...17...
There were fires on the horizon to the west and north and a geyser of flames had just erupted from the roof of a house not three blocks away from Yevgeny’s crew, sending sparks and ashes showering into the night. Yet no fire bells rang and no firefighters appeared to check the fire’s spread. Which was madness. It made no sense at all.
Yevgeny was in an agony of indecision. Was this what he was supposed to be looking for? But if so, why would General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka and Baron Lukoil-Gazprom have been so coy about the nature of the threat? Was he expected to put out the fire or was he supposed to stay at his post and let it burn? If there were three unrelated fires within eyeshot at the same time, surely that meant there were more elsewhere in the city. That wasn’t natural. But neither did it look like any kind of deliberate enemy action he had ever heard of. Nothing in his military training had covered anything remotely like the situation he now found himself in.
Then he heard noise in the distance.
At first he thought it was music, because there was a regular throb to it. But as it grew louder and closer, he realized that it was anything but musical. People were chanting and beating on drums and blowing horns to several different beats and as many different tunes at once. Down with something, they chanted. Down with something, Down with something. But Yevgeny was damned if he could make out what that something was.
Yevgeny mounted his horse and raced down Teatralny proezd to Tverskaya ulitsa. At the intersection looking north, he saw a shadowy deluge of humanity churning and rumbling down the street toward him with banners flying and fists flung into the air. This was surely what the baron had said he would know when he saw it. But knowing it and knowing what to do about it were two separate things.
The sergeant appeared at his elbow. “Shall we bring up the gun and open fire, sir?”
“On our own citizens?” Yevgeny said, horrified.
“It’s been known to happen, sir.”
The mob was coming closer and coming into focus as well. Yevgeny could make out individual faces now. There were three white horses pulling a troika at the front. Behind it, bodies filled the street from wall to wall. Most of them seemed to be wearing red kerchiefs. But the team pulling the troika… Didn’t it look familiar? Surely that was—he squinted—the same cloned triplet of a stallion his cousin Avdotya owned? The one whose uniqueness she had ensured by buying the genome’s patent and then refusing to license it?
“Do you want me to bring around the cannon, sir, and have it aimed up the street? Just as a precaution, I mean.”
“Yes, yes, why do you bother me with questions, just do it,” Yevgeny muttered distractedly. He stared with all his might, trying to will the distant figures into clarity, cursing the dimness of the moonlight, praying he was wrong. Slowly they came closer until finally, yes, that was without question the Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma driving. Sitting behind her were Irina, the dog-headed Byzantine ambassador the baronessa had invited to her soiree, and…Tsar Lenin?
Yevgeny’s head swam with the impossibility of it all.
But then the words swam into lucidity. Down with the duke! the mob was chanting. Down with the duke! Down with the duke!
It was treason. Beyond all doubt this was what the general’s gnomic warning had been about. Yet now that the need for action was upon him, Yevgeny found that he could not bring himself to act.
“If we’re going to fire, now’s the time to do it, sir. While there’s still time enough to get off another shot or two if the first one don’t turn ’em away.”
“I…”
Yevgeny knew what he should do. He knew what General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka would demand of him, were she here. But he could not fire upon his cousin. They had played together as children. As adolescents they had competed for the same lovers. He had been the witness at her marriage to that overbearing oaf of a husband of hers.
Yet he had to. It was his duty.
Yevgeny drew out his snuffbox and flicked it open, feigning a confidence he did not feel. “Is everything ready, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well, then.” Yevgeny took a dip of snuff, marveling at how steady his voice was. His stomach was a lump of ice. He face felt numb. He did not know how he would survive this decision. “In that case, you may…”
“Sir?”
“Yevgeny’s mouth moved, but nothing came out.
“Sir, are you ordering me to fire?”
“I—”
“Stop! Cease! Do not fire!”
Yevgeny spun about and saw, speeding up Okhotny Ryad ulitsa, the least likely Angel of Mercy imaginable—none other than Chortenko himself—leaning from the window of his notorious blue-and-white carriage. The servile coachman drove its horses up so mercilessly that the carriage rattled and leaped and threatened to shake itself apart. “Do not fire!” Chortenko shouted again.
