The Army on the Train
For several days I wrestled with the idea of escaping this place. In truth, it was no exaggeration to call it Anastasia’s city, perched on what amounted to the front line—belonging to neither the Whites nor the Reds. Besides, no one could predict how the future would unfold. I had no idea how long I could avoid a bullet through the head. The only combat I had ever seen was brawling with biker gangs just to secure food. My plan had been simple: serve as a rallying point for the White commanders, then slip away once an exit presented itself. Yet somehow, before I knew it, Yekaterinburg had become entirely mine.
Every time I stepped outside, the Russians lit up with joy, convinced I had come to visit them. You cannot spit in the face of a smile. So I forced my own smile and shook hands with my so-called subjects, one by one. It was during one of these tedious public appearances that a soldier delivered an urgent report.
“Your Highness. An unidentified army is approaching.”
“Unidentified?”
“It is the Czechoslovak Legion.”
The Czechoslovak Legion. The force that had rampaged across Russia aboard armored trains, freezing the enemy’s blood and squeezing them until they cracked. Originally formed by Czechs and Slovaks as an independence army during the Great War, they had been driven all the way to Siberia under pressure from German and Austro-Hungarian forces. Their exploits were so formidable that rumors claimed the Bolsheviks had executed the Tsar’s family precisely to prevent the Legion from rescuing them and delivering them to the Whites. Their numbers, I had heard, exceeded fifty thousand.
“The Czechoslovak Legion. Then they will be traveling on armored trains.”
“Yes. Their commander requests an audience with Your Highness.”
Why on earth had they come this way? I possessed nothing resembling a real army—only a few hundred volunteers who amounted to little more than an Anastasia fan club. They must want to negotiate. Even if the Tsar had bungled everything, the last surviving child of the imperial house still carried symbolic weight. I could not guess their exact purpose. Handing me to the Reds? No. If that were the case they would have attacked already. Since they had asked to see me, meeting them was the only reasonable course.
The Czechoslovak Legion consisted of elite veterans—tens of thousands of them. If I played this right, I might even swell our ranks.
“It is an honor to stand before Her Highness Princess Anastasia, the Saint of the All-Russian Empire.”
Radola Gajda, when I finally saw him in person, radiated the crushing presence one would expect from the man who had terrorized the Reds from the back of an armored train. Was he trying to intimidate me right from the first meeting? I kept my expression serene.
“General Radola Gajda.”
“You know my name?”
“Are you not the renowned commander-in-chief of the Czechoslovak Legion, the one who rides the armored train Orel? I understand you have been chilling Bolshevik blood along the Siberian railway.”
Was this the proper tone? It hardly mattered. What mattered was that I could not afford to earn this man’s enmity. At the same time, I could not grovel; a princess still possessed dignity.
“I was told you possessed a very frail constitution. I must confess I was astonished to learn you had survived the Bolsheviks’ grasp.”
“The dead are dead. The living must go on. However, my strength is woefully insufficient to defend this land. I cannot say how much longer I will survive.”
In other words: stop roaming around and help me. I could not voice the request outright; I still did not know where his true loyalties lay.
“Then perhaps it would be wiser to travel farther east—”
“Since you have come here, you must have seen how the people receive me.”
“Ah, yes. I saw. It is clear the Romanov name still carries weight.”
The words were half mockery, half genuine surprise. He had probably never imagined anyone would still rally behind the Romanovs. The discovery must have rattled him. Especially if he felt his own life might be at stake.
“Rasputin’s meddling and my father’s incompetence sparked the Bolshevik Revolution. Many of our subjects turned away. Yet the people of Yekaterinburg still follow me—a girl with no power at all. I cannot abandon them and flee east.”
“I see.”
His face remained impassive. Inside that skull a calculator was no doubt clicking away, tallying possible gains. Time to dangle something he might actually want.
“Shall I guess why you have come all this way, General Gajda?”
“Please do.”
At last a spark of interest lit his eyes.
“You hope to secure me and send me east if possible. Then, by involving yourselves in this civil war, you intend to win aid from America and Japan before escaping to Vladivostok. Am I correct?”
“You see through me at once.”
Of course I did. The Czechoslovak Legion desperately wanted to go home. They would use any lever available. In the original timeline they had secured safe passage by handing over Kolchak.
“It is a sound plan. But Yekaterinburg sits at the hinge between European Russia and the Siberian and Asian territories. Its industry, commerce, and finance are well developed.”
“I am well aware of the city’s importance.”
“Precisely. If we lose this place, the White Army will be crippled.”
Yekaterinburg might lie in Asia, yet it had to remain in our hands. We needed linkage with South Russia. The Whites could not survive on Siberia and the Far East alone.
“Hm. I would like to hear the true intent behind those words.”
“You are probably thinking, ‘What nonsense is this princess spouting? She reads the situation well enough, but that is all. Shall I simply kidnap her and leave?’ Something along those lines.”
“Ahem.”
He really had been thinking that. Depending on how I behaved, he could drag me away at any moment. Even so, if I was going to be taken, I would at least present a convincing performance. The only way forward was to meet the situation head-on.
“Allow me to speak plainly.”
“Please.”
“Go east. Make contact with the Allied Powers. Announce that the Tsar and his family are dead, and that only Princess Anastasia survived.”
“That would have to be announced eventually if we head that way. So you truly mean to remain here.”
Gajda narrowed his eyes, trying to peer into my soul. I continued without flinching, voice flat.
“Tell them the princess, consumed by vengeance, will meet a glorious end fighting the enemy right here in Yekaterinburg.”
