Chieftains

He knew they had shot him; he was dying. He lay on his back, and he could see the stars above him. He recognized the Great Bear; found the beacon of infinite north, the Pole Star. He wondered how long he would be able to watch it before his senses faded. And what then? Perhaps he would still be able to see the stars. Perhaps, after all, something followed death. It would have been better to have died somewhere else. Beside a good river; in the warmth of a summer afternoon. There was no romance about death in wartime; that was the myth old men told the young, a lie to feed violence…religion…was there even a God? It was all very convenient, a God to control the people while they were alive, blackmail them into submission with threats of godly vengeance…provide them with an after-life to remove the fear of death, and what did you have then? A disciplined army who would fight.

If there is a God, thought Studley, if you are up there and can hear me, just remember please that all I want is Jane. Not now, but in time.

Max would want her, too. How would a God solve that problem?

There was a dark shape beside him, the fallen trunk of some great tree. He could smell it rotting; the fungi. We'll rot together, he decided, here in this hollow in the ground. The beetles and the worms will share us. You didn't die peacefully either, tree, but you probably took longer. Perhaps you took fifty years to die; more than my lifetime.

He closed his eyes for a time, and tried to conjure warmth; it wouldn't come, nor would the images of Jane. It was almost as though he had expended them while he was resisting the torture. There was satisfaction in that…in the endurance. He had won, and the GRU captain had lost. It had been a small individual war between them, and the knowledge the Russian would have to live with defeat pleased him.

The Great Bear had moved a little, tilted slightly towards the heads of the pines. Studley wriggled his hand sideways until he felt the soft bark of the dead tree. It took him several seconds to realize he had done so. He clenched the other hand and felt it grasp moist earth.

Experimentally, he lifted his head.

No one survived a close-range burst from an AKS-74, and that was what he remembered the guards carrying. He thought he had felt the blow of the bullets, their impact throwing him sideways down the steep bank through the undergrowth until he pitched against the tree trunk. Soviet 5.45mm bullets had the reputation of going in small, but doing a lot of damage on their way out. If he attempted to move too much perhaps he would burst apart, spilling his blood and entrails beneath him. He cautiously flexed a leg, and the pain from his calf wound was startling, seeming to awaken every nerve in his body.

He collected together his memories of the past hours; his capture, interrogation, torture. He set them in order. Miraculously, he was still alive. Alive? Why? How? He tried to understand, and realization brought a strange bitterness. He had meant nothing to the soldiers who had been ordered to shoot him; an insect to be squashed. They hadn't even bothered to make sure they had done the job properly. He was of no importance, simply rubbish for disposal.

He pushed himself upright and into a sitting position, his back against the fallen trunk. The exertion made him dizzy and sick. Carefully, he examined his face with his fingertips, by touch. It was unrecognizable, swollen and tender. His teeth were broken stumps, and his lips torn, caked with congealed Mood. He could not open his jaw. The cracked ribs in his side ached as he breathed, a reminder of the blow from the guard's rifle butt.

His leg was throbbing, the rough bandaging over the wound seeping blood. He tightened it as best he could in the darkness. There was some sort of injury to his upper back; he couldn't tell what, it was painful but it didn't prevent him moving his arms.

They had wanted him to give them the code, and he had refused. They had tortured him and then tried to kill him, and he had survived. The thoughts strengthened him. He would get away; he would drag himself deeper into the woods, find somewhere he could hide out during the daylight, clean and examine his wounds. When he was stronger, he would work his way south-west and attempt to find a way through the lies, perhaps into Switzerland. If not, he would seek out one of the guerrilla groups that would certainly have been formed. Somehow, eventually, he would get back to Britain and Jane.

He thought of the GRU captain; the man's angular face becoming more twisted by fury as Studley had remained silent. He would torture others who came into his hands, For Studley, the de would change at midnight, but for the GRU captain there would always be a new daily code to be broken along with the will and bodies of his prisoners.