The Last Tsar's Dragons

Chapter 19

The red dragons were restless that evening in their burrows, snapping at their keepers and tugging at their leads. Bronstein tried to keep them in line—he was the only one they really listened to—but even he was having trouble with them that night. Others might have thought to use a whip. A cat-o-nine tails was always close to hand, and a buggy whip as well. But Bronstein eschewed the rougher methods, leading the dragons with a firm hand and a firmer voice. Usually it worked.

“Why do they act this way?”

“And why do you not stop them? You have a whip.”

The speakers were Koba and Kamo, two middlemen sent by Lenin to oversee the training of the beasts. Or the “Red Terror,” as Lenin had dubbed them. That was so like him, trusting no one. Not even his own handpicked men. He’d told them nothing beside the fact that they would be underground. They’d assumed they were to be spies. And they were, of a sort.

Though they looked quite different—one strikingly handsome with windswept hair and a disarming smile, the other a frog-eyed caricature of a typical Georgian peasant—Bronstein couldn’t tell Koba and Kamo apart. Something in their manner made them identical in his mind: arrogance compounded by… by…. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“The dragons are bred to the sky,” he said archly, “and this stay underground irks them. To beat them will only make them tenser, more dangerous.”

“Then why even have the whips?” asked perhaps-Kamo.

“It makes me calmer,” Bronstein told them, with a bit of self-deprecating humor in his voice. That neither of them laughed was another dark tick against them.

Bronstein fixed one of them—the handsome one—with a glare. Koba, maybe. “And you may try to stop them if you wish.” He realized he was trying to train the two men as he trained the dragons, with a combination of strength and cozening.

Maybe-Koba looked at the dragons for a moment as if considering it. He didn’t look hopeful. But he didn’t look frightened, either.

Bronstein snapped imaginary fingers. That was it! Arrogance compounded by blind stupidity. They didn’t know enough to be afraid of the dragons. Or of Lenin. Or—he considered carefully—of him. The dragons were smarter, but Koba and Kamo served a different master. He wondered if that made the difference.

“My apologies, Comrade Bronstein,” Maybe-Koba said, his voice flat.

He didn’t sound sorry. The man is an entire library of negatives, Bronstein thought.

Maybe-Koba went on. “We shall let you return to your work. Comrade Lenin will be here within days. Then we shall release the Red Terror to cleanse this land. Lenin has said it, and now I understand what he means. Come, Kamo.”

Koba it is, then, Bronstein thought, adding aloud, “Cleanse it of what? Of Russians?”

Bronstein knew that Koba—or maybe Kamo, does it really matter?—had been a Georgian Social Democrat and nationalist and some whispered a separatist before joining Lenin to free the entire working class. Some said Koba—or maybe Kamo—still was. The fractures in the revolution made Bronstein’s head hurt. Without realizing it, he rubbed his cigarette-stained fingers against his temples.

Koba stared at Bronstein with no trace of emotion on his face. “Of the tsar. And his followers. Are you feeling ill?” As if a headache dropped Bronstein even further in his estimation.

Despite his flowing hair and soft brown eyes, there was something hard about Koba, Bronstein decided, like his innards were made of stone or steel rather than flesh and blood. But the men followed him. Followed him without question. Not that the men who followed Koba asked a lot of questions. They might fight for the workers, but they looked like idlers and ne’er-do-wells to Bronstein.

Are these the professional revolutionaries Lenin envisioned when he split the party?

Bronstein decided that ne’er-do-well was too kind a term to apply to these fellows. They looked more like thieves and murderers, and most likely anti-Semites.

But maybe those were the kind of men you needed to win a revolution.

He remembered when that was a philosophical question. Back in England, when he and Lenin and Borutsch all worked at Iskra, the revolutionary paper. He’d sided with Borutsch then, averring that education, enlightenment, and just a touch of propaganda would turn the entire working class to the revolution’s side. There’d be no need for war or violence, and certainly no need for dragons.

But that was before his forced education in Siberia. Before his enlightenment on Bloody Sunday. He knew now that revolution was a dirty business. A bloody business.

He grunted. So was tyranny.

“I will provide the dragons, Koba, and you provide the men. Together we will free this land.”

“Comrade Lenin will be here soon. He will say if there will be freedom or not.”

Bronstein shuddered, but only inwardly. Outwardly, he was ice. Freedom was not a bargaining chip. It was the sole purpose of a revolution. What on Earth is Lenin thinking?

Is he mad?

He swore to himself that his dragons would make a meal of Koba and Kamo if they tried to corrupt the revolution. He would chop them into bite-sized pieces himself. He imagined feeding the dragons from a trough full of Koba-Kamo bits while Lenin asked him where his lieutenants had gotten to.

“Why Comrade Lenin, I have no idea. But I never trusted them. Never believed they were truly committed to the revolution.”

“Be sure his dragons are ready,” Koba said, interrupting his reverie. The Georgian turned sharply and headed up the tunnel with Kamo right behind.

His dragons? Do they mean Lenin’s dragons? Bronstein’s hand twitched. They are not Lenin’s dragons! Who stayed up nights with the beasts? Who imprinted them? Who fed them by hand?

How he would have loved to wring the necks of these interlopers. He briefly revisited his trough fantasy, but it was no longer a comfort. Just made him think again about Borustch’s warning.

Did I have these violent fantasies before I became a dragon-keeper?

He was an intellectual, a writer. Not a bully. Not a murderer. He shuddered, trying to turn his mind away from blood and violence. But one of the dragons chose that moment to bite off the finger of a young man who was grooming him, and Bronstein had to run and help retrieve the digit from the dragon’s mouth before it was swallowed.

Lenin will be here soon, he thought, smacking the dragon on the top of its stone-hard head until it opened its mouth. The finger was still on the creature’s tongue. For a second he stared at it, as if it were a piece of meat. Then he snatched it out before the dragon’s jaws snapped shut.

He tossed it to its bleeding and howling former owner before wiping his hands on his shirt. Perhaps the doctor could sew it back on. Perhaps not.

Fingers, dragons, revolutionaries, his thoughts cascaded. There’s no way we’ll be ready in time.

And yet they had to be.