Escape From the Dragon Czar: An Aegis of Merlin Story

by James E. Wisher

  “You’re telling me. I spent three hours on the side of the road this morning trying to get this piece of junk running again. It’ll be a small miracle if I make it home before dark.”

  A humorless laugh from the official. “I won’t keep you then.”

  A moment later the truck rumbled into motion. Anya peeked out one of the gaps and caught just a glimpse of a man in a white uniform holding a clipboard and making notes.

  Beside her Mom groaned. “That was close.”

  “Won’t there be an inspection when we reach Mossa?” Anya asked.

  “Yes, but we won’t be on the truck when it arrives.”

  * * *

  For the next half an hour they bounced along on a slightly less rough road and Anya’s mother told her about the resistance and how they became more and more involved. Anya could only shake her head at the secret life her parents led. There was one thing she had to know and while she feared it would be hard for her mother to talk about, she needed to ask.

  “How did Dad die?”

  “He was killed helping a resistance agent on one of his delivery runs.” Mom sniffed and Anya imagined the tears running down her cheeks.

  Anya felt around their little compartment until she found her mother’s hand and gave it a squeeze. Mom squeezed back and cleared her throat.

  “One of the reasons they agreed to help us was because your father took a job at the cannery. The delivery truck gave him a perfect excuse to travel all over the county. They built a compartment to hide people or supplies under the box. He didn’t have a package every trip, just now and then. It was bad luck that on the day one of the witches was doing an inspection he was carrying a spy. She found the hidden compartment and killed both your father and the spy.”

  “Why didn’t they come after us?” Anya asked.

  “He worked under a false name and when the witch killed him there wasn’t…” Mom’s voice caught and she was silent for a few seconds. “There wasn’t enough left to identify. It isn’t unusual for people to disappear, so when your father vanished no one thought much of it. Just another unlucky soul caught up in something the Empire didn’t like.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “Now we take the long trail out of the Empire. When we’ve escaped you’ll be the first wizard to have ever gotten out. Many powerful people will want to talk to us about the Empire. What we know is our bargaining chip. Don’t tell them anything until we’re safe.”

  “How long will the trip take?” Anya had studied geography in school of course. The nearest free nation was the Kingdom of the Isles, but how long it would take to get there was another matter altogether.

  “If all goes according to plan we should be in London by the middle of August.”

  “What if things don’t go according to plan?”

  The truck rattled to a stop. Maybe that was just as well. Anya didn’t really want to think about what might happen if they failed.

  The truck bed rocked and shifted and a moment later the basket was dragged to one side. Anya squinted against the glare.

  “Quickly,” Fedor said. “We don’t want to be seen on the side of the road.”

  Anya crawled out and stood up, her legs and back complaining after being cooped up for so long. Her mother climbed out behind her and the three of them hopped down. They’d stopped at the edge of a battered blacktop road. There was no one around for as far as she could see in either direction. She took that as a good sign.

  At the edge of the shoulder a clump of evergreen bushes rustled and slipped aside revealing a young man perhaps three years older than Anya. He wore coarse wool pants, a brown jacket, and a fisherman’s cap.

  Fedor motioned them toward the newly made gap in the shrubbery. Mom took Anya’s hand and they hustled down to the stranger. He exchanged a nod with her mother and then they were past. A well-worn trail led away from the road and deeper into the shadowy evergreen forest.

  Anya shivered and tried not to think of the stories Dad used to tell about ghosts and wolves that liked nothing better than to eat little girls. She tightened her grip on her bag and tried to peer into the surrounding shadows. They were only stories, nothing to worry about.

  Mom stopped and turned toward the road. Fedor passed his keys over to the new guy and joined Anya and her mother on the trail.

  “Darko will take the truck the rest of the way.” Fedor took the lead and they started down the path. “If they search they will find nothing but a poorly packed load of vegetables.”

  “Where are we going now?” Anya asked.

  “Over the foothills into the next county. Others will be waiting to take us to the train depot. A friend has arranged transport to the port of Anapa.”

