No time to shelter myself.
No time.
SWEAT. OIL. STUFFY air and unwashed bodies all around me. Even with my eyes still glued shut, I knew I was crammed into some claustrophobically small space, a space that buzzed my bones with the throbbing hum of churning diesel engines. I was panicking before I was even fully conscious.
“I thought you were dead,” a voice said dully somewhere beside me.
I peeled my eyelids open. A low ceiling not far above me; a floor spread with cork mattresses and metal partitions, soldiers jammed everywhere they could sit, lie, or curl into fetal positions. Most were bandaged, all seemed to be staring with blank eyes at some unknown distance. Only there was no distance; this room was as windowless and cramped as the inside of a rifle’s barrel. “Where are we?” I rasped, looking around to see a skinny corporal from 54th Regiment whom I’d chatted with in the mess line from time to time. “You’re Misha—Comrade Corporal Sternov, right? Third company? Where—”
“Cruising underwater toward Tsemes Bay in Novorossiysk,” he answered. “L-4—she used to be a minelayer, now she’s a transport submarine. Captain Polyakov took her down at dawn—you’ve been out cold since they loaded you in here on a stretcher.”
I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. Submarine? Dimly, I remembered hearing a rumor that a handful of submarines were coming into Sevastopol’s bay with ammunition, fuel, and provisions, but no one knew anything more. If they’d arrived and unloaded, of course they would depart with as many wounded as they could carry . . .
Kostia. Vartanov. My platoon. I tried to sit up, and a wave of splitting agony cratered my head. I knew what it was: concussion, eardrum damage, shell shock. I heard a whimper that seemed to be coming from me, and reaching up, I found a row of neat stitches along my earlobe.
“Looks like a blast knocked you out and a splinter nearly took your ear off.” Corporal Sternov looked at me a little spitefully. “I’d like to know who you’ve got in your pocket back in the medical battalion, getting on the evacuation list for a splinter wound.”
Lena—was she here? “Do you know Lena Paliy? The best medical orderly in—”
“Dead, so I heard. Mortar fire on a first-aid station.”
No, not Lena, not Lena. “My platoon.” I moistened my cracked lips, trying to sit up despite my throbbing skull. “Sergeant Shevelyov, Corporal Vartanov—”
A shrug.
“Second Company?” Names of friends and comrades in arms fluttered through me like trapped bats.
“Probably all dead.” With shocking suddenness, Sternov’s face screwed up in a sob. “My company was overrun, too. I don’t know if I’m the only one who . . .”
I reached out and took his hand, hardly aware of what I was doing. “I can’t be here,” I whispered. What was I doing here when my partner was back there, my men were back there, Lyonya’s grave was back there? How could I have been magicked onto a stretcher and into a submarine, fleeing my doomed city like an underwater rat? If I’d been conscious when the evacuation order came through, I’d have fought with every bone in my body. I’d have pried myself off the stretcher and crawled back into Sevastopol on my bloodstained hands and knees. “I have to get back.”
“You think they’ll turn the submarine around just for you?” Sternov snarled tearfully. “Even Lady Death doesn’t get that privilege.”
“Don’t call me that!”
He pulled away sullenly, tears still leaking. I turned over, facing the humming metal wall, and felt a sharp corner poke me. I’d been lying on my pack; probably the only reason it hadn’t been stolen. My rifle was gone—that would have been tossed to someone still able to defend Sevastopol. The beautiful Mosin-Nagant Three Line Kostia had turned from a standard-issue rifle to a sniper’s weapon just for my hands . . . but my shaking fingers found the rest of my things. The packet of letters from my family; Slavka’s picture; my battered dissertation; the pear-wood pipe Vartanov had given me. And something else.