1637_The Volga Rules Read online

  The good news, Ivan didn’t know, was that the third boat had blocked the first boat’s cannon and, because it was turning, its cannon too were pointed in the wrong direction.

  “Fire,” Ivan shouted and shot at a man standing on the bow of the third boat with a line and sinker in hand. He missed, but that didn’t stop the man from dropping the line and ducking away from the railing.

  Another forty odd shots rang out, as well as a few curses as flintlocks failed to fire. There were three hits. Ivan popped the chamber from his carbine, tapped the second chamber over the pan, inserted it into the lock and closed the lock. All the while, he heard Lieutenant Vadim Viktorovich Lagunov crowing.

  Vadim hadn’t liked the plan. Mostly because it was Ivan Maslov’s plan, but also because it didn’t quite fit in with his notion of martial glory. He was now starting to reconsider. There were four boats full of troops and cannon being held by sixty men and a bunch of mines. Besides, Vadim had hit his man. The captain, or perhaps a mate, but clearly someone important. He popped the chamber from his AK and started reloading.

  On board the third boat, the first mate, now in command, was cursing the pilot for abandoning his post. The Volga here was not particularly deep and it had sand bars. Which was almost certainly why the ambush was placed here. He tried to guess where the sandbars might be, then he found one with the bow. “Stop engines,” he shouted. It was the right thing to say. The engineer pulled a lever that disconnected the prop from the engines. Now there was only momentum and current pushing the nose of his boat onto the sand bar. That was enough to push the nose a couple more feet into the sand, but the boat was at an angle to the current and the current pushed from the side. The third steamboat pivoted on its bow and came within a foot of wedging its stern on the sunken first steamboat. But a miss is as good as a mile, and the third steamboat of the expeditionary force pivoted around till it was facing upriver and came loose from the sandbar.

  The first mate took that as a sign from God that upriver was the way they should be going. “Full speed ahead!” he shouted. The fact that they had taken seven more casualties in the two minutes it had taken for the boat to pivot might have had something to do with the mate’s interpretation of God’s will. That and the fact that he couldn’t see any slackening of the enemy fire and he couldn’t even see the people shooting at them, just the smoke from their guns.

  The second boat, which had turned to starboard to avoid the first, got by without a scratch. However, its captain, who was not a boatman but a member of the service nobility, was now looking downriver and seeing in his mind’s eye a mine under every square foot of water. There was shooting behind him, but he was an experienced officer and gunfire was something he understood. He looked at the river ahead, then he looked at the battle behind. And he shouted to the boatman, “Turn us around!”

  The boatman looked at him like he was crazy and the captain pulled his pistol. It was a six-shot black-powder caplock pistol, copied from an 1851 Colt and made in the gun shop. The boatman turned the boat around. “You’re going to take us right back the way we came.” The captain pointed. “And we’re going to drop ropes to pick up survivors from the lead boat.”

  They made their way back up the river and didn’t take much fire. Most of the ambushers were still shooting at the retreating third boat. Much of the crew of the first boat were picked up, but the expedition commander had gone into the water wearing a steel breastplate.

  Ivan looked around at the aftermath. His little force hadn’t taken so much as a scratch and there were three riverboats retreating back upriver. On the other hand, Ivan was pretty sure what he would do in this situation. He’d go upriver half a mile or so, till he was out of direct fire from the enemy, then he would unload the soldiers and sweep down the bank. “Sergei, head upriver and keep watch on the boats. If they land, run back and tell us.” Ivan turned to Lieutenant Vadim Viktorovich Lagunov. “Well fought, Lieutenant. Signal our steamboat to collect the rest of the mines, and let’s see if there’s anything on that—” He pointed at the riverboat sunk to its smokestack in the center of the river.

  “Right, Major,” Vadim said with less resentment than Ivan was expecting.

  It took an hour to collect up the five other mines that had been placed and by that time Sergei was back with a report of infantry marching along the riverbank. “The boats are staying back of the infantry,” Sergei added, grinning a gap-toothed grin.

  “How many?”

  “A lot, Captain. Three hundred and more, I make it, and they have the AK4s. They left the cannon on the boats, though.”

  “Shit. I’d like to try and bring up the guns on that wreck out there, but…How long before they get here?”

  “Maybe a half-hour. I ran after I got a look at ’em.”

  “We could put out a screen to delay them,” offered Vadim.

  Ivan shook his head regretfully. “I’d like to, Vadim, but we just don’t have enough men. All right. Get everyone on the boat and we’ll go to the next spot.”

  The next spot was seventeen miles downriver, where the Volga split into three channels with visible sandbars between them. Only the rightmost channel was deep enough for a boat, and if they put out the mines in that channel there was a good chance that they would get another boat. Seventeen miles was a couple of hours by steamboat, but a long day’s march along a twisting, muddy riverbank.

  “Will we set up another ambush?”

  “No. Just a couple of scouts, and they will be a half-mile or so downriver from the mines. Then we’ll see what they do next. If they have people on both sides of the river, we’ll keep retreating before them. But if they put them all on one side, we’ll set up an ambush on the other.”

