Nadia nodded. “He was still in contact with important people. Maybe they knew. What of your father? What did he do?” Filip had said his father had been convicted of treason, but treason could mean many different things.
“He and a friend helped organize a street demonstration. At first, they were calling for universal suffrage. But it soon took on an antidynastic tone, and they clashed with the police.” Filip broke off with a yawn.
“Did you sleep while you were gone?”
“A bit.”
She wanted to spend more time with him, but that wasn’t fair. He needed sleep, and she needed to follow orders. That was something she’d learned as a nurse, the importance of discipline. “Kral told you to rest. I suppose you had better follow his advice.”
He hesitated, then nodded.
“Will you attack Omsk tomorrow?”
“I can’t see any reason to wait. And I doubt Gajda will either. He believes in hitting the enemy hard and quickly.”
Filip had just returned, and tomorrow he’d be leaving again. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?” Taking Omsk would be no easy task.
Filip’s eyes wandered over her face. “I have reasons to come back, so I’ll do my best.”
Chapter Eighteen
Anton’s boots squelched as he pulled them from the mud. He understood why they’d been sent on a flanking maneuver around the rail line, but that didn’t make the marching any easier.
“Mud.” Dalek cursed under his breath. “They talk about battles and charges, but war is really about mud. Galician mud. Ruthenian mud. Siberian mud.”
“And may we all live long enough to see Czechoslovakian mud.” Emil straightened his rifle strap. Their squad didn’t have a full supply of weapons, but they were better off than most, thanks to the cache they’d hidden. “I’d rather deal with Siberian mud than Siberian snow.”
“We better be gone before the snows come.”
Anton didn’t say anything, but he agreed with Dalek. Winter in Siberia sounded like a good way to lose a few toes to frostbite. The days were long lately, but they’d be short in the winter months, dark and cold. Veronika would hate it, and so would he. Better to spend the winter in France or in their new homeland.
The legionnaires from Marianovka had split into two groups. The main force defended the station. Kral’s group of about two hundred, a quarter of them armed with rifles, were spread across the marshy taiga, moving toward Omsk. A few, like Filip, had other missions.
A runner dashed over to them. “They’ve come. We have better positions, but they’ve got more manpower. And machine guns.”
Kral’s group didn’t have a single machine gun. And while Anton was glad he didn’t have to cart it around, he would have liked the firepower. The Bolsheviks rode an armored train. Legion rifles could peck at it, but they’d do little damage.
“All right, move back to the track,” Kral ordered.
Hopefully the Bolsheviks had driven far enough west toward Marianovka Station that they wouldn’t notice the legionnaires who had sneaked around behind them. Anton, Dalek, and Emil hauled brush and whatever else they could find to make a barrier of sorts across the train tracks.
In the distance, small arms sounded as the Bolsheviks attacked Marianovka. Anton and a dozen others pulled out sharp Russian shovels and began digging. The rest of Kral’s group worked on destroying a section of track. If the Reds tried to retreat back to Omsk in their armored train, they’d be stuck, sandwiched between two groups of the legion.
***
Filip pried another steel railroad spike from its tie plate. Fedorov worked the opposite side and was several sleepers ahead of him. Other men worked on the fish plates, undoing the bolts so the rails could be pulled away.
Filip had snuck back into Omsk that morning after a lamentably small amount of sleep. He could have spoken less with Nadia, but he didn’t regret those moments. He’d thought he’d married a helpless aristocrat. Instead, he’d married a clever, determined woman who was helping the legion make its way east with weapons, medical care, and knowledge.
“Come, Czech. You’re falling behind.”
Filip grunted at Sokolov’s teasing. Most of the other men were railway workers, so of course they were more skilled than he at destroying rail line. “This one’s a bit tricky.” That was true enough; the edge of the tie had corroded, so there was less of a head for Filip to work his prybar under. He tried from a different angle and shifted the spike.