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  By the time they got back to the column, it was crossing the Volga at Staritsa and Tim had himself well under control. He made his report and the general discussed the way the battle had gone. Whoever had commanded the Poles had kept his Cossacks in reserve. Which was a bit of a surprise; since probably the greatest Russian weakness was in tactical mobility. Of course, a Russian army that was mostly cavalry was unusual, too.

  “I am concerned about the loss of the cavalry,” General Izmailov echoed Tim’s thoughts. “The cavalry units were most of what tactical mobility we had. We can’t afford to be caught away from the Volga. We’ll need it for supply. It’s a hundred miles along the Volga from Tver to Rzhev. I am going to take the main force straight to Rzhev. But I am sending Captain Boyce and his people along the river to grab up every boat they can find.”

  Tim said, “But the supplies are coming up by steam barge, aren’t they?”

  “They’re supposed to be,” General Izmailov said. “But the latest steam barge is overdue. The steam barges don’t work that consistently yet. So I want regular boats to fill in the gaps. I also want to deny them to the Poles. So, you’re going with Captain Boyce and his troops, Tim. I don’t really think they’ll run again, but better safe than sorry.”

  “Yes, sir. What do I do if they do run?”

  “They won’t. That’s why you’re going. I’m sending a squad of Streltzi with you, but they are just to keep you safe. Captain Boyce knows that if his company fails in its mission, you’ll take the Streltzi and come tell me about it. Then he and his people won’t get paid.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tim said. “I’m sure the steam barge will arrive soon.”

  Chapter 55

  On the Volga River

  “God cursed piece of crap!” Shorty shouted as the pressure valve started screaming again.

  Ivan couldn’t really blame his brother. Besides, it wasn’t really blasphemy, more a statement of fact. The new barge that they had received had a real pressure-relief valve. The pressure-relief valve blew a whistle when it let off excess steam. The whistle wasn’t removable. Whenever the steam got a little strong, the thing started screaming at them like some sort of demented banshee and didn’t stop till the steam pressure had dropped to what the builders in Murom thought was a good pressure. Which, they had told Ivan Mikhailovich, was about thirty pounds per square inch.

  When they had gotten to Murom they had been informed that they weren’t going back to Moscow. They were instead taking supplies to “our gallant troops,” which meant they were going up the Volga almost all the way. Except, of course, the Volga wasn’t their river. Never mind. It didn’t matter. They had the most experience with steam barges. So they were given this brand new and improved steam barge with a donut boiler. Which wasn’t quite a tube boiler, but better than a pot boiler since the chimney for the fire box went through the boiler. It had better, more finely worked, cylinders and pistons and worked at higher pressure, so used less fuel and went faster. It had two propellers, one on either side. What a glory of Russian engineering!

  Crap!

  There had been four explosions of steam barges since Ivan and Pavel Mikhailovich had taken out the first one. Four out of the thirteen barges that had been launched. Each and every explosion had been blamed on the barge’s engineer over-pressuring the boiler. Maybe that was the cause. The engineers weren’t here to argue the point. The experts at the Dacha and Murom hadn’t actually said that a dumb peasant couldn’t be trusted to manage the steam pressure, but the brand new release valve didn’t have any sort of adjustment that the engineer on the barge could make.

  They were going up an unfamiliar river in a brand new barge. So far this trip they had lost two seals on the right piston and run aground once.

  “What is it this time, Shorty?” Ivan shouted. He had to shout. The god-cursed pressure valve was still screaming. The passengers had retreated to the front of the barge.

  “What?” Shorty shouted back holding his hands over his ears. “I think the release valve is getting looser. If we had the sort of head of steam we should need for it to go off like that, we’d be going twice as fast.” Shorty banged the boiler with his wrench and it finally stopped screaming.

  Ivan looked at the shore and at the water. This wasn’t their river, but it looked to him like Shorty might be right. He looked for something to toss over the side to get a clearer notion of the speed of the current. Mostly they were carrying food. Barrels of beans and rye, flour, beets and even some freeze-dried fruit.

