by Eric Flint
“That’ll be the mercenaries from Rzhev,” General Izmailov said, then looked at Tim. “Take word the column is to halt. Officer’s Call at the front.”
“Halt the column. Officer’s Call, sir, at the leading unit,” Tim told the commander of each unit as he rode down the line.
It was the third day of marching toward Rzhev. And this halt would probably cost them two miles. When he got back to the front, Tim saw that General Izmailov was speaking to the sergeant leading the mercenaries who had sent the riders to inform Moscow of the invasion.
“So tell me, Sergeant,” General Izmailov was asking, “why did you abandon your post?”
“What post, General? We were ordered to Rzhev to guard a supply depot. When we got there, there was no supply depot. No quarters and no pay. My people were living in tents outside Rzhev. You can’t guard what isn’t there, sir, and we were never assigned to guard Rzhev.” The sergeant pulled a set of orders out of his pack and handed them to General Izmailov.
General Izmailov looked over the orders and snorted. Then he handed them to Tim and went on to the next question. “Did you keep in contact with the invading force?”
The burly sergeant shook his head. “No. We didn’t see any more of them and I don’t have the men to spare.”
“Are the invaders coming this way? Heading to Tver? Did they even continue on past Rzhev, or did they stop there?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Sergeant Hampstead admitted.
Tim read over the orders and information in the packet, and stopped. Ivan Petrovich Sheremetev. Well, that explained why the foreign mercenaries had been sent off to guard a nonexistent supply depot. It was almost funny. The lesser Sheremetev’s greed had, for once, worked to Russia’s benefit. If the mercenaries hadn’t been in Rzhev, the Poles might have bypassed the place altogether and headed straight for Tver. With no warning to the Kremlin until they had already taken Tver.
General Izmailov turned to a discussion with the dirigible’s pilot. After discussing the dirigible and its capabilities for a few minutes, the pilot, “Nick” Ivanovich, said, “General, if we loose the tether, we can see more. I can usually get twenty miles an hour when I use the engines, assuming the engines work. And if the wind isn’t bad when I get up there.”
“When they work?” Izmailov looked dubious. “ When they work?”
“They do… mostly,” Nick said. “The engines aren’t really the problem. Sometimes there is considerable leakage in the steam lines. If the steam isn’t leaking too bad, I can stay up for ten hours or so. If everything goes right, I can get from here to Rzhev and back before dark.”
Izmailov thought for a few moments. “All right. We’ll try it. But at the least problem abort the mission and get back here.” He turned back to the mercenary. “Sergeant, your officers were delayed in Moscow but we expect them to be joining us in a day or so. You and your men are to fall in at the end of the column as we pass.”
Everything didn’t go right for Nick Ivanovich. The problem was the winds. They were southerly and fairly strong at five thousand feet. Weaker, but still southerly, at five hundred. Testbed didn’t have a compressor; it couldn’t lift the weight. So it couldn’t pump hydrogen out of the bladders and then get it back. Once the hydrogen was gone, it was gone. It did have a couple of hydrogen tanks so it could go up and down a little bit.
Nick ended up using more fuel than expected to keep on course. There was some steam leakage but it wasn’t too bad. All of which meant that he might have made it to Rzhev and back. Or, if he went all the way to Rzhev, he might run out of fuel or water before he could get back.
“I was forced to abort, General.” Nick shook his head. “Wind was awful and kept blowing me off course. But I did get a bit better than halfway and didn’t see the first sign of the Poles. No advancing troops, not in this direction.”
Izmailov turned to the mercenary sergeant. “Did your scouts see the entire army? This so-called ten-thousand-man army?”
“No,” Hampstead admitted. “My scouts saw the leading elements. About three thousand men. And that’s still more than my five hundred could face with any hope of victory.”
“How do you know it was the leading elements? Not the whole force?”
“The formation was spread out like a screening element. Why put a screening element out when there’s nothing to screen?”
