Free The Winter Horses by Philip Kerr Page A

on earth did you persuade these two horses to lie down and let you cover them with a layer of straw?”
    “Actually, it was their idea,” said Kalinka. “They lay down and started to pull the straw across themselves, like they were going to bed. I just helped finish the job. You know, I’d say they’ve done this sort of thing before: hiding. I mean, they seem pretty good at it. As good as me, I reckon. Maybe better.”
    “For years, I’ve been telling people that these horses are as clever as foxes.”
    “I reckon they are, you know. Not that I know many foxes.”
    “I used to say that there was a very good reason why they had a fur brush for a tail instead of just hair.” Max rubbed his silver beard thoughtfully. “I guess I should have listened to myself, eh?”
    He laughed, clapped his hands and stamped around the floor with delight. This prompted Temüjin to utter awhinny and hoof the straw, which seemed to amount to almost the same thing.
    “I always knew they could find the right spot to stand in that helped them blend in with a bush or a tree,” added Max. “There are plenty of stories in the books about how they were able to evade Mongolian hunters who were just a few steps away from them. But I didn’t realize how far they could take something like that. I never heard of a horse doing what I witnessed in here.”
    “There’s a first time for everything,” said Kalinka. “Isn’t that what people say?”
    “For everything except a miracle, perhaps.” He shook his head. “Come on. I won’t be happy until I’ve got the three of you hidden away again.”
    Max led them outside; the sun was properly up by now, and they could see a clear trail left by Grenzmann’s horse as far as the horizon, which prompted Max to find something new to worry about.
    “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.
    “What is it?”
    He pointed at the Hanoverian horse’s hoofprints.
    “If we walk on this snow, there will be an obvious trail from here to the waterworks. For any German soldiers looking for more horses to shoot, it would be like drawing them a map.”
    “We could walk single file,” suggested Kalinka. “Like Saint Wenceslas’s page.”
    Max shook his head. “It would still make them curious.
    And that curiosity might lead them to the old waterworks. No, I think it’s probably best we keep its existence as secret as possible.”
    “So what are we going to do?”
    He glanced up at the sky again. “There’s only one thing we can do, I think, and that’s to wait for it to snow again before we go to the waterworks.”
    “Is it going to snow again?”
    “In this part of Ukraine, at this time of year, it always snows again,” Max said grimly.
    Kalinka shrugged and led the two horses back into the stable. “I suppose,” she said, “we could always hide under the straw if that captain or any of his men come back.”
    Max nodded. “If my old heart can stand it, I suppose you could at that,” he said.
    “Until then we could play chess, if you like,” said Kalinka. “I noticed that you have a set of pieces and a board.”
    “Do you play?”
    “A little.”
    It was several hours before it started to snow again, by which time Kalinka had beaten the old man at chess three times in a row.
    “You’re very good at that game,” he said irritably as he finally led the girl and the two horses across the open steppe to the smallest lake, which was where the waterworks was located. “How is that?”
    “My father said I was a prodigy,” she announced matter-of-factly. “He could never beat me and he wasmuch better than you. Oh, I don’t mean that you’re no good at all. Just that you’re not half as good as he was. He was the regional state chess champion. He used to say that the secret of being a very good player is to think two or three moves ahead. Somehow, I manage to think four or five moves ahead. That’s all.”
    “That’s all?” he muttered. “You manage to make that sound quite