by Eric Flint
“Right. You go out and find a bunch of blind girls. That way they won’t see you and run away. If that works, we’ll be fine in about twenty years. Assuming the director-general gives us twenty years. Meanwhile, is there any word from Bernie?”
“No,” Lieutenant Lagunov said in a voice that made Ivan realize he should have kept his mouth shut. Then Lagunov continued. “But there is another boat sailing down the Volga. Sergei wants to send out a couple of small boats to ask them for news.”
“That’s fine. I’ll be down directly.”
Ivan Maslov thought about standing gallantly in the prow of the little oared boat that was making its way to the riverboat. Then he thought about falling into the river and gave up on the notion. It wasn’t a new thought in any particular. Instead he waited in the center of the boat, as they rowed out to meet the riverboat. He looked up and saw Alexander Nikolayevich Volkov on the rail. “Oh, shit.”
Alexander wasn’t one of his favorite people. He had been at the Kremlin back in ’33, and Ivan and Tim had won a fair amount of money off the stuck-up snot. Ivan pulled his fur cap down to cover his face. It wasn’t calculated, more the automatic reaction of a nerd when encountering a jock. Having reacted though, he realized it was useless. He was going to have to climb up onto the boat and face Alexander. Still, having pulled the cap down, he wasn’t willing to push it back up. So he waited. When the rowboat came alongside and a rope ladder was tossed down, Ivan and his men started boarding. There was a girl Ivan had never seen being introduced as Izabella Utkin. Then Alexander was introduced and Ivan’s head came up. Alexander Orlav wasn’t Alex’s name. Then Alex saw Ivan’s face and his went pale.
“Hello, Alexander Nikolayevich,” Ivan said, then started to smile.
The smile died as Ivan noticed all the peasants holding weapons. There was a big man with a chamber-loading carbine that looked like it came out of the factory at Murom. In fact, it looked a lot like the one Tim had sent Ivan.
“Everyone calm down,” Ivan said, looking around. “You can always shoot us in a minute if you decide to. And whatever you do, it’s going to be seen by the people on Kruglaya Mountain. So it probably won’t do you a lot of good if what you’re after is sneaking by.”
“Which side are you on, Ivan?” Alexander asked. “You were always with Boris Timofeyevich, and he’s…”
“That’s right. General Tim now, appointed okolnichii by Czar Mikhail.” Ivan said. “Why are you running, Alex?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Tell me about it. Or better yet, let me tell you about complicated. Are you trying to reach Czar Mikhail?”
Alexander looked at the girl. She looked at an older priest. The priest looked at the big peasant and the big peasant shrugged. “Yes.”
Ivan looked around. There had been peasants coming down the river since he and Tim had left Bor, but always in ones or twos. The largest group Ivan had seen till now was ten. But there were at least two hundred, possibly more, people crowding this boat. “How? Never mind. You’re in Czar Mikhail’s territory, at least for now.” He wished he’d left that last part out. It was true but bandying about that you don’t think you’ll be able to hold the ground you’re standing on isn’t a good idea.
Alexander looked at the mountain then back at Ivan. Ivan waited for Alexander to make some comment but, surprisingly, he didn’t. Alexander had done well enough in the war college at the Kremlin and Ivan could see that he was following Ivan’s logic now. Sviyazhsk was a guard post, little more than a trip wire. Kazan was defense in depth, expected to be lost. All to keep Sheremetev and his forces away from Ufa for as long as they could.
“So, you control the Volga below the Kama?”
“Yes,” Ivan said, and could hear the next question before Alexander asked it. For how long? But Alexander didn’t ask.
Instead he just nodded. “Well, you’ve been more successful than I would have expected. We’ll go on to Ufa then. What can you tell me about Czar Mikhail’s position on the granting of new lands?” He waved his hands at the gathered serfs.
“As I understand it, that’s been pretty catch as catch can. Up till now it’s only been small groups and they are mostly just expanding the farmland around Ufa. They are mostly villages owned by the villagers, but there has been someone put in charge. You’ll have to ask when you get there.”
They talked a bit more and then the boat went on. Ivan went back to trying to figure a way of interdicting the river.
CHAPTER 12
Delays on the Volga
Ufa
September 1636
“Where am I going to put you?” Olga Petrovichna complained.
“I don’t see that you need to put us anywhere,” said Stefan. “Just point us to the land that Czar Mikhail has offered us and we will take care of ourselves.”
“Oh, you will, will you? What are you going to use for seed next year? For that matter, what are you going to eat this winter?”
“We brought grain with us!”
“What? How much?”
“However much, it’s ours. Not yours.”
“Perhaps this conversation might better take place some place other than a public dock,” offered Izabella.
That took a while. First they had to decide where everyone was going to stay for the moment, while they worked out the rest. After some argument, the fugitive villagers decided to stay on the boat…or at least on the dock. So the Ufa dock was full of running, laughing children. Two hundred people on a river boat the size of theirs were about a hundred too many. Add in several tons of grain, wagons and gear, and they had been living in each others’ laps since they loaded on the boat. The children went a little crazy with freedom.
