-Oh! Father! The map. Here, we found this map with the officer we killed. It is marked here, here, and here. We think this is where he was having mines planted. They seem to mostly be concentrated by the NW bank of the river. I suggest you cross over at the ford here, right after the falls-

-Ah, I see you are right. It is going to take us an extra hour due to the roundabout way…Leave without us, make camp at the next stand of woods you find, and we will try to catch up. Keep heading South West until you start seeing signs for the Kharkiv Oblast, which is only about 6 kms from here. Stay in the trees as much as you can, or otherwise only travel at night. If you stay going SSW you’ll eventually get to a village called Romanivka. There is a post office there, or rather there should be a post office there, and the man who runs it is a friend of mine and will help you if you tell him that Augustine sent you. Alright? Do you have that?-

-South West, 6km to Kharkiv, stay in the woods, Romanivka Post Office, Augustine-

-Comrade Hvorostovskya, your mind is like a steel bear trap! Alright, fan out-

Father Agin and the Brothers Maslow gathered up two gunny sacks worth of camping gear and started heading due east towards the ravine carved into the granate by a tiny tributary of the Vorskla. Pines and birch grew in a thick wall that hid the true depth of the ravine until one had all but fallen the full 10 meters down to the water below. Father Agin knew the area because he used to hunt for truffles in the ravine back before the devils had been let out of Hell. Another thing about the thick tree cover was one could not be seen from the ground or from the air; as long as you stayed within 3 meters of the edge of the ravine, you could have moved an entire regiment through undetected. The going was rough, though, with thick undergrowth and gnarled roots at ankle height. Father Agin was no longer the outdoorsman he’d been in his youth at seminary, and soon fell behind the leanly muscled and youthful twins. Instead of calling them back, Father Agin decided to take the time to look about for something edible. He scanned the ground as he kept up his hardy pace, grabbing a handful of clover here, some mushrooms there. Soon he had filled his wool cap with nearly a pound of fresh food. The sun had fully set, and they were even farther from the rendezvous than he had anticipated.

Father Agin puckered his lips and whistled out a lilting tune that sounded to unsuspecting ears like a dove calling out to its mate. The commotion of the young men running ahead of him came to a sudden stop before getting louder and closer. The two men appeared from out of the woods to Father Agin’s left, and dropped a pile of dry branches, twigs, and leaves in a pile on the ground. One of the brothers struck a match while the other gathered water in a small pail he’d kept tied to his belt with a length of twine.

Father Agin pushed some flat rocks towards the center of the fire, hoping to use them later to keep warm in the growing chill of the steppe autumn. The small pail was hung from a bent pine bough over the fire. Father Agin threw in the mushrooms, clover, a few herbs, and the little bit of salted pork he had left from the German ration pack he’d purloined during their last ambush raid. The slapdash stew began to bubble and hiss, so the men pulled it from the fire, sit it on a stone, pulled out their spoons and got to eating.

-Why do you think the Germans are lingering around here for so long? They took the town and pushed the Red Army right out in a few days-

-Well, they know there are many of us out here still, partisans, and that they cannot secure their supply lines fully until they have swept us up. I mean, do you know how much harder it is to get trucks out here? From Lviv to Kyiv is one thing, the roads are fine and passable all year round, but once you get out here in the steppe? Where there are no roads, and the mud can get up to your armpits?-

-Perhaps it is that simple, Father, but I can’t help but be bothered by something Comrade Bogomolov told me-

-What is that, child?-

-Well, his family, they…they murdered them all, and well, they murdered the families of all of Comrade Bogomolov’s neighbor’s, too-

-That is a tragedy-

-It is, father, but Comrade Bogomolov told me that all of his neighbors were Jews, as was his wife, and his children were being raised in the Jewish religion. I did not know why he felt the need to tell me this. They were farmers, not partisans or party members or anything. There was no reason to kill them-

-They were Jews, that was reason enough for the Nazis. These people are vampires, these Nazis, they want only blood. Jewish blood, Slav blood, Soviet blood. These Germans…I do not understand them, and I do not want them. I want to kill them, that’s all. I want to see a pile of them a hundred feet high, and I want to set that pile alight for all the world to see, as a warning-

-Father, are the Nazis going this far into the Steppe in order…in order to hunt down our Jewish comrades specifically? Why bother, they are already fleeing East, the poor souls, just like the Germans say they wanted!

-Never trust the words that come from a German’s mouth! As I said, They are vampires, comrades, they want only blood. I cannot fathom their final aim, but I will do all I can to thwart their plans-

-Our father told us that some of the other farmers were considering giving up the Jewish farmers from their collective in exchange for higher rations. My father would not hear of it, and spat at their feet-

-Your father was a good man. There is, unfortunately, a deep hatred and fear of our Jewish brothers embedded deep in Ukrainian hearts. It is an ugly thing, a primeval and stupid thing, and something I wish our Party had had more time to stamp out with education. Goddamn these Germans! An entire den of antisemitism could have been swept clean, but now the Germans are using the hate in our own hearts as a weapon. It makes me ill-

-Father Agin, should I put out the fire for tonight? Or I could stay up with it-

-No, no. Don’t bother doing either. I will stay up with the fire. It is far too dense in this forest for the fire to arouse any sort of attention. Get some rest, my sons, and I will roust you if I hear anything-