trouble in Svardovia 10

 

Chapter 10

 

Once realising that he was committed to battle, Thorndyke had calmly ordered Edward below, with the suggestion that he interrogate the rescued prisoners. It was something practical to do, and Edward gladly accepted the suggestion.

Thorndyke waited for the Svardovians to open fire first; he would be able to log that as being aggressed, not the aggressor, with evidence of being on a mercy mission.

The fools opened fire before they were even in range.  He permitted them another shot, and then said into his speaking trumpet to the gunners, “Fire as you bear.”

Number one gun went off like a firecracker, and in common with the practise accuracy of the crew took both engine nacelles off one of the zeppelins, knocking off one, and continuing right through to the one the other side. Number two put a hole through the dirigible, piercing one gas bag, but no other damage. It was losing height, anyway.  Number three plainly had enough heat to the shell that it ignited the hydrogen… or maybe it struck something inside that caused sparks… and the ship went up in a fireball.

The enemy was in range, now, for what it was worth. Their aim was not good.

“Fire as you bear, lads; six-pounders ready when they come in good range,” said Thorndyke.

The fire might sound ragged; but every shot was carefully aimed. Thorndyke did not seriously expect much damage from the sluggish zeppelins, who had arrived in such beautiful formation, which had rapidly broken up as soon as they were facing return fire. Thorndyke was prepared to bet that not one of them had ever faced battle at all. One Zeppelin even cut and run, without receiving any damage at all!

Though the heavy shells could pass through the dirigibles without doing any damage, his men were aiming at engine nacelles, three on each side for the largest, or the rudder. As they drew closer, Thorndyke opened communications.

“I am willing to accept your surrender,” he said.

“No! you will be crushed!” cried his counterpart. “With the amount of fire you have taken, surely your liftium tanks are in bad shape, and your men killed, so it is you who must surrender.”

“Do you know what it is for an Englishman to raise two fingers at you?” said Thorndyke. “It is an expression of our contempt. So be it; if you will not surrender, you will have to be crushed.”

The fools had no idea how outclassed they were. A lucky shot killed two of his men; but that only made the rest angry, and more careful. Though there was the saying that the strongest fighter could be brought low by the bites of many vermin, this swarm were not really a challenge.  Still, Thorndyke watched their tactics – such as they were – to analyse, in case there was any identifiable attack pattern. He could see none, and continued to knock zeppelins out of the sky. He ignored the one which had lost the engine nacelles on one side, and was going round and round in circles, the rate of fire sufficiently slow and undisciplined that it was firing more at the other Svardovians than on the ‘Thunderchild.’

And as well as the six pounders, Thorndyke nodded to the machine-gun crews to let loose the force of the mighty Vickers Maxim guns, with rounds of ‘Buckingham,’ for balloon-strafing. The combination of the explosive and incendiary rounds made short work of the rest of the zeppelins. Thorndyke suspected that the enemy admiral may have plummeted to the ground very surprised that his prettily painted, aggressively red, warships were not an automatic match for anyone.

 

Edward ignored the sounds of battle.

“For the record, captain… your name?”

“Ihor Robochik,” said the captain.

“Captain Robochik; did you send a distress call, requesting aid?”

“Yes, I did, and we were very grateful.  We had descended rather suddenly, and I had a report that someone had sabotaged our vents and our spare hydrogen, but then, what was left blew up, and I do not know why.  My men know better than to smoke in the dirigible, we are the most experienced crew… or were.”

“An officer brought on board prisoners, Prince Dmitry and Miss Sophie Harmon, an English girl.”

“Yes, and my men sniggered at her for her apparent fear of everything, but rumours since say that she must have feigned this, and it was she who sabotaged my ship.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Edward. “She is my daughter, you see.”

The man’s eyes widened in fear.

“I am sorry, sir,” he said. “But I do not disobey Princess Victorina.  She had the girl… your daughter… confined in a crew cabin, and had Prince Dmitri taken to her personal torture chamber.  Later, however, I understand that she began acting strangely and had him taken to her room…. Police-chief Zbignevosky was rooting around like a crazed goat, looking for them both.  If you ask me, they were no longer on the ship when it finished going down, and certainly not when it exploded. I have not checked my lifeboats, but perhaps they took one, or climbed off onto the cliffs before we finished our descent, and certainly before the explosion.”

“Thank you; that is balm to a father’s heart,” said Edward.