Meanwhile, news of a boatload of people had reached the escaped serfs who had already arrived, and the dock where the boat was docked started drawing peasants like flies to honey.
Ufa kremlin
September 1636
“What’s going on?” Mikhail asked, as he looked out the window at the activity on the docks.
“I don’t know, but I expect we will be finding out soon,” Evdokia said. A knock at her door indicated that she was probably right.
“Come in,” Mikhail shouted, and Anya came in, followed by Olga, a big blond man, an older dark-haired man wearing a priest’s cassock, and—was that Alexander Volkov? Mikhail thought it was, but wasn’t sure. He had seen the young man perhaps half a dozen times on visits to the officer academy at the Kremlin. There were also two smallish women, one of whom was obviously pregnant, but for the moment Mikhail paid them little attention. “Alexander? Has your family come over to my side?”
“Your Majesty,” Alexander said, bowing, “I don’t know. I was kidnapped.” The others stiffened, then Alexander continued. “It was done to keep me and my family out of trouble, but it still kept me out of touch with the family.”
“I take it then that these are your kidnapp—ah, rescuers?”
“Yes. This is Stefan Andreevich, the blacksmith from a village called Ruzuka and the leader of a large party of former serfs wishing to take advantage of your proclamation.”
“A whole village?”
“More than that. Others have been joining us since we left,” said the little pregnant blonde.
“How many?”
“Two hundred twenty-seven, including the children,” said the priest.
That was the largest group not led by a noble by a factor of four. “In that case, why don’t we gather up some chairs and you can tell me all about it.”
For the next hour and more Mikhail listened and asked the occasional question as he learned about the trip across Russia of the villagers of Ruzuka. It was mostly Father Yulian and Vera, the smith’s wife, who carried the conversation.
Finally, he said, “You’ve done a very impressive thing in bringing so many. I can use talent like that. Now, ever since we got here our cartographers, with the aid of the dirigible, have been mapping the area. I think we can find a suitable place for your
people to set up your new village. We’ve set up several villages so far, and to the extent I can, I am trying to keep them fairly close to Ufa so that transport will be easier.”
They went over to the map table and found a place. It was about ten miles east of Ufa, in a lightly forested area. To get there, they would be taking the river boat about five miles up the Belaya River, to the mouth of the Ufa River, then follow the Ufa back north. The lands actually included a small stretch on one side of the Ufa River, though Stefan, looking at the map, thought they would want to put the village itself about a mile and a half from the river.
“We would like to know who will own the land,” Izabella said.
Mikhail grinned and said, “What we have been doing is providing all the new arrivals with a range of choices they can make. If they wish, they can be settled on a suitable—and suitably large—piece of land owned collectively by their village. Or, if they prefer, we will give each individual refugee a stake that they can use for land or sell to someone who wants land. In the up-time America, they offered forty acres and a mule to the freed slave families, at least according to Bernie.”
“What’s an acre?” Izabella asked.
“It’s an English measure the up-timers used. Forty acres make about fifteen desiatinas. We will be offering each adult a grant of five desiatinas. That will also be the standard we use to determine the amount of land given a village, if they choose to own the land collectively. So if we can’t give you a mule, your families should get something close to the forty acres, depending on how many adults in the family. A single man or woman gets five desiatinas, not really enough to farm. On the other hand, a married couple with their parents living with them might get twenty or even thirty desiatinas. More than a single man can farm without the new plows and reapers. But not everyone wants to farm. A young man or woman can bank or sell their grant. For the most part, the grants are being combined into village corporations.”
“What’s a corporation?” Vera asked and Czar Mikhail could hear the suspicion in her voice.
“It’s not required, Vera. You and Stefan can set up your own little farm. But even with the improvements we have gotten from the up-timers and the research at the Dacha, it takes a lot of work to manage a farm. And a lot of it is better done in a group. There are the free villages—” The term Mikhail used was obshchina, which translated into “commune” and what it meant was a village that was held in common by the villagers themselves. The term had very little in common with the later idealistic communes where everyone owned everything in common, so no one owned anything. “—but one of our scholars studying up-time law suggested corporate farms, where the villagers would pool their grants into one large grant and the land would be owned by the corporation. The people would own shares in the corporation, based on their contribution. As I said, you don’t have to do it that way, but it seems to work fairly well.”
“We’ll look into it,” Izabella said before Vera could ask another question. “What about members of the service nobility?”
“There has been some debate about that,” Mikhail acknowledged. “In fact, Bernie Zeppi and Tami Simmons suggested that members of the service nobility should be granted the same deal as everyone else. As you can imagine, the service nobility weren’t thrilled with that. What we finally came up with was somewhat larger land grants based on the rank your family held back west. But also with military or administrative duties attached. You will want to check with the land office. On the other hand, you won’t have any serfs to work your land unless you make some sort of arrangement with them.”
“So it will be me putting my land grant in with their land grants and what? Getting a larger share of the corporation?”
“Probably something like that. But it will be between you and them to work out.”
