The Demi-Monde: 56th Day of Winter, 1004
There are six rivers in the Demi-Monde®. The five Spoke Rivers which rise in the central Hub lake – Mare Incognitum – flow Boundarywise and define the borders of the Sectors. These Spoke Rivers – the Thames, the Rhine, the Volga, the Yangtze and the Nile – each have an average current speed of 1 mph, though in the rainy season this can increase substantially. An ebb tide runs for 4 hours each night, when river currents reach a speed of 10 mph. The sixth river (the Wheel) is a Hub river which connects all five of the Spoke Rivers and defines the boundary of Terror Incognita.
– The Demi-Monde® Product Description Manual: 14 June 2013
Fate – ABBA – had granted Comrade Commissar Dashwood a reprieve.
The confusion and panic that enveloped the Manor following the escape of the Daemon had been such that Beria seemed to have quite forgotten the order to arrest him. All the fat man had been intent on doing was bustling the Leader out of the house and moving him ‘somewhere safer’ and he had done it so quickly that the Baron hadn’t had an opportunity to get a decent shot at him. Within fifteen minutes of the explosions rocking the house none of the members of the PolitBuro remained. Dashwood – a little bewildered by the turn of events – had found himself alone in the Manor. No one was worried about the safety of a lowly Commissar of Transport.
But he knew his reprieve would be a temporary one, that once the furore had died down he would be purged. Sooner or later they would come for him. And by his estimation it would be sooner: Beria would probably arrest him at dawn tomorrow, which meant that he had only the rest of the night to prepare.
Yes… fate had given him a chance to fight Heydrich. For too long he had been docile. Now was the time to show that there were those in the ForthRight who were ready to fight the evil that was Heydrich’s Party. Now was the time to rally the Royalists who had gone underground and lead them in defence of freedom.
As the last SS steamer puffed its way through the Manor’s broken gates, Dashwood strode up the staircase to his room where he packed the field uniform he had worn as a colonel in the Royal Guards into a small knapsack. To this he added his Sam Browne belt and his Mauser revolver. He was ready.
There was a knock on the door and a moment later his butler, Crockett, appeared in the room. But rather than wearing his usual outfit of morning suit and spats, the butler now presented in a rather more functional get-up comprising a tweed suit and a pair of heavy-duty hiking boots. It was the pistol he had thrust in his jacket pocket that Dashwood found most incongruous. He had never felt it necessary for his servants to be armed.
‘I have taken the liberty of packing a few mementoes, Sir.’ Crockett indicated the suitcase he was carrying. ‘The miniatures of your wife and of Miss Trixiebell and such like.’
‘Why?’
‘I believe that after tonight it will be difficult for us to return to the Manor.’
‘Us, Crockett? I don’t need a servant to accompany me: I’m just going away for a couple of days on business.’
‘My understanding is that this business will necessitate your going into hiding, Sir, whilst you organise the Royalist resistance to the Party.’
‘How?’
‘How did I know, Sir? Because a good butler knows everything about his master: it is impossible to anticipate his requirements otherwise. I have also packed some sandwiches and a bottle of Solution; I have an inkling that it will be a long night. And, if I might be so bold, Sir, I would recommend the Webley rather than the Mauser; it is in my opinion a much more effective firearm.’
‘Crockett, if we’re captured they’ll execute you.’
‘Then I will have to rely on your good offices, Sir, to ensure that we are not captured.’
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
‘My family have served the Dashwoods for seven generations, Sir: it is unthinkable that a Crockett would not be on hand to assist you in this, your greatest adventure. It is time, Sir, to rid the Demi-Monde of these bastard UnFunDaMentalists.’
‘If you’re determined.’
‘I am, Sir. Shall I have Cassidy bring the steamer to the front of the house?’
‘Cassidy? Is he coming too?’
