All that summer the blue, white, and gray steamboats from western Russia shouldered their way into the riverside dockyard of Korosumksa.  They stood three miles downriver to discharge the men and munitions needed in the coming campaigns to put down the insurrection before it could flare up into a war throughout the new territories.  Paddle-wheelers, ending the monotony of their humble traffic, made endless orbits from boat to city and back again as the physical evidence of Russian power began to register on the naked eyes of the locals.

The paddle-wheelers were so small a curiosity now that few Russians went down to the dock to watch the lighters unloading unless they bore relatives, friends, or superior officers from back west.  

Thus one day late in July the Karamazov brothers, in their best uniforms, presented themselves in the docking area only because they were obeying a tacit summons that could not be ignored.

Onboard one of the steamboats in the river, the Vanya, were Major General Vitaly Milekhina and his daughter Raisa.  General Milekhina, the "boy Brigadier of Turkish War fame," as the press called him, was now a disillusioned man in his early sixties.  For weeks it'd been rumored among army people that he was coming to Korosumksa to take over a vital field command and eventually replace General Alyokhin as commanding general.  Among his few friends and many enemies alike his arrival was awaited with a certain amount of trepidation.  The general was infamous for his impatience, his thirst for immediate and complete success in anything he undertook, and his brusque removal of any subordinate whom he suspected of interfering with that success.

One of the few who refused to be overawed by the general was Alexei Karamozov, who was adept at flattering, cajoling, and influencing the older man.  Alexei had made himself indispensable to the general at various low points in his career when the latter needed admiration as a drunkard needs his whiskey.  He had been a constant source of comfort both as an aide-de-camp and as the future husband of Raisa when it seemed to the general that the world had forgotten him.  At just the right time Alexei would break into a conversation with some such deferential question as, "Doesn't that remind you, General, of the morning at Mezhdukala when your brigade....?" Out of the general's company, Alexei was equally adept at delivering sonorous imitations of the general which made him out to be even more of an arrant old saber-rattler than he truly was.

Though he may not have shared the general apprehension, Alexei did not seem overwhelmed with joy at the arrival of the general, or even of Raisa, it seemed to Dimitri.  Alexei wore an abstracted air as if preoccupied with something more interesting or important.  This in itself was odd for him, as liked to toss himself into everything that happened, giving each moment the same value, whether it was drilling his troops or eyeing the beauties taking the air on the Fahar.  Dimitri thought that, maybe, there was something in the rumors he'd heard, hinting that Alexei was inordinately interested in the young and restless wife of a very senior officer.

The first boat in from the Vanya, not unexpectedly, was a pinnace borrowed from the navy to bring General Milekhina ashore in a style befitting his rank.  This steam launch, unlike the frail and skittery chaikas which brought in the other passengers, came in trimly and smoothly.  The general stood in the stern-sheets with his aide and a naval officer appointed to accord him full honors on the brief journey.

"Good God," Alexei murmured, "I do believe the general thinks he's Alexander Nevsky riding across the ice on Lake Peipus."

From the rather exalted look on Milekhina's face, however, Dimitri guessed the general's mind was centered on more immediate events----like his unrewarding service as commander of the Moscow Military District, head of a staff bureau in the Kremlin, colonel of a regiment strung out through Eastern Siberia in a dozen dull little posts, commanding officers of a fort that squatted on an island in the Baltic Sea bristling with guns that had never been fired at an enemy in all the decades of its existence---and that now, once more, despite highly placed enemies and bungling subordinates, he was going back into action.  It was like being given a second youth!

 Vitaly Milekhina. at 62. was still a handsome and soldierly figure as he balanced himself in the stern of the little launch coming into what had once been called the Sultan's Dock.  Dimitri and Alexei hurried down the stringpiece to be on hand the moment he jumped ashore.  There was an almost youthful spring to his movements as he accomplished this maneuver, undoubtedly the results of having insisted on a canter before breakfast every morning of his adult life. He was still fairly slender and compact, his frosty blue eyes were sharp and clear, and he had a full head of graying brown hair.  He didn't look a day over fifty in his white uniform with its gold epaulets.  He was a taut kind of man.  All this at first glance.  A longer look and one could see age creeping up around the edges of this facade---a slight tremble of the hand, a sudden sag in the carefully held jawline, a hint of desiccation to the hawkish profile---and one could guess that Milekhina was holding back the natural process of aging with an almost pathological desperation.