The answer to that seemed obvious to Tim-to hide the fact that that was all you had. To bluff. Still, the sergeant’s point about the size of his force was well taken. Why bluff against a force of only five hundred men? Tim could think of two reasons. If the attacking force didn’t know how big the force in Rzhev was, they might try a bluff to get a force of a thousand or fifteen hundred to retreat and avoid a battle against an entrenched opponent. Two-to-one odds aren’t that great when the enemy is behind walls.
Or it could be that the bluff-if it was a bluff-was intended not for the sergeant but for… well, them. The relieving force. Tim looked over at the wagons holding Testbed and smiled.
General Izmailov was shaking his head. “There are a lot of reasons why you might arrange your troops in a pattern that will, at first sight, look like a screen…”
Though General Izmailov didn’t know it, the commander of the Polish invaders had not, in fact, formed his force into a screen. He had split his force into three columns of a thousand men to facilitate gleaning. The scout had spotted the center column and swung wide around it which had taken him right into the second column. He had assumed that the two columns were the ends of a large screening element but hadn’t checked.
There were four wagons in the dirigible contingent. One carried the dirigible while on the march-or served as a moving anchor for it, rather. The dirigible floated about fifteen feet above the wagon and was cranked down to ground level and tied down with spikes driven into the ground at night or in bad weather. That wagon also carried the pump that was used to compress hydrogen gas for the canisters. Another wagon carried equipment and materials for the production of hydrogen gas. A third carried equipment for field repairs and the fourth carried the repair crew. After the aborted trip, they spent two days worth of breaks on the march doing maintenance before they felt safe with the thing untethered again. General Izmailov was not pleased.
“I’m sorry, General,” Nick Ivanovich said. “But there is a reason we call the dirigible ‘ Testbed.’ It’s an experimental design to test concepts in aviation.” The term “aviation” was English but Izmailov was familiar with it by now. “To the best of our knowledge, nothing quite like it has ever existed in this or any other history. The engines are handmade by Russian craftsman, as are the lift bladders, the wings.”
Nick hid a grin. The designer would hate him calling the control surfaces “wings.” They weren’t designed to provide lift, but control. In fact, they provided a bit of both. The “wings” acted as elevators at the tail of the dirigible. More were located between the gondola and the motors. They didn’t provide much lift, but by pointing the dirigible’s nose up or down, he could gain or lose a little altitude without having to dump ballast or gas. Or use the emergency tanks to refill the lift bladders.
“They were well made, but by people who had no way to do more than guess about the stresses they would face. It’s steam powered and if they had steam powered dirigibles up-time, we haven’t heard about it. That’s why they built it-to see.”
“So why don’t we have an improved version or one of the airplanes that the up-timers have?” Izmailov sounded impatient and gruff.
“Engines, sir. Ours are both heavy and weak They wouldn’t get a heavier-than-air craft off the ground. There is one engine in Russia that might lift an airplane off the ground. That engine is in the car Bernie Zeppi brought to Russia.” This wasn’t entirely true, as Nick well knew. The engines they had built for the dirigible would get an airplane off the ground just fine. It was the added weight of the water, the boiler and the steam recovery that had so far made down-time-built steam-powered heavier-than-air
craft impossible. Without the recovery system, a steam powered aircraft would work fine for a few minutes before the water was all used up. Water weighed a lot.
“So I will have the intelligence you can gather from your Testbed only when and if everything goes right? If nothing breaks on your toy and the weather is just right?” The general glared, then visibly shook himself. “All right, Captain. That’s all.”
The cavalry were equally unimpressed with the intelligence gathered by Nick. And more than a few of the cavalry were resentful. Scouting was a part of their function and, as far as they were concerned, the infantry was looking to take away the other part. They rode out almost gaily for the two days the dirigible was being repaired.
But, just like the dirigible, they found no traces of the enemy.
Chapter 53
July 1634
Sixty miles as the crow flies from Moscow, Nick was ready to try again. Mostly because they were launching from closer to Rzhev, but also because it was, luckily, a still, calm day. Nick made it to within five miles of Rzhev. At five thousand feet, he feathered the engines so he would have a stable platform, pulled out his telescope and started counting outhouses and camp fires.
