The Demi-Monde: 56th to 58th Days of Winter, 1004
The principles of Eugenics may be applied not only to matters of racial management but also to the interpretation as to why certain city-states within the Demi-Monde are more successful than others. This form of macroEugenics has been named ‘Political Eugenics’ (Reinhard Heydrich: Race, Eugenics and the Survival of the Fittest City-States, Party Rules Publications). Using the principles enunciated by the Quartier-Chaudian naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck – that all organisms strive towards perfection and that this struggle is stimulated by competition within the bio-system – and applying them in the political arena, the Great Leader has concluded that the success of the ForthRight is a demonstration of the maxim ‘the survival of the fittest’ writ large. In sum the Demi-Monde is a battlefield wherein the races fight for supremacy and it is the ForthRight – and the Aryan people – that has emerged supreme.
– The Principles of UnFunDaMentalism: His Holiness Aleister Crowley, Ministry of Psychic Affairs Publications
Trixie couldn’t sleep. She was too excited to sleep. Too much had happened, too much was going to happen. Her mind was a whirl of plans and possibilities as she revelled in the thrill of revolution. And, after last night, she was a real revolutionary.
According to Heydrich, revolutions were a natural manifestation of the frustrated will of the People. But as Trixie sat sipping her coffee she was determined that it would not be her will that was frustrated. She might be bone-tired, her arm and her ear might be aching like the very devil and her body might be covered in bruises, but this wasn’t a time to rest. Revolution, as she was discovering, was hard work.
There was the sound of boots clumping across the warehouse and she looked up to see Lieutenant Gorski marching towards her. From the expression on his face he seemed to be even more frightened and confused than ever.
‘They’ve taken the Major,’ he gasped.
‘Calm down, Gorski,’ snapped Trixie. ‘Who’s taken the Major?’
‘Lieutenant Adamczyk came to the inn where the Major was resting ten minutes ago. He had orders from Chief Delegate Olbracht to arrest the Major for treason and Crimes against the ForthRight.’
‘What about the Daemon – Miss Williams – did Adamczyk take her as well?’
Gorski shook his head. ‘No, that long-haired bloke nipped out of the back door with the Daemon and the Shade before Adamczyk had a chance to nab ‘em.’
Trixie nodded. She might have guessed that Vanka Maykov would be too fly to be captured: he had the look of a man who was light on his feet. By now he would have Norma Williams and the Shade hidden away somewhere waiting to see how things panned out.
‘Well, Lieutenant Gorski, you’d better get your men on their feet. We’ve got work to do.’ She looked at the bodies of the soldiers sleeping on the ground around her, spotted the snoring Wysochi and woke him with a prod of her boot. ‘Time to get up, Sergeant, time to get revolting.’
Wysochi blinked his eyes open and then checked his watch. ‘Fuck off. It’s only eight o’clock. I’ve only been asleep for an hour.’ With that he rolled away from Trixie and pulled his dublonka over his head.
Trixie kicked him again. ‘Major Dabrowski has been arrested. Young Gorski here’s seen Adamczyk take him away.’
‘Taken him where?’
‘Over to the City Hall,’ spluttered Gorski. ‘Chief Delegate Olbracht’s spitting teeth about the raid last night. He’s talking of executing the Major for treason. He wants to put him in front of a firing squad.’
The mention of a firing squad at least persuaded a sour-faced Wysochi to sit up and stretch.
Gorski gabbled on. ‘A message has been received from the Leader himself saying that the ForthRight views the raid on the barges as an act of treason. But the message also says that if we give up the weapons and the Daemon, then the city of Warsaw will be pardoned. Only those directly involved with the taking of the barges will be arrested
…’ He trailed off, obviously realising for the first time that as he had taken part in the raid on the barges then he would be one of those destined to be put up against a wall and shot.
‘Should I take my men to go over and free the Major?’ asked Wysochi as he lumbered to his feet.
‘No. Let’s take an army.’ And with a nonchalant wave Trixie signalled to the crowds of people packed into the warehouse.
Wysochi looked where she was pointing: there, sitting on crates, standing around chatting or just generally idling away time were crowds and crowds of people. ‘Who the fuck are all these people?’
‘Volunteers,’ said Trixie. ‘Word of what happened last night has got around. They’ve come to volunteer to fight the ForthRight.’
‘So many.’
‘There are over a thousand kids here.’
Kids like me. ‘
Most of them are useless but they’re willing.’
‘What are they waiting for?’
‘Rifles… orders… and for you and your men to get up off your arses and help organise them.’
‘But what about Olbracht?’ asked Gorski. ‘He’s ordered that the rifles be surrendered.’
Trixie laughed. ‘Fuck Olbracht…’
By ABBA, being a revolutionary was having a terrible effect on her language.
‘… we’re revolutionaries, Lieutenant, and we’re dead even if we give up the rifles. And as revolutionaries we take orders from nobody.’
In fact, as both Gorski and Wysochi quickly found out, revolutionaries did take orders, but only those issued by Trixie Dashwood. She knew exactly what had to be done and had no hesitation in telling people how to do it. They spent the morning dealing with the seemingly never-ending line of young men and women – that there were so many women amongst them came as a pleasant surprise to Trixie – volunteering to fight for Warsaw. Each of them had to be assessed and issued with a white armband on which were scrawled the letters WFA – the initials of the Warsaw Free Army – then they were divided into pairs, each pair issued with a Martini-Henry rifle and one hundred rounds of ammunition. This done, the volunteers were clustered into groups of twenty to be shown how to load and fire the rifles.
When Wysochi enquired why only one rifle was being issued per two volunteers her answer had surprised even him with its callous pragmatism. ‘We don’t have enough rifles to go around, Sergeant, remember we’ve still got to arm the WFA. So for now one of the pair will have the use of the rifle during the day and the other will have it during the night. Anyway,’ she added quietly, ‘a week after the first SS attack only half of the buggers will still be alive. Then they’ll have a rifle each.’