Both brothers saluted the general, who then grasped Alexei's hand with both of his and shook it warmly.  "Alex, you young rogue, good to see you.  You're looking fit, campaigning must suit you.  Raisa'll be in the next boat---can't wait to see you..." The general spoke in a series of field dispatches whenever embarrassed by emotion.  After another moment or two of verbal telegraphy directed at Alexei, he decided to recognize Dimitri, of whom he had never entirely approved.  "Hullo, Dimitri---Major now, I see..." The general's eyebrows lifted in an unflattering surprise.  "I'll be damned.  Won my majority in the field, after seven desperate engagements with the enemy.  Everything comes easier now."

The general dismissed the naval officer and told his aide to arrange transportation to the Hafrar Inn forthwith.  

He had started to rap out questions, directly mostly at Alexei, about conditions in the islands when the chaika bearing his daughter and their considerable baggage, along with a few other passengers from the transport, began easing its way to the dock.

The general, with the two younger officers trailing respectively one pace behind, moved down the dock towards the chaika's landing place.  Courtly as always with his only child, the general helped her from the chaika's gunwale to the dock, swinging her over as easily as if she were still a mere child.  For a moment Raisa stood there, surveying all three of the men who had always been the most important in her life, more than a little conscious, Dimitri thought, of the drama inherent in the tableau and the fetching picture she made as to its centerpiece.

She was as touchingly beautiful as he had remembered her.  There was an appeal, a wistfulness, a childishness perhaps, about her beauty that made one forgive her for having more than her share of it.  She wore a dove-gray traveling costume, tucked in here, flared out there, artfully making the most of her slim, willowy figure.  She carried a small and frilly parasol utterly inadequate for protection against the sun in these latitudes but well adapted to Raisa's purposes.  For Raisa it was a kind of feminine sidearm, occasionally to be used in shading her eyes when she wished to look at one against the sun, to be twirled gaily against her shoulder, to gesture with, to use as a background framing for her delicate features.  Yet she was not consciously a coquette---just a girl who fell into postures as graceful as the more studied arabesques of a dancer.

A mass of burnished blonde hair, the color of pale honey, formed an elegant nest for the feathered little hat she wore.  Her eyes were a dark sapphire blue, like the waters of a bottomless mountain lake, without the frosty austerity of her father's.  Her skin had a delicate flush just beneath the surface, the color of a ripening peach.  There was a radiance to her face even in repose.  Her mouth was rather small, conforming to the narrowing line of her jaw, but full, scarlet and caressing, always poised as if kissing the air around it.  There were tiny dimples sat at the corners of her mouth and the point of her jaw.  The bones in her face were so frail, they looked as if they could be crushed between one's thumb and forefinger.

Raisa held her mock-inquisitorial stance for just a moment, then laughed delighted and flung herself into Alexei's arms. "Alex, darling, I've missed you so," she said.  Yet there was a quick little frown, indicating, perhaps, that she was reminding herself that no reunion with Alexei was likely to possess an enduring happiness.  Raisa was just tall enough to look over Alexei's shoulder as he embraced her, and Dimitri could see that she was not as carefree as she pretended to be.

Alexei kissed her rather hastily and then let her go.

"Thank you, sir, for bringing her to me," Alexei said gravely to the general, who squeezed Alexei's arm with approval of his soldierly suppression of emotion.

"And Dimitri," Raisa said boldly, stepping around Alex and walking towards Dimitri with her arms outstretched.  "Dearest Dimitri, always the same." She clung to him and reached up to kiss him gingerly on the cheek.  "I don't think I'd have come if I hadn't known you'd be here too," she whispered.

