Ch 14 Snow Crawling
All was left behind: the swaying gas lamp inside the bunker, the sizzling water pot on top of the campfire, big sister Tonya's letters from Moscow, Natashenka's anxious warning before departure, the fight with Wang Yao in the previous morning—all were left behind the warning line of barred wires.
What faced afront was a dark and thick night sky where low clouds were racing past. In the gap between two overlapping clouds hid a trifle of cold bleak moonlight, as if blanketed with a layer of faint red dust. The snow field with scattering bushes was covered under such tremendous light and shadow that it almost resemble an inauspiscious sign.
The lieutenant ordered crawling. There was a long way to crawl through according to the previously studied map. Snow mercilessly seeped into Ivan's camo coat and slowly melted inside. Snow water mixing with sweat caused the newcomer to feel shivery in a moment and suffocating in the next. Only now had he realized that this was how it had always been for the infantry soldiers; cavalries couldn't compare to them. This rider who had been spoiled by the comfortable and flashy lifestyle on horseback suddenly had a deep feeling of pity and respect to his fellow soldiers.
Not faraway from him, there was the foreign young man of smaller build crawling nimbly at ease without much exertion. "What an experienced scout!" Ivan struggled to adjust his movement while thinking over the previous day with a heavy heart, "But seeing his character yesterday, who would've thought that he belongs to the front!"
From the hill at far came the rumbling sound. The frozen ground responded by shivering beneath their elbows. A few flare bombs flashed through the pitch-dark sky—they must speed up. Once reaching the woods over the hill foot, nobody would be able to find them.
Suddenly a flash of white light brightened the snow field. The firing lights of machine guns immediately spreaded densely across the trail in front of them. It seemed that they were trapped here. But just then, the firings seemed to change their aim and, instead, directed the mad strafing at the bushes adjacent to them.
"Follow me…" Ivan heard the lieutenant's voice but for a second he couldn't react due to excessive shock as well as stiff limbs from crawling in snow. At this very moment, Ivan felt that someone stopped beside him for a second and dragged him up from the snow. Only then did he finally came to his senses, as if awakening from a dream, and followed everyone else into the nearby woods.
They collapsed on the ground as the most dangerous and unbearable moment had past. Sasha's low voice came into his ears, "Pavlik diverted their firing…he ran over there…"
The enemy's machine guns were busy strafing at the bushes and the flare bombs temporarily blinded their eyes. Before finishing up Pavlik, the enemies didn't have time to look the other way. The soldier whose last name hadn't been remembered by most people saved their lives, thought Ivan with deep emotions. But when he was unable to catch up with the group due to shock and exhaustion, who, in the moment when his life was hanging by a thread, pulled him up?
Even just for a split of a second, he wouldn't mistaken that hand with any other's….Wang Yao sat near him without a word, leaning his back on a big tree. The tree's shadow covered over his delicate but serious face with a look of comtemplation and solitude, a force of possessing complete insight of everything but chose to hold his tongue. A strand of black hair hanging at his pale forehead was lined with a shell of ice, looking like a thin but vivid scar.
Ivan moved his body slightly over to him and placed his own frozen hand on his. He didn't move away.
"Thank you." As the last syllable came out of his mouth, Ivan felt Wang Yao giving his wrist a tight squeeze. On this black-haired young man's face, there remained a look between mindlessness and preoccupation. He slightly tightened up his thin lips. This involuntary gesture made his young face revealing a somewhat childish melancholy.
"Oh you…" Ivan moved his gaze away from the other's face, secretly pondering over the warmth and strength of that squeeze on his wrist. "Who are you after all…"
The lieutenant ordered the squad to rest for a moment. In the depth of woods hidden under the massive layers of spruce branches, they started a campfire small enough to warm their hands and canned food only; bigger campfire would attract the enemy's attention. The scouts silently touched the vodka cups in their hands for Pavlik who stayed in the bushes forever.
At this time, Egorov who was on lookout gave them a signal: a patroling German soldier was coming into the woods. Ivan saw the lieutenant eyed Wang Yao a signal, then the two quietly walked over to the end of the woods. After a very brief struggling, the two men escorted back this unlucky German soldier.
Ivan had heard that Wang Yao was good at taking captives. This black-haired young man was smaller than Europeans but solidly-built and powerful, often able to bring back "tongues*" from previous reconnaissance missions. Ivan certainly had seen how he dealt with the rude squad leader Kulikov before, but seeing with his own eyes of the way he tamed the captive, Ivan couldn't help but to admire his skills.
It seemed that the captive was fearful and honestly answered all the questions the soldiers asked. They came to know various pieces of useful information—far from enough, but there was nothing more they could get out of him. In previous missions, captured "tongues" would be brought back to the headquarter to be questioned, then sent to the captive camps. But now was only the beginning of a long scouting mission. How could they take this burden along with them?
The captive seemed to have detected their intention and began to tremble, begging with his not so fluent Russian, "Sir! Comrades! I'm a factory worker! Please look at my hands. I'm not a Nazi! I was forced into the recruitment…My wife passed away. I have an old mother and four children…"
The lieutenant looked at the callous worker's hands with sympathy. They searched a photo from his body—a garden in front of a small house stood this German soldier, his white-haired mother and four children of no more than ten years old, shoulder to shoulder, with an irresistable sorrow on each person's face for the seperation at hand.
"What he said is true, but we have to kill him." said the lieutenant firmly. "Who wants to do it?"
Before the lieutenant finished his words, the captive's throat grumbled a strange noise. Wang Yao's right hand still grabbed the captive's neck from behind, the left hand pulling out a dagger from his chest. As he released his hand, the captive's heavy body noiselessly fell on the blood-stained snow.
The ice on that strand of hair already melted from the fire, leaving the wet strand sticking onto his chilling forehead. For some reason, it looked even more like a scar to Ivan that he almost wanted to step forward and brush away the hair that irritated him.
"If I were caught, I wouldn't say a word." said Wang Yao abruptly as he raised his hand and threw the captive's photo into the fire.
"tongues": alive captives