Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois (38 page)

Cordell took advantage of the pause to say, “But you were originally deserters of the Austro-Hungarian Army…” For a moment it seemed to Cordell that the Colonel stiffened and would have swung at him but then managed to control himself. “…and were on your way to the coast to leave Russia by way of the Pacific.”

The Colonel drew in a chestfull of frigid air and said, “Yes, we were taken prisoners of war at first, but later the Czar allowed us to form our own units. Before we reached the coast, however, the Bolsheviks struck and…complications arose involving our departure.”

“So you stayed and allied yourself with the Whites and the Interventionist forces,” Cordell concluded.

“Ha!” the Colonel bellowed, stooped and clapped him on the back, knocking Cordell off balance. “You Americans can drag information from one like milk from a cow!” With that, he stormed off into the gray, swirling whiteness kicking his sleeping men as he went.

Cordell leaned back against the wall, breathing shallowly, relishing the calm before the intruding sounds of men girding themselves for combat. In another moment he heard the dull shifting of bodies and the clank and creak of metal and leather. A soldier walked by, looking intently down at his rifle as he tried to worry the bolt loose from the frozen shaft. Farther off, he saw another man urinate over his weapon, a thin mist rising from his feet. Cordell stood at last, accompanied by the crack of his joints. He felt for his pistol at his hip and stared into the eddying whiteness beyond the wall, where soon thousands of men would walk warily to the black
taiga
up the river.

As he stared into the white and gray of the Siberian plain, Cordell remembered the day he was called into the editor’s office on the fifth floor of the Maher Building in uptown Manhattan. He had been still riding on the success of his Rupert murder story when Kenneth Streeter at the International Desk called him over. “Cordell,” he had said without bothering to remove the cigarette from his mouth, “how would you like to take a little trip?” It was that easy. Three days later, he found himself on a ship bound for Vladivostok, Russia’s port on the Pacific. Before he had left, he managed to get hold of every paper he could find that carried stories on the Bolshevik Revolution and the war in Siberia and the Ukraine. By the time he arrived in the port of Vladivostok weeks later, he knew as much about the war as anyone back in the States, except maybe for the War Department.

In Vladivostok, he acquired his first taste of Russian winter with the cold wind and thin covering of snow. Before leaving port, he watched American soldiers debark from his ship, and march in perfect cadence to barracks somewhere nearby. His papers told him to wait, as a courier would be sent to take him to the local White Russian commanding officer. It was not long in coming. A young orderly who could not speak English met him and showed him some orders typed up in English, then led him through the frozen town to the commander’s headquarters.

The commander was civil enough, and even shared a glass of cognac with him. Finally, he gave Cordell a railroad pass to Omsk, one of the largest Central Russian cities and headquarters-in-turn of the counter-revolutionary government.

The Trans-Siberian Railroad was the first thing seized by the renegade Czechoslovak units, and it was along it that the Czechs began the anti-Bolshevik crusade. For three days the monotonous Siberian plains rolled by his window, occasionally broken by patches of thick coniferous forests called
taiga
by the natives. As the miles rolled on, the snow that covered the land grew deeper and deeper and fell longer and longer until he rea

He never did get to see Admiral Kolchak, but he did reach as far as the office of General Dovska, the regional commander. The general was very polite, as befitted Czarist nobility, and granted Cordell’s request for a position with the front-line troops. Cordell was surprised to learn, after a long four-day march with reinforcements through freezing weather, mountainous drifts, and the frozen river Tavda, that the unit he was assigned to was not Russian after all, but Czech. At least the Colonel in charge spoke English, which was more than he was beginning to expect.

Upon meeting the mountainous Colonel, Cordell learned that the reinforcements he had marched up with would be used for a major offensive operation to take place in a few days. Not expecting action so soon upon his arrival, Cordell immediately began to question the men with the help of the Colonel, jotting down quick notes.

The snow was falling harder now, creating a gray haze with distance beyond the wall. Cordell passed his hand over the top stones and watched the displaced snow fall on the far side, the small heaps almost invisible on the white on white of the ground.

There was motion all around him and he saw the Czech soldiers, so far from home, shake the snow from their shoulders and begin to negotiate the wall. Scores of other soldiers were swarming up from the rear, black against the white of the land, and followed their comrades to the distant taiga. The thick blanket of snow muffled their movements, and the storm, Cordell hoped, covered their advance. As more and more of the grim men passed him into the grayness, he began to wonder if he had misunderstood the Colonel’s earlier directions to wait for his return before starting out.

Then, from among the advancing troops, the Colonel trudged to Cordell’s side, snow whirling and eddying between the two men. The Colonel squinted in the breeze, lines forming around his eyes like ice cracking, and said through bearded lips, “I am glad you held up. I was forced to stay longer with one of my units because of a disciplinary problem.”

Cordell lowered his muffler and said, “Don’t worry about it, Colonel,” then, “Which way do we go?”

“We follow the river north, keeping west of Gorodov until we reach the
taiga
…” he paused a moment, rubbing his chin, “…about three miles north of the town. Then we ‘dig in’, as you say, in the forest.”

“So we’re not going through the town of Gorodov after all?”

“No, the Russian units to our right moving up the Itirsh will capture it. There will be less confusion since my men do not speak the language.”

Cordell was disappointed. He had hoped to move through the town and talk to some of the local people. Especially with scare stories of a Cheka “red terror” campaign in the Bolshevik-held areas.