With her breath in his ear and his body touching his, and even with her father and her fiance looking on, Dimitri experienced a brief impulse to crush her against him---whether out of attraction or revulsion he wasn't sure, but certainly some violent and dishonorable emotion.  Not since she was a child with the honey-colored hair tumbling around her shoulders had he felt a truly tender affection for her.  They had been engaged when she was eighteen and he was six years older, but even then, he had to admit to himself now, there was nothing sublime or poetic about his feelings for her. He had just wanted to possess her, while hypocritically assigning himself nobler motives.

Raisa stepped back and once more looked into the faces of the three men in her life.  "Will I like it out here?" she asked. "I'm serious, I want to know."

"Korosumska is getting very lively," Alexei said.  "Balls and receptions every other night."

"I'm sure you'll like it, Raisa," her father said.  "It won't be like one of those dreary posts where my friends in Moscow exiled me from time to time.  There's action here, and the whole army comes to life when there's work to be done.  The men fight in the field, and the ladies battle over teacups back here in a headquarters city."

"Dimitri?" Raisa said. "Don't you have an opinion?"

"I suppose it will depend on how much you want to like it," he replied.

"What a dog-in-the-manger answer," she said, "and what a Dimitri-like answer!  Are there many beautiful women here?"

"Ask Alex," the general said. "He's the one with an eye for beauty, the young devil.  What do you say, Alex? Is there a chance for an old widower like me?"

"You need no advice from me on that score, sir," Alexie said. "Your reputation for reconnaissance is in the best traditions of the armies of Imperial Russia."

"Surely you can provide more information than that, Alex darling," Raisa said coolly.

"I don't think you have too much to worry about, Raisa," Alexei said.  "I can't speak authoritatively on the subject of civilian women---Dimitri was squiring one of them around until she left to save the heathen in some other desert outpost.  But I've noticed one thing about our own ladies.  I don't have to ask where their husbands have served, I only have to look at their wives and I can tell.  If they're leathery and anxious-looking, they invariably came from some frontier post.  If they're fashionably dressed, Vladivostok or Yalta. If they've already succumbed to the Muslim influence---a chador or a veil over the face---their husbands were probably from the Kazakh Oblastlies.  And if they keep a weather eye out for visiting parliamentarians, or like to flirt with the foreign journalists, they've probably done a tour of duty in Moscow."

"I'll wager that you noticed more than that about the ladies," the general said.  Despite the difference in age and rank, he became almost frolicsome when Alexei was around.  Dimitri had once heard the general say, "Alex's the best tonic for me that I know.  Same kind of rascal I was in my green age.  None of the young fellows have the same spirit." The only thing for which the general would not forgive Alexei, no doubt, was his failure to marry Raisa.  The general's whole ambition was centered on the determination that they would provide his grandchildren.  Maybe, Dimitri thought, that was one of the barriers to a more perfect understanding between the two of them, the general's loving coercion.

By now the general's aide, a young lieutenant whom he fully remembered to introduce as Nikita Khorkov, had returned and was hovering a few yards away.  Lieutenant Khorkov finally worked up the courage to announce that he had a carriage waiting.

The general and Alexei paired off for the walk up to the narrow street running along the docks, and Raisa took Dimitri's arm, her slender white hand squeezing him just above the elbow with a sort of insinuating pressure which, however, may have been entirely innocent. One never knew with Raisa.

Without a change of expression, and speaking in a sweetly even tone, she said, "Poor Alex doesn't know what he's in form.  Either he marries me before Christmas or he gets his ring back, in spite of anything he or Father can say.  There are other men in the world."

She tilted the parasol and smiled up at him.

Almost from the hour of General Milekhina's arrival in Korosumska military preparations proceeded at an accelerated pace.  That same night his appointment to command the Ramah Valley expedition was announced.  The next day he established his H.Q. north of the city and before nightfall had sent orders to the regiments of his command that they were to be prepared to "move out at an hour's notice."  It was naturally assumed that the quickening pace of events was attributable to General Milekhina's celebrated lack of patience, but the true impetus came from headquarters, which had only been waiting for his arrival from back west to open the campaign.  The expedition, of which Spravtsev's regiment and Dimitri's battalion were to be part, was primarily designed to sever communications between the rebels in the northern and southern extremities of Kenzank.  It was to march up the valley of the Ramah River, take the city of Kashtet, and capture as many as possible of the rebel garrison.

