Volga River, Tver Oblast.

4th December 1941, 2:18 p.m.

German territory.

Winter.

“A sense of terror was deforming

His features. And he would then press

His hand to heart in a great fastness,

As if to make its tortures painless...”

- Excerpt from a Russian poem

The world pressed in around Oryl, the outskirts of Rzhev now past and faded into the distance. His focus drew into the pain in his shoulder, the burning in his lungs, the smack of his feet against the snow-covered ice, and the undulations ahead that could be his only indication of a thin spot in the ice - and a sudden plunge into deadly waters.

He had abandoned the bushes beside the river to gain speed, but unfortunately that meant dealing with other problems - namely the ice and snow threatening to slip him up and casting a trail of footprints behind him as he propelled himself along despite the treacherous footing.

The light snowfall would soon fill in, or at least hide, the footprints he left behind, although it did send a chill through his body at the same time. His winter coat kept him warm while he was still moving, but once he stopped there would be little keeping him from freezing. The temperatures in the past week had approached negative thirty, colder than most winters he had lived through, and there was nothing keeping them from going even lower as midwinter drew closer.

The hum of engines off to his left shook him from his concentration, and he almost stumbled on the ice, catching his footing at the last moment. Once he saw the cause, though, he relaxed. The source was a German supply truck travelling in the opposite direction, hurrying along on some errand or another. They wouldn’t be on the lookout for him.

As the snowfall picked up, Oryl started to slow his pace and relax. Looking down the river, he could see no indication that he was being followed by Germans. Nobody sane would chase down a single deserter in this snowstorm, even if he was armed.

Blowing a snowflake from his chin, he started to think about his next move. If he was going to be forgotten by the Germans, he might be able to find somewhere to hole up nearby. There would be hunting lodges in the wood - he should be able to stumble across a hunting trail and follow it to shelter. It was probably his best option, given that returning to Rzhev wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

If he remembered correctly, there was a jetty for ferry boats further down the river. If he found that, he might be able to follow the trails from there to a place he could settle down for the night. He would be safe until morning then - no German soldiers would be wandering through hunting trails in this weather. No German soldiers who weren’t in a position like his, that is.

Keeping an eye out along the right bank of the river, he tried to spot the jetty as he continued downstream.

The snow began to intensify as Oryl began to worry that he hadn’t seen the jetty. Coming to a bend in the river that he recognised, he was sure of it. He knew it would be hard to spot given the coverage of snow, but he didn’t think that he could miss it. With the river shrunk in winter, it should have stood out, but he had to have missed it.

He turned back and hurried in the other direction. The sky had begun to grow darker, and it wasn’t just because of the storm. The sun was beginning to sink behind the treeline to the southwest. Another vehicle passed by along the road, but it was far out of sight and didn’t stop to look for him.

Getting worried by the amount of time he had left, Oryl got lucky at last, not as much by seeing the jetty as running into it. His foot kicked one of the pylons on the landward side, half buried by snow. The other pylon he couldn’t see poking out anywhere - presumably it was damaged since he had last been there and hadn’t been repaired.

Now that he had his bearings, he could finally begin to seek out the trails between the trees. A pair of them stretched out in different directions, and he hesitated for a moment, trying to remember which one might get him closer to shelter.

Another growl of an engine further down the road behind him alerted him to danger. He stepped away from the riverbank and back among the woods, the freezing cold beginning to seep into his body now that he was no longer moving. For the moment, however, he had no choice but to huddle up and deal with the chill. The road at this point drew close to the road to let ferry boats drop off passengers - there was a clear view from the road to his position as the trees against the river had been cut down.

Into this gap in the trees crawled a half-track. A handful of German soldiers, huddled together for warmth but still shivering, stared out in all directions from the crew compartment. It wasn’t moving quickly, letting them keep pace with flanking infantry, who emerged from the trees alongside it.

The infantry fanned out into the open space by the river, with a few running down to the water to scout out the area. One called out and waved more soldiers over, and the group suddenly stepped up their alertness. The machine gunner on the halftrack braced and armed his weapon, and a foot soldier fired off a flare to alert any other nearby groups.

They had spotted Oryl’s footprints from the last time he had passed through.

