1636 The Kremlin Games (48 page)

“You are under arrest!” the latter-day
Oprichniki
said.

Feeling more than a little pale herself, Natasha turned to the czar and waved at the man in black. “Did you authorize this, Your Majesty?”

She was unutterably relieved to see the little, almost unconscious, shake of the czar’s head.

The black coat spoke again. “Seize them!”

“Hold!” Natasha shouted. “You have no authority here and none over me! The only one who could give you such authority is right here and he hasn’t done so.”

Her arguments went unheeded and the troops kept right on coming. Then she heard Bernie.

“Hey, Dogboy!” he shouted. “That fancy silver puppy won’t stop a bullet.”

When Natasha looked, Bernie was holding a large up-time revolver pointed at the chest of the
Oprichniki.

“My men will kill you and the princess!” the
Oprichniki
shouted back.

“Could be,” Bernie acknowledged rather more calmly than Natasha really would have preferred, “but you will still be dead.”

“They will be dead before then,” came another voice, as calm as Bernie’s but much colder. Looking over, Natasha saw that Vladislav Vasl’yevich had come out from the gap between two of the tents, followed by several of his men. All of them had their weapons raised and ready to fire.

The czar himself was looking a bit conflicted about the rescue. The dogboy still under Bernie’s gun was looking very angry. But the confrontation was over, obviously. The man could be as angry as he wanted, he had no chance against the odds he was facing.

So, Bernie turned toward Natasha and began re-holstering his gun. But she was staring past him looking at Dogboy and the czar. Then her expression changed. Bernie turned back to see Dogboy pulling out a pistol of his own and pointing it, not at him or Natasha, but the czar. The czar was looking back at Dogboy with a half-frightened, half-resigned expression on his face. As though the fate that he had been dodging all his life had caught him at last.

Then Vladislav Vasl’yevich jumped, knocking the czar out of the way.

Bernie fired, Dogboy fired. Vladislav Vasl’yevich went down, spraying the czar with his blood.

Dogboy went down, too. Wounded in the shoulder, not dead, but he’d lost his gun.

A couple of the other dogboy guards took the gunshots as a license to resume hostilities, but Vladislav Vasl’yevich’s men began firing at them immediately. Numerically, the two groups were about evenly matched, but the Gorchakov guards were equipped with the brand new AK4.7 cap-lock repeaters. The .7 modification was only partly to the gun. The center fire chambers could be fit into a clip that was shifted right to left, one chamber every time the lever-action was opened and closed so that it was fire, cock, fire, cock. The dogboys, on the other hand—with standard Sheremetev pecuniary habits—were equipped with the cheaper AK3 flintlocks.

It was a damp day, too. The only dogboy gun that came to bear squarely on its target misfired. The end result was a simple massacre. After seeing Vladislav Vasl’yevich gunned down, his men were in no mood to take prisoners—
any
prisoners, not just the two who’d raised their guns.

Two of the dogboy guards survived, but they were badly wounded. Meanwhile, another group of Natasha’s guards had rescued the czarina, the nurse, her husband, and all the children.

*     *     *

They questioned the chief dogboy who was, as it turned out, an
Oprichniki
of the
Boyar Duma
.
So this was the form that Sheremetev’s
political officers
were to take. Ivan the Terrible’s
Oprichniki
had been his personal secret police and ultimately had proven to be more trouble than they were worth. But they had included many people that would, in later years, prove very important—including Patriarch Filaret and Boris Godunov. So the
Boyar Duma
, also in need of a force to put down dissension, had created an updated version.

A contingent of that new organization had been given the job of guarding the czar. Their commander, the one with the dog’s head clasp, was under orders to kill the czar, but only if it looked like the czar might escape. The same orders were in place for the czar’s family, but only if the czar was dead first. The
Boyar Duma
didn’t want Mikhail free and after revenge for a dead family. They didn’t, even Dogboy insisted, want Mikhail dead. Just out of the way while they did what was needed to keep Russia safe from the corrupting influences that Mikhail and his father had allowed in. Russia needed a strong hand. The Russian people tended to become bandits and brigands if they were given too much freedom.