Trixie relished the bureaucracy of revolution and as the hours ticked by, the mob of overexcited, ill-disciplined volunteers was gradually formed into something approximating to an army. But the one thing that Trixie hadn’t anticipated was how the news of her involvement in the Battle of Oberbaum Bridge had spread. On numerous occasions volunteers came up to her and thanked her for what she had done for the people of Warsaw, insisted on shaking her hand, enquired if she would be leading a regiment, asked if they could have the honour of serving under her command…
It had been heady stuff and perhaps if she hadn’t had the stoic presence of Sergeant Wysochi at her side, it might have embarrassed her. Wysochi, though, encouraged this hero worship. ‘It’s important, Miss Dashwood, for soldiers to have a hero. They see you, a girl, a non-combatant, fighting and beating the best the ForthRight can throw at us and they begin to believe.’
‘Believe what, Sergeant?’
‘That all this might not be as utterly bloody hopeless as I think it is.’
‘It’s noon, Sergeant,’ said Trixie quietly. ‘Time, I think, to march to rescue the Major. Now we’ve got an army we’ve got to make sure that those bastard delegates don’t do something silly.’
It took a while for Wysochi to cajole the volunteers into ranks but finally, after an hour of screaming, swearing, shoving and kicking, he pronounced himself happy. At a shouted command of ‘Advance’ from Trixie the ragtag army lurched forward. The Uprising had begun.
It was an amazing sensation for Trixie to be marching at the head of her amateur army through the streets of Warsaw.
Her army. Ridiculous.
Only a day ago she had been a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl and today she was in command of an army of revolution. ‘Command’: now that was a word that gave her pause. Since the time she had taken command of the barge no one had once questioned her authority, no one had once protested that they weren’t prepared to take orders from a woman. She had assumed command and everyone had assumed her right to do just that. Certainly, she had the formidable Wysochi as her shadow, but it was still remarkable that men and women should so readily do as she told them. Maybe she had a talent for war: after all she loved leading, she loved giving orders and loved taking responsibility.
And now she was finding that she loved adulation.
It was a fine sunny Winter’s day and as they marched, the people of Warsaw came out to watch and cheer them along. Somewhere along the line the volunteers had found a drum and an accordion so now as they marched they sang and the people lining the streets joined in with gusto. Soon the avenues of Warsaw echoed with the words of patriotic songs and the crash of boots on cobbles. Before Trixie had led her army half a mile the march had turned into a parade, into a celebration. Children began to dance along beside the marching fighters, old men stepped out of the crowd to shake Trixie’s hand, flowers were thrown…
The singing stopped when they wheeled into Pilsudski Square.
There, facing them, was a long line of resolute-looking, green-coated infantry. The six delegates stood immediately in front of the soldiers with Major Dabrowski, head heavily bandaged, guarded by two more soldiers, a little to the side. Trixie raised her arm and behind her, her army came to a stuttering halt. Immediately a deathly hush fell across the square.
Trixie swallowed hard and brought her fluttering heart under control. This wasn’t a time to falter; this was a time to be resolute. ‘Bring the Warsaw Free Army into line, Sergeant,’ she ordered in a loud voice, clearly audible to her army, ‘and then let’s go and hear what these traitorous bastards have to say for themselves.’
Together she and Wysochi walked across the cobbled square, with only the snap of their boot heels on the stones invading the heavy silence. In truth she felt a little awkward, as though she, little Trixie Dashwood, had no right to be performing as a leading actor in this revolutionary pantomime. But the look on the face of Chief Delegate Olbracht told her that he, at least, took her very seriously indeed.
‘It’s Lady Dashwood, is it not?’
‘It is.’
‘You are aware, my Lady, that it is an act of sedition to parade within the ForthRight carrying unlicensed weapons.’
Keep it simple, Trixie, but keep it decisive. Make sure the crowd can hear. Make sure the crowd can understand.
‘I do not recognise the jurisdiction of the ForthRight within the territory of Warsaw.’
Chief Delegate Olbracht gave a snort of derision. ‘Who the Hel are you to decide what is or is not recognised by Warsaw?’
Trixie laughed, and waved her good arm behind her, indicating her makeshift army. ‘I have a thousand reasons giving me that right. I have a thousand fighters at my back and all of them are proud, free Varsovians. I am acting Commander of the Warsaw Free Army.’
‘Ridiculous. You’re just a girl. How can a girl be commander of an army?’ laughed Olbracht. ‘You have no rank. You are not authorised to speak before the Administrative Committee.’
‘I have assumed command in the absence of Major Dabrowski’ – she nodded towards the Major – ‘who, I understand, is being held under arrest by Enemies of the People.’
If this revolutionary cant is good enough for Heydrich, it’s good enough for me.
‘You can’t do that.’
‘The Hel I can’t.’ Trixie raised her voice so that it carried throughout the square. ‘I fought with some brave men last night to arm the Warsaw Free Army. I watched some of those brave men die to capture the rifles that will prevent that swine Heydrich butchering the people of Warsaw. Their deaths give me the right to speak.’
Olbracht shook his head. ‘Then answer me this: why would you fight for us Varsovians? You’re not even a Pole.’
There was a murmur through the ranks of Trixie’s army: her Russian was so good that obviously a lot of them hadn’t realised that Trixie was an Anglo.
‘I stand here ready to fight for Warsaw because this is not a fight between the Varsovians and the ForthRight: this is a fight between all free Demi-Mondians and the forces of evil. This is a war of survival, a war where all those who have the temerity to be different from Anglo-Slavs – from Aryans – be they Poles or nuJus or Chinks, must stand and fight or be swept away.’
Trixie could hardly believe she was saying this. For her to be actually standing up for the UnderMentionables was simply astonishing.
By ABBA, she had changed. ‘
I have heard from Heydrich’s own mouth the plans he has for the non-Aryan races of the Demi-Monde and those plans will lead to the annihilation of the Polish people. I have heard from Heydrich’s own mouth that the Final Solution will mean the death of every Pole, every nuJu and every man, woman and child living in the Ghetto.’ Trixie raised her voice until she was almost shouting. ‘I tell you straight, today we must make a decision. Today we must decide whether we fight together or we die together.’ She was rewarded with cheers from the ranks of the WFA fighters.
