“Captain Sergienko has been gravely wounded and dispatched home. Comrade Lieutenant Grigory Fyodorovich Dromin commands the battalion now.” Before I could manage more than an inhalation of shock and grief for my captain, I was meeting his successor. Dromin was new, slim, immaculate, and thirty-five; not one hair on his smooth head did anything but shriek fresh meat.
He flicked through my documents as I saluted. “You wish to become a platoon commander, Comrade Senior Sergeant? Are you really up to it?”
“That’s not for me to decide, Comrade Lieutenant,” I said evenly, “but senior command.”
“Which senior command do you mean? I am your senior commander, and I am opposed to women occupying field positions in the army.”
At least he said it. Plenty of officers thought the same thing but refused to admit it. They just smiled when they saw women arrive in their commands, then refused to make use of them.
“You’re a sniper, apparently.” Dromin tossed my documents back. “Fire away at the Nazis by all means. But commands will be issued by those who are supposed to issue them.”
“Who would that be, Comrade Lieutenant?” I couldn’t resist replying.
“Men, of course. Proper officers.”
He would have dismissed me from his presence right then and there, but a laughing voice came from the rear of the command post where a cluster of officers was working. “Give her a platoon, Dromin. Or do you want to argue with General Petrov?” A man unfolded from a too-small stool, and for a moment I thought it was Alexei and nearly recoiled. A junior lieutenant, tall and fair-haired—but he wasn’t my husband, though he did look familiar. “She already had an unofficial squad,” the lieutenant continued, leaning against my new battalion commander’s table. “Give her more men and call it a proper platoon.”
“Do we really believe this nonsense about one hundred and eighty-seven kills?” Dromin spoke as though I wasn’t there. “If she had even a quarter that many, she’d have an Order of the Red Banner by now.”
“Petrov still gave her a platoon.” Cheerfully. “Fork it over or go argue with him.”
The lieutenant smiled at me, and I realized who he was: the fair-haired man at the banya outside Gildendorf, the one I’d kissed on the cheek. He’d been in civilian clothes, so I’d assumed he was a scout or a guide . . . that was the only reason I’d let myself flirt with him. Now here he was in the damned command post. I felt myself flush, not even bothering to hope that he didn’t remember. His eyes were sparkling. He remembered, all right.
I was only too happy to obey Dromin’s curt dismissal, marching out with eyes fixed on the middle distance. The bickering continued behind me, and I distinctly heard: “。 . . Petrov’s little pet, she’s probably warming his bedroll—” My face flamed as I stamped through the unfamiliar mess of trenches, communication passages, machine-gun emplacements. New front line to defend, new enemies to understand, new terrain to learn, and now a new commanding officer who thought I was a front-line whore. An impression for which I had only myself to blame. Well, if lieutenants wouldn’t traipse around dressed like civilians . . .
The army sappers had constructed good, deep dugouts in the thickly forested hills. Making my way down the winding trail leading me to the lines of 2nd Company, still swallowing my embarrassment down like hot coals, I heard a whoop and found myself suddenly seized in bearlike arms. “Mila! Mila, there you are—！” I saw the broad beaming face of that young ox Fyodor Sedykh as he set me back on my feet. “We thought maybe the Romanians got you after all. I told Kostia—”
I turned from Fyodor and registered my partner’s still, carved face. “Kostia,” I said, and his arms came round me like a band of iron. I hugged him back hard, only pulling back to look him over. He was thinner than when I’d seen him last, and his trigger hand was bandaged. “You’re wounded?” He shrugged, and then Fyodor was drawing us both down by the nearest stove.