The Ukraine, March 1918
Nadia Ilyinichna Linskaya held her horse steady and strained to hear the Russian officer conversing with her from the overcrowded train carriage. The thrumming of the engine made it difficult to hear, so she leaned as far forward as her sidesaddle would allow.
“Yes, I was in the Eleventh Cavalry Division, but with the Dragoons.”
“Did you, by chance, know Captain Nikolai Linsky of the Hussars?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, miss, I can’t help you.”
The train whistle shrieked, and Konstantin flinched beneath her. Nadia gathered the reins and riding crop in her right hand and patted her horse’s neck with her left. “I see. Good day.” She hadn’t meant her words to be so curt, but a combination of smoke, steam, and disappointment choked her throat.
The train crept forward, and Nadia turned Konstantin away, back to her aunt’s manor. She’d been foolish. A maid had said an officer with the Eleventh Cavalry was passing through, and Nadia had ridden out to search for him. But what had she expected? Even if the man had known her brother, he wasn’t likely to still be carrying around Nikolai’s things, not eighteen months after his death. Any last epistles or personal effects would have already arrived, or they were lost forever.
She glanced back a final time. The officer had disappeared. Other soldiers filled the windows, rode on the roof, and clung to the buffers. All hurrying home now that the Russian Army had collapsed and made peace with the Germans. None of them wanted to be left out of the land redistribution. But if they were from Tambov Oblast, they were too late. The peasants there had chased Nadia’s family off the previous autumn and had long ago divided the stolen land for themselves.
Russia was falling to pieces. The tsar and his family had disappeared, the army was in mutiny, and the provisional government had lost power to a pack of insane men who called themselves Bolsheviks. Nadia’s father mourned the lawlessness spreading throughout the former empire. His fears and his prior service to the tsar meant their family rarely left her aunt’s estate, where they’d taken refuge after the peasants had chased them from Lavanda Selo. But hope for some piece of Nikolai—a friend’s memory or more information about how he died—had been enough to lure Nadia out.
It had all seemed so perfect. A report of an officer from Nikolai’s division on what would have been Nikolai’s twenty-fourth birthday. Papa leaving the manor for the first time in a month, so he hadn’t been around to stop her from riding out. And she’d actually found a man who matched the maid’s description of the scarred cheek and spiky mustache, even after he’d boarded the train. It had felt like a miracle, but it hadn’t mattered, because the dragoon officer hadn’t known her brother.
She’d left to find news of Nikolai, but escaping the manor had been something she’d longed to do anyway. She’d spent too much time hiding away, too much time worrying instead of living. “And you’ve got to feel just as cooped up as I do,” she said to Konstantin. “Since we’re out, we may as well make the most of it.”
She gripped the saddle’s double pommels with her legs and urged Konstantin on, away from the train track and across a wide Ukrainian field. A gallop across the countryside wouldn’t completely assuage her disappointment, but it might help.
The wind pulled at her clothing, and the scent of snow melting into farmland tickled her nose as they rode faster and faster. For a moment, she imagined both her dead brothers beside her, astride their own horses, laughing and urging her to keep up. And after they rode, they’d return to Lavanda Selo for tea and freshly baked black bread smothered in butter and currant jam.
“Fly, Konstantin!”
The horse did his best to obey. Perhaps he understood that all too soon they would return to the stifling confines of her aunt’s estate. For now, his smooth stride seemed to outrun all Nadia’s grief and disappointment, and she felt as carefree as she had in the prewar days, before events had irrevocably altered her life, her family, and her class. Konstantin galloped across one field, then another. Nadia had never explored this part of the countryside, but they were heading in the correct direction, and Konstantin knew the way back.
A whistle of an undulating pitch rang in her ear. What was that? Artillery? The whine ended in an explosion of fire, dirt, and feather grass. Konstantin reared in alarm and swerved into a ditch. Then, despite her best efforts to hold on, Nadia was flying.
And falling.
She woke with a roaring headache and a view of five half-shaved men standing over her. Half-shaved wasn’t entirely accurate. One had only a bit of shaving lather on his chin, two had it spread across their entire cheeks and jaws, and the remainder had taken but a swipe or so at their cheeks before they’d been interrupted. All wore uniforms with an unfamiliar badge on their left arms. Nadia squinted so their collar patches would come into better focus. They weren’t officers.
“Are you all right, miss?” The words were Russian, polite enough but not polished.
The warm boots and charcoal-gray riding habit she wore failed to stop the winter chill from seeping through her skin, but the weather was the least of her worries. She needed to find Konstantin.
Then there was the problem of the men. They didn’t look menacing, but Nadia wasn’t so ignorant as to not recognize the extreme vulnerability of her position. She was all alone, far from manor or village, surrounded by five soldiers.
“Miss, can we help you?” The man who spoke had curly brown hair and a face hidden by shaving lather. “Some of the artillery lads were testing one of their pieces. I’m sure they didn’t mean to frighten your horse.”