The servile pulled back on the reins and the carriage clattered to a stop alongside the artillery piece.
Without descending, Chortenko said, “I am ordering you to withdraw. The city is in danger of conflagration. You must use your cannon to knock down the buildings that are afire before the disaster spreads.”
“Sir.Yes, sir,” Yevgeny said, vastly relieved. But then something perverse within him caused him to add, “But what of the mob, sir? Their treasonous slogans?”
“This is no time for you to be engaging in political activities.” Chortenko whipped off his glasses, revealing his buggish eyes. “You have your orders. Will you obey them?”
“I am a soldier in the service of Muscovy, sir,” Yevgeny said, feeling almost as offended as he did relieved.
“Answer the question! Yes or no?”
Yevgeny could not trust himself to speak. So, instead, he clenched his teeth and nodded.
“Then get to work.” Chortenko looked up at the servile. “Take me to the Alexander Garden and then, after you have dropped me off, return to the coach house and rub down the horses.”
The carriage left. Yevgeny stared after it in astonishment. Then he turned back to his crew. “Well? Get a move on. We’ve got a fire to fight.”
They did.
Arkady was trudging down a narrow and lightless street, hoping against hope that it would soon open into a road that would take him to the Kremlin, when he realized he was not alone. There were footsteps matching his, stride for stride.
He broke into a trot. So did the second set of footsteps. He started to run. So did they. And then—disaster! The doorless and windowless wall of a brick building loomed up before him. He had come to the blind end of a cul-de-sac.
As Arkady stumbled to a stop, the other footsteps did the same. An echo? He almost laughed. Of course. It could be nothing else. Arkady’s heart was pounding so hard he feared it would rip free of his chest. He found himself gasping for air. In the darkness, somebody matched him wheeze for wheeze.
“It’s just an echo,” he said aloud to reassure himself. “Nothing more.”
“. . . just an echo. Nothing more.” The voice came from directly behind him. “Or is it?”
He shrieked, and was seized from behind. Arms and legs wrapped themselves about his arms and chest, rendering him helpless. Arkady’s knees almost buckled under the weight of a human body. “Sssssso!” a witchy voice whispered into his ear. “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you? Not afraid of the ancient thing from the graveyard, don’t believe in the night hag, think you can’t be ridden, eh?” Crisp teeth nipped his earlobe. It stung so sharply that Arkady knew the bite had drawn blood. “You know for a fact that your flesh is too bitter for my taste? You find it hard to believe that I’d like to break open your skull and eat your brains?” The hag’s limbs tightened about Arkady like the coils of an anaconda. “You’re absolutely sure I wouldn’t crush you dead if you disobeyed my orders?”
He couldn’t breathe! Arkady found himself panicking. Then the hag loosened her grip. “Breathe in, boy. Savor the air. That’s Baba Yaga’s gift to you. Now thank me for it, as politely as you know how.”
Arkady gulped in the air, genuinely grateful, absolutely terrified. “Thank you, Baba Yaga. For letting me breathe.”
But wasn’t Baba Yaga a fairy-tale creature? A figure out of myth? Of course she was. So what was this thing on his back?
“Tonight you are my steed,” Baba Yaga said. “Don’t try to escape me.” (As if he could!) “If you turn around to look at my face, I’ll gouge out your eyes and suck their juices.” (As if he wanted to see her!) “Now run. Run like the wind, and if we don’t get where we’re going fast enough…well, the horse that can’t run can always be rendered down for glue.”
Bony heels dug into his flanks.
Arkady couldn’t actually run, but he did manage to achieve a trot, which seemed to satisfy the madwoman on his back for the nonce. “Where are we going?” he asked fearfully.
“To our destination.”
“And where’s that?”
Baba Yaga laughed wildly. Then she seized a mouthful of Arkady’s hair with her teeth and ripped it out by the roots.
He screamed and ran.
