1636 The Kremlin Games (32 page)

By noon Tim was considering the value of getting rid of the beards, as he’d read Peter the Great had done. But in his own mind, “the beards” were the idiots who kept harping on their noble rank, regardless of their true ability at war.
At this rate we’ll meet the Poles thirty miles out of Moscow.

*     *     *

On the first day Nikita—“call me Nick”—Ivanovich’s dirigible contingent ended up at the back of the line of march, which meant that by the time they reached the campsite it was already getting dark. Tim watched as
Testbed
lifted into the night sky and disappeared. All Tim could see was the rope from the wagon, climbing into a bit of deeper blackness which hid the stars.

“Of course, it could be that there simply wasn’t that much to see,” Nick reported a half hour later. Tim could see that General Izmailov was less than pleased. But Nick didn’t seem to be worried about it. Which Tim thought was very brave or very stupid. Then he looked over at
Testbed
, which the crew was still tying down for the night. He remembered that Nikita Ivanovich had been the first person to climb into it and had flown it without ropes to keep the wind from carrying it away. Tim still wasn’t sure whether that was brave or stupid, but the “very” gained a whole new level of magnitude.

“Tim!
Testbed
will be placed near the front in tomorrow’s order of march,” General Izmailov gritted. Tim knew that the general had seen the demonstration at the Dacha and had been planning to use the dirigible. But how were they supposed to know that it didn’t work at night? Granted, it was pretty obvious when you thought about it. Dark is no time to observe things.

*     *     *

“I don’t believe this,” Tim muttered. “We’ll never get there at this rate.” The march had put them about twelve miles west of Moscow. Worse, they were
trying
to move fast and doing it over good roads. The scrapers had improved the roads around Moscow quite a bit.

His friend and fellow student at the cadet corps, Pavel, nodded in agreement. “Bad enough the delays because of the confusion. But Colonel Khilkov and the fit he threw when we were setting out and he discovered that we were ahead of him in the line of march was just plain stupid.”

Tim figured the flare up was at least half Usinov’s fault with all the gloating he was doing. But he didn’t say so. Pavel was Colonel Usinov’s cadet aide de camp, and thought quite highly of him. “Just wait till he hears that General Izmailov is going to put
Testbed
near the front of the line tomorrow.” Tim threw his arms up and pretended to be having a fit. “Never let it be said that mere military necessity should trump social position in the Russian army. ‘My cousin is of higher rank than your uncle, so of course my company must be ahead of yours in the order of march.’” Tim spat on the ground. “Idiots. We’re all idiots. If we go on like this we’ll be defending Moscow from another Polish invasion and we’ll be doing it right here. You can bet that the Poles aren’t sitting on their asses in Rzhev arguing about who should be first in the line of march.”

Chapter 51

Tim could have bet that, but he would have lost. Because sitting on his ass arguing was precisely what Janusz Radziwiłł, the commander of the Polish forces, was doing. Not about the order of march, but what they should do now. Janusz, in his early twenties, was already the court chamberlain of Lithuania. That was a high post in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which he had gotten because of the influence of his cousin Albrycht Stanisław Radziwiłł, Grand Chancellor of Lithuania. Janusz was sitting with his two main subordinates discussing the absence of the arms depot that they had been expecting. It was a rerun of several discussions they had since they had gotten to Rzhev and discovered that the Russian invasion Janusz’ spy had informed him of was not nearly so near as they had expected.

“Ivan Repinov has confirmed everything,” Janusz insisted again.

Mikhail Millerov, commander of his Cossacks, snorted. “You can’t depend on anything that rat-faced little bureau man says. I’ve questioned many men and his sort is the hardest to get the truth out of. Not because he’s a strong man, but because he’s weak. He’ll tell you anything you want to hear and change his story five times in as many minutes.”

“Yet what he said makes sense and fits with what the agent reported,” said Eliasz Stravinsky, the commander of the western mercenaries. “Ivan Petrovich Sheremetev is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.”

“Yes!” Janusz exclaimed. “That by itself explains the situation to anyone familiar with Russia. Ivan Petrovich commits graft as other people breathe, continuously and with very little thought. And as the nephew of Prince Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev, the third power behind Cherkasski and the patriarch.

