Sunday, April 20, 2025

Trouble in Svardovia 19

 Happy Easter, my friends!

 

 

Chapter 19

 

 “I don’t much like the look of the sky,” said Karol, as they breakfasted. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we had sleet, hail, or snow.”

“Well, we shall have to cope,” said Dmitry. “There are four of us to keep each other warm, and you and I know how to survive. If need be, we can dig in for a while.”

“Is it worth going along to look at the cutting and see if there’s any kind of ridge left?” asked Sophie.

“I really did not want to, because of the soldiery likely to be there, but I should think by the time we’ve got there, they should have got cleared any of their men and machines which can be got out.”

Karol was right about the weather, and Sophie was glad that they were not trying to go up into the cloud which was settled right on the ridge of the mountain. Almost anything had to be better than that, without proper mountain-climbing equipment. They endured as they struggled through the stinging of hail, tiny pellets, but still painful.

 

oOoOo

 

Soldiery arrived from the capital, in a train.

“Your priority is to clear those Gargantua which are not damaged,” said Ferdinand. “There must be some pilots who know their duty and refrained from injury. Do you have flatbed trucks on the train?”

“No, my lord, you called for a troop train, not flatbeds,” said the major who had been sent.

“Well, you should have realised we needed to evacuate the Gargantua!” screeched Ferdinand. “Get a train with flatbeds! Send this one back!”

“Including the medical orderlies you asked for and hospital carriage?” asked the major.

“No, of course not! Uncouple the hospital carriage and send the rest back!” said Ferdinand.

“The siding here is occupied already; how is the engine, at the front, supposed to get back to the capital if the carriage in the middle is uncoupled? There is no turn-table, and nowhere to put the carriage from the middle of the train.”

“Insolence! You are demoted! Think of something!” cried Ferdinand.

The former major’s thoughts ran along assassination and a military coup at this juncture, but he saluted, and telephoned for a second train to be sent, with a tank engine at each end, and flatbeds, so that sundry other carriages could be evacuated as well.

Those pilots who were capable… and it may be said that a few invented spurious concussion to avoid retribution… removed the Gargantua which could be both cleared, and got into some level of working order.

This was eight of them. Two nearest the blast zone had both been buried to the knees, and refused to start.

Some engineers started work on them, but declared that without a crane to evacuate them to a workshop, nothing could be done.

Even Ferdinand realised that a breakdown train with cranes could not be got through until the half mile of extraneous trains had been removed. Or, more track had been laid in the valley to bypass the other trains. In any event, it would take time, and Ferdinand retired to the city with Slabinysky, both of them in high dudgeon, leaving his men to just get on with it. Something they managed with a great deal more dispatch without him.

 

oOoOo

 

Thorndyke read the report on the effect of the heat ray that his damage control crew brought him.  The armour plates at the bow would have to be replaced, of course, as the steel had been annealed, but it turned out that liftium was also fire-retardent. What an excellent side effect!  Thorndyke prepared a report for the admiralty, and put in a request for Mr. William Ramsay, who had taken up the mantle of Sir Humphrey Davy, to investigate these properties for safety at sea and elsewhere, and whether the fire-retardant properties were able to be isolated from the lifting effects of liftium. He added that he had conducted experimentation with and without the lift-damping effects of the solenoids which controlled the effect of Liftium, and could see no diminution of the desired effect on the ship.

Meanwhile, by the look of the clouds at the top of the mountains, it was filthy weather up there, and they should leave right away in case a rescue might be needed.

 

oOoOo

 

Dmitry flailed wildly and stepped back.

“We’ve reached the cutting!” he shouted, against the wind.

“Good; let us go down,” said Sophie. “We have real rope this time and don’t have to rely on Victorina’s best silk stockings.”

“There’s a tree there, let me tie the rope to it, and then we shall go down roped together,” said Dmitry.  “If the weather improves, one of us can climb up to untie it; if not, we’ll cut it short. We have more than one rope, for just such an emergency.”

Dmitry went first, and found a ledge some ten feet down. Karol lowered their kit, then sent the girls next, and untied the rope to bring with him.

“It wasn’t too far to fall if I had slipped,” he said with a shrug. “Mitka is there to cushion my fall.”

“Oy!” said Dmitry.

The noise of the storm passed over their heads, and the spite of the stinging hail reduced too.

“Well, there’s enough weather below that any soldiers have gone home,” said Dmitry, lying flat on the tent bundle to look over the ledge. “There are two gargantua visible; they appear to have broken down, as there are signs of them having dug out and removed others; I can see the footprints of them retreating. I wonder how many are buried.”

