Sweet Love, Survive

by Susan Johnson

  The general’s cool voice went on. “Why do you think I put a chastity belt on her? To be sure that if she had a child, it would be mine. You can’t trust women, any fool knows that. You’re a case in point. Look what happened. She took up with the first man who came along. If that isn’t proof of her fickleness I don’t know what is. You’d better keep her chained to the bed, Kuzan, if you want her for yourself.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Apollo snapped, already tensing to move.

  “Good luck, then; you’ll need it. By this time next year, she’ll be in someone else’s bed.”

  The thought was insupportable and intended to be. Apollo, never sensible about Kitty, had moved two full steps toward the wine cellar before Karaim, deciding Apollo had put his life in jeopardy too many times already over that woman, heaved the grenade through the splintered door, pulling Apollo down an instant later.

  When the grenade exploded, Karaim and Apollo were jammed against the four-foot-thick outside wall, and even then the vibrations jarred their bodies like the kick of a horse. Smoke billowed out of the wine cellar; the door, already smashed by machine-gun fire, was completely gone now.

  “Dammit, I wanted him myself, Karaim,” Apollo hissed angrily, resentful of the missed opportunity to personally kill Beriozov.

  “There’s no time. We’ve got to get out of here,” Karaim replied, ever sensible, but he didn’t explain his real reason. Apollo’s blood lust was too high and insensate where Kitty was involved. Iskender-Khan was right, and everyone but Apollo understood. One Bolshevik general, however many times he had bedded the Young Falcon’s woman, was still not worth Apollo’s own life. “Let’s go. Troops could be on their way out here from Sochi right now. The pig is dead.”

  And as if in answer, from the depths of Hades itself, Beriozov’s harsh, grating rasp came out of the demolished wine cellar.

  “Come and get me, Kuzan.”

  Apollo, rising slowly, fingering the black Mausers at his hips, smiled at Karaim. “You heard? He’s still alive,” he said, as gently as a blade through butter.

  Beriozov was dying, but his strong body, the stubborn body of an ox that had survived so much since the early days in Siberia, was not drained of life as easily as ordinary men. His companions in the wine cellar were all dead. One had been shot with a chill anger when the bastard had tried to leave; the others were blown to bits by the grenade. The general, partially protected by a large cistern, hadn’t felt the full impact of the explosion, but he wouldn’t live much longer and he knew it. Both legs were useless, his left arm hung in tatters of flesh and bone, his chest was peppered with shrapnel, and blood seeped from hundreds of puncture wounds. Dragging himself across the floor with his right arm, he propped himself up against the wall facing the shattered doorway and leveled his handgun at the entrance.

  “Leave him, Apollo. He’s all but dead,” Karaim advised quietly. “We’ve still five days of hostile country to ride through. Let’s not waste any more time here.”

  But Karaim would never know if his advice had reached Apollo or not, because the general’s voice then hissed, “Katherine’s child is mine. Remember that every time you look at it.”

  There was a cold, lethal growl of rage and Apollo launched himself with terrifying suddenness toward the doorway. He had been trained to perfection to be a warrior in sinew, muscle, and brain, and he moved in that cool, dim basement with the instinctive coordination of a hunting panther. He lunged, rolled, fired, and behind the chill, almost inhuman gleam in his golden eyes there was not an instant’s doubt his bullets would reach their destination.

  He hurtled through the opening, rolling through to the left, his blazing guns flashing fire in the small chamber, his body a blur of black and gold, too elusive a target for Beriozov. And while the general emptied his automatic in a staccato pattern of death, it was Apollo’s revolver that found its mark.

  The murderer of thousands, ravager of hundreds, the ruthless commander of the Sixth Division’s iron-fist shock troops, slumped in death.

  Apollo gracefully unrolled himself from the debris. He stood broad and powerful within the frame of smashed wood and crumbled masonry, smoking pistols hanging in both hands, a primitive figure of dreadful vengeance. Standing still, scarcely breathing, all his mind and all his passion flowed into the long, searching glance of unleashed hatred he gave the dead general. Kitty’s cruel captivity was avenged. “Now,” he said softly, sliding the Mausers into their holsters and flexing his fingers lightly, “now we can leave.”

