The coalition army included detachments from sixteen libraries— about two thousand men from various different cities: Saratov, Tomsk, Perm, Kostroma, Ufa, Krasnoyarsk, Khabarovsk, Lipetsk, Sverdlovsk, Penza, Belgorod, Vladimir, Ryazan, Vorkuta and Chelyabinsk. They were joined by a militia of six hundred people fielded by reading rooms.
Mokhova flung almost three thousand mums into the battle. She herself wisely did not take part in the fighting. The army was commanded by Polina Gorn.
LIBRARIES AND READING ROOMS
A READING ROOM was the name given to a small group organized round some particular Book—of Joy, Memory or, more rarely, Endurance.
The entire Gromov world had begun with small communities like this. When a solitary individual who had penetrated the mystery of a Book turned up, a reading room would form around him, including those comrades whom he had decided to take into his confidence. If someone with a family became a member of a reading room, then soon his nearest and dearest became members too, and that was tolerated indulgently. But every piece of string comes to an end, and at a certain stage the community stopped expanding.
A reading room was the foundation or basis on which, in time, a library could spring up. The opposite also occurred. Following an armed clash a small clan might be reduced to a reading room.
All kinds of people were taken in, from all age groups and all professions. Every reader was free, both morally and—more importantly—financially. This was an advantage that reading rooms had over libraries, where people donated part of their income, the so-called “membership fee”, to fund the search for Books and support the administrative structures.
Just like a library, a reading room had a leader, who was known as the librarian. He or she was the owner of the Book or the person to whom the reading room had entrusted it. Reading rooms did not become involved in the search for Books; people were satisfied with what they had and honestly waited their turn to use it.
At first there were no points of intersection between the libraries and the reading rooms, although they knew about each other. Later the libraries built up their strength and accumulated more Books. The existence of competitors was incompatible with their totalitarian plans.
Reading rooms were blackmailed and intimidated. Suggestions were made that they should voluntarily give up their Book, and they were promised a place in a library if they did so. Sometimes Books were expropriated. There was an official explanation for this blatant banditry: the reading rooms were declared a hotbed of copyists and the leaders of large libraries called for copying to be halted at any price.
From out of a black void the “torch-bearers” appeared—hellhounds spawned by the will of the large clans. The torch-bearers attacked reading rooms, stole their books and burned them. These losses had practically no impact on the libraries, which had numerous spare copies in their depositories, but the wretched readers who had been deprived of their only Book were left with nowhere to go except into a library.
Against the background of this contradictory situation Mokhova’s star rose high in the Gromov firmament. Following several successful raids on the depositories of influential libraries it became clear that a major battle was inevitable. An appropriate field for it was found in the north of Russia, beside the abandoned village of Neverbino.
And then the members of several clans, including Lagudov’s and Shulga’s, appealed to the reading rooms for help in the struggle against Mokhova, promising them absolute immunity from all financial levies in the future. That was why so many volunteers assembled near Neverbino. They came from every corner of the country to bear arms and stand up for their own reading rooms and Books.
THE BATTLE OF NEVERBINO
THE COALITION’S DETACHMENTS were organized in a primitive fashion, after the example of the Russian forces at the Battle of Kulikovo Field. The individuals in its staff headquarters were remote from modern military tactics, but nonetheless—as became clear later—quite practical in their approach.
The avant-garde of the formation consisted of the patrol and advance regiments, made up of reading rooms. Located behind them was a large regiment made up of brigades from six libraries, with its flanks protected by right-flank and left-flank regiments, each consisting of four combined brigades. Sheltering behind the large regiment was Shulga’s clan, which called itself the reserve regiment, and the ambush regiment stationed in a small stretch of forest nearby was the detachment from Lagudov’s clan, which also had only moderate claims to excellence as a fighting force.
Books of Endurance were extracted from secret depositories. Special readers, gathering groups of fifty people around them, read through the Books, straining their voices as they rendered the listeners’ bodies insensible to wounds.
The allusion to Kulikovo Field was reflected in the challenge to a duel issued to all comers by the crane driver Dankevich as she whirled her terrible hook round her head. No duel took place, however— no Peresvet could be found among the ranks of the libraries.
Battle commenced at about two o’clock in the morning. Pumped full of strength, the “mums” moved in to attack the patrol and advance regiments. After suffering heavy losses, the reading-room militias pulled back.
Polina Gorn issued orders from a low hill where she was surrounded by her guard. Seeing that the frontal attack had run out of momentum and was threatening to turn into a pointless, drawn-out battle, Gorn created an advantage of numbers on the flank by throwing six units of a hundred women against the left-flank regiment, which fifteen minutes later no longer existed, having been crushed by the hammers of former railway workers.
Shulga’s reserve regiment, which was responsible for preventing outflanking movements, abandoned the left-hand regiment to its fate, swung round the right-hand regiment and made straight for the high ground where Gorn’s headquarters was located.
The detachments led by the mighty Dankevich emerged at the rear of the combined forces, creating a genuine threat of encirclement. Lagudov’s ambush regiment struck at the rear of the mums who had broken through. The sudden introduction of fresh forces did not change the situation significantly. What saved the coalition was the passage of time. The effect of the Book of Strength had partially worn off—it had been read to the old women in advance, to provide the strength required for the forced march from the railway line to Neverbino.
Gorn’s bodyguards perished in the cruel skirmish. An old woman who looked very much like Gorn was cornered by Shulga’s soldiers. She fought desperately until she suddenly weakened and Shulga, goaded on by the Book of Fury, split his opponent’s head open.
The death of their general was the signal for mass flight by Mokhova’s army. Weakening as they ran, the old women were pursued like Mamai as far as the railway station. No more than a few dozen survived.
Rumours circulated that Gorn herself did survive, that it was her double who had been killed, that Gorn and two dozen of her closest comrades in arms who had retained their agility managed to hide and several days later reached their citadel, the nursing home. But it was preferred not to broadcast this information widely.
Many clamoured that Mokhova should be polished off in her lair and the Home should be taken by storm, otherwise the hydra would sprout more grey-haired heads, but this suggestion was stifled with the argument that Mokhova was finished anyway and “her fangs had been drawn”: a scorched fragment of the Book of Strength was found at the site of Gorn’s headquarters—it was believed that Gorn, sensing defeat, had destroyed this unique copy, probably the only one still in existence.