by Eric Flint
“But you did well at Rzhev! At least officially.” Ivan envied the status his friend’s family provided but didn’t envy Tim his great uncle at all. He had met the old monster once and that was more than enough. Tim’s great uncle was, by good fortune, a supporter of the Sheremetev faction, which now controlled the Boyar Duma. General Shein, on the other hand, was now in charge of one section of the Siberian frontier, demoted and sent as far from Moscow as you could get and still be in Russia. From what Ivan had heard, General Shein had missed execution by a hair’s breadth.
“My uncle is not limited to official channels,” Tim said. “I’m to have a chat with him. Which translates to giving him a full report on everything that happened. It will take hours, I promise you. Hours! I won’t be able to gloss over anything.”
Ivan knew that Tim would much rather downplay parts of what happened in Rzhev. More for Izmailov’s sake than his own. Which was a pretty positive response to someone that had you cleaning out latrines.
Tim’s great uncle was no one’s fool and ten times as politically astute as Tim ever wanted to be. It had taken him all of a minute and a half to get through the fiction of the contingency plan. He had laughed at General Izmailov’s notion of giving Tim a medal and then having him shot. A rough, cackling laugh, that seemed to come from the depths of hell. “A good plan,” his uncle said when he finished laughing. “But he was wise not to carry it through. I would have regretted having a man of such wit put to death.”
Tim waited. Silent. At attention.
“Well?” his uncle barked.
“Yes, sir. General Izmailov is a great general and a great asset to Russia.”
“But a friend of Shein’s-one of his proteges, in fact. Keep your distance from him, boy. Sheremetev’s not fond of Shein. The war party didn’t do well in this last shake up. I’ll try to keep your general alive for you, but not to the point of risking the family. Now tell me about Khilkov. What went on? And why did Izmailov let him do it?”
Tim told him. It wasn’t like General Izmailov had much choice, considering Khilkov’s family connections. Then they went on to the situation in Rzhev and the Polish border in general.
“Rzhev was a mistake, sir,” Tim said. “They didn’t have the steam ships to take advantage of it, even if they had held the town. It really was one of the magnates going off on his own.”
“I don’t doubt it, boy. That’s what started that business with the false Dmitris, back at the beginning of the Time of Troubles. Poland uses its magnates to test the waters.”
“Yes, sir. But they didn’t have the logistic train to support it even if it had worked.”
“You seem pretty sure of that, boy. The Poles are cavalry. They need their horses but can steal the rest.”
Tim hesitated. He was in fact quite sure that cavalry would be trashed if it lacked infantry support and Russia controlled the rivers for troop transport. But his great uncle was a boyar of the Duma and ruled the family with an iron hand. “Not with us controlling the river with steam barges. War horses need grain, horseshoes, and so on. Cavalrymen need food and equipment-which breaks in the field-and gunpowder. They would do damage but with the steam barges to put troops in front of them and the walking walls and cannon… especially with the AK3’s… they are going to run out of cavalry long before we run out of bullets. Over the course of an hour cavalry can outrun a steam barge, but over a day they can’t keep up. With the dirigible to locate them…” Tim shook his head. “They wouldn’t last a week.”
“Tell me about the flying ship.”
“It told us where they were. That was important in Rzhev, but would have been even more important if the Poles had tried to push farther in. It would have let us see where they were going and get there first. They would have been forced from one trap to another, until they were utterly destroyed. Cavalry is doing well to cover thirty miles a day; a dirigible can cover that in an hour or two, if the wind is good. Then go home and tell the infantry and mobile artillery where the cavalry is headed. Cavalry’s day is over except as support troops. If that.” Which was a risky thing to say because his great uncle had been a cavalry commander under Ivan the Terrible.
