One of the captured officers lay on the ground, no longer moving. She knelt beside him and felt his neck. His pulse beat a steady rhythm under her fingers.
Another man scrambled closer. “Is he alive?”
“Yes. Do you see any blood?” She didn’t, but she wasn’t strong enough to move him, not after eight months on a forced labor crew.
The other man turned him over. “Nothing more serious than scrapes.”
She noticed the bump on the side of the unconscious man’s head. The tree must have hit him. The guards were keeping their distance rather than ordering her back to work. They were in a generous mood today. “He’ll probably have a concussion.” That could be dangerous in these conditions. Anything that hampered the ability to work could result in less food, which led to death. “You’re his friend?”
“Yes,” the other man said. He eyed the guard drawing closer.
“I was a nurse during the war. I don’t have any equipment, but I’ll do what I can for him when he wakes.”
The guard surveyed the three of them. “Is he dead?”
“No.” Nadia held her breath, wondering what the guard would do.
“Leave him then. The rest of you get back to work.”
***
She saw the man who’d been hit with a tree later that night.
“You were a nurse?” he asked. He was tall, probably about forty, with blue eyes and fair hair.
“Yes.”
He held out his arm. “I think this may be broken.”
Without an x-ray, she couldn’t be sure, but she examined the discolored and swollen skin. “I could splint it for you. I’d need cloth and some straight sticks. Where is the pain strongest?”
He pointed to his wrist. “I lifted my hand at the last minute to stop the tree. It didn’t work.”
“It didn’t stop the tree, but it might have saved your life. One can survive a broken wrist. A broken skull is far more serious. How is the knot on the side of your head?”
He turned, and she gently felt the bump. He winced.
“I’m sorry. I have to feel for damage.” She prodded a little further, then finished.
He sighed. “I’ll have Yuri find materials. Thank you for your help.”
The injured man and Yuri, his friend from earlier that afternoon, gathered the needed supplies. When she finished splinting his arm, they offered her half a piece of bread.
Her mouth watered at the dark, dry morsel, but she waved it away. “You’ll need to keep your strength up. Especially if your injury affects your work.”
The injured man raised an eyebrow. “Most prisoners would slit someone’s throat for an extra piece of bread.”
“If the Bolsheviks take my decency from me, then they’ve won. I won’t take bread from the injured.”
He cracked a smile. “Why are you here?”
It was a long story, and he was a stranger, so she told a shortened version. “The Cheka condemned my family to death. I escaped, but I was captured again, and the agent commuted my sentence to fifteen years hard labor. Not that I expect to survive that long.” Hunger was her constant companion now. Lice infested her hair, even though she’d cut most of it off. Her body had grown unpleasantly lean, her limbs were like sticks, and she was constantly cold. The temperature was already falling, and it would get far worse far too soon. She might not survive another winter, not if she had to begin it so underweight.
“Why was your family condemned?”
“We were aristocrats. And my father served the tsar. We left when the Bolsheviks took power, went to the Ukraine, but I suppose his past actions were enough to brand him as a counterrevolutionary.”
The man grew thoughtful. “Your father’s name?”
Nadia hesitated but not for long. The Bolsheviks knew who she was. There was no longer any need to hide her identity. “Baron Ilya Ivanovich Linsky.”
“I met Baron Linsky a few times. You’re his daughter?”
“Yes.”
He studied her, probably seeing a face that didn’t resemble her father’s at all. “Your father may not have told you, but he was getting supplies for General Alexeyev and General Kornilov. I’m not surprised the Bolsheviks wanted him shot. He was dangerous to their cause.”
It took a few moments for the words to register. “No. We were planning to go to France until the Bolsheviks were defeated.”
“He may have been planning to send you and your mother away. But I don’t think he was planning to leave. Knowing him, he was going to stay and fight. Not with a rifle. With supplies and a talent for logistics.”
Could her father have been planning to send his family off to safety while he stayed behind? Yes, of course. Papa wouldn’t have left unless all hope was gone. He was tied to the land, bound to Russia for better or for worse. He would have considered emigration desertion, and desertion was something her father would never be guilty of. That was why they’d gone to the Ukraine. Not to escape but so he could better liaison with the Cossacks and royalist troops in the south of Russia. She wished he would have trusted her with the truth.
“Miss Linskaya.” The man held out the bread again. “Take this, not as payment for medical care but as a gift to the daughter of a man I once had the privilege of serving with. A man I admired. Take it as a gift from a former officer to a former lady, in memory of a happier, more chivalrous time.”
Nadia hesitated, but then she took the bread. If it was given to honor her father, how could she refuse? “What is your name, sir?”
“Kirill Sokolov. I used to be a polkovnik. But that was another time.”
He’d held a high rank. Now he sat in a makeshift camp for enemies of the Bolsheviks. And with one arm broken, his chances of survival seemed small. “How long is your sentence?”
“Five years.” The corner of his mouth pulled up slightly. “But I hear they’ll increase it tenfold if I’m caught trying to escape.”
Nadia’s eyes flashed around. No one was close enough to hear them other than Sokolov’s friend. “Be careful. The guards have informants.”
“Do you know who?”
“No.”
Sokolov met her eyes and held them. “If there are informers, they don’t include the daughter of Baron Linsky, I’m sure of that. Tell me, Miss Linskaya. If you could escape, where would you go?”
“It’s Mrs. Sedláková now. I married a Czech. If I were free, I would try to find him again. Have you any news of the legion?”
Sokolov frowned, as if he had bad news. Worry wove its way around her chest and hitched tight. What if the legion had been cut off, surrounded, destroyed? “The Czechoslovaks are no longer serving on the front.”
Relief made it easier to breathe, but Sokolov’s words hinted at disapproval. “Are they going home?”
“No. Guarding the railway to keep it open. But we needed them at the front. So many times we needed them, and they wouldn’t join us.”
“It’s not their fight.”
“It may not have started as their fight, but when they went to war with the Bolsheviks, they provoked massive retribution from the Red Army. We’re having to face it alone.”
She understood Sokolov’s frustration, but she wanted Filip and the others to be safe, and guarding the railways seemed far less dangerous than fighting the Red Army. On the other hand, she wanted the Reds defeated. “How are things at the front? We don’t get much news.”
“We’ve had setbacks. But the war’s not over yet.”
***
The trees had shed most of their leaves, and Nadia’s clothes had to be held on with rope when Kirill Sokolov and his friend Yuri Fedorov suggested they escape.
“Now, as the weather’s turning?” Nadia asked.
Sokolov nodded. “Now, before new guards are sent in.”
Nadia stretched her hands. Blisters lined her skin, and her back ached after a day of digging graves for typhus victims. “You would take me with you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” She wanted to leave, but she’d be of little use in a fight, and she wasn’t as physically sturdy as either of the men.