*     *     *

“Look, folks,” Bernie said after a while. “This is all very interesting and I’m sure quite socially relevant, but is this really the time for a debate on political philosophy? They were going to kill you, Your Majesty. Maybe not now, but once they were sure of themselves. At best, they would keep you and your whole family prisoners for the rest of your lives. Meanwhile, the bad guys are after us and I don’t want to stick around to find out what they’ll do if they catch us. It’s your country, Your Majesty. If you want to stay here and trust to the good offices of the
Boyar Duma
, and that fink Sheremetev, that’s your choice. But we need to leave.”

The nurse, Tami Simmons, spoke up. “We’re going with you! I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but I don’t want my kids here when these guys’ friends show up.”

The czarina agreed, and then so did Mikhail. So, the czar and czarina and their kids would ride in the Dodge with Bernie and everyone else they could fit would ride in the trailer. That still left half a dozen of Natasha’s guards without transport. They took the horses in the paddock. All of them. They would need remounts and didn’t want to leave the dogboys with transportation. There was serious talk about killing the dogboys. And as a sort of compromise, Czar Mikhail had them swear on pain of death not to serve the
Boyar Duma
anymore.

Bernie didn’t figure the oaths would last past the time it took them to get over the horizon, but he didn’t really care either. Natasha’s guardsmen were to make their way back to Murom as fast as they could and if Natasha wasn’t there when they arrived, at the very least orders would be.

Bernie, the czar and the czarina talked as Bernie drove them slowly over the rough roads, fields, and trails back to Murom. And by the time they got there, the czar had decided.

Well, the way Bernie figured it, the czarina decided and the czar went along. Mikhail Romanov didn’t strike Bernie as the forceful type. The decision was that the czar, czarina and the children would go to Bor, take possession of the dirigible
Czarina Evdokia
, and then decide where to take it.

Bernie thought about arguing for Grantville, but decided not to. The truth was, Grantville and its USE were now more of a foreign country to him than Russia was. To the extent that Bernie Zeppi felt he had a king—not much—that king was Mikhail Romanov, not Gustav Adolf.

Chapter 79

They drove up to the palace at Murom, fat and happy, totally unaware of the changes that had taken place while they were off rescuing the king of the country and his family. The guards waved them through the city gate, then others waved them through the gates of the palace compound.

Not until Bernie stepped out of the car did the guns appear.

*     *     *

“Oh, crap,” Tim heard the up-timer say. “This couldn’t just be simple.”

Captain Ivan Borisovich Lebedev sneered at him. “You are all under arrest in the name of the czar.”

Then Tim saw the other door of the dodge open and Czar Mikhail stepped out. Much to Tim’s surprise.

“Really?” Czar Mikhail said. “I wasn’t aware that I gave an order for this man’s arrest.”

Cousin Ivan Borisovich gaped at him. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the hunting lodge.”

“I got tired of hunting,” Czar Mikhail said, though Tim knew very well that he hadn’t been hunting.

The up-timer started grinning. Cousin Ivan looked back and forth between the up-timer and the czar. The guardsmen and
Streltzi
who had performed this ambush started looking at each other, trying to figure out what to do. Tim couldn’t help but sympathize with them. The day had been a whipsaw, the Sheremetev clan in control of the city then the Gorchakov clan, then the Sheremetev again. Then, when the Gorchakovs came back and were arrested by the Sheremetev in the name of the czar, out pops the czar himself to countermand the order. Of course, most of these men had never seen the czar, but Cousin Ivan had confirmed his identity. For that matter, Tim was starting to feel a bit whipsawed himself. He was a loyal member of his clan, but his oath was sworn to Czar Mikhail. Who was standing right here, denying that he’d ordered the arrest of the up-timer. Tim was fully aware that many of the orders that were given in the czar’s name were actually given by the
Boyar Duma
, but presumably the
Boyar Duma
was acting
for
the czar.

“You are under arrest by order of the
duma!
” Cousin Ivan shouted. For once in his life, Ivan Borisovich Lebedev had made a quick decision. And it had to be one of the worst decisions that Tim had ever heard.