She ought to have paid better attention. She hadn’t meant to ride into the path of a field gun. Smoke circled skyward to the west—the explosion hadn’t been close enough to harm her, but the fall had left pain gripping her head and each of her limbs. The hatless man with the curly hair waited for her answer, and her governess’s oft-repeated advice about dealing with the unrefined elements of society came to Nadia’s mind: be polite, but display no warmth. Showing fear would make them bolder, so she would have to look brave. From her position in the dirt and snow, she did her best to straighten her shoulders. Movement accelerated the pace of the thumping in her head. “I need my horse.”
The man nodded. “I’ll find it.”
“Plan to ride it again?” Another man asked. He’d almost finished shaving the stubble along his jaw but not the blond mustache, and a bit of shaving lather still dotted his chin.
“Naturally.”
He held a hand out, and she accepted his help back to her feet. She squeezed her eyes shut as her vision swirled. Perhaps staying on the ground would have been wiser.
The blond man grasped her elbow to help her balance. “Perhaps you should sit again. That was a hard fall. I daresay you knocked your head soundly enough to earn a rest.”
“I’m quite all right.” Nadia absolutely would not lounge about with a group of enlisted men. “But I do need my horse.” Would they steal Konstantin? It wouldn’t be the first horse her family had lost to theft, but it would be a long walk back.
“Filip will find it. He’s our best scout.”
“I thank you for your assistance, Mr. . . .”
He tugged at the brim of his cap. “Dalek Pokorný. At your service, miss.”
The others spoke their names as well, far too quickly for her to remember them all, but any questions about their nationality disappeared. “You’re Czechs?” According to Papa, the Czechoslovak Legion was the best fighting unit in the Ukraine. Everyone else was demoralized or torn between old loyalties to the tsar and new loyalties to myriad other factions. The Czechs, on the other hand, were united in their goal to overthrow the Austro-Hungarian Empire they’d once been part of.
Two of the remaining men nodded. The third, a man with fair skin, wavy brown hair, and a cut on his jaw, didn’t. “I’m a Slovak. And I spent a year assisting a doctor in a camp for war prisoners, so I’d be happy to examine your head.”
Nadia lifted a hand to the coiffure below the brim of her riding hat where several smooth strands of hair had escaped the hairpins. The Slovak had undoubtedly picked things up from the doctor in the prison camp the same way she’d learned from the doctors in the Petrograd hospital where she’d volunteered as a nurse, but her injury wasn’t serious. “I’m sure that isn’t necessary. I must be on my way.”
“You’re barely standing straight. How do you expect to ride?” That was the blond one.
Nadia repositioned her feet. He was right—she was in no condition to ride, but if she didn’t return home before Papa, he’d scold her for going out alone, no matter what her intentions had been. She shouldn’t have ventured out, not if the steady ache in her head and the nervous anticipation in her chest were to be believed. “I’ll be missed if I don’t go home at once.”
“Would you like us to see you safely there? These aren’t exactly calm times.” He gestured toward the fields. “You might run into Bolsheviks, and they might mistake you for one of the grand duchesses.”
Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Ukrainian Nationalists, and a dozen other groups harbored resentment toward former Russian aristocracy. Nadia shared a birthday with the Grand Duchess Tatiana, and both were descendants of Peter the Great, but too much Tatar blood flowed in Nadia’s veins for anyone to mistake her for a Romanov. “I doubt anyone would think me a grand duchess. The tsar’s daughters all have brown hair, and I have black.”
“Even so, there are bandits about. And peasants who think revolution means the freedom to rob at will.”
“Which is why I require my horse. He’s quite fast. I thank you for your help, and I apologize for interrupting both your shave and the artillery test.”
The blond, Dalek, if she remembered correctly, motioned behind her. “There’s Filip with your horse.”
She turned. Her bay gelding cooperated with the soldier who held his reins. He’d wiped away his shaving lather since leaving to find her horse, revealing a jawline darkened with thick stubble. She took a few tentative steps toward Konstantin, keeping her head high and her shoulders back. She managed to walk in a straight line, so the fall must not have hurt her too badly. “Thank you for retrieving my horse.”
Filip nodded. “Happy to help, miss. Are you hurt?” His Russian, though accented, flowed easily from his tongue, and his voice had a pleasant timbre.
“I am well, thank you.”
He raised an eyebrow as if he wasn’t sure he believed her. “I imagine the explosion is the reason the horse threw you, but he also has a loose shoe. We have a farrier back at camp who could shoe him for you.”
If she went to their camp, she’d most certainly be late. And though the man had kind honey-colored eyes, she didn’t trust him or his friends. Maybe she was spending too much time with her father lately—it was hard to trust anyone. She scanned Konstantin’s hooves. None of the shoes looked off to her, but she’d never shod a horse before. “Is the horse injured?”
“Not that I could tell, but I’m infantry, not cavalry. That was no small crash.”
“It must have looked worse than it was.”
“If you say so, miss.”
Goodness, he was polite, but something in the twist of his lips suggested he wasn’t convinced. His expression revealed no hostility, and she was stretching the truth, so she wouldn’t hold his skepticism against him. Her head swirled and throbbed, but she was well enough to stay on her horse, assuming nothing else spooked him.
