Paul fed the firebox then crawled for’ard, clattering down the steps into the saloon. He found Sofya crouched under the table, arms over her head. Another shell hit the water to aft throwing up a plume of spray and rocking the Lyena. Paul reached for Sofya. He put his arms around her and she pressed against him.
She was shaking and he remembered his first time under an artillery bombardment, hunkered down in a trench dugout. That had lasted an hour and a half, quaking the timbered walls and ceiling of the dugout with every explosion, threatening to bury them in mud.
‘Have they hit us?’ Sofya asked.
Paul looked up into the wheelhouse but could see nothing.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘They can’t get our range.’
And as he said it he realised the shelling had stopped. He crawled back aft and peered over the stern. He could hear nothing but the sound of their own engine. The spotlight had gone out. Paul thanked the Russian Orthodox God for the incompetence of the sailors manning it. To his amazement no destroyer had followed and he wondered if its commander had been ashore. If the navy was anything like the army he was familiar with, no one would dare do anything without orders.
The Lyena was hugging the north bank. He suddenly realised that if there were any forward units on the river they were steaming straight for them. He checked the boiler then went back through the saloon and up into the wheelhouse.
Malinovsky was at the wheel. The windows in front of him had been shattered and blood was running down his face onto his shirt.
‘You’ve been hit,’ Paul said.
‘Glass, that’s all,’ said the captain.
Paul held his shoulders and squinted at him through the gloom. Malinovsky’s left cheek had been lacerated and he had a wound on his neck that was pumping blood. Paul shouted for Sofya and took the wheel.
‘Can you steer?’ Malinovsky asked. Paul supposed he was about to find out. ‘Head for the centre of the river.’
Sofya came up to the wheelhouse, saw the blood and helped Malinovsky back into the saloon.
Paul turned the wheel away from the bank but too far. He spun it back to compensate. Through the broken glass he saw the bow was empty. Valentine had gone. Hit? He might be on the deck, or even gone overboard… Paul opened his mouth to shout when a hand fell on his shoulder and frightened him half to death.
‘That was close,’ said Valentine.
Paul’s heart missed a beat. ‘Are they following?’
‘I don’t think so. How’s Malinovsky?’
‘Cut. Flying glass. Sofya’s seeing to him.’
‘Can you steer this thing?’
‘As long as I don’t hit anything,’ Paul said. ‘Can you?’
Valentine took the wheel. ‘I’ve done a bit. Go aft and see if you can see anything.’
‘You’d best keep her mid-river,’ Paul suggested. ‘They might have started moving troops up-river already.’
Valentine grinned. ‘Aye-aye, skipper.’
In the saloon Sofya was bandaging Malinovsky’s neck with strips torn from a shirt. The captain’s face was pale, his eyes black beads sunk deep in his head. Paul laid a hand on his shoulder and went aft to look back onto the dark river. He could see no lights and heard no sounds above the rhythmic chug of their own engine. He put some more timber in the firebox then, reaching for his cigarettes thought better of it. He didn’t suppose there were snipers like they had in the trenches, but a light on the river and the sound of an engine would be enough for a competent gunner to estimate their range. He put the cigarettes back in his pocket and made his way round to the wheelhouse again.
‘It’ll be light by the time we reach Kazan,’ Valentine said.
Looking east down-river, Paul saw the first faint suggestion of dawn. Somewhere ahead was the People’s Army of Komuch and the Legion. Another front line to pass through and with nothing more than a letter for cover.
Malinovsky came up into the wheelhouse, shouldered his way past Valentine and retook the wheel.
‘How far is the railway station from the steamboat pier?’ Valentine asked.
‘On the Volga? Twelve, thirteen versts.’
‘So far?’
‘It’s the floodplain. In the spring the Volga and the Kazanka Rivers burst their banks. This time of year it’s dry enough but the Volga pleasure steamers always tied up at a pier near the mouth of the Kazanka. Before the fighting there used to be trams and carriages to take people into the city, but now…’ he finished with a shrug.
‘What about the Kazanka?’ asked Paul.
‘Yes, I can take her up the Kazanka, past the Admiralty. The railway bridge crosses the river just beyond it. North of the Zilantovski Monastery she bends around and runs parallel to the dam. If we can get through I can dock her near the Kazan Kremlin. It’s no more than a verst or two from there to the railway station. But if you’re thinking of taking a train east you’ll have to get through Azin’s army first. Your best bet will be down-river. That’s the way the Whites will go when the Red Army move up.’
‘You think they’ll evacuate?,’ Valentine asked. ‘They took the city from the Red Army. What makes you think they’ll give it up without a fight?’
‘Trotsky,’ barked the captain. ‘They didn’t take it from Trotsky. He’s come to take it back.’
A morning mist clung to the river and the floodplain. Out of it Kazan rose eerily on her hills. Paul had never been to the city. All he knew of Kazan was what he remembered from his school lessons. Those interminable hours spent in the classroom of the Rostov house in Petersburg, vying with Mikhail to answer the tutor’s questions on history correctly and always coming second-best. Some of it had stuck, such as the fact that Kazan had been founded by a Tartar Khan before being captured by one of the tsars. He remembered this chiefly because the tsar’s regent had risen against him and massacred all the Russians in the city. It was the sort of bloodthirsty detail that appealed to schoolboys. Fifty years later Ivan the Terrible had re-conquered Kazan but now Paul couldn’t recall if that monster had taken a belated revenge. He did know that later still the pretender, Pugatchév, had destroyed the city and that Catherine the Great had rebuilt it. Now, after Lenin’s orders to Trotsky, unless the People’s Army of Komuch and the Czech Legion could stop them, it stood on the brink of a second destruction.
Malinovsky pointed through the mist to the mouth of the Kazanka River on the north shore and the steamboat pier beyond began to materialise in the dawn light. Beside it a tramway ran north-east towards a Tartar tower. To the west lay the centre of Kazan with its cathedral domes, mosques and towers.
They rounded a point and the Lyena began to wallow again as the current of the Kazanka fed into the Volga. Malinovsky swung the wheel and the steamer began to drift before her screw bit the water. She seemed to stop for a moment before turning her bow into the current. Now they were closer to the pier, Paul could see troops at the river’s edge watching their progress. Malinovsky had taken down the red Bolshevik flag they had been flying while passing the flotilla and run up in its place the tattered remnants of the white shirt Sofya had used to bandage his cuts. Seeing the troops, the captain leaned out of his wheelhouse and bellowed ‘Komuch,’ at the top of his voice. The name hung on the air for an instant, then was swallowed by the thrum of their engine.