The crowds exploded into sheer noise when the troika entered the Alexander Garden before the west wall of the Kremlin. Hats flew into the air like flocks of birds. Louder the cheering grew and louder, until it merged into one astonishing roar so overwhelming as to move beyond mere sound to become a constant and deafening pain. All faces were turned toward the carriage. Every hand stretched out reaching for it. Everywhere, torches, flags, and kerchiefs were in constant motion, a blur of color, as if all the world were on fire. Being in the driver’s seat was like sitting at the center of a flaming whirlwind.
It was easily the most amazing moment in Baronessa Avdotya’s life.
Intellectually, she understood that none of this was her own due. But it felt like it was, and that was the important thing. It filled her with a sense of destiny and purpose. She could not help turning from side to side, nodding and smiling luminously.
She craned around to look behind her and saw Tsar Lenin standing upon the seat. His balance was preternaturally perfect as, hand in air, he acknowledged the applause with a dignified hint of a bow, the tiniest twitch of his wrist.
Now those closest to the tsar unharnessed the horses and led them away. Others seized the carriage by its rods and pulled it by hand through the adoring throngs.
A speaking platform had been set up at the foot of the causeway leading up to the Trinity Tower gate. Bleachers stretched the length of the Alexander Garden’s back wall. In between, all the park was already filled with marchers from the three invasions which had by prearrangement arrived earlier than Tsar Lenin’s group. More people than Avdotya had ever in her life seen in a single space struggled to catch a glimpse of the great man, and screamed in ecstasy when they did.
Lenin stood straight and proud on the carriage seat, accepting their adulation.
Then, as lightly as he had climbed up, the new tsar leapt down and walked without hurry or effort through a riotous ocean of humanity which parted before him like the Red Sea before Moses, and closed solidly behind him like the gates of history clanging shut. Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma ran quickly after Lenin, leaving Irina behind (indeed, forgetting her completely), and slid her arm through his.
Tsar Lenin did not object.
The Royal Guard appeared out of nowhere to close ranks behind and to either side of them, a bodyguard that Lenin surely did not need, but which did much to emphasize the legitimacy of the once and future ruler, freshly returned from the graveyard of the past to claim his land once more.
Together they ascended the stairs to the platform.
Upon the departure of the terrifying entity impersonating Lenin, Surplus had quietly slipped down from the troika. Irina had tried to climb over the heads and shoulders of the crowd to join the baronessa and been absorbed in their number, another anonymous drop of water in a sea of hysteria. Alone in all Moscow, it seemed, Surplus was immune to the contagions of emotion that lofted the crowd’s mood higher and higher. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that those emotions terrified him. So much so that he immediately determined to get as far away from their epicenter as possible.
Not without effort, Surplus made his way to the fringes of the crowd. Behind him, the troika was being dismantled and then broken into pieces for souvenirs and relics.
When finally Surplus found himself free of the immense assembly’s gravitational pull, he paused to gather his thoughts.
He had been in mobs before, though none so great as this. The prickling sensation of danger, of incipient violence, was not new to him. He knew how easy it would be to surrender to the madness that permeated the air and let himself be swallowed up by it. It was therefore of primary importance for him to keep his head. Systematically, then, Surplus reasoned carefully that:
Imprimis: The Duke of Muscovy was about to be overthrown.
Secundus: This meant that the plan he and Darger had devised to separate the duke from a generous share of his nation’s surplus wealth was defunct. There was no point in mourning this fact. One simply had to move on.
Tertius: It would therefore be wisest to take advantage of the night’s confusion in order to obtain some lesser share of Muscovy’s treasures. Since he and Darger had invested a great deal of time and effort in the original project without the least recompense, this would not be theft but only simple justice.
Quartus: To do so in the fleeting hours during which Moscow’s guardians were distracted or off-duty would require some form of transportation. A saddle horse would hardly suffice, for it would too greatly limit the potential volume of valuables he could hope to snatch up. Therefore he needed a carriage. The baronessa’s troika no longer existed. So the question presenting itself was, where could he rent, borrow, or steal such a thing?