  Up front, there were four barrels of gunpowder, a box of one hundred chambers for the new AK3 rifles and another crate full of the rifles. There was also some lamp oil, but nothing that Ivan saw was trash that would float and tell him how fast the river was running. He watched the ripples off the bow and they didn’t seem to be going that fast. “I think you’re right, Shorty.”

  The passengers were still at the front of the barge. Four boys, ensigns, and deti boyars off to win glory, who had decide that going to battle by steam barge would be a lark.

  The ensigns had changed their minds about that when they first experienced the pressure valve screech. By now they had decided that it was unsuitable for them to arrive at Rzhev on a boat since they were cavalry. However, there were no horses for them to buy. By now Dmitri Borisovich was discussing the advisability of arriving in Rzhev on cows.

  “Cows are useful animals and holy in India or someplace like that. Surely it wouldn’t diminish our dignity to much to arrive on milk cows,” said Dmitri Borisovich in a voice that was an artful mix of wistful and jesting. He was the youngest and the friendliest of them. The others had started out superior and by now were making threats of dire consequences if Ivan and Pavel didn’t magically get them to Rzhev.

  “What is the problem with this scow?” Mikhail Ivanovich, the eldest of the four, asked.

  Ivan gritted his teeth. They were boyar’s sons, and in at least one case that was probably literally so. Mikhail Ivanovich was probably the son of Ivan Corkiski, born on the wrong side of the blanket. So telling him to shut up and mind his own affairs while Ivan and Pavel saw to the boat wasn’t advisable.

  It only made it worse that they were mostly justified complaints.

  “It’s not their fault, Mikhail,” said Dmitri Borisovich. “They didn’t build the thing.”

  “No, the Gorchakov clan built it. Holding the rights to everything to themselves, the Corkiski clan could have…” Mikhail stopped at the glare one of the others was giving him.

  Alexsey Sergeyivich was a Gorchakov deti boyar, which was why the four had been in Murom when word of the invasion had arrived. He had promised his friends that he’d be able to get them the new AK3 rifles. Which he had, indeed, accomplished.

  Dmitri interrupted the stand-off with the comment, “The barges are made by men. Men who are imperfect. Why should we expect that the barges would be perfect?” Then, looking toward the shore, he said, wistfully, “Still, there is that cow…”

  After some more mutual glaring, the four passengers moved to the front of the barge, which was continuing its trip upriver. Albeit more slowly, it seemed.

  “Ivan, see this?” Pavel said, pointing at a spring-loaded screw in the assemblage that led from the boiler to the pressure valve. “I think it’s gotten looser.”

  “Well, tighten it, Shorty!”

  “I’m not sure I should, Stinky. What if it breaks something?”

  “Don’t call me Stinky. You may be right, it might break something. Or it might fix something. Look, here. See? There’s a lever that’s pushed on by that screw. I think it controls the pressure valve, but I’m just not sure.”

  “So I tighten it, right?”

  “Yes, but if we do we risk blowing up the boiler.”

  “I’m going to watch it for now, to see if it loosens any more.”

  They added more wood to the firebox and a few minutes later the pressure valve popped again and it started to scream.

  Mikhail Ivanovich had h
ad enough. This was ridiculous. He stood quickly and marched back to the back of the barge. “Give me that,” he shouted, grabbing the wrench. He swung at the screaming whistle, and hit it. It dented, but kept screaming. He swung again and the whistle went flying off into the river.

  The bargeman looked stunned. “B-b-b-”

  Mikhail cut him off. “There, that’s fixed.” He handed the peasant the wrench and marched back to the front of the barge.

  What neither Mikhail nor Pavel knew, was that as the whistle bent before it broke, it had blocked the pressure valve from opening properly. Some steam still escaped, so it looked like the pressure valve was still working as it should.

  After thinking about it for a minute, and examining the damage, the best Pavel could tell was that the damage wasn’t too severe, aside from the removing of the whistle. Pavel shrugged. At least they wouldn’t be hearing that damned whistle anymore.

  He threw some more wood on the fire.

  Things were going much better now. They were making much better time. The steam pressure valve was constantly open, but doing its job. So it seemed.

