The Steel Tsar (13 page)

The wireless began to buzz. Our operator lifted his instrument. “It is the flagship, sir,” he told the captain. The captain came to the equipment and began to listen. He nodded once or twice and then gave fresh orders to the helmsman. He seemed almost cheerful. “Gentlemen,” he said, “the Cossacks are already charging. Our job will now be to try to break them up.”

The task was hardly congenial, but anything had begun to seem better than bombing a camp. At least it would be a moving target.

I
very much doubt, Moorcock, that you will ever know the experience of confronting a Cossack battle-charge, or, indeed, that you will ever witness it from the control deck of a sophisticated aerial cruiser!

Led by Admiral Krassnov’s flagship, we raced lower and lower to the ground, to give specific accuracy to our aerial torpedoes. As we approached we were barely fifty feet up and ahead of us was a mountain of black dust in which were silhouetted the massed forms of men and horses. This, at least, felt more like a fair fight.

Standing on the bridge, peering forward, Captain Korzeniowski issued the command:

“Let go Volley Number One.”

Levers were depressed and, from their tubes in the bow of the gondola, aerial torpedoes buzzed towards the yelling Cossack Host. The torpedoes made a high-pitched noise as the air was sliced by their stubby wings and then a deep-throated
boom
sounded as they entered the Cossack ranks. Yet for all they were inevitably deadly the torpedoes hardly seemed to make a scrap of difference to the momentum of the charge.

Next, as the riders passed below us, we released our bombs, lifting to about a hundred and fifty feet as we did so and then dipping down again to fire off another volley of torpedoes. The ship creaked to the helmsman’s rapid turning and returning of the wheel, to the height coxswain’s sure hand on his valve-controls. I’ve never flown in a tighter ship and as we did our bloody work I prayed for the chance of a real engagement with ships of equal manoeuvrability.

The Cossacks split ranks as we came down on them again and at first it seemed they were in panic. Then I realized they were tactical breaks to move out of our direct line of fire. They showed enormously disciplined horsemanship. Now I understood what Pilniak had been talking about. And, admiring such courage and skill, I felt even less pleased with myself for what I was involved in.

On a wireless order from the flagship we released the last of our bombs and went rapidly aloft. Now we could see the results of our attack. Dead and dying men and horses were strewn everywhere. The ground was pitted with craters, scattered with red flesh and broken bones. It was sickening.

Pilniak had tears in his eyes. “I blame that
staretz
for this— the mad priest Djugashvili. He’s not a socialist. He’s a lunatic nihilist, throwing away those poor lads’ lives!”

It’s common enough to transfer one’s own guilt onto an easy villain, but I was bound to agree with him about the so-called Steel Tsar.

Not for the first time, however, I wished that the airship had never been conceived. Its capacity for destruction was horrifying.

On the bridge Captain Korzeniowski was pale and silent. He gave his orders in quiet, tense Russian. Whenever my eyes met those of one of my fellow airshipmen it seemed we shared the same thoughts. This could be the beginning of Civil War. There is no kind more distressing, no kind which so rapidly describes the pointlessness of human killing human. I have been fated, for a reason I cannot comprehend or for no reason at all, to witness the worst examples of insane warfare (and all warfare, it seems to me now, is that) and having to listen to the most ridiculous explanations as to its “necessity” from otherwise perfectly rational people, I have long since become weary, Moorcock, of the debate. If I appear to you to be in a more reconciled mood than when your grandfather first met me it is because I have learned that no individual is responsible for War—that we are all, at the same time, individually responsible for the ills of the human condition. In learning this (and I am about to tell you how I learned it) I also learned a certain tolerance for myself and for others which I had never previously possessed.

* * *

W
e had not managed to halt the Cossack charge, even though we had weakened it. As we returned to the airpark I saw the second stage of our strategy. On the outskirts of the city the larger troop-carriers were releasing their “cargo”.

Each soldier fell from the great gondolas on his own thin wings.