HQ, as usual, was proceeding cautiously, more fearful of defeat than desirous of a thumping big victory.  It seemed to lesser minds to be trying to discourage the rebels, rather than inflict any large amount of damage on them---a procedure that disgusted most of the younger officers and bewildered the troops, who naively believed that they were there to fight a war.  Yet it was a sensible policy, as large army casualty lists were not sensible.  The true purpose of the army in Turania was to pacify, (the conquest having been accomplished many months ago) and bring about a reconciliation between the native population and their new masters without the bitterness that a prolonged resistance would encourage.  HQ also was intensely aware that any setback suffered by the Russian forces would be used to the fullest extent by the rebel propagandists to attract recruits by the thousands to their banners.  Caution, in the highest echelons, became a military and political need---and a matter of scorn to the fighting men.

To these considerations and the arguments aroused in the camps of the three regiments assigned to take part in the Ramah Valley campaign, Dimitri closed his mind as much as possible.  He felt that it was his duty to let the HQ staff worry about the bigger problems while in concentrated on getting his battalion into fighting shape.  Yet he could not help being aware of the stresses and strains involving the expeditionary force itself.  It was painfully obvious that General Milekhina, in addition to disputing the limited objectives that corps headquarters insisted on imposing for his campaign, had small regard for his regimental commanders, Colonel Spravtsev among them.  He consulted them as little as possible and often called in their juniors to settle various problems connected with getting the divisions on the road to Kashtet.  One afternoon Dimitri was submitted to the following catechism:

"A two-day march to Kashtet?  Why?!"

"The transport, sir," Dimitri replied.

"What transport?"

"Um, the thumars, sir."

"What the hell is a thumar?"

"A local name for a Bactrian camel, sir."

"And what the hell has the Bactrian camel got to do with the army of Imperial Russia?  Where are the horses and mules?"

"Back west, sir, and the Bactrian camel is the only beast in Kenzank available for transport purposes.  Horses and mules don't do very well in this climate for heavy-duty hauling.  Besides, there are barely sufficient horses to mount the junior officers."

"Camels?!  For the Russian Army?  God Almighty, Dimitri, camels are for Arabs and Mongols.  Why must we lower ourselves to that level?"

"Well, the Bactrian camel is exceptionally adept at withstanding wide variations in temperature, ranging from freezing cold to blistering heat.  They can go without water for months at a time, which will be useful in the harsh Turanian terrain.  Speeds of up to 40 miles an hour have been reported by local riders, but I've never seen one move that quickly."

"But there is a disadvantage, eh?"

"Just that we'll have to keep them well fed so that their humps stay plump and erect.  Failure to do so will cause the humps to shrink and lean to the side, thereby rendering them unrideable."

"As if the goddamn infantry isn't bad enough," General Milekhina said, "I've got be saddled with temperamental camels!"

Every time such problems came up, the general couldn't restrain himself from reminding everyone how fine and simple it was to lead a cavalry brigade in the Crimean War.  "Besides," he would say, "I wasn't hampered at every turn by the educated fools they assign a man as staff officers, supposedly to do his thinking for him.  My office was in my saddlebags.  Now it takes a ton of paper forms to get a division marching up the pike."

Despite all these vexations, however, General Milekhina was able to order the advance up the valley to begin within ten days of his arrival to take command.  His three columns set out one morning in early August.  They were to converge late that day in the village of Kutan, bivouac there for the night, move out two hours before dawn and attack the line of rebel trenches, stretching east to west across the Ramah Valley, which covered the city of Kashtet.  The rebel General Thutmib was believed to have several thousand men available for the defense of that small city.

In Colonel Spravtsev's column, which had the right wing of the advance, Dimitri's battalion was in the vanguard.  The colonel, who was the only mounted man in the column, rode with the 2nd battalion; then came the thumar-drawn supply wagons and a battery of light artillery, and finally the 3rd battalion.  The heat was murderous, the dunes and terraces bordering the line of march steamed under the relentless sun.  But the pace of the march was so slow, with frequent halts to accommodate both men and camels, that there were few stragglers.