  “And then?” Anya skipped over an exposed root. If she didn’t take care she’d break her neck and save the Imperial agents the trouble of executing her.

  “A ship across the Black Sea to Constanta.”

  Anya’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “We’re going through the Land of Night Princes? That’s insane. We won’t last a night.”

  Fedor waved a dismissive hand. “The princes hate the czar almost as much as we do. They’ve been a great ally in our fight. I’ve spoken to Prince Talon myself and he agreed to grant us safe passage all the way to the German border. In fact, that part of the journey may be the safest leg.”

  Anya’s mind reeled. What did it say about the rest of their journey if traveling a thousand miles through vampire-infested countryside was the safest part?

  2

  Investigation Begins

  The house was a burned-up, gutted wreck. A trickle of smoke continued to rise from the remains, tickling the back of Yarik’s throat. He wasn’t an expert, but even he could tell someone set the blaze. Only a few charred boards remained standing, most of the building having fallen into the basement.

  He shook his head, not much to be learned there. Ignoring the charred stink filling the air, he left the boys, two junior agents on a rotation through the county office, to pick through the ruins and turned his attention to the government van parked in the gravel driveway.

  A White Witch had signed it out, he hadn’t bothered to memorize the woman’s name. If you’d met one of the witches, you’d met them all. In fact, Yarik had seen corpses with more variation in personality. If you liked your women arrogant, dismissive, and powerful, you’d love a witch, otherwise, forget it.

  He pulled the door open and found a clipboard sitting on the driver’s seat. It held a single piece of paper with a list of names. The first six had an X beside the name. The seventh name was Anya Kazakov, the only daughter of Sasha Kazakov, the registered occupant of this property.

  Yarik tossed the clipboard on the seat. Clearly her testing of Miss Kazakov hadn’t gone according to plan. Now he was stuck figuring out what went wrong. Damn witches. Nothing but trouble, the lot of them.

  “Agent Yarik!” One of his boys—he’d given up trying to learn their names since they’d be gone in six months anyway—stood in the rubble and waved his arms.

  Yarik’s back popped when he stretched it. He marched over to the edge of the ruined house. “What?”

  “We found a skull, sir.”

  “Anything else?”

  He held up a charred length of wood. Even from a distance Yarik could see the crystals set into it. Damn witches.

  “Bag the skull and the stick. We’ve got a dead witch on our hands, boys. We need to find whoever did this and find them fast.” If they didn’t, they’d have an army of the mad women crawling all over the county making life even more miserable.

  Yarik left the boys to finish combing through the house and walked over to his cramped government car. It had been white at some point in its life, every damn thing associated with the government was, but now age and dirt had combined to turn it a sort of yellowish tan. Looked about like what he used to find in his son’s diapers.

  His throat tightened and he dismissed the memory. Best not to think about Y
uri. He’d been dead for twelve years, but try as he might, Yarik still couldn’t let go.

  Focus on the job, that was the thing to do. He wedged himself behind the wheel and loosened his tie. Whoever had designed the cheap piece of junk hadn’t had six-foot-two, three-hundred-pound men in mind.

  At least it started on the first try. He pulled out of the drive and turned right up the dirt road. Of all the counties in the Empire, why did a witch have to die in his? There were over a hundred counties and the emperor only knew how many witches, yet he had the horrid luck for this to happen.

  He bounced through one of the many ruts and grimaced. If he had to search all the miserable back roads it was going to be a long afternoon.

  Twenty miles up the road he reached the nearest checkpoint. It wasn’t much, just two teenagers in white uniforms sitting beside an orange sawhorse. Yarik rolled down his window and dug out his identification.

  The blond boy looked at his official seal, then at Yarik’s face, then to the seal again. Finally he gathered himself enough to ask, “Can we help you with something, sir?”

  “Has Anya Kazakov or her mother come this way?”

  “No, sir. We saw smoke.” The second guard joined his partner beside Yarik’s car. “Was it the Kazakov’s place?”

