Heart of Iron (28 page)

“Valkyrie,” Petrovsky offered in a reverential tone, his eyes glistening. I guessed that he harbored some ideas of his own as well.

“Right,” the Rotmistr said, nodding. He pulled a wine bottle from under the bench where it fit for easy storage, and topped off the mugs of both cornets. He handed the bottle with the leftovers to me, and I guessed that I was to drink directly from it. “But flying wenches or no, this is not why. You know that in the great hall, in Odin’s hall — and Odin is the one who takes the warriors fallen in battle — they drink and then they fight, and whoever falls in that battle wakes up whole again, so he can drink and fight and die again. In Valhalla, it’s not like heaven, where you get to stay alive forever and play some lute or harp… there, the world is destroyed every day, and then rebuilt anew, so nothing is ever old, ever stale.”

I took a cautious sip of the wine. “But everyone gets resurrected and they’re still the same.”

The rotmistr wagged his thick, calloused finger at me, dirt around his fingernail black as gunpowder, and I suspected that it had become incorporated into his skin and could never be washed out. “No one is the same after resurrection. Read the classics, Menshov. Cannot step twice in the same river, and everything changes even if you go away from home for a week. What do you think happens to everything, to the world, if you daily destroy and rebuild it? It changes, because nothing can ever be recreated perfectly.”

“So what do you want with it?” I asked, wine making me bolder. “You want to be killed and resurrected too?”

He shook his head, sly. “No no. I’d sit in the corner and watch and take notes, on how everything becomes different from day to day to day. I would keep track of all the small alterations, of all the tiny fault lines and cracks that appear from one resurrection to the next. And I will be there when everything finally crumbles to dust.”

“What will happen then?”

“Ragnarok,” he said. “When the new world will be made from scratch instead of rebuilding an old one again and again, from a broken mold that wasn’t that great to begin with.”

“You want an apocalypse?”

He shook his head vigorously. “Aren’t you even listening to me, lad? Apocalypse means that the world ends and we all go live in the clouds with harps, or in the eternal flames with pitchforks as the case may be. No, what I want is a new, better world, and the only way to make it happen is to go to Valhalla, and to go there I need to die with a weapon in my hand. Believe me, I’ve given it a lot of thought, and Ragnarok seems like the only way to a new world rather than a mere destruction of the old one.”

I suppose I could think the rotmistr was simply insane, raving mad, and yet charismatic enough to attract two youthful and foolish cornets as followers. But talking to Kuan Yu had prepared me for such things. When he talked about Hong Xiuquan, it seemed rather immaterial whether he was insane or not, and whether Hong was indeed Jesus’ younger brother. In some situations — and most of those seemed to deal with religion, I had noticed — sanity seemed a meaningless concept, and one had to ask whether such convictions would harm the world or make it better. It was difficult to decide that about either the rotmistr or Hong Xiuquan; although I had no doubt both meant well, and this was more than I could say about almost everyone else.

By the time we had reached Krasnoyarsk, I had developed a feeling that I was still at the university, so many lectures about philosophy and religion I was subjected to. I rather enjoyed the experience, and between the rotmistr and his disciples and Kuan Yu, who was also quite given to theological speculation, my mind swelled with ideas. Kuan Yu too seemed enthralled by the rotmistr’s stories of Odin and the entire choosing of the slain process. Kuan Yu managed to tie it in with his thoughts on Kuan Ti and a variety of goddesses he claimed to honor — deities I was hearing about for the first time. I liked the goddess of the sea best, because she was the one in charge of all waters and oceans, and in my own oblique way, without betraying much of my thoughts to myself, I decided she would be the one looking over Hong Kong and other port cities, and — by extension — after Chiang Tse.

The rotmistr and the cornets in turns argued with and listened to Kuan Yu, and I could sense their minds turning and absorbing new gods, turning them this way and that, fitting them into their view of the world.

“And what about you, poruchik?” the rotmistr asked me when we were about two hours away from Krasnoyarsk. “What do you think of this whole God balderdash?”