It was dusk by the time the regiment approached the village of Kutan and the first of a series of confusions that were to afflict the campaign ensued.  All three regiments happened to converge at the crossroads at the same time.  Their columns became inextricably tangled in the village itself, with troops crowding the narrow streets with thumars, wagons and field guns, shouting officers, and bewildered natives.  The general's staff had failed to time their arrival so that each regiment would march through the town and occupy its bivouac without being snarled up with the others.  The general himself, not to mention his staff, was nowhere to be seen; presumably, the general intended to ride in that night when the roads were clear.

Colonel Spravtsev, his face almost purple with outrage at the confusion, assumed command of Kutan as the senior officer on the scene, and ordered Dimitri to "straighten out the mess at the crossroads."

Dimitri took one of his companies, the Arkhangelsk Volunteers, to the crossroads just south of the village to establish a roadblock and halt all movement on Kutan at gunpoint---if necessary--while Alexei's company of Regulars cleared the streets of the village itself and got the intermingled companies marching to their assigned areas north of the village, squad by squad, straggler by straggler.  Then, by the light of flares, Dimitri directed a battalion of each of the three regiments to proceed through Kutan in order, without jamming the crossroads.  The process took hours of threats, arguments, denunciations, and explanations, as each angry and frustrated unit commander demanded priority in passing through the crossroads.  It was almost midnight by the time all of the troops had reached their bivouac and the cold comfort of hardtack and borscht for their only meal since breakfast.  

Just about the time that the last troops were clearing Kutan, General Milekhina, his staff and aides galloped into the village and were astonished to learn that the march plan had been botched.  The general dismissed Colonel Spravtsev's report of the confusion as a "small matter, no need to get old-womanish about it, Spravtsev," and called an immediate conference of all field officers, those commanding battalions and regiments.

A score of officers, including General Milekhina's staff, were assembled in the light of army lanterns in the marketplace of Kutan.  Alexei, although only a company commander, was present at the general's express orders.  The general, now dressed in a white field uniform, stood before his field officers and laid the law down.  He showed no signs of weariness from the ride or the late hour, no evidence of strain over the fact that this was literally the eve of battle.

"A few of you gentlemen have served under me before," the general said slapping his leg with a riding crop, "and I don't have to tell them that I'm disappointed in the lot of you.  I'm only an iron-assed old Cossack, but I can tell in a moment when a man is letting down in his job.  The whole lot of you, with one or two honorable exceptions, behaved like a mob of disgruntled serfs in permitting your columns to jam up at the crossroads.  A decent measure of discipline on the march, and this would never have happened."

The general surveyed his officers with lancelike blue eyes, giving the effect that he was memorizing each of their faces for possible retribution in the future.  "A good many of you will be taking the next train to Siberia if another incident like that occurs.  I needn't remind you that I'll be going over the efficacy reports of each of you the day after this campaign ends.

"Enough of recrimination, however, what's done is done.  You can all retrieve your fortunes at daylight tomorrow, today rather, when we go up against the enemy before Kashtet.  I want that town taken with efficiency and dispatch.  Nobody can claim the plan of operations isn't easy enough. Spravtsev on the right wing goes in, followed by the other two regiments on the left.  All we've got in front of us is a rabble of frightened Orientals who can't shoot worth a damn, from all accounts.

"I intend to take lunch at noon in Kashtet.  I want it spread on a white tablecloth in the khan's palace.  And, by God, if I have to scarf down cold rations in a ditch this side of Kashtet, just because you fools haven't pushed the attack as planned---with efficiency and dispatch----a lot of you are going to pay hell for it.  Remember that.  I trust that tomorrow evening, at the mess table in Kashtet, I'll have the pleasure of toasting each and every one of you."

General Milekhina waved his riding crop and dismissed the assemblage.  He halted the Karamazov brothers as the others scattered for their bivouac areas and asked them to step into his tent for a moment.  "A nightcap, lads," he said. His striker served them each a glass of cognac in the big, well-lighted tent.  Dimitri noted that his camp table was innocent of the maps, reports, and other paraphernalia of command that one might expect in the tent of a division commander the night after the battle.  The general, apparently, was going to play it by ear.

