Three weeks later, the tunnel was cleared enough that they could lay new rails over the remaining rubble and bring their armored train through. Troop trains would follow but not Nadia’s train, at least not yet. Filip was starting to lose track of how long it had been since he’d seen her. Some of the men, like Dalek, had wives back home in Bohemia who they hadn’t seen since the war had begun. In comparison, Filip’s separation was mild, but knowing she was close made it different somehow.
Kral pulled Filip aside while others worked to lay the rails. “Scout ahead; see what you can see without getting shot, eh? Be back in three days. We should advance toward you, so you won’t have as long of a trip back.”
Filip nodded. The Bolsheviks had been given three weeks to prepare a trap for them, and the legion needed to know as many details as possible if they were to have any hope of escaping it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nadia woke to a baby’s cry. Marek. She waited for Veronika to quiet him, but the wail grew. Bunks creaked as the other women turned over, trying to go back to sleep. Veronika’s lullaby drifted up, but minutes passed, and the lullaby didn’t seem to be working. A scrape and scuff told her Veronika was getting up. The cries moved as Veronika paced the floor with her infant. Then the door of the boxcar slid open, and distance made the wails fainter.
Nadia wanted nothing more than to snuggle into her blanket and get a little more rest before she headed to the hospital train, but Veronika was barely over a bout of mastitis, and she was supposed to be resting.
Nadia climbed from her bunk and followed her friend outside. “Veronika?”
Veronika held Marek to her and swayed back and forth. He was wrapped in the blanket of white and red his mother had made to match the ribbons the men of the legion wore on their caps. White for Moravia and red for Bohemia. “I just fed him, but he won’t go back to sleep.”
The horizon was lightening from black to gray. The short night was almost over. “Let me take him. I have to get up soon anyway. You should rest.”
Veronika frowned.
“I’ll take good care of him.”
“I know you will. I just hate needing help.”
“You’ve helped me. Time after time.”
Veronika handed Marek over. “I never had to give up sleep for you. But I’m so tired. Thank you.”
Marek continued to fuss after his mother returned to the boxcar. Nadia checked to make sure he was warm, then held him to her shoulder and patted his back in case he had gas. She watched the sunrise with the baby. The sky turned from cool shades of blue and indigo to warm shades of amber and blush. Was Filip awake, watching the sunrise? If so, the crack of rifles probably accompanied his view rather than the sounds of a fussy infant.
She missed him. She wanted to see him again, wanted to tell him she was ready to try a real marriage, if he would take her as a permanent wife. The wounded brought rumors and updates with them, and the legion published newspapers in multiple languages, so she could follow the battles and skirmishes. Nothing gave details about Filip and whether or not he was safe.
Eventually, Marek soiled his diaper, then calmed.
“Was that what was bothering you, little one?” Nadia laughed at the baby, then gave him a fresh diaper. He seemed sleepy after that, so she rocked him until his eyes closed, then tucked him into the bunk with his mother.
Nadia scrubbed herself clean and went to the hospital train. Maybe the work would keep her from worrying about Filip for a few hours.
Most of the men still slept when she arrived, but the orderly had plenty of cleaning for her to do. Then the men woke, and she served breakfast of bread with butter and gooseberry jam while the wounded passed newspapers around.
One whistled. “We finally took Yekaterinburg. The end of July.”
Yekaterinburg was to the west of them, on the northern line rather than the southern line the Sixth Regiment had come along. Now more of the legion could make it east, if Filip’s group could clear the Bolsheviks out of the tunnels around Lake Baikal. If not, they were all trapped—the groups waiting around Irkutsk and those coming from Yekaterinburg.
The man folded the paper to read the bottom half of the sheet. “They think the tsar was being held in Yekaterinburg.”
“Did the legion free him?” Nadia asked. Nicholas II had been flawed, but he was still her tsar and her father’s friend. Most of the time, she thought it best that he not return to power, but if he could somehow prevent the Bolsheviks from taking over all of Russia . . .
The man looked up from the paper. “He disappeared. Sounds like he might have been executed.”
Executed? Would the Bolsheviks really kill the tsar? “What of his family?” Nadia had volunteered in a Petrograd hospital with the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana. Hatred was widespread for the tsar and tsarina, but surely they’d let the children go.
“No one knows for sure. But the Bolsheviks aren’t very forgiving.”