The Chief Delegate stepped forward and, raising his voice above the hubbub of the crowd, addressed the thousands of volunteers standing in the square. ‘The Administrative Committee of Warsaw has received a communication from the Great Leader: if we will surrender the Daemon known as Norma Williams and the weapons stolen yesterday then the Party will only punish those directly involved with the abduction of the Daemon and those who committed the act of piracy. You are ordered by your legally appointed Administration to lay down your weapons.’ Not one of the WFA fighters moved but the ripple of unease amongst their ranks was palpable. ‘A handful of lives to save millions!’ shouted Olbracht.
‘You trust Heydrich?’ retorted Trixie and immediately cursed herself. This wasn’t some debating society. This wasn’t a time for discussion. Debate and discussion implied doubt, and a revolutionary couldn’t afford doubt. Doubt implied weakness and a lack of will.
The Chief Delegate leapt at the chance given him by Trixie. ‘We must trust Comrade Leader Heydrich!’ Olbracht shouted. ‘Our Leader is a man of honour. He has generously offered us a way of settling this nonsense so that the people of Warsaw are not punished for this girl’s recklessness.’ He turned to Dabrowski. ‘Major Dabrowski, you are the real commander of the Warsaw Free Army, and as an officer and a gentleman you are duty-bound to put the welfare and the well-being of the people before your own interests. I am ordering you, as the Chief Delegate of the Administration Committee of Warsaw, to instruct these people to lay down their weapons, to disband this ridiculous Free Army and to surrender the miscreants and the Daemon to the custody of the Checkya.’
Every eye in the square turned towards Dabrowski, who flinched back as though physically struck. He looked awful: pale and weak, he had to lean on a stick to stay upright.
Dabrowski seemed to crumble into uncertainty. He looked a different man from the rakish and confident soldier Trixie had known only a day or so ago. Could it be, she wondered, that the injuries he had suffered in the raid on the barges had broken him both physically and mentally? Maybe he was ill? Maybe all his training, all his conditioning as an officer to obey orders given by a superior was confusing him?
At Dabrowski’s silence, the Chief Delegate smiled an obnoxious little smile. ‘I think that is all the answer we need.’
Around her Trixie felt the volunteers begin to shuffle and to murmur. She was aghast at how a crowd could be so easily manipulated, how easily an army that only a few moments ago had been full of patriotic ardour could be cowed by bluster and braggadocio. She could not – would not – stand by and watch this foul man take control of the situation.
A determined set to her mouth, Trixie turned towards her army and addressed them directly. ‘The Warsaw Free Army is not prepared to surrender.’ She paused, unnerved by how the large crowd was listening so attentively. ‘Yesterday my father was murdered, laying down his life for mine. Today, it is my turn to make a stand for those who have the audacity to be different from the Aryan ideal of Heydrich. I am not a soldier, but I will fight. I am not a man, but I will fight. I am not a Varsovian, but I will fight.’ She paused for a moment to calm the tremor of emotion that had infected her voice. ‘And if none choose to follow me… then, as ABBA is my witness, I will fight alone.’
The square was totally hushed, those gathered in it silenced by their uncertainty.
Trixie was aware of movement to her left as Sergeant Wysochi came to stand next to her. ‘While I breathe,’ he announced, in a stentorian voice that echoed around the square, ‘I swear by ABBA that you will never stand alone.’ He stabbed his fist into the air. ‘Better to die on our feet than live on our knees!’
Even as the last word left his lips, the Warsaw Free Army erupted in a storm of cheering.
‘What did you make of that?’ asked Ella, as she sat by the window of her hotel room looking down at the scene unfolding in the square below her.
‘They’re all mad,’ was Vanka’s conclusion.
‘They seem determined enough and that Trixiebell Dashwood has been a revelation. I never took her for a revolutionary.’
‘War does strange things to people and it’s often the unlike-liest of individuals who prove themselves the most capable.’ He sighed and pulled the curtain back over the window. ‘Trixie Dashwood is a natural leader but that’s not enough. The Poles haven’t got a prayer.’
‘Why? There’s an awful lot of them.’
As he patted the room’s scabrous couch – raising a cloud of dust as he did so – and sat down, Vanka shook his head. ‘I don’t think the Poles realise what’s coming at them. Clement’s SS are the best, the most ruthless and the most formidably equipped troops in the whole of the Demi-Monde. It’s going to take more than some stirring words, a mob of ill-armed irregulars and a few jerry-built barricades to keep them out. The SS will crush them before the end of the week.’
‘They’ve got weapons now.’
‘They’ve got a few out-of-date rifles. The SS have got superior weaponry, they’ve got discipline, and they’ve got armoured steamers and artillery. This rabble hasn’t a prayer.’
‘I understand that in street-fighting the advantage is always with the defenders.’
Vanka shrugged and took a moment to light a cigarette. ‘We’ll see. If they’re brave enough and they’ve got enough of these firebombs I hear their womenfolk have been cooking up, then they could give the SS a headache, but the key problem the Varsovians have is that there is no way for them to win. They can’t defeat the SS. They can’t defeat the ForthRight. And if you can’t win, the only alternative is to lose.’
Ella nodded towards the crudely painted banner that was being paraded around the square by a band of dancing WFA fighters. It read, ‘Our Victory Is Never to Surrender’. ‘They seem to think that they can fight the SS to a standstill.’
‘Humbug,’ snorted Vanka. ‘Heydrich will never allow himself to be defeated by a bunch of street-fighters; he’ll put as many troops into the Ghetto as is necessary to get the job done. That’s the problem with people like Trixie Dashwood, she’s a romantic. That escapade with the barges has gone to her head: she’s stopped thinking about the consequences of what she’s doing. Romantics are the most dangerous of all soldiers, they’re the ones who want to die.’
‘But, as Sergeant Wysochi said, maybe it is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.’
‘Heroic tosh,’ snapped Vanka. ‘Once you’re dead you have no chance of victory. Better to be a live coward than a dead hero.’
‘That’s a very cynical attitude, Vanka.’