  • • •

  The first two hours out of Sochi passed unchallenged, but by the time the lights of Nalchik were in sight, a flurry of activity at the crossroad—roadblocks being put into place, armored cars screaming out of town—indicated that the general’s demise had been discovered. As indeed it had when the local procuress arrived with the evening’s selection of girls. Mass hysteria by the ladies of the night had greeted the sight of the bloody remains of the general and his guard. The local Cheka was out at the villa within the hour and instantly telegraph and telephone wires relayed the news across the width and breadth of South Russia.

  Very soon, Iskender-Khan heard the news as well, since he paid the spies he had posted in the garrisons bordering his territories very generously; and while he rejoiced at the reports of the general’s death, he knew Apollo and his men still faced grave danger. To cross the entire width of South Russia when the alarm had been sounded was a gauntlet of treachery whose successful navigation courage alone couldn’t guarantee.

  Iskender’s men had been held in readiness since Apollo’s departure. He understood Apollo’s need to accomplish this venture alone, was proud of the boy’s bravery, but now with the general dead it would serve no purpose to have his favorite great-grandson lying murdered, the victim of a machine-gun ambush or a superior force of the Red Army.

  Riding out himself at the head of his warriors, a position relinquished to younger commanders over a decade ago, Iskender-Khan rode through the narrow pass guarding the valley of Dargo and down from his mountain fortress to see that the odds against his beloved great-grandson were slightly evened. Iskender-Khan with six hundred riders galloped west.

  Near each garrison town, one of his men would ride in to receive the current telegraph reports from his paid informers, while the small army remained concealed on the outskirts. Military messages followed Apollo’s route north and east from Sochi. His troop had evaded the roadblock at Nalchik. A Red patrol outside Muri had died when they’d stumbled on the forward scouts of Apollo’s band and attempted to outrace them back to the garrison. The twenty mountain men had been sighted briefly at Dshava, then at Ananur. The last report put them in the vicinity of Telav and still riding hard for the mountains.

  Iskender shifted his route slightly south by southwest, steering at a tangent for Apollo’s line of escape. He had expected him to cut across the Tush and Dido region, but apparently Apollo was headed for the Bogos Ridge.

  No one slept that night; they rode without rest or food, stopping briefly only to water the horses. The six-hundred-man army marveled at the stamina sustaining their old patriarch through hour after hour of a pace grueling even to a man in his prime.

  But more than ordinary physical or mental endurance was fortifying Iskender-Khan through the long hours. His proud spirit wouldn’t rest until Apollo was safely returned to him, and no Russian army, regardless of affiliation, had ever subjugated either his spirit or his nation. Invading armies had from time to time made their point, but never permanently. He still ruled his people as he had for four score years, protecting them against any foe whether tsarist, red, or white. The clans in his mountain nation had existed before there was a Russia and they would continue to exist despite successive political changes in Leningrad or Moscow.

  At Kvarshi, near midnight, bad news met them. The garrison at Shanada had trapped a troop of mountain men just before sunset.

  Grim-faced, Iskender-Khan received the information. A sa
vage light shone briefly in his eyes. In high dudgeon, he raised his right arm and brought his nagaika precisely across the heaving rump of his horse.

  The six hundred men and their indomitable leader raced south. If Apollo is lost, Iskender thought vengefully, I’ll light fire to this country from Yalta to Baku.

  They came on the site of Apollo’s troop an hour after dawn. The small band was trapped in a deep ravine several hundred yards off the main road to Shanada. Although Apollo had avoided roads wherever possible, the straight three-mile stretch blasted through the mountains had been chanced to save themselves a day and a half of mountain trails. By this time their horses were hopelessly tired, nearing exhaustion.

  The roadblock had appeared suddenly, looming ahead of them as they’d careened around a sharp curve in the road. Apollo, in the lead, had veered, hesitated at the sight of massed men and artillery, and then, altering course grimly, plunged into the ravine paralleling the road in hopes of circumventing the waiting ambush. Too late, he’d discovered what the local Red officer had already known: the ravine ended in a cul de sac.

  Apollo and his men, at a desperate disadvantage in numbers, had been trapped, pinned down since dawn by rifle fire from every side.