All in all, it was a grueling interview and Tim was happy to get back to the Kremlin. Though Tim didn’t know it, the interview had a strong effect on the policies of the Boyar Duma. Cavalry, which had always been the province of the service nobility, was downgraded in importance and so was the service nobility. Instead, the Streltzi class with its rifle companies would be given more support and respect. It wouldn’t happen in a year or even a decade, but between the destruction of Khilkov’s cavalry and the many reports, both official and unofficial, the writing was on the wall. Eventually, because the service nobility was the class that produced the bureaucrats and the Streltzi class was the class that produced the merchants, the private sector would gain-a bit at a time-the ear of the government and the public sector would be heeded a bit less. The years of limited mobility would not be allowed to lapse. With inflation, that would mean that more and more of the peasants would be able to pay off their debts to the lesser nobility and seek factory jobs.
Totally by accident and without ever knowing it, Tim had struck a blow for freedom. A small blow. Even a tiny one. But enough such tiny blows and even the massive edifice of Russian serfdom might eventually fall.
Tim had a week in Moscow to get all the new uniforms made, then he got sent as executive officer to a cousin who was leading a contingent of cavalry to the city of Murom. It was too late in the year, unfortunately, to use one of the new steam barges for the purpose. The rivers were already freezing over. Tim had hoped to ride on one of them.
“How is it, my friend,” Ivan asked Tim, grinning evilly, “that you have all the connections, the rank and a letter of thanks from the czar and I get the plum assignment?”
It was, Tim thought morosely, an excellent question. Of course, Ivan’s grin made it even worse. “I told you I wouldn’t be able to leave anything out,” Tim said, referring to the meeting with his uncle. “I’m being reminded I need to learn to follow orders. So while you become the aide of Captain Ruslan Andreyivich Shuvalov, new commander of the dirigible Czarina Evdokia, I become the Executive Officer of Cousin Ivan Borisovich Lebedev. Which means I get to do all his work while he gets drunk and bothers the local girls.”
“Your cousin who is also a captain and the new commander of the Murom Streltzi. Murom being the family seat of the newly famous Gorchakov family. So the whole town is supposed to be full of electricity and every peasant’s hovel has indoor plumbing.”
“While you get to go flying in the newest and biggest airship in the world. At least, I think the Czarina is going to be bigger than any other so far built. In a just world, you would be stuck as Cousin Ivan Borisovich’s aide in Murom with its electricity, and plumbing-which I bet is not as good as rumor says-and its small force of Streltzi. While Nick would be the captain of the Czarina and I would be his executive officer, running test flights over Bor.”
“That would be illegal and you know it. You’re great house and Nikita Ivanovich Slavenitsky is deti boyar. They can’t place someone of your family rank under someone of his.”
“Fine, so leave Nick as captain and let you be his aide and Ruslan Andreyivich Shuvalov be his executive officer. Not the other way around.”
Ivan sighed histrionically and Tim wanted to hit him, mostly because he knew his friend was right and he was being silly. Then Ivan continued, “Sheremetev’s faction won in the latest shakeup. With the death of the patriarch and the purges in the bureaus, the Gorchakov clan-while not in disgrace-didn’t exactly come out of it smelling of roses. Besides, you know as well as I do that the Sheremetev family outranks the Gorchakov family. If the Gorchakovs were in better odor at court then Captain Slavenitsky might have gotten the slot but Ruslan Andreyavich Shuvalov wouldn’t have been put under his command even then.
“With the shake up, the riots, the patriarch’s death, Sheremetev
has been declared Director-General by the Boyar Duma. He is the effective ruler of Russia and he is going to do everything he can to shift any of the glory that comes out of the up-timer knowledge to the Sheremetev clan. That’s why his up-timer Cass Lowry is to be put in charge of the Dacha. And they couldn’t put you under the command of Captain Ruslan Andreyavich Shuvalov any more than they could put you under the command of your friend Captain Nikita Ivanovich Slavenitsky. That’s the drawback of being of a great house. The only way they could make you the executive officer of the Czarina would be to put your cousin in command of her.”
“Anything but that.” Tim shuddered.
“See!” Ivan said. “And Captain Shuvalov is a capable man, if a bit of a cold fish. So, since you’re guarding the Gorchakov family seat, what’s happening at the Gorchakov Dacha?”
