And so, the most perilous chapter of this village's history reached its grim conclusion.
The last of the Imperial curs was dead.
The Village Head, his body laden with the exhaustion of a man who had stared into the abyss, dragged his feet back toward the settlement. His movements were leaden, the weight of the struggle etched into every weary step.
A few young men stepped forward to support him, hauling the old man toward the relative safety of the village.
Watching them, I sank onto a gnarled tree stump and drew a sharp, frigid breath of tundra air.
It had been an agonizingly long day.
As the adrenaline ebbed away, my limbs felt like leaden weights and my heart thrummed with a hollow, rhythmic fatigue. It was as if the very organ had finally decided to uncoil from its state of high-strung tension.
I wondered if Fyodor Wrangel had survived. And Alya... was the girl safe?
While I sat there, chin resting in my palm, mired in these dark ruminations, a shadow fell over me.
"What shall we do with the remains, Comrade? Should we leave them to the frost?"
The remains. Right. The Imperial Inspector's corpse.
I looked toward the site, considering the tactical and ideological implications of a dead official. The flail had shattered his skull with such visceral brutality that the sight was surely nauseating. I had squeezed my eyes shut during the final blow for that very reason.
Curiosity, that damnable trait of the intellectual, pricked at me. I shouldn't look. But I did.
I peered at what remained of the Inspector, then quickly turned away, my throat tightening.
"Burn them. Consign the body to the pyre," I ordered.
"Sir? Wouldn't it be more fitting to let him rot in the mud as a warning?" one of the men asked, his voice thick with cold resentment.
"It is unsightly and serves only to leave a trail for any pursuing detachments. Furthermore, it betrays our own principles. We are not like them—butchers who revel in desecration. Even in death, let us grant him the dignity of the human species, if only for the sake of our own humanity."
Gods, I felt like I was going to retch. I will spare you the detailed inventory of the gore. Suffice it to say, the Village Head's flail had left the Inspector in a state beyond recognition. He looked less like a man and more like the mangled accounts of Rosa Luxemburg after she had been brutalized by the butts of the Freikorps' rifles.
"Repulsive," I muttered.
In a desperate attempt to excise the gory imagery from my mind, I reached for the solace of the modern age—or the closest equivalent available in this backwater. I bit into the stem of a long-necked pipe. Tobacco: the eternal refuge of the weary mind.
I struck a light and inhaled.
"Cough! Cough! Hrk... damn, that's acrid!"
The raw, unfiltered tobacco hit my lungs like a blast from a coal furnace. It was harsh, biting, and entirely devoid of the civilizing grace of a filter. Even for a man who fancied himself a hardened veteran of the ideological trenches, the smoke brought stinging tears to my eyes.
I missed the sanitized tobacco of my former life. I was still coughing when the others surrounded me.
"Comrade Chairman! That was magnificent! To draw the enemy's attention specifically to save another... I couldn't have even conceived of such a strategy! No, even if I had, the sheer terror would have paralyzed me!"
"Aye, Comrade! Until now, I took you for a mere ivory-tower intellectual—a man of words and no substance. I stand corrected. My respect is yours!"
The same youths who had once scoffed at my rhetoric from afar were now looking at me with something bordering on religious fervor. They were joined by the others—the soldier who had narrowly escaped death, the hunters with their notched bows, and the fledgling cadres of our Revolutionary Committee.
"Peace, brothers. Please," I said, modulating my voice to hit that perfect note of humble leadership. "I did very little. This victory belongs to all of you. It belongs to young Lyova, who overcame the paralysis of fear to bring us intelligence. It belongs to Comrade Wrangel, who offered his very flesh to buy us time. We succeeded because we stood as one to protect little Alexandra. Your unity won this day, not my maneuvers."
"Urah!" the crowd roared.
A bit of strategic lip service never hurt. Though, to be honest, I thought my performance was quite commendable myself. A carry, as they'd say in the gaming pits. Yes, I definitely carried that encounter.
As I finished my brief address, the fervor reached a boiling point. The applause died down, replaced by a sudden, collective surge as the crowd moved toward me. For a fleeting second, the sudden motion sparked a flash of genuine fear in my chest.
"Wait... what are you doing? Stay back, you're scaring me," I stammered.
They ignored my protests. Large, calloused hands gripped my shoulders and thighs, hoisting me upward.
"VLADI! VLADI! VLADI!"
I was propelled into the air, my body suspended several meters above the frozen earth for terrifying intervals.
"Hey! Stop! Put me down! Argh! My back!"
Gods, save me! They kept tossing me—a collective 'tossing in a blanket' but without the blanket. Each time I was caught, I felt my spine compress under the weight of my own revolutionary importance.
"VLADI! VLADI!"
"Hrk! Ack!"
I couldn't take much more. My lumbar region was screaming. My kingdom for a soft bed and a respite from this peasant strength.
Just then, Maxim Weber approached.
"Enough, Comrades. Cease this at once. Excess is the enemy of the prudent."
Maxim! My brother! My doctor! I knew I could count on you!
I waited for the rhythmic cycle of flying and falling to end... but my hope was a fragile, fleeting thing.
"Eh? But Comrade Doctor, surely on a day of such triumph, a few more tosses are warranted?" one of the men asked.
"Hmm... very well. Exactly five more. And this time, I shall assist in the lifting."