  With a wave of his hand Iskender deployed his men. Twin flanks of black-coated mountain warriors swung out in a wide arc a quarter mile long, three waves deep, and beautifully drawn up in serried ranks. When Iskender signaled the attack they advanced stirrup to stirrup in parade-ground style, the vibrating ground and trembling hum of the earth the first intimation of attack. Turning around, the Bolsheviks’ blood froze in their veins. A now screaming wave of mountain men in a solid body were sweeping down on them, spreading fan-wise, their formation bulging forward in the middle, falling back on the flanks. Three deep and seemingly endlessly wide, they encircled the Bolshevik position with a black-coated wall of approaching horseflesh and shattering rifle shot. The Red troops, having no wish to argue with an army of mountain men, immediately put to flight in a tangled rush toward Shanada.

  None of them reached it. The charging men with high, wailing cries, gleaming teeth, and black eyes came in firing at a gallop and Red soldiers fell before they had run ten steps. In an instant the scene was a foot soldier’s nightmare; cavalry pursuing infantry, a rhythm of flashing forearms, the clash of steel, laboring bodies and horseflesh, the Reds all dying at farther or lesser range by bullet, saber, or kinjal. The mountain men were invincible, battling savagely through the ranks of the Red soldiers like a flame through wax. They devastated them, broke them, and within a half hour it was over.

  Apollo heard the battle cry of Iskender’s army, and when his adversaries turned from their target practice in the ravine to defend themselves, Apollo and his troop mounted and rode out of the cul de sac to lend their support to the battle.

  Iskender and Apollo met at the ruins of the roadblock when it was over. Apollo galloped up and about a dozen feet from Iskender reined in, Leda fairly sitting down on her hocks. He saluted—not the flashy, sharp, military salute, but a calm, courteous gesture, a manner learned from childhood.

  Iskender acknowledged the salute and then embraced his great-grandson. “The gourai dogs had you badly outnumbered.”

  “My thanks, Pushka, for a timely rescue. In saving miles we damn near died. But the horses …” He shrugged then and stopped. It had been a calculated risk; they had almost lost.

  “A marvel you made it this far, As-saqr As-saghir,” Iskender observed, pride shining in his eyes. “The whole of South Russia is up in arms and out to stop you.”

  Apollo smiled then, absolved from what some may have considered foolhardy recklessness. “And you thought you’d even the odds,” he said, his glance taking in the hundreds of massed warriors converging on the roadblock.

  Iskender smiled thinly. “It’s all I could muster on such short notice. The farther reaches of the nation were unable to arrive in time. A sufficient number, however, against such as these,” he observed tranquilly. In the same moderate tone, oblivious to the hundreds of dead soldiers littering the landscape, he continued, “So for home now, and a peaceful future.”

  “For home,” Apollo agreed softly, and the two tall, proudvisaged men, one so old and one so young, yet compatriots in spirit and purpose, left the treachery and perfidy of civilization and turned their horses toward the mountains.

  Iskender asked no probing questions of Apollo. All he cared to know would be available from Karaim or Sahin if he was so inclined. The details didn’t matter to him. In the ninth decade of his life he found that details mattered less and less to him. What mattered more, he had discovered, was a certain serenity concerning the purpose and fulfillment of one’s life. And how one approached that goal—or attained it—mattered infinitely less than the personal satisfaction of achieving it. So if Apollo was satisfied with his choices in life, whether won or lost (and in the case of the White cause, the outcome, of course, had been unsuccessful), Iskender hoped they brought a moderate amount of happiness to the youth who was as dear as life to him.

  He did ask Apollo a question on the following day when they parted at the base of the citadel, as Apollo was about to strike out across the valley for his own home. “Did the general’s death serve its purpose?”

  “It did,” Apollo replied shortly.

  “Are all your doubts put to rest?”

  “Yes,” Apollo said, but Iskender saw the flash of anger flare momentarily in his great-grandson’s pale eyes, and he was sorry he had asked.

  Apollo rode toward his home, home to the woman he loved, but a weary despair overlay the success of the mission. He had thought that when he killed Beriozov it would be over—the wondering, the frustration, the anger and resentment. But Beriozov was dead now, and those last taunting words echoed endlessly in his mind … and the worst of it was that he couldn’t kill him over again.

