The Great White Army

by Max Pemberton

"Don't think of me, captain," she would say; "I am used to the cold. Have I not lived many years in Russia? All this is nothing to me."

Such courage was infectious, and we were both the better for it. It seemed possible now that we should reach the town after all, though there were many bitter interludes before we did so. Sometimes the lights would disappear altogether, and we would believe that we had lost our road. Then again they would appear as mysteriously, and we would think the city but a stone's throw from us. In the end, I remember, we came to a frozen river, and putting our horses across it, we found ourselves beneath high and forbidding walls, which told us that we had lost our way, and that the night might still have the better of us.

This was a terrible hour, and we rode vainly to and fro as children who are lost in an unknown country. Everywhere black walls denied us shelter, and so at last we recrossed the river and went southward a full half-hour before we discovered the gate of Slawkowo and cried to one another that all was well.

We thought it must be so.

Here was a considerable town with the houses of the merchants who had sheltered us when we rode to Moscow. We had known some pleasant days in Slawkowo on our outward journey, and I do not think it dawned upon any man that our reception would be different upon our return. Hardly had we entered the gate when we discovered our mistake. Of the once fine houses but the shell now remained. The main street was impassable by reason of guns and wagons gathered there. We turned aside to the suburb on the south, and found such houses as remained alive with our comrades, who filled them from garret to cellar, and swore that no new-comer should enter.

By here and there whole companies of infantry were bivouacked in the open for lack of shelter, and the high wall of church or garden alone protected them from the terrible night. Of food there seemed no prospect whatever. We beat upon the doors of many houses, and although we gave those within to understand that we were officers of the Guard, they answered that men or devils should not come in that night. At last we found ourselves at the very ramparts again with never a house in view and nothing but those monstrous walls before us.

"Good God!" says Léon, drawing rein at last and turning to me wearily, "is there no house in all this cursed city which will take us in?"

I could but answer him that we must wheel about and try again, and although my horse staggered at every step, and ultimately fell dead as we went, I could but repeat the admonition. We must get into a house of some sort, or we should never see the dawn. So much would have been evident to a child.

Behold us, then, staggering on, the snow beating upon us pitilessly; the wind howling amid the shells of the ruined houses; the city itself but a mob of maddened troopers fighting for their very lives on every threshold. So evident was it that we should get no shelter anywhere in the vicinity of the gates that we pushed on ultimately as though we would leave Slawkowo by the western road, and then for the first time we were able to breathe freely and to reckon with the situation.

There were no houses at all here—merely the blackened ruins of once fine streets. Often we rode over heaps of rubbish with the sure knowledge that a mishap might send us headlong into some vault or cellar, already, it may be, full of dead. This, however, did not deter us; we had Valerie to save, and the same thought inspired us both. There could be no rest for either until Valerie St. Antoine had found a refuge. How shall I tell you what we ourselves suffered, buffeted this way and that; drawn now to some phantom house; anon to the borders of the frozen river, and from that back again to the wilderness? Certainly I thought that all was ended, and the deadly spell of the cold seizing upon me, I began to have that desire of sleep from which there can be no awakening.