Free The Winter Horses by Philip Kerr

Max himself.
    But when the old man reached the stable door, he found Molnija with his muzzle in a bucket of fresh feed—placed there, he imagined, by Kalinka—with no sign of Temüjin or Börte. Astonished, he glanced around the stable several times but, as if by magic, the two horses had vanished.
    Grenzmann caught up with the old man and smiled. “I can see you were expecting us, Max.”
    “Sir?”
    “The feed you had prepared. That was most thoughtful of you. A peace offering, perhaps?”
    “Er, I did wonder if you might ride out this way, sir,” said Max. “It being such a beautiful morning.”
    Grenzmann looked about him and took a deep breath.
    “I wonder, how many more such mornings will there be for us Germans?”
    “Many more, I hope, sir.”
    “What do you think will happen to Lightning when I leave, Max?”
    “I haven’t given it much thought, sir.”
    “Well, I have. Since that awful business with yourPrzewalski’s horses, it’s been on my mind a lot. Shall I tell you what I think will happen to him? To Lightning? To all of your precious animals here at Askaniya-Nova?”
    Max shrugged. He might have reminded the captain that almost all of the animals—the deer, the llamas, the bison, even the zebras—had been shot by the Germans for their kitchen, but he hardly wanted to provoke an argument with Grenzmann. Not when he was being so friendly.
    “I think the Red Army will butcher this horse and then eat him. That’s what will happen to him.”
    “Then why not take him with you, sir? When you leave.”
    “I’d like to, Max. Really, I would. But even a horse as fast as this couldn’t keep up with a motorized group of SS. Especially as we may have to try to fight our way out of here.”
    Grenzmann let Molnija finish the last of the feed in the pail and then lifted his head into his hands.
    “So what will you do, sir?”
    “Only one thing I can do, really.”
    To the old man’s relief, Grenzmann took hold of the horse’s reins and then led him outside, where he mounted the animal again and turned him toward the big house.
    “I shall shoot him myself.” Grenzmann patted the horse on the neck and then smiled sadly at Max. “It’s the kinder thing to do. That an animal as fine and noble as this should end up on some Russian peasant’s plate is an unbearable thought to me.”
    Max said nothing.
    “But that’s not for a while yet.” The captain nodded. “Don’t forget about tomorrow night, will you, Max?”
    “No, sir. I won’t forget. And thank you.”
    Grenzmann galloped away, and for quite a while after he’d gone—until he realized it was the sound of his own heart beating—it seemed that Max could still hear the horse’s hooves on the snow.

T HE OLD MAN WATCHED Captain Grenzmann gallop away until he was just a dot on the snowy horizon before turning back to the stable. Still more than a little puzzled—for he had seen no tracks in the snow leading away from the stable to persuade him that Temüjin and Börte had ever left there—Max looked up at the loft and called out Kalinka’s name.
    “Kalinka,” he said. “You can come down now. He’s gone.”
    For a moment, Max thought there must be an earthquake—these are not uncommon in that part of the world—because the straw-covered floor of the stable seemed to shift before his eyes; the next second, Kalinka stood up, followed by the two horses.
    “That was close,” she said. “There was one moment when his stupid, great horse almost stepped on me.”
    “I don’t believe it,” said Max, for it was now apparent to him that all three of them had been hiding under a layer of straw.
    She grinned. “We really fooled him, didn’t we? That German. And his German horse.”
    “How did you do it?” he asked the girl.
    “Believe me,” she said, picking straw off her clothes, “I’ve hidden in a lot of hayricks since I left Dnepropetrovsk. More than I care to remember.”
    “I’m sure you have. But what I mean is, how