Chapter 17
The little ‘family’ on the platform was not the only group to draw closer. Mothers pushed children behind them, and husbands held terrified wives. The machine on its own had been an intimidating thing; en masse, they were terrifying. Too wide to come two by two, they clanked inexorably down the line one after the other, hulking instruments of death and destruction, their legs, like those of ancient dinosaurs, or predatory birds moved in their alien way, the bulk of their bodies seeming to lean forward from them to seek prey, the control room with its two large windows over the heat ray like gigantic eyes.
“The hell!” muttered Dmitry.
“Our people are on watch, yes?” said Sophie.
“Oh, yes, and ready to blow the cutting,” said Dmitry. “Unfortunately, that means that our easy way out will be gone. And we shall have the choice of staying here, which is no choice at all, finding another way out, or going into the mountains without being properly clad for the early snow that high up, without even Victorina’s furs.”
“Can we not try to get through just above the cutting?” asked Sophie.
“The amount of explosives we put should have made an almost geologic level of mess,” said Dmitry.
“There might be a diplomatic arrangement to lift the passengers stranded here over by commercial zeppelin,” suggested Sophie. “That is the civilised approach to civilians stranded in a war zone.”
“That assumes Vandalia would act in a civilised way,” said Dmitry, dryly. “They are more likely to question quite brutally everyone on the train to find out their business over the border which would coincide with this.”
“The border violation is Vandalian, though,” said Sophie, indignantly.
“And that will not matter to their paranoid brains,” said Karol. “We have to get out of here, as a matter of some urgency, but without looking as if we are fleeing.”
Svetelina, seeing some of the women being led tenderly to the waiting room by their men folk, moaned, swayed, and collapsed in an elegant heap.
“Oh! My poor child! She is overcome!” cried Dmitry. “Let me take her away to a doctor!”
He lifted Svetelina, and carried her out of the station, even the military parting to let them go; a sure sign that there would have been questions.
“Where are you going?” an officer asked.
“My daughter has fainted! Where does a doctor reside?” demanded Dmitri.
“This place does not rate a doctor; take her to the Gasthof, and I will have one sent for, but it is probably only her age, and nerves,” said the officer, not unkindly.
“Thank you!” said Dmitry, warmly.
Being off the station was the first thing.
“A keen fisherman, eh, son?” asked the officer. “Well, if you want to try your luck up at the old mill pond, I doubt the doctor will be here for a couple of hours, at least.”
“May I, Papa?” asked Sophie.
“You may not, not until I have your sister lying down in the dark, for it will have brought on a migraine for sure,” snapped Dmitry. “Then, I will think about it, but I know you! If I let you go off for two hours, it will be four, or five, or after dark, and me fearing that you have drowned your foolish self, and then you turn up wet, slimy, and your trunk still in the train.”
Sophie sighed, hunched her shoulders, and followed. The officer winked at her.
“I expect you will be able to slip away,” he murmured. “The hold-up will be likely to continue for several days, and the Gasthof glad of fresh fish, for the passengers will be billeted on them.”
“What is going on, sir?” asked Sophie.
“Oh, the upper echelon are run mad,” said the officer. “And you didn’t hear it from me. Someone assassinated a political hot-potato from Svardovia, and stole a walking machine, and then disappeared, leaving it in a field, and someone decided it was the prelude to an invasion from Krasnytsya.”
“Eh, perhaps someone also spiked their schnapps with funny juice,” said Sophie. “I wouldn’t mind trying to drive one of those machines.”
“Hah! A future officer for us no doubt,” said the officer, and almost spoiled the goodwill Sophie had built with him by going to rumple her hat. Sophie ducked, instinctively.
“Oh. Free with his hands, your Papa?” said the officer.
“Only since Mama died,” said Sophie, sadly. “We are off to school; we are in the way.”
“Well! May you enjoy it, anyway – when you finally get there,” said the officer.
Sophie ran to catch up as Dmitry turned to look for her, careful to run from her shoulders, not after the manner of a woman.
“What did he want?” muttered Dmitry.
