Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

“We are here to serve Kolchak’s government. Refusing Admiral’s direct request not advisable. Go with Maid to front, report often, return earliest. Above all, avoid combat. Neilson will assume your wireless duties in interim. Barrows.”

The message from Barrows took him totally by surprise. What had begun as a favor to his friends had now assumed top priority over all others. He would be accompanying Zhanna and her men to Iletsk, whether he liked it or not. Their departure date was set for the following week.

Ned delivered the news to Yulia two days later, at breakfast.

“But you promised—no more trips!” she blurted out, dropping her knife and fork noisily onto her plate and tossing her linen napkin across the table at him.

“But I have no choice!” he answered as he raised his palms helplessly to the ceiling. “The order came directly from Admiral Kolchak!”

“Spare me your lies!” she spat back at him. “You’re only going because of her!”

“Yulia, please!” he exhorted.

But she had already leapt from her chair and was nearly at the door. He heard her heavy footsteps climbing the stairs. After a few moments’ deliberation, he followed and knocked on her door.

Within moments, Vera, the elderly housekeeper, was at his side and laid a hand on his arm.

“Don’t go in,” she whispered with a grave expression. “Wait. Try later, after she comes out.”

But Ned had an urgent appointment at the Stavka that morning and couldn’t delay long. He waited fifteen minutes and knocked again. No answer. So he wrote her a note, slipped it under the door, and left for Omsk.

Chapter 12: Uralsk Encampment

“And those who were seen dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Musical Theme: Zaporozhye Cossacks, Op. 64, Introduction, by Reinhold Glière

EARLY MAY, 1919, ILETSK

Zhanna and her volunteers left Omsk by military supply train five days after her birthday celebration at St. Yekaterina’s Church. Paladin’s parents, having been warned some time earlier of their son’s likely departure for the front, waited at the station to wish their son a safe journey. They were a handsome couple, though their well-made clothes were threadbare and their shoes falling apart from long use. As their exuberant son lent Zhanna a hand to climb into the battered passenger coach that they would share with Ned, Ivashov and dozens of other officers during the trip to Iletsk, Madame Borisova reached out and held Zhanna’s and Boris’s hands in hers.

“Go with God on your journey,” the woman told the young couple with tear-filled eyes. “Our hearts are with you. But, if you have the powers they say you have, Zhanna, I ask you only one thing, as a loving mother: please, please, bless my Boris and bring him back safely.”

Zhanna let go of Paladin’s hand long enough to give Madame Borisova a quick embrace before stepping aboard the train.

“Madame, I give you my solemn word that Boris will be neither killed, captured, nor grievously injured in my service. Have no fear on that account, for I assure you that he shall return to you quite as well as he is now, or maybe even better!”

Tears streamed down Madame Borisova’s cheeks, though she beamed with pride and happiness for her handsome son.

“Go with God!” she repeated as the train jolted forward to leave the station. “And save Mother Russia, if you can!”

Ned watched Paladin’s waving parents recede in the distance and wondered why neither Zhanna’s father nor uncle nor any of her brothers had made the journey from Transbaikalia to see her off. Had she not invited them? He also wondered whether the forces of war would permit Zhanna to make good on her promise to Madame Borisova. For Ned had experienced those forces at first hand and Zhanna had not. Did she have any sense of what lay ahead? Had her Voices prepared her for the prospect of defeat and death, both for herself and for her men?

* * *

During their four days riding the rails to Iletsk, Ned sought to learn all he could from Ivashov and others about the war at the southern end of the Urals front.

Until now, the Siberian forces there had consisted primarily of two Cossack armies: that of the Ural Host and that of the Orenburg Host. In March of 1918, an anti-Bolshevik rebellion erupted in the town of Guryev, on the northern coast of the Caspian Sea, under Ural Cossack General Vladimir Sergeyevich Tolstov. Similar uprisings then broke out in other centers of Cossack activity, all across the Orenburg Steppe. Their troops consisted primarily of training cadres and reserve officers, as most Cossack fighters had not yet returned from the war against Germany. And when they did return, Bolshevik authorities disarmed them along the way.