XXXII
The train veered off to the side as it
rounded a tight corner shaking the car like a bomb.
Soso’s eyes flashed open. He
looked around at his near empty car, at the few other prisoners, who perturbed
were all closing their eyes again. He
closed his too. Inevitability was the
name of the final stop of the train, but Soso knew that it wasn’t the
inevitable the Tsarist troops thought it would be. No, he knew he was not going to his
death. Russian lives were too valuable
at the moment, even a lowly prisoner like himself. He was going to get conscripted with the
handful of men that were with him. The
war was going extremely badly for the Tsar.
He needed more cannon-fodder.
But Soso already knew they wouldn’t find
him fit for service. He had an injury in
his left arm from his youth when he had tried to play a game grabbing hold of
the axles of carriages as they thundered past.
His mother had done her best to help him, but the wound had never healed,
and as such he had always known he could never be the ideal Georgian
warrior. But from the tales of how many
Russians had died in the war already, he decided he was better off not being
that warrior.
The train thundered ominously onward,
towards the south, and Soso fell back asleep.
He would soon fail his exam, and be left in southern Siberia until
February. But his fate was about to
change. The February of 1917 was the
month that would rip Russia apart. The
powder keg was finally about to burst, and the revolution about to begin.
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