Despite his stern and admonitory remarks to his officers a few minutes before, he was jovial with the two brothers.  "By this time tomorrow night those fellows back in Makhan-e-Maroun Palace are going to sit up and take notice, I promise you.  Need a good shaking up.  All this talk of 'limited objectives and 'proceeding with due caution.' You can't draw a line when you've got the enemy on the run.  Hot pursuit, that's my motto.  When I clean out this valley there won't be an insurrecto left to raise his hand against us...."

The general dismissed them with best wishes for the morrow, and they returned to the bivouac area outside the village.

Dimitri got a few hours' sleep propped up against the trunk of a date palm.  He came awake at the first note of the bugle which sounded reveille over the vast bivouac.  A few minutes later Sergeant Zykov brought him a tin cup of steaming coffee, which, along with a cigar, put a little heart into him for the pre-dawn march ahead.

Inside half an hour the columns were on the move again, Spravtsev's regiment advancing along the eastern slope of the valley and the other two regiments paralleling it on a road following the western slope.  The floor of the valley shook with the foot beats of thousands of men, their guns and transport.  It was still dark, and Dimitri ordered scouts sent out on point ahead of the column and on both flanks.

The column forded a shallow stream, and by the time it emerged on the other side it was light enough to glimpse the outlines of the broad valley, the Ramah River off to the left, the city a ghostly white on the heights several miles to the north.

They marched along the road between flooded rice fields a thousand yards wide and half a mile long, the water in them retained by miniature dikes a foot or two high in most places.

On the slope of the valley off to the right people could be seen driving their cattle into the mountains for safety----the whole countryside was being emptied at the approach of Russian troops.  There would be no element of surprise in their attack that morning.

Even though he paused to sweep the soggy terrain every few hundred yards with his field glasses, Dimitri could see no sign of the rebel trenches.  The enemy apparently was well dug in and likely hidden behind the line of a desert dune.

Sergeant Zykov, imperturbable as ever, trudged along at his side, with a rifle slung over his shoulder and his shotgun in hand. The rifle was a concession to formal campaigning.

The column had just rounded a bend in the road when a volley was fired at a considerable distance and Mauser bullets chunked into the roads and dirt-covered fields bordering it.  The rebel line, Dimitri judged, was almost a thousand yards to the north.  He didn't even have to give the order to deploy.  Both his companies, the Arkhangelskis again commanded by Captain Chudov, flung themselves into the dunes, formed a firing line, and then took cover behind the nearest boulder.  Young lieutenants coolly stayed standing behind their platoons and shouted out orders for volley after volley, "Ready....aim...FIRE!....Ready....aim...FIRE!"  Alexei was standing in the road ordering his men to spread out to the left while the Arkhangelskis formed a line to the right of the road.

A few minutes later the second battalion came up the road on the double and plunged through the mud and water of the paddies to extend the Russian line far to the right, cover the enemy positions, and prevent any enfilading fire. At the thousand-yard range, most of the firing was bound to be wide of the mark on both sides.  They'd have to close with the enemy, but they (first) had to feel him out and determine the strength of his positions and his will to hold them.

Colonel Spravtsev made a splendid but professionally unconcerned target riding up there on his big white horse, advertising to the whole countryside "Here is the commander."  Dimitri went to confer with him just as the field battery came up at a very slow trot, cut loose its lumbering gun teams, dug its trail into the mud of the roadside, and prepared to start shelling the insurgent line.

Colonel Spravtsevb swung out of the saddle and ordered that the 3rd battalion come up far out on the right flank and around the enemy line as fast as possible.

"But," he said, jabbing Dimitri in the ribs, "we can't wait around for the reserve battalion to go into action.  I want you to advance your line in a series of rushes---dune to dune.  Hell of a place to fight in this sea of sand and stone. If you get the Turanians on the run, keep going until you take Kashtet.  Then stop.  Not one foot beyond the city.  Those are orders, as I interpret them.  If General Milekhina wants a further advance he'll have to give me the order in writing.  With witness and a notary."

Dimitri sent word to  Alexei and Captain Chudov that their companies were to go forward, dune to dune, on each side of the road.  All further commands would be given by bugle call.