“Three thousand men, General, more or less. They haven’t burned the town, but it’s not big enough to hold them all. They have built a camp next to it. No walls, not much in the way of defensive fortifications.”
“Did they see you?”
Nick shrugged. “I can’t say for sure. Testbed is big and quite visible, but I was five miles away and a mile in the air. It depends on where they were looking. No one took a shot at me and they didn’t seem disturbed when I looked at the town.”
“Three thousand? Is that all?” Colonel Ivan Khilkov said. “General, we’ve got almost that many cavalry. Send us ahead; we’ll ride them into the ground.” The colonel was not a fan of the new innovations in warfare provided either by Western Europe or the up-timers.
General Izmailov hesitated and Nick knew why. Ivan Khilkov was young, but from a very old family. A very well-connected family, since one of his relatives was Patriarch Filaret’s chamberlain. The general could deny him once or twice, but if he did it too many times, Izmailov would find himself relieved of command and his career ended. Nick prudently kept his mouth shut.
Four days later, General Izmailov could no longer say no. Colonel Khilkov had sent mounted scouts directly to Rzhev.
“They are fortifying the town, albeit slowly. By the time the full column reaches Rzhev, the town will be fully fortified,” Khilkov said. Then he sniffed. “Send us, General. We can get there quicker than this”-Khilkov waved an arm at the wagons-“torturous mess. The cavalry can get there in two days. By the time you can get all this there, we’ll have taken the town.”
“The Streltzi may not move as fast as cavalry, but they are equipped with the new rifles.” Then Colonel Petrov stopped and grimaced. Although the Streltzi were supposed to be the first to get the new rifles, Colonel Khilkov was wearing a fine leather bandolier with twenty loaded chambers across his chest. And it wasn’t just for show. Colonel Petrov knew that Colonel Khilkov had his own AK3, as did quite a number of his men. In fact, the AK3’s that had been sold on the black market were one reason it had taken so long before they were finally issued to the Moscow Streltzi.
Colonel Khilkov casually patted his bandolier. “I’m familiar with the AK3, and quite impressed by them. But it is the shock of cavalry that wins battles. Not footmen plinking from behind a wooden wall.”
There was no way to avoid it, Izmailov knew. Against his better judgment-and with a tiny bit of worry for his future-he agreed. He might very well be ruined either way. If Khilkov won, he’d look bad. If Khilkov lost, his angry relatives would blame Izmailov.
“Khilkov and his forces are about ten miles from Rzhev, sir,” Nick Ivanovich reported.
“Very well,” Izmailov said. “Do whatever it is you need to do with your… Testbed. If he’s that close, you should see the battle tomorrow.” The general paused. “Take Lieutenant Lebedev with you.” When Nikita started to object, General Izmailov held up his hand. “There’s no choice in this. He is from a good family. If things go well tomorrow, it won’t matter-but if they don’t, you and I will need his report.”
By this time, the main column was only about forty miles from Rzhev by air. Which, unfortunately, meant quite a few more miles on foot. Fortunately, it was short-hop range for Testbed. Nick spent the rest of the day doing maintenance and preparing for the overloaded trip to Rzhev. The general consensus was that tomorrow he would have a ringside seat for a glorious feat of victory by Russian cavalry. General Izmailov clearly wasn’t so sure, and Nick shared his doubt. There were probably a few others who were less than sanguine about the outcome. Sergeant Hampstead was one of them; his commanding officer, Captain Boyce, who had joined them on the march was another.
“I’m going with you.”
Nick Ivanovich looked over at the young lieutenant. “So General Izmailov told me. That’s why I’m pulling two of the four hydrogen tanks. We’ll also be taking less ballast water and less fuel.” Nick wasn’t happy with the situation but he rather liked Tim, one of the more innovative young officers in the Russian army. And young was the word. Tim might be seventeen, but he looked closer to fourteen. “Bernie Zeppi said once that the glamour of flying would get to almost anybody. But it’s dangerous up there. A dirigible is a balancing act. Look there…” He pointed. “Those are the lift bladders. They pull the dirigible up but not by a constant amount. There are several factors involved. At night, for instance, the hydrogen gets cooler and loses some buoyancy. Flying one of these things is more like horsemanship than you’d think.”