  “’Fraid so. You know them?”

  “Not personally, sir. Anya was two years behind me at school. I knew her by sight, but we didn’t hang out or anything.”

  “All the boys knew Anya by sight.” The second guard gave a wolf whistle. “She’s the most beautiful girl in the county.”

  “Can you give me a description?” Yarik asked more out of curiosity about what they’d say than any need to know. He could call the school and have a picture in five minutes.

  The first guard said, “Blond hair, blue eyes, everything else perfect.”

  The other boy gave an enthusiastic nod. “She’s surface-of-the-sun hot.”

  “Do they have family in the area, somewhere they might go if there was an accident?”

  “Not that I know of,” Guard One said.

  “Okay, keep your eyes open. If you see either of the women, take them into custody. We need to ask them some questions about the fire.”

  Both boys saluted and returned to their posts. Yarik had seen less inspiring servants of the Empire, but he couldn’t recall where. He made a u-turn and drove back down the road. It was fifty miles to the checkpoint in the opposite direction. Fifty miles of pockmarked, rutted, dirt road.

  Damn witches.

  * * *

  Yarik turned off what passed for a main road and onto a secondary road that had just a few less craters than the moon. After striking out at the second checkpoint he only had one option remaining. If Anya and her mother didn’t come this way he was flat out of ideas.

  As he approached yet another checkpoint, this one manned by a graybeard old enough to be his father, Yarik’s radio crackled before a staticky voice said, “We found a hidden room in the basement, sir. It appears the Kazakovs may have been resistance sympathizers. We found no sign of other bodies. What are your orders, sir?”

  Yarik stopped and snatched the mic off its holder. “For one thing stop using the radio. If the resistance is involved they monitor government frequencies. When you’re finished there take the witch’s van to base. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Should anything else come up, call my cell.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The radio went quiet and Yarik gave a disgusted shake of his head. Morons. He’d fire the both of them if he could. Unfortunately, they weren’t qualified to do anything useful so he was stuck with them, at least for a few more months, then they’d be someone else’s problem.

  He put the car in gear and eased onto the road. When he reached the checkpoint—this one was literally an old man with a walking stick and clipboard—he stopped and rolled his window down.

  The old man hobbled over and looked through the window at him. Yarik flashed his ID. “Has anyone come through here today?”

  “Ah, yeh.”

  A headache was slowly building now. “Who?”

  The guard’s neck creaked as he turned to look at the clipboard. “Fedor Volkovich. He had a load of vegetables bound for the plant. Fedor’s a good boy. Comes through here a couple times a week. Always has a minute to chat. Not today though. Running late. He ought to request a new truck. That piece of junk he’s driving is on its last legs. Why I remember back in the ol—”

  “What time did he come through?” Yarik asked. Once the old-timers got going you had to be quick or they’d never shut up.

  “Twelve forty-seven. I know just what time it was because I checked my watch.” The guard dug a silver watch out of his pocket. “I got it when I left the army. Served ten years on the eastern border fighting the Iron Emperor’s stone soldiers.”

  The guard blathered on, but Yarik stopped listening. The first signs of smoke were called in a little after noon. If Fedor was involved the timing was right.

  “You had to use a bazooka to destroy them stone soldiers. I was just a rifleman, never did get to fire one of the rocket launchers. Why I bet—”

  “Did Fedor have anyone with him?”

  “What? No, course not. Why would he have anyone with him? I told you he had a load of vegetables for the plant.”

  “Did you search the load?”

  “No. I’m just supposed to note the name and time of anyone passing through. No one said anything about searching. If I’m supposed to search someone needs to tell me. I can search alright. Did I tell you about the time—”

  “I need to get moving. Good afternoon.” Yarik rolled up his window, cutting off the stream of words.

  He pulled out around the old man and drove as fast as he dared down the rutted path. The cannery was in Mossa. If he hurried Yarik figured he could make it before shift change.

