1636:The Kremlin games

Chapter 83

“Because you must!” David Sikorsky shouted. “The Boyar Duma has ordered the arrest. Director-General Sheremetev wants these people stopped!”

“One of those people,” the commander of the Nizhny Novgorod Streltzi snarled, “is the czar of Holy Rus. And if he wants to go, I’m letting him go.”

David pulled out his emergency pistol. “The patriarch has proclaimed that the czar is under a spell!”

“Didn’t look like it to me,” the commander said.

“Can you imagine Czar Mikhail standing on a barge, waving to peasants? Of course he was under a spell! Send a radio message. You’ll get confirmation from Moscow.” David rubbed his eyes. It had not been a good evening so far.

After making his way to the Volga River, stealing a rowboat, rowing across the river, and having to walk a mile back to Nizhny Novgorod, he had to deal with these uncultured cretins. He had bribed his way into the commander’s office and had some support among the officers. Much of the service nobility was unhappy with the changes that Czar Mikhail had proclaimed since his escape from the hunting lodge. The loss of serfs would ruin some of these men and probably do some harm to all of them.

“Just listen to me,” David finally got out. “What the czar is being forced to do will destroy all order in Russia. We’ll be back to the Time of Troubles. Radio Moscow. There will be great rewards for those who support me in this.”

And they did. It took most of the rest of the night, but by the next morning David had his force. It was barely two hundred men, perhaps fifty of the service nobility and one hundred fifty of the Streltzi.

The next morning at the docks, they loaded up the ferry that ran to and from Nizhny Novgorod and Bor, and began taking men across the river.

“Don’t overload her!” Nick shouted. “I know she’s big, but she’s not a boat!”

“Are you sure this thing is safe?” Tami Simmons muttered to Bernie. “I don’t want my husband and kids, not to mention me, falling out of the sky.”

“Safer than any airplane in this century,” Bernie said. “And that guy over there is probably one of the most experienced dirigible pilots in the world.”

“And just how much experience are we talking about?”

Nick shrugged. “Not a lot. Maybe two hundred hours. But he’s the best we’ve got, and that’s the quickest way out.”

“Maybe we ought to take the steamboat,” Gerry Simmons said.

“Okay by me,” Bernie said. “But you’re the ones who have to talk to the czar and czarina about it.”

“Well, scratch that idea,” Tami sighed. “Alexsey is running a little fever.”

“Troops!” someone shouted. “Troops landing!”

“Landing where?” Bernie shouted back.

“On the banks of the Volga,” said Petr Kadian, one of the Gorchakov deti boyars. “That way!” He pointed.

Tim headed for him. “How many? What strength?”

Tim followed Petr Kadian down the street to where he could see the troops forming up down by the river, though forming up seemed rather a generous overstatement of the sort of milling mob that was down by the river. Part of that feeling was because Tim was a professional. Not a very old or experienced one, but a professional nonetheless. Part of it was that he was still very young and most of his experience was with game pieces, not men.

All of which didn’t mean that Tim wasn’t right. The force that David had raised in Nizhny Novgorod was only partly Streltzi and not the better part of Nizhny Novgorod’s Streltzi. They were filled out by peasants who had very little training. If they had been defending their city walls, they would have been fine. If they had been called up to fight off an invasion with time to get used to the idea, they might have done all right. But they had been drafted into a scratch force to go arrest the czar-and in one night. They weren’t sure if they should be obeying this stranger, whatever the radio telegraph said. Why should they trust the radio? It was new, it was a device, not a person they knew. They had seen the czar standing on a steam barge just the day before. They liked him. He had waved to them and so had the czarina. They really wished that political officer from Bor had just, well, stayed in Bor and not bothered them.

So they milled around, argued about where to stand and who was in front and who was behind in the line of march, and hoped that they would be too late. Tim didn’t know that was what was happening. He wasn’t experienced enough to know what was happening just by looking, but he was bright and had the right instincts. There was something very weak-looking about the force he was facing. He didn’t know what it was, but he could feel it. It was a big force. Almost twice as big as he had been expecting, something like two hundred men. But they didn’t have the AK4’s he’d been expecting. Two-thirds of them didn’t even have AK3’s; they had old match-lock muzzle-loaders. “Come on. Let’s form the men up,” he said to Petr Kadian.