He gazed thoughtfully after Lenin, striding confidently toward the speaker’s platform, where an uncomfortable line of dignitaries awaited him. One notable was conspicuous by his absence. Once brought to mind, however, he was the obvious solution to the problem now faced.
Who else should Surplus turn to in time of need but his good friend, Sergei Nemovich Chortenko?
As she rose up above the masses onto the platform, Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma had an epiphany. Everything she had ever done with her life—the parties and entertainments, the gifted and witty lovers, the clothes and crafts and furniture and houses that no merely wealthy woman could afford, in short everything—was a weak substitute for political power. It had never before occurred to her that the purposes to which her husband had devoted his life were anything other than a means to wealth. Yet now that she’d had the merest taste of it, she realized that power was good. Power was good and more power was better. She wanted all of it she could get.
She wanted, too, the love and adulation that were raining down on Tsar Lenin at this very instant. And why shouldn’t she get it? She was still young. She was willing to work hard. She could learn to be ruthless. Her beauty would not hurt her, and neither would her wealth.
Lenin could not live forever.
He would need a successor.
The new government of Muscovy, a line of mediocrities and dunces (Avdotya knew them all), sat on folding chairs along the back of the platform, looking neither happy nor comfortable. It was obvious that not a one of them would be there had they been given the choice. At their very center was an empty chair, which the baronessa took.
Tsar Lenin had taken the dais. The mob went wild.
He gestured for silence—once, twice, a third time—and then finally received it.
“Comrades!” Lenin shouted. He then paused as a series of barrel-chested men in the blue-and-orange uniforms of the Public Address Service raised their megaphones and repeated his word one after the other, relaying it to the very back of the crowd. “The long, slow war for the unification of Mother Russia has been simmering for more than eight years. And as each year, as each month, as each day of the war goes by, it becomes clearer and clearer to every thinking mind that unless there are drastic changes, our country will not be reunited in our lifetimes.” After each sentence he paused, so it could be relayed throughout the Alexander Garden and from there to the crowds in Red Square and beyond.“It is becoming more evident by the day that the Duke of Muscovy moves our armies sluggishly from place to place, as if he were engaged in a game of chess. But war is no game! It is a terrible and desperate enterprise which, if we are to engage in it at all, were best gotten done and over with quickly.”
Pandemonium. Lenin waited for it to subside.
“The Duke of Muscovy hides in his palace in the Kremlin. Who has ever seen him out on the streets, inspecting his city, or his armies, or his navy? Moscow is burning, Russia is ablaze, the world stands on the brink of annihilation, and where is he? Where? He is in there!” Lenin made a quarter turn and jabbed his hand up at the Kremlin.
“Why have we never seen him? Why does he not walk among us, reassuring us as only a supreme ruler can, sharing in our sorrows and rejoicing in our triumphs? We are born and he is not at our christenings, we marry and he does not attend our weddings, we die and at the funeral we are alone.”
There was a ripple in the crowd which the baronessa noticed only in passing, as four more gigantic bear-men of the Royal Guard muscled their way through, escorting a slightly podgy little man wearing glasses whose lenses, seen by torchlight, were two cobalt disks.
Chortenko.
The head of the secret police came up on the platform and walked straight toward the baronessa. Leaning down, he said in her ear, “You have taken my seat, Baronessa. But no, no, no, you must keep it. I will stand here behind you.” He placed a hand on her shoulder.
Even in her elated state, Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma could not help but shudder.
“When leadership is weak and ineffective. When it is invisible and unheard, why then a time must come for it to be replaced. That time has finally arrived. That time is now.” Tsar Lenin paused to let the applause roll over him. Then, gesturing for silence, he said, “A new compact must be made with the Russian people. You will give me your loyalty, your labor, your dignity, your bodies, your blood, your lives, your sons and daughters…”
His silence, though brief, seemed to stretch on forever.
