Read Online Red Winter by Dan Smith - Free Book Online

threw it over my brother, showering across his lifeless body, and I watched as he disappeared from the world. The patter of the soil on his body was the saddest sound I had ever heard, and the hardest shovelful was the one that hid his face. It settled into his nostrils, his eyes, on his lips and across his pale skin. And then Alek was gone.
    I put on my jacket and picked up my coat and satchel, walking back through the crosses and memorials towards the women.
    ‘I’ve nothing to mark his grave,’ I said, as the sleet fell around me.
    ‘That can’t be helped,’ Tanya replied.
    I nodded and stopped to stare at the place where I had buried my brother. He was gone now, but would always be with me.
    ‘Now I’ll show you what you want to see,’ I said, turning from the grave and walking away without looking back. ‘Then I’m going to find my wife and sons.’ Perhaps I would have to bury them too.
    I had entered the church before Tanya called after me, but I didn’t stop. I had done my duty to my brother now, and I wanted to get back to the lake, to the forest, to follow the call of the crows. I had delayed too long already.
    ‘Hold on,’ Tanya said, following behind me.
    I passed through the church, putting on my coat, and was close to the front door when Tanya came alongside me, walking quickly.
    ‘What do you mean about finding your wife and sons?’
    I continued out into the empty road.
    ‘What did you mean?’ she asked again.
    ‘Come with me if you want to see.’

 
     
     
     
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    Tanya said nothing, but she fell back a few paces, walking behind me.
    Last night, the mist had washed over the bridge and lay across the path and undergrowth like forest spirits waiting to form, but now the wisps had vanished and all that remained were patches of frost and the hardening sleet. It crunched under our boots as we tramped to the far end of the village towards the footbridge.
    The crows. They were still here, calling their bleak cries to the morning. From time to time their cawing became more agitated, and some would rise into the air over the trees beyond the lake, then they would settle once more and the sky would be still.
    Tanya and I stopped at the mouth of the bridge and waited for Lyudmila to bring the horses.
    ‘They look tired,’ I said, as she came from the back of the church and led them along the road towards us.
    ‘They’re tough enough,’ Tanya replied.
    ‘And the bridge won’t take their weight.’
    ‘It won’t have to.’
    When Lyudmila caught up with us, Tanya took the reins of one of the horses, holding them out to the side so the animal could negotiate the river while she used the bridge.
    ‘After you,’ she said to me, so I crossed the bridge with the women following, and the horses splashed through the icy water beside us.
    We took the narrow path beyond, the branches reaching across on either side as if trying to touch us. It was less ghostly now than it had been last night, but there was something impersonal and unfeeling about it. As if we didn’t belong here.
    The horses came without complaint, the water dripping from their bellies as we went on into the forest, the soft thump of their hooves on the lonely path. There were tracks there, below the frost, the coming and going of many feet, but there was no telling how long they had been there.
    I knew what to expect when we came out into the clearing by the lake, but it still stopped me in my tracks.
    The sight of Galina’s husband lying dead on the grass was even starker than I remembered it. It had been softened by the moonlight, but now it was hard and cold and cruel. I was no stranger to the vile things that one man can do to another, but something about this made my flesh crawl. Perhaps because I had known this man.
    He had been a part of my life.
    The body lay in the centre of the clearing, surrounded only by the last red leaves of autumn, now frosted and glittering with the touch of winter. There was no