Rod Rees - The Demi-Monde - Winter

Baron Dashwood was torn. He was an officer and a gentleman so his first instinct was to do what he was ordered to do by his commanding officer. That his commanding officer was also his daughter made the prospect of ignoring those orders even more difficult. But he was certain that the WFA were being led into a trap and whilst he had a responsibility to Trixie and the WFA he also had a responsibility to the two hundred men under his command.

It was a difficult, an impossible decision, and unfortunately it was one he had to make quickly: there were only fifteen minutes left until the breakout began. He looked around at the men huddled in the warehouse – many of them the Poles he had freed from the work camp. He couldn’t betray these men: he couldn’t allow them to be needlessly killed or captured by the SS.

He loved Trixie but…

The irritating thing was that it was his own arrogance that had brought him to this: if he hadn’t assumed that Heydrich was just a vicious idiot then he would have realised that it was he who was being played for a fool, that it was he who was being played as a patsy. How Heydrich and his cronies must have laughed when he swallowed their charade about the ForthRight attacking the Coven. How they must have howled when they allowed him to escape from Dashwood Manor knowing that he would warn his Royalist friends in the Coven and in this way reinforce Heydrich’s little pantomime. How could he have been so stupid as to have underestimated them? How could he have forgotten how cunning these bastards were? But the game wasn’t over yet. Maybe they had underestimated him.

‘We’re not going to Westgate with the rest of the army,’ he said finally. ‘That’s what the SS want us to do. We’re going to get out through Southgate and then head east to the river and down into the Hub. Assemble the regiment, Captain Crockett. If we’re challenged by the SS we’ll tell them we’re an Anglo regiment being reassigned to the attack on the Quartier Chaud. Tell the men they’re only to fire as a last resort. We’ll escape the Ghetto using guile, not muscle.’

Crockett gave the Baron a salute. ‘Sounds like an excellent idea to me, Major, I always had a strange aversion to fighting to the last man.’

For Trixie the final battle of the Warsaw Uprising was the worst experience of her short military career. It was the one she came closest to losing.

Despite the reinforcements, despite the confusion caused in the SS ranks when her father had smashed his way into the Ghetto, despite the best efforts of her fighters, the breakout soon degenerated into chaos.

As the first of them vaulted the barricades shortly before twelve, Trixie knew that it would be a murderous night. Within seconds the battle had become a fire-racked confusion, and the fighters of the WFA were cut down in swaths as they desperately fought their way through the ruins of the city towards Westgate. The carnage was terrible and Trixie sensed that outnumbered and outgunned, they were doomed.

The weather saved them from complete annihilation. It was the last night of Winter and the season had obviously determined to go out with a flourish. The blizzard that swept through the Ghetto was as bad as any she had ever experienced, so bad that it was impossible to see more than a few yards ahead, to distinguish snow-covered friend from snow-covered foe. These last savage snows of Winter churned with the smoke from burning steamers and smouldering buildings to make the Ghetto a scene from Hel.

But even shrouded by the blizzard, the losses were terrible. After an hour of the bitterest fighting of the whole Uprising, only a battered remnant of the WFA smashed its way to Westgate. And there in the smoke- and snow-drenched darkness, the Poles and the SS grappled with each other in hate-filled fury, their firefight enveloping the gateway.

But in the end the sheer bloody-mindedness of the Poles triumphed and Trixie led her fighters out of the Ghetto.

The fighting provided the perfect cover of chaos and mayhem for Ella, Vanka and Rivets – together, of course, with Ella’s twelve dutiful disciples – to make their escape.

But rather than going towards the river as Ella had expected, Vanka headed for Middlegate. The reason was made clear thirty minutes later, when they were crouched by a barbed-wire fence that surrounded what looked like a flat, treeless playing field.

‘Where are we?’ whispered Ella as she scrolled through PINC.

Vanka was quicker with his answer. ‘Welcome to the John Hanning Speke Balloon-O-Drome, home to the First Aerial Detachment of the ForthRight Observation Corps.’

Ella peered out into the darkness that shrouded the Balloon-O-Drome. There, gently swaying in the breeze, she could just make out the bulbous form of a balloon. The penny dropped. ‘You mean us to fly to ExterSteine?’

Vanka nodded enthusiastically. ‘It’s the only way. Anyway, I’ve always wanted to go up in a balloon. We’re fifteen miles from ExterSteine and it’s only’ – he checked his watch – ‘five hours to dawn and as the wind shifts to the east between midnight and six in the morning it’s a perfect time. By my reckoning ExterSteine is almost due east, so all we’ll do is let the wind carry us in that direction until we see the standing stones and then let out the hydrogen from the balloon and…’

‘Crash?’

‘Sink gracefully to the ground,’ he corrected. ‘Look, Ella, I know it’s a pretty madcap sort of scheme but unless you can think of a better way of us getting to ExterSteine before dawn, this is all that’s on offer.’

‘It’s madness.’

‘You’re not frightened of heights, are you?’

‘It’s not the heights that frighten me, it’s the depths that come rushing up to greet you when you crash that I’ve always found discouraging.’

‘Don’t worry, Ella, flying can’t be that difficult.’

‘You’re not suggesting you’re going to fly it!’

‘Of course,’ answered Vanka casually. ‘Who else? Anyway, it’ll be fun!’

‘Fun? That’s a hydrogen balloon you’re talking about: one bullet and we’ll be toast.’

‘It’s night: no one will see us.’

‘What about the guards? They’re not just gonna let us waltz in and steal one of their balloons.’

‘Most of them will be drunk by now. It’s Spring Eve and everybody gets drunk on Spring Eve. And if there are any guards who aren’t drunk then your Disciples will settle them.’

Before Ella quite knew what was happening Vanka flourished a pair of wire-cutters, cut a hole in the fence and she was running behind him towards the balloon. All the guards protecting the Balloon-O-Drome must have been drunk as no one challenged them, or maybe none of them believed that anyone would be mad enough to steal a balloon. Closer to, the balloon looked enormous but very fragile. The canvas of the cover was stretched over a thin bamboo frame, and the basket that hung beneath was woven from what looked to be wholly inadequate wicker.

‘There isn’t room for more than two or three people in that basket. What are the rest of us going to do?’

‘Don’t worry about them,’ answered Vanka. ‘Rivets will come with us – he’s only little. The rest will be all right. They’re tough guys and they’ll make their way to the Quartier somehow. But I think they’d appreciate it if you said a few words of thanks before we go.’

‘How about a prayer?’ suggested Ella, only partly in jest.

Once out of the Ghetto, it was every man and woman for themselves. It was impossible for Trixie to control or to command the survivors of the WFA. So far as she could judge, the chance of their being able to fight through Odessa and St Petersburg to the Anichkov Bridge was very slim.

But the peculiar thing was that now, when they were at their most vulnerable, the SS threat had receded. There were still fire-fights going on all around the perimeter of the Ghetto, but not with quite the intensity of before. It seemed that – despite her father’s misgivings – their plan to escape through Westgate had worked: there were hardly any regular ForthRight Army soldiers defending the route south through Rodina to the Coven. But there was still a march of almost fifteen miles ahead of them and by the look of her soldiers that would be fifteen miles too far.