The rhythm had changed.
It was no longer the frantic, crashing flight of prey. The fear—the stumbling through the dark, the breathless panic—had been burned away in the fire of the farmhouse. What remained was purpose. Cold, disciplined, lethal. They moved like hunters now, not hunted men.
Pavel led them, massive and silent. He wove through the forest with the grace of something built for survival, his single eye scanning every shadow. The simple soldier was gone. What moved ahead of them was a sentinel, forged by loss and hardened by faith in something far darker than orders. Murat and Ivan flanked him, their movements sharp and measured. The forest no longer frightened them; it belonged to them now.
And in the center rode Koba—silent, calculating, eyes flicking between the map on his saddle and the pale winter light slanting through the trees. Every rustle, every shift in the wind was processed and filed away. He was no longer fleeing an empire; he was studying it.
On the second day, Pavel raised a fist—the signal to halt. He pointed to the mud near a half-frozen stream. It was a churned, chaotic mess of hoofprints.
Ivan hissed, "Cavalry. A full squadron, maybe more."
Koba rode forward, unbothered. One glance, and his voice came calm and sure. "Old cavalry," he said.
Murat frowned and slid from his saddle, crouching beside the tracks. "How can you know that? Mud is mud."
Koba dismounted, knelt, and touched the ground. "No. Look closer." He traced the edge of a hoofprint with his gloved hand. "See the crumble along the rim? The frost has softened it. A fresh track would be sharp, clean. These are days old." He nodded toward a nearby patch of droppings. "And that. Dry, pale, no steam. They rode through here more than forty-eight hours ago. They're gone. West. We're behind their lines now."
He rose, brushing the mud from his glove. His voice was calm, but final. His men stared, half in awe. From a patch of mud and dung, he'd built a map. It wasn't magic—it was knowledge. But to them, it might as well have been the same thing.
As they rode on, the forest began to whisper stories of the chase. A cigarette tin, half-buried in pine needles, gleamed in the gray light—a brand from St. Petersburg, elegant script and the smiling face of a woman in a hat. Civilization, dropped in the dirt. The next sign was colder: an abandoned camp. The ground trampled flat, ration tins scattered, ashes gone white. Pavel bent down and lifted a brass cartridge casing, polished by the frost.
"Tula Arms Plant," he murmured. "They were here. Armed for a war."
Koba's eyes swept the site, unreadable. "Good," he said.
The others turned to him, startled.
"It means they've moved on," he explained. "Sazonov is methodical. He sweeps, finds nothing, and pushes forward. He believes this sector is clear."
Jake's voice rose inside him, frantic.
Jake:Clear? This is insane. We're walking straight back into their grid. Sazonov isn't a fool—what if he left guards? Snipers? Sensors?
Koba:The probability of that is negligible. A cleared sector does not receive resources. Sazonov is hunting a moving target, not guarding a dead zone. The risk is minimal.
Jake:You're gambling with lives—
Koba:No. I'm investing loyalty. When they see what we recover, it becomes faith. And faith sustains obedience longer than fear.
Two days later, they found it.
The air grew still, heavy with familiarity. They left the horses hidden in a ravine and advanced on foot, slow and soundless. The final stretch they crawled, pine needles crunching under their gloves.
Koba parted the last of the branches—and froze.
The railway stretched out before them like a scar, two lines of frozen steel cutting through the forest. The gravel was still churned where the train had stopped. A hundred meters away lay the thicket where they had buried their future. It looked untouched. Too untouched.
He held out a hand. "Binoculars."
Pavel passed them over. The metal was icy against Koba's skin. He raised them, scanning the tangle of branches. At first glance, everything seemed perfect. The thicket was exactly as they'd left it. But Koba's eyes weren't looking for familiarity—they were searching for what didn't fit.
A patch of moss, too evenly replaced. A line of disturbed needles, too straight. A faint, unnatural symmetry where the wild should have been chaos. Then—there. A glint. Thin. Metallic. A wire stretched six inches above the ground. Another, farther back. And another.
It wasn't a hiding place anymore. It was a web.
"Pavel," Koba murmured. He handed the binoculars back. "To the left of the birch."
Pavel looked. His face shifted, the color draining from it. "Mother of God," he whispered. "What is that?"
Koba lowered his eyes, the faintest trace of admiration in his expression.
"That," he said quietly, "is Sazonov's garden."
He watched the wind stir the frozen branches. "And he's sown it with death."