Free The Child Thief by Dan Smith Page B

to my knees, where I let it rest for a moment, feeling the cold of it against my legs. Putting my hands on top of it and turning my face to the ceiling of the barn, I
paused to give a thought for the dead man, then I nodded to myself and opened the satchel.
    Inside there was a handful of ammunition for the weapons he’d been carrying, the brass casings loose in the bag. There was a flat tin bound with a black and orange striped ribbon. When I
turned the tin in my hands, I saw that in the place where the ribbon was knotted, a medal hung from the material. I had never seen one like it, but I knew what it was and what it meant. If the man
with the sled was the owner of this medal – if he had earned it – then this man had not been my brother. He had not been my kin. He would most probably have been an officer.
    I had fought on the front with many different officers during the Great War before the revolution. Men who’d been bred for self-sacrifice and honour. Men who’d had those things so
thoroughly ingrained in their personalities they were unable to turn and walk away when they saw death coming for them. I had stood in bloody water up to my knees with them, lain in the mud among
the bodies of my comrades, thrown myself at enemy lines for them. They were men who became outraged at the growth of battlefield committees and were confused by soldiers who refused to fight
without committee agreement. The words and status of the officers was useless against the growing feelings of inequality among their men, and many of them were lynched by revolutionary squads
refusing to fight.
    I had been a supporter of the changes and I had embraced the revolution when it came. I had even seen the failings of the officers who drove us into a futile war, but I had never condoned their
slaughter at the hands of revolutionaries, and I still maintained my respect for any man who was prepared to fight for his beliefs. A hundred men like Dimitri turning on officers who gave their
lives to their country and had earned the honour of dying in battle was not my view of justice. I felt both anger and sadness conflict in me when I thought this stranger in our village had come
away from that nightmare, survived the sweep of the revolution and the civil war that followed only to be hanged by Dimitri and his cruel pack. I wondered if I had tried hard enough to stop them;
if there was anything else I could have done to stop Dimitri.
    Outside, I went back round the barn, dragging the sled upon which the children had been lying. The old black oak came into view, its naked arms reaching for the heavens,
presenting its grotesque decoration still twisting and swaying. I had left him there to shame the people who had done this, I didn’t want to spare them their guilt, but now I knew I had to
take him down. Such indignity was no end for a man who had once fought for his country. And whether he’d been tsarist or communist or anarchist it made no difference. They were just names
that meant nothing.
    Natalia was sitting at the table with the children when I pushed open the door. They all looked up at me, but I barely acknowledged them. I put down the items I’d brought from the barn,
laid them with the man’s rifle, then collected one of the blankets Natalia had used to cover him. There was a fresh fire in the hearth now, the flames just beginning to pick up, and the
blanket was tinged with its warmth.
    Natalia watched me, unspeaking, but when I went back to the door, she stood. ‘Where are you going?’
    I stopped with my fingers on the handle and spoke without turning round. ‘To cut him down.’
    ‘And then what?’
    ‘I’m going to bury him.’
    ‘The blanket . . .’
    ‘We can spare it.’
    A chair scraped the floor behind me. ‘I’ll come with you,’ Petro said.
    ‘No. Viktor can help.’
    ‘ I can do it, Papa.’
    ‘I said, Viktor can help.’ I pulled open the door.
    I took the sled to the centre of the village, where the