Part Six
The year 1636
Chapter 70
February 1636
Cass rode up to the Dacha with a mixture of trepidation and glee. He was finally going to get his own back from that traitor Bernie and his bitch Natasha. And he planned to have a little fun with that Anya chick, too. At the same time, Cass knew he had to be careful. Sheremetev and his gang weren’t the sort of people you crossed. But sooner or later, they’d get bored and leave the place fully in Cass’ control. Then he’d have the run of the place.
For several weeks things went along pretty much as they had before. The Dacha’s contacts with the outside world had always been limited; now they were the next best thing to nonexistent. Even contact with associated projects like the Czarina Evdokia, the large dirigible being built in Bor just across the Volga from Nizhny Novgorodi, or the foundry and gun shop located in Podol just a few miles away from the Dacha, were difficult and sporadic.
“I’d kind of like to know what Cass is doing here,” Bernie said. “And do we know anything about why Tami Simmons came to Moscow also, and with her whole family? She’s the American nurse.”
“The czar and czarina were so impressed with the spring typhoid reductions they decided to bring in a real up-time medical expert. Do you know her?”
Bernie shrugged. “In passing, the way people in a small town more or less know anyone else in the town. She’s from Kentucky, originally, and she’s a lot older than me. I know her husband Gerry a little better, but still not very well.”
Bernie looked around the room at the tense, worried faces, then back at Natasha. She was pale enough that she wouldn’t need the kabuki makeup women wore in Russia in the here and now. Bernie tried for something vague and unthreatening. “That Shuvalov dude seems like a pretty good guy. Do you think he’d let me send a message home?”
He hadn’t thought it was possible, but Natasha went even whiter.
“Don’t try it right now, Bernie,” she said. “Just leave it for a bit.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, Natasha? I know there’s something I’m missing here. Besides the armed soldiers, of course. And not seeing Boris for weeks. And the fact that everyone is tiptoeing around like ghosts while Cass is acting like Cass Squared.”
“Colonel Shuvalov is a deti boyar, a retainer of the Sheremetev family, Bernie. Rather like Nikita Ivanovich Slavenitsky is to my family.”
“Yeah. He’s pretty polite. Nice guy,” Bernie said. Not getting what this had to do with the price of beets.
“He goes out of his way to be cordial,” Natasha admitted. Her face got pinched. “But stop and think, Bernie. Colonel Shuvalov doesn’t push it, as you would say. But… he’s here for more than one purpose. My family, the Gorchakov family, were once independent princes. We retain the titles and are very wealthy. We’re just not as politically well-connected as some of the other great families. At least we hadn’t been. With the Dacha we were starting to become so. So Colonel Shuvalov has been selected…”
“He’s after you?” Now Bernie got it and he didn’t like it. He really didn’t like it. This sort of thing was bad enough when applied to some ordinary down-timer but applied to Natasha…?
Somewhere in a part of his mind that he usually tried to avoid, Bernie understood that his feelings for Natasha had gelled in a certain way. Quite a while ago, in fact. But he still had no idea what to do about it, Russian noble society being what it was-and now this just got dumped on him!
“That’s slavery… or something. Like something out of a book! One of my sister’s stupid romance novels.”
Natasha laughed bitterly. “Romance has very little to do with it. Through me, my family and its fortune will serve Shuvalov’s ambitions. Our… sons… will be boyars, great family boyars.”
“That stinks!”
“Calm down, Bernie. Don’t lose your temper,” Natasha said. “As long as we’re quiet and don’t make a fuss, Colonel Shuvalov will remain polite. He would much prefer to have a… mutually supportive relationship. But the relationship itself is in no way optional. Not on my part and not really on his. The basic motivation behind the match is to move my family’s wealth into the Sheremetev family’s control. It’s politics, Bernie. International politics as much as internal. Sheremetev is pro-Polish, anti-Swedish. The patriarch was anti-Polish, and so favored the Swede.”
“And Director-General Sheremetev has a reasonable point,” Filip said. “I like the concepts you up-timers bring, but Gustav Adolf is just another would-be emperor of the world. Not that different from Genghis Kahn or your Napoleon or Hitler.”
“Oh, come on. Gustav Adolf isn’t anything like Hitler,” Bernie said.
“And how is Gustav Adolf different from Adolf Hitler, in the up-timer histories?” Misha asked.
