Trouble in Svardovia 12

 

Chapter 12

 

‘Thunderchild’ set off to retrieve the Prince of Krasnytsya and his princess, a misplaced British national.

It may be said that the population of the village below the high pasture was split between those who hid in their cellars, and those who ran along to follow the flying ship. Yon was terrified when the flying ship came back and came low, and anchored above his pasture. He bolted back into the house.

“Quick! Into the cellar, and hide, the flying ship has come!” he cried. Sophie leaped up with a cry of alarm, and then looked out of the window, and took the top of Yon’s arms as he tried to push her towards the cellar.

“Yon! That is our ship!  It is friends!” she told him. “It belongs to the man on the coin!”

“Truly? His ship? Is he on it?” asked Yon.

“No, but he sends a great man with it,” said Sophie.

And then the door was opening.

“Papa!” cried Sophie, and cast herself into her father’s arms. “Oh, papa! She whipped Mitka with a horrid wire whip and he has been so ill!”

“Papa!” Dmitry managed to get to his feet, and into Edward’s embrace, crying out as the older man’s arm tightened around him. Edward let go, promptly.

“My dear boy! It is all over, and you might return home, and England will be stern with Svardovia.”

“Papa! Sophie is a Bogatyrka, a heroine! She has borne the brunt of all this, and no hero could do more. She rescued me, and nursed me enough to effect our escape, and got food, and she got me here. It is a tale worthy of an epic poem, or a novel!”

“There, my boy, we shall all hear all about it, but you need a doctor,” said Edward.

Nothing would do for Yon but that he should come and meet Captain Thorndyke, also a man with a magnificent naval beard, and kneel at his feet, and call blessings upon him as a great man. He left with naval uniform, and a bosun’s whistle, inordinately proud of himself, with stories for a lifetime to tell in the village inn over winter, now aware that he had helped rescue a real prince and his princess.

“We never did find out if this is Svardovia or Krasnytsya,” said Sophie.

“It is Krasnytsya; I declare it,” said Dmitry. “For their contumely, Svardovia has forfeited it to us.”

“I’ll see it written into the treaty,” murmured Edward, who was fairly certain that the ridge would be known as ‘Prince’s Ridge’ from now on.

 

A strongly-worded diplomatic complaint was forwarded to King Cheffan, as well as the notice that his daughter died when attempting the kidnap of a British national, who shot her whilst escaping her custody. The reporters were released, and if the reporter of the ‘New York Times’ had considered writing up Sophie as a hard-boiled murderess, the girl’s tearful breakdown of how Victorina was a monster, torturing Dmitri in her underwear like some strange courtesan won him over. Also the salacious nature of the story which would go down well with his sophisticated readers. Naturally, the ‘Times’ was more partisan, and spoke of the plucky English girl determined to save her true love, a brave man with the heart of a lion who deserved an English bride.

The Krasnytsyan nobility were also partisan, and Sophie found herself welcome anywhere. She was launched into society from the household of Baron Yuri Blatinski, and got to know his daughter, Svetelina, who was about Sophie’s age.

“I will hold you up as an example when papa says I cannot manage something,” giggled Svetelina. “Oh! As Karol is a dear friend of Dmitry’s, I hope you and I will also be friends.”

“Almost certainly,” said Sophie. “I like your family.”

“We must plan  your wedding,” said Svetelina.

“My mother will want some say in it,” said Sophie, “But I want to have a dress which suggests the national dress.”

“And a crown of flowers in your hair!” said Svetelina. “Oh! It might be in silk instead of linen, to satisfy those who say a wedding gown must be sumptuous.”

Before a wedding was to be thought of, Captain Thorndyke was made Grand Admiral of the Krasnytsyan fleet, and Dmitry put in an order for some treated keels.

The shocking news on the wireless was that King Cheffan of Svardovia was dead.

“Had a heart attack in fury,” said Dmitry, cheerfully.

“Are you going to take the throne?” asked Edward. “You’re next in line.”

“The hell, I am,” said Dmitry. “I have enough to do with my little principality of brigands, mavericks, guerillas, and misfits. I want nothing to do with Svardovia. Perhaps one of my sons will take it on, when enough time has passed for the bitterness to have died down. I want an English governor.”

