The sun rose early, and Filip stood and stretched, then washed his face and hands in the river. “Do you suppose Sokolov will send food?”
“Only after he’s driven out the last of the Bolsheviks.”
Filip shared the last of his bread and the Kazakh shared his salted, dried fish. A few people passed as they ate, but most didn’t notice the two soldiers guarding the bridge from below.
Then a group of five armed men ran at them.
“Halt!” Filip shouted. He aimed but hesitated. He didn’t know who the men were or which side they fought for. He repeated his order in Russian, Czech, and German.
The men didn’t slow.
Filip and the Kazakh fired from their positions on the ground. The men fired back, attacking in a frontal assault with nothing but a few blades of grass to hide them. One down. A second turning away. Three and four cried out and collapsed. Then Filip shot the last assailant, who was near enough for Filip to recognize the uniform. The man had been a war prisoner.
“The prisoners are the Bolsheviks’ best supporters. Probably because they feed them.” The Kazakh nodded at the fallen men. “Siberia is no place for a person without allies—a tribe, an army. It’s hard to survive alone.”
Filip understood the need to be part of something bigger, but the attack had seemed the work of true believers, not men who had joined an army simply to be fed.
A shot rent the air, and a plume of dirt burst between Filip and the Kazakh. They dropped to the ground and spun to see another group attacking from behind. They each shot one, leaving two. The men attacked from downhill, so Filip scrambled closer to the pillar for cover. They must have snuck to the river while the first group was charging.
A flash of pain burst above Filip’s right ear. He heard himself cry out but kept hold of his rifle. But his weapon seemed a great deal heavier now, and the sun had been up for hours, so why was everything so dark?
He hauled his rifle back into position and aimed, but the two men had turned into four blurry apparitions. Was he supposed to shoot the smudge on the far left or the identical smudge just to the right of it? He blinked, turning the men back into a pair, but then his eyes blurred, and there were six of them. He fired at the center figure on the left half, and the shot echoed along the bottom of the bridge. Filip tried to aim again, but everything had turned to a painful, throbbing gray. Another shot, not from his rifle, and he was falling, falling hard into the earth.
Chapter Nineteen
The number of casualties had almost overwhelmed Nadia that first day of battle. More experienced nurses had told stories of what it was like near the front, where wounded men would come in a trickle for days, then in a flow, then in a gush. One had confessed that they’d had to ignore some of the wounded. Those who couldn’t be saved were left to die unaided.
Now Nadia understood, but she couldn’t ignore any of them. It didn’t matter if she was exhausted and had worked all through the night. The legion had saved her life. She would wear herself out trying to save as many of them as she could.
Her stomach rumbled, but she didn’t have time to eat. The fighting was over now, and fewer wounded were coming in, but there was still so much to do. She paused long enough to get a drink of water. She’d be dizzy otherwise.
“There’s a hospital in Omsk,” the orderly told her. “As soon as the city’s secure, we can move our patients there.”
A hospital would be an improvement over the straw-lined boxcar. Dima had kept the stable at her aunt’s estate in better condition than this. The doctor at the Petrograd hospital had told Nadia and the other nurses over and over again that cleanliness was necessary to prevent the spread of disease. But how could she stop to clean when men were in danger of bleeding to death?
“Will you sterilize these for me?” Someone had fetched a local doctor, and he was stitching up torn and punctured flesh. He pointed to his needles.
“Right away, sir.”
Nadia put the needles in a dish and poured vodka over them. She reached to put the liquor back on the shelf, but something caught her eye.
She dropped the alcohol, and the bottle shattered.
Filip stumbled through the door, Dalek supporting him. The way he moved suggested extreme drunkenness, but the cascade of blood on his face and hair suggested it was far more serious.
She left the broken glass and rushed to Filip. “What happened?”
Dalek dragged her husband to an empty spot on the floor. Filip closed his eyes and leaned his head against the boxcar wall.
“A bullet grazed his head,” Dalek said. “Looks worse than it is.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” Filip’s voice lacked its normal volume. “You don’t have this pounding headache.”
“Get some sleep, then. The rest of us have more important things to do than lay about in a hospital.” Dalek chuckled at Filip’s scowl, then left.
Nadia grabbed a rag and water and knelt to scrub the blood off. But now that the most important man in the army was inside the hospital car, her hands wanted to stop working. She managed to get the rag into the water, but her fingers shook so badly that she couldn’t wring it out. She took a deep breath. What was wrong with her? She tried again and decided an insufficient wringing would work. His uniform was filthy. What was a little extra water?
She cleaned off the worst of it. The wound was too wide and shallow to need stitches. It might scar, but then again, it might not. What if the man who’d shot him had held his rifle at a slightly different angle? What if the wind had blown with a slightly different force? The smallest change in circumstances might have left Filip dead.
Her hands started shaking worse than before.
“Nadia?” Filip’s eyes cracked open. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, not trusting her voice. She’d treated hundreds of patients throughout the war, maybe thousands. So why this reaction, why now?
Filip took her trembling hands in his. Her hands were covered in blood—most of it Filip’s, though other patients had contributed to the buildup.
“When was the last time you slept or ate?”
“I don’t remember.”
Filip moved his head and winced. “Sit for a moment.”
She complied. There wasn’t a lot of room, so she sat very near to him. He kept hold of one hand, and though they sat in dirty straw in a crowded boxcar, the moment felt intimate, private.
“I’m glad you’re helping us.” Filip eyed her from partially closed lids. “But you still need to eat.”
“It’s hard to tell that to the next patient who needs help.” There were no other nurses to relieve her, and the orderly and the doctor were equally busy. “It’s supposed to calm down now that Omsk surrendered.”
“Did they surrender?”
“Didn’t you hear?” If news had reached the hospital, surely it had reached the men who fought. “Where were you?”
He closed his eyes again. “Guarding a bridge.”
The orderly caught Nadia’s attention and motioned to the broken glass. “Filip, I have to get to work.”
His eyes stayed closed, but his lips pulled into a frown. “Will you sit with me again when you finish?”
“Yes, as soon as I can.” She squeezed his hand and went to pick up the broken glass.
***
Dalek scribbled down the message being transmitted into the newly commandeered Omsk telegraph office. The legion had taken official control of Omsk just that day, after promising the inhabitants that they were there only to keep the peace and keep the rail line open.
“What is it?” another clerk asked.
“The Bolsheviks in Tatarsk want reinforcements.” Dalek looked at a map. Tatarsk was to the east of Omsk. So that meant the detachment of legionnaires approaching Omsk from the east was nearing Tatarsk and putting pressure on the Bolshevik garrison. The Reds still held much of the Urals, part of the northern rail line, and pieces of the track between Omsk and Irkutsk. If the legion could kick them out of Tatarsk, they would eliminate a pocket of opposition and allow two units of the legion to converge. “I need Lieutenant Kral. Immediately!”