The whispers spread like frost across broken stone, never spoken in the open, always bent close to firelight or muttered behind walls of rubble. Christian did not seek them, yet they found him, curling through the dark like smoke.
"…he has lost his mind," one officer rasped. "How long do we bleed before someone admits it?"
Another spat in the snow. "He'll never retreat. He would rather see every one of us buried here than admit failure." The silence that followed was jagged, dangerous. Then came the muttered curse:
"Better the Soviets than our own Führer."
No one answered. No one needed to.
The whispers multiplied, each carrying sharper edges. Christian overheard them as though listening to the unraveling of an army. "My company eats rats. Rats! And Berlin sends us messages of glory. Glory!"
Another barked a bitter laugh. "Glory does not feed men. Glory does not keep fingers from freezing." The talk turned darker still. "Paulus asks for retreat, for mercy. Berlin answers: Hold at all costs. But the cost is our flesh."
And then the words Christian would not forget: "I'd take Stalin over him. At least Stalin knows when to feed his men."
But it was not only Hitler that haunted them. It was the name on every tongue, passed in fear like a curse: Vasily Zaitsev. "He hunts officers," one whispered. "Picks us clean. A man lit a cigarette near the railyards shot clean through the eye. Dead before he could draw breath."
Another shook his head. "Not ten a day, as they say. Twenty. More. Each day, another captain falls, another lieutenant struck down."
"He is no man," a young lieutenant murmured. "He waits for days without moving. Watches you as you breathe. And when you lift your glass, or your scope, he chooses."
A silence fell. The older major's hand trembled as he spoke, voice raw: "They say he does not miss."
Paranoia grew until it thickened the air like smoke. Officers crept through rubble bent low, refusing to raise their binoculars. Helmets pressed too tightly on brows. Even the act of peering over a broken wall became a game of Russian roulette.
One man whispered that Zaitsev could smell fear. Another swore he had seen him once, just once, a ghost crouched among wreckage with eyes bright like glass.
A captain, shaking, muttered: "He chooses who deserves to die. He waits for arrogance, for the officer who dares stand tall and then, he's gone."
Another broke down entirely, sobbing into his hands. "I cannot go out there. I cannot. I hear his bullet in my dreams." The whispers merged with treason until Christian could no longer tell one from the other.
Better the Soviets than our own Führer.Zaitsev is death itself.The Führer feeds us to the Red Army.
That night, sleep came like a horrible monster.
He dreamt of Antonov again. The warmth of blood across his hands, the knife sinking deep. But from the snow rose a tide, black and red, faceless soldiers by the thousands. He raised his pistol, desperate, but it crumbled into ash between his fingers. He tried to run, but the tide pulled him under.
And there, above the roar, he heard the legend made flesh, Zaitsev's voice, cold as steel: "You cannot hide, German. The bullet is already waiting."
The tide consumed him whole.
Christian woke gasping, drenched in sweat, his hand twitching as though still clutching ash.
For the first time, the thought took form, jagged and poisonous:
If I betrayed one master for another, would I be more damned? Or less?