The infantry advanced on the signal as prescribed, and by the time they'd closed to within 500 yards of the enemy, each man looked like a statue sloppily carved out of the mud.  The artillery behind them opened fire at the same time, sending up fountains of mud along the enemy line.  The long skirmish line moved forward with the precision that had been drummed into the men during the days of drill and maneuver that summer, well-spaced out to keep casualties to a minimum.  Here and there a man floundered in the hard-packed, dusty surface of the dunes, a Mauser bullet in him, but the stretcher-bearers followed so close behind the skirmishers that most of the wounded were retrieved a few minutes after they fell.  Dimitri, following right behind his companies close to the road, felt proud of the steady and professional manner in which they performed.  If there was any splendor in the dirty work of the infantry, it was at a self-abnegating moment like this, when the men flung themselves into battle heedless of the enemy fire, the mud, the wariness of a long march, and performed precisely as they'd been taught on the drill ground.

Dimitri himself was so covered with dirt that Colonel Spravtsev almost road past without recognizing him.  

"Are you looking for me, Colonel?" Dimitri asked as Spravtsev's horse went plunging past.

"God Almighty, Karamazov, is that you?   What a sight!  How are things going?"

"So far, so good.  We should be closing with them inside half an hour.  By the way, Colonel, don't you think it would be wise to get off that horse?  You're making a perfect target, and the enemy line is only about five hundred yards' way."

"No, thanks, Dimitri, I'd rather risk getting shot than wallow around in this outsize sandbox.  I'm going around to the right flank now and see to it that the reserve battalion hits them on the flank with all they've got."

Ten minutes later Dimitri's battalion was extended fanwise along the line of a curving dike less than 200 yards from the enemy trenches.  Most of the enemy's fire, Dimitri noted, was going over the heads of his men, even when they were running through the rice paddies.  He gave his battalion a moment's rest, ordering the bugler to sound "Cease Fire."  He looked up and down the line of the Archangelsk company and of Alexei's Regulars across the Kutan-Kashtet road.  Very few casualties, from the looks of things.  Time to make the last charge.

At Dimitri's signal, the bugler sounded the excited, chattering notes of the call which sent his companies forward.  All that gleamed about this muddied crew was the naked blades of their bayonets.  By the time they were halfway across the final paddy separating them from the enemy, the Turanian troops fled from their trenches.  Despite the haste of their retreat, few of the enemy abandoned their rifles, which demonstrated to Dimitri that they had not lost all power of resistance.  The battalions to the right had launched their assaults a few minutes later and were similarly successful.  Both Alexei and his other company commander, Dimitri saw, had survived the action but two young lieutenants, only a year or two out of military college, had been wounded.

Dimitri regrouped his battalion on the road to Kashtet and continued the advance on orders from Colonel Spravtsev.

They crossed the Ramah River and another dusty plain half a mile long, then another river, the Sar, over which the bridge was undamaged.  It was shortly before noon when the battalion was halted just outside the city of Kashtet.  Bed sheets were displayed from the windows and on the rooftops of the houses as a token, presumably, of the authorities' intention to surrender the city.  The battalion marched in with shouldered arms, and not a shot was fired against them.  The insurgents had continued their flight several miles up the valley.  Kashtet was a pleasant place with a population of three or four thousand, situated high enough above the sweltering desert dunes in the valley to make the contrast in heat and humidity refreshing.

Orders came up from General Milekhina that Spravtsev's regiment was to garrison the city and the other two regiments, which had driven in the insurgent defenses southwest of Kashtet, were to bivouac in rice warehouses on the outskirts.  By the time the general and his staff arrived, Spravtsev's battalions had occupied the barracks and the public buildings, and there was little left for the senior officers to do but congratulate each other on their swift success.

Division HQ was set up in the khan's offices, but after listening impatiently to the reports of his regimental commanders General Milkekhina departed for a merchant's house nearby which had been requisitioned as his private quarters.  The general, Dimitri observe, was in a curiously withdrawn mood.  The taking of Kashtet at a total casualty list of less than a score dead and about fifty wounded, the fact that approximately 100 prisoners had been taken, did not seem to interest him greatly.  There was a brooding look about the general's lean, almost horsy face as he left his field officers to "think things over in private," as he put it.  Most of the officers thought the old gaffer was going to lie down and get a little rest, but Dimitri heard later that Alexei spent most of the afternoon with him.