“We have no way of knowing, but if your people were waiting to set off charges at the other end, then that should have dealt with most of them,” said Karol.

“It’s blocked the way, and you know? That’s all I really care about,” said Dmitry.

“Dropping the top of the Adlerhorn on them is a bit of an overkill,” said Karol. Dmitry shrugged.

“I expect Bugun snuck some nitro into the fault the railway people have been worrying about,” he said. “He’s an enthusiast. At least he’s not an anarchist like his father was; though he did solve the problem of anarchy in Krasnytsya.  He bombed an anarchist meeting on the grounds that anarchy means no government, and holding a meeting immediately introduces governance of sorts.”

“Not the most stable of people,” said Sophie.

“No, but his son is a useful fellow to know in times when large amounts of destruction is needed,” said Dmitry.  “And if permitted to excavate things, he’s quite happy. Apparently he has lands in Russia, in a little place called Tunguska, and he wants to go there and experiment with a new type of explosive he has invented.”

“Did you hear someone shouting for help?” said Sophie, sharply. “I thought I heard a voice.”

“It’ll be the wild wind of the storm,” said Dmitry.

“No, she’s right – I heard it too!” said Svetelina.

Dmitry cocked his head on one side, and listened.

“You’re right,” he said. He made a voice trumpet of his hands. “Where are you?” he yelled.

“Under rock!” came an answer. “Help! Please help!”

“Let’s get me tied to the line, and I’ll go out over that avalanche,” said Dmitry. “I don’t care who it is, we can’t leave anyone to suffocate under an avalanche.”

Karol took most of Dmitry’s weight, and the girls added their weight and strength behind him to lower him onto the unstable pile.  Dmitry took the axe he had purchased for want of a pick, and made his way cautiously across the pile, stumbling as rocks and earth gave way, and called again, making his way towards the weak shouts.

“Apparently they don’t know how to yodel the way you do, Karol,” giggled Svetilina.

 

Dmitry reached where he thought the voices were coming from.

“Hello?” he said.

“Thank God! We are trapped, and nobody is answering on the radio,” said a voice.

“Listen,” said Dmitry, “I am Prince Dmitry of Krasnytsya; if I rescue you, I will consider you my prisoners, and I will expect you to give your parole. If I leave you, I expect that your own people will be back tomorrow.”

“They won’t! they said over the radio that they were pulling out but somehow our calls did not reach them! I’m Sergeant Herman Schulz, and if we don’t get help, my corporal is likely to die, and… and I think they have abandoned us.”

“Do you swear not to try to harm me or my party?” asked Dmitry, who was already pulling away stones.

“I swear,” said Schulz.

“Us too,” said two other voices.

“Helmut is unconscious,” said Schulz.  “The rock that broke our window hit him on the head.”

“We’d be suffocated without air from the window,” said one of the other voices. “Johan Schmidt, at your service, your highness.”

“Wilhelm Bakker,” said another.

“This is a pretty pickle and no mistake,” said Dmitry. “I’m going to get my companions to come across. Is your engine still working?”

“If it hadn’t been, I think we’d have frozen to death,” said Schultz. “But I don’t dare run it for long, the fumes are being exhausted somewhere, but I don’t want the chance of them coming in, nor of running out of fuel.”

“The weather’s getting worse,” said Dmitry, grimly. “Ah! I can see you!” he had managed to clear enough stone to see the window. Schulz gave him a tight smile and saluted.

Dmitry made a sweeping motion to the others to come over and join him.

 

“Well, that’s all very well, but fastening off the rope won’t be easy,” said Karol.

“If you let us down, and the tent, can you climb down?” asked Sophie. “You can fall on us.”

Karol regarded the slope.

“Dig me some holes in the side as you go down,” he said.

Sophie nodded. That, she could do.

They got down, somehow, and made their way along the rope towards Dmitry.

“Three not too badly hurt and a concussion,” said Dmitry. “Stand back! I’m going to break the rest of that broken window, and pass down a shovel, so you can shovel all the broken glass out.  If you can strip out as much as possible, we’ll join you overnight, and make our way out tomorrow.”

“At your command!” said Schulz.

Dmitry used the axe to break out the glass to the edge of the left hand window.  With a shovel, and using his hat as a brush, Schulz managed to toss out all the broken glass.

“Here’s the breech of one of our Nordenfelts,” said Bakker. “It takes up a lot of room. We have tools in here.”

With both guns removed, and most of the instrumentation, there was a lot more room, though it took almost two hours. The girls set up the tent enough to protect the broken window from the wind, and the men helped manhandle the wooden dashboard.