  Pavel checked the screw and it was looser, he was almost sure. He was considering tightening it, when it happened. The pressure in the boiler had been building gradually for several hours and the iron was not as strong or as well welded as it should have been. The seam broke and ripped loose, happening faster than the eye could possibly follow.

  Pavel was cut in half by the jet of steam before he knew anything had happened. And the shattering boiler sent burning wood from the firebox and shrapnel from the boiler flying everywhere. The rest of the water in the boiler flashed into steam in an instant.

  Ivan, Stinky, took a piece of shrapnel in the belly and went down screaming. Mikhail Ivanovich, who had been bragging that it was he who was responsible for their increased speed, was only slightly wounded by a piece of boiler that struck him in the arm, but was shocked and confused by the noise. More importantly, the same piece of boiler that struck Mikhail’s arm bounced into a barrel of lamp oil, ripping it open and spilling the contents across the deck.

  For fateful moments, as the lamp oil spread across the deck toward bits of burning wood, the survivors were held immobile in shock. Then, as the oil reached a burning shard, fire covered the front third of the barge. And that brought Dmitri and Alexsey out of their shock. Alexsey grabbed Mikhail Ivanovich from the deck and Dmitri went to try to rescue Ivan, who was still screaming.

  Neither of the rescuers was in time, for the flames breached one of the gunpowder barrels. And the newest, fastest, most technologically advanced riverboat in Russia ceased to exist.

  Chapter 56

  July 17, 1634

  “Oh!” Judy the Younger Wendell heaved a great sigh. “She’s beautiful.”

  The bride was beautiful. Brandy Bates wore a flowing, white, angora/wool gown with a Chinese silk veil. The veil was attached to a wreath of white roses mixed with baby’s breath and myrtle leaves. The leaves were said to bring good luck to the marriage. Brandy carried a bouquet of more white roses, baby’s breath, ivy and pale pink carnations.

  “She’s probably melting in that wool,” Vicky Emerson muttered. “God knows, I am.”

  The Barbie Consortium were bridesmaids at the wedding of the season. Wedding of the year, could be. And in spite of Vicky’s every effort, the skirts were long and the dresses modest. Not her favorite look.

  “Shh!” Millicent hissed. “She’s almost here.”

  The wedding was being held in the formal garden of the Residentz, the home and offices of Vladimir Gorchakov’s Russian delegation. Father Kotov had pushed for the wedding to be held at St. Vasili’s Russian Orthodox Church, but there were just too many people who needed to be invited. And most of them had shown up.

  “Brandy is just gorgeous.” Tate Garrett, Vladimir’s chef, wiped her eyes.

  “Prince also,” said Father Kotov’s wife Kseniya. Her English was so heavily accented it was barely comprehensible, but given that the woman had only been in Grantville for three months Tate was impressed she spoke any English at all. She herself had only learned a handful of Russian terms and was still incapable of following any sentence spoken in the language.

  Kseniya was right about the prince, too. Vladimir had suffered the indignity of Grantville’s eclectic fashion mix-with Russian tradition thrown in-but somehow, magically, it had all come together in a cohesive whole. He wore a Russian style fur hat and cape and trousers that were so tight they might almost have been hosiery. The ceremony was nice, too… if a bit long and convoluted with the greater part of it in a language hardly anyone understood. The reception was more interesting.

  The wedding cake Tate had worked on decorating for two days stood tall and gleaming in the center of a table, flanked by molded Russian Creams on each side. Every kitchen maid at the Residentz had learned to make mints whether she wanted to or not, because there were literally thousands of them. Tate blessed Vladimir several times for choosing an afternoon reception. She might have had a nervous breakdown if she’d had to do a formal dinner for all these dignitaries. Instead, they’d set up an informal buffet. People were circulating freely, murmuring to one another about various things.

  Tate began to relax. It was going well.

  “No, it’s not that simple,” Kseniya Kotova said. “The czar can’t make laws, not without the consent of the Assembly of the Land or at least the Boyar Duma. It’s not just that it would be unadvisable; he literally doesn’t have the authority to change the law on his own.”