  All his life Apollo had lived with the reality of kanly, of blood feuds and retribution for wrongs committed. But no one had ever told him that blood vengeance couldn’t rectify the original sin or destroy the memory, or, curse it, stop this abominable litany that rasped at him from the pits of Hades itself. Child is mine … remember that … Katherine’s child … mine. … When it’s born … remember that … remember … remember …

  Kitty, in sea-green tissue silk, came running down the steps when Apollo rode into the courtyard. His heart leaped and all his black temper and misgivings were stilled; the sight of her uncontained joy and magnificent beauty conquered him anew.

  She tugged at his leg, his burkha, even before he could dismount, smiling up at him with tears in her misty green eyes, love shining openly on her fragile face. “I was so worried—” He looked tired. It was clear in his face.

  “I’m fine,” he responded, pulling off his gloves.

  Kitty noticed with a lurch of concern the ragged gashes across both hands. “You’re hurt! Your hands—”

  “It’s nothing, sweetheart. Only scratches.” Apollo swung out of the saddle and she threw herself at him. His arms folded fiercely around her and despair, weariness, dark cynicism were gone. Only the moment mattered. Only holding her close mattered. And having her. The future was theirs. … Kitty was his, only his, and nothing else bore thinking of.

  “I missed you,” Kitty sobbed softly into his chest. “I was afraid … alone.”

  “Duskha, don’t cry,” Apollo soothed gently. “I’m back now. I won’t have to go out again.”

  Kitty looked up at him searchingly. “No more raids?”

  “No more raids.”

  “What about the men?”

  “Karaim can lead the next one. So dry your tears.”

  “Consider it done.” Kitty laughed shakily, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffling softly. Her heart soared with joy. To have Apollo back after almost two weeks of not knowing whether he was alive or dead was like a wish come true, earthly paradise, and the promised land all rolled up into one. He was tall and beautiful, his
hair two shades paler, his skin two shades darker after the past days on horseback.

  “And how is the baby, Mamasha?” Apollo asked, holding her at arm’s length and gazing at the now obvious bulge of her tummy. In his pleasure at seeing Kitty again and knowing she loved him, he could ask the question with a solicitude untinged by rancor. After all, he had promised many weeks ago on a cold and snowy hillside that he would be the father of her child. Now he only required the sincerity to uphold his vow.

  With Kitty soft and warm in his arms, her vivid eyes alight, her lush honeysuckle lips parted in a smile of elation, upholding his vow was no hardship.

  “The baby’s fine and I’m fine and I love you,” she said, smiling happily, “more than your great-grandfather loves his collection of paleolithic bronzes.”

  “A formidable encomium.” Apollo grinned in return. “I only hope now I won’t disappoint such adoration,” he said in a roguishly husky voice.

  Kitty’s hand drifted up the dark silk of his beshmet, ran up his throat, and gently traced the curve of his upper lip. “You never have in the past,” she replied in that particular breathy, teasing tone he always associated with the very happiest of his memories.

  “We try,” he murmured softly, lapsing comfortably into the royal pronoun, one eyelid narrowing in a sinfully delicious wink.

  Prince Apollo Kuzan, bred to luxury as heir to the vast Kuzan fortune, scion to Iskender-Khan’s mountain nation, young, gifted, handsome, felt himself more truly blessed by the single bounteous asset of Kitty’s love than by the abundant wealth of all his other fortune.

  The baby’s paternity no longer signified, liabilities like husbands were effaced, bitter memories of swinish generals disappeared. It was spring in the mountains; he was home after a successful venture. Kitty declared her love in enticingly visual, verbal, and tactile ways, and just as soon as the dirt of the journey was washed away, he’d show her the fullness of his adoration. “I think we’ve given the servants enough to talk about. Shall we go inside? I need food, I need a bath, and I need you—not necessarily in that order.” A broad smile creased his sun-bronzed cheek, and taking Kitty by the hand, he started up the entrance stairs. “I think a bath first—unless, of course,” he teased, his golden eyes alight, “the smell of the stables excites you. There are women with such fetishes. …” His voice trailed off suggestively.