A frown from Crockett. ‘Of course. You are a Baron, after all, Sir, and a man of your rank cannot be expected to walk to war. Cassidy the gardener will accompany us as well: he is especially disgruntled regarding the mess the UnFunnies made of his front garden. Vandalism, he calls it. I have given him command of the rest of the male staff: they just await your word and then they will rendezvous with us at your convenience. I dissuaded the female staff from accompanying us, but only, I might add, with the greatest difficulty. Cook was especially obstreperous.’
‘But there might be a Checkya crypto amongst the staff.’ Dashwood had long suspected that Beria had a spy in his household.
‘There was, Sir, but I took the liberty of burying Chesterton under the rose-bed. He will, in my opinion, contribute more to the Dashwood estate in the capacity of fertiliser than he ever did as a footman.’
Dashwood nodded solemnly; it was obviously useless to argue. ‘Very well, Crockett, you’d better tell Cassidy to get the steamer fired up.’
As he moved to the door, Dashwood wondered if Trixie was safe. He prayed that she was.
Grim-faced, Trixie Dashwood marched to war through the dock-lands of Warsaw.
She marched to avenge her father, to punish the bastards who had killed him. By the Spirits, she would make them suffer. She would have her revenge. She would build her father a monument out of SS dead. And one day she would kill Heydrich.
That she swore.
‘To the left, Major,’ she heard Wysochi call out, directing their little army.
She would stay close to Wysochi. He was a killer and she wanted to learn how to kill. She wanted to be the best killer of SS there had ever been. Instinctively she dropped her hand onto the butt of her Mauser pistol and checked her watch as they passed under one of the few gas lights still functioning in the Ghetto. She was shocked to see that it was only a couple of hours before dawn. ‘How far are we from the river?’ she asked Wysochi.
‘Just a couple of hundred yards.’ He obviously understood her concern. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got enough time. Once we get there we’ll find a boatman and bribe him to take us across to Berlin.’
‘There’ll be boatmen about at this time of night?’ Trixie asked, dubious that anyone would be mad enough to still be working at four o’clock in the morning, especially on a bitterly cold night like this.
‘Lots of them,’ the Sergeant confirmed. ‘Quite a few Comrades like to frequent some of the more accommodating establishments found in the Ghetto’s red-light district. Polish women are famous for how friendly they are towards visitors from the ForthRight.’
A few hours ago Trixie would have been shocked to her core by the thought that citizens of the ForthRight would despoil themselves by consorting with Polish whores. Not now. Now she knew the ForthRight for the rotten, stinking, hypocritical place it was. Now she knew that the Party leaders had feet of clay.
Bastards.
Wysochi saw the look on her face and misinterpreted it as one of disbelief. He laughed. ‘You will find, Miss Trixie, that a great many Party members like to while away a few hours sampling the fleshy delights of the Ghetto. They seem to prefer Polish women to the more frosty UnFunny charms of ForthRightist ladies.’
Trixie didn’t have the energy to rise to the insult. She didn’t care what Wysochi and these other Polish pigs thought of her: all that mattered was that they helped her kill SS.
A burst of cold wind circled her. Trixie pulled up the hood of her cloak and pushed herself forward through the snow. Although the streets leading to the Warsaw docks were made almost invisible by the blizzard, Trixie knew they were getting closer to the river. The smell that was wafting towards them from the Rhine was simply horrendous.
‘That’s the Gas House, they clean all the filters at night,’ Wysochi explained when he saw her wrinkle her nose. ‘The Warsaw Sector produces all the gas used in the Demi-Monde. Not terribly glamorous and not terribly lucrative but without us Poles everybody in the ForthRight would be walking around in the dark.’
It might be worth it, thought Trixie, wishing she’d brought her pomander with her: the smell was so bad it made her stomach heave.
