Then again, perhaps it would not have surprised him, for hadn’t he suspected all along that they were all a little insane, separated not by leagues, but only by tiny degrees?
21
A thousand miles away, another kind of insanity reigned.
Incessant bursts of artillery fire had been shattering the torpid desert air for what seemed endless hours. It was a cruel nightmare, the siege of Plevna all over again. And Sergei found himself once more, against his will, right in the thick of it.
This time the besieged town was Geok-Tepe, sitting upon a desert oasis.
As if it were indeed Plevna in the Caucasus being played out for a second time, there again sat the White General upon his mighty steed, leading his troops with the same fiery zeal he had three years ago.
Sergei, however, beheld the scene this time with far different eyes. He had lost his grip on patriotic idealism back then. This present conflict was causing him to lose his grip on reality altogether. The book that had gotten him exiled to this hell for its so-called sedition seemed but idealistic prattle now, after eight months on the very edge of civilization. Nothing he had learned in cadet school or in the Balkans could have prepared him for the animalistic horror of this place.
The army had been given carte blanche to destroy everything. No one cared to look too closely at the details of how the specifics of the assignment were carried out, especially where infidel Tartars were concerned. General Skobelev made no bones about his ruthless military policy.
“I hold it a principle,” he had been quoted, “that in Asia the duration of peace is in direct proportion to the slaughter you inflict upon the enemy. Strike hard and keep on striking till resistance fails. Then form ranks, cease slaughter, and be kind and humane to the prostrate enemy.”
Simple enough, really. Kill and keep killing until there are so few left alive they can do you no harm. And then be kind and humane to them.
Kind and humane, thought Sergei caustically. Who was anyone trying to fool with such contradictory words!
Why couldn’t he accept the policy like everyone else? He was a soldier. He had been trained to fight, to conquer, to kill. Why had he changed, but no one else had?
The killing now seemed so senseless, so avoidable . . . so wrong. Why couldn’t they see the lunacy in it all? Or why couldn’t he close his eyes and merely endure? Why did he feel as if every fallen innocent had been cut through with his own sword?
Was he the only man of conscience in all of Asia?
No. He had more than once observed one or another of his fellow Russian soldiers comforting a child they had themselves orphaned. Yet Sergei had a problem most of his fellows did not seem to share. He was unable to accept authority that had no reason behind its commands. His father had pointed out this flaw many times. It was a mortal flaw when it rose up in the heart of a soldier, where blind obedience was the mortar that held the entire structure of the military together. And his propensity to fall prey to this fatal weakness of character was more than half the reason Sergei had attained only the rank of lieutenant after five years in the army.
All at once a voice shattered his thoughts, its sound more disconcerting than any artillery blast.
“Lieutenant Fedorcenko!” shouted Captain Rustaveli. “We don’t have all day. Prepare to move your men forward.”
“Yes, sir!”
Rustaveli made certain Sergei noted his satisfied grin at the word sir before pushing on. Sergei made an equally pointed effort to ignore it. He had a job to do, orders to follow. He had to stop thinking! That’s how the others must do it. Think of nothing but orders and the job to be done. Ignore the numbing stench and cries of death. Close off your mind to the horrifying—
No! He was thinking again! He must stop before he went mad! With a swift motion he spun around to the handful of troops under his command.
“You heard the captain. It’s time. Ready yourselves to march!” he shouted with more volume than enthusiasm.
Two months ago, Skobelev had laid siege to the desert fortress after the Turks had taken refuge inside its walls. The White General’s forces numbered less than eight thousand. There were upwards of twenty thousand Turks, but the best estimates placed only eight thousand firearms in their possession, along with assorted knives, swords, and pikes. And again, as they had done last year, they held on stubbornly. The Turks attempted many fierce sorties out of the fortress, but always Skobelev’s forces drove them back.
The Cossack general, however, was determined not to suffer the doom of his predecessor of the 1879 campaign. He kept his head and commanded a siege that easily put the Grand Duke Nicholas’s bungled attack on Plevna to shame. He had ordered tunnels to be dug, by which the walls of the fortress would be mined. He’d not waste good soldiers in senseless heroics; Russian lives were too precious. Not that he had anything against heroics—he all but thrived on them. But he preferred them served up with assured victory.
The mines were now in place and ready to detonate. The troops were forming ranks by which to move on the vanquished Tekke fortress.
Sergei mounted his coal-black gelding and felt a knot tighten in his stomach. Even now, at this late hour, he tried to convince himself that what he had witnessed in small skirmishes were but isolated acts of brutality. This was a full-scale battle, with the general himself overseeing the action. He must certainly have meant the word slaughter only in its broadest, almost figurative sense.
But even as he mounted, Sergei remembered his resolve. He would not stand idly by again. He would not give even the White General blind obedience that silently condoned the murder of innocents.
Deafening blasts suddenly rent the air.
Great columns of smoke and dust rose at intervals around Geok-Tepe. The ground shook tremendously as the mines exploded, bringing down first one, then another section of the fortress walls. Sergei’s horse snorted and stamped restively.
