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Chapter Two


Russian sleighs

Russian sleighs



Twelve Versts east of Tyumen

“Shshshshsh,” whispered the leader of Strat Recon, newly promoted Guards Captain Turgenev.

Turgenev could see the foot-stomped path from his perch by a tree and mostly behind a snowbank. The setting sun cast long shadows, which helped conceal him and newly commissioned Lieutenant Rostislav Mokrenko.

Perhaps three hundred meters west, in the middle of a cleared stretch, a small caravan of fifteen carts and sleds formed a circle in the tamped-down snow. These were apparently pulled by horses, large horses, not the sturdy little Yakuts used by Strategic Recon and the Guards Brigade. The animals were tethered to their carts and sleighs, most of them with feed bags covering their muzzles. Smoke from a few fires rose thinly over the encampment. The guard force consisted of no more than two men, walking together, who circled the camp every ten minutes or so.

“Ambush or assault, sir?” Mokrenko asked. “I think our best chance is assault, with a small team to prevent anyone escaping to spread the word.”

Turgenev nodded and said, “As it happens, I agree with you, ser . . . Lieute . . . Rostislav Alexandrovich, but mostly because we need to waste no time in getting to Yekaterinburg. An ambush would depend on their timing; an assault on ours. Go back, if you would, and get two men to take over this post. Then we’ll go back and prepare to assault with the main force.”

“Sir, suggestion?”

“Yes.”

“Myself and one other man, using knives and swords only, machine pistols unloaded and slung, to kill the guards and prepare the way. We can signal that the coast is clear with one of those carbide lights.”

“Let me think on it.”


The moon wasn’t quite half-full, and had been shining for the last couple of hours. Even at half-full, it was bright enough to cast shadows from the trees onto the snow-laden ground.

Wearing all white now, and with the hoods of their snowsuits drawn tight to expose little but their eyes, Mokrenko and Lavin moved from shadow to shadow, closing not on the guards, but on a position from which to take out the guards. The guards themselves were on the other side of the encampment now.

Mokrenko’s and Lavin’s movement was silent, barring only the soft crunching of packed snow under booted feet. From somewhere to the north a lone wolf howled, soon to be joined by an entire pack.

Inside the camp, the fires were either burning low or smoldering on their way to extinction. Though the troops in the camp had started the evening boisterously enough, from the sound of things the boisterousness heavily supplemented with vodka, by nine in the evening all but the two circling guards were apparently asleep.

Certainly, they’re quiet enough now, thought Mokrenko. Understandable if they’re exhausted; while we came on the snow road packed down by the Reds’ column, they probably had a hell of a time getting these carts through the snow between the railhead in Tyumen and here.

Interestingly, now that he was almost at the perimeter of carts, Mokrenko could make out several machine guns, carried on top of some of them. How many more might be hidden he couldn’t guess.

Grabbing physical control of Lavin, Mokrenko pointed down at the twin paths in the snow made by the two circling guards. Lavin understood instantly. If they’ve got an easier path they’ll continue to take it.

With Lavin’s understanding nod, the sergeant poked him in the chest, lightly, and then pointed at an evergreen, the full branches of which formed an oval shadow on the snow. He then touched his own chest and pointed again, this time at a different darkened oval, nearby and on the other side of the twin paths. Lavin’s nod at that was shorter and shallower.

As Lavin lay down in position, Mokrenko stepped into the nearest of the twin paths. Turning left, he followed the path to the south, looking for a place to cross to the other, inner path. They never did grow close enough to simply step over to the next path. But at some point it was unlikely they would see any trace of a step, so he just crossed over, leaving a marker in the snow. From there he turned right again, heading back towards Lavin. At his own already picked-out shadowy oval, he lay down on the cold snow to await the return of the guards.

The cold will, at least, help me stay awake while I wait. Wish I’d been able to catch up on sleep from the night spent reconning the column . . . 


Waiting one hundred twenty meters north of the encampment, and perhaps one hundred sixty northeast of his sergeant, Turgenev understood and expected Mokrenko and Lavin to clear the way with cold steel. To the extent possible, he intended that the rest of Strat Recon would join them in this. To this end, the remaining men who carried unbayoneted machine pistols also had swords, while those with rifles had their bayonets affixed. The exception was the Lewis Gunner, who was crouching next to Turgenev where he could be controlled.