“Break that up; we may yet need it as firewood and it can be stored in the engine compartment,” said Dmitry to Sophie. She took the axe to reduce to useable lengths.  Once the cabin had been cleared of anything superfluous, there was plenty of room for the eight of them to bunk down, and they dropped down, whilst Dmitry set up the tent more securely over the former window.

“That looks like a heat ray gun,” said Schultz.

“Yes; we came to steal one,” said Dmitry, calmly. “That, and complete the execution of Yaromar Zbignevosky, who had escaped custody.  I strongly suggest, when we all get out of here, after the storm has abated, that you claim to have escaped on your own, and forget you ever saw us. Ferdie is not going to take it that you let us rescue you under parole.”

“We have honour, at least,” said Schultz. “And we have had hallucinations only in the cold, where one’s wishful dreams produce beautiful women dressed as boys and… coffee?” as Sophie poured him some from the vacuum flask.

“The British war machines are much smaller, but the engines keep hot water on the boil all the time to make tea,” said Sophie. “It’s our secret weapon.”[1]

“There’s a drain in the engine compartment, which we can use as a toilet,” said Dmitry. “It will be a little primitive, but better than nothing. I’ll take off the grating so anything solid can go down. After all, nobody wants diesel fuel slopping around if the tank is holed.”

“We’ll have to have cold rations, though,” said Sophie, who was checking the corporal’s head. “This is a nasty wound, I’m not sure I can do a lot for him, I’m sorry.”

“If he’s going to die, at least he’s going to be more comfortable to do it,” said Schultz, as Dmitry’s party shared out their blankets and coats, it being quite warm with the engine run intermittently, and the canvas-covered hole below the general level of the wind. 

They ate somewhat more frugally than the day before, but the Vandalian soldiers were grateful for anything offered to them. And there was nothing else they might do but go to sleep. The girls snuggled down to sleep at one end of the cabin, with Dmitry and Karol between them and the Vandalians.

 

oOoOo

 

Captain Thorndyke’s search showed him nobody on the mountain, though visibility was poor. He did not want to risk going too low the other side, for fear of putting Dmitry and his party at more risk; but he noted that there were a number of cook fires, and wondered if the Krasnytsyan party was amongst them, hidden in plain view.

He would come back daily.

He returned via the cutting, in case they were trying to get through it; and missed the light from the partially uncovered Gargantua which was put out to save battery power minutes before he passed silently overhead.

 

oOoOo

 

There had been a fall of snow overnight, and Dmitry reached round the canvas to scrape as much as he could into all their cook pots.

“A lack of water will be our main problem,” he explained. “I’ll melt this on the engine block.  We can have some oatmeal in some of it, with some conserve; not quite like müsli, but at least better than nothing.”

“There’s a little goats’ milk cheese which you could put in it,” said Sophie. “The soft one; it should melt and mix in fairly readily, and with the conserve, it won’t overwhelm the flavour.”

“And a nice bit of protein,” said Dmitry. “I’ve made your corporal drink a few times during the night, and I think he may be sleeping naturally.”

“I… I am awake; am I dreaming?” said the corporal.

“We’ve been rescued, Helmut, but we are prisoners,” said Schulz. “We gave our parole.”

“I give mine,” said Helmut, weakly. “I need a piss.”

“Give him a hand to the sump,” said Dmitry. “We can find out how wobbly he is.”

Helmut had a better colour when he sat back on his blanket, and managed to eat a few spoonfuls of Dmitry’s not-müsli.  There was no more coffee.

“Mitka,” said Sophie, “I think that you or Karol should go across the avalanche and try to get far enough to signal for help.”

Dmitry considered.

“I should be the one to take the risk,” he said.

“Highness, I would be honoured to come with you and help you,” said Schultz.

Dmitry considered.

He nodded.

“You’re a good man; I won’t turn it down,” he said. “We can take the groundsheet to the tent; and if we have one scarf wrapped round our bodies under coats, and one on top, tying down hats, it will help. And we will take the two best coats. My bride is correct, we cannot hope to get to safety with Helmut without aid, and I am not sanguine about getting through with the girls now the weather has turned, even if we left you half the food and sent someone for you.”

 



[1] Every modern British tank and armoured car has a brew going all the time. A British squaddie will put up with a lot of privation so long as he has hot tea at regular intervals.

 

4 comments:

  1. And a happy Easter to you! Thanks for the chapter. I feel bad for the more honorable Germans.

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    1. thank you! perhaps the Vandalians will get taken over by someone else... or get a new archduke!

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  2. Happy Easter to you, Simon, the cats and other readers here. I do hope the Archduke comes to a sticky end, he's asking for it. Mary D

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    1. thank you! no spoilers and no promises. I might want to do a sequel. Only two more chapters to go.

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