[Witches' Horses] Sibir
Title: two steps sideways
'Verse/characters: Sibir; Ruslan Sergeievich, Symon Gavriilovich, various others
Prompt: 49A "messenger"
Word Count: 2308
Notes: After first time. I foresee a terrifying amount of research into flight panels at some point.
Also, it's been over a month since I last wrote. Please forgive the rust.
---------
They hadn't expected to lose Davidovich; the surprise had been shocking. But a wild shot from a dying troop cart and just slightly too slow reflexes on the part of the rider with Davidovich had left a gutted horse and no survivors.
They'd hoped, of course. Davidovich had been well-liked among both his artel and the sergeants. But when the third horse's scan came up blank on lifesigns Ruslan had ordered the dead horse to be left behind: they had a battle to finish.
The rest of the fight had gone as well as could be expected. They'd lost another horse--that one with three survivors, including the rider--and a near-miss on Ruslan's own had left him with a long set of burns all down his left leg. He'd gotten the fire out before it spread, and no one else had been injured. Escaping the clutches of the triage medsestra on the zastava had proved trickier. After promising that it was only the leg, and that he'd check in later to make sure the burns hadn't matured into something uglier than blisters and pain, he'd ducked out while she was distracted by a bleeding head gash.
One of Lievtenant Gavriilovich's riders had brought him a spare pair of pants, which he accepted gratefully, his own having fallen mercy to the medsestra's scissors. She'd have had his shirt and what remained of his underwear if she hadn't gotten distracted. Forcing the blush down as he thanked the rider, he struggled into the spare pants and his own boots. The left one smelled a bit of char, but seemed to have escaped otherwise, as had the skin beneath it. He was grateful for that; a foot or hand burn was enough to keep a man aboard the zastava on light duty, and he really didn't want to be trapped with everyone's paperwork, the way Lievtenant Savvov still bitched about over cards.
Ruslan hadn't been a lievtenant yet when Savvov had been injured, but the stories were . . memorable.
Stopping at the first available mirror, Ruslan checked first the casualty list for his artel, then the whereabouts of three things. Kostenko, who was last listed as checking into the sergeants' mess, which engineering bay was due for battle-damaged and destroyed horses, and Captain Leonidovich, who was . . somewhere. The system all but threw up its hands in exasperation at him for asking. Ruslan mentally noted down a possible side effect of the topical painkillers the medsestra had slathered generously over his leg, then left a message in the captain's inbox that he was still building his after-action report and would either send it or deliver it in person according to the captain's preference.
Then he hiked--well, limped--down to the engineering bay, to say goodbye to a friend.
Nearly an hour later, leg throbbing and put entirely off the idea of eating by watching the engineers try to figure out who'd been where in the horse and what their records wanted done with them, Ruslan still came into the sergeants' mess to find Kostenko. He'd been gifted with a bottle of something he was only assuming was vodka and not paint-stripper by one of the older engineers, after the man had asked why in God the Father's name Ruslan was still there.
Seven sergeants were gathered at one of the tables, along with what appeared to be rather more than seven bottles. Ruslan figured that was all the currently offduty men, and slid carefully onto the end of the bench nearest Kostenko. Two sergeants shuffled over on the bench to make more room for him, and he nodded a thank you to both as he added his bottle to the collection on the table.
"If you made that yourself you've been holding out on us," the sergeant on Kostenko's left rumbled, and Ruslan choked on a laugh.
"The engineers," he said, and Kostenko stirred, giving Ruslan a considering look before he broke the seal on the bottle. "It's probably not as good as what you could find--"
Kostenko slid a glass over to sit in front of Ruslan, then filled it from the bottle. "This is from Dima Yevchenko's private stash, sir," he said, not slurring at all, though his hand was shaking slightly. "You must have impressed him."
Ruslan eyed the glass, then the sergeants as Kostenko filled the other glasses. Picking it up, he gravely toasted "Your health" to the group and upended the glass down his throat.
Black laughter bubbled up from several of the men, Kostenko included, and they toasted him back as formally, and drank.
---
Ruslan and Kostenko split Davidovich's paperwork the next day, after Ruslan had finished composing the message for the family to accompany the remains and his surviving sergeant had gotten over the hangover. Ruslan hadn't realised quite what that had meant at the time, but had since discovered that Davidovich had been one of those men who put off paperwork until absolutely necessary. And the man had classed 'absolutely necessary' as 'my lievtenant or the file sergeant is threatening bodily harm if this piece of paper is not filed'.
Nearly six hours later, spread out across one of the tables in the sergeants' mess because all the proper desks had been stolen by captains or senior-ranked levs, he'd finally made headway on the pile. At least he thought the to-be-filed stack was finally taller than the to-be-filled-out stack.
