Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette Volume XI

"So what are you doing here, Cass? Since you're so rich, I mean?" Bernie shot him a look.

Cass flushed. "Cheap shot, man. The breaks haven't been going my way. It's Stearns' fault. Treating the down-timers like they're real Americans and selling us out to the Swedes like he done." Cass knew if it weren't for Stearns, all the up-timers would be rich and powerful with dozens of girls and solid gold crappers. But Stearns was giving it all away.

"Cass, we're not in high school anymore. There's not a cop you can call." Bernie stared at him intently. "Some breaks are coming your way, sure enough. Broken arms, broken legs and a busted head. The lady you were hitting on is a frigging knyazhna, Cass. That's Russian for princess. Don't think for a minute that her guards won't cut off your dick and feed it and the rest of you to the pigs."

"What the hell is your problem, Bernie boy? Afraid of the competition?" Cass pulled his new Peace Maker and pointed it casually in Bernie's direction. Just to make a point. Besides he liked the gun and how it made him feel strong and dangerous. It was modeled loosely on the Colt Peacemaker but made in a down-time gun shop. "Anyone wants to cut me, they had better bring a whole lot more fire power than these candy-asses have." Bernie froze. At first Cass thought he had made his point, but Bernie wasn't really looking scared. Mostly he was looking pissed. What the fuck was Bernie's problem anyway?

Slowly, it occurred to Cass that pointing a loaded gun at Bernie might be pushing it a bit more than he'd meant to, at least right off the bat. He really hadn't meant to piss Bernie off, not till he got the lay of the land, anyway. Especially, he hadn't meant to let Bernie boy know that he was competition. "Hey man, it's no big deal. If you got dibs on her, I'll back off." Cass put away his gun and left the brown-nosing asshole. He need to walk off the booze a bit, anyway.

Cass knew he was smarter than Bernie. He hadn't done well in school, but didn't mean he was stupid. School just bored the shit out of him. Besides, he was a football star. He didn't need to bust his hump in English class. He knew he could pick up what Bernie was doing pretty quick. He could probably push Bernie out, if he wanted to. But he wasn't going to put up with much crap from the dumb-ass down-timers. Not him. Not ever.

Cass winced at the bright sunshine when he walked out the door three mornings later. "Oh, man, that hurts."

"Think you might want to be a little more careful with the booze?" Bernie's smirk was insulting. "Sun shining off snow can really dazzle you, but the biggest part of your problem is your hangover. Three days and three hangovers. No wonder it hurts."

"Maybe," Cass muttered. Drinking was about the only thing he was enjoying. Well, that and the girls. Every place they stayed had servant girls. Even staying away from the bitch princess wasn't hard, not when you had all those girls around.

Bernie put on his heavy coat. "You ready? Let's get a move on. This trip is taking forever. I wish the car was running, I really do. Steering and braking with no power while being towed behind a team of horses is a real pain."

"What did you expect? The thing sat on blocks for fucking years, man." Cass snorted. "Let's go. Get to this dacha place and see if you can get it running."

Hours in the carriage with only a couple of troops who didn't speak English was a real bore. But Cass didn't want to ride on one of the carts out in the open and especially didn't want to be on horseback. Too cold for that, by half. It was the usual order today. Out ahead of everyone, a double column of ten guards on horseback spread out. Then came the rolling stock. First came the fancy-ass sleigh that Bernie's girl was in. Cass hated to admit it, but it was actually kind of neat. Boxy, but still sort of streamlined and buffed to a high gloss. Then Bernie was freezing his ass off in that damned old junker of his. Cass was behind Bernie's car in his carriage. Then all the carts with all the stuff the Yaroslavich dude had sent. At the end of the line there were six more guards. Plus guards in some of the rolling stock.

Bernie patted the dash. "Oh, yeah. Once I get it running it will be able to do thirty miles an hour at least. Even on these roads and pulling a bunch of stuff."

Vladislav Vasl'yevich was riding beside Bernie's car just then. Partly because he was actually interested in how it worked and could see lots of military applications for these motorized vehicles. Mostly, though, over the course of a day's travel, he would spend time all along the column. He checked everything, several times a day, to make sure everything was working and looked for trouble before it happened.

Vladislav had seen and reported on hundreds of military applications in the time that Bernie had been at the dacha. He hadn't exactly been ignored. The czar now had a 30-06. It was hand-made with gold engraving, but there was a very limited supply of bullets. There were people making new guns, flintlocks, but only in small numbers, as experiments. There were the war games in the Kremlin, but darn little in the field. The military had been, in Vladislav's opinion, slow to consider the potential usefulness of the up-timer's innovations in weapons and tactics.

"I wouldn't mind seeing that… " Vladislav stopped at the shout from the front of the column and shots ringing out. "Bandits. To the knyazhna." He looked around to assess the situation.

The road here curved from southeast to east. The bandits had either been spotted by the guards out in front or had jumped the gun. Probably spotted, that shout had been Petr Kadian. It was a large party, it must be. This many trained solders wouldn't be easy to overcome. From the noise, there were probably around thirty or forty bandits. Most were hitting the front of the column, and the outriders on the north side, which was the inside of the curve. That meant that Vladislav's men were more spread than the bandits were and the bandits could react a little faster. Vladislav noted in passing that Bernie was trying to get his 30-06 out of the back seat of the car. That could help, depending on how Bernie held up in combat.

Surprisingly, the other outlander, Cass, was out of his carriage and running toward Bernie's car. "Get down, you idiot." Vladislav shouted. "Get down before you get shot."

What was the idiot doing, Vladislav wondered. He was playing with the back of Bernie's car. The back of the car opened like a great mouth, hiding Cass from Vladislav's view.

There hadn't been bandits in this area for years. It was too well patrolled. Not out of fear of bandits, but to provide warning of an attack by Poland. Vladislav waved to the Embassy Bureau troops who were bringing up the rear. "To the knyazhna. Don't worry about the carts, protect Natalia Petrovna and Bernie." They could probably replace the stuff in the carts if they had to, but they had to protect Natasha Petrovna and Bernie. Vladislav shot one of the bandits and dropped the pistol. He drew the second. He always carried one in each boot and two in his belt.

" Yeeeehaaaw!"

Vladislav looked around, startled by the scream. Cass had reappeared from the back of Bernie's car and was carrying a long gun of some sort. He was running at the woods on the north side of the road, screaming like a banshee. Clickety boom, came the noise. And again. Clicktey boom. Clicktey boom. Two bandits were down, one with most of his head blown away. Vladislav watched as Cass cut to the right. Clickety boom. Cut left. Clickety boom. Cass ran in some sort of wild pattern that the attackers couldn't follow. Neither could Vladislav.

Crack. A different noise sounded. One of the bandits fell from a horse. Since most of the bandits had been on foot, Vladislav figured he was probably their leader. They should have been paying attention to Bernie, who knelt behind his car taking well-aimed shots at the attackers. Vladislav could see his head and shoulders. The bandits would be lucky to see his head, or the 30-06 that was killing them. It would take a special miracle to actually hit a target that small.