1637_The Volga Rules Read online

  * * *

  1637: The Volga Rules

  * * *

  NEW ENTRY IN THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING, GENRE-DEFINING ALTERNATE HISTORY SERIES.

  It’s been five years since a cosmic incident known as The Ring of Fire transported the modern day town of Grantville, West Virginia, through time and space to 17th century Europe. The course of world history has been forever altered. And Mother Russia is no exception.

  Inspired by the American up-timers’ radical notion that all people are created equal, Russian serfs are rebelling. The entire village of Poltz, led by blacksmith Stefan Andreevich, pulls up stakes to make a run for freedom.

  Meanwhile, Czar Mikhail has escaped house arrest, with the aid of up-time car mechanic Bernie Zeppi, his Russian associates—and a zeppelin. The czar makes his way to the village of Ufa. There he intends to set up a government-in-exile. It is to Ufa that the serfs of Poltz are heading, as well.

  The path is dangerous—for the serfs as well as the czar. They face great distances and highwaymen. But the worst threat are those in the aristocracy who seek to crush the serfs and execute the czar in a bid to drive any hope for Russian freedom under their Parisian-crafted boot heels. But the Russians of 1637 have taken inspiration from their up-timer counterparts. And it could be that a new wind of liberty is about to blow three centuries early—and change Mother Russia forever.

  Cover Art by Tom Kidd

  * * *

  Hardcover

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  First printing, February 6, 2018

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4814-8303-2

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-625-7

  Copyright 2017 by Eric Flint, Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  http://www.baen.com

  Electronic version by Baen Books

  http://www.baen.com

  * * *

  1637: The Volga Rules

  Table of Contents

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  Part One

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  Part Two

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  Part Three

  CHAPTER 19

  Part Four

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  Cast of Characters

  To John Huff, Harold Huff and Stephen Huff

  PROLOGUE

  Go East, Young Man

  Factory in Polxtz, Russia

  February 1636

  Stefan Andreevich wiped off the sweat, then motioned for Nestor to turn the crank. While Nestor cranked and the weight lifted, Stefan checked the irons in the fire. He had plenty of time. It was a stone forge with a leather bellows, newly made last year with little regard to appearance. The stones were quarried, but not shaped, and the mortar was not of good quality. The sparks flew up as Stefan used the tongs to check the color of the wrought iron globs in the glowing charcoal, while Nestor cranked away.

  Once the hammer was up, Stefan used the tongs to pull the plate out of the stamp forge and set it on a scorched wooden shelf. Then he pulled the mop from the bucket and ran it over the bottom and top molds. The molds steamed and hissed with the water, but it was an important step. They couldn’t be allowed to get too hot or they would start to deform. He turned back to the fire and pulled another blob of wrought iron. It was yellow hot and would take off a limb if he allowed it to touch him. He placed it in the mold and signaled Nestor, who pulled the lever that dropped the weight.

  Over five tons of lead-weighted stamp dropped almost six feet. Wham!

  Torn between admiring the efficiency of the system and resenting the labor, Stefan repeated the process. Then he repeated it again. There was little discussion. The men at the bellows were from Poltz, where he and about half the men of Ruzuka had been sent to work. It made things much harder, because if they were here stamping out plates they couldn’t be back home weaving cloth, which was the main winter craft of Ruzuka. After a long day, the men were given a poor meal and sent to bed in a barn. Just as had happened yesterday and would happen again tomorrow and the day after, six days a week for the last three months and another to come.

  Stefan wouldn’t be making cloth if he were in Ruzuka. He would be making iron parts for the looms and the plows and other needs of the village. He looked back into the fire of the forge and checked the color of the blobs, then waved for more pumping. Then he thought about how fast he could stamp out various parts if he had a drop hammer.

  Nestor would be making cloth if he were in Ruzuka. Like most of the villagers in Ruzuka—and like most of the peasants in Mother Russia—Nestor had two professions. Farmer in spring, summer, and fall, but in winter he was a weaver and made cloth.

  Stefan was an exception. A blacksmith was needed all year round, as much in winter as in summer. He was here because, as a blacksmith, he was a skilled craftsman. Colonel Ivan Nikolayevich Utkin, the man who held Ruzuka as pomestie from Czar Mikhail, would get paid more when he rented Stefan out.

  Ruzuka, Russia

  March 1636

  Vera pulled Stefan to her and kissed him vigorously, then pulled back and looked into his eyes. “Was it bad?” she asked, her greenish-brown eyes shining.

  “No worse than usual,” he told her stoically.