That proved unnecessary. By the time they got back to the hangar, Ivan had the men they had brought with them from Murom formed up with the help of Princes Natasha’s more experienced guardsmen.

“So what do we do, General?” Ivan asked, with a grin.

Tim thought about it. The land between the river and the town was open; muddy bank fading to grassy field to streets and buildings. His force was outnumbered, but at the same time each of these people had sat down with the czar, the czarina, and Princess Natasha. They had talked with Bernie and Filip and they were volunteers who knew what they were fighting for. They could sit in the town and fight from behind the buildings. It would work, but it would get a lot of people killed. No, that isn’t the way.

“We’ll march out to meet them.”

Ivan gave him a look and Petr Kadian asked, “Why?”

“You saw them,” Tim said, still trying to figure out exactly what he had noticed about the invaders.

Petr Kadian nodded.

“Well, how did they look to you?”

Petr Kadian was by no means a military genius, but he had served the Gorchakov clan as an armsman and retainer for near twenty years. He had seen armies and he had seen battles. He had seen fierce resistance to overwhelming odds and armies coming apart in the face of a light breeze. He hadn’t noticed it when he was out there looking at the opposing force because it wasn’t his job to notice that sort of thing. But now that the boy general brought it up, he realized that those fellows out there were… “A rout waiting to happen, sir.”

That was what Tim had seen without quite knowing why.

Ivan, now that it had been explained, knew why. “We want them to see each other run.”

“More importantly, we want them to see that we won’t,” Tim said. “We want them to see us as a real army. The czar’s army. Small maybe, but real.”

They marched out in two columns with sergeants counting cadence loudly. When they were a little over one hundred yards from the still-milling mob from Nizhny Novgorod, they made a right turn and the columns stretched out into lines. Finally Tim called them to halt, then shouted, “Left, face!”

“Dress ranks!” Tim carefully paid no attention to the mob from Nizhny Novgorod as he watched the men dress their ranks, then as he walked down the line, commenting on uniforms and weapons. It wasn’t a bluff. Tim was quite sure these men would slaughter the mob they were facing. And it wasn’t a matter of bravery. Tim wasn’t sure how to put what it was. But he never would consider doing this if he were facing Sergeant Hampstead’s men. Nor if he were facing the Moscow Streltzi, even without the walking walls. Finally, he looked over his shoulder.

The mob of Nizhny Novgorod was no longer milling around, but they weren’t forming themselves into a unit either. They were just standing there, staring.

Tim shook his head. “All right, men,” Tim shouted. “On the command, the first rank will kneel and ready their rifles. Pick your targets. We want to hit as many in the first volley as possible. We will then wait till the breeze clears the smoke away before the second rank fires.” Tim looked back at the men across the field then continued, in as loud and penetrating a voice as he could manage, “There will be no reason to rush.”

A shot rang out. Tim didn’t spin or jump; he had been half-expecting it. He turned around to see a man near the end of the sort of arching line that the Nizhny Novgorod contingent had drifted into. There was smoke drifting from a musket in his hands. “Sergeant Kadian,” Tim said loudly.

“Yes, General?” Kadian asked.

“That uncultured fellow with the smoke coming from his musket is your target.”

“Right, General!” Kadian sounded quite pleased. And men started edging away from the fellow who had shot his musket.

“Very well. Where was I? After the first rank has fired and the air has cleared, the second rank will, on command, advance five paces, kneel, and fire. When the air has cleared again, the first will…”

Bernie and Natasha were boarding the dirigible when they heard the shot. They didn’t turn. It was just one shot and all it indicated was that they were in a hurry. The Czarina Evdokia wasn’t the Graf Zeppelin. It was a seventeenth-century airship built by seventeenth-century craftsmen informed by late-twentieth-century knowledge. Still, it was the same basic shape as the Graf Zeppelin, if a bit smaller. They loaded in a dozen passengers, and Captain Nikita Ivanovich Slavenitsky, the first Russian to fly, gave the order to pull her out of the giant hangar.

Tim finished his little speech and ordered the first rank to kneel. The Nizhny Novgorod force had lost several men who just faded away, but not enough. They still outnumbered Tim’s men. “Take aim! Fire!”