“In exchange, I will take you in my hand, mold you together into one indistinguishable mass, and of this new matter create a single tool, a single weapon, a hammer greater and more powerful than anything the world has ever seen. This hammer I will bring down upon our enemies. Upon those who stand in our way. Upon those who are weak and traitorous. Upon all who oppose our greatness. Our armies will sweep across the continent and nations will fall before us. This will be only the beginning…”
The speech was quite literally hypnotic. Lenin’s actual words hardly mattered; the experience of solidarity they created was all. So intent was the baronessa on Lenin’s radiant vision of the future that she did not realize at first that the buzzing in her ear was Chortenko talking to her. With an effort, she managed to focus on his words. “. . . and in the morning, a private get-together at my mansion.”
She turned, astonished. “What did you just say?”
Chortenko stroked her hair. “The two of us, Baronessa, alone. I’ll show you my kennels.”
Darger and Kyril made a wide circumnavigation of the Kremlin, searching for an approach that was not blocked by prodigious crowds. But though they circled almost two-thirds of the way around the fortress, always there were impenetrable thickets of humanity in their way.
In Kitai-Gorod, they had just taken a shortcut through a narrow and lightless alleyway when someone—or something—came running up behind them.
Darger whirled about and then flinched back from an astonishing apparition: two people, one riding on the other’s back and clutching him so tightly that they seemed a single, if misshapen, two-headed creature. “Whoa!” cried a woman’s voice, and the chimera came to a halt. Its two faces were filthy with mud or worse.
“Don’t be afraid, sweeties,” the woman crooned. “Old Baba Yaga means you no harm. She won’t rip off your tongues and gouge out your eyes. She wouldn’t eat a fly.”
“Don’t believe her!” a man said in a terror-choked voice. “She’s killed two—”
But the warning was cut short. The man made a strangled noise. Then the grotesque figure collapsed into its component parts, the man tumbling down to the ground unconscious and the woman leaping free. “So much for him,” she said. “They have no stamina, these modern youngsters. It was the invention of fire that did it. Fire and edged tools have made them all as weak as porridge.”
Darger opened his mouth and shut it again.
“Alcohol?” Kyril said brightly, extending the bottle.
“Yes!” The alarming woman snatched it out of his hand. “And that rag you’re wearing as well.”
The kerchief whisked itself from Kyril’s neck. There was a long silence.
At last Darger said, “Are you in need of assistance, madam? Perhaps we can…” His voice trailed off. Waving his hands through the murk before him to make sure, he said, “She’s gone.”
“Good. That crazy bitch stole my bottle!”
“The chap she was riding seems not to be injured. His breathing is steady.” Darger examined the man’s face. “Huh!”
“Something wrong?”
“No, no, it’s just that I know the fellow. Well, he is nobody of any consequence, and so we may safely forget him.” He hoisted the dark form into a sitting position, and left the man leaning against the side of a building. Then he said, “Is there any approach at all we haven’t tried yet?”
“Well… There’s still the south wall. I never heard of there being a way in there. But what the fuck do I know?”
“If it’s a possibility, however remote, we must explore it. Diligence, Kyril! Diligence is all.”
Koschei sat on a wooden chair he had carried from his hotel room to a quiet spot on the Kremlin’s south wall, by the Annunciation Tower, smoking a pipe. His klashny was a reassuring weight in his lap. God was a burning presence in his brain.
He waited.
The strannik’s part in tonight’s activities was simple. When the demonic Tsar Lenin was safely in power, he was to give up his contemplation of the Moscow River and stroll across the Kremlin grounds to the ramparts overlooking Red Square. There, he would start shooting people at random. Meanwhile, from their perches atop Goom and St. Basil’s, Svarožič and Chernobog would do the same. This would create panic and help to trigger a riot that would quickly spread to engulf the city. Thus they would do their small bit to bring about the Eschaton. In all likelihood none of them would live to see God striding the streets of Moscow. But Koschei was confident that they would all die having done what piety required.
“You are silent,” observed the devil crouching at his feet.
“We have nothing to discuss,” Koschei said.
“You were not always so reluctant to talk to us.”
“There was a time when I sought for grains of truth hidden in your lies, like a sparrow picking oats from a steaming horse-turd. This being my last night before my soul is translated into the afterlife, however, I prefer to spend my time in prayer and meditation.”
