Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [96]
A few horses bounded across the training ground, almost up to their bellies in powdery snow, kicking up white fountains as they strained against the resistant substance. The horses whinnied and thrashed, silly animals that they were, firmly convinced the stuff holding their legs meant them harm and that they had to fight for their very lives. A tall bay gelding lost its footing and skidded, landing hard on its flank. I hoped it was not injured.
The rotmistr, the cornets and I, all of us bundled in our yards of furs, stood just inside the gates, surveying the mass confusion. “What’s going on?” I said, succumbing to the apparent need of repeated demands for information that ruled the garrison.
“Let’s find out.” The rotmistr moved ahead with the confident but lopsided strides of his slightly bowed legs; the cornets and I followed like oversized, fur-clad ducklings.
The rotmistr approached a man dressed in a pelisse and dragoon uniform jacket decorated with a few medals and officer’s epaulettes; he would had cut a lot more impressive figure of he wore his britches rather than the bottoms of his under flannels tucked in his shining, spurred boots. “Excuse me,” the rotmistr said. “What’s the trouble? I have a trainload of hussars here, and we will be more than happy to assist you if you only tell me what’s going on and what’s to be done.”
The man’s eyes cast about wildly, as if he had just woke from a terrifying dream. “The English,” he rasped. “We were attacked by the English, leaping over the fence, stealing horses . . . one of my men tried to apprehend the trespassers, and he had his musket torn out of his hands, and its barrel tied into a knot. He says, the man who did it did it with his bare hands. Tied solid iron into a knot.”
“How many were there?” I asked, my heart fluttering with excitement and relief. One thing about Jack, he could rarely be confused with anyone else.
The man shrugged, distraught. “There was the one who ambushed the man guarding the stables . . . and then there was shouting, and they grabbed horses . . . no one expected an attack, not here, not in the middle of the winter.”
“I understand,” the rotmistr said, his voice even, soothing.
By the time the terrified horses were caught and put back into their stables (adjacent to the barracks for warmth) and the soldiers had regained their composure and disentangled themselves from the horses’ tack and each other’s muskets, the sun had almost set, and we were led to the officers’ quarters—a grand name for a log cabin divided into three apartments, each with a small bedroom and a sitting room, plus a common kitchen and a dining room with a long rough pine table. The table looked as if it was waiting for an opportunity to stuff someone’s unsuspecting palm full of splinters. Paisley drapes struggled valiantly to disguise the room’s rough-hewn severity, but failed miserably.
We waited for two batmen, both Cossacks, to prepare the table for dinner. It was barely afternoon, and yet the sky had grown dark and star studded— fat yellow stars, spreading like wiggly-legged spiders over the royal blue of the sky, not the pale, cold white pinpricks one saw in St. Petersburg.
The moon was also out—large and peach-colored, with a few spots that looked like decay. It hung outside of the officers’ dining room window as if eager to eavesdrop on our conversation. It was quiet now, with an occasional sharp bark of an Arctic fox or some other small predator, cold and hungry and ecstatic to be alive, to feel the steam of its blood coalescing against the solid cold of the night.
The garrison’s commander, Captain Kurashov, told us the story again over dinner. He had calmed down, and for a while I wondered why a real soldier would be so distraught about the theft of a horse or two, even if it was accompanied by the appearance of Spring Heeled Jack.