“Whoa . . . easy, boy,” Sergei murmured, rubbing the animal’s taut neck. A moment later the general gave the order. Eight thousand Russians surged forward with wild war cries and shouts.
A few of the Turks met the attacking army in an attempt to fight them off long enough to allow others to retreat somewhere to safety. It was a hopeless attempt. The clash of swords and bursting gunfire and artillery now rose to match the dying echoes from the mines. The Russians surged forward to engage the Tartars in combat hand to hand. This was the kind of fighting Sergei had been trained for. As long as they were battling enemy soldiers for control of the battlefield, he could perform his duty and keep his manhood intact.
He was parrying blows from a Tartar scimitar when Rustaveli rode up and hacked the nomad down from behind.
“I had him!” shouted Sergei.
“From that look of cowardice in your eye, I think he would have killed you instead! I cannot wait for you, Lieutenant. We have orders to pursue the retreating infidels!”
Sergei hesitated.
He balked at any assignment with Rustaveli. And something inside told him he was better off right where he was.
He should have refused to follow. Maybe he was no braver than Rustaveli had said. Maybe he was not as much the cynic as he feared. Part of him still believed in the Russian army and its purpose. At least part of him desperately wanted to. Whatever the cause, without further thought, Sergei reined his horse around and galloped off behind the captain.
Thousands upon thousands of Tekke refugees fled their destroyed fortress. Men, women, and children had taken refuge in Geok-Tepe when the Russians had first arrived. Now they had to find another haven, for they knew what lay in store for them if they were caught.
The ruthless Russian soldiers cut down all they caught, without regard for age, sex, or occupation. All previous skirmishes with the nomad thieves paled in comparison to the unrelenting carnage now underway.
“Stop . . . stop!” Sergei found himself screaming, not knowing when he had started. His voice was but a whisper in the midst of the rampaging Russian
s and the screams of the terrified, fleeing Tekkes. The men under his own command were heedless of his cries as well, caught up in the frenzy of the attack.
Somehow he kept riding. He had to keep on; if he attempted to turn back now, he would find himself trampled under thousands of his fellow Russians’ feet. He would ride and ride and never turn back. He would ride beyond the burning, smoking fortress, beyond the mountains. He would escape! He would find his way back to Anna. They would escape this horror together!
He urged his horse on across the rocky terrain, not even noticing as it trampled over a mound of fallen bodies. Suddenly a woman sprang up in front of him, as if out of the very ground. He had seen nothing, and all at once there she was in his path.
“Have mercy!” she wailed, with arms outstretched toward him. His horse reared, whinnying wildly.
Perhaps its master’s panic had seized the horse also. But for whatever reason, the animal was out of control. Its sharp hooves crashed down upon the pleading woman, killing her instantly with a vicious blow to the head.
The horse reared again, throwing Sergei off its back. His fall was cushioned by two bodies alongside the path. He lay stunned for a moment. When he tried to move off the corpse that had undoubtedly saved him from a broken neck, he saw that it was a young boy, perhaps eleven. Blood still oozed from the fatal wound to his chest, but Sergei was too numb to feel sick.
He crawled from the boy to the woman. He knew in an instant that she was dead also, her eyes still wide with terror, her final scream still etched upon her lips and in Sergei’s seared consciousness.
He rose to his feet. The uniform he had once been so proud of was stained with blood—blood that poured just as red from the bodies of Turks as from any Russian aristocrat. He felt no gratitude that it was not his own blood spilling out upon him. Would to God it was his blood! He would willingly, gladly die to be spared the sights before him!
His horse had fled. If he could not be dead with the heaps of Turks on the ground, Sergei regretted only that he was not still on the gelding, riding . . . racing away from this nightmare. But he could neither escape nor die. He had to stumble along through the slain by foot.
It seemed he walked for hours, but it could have been only minutes. The mayham of pursuit and slaughter still continued around him. His vision, blurred with sweat and dirt and tears, spared him the full impact of the horror. But what he had already seen was enough to burn the memory of this day into his mind forever.
Then Sergei came unexpectedly upon Captain Rustaveli and two other yunker officers. They had rounded up a dozen or so refugees of both sexes and varying ages. Rustaveli was about to give the command to execute the whole group.
Suddenly the sickening pain and disgust overwhelmed Sergei. He could not watch another senseless death. In some rational recess of his mind, he knew that to stand by and watch such a crime was as despicable in its own way as actually committing it. At that moment, however, he held rationality by a slender, unraveling thread. His confused and fragile mind did not stop to debate philosophy, but instead repeated silently, This must stop . . . stop . . . stop!
Rustaveli stood in front of him. Sergei could not still the impulses, the voice that had echoed inside him sounded forth from his lips, although his ears could not hear it. He ran forward, unaware of having made the decision to attack.
“Stop . . . stop!” he shouted, rushing toward the captain. “Stop, Rustaveli . . . do you hear!” His voice was hoarse, and his body shook. Suddenly he stopped, finding himself standing in the midst of the condemned Turks, half of whom were women.
The yunker captain’s eyes glowed with the passion of hatred. Then slowly his mouth widened in an evil grin as he kept his rifle trained on the refugees.