And now we wait for the sergeant’s signal.


Mokrenko came awake with a start and with the Red guards’ booted feet mere inches from his face. Since he knew where to look he could see that Lavin was still dead asleep.

The further foot moved on, as did one of the other guard’s feet, with neither of the guards having apparently noticed Mokrenko’s presence.

“So,” said one of the guards, “after the landlord put us off our farm for failure to pay our rent, what was left for me but to join the Reds?”

“My story is a different one, Comrade,” said the other Red. “We had given up our farm and moved to Moscow fifty years ago. But at what they paid in the factories and what we had to pay for rent and food—heat in the winter was a rare luxury—with no running water and living in filth; well, the words of Comrade Ilyich came through to me like revealed truth!”

“Even so,” said the first guard. “My father, of course, would hear nothing against the rotten Tsar . . .”

Thank God, thought Mokrenko, for people who don’t look for what they don’t expect to see. And I must not listen to their words; there’s too much truth in them. Or has been too much truth. But the Empress—Mokrenko felt his heart swell with filial piety—she will make things right.

I don’t think I can take them both out quietly. Neither do I think that Lavin can awaken quickly enough to stop the other one from raising an alarm. So it’s on me—well, you and I, God—to take out both. If I can’t make it quiet I can at least give the lieut . . . err . . . the captain, a little more time and some degree of surprise.

With no more thought nor time for it, Mokrenko smoothly rose to his feet, drawing his new shashka—the previous one had been given to the new empress at her coronation—and stepped forward. A single swing and the rightmost guard’s head fairly leapt off his shoulders in a great cascade of whooshing blood.

The other guard turned his head at the sound, then gasped in horror as the body took another step forward before beginning its slow collapse to the snow. Sensing a movement to his right, he twisted, instinctively pushing his rifle out to guard against the unseen but sensed threat.

Mokrenko’s slashing shashka hit the rifle at an angle and then slid down it, neatly removing four fingers and a bit of a thumb. The guard screamed then, twice, once as the shock and pain of missing fingers registered and then again as the slashing sword bit deeply into the junction of neck and right shoulder. He fell to the snow, oozing a rivulet of blood that became a torrent as the sergeant roughly yanked his sword out of the dying body before driving it, point first, deep into the guard’s chest.

There was a loud, panicked shout coming from inside the encampment. “To arms! To arms!”

Shit, must have been a duty NCO inside.

Lavin was awake in an instant, sword in hand.

“Fuck the sword,” said Mokrenko, “it’s machine pistols for us now!” Lavin dropped the shashka and took up his MP-18.

Hearts pounding, the pair charged their weapons, not even trying to conceal the slamming of the bolts home after they released the charging handles. Then Mokrenko and Lavin sprinted the few steps to the nearest gap in the wall of carts and sleds. Seeing what had to be a duty NCO or officer bellowing in the center of the camp, outlined by one of the small remaining fires, and directing the awakening Reds to this section of the perimeter or that, Mokrenko took a careful aim.

Brrrrrt. The bellowing man went down, folding at the middle, before plopping onto his arse and rolling over to one side. This, unsurprisingly, didn’t slow the rush to arms.

Lavin, standing near to Mokrenko now, and taking cover behind the same cart but at the other end, fired at a running Red, missed, then fired again for the win.

“Insects!” Lavin shouted. “However many you may be, I shall burn you down!”


Turgenev wasn’t sure he’d heard a scream. He had his doubts about hearing any shouting. But the sound of two MP-18s firing full out there could be no doubt of. He knew at once, It’s all gone to shit!

In such circumstances, he did what any sensible officer—well, any sensible Russian officer—would have done. Gripping his own MP-18 firmly in one hand while charging it with the other, he arose to his feet, shouted “Urrah!” and began to charge for the encampment.

“Urrah!” followed him from nine other throats, sounding like two or three times that many. “Urrah! Urrah! Urrah!”