  “Why?” Vadim asked. The question wasn’t derisive, but curious.

  “Because a group like that can only go as fast as its slowest unit. Every time the troops on either side of the river run into an obstacle, everyone has to wait till they negotiate it. So we want them split into as many groups as we can manage.”

  Ivan’s force had good news—well, mixed news—when they camped that night. The three remaining boats had stopped at the ambush site to recover the cannon and the lost rifles from the sunken steamboat. They spent two days doing that, then the riverboats went on, while many of the troops marched along the riverbank on the southwest side of the river.

  CHAPTER 14

  Arsenal of Constitutional Monarchy

  Ufa

  October 1636

  Stefan got off the horse, then went to help Vera down. They had ridden in to Ufa in response to a request from Czar Mikhail, delivered by a messenger rider. They were met by Olga Petrovichna, who led them up to the Ufa kremlin.

  “What’s this all about?” Vera asked.

  “I don’t know for sure. You know that Anya had everyone tell her about what they did and put it all in a book?”

  Stefan nodded. He remembered. It had taken days and it wasn’t just Anya. There had been half a dozen interviewers and they wanted to know everyone’s skills.

  “Well, they were talking about rockets and Anya was going through that book and came up with Stefan’s name. So we sent for the two of you.”

  Bernie adjusted the down-time-made Coleman lantern and went back to the table. He looked down at the plans for the black powder rockets. They were mostly wood, but they needed metal or ceramic venturi.

  Then he looked up at Natasha and couldn’t help but smile. She wasn’t wearing the white makeup that she had worn the first day they had met, but her natural complexion was pale and she was wearing ruby-red lipstick. Her hair was just as straight and black as ever and her eyes just as blue. She looked up and saw him looking and there was just a hint of blush in her cheeks as she smiled back. Then the door opened and Olga brought in a big man and a little woman who had to be Stefan and his wife, Vera. Natasha turned and the smith and his wife started to bow.

  “Don’t bother with all that,” Natasha said. “How is your new village coming?”


  Stefan remained silent, but Vera said, “Slowly, Your Highness. The land is mostly forest and we’ve been chopping down trees for the last couple of weeks. We’ll have plenty of logs to build our houses, but it’s a lot of work to clear the land.”

  “If you have extra lumber, we will want to buy some of it,” Bernie said.

  “Is that why we’re here?” Vera asked.

  “No,” Natasha said. “It’s about Stefan’s experience with drop forges. We have people with similar experience, but we also have a lot of jobs for them.”

  Bernie noticed that Vera didn’t seem thrilled at this news, and he remembered that Stefan had been, for all intents and purposes, rented to a neighboring village last winter. Which was where he had gotten the experience. “We pay people to work for us,” Bernie said. “And we don’t force them to take a job if they don’t want it.”

  Natasha looked over at him, then back at Stefan and Vera. “You do need to understand that this is important. There are steamboats coming up the river right now. They want to take Czar Mikhail, and you and me, all of us, back into captivity. We have a young man with a small force out on the river slowing them down, but he needs better weapons than he has. We don’t have the equipment to make cannon, but we can make rockets. At least, we can make most of the parts needed for rockets. But one part is not easy to make, especially by hand. It’s called a venturi, and it is vital for making the rocket fly straight and fast.” She waved them over to the table and showed them the drawings.

  “From what we were told, you built your own drop hammer and stamps for parts for your wagons. Is that right?” Bernie asked.

  Stefan nodded.

  Bernie was starting to wonder if the guy knew how to talk. “What we need help with is a stamp or a set of stamps that can be used to make venturi.”

  “Do they need to be made in one piece?” Stefan asked, as he looked at the drawings.

  “What do you mean?” Bernie asked.

  “Well, this thing is two bowls with a tube between them. It’s a pretty short tube too. You can’t make it as one piece with a drop hammer. You need to make two pieces at least, and probably three, then fit them together.”

  From there the discussion went into technical details of how the stamps for each part would be made and how the parts would be assembled, clamped, bolted or welded. Induction welding would be best, but most of their electronic equipment had been left in the Dacha. Stefan was clearly confused about the notion of induction welding, but also interested. So the discussion digressed a bit at that point, but then got back to the venturi. They finally decided on a sort of heavy wire clamp to lock the two main pieces together.

  By that time the ladies had drifted away to talk about costs, and if their discussion was rather sharper, it was collegial in its own way. Olga, Anya, and Vera were all experienced bargainers and Princess Natasha—if she wasn’t used to bargaining over a half dozen eggs in a market stall—was quite familiar with the costs of labor and materials.

  For two weeks Stefan worked on stamps while another drop hammer was built in Ufa. Then, in two days, they made five hundred venturi. Which was a hundred more than they had rockets to use them.

  Izabella was not comfortable. She was living in New Ruzuka and still not at all sure what was going to happen to her. Most of the villagers were willing enough for her to fill a role not that dissimilar to the role that her family had played in old Ruzuka as an arbiter of disputes. But they weren’t going to be in any great hurry to give her half the crop to pay for that service. Granted, she owned a good share of the corporation, and if it ever started paying dividends it would help support her. But the way it had worked out was that the corporation was paying the farmers, and that pay came out first, before everyone divided up any profits. So Izabella’s net was not going to be the same as the fifty percent of gross that her family had gotten in old Ruzuka.

