Knight Without Armour

The change was made, and on the seventh day, very early in the morning, they left the forests. The sky was fine, but clouds were already massing on the horizon for a thunderstorm that would doubtless Tiring to an end the long spell of fine weather. It was still hard to make more than the sketchiest plan of campaign. Amidst those lonely Ural foothills there had been an atmosphere of being out of the world, removed from many of its bewilderments and troubled by nothing more complicated than the elemental problem of the hunted eluding the hunter. In the plains, however, all problems were subtler and more intricate—as intricate, at least, as the political and military situation of the country generally. At Saratursk, before the escape, A.J. had tried to visualise what was happening as a whole, and not merely locally, but it had been difficult owing to the wildness of the rumours that gained credence. Every morning there had come a fresh crop of them—that the German Kaiser had committed suicide, that Lenin had been shot in Moscow by a young girl, that a British army was invading from Archangel, that the Japanese were approaching from the east along the line of the Trans-Siberian; there had been no lack of such sensational news, much of which was always more likely to be false than true. It seemed, however, fairly probable that Czecho-Slovak detachments were by this time in full occupation of great lengths of the Trans- Siberian, and it was also possible (as rumour alleged) that they had pushed up the Volga and captured Sembirsk and Kazan. The repulse of the Whites from Saratursk would appear, in that case, to have been a merely isolated and local affair—as local, in fact, as the Red Terror that had followed it. But then, all Russia was seething with such local affairs, and the history of the whole country could scarcely be more than the sum-total of them. A village here might be Red, or there White, and a stranger could hardly tell which until he took the risk of entering it. The Czechs, despite their imposing position on the map, held merely the thin line of the railway; a few versts on either side of the track their sway ended, and the brigandage of Red and White soldiery went on without interruption.

So much A.J. had in mind, though there was little he knew for certain. If there had been any fixed battle-line between Red and White, it would have been a straightforward task, despite the danger of it, to make for the nearest point of that line and cross over. As it was, however, there could be no advantage in joining up with some small and local White colony which, in a few days or weeks, might surrender to the Reds and be massacred.

The two of them talked the matter over during that early morning descent to the plains, and she said at length, putting it far more concisely than he would care to have done: “The whole question is really—am I to escape alone, or are you to come with me? You are to come with me, of course, and that means we must go right away—out of the whole area of these local wars.” Then she looked at him and laughed rather queerly. “Oh, it all comes to this, I suppose, that what I want more than anything in the world is to be with you. Can’t You believe me? In a way I’m enjoying every minute of all this—it’s an adventure I don’t want ever to end; but if it must end, then let anything end it rather than separation. Promise that wherever we go and whatever happens to us, it will be together!”

“That is all I hoped you would say,” he answered. “We will make south for the railway, then, and take a train, if there are trains, towards Kazan. And there, if the situation remains the same, we can join the Czechs.”

The hill country ended with disconcerting abruptness; by noon they were crossing land so level that it looked like a sea, with the horizon of hills as a coastline in the rearward distance. It was dizzily hot; the threatened storm had passed over with a few abortive thunderclaps. The earth was caked and splitting after weeks without rain; dust filled eyes and nostrils at the slightest breath of wind; the crops were withering in the unharvested fields.

As distance increased between themselves and the mountains, they found tracks widening into roads, and roads becoming more frequented. Every side- track yielded its stragglers, most of whom were peasants carrying all their worldly goods on their backs. Where they had come from and where they were bound for were problems that were no more soluble after, as often happened, they had unburdened their secrets to the passing stranger. But many were too ill and dejected even to give the usual greeting as they passed, and some showed all the outward signs of prolonged hardships and semi-starvation.