‘Pragmatic rather than cynical, I think. And believe me, Ella, I have absolutely no intention of dying. I think it a better philosophy to let other people do the dying for me. Anyway, these kids seem so enthusiastic to journey to the Spirit World that it would be churlish to deny them my place in the queue.’ He took a thoughtful puff on his cigarette. ‘No, our objective is to stay comfortably hidden away here for the time being, to keep out of that bastard Olbracht’s way – he’s too loyal to the Party for my liking – and wait until they forget what a good idea it would be to give up your pal Miss Norma Williams to Heydrich. Then when the time is right we’ll make a run for it. Maybe we’ll head for the Coven and board a barge to take you and Little Miss Misery’ – he nodded towards the adjoining room where Norma was sleeping – ‘to NoirVille. Once we’re there you can pay me the million guineas you promised me.’
‘And then?’ prompted Ella, somewhat hurt by the rather mercenary way Vanka was discussing their escaping to NoirVille. She had hoped he might be motivated to help her by something other than money. She had come to think – to hope – that Vanka Maykov might actually have some feelings for her.
‘And then you go back to your world and I’ll have a good time spending my million in this one.’
Apparently not. Maybe now she was seeing his true side; the man was, after all, a conman. A conman who obviously didn’t like the idea of having a Daemon as a lover.
She just wished she didn’t care for him so much.
Barely able to hide a smile of smug satisfaction, Archie Clement scanned the map of the Ghetto one more time and checked his watch. It was five minutes to noon: the Leader had ordered him to begin his assault on the Ghetto by midday on the 59th day of Winter and by dint of a Herculean effort the destruction of Warsaw would begin one full day ahead of schedule. He had been set an impossible task but he had done it. Today the Ghetto would be punished for Dabrowski’s abduction of the Daemon and his taking of the barges.
‘You got all them steamers fired up, Comrade Major Hartley?’ he asked the officer beside him. ‘Won’t do for them to miss the big parade, now will it?’
‘We have four steamers in position to lead the assault along Uyazhdov Boulevard, Comrade Colonel.’
‘Only four?’ Clement turned and spat out a wad of tobacco which missed the Major’s brightly shone boots only by inches. ‘Just four steamers ain’t gonna get them Rebs fouling their breeches, now is it?’
‘Unfortunately, Comrade Colonel, such was the speed of the mobilisation that we had no time to bring up more. But even so, we anticipate only limited opposition. We will conduct an artillery barrage to eliminate the barricades the rebels have thrown up across the avenue then deploy our very finest shock troops.’
‘Don’t do to count your chickens, Hartley. Them damned Polaks showed a lotta grit during the Troubles, so don’t you go thinking they’re gonna skedaddle just ‘cos we fart in their direction. And make certain sure you’ve told your commanders that them Rebs is heeled. There was ten thousand rifles on them barges they hijacked.’
Now that had come as a surprise. According to Beria’s assessment, Dabrowski was the archetypal staff officer: a man built for thinking rather than action. That, after all, was why they had selected him. But the attack on the barges had demonstrated an unexpected determination and ruthlessness. Perhaps he would make a more resolute and effective commander of the WFA than they had anticipated.
‘With all due respect, Comrade Colonel, they were only Martini-Henrys, obsolete models that are no match for the M4s our own men carry.’ The Major gave his commander a reassuring smile. ‘I am confident that we will sweep this rabble before us. By nightfall we will be in the Old Town and have control of the Warsaw Blood Bank and once we have achieved that objective it is only a matter of time before Warsaw surrenders.’
Clement nodded. What the Major said made perfect sense, but somehow Clement couldn’t shake off a nagging feeling of foreboding. Taking Warsaw might, he decided, be a little more difficult than his Major believed.
You could never trust a fucking Reb.
Major Dabrowski…
Trixie stopped herself, remembering that now, as official Commander of the Warsaw Free Army, Dabrowski was Colonel Dabrowski. And Colonel Dabrowski, Trixie decided, was a jealous man.
There was no other explanation for his shoddy treatment of her during the first meeting of the WFA Emergency Executive. He had barely been able to be courteous, never mind thank her for saving him from Olbracht. During the meeting he had strenuously refused to acknowledge her role in the taking of the barges, in the arming of the WFA, in the overthrowing of the delegates, or in his elevation to head of the Emergency Executive. All he had seemed intent on doing was stripping her of any role or influence she might have in the WFA.
Indeed, his first act – browbeaten into it, Trixie had to admit, by the regular army officers – was to decree that women could only hold non-combatant positions in the WFA. For Trixie it had been a slap in the face which, almost a day later, she was still fuming about. There seemed little point in having a revolution if all the old prejudices and hatreds remained intact.
Trixie felt a tug on her sleeve. Turning, she found Sergeant Wysochi holding a large enamelled mug of soup out towards her. ‘Drink this,’ he said with a smile. ‘It’s going to be a long hard day and I don’t think Clement will be inclined to allow us a pause in the fighting to take luncheon.’ Trixie nodded her appreciation of the Sergeant’s thoughtfulness and sipped the scaldingly hot potato soup. ‘Put this in your bag too.’ He passed her a parcel wrapped in newspaper. ‘It’s a black bread and cheese kanapka.’ He noted the look of bemusement on Trixie’s face. ‘It’s a sandwich. It’ll keep you going if things turn difficult.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Sergeant.’
‘Just protecting my officers… some of ‘em anyway. The ones worth protecting.’
‘I’m not an officer: Colonel Dabrowski made that very clear. My role is simply to provide help and sustenance to our brave, male soldiers.’
Wysochi chuckled. ‘Well, you should be. After that little speech of yours in Pilsudski Square they should have made you a general. But then the Colonel is a little old-fashioned that way: he doesn’t much like the idea of women bossing men about.’ Wysochi gave Trixie an evil little grin. ‘Me, on the other hand, I quite like the idea of powerful women.’
Trixie decided to ignore the rather tasteless innuendo. It was a sign of the remarkable transformation in her life and attitudes that she could even bring herself to chat with someone of such a low rank in society as Wysochi. War jumbled everything up, made all the old certainties… uncertain.
‘You don’t seem to like officers, Sergeant Wysochi.’