“Fourth, if you count the czar,” Mikhail Millerov corrected.

“I don’t,” Janusz insisted. “Mikhail Romanov is his father’s puppet and everyone knows it. In any case, Ivan Petrovich has ample opportunity for that corruption. He got the contract for the depot and pocketed the money.”

Millerov nodded a little doubtfully, and Janusz continued. “My agent in the Muscovite treasury bureau spent considerable time putting together the pieces. Prince Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev was clearly in charge of making the arrangements. And naturally shifted contracts to where they would do his family the most good. Corrupt, every last one of them.” It didn’t occur to Janusz to wonder what someone on the outside might think of the Polish nobility.

“Possibly . . . or possibly your man misinterpreted a scam of the Sheremetev family and the only place the depots were ever intended to be was in the pockets of the Sheremetevs.” Millerov shrugged. “At this point we’ll likely never know for sure and it doesn’t matter anyway, because we are sitting here in Muscovite territory. They aren’t going to apologize. They’re going to deny and the depot isn’t here. They’ll demand reparations. Granted, the Truce of Deulino expired in July of 1633. His Majesty has refused to give up his claim on the Russian throne and Russia hasn’t given up its claim to Czernihów or Smolensk. So legally Poland is at war with Russia, but up to now it’s been a pretty phony war. Little fighting and even less talking. The war is going to get a lot more real now, one way or the other. So it would be best to win it. Yes?”

Eliasz Stravinsky nodded. “If we go back now, we’ll look like idiots. Not very good for the career, that.”

Janusz Radziwiłł nodded almost against his will. He was still convinced that the reports had been accurate. The Muscovites were planning to take Smolensk and much of Lithuania, just like they had tried in that other history. But probably—as had happened before—corruption in their ranks had interfered. Still, the Cossack was right. It didn’t really matter now.

Chapter 52

“Men coming in,” the scout said as he rode up to the general.

“That’ll be the mercenaries from Rzhev,” General Izmailov said, then looked at Tim. “Take word the column is to halt. Officer’s Call at the front.”

“Halt the column. Officer’s Call, sir, at the leading unit,” Tim told the commander of each unit as he rode down the line.

It was the third day of marching toward Rzhev. And this halt would probably cost them two miles. When he got back to the front, Tim saw that General Izmailov was speaking to the sergeant leading the mercenaries who had sent the riders to inform Moscow of the invasion.

“So tell me, Sergeant,” General Izmailov was asking, “why did you abandon your post?”

“What post, General? We were ordered to Rzhev to guard a supply depot. When we got there, there was no supply depot. No quarters and no pay. My people were living in tents outside Rzhev. You can’t guard what isn’t there, sir, and we were never assigned to guard Rzhev.” The sergeant pulled a set of orders out of his pack and handed them to General Izmailov.

General Izmailov looked over the orders and snorted. Then he handed them to Tim and went on to the next question. “Did you keep in contact with the invading force?”

The burly sergeant shook his head. “No. We didn’t see any more of them and I don’t have the men to spare.”

“Are the invaders coming this way? Heading to Tver? Did they even continue on past Rzhev, or did they stop there?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Sergeant Hampstead admitted.

Tim read over the orders and information in the packet, and stopped.
Ivan Petrovich Sheremetev.
Well, that explained why the foreign mercenaries had been sent off to guard a nonexistent supply depot. It was almost funny. The lesser Sheremetev’s greed had, for once, worked to Russia’s benefit. If the mercenaries hadn’t been in Rzhev, the Poles might have bypassed the place altogether and headed straight for Tver. With no warning to the Kremlin until they had already taken Tver.

General Izmailov turned to a discussion with the dirigible’s pilot. After discussing the dirigible and its capabilities for a few minutes, the pilot, “Nick” Ivanovich, said, “General, if we loose the tether, we can see more. I can usually get twenty miles an hour when I use the engines, assuming the engines work. And if the wind isn’t bad when I get up there.”

“When they work?” Izmailov looked dubious. “
When
they work?”

“They do . . . mostly,” Nick said. “The engines aren’t really the problem. Sometimes there is considerable leakage in the steam lines. If the steam isn’t leaking too bad, I can stay up for ten hours or so. If everything goes right, I can get from here to Rzhev and back before dark.”

