Blood and Salt by Barbara Sapergia Read Free Book Online

as if Ukrainians had anything to do with starting or running the war.
    The guards still haven’t noticed he’s not working.
    As always, they pace up and down, trying to keep warm. Resettle rifles on shoulders. Wrap scarves more securely. Stare at snow. Taras is getting to know them a little. Not that he likes them, but it helps to know what they might do in certain situations.
    Taras doesn’t see a thin figure creep up beside him until a swift, hard blow strikes his shins and he collapses in the snow. Pain comes in waves, floods his body, his brain, worse than the time a horse kicked his knee. He can’t scream, hasn’t the breath for it. If only he could faint and not come back till it was better. A gaunt red-faced man with hair like pale straw grins down at him, runs his fingers over the handle of his axe. It’s the one who watches. Zmiya, Taras and his friends call him. Snake.
    Blood fills his mouth and he spits into the snow. He must have bitten his tongue when the wooden handle hit. More blood pools and runs down his throat. He spits again and rinses his mouth with snow. Zmiya walks away. For reasons Taras expects never to learn, Zmiya has spied on him since the camp moved to Banff and he ended up in their bunkhouse. Or maybe it wasn’t by chance. Maybe Zmiya made sure he got into the same bunkhouse in order to spy on him. Taras sees that he should have confronted the man. Why didn’t he? So many things he can’t be bothered with in this place.
    The guards have seen nothing. The nearest, Bud Andrews, is turned slightly away. In his forties and out of shape, he looks bored almost to despair. His blue eyes and plump, rosy cheeks give him a look of good humour, and he isn’t mean like some of the others. But like the internees, he can’t leave. He paces the snow with a faraway, almost wistful look. Finally sees Taras on the ground holding his shins.
    “Cramp?” Andrews comes a few steps closer. “Just give it a good rub, it’ll come round.” He smiles helpfully and moves on, utterly failing to see blood. Or to figure out that you don’t get cramps in your shins.
    Bent over a felled pine, Zmiya laughs soundlessly. Mimes rubbing his shin as if it’s the most comical thing in the world.
    A second guard, Jim Taveley, stares into the distance as snow glazes his cap and greatcoat. If he’s seen what happened, he doesn’t let on. Veiled in white, he must think he’s invisible. Sometimes when Taveley looks at the internees a pinched look comes over his face, nostrils flared, thin lips turned down. “They’re not like us,” Taras heard him say once.
    The pain is like an acute form of cold. Terrible but also interesting. Taras looks around for the third guard, who was off taking a crap in the trees a while ago. As if Taras’s glance has conjured him from snow and air, Jackie Bullard, a stocky man in his mid-thirties, steps out of the forest, red-faced and angry looking. It’s no fun trying to pass hard stools while your balls are freezing off. Taras knows.
    “Hey!” He spots Taras on the ground. “What the hell are you playing at?” Bullard must see the red blotches in the snow but pretends not to. “Get up! Get back to work.”
    Taras staggers to his feet, hoping nothing’s broken; almost faints with pain. A wash of red spreads over the sky, the snow. He’s never seen that before.
    “Bloody slackers.” Spit flies from Bullard’s lips. “Get a move on.” He says these words, or something similar, at least once every hour. Maybe it’s how he remembers who he is. The prisoners sweep hard eyes over him. Bullard moves closer to Andrews, who doesn’t even notice.
    “Asshole,” Taras says under his breath.
    He stumbles to where Yuriy and Ihor are cutting tree trunks into logs.
    Yuriy sees blood at the corners of Taras’s mouth. “What’s wrong?”
    “Bit my tongue. Zmiya hit me with an axe handle. Across the shins.”
    “What the hell?” Ihor puts out an arm to steady him.
    “Damn that