by K L Conger
Taras sighed, feeling more hypocritical than he’d ever felt in his life. “Master Tailor, the Tsar has ordered every man, woman, and child be present, upon pain of death. I’m sorry sir. The tsar requires your entire family to attend.”
Taras wondered if the man would rebel. He merely looked crestfallen. Without another word, he disappeared into his house. A few minutes later he emerged again. His wife held their two daughters, neither more than ten years old, by the hands. The man held a tiny boy in his arms. With resignation, they joined the throng pushing toward Red Square. Taras walked along beside them for a while, but soon lost them in the crowd.
When he re-entered Red Square, Taras saw something that made his stomach twist in foreboding. The entire staff of the palace—maids, cooks, servants, grooms, stable hands, all of them—were brought out to watch. They lined the Square, standing right up against the Kremlin wall on both sides of the gate. Taras’s eyes immediately sought out Inga and found her standing with Yehvah on the far-right side of the dais.
Taras generally preferred to stay back, far from the execution area, but with Inga so close to it, he urged Jasper forward, carefully picking his way through the now-crowded square until he reached the front. He took up his place as close to her as possible, but still stood too far back for her to notice him. Taras felt better keeping her in his sight line.
Dividing his attention between the two women and the other side of the Square, where people on foot and soldiers on horseback still streamed in, he searched for Nikolai, who appeared a few minutes later. Taras signaled several times to get Nikolai’s attention. When he did, Nikolai gestured with his chin as if to ask what Taras needed. From across the Square, Taras cut his eyes toward where Inga and Yehvah stood huddled together. At first, he could tell Nikolai didn’t understand. Eyebrows narrowed in confusion, Nikolai’s eyes scanned the horizontal pillar of servants. Understanding came into his face, accompanied by fear, and he urged his horse toward Taras.
As the Tsar stood and the square quieted, Nikolai guided his horse up beside Taras’s. Taras nodded with his chin at where Inga and Yehvah stood. Nikolai’s eyes settled on the two women.
“The Tsar brought all the servants out?”
“Apparently. My question is why. I know he wants witnesses, but the crowd is on edge. If this turns dangerous, doesn’t he want to protect the servants? If he gets them all killed, he’ll be forced to wait on himself.”
Nikolai barked a derisive laugh. “Ivan has no care for slaves. If they all die, he will simply find more people to press into service.”
The two men exchanged glances. If this did turn into the riot it threatened, the two of them would be the only ones interested in keeping the servants alive.
Ivan stood, looking none too pleased, and the executions began, every bit as brutal as before, and worse. Ivan had several families impaled, others ripped apart by the Tsar’s bloodthirsty dogs.
The crowd had grown sick of it. Many of them cried out or turned away, covering their children’s eyes. The crowd’s reaction infuriated Ivan. From so close to the dais, Taras heard him clearly.
“Guards!” The Tsar shouted. “Soldiers! Move among the crowd and force them to watch. Anyone caught trying to look away will be arrested!”
Taras and Nikolai exchanged glances. Near Ivan, Ergorov spoke. “My Lord Tsar—”
“No excuses from you Erogorov. By turning away, they show they do not support their Tsar. That is tantamount to treason. They will watch or they will join the condemned!”
Taras watched the goings-on grimly. He and Nikolai positioned themselves away from the rest of the soldiers, so they hadn’t been called upon yet, and he hoped they wouldn’t be. The more restless the crowd became, the more he wanted to remain close to Inga.
“Petrov, Demidov! See to that group, there.” Ergorov, from atop his horse, pointed at a group of onlookers behind where Taras and Nikolai stood. The people in it cowered and turned their faces away from the dais.
“I’ll go,” Nikolai said. “Stay here for as long as you can.”
Taras nodded, his eyes on the crowd again. Many of the servants looked scared, pressing themselves more tightly up against the Kremlin. Everyone felt it coming. Still, when it did, it was terrifying.
