Harry showed off an open-lipped smile that made Lee think uncomfortably of aged porcelain and fragile, gold-etched dinner plates. “Keep them warm. They’re only puppies, and they don’t know anything yet. Soon you must train them.”

“How do I do that?”

“In order to train a dog, first you must know more than the dog. Goodbye.”

21

The Alexander Nevsky barracks, which housed the 1st Archangel Company, heart of the Slavo-British Legion, was a three-story concrete structure by a snow-covered training field spotted with the unhappy treadmarks of Shackleton boots. This field had been the site of drills in bayoneting, marksmanship, and coordinated exercise. Because equipment was hard to find, items from children’s playgrounds had been conscripted. When Ironside approached, he noted from the back of his staff car one set of football goals, a wooden carousel, a pair of sawhorses, and a lonely-looking tetherball banging in the wind against a metal post.

His car drove slowly—marching speed, in fact, since it followed three companies on foot: one British, one American, and one French. Behind Ironside was a team of horses pulling a battered French 77mm field gun. The idea was to come with adequate firepower, but not so much as to be alarming.

It was dark, and so Ironside directed his C3 Tommies to rig lighting while he stood, hands in pockets, craning his head toward the third floor of the barracks building. It had small, barred windows. The mutineers waved their weapons in defiance, but when they recognized that waving wooden rifles was unimpressive, it was back to a muffled chant of dissent.

Their main concerns were that no one had told them what they were expected to do. Or what would happen when the Allies left. The drills with the children’s play equipment had been demoralizing. The mutiny had been the first thing since their incorporation that actually made them feel happy.

Ironside sighed, folding his arms across his stomach. He touched the tip of his tongue to his mustache, and thought that he would have to learn not to do this when winter progressed. “What’s the roof made out of?”

One of the Royal Scots squinted. “Wood shingles.”

Another asked, “Shall we use the gun, sir?”

Ironside regarded the field gun. “If we wanted to kill them all, then, yes, I suppose, but no. Might I have seen a Stokes mortar kit somewhere here? Yes?”

The American company had brought one. The Stokes was simple and small: a three-inch-bore barrel about four feet long, supported by a bipod. Unfortunately, in the cold, its hand crank froze into place, and no amount of grease or cursing could budge it. Which embarrassed the two Americans in charge, who elected not to mention its shortcomings right now.

One of them was Hugo and another was Wodziczko.

“Private.”

Hugo looked up. Towering above him was the general he had only seen at some distance. “Sir?”

“How go your preparations?”