Sun Hui followed Captain Ivar's advice, in fact, when it came to training, Ivar, who was born as an authentic tank soldier, did a good job, so Sun Hui spent most of his time with scouts these days.

On this day, he set out with the scouts to reconnoiter the enemy.

Dressed in camouflage and tightly fastened with all the straps—on the feet, on the abdomen, under the chin, and on the back of the head—as a scout, he was freed from the daily grind and miscellaneous things, he no longer belonged to himself or his chief, and he had no intention of remembering the past. He tied grenades and daggers to his belt and carried a pistol into his arms. He has set aside all the conventional conventions of mankind and has been outside the legal guarantees, and will henceforth be on his own. He gave all his documents, letters, photographs, medals and medals to the secretary general, and to the head of the party group or the regimental card. So he put aside his past and future, and only cherished it all in his heart.

He has no name, like a bird in the woods. He could also abandon the clarity of human language and simply convey a message to his comrades with the chirping of birds. He merged with the wilderness, the forest, and the canyon, and became the elves of these regions—the elves in danger, always on the alert, with only one thought in his head, and that was his mission.

Thus begins an ancient arena, with only two characters on stage: the human and the Grim Reaper.

Toltkin sent his warriors to go first, and he went to the front with Pyshkov and Markov and Sun Hui.

"There could have been a lot of things, but none of the scouts had an officer to take the lead." He said to the division commander, who agreed.

The four officers walked along the forest path, talking in low voices. In fact, it was only Markov who spoke, and the sad Pyshkov listened to him, while Toltkin looked ahead with a careless eye.

"I hope the war will end soon." Markov looked at Toltkin's serious silhouette from the side, and for some reason suddenly closed up.

Toltkin was silent. When he went out on a mission, he was always very silent. It took a great deal of self-control on his part to achieve this false tranquility that bordered on sleep. He gave himself to fate, and his whole expression seemed to say: I have done everything I can, and everything will be left to nature in the future.

The firing position of an artillery battery under the artillery regiment was on a broad ridge with small spruce.

The artillerymen were rushing around the already located artillery. They saw Toltkien from afar, waved their hands and shouted, "You have to go to work again?" ”

"I have to go again." Toltkin replied briefly.

There were already people waiting for him in the trenches. Lieutenant Muravyov, Captain Kolev and two mortar company commanders were there. Semenov crouched in the trench with the other scouts and chatted softly.

Captain Kolev clearly defined the coordinated actions of each other.

"That is, I bombarded target No. 4 with artillery to divert the attention of the Germans. Beware, Toltkin, don't turn to the left, or you'll run into my cannonballs. Immediately after that, I worked with the mortar gunner to hit target No. 5. If you send out a red flare, I'll hit targets 1, 2, 3, 6, and 7 to cover your retreat. ”

"Did the mortar shooter test?" Toltkin asked.

"Well, it's all set." Mortar gunners assured.

"Just in case, my machine gun is ready." Muravyov said.

Everyone was clearly excited.

Toltkin and Sun Hui stretched out their bodies against the breastwork to listen to the movement of the German front. Sun Hui heard a foxtrot playing foxtrot somewhere in the distance opposite. From time to time, white flares on the left rise into the sky.

Toltkin jumped back into the trench, turned to the scouts and sappers and said, "Listen to the battle order." ”

The scouts slowly stood up.

"The enemy defended the sector with the strength of an infantry division. According to the intelligence available to us, the depth of the enemy's defenses is being redeployed. The division commander ordered us to reconnaiter behind enemy lines, to find out the nature of this redeployment and the situation of enemy reserves and tanks, and then to report all information to the command by radio. ”

Toltkin explained the sequence of marches to the scouts, and announced that he had appointed Semenov as his deputy, and then he nodded silently to the officers who remained in the trenches, climbed over the breastwork, and quietly headed for the riverbank. Then, Pyshkov, Markov, Sun Hui, Semyonov, and the three sappers selected to escort the reconnaissance group did the same, one by one. The last to disappear was Semenov.

The people who remained in the trenches stood motionless for several minutes. Then Kolev suddenly and inexplicably scolded the street, and scolded for a long time. He asked Muravyov to give him a little vodka, and sure enough, he drank a full glass, but frowned in disgust as he drank it. Kolev never scolded the street and never drank vodka. Muravyov thought it strange, but he was silent.

At this moment Toltkin stopped in the low bushes close to the bank of the river. The scouts waited for his orders, but Toltkin was still delaying for some reason. They stood like this for two or three minutes. Suddenly, a German white flare plunged into the darkness, sizzled, and split into many dazzling fragments, filling the creek with milky white light, and then extinguishing it just as suddenly. This is probably exactly what Toltkin was waiting for. He stepped into the dark, cold water, and the rest of the group followed him, and they quickly crossed the river, stopping again in the shadows of the west bank, waiting for the next flare to flash. Later, Toltkin told the sappers to go first, and he and the scouts followed.

The sappers rounded a depression (which was much larger than Toltkin had imagined when he first observed) and stopped. From here are minefields.

The sappers explored the ground with their long probe rods, while listening carefully to a mine detector hanging from the sapper's chest, and slowly moved forward.

The flares flashed again. Instinctive fear drove the scouts to the ground. They lay on a flat plateau, thinking that the terrible death light of the flare had shone through. It seems that the whole world can see them. But the flares went out, and there was silence everywhere.

Sun Hui watched as the sappers carefully groped in the dark, unloading the fuses of a few mines. A powerful machine-gun tracer bullet swept overhead and flew into the distance. The scouts froze. The same shuttle passed to the left, with a dry click. There was also a Maxim heavy machine gun on the Soviet position that clicked lonely, and its bullets seemed to be the last greetings of their own people, whizzing past somewhere on the right.

The leading sapper saw the barbed wire through the darkness and turned his head to look at Toltkin crawling behind him.