I shrugged, my attention riveted to the black tunnel of fir forest we sped through, to the glistening of the diamond dust in the still air — I could tell, with some mysterious sixth sense, that it was very cold outside, colder than Novonikolaevsk, cold enough for birds to freeze in their flight and fall out of the sky like small feathered stones. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m Orthodox, as I was brought up, and I do wish I had more opportunities to go to mass and to light a candle for my father’s soul.”

The rotmistr grinned from his seat across from mine. “You were brought up one way, and you never questioned it?”

“No,” I said. “Why would I? There was never any reason — I guess I do not find myself trapped in a carriage full of amateur theologians often enough.”

That made him laugh. “So you believe in the clouds and the souls and all that.”

“I suppose.” I looked away from the black-and-white landscape streaming past the window, regretful to be dragged into yet another argument I had no particular desire for. “I do not believe that questioning everything is necessarily a virtue.”

“So you prefer obedience.”

“No, but sometimes it is easier to follow a simple path rather than guessing everything about it. You question so much, it is a miracle you manage to get yourself dressed in the morning.”

“I have a batman for that,” the Rotmistr answered but grinned. “However, I see your point. Only God ought to be more important than getting dressed.”

“To you maybe,” I answered icily. “I take my attire quite seriously, and when I’m not in uniform, I assure you I’m quite a stylish dresser.”

The cornets laughed and the rotmistr smiled into his mustache and dropped the subject. The train whistled and steamed and whined, and pulled into the station an hour later.

We found the garrison in a state of disarray and alarm. It was a small one, protected by a palisade of pointed thick logs aimed at the sky like spears. Behind the palisade, there were a few wooden barracks, a training ground, stables and a kitchen, and officers’ quarters. All of the buildings and the snow-covered training ground, its snowy surface broken by chaotic chains of footprints, indicative of panic rather than proper military maneuvers, were surrounded by bearded soldiers, many only half dressed, some armed. All looked startled and kept calling to each other trying to see what had happened.

A few horses bounded across the training ground, almost up to their bellies in powdery snow, kicking up white fountains as they strained against the resistant substance. The horses whinnied and thrashed, silly animals that they were, firmly convinced the stuff holding their legs meant them harm and that they had to fight for their very lives. A tall bay gelding lost its footing and skidded, landing hard on its flank. I hoped it was not injured.

The rotmistr, the cornets and I, all of us bundled in our yards of furs, stood just inside the gates, surveying the mass confusion. “What’s going on?” I said, succumbing to the apparent need of repeated demands for information that ruled the garrison.

“Let’s find out.” The rotmistr moved ahead with the confident but lopsided strides of his slightly bowed legs; the cornets and I followed like oversized, fur-clad ducklings.

The rotmistr approached a man dressed in a pelisse and dragoon uniform jacket decorated with a few medals and officer’s epaulettes; he would had cut a lot more impressive figure of he wore his britches rather than the bottoms of his under flannels tucked in his shining, spurred boots. “Excuse me,” the rotmistr said. “What’s the trouble? I have a trainload of hussars here, and we will be more than happy to assist you if you only tell me what’s going on and what’s to be done.”

The man’s eyes cast about wildly, as if he had just woke from a terrifying dream. “The English,” he rasped. “We were attacked by the English, leaping over the fence, stealing horses… one of my men tried to apprehend the trespassers, and he had his musket torn out of his hands, and its barrel tied into a knot. He says, the man who did it did it with his bare hands. Tied solid iron into a knot.”

“How many were there?” I asked, my heart fluttering with excitement and relief. One thing about Jack, he could rarely be confused with anyone else.

The man shrugged, distraught. “There was the one who ambushed the man guarding the stables… and then there was shouting, and they grabbed horses… no one expected an attack, not here, not in the middle of the winter.”

“I understand,” the rotmistr said, his voice even, soothing.

