authorize this, Your Majesty?”
She was unutterably relieved to see the little, almost unconscious, shake of the czar’s head.
The black coat spoke again. “Seize them!”
“Hold!” Natasha shouted. “You have no authority here and none over me! The only one who could give you such authority is right here and he hasn’t done so.”
Her arguments went unheeded and the troops kept right on coming. Then she heard Bernie.
“Hey, Dogboy!” he shouted. “That fancy silver puppy won’t stop a bullet.”
When Natasha looked, Bernie was holding a large up-time revolver pointed at the chest of the Oprichniki.
“My men will kill you and the princess!” the Oprichniki shouted back.
“Could be,” Bernie acknowledged rather more calmly than Natasha really would have preferred, “but you will still be dead.”
“They will be dead before then,” came another voice, as calm as Bernie’s but much colder. Looking over, Natasha saw that Vladislav Vasl’yevich had come out from the gap between two of the tents, followed by several of his men. All of them had their weapons raised and ready to fire.
The czar himself was looking a bit conflicted about the rescue. The dogboy still under Bernie’s gun was looking very angry. But the confrontation was over, obviously. The man could be as angry as he wanted, he had no chance against the odds he was facing.
So, Bernie turned toward Natasha and began re-holstering his gun. But she was staring past him looking at Dogboy and the czar. Then her expression changed. Bernie turned back to see Dogboy pulling out a pistol of his own and pointing it, not at him or Natasha, but the czar. The czar was looking back at Dogboy with a half- frightened, half-resigned expression on his face. As though the fate that he had been dodging all his life had caught him at last.
Then Vladislav Vasl’yevich jumped, knocking the czar out of the way.
Bernie fired, Dogboy fired. Vladislav Vasl’yevich went down, spraying the czar with his blood.
Dogboy went down, too. Wounded in the shoulder, not dead, but he’d lost his gun.
A couple of the other dogboy guards took the gunshots as a license to resume hostilities, but Vladislav Vasl’yevich’s men began firing at them immediately. Numerically, the two groups were about evenly matched, but the Gorchakov guards were equipped with the brand new AK4.7 cap-lock repeaters. The. 7 modification was only partly to the gun. The center fire chambers could be fit into a clip that was shifted right to left, one chamber every time the lever-action was opened and closed so that it was fire, cock, fire, cock. The dogboys, on the other hand- with standard Sheremetev pecuniary habits-were equipped with the cheaper AK3 flintlocks.
It was a damp day, too. The only dogboy gun that came to bear squarely on its target misfired. The end result was a simple massacre. After seeing Vladislav Vasl’yevich gunned down, his men were in no mood to take prisoners- any prisoners, not just the two who’d raised their guns.
Two of the dogboy guards survived, but they were badly wounded. Meanwhile, another group of Natasha’s guards had rescued the czarina, the nurse, her husband, and all the children.
They questioned the chief dogboy who was, as it turned out, an Oprichniki of the Boyar Duma. So this was the form that Sheremetev’s political officers were to take. Ivan the Terrible’s Oprichniki had been his personal secret police and ultimately had proven to be more trouble than they were worth. But they had included many people that would, in later years, prove very important-including Patriarch Filaret and Boris Godunov. So the Boyar Duma, also in need of a force to put down dissension, had created an updated version.
A contingent of that new organization had been given the job of guarding the czar. Their commander, the one with the dog’s head clasp, was under orders to kill the czar, but only if it looked like the czar might escape. The same orders were in place for the czar’s family, but only if the czar was dead first. The Boyar Duma didn’t want Mikhail free and after revenge for a dead family. They didn’t, even Dogboy insisted, want Mikhail dead. Just out of the way while they did what was needed to keep Russia safe from the corrupting influences that Mikhail and his father had allowed in. Russia needed a strong hand. The Russian people tended to become bandits and brigands if they were given too much freedom.
“Look, folks,” Bernie said after a while. “This is all very interesting and I’m sure quite socially relevant, but is this really the time for a debate on political philosophy? They were going to kill you, Your Majesty. Maybe not now, but once they were sure of themselves. At best, they would keep you and your whole family prisoners for the rest of your lives. Meanwhile, the bad guys are after us and I don’t want to stick around to find out what they’ll do if they catch us. It’s your country, Your Majesty. If you want to stay here and trust to the good offices of the Boyar Duma, and that fink Sheremetev, that’s your choice. But we need to leave.”
The nurse, Tami Simmons, spoke up. “We’re going with you! I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but I don’t want my kids here when these guys’ friends show up.”
The czarina agreed, and then so did Mikhail. So, the czar and czarina and their kids would ride in the Dodge with Bernie and everyone else they could fit would ride in the trailer. That still left half a dozen of Natasha’s guards without transport. They took the horses in the paddock. All of them. They would need remounts and didn’t want to leave the dogboys with transportation. There was serious talk about killing the dogboys. And as a sort of compromise, Czar Mikhail had them swear on pain of death not to serve the Boyar Duma anymore.
Bernie didn’t figure the oaths would last past the time it took them to get over the horizon, but he didn’t really care either. Natasha’s guardsmen were to make their way back to Murom as fast as they could and if Natasha wasn’t there when they arrived, at the very least orders would be.
Bernie, the czar and the czarina talked as Bernie drove them slowly over the rough roads, fields, and trails back to Murom. And by the time they got there, the czar had decided.
Well, the way Bernie figured it, the czarina decided and the czar went along. Mikhail Romanov didn’t strike Bernie as the forceful type. The decision was that the czar, czarina and the children would go to Bor, take possession of the dirigible Czarina Evdokia, and then decide where to take it.
Bernie thought about arguing for Grantville, but decided not to. The truth was, Grantville and its USE were now more of a foreign country to him than Russia was. To the extent that Bernie Zeppi felt he had a king-not much-that king was Mikhail Romanov, not Gustav Adolf.
Chapter 79
They drove up to the palace at Murom, fat and happy, totally unaware of the changes that had taken place while they were off rescuing the king of the country and his family. The guards waved them through the city gate, then others waved them through the gates of the palace compound.
Not until Bernie stepped out of the car did the guns appear.
“Oh, crap,” Tim heard the up-timer say. “This couldn’t just be simple.”
Captain Ivan Borisovich Lebedev sneered at him. “You are all under arrest in the name of the czar.”
Then Tim saw the other door of the dodge open and Czar Mikhail stepped out. Much to Tim’s surprise.
“Really?” Czar Mikhail said. “I wasn’t aware that I gave an order for this man’s arrest.”
Cousin Ivan Borisovich gaped at him. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the hunting lodge.”
“I got tired of hunting,” Czar Mikhail said, though Tim knew very well that he hadn’t been hunting.
The up-timer started grinning. Cousin Ivan looked back and forth between the up-timer and the czar. The guardsmen and Streltzi who had performed this ambush started looking at each other, trying to figure out what to do. Tim couldn’t help but sympathize with them. The day had been a whipsaw, the Sheremetev clan in control of the city then the Gorchakov clan, then the Sheremetev again. Then, when the Gorchakovs came back and were arrested by the Sheremetev in the name of the czar, out pops the czar himself to countermand the order. Of course, most of these men had never seen the czar, but Cousin Ivan had confirmed his identity. For that matter, Tim was starting to feel a bit whipsawed himself. He was a loyal member of his clan, but his oath was sworn to Czar Mikhail.