Wysochi was as good as his word: it took him only five minutes to find a boatman willing to take the ‘gentlemen revellers’ across the Rhine to Berlin. The eighteen of them boarded the Whitehall Gig and after a whispered plea from the boatman for them to ‘keep their fucking noise down’ they were off. Despite the blinding snow, the boatman seemed to have an unerring sense of where he was – probably, decided Trixie, he just knew to keep the smell of the Gas House at his back – and was able to guide his four oarsmen to a quay a few hundred yards upriver from the Oberbaum Bridge. Even as the boatman struggled to moor the boat against the surging ebb tide, Major Dabrowski jumped ashore and led his company cautiously up the snow-slick steps leading to the dockside.
The attack had begun.
Unfortunately the intelligence provided by Trixie’s father was wrong. His file had advised Dabrowski that the munitions would be carried on two barges: a Crowley-class steam-propelled barge towing a Beria-class unpowered drifter barge. What they saw when they had pushed their way through the snowstorm to the quayside were three barges; there was a second drifter barge on tow. Trixie’s heart sank: whilst she was confident – well, fairly confident – of being able to manage two barges in an ebb tide, three was a different proposition altogether. Only the most proficient of Rhine watermen were capable of running a trio of barges and then only if the ruddermen managing the drifters were able men who knew their business.
The Rhine was too unforgiving a river for beginners like Trixie.
‘It’s a trio, Major,’ Trixie whispered. ‘I don’t know if I can handle a trio.’
Dabrowski shot her a look. ‘What can we do? We’ve come too far to go back.’
‘Decouple the third barge. Cut it loose.’
‘But the rifles…’
Fear and rising panic made Trixie’s reply sharper than she intended. ‘Damn it all, Major, do as I tell you or we might lose the whole cargo.’
Dabrowski didn’t have time to answer. Sergeant Wysochi and two other men, knives in hand, were already up and over the side of the steam-barge, hunting for sentries. Trixie heard the sound of a scuffle, a strangled scream and then a splash as, presumably, a body was heaved overboard. A few seconds later the Sergeant reappeared, a savage grin decorating his face. The man was an animal, an animal who was good at killing SS. ‘Secure, Major,’ he said sotto voce.
‘Right, Gorski,’ Dabrowski snarled at the young Second Lieutenant, ‘get your men on board, half on each of the first two barges arranged along the port side. I want them ready to repel boarders. Things are going to get hot.’ He turned to Wysochi. ‘Sergeant, secure Miss Dashwood in the wheelhouse and then get two men into the boiler room and fire it up.’
‘It’s already fired up,’ commented Wysochi, pointing towards the wisps of smoke coming from the funnel. Dabrowski blushed, embarrassed by his ignorance.
‘Shall I cast off, Major?’ Gorski asked, barely able to keep the tremble of excitement out of his voice.
Trixie stiffened. The most important lesson she had learnt during her time on the Rhine was that on board a steam-barge there could be only one master. More than one person giving orders was a recipe for disaster.
‘I give orders on this barge, Major,’ she snapped. ‘Whilst on board you will do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. Do you understand?’
Dabrowski looked as though he had been slapped. ‘How dare…’
‘I dare because I am responsible for the management of these barges.’
‘I will not take orders from a woman.’
For Trixie it was an epiphany. That sneering comment from Dabrowski brought home to her that her future – her destiny – was now wholly her responsibility. Her fate was in her hands. The ForthRight had destroyed her old life so now she wasn’t obliged to follow its creeds and its social etiquette. To survive in this new, hostile world she would have to be her own woman: strong and independent. Her father had always said that intellectually she was the match of any man, now she had to prove that she had a will to match any man’s.
‘If my being a woman upsets you then I suggest that you stay ashore or find another to work these barges.’
The ultimatum had its effect: Dabrowski took a deep, deep breath and then gave a curt nod. ‘So be it. But believe me, Miss Dashwood, I will not forget this slight.’
Trixie brushed off his threat with a negligent wave of her hand. ‘It’s best if we let the barges drift out into midstream before we get under way, that way we’ll have more room to manoeuvre. Major, have your men free the mooring ropes and cast off the three barges, and you, Lieutenant, find an axe and have somebody cut the hawser tethering us to the second drifter.’ Orders given, she followed Dabrowski on board the steam-barge. Now there was no going back.