Filip scanned the ground and bent to pick up a rock. A flash of panic churned in her chest, and she took a step back. But he hadn’t picked up the rock to attack her. He took Konstantin’s right front fetlock and pulled it up, balanced the hoof on his knee, and used the rock to pound the horseshoe back into place.
“That should get you home, but I’d recommend seeing a farrier as soon as you can. And I wouldn’t gallop on that shoe, even if you weren’t recovering from a crash.”
Her hand went to the back of her head again. Her hair was no longer flawless but was not disarrayed enough to reveal just how much her head ached. She wondered what they’d seen. Memory of her fall was like smoke. She couldn’t quite grasp it, no matter how hard she tried to hold it.
Filip checked Konstantin’s bridle. “I’ll see you home.”
“That isn’t necessary.” The likelihood of Papa returning to the manor before she did grew with each passing minute, and if he saw a foreign soldier accompanying her—an enlisted man, no less—he would assume she’d been in far more danger than what had come with an unauthorized ride on his favorite horse.
“Perhaps you misunderstand me, miss. You’ve ridden into the middle of several wars. You’re injured, your horse cannot ride at full speed, and you’re all alone. I’ll accompany you to safety.” He motioned, and the man named Dalek came over to join him. “We can remain out of sight, if you wish, but we will see you home.”
Did he think he could order her around just because she was a woman and dizzy and alone? She didn’t dare provoke him with an outright refusal. She’d seen how changeable men could be: one day humble sycophants hoping to earn her papa’s favor, the next day denouncing the family and threatening murder. “How will you ensure my safety if you can’t see me?”
“I didn’t mean we wouldn’t see you. But you might not see us.” He glanced back at the other men. “Some of them haven’t fought in a real unit for years. Escorting you home while remaining invisible will be good training. We would be most grateful for your cooperation.”
Maybe she would take Konstantin and gallop off anyway. But if his shoe wasn’t secure, she might end up exactly where she’d started, on the ground with a gaggle of Czech and Slovak soldiers looking down at her. Or something worse might befall her. She’d purposely worn no jewelry so as not to attract attention. Robbing aristocrats was practically a national sport nowadays. But jewelry wasn’t the only thing someone could take from an unescorted young woman. “I suppose if it will assist in your training.” She patted her gelding’s forelock. “And prevent Konstantin from being forcibly enlisted into an army of Ukrainian Bolsheviks or Ukrainian Nationalists.”
He checked the saddle’s straps and girths. “May I help you mount?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He bent to offer his gripped hands as a platform of sorts, and as she sprang up, he guided her into the saddle. He was almost as handy as her normal groom, though Filip was stronger. Poor Dima walked with a limp, a result of the war, and he was so thin Nadia sometimes thought a strong gust of wind might blow him away. She looked at the man in front of her. Healthy, in his midtwenties, a pleasant sort of face. Had he been wearing a proper officer’s uniform with shiny boots and a freshly shaved face, he might have been handsome enough to merit more of her attention.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Will you want this, miss?” Dalek held up her broken crop.
She took it but doubted it would be of much use for keeping balance or guiding the horse. “I suppose it is just as well that I’m limited to a walk. Thank you for your assistance.” She gave the men a cautious smile and adjusted her reins. She guided Konstantin to the nearest road, and when she looked behind her, the half-shaved Czech and Slovak soldiers were gone.
Perhaps they weren’t going to follow her home after all. Just as well. She didn’t want her parents or her aunt to see them.
Tussocks of grass and bits of bushes peeked from beneath the half-melted snow. She took in the open expanse, wanting her eyes to drink their fill before she was again confined. Pity her bit of freedom had ended in a headache and a broken riding crop, with no word on her brother.
A half hour later, she rode through her aunt’s main gate and steered Konstantin toward the mounting block. She glanced back and saw no sign of the soldiers, but Dima appeared at once.
“Is my father back?”
“No, miss.”
Nadia nodded with relief, and the motion gave her an unfortunate reminder of her injured head. “I prefer that he not hear of my ride.”
“As you wish.” Dima assisted her from the horse.
“He’s had some trouble with his front shoe. The right one.” She handed Dima her broken crop, and he led Konstantin away.
She paused before going inside to search the road for any sign of Papa’s carriage. If he saw her in her riding habit, he’d suspect she’d been out. She’d turn twenty-one in the coming summer, but she still had to obey. The war had stopped time, at least in some ways.
The war. If the war hadn’t come, her two brothers would still be alive, Mama wouldn’t be gripped with melancholy, and rides on Konstantin would not be such a rare occurrence. She might have a niece or a nephew, might have a husband. She and Oleg had been too young for a formal engagement before the war, but both families still assumed they would marry one day.
She glanced across the open land. She would have liked to have her liberty a little longer that morning. More than that, she would have liked to learn more of Nikolai, but that errand had been more hope than logic.
Near the pillars marking the gate, something caught her eye. Two men. The Czechs. Filip gave her a salute, and then he and Dalek turned to leave.
They had followed her after all. She’d looked for them. How had she not seen them? She hurried inside, unsure which was more unsettling: her pounding head or the invisible Czech soldiers.