A dead man’s hand clenched around her throat. She swallowed twice before she could say: “Not together. It’s too important. This whole district will be aswarm. I’ll have all I can do to get through alive, and I’m experienced. You must try by yourself. Wait here till—tomorrow night?—till it looks safer.”
Between her hands, he straightened. “No. My comrades are fighting. I ran away once. Not again.”
“What use will you be, with that wound of yours?”
“I can carry ammunition. Or—Katya, you might not make it. I might, by sheer luck, and let them know.” He laughed, or sobbed. “A tiny, tiny chance, but who can say for certain?”
“Oh, God. You idiot.”
“Every little thing counts, you said.”
Yes, each scrap thrown into the furnace, it does become part of the steel. “I mustn’t delay, Pyotr. Give me, well, half an hour till you start, so I can get clear. Count to, uh—”
“I know some old songs and about how long they take. I’ll sing them in my head. While I think of you, Katya.”
“Here.” She undid objects and tossed them on the sofa. “Food, water. You’ll need strength. No, I insist; I’m not injured. God keep you, lad, you—you Russian.”
“We’ll meet again. Won’t we1? Say we will!”
Instead, she cast her arms about him and laid her mouth on his. Just for a minute. Just for a memory.
She stepped back. He stood. His breath went like flaws of wind in the dark (springtime wind?) amidst the hammering of the guns. “Do be careful,” she said. Taking up her rifle, she felt her way to the door.
And down the stairs. And into the streets.
Tanks roared somewhere on her left. Would the Germans mount a night attack? Likelier a feint. But she was no strategist, merely a sharpshooter. Flashes etched skeletal buildings against a reddened sky. She felt the racket through her bootsoles. Hers was simply to deliver a message.
Or to survive? What had she to do with the cruel follies of mortals? Why was she here?
“Well, you see, Pyotr, dear, I am a Russian too.”
A park, a piece of openness between these jagged walls, glimmered white before her. A solitary tree was left, the rest were stumps and splinters around a crater. She skirted it, keeping to shadows. Likewise would she skirt the ravine, and be most cautious when she came to the railroad tracks that led to the Lazur. She must arrive with her word.
She doubted Pyotr would. Well, if not, he’d stop a bullet or two that might otherwise have gone into somebody more effective. If somehow he kept alive—Maria of the mercies, let him, help him!—of course they’d never see each other, or hear, or anything. Suppose two grams of dust are whirled together for a moment when a storm runs over the steppe. Will it bring them back?
Certainly never her to him. She would be changing identities again before long. Whenever the Four Horsemen rode across the world, they opened easy ways for doing that. She could not have stayed much more with the Cossacks anyhow.
But first—
The guns boomed louder. Given the news she bore, the Soviet artillery would take aim at Kratoy Gully. It would blast the Germans out of there before they could dig in. That would be that, while the war went on.
Work, you guns. Bring down the wrath of Dazhbog and Perun, of St. Yuri the dragonslayer and St. Alexander Nev-sky. Here we stand. The thing that bestrides all Europe shall come no farther than us. If we fight in the name of a monster, that makes no difference. And we don’t really. Once this Stalingrad was Tsaritsyn. It can become something else someday in the future. But good for now to think that we hold fast in the City of Steel.
We will endure, and prevail, and abide the day of our freedom.