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haven’t seen any action, unlike yourself.”

  “Then you can come with me and I’ll show you a real war.”

  “Well, I’d like that. If you’d tell my master.”

  “This Yuri Fomich chap – can he get another apprentice?”

  “I guess so. Everyone wants to be a brewer’s boy – they think it’s their ticket to… well, you know.” He grinned.

  Piech poured out another dram of vodka for them both and raised his glass in a toast. “Then – to the rest of the war! To victory!” He paused. He looked directly into Kostya’s eyes. Kostya found himself unable to tear his gaze away from that of someone who was far higher on the social ladder than he was; it wasn’t done to look into the eyes of even one’s master, let alone a captain from a family as highly-ranked as the Piechowie.

  But no such objection was made. The only reason Kostya looked away was through embarrassment. It was the feeling that he had last felt when he looked into the eyes of the attractive young man with whom he’d had a brief romance with back in the workhouse. Such things were punished quite severely when found out. He still had the scars from the beating he’d got for it, seven years after it had happened. He didn’t want to give Piech any cause to report him to the sergeant. It wasn’t illegal, but there could always be unpleasant informal consequences. He really didn’t want to find himself sent to reconstruct the railway in the full teeth of winter.

  Piech then leaned across, and whispered something in the young soldier’s ear. And then he kissed it.

  VI

  “And I suppose Captain Piech will back this up?” the staff sergeant growled, not even looking up from his desk. “I never took you for a troublemaker, Prilukhov. A year ago I’d have sent you to the front straight away, but if you think this is the way to go about trying to get there, then you’ll be seeing the inside of the guardhouse at the fortress, or building the railways, rather than anything else. You’re needed here. It’ll be all hands on deck in a week or two when they get to the cities and the Lenks start to throw everything they’ve got at us.”

  After New Year, the advance was making good time. The siege was wearing down the city quicker than imagined – the predictions of liberation by the end of Sychen were being revised and the hospital was being readied for the potential casualties from when the street fighting really began. They had saved so many from Mogilyovka because of good railway links between Krovt and the front. Now they aimed to save just as many lives from the big push.

  The orderlies were crucial to the task. If they could get the hospital cleaned from top to bottom before casualties began to arrive, there would be medals all round. “Just think of that. You haven’t seen any actual bullets, but you go home a decorated hero.”

  Kostya tried to ask the sergeant to go and speak to Captain Piech, but the sergeant once more threatened him with punishment and told him to get back to his rounds – and to stay away from the captain, who was making his own arrangements with his doctors.

  He no longer needed so much help. A couple of days after New Year, Doctor Arvid Chislenko, the head of the military medical corps which ran the hospital, had personally attended them and had ordered Kostya back to attend the general wards, where the injured and convalescent private soldiers slept in bare barracks, with a cold comment that he had got too close to the captain - "far closer than is respectable for a man in your position. Please leave."

  He wondered if he had taken a grave risk by going to the sergeant and repeating Piech’s offer from New Year, and if the sergeant, or Captain Piech, had told Chislenko. Piech at least looked shocked at Chislenko's phrasing. So quite possibly...

  What if someone had already reported them? He did not believe anyone could have known directly, but there was bound to have been something. Chislenko was rumoured to have considerable magical gifts; people called him the Wizard of the North for what he could do for his patients. But no-one had ever caught him in the act of outright sorcery, and rumours could spread fast without magical help.

  The only kiss had been in a closed room, however.

  It hadn’t just been being special to someone as a servant or friend. Over the two months since he had been brought in, Piech had treated Kostya as someone other, even, than a young man capable of taking some initiative and who had been given, for a very short period, a position of responsibility for someone else’s care. It wasn’t the deprivation of his special patient or the abrupt response of the sergeant to his petition.

  Stories were told in Allemund of the close friendship between the green god Frei, whom the Slovians knew as Lisak, and his companion Adalbert, who both tricked Perun, known as Thor in that language, into revealing where he’d imprisoned Odin’s two wolves, Hinn and Minn. Frei and Adalbert were said to be lovers by some storytellers, but simply close friends by others. Kostya had not known that it was possible to for an aristocrat who could, if he so chose, leave him here to clean up other people’s vomit, to truly love a pauper like himself. But he was willing to accept Piech’s offer of a position as his personal attendant. That showed acknowledgement of his own abilities as well as a way of becoming the captain's lover.

  The next day was hard, but at least there had been a lull in the influx of patients. Many of those who two months beforehand had been sneering at him had moved on, and the few that arrived were more upbeat and simply ignored him. The day passed uneventfully, and he finally crawled back to his room after a rather sad, lonely supper in the mess. 

  Captain Piech was leaning against the doorframe, smoking and talking to Lopatkin and Kiselyov, the two men he shared a room with.

  “Bit of a prick, that sergeant of yours,” the Captain said, with a wry grin, offering him a cigarette. “Take as many as you need. I’ll teach you to smoke cigarillos when we get back on the road. Better than these nasty little papirosy – never quite got used to them but can’t get the army to dispense the expensive stuff.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but he turned me down,” Kostya said.

  “No, he didn’t,” Piech said, taking a drag on his cigarette and coughing. “He took a bit of persuading, that was all. Get your kit packed – we’re leaving for the front tomorrow.”

  Kostya saluted, clicked his feet together and smiled.

  ###

  Thank you very much for reading this book. If you enjoyed it, would you mind leaving a review at your favourite retailer? Thank you!

  Louise Stanley

  About the Author and Series

  Louise Stanley lives in Hampshire, UK, and has always had an abiding interest in Russia and Eastern Europe and in 19th century Britain and Europe. The Nine Lives of Michal Piech is a series of stories set in a steampunk fantasy world of her own creation, following Michal Piech and his friends and relations through the life and death of the Insulan Empire.

  Other Titles by Louise Stanley

  Ludlin

  Brother Wolf (coming spring-summer 2014)

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