  As he drove he flipped open his phone and hit auto-dial. A moment later a female voice said, “Security Station Fifty-Three, how may I direct your call?”

  “Research.”

  “One moment.”

  The line went dead and a moment later another voice, this one male, said, “Research.”

  “Is that you, Rostov?” Yarik asked.

  “Agent Yarik. It’s been a while since I heard from you. How can I help?”

  “I need anything you have on a Fedor Volkovich, especially as it regards a family named Kazakov or the local resistance.”

  “Got it. This have something to do with the dead witch?”

  “Looks like. Call me when you have something. Don’t use the radio.”

  “Understood.”

  The line went dead and Yarik flipped the phone shut. Rostov was the best researcher in the department. Not that that meant much since they only had two researchers, Rostov and his brother Sergei. Still, if there was something to be found he had confidence Rostov would find it.

  An hour later Yarik reached the edge of Mossa. The town consisted of grids of cinderblock apartment buildings, cinderblock shops, a few smaller factories, and the cannery. Two roads ran north and south, one straight to the cannery. At his first real checkpoint of the day, a pair of guards armed with machine guns stood beside a little shack with a gate attached to it. They passed a cigarette back and forth and ignored Yarik. Clearly they didn’t recognize his government-issue vehicle.

  Yarik rolled down his window and thrust his credentials at them. Fear quickly replaced arrogant indifference. That was the correct reaction when you made a superior wait. Yarik knew plenty of agents that lacked his good nature. His old boss, for instance, would have had these two idiots transferred to the eastern front in a heartbeat if they’d kept him waiting.

  The cigarette was quickly stamped out and both guards hurried over. “How can we be of assistance, Agent?” asked the older of the two, a young man with a patchy beard and frayed uniform.

  “I’m looking for a Fedor Volkovich. He was headed this way with a load of vegetables for the cannery.”

&n
bsp; The older guard looked to his companion who trotted over to the guard shack. He reached inside and pulled out a clipboard. He flipped the pages once, nodded, and jogged over to the car. “I found him. Came through just before two. Nothing unusual in my notes.”

  Yarik nodded and gestured at the gate. The guards hastened to open it for him. When the bar was up he drove through and straight down to the cannery where he stopped at yet another checkpoint. It was a damned wonder they got anything done in the Empire. Everyone was always stopping to talk to guards.

  He completed the ritual presentation of identification and a middle-aged man leaned against the hood of his car. “Can I help you, Agent?”

  “Fedor Volkovich. He came through at two. Do you remember him?”

  The guard shrugged. “We get deliveries all day long. I can’t keep track of who’s who. As long as they’ve got vegetables and are on my list, I let them through.”

  “What time did he leave?”

  The guard gave a put-upon groan and stepped into his shack. If the Empire had a stock market, Yarik would have invested in guard shack and uniform makers.

  The guard emerged again. “He left fifteen minutes ago. You just missed him.”

  “What did he look like?”

  The guard gazed up at the sky and tapped his chin. “Young lad, mid-twenties maybe. No beard. Had on a funny hat, like sailors wear.”

  Yarik nodded, snatched his radio mic from its cradle, and switched to the local frequency. “Guard Station One, come in.”

  A moment of static was followed by a crackly voice. “This is Guard Station One, go ahead.”

  “This is Agent Yarik. Stop any truck attempting to leave the town. Understood?”

  “Yes, Agent. How long do you want us to hold them?”

  “Until I’ve spoken to the drivers. I’m on my way now.”

  Yarik repeated his message to Guard Station Two and turned towards the edge of town. One of them was bound to catch Fedor. Maybe now he’d get some of his questions answered.

  * * *

  The guard shack had been reduced to splinters. Empty baskets lay scattered across the road. At least the guards themselves managed to leap aside when the delivery truck refused to stop. They appeared shaken, but no worse for wear. Yarik scrubbed a hand across his face. There was no sign of the truck that had done the running down. Any doubts he’d had about Fedor’s involvement with the resistance vanished.