Taras saw it happen. Ergorov argued with the tailor Taras had spoken to earlier. The man covered his children’s eyes, refusing to stop. Ergorov shook his fist. He shouted at the tailor to let his children see the execution. Then the general tried to physically take the child from his father’s hands. The tailor struck Ergorov with his balled fist, signing his own death warrant. It escalated in seconds, radiating outward in rings. The people around Ergorov and the tailor joined in, then the ring around them, then the one around them. In less than a minute, the entire square went mad.
People fought, pushed, screamed, tried to leave. Some succeeded. The crowd became a fuming mob, forsaking reason and logic. The Streltsi gathered Ivan up and hurried inside the Kremlin gates, which were then securely barred. The mob throbbed like a living thing, gyrating, dragging more and more people into its deadly, pulsating center.
Even aside from the scheduled executions—which the executioner continued to carry out, though no one watched anymore—there would be a great deal of blood in Red Square this day.
Taras urged Jasper closer to Inga, who still stood far ahead of him. The horse danced nervously. Taras’s horse had seen war, but people screaming and thrashing in such tight quarters made any animal—any human, for that matter—skittish.
He focused on Inga. If pulled into the crowd, she could be trampled. If she stayed by the wall, she could be crushed. The weight of the crowd proved so heavy, even the horses couldn’t bull through it. More than one mounted soldier went down, horse sucked beneath the crush of the horde.
Having no wish to add to the killing, Taras took out his ax rather than his sword. He held it with his hand up under the metal head, using the haft as a club rather than the ax as a killing weapon. He mostly used it to push people out of the way or in the right direction. More than once he had to strike some flailing, irrational person doing harm to those around them.
To his horror, some of the more sadistic of his fellow soldiers took advantage of the chaos. Many did murder, grabbing for jewels, dragging screaming women toward less-dangerous pockets of the square.
Taras neared Inga and Yehvah’s position with agonizing slowness. A group of palace servants consisting mostly of women, young girls and young men, huddled together. Inga and Yehvah quivered among them. Three men, obviously not servants, faced them with knives. One held the point of his dagger to the neck of a young groom. Taras didn’t know the groom’s name, but he couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. Kicking savagely at Jasper’s flanks, trying to force the horse closer, Taras heard the knife-wielder speak.
“We must get out of the Square! Surely you have keys to the gates. Or is there a servant’s entrance somewhere?”
“There are other entrances, my lord,” the young man’s eyes raced about in terror. “We can’t get to them from here. We’d have to leave Red Square first.”
“Lies!” The man raised his dagger and Yehvah stepped forward, in front of the young groom, pushing him back behind her. The man’s knife thrust came up short, barely missing Yehvah’s shoulder. He stared at her in astonishment.
“My lord he tells the truth. We cannot—”
The man struck her with the back of his hand, knocking her backward. Inga jumped up to catch her as she fell.
Taras sat only feet away now, but Jasper couldn’t move any closer. A wall of people fought and screamed between him and the situation. He didn’t understand why Jasper couldn’t push through them. Then he realized. It was a wall. Literally. A four-foot mound of bodies had piled in his path. The crowd kicked and pushed and screamed right over top of the mound, barely noticing it. No wonder Jasper couldn’t push through.
Taras considered getting off his horse, but the tide of people pushing towar
d him moved in the opposite direction. If he dismounted, he’d be swept before them.
The man who struck Yehvah stepped forward, standing over her. The younger servants shrank back from him with fear. He sneered at them. A slightly stooped, white-haired man, one Taras immediately recognized, stood between the servants and the knife wielders.
Anatoly.
“Get out of my way, old man,” the knife-wielder growled.
“You will not harm these people, sir. We all want to make it out of the Square alive. We are as helpless as you.”
“If you don’t get out of my way you certainly won’t make it out alive, old man. Now move!”
Anatoly stood his ground. His eyes shifted to Taras and back again. Taras gasped. Anatoly had seen him and was trying to buy time for Taras to get there. Taras dug his heels into Jasper’s flanks again. The horse whinnied and reared, but only gained a few inches.
“Have it your way.” The man raised his knife and plunged it into the right side of Anatoly’s chest. Anatoly crumpled to the ground.