“A matter of feel and instinct, rather than science, you’re saying.”
“Right. If you gauge it wrong, you’re likely to crash. Fortunately, you’ll probably have more time to react than you would falling off a horse. On the other hand, Testbed here has as much surface area as a three-masted schooner has sails.” Well, not really, Nick admitted silently, but it doesn’t have a hull in the water holding it in place either. “So a sudden change in the wind and we can be a hundred yards away from where we want to be before I can even start to compensate. If we are facing into the wind, or close to it, the engines are enough to move us through the air. But if the wind is from the sides, the wind wins. If it rains on this thing, the weight of the water means even with all the ballast overboard and the bladders at capacity, we don’t have enough lift. We had to drop the radiator more than once in tests at the Dacha and the aerodrome where they are working on the big one. We haven’t had to drop the engines or the boiler yet but it’s rigged to be able to.”
Nick went on to explain about the various controls. The fifty-pound weight that didn’t seem like that much till you realized that it could be moved from the tip to the tail of the dirigible to adjust its balance and angle of attack. That not only the wings, but the engines at their ends rotated as much as thirty degrees, to provide last minute thrust up or down for takeoff and landing. Especially landing. The steam engines could reverse thrust with the turning of a lever, so Testbed didn’t need variable pitch propellers. It was all a bit intimidating.
Chapter 54
Rshev, on the Volga River
“It is a beautiful sight,” Tim said. “Banners flying…” He paused a moment, then sighed. “A beautiful sight, noble and glorious. But at the Kremlin in the war games they treated pike units as fortified. Not easy to overrun. Colonel Khilkov didn’t think much of the war games.” In a way, this was like one of those war games, an eagle’s eye view. Tim had played a lot of them, and suddenly, as he watched, he could see the little model units on the field below. He remembered one of the games-an unofficial game-when one of his fellow students had had a bit too much to drink and ordered cavalry to attack undispersed pike units. You were supposed to hit them with cannon first, to break up their formation. And he remembered those cavalry pieces being removed from the b
oard. Ivan had stood, held up one arm, wobbled a bit, lifted the arm again and proclaimed “But, I died bravely!” They had all laughed. Suddenly it didn’t seem funny at all.
“Colonel Khilkov thinks the Poles will break when faced with a cavalry charge… and General Izmailov didn’t seem to agree.”
“You’re sounding a bit, ah, concerned there, Tim.” Nick peered though his telescope toward the Polish forces.
Tim nodded. “Colonel Khilkov is… a bit difficult.”
The Polish forces didn’t flee. Three thousand Russian cavalry faced a wall of about two thousand Polish infantry, armed with pikes and muskets, as well as the Polish cavalry. The infantry stood in ranks and waited. Then they lowered their pikes and the Russian cavalry charge ran headlong into a porcupine made of men. Then the Poles fired. It was unlikely that the volley killed many men, but it was enough to shatter the Russian formation.
Then it was the Polish cavalry’s turn. They were outnumbered but they were fighting a scattered unit. Colonel Khilkov tried to rally his men and almost managed it. But the Polish infantry had slowly-as infantry must-advanced while the Polish cavalry had been cutting its way through the Russians. Once their own cavalry was mostly clear, the Polish infantry opened fire again.
“It’s all over, mostly,” Nick said. There was, it seemed to Tim, a coldness in Nick’s voice he had not noticed before. “We’d better head back to General Izmailov and tell him.”
Tim nodded, tears blurring his sight. He kept seeing little cavalry units being picked up off a playing board while he looked at the clumps of bodies on the field. It was too far to distinguish individuals but he knew some of the cavalrymen whose bodies made up those clumps. “The general’s not going to be happy.”
The little boyars with their fine horses had left the field, those that still could. Routed by soldiers who worked for pay, not glory.