Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

“Good,” the Maid affirmed, “for if I fall in battle, you must take up my banner and hold it high for all to see, through every fight, until this war is won.”

Paladin stiffened visibly and seemed to hold his breath as he offered her a hasty salute.

The attack was set to begin at first light. Accordingly, the units taking part in it took up their positions throughout the night. But an hour before the flare was to go up, the unit commanders received word that General Tolstov had ordered a postponement until the following day, as additional reinforcements were en route from Aktyubinsk.

The Maid was outraged at the delay and made her way immediately to Tolstov’s command bunker.

“What is the meaning of this outrage?” Zhanna challenged the Cossack leader as she stormed into the bunker. “We cannot delay another hour, let alone another day, for events are unfolding rapidly in the north that will pull us in!”

“Calm down, young lady, and listen!” Tolstov demanded. “The additional battalion from Aktyubinsk is needed to insure our victory. I have discussed it with my staff and the matter has been decided.”

“You have taken your counsel and I have taken mine,” Zhanna retorted through clenched teeth. “It is God who grants victory, not your extra battalion. You are a wicked man for going back on our agreement to attack! Whether you give the order or not, my men shall go out at first light and will take the city as we have trained them to do!”

“They will do no such thing!” Tolstov roared. “You and your men will obey my orders!”

“It is God who commands us, and it is He whom we shall obey!” she answered, shaking with fury. Without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and left. Before anyone could catch her, she made her way to the armored cars and climbed aboard the lead vehicle, banner in hand.

Her shoulders still shook, but now the shaking was from fear.

“We go forward! Now!” she told Captain Popov, the young armored detachment commander with whom she had spoken earlier. And to the other crews, she barked, “Start your engines and follow!”

Waving her banner and firing her Mauser pistol from time to time into the air to draw attention, she led the eight Austins in a single file past the assembled infantry, her volunteers clamoring nearly loud enough to drown out the roar of the engines. And then, she ordered Popov to drive toward the city and the attack commenced.

Perhaps the Siberian artillery spotters had noticed the vehicles’ movement, or else the battery chiefs had not received Tolstov’s order to delay, for in the next instant, the six-inchers awoke the shivering poplars with waves of thunder that resounded among the hills as if emerging from the earth’s belly. Moments later, shells shrieked overhead and delivered their deadly bursts of shrapnel above the barricades, trenches and along Uralsk’s empty streets. And at the same time, Red cannons boomed from their places of concealment in the city while Siberian counter-battery fire zeroed in on them and silenced one after another as soon they dared speak.

Ned watched it all through field glasses from a bunker located as close to the action as he dared go, following the AEF’s strict order not to engage in combat. As the armored cars lurched forward, with Zhanna’s volunteer infantry following close behind for cover, he noticed the Siberian mortars laying down a barrage of smoke shells just ahead of the attackers to obscure the defenders’ forward vision and negate the otherwise deadly accuracy of the Red machine gunners and sharpshooters. Meanwhile, the Red troops formed in packed ranks behind the barricades, bayonets bristling above their heads.

“Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat!”

A machine gun not far from Ned belted out its staccato song. And after that, it seemed to Ned that rifles were popping off all around him, amid a constant seething of machine-gun fire in the background and a persistent chirping of field telephones. Toward the front of the skirmish line, Ned saw a tall Siberian soldier fall in the dust and color it with his blood. After him, another keeled over, struck by a metal fragment from a puff of black smoke at his side, while the Red machine guns blindly sowed their seeds of death into the smoky mass before them. But with each few steps or feet of crablike creeping, the Siberians found more targets and fired, straining to come close enough to the trenches to lob their Mills bombs inside, storm the survivors, and begin clearing the entrenchments from one end to the other.