The Lion and the Baron

by Simon Brading

  ‘Oh... Good.’ He barely managed to squeeze out the words; even though the pain had receded with the application of the patch, his body was still shaking uncontrollably. ‘Pills. In the tin. Willow bark. Two. P-p-please.’

  The patches were only for local pain, for injuries and such, they did nothing for the rest of the body. For that, the med kit contained concentrated willow bark pills. They suppressed mild symptoms, like lowering a fever, helping a pilot stay healthy enough to continue avoiding capture, but they weren’t particularly strong and did nothing to actually cure whatever was wrong. They were better than nothing, though.

  After she had gotten him back into his clothing, Tanya fed him two pills, then held his water bottle for him when his hand shook too much to do so himself.

  ‘Thank you.’ Drake closed his eyes and waited for the pills to take effect. ‘Is it dark yet?’

  ‘The sun went down about half an hour ago, but it’s still too early to get going.’

  ‘Good; I think I’m going to need a while before I can walk.’

  ‘Yes. You will.’ The light went out and she settled back beside him under the parka, but didn’t snuggle up to him.

  They lay in silence for a while, as Drake’s shaking subsided to an occasional shiver, the only noise the soft rustling of the needle-like leaves of the tree above them, but then Tanya’s voice sounded in his ear. ‘You were having a bad dream. You were calling out the name “Gwen”... Is that Gwen Stone? The Misfit? Are you her lover?’

  ‘No, I’m really not. We grew up together and we’re just friends.’

  ‘But you wish she was more.’

  ‘Of co...’ Drake began to answer, but then stopped; for some reason he found that he no longer possessed the same certainty of only a few hours before. Perhaps it was the fever or perhaps his brush with death, but something had changed and he could no longer say that his desire for Gwen wasn’t just what was left of his youthful infatuation. Even the gleam in her eye when she had said those fateful words to him no longer seemed the promise of a future, but rather regret at the necessity of a difficult conversation.

  ‘I... um, well, I’m not sure actually. I love her as the sister I never had, but...’ He tailed off in embarrassment; his persistent pursuit of Gwen and his subsequent proposal now seemed childish and not a little selfish.

  ‘I understand.’

  Tanya’s voice was soft as she moved close again, her warmth seeping into him once more.

  ‘It kills me that I won’t know if anything happens to her over the next few days, though.’ The vision of Gwen’s broken corpse being carried away by Gruber sprang into his mind again and he gritted his teeth against the helplessness he’d felt, the helplessness he now felt. ‘I know she can take care of herself; she’s a Misfit, but with the Barons here and Baryshnikov acting so recklessly all bets are off.’

  ‘She’ll be fine. I’m sure of it. The Barons have gone up against the Misfits before and come off worse each time, I don’t think this time will be any different. Do you?’

  ‘No, I guess not.’ Drake wasn’t so callous as to tell her the truth, that every other time the Misfits had faced the Barons they’d had the entire RAC to keep the rest of the Fliegertruppe from them, not just a single Muscovite squadron with largely inexperienced pilots and an unreliable commander.

  ‘So. If you are not Gwen Stone’s man, whose are you?’

  Drake chuckled at the Muscovite’s turn of phrase. ‘Apart from the King’s, nobody’s.’

  ‘There is nobody waiting for you at home?’

  ‘I have a couple of dogs.’

  Tanya scowled, wrinkling her nose. ‘You have dogs... Urgh, how did I know that you would?’ She tutted and her hair brushed his neck as she shook her head. ‘Such a man thing, cats are much better. And you know very well that I didn’t mean that!’ She slapped him none too gently on the thigh, dangerously close to his posterior. ‘You have a girl waiting for you? Or a boy?’

  He shook his head, laughing softly. ‘No. Nobody’

  ‘What about siblings?’

  ‘None. I’m an only child.’

  ‘I guess your parents will miss you.’

  ‘I guess. You can never be too sure with my parents, though; I often got the feeling when I was growing up that they hadn’t really wanted me, that I was just there to carry on the family name.’