“I’ll tell them,” said Edward. “The mineral wealth here, including the raw materials for Liftium, will make it an attractive proposition.”

He had to report to His Majesty’s Government that Captain Thorndyke had turned the position of governor down, preferring to be Dmitry’s grand admiral. Edward turned it down as well.

“With my daughter being married to the Prince of Krasnytsya, I think the inhabitants of Svardovia would resent it,” he said. “If I may make a suggestion, it would be an excellent position for Admiral Beresford.”

He did not say that it would also get that outspoken admiral out from under the feet of the admiralty, where he clashed on at least a weekly basis with Admiral John ‘Jacky’ Fisher, who had risen from humble beginnings, and resented the flamboyant and aristocratic Beresford, known unofficially as the ‘Red Admiral,’ and his wife the ‘Painted Lady.’ Being aristocratic, he would please the ruling class of Svardovia. He was a man of great humanity, but not addicted to innovation, something else which would please the Svardovians, though it had caused his downfall in the Royal Navy, the reason he had been supplanted by Jacky Fisher.

The Svardovians needed a gentle approach, and Beresford was just the man to do it.  It would please the king, who thought highly of his one-time aide-de-camp despite a dispute over a shared lady in their colourful love-lives.

 

Sophie was not party to the worries of a governor for Svardovia, having more pressing worries with the arrival of her mother. She hugged Sophie fiercely.

“Sophie! I can’t think how you manage to get into trouble the moment my back is turned!” cried Mrs. Harmon. “I certainly hope that the newspapers have been exaggerating about all that has been happening!

“Well, you know how the tripe-hounds are,” said Sophie. “They do write a load of nonsense, don’t they? But at least now I can marry my Dmitry.”

“My dear! You are only seventeen; you do not have to marry, just because there was much made of your resemblance to that woman, you know. I cannot see it, myself; you are a pretty, natural girl, nothing like that over-made-up trollop.”

“I love Dmitry, Mama,” said Sophie.

“I am sure he seems a romantic figure; but if he wanted to marry that woman, he is not a man who would treat you with respect.”

“Mama! How could you imagine for a moment that Mitka would want to marry Victorina?  I pretended to be her to pay her back for kidnapping me on the train, he never wanted her, he knew I was me.  I killed her to rescue him, and Papa has already given his consent.”

“Oh, dear!” said Mrs. Harmon. “I cannot quite like it.”

“You will love Mitka,” said Sophie.

“I thought his name was Dmitry?” said Mrs. Harmon.

“It is, but Mitka is his pet name, like Papa used to call me Fi-Fi, until we met that awful French countess with the poodle named Fifi, and I never could look on it the same, and nor could Papa.”

“Oh, what a horrid woman she was! And what ill-conditioned curs those poodles were! Why, I recall the very name ‘poodle’ became a euphemism for their… deposits,” said Mrs. Harmon, diverted. “You wrote a very naughty rhyme about them poodling everywhere.”

“They poodle in the parlour, they poodle on the stair; they poodle left and poodle right, and poodle everywhere,” said Sophie, happily, pleased to have diverted her mother. “I want to have a wedding dress after the style of the very picturesque national costume, to show the people that I enter into their feelings.”

“Oh, what a charming idea!”

Sophie hid a sigh of relief. Her mother was now safely sidetracked into shopping, clothes, and clothes’ design. She might continue getting to know the merry Svetelina, and spend some time with Dmitry.

Mrs. Harmon had, indeed, liked Dmitry when she met him.

“Such a polite and punctilious young man!” she murmured.

She almost changed her mind when Sophie was standing patiently in the toile of her wedding gown, with seamstresses and pins all around, under the dictation of the bride’s mother, when Dmitry burst in through the door.

“Sofika! We cannot be married yet, there is an emergency! And you must get dressed for travel and come with me right away!”

“Most certainly, Mitka, but if you tell me what it is about, I might yet escape being tailored to death whilst you tell me about the emergency,” said Sophie.

“Oh, my Sophie! It is terrible! Yaromar Zbignevosky has escaped!”

“Oh, no! but where is he to go? Svardovia is in British rule now, he can scarcely go home to stir up trouble.”

