Eric Flint: 1636:The Kremlin games

Bernie and Natasha were boarding the dirigible when they heard the shot. They didn’t turn. It was just one shot and all it indicated was that they were in a hurry. The Czarina Evdokia wasn’t the Graf Zeppelin. It was a seventeenth-century airship built by seventeenth-century craftsmen informed by late-twentieth-century knowledge. Still, it was the same basic shape as the Graf Zeppelin, if a bit smaller. They loaded in a dozen passengers, and Captain Nikita Ivanovich Slavenitsky, the first Russian to fly, gave the order to pull her out of the giant hangar.

Tim finished his little speech and ordered the first rank to kneel. The Nizhny Novgorod force had lost several men who just faded away, but not enough. They still outnumbered Tim’s men. “Take aim! Fire!”

Blaaam! Blam! Blam!

A bit ragged, but not too bad. And certainly better than the spatter of shots that the Nizhnys had put out in response.

“Wait for it!” Tim shouted. “Let the breeze clear the smoke!” Let the enemy see their dead and think about being elsewhere.

The breeze was taking its time in clearing away the smoke. And when it did, the results were a bit disappointing. They were at the outside edge of the AK4.7’s range. Well outside of the effective range of a musket, but Tim had hoped for better. Almost fifty men had shot and less than ten of the enemy had fallen.

“Second rank advance!” Tim moved forward with the new front rank. “Your left! Your left! Halt!

“Kneel. Ready! Aim! Fire!”

Blam! BlBlaBlaaaam! Blam! Blam!

Definitely a bit ragged. It was strange. Tim should have been scared and, in a way he was. But the effect it had on him was weird. He just noticed things. Every detail became intense and distinct. The stench of the air, not just the acrid smoke of the burned powder but the smell of the river’s muddy bank, combined with the dew on the grass. The patterns the smoke made as it wafted away under the light breeze. And, most of all, the enemy across the field. It was almost as if he could see their faces. Feel the fear that was eating away at the little discipline they had. He was honestly a little amazed that they had held this long.

Then the Czarina Evdokia appeared over the roofs of Bor. It was massive and it was flying. It wasn’t the first time these men had seen it. It had made several test flights and some of them had gone over Nizhny Novgorod. But in this case, it meant that their last reason for being here was floating away.

“Next rank! Forward five paces!”

The Nizhny Novgorod force scattered. Tim let them. Honestly, he had nothing against those men. They were following the orders they had been given by their lawful lords.

Ivan came over. “So what now, Tim?”

“We go to Ufa.”

Czarina Evdokia looked out the window of the Czarina Evdokia, awash in conflicting emotions. Staying alive in the bear pit of Russian politics wasn’t ever easy, and her habit-along with her husband’s-had been to keep her head down. That hadn’t worked. Apparently it had in the other timeline, but not in this one. Now they were out of position. They couldn’t keep their heads down and Evdokia wasn’t at all sure that Mikhail would be able to handle being his own man. Or that she would be able to handle it. What would Sheremetev and the Boyar Duma do now that Mikhail had escaped the relatively comfortable prison? It was safe to assume that the gloves would come off, but how? Would they declare that Mikhail was False Mikhail, like the False Dmitris? Would they depose him in favor of Sheremetev and his family?

Evdokia didn’t know. All she really know was that she was scared to death and at the same time thrilled to be alive and flying over the countryside in a dirigible named in her honor. She looked over at her friend and confidant, Natasha, and wondered what the future would bring.

Natasha didn’t notice. She was holding Bernie’s arm and wasn’t quite sure how it had happened. Some time, while she was watching the battle of Bor probably. But she had no desire at all to let the arm go.

Nor the man it belonged to. So many other customs and attitudes were being cast aside, why should she worry about this one any longer?

And so many things would be changing for them, anyway. She thought about what Filip had said to the czar, when he compared him to a Cossack. He’d been joking, but the more Natasha pondered the matter the more profound that jest became.

Everyone knew there were noblemen out there in the Cossack bands, not just runaway serfs. One of them, the Polish-Lithuanian nobleman Aleksander Jozef Lisowski, had even invaded Muscovy twenty years earlier at the head of an outlaw army. He’d besieged Bryansk, defeated two Russian armies sent against him, burned Belyov and Likhvin and taken Peremyshl, and then defeated another Russian army at Rzhev. He’d finally left at that point, but not before burning Torzhok also.

Lisowski himself had died not long afterward. But his men still remained and still considered themselves an army. The Lisowczycy, they called themselves; “Lisowski’s men.”

There were possibilities out there in the frontier lands of eastern Europe; eastward as well as to the south. People came to such lands for many reasons; usually running from something but also looking for adventure and fortune. Former serfs, former free men, former noblemen-the distinctions became blurry in the borderlands; sometimes, to the point of vanishing altogether.

What could happen in such lands, if there were a true czar to serve as a rallying point?

She didn’t know, but she planned to find out.