  ‘I don’t know your parents, but I’m sure that’s not true.’

  Drake shrugged. ‘Unfortunately, I think it’s true of many of the children of the aristocracy in Britain; we have nannies and tutors taking care of us while we’re growing up and then, as soon as we’re old enough, we’re packed off to boarding school. As a child I only really saw my parents for meals and even then I usually had half a dozen people or more between me and them.’

  ‘You poor thing!’

  There was silence for a moment, then Drake felt the parka being pulled up over his head. The sudden glow of the clockwork light made him blink and when he could see again, he found Tanya lying in front of him, a short stick holding the parka up over their heads like a tent. He hadn’t felt her move.

  ‘You said aristocracy? Does that mean you are a prince or something?’

  ‘Not quite, just the son of an Earl.’

  ‘Oh, is that all? So you are, what, Earl Rudy? Do I have to call you that now?’

  Drake snorted. ‘No! Until my father dies and I inherit his title I’m just Lord Rudyard Sebastian Augustus Cholmondeley Drake, Lord Drake for short.’

  ‘Lord Rudyard Sebastian...’ Tanya tailed off. ‘I’m not sure I could remember all that even if I tried. I’ll stick to Rudy, if you don’t mind, my Lord.’

  She gave him a mocking smile, bowing her head and Drake laughed again. ‘I’d much prefer that, thank you.’

  Tanya’s smile faded and she turned serious. She grabbed the light and held it between them to illuminate him better and looked him up and down critically. ‘How are you feeling?’

  Drake realised that his arm no longer hurt and his trembling had completely stopped. He smiled. ‘Much better, thank you.’

  ‘Good, then I won’t need to leave you behind.’ She grinned, then took a bar of rations out of his bag and handed it to him. ‘We’ll go soon. Have some breakfast; you’ll need your strength.’

  An hour later, Tanya decided that the Prussians had had long enough to settle in for the night and start drinking and they set off into the freezing night, Drake following in the Muscovite’s footsteps as she forged a path through the knee-deep snow. At first they went west, almost directly away from Muscovy, to get away from the highest concentration of Prussian forces, but then, after about five hours they turned south.

  Drake was barely aware when they changed course. The most recent patch had begun to wear off after a couple of hours and the pain came back with a vengeance, along with the shivering. Tanya suggested using the last one, but he refused, wanting to keep it in case of a real emergency and instead just took a couple more pills. They weren’t nearly enough, though, and he slipped into a kind of trance state where Tanya had to lead him by the hand and it was all he could do to stay on his feet and put one in front of the other. When they finally stopped, just before dawn, he was unconscious before his head hit the floor.

  Two more nights passed like that. He had no idea how far they travelled; his memories were a nightmare of pain, while at the same time filled with a monotony that was broken only when Tanya dragged him into any available cover to avoid something he was too delirious to see. He had a vague impression of coming to a road cut through the forest and hunkering down in the trees to wait for a convoy of vehicles to go past, the vibrations in the ground almost indistinguishable from the tremors running through his body. He seemed to remember Tanya goggling at a pair of gigantic walkers in the long line of machines and excitedly commenting on them, but they made no impression on him and did nothing to bring him out of his stupor. He was also fairly sure they had crossed a river at some point, over a frozen narrows, w
ith the ice creaking ominously at their weight.

  Thankfully, though, when he collapsed every morning in whatever shelter Tanya could find them, the dream of Gwen’s death didn’t return.

  While they were resting during the daylight hours of the fourth day, his fever finally broke and he opened his eyes to weak sunlight.

  They were in a crude hut, which had seen far better days and obviously hadn’t been used in quite some time. Cold light streamed in through numerous gaps in the walls, along with icy air, but it was better than being out in the open and the rotted floorboards provided good insulation from the frozen ground.