‘Nah. Most of them are tossers, even the regular army ones. But you… you might make a fighter. Not a good fighter,’ Wysochi added impishly, ‘what with you being a girl, but not a bad one.’ He pushed at the barricade that stretched across the street with his boot. The barricade was a higgledy-piggledy structure that had been erected in a madcap couple of hours from a mishmash of paving slabs, doors, old bits of furniture, wrought-iron fencing, barrels and several trees that had been chopped down and dragged in from some neighbouring gardens. ‘Solid enough,’ he decided, ‘but whether it’ll be strong enough to stop an armoured steamer is another matter.’
‘It better be,’ observed Trixie. ‘This street leads directly to the Blood Bank, so this is where the main SS assault will come. Apparently the Captain’ – now it was her turn to nod in the direction of Captain Gorski, who was sitting on top of the barricade gnawing at a fingernail – ‘has been ordered to hold this street to the last man.’
‘The Spirits help us then. I don’t think Gorski could hold his dick with both hands, never mind a barricade with only two hundred fighters. And without good leadership, once it gets hot this lot are going to cut and run.’
‘They’ve got you.’
‘Yeah, they have, haven’t they?’ Wysochi lit a cigarette, took a deep suck of smoke and gave Trixie a smile. ‘And they’ve got you too, and from that look in your eye, non-combatant or not, I think you’re intent on doing more than just offering words of encouragement.’
They were interrupted by a shout from a lookout stationed on one of the rooftops along the street.
‘Balloon!’
Trixie looked up to where the sentry was pointing. There, hovering a quarter of a mile away and perhaps two hundred feet in the air was one of the ForthRight’s new Speke-class hydrogen balloons, its huge red canopy bright in the afternoon sunshine. It seemed so peaceful, so harmless floating there. She could see two men in the wicker basket studying the barricade through a telescope, the lens glinting in the sun.
Wysochi tossed his cigarette aside. ‘C’mon, the balloon’s gone up. Time to make ourselves scarce.’ He cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘Take cover,’ he bellowed to the WFA soldiers standing around their braziers trying to keep warm, then he grabbed Trixie’s arm and hauled her towards one of the cellars that had been commandeered into service as bunkers.
‘Ignore that,’ yelled Captain Gorski. ‘It’s only a balloon.’
‘They’re spotting for the artillery,’ shouted Wysochi over his shoulder as he hurled Trixie down the steps to the cellar.
The discussion was cut short by a strange whistling sound that cut through the air.
Trixie had read descriptions of artillery barrages in the books in her father’s library but she was still stunned – literally – by the reality of being at the receiving end of one of them. The explosions of the shells were deafeningly loud, so loud that she felt her one good ear go pop: it was as though she had been smashed about the head by two cymbals. But the noise was as nothing to the shock wave which tore out from the blast. Even shielded underground she was hurled against the wall, her head smashing against the brickwork. A shearing pain lanced through her damaged shoulder and for a moment she lay foetuslike on the ground, deaf, numb, and shocked by the ferocity of what she’d experienced. Dust and grime thrown up from the blast began to swirl around her: now every time she took in a breath it was flavoured with the taste of brick dust. She coughed, trying to spit the choking powder out of her mouth.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, and turning her head she saw a concerned Wysochi looking down at her. He was covered in a patina of white dust, looking as though he had been dipped in flour ready to be baked in an oven. His uniform had also suffered in the blast; the right sleeve of his jacket was torn and the knees of his trousers were tattered and stiff with mud. He spoke to Trixie, but she couldn’t hear a thing. She stabbed a finger into each ear and massaged them.
Wysochi nodded and raised his voice. ‘Are you hurt?’
Trixie staggered to her feet and took a quick inventory. She had a catalogue of bumps and bruises but nothing seemed to be broken. She mouthed an uncertain ‘I’m fine,’ and was pleased when she heard her own muffled voice.
‘Good, then come with me.’ Wysochi turned and climbed the basement stairs back up to the road level.
The scene that greeted Trixie was one of horror and carnage. About ten of the men and women who had been putting the finishing touches to the barricade had been caught in the open when the salvo of artillery shells had struck and now they lay bent and busted on the torn cobbles. Captain Gorski was lying amongst them: from the odd tilt of his head it was obvious that his neck was snapped.
Trixie looked around: there seemed to be no officers and no NCOs, just a muddle of winded, bemused and very frightened soldiers. Then, out of nowhere there was another explosion, and Trixie and Wysochi were pelted with debris. When Trixie stood up, she found the Sergeant lying still and unmoving at her feet, hit by a flying brick.
She gawped down at Wysochi. It seemed impossible that such a powerful man could be felled. He was a rock. He was indestructible. Panic washed over her. She looked around, frightened, uncertain what to do… alone.
‘Steamers… SS steamers…’ someone shouted, the quaver in his voice indicating that he was near to panic.
Trixie’s naturally combative spirit reasserted itself. ‘Corporal! Is there a corporal still alive here?’ she screamed at the top of her voice and almost immediately a boy emerged from behind a low wall that surrounded the front garden of what had once been a very elegant house. It was elegant no longer, having taken a direct hit. ‘What’s your name, Corporal?’
‘Karol Michalski.’
‘Get ten men, Corporal Michalski, and as many firebombs as you can carry and station yourself at the top of that house there.’ She stabbed a finger towards a tall building standing a hundred yards or so in front of the barricade. ‘Wait until the steamers arrive, then burn them.’
The Corporal hesitated for a moment, then saluted and without another word did as he was ordered. Trixie looked around and saw a soldier staggering around brushing flames out from his trousers. ‘You, soldier, round up twenty men and station them on the upper floors of that building.’ She pointed with her revolver to the house that flanked the barricade.
The young soldier shook his head. ‘No. We’ve got to retreat out of artillery range…’
‘Pull yourself together, man. What’s your name?’
‘Josef Zawadzski.’
‘If we run, Zawadzski, the SS will kill us like rats in a barrel. There’s nowhere to retreat to. We must stand or we must die.’ Other men were slowly emerging from their hiding places and Trixie raised her voice so they could hear her. ‘Yesterday you swore an oath to defend your city to the last man. Today we will find out whether Poles are men of their word or men of straw.’ Flushed with embarrassment, Zawadzski saluted and then began rounding up his men.
