The Sojourn - Andrew Krivak [40]
From the lieutenant and a bespectacled man in supply we got beeswax for our boots, a ration of biscuits, an extra canteen for water, and some small candles we used to melt snow in our cups, and then we stayed put at the fort. The temperatures had dipped well below freezing by nightfall and a sickle moon hung in the western sky, the air so crisp that it seemed to crackle when you inhaled. The next day we rose and ranged to the peak of Mount Cornetto, the best vantage point in the region of the surrounding territory, and safely to the north, but we only did this to escape the damp cells and crushing morale of the fort. In truth, we had no idea how we should go about finding the man or men who most likely thought and acted as we did, and we even wondered each time we stepped off of the access road to the fort and into the pine and rock ledges of the forest, if we’d emerge onto some height, glass our line of sight, and be killed right where we stood. But we changed our route every day, found several vantage points and possible hides, overnighted below the tree line each night in a hidden snow cave we carpeted with pine needles, and, after a week of this, reported back to Fort Cherle.
Prosch seemed surprised to see us, or at least he feigned surprise, and wanted to know why we weren’t out hunting our sniper, as we’d been ordered.
“Herr Hauptman, because he’s not out there,” Zlee said.
“How can you be so sure?” Prosch replied.
“It’s too cold, sir. So we’re ranging to find the most likely place for him to reappear when the weather breaks, and for us to position ourselves.”
“Splendid,” Prosch said. “I’ve been sent mountain men who have found it too cold to hunt in the mountains. Corporals Pes and Vinich, if one more man dies at the hand of this Italian while you are under my command, there will be no courts-martial. I will execute you both myself and have the stable boys pitch your bodies over a cliff. Do you understand?”
For the first time, I feared what a man was capable of doing to me in that war, a man weaker than I, and yet one whom I was bound to obey, at least in his presence. At that moment, I would have chosen to have been blown to bits by random artillery rather than to have had Captain Edmund Prosch be the last man to see me alive before a firing squad put a bullet through my heart.
But Zlee never flinched. “Herr Hauptmann, if you will forgive the solitary nature of our methods and allow me to explain.”
Zlee’s German sounded nothing like the high tone he had meant to use, even if sarcastically, but Prosch, who loved to be coddled almost as much as he loved to be feared, sat down and said, “Explain.”
And so Zlee told him that we suspected the sniper had been using the intermittent warming trends in the mountains to hunt in the early mornings, when the mist that rose from the melting snow provided a kind of directional cover for him, while it still allowed him to fire accurately using an optical sight, because the scope picked up more morning light than the naked eye. And in the thin mountain air, the closer he got to his target, the more accurate he’d be.
“He’s not firing from the next mountain over, sir,” Zlee said, “but more likely only a few hills.” We couldn’t know this for sure, but it was our best guess, and so we told Prosch something he wanted to hear.
Prosch asked why the other Austrian sharpshooters hadn’t known this and Zlee said that unfortunately they had overestimated the skill of their adversary. “If he were good at what he does, sir, he would be wearing a coat of field gray and fighting for Emperor Karl.” Although we ourselves suspected our target to be a local Austrian trained like us, yet who, for reasons