  There was a familiar warmth against his back and he turned to find Tanya watching him. There were black circles under her eyes and he realised that, not only did she have the strain of shepherding him during the night marches, but she had probably not slept much during the days; this deep into enemy territory they needed to if not keep watch then remain alert while they rested, something she would have had to do for both of them while he’d been ill.

  He smiled gratefully. ‘You didn’t leave me behind, then.’

  ‘I was sorely tempted. More than once. But then I thought of how much of a reward your parents will give me for bringing you home to them.’

  Drake chuckled. ‘You’ve earned it. Thank you.’

  She returned his smile. ‘You’re welcome, Rudy.’

  From then on they moved a lot quicker and when they found a place to rest after two more nights of trudging through the unchanging Finnish forest Tanya announced that they were far enough south to risk crossing into Muscovy.

  They started east from their latest shelter, a duck hunting blind on the shores of one of the dozens of iced over lakes, first thing in the morning. Drake had no idea how she knew where they were on her map, but she insisted that they were only half a dozen miles or so from the border which, that far south, no longer ran along a river, but through the wilderness. It was a walk of perhaps an hour or two, depending on the terrain, but it took much longer than that because Tanya brought them to a halt every few hundred yards and insisted that he wait while she scouted ahead.

  The pauses took their toll on him, far more than the march itself, both mentally because he never knew whether Tanya would run into danger, but also physically because he ended up frozen stiff with the inactivity. The thought of how close he was to returning home kept him going, though; the weather had held out during the last few days and was still good for flying, meaning that the British expedition would almost definitely still be in Vaenga.

  It was very slow going, but finally, in the small hours of the morning, when she reappeared there was a broad grin on her face instead of the serious look she usually had while they were moving.

  ‘I’ve got something to show you, Rudy.’

  Drake roused himself from under the fallen tree where he had taken cover and let her pull him to his feet, then staggered after her as best he could on stiff legs. It was pitch black and he was absolutely exhausted, so he didn’t initially react when she stopped and it wasn’t until she grabbed the collar of his greatcoat to give him a sharp tug that he stumbled to a halt.

  ‘Come on, wakey wakey, Rudy! We’re here!’

  An extremely faint light blossomed in front of Drake, illuminating not only Tanya’s face, but also a battered wooden signpost, sticking out of the frozen ground. He barely had time to register the fact that there was writing in Cyrillic burned into it before Tanya turned the light off again, but that brief glimpse was enough to send a surge of adrenaline through him which brought him full awake; they were in Muscovy, they were safe.

  Chapter 5

  Drake was almost knocked off his feet when Tanya threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around him and hugging him tightly.

  ‘We’re home, Rudy.’

  There was a wetness on his cheek and he blinked in surprise when he realised that she was crying.

  Hesitantly, he wrapped his good arm around her and held her back.

  She pulled away after only a few seconds and her hand fumbled with his. ‘Come on, there’s an outpost a couple of miles away. We can be there by dawn and whoever’s there will be able to call for some kind of vehicle to come pick us up. Maybe they’ll even send a transport aircraft! We could be in Vaenga in time for lunch!’

  The excitement in her voice was contagious and Drake couldn’t help but laugh as she pulled him into motion, his tiredness and the cold completely forgotten in the face of the possibility of getting back to the airbase before the British expedition left.

  The sky was lightening by the time Tanya dragged Drake into a crouch within a copse of trees.

  ‘There it is.’

  ‘Where?’ Drake looked to where she was pointing, but couldn’t see anything through the morning mist.

  ‘Fifty yards ahead. Between the two big firs.’

  Drake squinted, scanning the area. ‘All I can see are a few bushes and a mound of earth...’

  Tanya rolled her eyes. ‘It is the mound, dummy! Under that is a reinforced concrete bunker with a dedicated telegraph line connected to a central exchange in St. Petersburg and mounted machine guns covering all approaches. There are thousands of bunkers, just like this one, every few miles along our entire western border. During peacetime they’re only manned by local volunteers who are provided with food and a stipend, but since we entered the war they each have at least four soldiers assigned to them, but the ones closer to the combat areas have entire companies.’

