“I spoke to the men who fought under Voitsekhovsky. They didn’t know the tsar was in Yekaterinburg.”
“Well, the Bolsheviks thought the legion was part of a rescue mission.” Strange how Filip felt sympathy for Russian royalty but had wanted to end all privileges for their counterparts in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But the Bolsheviks were massacring former aristocrats, or former people, as they called them. Wanting to level a group that had oppressed people for centuries was different from trying to annihilate them.
The rest of the Sixth Regiment pulled into Yekaterinburg station later that day. Filip and Dalek watched as they detrained and assembled in front of the depot.
“Where are the rest of them?” Dalek asked.
“Maybe there’s another train.” This couldn’t be the entire regiment. It should be twice this size.
Filip joined Anton and Petr. They exchanged greetings, then Filip asked, “Is another train coming?”
Anton shook his head. “This is all that’s left of us.”
Death had nibbled at their numbers over the summer. It had clawed at them during the winter. Filip should have been with them. These were his brothers, and many were his recruits. His work protecting the rails had been necessary, but guilt hung in the air.
“Where’s Emil?”
“Wounded.” Petr frowned. “We heard he made it to Vladivostok, minus half of his right leg. Larisa and Veronika saw him. They’re renting a room together. Small and crowded, but they’re used to that, I suppose.”
Filip nodded. Poor Emil. Did he think it was worth it, losing a limb in service of his country?
Filip should have been prepared for the next question when Anton asked, but it still struck him like an artillery salvo.
“How’s your wife?”
***
Filip’s old bunk was still available in the familiar, worn teplushka.
“About Mrs. Sedláková . . . or whatever name she’s using now . . . I’m sorry, Filip.” Anton shoved a bit of loose cotton more tightly into the crack it was supposed to fill.
Filip shook his head and inhaled deeply to make sure his voice was steady. “I was foolish to think anything lasting could come from a corporal marrying a baron’s daughter.”
“War made fools of a lot of us.” Anton sat on his bunk. “I believed the Entente for months. When they said the British were coming, then the Japanese, then the Americans, I believed it every time. And each time, it was a lie.”
“I’ve seen a few Americans,” Filip said. “Not soldiers. YMCA volunteers. They had chocolate and tinned fruit. But what we really needed were uniforms without holes and more rifles and men to shoot them.” The regiment wasn’t going naked, but their clothing looked more like rags than uniforms. Half the men had holes in the fabric meant to cover their shoulders, worn away by their rifles. Real socks were a thing of memory.
Dalek huffed. “And the British sent us a very nice naval gun. They just neglected to provide a single shell to shoot from it. And the French sent us a general but no troops.”
“Do you remember what you said when you came to Taganrog and told me I should fight for the Czechoslovak Legion?” Anton asked.
“A bit,” Filip said.
“You said we were going to earn a country of our own.” Anton tapped the wooden boards of his bed. “Last summer when we took over the railroad, I understood. We were making our way home. Or to France, and then home. I even understood what happened in the fall. We could help the Allies more here than we could in France. But what are we doing now? Why are we still fighting? The war ended in November. Why can’t we just go home now that we have a home? If we don’t hurry, all the jobs and all the land will be snatched up. We’ve risked so much for our country, but if we’re stuck in Siberia, we’ll miss out on all the opportunities.”
Filip knew the arguments for staying. Someone needed to keep the railway open and running, and the peace settlement hadn’t been finalized. Czechoslovakia was a country, but the borders could change. And the legion had stirred up a hot response from the Bolsheviks; it seemed unfair to abandon their allies, the White Russians, to a mess partially of the legion’s making. But Filip didn’t spout off any of the official reasons. His heart wasn’t in official reasons anymore. His heart wasn’t in anything anymore, other than in mourning. He’d always been the one with the answers, during his recruiting drive and on the legion’s thrust eastward the previous year. But not now. “I don’t know, Anton. I don’t know.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Nadia hugged the Khanty woman who had taken her in and restored her to health. “Thank you for everything.”
The smear of gray she’d seen before she’d collapsed had been smoke from a peasant’s hut. When her stolen ponies had wandered near, the woman and her husband had gone to investigate. Nadia still wasn’t sure if they’d expected to find someone living or if they’d simply wanted to scavenge more lost supplies, but they’d found her, unconscious and almost frozen, and had brought her to their home.
Rest, tea, and warmth had done wonders. As had time. But time was also a painful thing. She hadn’t kept an exact count, but at least three weeks had passed since her abduction. There was a deeper pain too, a sorrow that would never disappear but would forever scar her heart. She’d lost the baby. She’d never even had the chance to tell Filip, and now the news would bring mourning rather than celebration.
She said goodbye to the couple, to the shaman who had helped heal her, and to others from the small settlement who had been so generous with their food and their fires. They had given her refuge, enough rubles for a train ticket back to Filip, and enough dried meat for her journey. More than the food and the money, they’d given her another chance at life. She left the horses with the village, but her expressions of gratitude seemed woefully inadequate.
One of the peasants took her by sleigh to the nearest train depot along a spur line. He didn’t speak Russian, but she hoped he understood her emotion, if not her words, when she thanked him again.
She walked into town. The journey from the village had taken most of the day. She may have already missed the last departure, so she hoped the train station had a heated waiting room.
A dozen stores lined the street leading to the train depot, with wooden homes opposite the stores and huts along the secondary roads. A dress in a store window caught her eye, but she paused for only a moment. She didn’t have money for a new dress. The one in the store probably wasn’t new anyway, but at least it was clean. That was what she really wanted—to be clean again. The Khanty settlement hadn’t had bathing facilities. She searched the main road as she walked to the depot, hoping to spot a bathhouse or an inn.
The streets were strangely empty. Maybe the town was only large enough to hold market a few times a week rather than every day. Or maybe it was Sunday. Once she got to the station, she could inquire as to what day of the week it was and which direction she should travel to find her husband.
The town was quiet, but the train depot was hectic. People emerged from a train, and they were treated like prisoners. But they couldn’t be military prisoners. Some were far too old, and some were female.
As she got closer, she could pick out the difference between the guards and the guarded. The guards wore long black coats, much like the men who had shot her parents. Something twisted in her gut. She didn’t know where she was or where she could go, but she had to get away from the train depot.
A burst of wind made a bright red flag billow into view. Either the bandits had carried her far to the west, or the legion had been pushed farther east. She was in Bolshevik territory.
No wonder no one was out shopping. The Bolsheviks had taken over the town. They’d probably seized all the crops and would label anyone trying to sell something a kulak or a petty bourgeoisie.