“He has relatives in Vandalia, and they are such militarists there, and they admire people like Otto Von Bismarck. They have taken the idea of the German Panzerwaffen,  which are larger than the British Frankenmecha, essentially a knight in outsize armour, and where the Panzerwaffen has a crew of two, the Vandalians have made Gargantua, huge walking machines which need four men to crew them. They are terrible, and fearsome, and none can stand before the terrible heat ray they have discovered.”

“We don’t want them allying with any German state, if they have such a weapons,” said Sophie, worried. “It would be easy to invent a diplomatic excuse to go to war.”

“Exactly! We shall have to be careful, and go incognito,” said Dmitry.

“We will cross the border as jolly walkers who know no boundary,” said Sophie, “And Mama shall dye my hair for me, as it is distinctive.”

“Sophie!” her mother shrieked.

“I am going with Mitka, Mama, and either you can help me not to be killed or you can let me stay at risk,” said Sophie.

“Oh, Sophie!” wailed her mother. “Why do you have to be involved? Can you not leave it to the men?”

“Why, Mama Elisabeth! How churlish you would think me if I left Sophie at home, biting her nails with worry whilst we were gone, when she might join the sport of hunting Zbignevosky!” said Dmitry. “I promised her, I would always involve her. Moreover, if she is not at home, he cannot double back and bomb her, in order to hurt me, which he would be quite likely to consider doing, if he did not know Sophie’s mettle. She will be as safe with me as anywhere.”

“Like she was when you were captured?” asked Elisabeth Harmon, tartly.

“Oh, Sophie was never in any real danger,” said Dmitry. “She’s far too resourceful.  And she knows better than to cause a spark near hydrogen.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Sophie. “I collected a load of black powder from the shells which had not been properly armed, in case we needed to blow away any inconvenient bits of terrain, but I expect you will have far better explosives than that to deal with these Vandalian Gargantua? And what is the politics of Vandalia, please?”

“Yes, we will take dynamite,” said Dmitry. “It’s stable, but we can always cook it off to get nitro-glycerine if we need more of a bang. Touchy stuff, nitro, so I don’t want to travel with it.  We will go with alpenstocks, as walkers do, singing Austrian folk songs, and the alpenstocks will be hollow tubes filled with sticks of dynamite.”

“Excellent,” said Sophie. “But this time, we shall have proper cooking pots, for I was so discommoded that I had forgotten any.”

Mrs. Harmon sighed.

Her biddable, tractable daughter appeared to have grown up into an out-and-out guerilla.

And the young prince she had attracted – and who would have thought their daughter would marry a prince? – was not repelled by this distressing independence and incendiary urges, but seemed pleased!

“I have a vague recollection of an archduke,” said Sophie.

“Indeed; Archduke Ferdinand Eisigherz von Eisenstein, a Germanic family being the ruler over a mixed population of Slavic and Nordo-Germanic people,” said Dmitry. “They are separated from us by a mountain range, the Galassian range. But the Gargantua can cross it quite easily, in a particular pass, which has been excavated for the railway line.”

“That sounds to me like a good trap for them,” said Sophie. “And then drive a long tunnel for the railway, with Mr. Brunel’s tunnelling mole, made practical by Joseph Bazalgette, for the making of anything from storm drains to railway tunnels. Why, it has even been mooted that a tunnel beneath the English Channel would be feasible; though whether it would be desirable is something of a moot point. The Channel is a very effective moat to our island castle.”

“Ah, the advantage that England retains over its larger neighbours,” said Dmitry. “I like the way you think. Vandalia is aggressive and looks for lands which are easy to take. We are no pushover, now, thanks to having a British warship, but I do not know how closely our territory would be guarded, if Vandalia made it expensive.”

“How effective is their heat-ray?” asked Sophie.

“Enough to destroy  a zeppelin in one go, set fire to a wooden ship. I think two or three could be bad news for the ‘Thunderchild.’ But they are one-use weapons, and once used, they need to be reconditioned. They then rely on having four Nordenfelts, which are quite bad enough, even if only two can be fired at any one time. But they have two in the rear as well.”

“They sound a menace,” said Sophie. “We should steal one, and destroy the rest, as well as dealing with Zbiggy.”

“My lovely bride! Come to my arms!” cried Dmitry, hugging her to kiss, and then yelping as he was attacked with pins. Sophie giggled.

“I will change, and meet you in the war room,” she said.