They were retreating.
At least there was safety in numbers. Kappel’s group didn’t have a hospital train or even a tent, but there was no lack of wounded and ill patients, so Nadia’s services as a nurse were welcomed. In exchange, she ate. Not enough to gain back what weight she’d lost but more than she’d had as a prisoner.
The men she tended tugged at her compassion. The women and children often brought her to tears. The soldiers were retreating with their families, and the young suffered disproportionately. So far, she’d had no contact with the legion. The Czechs and Slovaks stayed a few stations to the east of Kappel and his men. The Red Army stayed to the west, nipping at their heels.
She replaced a bandage on an older man’s bullet-pierced bicep, then cut off the black ends of a young man’s frostbitten toes and wrapped the foot in relatively clean rags. She wasn’t really qualified to remove gangrenous bits of fingers and toes, but someone had to do it.
“Nadia?”
She turned. The sun was down, and the voice had come from a man standing in the shadows. He stepped closer, and light from a nearby fire revealed olive skin and black hair. It couldn’t be . . . The face was too thin, even if the coloring was right. But that voice . . .
She straightened and stared. The endless cold and miserable rations were making her hallucinate. Nikolai was dead. And yet, those eyes were familiar, and the grin that broke across the man’s face was one she’d seen a million times before. “Nikolai?”
“It’s really you, then.” Her brother closed the distance and wrapped her in an embrace. “The years have changed you.”
“And you’ve come back from the dead. Oleg said your company was slaughtered and you disappeared . . . three years ago. He told us you died.” Her tears had smeared the ink of Oleg’s letter.
“No. Wounded. And taken prisoner.”
“Why didn’t you write to us?” Her chest felt tight. They’d mourned for him, but Nikolai was alive!
“I did write, a dozen times. But I was sick, so it wasn’t right away. And then some Welch pilot escaped, and the German commandant punished the whole camp by revoking our mail privileges. Then the first revolution happened. And the second. I came back when the war ended, but I couldn’t find anyone. Not in Petrograd, not at Lavanda Selo. I’ve been praying for some clue about where you all went. How are Mama and Papa?”
Joy at her brother’s resurrection had made her forget everything else for just a moment. But memory of all her griefs came back again, heavier now because she knew Nikolai’s warm smile would soon disappear.
“We went to Piryatin.” She pulled her brother closer to a fire. They sat there while she told him everything that had happened, from when the Cheka found their family until she found Kappel’s army. Nikolai’s face seemed worn out as she finished. Part of the pallor could have been the poor rations and the long march, but it was also a heap of wrongs and hardships, and he was hearing it all at once.
“And now you’re a nurse again.”
She nodded. “I’m hoping to catch up to the legion. Find Filip again.”
“Your husband is a corporal?”
“A sergeant.” She doubted the slightly elevated rank would impress her brother, but Filip had been pleased with his promotion. By now, maybe he’d received another. “He’s from Prague. A watchmaker. Life with him will be different from what it was before the war, but I love him.”
Nikolai frowned. “Are you sure he’ll overlook what happened when the bandits took you? Honor is a powerful thing.”
“He won’t blame me.” She said the words, but Tanya had asked much the same question, and hearing her brother echo that doubt made it hard to ignore.
“Maybe not. But will he still want you?”
“I have to see.”
Nikolai nodded. “I’m not trying to destroy your hope. I just don’t want rejection added to everything you’ve already suffered.”
She squeezed his hand. “I have more patients to check. But I’m happy to see you again, Nikolai. This is a blessing I didn’t dare hope for.”
***
Knowing Nikolai was alive fixed something broken deep inside Nadia’s chest. Their time together was limited because they both had duties. She was a nurse, and he was an officer, though in the White Army, being a captain didn’t mean all that much. The Whites were opposite of how she’d found the legion in 1918. The legion had been mostly enlisted men. Corporals and sergeants had done the work of lieutenants and captains. The White Army, on the other hand, had few enlisted men and an overabundance of officers. Generals might command companies instead of divisions.
But no one was giving many orders lately, other than retreat. Nadia pulled a pot from the fire and ladled kasha into bowls for her and her brother. They had to eat quickly because they would soon be on the move again.
Nikolai blew on a spoonful, then tasted it. He gave her a smile of appreciation. “You know how to cook.”
“I learned.”
“I left behind a sister who could spend hours discussing art, music, or fashion but who couldn’t prepare a meal to save her life.” He looked at his bowl. “I knew you’d volunteered as a nurse, but to see you working on hard cases, to see you cooking . . . You’re different.”
“The world changed. I had to change too. I can even do laundry now, when soap is available.”
He met her eyes again. “I don’t think the work battalion was good for you. You’re too skinny. But the rest of the changes suit you.”
Nadia hadn’t felt approval in months. To feel that emotion from her brother almost brought her to tears. “You’ve changed too. Before the war, you were always in pursuit of the next lark: the theater, a practical joke, a ride through the fields. You’re more sober now.”
“War and revolution have a sobering effect. So does knowledge that the rest of our family is dead.”
Nadia lost her appetite as a vision of the executions in her aunt’s courtyard crossed her mind, but she forced herself to finish her breakfast. She needed every last bit of boiled grain to keep her strength. “I don’t even have a picture of them. Do you?”
“No. I had some before I was captured. I never got them back.”
“The only thing I have from before are my boots.” She held out a foot, displaying the torn leather and the cracked soles held together with rags. “Old boots and memories.”
Nikolai rummaged through his pack. He seemed to find what he was looking for and handed her a small object. With reverence, she examined the bit of metal with orange and black ribbon in her palm. Orange for fire. Black for death. A Cross of St. George, 4th Class. “This is yours?”
He nodded.
“What did you do?”
He shrugged. “I held the line against the Reds. And I did it much better than the units on either side of us did, which didn’t work to our advantage. We were exposed in a salient, so I turned and attacked the enemy’s rear. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. Made them withdraw. I took a gamble that they would panic, and they did.”
She handed the medal back to her brother, but he shook his head. “Keep it.”
“I can’t keep it. It’s yours.”
“You said you don’t have anything from our family. I can’t find a piece of Mama’s jewelry for you, so a Cross of St. George will have to suffice.”
“But what about you?”
“I found my sister. I’ll be content with that.” Nikolai stood. “They don’t award medals for learning to live again when everything’s been taken away from you. But maybe they should.” He squeezed her shoulder briefly before moving on to his duties.
Chapter Forty
When Filip’s train pulled into Glaskov Station, across the river from Irkutsk, it was already growing dark. Icy temperatures buffeted his skin the moment he left the train. A sizeable group of Japanese soldiers waited, along with a hundred Russian troops and a handful of fighting men from France. They weren’t openly hostile, but they weren’t openly friendly either.