  Reverend Green waited for the translator to finish. Once he was done, Green frowned and spoke in English. “So if he wanted to end serfdom, for instance, the Duma would stop him?”

  Most of the Russian delegation in Grantville was well-versed in English because England was Russia’s biggest trading partner in the early seventeenth century. But not all of them were-and, in any event, the English they knew was quite different from the version spoken by up-timers. So, they’d brought a number of translators with them.

  Kseniya’s husband had been chosen as their priest partly because he was fluent in English. With his help, she’d grown fairly adept in the language, so she thought she’d understood what Green had said. But since the third person present in room, Colonel Leontii Shuvalov, was one of the Russians who spoke almost no English, she waited until the translator was finished just to be sure.

  She then glanced over at Shuvalov. Kseniya was by now fully aware of the up-timers’ attitude toward serfdom, but this was not the place to discuss it. While she was still trying to figure out how to guide the conversation to a safer topic, the colonel spoke up. “It probably wouldn’t be the Boyar Duma, what you would call the royal council, that stopped him, but the Assembly of the Land. The ah, middle class I believe you call it. The great families have never been the ones pushing to limit the rights of departure.”

  Again, they waited for the translator. Once he was done, the American priest-no, she thought he was called a pastor-looked surprised.

  “I would have thought they would want it most.”

  Kseniya understood that quite well. She waited for the translator to interpret for the colonel and then said: “Yes, I know you would. You up-timers tend to simplify things.” Kseniya was a bit annoyed at Reverend Green. “It isn’t a conflict between the evil lords and their suffering serfs. The great families can afford to… what is it you call it up-time… go head-hunting? Though, in the case of serfs, it’s more back-hunting.”

  Reverend Green snorted.

  “I’m not sure that Boyar Sheremetev would agree with you,” Colonel Shuvalov said.

  “Of course not.” Kseniya regretted saying it as soon as it came out but the truth was she despised Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev though she had never met him. From all reports he was ill-tempered and not very good at dealing with the bureaus. Still, the news that the Smolensk war would have been a disaster had brought him back into politics. So she explained a bit more. “Russia la
cks labor, and the weather conditions that make it the next thing to impossible to work the land for half the year don’t help. If the serfs were released from the land, the only people in Russia who could afford to hire the labor needed to run a farm would be the great families and the big monasteries.”

  “Don’t forget the new innovations,” Colonel Shuvalov pointed out. “While there is truth in what you’re saying, there is less of that truth now than there was before the Ring of Fire.”

  Kseniya hesitated. What she wanted to say was unsafe, more for her family than for her. But spending time in Grantville had made it harder to keep her mouth shut. “It takes time to put those innovations into production, Colonel. Can you afford to lower your-” A quick glance at Reverend Green. “-tenants’ rent?”

  Colonel Shuvalov grinned at her. It was a surprisingly friendly grin. “Actually, yes. Though I will admit that it’s only because Boyar Sheremetev has been quite generous with my family.” Then the colonel turned back to Reverend Green and addressed him through the translator. “Kseniya’s father-in-law and I aren’t really in the same position, not quite. We are both Russian officers. He a captain, I a colonel, but the larger difference is that aside from the lands granted me by the czar, Boyar Sheremetev provides additional support. So my financial position is a bit better than his and less likely to be swamped by changing economic tides.”

  “Speaking of the army, how are the negotiations with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth going?” Kseniya asked.

  “Negotiations?” Reverend Green asked, after he got the translation. “What are you negotiating with the PLC?”

  Now Colonel Shuvalov did look shocked. “Surely you knew! Poland and Russia are at war! We have been since the Truce of Deulino expired over a year ago. The negotiations are an attempt to prevent the shooting war from resuming.” Then he looked back at Kseniya. “Not well, when I left Russia. King Wladyslaw is insisting that he is the rightful czar.” He snorted. “And I believe the rightful king of Sweden, as well. Boyar Sheremetev is convinced that he, like we, has read the history of the other time Smolensk war. So he knows, probably, that it is unlikely that he can actually gain the throne. But considering the degree to which he trounced us in that other time, he seems to expect to receive the war indemnity without actually having to fight the war.”