A sergeant, still bemused and baffled by the barrage, stumbled out from a cellar and made an attempt to exert his authority. ‘No, stay where you are. I command here. You’re not a real officer. I say we retreat.’
It was a pivotal moment. The men who had been scurrying off to do Trixie’s bidding hesitated. They looked uncertainly from Trixie to the sergeant and back again.
She tried to bluff. ‘I am Lieutenant Trixie Dashwood.’
‘We ain’t got no women officers in the WFA. I’m in charge here and I say…’
They never got to hear what the sergeant was intent on saying. The pistol in Trixie’s hand barked and the sergeant dropped to the ground with a bullet hole in his chest. For a second Trixie stood paralysed by her own ruthlessness. But then she threw off any doubts; she would ponder the morality of her action later… if she lived. ‘He was an Enemy of the Revolution. I command here,’ she snarled. ‘I am Lieutenant Trixie Dashwood, and my orders are to hold this barricade and hold it I shall. You – Corporal Zawadzski – get those twenty men into that building and when the Anglos come, fire down on them. Understand?’
A nod from Zawadzski.
‘The rest of you, get your rifles and your ammunition and man the barricade.’
‘What about us?’ said a voice to Trixie’s left.
Trixie turned to find herself looking at a group of young girls, the eldest of whom couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Surely they were too young to be away from their parents? Trixie nearly laughed, she was only three years older than them and she’d just shot a man for disobeying her. ‘Carry the wounded to the basement. Look after them as best you can. The rest of you grab rifles and help defend the barricade.’
‘Women can’t fight,’ protested one of the soldiers.
The look on Trixie’s face silenced him. ‘It doesn’t matter if a rifle is fired by a man or a woman, to the SS trooper it kills the result is just the same. If the SS win, women will be executed alongside the men, therefore they have the right to fight and die just as surely as men.’
It was one of those strange moments when silence descends, when all noise and all talking suddenly ceases. It was as though the world was taking a breath. It was as though the world had been suddenly made mute by the horror it was about to witness. Trixie looked around at the men and women manning the barricade, and wondered what they were listening for. She strained her one good ear.
There…
Far off she could hear the scrunch of steel on stone, could hear the faint thud-thud-thud of a steamer’s pistons, could hear shouted commands drifting towards her through the sharp, crystalline cold of the afternoon.
A boy, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, darted around a corner of a building and shouted a message. ‘The Anglos are advancing through Southgate. Ten minutes.’
‘Soldiers of Warsaw, prepare yourselves,’ Trixie shouted.
Now all they could do was wait and she suddenly came to understand how lonely it was to command. Every one of the men and women lining the barricade was waiting for her to say something. She began to pace up and down, shouting at the pale-faced WFA soldiers as she went. ‘Hold your fire until the Anglos are within fifty yards. Don’t waste your shots. When a man falls, one of you without a rifle will take his place. I will shoot anyone stepping back from the barricade. There will be no retreat, there will be no surrender. This is your time, people of Warsaw. This is your time to kill.’
The first steamer lumbered around the corner five minutes later. The SS had taken the rubber tyres off the wheels and screwed in large spikes; now the wheels smashed and crushed the street cobbles as the machine passed. Swathed in steel and steam, the huge steamer huffed and puffed its way, slowly, inexorably, towards the barricade. Once it faced them head-on, it stood poised for a moment crouching like some great fire-breathing dragon that had escaped from the depths of Terror Incognita. Then it began to lurch forward, gradually picking up speed, obviously intent on ramming the barricade. Behind the machine swarmed a mass of black-uniformed SS troopers. There was a rat-tat-tat as two Gatling guns housed in nacelles on the top of the steamer opened fire and instinctively Trixie threw herself to the ground. Bullets smacked into the house to her left. Windows smashed, showering glass down onto the road. Somewhere to her right she heard a scream. The steamer picked up speed. It seemed unstoppable, a huge lumbering force of Nature.
‘Steady, you useless bastards,’ shouted Trixie. She blushed. She couldn’t believe someone of her rank and her breeding could use such profanities. Sergeant Wysochi had a lot to answer for. But when she saw the effect her words had on her troops – they were actually laughing – she was encouraged to go further. ‘Look at them… there are so many of the fuckers even you useless bastards can’t miss.’
There was a round of louder laughter.
The SS lumbered forward. Eighty yards… seventy yards… sixty yards… fifty yards.
‘Fire!’
The soldiers of the WFA began to fire, working their Martini-Henry rifles for all they were worth, pouring fire into the advancing SS. In an instant the bright Winter’s sunshine was shrouded with a cloying, choking cloud of cordite.
‘Hold hard,’ Trixie screamed as the steamer hit the barricade. For a moment she thought the barricade would buckle but the tons of earth and timber that they had laboured to pour into its construction withstood the charge. Now Corporal Zawadzski’s men began to fire down into the ranks of the SS swarming around the beached steamer. A man fell back from the barricade, his face mashed by a bullet. Instinctively Trixie brought her brute of a pistol up, took aim at the SS advancing towards the barricade and pulled the trigger. The Mauser bucked back in her hand, raking her injured shoulder with pain as she worked the trigger and fired again and again and again. Frantically she fired shot after desperate shot into the black mob of the SS, firing until the hammer of her pistol clicked on an empty chamber.
It looked hopeless: the SS were coming forward like a black wave, hosing the barricade with their automatic weapons. Then little Corporal Michalski and his band struck, hurling their fire-bombs down, turning the whole of Uyazhdov Boulevard into an inferno. In a moment the fashionable tree-lined avenue was turned into a living, burning Hel.
‘Now!’ she yelled and two boys – children really, neither was more than ten – leapt over the top of the barricade in a suicidal attempt to throw firebombs into the cabin of the steamer. One was cut down by machine-gun fire but the second managed to thrust his bomb through the driver’s observation port. There was a ‘wooomph’ as the bomb exploded and in that instant the sound of pounding steam pistons and scrabbling wheels was accompanied by the screams of the steamer’s crew as they were burnt to death.
Then, like the ebbing of a tide, the ferocity of the fighting seemed to suddenly falter and, as she watched, the SS began to retreat.
