“I’m relieved to hear it,” General Shein said wryly.
Tim stood mute.
“Speak up, Lieutenant,” the commandant said. “Why do you think Rzhev is the wrong place?”
“It’s too far upriver, sir. The Volga is navigable at Rzhev but only barely. Tver would be a better choice, even if it is farther. You’d want to take Rzhev, too. Later. After the first strike. But if you take Rzhev first, you warn Tver and give them time to fort up and block any river traffic from going past.”
General Shein looked at the commandant. “He’ll do.”
* * *
After that, things moved quickly. Third Lieutenant Boris “Tim” Lebedev found himself suddenly assigned as aide de camp to General Artemi Vasilievich Izmailov.
“Third Lieutenant Boris Lebedev reporting as ordered.”
“Who are you?”
“Sir, I’m to be your cadet aide de camp.”
“I asked for Maslov! The baker’s boy.” General Izmailov was clearly not pleased.
“Ivan?”
“You know him?”
“Yes, sir. We’re friends at the military academy.” That was the semiofficial name of the still semiofficial officer training school that was growing in the Kremlin.
General Izmailov paused and give Tim’s uniform a careful once over. “Let me guess. Your father is a boyar or duma man?”
Suddenly Tim understood. “A great uncle, sir.” The pride that Tim’s voice usually had in that announcement was notably missing. The general had asked for the best student in the cadet corps, Ivan Maslov. Instead he had gotten . . . well, not the highest in family rank. There were a lot of high family kids among the cadets. It was quite the fashion these days. No, what the general had received was a cadet of acceptable social rank and lesser skill. Even if Tim had beaten Ivan once.
General Izmailov was not usually placed in independent command. For the same reason—he didn’t have enough social or family rank. In fact, he was officially second in command of the army they were raising right now, placed temporarily in command of the advance column.
General Izmailov shrugged and got down to business. “I’ll be leading a reconnaissance in force and—if necessary—a delaying action while the reserves are called up. The reconnaissance force is made up in part from Streltzi Prince Cherkasski has loaned us from the Moscow Garrison.” Prince Ivan Borisovich Cherkasski was the chief of the Strel’etsky prikaz, Musketeer Bureau. “They’re under Colonel Usinov. We have small detachments from the Gun Shop and from the Dacha. And two regiments of cavalry under the command of Colonel Khilkov.” General Izmailov gave Tim a look. “Usinov has more experience but Khilkov’s family is of higher rank. We have peasant levies for labor battalions. About four thousand of them. We have four brand-new cannons from the Gun Shop and some of the Streltzi we’re getting have been equipped with the new AK3’s. From the Dacha we’re getting Testbed, the flying machine. I am told it is to be used only for reconnaissance. And we’re getting thirty of the scrapers. There won’t be time to use them much on the march, but they should help a lot with fortifications when we find our spot.”
Tim nodded his understanding. “What about the radio network, sir?”
“Apparently there is no link going toward Rzhev. There is one going toward Smolensk, which would have given us warning if they’d come that way. Which may have something to do with why they’re coming from Rzhev. Unfortunately, most of the radio network has been put in places where it would be convenient for members of the great houses, not where it would help the army.”
The assumption was that they would meet the advancing Polish forces somewhere between Rzhev and Moscow. Meanwhile Tim was assigned fourteen different jobs, some of them in direct conflict with the others. Or at least that’s how it seemed. He was to coordinate with the labor battalions, the Streltzi, the Dacha contingent as well as the Gun Shop contingent, and make sure that all the various units were in the right marching order. Except that the people in charge hadn’t actually decided the marching order yet. So he was given one order and then fifteen minutes later given a different order by someone else.
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.