3
The Promised Land
he knew this country. He had travelled it many times. He knew the
landscape he knew the people, he knew everything there was to know
about hunting. Since the age of three he had been doing it. When
they had first presented him with a bow, an arrow, a cartridge, a bullet and
a gun he had been trained in the outdoor pursuits of fighting,
riding and hunting. At the age of eight, by which time he had been
taught to fish, and to ride unsupervised in public, he had been singled
out for future command. He had risen to the rank of captain in a
Ukrainian Cossack battalion of the Russian army and he was proud
to be in the service of His Imperial Majesty Tsar Aleksander the First
and engaged in the defence of the Holy Motherland.
His dedication to his homeland was deep and powerful and so
heavily ingrained into his being that he wore a small stitched cloth
sachet attached to a leather lace around his neck, next to his body. It
contained a pinch of his native Ukrainian soil.
It was in the depths of winter as he approached Sejny in Poland,
to the north west of his native land following the faint tracks of his
quarry. He noticed that the marks in the snow and ice had skirted the
town and were now receding into the distance, moving away from it.
He doggedly continued. They disappeared for a time at the edge of a
frozen river and after traversing it and casting about on the opposite
bank he picked up the trail again. Further still to his right was the
beginning of a pine forest all sheathed in white, a mass of towering
shimmering stalagmites. It was late in the afternoon and the light was
starting to diminish. He eased over towards the trees through thick
snow, heading for their shelter. It was time to think about making
camp for the night. It wasn't going to snow again but the huge freeze
was continuing. He would carry on with the hunt in the morning.
This was becoming the coldest winter he had ever experienced and
he knew that the elements should always be taken seriously. Weather
lore had been drilled into him almost from birth, to hold nature in
the greatest respect, because one oversight could lead to death.
Behind him on a halter was his packhorse, a medium sized shaggy,