Despite this outward show of confidence, her inexperience nearly did for them. Although Dabrowski managed to free the hawsers tethering the barges to the dock, in her excitement Trixie had forgotten that there was always a security line connecting the steam-barge to an alarm bell. As the unshackled barges, caught by the pull of the tide, began to slide ponderously away from the dock, so the security line tightened until, when they had gone less than twenty feet the alarm bell began to toll. The response was immediate: lanterns were illuminated, orders were shouted, the sound of hobnailed boots echoed along the quay and then out of the snow-thick darkness raced a detachment of Checkya militia.
‘Fire, you useless fuckers,’ screamed Sergeant Wysochi. A tattered salvo of rifle fire crackled along the barge. It was difficult for Trixie from her position in the wheelhouse to see through the swirling snow how effective the fusillade was, but the screams suggested some of the shots had found their mark.
There was some desultory return fire from the Checkya and a bullet smacked into the side of the wheelhouse, making her flinch away as splinters flew. Instinctively she crouched down, trying to make herself as small a target as possible, then, cursing herself for being such a coward, she stood back up straight. This was no time for cowards. A soot-blackened face appeared around the door jamb. ‘Steam’s up, Miss,’ the boy yelled and gave her a thumbs-up. Immediately she hauled back on the drive lever. There was a bellow from behind as the engine powered up and the steam-barge began to shudder and shake as the pistons pounded. The deck beneath her feet trembled. She felt the jerk as the propeller of the steam-barge was engaged and then a shove in the back as the craft began to move under its own power. The noise in the wheelhouse was deafening, she could barely hear herself think.
‘You, soldier, get forward to the bow,’ she screamed at the top of her voice. She saw the look of incomprehension on his face. ‘Get to the front of the barge and shout when you see the Oberbaum Bridge. I can’t see a thing in this snow. You’ve got to help me aim for the central span.’ The boy disappeared into the snow.
Manoeuvring the heavy barges was a nightmare. Heaving and straining, Trixie had to use all her strength to manage the wheel as the barges, caught by the current, bucked and squirmed along the river. Her muscles ached from the struggle to keep them straight.
Two more bullets smacked into the wheelhouse, but Trixie was so intent on hauling on the wheel, sawing it desperately back and forth, trying to bring the drifters in line directly astern, that she hardly noticed. A wild-eyed Wysochi joined her. ‘Help me,’ she gasped. ‘I need to bring this barge around.’
It was only thanks to Wysochi’s enormous strength that they managed to wrestle the barges into line. It wasn’t a moment too soon. There was a shout from the bow. ‘I can see the bridge, maybe a hundred
…’
The sentence was terminated by the crack of a rifle and a splash as the man toppled over into the river. ‘Get forward, Sergeant!’ Trixie shouted. ‘I need you at the bow, directing me.’
Wysochi hesitated for a moment and then was gone. Without his strength to help her, controlling the barge was almost impossible. She could feel the wheel twisting and squirming ever more violently under her hands as the barges came closer and closer to the eddies that rippled so powerfully around the piers of the bridge. The stern of the steam-barge began to pull out of line, dragged by the drifters as they were caught in the current. Frantically Trixie signalled for more power, doing everything she could to compensate for the yawing of the drifters, terrified that the barges would run out of control, that they would meet the bridge beam-on, that the drifters would be trapped lengthways against the bridge by the ebb tide.
Lieutenant Gorski’s head appeared around the door.
‘What about the second drifter?’ she shouted over the pummelling of the steam engine as it struggled to provide the extra power she demanded. ‘Have you cut it loose yet?’
‘Major Dabrowski is still trying to cut the hawser. The Checkya are making it hot for him. He’s lost two men already.’
