1637_The Volga Rules

by Eric Flint

  The “new barn” was torn down to the modules, which would be used to make wagons. The six teams of ponies were set to work dragging lumber to make construction easier.

  “We don’t have enough ponies to pull the wagons,” Vera said.

  “I know. But I can’t forge a pony!”

  “What about one of those steam engines?”

  Stefan looked at Vera, then shook his head. “I don’t know enough. You know that some of them blew up on the river? And those were the ones designed by the big brains in the Dacha.” Then he looked at her again and said, “Some of them are simply going to have to pull their wagons themselves.”

  “Them? We don’t own a pony! Stefan, you’re a blacksmith, not a farmer.”

  “We own one now,” Stefan said. “I traded some parts of the wagons for it. We only have the one, though, not a team. It’s going to be slow going and we will have to share them out when we’re going up hills.”

  Kiril Ivanovich watched the preparations with an increasingly troubled heart. He didn’t like the idea of leaving, and the fact that the modules from the new barn just happened to be exactly the right length to make the new wagons struck him as highly suspicious. He was slowly becoming convinced that the whole thing wasn’t the colonel’s instructions at all. That fornicating priest and Stefan—who was an arrogant bastard, well above himself—were behind the whole thing. He considered going to the colonel’s lady, but that had done little good in the past. She was wholly under the priest’s sway, and Kiril didn’t think that it was because she was especially pious.

  No. If he were to put a stop to this, he would have to get a message to the colonel. He knew where the radiotelegraph station was, and five days after the meeting in the priest’s house, he left the village on foot, intending to warn the colonel of dangerous goings on.

  It took Dominika a few hours to realize that Kiril wasn’t where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to be doing. Then she rushed to see Father Yulian. It took another hour to confirm that Kiril was nowhere in the village.

  “Where do you think he’s gone?” Stefan asked.

  “Wherever he can do us the most harm,” Yulian said. “Kiril is a man always ready with a knife for his neighbor’s back. Full of suppressed rages and desires that keep him from God.”

  Time had run out. Father Yulian, Stefan, and Anatoly went to the big house to inform Elena that they were leaving to join Czar Mikhail at dawn, and she was coming with them. Although initially somewhat startled and unbelieving, thanks to her relationship with Father Yulian, she became very pleased and helpful. Her relations with her husband hadn’t been good for several years. She went into the house and brought out silver and a lot of the new paper money, which was apparently what the colonel had received for the work of his serfs at the factory in the neighboring village. Then she and Izabella started packing, as did the rest of the village. They took every wagon in the village, the new ones they had just built, and the older ones that they had used to manage the farming village and bring in the crops. They stripped the village of Ruzuka clean. Every animal that could pull a wagon, and they stripped the big house of every valuable.

  They traveled well the next day, with Elena informing the headman of the neighboring village that her husband had told them to evacuate in advance of the approaching Poles. “Yes, he’s very close to Prince Sheremetev, my husband is,” Elena explained. They tried to buy extra horses, but after hearing about the evacuation, the beasts were not for sale. A bit of bad strategy that Izabella complained about the rest of the day and all that night.

  For the next week and a half, they traveled without great difficulty. There was enough confusion that no one had much time to look for them and they had the letters and the colonel’s seal. They also had the colonel’s lady and daughter to act as cover for them by putting on their airs as a boyar’s retainer family. Airs that Elena never actually took off, but the villagers accepted that. She was being useful, and they were used to her acting that way, probably wouldn’t have known what to do with her if she had acted human.

  Russia wasn’t like Europe. It was sparsely populated, even in the more civilized western portion around Moscow. After a few days, village headmen started sounding like they might be interested in holding them there. So, after considerable discussion, they started avoiding the villages. It made travel slower, but kept them out of conflicts. And, for that matter, it kept the colonel from knowing where they were.

  Part One

  Russia East

  CHAPTER 1

  Taking to the Sky

  Russia House, Grantville

  July 1636

  Brandy struggled through the Russian documents. Her Russian wasn’t great and the Cyrillic letters didn’t make things easier. But she needed the practice. When she married Vladimir, she hadn’t quite realized the extent she was marrying Russia too. Information flowed, not just from the Ring of Fire to Russia, but from Russia to Grantville. Brandy was now working her way through a two-hundred page report on resource exploitation in Russia, compiled by the staff at the Mining Bureau and forwarded to them by Boris Petrov. Iron production was up significantly, especially in the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly area. There was a new iron mine south of Moscow, and more mines in other places, all as a result of the information provided from the Ring of Fire. Not just the information that there was a massive load of iron there, but the knowledge that the iron was going to be desperately needed all through Europe over the next decades, made the government and the new industrial class realize the investment of resources in mining was worthwhile.

