An army, Jake knew, was like a knife. It didn't matter how dull it was if you swung it hard enough.
The day after the executions, the atmosphere in Tsaritsyn had transformed. The pervasive stench of despair had been replaced by a sharp, metallic scent of fear and focused energy. Soldiers were digging proper trenches, the frozen earth yielding to their frantic spades. Officers, terrified of becoming the next example, were actually leading drills, barking orders that were obeyed instantly.
Jake walked the lines, his boots crunching on the hard-packed snow. He stopped to watch a soldier polishing his rifle with a scrap of oil-soaked rag. The man looked up, his eyes meeting Jake's. There was no love there, but the dull emptiness was gone. It had been replaced by a hard, wary respect.
Fear had worked. It had unified them. But fear was a fuel that burned hot and fast. Now, he needed to give them something else. He needed to give them a victory. A proof that they were not just cattle waiting for the slaughter.
He returned to the command bunker, a reinforced cellar beneath a ruined factory. His new inner circle was waiting. Taranov, the Cheka executioner, cleaned his fingernails with a knife. Anatoly, the scarred sailor, stood guard by the map table. A few junior Red Army officers, men Jake had spared because they showed a flicker of competence, looked at him with nervous anticipation.
They gathered around the map. It was a grim picture. The White Army held the high ground on the bluffs overlooking the city. They had superior numbers, better supplies, and, most critically, heavy artillery that pounded the Red lines day and night. A direct assault would be suicide.
"We cannot attack their lines," a young captain said, tracing the enemy fortifications. "Their machine guns have overlapping fields of fire. We would be cut to pieces before we reached the wire."
"Correct," Jake said. "If we play by their rules, we lose."
He pointed to the broad, white expanse that separated the two armies. The Volga River. It was frozen solid, a highway of ice a mile wide.
"We don't attack their lines," Jake said, his voice low. "We attack their ego."
He tapped the map, on the far bank, miles behind the White front. "Their artillery park. It's located here, in this ravine. Intelligence says it's lightly guarded. General Mamontov assumes we are too weak to cross the river, and too stupid to try."
He looked up at his men. "Tonight, we prove him wrong. We aren't going to take territory. We are going to steal his teeth."
The plan was insane. A night raid across a mile of open ice, into the rear of a superior enemy force. It was not a military maneuver; it was a pirate raid on land.
That night, a thousand men gathered on the riverbank. They were not the best soldiers, but they were the hungriest. They had wrapped themselves in white sheets, bed linens looted from the city's hotels. They painted their faces with chalk and ash.
"No talking," Jake ordered, moving among them. "No smoking. If you cough, you bury your face in the snow. We are ghosts."
He took his place at the front. He had to. To be the "Demon," he couldn't lead from the rear. He had to be the first shadow on the ice.
They moved out. The wind howled down the river valley, a biting, screaming gale that whipped the snow into a frenzy. It was miserable, freezing hell, but it was perfect. The noise masked the sound of two thousand boots shuffling across the ice.
They were invisible. A white stain moving across a white void.
Jake's heart hammered against his ribs. Every shadow looked like a sentry. Every crack of the ice sounded like a gunshot. But they kept moving, a silent tide of desperate men.
They reached the far bank without a shot being fired. The White sentries, confident in their safety and Mamontov's arrogance, were huddled around fires, drinking and laughing.
The Reds struck.
It was brutal, silent, and fast. Knives and bayonets flashed in the moonlight. There were no screams, only the wet thud of steel hitting meat and the gurgle of dying men. The sentries were dead before they could reach their rifles.
They pushed inland, moving swiftly toward the ravine. And there they were. Twelve heavy field guns, lined up in neat rows, their barrels pointing toward the city they had been tormenting.
"Spike them?" Anatoly whispered, pulling a grenade from his belt.
"No," Jake said, a grin splitting his chalk-white face. "We're taking them."
They found the horse lines nearby. The draft horses were asleep, steaming in the cold air. Working with frantic speed, the sailors and soldiers hitched the teams to the guns.
Then the alarm went up.
A flare burst overhead, bathing the ravine in harsh, wavering magnesium light. Shouts erupted from the main camp. A bugle sounded.
"Move!" Jake roared, abandoning stealth. "Go! Go!"
The drivers whipped the horses. The heavy guns lurched forward, their wheels crunching over the frozen ground. The raiders poured back toward the river, a chaotic, retreating flood.
Behind them, the thunder of hooves. Mamontov's Cossacks. The White cavalry was coming.
"Rear guard!" Jake shouted. "Form a line! Hold them back!"
Taranov and his Chekists dropped to one knee, leveling their submachine guns. As the first wave of Cossacks crested the ridge, sabers drawn, Taranov opened fire. The chatter of the guns tore through the night. Horses screamed and tumbled. The charge broke against the wall of lead.
It bought them precious minutes. The guns were on the ice now, the heavy wheels groaning. The horses slipped and scrambled, their hooves striking sparks from the frozen river.
They ran. A mile of open ice, under fire from the enraged enemy on the bank. Bullets hissed around them, kicking up spurts of ice. Men fell, screaming, but the column didn't stop. They dragged the guns, pushed the wheels, whipped the horses.
They reached the Tsaritsyn bank as the sun began to bleed over the horizon.
Exhausted, freezing, and triumphant, they hauled the prizes up the slope. Twelve enemy cannons. The very guns that had been killing them yesterday.
A cheer started. It began as a low rumble and grew into a roar, a raw, primal sound of victory that echoed off the river bluffs. The soldiers hugged each other, weeping and laughing. They hadn't just survived. They had won.
Jake stood on the barrel of a captured howitzer, looking back across the river at the furious, impotent White lines. He could see the tiny figures of officers on horses, shaking their fists.
He hadn't just beaten them. He had humiliated them. He had stolen their power and their pride in a single night.
General Mamontov would be apoplectic. His vanity would be wounded. And a vain, furious enemy was an enemy who made mistakes.
Jake turned to Taranov. "Load the guns," he said, his voice raspy with cold. "And turn them around. Let's give the General his own iron back."