A small pocket of ground opened in front of Taras. He urged Jasper forward and the horse leapt over the mound of bodies, crashing into the three men with knives and sending them sprawling. None of them got up again. The group of servants gaped.
“Stay behind my horse,” Taras yelled. Inga and Yehvah leaned over Anatoly, trying to staunch his gushing wound.
Another horse, riderless and spurred on by the screaming crowd, tripped over bodies as it went, crashing into Taras’s horse. Jasper fell toward the Kremlin wall and nearly trampled all the servants Taras was trying to protect. With some effort, the horse regained its footing, and the servants only barely danced out of his path. The pull of the mob guided Jasper away from Inga and the others once more.
Deciding Jasper would have to fend for himself, Taras leapt from his back and moved to stand in front of the servants. He never made it.
Taras had no idea what happened in other parts of the Square—he couldn’t see over the heads—but the entire mob, several hundred strong, were pushed back, slamming up against the stones of the Kremlin wall. The breath was crushed from Taras’s lungs and panic welled up in his chest. They would all be crushed into oblivion.
As the crowd moved and pulsated, their weight slowly lifted. Taras didn’t wait. Expending every ounce of strength he could muster, he dragged his body weight along the wall toward where he’d last seen Inga, growling through clenched teeth as he crawled painstakingly around and between human obstacles. It felt like pulling against an exceptionally strong undercurrent, or up the sheer face of a cliff. Sweat poured into his eyes and his chest hurt fiercely.
He caught sight of Inga. She faced the Kremlin wall, her back to the crowd, wedged between the wall and the mob, unable to move. Her arms trembled as she pushed away from the Kremlin wall. The horde slammed up against her again, flattening her against the stones. She cried out in pain. Or looked like she had. Taras couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the mob.
He had to get to her before she was crushed.
Pushing against the throng, he shouted her name. Her head swung wildly, as though she’d heard him. After several seconds, her eyes focused on him. She thrust an arm out toward him. He reached for her but still stood too far away. Taras fought for inches of ground with his toes, and though he thought he was getting closer, it didn’t feel that way. Their fingers reached, inches apart, when a heavy weight slammed into Taras’s shins, knocking his feet out from under him.
He went down hard, landing on a fallen woman’s back. Blood trickled from her nose, and her eyes stared blankly. Taras fought to stay on his hands and knees. The crush of the crowd knocked him sideways and his face hit the hard stones of Red Square, rebounding.
When he raised his head, a forest of feet and legs met his eyes. Far above him the owners of those legs screamed and pushed and panicked. The screams sounded far away, the movements too slow for panicked human beings. Taras leaned forward onto his hands and pushed his weight up. The world spun. Rising seemed an impossibility as people tripped over, stepped on, and kicked him. He made it onto his knees several times, only to be forced back down again.
Slowly, his head cleared. With clarity came awareness of the danger he was in. By then, his limbs and torso felt so sore from the abuse they’d suffered, he wasn’t sure he'd ever have the strength to stand again.
Inga. He had to get to her.
Looking around, he found the sturdiest-looking pair of legs he could see. They were the size of small tree trunks. Crawling on his stomach, he grasped the calves and pulled himself up, snarling through gritted teeth at the effort. The legs immediately fought Taras’s grasp, jerking and kicking. Taras threw his weight to one side, barely avoiding a vicious kick to the ribs. He grabbed the man around the waist and pulled himself up higher, grinding his boots into the ground for purchase. The man turned, throwing punches his way and Taras caught his flailing wrists, using the man’s movements to yank himself upright, until his feet lay flat on the ground. Then he shoved the man back, away from him.
The man stared at Taras in astonishment, then went back to pushing through the crowd. Wiping blood from a split lip and pushing aside thoughts of how close he’d come to death, Taras turned to search for Inga. She stood in the same place, trapped against the stones of the Kremlin. Tears—or sweat?—slicked her face.
He now stood much farther from her than when he’d fallen. The stampeding crowd pushed him far enough that she couldn’t hear when he yelled her name.