  ‘So there should be soldiers in there.’

  ‘Yes. And at least one of them should be awake and looking out for the enemy, which is why we’ve stopped here.’ She grinned. ‘I don’t want to be shot by my own side after all we’ve gone through.’

  ‘That would be a little bit annoying.’ Drake chuckled, nodding earnestly. ‘So, how do we avoid that?’

  ‘Like this.’ Tanya lit the clockwork lantern, holding it against her chest so that it could only be seen from in front of her. She moved it up and down deliberately three times, then extinguished it again.

  ‘Now what?’

  The words were hardly out of his mouth before an answering light came on in the mound, almost invisible in the morning haze. It moved from side to side three times, then winked out.

  Tanya smirked at him. ‘Now that.’

  She grabbed his hand and together they jogged across the open ground, giving Drake his first good look at the bunker.

  The mound of earth atop the military installation was about five feet high and five yards wide atop a slight rise. It was planted with bushes to better camouflage it, although they had obviously been kept fairly trimmed so as not to obstruct the view slit, which went all the way around the bunker just above ground level, giving it a commanding view of the surrounding area.

  Tanya took them to the far side where there was a ramp down into the ground concealed beneath more bushes and Drake followed her down. It was steep and damp, open as it was to the elements, but a metal grid on the floor kept it from being dangerously slippery. A heavy-looking door was standing invitingly open for them at the base of the ramp and a man, bundled up in a Muscovite parka with his hood pulled low against the cold, was waiting for them in the doorway. As they got nearer, Tanya began babbling to him in Russian and the man smiled, nodding, and gestured for them to go inside.

  The bunker was far larger than Drake had been expecting. It was an open space, about three yards high, empty, apart from a narrow walkway going around the wall, which provided a platform from which to look out of the observation slit, and a circular hole in the floor, through which was coming a soft glow, illuminating an ornate brass spiral staircase.

  He wandered over to the staircase and ran his hand over the intricate handrail, tracing the ubiquitous cogs, interwoven with military devices such as projectiles, swords and guns to form a tubular lacework. It traced a circle around the hole, serving as a safety rail, before spiralling elegantly down around thin wrought iron stairs composed of extre
mely realistic overlapping leaves. As he bent to take in the details more closely, he wondered why such an artwork had been created for such a remote place and whether there was one in all of the bunkers Tanya had mentioned.

  He was so fascinated by the staircase that he hadn’t noticed the blood on the back of the parka of the man who’d let them in, nor did he see the two other men, dressed in snow gear that was definitely not Muscovite, who appeared from the deep shadows on either side of the door.

  Tanya did, though, and she spun in place, her knives appearing in her hands as if from nowhere. However, before she could do more than lunge in the direction of one of the men, the first man struck her in the head with his rifle butt and she collapsed to the floor like a sack of spuds.

  ‘Tanya!’

  Drake heard the commotion behind him and spun. He began to leap to the woman’s defence, but the rifles of all three men swung towards him and he immediately thought better of it.

  The man who’d opened the door for the looked Drake up and down. ‘You are British are you not? A Misfit?’ The man’s English was precise with only a hint of an accent, betraying at least a few years of education in England. He was most likely an officer.

  Drake drew himself up. ‘Aviator Lieutenant Drake, Royal Aviator Corps. Serial number...’

  The officer waved for him to stop. ‘I don’t recognise your name so you are not a Misfit.’ He said something to his companions in a language that Drake didn’t recognise and they lowered their rifles then bent to pick up Tanya’s knives from the floor where they had fallen before searching her.

  The officer watched them for a moment, then turned back to Drake. ‘Will you be a gentleman and hand over your weapons, swearing to me that they are all you have, or do I have to order my men to search you?’

  Drake nodded. ‘I will surrender my weapons.’

  ‘Good choice.’

  Drake fished around in his knapsack, brought out the penknife and handed it over with a grin.