Izmailov thought for a few moments. “All right. We’ll try it. But at the least problem abort the mission and get back here.” He turned back to the mercenary. “Sergeant, your officers were delayed in Moscow but we expect them to be joining us in a day or so. You and your men are to fall in at the end of the column as we pass.”

*     *     *

Everything didn’t go right for Nick Ivanovich. The problem was the winds. They were southerly and fairly strong at five thousand feet. Weaker, but still southerly, at five hundred.
Testbed
didn’t have a compressor; it couldn’t lift the weight. So it couldn’t pump hydrogen out of the bladders and then get it back. Once the hydrogen was gone, it was gone. It did have a couple of hydrogen tanks so it could go up and down a little bit.

Nick ended up using more fuel than expected to keep on course. There was some steam leakage but it wasn’t too bad. All of which meant that he
might
have made it to Rzhev and back. Or, if he went all the way to Rzhev, he might run out of fuel or water before he could get back.

*     *     *

“I was forced to abort, General.” Nick shook his head. “Wind was awful and kept blowing me off course. But I did get a bit better than halfway and didn’t see the first sign of the Poles. No advancing troops, not in this direction.”

Izmailov turned to the mercenary sergeant. “Did your scouts see the entire army? This so-called ten-thousand-man army?”

“No,” Hampstead admitted. “My scouts saw the leading elements. About three thousand men. And that’s still more than my five hundred could face with any hope of victory.”

“How do you know it was the leading elements? Not the whole force?”

“The formation was spread out like a screening element. Why put a screening element out when there’s nothing to screen?”

The answer to that seemed obvious to Tim—to hide the fact that that was all you had. To bluff. Still, the sergeant’s point about the size of his force was well taken. Why bluff against a force of only five hundred men? Tim could think of two reasons. If the attacking force didn’t know how big the force in Rzhev was, they might try a bluff to get a force of a thousand or fifteen hundred to retreat and avoid a battle against an entrenched opponent. Two-to-one odds aren’t that great when the enemy is behind walls.

Or it could be that the bluff—if it was a bluff—was intended not for the sergeant but for . . . well, them. The relieving force. Tim looked over at the wagons holding
Testbed
and smiled.

General Izmailov was shaking his head. “There are a lot of reasons why you might arrange your troops in a pattern that will, at first sight, look like a screen . . .”

*     *     *

Though General Izmailov didn’t know it, the commander of the Polish invaders had not, in fact, formed his force into a screen. He had split his force into three columns of a thousand men to facilitate gleaning. The scout had spotted the center column and swung wide around it which had taken him right into the second column. He had assumed that the two columns were the ends of a large screening element but hadn’t checked.

*     *     *

There were four wagons in the dirigible contingent. One carried the dirigible while on the march—or served as a moving anchor for it, rather. The dirigible floated about fifteen feet above the wagon and was cranked down to ground level and tied down with spikes driven into the ground at night or in bad weather. That wagon also carried the pump that was used to compress hydrogen gas for the canisters. Another wagon carried equipment and materials for the production of hydrogen gas. A third carried equipment for field repairs and the fourth carried the repair crew. After the aborted trip, they spent two days worth of breaks on the march doing maintenance before they felt safe with the thing untethered again. General Izmailov was not pleased.

“I’m sorry, General,” Nick Ivanovich said. “But there is a reason we call the dirigible ‘
Testbed
.’ It’s an experimental design to test concepts in aviation.” The term “aviation” was English but Izmailov was familiar with it by now. “To the best of our knowledge, nothing quite like it has ever existed in this or any other history. The engines are handmade by Russian craftsman, as are the lift bladders, the wings.”

Nick hid a grin. The designer would hate him calling the control surfaces “wings.” They weren’t designed to provide lift, but control. In fact, they provided a bit of both. The “wings” acted as elevators at the tail of the dirigible. More were located between the gondola and the motors. They didn’t provide much lift, but by pointing the dirigible’s nose up or down, he could gain or lose a little altitude without having to dump ballast or gas. Or use the emergency tanks to refill the lift bladders.