The five soldiers on the ground split up, gesturing and calling orders to each other. Four of them followed the footprints further downriver, while the last walked towards Oryl’s current position, checking out the rest of the area. A fresher set of footprints awaited him, just metres ahead.

The half-track’s engines were muted by the snowfall as it inched down towards the river. Troops aboard disembarked, the driver not sure if the ice could take the weight. The rumble of a second engine from further away indicated more German troops would soon arrive.

Hidden behind his tree on the other bank, Oryl cursed his carelessness. But how could he have thought the German troops would care so much? Assembling an entire task force just for a single deserter?

He chambered another bullet into his rifle as the German soldier drew closer, the empty shell casing that fell into the snow reminding him of the soldier he had almost killed before - and the one he would now have to take the life of.

Hearing the crunch of snow across the river behind him cease, Oryl clutched his rifle in ready position, then stepped out from behind the tree. He brought the barrel to point at the unlucky soldier, taken unawares as he bent down to check the fresh set of footprints in the snow.

The rifle shot echoed out through the frozen landscape, drawing the attention of the other soldiers. Several of them dived for the ground across the river, searching for the enemy.

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The soldier Oryl had shot fell back against the ice, scarlet blood scattering away and painting dots in the snow. Oryl himself dashed off into the trees before the fallen soldier’s allies could react.

A hail of bullets spat among the trees as the machine gunner opened up on Oryl’s position. He dove for cover as splinters were flung from trees, a blunt impact in the same right arm indicating a hit. The other soldiers added the weight of their fire to the barrage, sending a blizzard of bullets to match the falling snow into the trees where Oryl had been hiding.

After the initial automatic fire faded into a few bursts from the machine gun, Oryl took to his feet again, running through the deep snow of the path. A few bullets buzzed by his ears, but Oryl was quickly lost among the woods as the German soldiers gathered and prepared for their pursuit.

The shouts from behind continued as Oryl pressed on through the tree cover. He was losing warmth, both from the snow slipping into his garments and from the bleeding cut on his arm that had pierced through his outer garments. The offending chunk of wood, too large to be called a splinter, used to be a branch from a pine tree. It was still stuck in the cut and shouldn’t be taken out until he could give it more attention than he could afford at that point. At least the snow was covering the trail of blood.

He broke the large part of the piece outside of his clothes free, withstanding the pain as the force he applied rubbed the remainder of the splinter around inside the wound. That way it wouldn’t slow him down as he ran.

With the sun now hidden completely behind the treeline and the wind starting to pick up, the air chilled rapidly. It was probably even colder than it had been the past days - up to forty below in Centigrade, or even lower.

Oryl couldn’t take the time to rest, however. The barking and howling of dogs carried through the air behind him, as much trained into the dogs for intimidation as it was their nature. A German wardog unit was on his trail.

He had no way of telling how far behind the barks were either, as the sound was muffled by the snow and the forested landscape, but he couldn’t see them behind him for now. There must have been something confusing the dogs’ smell.

He held the stolen pistol for self-defence. His rifle was useless, injured as his shooting arm was. Instead of the pain, a feeling of numbness had begun to soak through his hand and forearm, perhaps indicating a lack of circulation or perhaps something more sinister.

The trail drew out before him, twisting and turning as it ran around fallen trees and rocky outcrops. He had seen two paths that may have led out to hunting cabins, but hadn’t been able to move towards them with the Germans so close on his trail. His hope was for them to call off the hunt with night drawing closer and head back to Rzhev so he could find shelter. Otherwise they might all freeze to death, even if he was caught.

Glancing over his shoulder again, Oryl spotted a bounding shape making its way through the terrain, over a collapse tree he had passed just thirty seconds ago. He slowed to a halt, putting his back to a tree and readying the pistol as the dog drew closer.

It slowed as he did, walking out with a growl. It had followed the path through the snow that he had left behind rather than blazing its own trail, but it still shook the last few flakes from its back as it circled Oryl.

Looking around with one eye still on the wardog, Oryl didn’t spot any other hounds - it was just the one that had followed him. It was quite the brute though, with well muscled limbs and a jaw filled with teeth bared in a growl.