Stefan had kept looking at the map. He figured that once they got set up, they could see about cutting a road from the village back to the Ufa River, get some boats and have good transport to Ufa city. The Belaya and Ufa rivers surrounded a spit of land that ranged from a couple of miles across to seven miles across at its widest point, and nine or ten miles long before it widened out again. That was why Ivan the Terrible had chosen to put a fort here. Mikhail was not giving out village-sized plots in that spit. The city that was planned would eventually fill it. That, of course, was many years away.
For the next week, as the Ruzuka villagers made their preparations, sold grain and bought equipment in Ufa, their village doubled yet again. Part of that was due to the fact that many small groups of runaways had tended to be young men. On the other hand, those who had joined the Ruzuka wagon train had been women by a ratio of at least two to one. The women had wanted to go east just as much as the young men, but had been less willing to go alone through a Russia filled with wild animals and wilder men.
Now that they were here and there was the opportunity to start a new life, the young men wanted to go to the future village that had young women in it.
Also Izabella’s land grant came in at almost ten times a standard peasant’s land, and she put her land in with the villagers to increase the size of their farm even more.
Meanwhile, Alexander had been drafted. That additional clause for the service nobility had come into play. He, like Izabella, got a larger land grant but he also had service obligations.
“The duma and I are jockeying for position, both politically and militarily,” Czar Mikhail said as Alexander was still recovering from his bow. The czar waved him to a chair and Alexander sat. “We buy support and punish collaboration with the enemy. When one of the great houses comes over to me, Sheremetev has the duma seize their property in territory he controls and grants it to one of his favorites. In my way, I do the same. So the great houses are splitting up, sending some of their connections to me—or at least allowing some to come—so that if should I win, someone in the family will get to keep the family lands. And they’re keeping some with Sheremetev and the duma, so that if he wins they will have someone to speak for them. The courtiers and service nobility are doing the same.”
Alexander nodded. Russia in the seventeenth century was a mix of east and west, but whatever the terms, it was all about alliances and backing the right horse. When he had been assigned to watch for peasants in Balakhna, it had looked to the family like Sheremetev was sure to win. Even when Alexander had been “kidnapped,” it had still seemed like Sheremetev and the boyars would eventually bring the errant czar back under control. Now that he was here in Ufa, Alexander wasn’t so sure.
“In spite of the fact that your family were early adopters of the tech from the Ring of Fire and the Dacha, politically you’re more conservative. And, almost all of your family’s lands are in Sheremetev-controlled territory. One of the things I am trying to do is make sure that I’m not just passing out benefits to my favorites. As it happens, you’re the ranking Cherakasky connection to come over to my side. Do you know why that is?”
“Honestly, Your Majesty, I think it’s because they are playing the odds. None of them have seen what’s happening in Ufa, and they don’t see any way you can hold out. That goes both for my direct family and, I think, for the Cherakasky clan. I know that the political notions coming out of the Dacha made my family nervous and I know that they wanted to avoid a war with Poland, which might be why they sided with Sheremetev when you—” Alexander paused and then continued. “—when you went into seclusion.
“Did Sheremetev actually have your father murdered?”
“I think so. Or, to be more precise, Ivan Borisovich Petrov heard from his father that Sheremetev arranged my father’s murder. Some of the things said by the oprichniki who were guarding me in my—” Mikhail stopped and gave Alexander a half smile. “—seclusion, indicated that he probably did. We may never know for certain. But we have wandered a bit far afield. You’re the ranking Cherakasky connection and because I don’t want to just take the Cherakasky lands and give them to one of my favorites, I am minded to give them to y
ou.”
Alexander felt a mixture of terror and elation. Rather heavy on the terror and light on the elation, as he considered the way his family was going to react to the news of his elevation. Father would not be pleased. Neither would his older brothers. And the Cherakaskys weren’t going to be happy at all. “I’m not sure…”
“No. But I am. Not that it will mean much if we don’t win.” Czar Mikhail stopped. “No. It will mean one thing, at least for now. You will be able to draw on the projected income of those lands at the Land Bank here in Ufa to buy what you need or even make investments. You should check with them and establish your credit limits before you go to Kazan to report to General Lebedev.”
“Report to where?”
“I’m sending you to Kazan and assigning you to General Lebedev,” Czar Mikhail told him. “I don’t have nearly enough officers and even fewer that have any actual training.”
“Don’t discount experience, Your Majesty,” Alexander said. “I know that General Lebedev has done well, and I certainly lost enough money to him and the baker’s son. But war is not chess. However skilled they are at the games, it’s not the same as real war.”
“You may be surprised to hear that General Lebedev has told me the same thing. But in our case, a war is at least a bit like chess. Capture the king and the other side loses. If I die, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Sheremetev will ultimately win…but it certainly means that we—all of us—lose.”
“Is that true in the other direction, Your Majesty?”
“Not as true, perhaps. But, yes, the loss of Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev would probably eliminate the Sheremetev faction in the duma. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the duma would send emissaries inviting me home and swearing undying loyalty, but it would help our cause a great deal.”
Alexander wasn’t sure he wanted to leave Ufa. In fact he was almost sure he didn’t. He was confused and the image of a blond girl returned to his mind.