Progress was relatively slow across the snow. At each difficult step Turgenev expected a storm of fire to cut down his little command.

It didn’t happen. Between the fire from Mokrenko and Lavin and the sudden confusion, most of the encampment’s denizens had hunkered down behind whatever they could find of cover and were not even returning fire. Anyone who had any fight in him had already been dispatched by the MP-18s.

“Fuck this,” said Lavin, ceasing fire. “These aren’t insects; this is too much like drowning puppies.”

Mokrenko agreed. He also ceased fire, made up a quick bluff, and shouted out, “Reds, you are surrounded by two companies of Guards Infantry. Surrender now and you may yet save your lives! Stand up with your hands up and collect yourselves in the center of your camp, by the remaining fires. Drag your wounded with you; anyone found away from the fires will be shot.”

By ones and then twos and threes, the men began to come out from cover and gather together. A few bleeding men they carried or dragged. By the firelight, they all looked frightened out of their wits. They also, for the most part, looked very, very young, with only a couple of salt-and-peppers scattered among them for spice.

“Keep an eye on them,” Mokrenko said. “I’m going to try to meet Turgenev halfway and stop a massacre.”


The new prisoners remained in the center, feeding what remained of the wood to their little fires. Outside, standing atop carts and sleighs, sporting MP-18s, Mosin-Nagant rifles, and a single Lewis Gun, nine of the men of Strat Recon stood guard, while Lavin went through the carts, jotting down what he’d found. Meanwhile, Captain Turgenev and Mokrenko worried and wondered about what to do with their prisoners.

“If we were smart, we’d just shoot them,” said Mokrenko. “We don’t have the manpower to guard them, and I don’t think we can risk letting them go.”

“‘If . . . ’” quoted Turgenev. “But if there’s any way not to . . . Well, let’s see.”

“Sir?”

“I’ve spent most of my short life studying people, Sergeant. Intelligence is as much about that as it is about terrain, weather, and orders or battle. Let’s see what I’ve learned.”

Turgenev turned away, strode over a cart through the ring of guards, and stood inside the circle, perhaps ten meters from the prisoners. He noticed then, in the dawn’s light, that none of the prisoners wore complete uniforms. Some wore a few bits of military garb, but not as if they were actual uniforms nor as if they were men used to wearing uniforms.

Interesting.

“Is there anyone here who can speak for all of you?” Turgenev shouted. “Anyone at all?”

Eventually, the other prisoners pushed and prodded one older man forward. Nervously he advanced on Turgenev.

Humbly, the prisoner held his hands clasped in front of him and bowed his head. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, gaunt, balding, and with poor teeth.

Gospodin, I am Denis Denisovich Garin. The men want me to speak for them.”

“Tell me about them,” Turgenev ordered, though gently.

“Not much to tell, sir. We were, some of us, miners in Yekaterinburg, and others farmers . . . oh, and a double handful of teamsters.”

“And you?”

“I was a teamster, sir. Just that.”

Having a sudden inspiration, Turgenev asked, “So you all decided to help these counterrevolutionaries against the revolution?”

This apparently startled Garin, causing him to jerk his head and to blink his eyes, repeatedly. “Honestly, Gospodin, we never really knew who was who.” He gestured at some of the corpses littering the open space, saying, “These men told us they were the revolution. They told us this as they herded us to the rail yard to load the horses, sleighs, and carts. We never knew or cared about that; we just didn’t want to be shot, bayoneted, or strung up.” Garin’s eyes grew misty. “Watching a couple of old friends, you know, dancing their lives away under a tree at the end of a rope tends to stifle the urge to argue. Having strange armed men looking at your wives and daughters, with interest, does too.”

“Who among these were the men who conscripted you and supervised you on your way?”

Garin looked at the very first one, shot down by Mokrenko, and said, “He was the second in command; Comrade Reznik, he was. And . . .” Garin looked around, then said, “And that one over there was the chief, Comrade Shapiro.” Looking around a bit more, the teamster announced, “And that one was Comrade Lopatin. Then there were”—quickly Garin pointed out three more among the slain—“five more. I only see three of them. The other two aren’t with us. That’s all; just those seven.”