  She hugged him again. “The women have been working at the weaving, but we don’t have nearly as much cloth as last year. Still, the colonel insists that we owe him the same amount of cloth, in spite of the extra work you’re doing. And Kiril Ivanovich has told him how much we made, so we can’t hide any away. The colonel is going to take almost all of it.” Vera’s usually pleasant tone was harsh and angry. Then she hugged him again, as though trying to use his strength to hold away the world.

  Stefan wished he could hold away the world, but they were serfs and Colonel Ivan Nikolayevich Utkin controlled their lives. The colonel was a deti boiarskie, which literally meant “child of boyars,” but really meant a retainer of one of the great houses. Someone who served a member of one of the great houses or who owed their position in the bureaus or the army to the influence of a great house. The colonel was both. He was a retainer of Director-General Sheremetev himself and had gotten his position in the army due to Sheremetev influence. The village of Ruzuka was part of the colonel’s pomestie, payment in land with serfs. As a serf in Ruzuka, Stefan had little say in how his life or the lives of his wife and children would unfold.

  A thought that had been slippi
ng around in the back corners of his mind for the last couple of years came to the fore. We should run. He had his wife and children to think about, and though he wasn’t overfond of Father Yulian, the priest had said some things in his sermons that struck Stefan as worthwhile. That God and the angels had intended men to be free, but men, in their weakness and fear, had given over their liberty to the strong and the vicious, in hopes of protection. Well, the strong and the vicious had taken the liberty, but they didn’t seem overly concerned with protecting Stefan’s wife and child from hunger and want. Maybe it was time to try a little freedom. But for now Stefan kept the thought from his lips, even with Vera.

  They sat down to a meal of stewed beets with just enough grease to make you think there might be some ham in there somewhere, and talked about the goings-on in the village. Vera’s friendly manner made her everyone’s confidant and mostly she didn’t share what she was told. Except with Stefan, but Stefan was a taciturn man. He didn’t talk much, being the sort who thought of just the right thing to say…a day or two after the conversation.

  That night, with Vera snuggled against his chest, Stefan looked around the small room and thought about what they would need to take if they ran, and how they would carry it. Their house was next to the smithy and not in great repair. Stefan was good with metal, not so good with wood. But small as the house was and as little as they had, they would have to leave a lot. If they went. And if they went, where would they go? Vera hugged him in her sleep and he hugged her back.

  Izabella smiled like a cat as she saw her mother leaving Father Yulian’s cabin. She knew what was going on there and she decided that if Mother could do it, she could too.

  Three days later, she sat in the quiet room that Father Yulian used to take confession. “I have these urges, Father Yulian. Even while in church, I feel these strange new feelings.” Izabella was five foot three with golden blond hair, blue eyes, and a curvaceous figure. She knew she was desirable. She only needed Yulian to notice. And she paid attention in church and understood the doctrine. Besides, she had seen him with Mother and heard what he said. “They distract me from the contemplation of faith.” She considered mentioning that she had seen him and her mother. Perhaps confessing her snooping would be a good way, but she held that in reserve. She really wanted Yulian to want her, not to be forced into her bed.

  Father Yulian was most understanding and instructed her that the best cure for lustful thoughts was satiating them. Then the mind was left clear for the deeper concerns of the faith. “Also,” he said, “the realization that our desires can distract us from the worship of God makes us humble and more willing to welcome the Holy Spirit.”

  By the time he had finished ministering to her, Izabella felt so calm as to be called languid.

  Life went on in the village, with Father Yulian ministering to the needs of his flock. To those with a need to learn, he taught reading, writing, mathematics, and other things. Increasingly, political philosophy found its way into his teachings, both from the pulpit and during his private counseling.

  Ruzuka, Russia

  April 1636

  Stefan looked out at the fields. The crops were in the ground, but the children weeding the fields had a gaunt look about them. With the end of winter, the men had finally gotten to come home from the factory in Poltz to do the necessary work in Ruzuka.

  Stefan stayed busy at his forge, and whenever he could he made the bits and pieces for a wagon and hid them away. He looked around again. Anatoly was working in his shop, making handles for the new reapers. It was a hot day for April which was part of the reason Stefan had stepped outside. Vera waved as she lead Vasily and Eva to the well. He’d almost told Vera about his plan a dozen times in the last few weeks, but he held back. The truth was that he was afraid that she would not want to leave her friends. Afraid that if he gave her time, she would talk him out of it and they would wait till it was too late to run. They were one of the wealthier families in the village, in part because Stefan had built his own drop hammer and that had saved him a great deal of time in the repairing of farm equipment, which in turn meant that there was more time to gather the iron ore and make the wrought iron. It let them trade for more food, more clothing, and they would be even better off if Vera didn’t insist on feeding half the village children.

