Knight Without Armour

They sat down on a leafy slope and shared the chocolate and also a hunk of black bread that he had brought from Tarkarovsk. There was nothing to drink, but he had a water-bottle and they could find a stream as soon as it grew daylight. They ate ravenously and were still hungry when they had finished. Then it was necessary to make plans, tentatively, at any rate, for the future.

A.J. was not disposed to minimise the seriousness of the situation. The story that the runaway guard would doubtless tell was just as credible as theirs—perhaps more so to those he would be addressing. A man supposed to be a Siberian assistant-commissar, supposed also to be escorting to Moscow a dangerous female counter-revolutionary and member of the aristocracy; the doubts that the Ekaterinburg officials had had, and their precautionary escort of two Red guards; the shooting of one of these guards in the middle of a forest—such a story would not seem difficult either to believe or to interpret in a district notorious for its ‘redness.’ And as for the wallet-full of assorted stamps and seals, A.J. began to feel that their presence might be a danger quite as much as a safeguard.

If they could only make their way to another district, across country, say, to the northern railway at Perm, they could there continue their journey to Moscow incognito, as it were. A.J. was fairly sure that his story would be credited at headquarters, especially as the Moscow authorities had had so much trouble themselves with the turbulent Uralian provinces. Anyhow, all that remained in the less immediate future; the more pressing problem was to avoid detection by search-parties who might soon be scouring the forests.

Fortunately for their chances of escape, the surrounding country was full of wanderers, refugees driven from their homes by the press of war or famine, seeking friends or relatives in distant parts of the country, or else tramping vaguely from village to village in default of anything more definite to do. Even in the forest country there were folk of this kind to be met with, and A.J. could not think of any better disguise than for the two of them to appear to be such wanderers. His own attire was reasonably suitable as it stood, but he realised that it would take a certain amount of adjustment to make his prisoner look like anything but a former aristocrat. Her clothes, though old and shabby, were hardly such as a peasant would ever have possessed, and her shoes, even after repeated patchings, were still recognisably foreign. He dared not allow her to be seen until these incongruities were removed, and he explained the matter to her briefly. “We shall have to be particularly careful during the next twenty-four hours,” he insisted. “As soon as it is daylight I will leave you in some arranged spot and try to get clothes for you. If there is a village anywhere within a few miles I ought to be able to manage it.”

After their short rest he climbed the hill while she remained more prudently below. The moon was now fast sinking over a distant ridge, and while he crouched in the long grass trying to get his bearings he saw the first whiff of dawn creeping over the eastern horizon. Soon he could see the forests turning from black to green and the sky from grey to palest blue; then, very slowly, the mist unrolled along the floor of the valley. But there was no sign of any village. It was, he knew, a sparsely populated district, and quite possibly the nearest settlement might be a score or more miles away. If that were so, he and his prisoner must hide in the forest during the day and push on as fast as they could when night fell.

By the time he rejoined her it was quite light, and the clear cloudless sky showed promise of a hot day. He took off his coat and then looked around for a stream from which to fill his water-bottle. Cautiously he descended the slope, skirting the hill in a wide curve, with the first rays of sunlight splitting joyously through the foliage. How lovely the world seemed, but for human beastliness, and how disgusting to wish that the birds were not singing so loudly, because they made it difficult to listen for anyone approaching in the distance. Yet behind a certain quiet rage and perturbation, excitement was on him, and when at last he found a stream, bubbling crystal-clear over pearl- grey rocks, he knelt to it and, dashing the icy water over his face and head, felt what was almost a new sensation—happiness.