“There is no afterlife. You will die into eternal oblivion.”
“God says otherwise.”
“Where is this God? Show him to me. You cannot. The steppes of Russia are vast and empty. I crossed them on foot and he was not there. On my journey I killed every human being I encountered. Angels did not descend from the sky to stop me. The city of Moscow is thronged with people of every sort and not a one of them has ever met with God. The history of Russia stretches far into the past and there is in all of it not a shred of evidence for the existence of such an entity.”
“I feel His holy presence within me even now.”
“Your temporal lobe has been stimulated by drugs we provided you.”
“Intending evil, you achieve good. Such is the irresistible power of the Lord.”
“The power, rather, of self-delusion.”
Koschei frowned down at the scoffer. “Why are you even here?”
“At this moment, there are few places in Moscow that are safe for my kind. One of us died leading the uprising in Zamoskvorechye. When that happened, three of the remaining four deemed it best to leave our uprisings to continue on their own momentum. Only Tsar Lenin is still in public view.” “But why here? With me.”
“Does my presence offend you?”
“Yes.”
“Then that is reason enough.”
Some time passed in uncompanionable silence. Then Koschei said, “What are you looking at so intently?”
The metal demon rose up on its haunches, like a hound. It pointed downward, across the road that ran just below the wall. A few scattered pedestrians, gray in the moonlight, hurried toward the gathering in the Alexander Garden. There were no carriages. “You see that small pump-house by the river?” It was practically invisible, but the strannik’s sight was good. He nodded. “It is built on the site of the ancient outlet of a hidden tunnel which leads into the Beklemshev Tower, and from there into the Terem Palace. Its existence has for ages been the subject of rumor and speculation, though most believe that it leads to the Secret Tower, and is in fact commonly held to be the reason for the tower’s name.”
“You know everything—and nothing. Why bring up this useless fact?”
“Because there is a rider on the road.”
“Oh?”
“Traveling fast.”
Koschei stood and fixed his keen eyes on the woman leaning low over her steed. Her hair flew out behind her as if her head were on fire. The horse was gasping and overheated. “You should be happy, demon.”
The metal gargoyle did not look up. “How so?”
“That woman is killing the poor beast with overexertion. Another dumb animal dead, and a soul on its way to Hell for her wicked deed. Surely that elates you.”
“You know nothing of Hell. Is your klashny loaded?”
“It is. Why do you ask?”
“Because the rider is none other than General Magdalena Zvyozdny-Gorodoka. In the temporary web of alliances that we have woven, she is our common enemy. The only possible destination she can have is the pump house entrance to the Beklemshev Tower tunnel. The only possible reason for her to enter the Kremlin is to see the Duke of Muscovy.”
“So?”
“If she speaks to the duke, he will tell her of all our plans. Inevitably, she will demand to know how they can be thwarted. No one else could possibly answer such a question. Yet for the Duke of Muscovy, extraordinary feats of analysis are possible. I am instructing my brothers to hurry to his side and kill him first.”
“That is hardly necessary,” Koschei said, rising from his chair.
He raised his klashny and took careful aim.
The first shot sent up sparks by the horse’s front hooves. A little too forward and several feet too low, then. The second shot disappeared into the night. Probably too high. But the third shot took the horse right in the chest. It stumbled and fell, sending the general flying.
Koschei waited until she stopped rolling, and then placed eight shots in her unmoving body.
The Pearls Beyond Price were finally, completely ready. Their clothes and jewelry were perfect from tiaras to slippers, and their hair and makeup were works of art. They looked each other over minutely and were pleased with what they saw.
Then they had their escorts assemble before them.
Enkidu saluted. “We got the six carriages lined up outside. Decorated with swags of flowers, the way you said. Plus the horses’ manes are all plaited and their hooves gilded too.”
“It wasn’t easy painting them hooves either,” Atlas said. “They didn’t much care for it.”
Making a dismissive gesture, Russalka said, “We’ve changed our minds. We only need three coaches. That way there will be one of us at each window to wave to our adoring subjects-to-be, whichever side of the street they happen to be standing on. You may send the others away.”