In rough formation, the airborne infantry began to glide towards the earth, guiding themselves on pairs of silken sails to the ground where they reformed, folded their wings into their packs and marched towards the trenches already prepared for them. Next, on large parachutes, artillery pieces were landed and moved efficiently to their positions. As the Cossack Host approached the suburbs, it was met by a sudden burst of fire. I heard rifles and machine-guns, the boom of howitzers and field-guns.

Pilniak said to me: “I wish I was down there with them.”

I merely wished that I was nowhere near Yekaterinaslav. “Does the Steel Tsar lead his own charges?” I asked. Perhaps I was hoping that the man had at least died for his folly.

“They say he does.” Pilniak grimaced. “But who can be sure? He’s quite an old man, I gather.”

“I wonder how a Georgian priest became a Cossack ataman,” I said. “Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

“He’s been in this part of the world for years. A Cossack is a
kind
of person, not a member of a race, as such. They elect their leaders, as I told you. He must have courage and he must have a powerful personality. Also, I suspect, he has the knack of appealing to people’s pride. The Central Government has humiliated the Cossacks, who know that if they had not supported the Revolution, it would have collapsed. The Revolution started where our old uprisings always used to start, here in the South, on the ‘borderlands’ (that is what U-kraine means). It could have degenerated into pogroms and civil slaughter, but the Cossacks had been mistreated by the Tsar, used badly in the War against Japan, so they sided with the socialists and helped establish the first effective parliament, our Duma, which in turn caused Tsar Nicholas to abdicate. It was Cossacks who seated Kerensky in the Presidential Chair. It was Cossacks who put his picture in place of the Tsar’s.”

“You and your ikons—” I began, but Pilniak was in full, impassioned stride.

“Naturally the Cossacks feel humiliated by Kerensky. They gave him the power in return for their own autonomy. They see him as betraying them, as attacking their freedoms. On that day in October 1905 when he stood before the Duma and the representatives of all the Cossack Hosts, he spoke of ‘eternal liberty’ for the Cossacks. Now he appears to be making exactly the same mistakes Tsar Nicholas made—and is paying the price.”

“You seem confused in your loyalties,” I said.

“I’m loyal to our socialist ideals. Kerensky is old. Perhaps he takes poor advice, I don’t know.”

I looked back at the carnage, astonished that those wild, atavistic horsemen could have so much influence on the course of modern history. If it was true that they had only demanded their own freedom, rather than political power as such, then it was not surprising that they felt betrayed by those they had supported. There were many people who had shared their experience throughout history.

“Djugashvili promises them their old liberties back,” said Pilniak bitterly, “and the only freedom he actually brings is the freedom of death. He’s still a peasant priest at heart. Russia is cursed by them. They have something which the Russian people find hard to resist.”

“Hope?” I said dryly.

“Once, yes. But now? Our country has almost universal literacy, a free medical service which is the envy of the world, our living standards are higher than most. We are prosperous. Why should they need a
staretz
?”

“They expected Heaven. You said so yourself. Your socialist Duma appears to have provided them only with Earth—a familiar reality, however improved.”

Pilniak nodded. “We Slavs have always hoped for more. But until Kerensky we achieved far less. What could the Steel Tsar do for us?”

“Remove personal responsibility,” I said.

Pilniak laughed. “We have never been fond of that. You Anglo-Saxons have the lion’s share, eh?”

I failed to take his point. Seeing this, Pilniak added kindly: “We are still ruled, in some ways, by our Church. We are a people more cursed by religion and its manifestations and assumptions than any other. The Steel Tsar, with his messianic socialism, offers us religion again, perhaps. You English have never had quite the same need for God. We have known despair and conquest too often to ignore Him altogether.” He shrugged. “Old habits, Mr. Bastable. Religion is the panacea for defeat. We have a great tendency to rationalize our despair in mystical and utopian terms.”

I began to understand him. “And your Cossacks are prepared to kill to achieve that dream, rather than accept Kerensky’s philosophy of compromise?”

“They are, to be fair, also prepared to die for the dream,” he said. “They are children. They are Old Believers, in that sense. Not long ago, all Russians were children. If Djugashvili has his way, they’ll become children again. Kerensky’s mistake has always been that he has refused to become a patriarch—or, as you said, an ikon.” He smiled. “Though he’s come close in his time. Petersburg socialism seems cold to the likes of our Cossacks, who would rather worship personalities than embrace ideas.”