“Come, we must hurry to reach the head of my column. It will not do to have my men leaderless in an encounter with the damn Bolsheviks.” With that, the Colonel dragged his bulk over the wall, taking a shower of snow and rocks with him. On the other side, he took his rifle from his shoulder and held it in front of him as if it were a pike. A glance behind him sent Cordell over the wall in a bound. The snow immediately in front of him was hard-packed with the passage of countless men, men who were still streaming over the wall. “Follow as best you can, my friend, for the damn Bolsheviks will not wait for us to begin the battle.”

He said it with such joviality that Cordell wondered whether he wanted to go back to his homeland at all. And the way he kept using the word “damn,” as if he thought it an ordinary American word, a common adjective like “dirty” or “sneaky;” well, it was, sort of. Cordell smiled. Should he tell the Colonel of his error, or let him revel in his belief in his knowledge of American slang? What difference did it make? A man had few enough delusions out here anyway…why spoil it for him?

Men were all around him now, walking forward instinctively crouched, guns at the ready, bayonets tilted down a bit. The footprints he had been following for the past few hours were now knee deep, and the cracks forming in the settling ice of the Tavda River sounded like gunshots in the silence. More than once, Cordell had thrown himself into the driving snow at the sound, only to have the Colonel pick him up by the collar of his parka. He was saved from humiliation by the sight of dozens of other men lifting themselves from various drifts. Everyone was on edge now. According to the Colonel, they had passed the town and were approaching the brooding wood of the
taiga
.

Then the Colonel signaled him to his side, and in a cloud of breath pointed to the horizon. “I don’t see a thing,” said Cordell, lowering his muffler.

“Keep looking; there,” insisted the Colonel, pointing.

Cordell began to speak again, then stopped. There was something there. But in the thickly driving snow all was gray; then he seemed to see a dim outline, a shade darker than the surrounding gray, dim forms that towered over his head.

“Come,” said the Colonel, a friendly hand on his back.

In a few steps, Cordell could make out what the shapes were. Monstrous pines stood huge across the land, stretching into the distance on either side; which was not so far in this storm. Cordell could not believe he had not seen them earlier, since the boughs were already over his head when the Colonel first brought the trees to his attention.

Soon the massive boles were all around, great sweeping branches weighted with snow, sweeping to the ground. The slight breeze was enough to clear the snow away from the base of the trunks, creating hollow bowls that quickly filled with tired men. It was a fairy tale landscape that made the war seem remote and unimportant.

The sounds of the men were more audible now in the closeness of the forest; soldiers lay here and there throughout the wood, it seemed, their weapons trained before them, eyes straining to see deeper into the taiga. Now and then a rifle shot reverberated among the boles, disturbing the snow higher up in the trees. The men were nervous and Cordell understood why: the forest had a life of its own. Not a sentient sort of life, but a feeling, a mood. A will of its own. Cordell shook the feeling physically and heard the Colonel’s voice bellow hollowly, giving orders to his men. Then he approached Cordell and said, “This is as far as we go. Come, we will sit beneath this pine.” It was the largest tree in sight; somehow it seemed fitting for the Colonel.

“Is this as far as we go?” reiterated Cordell as he followed the Colonel.

“For now, my friend; break off some of these rotten branches.” He gave one a yank and, though it snapped with little resistance, it proved not to be rotted.

“I thought we were supposed to see some action during this advance.” Cordell dropped the sticks he had collected near the base of the tree.

“We were, but the Bolsheviks must have discovered our plans and pulled back. It has happened before. Maybe the Russian unit on our flank ran into something in the town.” The Colonel kneeled to arrange the branches. Cordell sat against the curve of the trunk and pulled his blanket from his roll. The Colonel hunched closer to the faggots and started a fire. “Let us find out about the town, eh?”

With that he lurched to his feet, cupped his hands to his mouth and called off into the distance. Cordell recognized the guttural sounds of Russian as they poured from the Colonel’s throat, then a flurry of answering calls from deep in the forest to his right, behind the tree. At first a few voices answered in chaotic unity, but then only a single one remained. Cordell recognized it the Russian language and, with the comparison, was able to pick up the Colonel’s Czech accent. Then he realized that the disembodied voice was quite animated and repeated often a certain word. Cordell fumbled in his inner pocket for his pencil and pad and listened for the word again. There it was… Ithaqua. The word seemed to be picked up farther back by the other Russians. The Colonel stopped abruptly and lowered his hands. He settled around the fire and said, “That unit passed through the town; they said there was no resistance. But there were some strange findings.”

“Like what?” Cordell leaned forward eagerly.

“Footprints all over the place and no bodies,” said the Colonel almost matter-of-factly. “It sounds like Cheka doings to me.”

“What was that word they kept repeating?”

The Colonel turned away his face. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? Not the way they were saying it. What word was it?”

The Colonel’s eyes, blazed under his massive eyebrows, his mouth a thin line in his beard, but Cordell was not noticing.

“Ithaqua.”

The two men’s eyes met. For a moment, Cordell thought he saw something there. “Just a Cheka unit, but that is enough.”

“I’d like to see the town. Will you take me?”

“I must remain here; an attack may come any time.”

“Then I’ll go alone. Where is it?”

“Are you Americans all so stupid? You would never find it alone in this country.”

“I’ll ask directions along the way.”

The Colonel laughed then. “Ha! You are a stubborn one, my friend. Almost as stubborn as a wife I once…well, never mind, we will leave in the morning.”

The fire crackled.