Abandoning all logic, Taras moved toward her again, climbing over people as he did and ignoring the voice in the back of his head that said it was wrong. These people were as frightened and desperate as he. He didn’t care. He needed to get to Inga and moving through the crowd obviously wasn’t an option. As a soldier, he harnessed more strength than most men. Digging his fingers and the toes of his boots into soft flesh, he scaled human backs and pushed off shoulders to propel himself quickly over top of the crowd toward Inga.
Falling between two vertically standing bodies directly beside her, he reached out, grabbed her wrist and yanked her toward him. Finally, Taras held her. He pulled her into his chest, wrapping his body around her like a shield, and navigated them along the wall, looking for a spot where they could breathe easier. They wouldn’t make it through to the other side of the mob, but at least here she was protected on one side.
“Taras, are you all right?” Inga turned in his grasp and threw her arms around his neck. “I saw you go down. I thought...”
“I’m all right. Inga, where’s Yehvah?” Though he pressed his mouth to her ear, he still shouted to be heard over the cacophony.
“I don’t know. We got separated.” Tears covered her cheeks.
Taras looked around, but didn’t see anyone he recognized. He prayed, for Nikolai’s sake, that Yehvah lived somewhere. Taras could do nothing for her now.
The hysteria of the rioting throng rose in pitch and seconds later, their weight pressed Taras into the Kremlin wall again. Putting a hand on either side of Inga’s shoulders, he planted his feet wide and pushed his weight out hard, keeping Inga isolated in the space he created.
True terror bloomed in his chest as his arms trembled against the crowd’s weight. He’d been sure if he got to Inga, he could protect her, but the mob pressed harder against him, and his limbs spasmed with weakness.
Inga hunched in the small space in front of him, looking small. A surge of weight slammed Taras into her. She gasped, and it took him several seconds to push his arms straight out from the wall again. He did seem to be managing better with his legs than with his arm.
“Inga, squat down. If they crush me into the wall here,” he glanced toward his arms, “I think you’ll be more protected down by my feet.”
Looking up into his eyes, she hesitated, then shook her head. Without a word, she threw her arms around his neck, pressing herself against his chest. As she did, the crowd slammed them both against the wall once more, a
nd this time Taras didn’t have the strength to push back.
Wrapping his arms around Inga, feeling like his chest would burst under the weight pressing against it, he wondered if his life in the Kremlin, as well as Inga’s, would end today.
Chapter 19
THREE DAYS AFTER THE riot, Taras limped toward the bedchamber of the Tsar’s younger brother, Yuri. Yuri had fallen ill and Ivan spent the past week—when he wasn’t attending executions—at his brother’s beside. Slow of mind, Yuri would never be fit to rule. Yet, Ivan remained loyal to his brother, and had taken prodigious care of him since the two of them were only boys. Or so everyone told Taras.
After the riot in Red Square, Ivan sent letters and couriers all over the country, trying to repair the damage. All the uninjured members of the Chosen Council were already off on errands for him, which meant when he needed another one, an injured member had to be summoned.
Taras wasn’t hurt badly, in truth. He would limp for a few days yet on his twisted ankle, and his body felt three days healed from an encounter with a blacksmith’s hammer. It wasn’t far from the truth. But Taras could work, which was more than many who’d been in the square that day could boast.
Both Inga and Nikolai took only scrapes and bruises, for which Taras felt immense relief. Yehvah turned out to be another matter. One of her legs had broken. Never a favorable situation in the dead of winter. Broken bones didn’t always heal properly and were easy sources of infection. Nikolai, of course, made sure Yehvah received the best care in the Kremlin. Even if she healed without incident, she’d be laid up for weeks, and it could only do more harm to her overall condition. She would need more help than ever to keep from being thrown out.
The head clerk hovered triumphantly around her sick bed until Nikolai’s scowl chased him away. With one glance at Nikolai the clerk’s smug look faded. He ducked his head and melted into the corridor, though Taras doubted he ever strayed far.