Training his pistol on its bulk, Oryl prepared for its attack, but it seemed content to circle. It sniffed the air, still keeping up its growl, but then turned its head in another direction as if distracted by something. As Oryl kept his pistol on it, it turned away from him and dashed off on a tangent into the woods, leaving him alone and still quite confused.

As Oryl kept moving, the sounds of German pursuit faded off. They were likely pulling back to Rzhev - he had outlasted them. But now he needed to outlast the winter night, as frozen blood started to gather in his jacket.

Snow slid from trees as the wind howled between them, Oryl’s new pursuer tickling against the back of his coat as it gusted over the snow. A pair of gunshots carried over the now full snowstorm through the forest - perhaps the German soldiers running into an animal, perhaps a hunter, perhaps something altogether different.

The trail was starting to grow harder to follow as the light drained away. Oryl didn’t have a torch or other light to guide his path, so he relied on vague memories and a feeling of where a campsite might be. They would be built where they could stand clear of normal snowfalls - so atop an outcrop of rocks, into the side of a hill.

A brief flurry of snow emptied away, clearing his vision for a moment. Among the trees off to the side of the path he saw the oblong shape of a roof.

Stumbling towards it, he was able to make out more of the detail. Its shaped, windowless wooden walls stood out against the rough vertical forms of the pine trees around. There was a small cowled chimney emerging from one of the corners of the building, promising the potential for warmth inside.

He collapsed against the door, panting clouds of white mist in and out. The relief had taken as much out of him as the cold and wounds did. The door was locked, but a chop from his axe broke the thin chain, dropping the padlock free, and he was through. He stepped through the raised doorway, the snow having not yet reached the sill, into the blackness of the camp.

The inside was just as cold as out, but at least there was no wind. Oryl squinted around in the darkness, trying to spot some sort of light. He could see a fireplace in the corner, but he had no way of lighting it. There were some slots in the wall he could open to let light in, currently letting the barest glimmer through, but he had no wish to expose himself to any more cold than he needed. He was best off with the door closed and him on the warm side.

Feeling his way along a shelf by the door, his hand ran into boxes and packaging, something furry but dead and cold, and finally a square box with a rough patch like sandpaper on the sides. Matches. He dropped his bag and grabbed them off the shelf with his good hand.

The fire caught with a flare of light, propaganda leaflets around the base of the fireplace crumbling and blackening as they burned. If a commissar had been here they might have locked him up for political crimes, but at the moment warmth was the only thing Oryl cared about. And as the twigs and finally one of the logs in the fireplace caught, warmth was what he got. He sank back against the bed and closed his eyes as he felt heat soak into the air in the cabin.

Once he felt the snow in his clothes start to melt, he removed the sleeve from his arm to check the wounds. The first bandage had come loose, but the cut had scabbed up, leaving trails of dark red down his arm. The newer injury was still bleeding, sapping warmth and feeling below his elbow.

It would have to be taken out, and it was going to be painful. He may have to rest here for a few days to recover. Right now though, he was more worried about how he could get all the fragments. The injury was on the back of his arm and was a tricky spot for him to reach.

A small medical kit on the wall by the door provided part of the solution, hanging next to an asbestos fire blanket. In it he found a syringe containing painkillers.

He pulled out a pair of tweezers from the kit, started melting some snow in the fire, sat down and injected himself with the morphine.

… And heard footsteps approaching the cabin.

He reached slowly for his rifle, then realised once he had it that his arm was still injured. Instead he grabbed his pistol, his shadow flaring on the wall as the footsteps stopped outside the door. Whoever it was, it was going to be bad for him.

“Let me in?” A voice called out from beyond the door. “I know someone’s inside.”

Oryl didn’t say a word. The language was Russian, but the accent was not.

The call repeated again. “No Russian? Hallo, kann ich fragen, wer drin ist?”

Oryl’s head spun and he snapped himself into focus. Now was the worst time to be distracted - he was exhausted, having run all day and nearly been killed, but now was the time he needed to concentrate the most.

The knock on the door happened again. “Hallo?”

Before he realised it, the gun had slipped out of Oryl’s hands. He coughed. Somehow it didn’t matter any more. He couldn’t hold on to his wakefulness for any longer.

So he did what he had done once already. He gave up.

As the door opened and a man in German uniform stepped inside, Oryl drifted off into senselessness.