She missed him. She wanted to see him again, wanted to tell him she was ready to try a real marriage, if he would take her as a permanent wife. The wounded brought rumors and updates with them, and the legion published newspapers in multiple languages, so she could follow the battles and skirmishes. Nothing gave details about Filip and whether or not he was safe.
Eventually, Marek soiled his diaper, then calmed.
“Was that what was bothering you, little one?” Nadia laughed at the baby, then gave him a fresh diaper. He seemed sleepy after that, so she rocked him until his eyes closed, then tucked him into the bunk with his mother.
Nadia scrubbed herself clean and went to the hospital train. Maybe the work would keep her from worrying about Filip for a few hours.
Most of the men still slept when she arrived, but the orderly had plenty of cleaning for her to do. Then the men woke, and she served breakfast of bread with butter and gooseberry jam while the wounded passed newspapers around.
One whistled. “We finally took Yekaterinburg. The end of July.”
Yekaterinburg was to the west of them, on the northern line rather than the southern line the Sixth Regiment had come along. Now more of the legion could make it east, if Filip’s group could clear the Bolsheviks out of the tunnels around Lake Baikal. If not, they were all trapped—the groups waiting around Irkutsk and those coming from Yekaterinburg.
The man folded the paper to read the bottom half of the sheet. “They think the tsar was being held in Yekaterinburg.”
“Did the legion free him?” Nadia asked. Nicholas II had been flawed, but he was still her tsar and her father’s friend. Most of the time, she thought it best that he not return to power, but if he could somehow prevent the Bolsheviks from taking over all of Russia . . .
The man looked up from the paper. “He disappeared. Sounds like he might have been executed.”
Executed? Would the Bolsheviks really kill the tsar? “What of his family?” Nadia had volunteered in a Petrograd hospital with the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana. Hatred was widespread for the tsar and tsarina, but surely they’d let the children go.
“No one knows for sure. But the Bolsheviks aren’t very forgiving.”
Nadia nodded and went to work changing bandages. If the legion had driven the Bolsheviks from Yekaterinburg at the end of July, then three weeks had passed, plenty of time for the tsar and his family to escape to safety. But Alexei had poor health. Maybe they were still traveling, moving at a slower pace to accommodate the tsarevich. Or perhaps they were safe already but wished to stay in hiding a while longer.
When she had a free moment, she grabbed an unattended newspaper. The words were Czech, so she asked one of her patients to read it to her while she replaced the bandages on his shoulder. The first man had softened the news. The article was blunter, reporting that the tsar was almost certainly dead. It all sounded so savage, killing the tsar. She understood the frustrations of the peasants and the workers. But to kill him? The tsar had exiled his enemies. He’d shown mercy. Couldn’t they have extended the same mercy to him? And what had become of his wife and children?
Nadia had already decided she wanted a future with Filip, even if it meant leaving Russia. But she would always be Russian at heart, and if the tsar was really dead, then a part of the Russia she loved had died with him.
She worked with a renewed determination to assist the legion. The enemy was brutal and terrifying. And somewhere along the shores of Lake Baikal, her husband was facing them.
***
Three days after setting out, Filip returned with a discouraging report. “The Bolsheviks are dug in at Tankhoy. I counted sixty troop trains between there and Mysovaya. They weren’t idle while we cleared the tunnel, and now they’re waiting for us.”
Kral nodded but didn’t seem overly worried.
Filip didn’t want to sound like a defeatist, but this roadblock was more serious than the others they’d faced. They had more room to maneuver here than they’d had on the opposite side of the lake, but the mountains still hemmed them in. Thick pines would mask some of their advance, but other sections of the landscape would leave them woefully exposed. “You aren’t worried, Brother Lieutenant?”
“No. We’ll conduct a frontal assault tomorrow morning.”
A frontal assault? Was that supposed to be encouraging?
Kral continued. “Gajda sent a group over the mountains to hit them in the flank when we attack.”
That was something, but it might not be enough.
Kral cracked a smile. “And Colonel Ushakov is leading our fleet across the lake tonight. His legionnaires and Cossacks will attack in the rear, closer to Posolska.”
“Our fleet?” The legion had no navy.
“Ferries and a few steamers pulling barges. Enough to move twelve hundred men. Tomorrow will be hard, but we’ll manage.”
A three-pronged attack. Filip didn’t have the energy to debate whether or not it would work. As soon as he found his bedroll, he went to sleep.
The next morning dawned early, as summer days did in Siberia.
“Do you ever wake up and wonder if you’re seeing your last dawn?”
Filip looked over to Anton, who was cleaning his rifle. “You feel that way today?”
“No more than usual. It’s just that we’ve been fighting almost nonstop since the end of May. August is nearly over. Marek is almost two months old.” Anton fixed his bayonet. “Remember Jan Beran?”
Filip nodded. Beran had joined the legion in Taganrog, same as Anton. He’d died in the fighting for Krasnoyarsk.
“He had a son. Born in 1915, seven months after we were called up. He never met him.”
“This war has made it so a lot of sons will never meet their fathers. But our sons will have a country.”
Anton gazed at the lake. Filip wished he could read his friend’s thoughts. He could guess at the emotions a little. No matter how promising the future, there was pain in knowing they might not see it. Anton straightened his shoulders. “I suppose I have to trust God to take care of my family if I no longer can.”
Their assignment that day included a frontal assault against a daunting foe, yet Anton’s expression had grown calm as he spoke of God. Had Filip heard similar words from someone unacquainted with trouble, he would have passed it off as naivety. It was easy to trust in God when life was easy. But Anton knew all about war, discrimination, and poverty and held to his faith despite all the hardships he’d seen and felt. What would it be like to have such a firm assurance? In that moment, Filip wished he could feel the same, but the oppression he’d felt as a child and the horror he’d seen as a soldier made the concept of a loving God hard to grasp.
The other men stirred, and not long after, a runner came by, telling them to assemble. They gathered their things and adjusted their equipment, then organized themselves for the march to Tankhoy. Dread grew with each step they took, at least for Filip. He’d seen the fortifications waiting for them.
A boom sounded in the distance, and a thread of smoke appeared to the north along the lake.
“What was that?” Dalek climbed a tree for a better look.
The smoke grew, getting darker.
“I’ll bet it’s Ushakov’s men.” Filip didn’t know for sure, but that was where the cross-lake assault had been planned. He just hoped it was a Bolshevik possession that had been destroyed and not a ferry full of legionnaires or their Cossack allies.
Filip’s regiment advanced the rest of the way to Tankhoy Station. In the distance, the flash of sunlight off bayonet told him the group of legionnaires who had marched over the mountain was also in position.
“Hit them hard, and drive them from Tankhoy!” Kral ordered.
The legion attacked, and the Bolsheviks fought back with fury. Filip led his squad from one point to another, trying to shield his men from a withering hail of rifle fire and advance at the same time. Tankhoy was small, but the Bolsheviks had found or created formidable positions. He kept his men in the trees when he could, but huge stretches of ground were open, leaving them exposed.