Romanov(70)

The locomotive picked up speed and Zash ran parallel to a hitch between train cars with a small landing. Alexei reached for the support pole with his free hand and Zash tossed him onto the landing, stumbling moments after. I ran faster than the train, catching up to them, but my energy wouldn’t last long.

I pulled a pack off my shoulder as I reached the hitch and tossed it to Alexei. Joy pressed against the train car, trying to keep her feet.

“Get on!” Zash shouted from behind me.

I reached for the bar, but my skirt tangled around my knees. I hoisted it up and tried again. My fingers wrapped around the warm metal. Alexei reached for me from his spot by the closed door—a gesture of help with no promise of success. He was too weak.

My other hand managed to find a hold, then hands lifted me from behind—just the momentum I needed to land awkwardly on the bumpy hitch between the two cars. I gained my balance and spun to grab the stretcher from Zash. His arms and legs pumped and his chest heaved. Even so, the train started inching beyond him.

“Climb on!” I cried.

He reached for the bar but couldn’t seem to keep up. I looped my left arm through it and then reached for him with my right, stretched until my ribs screamed. He grabbed my forearm and I pulled. My shoulder strained and threatened to pop from its socket. Zash put on a burst of speed.

A gunshot split the air, mixing with the whistle of the train.

Zash dropped like a stone.

His body tumbled away from the train. Beyond him rode two Bolsheviks on horseback, and four soldiers ran on foot. The rider with the smoking pistol was Yurovsky.





31


I didn’t scream. I didn’t panic. Instead, my mind entered that cool calm that came when everything went wrong. A sharp, almost painful clarity.

Yurovsky shouted something to his Bolshevik companion and pointed up to the train. The soldier took off, toward us. Even from this distance I could tell his eyes were focused ahead—toward the engine. He was going to stop the train.

I yanked the rolled-up stretcher from its place lodged against the door, gripping the long wooden poles with my shaking hands. I leaned back so the rider wouldn’t see me, straining my ears for his hoofbeats over the chugging of the train.

Just as he came into view, I swung the stretcher poles in an arc. They collided with his chin with a loud crack, jarring my entire body. I almost dropped the stretcher as the soldier went tumbling off his horse. A thunk of metal told me he’d had an unfortunate collision with the spinning train gears. I didn’t have time to feel sick to my stomach.

I shoved the stretcher into Alexei’s hands. “Stay here!” Then I leaped like a wild woman from the train to the horse. I landed on my stomach over her saddle and almost vomited from the pain it sent to my ribs. Sorry, Vira. The horse still galloped, but not as ferociously as when she’d been pushed by the soldier’s relentless heels.

I straddled the saddle and turned her around. Yurovsky and Zash were still in view. Things had happened that fast. The saddle held a pistol in a holster near my knee.

I urged the horse back into her frantic gallop, back toward Yurovsky, averting my eyes from the bloodied form of her previous rider. Then I rode. I rode faster than I’d ever ridden—galloping like the cowmen shown in the Western moving pictures that used to come in from America.

Wind yanked Vira’s scarf from my head.

Yurovsky sat mounted beside Zash’s body. Zash pushed himself weakly to his hands and knees in the gravel beside the tracks, surrounded by Bolsheviks. Yurovsky leaned down and grabbed Zash by the hair. His gaze lifted at my advance. I didn’t slow. Instead, I pulled out the saddle pistol and leveled it on the forearm of my hand holding the reins. Yurovsky’s eyes widened.

Let him see how it felt to have the barrel facing his direction. Let his heart thunk with a defeated realization that a bullet was coming for him.

I aimed poorly but still pulled the trigger. The Bolsheviks surrounding Zash scattered. My bullet hit Yurovsky’s horse. Poor beast. It reared. Yurovsky tried to hang on, but the horse was dead before its hooves returned to the earth.

It collapsed backward, pinning Yurovsky beneath its mass.

Zash stumbled to his feet, a patch of blood marking the gravel beneath him. I yanked my horse around him, sending pebbles skittering into the faces of the enemy. I held out my hand. Zash took it and nearly wrenched me off the horse’s back with his effort to mount behind me.

Once situated, I steered the horse into the woods so Yurovsky and his soldiers couldn’t shoot us. We dodged trees and headed after the train, branches whipping my face and thunder in my ears. Finally out of range, we returned to the open and entered a full gallop. We reached the back of the train, passed it, and found the gap between the two cars where Alexei stood, lodged against the exterior with the stretcher poles, holding Zash’s pistol in his hand, ready to fight like a soldier.

But no one was coming after us. No one could come after us. Not with Yurovsky’s horse now dead and me riding the other one.

Zash hauled himself from horse to train hitch and held his hand out for me. I shook my head. “I’ll ride her a bit longer!” I hollered. “We can’t have her returning to Yurovsky.” I reached into my corset and pulled out the pearl Vira had refused to accept. “Bribe the conductor with this.” I also held out a diamond. “And tell him he can have the diamond if he blows through the next station.”