Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 3: Flashman at the Charge, Flashman in the Great Game, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord. George Fraser MacDonald
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as the thoughts rushed through my mind, I was glancing at the stars, picking out the Plough and judging our line south. That way, even if we hit the coast fifty versts either side of Yenitchi, we at least stood a decent chance of finding our road to it in the end, for we had time on our side.
“Right,” says I. “Let’s be off. We’re sure to hit some farm or station where we can change horses. We’ll drive in turns, and –”
“We must take Valla with us,” cries he, and even in that ghostly light I’ll swear he was blushing. “We cannot abandon her – God knows what kind of villages these will be we shall pass through – we could not leave her, not knowing what … I mean, if we can reach the camp at Sevastopol, she will be truly safe … and … and …”
And he would be able to press his suit, no doubt, the poor skirt-smitten ninny, if he ever plucked up courage enough. I wonder what he’d have thought if he’d known I had been pupping his little Ukrainian angel for weeks. And there she was, in the sled, with not a stitch to her name.
“You’re right!” I cried. “We must take her. You are a noble fellow, Scud! Off we go, then, and I’ll take the ribbons as soon as you’re tired.”
I jumped in the back, and off we swept, over the snowy plain, and far behind us the red glow mounted to the night sky. I peered back at it, wondering if Pencherjevsky was dead yet, and what had happened to Aunt Sara. Whatever it was, I found myself hoping that for her, at least, it had been quick. And then I busied myself putting the sled in some order.
They are splendid things, these three-horse sleighs, less like a coach than a little room on runners. They are completely enclosed with a great hood, lashed down all round, with flaps which can be secured on all the window spaces, so that when they are down the whole thing is quite snug, and if you have furs enough, and a bottle or two, you can be as warm as toast. I made sure everything was secure, set out the bread, and a leg of ham, which East had thoughtfully picked up, on the front seat, and counted the bottles – three of brandy, one of white wine. Valla seemed to be still unconscious; she was wrapped in a mountain of furs between the seats, and when I opened the rear window-flap for light to examine her, sure enough, she was in that uneasy shocked sleep that folk sometimes go into when they’ve been terribly scared. The shaft of moonlight shone on her silvery hair, and on one white tit peeping out saucily from the furs – I had to make sure her heart was beating, of course, but beyond that I didn’t disturb her – for the moment. Fine sledges these: the driver is quite walled off.
So there we were; I huddled in my fur, took a pull at the brandy, and then crawled out under the side flap on to the mounting of the runner; the wind hit me like a knife, with the snow furrowing up round my legs from the runner-blades. We were fairly scudding along as I pulled myself up on to the driving seat beside East and gave him a swig at the brandy.
He was chattering with cold, even in his fur wrap, so I tied it more securely round him, and asked how we were going. He reckoned, if we could strike a village and get a good direction, we might make Yenitchi in five or six hours – always allowing for changes of horses on the way. But he was sure we wouldn’t be able to stand the cold of driving for more than half an hour at a time. So I took the ribbons and he crept back perilously into the sled – one thing I was sure of: Valla would be safe with him.
If it hadn’t been for the biting cold, I’d have enjoyed that moonlight drive. The snow was firm and flat, so that it didn’t ball in the horses’ hooves, and the runners hissed across the snow – it was strange, to be moving at that speed with so little noise. Ahead were the three tossing manes, with the vapour streaming back in the icy air, and beyond that – nothing. A white sheet to the black horizon, a magnificent silver moon, and that reassuring Pole star dead astern when I looked back.
I was about frozen, though, when I spotted lights to starboard after about twenty minutes, and swerved away to find a tumble-down little village, populated by the usual half-human peasants. After consultation with East, I decided to ask the distance and direction to Osipenke; East was carrying a rough table of places and directions in his head, out of the book he had studied, and from the peasants’ scared answers – for they were in awe of any strangers – we were able to calculate our proper course, and swerve away south-west.
East had taken over the reins. Valla had come to while he was in the sled – I wondered if he’d been chancing his arm, but probably not – and had had mild hysterics, about her father, and Aunt Sara, who had been sitting up with a sick Cossack woman in the barracks, and had presumably been cut off there.
“The poor little lamb,” says East, as he took the reins. “It tore my heart to see her grief, Flashman – so I have given her a little laudanum from a phial which … which I carry always with me. She should sleep for several hours; it will be best so.”
I could have kicked him, for if there’s one thing I’d fancy myself good at, it’s comforting a bereaved and naked blonde under a fur rug. But he had put her to sleep, no error, and she was snoring like a walrus. So I had to amuse myself with bread and ham, and try to snatch a nap myself.
We made good progress, and after a couple of hours found a way-station, by great good luck, on what must have been the Mariupol road. We got three new nags, and bowled away famously, but what with lack of sleep it was getting to be hard work now, and a couple of hours after sun-rise we pulled up in the first wood we’d seen – a straggly little affair of stunted bushes, really – and decided to rest ourselves and the horses. Valla was still out to the wide, and East and I took a seat apiece and slept like the dead.
I woke first, and when I put my head out the sky was already dimming in the late afternoon. It was bleak and grey, and freezing starvation, and looking through the twisted branches at the pale, endless waste, I felt a shiver running through me that had nothing to do with cold. Not far away there were two or three of those funny little mounds called koorgans, which I believe are the barrows of long-forgotten barbarian peoples; they looked eerie and uncanny in the failing light, like monstrous snowmen. The stillness was awful; you could feel it, not even a breath of wind, but just the cold and the weight of emptiness hanging over the steppe. It was unnerving, and suddenly I could hear Kit Carson’s strained quiet voice in the dread silence of the wagon road west of Leavenworth: “Nary a sight nor sound anywhere – not even a sniff o’ danger. That’s what frets me.”
It fretted me, too, at this minute; I roused East, and then we made all fast, and I took the reins and off we slid silently south-west, past those lonely koorgans, into the icy wilderness. I had a bottle, and some bread, but nothing could warm me; I was scared, but didn’t know of what – just the silence and the unknown, I suppose. And then from somewhere far off to my right I heard it – that thin, dismal sound that is the terror of the empty steppe, unmistakable and terrifying, drifting through the vast distance: the eldritch cry of the wolf.
The horses heard it too, and whinnied, bounding forward in fear with a stumble of hooves, until we were flying at our uttermost speed. My imagination was flying even faster; I remembered Pencherjevsky’s story of the woman who had thrown her children out when those fearful monsters got on the track of her sled, and had been executed for it, and countless other tales of sleds run down by famished packs and their occupants literally eaten alive. I daren’t look back for fear of what I might see loping over the snow behind me.
The cry was not repeated, and after a few more miles I breathed easier; there was a twinkle of light dead ahead, and when we reached it, we found it was a moujik’s cabin, and the man himself at the door, axe in hand, glowering at us. We asked him the nearest town, and could have cried with relief when he said Yenitchi: it was only forty versts away – a couple of hours’ driving, if the beasts held up and weren’t pressed too hard. East took the reins, I climbed in behind – Valla was sleeping still, uneasily, and mumbling incoherently – and we set off on what I prayed was the last stage of our mainland journey.
For rather more than an hour nothing happened; we drove on through the silence, I took another turn, and then I halted not far from another clump of koorgans to let East climb into the driver’s seat again. I had my foot on the runner, and he was just chuckling to the horses, when it came again –