  The new Russian industrial class was worrying to Brandy. It was a mix of Streltzi—the city guards or foot soldiers, deti boyars—the retainers of the great houses, and the dvoriane—the service nobility, soldiers and bureaucrats who kept the gears of Russia turning. Finally, there was considerable investment by the great houses and the monasteries. All of that would have been fine, but the laborers in those new mines and factories were mostly serfs, and sometimes outright slaves. It looked to Brandy as though none—or at least very little—of the economic boom that was spreading from the Dacha was reaching the lower classes.

  Natasha Gorchakov had paid her serfs for their extra labor, before she fled to Ufa, but a lot of people hadn’t—and their number was bound to decline further now that Sheremetev had seized power in Moscow. In any event, most of the Gorchakov profits had come from—and still did—selling or leasing patents on the new products, not from making them themselves.

  Things seemed to be getting worse for the Russian peasants, not better.

  Vladimir came into her office. “How’s it going, love?” he asked, then leaned down and kissed her neck. “Have you drowned in Ivan’s statistics yet?”

  Ivan was Ivan Petrovich Lebanov, the head of the Mining Bureau. “Not yet, but he’s clearly trying. You know who I think is drowning, Vlad? It’s the peasants and especially the serfs. And worse, the slaves.”

  “What makes you so sure of that?”

  “It’s the costs. I have records here of the costs of the mines, including labor costs. But the labor costs aren’t being paid to the worker. They’re being paid to their landlords. Aside from your sister, no one seems to be using free people as labor.”

  Vladimir grimaced. He was almost certain she was right, but when he had left for Grantville back in 1631, he would have seen nothing at all wrong with it. He did now, but that was after years of living surrounded by up-timers. Vladimir was frankly shocked that the Dacha had become as liberal as it had, just from the books and Bernie Zeppi. Tami Simmons and her family had arrived in Moscow, but had gone into seclusion with Czar Mikhail and his family, so had had very little influence on attitudes in the Dacha or the rest of Russia. How had his sister become friends with an escaped slave? He never would have believed that Bernie Zeppi, of all people, could have had such an effect.

  “I hate to say it, but you’re probably right,” Vladimir said, then winced at the look she gave him.


  “We have a new baby, Vladimir. I don’t want us to have to move to Russia and start a revolution!”

  “I don’t either,” Vladimir said as placatingly as he could. What did she expect him to do about it? Wave a magic wand and make all of Russia’s problems vanish? He hadn’t even been able to keep Sheremetev from putting his man Shuvalov in control of the Gorchakov Dacha, Vladimir’s own property.

  “I know. But unless Czar Mikhail wins the civil war and puts the new industrialists in their place, there’s going to be a revolution. I haven’t gotten a letter from Evdokia in months.”

  Vladimir couldn’t help smiling a little, and Brandy grimaced. “I know. Little Brandy Bates, hillbilly from West Virginny, is upset that the czarina of Russia hasn’t sent her a letter.”

  Vladimir felt his smile die. “It wasn’t that. I was just happy that you were comfortable enough in your relations to the czarina that you would call her by her name without title. But given everything that’s happened over the past weeks I’m not surprised she hasn’t written to you. For that matter, she may have composed a letter—but how would she get it to you? She and the czar can’t very well land that great dirigible of theirs in Moscow and drop the letter off to be delivered to the USE.” He placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Don’t be upset about it. I know from Natasha that Evdokia holds you as one of her true friends.”

  Bor, Russia

  July 1636

  The Nizhny Novgorod militia was definitely a bit ragged. It was strange. General Boris “Tim” Timofeyevich Lebedev 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 Maslov came over. “So what now, Tim?”

  “We go to Ufa.”

  “How? The riverboats are full.”

  “That’s an excellent question, Ivan. Why don’t you figure it out and tell me?”

  Ivan looked at him like he was crazy for a moment, and Tim pointed to the star on his collar.

  Ivan looked, swallowed and said, “Yes, sir.”

  Tim tried not to smile…but he failed. He was only nineteen, after all. Czar Mikhail had given him the rank because there wasn’t an army to give him. It was silly and he knew it, but Tim still couldn’t help enjoying it. He wondered how the real generals, General Shein and General Izmailov, were going to respond. Last Tim had heard, Shein and Izmailov were in Tobolsk, keeping company with Siberian tribesmen. But, looked at pragmatically, Czar Mikhail didn’t really have that much of a chance. Tim was fully aware of that, and so was Ivan Maslov.

  Marat Davidovich, the new commander of Princess Natasha’s guards, came over. “Well, General, what now?”

  “I have Ivan Maslov working that out.”

  “Lord help us, the baker’s boy,” Marat Davidovich said only half in jest.

  Tim looked at him, trying to figure out what to do. Marat Davidovich was a good man and experienced. He was one of Princess Natasha’s hand-picked guards, and a skilled man at arms. But, even he was stuck with the notion that Ivan couldn’t fight because of the fact that he was the son of a baker.

  There must have been something in Tim’s expression that he wasn’t aware of, because suddenly Marat Davidovich braced and said, “Sorry, General.”

  It was all Tim could do to keep from letting his eyes widen in shock. “It’s all right, Marat Davidovich. But Ivan Maslov is very good at figuring things out.”