“Are you planning on going out dressed like that?” Nymphodora asked.
Enkidu looked down at his navy blue uniform. Behind him, the other Neanderthals stood fidgeting and shifting from foot to foot like so many schoolboys. “Well, yeah, kinda.” His voice fell. “Ain’t we?”
Speaking one after the other, Eulogia, Euphrosyne, and Olympias said:
“No. You most definitely are not.”
“You must change into the new livery we had made up for you.”
“Those lovely mauve-and-chartreuse outfits.”
Gargantua looked stricken. “The poofty little hats, too?”
“They’re called berets,” Aetheria said. “Yes, of course you do. It would hardly be a proper ensemble without them. They’re in that chest over there. Now—chop-chop!—strip down and get dressed.”
Blushing, Magog said, “You mean… get naked… right in front of you ladies?”
“Of course. We have to make certain you put the clothes on correctly.”
“Don’t worry,” Nymphodora said, “you won’t be revealing anything we haven’t seen before. In our imaginations, anyway.”
None of the Pearls smiled, exactly. But their eyes all glittered.
The two underlords entered the Terem Palace by way of the long underground passage that led from Chortenko’s mansion. They had re-configured their bodies, reverting to four legs, as though they were still cyberwolves. When they slunk into the Duke of Muscovy’s chamber, the last remnants of the Royal Guard raised their halberds in alarm. “Nobody is allowed in the Terem Palace uninvited,” one of their number said, his fur standing on end. “You must leave immediately.”
“No,” one of the creatures said. “You leave.”
“Or die,” said the other.
This was not the first time the Royal Guards had met the underlords. Chortenko had arranged a series of vivid demonstrations in his basement, wherein one of their number had displayed its strength and speed upon selected political prisoners. Afterward, Chortenko had urged them to remember exactly how long it had taken those prisoners to die.
By common consent, the bear-guards left.
The underlords took up positions to either side of the duke, one by each ear. “Your guards have deserted their posts,” said one.
“Your government is as good as fallen.”
“Chortenko is in charge now. As soon as Tsar Lenin’s speech is finished, he will seize the Kremlin.”
“There will be no resistance.”
The duke’s noble face grimaced in agony. His great head turned from side to side. But of course he could not awaken, try though he might.
“General Magdalena Zvyozdny-Gorodoka attempted to reach the Terem Palace in order to rescue you.”
“You would have called her effort heroic.”
“We had her killed.”
“With her died your last chance of stopping the revolution.”
“In gratitude for all we have done, Chortenko has given us permission to kill as many of your citizens as we wish tonight, in numbers up to half of the total population of your city.”
“It is not enough.”
“But it is a start.”
The sleeping duke lifted one arm so that the back of it covered those eyes which had never once in his life been open. “No,” he murmured. “Please… do not.” It was clear he was trying to awaken and, as ever, could not.
“Chortenko’s reign will begin with rioting and a fire that will destroy much of Moscow.”
“In the aftermath of this disaster, he will have to raise taxes steeply.”
“This will cause rioting elsewhere in your land.”
“The riots will be suppressed.”
“But at such a cost that taxes will have to be raised again.”
“Which will destabilize the economy.”
“Requiring new sources of income.”
“Which can be acquired only by force.”
“Muscovy will be able to survive only through constant conquest and expansion.”
In greater and greater agitation, the duke thrashed about, flinging his arms wildly to one side and the other. Effortlessly, the underlords evaded his blind blows. Always they darted back to his ear again. “No,” he said. “I will stop… you. I know how.”
“And how will you do that, Majesty?”
“You have no soldiers.”
“You have no messengers.”
“Your servants have betrayed you.”
“You have lost Moscow already.”
Weakly raising his arms upward, the duke said, “Lord God…hear my prayer. Aid me, I beg you.” His expression was one of mingled horror and yearning. “Send me…a miracle.”
“Fool! There is no God.”
“There are no miracles.”
“Soon there will be no Russia.”
The Duke of Muscovy screamed.
And then he awoke.