The Last Tsar's Dragons

Chapter 13

Spring would surely break in Russia like the smiles of women Bronstein had known: cautious, cold, and a long time coming.

Now, however, they were in the deepest part of the winter. Snow lay indifferently on the ground as if it knew it still had months of discomfort to visit on the people, rich and poor alike. But, Bronstein told himself, on the poor even more. The peasants, at the bottom of the heap, might even have to tear the thatch from their roofs to feed the livestock if things got much worse.

He’d visited the eggs a dozen more times, each visit going by a different route, from every conceivable compass point. Always checking for followers. Always looking for footprints not his own. And always carefully brushing away his back-trail. He spent hours with the eggs, squatting in the cold, snowy field, and talking out his plans as if the dragons could hear him through the tough elastic shells. He had no one else to tell. Borutsch had fled to Berlin, and Bronstein feared the old man had spilled his secret before leaving. But as he—so far at least—had not spotted anyone close by, and the eggs had not been disturbed, he was reasonably certain that even if Borutsch had spoken of what he’d seen, people would have thought him deranged. An old man at the end of his life muttering about dragons.

But this time….

Bronstein saw something was wrong as soon as he spotted the lightning-split pine. The ground beneath it was torn up, the leaves scattered. Running up to the tree, he gaped in horror at a hole in the ground.

It was completely devoid of eggs.

Mein Gott und Marx, he swore in silent German. The tsar’s men have found them. And they will have broomed away their steps even as I….

Whether it was Borutsch’s fault or his own carelessness, there was no time to tear his hair or weep uncontrollably, no time for recriminations. He simply had to flee.

Perhaps I can join Borutsch in Berlin. If he’ll have me.

Bronstein turned to run but was stopped cold by a rustling sound in the brush behind him.

Soldiers! he thought desperately. Reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small pistol he’d taken to carrying, he waved it at his unseen enemies before realizing how useless it would be against what sounded like an entire company of soldiers.

Swiveling his head from side to side as more rustling came from all around him, he came to a grim decision.

So this is how it ends.

The gun shook as he raised it to his temple.

“Long live the revolution!” he shouted, then winced.

Oh, to not have died with a cliché on my lips.

His finger tightened on the trigger, then stopped just short of firing as he realized how truly stupid he was.

A dragon the size of a newborn lamb—and just as unsteady on its feet—pushed through the bushes and into view.

“Gevalt,” he breathed.

The dragon emitted a sound somewhere between a mew and a hiss and wobbled directly up to Bronstein, who took an involuntary step back. The creature was fearsome to look at even as a hatchling, all leathery hide and oversized bat wings. Its eyes were the gold of a wolf, though still cloudy from the albumin that coated its skin and made it glisten in the thin forest light.

Bronstein wondered wildly if the eyes would stay that color or change, as babies’ eyes do. He’d heard the tsar’s dragons had eyes like shrouds. Of course the man who told him that could have been exaggerating for effect. And though the pronounced teeth that gave the adult dragons their sinister appearance had yet to grow in, the egg-tooth at the tip of the little dragonling’s beak looked sharp enough to kill if called upon. And the claws that scritch-scratched through the sticks and leaves even now looked as though they could easily gut a cow.

But Bronstein quickly remembered Lenin’s advice:

Dragons, like the bourgeois, respect only power. When they are fresh-hatched, you must be the only power they know.

He pocketed the pistol that he still held stupidly to his head and stepped forward, putting both hands on the dragon’s moist skin.

“Down, beast,” he said firmly, pressing down. The beast collapsed on its side, mewling piteously. Grabbing a handful of dead leaves from the trees, Bronstein began scraping and scrubbing, cleaning the egg slime from the dragon’s skin, talking the whole time. “Down, beast,” he said sternly. “Stay still, monster.”

More dragons wandered out of the brush, attracted, no doubt, by the sound of his voice.

Perhaps, Bronstein thought, they really could hear me through their shells these last few months. Whether true or not, he was glad he’d spoken to them all that while.

“Down,” he bade the new dragons, and they, too, obeyed.

As he scraped and scrubbed, Bronstein could see the dragon’s skin color emerging from the albumin slime. It was red, not black.

Red like hearth fire, red like heart’s blood, red like revolution.

Somehow, that was comforting.