Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

“God has spoken,” he declared. “And you are His favored one. Zhanna, I put tonight’s attack in your hands. I am your soldier!”

But Zhanna refused the baton and held the general’s elbow to lift him to his feet.

“No, you shall direct our forces, as always, general,” she told him. “I will take up my position at the head of the attack. If each of us serves God as best he can, I believe the King of Heaven will not deny us our victory.”

* * *

Once more, the Siberian forces sent probes and feints to find the weakest points in the city’s defensive perimeter and kept it up through the night. An hour before dawn, a red flare went up over the half-destroyed pontoon bridge leading into the center city and the diversionary attack began, with fortified barges entering the river’s main channel and making for the bridge. Defenders rushed to the adjacent fortifications, as the Siberians had hoped. It was then that riverborne assault force appeared in the east, guided by distant muzzle flashes from the Red artillery, and backed by Siberian machine gun crews dug in at intervals opposite the lightly defended eastern barricades. Now the Red commander had no choice but to deploy his last remaining reserves to shore up his eastern defenses.

Another flare went up from outside the eastern wire. This was the signal to launch the main assault from the White-occupied northern sector. All at once, a barrage of shells shrieked overhead and exploded over the city’s defenses, amid a clamorous seething of gunfire that rose like a storm at sea. As before, the Maid took up her banner with trembling hand, mounted the turret of her Austin armored car and led the attack, her banner unfurled, seemingly as oblivious to danger as Wellington at Waterloo, or Nelson on the quarterdeck at Trafalgar. Through the smoke and gunfire, the gray behemoth blasted its way from block to block, clearing a path for Siberian infantry to follow. From time to time, a brave Red defender ran toward the vehicle with a grenade or other explosive but none survived long enough to deliver it.

Ned observed the assault from atop an abandoned merchant house, together with Denisov, Ivashov, and a dozen staff officers manning field telephones and scribbling notes to messengers. Through his binoculars, he watched Zhanna’s Austin roll through the rubble-strewn streets toward the city center, guns blazing and infantry trailing cautiously behind, while the rattle of Red machine guns echoed among the buildings. All the while, more Siberian troops arrived in their rear to join the flood. Apparently encouraged by the sight of attackers making their way into Uralsk’s center, anti-Bolshevik inhabitants of the city left their hiding places and turned against the Red occupiers with weapons they had kept concealed or had captured from the Bolsheviks.

Within two hours of her entry into the city, the Maid’s volunteers seized the Red garrison’s headquarters and its weapons stores and gunned down its Political Commissar, Andreyev, when he attempted to flee. Petrovsky, the Red commander, bolted into a burning warehouse to elude his pursuers, never to emerge again.

Ned and Ivashov caught up with Zhanna at mid-morning outside the scorched remains of Petrovsky’s final resting place. Ned found her kneeling behind a low wall amid heaps of gleaming brass cartridge cases, cradling the bloody head of a dying Red soldier in her lap while urging him to accept God’s mercy before he drew his last breath. Behind her, only a block away, Siberian troops assembled Bolshevik prisoners on the city’s central square for transport to Guryev, from which they would be taken across the Caspian to a British-run prisoner-of-war camp.

“We’ve been looking all over for you, Zhanna,” Ned said as he knelt beside her. “Why are you crying?”

“Because of the dead,” she answered, her chin quivering uncontrollably. “Ours and theirs. I thought victory would be beautiful, but now I see that it’s an ugly, bloody thing!”

“How can you possibly say that, Zhanna Stepanovna?” Ivashov reproached her. “Why, I’ve never seen a more beautiful victory than this! And it’s your victory!”

“You did not see Petrovsky consumed in the flames, as I did,” she replied, horror still dancing in her eyes. “Such a hideous fate! And the young boys blasted to pieces by explosive shells! I tell you, I can’t bear it…”

“But bear it you must, Zhanna,” Ivashov replied calmly. “Before we are done, there will be much more of it. Come, now, the free citizens of Uralsk are waiting to see you! You gave them faith to resist and they want to show their gratitude.”

“I can’t,” the Maid sobbed. “I just can’t. Go without me.”