The Last Tsar's Dragons

Epilogue

AH, DON’T LOOK SO SURPRISED, and stop gawping up at me like a fresh-caught fish. Were you not listening? Did I not tell you exactly what I was capable of? Did you think this story ended any other way than with you bleeding out before me?

It’s not your fault, of course. Tough, though, that you are the one who pays for it. And isn’t that always the way of it? You trusted too much the story of my innocent incompetence and not enough the parts about my ruthlessness.

Your superiors are the ones who should have known better than to send a boy to guard a wily old fox like me. They thought there was nowhere left for me to run. They couldn’t have been more wrong. I’ll go to the Americans. Or the Germans. None of them like the Communists. I’m certain they’ll forgive my relatively minor crimes for the things I know.

Though I doubt I’ll tell them the whole truth.

I saved that for you poor, dying soldier boy.

So in your last moments, take solace in the fact that you are one of the very few who know the truth. The absolute truth.

About me.

About the revolution.

And certainly about the dragons.