  Izabella’s baby was going to be arriving soon and would need things. It wasn’t that she was broke. She and her mother had cleaned out the family coffers when they ran off, and she still had most of her mother’s old jewelry and most of the cash they had taken. It hadn’t occurred to anyone to divide up the stuff when Elena became insane. No. That wasn’t true. Izabella had thought of the money and jewels, hidden in a compartment in their wagon, then she’d thought of the fact that she was pregnant and kept her mouth shut.

  The Czar’s Bank in Ufa had taken that money, even the paper money, at face value, as a deposit, so she had money. But if she didn’t figure out what to do with it, she was going to run out in a year or two. Then she and her baby would be living on her share of the village profits. And Izabella had expenses. She had a position to maintain. Her share of the profits of a farming village might not be enough for a proper household.

  She heard Vera and Stefan coming up the path to her wagon arguing about something. Actually, Vera was arguing. Stefan was grunting. It wasn’t an uncommon phenomenon.

  Izabella got up and waddled to the door. “What did they want?”

  “They want Stefan to build a factory to make rocket nozzles,” Vera said.

  “That’s interesting…” Izabella didn’t know whether it was good or bad. She’d heard Vera arguing with herself while Stefan grunted, but she hadn’t heard what Vera was saying.

  “The Czar’s Bank in Ufa is willing to make us a loan to set up a factory to make the nozzles. But it’s going to be expensive and only the government is going to be interested in buying the rocket nozzles and that means…”

  Izabella listened as the older woman described the deal and she had a thought. “Wouldn’t it be better to have a more general factory so that it could make more than just rocket nozzles?”

  “Sure. But that would cost even more and even though the loan is at what Anya assures us is a sweetheart rate, we’re going to have to pay it back. And if we ask for more, they are going to up the interest rate.”

  “I don’t like putting the family back in debt,” Stefan put in. “It’s too much like being a serf again.”

  That clearly was what the argument had been about, and Izabella understood. She had been living with these people all her life, and on the trip from old Ruzuka they had talked to her. She had learned their fears. To a Russian peasant, debt was a chain. A chain that tied them to the land and made them the property of whoever owned it. That was why everyone in New Ruzuka walked around with their chests puffed out. They owned their own land. They were their own people. They had taxes to pay, but no debt to tie them to the land.

  “Czar Mikhail is forcing you to take on debt?”

  “No. Anya says that it will be the company that will take on the debt. She says that the worst thing that could happen is that the bank would take the factory if the debt got too big.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  “Yes, I think I do.”

  Izabella considered. She had money, even a lot of money by the standards of a Russian peasant village. What if she were to own the factory? “Do you think they would give me the loan? I mean, then I could hire Stefan to make the rocket nozzles, add in my money to make some different molds. You’re talking about using a drop hammer, right?”

  Izabella looked over at them and Vera was shaking her head. “What’s wrong?”

  “They’re offering the loan to Stefan because of his experience with the drop forge in Poltz and because he made a drop hammer in Old Ruzuka. Also because they sent a guy out to New Ruzuka to see how he had set up his drop hammer there as part of his shop…” Vera trailed off and Izabella realized that there was something else.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s not wrong, Izabella. Not exactly. You were a big help on the trip and even in getting ready. But the truth is, we don’t want to work on your land or in your factory.”

  Vera was trying to be fair, even gentle, but it was like a slap in the face. Izabella turned and ran—waddled—back to her wagon.

  “I should go talk to her,” Vera said worriedly and start
ed to follow. Stefan reached out and took her arm in his large hand. It was a gentle hold, but it might as well have been an iron cuff, so far as her being able to break free was concerned.

  “Give her time,” Stefan said, “and talk to Father Yulian.”

  “Part of the problem is that young Alexander is off at Kruglaya Mountain and nothing is really settled between the two of them,” Father Yulian explained.

  And part of the problem, Stefan thought, is that she has your child in her belly. Father Yulian often gave excellent advice and his skill at dealing with people was phenomenal. He was also well-, if self-, educated. But he was quick to shift responsibility from himself to almost anyone else. Stefan couldn’t help but like the man, but he had little respect for him. On the other hand, Izabella didn’t seem any more anxious to marry Father Yulian than he was to marry her, so maybe it wasn’t quite as straightforward as it seemed.

  “But, in truth, I don’t think that is the real issue. She doesn’t know her place in the world. She helped us out of bondage, risking her father’s wrath and even death. That was a brave and noble act. But in doing so she left behind her place and her certainty. She doesn’t know where she fits and when she tried to make a new place on the only terms she knew, you rejected her.”

  “You think…” Vera began hotly, but Yulian held up his hand.

  “No, I don’t. To an extent we all owe her for our present liberty, but that doesn’t mean she has the right to make us serfs again. You were right to reject her offer as it was offered, but she wasn’t offering nothing. Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t she offering to put up her money?”