The morning after Leks’ journey to the Bracia Wilkow, the Estonian steps out of his lodging to see Stanislaw walking up the south road to Ponikla. The teenager is clearly exhausted. Under the lingering effects of whatever Filip shared with him, Leks can clearly see – and smell – what Stanislaw has been up to. Leks grins to himself and falls into step alongside Stanislaw. “Welcome back! Long night?”
“Um.” Stanislaw flushes. “Uh, yes. Yeah.”
“You look tired.” Leks nudges his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get some breakfast in you.” He steers the younger man toward the hostel-turned-town-hall.
It’s been a few weeks since the team has had much of a chance to just sit down and talk. Constant rain has made the harvest harder, and the week-long diversion to organize the allied salvage operation at the wrecked train didn’t help matters. The crowd filters into the hostel’s common room, where Magda and her staff of pre-teens and elders have laid out the usual communal meal for sixty to eighty people.
Red walks in from the direction of the clinic, grabs a mug of herbal tea, and fills his plate. “Has anyone checked the river lately?”
“Miko said it’s about half a meter higher than normal,” Minka replies. “Not flooding yet, but you can see it coming.”
Zenobia sits down next to the taller woman. “The flood wall is… call it two-thirds done.” She wobbles a hand. “It’s not going to be a problem for the waterwheel generator, but I need a few more days to finish running cable. Alexei will help with that. He wants his Radio Free Poland on the air.”
Minka brightens. “Once that’s done, if we can pull a crew off the harvest, I’d like to take the big truck down to the rail yard and start bringing the larger machine tools up from the workshop there.”
Red nods. “That fits the roadmap. Once we can bootstrap ourselves some serious power tools, you two and Alexei can build out a couple of wind turbines to back up the waterwheel. Then we start figuring out what parts Von Bahr and his people need to repair the hydro plant at the dam. Leks, how’s it going on your side?”
Leks looks up from where he’s been quietly chatting with Stanislaw. “Hm? Lots of potato digging. But we have the start of a militia. Scott and his people can keep up the momentum. Ania and Ewalina and I are starting foraging classes. Edibles and medicinals both.” He grins and gestures at his plate. “With all the rain, it’s mushroom season!”
Red makes a note, taking a moment to appreciate the luxury of a fresh legal pad and a working ballpoint pen. “Let’s talk psychotropics later. I don’t think anyone here doesn’t have PTSD, but some are managing it better than others.” He glances up at Magda as she emerges from the kitchen and his brow creases.
The younger Polish woman misses the subtext as she doffs her apron and spoons a few dried cherries into a bowl of oatmeal. “Everyone getting enough to eat?” She smiles at the chorus of affirmatives. “Good. I’m trying to use as many fresh ingredients as possible. The babunia assembly line is canning and pickling as fast as they can go. And Maciej showed me a trick for burying barrels when we run out of root cellar space. Now that we have other people who can tend the fuel still, he wants to get back to his old job.”
Minka laughs. “I won’t complain about more of his mead!”
Magda grins in return. “And he wants to expand! Now that we have the plum orchard, he’s talking śliwowica, and maybe some experiments with cydr.”
The door opens to admit a gust of cold, damp air and Wesley Ross, one of the rescued POWs late of the 5th Infantry Division. Red and Leks glance at each other – according to the duty roster in both men’s heads, Ross has this morning’s radio watch.
The artillerist looks around the room to orient himself and heads for the table the team has claimed. “Doc,” he greets Red, then “Corporal,” with a glance at Leks. “Got a signal from the farmers up north. They’ve got a trauma case. Not one of theirs. No duress code.”
Red pushes back from the table. “That’s my sign. Leks, put together an escort?”
The Estonian nods as he stands. “Minka, bodyguard the doctor. Zenobia and… Magda, you’re with me. We’ll take the Toyota.”
After months of working together, the team doesn’t need a lot of additional instruction. They’re on the road ten minutes later. The Hilux technical is on point, Zenobia behind the wheel and Magda watching the terrain ahead. Lex stands in the bed, controlling the muzzle of the pintle-mounted AGS-17. About fifty meters back, Red and Minka endure the much harsher ride of the UAZ-452A ambulance.
With no convenient crossing point at Ponikla, the route runs southeast to the nearest bridge, then back northwest to the cluster of farms that marks the regional coalition’s only bastion north of the Pilica. It’s a two-hour drive over unmaintained back roads, so it’s midmorning by the time the team arrives in the vicinity of the “North Farms” clump of habitations. Two of the families’ younger kids are stationed to flag them down and guide them in.
Red and Minka grab their trauma gear from the UAZ and head inside. The patient is a man in his twenties with the build common to his generation in the Poland of 2000: worn thin from short rations and hard work. He’s wearing the bloodstained remains of a Soviet infantry uniform. Minka growls as she catches sight of the unit patch: it’s the 89th Cavalry Division. Before she came to Ponikla, her last encounter with that unit resulted in them taking her workshop truck and her horse, and she still hasn’t given up on getting either one back. But she follows Red’s lead and goes to work.
The patient has two arrow wounds in his left shoulder and the back of his right bicep. The immediately life-threatening issue, though, is a ragged penetrating injury in his right lower back. Red removes the rags the farmers used to pack the wound and washes away the blood. “What did this? Spear?”
Minka shakes her head. She’s forged some boar spears for Ponikla’s hunters. “This is bigger. See the square cross-section? I think… a glancing blow from a lance.”
Outside, Zenobia, Magda, and Leks keep an eye on the surroundings. The farmers are still working the harvest, but they’ve notched up their alert status a bit – weapons are in the fields with them, ready to hand, and lookouts are posted. The atmosphere is wary.
Leks buttonholes the farmers who were tending to the patient prior to the team’s arrival. “What can you tell us?”
They unpack the morning’s events. The patient came in from the northwest as everyone was setting out to the fields for the day’s labor. He was incoherent and staggering from exhaustion and blood loss, speaking in broken Russian.
“Did he say anything useful?” Magda asks.
The farmers shrug. “Not complete sentences. ‘Must keep running, must keep running,'” one says, putting the imitation of a heavy Russian accent into his Polish. “And something about being caught.”
“‘They can’t catch you if you don’t stop running,'” the other puts in.
Leks’ eyes narrow. “Did he say who ‘they’ are?”
“Yes, but it made no sense. We asked, but all he said was, ‘horse eaters.'”
“Oh, shit.” Leks involuntarily glances at the house where emergency surgery is ongoing. “I guess I’d better be the one to tell Minka.”