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 chat 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 appetizing 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 drat one could do, he added: "Our best line at the moment is to follow a masterly policy of inactivity; so let's turn in."
The soldier who had shown them up to the room roused them before it was light. As they had slept in their furs they were already dressed and apparently their hosts considered any form of toilet quite unnecessary, so they were led straight downstairs to join the soldiers at a breakfast which did not differ in any way from the meal they had had the night before. Afterwards they sat by the stove for about an hour while the Russians eyed them with a curious but not unfriendly stare; then the street door opened and the officer appeared in it, beckoning them to follow him outside.
Two sleighs were standing there in the pale dawn light, each with a soldier sitting in it and another on the box. Gregory and Erika entered one sleigh and Freddie and Angela the other. The big officer gave them a wave and both sleighs drove off. Any form of communication with their respective guards was impossible and it would have been completely pointless to attempt either to overpower them or to get away, so they resigned themselves to being driven south eastward through the crisp, frosty air.
They halted every few miles to give the horses a breather and to restore their own circulation by flapping their arms and stamping their feet. At midday they made a longer halt during which the soldiers provided a picnic meal of coarse bread and iron rations. All through the afternoon they drove on again, making, Gregory estimated, a steady twelve miles an hour, and just as dusk was falling they pulled up at another village. The prisoners assumed that they were to spend the night there but after having been given mugs of very weak hot tea and a bowl of stew apiece, in a large, log building where there were a number of other soldiers, their guards led them out again and with fresh teams of horses they took the road once more.
At six o'clock the road emerged from the forest and they saw that the carpet of snow ahead was broken by some scattered buildings. These soon grew more numerous. They passed a railway station, then the houses merged into the street of a small town where other sleighs and people were moving in the semidarkness, which was broken here and there by street lamps and the lighted windows of a few poor looking general shops. On reaching a small square the sleighs turned right and mounted a steep incline at the end of which there loomed up the bulk of a great building that seemed to tower above the town. Two minutes later they were halted by a sentry who, after a brief exchange with their escort, passed them through a high, arched gateway and from lights fixed to the walls they saw that they were in the courtyard of an ancient castle.
The drivers of the sleighs remained with their horses while the two other soldiers led their charges through a low door. A non commissioned officer who was writing at a desk in a small room took the guard's report, then he shouted for an orderly who took the whole party along a gloomy, vaulted corridor and left them in a large room with some benches in it and a stove at one end. Having loosened their furs they waited there for three quarter of an hour, after which the orderly reappeared to conduct them through several more long, echoing passages and up a broad flight of stairs. Their guide then unceremoniously threw open a large door in the upper hallway and motioned to them to pass in.