"Sweep the tracks! Move! That gunfire is bound to bring a world of trouble!"
Walter Ilves growled, his eyes darting back toward the path they had taken even as he urged the men forward. This was no place to linger. Though they had wiped out the patrol, the sharp reports of the engagement had carried far across the open snowfields; the main Soviet force could be on them like rabid dogs at any moment.
Simo, draped in blankets and supported by two soldiers, remained deathly pale, yet he managed to point toward the prisoner. "Take him. Head northwest, into the thick brush."
The group vanished into the shadows of the birch forest, leaving behind nothing but the wreckage of the skirmish.
After a desperate trek of nearly three kilometers, they finally halted deep within a leeward stand of spruce. The dense canopy provided a natural shield against the wind and snow, offering a modicum of concealment. The wretched Soviet prisoner was dumped unceremoniously at the base of a tree. His wrist wound, though crudely bound, had already turned a bruised purple from the cold. He huddled into a ball, shivering violently, his eyes wide with raw terror.
"Time for business."
Walter stepped forward and nudged the man's boot with his toe. While he, Simo, and Juha could bark out basic Russian commands like "Hands up" or "Drop your weapon," a complex interrogation was far beyond their linguistic reach.
"Old Juhani! Get over here!" Juha called out toward the rear of the line.
A scruffy veteran with a salt-and-pepper beard and a Mosin-Nagant slung over his shoulder shuffled forward. Before the war, Juhani had been a fur trader on the border; he had done plenty of business with the Russians and spoke their tongue fluently, albeit with a thick border accent.
"Ask him: Where is the main force? What are they doing? And most importantly, where is the supply line for the sector we're looking for?" Walter instructed, his words coming out in a rapid-fire clip.
Juhani nodded, crouched before the prisoner, and began a low-voiced inquiry in Russian.
At first, the prisoner kept his mouth clamped shut, his eyes shifting warily. But after Juha hovered a captured, frost-dusted bayonet in front of his face for a few seconds, the soldier's mental levee broke. He began to spill everything in a frantic wail, speaking so fast that even Old Juhani struggled to keep pace.
A few minutes later, Juhani stood up, his expression heavy.
"The kid's a greenhorn. He doesn't know much, but it's not all useless talk." Juhani pulled a pipe from his breast pocket; he didn't light it, merely clamped it between his teeth to savor the ghost of the flavor. "He says the Soviets have massed heavy forces nearby, at least two regiments, with plenty of tanks. The good news is our boys are holding firm. It's a stalemate; neither side can swallow the other yet."
"And?" Simo asked, his voice still weak from his ordeal in the water.
Juhani gave a grim smirk. "He says their rear is a mess. There are plenty of Finnish remnants like us raising hell, even blew up one of their field kitchens. The Ivans are getting jumpy, which is why they've got so many patrols out hunting for us."
"The supplies?" Walter pressed. "That's the key. Where is their line?"
Juhani sighed and shook his head. "The kid's just a corporal. He says their own lives are miserable; the black bread coming up from the rear is frozen hard as a rock, and ammunition is being rationed. As for specific routes and timetables... that's classified intelligence for regimental staff. A grunt like him isn't even allowed to see the maps."
Walter slammed a fist against a tree trunk in frustration. While hearing that the Soviet logistics were strained was a plus, without coordinates for the supply line, their unit was effectively a headless fly, forced to rely on blind luck.
"So he's a dead end," Juha spat, his patience fraying. "No use keeping him then."
All eyes turned toward the prisoner. The soldier seemed to sense the shift in the atmosphere; he began to wail in desperation, knocking his head against the ground and babbling words like "Mama" and "home."
Simo leaned against a spruce, his eyes closed. He said nothing.
This was the cruelest moment of war, yet the most pragmatic. They were a ghost unit; no logistics, no base, no support. To drag along a prisoner with a shattered wrist who couldn't keep pace and would require a share of their dwindling rations was equivalent to carrying a ticking time bomb.
Release him? That was as good as announcing their position. Within two hours, a Soviet pursuit team would be tracking their footprints. In the thirty-below depths of the enemy's rear, mercy was a luxury, and a lethal poison.
Walter looked at Simo. The legendary scout gave a nearly imperceptible nod.
The meaning was clear: Dispose of him.
"Let's get it over with."
Walter withdrew his gaze and swung his rifle behind his back. He didn't leave the "dirty work" to Juha alone; in this frozen wasteland, the burden of killing was not something one man should carry in solitude.
"Give me a hand. Keep him quiet."
Juha stepped forward and seized the sobbing prisoner by the collar, hoisting him up like a scrawny chicken slated for slaughter. Realizing his fate, the soldier began to kick and thrash, his mouth opening for a final, piercing scream. Walter moved in one swift motion, his thick leather glove clamping down hard over the man's mouth.
"Mph—! Mmmph!"
The screams were choked back into the soldier's throat, leaving only a muffled, rhythmic whimpering.
The two Finns, acting like a pair of iron pincers, marched the writhing Soviet soldier toward a marshy hollow deep in the woods where the ice hadn't fully set. The wind continued to howl, its shrill cry masking the heavy, uneven footsteps and the dark finality of what was to come.
Minutes later.
From the depths of the forest came the dull, sickening crack of breaking ice, followed by a heavy plop of something hitting water. After a brief, frantic splashing, everything returned to a deathly silence.
A short while later, two figures emerged from the gloom of the trees. Walter led the way, his face a mask of indifference as he straightened a ruffled cuff. Juha followed, using a clump of snow to vigorously scrub at a non-existent stain on his glove, his expression numb.
"Done?" Old Juhani asked, tapping his pipe against his palm.
"Yeah."
Walter exhaled a plume of white mist, his voice as cold as the surrounding air. "There was a natural blowhole in the ice further up, deep water underneath. We sent him down. The ice hole was like a mouth; it swallowed him whole."
No gunfire. No bloodstains. No need to dig through the permafrost. The young Soviet soldier had simply vanished into the frigid Finnish wilderness, becoming yet another secret buried in the mire.
Walter tightened his rifle strap, refusing to think of the man's face, refusing to look at Simo. He forced the last shred of human pity into the deepest recesses of his heart and turned his gaze toward the rapidly darkening horizon.
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