“So, Lieutenant Prince,” he said derisively. “You would put an end to my command, is that it?” He followed the words with a snort of laughter.
“There has been enough killing!” cried Sergei, feeling whatever control he still possessed slipping quickly away.
“Bah! You’re a fool, Fedorcenko. We are only obeying orders,” sneered the captain. “Now out of the way before you are killed along with them! I will have you tried for treason. Do not add to my pleasure by forcing me to kill you.”
Rustaveli cocked his rifle.
Sergei swiftly drew his own pistol. Even with trembling hands, he had a sure bead on his commander before the captain could respond. Any of the yunkers might yet turn their weapons on Sergei, but none of them would be able to fire before he sent a bullet into Rustaveli’s head.
“I will kill you before I watch another innocent life taken,” said Sergei. His voice shook as he sputtered out the words, and the captain laughed in his face.
“You don’t have the guts!” growled Rustaveli through his laughter. He fired. An old man beside Sergei fell to the ground. The small crowd of Turks screamed in panic and tried to scatter.
Sergei discharged his pistol, but at the same instant the captain’s horse reared back on its hind legs. The bullet from Sergei’s gun missed its mark and crashed instead into the captain’s shoulder, spitting out blood and pieces of the shattered bone.
The double shock from the bucking mount and the errant shot sent Rustaveli over backward, the last words on his lips a violent imprecation against the cursed aristocrat. He fell hard against a rock and lay motionless in the dust.
Sergei was only dully aware of all that happened next. There were more shots, more screams, more running. He was aware of doing nothing himself but standing where he was, pistol still in hand. He wondered vaguely why the other two yunkers did not immediately cut him down. But they were too shocked at what they had seen to respond. Killing Turks was a far cry from shooting down one’s own commanding officer.
Sergei heard horses approach. Then he heard the voice of the regimental colonel. Nothing registered clearly in his mind. He continued standing stock still, his hand down at his side, the pistol hanging from it loosely.
“What is going on here?” barked the colonel. The scene must have presented itself clearly enough. Sergei’s pistol in plain view.
The yunkers came to themselves quickly in the presence of a colonel. “He went berserk!” answered one.
“Who?”
“The lieutenant there. He came up bellowing and shouting. Before we knew it he had thrown himself in front of the prisoners and threatened the captain.”
“Shot him right off his horse!” added another.
“Without provocation?” asked the colonel.
“The captain told him to stand aside so that the orders could be carried out. Then the lieutenant fired on him.”
“Is this true, Lieutenant?” asked the colonel, casting his eyes on Sergei. Sergei turned slowly toward the officer as if noticing him for the first time. He opened his mouth and tried to speak, but no words would come.
“Answer me!” persisted the colonel.
Sergei felt his head nodding.
“All right, men, take him into custody,” ordered the colonel.
“What now?” asked one of the witnesses. “A firing squad is too good for the likes of him!”
“There’ll be an inquiry. No doubt a court-martial,” said the colonel. Then he turned and again addressed himself to Sergei.
“Do you understand that you are in a great deal of trouble, boy?”
But Sergei understood nothing just then, except that his loathing of killing had turned him into a murderer. That he himself was a victim did not occur to him.
He let the soldiers bind his hands as if he needed restraint, and they led him away without the slightest struggle.
At last he had brought the ultimate shame upon his father’s name. He had debased himself beyond all hope of restitution. He could never face his father again, never face Anna again. How could either of them ever look upon him again with anything but reproach?
A firing squad would be the supreme blessing—the fitting end to a life of failed dreams and visions, a life marked with only one j
oy—the love of a young woman who would now look upon him with as much disgust as he had felt for the captain he had tried to kill.
Whether he had succeeded or not hardly seemed to matter. The result would probably be the same regardless.
22
Katrina mounted the stairs of her home with heavy step. A footman opened the front door, and a valet inside immediately took her thick fur coat and hat. But she hardly noticed the servants. Her mind was still dazed from the shocking interview with her father.
The thing still seemed impossible. It could not have happened! Not to Sergei . . . not to her dear, sensitive, gentle brother Sergei!
It had to be a mistake!
She had been angry at first. She had fumed and stormed. Finally she had cried as the reality began to sink in. Her father, of course, had all the facts straight. That was the kind of man he was. And the facts were all too clear-cut. Viktor himself had gone to the Russian fort on the Caspian to verify them. The tragic news was unalterable.
She climbed the winding stairway to the first floor, her white-knuckled hand gripping the rail more for the sense of something solid in her careening world than for the physical support it offered, though her weak knees alone needed that as well. She sought her room—she had to be alone.
Alone . . . no, being alone was the worst thing! She needed someone. Where was Dmitri? Gone, of course—who knew where?
The thought of her husband made Katrina realize anew how alone she felt. She entered her room and closed the door behind her, then broke down in tears.
It was quiet and still. There was no one to comfort her—not father, not mother, not brother. And now even her own husband had deserted her. She sat down on the divan in her sitting room and wept—as much for herself as for her dear brother. There was nothing else to do.
The Russians Collection Page 88