By the time the terrified horses were caught and put back into their stables (adjacent to the barracks for warmth) and the soldiers had regained their composure and disentangled themselves from the horses’ tack and each other’s muskets, the sun had almost set, and we were led to the officers’ quarters — a grand name for a log cabin divided into three apartments, each with a small bedroom and a sitting room, plus a common kitchen and a dining room with a long rough pine table. The table looked as if it was waiting for an opportunity to stuff someone’s unsuspecting palm full of splinters. Paisley drapes struggled valiantly to disguise the room’s rough-hewn severity, but failed miserably.

We waited for two batmen, both Cossacks, to prepare the table for dinner. It was barely afternoon, and yet the sky had grown dark and star studded— fat yellow stars, spreading like wiggly-legged spiders over the royal blue of the sky, not the pale, cold white pinpricks one saw in St. Petersburg.

The moon was also out — large and peach-colored, with a few spots that looked like decay. It hung outside of the officers’ dining room window as if eager to eavesdrop on our conversation. It was quiet now, with an occasional sharp bark of an Arctic fox or some other small predator, cold and hungry and ecstatic to be alive, to feel the steam of its blood coalescing against the solid cold of the night.

The garrison’s commander, Captain Kurashov, told us the story again over dinner. He had calmed down, and for a while I wondered why a real soldier would be so distraught about the theft of a horse or two, even if it was accompanied by the appearance of Spring Heeled Jack. Surprise must have had something to do with it; but it also seemed the source of his unhappiness was internal — brought about by his disappointment at his own inability to deal with a sudden unpredictable situation. It was the sadness of a man who had been tested and found himself lacking.

I wished I could offer words of comfort, but at the time my mind was preoccupied with Jack’s whereabouts as well as those of Dame Nightingale and her contingent of agents. Anything that did not get me closer to the answer grated on my nerves.

“You have to know where they might have gone,” I blurted out half way through the dinner, interrupting the soothing speech Rotmistr Ivankov had been delivering. “I mean, there are not that many places here, are there?”

Captain Kurashov gave me a mournful, lingering look. “It is a small town,” he said. “There’s a Buryat village nearby, but in this cold the horses won’t get far, even if they are well cared for. I do not know if the man who took them, or the rest of the English, would know how to handle such fragile animals in the Siberian winter. They are not locals.”

I supposed I should’ve felt bad for the horses, but my focus allowed no distractions. “So they couldn’t have gotten far. When can your men go after them?”

The captain’s face folded into an accordion of surprise and concern. “Should we go after them?”

“Of course,” I said. “If you don’t, rumors will spread. You don’t want to become known as a cowardly garrison, do you? Word does get around.”

He scowled at me. “Don’t talk nonsense, young man. I am forty-two, and your stupid challenges are not going to work. If you want to go and look and bring our horses back, then please be my guest; we will appreciate it. We, however, need to assess the damage and investigate how that man got over the fence.”

“You said he jumped.”

He scratched his chin, thoughtful. “A few of my soldiers swear that this is exactly what happened. And yet, he must have used some device — a trampoline, or a spring of some sort, or spring-loaded stilts… ” His forehead furrowed, and I could see the brain of the poor captain working as hard as his jaws, grinding down a piece of rye bread. “He would’ve used something like that, wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t know.” I wasn’t sure he was quite ready for the Spring Heeled Jack exposition. “But I thank you — tomorrow morning we’ll look for your horses… I hope it doesn’t snow tonight.”

There was a loud pounding on the door, and the Cossack batman let in a small, shivering boy of perhaps fourteen, in a uniform that was criminally large for him. He was black-haired and his eyes had a curious almond shape, as if he had more than a small portion of Chinese or Buryat blood in him. Whatever the mix of his blood, it was not keeping him warm enough as he stood in the middle of the dining room, squinting and blinking at the light of the kerosene lamps, apparently oblivious to our presence.

“Well?” Kurashov nudged.

The boy startled, then fell back into a military stance and saluted his captain. “Sir,” he said. “You better come and look. They found something in the stables.”

The something the young man was referring to turned out to be a piece of paper, folded over so many times it was ready to fall apart at the seams. The paper was also soaked with melted slush, and bore a distinct hoof print. Still, I recognized Jack’s handwriting.