I shared his irony. “You make them sound like Americans.”

“We all have it in us, Mr. Bastable, particularly in times of stress.”

The cruisers were nearing the masts now and making ready to anchor. Captain Korzeniowski reminded us of our duties and we returned to our posts on the bridge.

We were never to dock.

As the sun began to sink over the steppe, filling the landscape with that soft Russian twilight, Pilniak pointed with alarm to the east.

“Ships, sir!” he shouted to the captain. “About ten of them!”

They were moving in rapidly—medium-sized warships, black from crown to gondola, without insignia or markings of any kind, and as they flew they fired.

We had only our light guns and no bombs or torpedoes left. Before attacking us, these ships had evidently waited until we had spent our main fire-power.

One of the other cruisers received a terrific bombardment, so heavy that it was knocked sideways in the air the moment before its mooring cables linked with the mast. It made an attempt to come up, nose-first, but explosive shells struck hull and gondola with enormous force. One or two of its guns went off and were answered by an even fiercer barrage. They must have hit fuel supplies, for fire burst out in the starboard stern of her gondola. She was holed, too, and jerking like a harpooned whale as she dropped towards the buildings of the airpark, fell against a mast, scraped down it and collapsed uselessly on the ground. Ground crew ran rapidly towards her, preparing to fight the fire and save her complement if they could.

Hastily Captain Korzeniowski ordered our gunners to their various positions about the gondola.

“Whose ships are they?” I shouted to Pilniak.

He shook his head. “I don’t know, but they’re evidently not Japanese. They’re fighting for the Cossacks.”

Captain Korzeniowski was at the wireless equipment, conferring with Krassnov’s flagship which, we could see, was receiving a heavy bombardment. The black ships appeared to single out one of our vessels at a time. He spoke rapidly in Russian.
“Da
—
da
—
yapanimayu...
” Then: “Two thousand feet, height coxswain. Full speed, minimum margin.” This meant we were going to have to hang on to our heads and stomachs as the ship began to shoot upwards.

We clung to the handrails. As we climbed we also turned to bring our larger recoilless thirty-pounders to bear on the black ships below. It was a beautiful piece of airmanship and it was rewarded almost immediately as we scored two good hits on one of the leading enemy craft. Though my head was swimming, I was elated. This was what I had joined the Service for!

Two enemy ships split away from the fleet and began to come up towards us, but without the speed, the efficiency or the sheer skill of the
Vassarion Belinsky
. We had little else, at that point, but our superior airmanship, for we were outgunned and outnumbered. We continued to rise, but at a slower rate, still firing down on the two black ships which swam upwards, implacable and deadly, like sharks moving in for the kill.

We reached the clouds.

“Forward at half-speed,” Captain Korzeniowski instructed the helmsman. He was very calm now and there was a peculiar little smile on his face. Evidently he preferred this kind of fighting, no matter how dangerous, to the sort we had first been forced to take part in.

“Cut engines,” ordered the captain. We were now drifting, partially hidden by the clouds, inaudible to our enemies.

“Are we going to engage them, sir?” Pilniak wanted to know.

Korzeniowski pursed his lips. “I think we might have to, Lieutenant Pilniak. But I want to get us as much advantage as possible. Turn the main vanes two points to port, helmsman.”

The ship began to come about slowly.

“Another two points,” said the captain. His eyes were cold and hard as he peered into the cloud.

“Another point.” We had almost made a complete turn.

“Engines active!” said Korzeniowski. “Full speed ahead.”

Our diesels shrieked into life as we plunged into the open sky again. It was a grey limbo, with clouds below us and the darkening heavens above. We might well find ourselves fighting at night, using our searchlights to seek out antagonists. It would be a game of hide-and-seek which could last until dawn or even longer. Captain Korzeniowski was plainly preparing for this, attempting to buy time. By now our surviving sister ships would have attempted the same tactics. We had little choice, for we were all but helpless in any kind of direct engagement.