Blaaam! Blam! Blam!

A bit ragged, but not too bad. And certainly better than the spatter of shots that the Nizhnys had put out in response.

“Wait for it!” Tim shouted. “Let the breeze clear the smoke!” Let the enemy see their dead and think about being elsewhere.

The breeze was taking its time in clearing away the smoke. And when it did, the results were a bit disappointing. They were at the outside edge of the AK4.7’s range. Well outside of the effective range of a musket, but Tim had hoped for better. Almost fifty men had shot and less than ten of the enemy had fallen.

“Second rank advance!” Tim moved forward with the new front rank. “Your left! Your left! Halt!

“Kneel. Ready! Aim! Fire!”

Blam! BlBlaBlaaaam! Blam! Blam!

Definitely a bit ragged. It was strange. Tim should have been scared and, in a way he was. But the effect it had on him was weird. He just noticed things. Every detail became intense and distinct. The stench of the air, not just the acrid smoke of the burned powder but the smell of the river’s muddy bank, combined with the dew on the grass. The patterns the smoke made as it wafted away under the light breeze. And, most of all, the enemy across the field. It was almost as if he could see their faces. Feel the fear that was eating away at the little discipline they had. He was honestly a little amazed that they had held this long.

Then the Czarina Evdokia appeared over the roofs of Bor. It was massive and it was flying. It wasn’t the first time these men had seen it. It had made several test flights and some of them had gone over Nizhny Novgorod. But in this case, it meant that their last reason for being here was floating away.

“Next rank! Forward five paces!”

The Nizhny Novgorod force scattered. Tim let them. Honestly, he had nothing against those men. They were following the orders they had been given by their lawful lords.

Ivan came over. “So what now, Tim?”

“We go to Ufa.”

Czarina Evdokia looked out the window of the Czarina Evdokia, awash in conflicting emotions. Staying alive in the bear pit of Russian politics wasn’t ever easy, and her habit-along with her husband’s-had been to keep her head down. That hadn’t worked. Apparently it had in the other timeline, but not in this one. Now they were out of position. They couldn’t keep their heads down and Evdokia wasn’t at all sure that Mikhail would be able to handle being his own man. Or that she would be able to handle it. What would Sheremetev and the Boyar Duma do now that Mikhail had escaped the relatively comfortable prison? It was safe to assume that the gloves would come off, but how? Would they declare that Mikhail was False Mikhail, like the False Dmitris? Would they depose him in favor of Sheremetev and his family?

Evdokia didn’t know. All she really know was that she was scared to death and at the same time thrilled to be alive and flying over the countryside in a dirigible named in her honor. She looked over at her friend and confidant, Natasha, and wondered what the future would bring.

Natasha didn’t notice. She was holding Bernie’s arm and wasn’t quite sure how it had happened. Some time, while she was watching the battle of Bor probably. But she had no desire at all to let the arm go.

Nor the man it belonged to. So many other customs and attitudes were being cast aside, why should she worry about this one any longer?

And so many things would be changing for them, anyway. She thought about what Filip had said to the czar, when he compared him to a Cossack. He’d been joking, but the more Natasha pondered the matter the more profound that jest became.

Everyone knew there were noblemen out there in the Cossack bands, not just runaway serfs. One of them, the Polish-Lithuanian nobleman Aleksander Jozef Lisowski, had even invaded Muscovy twenty years earlier at the head of an outlaw army. He’d besieged Bryansk, defeated two Russian armies sent against him, burned Belyov and Likhvin and taken Peremyshl, and then defeated another Russian army at Rzhev. He’d finally left at that point, but not before burning Torzhok also.

Lisowski himself had died not long afterward. But his men still remained and still considered themselves an army. The Lisowczycy, they called themselves; “Lisowski’s men.”

There were possibilities out there in the frontier lands of eastern Europe; eastward as well as to the south. People came to such lands for many reasons; usually running from something but also looking for adventure and fortune. Former serfs, former free men, former noblemen-the distinctions became blurry in the borderlands; sometimes, to the point of vanishing altogether.

What could happen in such lands, if there were a true czar to serve as a rallying point?

She didn’t know, but she planned to find out.