Dancing with Bears (33 page)

“That’s just wonderful. We’ve got guns when we need soldiers.”

Yet another messenger ran into the room and saluted. “Ma’am. There’s a force of hundreds of civilians coming up Bolshaya Yakimanka. They have banners and they’re singing.”

The general spat on the floor.

“If I may make a suggestion…” Zoësophia murmured, flicking a glance at the prostitutes and hoping the baron would catch her meaning before the general could.

However, it was General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka who caught her thought on the fly and, turning to the brothel keeper, asked, “Are all your harlots as strong as the one who attacked me?”

“For tonight, I am afraid so,” the madam said apologetically. “It is this new drug, you see. It—”

“Never mind that! Your girls are under my command now. If I cannot have my soldiers, I’ll have the next best thing.”

“How many of them are there?” The baron’s mouth moved as he counted silently. “Plus the two who are disposing of the corpse. I’ll have bayonets fixed on enough klashnys for the lot of them. No ammunition, however, I should think.”

“No, of course not,” the general snapped.

Zoësophia looked thoughtfully after the baron as he went out into the street. He had not noticed that General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka had established her ascendancy over him. Which made him the only person in the room who hadn’t.

***

Once he was free of the drug-saturated confines of the City Below, the cold night air cleared Darger’s head wonderfully. But clarity of thought did not make him any the happier. Quite the opposite, in fact, for the seriousness of the rebuilt-cyberwolf ’s threat came home to him with full and terrifying force.

Quickly, he ran a mental thumb down the particulars of his situation. A creature that was the stuff of nightmares, yet undeniably real for all that, had promised him torture and slow death sometime in the very near future. Meanwhile, he was helplessly strapped down on an apparatus from which he, not being an escape artist, could not hope to free himself. Further, a genetic chimera engineered for strength and (to judge by appearances) controlled savagery was his own personal prison guard. Those were the negatives. Against all of which, he had no weapons, allies, or special abilities other than his own native wit.

Luckily, that would suffice.

Step one would be to get some sense of Sergeant Wojtek’s character.

“Sergeant, I fear that my wallet, being overstuffed with banknotes, is digging into my hip. I wonder if you could possibly—”

Sergeant Wojtek looked down at Darger with enormous scorn. “You don’t know much about the Royal Guard if you think that one of us can be so easily bribed as that.”

“Well, indeed, I am a foreigner and thus woefully ignorant of many important matters. Still, my situation is horribly uncomfortable. Couldn’t you let me up? I can give you my word as a gentleman that I will not attempt to escape.”

“So you can. But does that mean you’ll keep it? No, I think that, if you don’t mind, I’ll simply obey the orders I was given.”

“Your logic is impeccable,” Darger said. “And yet, this position remains most damnably painful.”

With a sigh, Sergeant Wojtek upended the gurney, folded its legs shut, and then leaned it against a nearby wall so that Darger was upright. “There. Is that better?”

Surprisingly, it was. In addition to doing much to restore his circulation, simply being upright again, after so long a time on his back, filled Darger with hope. “Thank you, Sergeant.” He mentally counted to twenty and then said, “Do you play chess?”

Sergeant Wojtek stared at him. “What kind of a question is that? I’m a Russian.”

“Then I’ll start. Pawn to d4.”

After a moment’s astonished silence, Sergeant Wojtek relaxed slightly and said, “Knight to f6.”

Which was, if not a beginning, at least an opening.

By the time the game was played through, Darger and the sergeant were, if not chums, at least on an amicable footing. “Well played, Sergeant Wojtek,” Darger said.

“You’d have had me, if it hadn’t been for that one bungled move in the endgame.”

“My attention wandered.” This was only a half-untruth, for though Darger had planned to lose from the outset, there had also been a distracting incident. “That man in the odd gray costume who walked by us. He looked exactly like—”

“Tsar Lenin. I assure you that he not only looks like Lenin, he
is
Lenin.”

“But how is that possible?”

“We live in strange times. Let it rest at that. Tsar Lenin has returned from the dustbin of history and by morning all Moscow will be his.”