“I asked him what was going on, and he said the top brass have gone mad,” said Sophie. “If I slip out shortly with my fishing gear, I could cache it at the old mill, so it is not here to be searched. I might even do some fishing. The officer said we will all be billeted in the Gasthof and they would be glad of fish.”
“What will you use as a line?”
“I left one rod and line,” said Sophie. “I’m not much good at fishing, but you never know, in a mill pond, the fish might be bored enough to bite.”
Dmitry chuckled.
“I like the idea of hiding it,” he said. “If nothing else, we could then make a swift raid in a flying boat after getting ourselves out.”
oOoOo
The telegraph chirped in the tent of Major Vanyo Lebchuk. He read the morse, and shot out of his chair.
“In position to fire the charges, lads, they’re coming,” he said. “Let the first one through in case it’s the prince, stealing one; it’d be like him to do so, but send word to the navy to be on standby in case it isn’t.”
His telegraphist worked with hurried fingers.
The navy! One elderly British ironclad, and a number of small zeppelins, paid for by individual enthusiasts. The way ‘Thunderchild’ had dealt with all the Svardovian navy, however, did give Lebchuk some hope.
And then the first one came through the cutting; too close, surely to be a fugitive.
“Blow it,” said Lebchuk.
Four men pressed buttons on preset charges. Two of the charges were at the base of a mountain peak, towering over the pass. These had been set by one Yuri Bugun, who was an enthusiast, and Lebchuk only hoped that his enthusiasm had not got out of hand.
Lebchuk smiled grimly to hear the rumble of detonation, and prayed quietly that his experts had made sure not to harm any of those setting off the charges, nor him and his men.
“RUN!” he screamed, as he realised that the calculations had not taken into account how far things might spread.
Two minutes later, Lebchuk picked himself up, and counted his men.
They had all made it, though one of his detonator crew looked shaken. Lebchuk heaved out his own hip flask and gave the boy a nip of medicinal brandy.
“As God is my judge!” gasped the young cornet. “I thought the whole top of the mountain was coming down on me in one go.”
“I was fairly certain it was after me, too,” said Lebchuk.
oOoOo
With Svitelina installed in a bed in the Gasthof, and rooms bespoken for all his party, Dmitry felt they had time to breathe.
They were then interrupted by an ominous rumbling, and the very ground shook.
“Was that the charges?” asked Sophie, shaken.
Dmitri glanced out of the window, and gasped, even more shaken.
“That was the charges,” he said. “Someone got over-enthusiastic; they’ve blown down the whole Adlerhorn; the peak which overlooks… overlooked… the railway.”
“Dear God!” said Sophie. “When you said ‘geologic’ you were not joking!”
oOoOo
Grand Duke Ferdinand rode in the Gargantua which brought up the rear, along with a guest.
His guest was one Boris Slabinysky, lord of a small Svardovian barony, and lately its prime minister. He had left for the good of his own health, and looked even more than usual like the ‘louse that fed on dried blood.’
He smirked as the walking machine approached the station, and a young girl fainted. How delectably young she looked! And easy to intimidate, it seemed! Perhaps he might be able get to know her during the interrogations of the passengers. She would doubtless be ready to do anything for her other relatives. He looked at them closely, and stiffened. He was certain that… he bit one finger nail in agitation.
“Ferdinand!” he cried. “I am almost certain I saw Prince Dmitry, and his friend, Karol Blatinski, and the English girl on the platform!”
“You have Dmitry on the brain!” snapped Ferdinand. “Besides, why would Dmitry himself be in Vandalia, when he has suborned one of Victorina’s lovers to do it? Ferencz Ónodi was identified by Yaromar Zbignevosky, who was blown up to prevent him from talking – but they did not know that I have secret spy holes, and he had already confirmed the identity of the man. Look, I have the photograph.”
He poked the picture at Slabinysky.
“You idiot!” snapped Slabinysky. “That’s Dmitry!”
Ferdinand did not react well to being called an idiot, and he slapped Slabinysky.
