I wrote about what happened, about Yermilov, the man who defiled my sister, who took all of his hatred of us and used it to hurt her, to tear her body and mind and soul apart.
My hand trembled as I wrote, distorting the script.
A tear dropped, hitting the fresh ink, spiderwebbing the black blood from the pen with its misery.
I could see Yermilov’s hatchet face, his dark eyes, alive with hatred. Hatred for Russia, for us Romanovs, for royals and nobles.
God help me, but I could feel his hot breath in my ear, putrid and wet. It wasn’t Olga he was hurting. It was me. And then Maria. And Anastasia. Alexei.
The ink on the paper no longer formed letters or words, or even lines. My chest was shaking like it did when it was too cold and I couldn’t stop it.
The things I saw in Yermilov’s eyes. The power. Power over us, our lives, our bodies, our minds. I wouldn’t understand it until years later that what he had done was for power. Finally, he was, at least in his own mind, equal. The Romanovs had been brought down. One of us, and in some ways, all of us including Mama and Papa, were under him, at his mercy, crying, begging.
All of us bled for him.
What a rush of power it must have given this small, angry, despicable creature that thought of itself as a man and what it could do as manhood. What a rush to put the mighty in their place, to fuck an uncommon girl, to hurt her, put her in her place, to give her what she and her kind deserved.
Finally, for once in his life, he had power over all the wrongs done to him, and somehow he thought that they could be remedied with raping an innocent who had no power, no say, in whatever injustices the world had dealt him.
And it would be many years before I could understand my own guilt because there was a part of me that was glad it hadn’t been me, that all I had to complain about were my bad dreams. And I was glad that Yermilov was dead and that the little ones—my dear sisters and brother—would not have to fear him.
By the time the ink was dry, both my pen and my eyes were empty.
I felt wrung out, my limbs heavy, but I could finally take a breath without shaking. I thought that I could sleep again, at least for a little while, without nightmares. My eyelids drooped and I pushed away from the desk so that I would not doze off.
I gathered the sheets together, stacked them neatly, and took them to the hearth.
One by one, I ripped the sheets into small pieces, scattering them into the pile reserved for kindling. I dared not send the letter. Papa must not know. Not now, not ever. It would destroy him.
The last sheet shook in my hands, the last few legible words, No one cares. The world has forgotten about us, glaring back at me.
Chapter Twenty
Range G6, Camp Budapest
Down in the multistory underground building, otherwise known as Range G6, the boys of Fourth Company practiced what soon acquired the name of “ladder drill.” This involved rapidly porting their self-created flexible ladders to a wall with an opening, setting them up without losing any fingers, and ascending them by squads, fast.
Every time, thought Daniil, that I think we’ve got a handle on the problem, something new comes up. And half of it that I should have thought of, myself, was, in fact, thought of by the rank and file.
Take this, for example; if the people we want to free are on the first floor of a building, then we cannot go in on the ground floor, or we’ll be, in the first place, late in securing them and, in the second, we’ll drive anyone we don’t kill in among them. So… what should have been obvious to me, and wasn’t, was obvious to a private who was paying attention.
Note to self: Mark Guardsman Repin down for promotion and more advanced schooling, both for realizing we needed ladders and coming up with a design.
The design in question was, essentially, three six-foot ladders, with one in the middle tied to one on each of its ends, and iron pipes of the right dimension to hold them together and upright, once assembled. It was probably obvious enough a solution, but had taken a certain amount of trimming to make the upper portions of the downward two sections shorter so that the pipe would slide over them. It had the disadvantage of having two places with uneven rungs, and no really good way to shorten it if the target window or porch or door was low.
They’d experimented with one other design, an eighteen-foot ladder that was composed of two ladders, joined at the top and with a hooked chain to keep them upright. That had proven to be prohibitively heavy for rapid emplacement or carrying any distance in a hurry.
Still, at two poods per ladder, these aren’t exactly light either. There’s a difference though, between heavy and impossible.
There were only four ladders built, though given the rough usage, I am pretty sure we ought to build another four. Yeah… another four.
Down below, one of the squads—Sergeant Bogrov’s, I think it is—seemed to have come up with an ideal drill for the ladders. This involved running forward to a wall, with four men, two on each side, carrying the ladders, and the other two watching out for threats. As soon at the top of the ladder reached the wall, Kostyshakov saw, all four let go. The back pair then bent, grabbed the section lying on top, and ran backwards with it. While that was going on the front pair pushed the iron cylinders into place. Then the four elevated the ladder and dropped it just under a window in the wall ahead of them. It took about eighteen seconds to erect one, from reaching the wall to the first man scrambling up, after a little practice.
“Sir?”
Kostyshakov turned to see one of the men from the intelligence office. Guardsman Bernadelli, if I recall correctly.
“Message, sir, from Strat Recon. There’s a good bit in it, but the really important things, says Sergeant Major Nenonen, is that they’ve found the royal family; all are in Tobolsk. That, and Strat Recon has acquired fifty good horses.”
Daniil suddenly felt his heart lift so far and so fast it threatened to emerge from his left shoulder. Everything we’ve done, so far, was just a waste of time without this. Thank you, God, and thank you, too, Lieutenant Turgenev.
“Wonderful!” he said to the messenger. “Best news I’ve had in months. Have the Germans been told?”
“No, sir. For different reason, Sergeant Major Nenonen says you ought to tell them. He also says you had better come to headquarters before you do.”
“I’ll be on my way. Tell Strat Recon that we’d like hidden space for five hundred men and as much food as can be reasonably obtained.”
“Yes, sir.”
Daniil started to read down the twelve items in the message. The number in line twelve was a shocker. I need to ask for more details about them. I’d be willing to take on two thousand rabble, but what if there’s more a chain of command than Turgenev thinks?
“The war’s over,” said Basanets, the ungainly-tall battalion executive officer, rarely seen but almost always operating behind the scenes. “As of yesterday, it’s over. Well, not in the west but the Reds signed a treaty with the Germans. They’ve given up… God, I don’t want to think about what they’ve—we’ve—given up to the Nemetsy.”
“It works out to a third of our population, half our industry, and almost ninety percent of our coal,” said Nenonen. “And I don’t know what to do. Finland is on its own; am I a Finn or a Russian soldier or what?”