Faked Passports (50 page)

That thought gave him an idea which he was horribly
reluctant to carry out; but their lives were at stake and it might mean a temporary respite during which he could perform the seemingly impossible and think of some other plan to save them. Now that he had his full mental capabilities back, to think was, once again, to act.

Rolling the reins round his left hand, with his right he drew the trapper's sharp hunting-knife from his belt and, stooping, swiftly severed the leather thongs by which the breast harness of the off-side horse was attached to the sleigh. Directly it felt itself free of the weight it was dragging it bounded forward with a new spurt of energy nearly jerking Gregory out of the sleigh by the single rein which was all that now held it. But he had been expecting such a movement and had thrown himself backwards at the same instant, partially counteracting the pull. The other horses reared and the sleigh was almost brought to a standstill. Sheathing his knife he eased the reins and, as the sleigh started forward again, released the rein of the off horse altogether. As it broke away, outdistancing the others, he pulled his gun. For a moment the horse streaked ahead of them, its harness flapping wildly. Gregory swerved the sleigh a little to the left and did the horrible thing he had to do. Aiming his pistol at the horse he had freed he put three rounds into its buttocks.

An almost human scream of pain went up from the wounded animal. It faltered slightly in its gallop, its pace lessened. As they raced past Gregory put another bullet into its head in the hope that his last flying shot might kill it. He could not turn to see what happened; but the others saw. The horse plunged on, reeling from side to side for fifty yards, then fell. A howl of exultation went up from the pack and the poor beast was submerged under them.

For a few minutes it seemed as though the sacrifice had saved them so Gregory hauled on the reins of the two remaining horses to ease their pace and conserve their flagging energy. The evil baying of the wolves fell away in the distance; but it was never quite lost and soon they realised that it was drawing nearer again. For a pack of seventy to a hundred wolves a single horse was far from sufficient to satiate their ravenous appetites. The carcase had been picked clean and the pack was now hunting further prey.

Ahead another barrier of thick, impassable forest loomed up and Gregory knew that they must turn again; so he swerved to the south a few hundred yards before they reached it. Once
more the others, peering out of the back of the sleigh, could see that sinister black patch undulating across the snow in their rear. The speed of the sleigh had diminished now that it had only two horses to draw it and they had already spent their best efforts; but the raw flesh that the wolves had just devoured did not seem to have lessened their pace. Very soon they were near enough again for their gleaming eyes to be seen sprinkling the black patch they formed as they loped swiftly forward.

Gregory had been driving along the side of the forest for several moments before he realised that the surface they were now on was harder than that over which they had been moving before. Instead of being crisp and uneven it was solid and beaten flat. By pure chance they had struck a road and troops with lorries or tanks must have passed that way recently. The new hope that came to him with the discovery was killed almost instantly. Villages were so incredibly few and far between up there in the far north, and the fact that troops had used the road that day did not mean that they were necessarily encamped in that area. They might be a dozen miles away by this time and in the almost static war that was being fought in the Arctic one convoy might move along a road without its following that a second would do so for another week or more.

Freddie had his rifle trained again. The girls were crouching on either side of him; the wolves had ceased to bay and were running, a sinister, silent mass, no more than a hundred yards behind the sleigh. Now that they were on a road, with little risk of being overturned by crashing into some unseen obstacle in their headlong flight, Gregory was able to glance over his shoulder from time to time. The wolves were gaining upon them every moment. He thought of sacrificing the near-side horse as the only means of securing further respite but after a moment's reflection he knew that he dared not do it. Both horses were flagging and if he cut free the near-side horse the centre one, which carried the heavy arch of the
troika
, would not have sufficient strength to pull the fully-loaded sleigh much further. In its terror it would go on until it dropped; but the strain the horses had undergone in the last hour was already terrific. As it was, either of them might burst blood-vessels or die from a heart attack at any moment.

The silence was broken only by the hoof-beats of the horses. Not a sound or whisper of wind disturbed the illimitable forests and the pack ran on, a little tired now but silent, relentless and still making a better pace than the horses. The wolves crept up
and up until the white breath of the leaders formed a little cloud above the dark, heaving mass of furry bodies.

Freddie waited, staring into the fiery eyes of the pursuing pack. He did not mean to waste a single bullet. But at last the leader of the pack was within five yards of the end of his rifle. He took careful aim and fired.

The big beast turned a complete somersault and vanished under the swarm of lean, dark forms that leapt across him. A few wolves at the rear of the pack stopped to worry the carcase, but the others, feeling their prey almost within their grasp, did not swerve from their course or even hesitate an instant.

Within a minute Freddie had to fire again; then he settled down to the job in earnest. It was easy enough to pick off the wolves one by one as they came up to within a few yards of the back of the sleigh; but there seemed so many of them, and ammunition was limited. As Freddie emptied one rifle Angela passed him the other and reloaded the first. Soon he had to shoot more rapidly. The wolves spread out a little on to a frontage of about thirty feet and those at each extremity of the line were constantly creeping right up to the level of the sleigh in an attempt to pass it. He had to fire first to one side and then to the others as well as picking off the more courageous brutes that were still following in the sleigh's track.

The road lay clear before Gregory now as another thick belt of trees loomed up on their left-hand side and the way entered the depths of the forest. But a mile further on he suddenly saw that the road seemed to end; there were trees ahead of him as well. Turning, he glanced back. The wolves, now spread out across the whole width of the road, seemed hardly to have decreased in numbers for all the execution that Freddie had done among them.

With anxious eyes Gregory stared ahead, then the moonlight showed him that the road did not end but took a sharp bend to the left. As he cornered, it was just the opportunity the wolves had been waiting for. Those on the off-side of the road fell behind but those on the near-side cut off the corner and streaked ahead.