“It wasn’t Victorina who took him to her bedroom after torturing him,” blurted out Irina. “I thought it was, but she was acting strangely, locking and blocking doors. It must have been her, that girl, your daughter.  I don’t know what they did with my mistress! But they’d gone when Yaromar Zbignevosky was looking for them. And the bastard left me to die; he can whistle before I spy for him again!”.

Edward was starting to feel a lot better. The young couple might well be half way to Krasnytsya by now. He did not object when Thorndyke, after trouncing the Svardovian navy, made the decision to return to Krasnytsyan  territory.

 

oOoOo

 

After a good cry, Sophie shook herself and got up. She drank a little of their precious water, using the screw-top bottles first, sour as that water was. They might then refill them partly with the water from the bottles which could not be resealed.

She went exploring in their former retreat, and discovered that the cliff face had indeed been an arête, and was inordinately pleased with herself for recalling that geological term from the last term’s schooling she had had, and mentally defined it as ‘a high, narrow ridge formed when two valleys erode side by side through glaciation.’ Their high pasture looked more and more to be no such thing, but more a piece falling away, which if there was another ice age was likely to become a corrie.

At least, before the excess of erosion caused by the Svardovian navy demonstrating what rotten shots they were.

Sophie removed the worst of the stones that would make the way to the gap difficult, and went to cautiously peer through. There was a rather dizzying drop, but a climbable way down to a secure-looking ledge, which appeared to wind down towards the valley.

It was not ideal.

Sophie moved cautiously towards the front edge of their little haven, expecting to see the crashed Svardovian flag ship, and half fearing to see the wreckage of the ‘Thunderchild;’ the scattered wreckage of the Svardovian fleet, however, some remains still smoking, was not something she had expected from that terrible night. Thorndyke had justly had pride in his ship, but it had withdrawn. They must assume that Sophie and Dmitry had both died on the flagship.

Well, there was no easy path down that side, and Sophie would have been loth to try it in any case, lest any survivors from the war fleet were around; they would be justly hostile. And doubtless the whole valley would soon be crawling with the Svardovian military, on a rescue mission, and trying to figure out what went on. Sophie went back to Dmitry, who was still somewhat delirious.

She breakfasted on bread and a slice of game pie, and a carrot, not sure she could face another hard boiled egg so soon, especially as they would keep better than the pie, in their shells. She noted with approval that Dmitry had used the two whose shells she had broken for their meal the night before. She then explored to the ends of the little plateau, and found a spring, which was welcome; and she replaced the tap water from the bottles with spring water. She also found a number of unexploded shells from the enemy Nordenfelts. It made sense that the airships would use Nordenfelts, which had a lighter build than the Hotchkiss cannon used by the Royal Navy. Sophie vaguely recalled a discussion between two sailors on one trip with her parents about how unreliable the fuses of the Nordenfelts were.

The explosive might be useful; if she could extract it.  She had a recollection that the Hotchkiss fuse had a left hand thread, but she was uncertain about that of the Nordenfelt; but soon discovered that she might as well not have worried as half of them were missing their fuses, and the rest were loose. Another of Victorina’s finest silk stockings would hold most of the powder, Sophie hoped. If not, well, it had been time wasted. She tied off the stocking and doubled it.

These incendiary urges satisfied,  she went to check on Dmitry, and made him drink. He was half awake, and in pain.

Sophie gave him a couple more aspirins.

“Mitka,” she said, “We are not safe here. I want to take us to the other side, and I know that you cannot climb, but if I tie a rope to you, do you think you can help yourself a bit going down if I take much of your weight? I thought I would use those spruce trunks to make a travois, like the Red Indians, but I don’t think I can lower you on one, not on my own.”

“I’ll manage,” said Dmitry. “You are amazing, my love. I can’t even imagine how much many girls would be complaining about being stuck in the wilderness, hunted by enemies, with an unmanned man.”

“Unmanned? Hardly! You are a hero to manage anything.”

“Did I imagine a battle in the night, or was I having nightmares?”

“You did not. The ‘Thunderchild’ destroyed the Svardovian fleet, but then withdrew. I fancy they think us dead,” said Sophie, grimly.

“I cannot imagine your father giving up on a resourceful girl like you,” said Dmitry. “Give me half an hour for the aspirins to have their best effect.”

“If you can manage some game pie and a piece of bread, it will help,” said Sophie. “I refilled our bottles from a spring, but I don’t know where the next might be. If you will drink your fill, and so will I, I can refill them before we leave.”