‘Get rid of the fucking thing,’ Trixie screamed, aghast that a girl of her breeding should swear in such a foul manner, then ducked down as a salvo of shots smashed into the barge. Whoever was in charge of the Checkya had obviously worked out that she was intent on taking the barges upstream and that to do so she would have to sail them under the Oberbaum Bridge. The steam-barge was now so close to the bridge that she could see the muzzle flashes from the rifles of the Checkya who had already positioned themselves on the bridge and were firing down on the barges.
‘Get under cover,’ she heard Wysochi yell at his men as he emptied his revolver at the bridge that was now looming over them through the darkness and the snow.
Two pillars of the bridge passed on either side of the steam-barge’s bow. Now the turbulence was stronger and it took all of Trixie’s strength and all the engine’s power to bully the steam-barge, banging and scraping, under the bridge. Then, like a cork popping out of a bottle, the steam-barge was in open water, but her elation was short-lived. Although, miraculously, the first drifter got under the bridge without fouling or capsizing the second drifter didn’t. It twisted, beam-on, jamming itself immovably along the length of the bridge, between the two central spans. Now, no matter how hard Trixie forced the propeller, no matter how urgently she sawed at the wheel, the trio of barges was stuck fast, anchored by the third, the soldiers on board sitting ducks for the shots raining down from the bridge above. The only option Dabrowski’s men had was to cower away under the bridge itself and in consequence the Checkya concentrated their fire on the steam-barge’s wheel-house. It was fortunate for Trixie that she had a steel roof over her head, otherwise she would have been killed for certain. As she struggled and strained, twisting the wheel this way and that, furiously trying to edge the barges free, breathing prayers to the Spirits that they would come to her aid, there was an incessant banging and slapping of bullets above her head.
Fate intervened. The commander of the Checkya on the bridge had the bright idea of throwing grenades down on the barges and their first target was the trapped drifter. As luck would have it, the third grenade blew the hawser that connected the two drifters apart. Freed of the trapped drifter, Trixie felt the steam-barge leap forward, powering away from the bridge, dragging the remaining drifter with it.
Then the second drifter exploded.
The blast was enormous. It was as though the steam-barge was lifted into the air by a huge hand and then hurled back down onto the river. Trixie was thrown across the wheelhouse, her head smashing against a bulkhead, bashing her into unconsciousness. She came to, her head throbbing, her left arm twisted at an unnatural angle. Excruciating pain lanced across her shoulders and her ears rang from the crash of the explosion. With laboured difficulty she hauled herself back up onto her feet. All the glass in the wheelhouse windows had been blown in and now the thick snow and the ice-cold wind was swirling around, slashing into her face and eyes. The steam-barge seemed to be alight, burning debris and cinders from the destroyed drifter covered the decking and this, coupled with the black smoke that enveloped the river, made for a Helish scene. The stench of cordite in the air was suffocating, and she retched, spitting dust and bile from her mouth.
Fortunately the compass had survived the explosion. She tore a strip of cotton from her blouse, used it to wipe the glass clean, and checked her heading. Satisfied that she now knew where they should be going, she used her one good arm to drag the barge back to a northerly direction.
As the steam-barge settled on its course, Trixie took a quick look around. At first she thought that she was the only survivor, but then, slowly, painfully, figures began to rise up and after brushing burning cinders from their coats, staggered about as though drunk.
Thankfully Wysochi was one of the survivors, though he had suffered in the explosion. His cap was gone and part of his hair seemed to have been burned away, his face was soot-black and flecked with a myriad of tiny cuts and scratches. Peculiarly, it also appeared that he was steaming: as snow landed on his savaged jacket it dissolved into white steam.
‘Are you hurt?’ he shouted, and that was when Trixie discovered she was deaf in one ear. She touched it with her fingers; part of her right ear seemed to have been sheared away.
‘I think I’ve dislocated my shoulder,’ she shouted back; a ruined ear hardly seemed to be worth commenting on. She barely recognised her voice: torn ragged by all the screaming she had been doing, it seemed to have dropped an octave. ‘I’ll need help to dock the barge.’