The army of Pale Folk and Muscovites was pouring from the square, as it had been for some time. Still, the square remained crowded. Sergeant Wojtek made no move to join those leaving. Apparently he was content to bring up the rear.

“Tell me something,” Darger said. “You and your fellows have clearly switched allegiance from the current government to whoever or whatever this seemingly impossible figure from ancient history might be. But I would have thought that the Royal Guard would be programmed to be unshakably loyal to the Duke of Muscovy.”

“A common misapprehension. We are actually programmed to be loyal to Muscovy itself. It simply never occurred to anybody before now that the duke and the state might not be one and the same thing.”

“If I may ask, sir, and meaning no offense. Exactly how were you—”

“You were about to say ‘bought’—which would have been a mistake, for we were not bought but persuaded.” The sergeant splayed one paw and extended his claws, one by one, as far as they would go. Then he relaxed it. “Consider our situation. Though we do nothing now but stand guard at the center of the greatest stronghold in Russia over a ruler whom no one dare attack, the bear-guards were designed and created to be warriors. Chortenko simply pointed out to us that a war was in the best interests of Muscovy. Then he promised us one. Thus satisfying both patriotism and personal inclination.”

“Ahhh, yes. Of course.” Darger had never acquired a taste for war, but he understood that certain others—he did not call them madmen—were happiest when in its embrace.

“He also promised us real names,” Wojtek said with unexpected bitterness. “With patronymics. The names we have now are only fit for teddy bears.”

By this point, however, the square was finally beginning to clear out. “Well,” Sergeant Wojtek said. “I suppose we should move on.”

“If I may, sir,” Darger said. “I see a tavern across the way whose lanterns are lit, suggesting that its proprietor remains at his post. This gurney could not easily fit through the door, but your orders say nothing about it
per se
, only that I be kept bound. You could tie all but one of the straps about my body, leaving only one lower arm free, and then fashion the last strap into a kind of leash, which you could tie to your wrist to make certain that I did not escape. In that way, you would stay true to your orders, while still allowing me to buy you a drink.”

“Well…” Sergeant Wojtek said. “Perhaps. One drink couldn’t possibly do any harm. But no more than one, mind you. And then we really must be joining the others at the Kremlin.”

“Absolutely.” Darger did not quite smile, for he knew exactly how far he still was from freedom. But in his experience, once you got a soldier to drinking, the battle was half won.

Across the city, on the far side of the Moscow River, at the bonfire-lit intersection where Bolshaya Yakimanka ulitsa angled into Bolshaya Polyanka ulitsa, General Magdalena Zvyozdny-Gorodoka was handing out klashnys to her gaggle of prostitutes. She very carefully examined each weapon before surrendering it, to make certain it was not loaded. Then she instructed the bawds in how to use them as clubs.

“You want to put your opponent down so he doesn’t come back up at you. That means you must strike at the head. Hold your klashny like this.” She demonstrated. “Butt forward. The top of the skull is thick, so if you hit there, your weapon may well bounce off. Smash somebody in the face, and he’s still conscious and thrashing around. The best strategy is to clip them behind the ear. Out they go, and often enough they’re dead. So: Lift your klashnys like this.”

The trollops obeyed.

“Strike slightly downward and inward. Thus.”

They imitated her thrust, with varying results.

“Then return your klashny to its original position. One, two, three. Very simple. Are there any questions?”

A whore raised her hand. “But how do we know this pleases God?”

“Eh?”

“God is goodness and God is love. I didn’t used to think so, but now I’m sure of it. We all are.” The other harlots were nodding in agreement. “So I don’t know if He would like us to be hurting and killing people.”

“Katya’s right. If God is everywhere, how can we do such acts in His presence?”

The general’s expression was pained. “Do it lovingly. The way the apostles would. Behind the ear, remember!”

Meanwhile, the baron’s forces had all affixed bayonets to their weapons. Some of them were drunk, and the rest were so lit up on drugs they all but glowed. Still, training would tell. Baron Lukoil-Gazprom ranged up and down the ragged collection of soldiers, shouting and cursing until, out of sheer habit, they found themselves in a wedge formation, bayonets forward. They were facing the oncoming mob, which was still several blocks away, still invisible but already audible. They had been through this drill so often they did not flinch.

