The forest had no end. Days blurred into a gray ache of hunger and frost, trees endless and silent. Christian stumbled forward because to stop was to die. Snow dragged at his boots. His ribs burned. His mind clawed at scraps of memory, Müller's threats, Kristina's face, the shrieking massacre on the railway.
On the fourth night, voices broke the void. Not drunken peasants or ragged deserters these were sharp, disciplined, moving in formation. He crouched in the shadows, heart hammering, then staggered toward their fire.
"Kameraden!" His voice cracked. "Brothers!"
Rifles whipped up at once, black muzzles catching firelight. Shapes emerged from the dark lean men in soot-stained smocks, rifles slung, knives at their belts.
Commandos.
A tall officer stepped forward, face stone. "Identify yourself."
Christian raised shaking hands. His clothes were rags, his face a skull, but memory saved him. A phrase drilled into him in Berlin, for moments just like this.
"Der abend bringt schatten, aber die eule sieht im dunkeln."
(The evening brings shadows, but the owl sees in the dark.)
The officer froze. A beat passed. He lowered his rifle, signaling the others. Suspicion didn't fade, but the guns did.
They dragged him into the circle, stripping his pockets. One commando pulled free the leaflet Christian had carried against his heart, the German ink promising salvation. He tossed it into the snow without care.
"Where from?" the officer asked.
Christian's voice rasped. "A train. Prisoners. I was in one of the cars. It… derailed."
The words froze the circle. Men glanced at each other. The officer's gaze narrowed. "That was us. We set the charge." He stepped closer, his breath white. "Tell me. Did anyone survive?"
The memories slammed into Christian. The shriek of steel, wood splintering, men clawing doors, tumbling out screaming, cut down in the snow by rifles. Blood blooming across white drifts. Bodies falling, convulsing, silent.
His mouth was ash. "Some… tried. I don't know if they made it. I only saw them fall." He choked on the words. "The Soviets shot them like dogs. I don't know if anyone lived."
The commandos' silence thickened. One cursed under his breath. Another looked away, jaw tight. The officer's face didn't move.
"We thought it was a supply run," he said finally. His voice carried no tremor, no regret; only steel. "Ammunition. Grain. Not… prisoners."
The others shifted uneasily, but no one contradicted him.
Christian's throat closed. "They were Germans. Our men."
The officer's eyes cut into him, pale and merciless. "They were already dead, the moment they were captured. Better in the snow than paraded in Moscow. At least the train never reached its destination."
Another commando clapped Christian's shoulder with a gloved hand, the gesture colder than the wind. "At least you survived. Congratulations."
The words struck harder than the memory of gunfire. Congratulations; for surviving what the others had not. No mourning. No horror. Just survival.
Christian wanted to scream, to shake them, to demand they feel something. But he saw it in their faces and wolves do not grieve. Wolves only endure.
They moved him into their column, folding him into the silent machine. Through the black trees, the snow whispered under boots. No one spoke of the dead. No one spoke at all.
Later, by a dying fire in the ruin of a farmhouse, Christian sat apart. Sparks rose, fading into dark sky. He clenched Kristina's ring in his fist until it cut into his skin.
The images would not leave him: men scrambling from shattered cars, falling in red sprays. Hands reaching up in the night, unanswered and the commandos' faces; hard, unreadable when he told them. Their silence worse than denial. Their congratulations worse than mockery.
I'm among wolves, he thought and wolves do not mourn.
The fire cracked once, like a rifle shot. Somewhere in the night, an owl cried. Christian stared into the dark, knowing this was not salvation. He had crossed back into German lines, yes, but he had entered a pack that had buried its humanity in snow.