There was a shout from the barricades. ‘We’ve beaten them. They’re running for it.’
‘Keep firing,’ bellowed Trixie, ‘for fuck’s sake, keep firing. Kill as many of the fuckers as you can. Make them remember. Make them scared. Make them dead.’
And as she screamed out her orders, Trixie realised that she had never been happier in the whole of her life.
Comrade Major Hartley stood stock-still in front of Archie Clement’s desk as the Colonel idly played with his pencil, rolling it backwards and forwards between the fingers of his right hand. Finally Clement stopped his fidgeting and slowly raised his gaze.
‘So, waddya gotta say for yourself, Major?’
‘We encountered greater resistance than we had anticipated, Comrade Colonel. But I am confident…’
‘Con-fee-dent. Gracious me, Hartley, that’s a real two-guinea word, but ah gotta say iffn ah was standing in your boots ah wouldn’t be feeling con-fee-dent. No, Sirree. Iffn ah had seen two hundred of mah men blasted to buggery and the rest being forced to retreat by a pack of no-account Rebs, ah don’t think ah’d be using a word like con-fee-dent.’
Hartley swallowed hard. The perks and benefits that came with being a high-ranking member of the SS were one thing, but they were granted only after having taken an oath of death or glory. And as the performance of his men this afternoon could hardly be termed glorious
…
‘The Poles have used tactics which are bestial and violate every code governing civilised conduct in war.’
Clement looked at Hartley as though he were mad. ‘You joshing me?’
‘No, Sir: the Poles have children hurling incendiaries from rooftops. They have booby-trapped buildings.’
‘Mah, mah, what ruffians we are fighting. Children… boobytraps… whatever will them Rebs think of next? Cuss words? Obscene gestures? You better quit your bellyaching, Comrade Major, ‘cos ah ain’t used to having my SS boys having the shit kicked outta them by Rebel scum.’
‘They are fanatical, Comrade Colonel, and their commander is a madman…’ Hartley paused and then corrected himself. ‘… a madwoman.’
‘Them Rebs are commanded by a woman?’ asked Clement, suddenly evincing a little more interest.
‘Our Balloon Corps Observers report seeing a woman with long blonde hair organising the defenders and one captured Varsovian has confirmed this under interrogation.’
‘This woman’s gotta name?’
‘The prisoner didn’t know her name. All he was able to say before he died was that she was the same woman who led the attack on the barges. It is typical of these Polish scum that they would force women to fight like men.’
‘By mah reckoning, this woman is fighting better than a man, iffn the way she booted your ass this afternoon is any indicator.’ Clement took a long swig of his glass of Solution. ‘You better saddle up, Major Hartley, and get your boys ready to toe the line. You gonna attack again but this time ah’m gonna help you out by making sure that there’s a heavier artillery barrage before you let rip, a barrage so heavy that it’ll pound them Rebs to dog shit. And seeing as you caught me in a forgiving mood, Hartley, ah’m gonna allocate the six newly arrived armoured steamers to your assault. But listen real tight ‘cos ah don’t want there to be any misunderstanding: your objective is to take the barricades which block our advance to the Old Town before nightfall. This is your minimum objective and iffn them Rebs give you the turnabout again, Comrade Major…’ Clement gave Major Hartley an empty, cold smile. ‘Well, ah don’t think it’s necessary to explain to an SS officer who uses big words like con-fee-dent how he should act if he goes and fucks up for a second time, now is it?’
The artillery barrage lasted for two interminable hours. Holed up in a basement, Trixie heard and felt rather than saw the destruction take place outside. She tried to number the explosions but lost count when she reached thirty and the blasts were coming so close together as to merge into one. As she huddled against the basement wall, hands pressed over her ears, all she wanted was for the hammering to stop, to be in a place where she wasn’t frightened that she’d be buried alive. For two long hours she cowered in the corner of the basement, hoping, praying that one of the shells the Anglos were raining down on Warsaw wouldn’t score a direct hit on where she was hiding.
Finally there was silence.
‘Out, out,’ Trixie ordered as she kicked and pushed her troops out of the bunker. ‘Get back to the barricade.’
Reluctantly, tiredly, the defenders did as they were told. Trixie emerged, blinking into the late afternoon sunlight, to a changed landscape. The picturesque Warsaw of only a few hours before was gone and in its place stood a desolate scene of ruined and burning buildings, the air dank and rank with the scorched smell of smouldering astral ether. Trixie gagged at the smell and threw up at the side of the road.
A runner – a small boy wearing the jacket of a dead SS captain – came racing up. ‘Oo is the officer commanding ‘ere?’ he demanded.
‘I am,’ said Trixie.
The boy looked at her suspiciously. ‘Oo are you?’
‘She is Lieutenant Trixie Dashwood, commanding Number One Barricade, Uyazhdov Boulevard,’ said Sergeant Wysochi as he tottered out of a bunker to stand beside Trixie. He looked dreadful but he was alive. Trixie felt her spirits rise.
‘Where’s Captain Gorski?’ asked the runner.
‘Dead,’ said Trixie simply, then held out her hand to take the orders the boy had brought.
To the Officer Commanding #1 Barricade.
Greetings,
It is imperative that this barricade is held until nightfall. The defences behind #1 Barricade have been destroyed by enemy artillery fire. If you yield, Warsaw is doomed: there is no defence between your barricade and the centre of Warsaw. I beg you, as a fellow Pole, to spare no effort in your defence of our people.
May ABBA guide and protect you.
Colonel Jan Dabrowski
Officer Commanding the Warsaw Free Army
‘There is a message for you from our commander,’ Trixie announced in her loudest voice to the troops who were labouring to repair the barricade. ‘We are ordered to hold this street until nightfall. If we fail, Warsaw falls. There will be no retreat, there will be no surrender. I am an officer of the Warsaw Free Army and all soldiers under my command will do their duty.’
The fighting that afternoon was, if anything, more ferocious and more intense than the first attack. The SS had obviously learnt from experience and moved forward more cautiously, house by house, door by door, and, using flame-throwers and grenades, they cleared each house before the main advance reached it.