  Ivan Maslov looked at the bodies laid out on the ground and tried to think. Captain Ruslan Andreyivich Shuvalov was cold, having been killed in the fighting last night. Now, he and the other casualties from the night before were joined by Streltzi from Nizhny Novgorod, but it wasn’t the dead that were the problem. It was the living. The staff of the dirigible works were going to be needed in Ufa and so was a lot of the equipment. The steamboats were already overloaded, and Ivan didn’t think that the city fathers of Nizhny Novgorod were going to be in any mood to provide them with extra riverboats. Ivan took inventory of what they were going to need and realized that they weren’t going to have room. He pared down his list to things they had to have…and it was still way too much. Some of the equipment on the boats would have to come off. By the time Tim and Marat got back to the hangar, Ivan had a plan. He explained it.

  “No!” Marat said. “Under no circumstances. Those barges are Princess Natasha’s and so is the gear on them. Not Czar Mikhail’s.”

  “Captain!” Tim said.

  “No!” Marat said. “I’m sorry, General.” And he sounded sorry, Ivan noted. He even sounded like he believed in Tim’s new rank. “It’s not my choice. Those goods belong to the princess, and I have to make sure that they get to her in Ufa.”

  “And we will get them there, Captain. Believe me, we will. Even if we have to carry them on our backs.”

  “I guess we could do that,” Ivan offered. “There are wagons. We could take some of it with us overland. And if we go overland, that will free up more space on the boats.”

  They were in Bor for another day as they rearranged the gear and let everyone make up their mind what they were going to do.

  Tim insisted that people be allowed to make up their own minds, saying it was Czar Mikhail’s will that joining him be a free choice by free men. Ivan looked at Tim, and Tim explained. “You weren’t on the steamboat with us coming down from Murom. We talked a lot about what it would take to make the new Russia work, and a big part is having people have a stake in it. Czar Mikhail is convinced that those who follow him to Ufa must decide freely, not be forced into it. There is some psychological study that the up-timers did about it.”

  Ivan shrugged. It wasn’t up to him. No. It was. It had been his decision in a way, even if he had fallen into it. He couldn’t honestly say he had been forced or coerced, not really.

  Finally the boats left and the army—such as it was—marched out along the shore of the Volga.

  Russia House, Grantville

  July 1636

  Prince Vladimir Gorchakov sat at the computer and typed out a letter. He then encoded it using the program Pretty Good Privacy and saved the encrypted file to a floppy disk. After pulling the floppy out of the drive, he handed it to Gregorii. “You know what to do.”

  Gregorii would go to the Higgins Hotel and upload the floppy to the Grantville Wide Web from there, leaving no way to trace where it had come from. In a day or two, one of Francisco Nasi’s agents would pick it up and send it to him in Magdeburg, where he would decode it.

  “Do you think he will go for it?” Brandy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Vladimir admitted. “We have a lot of wealth. We’re just short of cash. So a loan on our interest in the microwave research isn’t unreasonable. They are making decent progress, after all.”

  Three days later, they got a response. It was encrypted and put up on the “Secret Message” news group. All the spies in Grantville—at least all the tech savvy spies in Grantville who had access to a computer—downloaded the full contents of that news group on a regular basis. Vladimir did it daily.

  Once
the message was unencrypted, it simply read “Have a talk with Ron Stone.”

  Which was interesting in itself. Vladimir didn’t think Ron Stone was any sort of spy. But he went ahead and made the appointment.

  Tried to, rather. He’d forgotten that Ron Stone and his wife Missy had moved to Hesse-Kassel in the spring, in order to expand the Stone pharmaceutical enterprises.

  There was as yet no regular airship run from Grantville to Kassel, but Vladimir was able to get a ride within a couple of days on an airship headed for the Netherlands. The vessel’s captain agreed to make a slight detour in order to drop Vladimir off at his destination—for a fee that fell short of outrageous, but only barely.

  Kassel, capital of the province of Hesse-Kassel

  “Have a seat, Prince Vladimir. What can I do for you today?”

  Ron Stone rose politely from behind his desk and gestured toward a chair against the side of the wall nearby. The chair he indicated looked quite comfortable—quite a bit more so, in fact, that the very utilitarian chair Stone himself was using.

  Ron Stone looked much like his chair. On the new side—he was still a very young man—and well-made in a plain, undecorated, functional sort of way. His eyes were hazel and his hair was straight, a sort of dark blond in color.

  Stone was of medium height, for an American. His physique was perhaps a bit stocky but there was little fat on him. Like his older brother Frank, he had been something of an athlete in school.

  (Soccer, though, not one of the Culturally Sanctioned Up-time sports like football or basketball. As Brandy had explained the matter, in up-time high school—at least of pre-Ring of Fire vintage—this placed Ron Stone on the nerd side of the dark and bitter chasm between nerds and jocks. Americans could be peculiar, sometimes.)