“You intend to face the Reds with only a few hundred volunteers?”
Now it was time to lay the groundwork.
“My father and mother—however incompetent—were shot without trial, without mercy. And it happened before my eyes.”
“……”
Not only had my parents and siblings been executed in front of me; they had been doused in oil, burned, and dumped like refuse. No one could emerge from such a scene unscathed.
“My younger brother died screaming. My older sisters were violated, then torn apart by bayonets before being set alight.”
“Good God.”
“With my own eyes, right in front of me, my family was slaughtered like animals. I cannot simply run away and live in comfort with this body.”
The justification was perfect. A princess driven mad by the horrific deaths of her family. A princess who must have revenge. Whether from pity or calculation, anyone who tried to take her now would sense she might choose suicide instead.
“Shouldn’t the living go on living?”
“Even now the sky looks yellow to me. Every night the restless spirits of my family appear, begging me to resolve their grudges. You cannot understand, General. The sight of loved ones burning, their bones scattered and buried like trash. That image never leaves me. Yes… there is one more request.”
“What is it?”
“Military supplies and support would be welcome.”
Gajda frowned, then spoke with a grave expression.
“Give me time to consider.”
Good. The bait had been cast. Whether he took it or not remained to be seen. If he chose to drag me away while growling, Stop your nonsense and follow, the optics would at least be acceptable. Far better than having me skip along eagerly. At minimum I could cement a powerful image. Revenge? For my parents? They were Anastasia’s parents. I possessed her memories, but memories were only memories. I had no personal reason for vengeance. I could allow myself to be hauled off against my will, play the tragic heroine in Europe or America for a while, accept aid from sympathetic relatives, and live comfortably. If events took an unexpected turn, I would simply have to perish here. In that case I would need to commit fully to changing the future. If the old empire was doomed, perhaps a Russian United States would serve instead.
After the meeting with Anastasia, Gajda gathered with his adjutants to discuss their next move. In truth, they had formed no particular plan on the journey here. The original intention had been simple: make an impression, collect the trembling princess who did not know when the Bolsheviks might kill her, and race east. That was all.
Yet the princess they actually met seemed half-mad. Having witnessed her family’s execution and cremation firsthand had clearly unhinged her. A manic smile inappropriate for a girl her age played constantly at the corners of her mouth. She burned with pure revenge.
“In a way we are not so different from the princess—adrift, unable to return home.”
The comparison was not entirely fair, yet under the broad heading of desperate circumstances it held.
“What are we to do? If she is like this, she may well choose suicide rather than let us take her.”
Exactly. Looking at her, it seemed that if she could not have revenge she would prefer death. Moreover there was the strange atmosphere in Yekaterinburg itself. The city was not Bolshevik; it was fanatically devoted to the princess. It went beyond mere pity. It was as if the people had witnessed a genuine miracle. When the officers spoke with self-proclaimed Anastasia worshippers in the streets, they heard tales of the princess surviving Bolshevik bullets and bayonets, and healing the sick with a wave of her hand. The officers had dismissed it as propaganda spread by her inner circle to deify her. Nevertheless, the city had clearly fallen under her control.
It was a stalemate. They had never anticipated Anastasia would respond this way. If anything happened to her after their contact, the Czechoslovak Legion would be blamed. For men already wandering without a homeland, the label of “princess-killers” would be catastrophic.
“Hm. It cannot be helped.”
“Sir?”
“What if we throw our support behind the princess instead?”
“But then when do we return to our homeland?”
The entire reason they had been crisscrossing Russia was to find a way home. That remained the goal.
“Punching through the Bolsheviks who arbitrarily signed a treaty and abandoned the war is not the worst prospect. Cooperating with the princess to a suitable degree—”
“We are not Cossacks. Becoming the Romanovs’ bayonets feels rather beneath us, does it not?”
“Regardless, now that the princess has survived she will inevitably become the focal point for every anti-Bolshevik faction. We would simply be seizing the vanguard and exerting our influence first.”
As long as Anastasia lived, any faction opposing the Bolsheviks would eventually gather beneath the banner of the last legitimate Romanov.
“In that case…”
“Consider it carefully. What if the princess eventually becomes Tsarina of Russia?”
If handled correctly, might this not allow the Czechs to exert control over Russia itself? Helping a woman consumed by vengeance resolve her grudge would surely earn them immense gratitude. She would repay them with liver and gallbladder if asked. Russia was a vast nation, after all. Its current ruinous state stemmed from an incompetent Tsar, but its latent potential could not be ignored. And the Bolsheviks—those wretches who had signed a separate peace with Germany, surrendered huge territories, and fled the war merely to cling to power—were eminently deserving of destruction.
In short, reasons to support Anastasia could be manufactured without much difficulty.
“Still, even if we become her foundation, how far can we realistically go?”
“That is precisely what we must discuss. They will have to accept our demands as well.”
“Our demands being…?”
“A guarantee of Czech independence. Assistance that allows us to maintain influence in our homeland afterward. That alone would be more than we could reasonably hope for.”
“Can we actually defeat the enemy?”
Defeat them we must. Better to say we must win and fight with everything we have than to speak in vague terms of possible victory. Besides, the enemy the Legion had observed was not particularly formidable.
“They are hollow. The Bolsheviks feared war and withdrew from the great conflict. All the competent Russian generals with experience from the imperial era have been pushed aside.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. Well. In hard times, people help one another.”
With Anastasia’s survival, the gears of history had begun to slip from their appointed track.