Sometime during those sequestered afternoon hours, at any rate, the general formulated a plan of operations to extend beyond Kashtet.

Dimitri learned about it when Colonel Spravtsev summoned him to division HQ shortly after 4:00 that afternoon and grimly shoved the copy of a telegraph dispatch into his hands.  General Milekhina announced to corps headquarters in Korosumska that several important insurgent generals and politicians, and the main body of insurgent troops, were just four miles away, up in the mountain village of Tharam, confident that they wouldn't be pursued.  The general had the honor of informing headquarters that he was sending a force to Tharam to attempt their capture.

"I went over to Milekhina's fancy billet and asked him about this," Spravtsev said. "I reminded him about the orders not to move north of Kashtet and all the old bastard said was, 'I wonder how you got into the cavalry service, Spravtsev.'  I tried to remind him that we were infantry operating under a tight set of restrictions and he said, 'I've always heard the 4th Cavalry was an inferior regiment.  Don't you know that the true cavalryman always exceeds his orders?' Anyway, your battalion is ordered to stand ready to march out for Tharam, tomorrow at dawn.  Bad situation, but there's no arguing with him."

Dimitri's next glimpse of the general was at mess that night in the merchant's house, to which all company, battalion and regimental commanders were summon.  The officers had cleaned up as best they could but were a rumpled crew to be dining so handsomely amid the merchant's best silver and crystal.  Their host's kitchen and wine cellar provided a dinner, on several hours' notice, that couldn't have been excelled in Korsumska itself.  The general toasted his officers, and responded to Colonel Spravtsev's somewhat restrained salute in return, with a joviality that none of his officers had ever seen him display before.

Towards the end of the meal a passenger came over from headquarters with a telegram which the duty officer believed the general should see at once.  General Milekhina read its few brief sentences with a bitter smile, then addressed his officers:

"Kremlin has seen fit to countermand my orders for a lightning attack on Tharam, tomorrow, gentlemen.  If you will forgive the expression, certain hard-assed gentry who prefer to do their campaigning behind desks are content to let the fruits of victory dangle just beyond our grasp."

General Melekhina looked around him at the long and crowded table, until his eyes came to rest on Alexei's face among his peers at the lower end.  "I am reminded, gentlemen, of a young cavalry officer in the Crimean War.  Just before the battle of Sebastopol, he served under an excellent but rather cautious corps commander named General Klimek.  His brigade had been ordered not to cross the Crimean Peninsula as Klimek feared it might be clawed to pieces by Lord Raglan.  This young officer, who then commanded a squadron, took it upon himself, with the unspoken blessings of his brigadier, to cross the peninsula and bring back information indicating that a whole Russian corps was assembling there for a surprise attack on the British left.  Those are things that don't go down on a man's record---initiative is something that only junior officers can afford at times---but I can tell you, gentlemen, that the young cavalry officer of whom I speak never had cause to regret his action.

With his eyes still fixed upon Alexei, General Milekhina lifted his glass and said, "A final toast, gentlemen.....To the young officers with the courage to seize the initiative...."262Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY58cqsfMo9

As they drank the toast Dimitri noticed that there was an unusually fervent gleam in Alexei's eyes.

A few minutes later the officers returned to their various commands.  Most of Spravtsev's regiment was quartered in the old royal army barracks but Alexei's company, designated as provost-guard of the city, was billeted in the jail and municipal offices.

Next morning, to the surprise of all but General Melekhina, Alexei marched his company out on the road to Tharam long before reveille, determined to attack that mountain town before the rebels could escape.  Colonel Spravtsev was furious.  Dimitri was shamed at his brother's betrayal of the regimental chain of command and sick with worry over the outcome of the venture....and General Melekhina smiled benignly.  Alexei had "seized the initiative."  Dimitri could only wait and wonder how many men would pay for his brothers' grab for glory.