  Things were especially bad this summer. Sheremetev had taken power in Moscow, apparently with the acquiescence of Czar Mikhail. And the colonel, as one of Sheremetev’s deti boiarskie, wanted to prove himself by making the village produce. The only good news was he was doing it by mail, being busy in the army and his son, Nikita, with him. That meant that only his wife, Elena, and daughter, Izabella, were here. Father Yulian seemed to have a great deal of influence with them. Stefan grinned at that thought, because Vera had told him how that influence came to be. Father Yulian was a man who had plenty of stamina, Stefan had to admit. He’d been ministering to the women of the village for a long time. Even to Vera, back before she had decided to marry Stefan.

  There was one other thing that Stefan had to respect about Father Yulian. He didn’t coerce the women of the village. They went to him. Once Vera had decided that she didn’t want to play anymore, Father Yulian had been fine with her decision.

  Ruzuka, Russia

  May 1636

  “Might I have a few words with you?” Father Yulian asked Stefan as he was leaving the church one Sunday.

  “I guess so, Father. Do you need new hinges for the church door?” Stefan looked at the door in question. The hinges were a bit rusty, but seemed in good enough shape.

  Father Yulian just smiled and waved him toward the cabin next to the church.

  “So,” Yulian asked, in his deep baritone, once Stefan was seated on a wooden bench by the stove, “when are you planning on running and where do you intend to go?”

  Stefan blinked. “What?” The priest was grinning at him, his left eyebrow raised. He had dark hair and rough-hewn features. There was just a touch of gray at his temples. His beard had a little dash of gray too.

  “I’m not blind, man,” Father Yulian said as his grin mellowed into a smile. “You have been making extra parts for a wagon and squirreling away dried meat and vegetables. At first I thought you were just preparing for the winter like any industrious man should, but then it came to me that your choice of goods are as light and compact as you can manage. You want things that you can carry with you.”

  Stefan’s hand, almost of its own accord, crept toward his belt knife. This was a disaster. The priest might tell anyone—the colonel’s wife, the headman, Kiril Ivanovich. And Stefan would be strung up and beaten half to death, maybe all the way to death. Then what would happen to Vera and the children?

  “You realize that leaving would leave the whole village in peril? Your debt would be applied to everyone left in the village. How do you think that’s going to make Vera feel?”

  “Better than burying our children would,” Stefan said angrily, but his hand had stopped its creeping toward his knife.

  Father Yulian nodded, but continued. “Probably. But better is not the same as good. Wouldn’t it be best to take the whole village?”

  “The whole village! You’re crazy. There is no way. Besides, what makes you think that they will all want to go?”

  “You don’t give me credit for knowing my flock, Stefan. There are a few who will actively oppose any attempt to leave. Kiril Ivanovich, for instance. Aside from the fact that he hates me personally, he believes that some are made to be serfs and some to be boyars, and that as a serf, his goal should be to be a good serf. At least, that’s what he tells himself. The truth is, he is a horrible coward who will yield to anyone with a whip.”

  Father Yulian went through the village, telling Stefan who would be willing to run when the time came but couldn’t keep their mouths shut, who wouldn’t want to go but would continue on if they started, and finally those who he thought they could trust to be a part of the preparations. Mostly women, Stefan noted, in
that last group.

  But, in spite of it all, Stefan wasn’t convinced. “Look, Father, that’s all fine, but how do you expect to move a whole village through Russia without anyone noticing? And the ones that we force to go along…they will turn on us the first chance they get. How do you plan to deal with that?”

  “No, not most of them. Once we leave, their only choice will be to go with us. They will already be Cossacks, runaways, according to Moscow. Especially with Sheremetev in charge. You know what the colonel has been doing since Sheremetev ‘retired’ the czar.”

  And it was true. There had been whippings on each visit by the colonel since Sheremetev had taken power, and two girls of the village had been forced by the colonel’s son, Nikita.

  They didn’t come to any agreement that day, but when Stefan got home, there was Vera waiting for him, and it was clear that Father Yulian had told her of his suspicions before he had brought the matter up with Stefan. She had many of the same questions, but she also wanted to know just where he planned on dragging her and the children.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Stefan admitted. “The Cossacks to the south, or east to the goldfields. I figure I can make us a good living making mining tools. The Cossacks are closer, and once I prove I can take it, they will leave you be.”

  “We are not going to live with those animals. They have no law but strength and that’s not how I want Vasily growing up.”

  “East to the goldfields then,” Stefan agreed. “After the harvest.”