Freddie had just exhausted the magazine of one of the rifles. Grabbing the other from Angela he opened rapid fire with it but there was no time to take careful aim. Two wolves leapt and fell in their tracks. Erika came into action with her pistol, firing over his shoulder, and killed a third; but the other bullets
went wide and half a dozen of the brutes were now running level with the horses.

Next instant their leader, a great, grey beast with slavering jaws, leapt at the throat of the near horse. It screeched and reared, jerking the sleigh violently to one side; but Gregory had out his knife again and in two swift strokes severed the harness.

With a neigh of fear the centre horse plunged forward just as Gregory released the near horse's rein. The terrified beast had hardly broken free when another wolf buried its fangs in the wounded animal's flank and the sleigh had not covered another ten yards before a dozen wolves had pulled the poor brute, screaming, to the ground.

Gregory knew that their lives could now be measured by minutes. Crazy with terror the centre horse was galloping blindly on, but now that it had to drag the full weight of the sleigh it could not possibly continue much further. The nearside horse would be devoured before they could cover another half-mile; then the pack would be after them again and all hope of outdistancing them gone.

Suddenly, ahead of him, he saw a change in the dim landscape. The forests on either side of the road ended abruptly but they did not give way to another open space. The snow was broken here and there by the black bulk of buildings. Glancing back he saw that the wolves were already on the move behind them. A black heap in the moonlight showed where about a third of their number were still tearing the remnants of the dead horse; but the rest had abandoned the fight with their comrades for a mouthful of the easier prey and were once more in full pursuit.

Even now Gregory feared that they might not reach the village in time. At this hour nobody would be about. The wolves would follow them into the village street and they might be pulled down before they could rouse the peasants to their assistance. Their only chance seemed to be that they might secure shelter in the nearest house. Freddie and Erika were now firing again as the nearest wolves gained once more upon the sleigh. The house was only a hundred yards ahead now. Using his whip for the first time Gregory drew the last spurt out of the beaten horse.

Suddenly the door of the house was flung open and a light appeared. The inmates had been aroused by the sound of firing. A group of men came out and in the bright moonlight one glance was enough for them to take in the situation. Some of them ran back into the house. As the sleigh drew level with them they tumbled out again; next moment there was the crash and rattle of machine-gun fire. There was no need to pull up the sleigh; the remaining horse tottered to a halt and fell dead at that moment, and as the party it had carried to safety stepped into the road they saw that their rescuers were soldiers.

Their burst of fire had scattered the wolves, which were running up and down baying again now, but not daring to approach any nearer. In a few moments they were driven off and the survivors, still howling dismally at being cheated of their prey, disappeared into the edge of the forest.

No sooner had the last shots been fired than the soldiers turned with cheerful exclamations of congratulation to the people whom they had saved; but it soon became apparent that none of them could understand what was said. All Gregory and his friends could do to express their gratitude was to shake hands, smile and pat the soldiers on the back. A very tall, black-bearded, dark-eyed officer motioned Gregory's party into the house which was evidently used as an out-post. The fug in the low room was frightful but they hardly noticed it in their relief at their miraculous escape and sank down, with their hearts still pounding, on a long bench by the wall.

They had eaten only a few hours before so they were not particularly hungry but after a little while some of the soldiers brought them bowls of hot stew and mugs of coffee substitute which Gregory thought was probably made from acorns. A quarter of an hour after their arrival the street door opened and the officer entered with another man who came over and greeted them in a language which was different from that of the soldiers. They guessed then that they had been taken for Finns and that the officer had brought a Finnish prisoner who could speak Russian from the local lock-up to question them and act as an interpreter.

This having proved a failure the officer stroked his long, black beard and regarded them with increased interest. Gregory attempted to open communications with him by using German, English, French and Italian, but apparently none of the Russians or the Finn had even a smattering of any of these languages, so the deadlock continued.

When they had finished their not very appetising meal—out of politeness rather than because they wanted it—the officer spoke to one of his men, who led them through a short passage and up a narrow stairway to an attic under the rafters of the
house. With a broken-toothed grin the man pointed to the rugs from the sleigh which had been thrown down on the floor there, handed to Freddie a tallow candle that he was carrying and closed the door behind him; but he did not lock it. The Russians were evidently not bothering to take any precautions to prevent the party from leaving without permission because they knew quite well that now they no longer had horses, the deadly cold, the isolated position of the village and the wolves in the forest would be a better deterrent to any attempt at escape than iron bars, steel doors and sentries with loaded rifles.

“What d'you think they'll do with us?” Angela asked in a low voice.

“Send us for questioning to some place where there are people who can speak our language, I expect,” Gregory replied.

“I wish we had been able to grow beards like you,” Erika said uneasily.

Gregory knew what she was thinking. The hair of both girls was hidden under their fur
papenkas
and they were quite as tall as many of the smaller Russian soldiers; so in their thick furs, which concealed their clothes and figures, they might quite well have been taken for men, except for the tell-tale smoothness of the lower parts of their faces.

He stroked his own black-and-grey imperial. “I'm afraid there's no hiding the fact that you're women and you might have had a nasty time if you'd fallen into the hands of those drunks at Petsamo; but I don't think you've got anything to fear here. Women are
really
treated as the equals of men in Russia and there's quite a lot of them in the Soviet Army, so the troops are used to having women among them. They won't make a pass at you unless you show any inclination that way yourselves.”

He was by no means certain that things would be as easy as all that, since no outlandish clothes could disguise Erika's loveliness and Angela's good looks, but it was no good meeting trouble half-way and he wished to reassure them as far as possible. On his old axiom that in any difficult situation one should always get as much sleep as possible when there was nothing else that one could do, he added: “Our best line at the moment is to follow a masterly policy of inactivity; so let's turn in.”