“You have Dmitry on the brain! He identified himself as Ónodi, and I telegraphed Vienna, to check that such a man exists, and he does. Look at those moustaches; turned up like all their hussars, and so loud! Dmitry is a quiet-spoken man, this one is loud and blustering, and his awful, awful whores! Why one of them…” he shuddered, “Actually kissed me on the cheek! I was never so humiliated! And Zbignevosky would know!”
Slabinysky was used to being slapped by Victorina, so he took it with resignation.
Could he be wrong? He looked again at the photograph.
“It is well-known that Victorina chose lovers who resembled Dmitry in some respect, at least,” he said. “And Ónodi is an older man. I would not put it past Dmitry to impersonate Ónodi.”
“No, I checked up on Ónodi, and he is on leave. It must be him,” said Ferdinand. “Besides, he is ahead of us! He had to abandon the walking machine he stole, but he gave my men the slip and he must be stopped at all costs! He has the heat ray!”
Slabinysky held his piece. He knew what he believed.
He ventured,
“Why would Ónodi spy for Dmitry?”
“Fool! You are like all the effete Svardovians, and you cannot get it up without being humiliated and caned by a woman. He found what she wanted, and rejected her in disgust, and Dmitry recruited him. It is a false Dmitry!”[1]
Slabinysky had a sudden, horrifying concept, of Dmitry co-opting, coercing, or persuading every one of Victorina’s Dmitry-resembling lovers into working for him, and the chaos which could ensue.
It had been bad enough with that wretched English woman, claiming to be Victorina! Such thoughts almost distracted him from his concealed anger at the slur cast on his own sexuality, and indeed, nationally, just because Victorina had had her perversions.
It had not helped that King Cheffan had once been photographed in a highly embarrassing position with his Master of Horse, a whip, and a saddle. Slabinysky put it down to royalty being inbred, but it had not been good for Svardovia.
The front of the procession of thirty Gargantua had reached the cutting which constituted the border with Krasnytsya now. It was five miles through the cutting, and then they would march on the palace in Berzhostrov, and demand the handing over of Ferencz Ónodi, and the return of the weapon! The Gargantua could go at a steady fifteen miles per hour, so in twenty minutes the front-runner with General Rikard Von Hönen would be through, and all of them would be in the pass. Nothing could stand against them!
‘Nothing’ is a very big concept, and nature herself hates to be mocked. Especially when poked very hard with a large amount of dynamite thoughtfully inserted deep into a fault, which had been causing some concern to the railway over whether natural methods of freeze and thaw might bring down the head of the mountain one day, without warning. Or as the Krasnytsyan explosives expert, Yuri Bugun, had said, something for everyone.
This insouciant expert had happily filled the fault with nitro.
It may be said that he had failed to be specific about this, as Major Vanyo Lebchuk was unnaturally prejudiced against nitro. Bugun found this prejudice disappointing, as it would do the job so much more efficiently.
What the major did not know would not hurt him.
As long as he could run fast enough.
Bugun was a man of simple pleasures. He was happy with the willing bar maid he had found at the next village on the line, and even more so when the earth moved for him.
And everyone else in the vicinity, but nobody else enjoyed it as much.
The Vandalian Gargantua pilots certainly did not enjoy it, but most of them did not have long enough in which to contemplate their unhappiness before oblivion pursued them to any afterlife they might deserve.
The first Gargantua was mostly out of the explosive zone; but the nineteen behind him were not.
The ten behind them were somewhat inconvenienced by falling rocks.
“See? You were wrong, you were wrong!” cried Ferdinand. “Ónodi got through, and they were waiting for us, they knew we must pursue him!
Slabinysky was too shocked to answer; but he certainly wanted a word with the family he suspected. First, however, he wanted treatment for what he strongly suspected was a broken arm.
Even those Gargantua not crushed into oblivion must be dug out to see if life was extinct, and most machines had been crippled, or could go no further in either direction for the debris from the avalanche which accompanied the shocking collapse of the head of Adlerhorn. Those on which a thousand meter cubed sized block of rock had fallen could not hope to have survived. Slabinysky crossed himself. He was not a regular communicant; but under such a shock, his childhood religion asserted itself to provide the only response he felt he could manage.