“Seven men controlled you all?” Turgenev’s voice was highly doubtful. “There must have been thirty of you!”

“There were thirty-four,” answered Garin. “They had our families hostage back in Yekaterinburg. They promised to hang them, down to the tiniest baby, if we failed to do our ‘revolutionary duty.’ We believed them.”

Turgenev quoted then, “Ah, ‘liberty, liberty; what crimes are committed in your name?’”

Should I take a chance on these, I wonder. No reason not to, I suppose, since we can always shoot them if they fail my test.

“Thirty-four,” Turgenev mused. “How many are still alive?”

“Twenty-seven, mostly unhurt, sir. Plus two more I wouldn’t expect to live.”

“Of that twenty-seven, Teamster Garin, how many are in favor of the revolution?”

“We all used to be, Gospodin. Yekaterinburg, after all. Not anymore. You see, there used to be forty of us for the drayage. The Bolsheviks hanged six on the way here . . . for various ‘crimes.’ And not all of them were content to merely look upon our wives and daughters.”

“So, would you rather have the tsar back?” Turgenev asked.

“No,” the teamster answered. “But I have heard, we all have, that the old tsar is dead and that his daughter has taken the throne, and promised a new day, a better day, for the peoples of the empire. Do you think it could be true, Gospodin?”

Turgenev declined to answer for the moment, instead saying, “Gather them around, Garin; I want to talk to them. In say, one hour,”—Turgenev pointed at a particular cart—“over there.”


“So, Lavin,” Turgenev asked, “what was the haul?”

“Leaving aside maybe twelve berkovets of food and forty of fodder, I count two heavy machine guns, four hundred and eighty rifles, assuming the cases are all full, which they seem to be, and a couple of hundred thousand rounds. The rifles are all Americansky, by the way, Vestinkhaus, if I’m reading their alphabet correctly.”

“That’s a lot of firepower, sir,” said Mokrenko. “Even if we trust this lot enough not to just shoot them out of hand, I don’t think I trust them with arms.”

“No, Serg— Lieutenant, there I must agree with you. But if we don’t shoot them then we have to bring them with us, right?”

“Yes, sir, I suppose so. Just cutting them loose is either a death sentence or a lot of loose tongues talking in Tyumen. And Tyumen is connected by rail and telegraph to everywhere.”

Rubbing the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger, Turgenev asked, “If we have to bring them, they go on foot or on the carts and sleighs, right? And the latter would be faster? And we can’t spare a special guard for them?”

“All true enough, yes, sir.”

“So I think we take this stuff with us anyway, as long as the drivers need to come.”

“One problem, sir,” said Mokrenko.

“What’s that, sergeant?”

“We have eighteen animals, with the spares. They’re not Yakuts, so they’ll need to be fed thirty funt of fodder a day, each. Do the math, sir; that’s only maybe four weeks of fodder, which doesn’t take us far enough. And, sir, we can’t board the rails at Tyumen, the way these unloaded. I don’t like our odds for hijacking a train, either, not without compromising our mission.”

“Hmm . . . let me ask.”

Turgenev went back into the circle and gestured for Garin to come over. “How were you going to feed the animals, Teamster?” he asked.

“There were supposed to be more convoys of fodder, Gospodin. There was a big stockpile of it, building at Tyumen. I saw few enough wagons or sleighs to carry it, though.”

“How much more could we carry if we stopped off at Tyumen to fill our load?”

The teamster chewed on his lower lip for a bit, thinking hard. Finally, he answered, “It really depends on how many horses and carts we can find. We were almost full when we left and have only used a bit of that, so there’s little room to take on more. But do you really want to go to Tyumen? There are still a lot of people there who would arrest and shoot all of us for desertion.”

Turgenev thought for a bit, then asked, “Is there another group of drivers that was supposed to take the next convoy to Tobolsk?”

“Yes, Gospodin. There were another sixty or seventy men—I never had an actual count, you understand—who were conscripted with us that there were no carts or sleighs for, yet, and so they stayed back in Tyumen.”

“Was there any plan,” Turgenev asked, “for sending out more convoys?”

