Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

“Well…” Sergeant Wojtek said. “Perhaps. One drink couldn’t possibly do any harm. But no more than one, mind you. And then we really must be joining the others at the Kremlin.”

“Absolutely.” Darger did not quite smile, for he knew exactly how far he still was from freedom. But in his experience, once you got a soldier to drinking, the battle was half won.

Across the city, on the far side of the Moscow River, at the bonfire-lit intersection where Bolshaya Yakimanka ulitsa angled into Bolshaya Polyanka ulitsa, General Magdalena Zvyozdny-Gorodoka was handing out klashnys to her gaggle of prostitutes. She very carefully examined each weapon before surrendering it, to make certain it was not loaded. Then she instructed the bawds in how to use them as clubs.

“You want to put your opponent down so he doesn’t come back up at you. That means you must strike at the head. Hold your klashny like this.” She demonstrated. “Butt forward. The top of the skull is thick, so if you hit there, your weapon may well bounce off. Smash somebody in the face, and he’s still conscious and thrashing around. The best strategy is to clip them behind the ear. Out they go, and often enough they’re dead. So: Lift your klashnys like this.”

The trollops obeyed. “Strike slightly downward and inward. Thus.”

They imitated her thrust, with varying results.

“Then return your klashny to its original position. One, two, three. Very simple. Are there any questions?”

A whore raised her hand. “But how do we know this pleases God?”

“Eh?”

“God is goodness and God is love. I didn’t used to think so, but now I’m sure of it. We all are.” The other harlots were nodding in agreement. “So I don’t know if He would like us to be hurting and killing people.”

“Katya’s right. If God is everywhere, how can we do such acts in His presence?”

The general’s expression was pained. “Do it lovingly. The way the apostles would. Behind the ear, remember!”

Meanwhile, the baron’s forces had all affixed bayonets to their weapons. Some of them were drunk, and the rest were so lit up on drugs they all but glowed. Still, training would tell. Baron Lukoil-Gazprom ranged up and down the ragged collection of soldiers, shouting and cursing until, out of sheer habit, they found themselves in a wedge formation, bayonets forward. They were facing the oncoming mob, which was still several blocks away, still invisible but already audible. They had been through this drill so often they did not flinch.

The conscripts had neither drum nor drummer among them, so a sergeant was given the duty of counting cadence. The baron had just finished giving the man his instructions when General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka came striding up.

“I’ll run these fat sluts around and up to that side street there.” She pointed. “When the mob passes us, start your men forward. I’ll wait until your wedge splits them and then send the girls running into their flank. If that doesn’t cause panic, I don’t know what will. They’ll run every which way, and I don’t think they’ll be eager to come back for more.”

“It’s a good plan,” the baron said. “I think it will work.”

The two returned to their respective forces.

All the while, Zoesophia had been standing at the sidelines, watching. Though her knowledge of military history and tactics was unsurpassed, she recognized that the general and the baron both operated from long experience. In this situation, there was little she could do for them, other than to keep out of their way.

But that did not mean her brain had stopped working. In every action so far, Zvyozdny-Gorodoka had taken the lead and the baron had followed her. Worse, the rank-and-file soldiers had witnessed this fact. Which meant that when this was all over, provided they were still alive, the hero of the night would not be the baron, but the red-haired general.

Something would have to be done about that. Tonight.

…16…

The Duke of Muscovy dreamed of fire. He twisted and turned in impotent fury. His beloved Moscow was in danger! All his conscious life, since the day his designers had deemed him sufficiently well programmed to govern, he had looked after it, dreaming of alliances and diplomatic interventions, repairs to the sewage system, improvements in food distribution, new health regulations, the reengineering of peregrine messenger falcons, trade treaties, bribes, the deployment of armies, discrete assassinations, the suppression of news items, construction projects, midnight arrests. The machinations of the underlords, of Chortenko, of Zoesophia, of Koschei, of Lukoil-Gazprom, and even of the false Byzantine ambassador with the improbably long name he had watched ripen, for the reports from Chortenko’s people were very thorough, and his powers of extrapolation uncanny. The actions of lesser players he had intuited. The movements and emotions of the masses were statistical certainties. But then the messengers came less and less frequently, and finally they ceased whispering in his ear altogether. A steadily growing blindness hindered his dreams. His ignorance grew.

As the State of Muscovy’s flow of information was disrupted, its duke could no longer integrate, hallucinate, and comprehend his realm. Which was to him an agony. Though he had no conviction that Moscow actually existed, he had known better than anyone else exactly what was going on in his city at any given instant. No more.

But he knew there were fires.

There were fires because fires were inevitable. They broke out in the best of times, and to fight them the duke had established volunteer brigades for every neighborhood in Moscow. But this was far from the best of times. Drunks were building bonfires in the streets. Drugged religious zealots were abandoning their prayers and debaucheries, leaving candles and lanterns untended, to join processions headed they knew not where.

Underpeople were scurrying about the passages beneath the city carrying torches like so many mice with wooden matches clenched between their teeth. It was impossible that there not be fires.

To make matters worse, tonight only a handful of fire brigades, police stations, or active military units were functional. Chortenko had asked the Duke of Muscovy how to inactivate the greatest possible percentage of them, and the duke had spelled out the process, step by step, in careful detail. That was why and how he had been created in the first place: to answer all questions put to him as fully and truthfully as his more-thanhuman powers of analysis and integration could make possible. He could no more withhold his counsel than he could tell a lie.

Yet, like an intellectual who had read so deeply and knowledgeably into a great novel that he had gone mad and believed its characters real, the Duke of Muscovy had fallen in love with the citizens whose fates had been entrusted into his safekeeping. He cared about their small, imaginary lives more than he did his own. He had been created to be their protector, their spiritual father. Now he was the only responsible official aware of Chortenko’s partnership with the metal demons and of the evils plotted by this hellish alliance. No one but he knew what had to be done to stop them.

Moscow must not burn.

But the Duke of Muscovy was powerless to protect his people. He was held captive in chains of sleep and could not break free. No one came to listen to his mumbled instructions-not even the traitor Chortenko. The Royal Guards kept carefully out of earshot, lest they overhear something they would rather not.

He groaned aloud.

The bear-guards-those few who still remained on duty-covered their ears.

The Zamoskvorechye incident-for “skirmish” was, in context, too elevated a word for it-was over in what felt like only minutes. The procession came flowing down the boulevard like a river, and like a river it looked at first to be unstoppable and irresistible. But Baron LukoilGazprom’s wedge of soldiers marched steadily up the boulevard to meet them, bayonets extended. Since most of the marchers came from the City Above and, however drugged, were still capable of fear, the sight of the advancing bayonets did much to discomfort them. Their chants turned to cries of alarm. The front of the procession stopped and eddied in confusion.