The conscripts had neither drum nor drummer among them, so a sergeant was given the duty of counting cadence. The baron had just finished giving the man his instructions when General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka came striding up.

“I’ll run these fat sluts around and up to that side street there.” She pointed. “When the mob passes us, start your men forward. I’ll wait until your wedge splits them and then send the girls running into their flank. If that doesn’t cause panic, I don’t know what will. They’ll run every which way, and I don’t think they’ll be eager to come back for more.”

“It’s a good plan,” the baron said. “I think it will work.”

The two returned to their respective forces.

All the while, Zoësophia had been standing at the sidelines, watching. Though her knowledge of military history and tactics was unsurpassed, she recognized that the general and the baron both operated from long experience. In this situation, there was little she could do for them, other than to keep out of their way.

But that did not mean her brain had stopped working. In every action so far, Zvyozdny-Gorodoka had taken the lead and the baron had followed her. Worse, the rank-and-file soldiers had witnessed this fact. Which meant that when this was all over, provided they were still alive, the hero of the night would not be the baron, but the red-haired general.

Something would have to be done about that.

Tonight.

...16...

T
he Duke of Muscovy dreamed of fire. He twisted and turned in impotent fury. His beloved Moscow was in danger! All his conscious life, since the day his designers had deemed him sufficiently well programmed to govern, he had looked after it, dreaming of alliances and diplomatic interventions, repairs to the sewage system, improvements in food distribution, new health regulations, the reengineering of peregrine messenger falcons, trade treaties, bribes, the deployment of armies, discrete assassinations, the suppression of news items, construction projects, midnight arrests. The machinations of the underlords, of Chortenko, of Zoësophia, of Koschei, of Lukoil-Gazprom, and even of the false Byzantine ambassador with the improbably long name he had watched ripen, for the reports from Chortenko’s people were very thorough, and his powers of extrapolation uncanny. The actions of lesser players he had intuited. The movements and emotions of the masses were statistical certainties. But then the messengers came less and less frequently, and finally they ceased whispering in his ear altogether. A steadily growing blindness hindered his dreams. His ignorance grew.

As the State of Muscovy’s flow of information was disrupted, its duke could no longer integrate, hallucinate, and comprehend his realm. Which was to him an agony. Though he had no conviction that Moscow actually existed, he had known better than anyone else exactly what was going on in his city at any given instant. No more.

But he knew there were fires.

There were fires because fires were inevitable. They broke out in the best of times, and to fight them the duke had established volunteer brigades for every neighborhood in Moscow. But this was far from the best of times. Drunks were building bonfires in the streets. Drugged religious zealots were abandoning their prayers and debaucheries, leaving candles and lanterns untended, to join processions headed they knew not where.

Underpeople were scurrying about the passages beneath the city carrying torches like so many mice with wooden matches clenched between their teeth. It was impossible that there
not
be fires.

To make matters worse, tonight only a handful of fire brigades, police stations, or active military units were functional. Chortenko had asked the Duke of Muscovy how to inactivate the greatest possible percentage of them, and the duke had spelled out the process, step by step, in careful detail. That was why and how he had been created in the first place: to answer all questions put to him as fully and truthfully as his more-thanhuman powers of analysis and integration could make possible. He could no more withhold his counsel than he could tell a lie.

Yet, like an intellectual who had read so deeply and knowledgeably into a great novel that he had gone mad and believed its characters real, the Duke of Muscovy had fallen in love with the citizens whose fates had been entrusted into his safekeeping. He cared about their small, imaginary lives more than he did his own. He had been created to be their protector, their spiritual father. Now he was the only responsible official aware of Chortenko’s partnership with the metal demons and of the evils plotted by this hellish alliance. No one but he knew what had to be done to stop them.

Moscow must not burn.

But the Duke of Muscovy was powerless to protect his people. He was held captive in chains of sleep and could not break free. No one came to listen to his mumbled instructions—not even the traitor Chortenko. The Royal Guards kept carefully out of earshot, lest they overhear something they would rather not.