Garin laughed. “You mean that they’d tell me about? Hah!” He paused then, scratched his balding head, and then added, “But the truth of the matter is that I don’t think they had any plan, but only an . . . what’s the right word . . . oh, I know; they had an urge, a direction, nothing more.”

“Let me ask differently. If we avoid Tyumen, do we have enough fodder to get to Yekaterinburg?”

“Yes,” Garin replied without hesitation, “provided, in the first place, that you are willing to empty out one fodder wagon or sleigh at a time and either cut the horse loose or kill it and eat it, and that the cold weather holds but without another dumping of snow on us. If we get stuck out in the middle of nowhere in a heavy snow the horses likely won’t make enough progress not to starve and we might starve with them.”

“Straight to Yekaterinburg, then,” Turgenev said.

“But what do you want to do in Yekaterinburg, Gospodin?”

“Among other things, hurt the people who dragged you away from your families and hurt and killed your friends.”

“I see,” said Garin. “Shall I bring over all the men now?”

“Do.”


“Gentlemen,” Turgenev began, “after consultation with your spokesman, Mister Garin, I am unsure what to do with you. That having been said, relax; while the convenient thing to do would be to just shoot you, we’re not that kind of people. Do you know any people who are like that?” he asked.

“The Reds,” answered one of the mufti-clad men, boldly. He was immediately echoed by a dozen others: “The Reds.”

“Well, if you haven’t figured it out,” Turgenev continued, “we’re not Reds. Let me ask you another question; what have you heard about the Tsar?”

“The late tsar, you mean?” asked that same speaker back. “We heard he’s dead and that one of his daughters has taken over. Is it true?”

“It is, friend. The second daughter, Tatiana, is now Tsarina, consecrated before God in God’s own house in Tobolsk. She is a remarkable young lady.”

“You sound like you know her,” that last speaker observed boldly.

“Oh, yes; I was one of those who rescued her.” Seeing the men perk up with interest, Turgenev asked, “Would you like to hear about it?”

At the chorus of enthusiastic affirmatives, Turgenev made a patting motion for them to sit down in the snow, and then began to tell the story.


So far the listeners were enthralled at the feat of arms described in loving and gory detail by Turgenev, the smoke and fire, the screams, the desperate hand to hand fighting. They were less enthralled, and a few were moved to tears by:

“ . . . and then the poor little tsarevich, sickly and weak but brave to a fault, threw himself atop the Bolshevik grenade to save his parents and sisters.

“Even then,” Turgenev continued, “it was working well until a traitor in our own ranks shot down the tsar, his wife, and one of the daughters, Olga. All we could save were the three younger girls.

“It was the worst thing, I think, any of us had ever seen, the three beautiful daughters on their knees gathered around the bleeding, shattered mortal remains of both parents and two siblings, weeping like poor lost souls.”

In fact, Turgenev had not seen it and didn’t actually claim he had, but it seemed like a nice additional touch. He continued through the sequestration of the tsar’s remaining family and the combing out of all the Bolsheviks in Tobolsk. Finally he asked, “Do you have any questions?”

That same bold man asked, “What’s the new tsarina like? We hear promises—we’ve always heard plenty of promises—but they never seem to get kept.”

“Well,” Turgenev replied, “she is as hard as she needs to be and as gentle as she can be. She could have shot—have had us shoot—all the men arrayed against us. She said no, she wouldn’t permit that. She said there were men there whose only crime was being forced into an enemy army and who deserved forgiveness, could it only be safely given. Those men have almost to a man signed up to fight for her.

“But she is no weakling, as, sadly, her father was. If someone needed shooting, she signed the death warrant and witnessed at least some of the executions. No averting her eyes for our tsarina!”

He paused briefly to let both carrot and stick make their impression.

“She’s tough in other ways, too. The Reds have custody of all the imperial regalia. In lieu of these—maybe better to say in preference to these—she took a soldier’s helmet for a crown, a hand grenade for her orb, a machine pistol like mine”—here Turgenev held out his MP-18—“for her mace, and for her sword a simple army issue Cossack’s shashka. It was that man there, Lieutenant Mokrenko’s, as a matter of fact.