They brought up more steamers as well, having protected their vulnerable gun and driving ports with wire to prevent firebombs being thrown inside. There was something implacable, unstoppable about the advance, but for all their care and all their planning, in Trixie the SS met someone equally flexible and inventive in her tactical thinking.
She sent Sergeant Wysochi out to mine the basements of the houses that lined the advance of the SS, detonating them when platoons of StormTroopers were inside. She sent snipers under the command of Corporal Zawadzski to harry and disrupt the tail of the SS advance, telling her men to kill officers and signallers. She had the bodies of the dead SS booby-trapped so that anyone touching them was maimed or killed.
But all she and her fighters could do was slow the onslaught: it was impossible to stop the SS advance. By twilight the six armoured steamers spearheading the SS attack force were positioned at the top of Uyazhdov Boulevard ready to begin the final assault on the barricade.
A grimed and cordite-stained Corporal Michalski appeared from the shadows after making a reconnaissance. ‘We’ve had it, Lieutenant. There are six steamers up there and maybe a thousand of them SS bastards. They’re bringing up field guns too. We’re fucked. Best iffn we pull back now.’
Trixie looked around at the soldiers defending the barricade. There were perhaps a hundred and fifty of them left, at least a third of them women and a quarter little more than children. They were exhausted, thirsty and hungry.
Slowly she shook her head. ‘We can’t, Corporal. They’re still evacuating all the civilians from the houses around Pilsudski Square. If the Anglos break through now there’s nothing to stop them slaughtering the whole lot of them. We have to stand.’
The Corporal gave a shrug. ‘Okie-dokie, Lieutenant.’ And then he stopped, looked Trixie straight in the eyes and gave her a salute. ‘It has bin an honour an’ a privilege serving under you, Miss.’ And with that he signalled to his band of boys and girls, who collected up their armfuls of firebombs and the grenades taken from the SS dead and followed Michalski back into the shadows.
Trixie had replaced her Mauser pistol with a Webley taken from a dead SS trooper. Being double-action it was easier for her to fire and a damned sight more accurate, but after an hour of fighting her palm had been ripped to pieces by the kick of the revolver, her right ear was stone-deaf and her fingers were burnt and blistered from loading bullets. By her reckoning she must have accounted for thirty of the SS but for every one she downed two seemed to take their place. The WFA ranks were thinning too: the barricades were littered with busted and twisted bodies.
Trixie checked her watch. It was still only six o’clock. It wouldn’t be dark for an hour and with the steamers only a hundred yards away there seemed little chance of their being able to hold the SS. They needed a miracle.
And the miracle was provided by Sergeant Wysochi.
Where he had scrounged up the explosives Trixie had no idea, but it was obvious from the size of the blast that the mines he had built in the basements of the two houses that faced each other across the boulevard had been huge. The Sergeant waited until the two front steamers were in line with the houses before he pressed the detonator. There was an ear-splitting explosion, the whole street quivered, the fronts of the two tall buildings blew out and then slowly, majestically the buildings toppled forward, smashing into one another as they crashed onto the street below, burying the two steamers as they fell.
There was a ragged cheer from the WFA fighters, but the respite afforded by the Sergeant’s booby-trap was short-lived. Immediately the dust settled Trixie could see SS soldiers begin to clamber over the debris, but without the shield offered by the two steamers they made easy targets. The Poles poured rifle fire into their ranks and children hurled bombs down on them from the windows of overlooking buildings. They died in their dozens but still they came on.
For twenty frantic, ferocious minutes it was nip and tuck. The firing from the SS was incredible. It was so heavy that Trixie was scared to raise her head above the parapet to see what she was firing at, all she could do was hold her pistol up to a hole in the barricade and pull the trigger, hoping that at least some of her rounds found a target.
And then suddenly – miraculously – it was over. As the daylight began to fade, the whistles sounded and the SS began to retreat. Dog-tired and hardly daring to believe what she was witnessing, Trixie slumped to her knees, but even as she knelt she felt a hand on her shoulder.
Looking up, she saw the face of a young green-jacketed lieutenant peering down at her. ‘Do you command here?’ he asked.
All Trixie had the energy to do was nod.
‘You and your fighters are ordered to pull back to Jerusalem Avenue. Keep to the side of the street, keep to the doorways. I’ll manage the rearguard. Good luck.’
She felt Wysochi at her side helping to lever her back to her feet and as she tried to brush the dust from her hair she took a moment to look around. Of the two hundred fighters she had begun the battle with there were barely fifty left standing. It had been a mighty near-run thing.
‘Get back to Jerusalem Avenue,’ she shouted, her voice cracked and parched. She turned to the lieutenant. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant.’
He shook his head. ‘No. It is the people of Warsaw who must thank you.’
Major Hartley sat, stupefied, in his room, idly playing with the glass of Solution. An almost empty bottle of Blood Heat’s Finest 20% Solution sat on his desk in mute testimony to the way Hartley had been punishing himself – and the bottle – for the last hour.
He grabbed at the bottle and attempted to top up his glass, but his hand was so unsteady that most of the red Solution tipped over the desk. With a slurred curse, he pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and tried to mop up the spill. In the end he gave up and simply lowered his forehead into the refreshingly cool pool of Solution.
Even if he hadn’t been quite so blood-drunk he would still have been befuddled by how these Poles – these badly armed, outnumbered and ill-trained Poles – had defeated his beloved SS.
He had never ever seen men – and women! – fight like that, as though they were indifferent to death. He was a veteran of the Troubles, a veteran who thought he had experienced every horror war had to offer, but he had never experienced anything to compare to these Polish fighters. They fought like the very possessed, hurling themselves, careless of their own safety, of their own survival, on his StormTroopers. He wondered for a moment whether they had been drugged, whether they had been dosed with blood, but this he knew was ridiculous. The only thing that would make a soldier fight like that was desperation… that and the Fury who was leading them.
What had his StormTroopers started calling her: Lady Death?
No wonder he had failed. And in the SS there was only one remedy for failure.
Major Hartley checked his watch. It was now nearly eight o’clock. His two young sons would be in bed. He took the envelope addressed to his wife and placed it squarely before him. Then taking up his Mauser, he blew a hole in his head.