People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks Page A

they came to a stream, Branko ordered Maks into the water, to turn over the moss-covered stones. After the odred had crossed, the stones were flipped back as they had been, the moss unbroken by boot prints or mule hoofs.
     
    For seven months, Lola’s odred lived on the move, rarely spending more than a night or two in one campsite, carrying out demolitions of railway tracks or small bridges. On many nights, they were offered the shelter of a farmer’s barn, where they slept in an animal warmth, cushioned by straw. But at other times, they camped in the forest, with only a makeshift blanket of pine needles to keep back the punishing cold. Although never much more than five miles from the nearest enemy post, their odred managed to escape ambushes that claimed other units. Branko preened about this as if it were a product of his own leadership. He expected to be served and deferred to like a general officer. Once, at the end of a grueling march, he lay down against a tree to take his rest while everyone else scrambled to gather dry firewood before the darkness overtook them. Oskar, throwing a heavy bundle of branches down beside the prone Branko, muttered something about Communists supposedly doing away with elitist privilege.
    Branko was on his feet in a second. He gripped Oskar by the front of his uniform and slammed him hard against the trunk of a tree.
    “You sniveling brats are lucky I was assigned to lead you. You should be thanking me every day for keeping you alive.”
    Isak stepped between them and gently pushed Branko away.
    “What keeps us alive,” he said quietly, “is not luck, or your excellent leadership. It’s the loyalty of the civilian population. We wouldn’t be able to last five minutes out here without their support.”
    For a moment, it seemed that Branko was going to strike Isak. But he retained control of himself somehow, and stepped back, spitting contemptuously on the ground.
    Lola had sensed Isak’s growing impatience with Branko. She knew he deplored Branko’s incessant speechifying, late into the night, even after long marches, when the exhausted youths would rather have been sleeping than listening to rambling exegesis on surplus value and false consciousness. Isak would try to bring the political harangues to a close, but many times Branko carried on, oblivious. The greater frustration lay in the difference between Branko’s self-regard and the rather low opinion held of him by the brigade commander in their region. Branko promised better weapons, yet they did not materialize. He told Lola that she would be assigned to a field hospital for training, but this never occurred.
    Still, she felt useful in her role as muleteer, and even Branko, who was stinting with praise, from time to time commended her. As winter pressed in upon them, most fell ill. The hacking of their wet coughs became the morning reveille. Lola begged onions from the farmers to make poultices. Isak showed her how to compound the ingredients for expectorants, which she administered diligently. She proposed a redistribution of rations so that those who were recuperating from illness could receive more. Branko promised to move them into winter quarters, but weeks passed and the odred remained camped out on the unforgiving mountains. Numbers dwindled. Zlata, ill for weeks with a violent chest infection, was taken in by a local peasant family and died there, in a warm bed, at least. Oskar, tired of the hardships and Branko’s constant ill will, deserted in the night, taking Slava, one of the farm girls, with him.
    Lola worried about Ina. The child had the same hacking cough as most of the odred. But when she raised the subject of finding a winter haven for her with Isak, he dismissed it. “For one thing, she would not go. For another, I would not ask her. I promised her I’d never leave her again. It’s that simple.”
    On a blizzarding day in early March, Milovan, the regional brigade commander, summoned the remnant