All of which left Tim with nothing to do but make a quick decision of his own. Who did Tim serve? The family or the czar? Clan or kingdom? And the answer surprised Tim as much as it did his cousin when Tim pulled his pistol out, stuck it in his cousin’s back and said, “I don’t think so.”

In a strange way, the up-timers really were a corrupting influence on Russia. Before the up-timers, Russia had been, in Tim’s eyes, anyway, an amalgamation of feuding clans. Now it was a nation. Becoming one, anyway. And it was that nation that Tim decided to give his loyalty to.

“Be careful, Cousin,” he continued. “If you say the wrong thing here and now, you will die with my bullet in your back. You do not arrest the czar of Mother Russia. To attempt to do so is treason. I am not a traitor.”

Cousin Ivan went back to not making decisions. Probably for the best.

*     *     *

“What do we do now, Your Majesty?” Tim asked, once all the armed troops had declared for the czar and Cousin Ivan was on his way back to the cell.

“There is a dirigible in Bor. We will take possession.”

“As you command, Your Majesty,” Tim said “And go where?”

“That’s a more difficult question,” Czar Mikhail said. “I don’t want to abandon my people. And the political consequences of my leaving Russia would be extreme.”

Tim nodded in understanding. Russia, in its way, was a very insular nation. Were the czar to move into exile in some other state, it would be awfully hard for him to ever come back.

“Well, that just leaves east,” Filip said. “Far enough east that it will be difficult for the Sheremetev faction to get their hands on you, but not so far that you can’t return when the time comes.”

They started looking at maps, trying to determine the best place to go. “What about the people of Murom?” Natasha asked. “Especially the guardsmen and the
Streltzi
, but, really, all the people, the factory workers and the servants. When we leave, will they be punished for letting us go?”

Tim wished the princess had asked that question when there wasn’t a mob of
Streltzi
standing around to hear it.

“Set them free and tell them to leave,” Bernie said.

“Order them to leave their homes and their town?” the czarina asked.

“Leave it up to them,” Bernie said. “That’s all you can do. You can’t order them to be free, only offer it.”

Filip was nodding. Tim remembered Filip, from his two visits to the Dacha, as a sort of silly fellow, always talking math and theory. Yet here he was with the czar, the princess and the up-timer along with the blond servant girl discussing . . . Discussing what? Tim wasn’t sure. The fate of Russia? The future of the world? Who were these people and how had Tim fallen in with them?

The blond servant girl, Anya, spoke up. “That’s the truth of it, Majesty. Freedom can be taken or it can be offered, but it can’t be forced on those not ready to embrace it.”

“And is Russia ready to embrace it?” the czarina asked.

“Russia is not all one mind, Majesty,” Filip said. “If offered freedom, some will accept, others will hide in their holes waiting for a new master to come along. Still others will take it as license, as the Cossacks do, and try to become those new masters. All you can do is the best you can do. But I have become convinced that the gain in liberty is worth the cost in security.”

The czar was looking at Filip speculatively. “I’m not sure what it is, but what you just said reminds me of a pamphlet I read once. I think it was signed ‘the Flying Squirrel.’”

Filip shrugged with a half smile. “I read a lot, Your Majesty. Perhaps I read that pamphlet.”

“Perhaps,” the czar agreed doubtfully.

“So,” Princess Natasha interrupted, “we offer those who wish to follow us to the east a drink of freedom, and see who drinks?”

“That’ll work,” Bernie agreed, “as long as we can figure out where we’re going. But it’ll mean we have to announce where that is.”

They went back to the maps.

The map they were looking at was a copy of one that had been sent to the Dacha, which was a copy of one in Grantville. They were fair copies, though. And features like rivers were clear enough. The place where the Ufa River . . .

Tim spoke up. “We have a problem, Your Majesty, and its name is steamboats. Steamboats in the last two years—but especially in the last year—have increased the goods transported on the Volga. They kept us supplied at Rzhev and by now they can move armies. Small armies, but still armies. If we go near a river, especially one that connects to the Volga, and most of them do, it will be easy to send an army after us.”

“We have two problems,” the up-timer said. “Contradictory problems. We want a place where those who want to can follow us and we want a place where the czar’s family can be safe from pursuit.”