Dmitry nodded; this was sensible.

 

Three quarters of an hour later, with a rope of stockings pressing agonisingly on his back, even through the padding of the fur cloak, Dmitri set off down the rock scramble into the parallel valley. He controlled the urge to vomit with pain; they could not afford to lose the food.  And he was good at climbing.

He was glad of Sophie’s aid, however, since he felt as weak as a kitten, and holds he would normally have taken in his stride  were too hard. He was trembling by the time his feet were on the ledge, a good six feet wide and winding down towards the valley floor. Dmitri fancied it might have had some artificial assistance.

Once down, he untied the silken rope for Sophie to lower the travois she had rapidly made, lashing the three branches together in a triangle. She lowered all the bags and cloaks tied to it; and then she must climb down herself, for they could not afford to lose their rope, however makeshift it might be. Dmitry stood, ready to catch her at need; and when she had descended, they clung together as the emotion of this last ordeal caught up with them.

“I need to use the rope to make a bed of the travois,” said Sophie. “You won’t walk far, I imagine; you are as white as a corpse.”

“I curse my weakness,” said Dmitry. “Perhaps you could check my back before we go on, whilst the aspirin is holding.”

Sophie nodded. He lay on one of the cloaks, after painfully undressing, and Sophie tore a strip of a linen sheet she had brought for the purpose to bathe his wounds, pressing on the few that were suppurating, to release the poison. They were thankfully few; the salt water wash had done its job.  She used the Germolene sparingly, on the worst cuts, and cold cream on the rest, and cut a strip from a sheet of Johnson & Johnson’s medicated adhesive plaster. It was supposed to draw pus out of suppurating wounds. She then laid a piece of the linen sheet on his back, and used narrow strips of the medicated plaster to hold it in place. Dmitry gratefully re dressed.

“If I may wait for a while, I’ll be able to walk, I think,” he said.

“Shall I scout ahead?” asked Sophie.

“No; sit and snuggle up to me and warm me up,” said Dmitry. “You don’t want to tire yourself out if we have to rely on the travois to shift me.”

Dmitry managed a few hundred yards, before having to collapse onto the travois; but he was conscious enough to lie on it on his face, holding on. Sophie grimly pulled, anxious to get somewhere they might camp. She castigated herself for not having brought a pot to at least boil water in from the galley; had she not been interrupted, maybe she would have thought of it, but she did not.

Nobody was perfect, but Sophie was worried that it would cause them serious worries later.

Perhaps she could find a village where she could buy pots and pans; she had both Svardovian and local Krasnytsyan coins.

 

The ledge duly widened into a high pasture; and this one looked as if it really was a high pasture, complete with goats and a log hut.

And there was the goat herd; a man with straggly beard and moustache, something over forty, and the slightly vacant expression of a man who is, in the words of most villagers, a little wanting.

“Hello,” said Sophie, in her best Svardovian. “Are we in Svardovia or Krasnystya?”

He looked confused and scratched his beard.

“We’m in the meadow,” he said.

“Are you Svardovian or Krasnytsyan?” asked Sophie.

“I’m Yon the goatherd,” said Yon.

Plainly this was a place so isolated – or changed hands so often – that he had no idea. He probably did not even know about the war.

“Did you see the flying ship?” asked Sophie.

“Ar, it come an’ it go back,” said Yon.

“We belong to it but got lost and my husband is hurt,” said Sophie. “I have coins for your help.” She dug in her purse for coins, showing them to Yon. There was a Edward VII florin, or two shilling piece there. “That’s no good to you, of course,” she muttered, and would have put it back, but Yon pounced on it.

“Good protector, fine beard,” he said. “I take that one. Come; I make bed other side of stove.”

Sophie was too exhausted to protest, and followed him. He seemed harmless. She would sleep with her pistol and a knife, just in case.

And he was as good as his word, filling big sacks with fragrant hay, and setting it to the side of the chimney opposite his own, built in bed. A woollen blanket protected from the hay poking through, and Sophie helped Dmitry onto it, where he promptly went to sleep.

“I cook when sun go down,” said Yon. “Water in well; cheese and bread in cupboard.”

“Please, we share too,” said Sophie, giving him two eggs and the rest of the game pie. It would be a while before she could eat game pie without gagging over the memories.

He beamed, and the victuals vanished in his pouch, and then he left the hut.

Sophie joined Dmitry in sleep.