“He’s Swedish, not German.” Nikolai laughed.
“Hitler was… would have been… Austrian, not German. Gustav Adolf made himself emperor of Germany the same way Hitler did in that other history, and is at war with a lot of the same people. France, England, Poland.
“Which is just fine with me.” Nikolai wasn’t laughing now. “Useless Poles! With their false Dmitris, murder and looting. At least we taught them a lesson at Rzhev.”
“And after that?” Misha asked. “How long before Gustav Adolf’s Operation Barbarossa?”
“He’s too canny for that. After all, the histories make it quite clear how it turned out. Besides, the reports are that he’s out of commission because of the wounds he got at that battle last fall.”
Misha shrugged. “He may well recover. And if he doesn’t, we will have to deal with Oxenstierna, who is no better. Hitler was a lousy general and didn’t understand Russian winters. Gustav Adolf and Oxenstierna are very good generals and do understand Russian winters. That makes them more dangerous than Hitler, the way I see it.”
For a while Bernie let the conversation roll over him. He had been paying a bit more attention to politics since the coup, and he was having a lot of trouble making sense of it all. He appreciated that Gustav Adolf had ridden to the rescue of Grantville in the Croat raid, but he didn’t approve of the USE having a king or the New U.S. being reduced to just another state. It seemed like Mike Stearns had given up too much of what America had been up-time. Maybe he had no choice, but that didn’t make Bernie any more loyal to some Swedish king and his German prime minister.
Bernie came to another realization, at that point. The Ring of Fire had happened almost five years ago-and he’d spent more than four of those years in Russia. By now, Bernie had more friends in Russia than he did in Grantville. His Russian was fluent and idiomatic, even if he’d always have a fairly pronounced accent. So Natasha told him, anyway.
For that matter, the American he was probably closest to, Brandy, had gone and married a Russian herself. He had to face it. The America he knew-had been born in, raised in-was just gone. Gone forever. The USE that had sort of replaced it in this universe didn’t really mean much to him.
The truth was, the USE seemed just like another down-time nation. From where Bernie was sitting, there wasn’t really that much difference between Czar Mikhail with Sheremetev
and King Gustav Adolf with Wettin. At this point, Bernie just hoped that the kings, emperors and czars of the world didn’t start a war that had up-timer fighting up-timer. He honestly didn’t know what he would do if that happened.
It wasn’t that Bernie had any love for the Russian government, because he didn’t. The czar himself seemed like a pretty decent guy but he wasn’t running the show-and serfdom just plain stank.
But that didn’t really matter. For good or ill, better or worse, Russia was his country now. It was where he lived, worked, and… had fallen in love, really for the first time in his life. It was the country where he’d healed himself, at least as well as he could. He owed Russia for that, if nothing else.
In for a penny, in for a pound, as the old saying went. He had no idea what to do, but he did know where he’d be doing whatever he did. Right here. In-ha! who would’ve guessed? — Mother Russia.
Natasha was still talking. “They don’t intend to take the family’s wealth away-just control of it. They consider it necessary, since while the Gorchakovs aren’t really one of the great families-we are one of the twenty but not one of the fourteen-we have acquired a degree of wealth and a set of connections that makes the family potentially disruptive if not brought to heel. Reined in, as it were.
“It could be a lot worse, Bernie,” Natasha pointed out. “Colonel Shuvalov is bright, charming, and a decent sort. He’s not… one of the worst. Not old. Not gross. More modern than some.”
Bernie didn’t really agree with Natasha’s assessment, even leaving aside his own desire for the woman. Shuvalov was also, unfortunately, completely loyal to his patron. He was aware of Sheremetev’s ambitions but didn’t feel that those ambitions absolved him of his duty. And if the ambition didn’t, neither did the greed that the Sheremetev family was famous for.
“He’s like… I dunno… some kind of samurai about duty and honor,” Bernie said. “And I kind of like him. But we can’t trust him because his loyalty will always come before his honor. If his boss tells him to feed us all to the pigs, that’s what he’ll do. I don’t see how we can get out of this mess. We don’t have enough men to do anything, and not enough weapons, either.”