‘Napoleon made his offer. “General,” he said, “I would give anything you asked if I could have Cossacks on my side. With twenty thousand of the best cavalrymen in the world fighting with France, no one could stop us.” Platov listened, rubbed his beard, and answered, “I see no problem.
This is a very easy thing to do.” Well, Napoleon could hardly believe his ears. “How can we do this, General?” he begged. “Tell me what you require.” The General stood in the grand, golden room of Napoleon and said, “It’s a simple thing. I will bring twenty thousand of my finest young riders to Paris for a few days. You will bring twenty thousand of your prettiest French girls to Paris. We will let Nature take its course, and in twenty years or so you will have your own twenty thousand French Cossacks!”‘
Dimitri spanked his knees with his hands, relishing the old General’s reply every time he told the story. Pasha and Sasha clapped and Valentin rocked back in his seat on the tank. The slanting lantern light made all their faces merry.
‘So, you see,’ Dimitri said. ‘The whole world fears the Cossack.
Including Napoleon and Pasha’s mother. And the Germans.’
He leaned into the lantern, to light his face better for this next chapter of the rite. ‘My old father. Your sergeant’s grandfather. He would be here right now if he were alive. Cossack families go to war together. Did you know that?’
The two lads shook their heads.
‘Well, they do. Every Cossack family knows the history of its warriors.
The family heroes are remembered with praise, the villains are the cowards or the disloyal ones. When I was your age, I went to war with my father. We wore red-topped caps and black burka cloaks with red hoods. We rode in pigskin boots and kept a tea kettle and sacks of biscuits tied to our belts. I had a curved saber, a carbine with a bayonet, and a goathorn full of powder.
We rode first against the Romanovs, those inbred European shits. And when we’d won enough battles against their white cavalry all across western Russia, even on these steppe lands around us right now, the Tsar himself gave in. The Cossacks were rewarded with free land, the right to govern ourselves, and respect! Then, after a few years of royal bribes, when it was clear the Bolsheviks would win, we traded in our white flag for a red one.
We turned on the bastard Tsar for the new bastard Lenin. Because the Cossack fights for the Cossack. It doesn’t matter who invades us. Germans or Russians, Tsars or commissars. Napoleon called us the disgrace of the human race. And he was right, if you look at how most humans live!’
The two boys were rapt. Dimitri understood the rotten training these two had been given before they were shipped to the Kursk bulge for their first battle. They’d been bullied and frightened and given no pay and less than a month’s lesson on how to fight in these tanks. Commissars had shouted slogans at them, they’d taken oaths, but no one had talked with them, told them tales of bravery and deeds and mentioned they might have what it takes to do the same, valiant things - podvigs. Valentin and his sour ilk were all they’d seen of the Red Army. These lads were considered nothing more than numbers to be thrown at the Germans.
Dimitri knew he could not make them into more. But if he and Valya were going to fight alongside these boys, they were going to think they were more. Or they would all die, because few die alone in a tank.
‘My father Konstantin was the best swordsman in the Kuban. Did you know a real Cossack sword has no hilt to protect the hand? Do you know why?’
No, they shrugged.
Dimitri cut his eyes to Valentin on the tank. ‘Tell us, Sergeant. About the Cossack sword.’
Valentin ran fingers over his pate. The stubble of his short hair made a fizzing noise. Dimitri held up an open hand, to say please.
Valentin cleared his throat. So needless, Dimitri thought, to be uncomfortable talking to men who may well save your life in the next week.
Embrace them, Valya, he urged silently, these are spirits, children like you.
Valentin gave the answer, continuing to scratch his head.
‘It… um… it’s not made for dueling. It’s made for striking from horseback.’
‘Exactly. And Pasha, Sasha, I will tell you right now with the pride of a father that your sergeant Berko there was the finest swordsman in all the Kuban when he was your age. Just eighteen, and a champion dzhigitovka!
In our village, the streets are wide and there’s a great central square. That is where we hold our war games. On Sundays and holidays, the streets are lined with saplings, set thirty feet apart. On top of the trees are clay pots.
The test, you see, is to gallop full bore between the trees and cut the pots with your sword. And Valentin there… well, your sergeant there, he was the best. Slashing back and forth, boys, he was a sight! A champion!’
Pasha looked up at Valentin. ‘Did you cut them off, like cutting off heads?’
Valentin appeared impatient, not with the query so much as his own past, before he became a sergeant for the Soviets. Watching his son fidget, Dimitri recalled the day when young Valya came to him and said he was going to join the army. ‘Wonderful,’ he had said, ‘we’ll go together. Yes!
We’ll be in the cavalry’ And Valentin answered him, ‘No, I want to join the tanks.’ The tanks! The metal horses, slow and stupid beasts, with a cannon and armor and dials where there ought to be a pounding heart and lungs and a life under your rear, not a hard seat and a stubborn clutch. A tank instead of a horse. A Soviet instead of a champion son. Dimitri listened to Valentin’s response to the boy Pasha, and thought, He sounds like a stinking Romanov up there high on his tank.
‘No, Private… no. A Cossack does not cut off heads.’
‘But…’ Pasha seemed to want to be scared, to hear of heads rolling by the dozens on the Cossack battlefield.
‘Only poor Cossacks cut off heads, Pashinka,’ Dimitri said. ‘Not your sergeant. He practiced hard and became a master of the many different saber cuts from horseback.’
‘You mean there’s more than… ?’ Pasha drew a finger under his neck.
‘Yes, yes.’ Dimitri got to his knees and made a blade of his open hand. ‘There’s the one straight down on the shoulder to take off an arm.’ He hacked at Pasha, who laughed. Sasha beside him giggled. ‘There’s this one, to cut open his guts. One across the hip…’ With each description Dimitri sliced at the two boys to make them laugh and understand they were more than numbers now, they were clan with him and, yes, the sergeant.
Dimitri sat back and glanced again up to Valentin. His son smiled thinly at his father’s antics. Alright, the smile said, enough. We are who we are, Father. So, enough. Dimitri sighed, and held up a hand for more of their attention.
‘The life of every Cossack relies on two things. First, his fellow Cossacks. He must be willing to die and kill for them, to never betray their trust. The second is his horse. The bond between rider and horse goes deeper than words. It is instinct and devotion. And do you know who was the best rider in my village?’
It was Valentin who gave the answer. ‘Katerina.’
Dimitri turned to beam at Valentin.
‘My daughter Katya. She was a champion, too. There was nothing she couldn’t do on the back of a horse. She could leap across a stream and lean down from the saddle to take a drink.’