“He’s good, then, at what he does?”
Dalek turned to his friend’s pseudo-wife. “The best. And I don’t say that lightly.”
“We have Omsk. They have Tatarsk. Do we have anything else?”
Dalek stood and went to another set of maps, ones pieced together to show the entire Russian Empire, from its old border with the Austro-Hungarian Empire all the way to the Pacific Ocean. He walked along from west to east, pointing out the stations legionnaires now held. “In addition to Omsk, we have control of Penza, Syzran, Chelyabinsk, Novonikolayevsk, and Tomsk. A few places in between. When the Bolsheviks split us up, they spread us all across Siberia. Now they have to fight us everywhere at once.” Dalek sat again. “Of course, we have to fight them all at once too, but I think we’re better organized than they are.”
Another message tapped its way through. Czech counterrevolutionaries have taken the station stop annihilate them at once.
Dalek grinned. “The legion has taken the Tatarsk Station. One more city we can add to our list.” Dalek turned to the other clerk. “You’d best tell the rest of the group, whoever Kral left in charge.”
“It’s more a hovel than a city. But it puts us closer to Vladivostok.” Nadia smiled, then it faded.
“Aren’t you eager to get there?”
“It’s just that sometimes it’s hard to remember there was ever a time before the war. Peace—I’m not sure I’ll remember what to do with it. And even then, I think life will be far different than it was before the war.”
“Not so many emperors and kaisers, I imagine. And not so many men of military age.” For a moment, memory of the battles Dalek had fought in haunted him. Waves of men cut to the ground, never to rise again. The emperor had considered them as expendable as the horses that pulled supplies or the shells that plowed into enemy soldiers. But this war had made even empires expendable. “The world will be different now.” Different, but would it be better? Filip would argue yes, as long as the Czechs and Slovaks were given their own country. And Dalek would never admit it out loud, but Filip was usually right.
Tap. Dash dash dash. Still awaiting artillery barrage stop reinforcements needed at once.
Dalek replied quickly. Track torn up by bandits stop attempting to repair.
Then another message clicked through. Counterrevolutionaries now attacking from west stop reinforcements and artillery needed immediately.
“I think our game is over, and we managed to take everything at the Tatarsk Depot except the telegraph office. I suppose we might as well let them know who we are now that we can’t fool them any longer.”
His next message needed no translation. Thank you for Tatarsk Depot stop Nazdar.
Nadia glanced at the message he’d just sent. “What does nazdar mean?”
“Hello. Goodbye. Good luck. Good health. Stand firm. For success—ours of course. That sort of thing. You’ve been with us since March. Haven’t you heard it before?”
“I have. I just wasn’t sure what it meant, and no one’s used it with me. Requesting a definition seemed like admitting to eavesdropping.”
“You should use it on Filip sometime. Nazdar, and polib mĕ.”
“What does polib mĕ mean?”
The other telegraph clerk chose that moment to return. He gave the two of them a look of surprise, then chuckled as he walked to his desk.
“Ask Filip when he gets back.”
“If I have a chance. He comes and goes so quickly, with never a moment to rest. And I suppose I made it worse by giving him one more responsibility.”
“Not all responsibilities are unpleasant. He’d spend more time with you if he could.” Dalek had never been a matchmaker before, but if Filip let a perfect opportunity like this pass him by, it would be a crime. And Dalek didn’t plan on letting his friend become a criminal. A deserter and a traitor, perhaps, but not the man who let a beautiful, interested woman escape him for want of effort.
Nadia glanced at her hands. “Will you let me know if you hear from him before I do?”
“Yes.”
“Then I ought to get back to my patients. Well done. It’s amazing what a few false telegrams accomplished today.”
***
The legion left a garrison in Omsk and continued on to Tatarsk, where Nadia and the hospital car connected with the rest of the regiment. But she saw Filip for only a few minutes. The railway ahead was clear to Novonikolayevsk but not beyond, so Kral sent Filip to gather information, and Nadia told him nazdar and somehow managed not to cry when he left again after scarcely saying hello. It might have been easier if he weren’t going into battle, or if she hadn’t heard so many rumors about the ways captured men were tortured.
After days of unimpeded travel, their train stopped in Mariinsk and waited for Krasnoyarsk to fall. Filip was up ahead somewhere, so she didn’t see him. When she’d married him in the Ukraine, she’d thought an absent husband preferable to a present one, but now she longed for his company. Prayers gave her comfort, and work with the wounded kept her busy, but he came to her mind again and again as the legion fought for control of the railroad.
The wounded who came to the hospital car were exhausted, their faces swollen with bumps. “I’ve never seen so many mosquitoes,” a soldier with a bullet hole in his arm told her. “And I’ve never had such blisters on my feet. Gajda and Kral led us on a seventeen-mile flanking maneuver. And when we got to the river, the ferry was missing, so we had to take rowboats.”
The next day, the wounded looked different. The skin of their faces, hands, and necks were black. “A peasant gave us this.” A soldier with a twisted ankle held up a bottle. “It stopped the mosquitoes.” And indeed, none of the men smeared in black had the horrible swelling of the other men.
“We fought for six hours. Doubt we would have taken it if Ushakov’s men hadn’t been attacking from the other side.”
Nadia did her best to keep track of everything she heard so she could tell the other women. As she returned to her carriage after a long shift in the hospital car, she wondered what Filip looked like. Was his skin swollen with mosquito bites or blackened to prevent them?
Veronika saw her and took her hand. “You look so tired.”
Nadia shook her head. “I’ll manage.” She pulled Veronika toward the hand-drawn map of Siberia someone had pinned up in the coach. “The men say Krasnoyarsk is ours now.” Nadia said ours without hesitation. She was with the legion now. “But the fighting was intense, so I imagine there’ll be rails to repair.” She doubted their train would be in Krasnoyarsk anytime soon. And by the time they got there, Filip would have already moved on.
“Any word on Anton?” Veronika asked.
“No. But that’s probably good news. If he were wounded, I would have seen him.” She assumed she would recognize him, even under the black liquid from the peasants.
“Any word on Filip?”
“No.” And suddenly, the comfort she’d offered Veronika felt useless. The legion tried to care for all its injured, but if Filip were wounded while scouting, he might not be found for days. And what if he were killed? They might never find his body.
Veronika squeezed Nadia’s hand. “Have faith.”
Nadia nodded.
“And get some sleep. More patients will need you tomorrow.”
Nadia washed up and slid into her bunk. “Veronika? What does polib mĕ mean?”
“It means ‘kiss me.’ Why? Has someone been telling you that? Other than Filip?”
“No . . . I was just wondering.” She hadn’t said that phrase to Filip yet. She’d scarcely had the chance, and now that she knew what it meant, she doubted she’d use it. Dalek was no doubt trying to stir up mischief.