In the summer of 1942, on the Rzhev-Vyazma salient, the Germans managed to build a deeply echeloned defense. The front line was practically stabilized, and attempts by the former cadet Vorontsov to break through to his own side are deadly dangerous. But now, the front “paths and trails” lead him not only back to friends—those real, and those who had been such in the past—but also to what seem to be obvious enemies, such as the Wehrmacht major Radovsky, commander of the combat group “Black Thunder”…