Wysochi gave a curt nod and then disappeared into the darkness. He returned a minute or so later. ‘Better than I feared, worse than I hoped. Ten survivors. Some are a bit knocked around but they’ll live.’
‘Major Dabrowski?’
‘Took a bad knock on the head from a piece of flying spar. He’ll make it all right.’ He staggered as the steam-barge bucked against the tide. ‘By my reckoning, Gdansk docks are over there. That’s where we’re headed, maybe a half-mile distant. I’ll take over from here, Miss Trixie… and thanks.’
Trixie had to admire Wysochi’s energy. Despite his wounds, despite the rough bandage that swathed his left hand, despite the savage burns on the side of his face, he still drove the men on. No sooner had they docked the barges than he was all business, dividing what was left of the little army into two groups, braying orders at them to round up men and steamer-trucks and to get them back to the barges as quickly as possible. He wanted the barges unloaded before dawn.
In stark contrast to Wysochi’s energy, Dabrowski sat slumped against the side of the barge. The bang he’d taken to the head had been a bad one and he was only semi-conscious, not quite understanding what was going on around him.
‘I need someone to rouse Dock Captain Kowal,’ Wysochi said to his Major. ‘I need someone to get the winches and cranes working.’
Dabrowski slowly raised his head and stared at the Sergeant through glassy eyes. As best Trixie could judge, his mind was concussed and he would be no further help that night.
‘I’ll go. Let the Major rest,’ she said and before the Sergeant could object she was off striding in the direction of the Dock Captain’s house a hundred yards along the quay from where they had moored the steam-barge. The house was in darkness when she got there, but it didn’t remain so for long, not after Trixie pummelled on the front door with the butt of her pistol.
When the Dock Captain finally opened his front door, he seemed less than impressed by the soot-covered apparition disturbing his sleep. Dressed in just his nightshirt, Dock Captain Kowal studied Trixie as she stood in the doorway, lantern in hand.
‘Who the Hel are you?’
‘I am…’
Trixie paused for a moment, trying to decide just who she really was.
‘… Lieutenant Dashwood of the Warsaw Free Army. We have captured two barges from the ForthRight and need you to round up every docker, yard worker and winch operator you can and assemble them to offload the barges now tethered at Number Two Dock.’
‘Fuck off,’ he said and made to shut the door. Trixie’s boot prevented it closing. She would, she decided, have to be firm with him.
‘It is imperative that…’
‘I said fuck off and I meant fuck off. I’m head of the Guild of Bargees and in that capacity I must tell you that, as we are not at war with the ForthRight, taking those barges by force is an act of piracy. I will not permit my members to risk imprisonment or their lives.’
His oration was interrupted by the cocking of a Mauser pistol. Trixie held the weapon to the side of the man’s head. ‘Unless you follow my orders, Dock Captain, I will have no hesitation to blow your fucking mind out.’
Kowal looked at Trixie, took a moment to assess just how serious she was and then nodded.
The unloading of ten thousand Martini-Henry rifles and five million rounds of ammunition and the transporting of the same to a secure warehouse was completed an hour after dawn. Exhausted and emotionally drained, the men slumped down and gratefully accepted the bottles of Solution that were handed around.
For her part Trixie sat on a crate of ammunition, trying to ignore the pain radiating out from her left shoulder and the throbbing of her ear, and doing her best not to fall asleep. Never had she felt so tired, so completely wrung out. She closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them she found the bulk of Sergeant Wysochi standing in front of her with his hand extended.
‘Would you do me the honour, Miss Dashwood, of shaking my hand? I would like to thank you for what you did tonight, to thank you on behalf of my Major, my men and the Polish people. You are the bravest person with whom I have ever had the honour of serving. If he were alive to see you, Miss Dashwood, your father would be a very proud man.’
Trixie took the hand. It was the most moving moment of her life.