“This is a girl who means to fight for Russia and intends to win, too. That’s important, when you think about your own futures; she intends to win. Indeed, she swore, before Almighty God, not to preserve her own power, not to preserve the monarchy, as all others before her have sworn, but to preserve the Russian Empire.

“Finally, I tell you friends, again this is no weakling. In our Tatiana we have the will and strength of Catherine the Great, reborn to us in our hour of need!”

The bold one stood then and began to sing. He spontaneously changed the words on his own: “Bozhe, Tsaritsu Krani!”

 

“God save our tsarina.

“Strong, sovereign.

“Reign for glory, our glory.

“God save the tsarina.”


The others likewise stood and joined in, also likewise changing the words. After a short moment, Turgenev joined in as did the guards standing on the carts and sleighs.


“Reign to make foes fear,

“Orthodox tsarina!

“God save the tsarina.”


“All right then,” said Turgenev, “does anyone have any time in the army or navy?”

“We were all exempt,” said Garin. “Critical industries, most of us. There are also a few farmers who would not have been critical except they were critical to keeping Yekaterinburg fed, where Yekaterinburg, itself, was critical.”

“Except for me,” said the bold one. “I am, I suppose, a deserter. Though what it means to be a deserter from a disintegrating army, I confess, I don’t know.”

Garin shrugged. “He never said.”

“I think we can, under the circumstances, pull a veil over your previous indiscretions,” said Turgenev, “provided, of course, there is no repeat. If there is, from you or any of you, you will be shot. Remember, we’re on horseback and skis; you will be on foot. And my Cossacks are fine hunters and trappers.”

“We understand,” said Garin, speaking for all.

“Right. Now, for the bodies. There’s no time to bury the Reds; leave them for the wolves. I’ll give you a few hours to dig graves as deep as you can in that time for your dead friends. But then we need to pack up and be on the road. It is, after all, a long way to Yekaterinburg.”


It was a long way to Yekaterinburg, a long way and a hard way. The two wounded teamsters did not, just as Garin expected, make it. They were buried by the side of the trail, with crosses marking the graves and trees hacked to mark the spot, on the theory that simple wooden crosses usually don’t last. And they moved out. It was not a simple trek.

There came the time the ice over a river was thinner than believed. One laden cart crashed through it, and the two men on the cart fell through and were washed under the ice to freeze or drown, whichever came first. There was no way to recover the bodies, though it was always possible that the river would carry them to some far lake or sea, where they might have the hope of a Christian burial. With that cart, too, went one horse, thirty-six rifles, roughly eight thousand rounds of ammunition, and a half a ton of food.

Then, too, there was the night a pack of wolves—probably driven to desperation by winter-caused starvation—hit them. The wolves killed two of the horses and ripped up one of the teamsters badly enough that he died the next day and, like the others, was buried on the spot. That cost not only the human and equine life, and not only the time to bury the lost teamster, but also still more time to crossload cargo to make up for the lost horses.

It was after this that Turgenev decided to issue rifles to the teamsters, along with six rounds of ammunition each, doubling the guard as well.

If there was a crossing over the rail line for carts and sleds, they couldn’t find it. Instead, the men built a ramp on both sides of the rail, got the horses and vehicles over, then demolished the ramp and camouflaged the leavings. From this they moved west to Yekaterinburg, skirting the town at a considerable distance before setting up camp, northwest of the bridge over the Iset River.


“The men would very much like to go home, Gospodin,” said Garin, once the circle of wagons was complete.

“Soon,” Turgenev promised. “But tell them—remind them—that they’re probably all wanted men by this point or, rather, they will be if seen by any Reds who know they’d been drafted for the supply column. Let me and mine go into town and check out the situation. I’ll give them leave to go home as soon as it’s sensible. Will that do?”

Garin nodded, then said, “It’s not ideal, but I think I can make them see the wisdom of waiting.”

“I’ll leave two men to back you up,” said Turgenev.

“No, no need, Gospodin. I’ll handle them.”

“Even so,” said Turgenev, firmly, “if there’s a problem arising to mutiny it will probably start sooner rather than later. I’m sending a small reconnaissance forward. The rest of us will stay and put a damper on any premature urge to go home.”



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