" . . . Lievtenant Sergeievich?" a age-cracking voice asked cautiously, and he looked up, startled. The boy--maybe one of the supply sergeants' runners? he certainly wasn't old enough to be in an artel--offered him a salute, which he automatically returned even as he replied "Yes?"
"Sorry, sir," the kid apologised, "I couldn't see your tabs, but everyone else in here was wearing sergeants' bars. Lievtenant Gavriilovich's compliments and he'd like you to meet him in the riders' training bay."
Ruslan blinked. "Did he happen to say why?"
"No sir," the kid apologised again. "Can I help you with those?" he added, wincing, as Ruslan started gathering up the paperwork, clicking the magnetic strips together to form a solid block.
"Certainly," Ruslan replied, pushing the to-be-filed gently towards him. "That stack needs to go to the file sergeant's office; any that aren't complete he can send back to me." He paused, having been about to mention that the other stack--assuming the kid could carry anything more--should go to Ruslan's quarters, but his concentration had completely broken when the kid pulled out a string bag and shook it open.
If the boy was fifteen, Ruslan would be surprised. His skin hadn't cleared up yet, and if he could grow a beard there was no evidence of it--and with the dusky tones to the kid's skin and the darkness of the hair on his head, the beard-shadow would be very visible. Unlike Ruslan's own, which grew in white-blond where it bothered to grow in at all.
Once the blocks of to-be-filed had been balanced carefully in the bag, the kid looked up, met Ruslan's stare, and flushed an intense dull red. "My babushka always made me carry a few bags for her, sir. It comes in handy?"
"I imagine it would," Ruslan said neutrally, still nonplused. " . . . Do you happen to have a second one?" he asked after a moment, because the flush wasn't going away.
"Sir?" the boy asked back.
"The other stack needs to go to my quarters until I can finish it. I'd rather the file sergeant didn't get both."
The kid winced, flush fading as he obviously remembered his own version of the file sergeant's rant, then nodded, pulling out a second bag from another pocket. "I can run these both, sir, if you want to go?"
Ruslan considered him for a few moments. "What's your name?"
"Maxim Antonovich, sir. I'm Sergeant Fedorovich's nephew," he added, knotting the top of the to-be-filed bag in an elaborately big bow.
Ruslan considered that statement as Maxim Antonovich began putting the blocks Ruslan's fingers had kept making while he was preoccupied into the second bag. String bags were a grandmother's trick; Fedorovich only played the small-stakes card games, and sent messages home every time he had the opportunity.
"Planning to join up when you're old enough?" Ruslan asked, testing his theory, and Antonovich paused, the second-to-last block dangling from his fingers.
"Yessir," he said after a moment, going back to his task and tying the second bag's top in a much simpler knot. "Uncle Kostya's helping me study in his offduty hours and the supply sergeants always need extra hands."
"Good luck," Ruslan wished him as he stood up. His leg protested the sudden change in position after sitting so long, but he caught the edge of the table and stretched it carefully before trying to put weight on it.
"Thank you, sir," Maxim replied, smiling shyly as he hefted the two bags. "If your quarters are locked I'll leave these with Uncle Kostya?"
"That's fine. Thank you--"
"No trouble, sir," Maxim demurred, and slid out of the mess as only a skinny, healthy teenager could. Ruslan swore the kid'd got through a gap narrower than the stacks of paperwork pads he was carrying.
---
By the time Ruslan got down to the riders' bay his leg had loosened up, stride still a little stiff but no longer limping as he had the day before.
The bay was almost entirely empty, which didn't surprise Ruslan. Most of the riders either slept or borrowed real horses to practice maneuvers in their off-duty hours, if gossip was true. He didn't actually mean to listen to it, but the sergeants had a way of easing extra information in to any conversation, and it sometimes came in very handy.
An arm rose from one of the training heads, waving to attract his attention. As he crossed the threshold of the bay the gravity coils shifted lighter, just enough to trip the unwary, but Ruslan knew about the shift--and why it existed--and just lengthened his stride.
Symon Gavriilovich was in the process of extracting himself from the horse's saddle, he saw, and the rider-Lev gained his unencumbered feet just before Ruslan stopped outside the training head.
"I had an idea," he announced as he slid down the side to join Ruslan.
"And you're telling me because I don't outrank you and cannot forbid you to do anything?" Ruslan shot back, mildly worried that he might be telling the truth.
" . . . No, but good thought! I'll keep that in mind," Symon replied, grinning. "No, I was thinking about starting a cross-training program--"
Ruslan blinked. "I thought the riders claimed there wasn't a thing the infantry could teach them that they didn't already know how to do."
"That was before we saw what you bastards can do with a couple of knives and some shells," Symon corrected, "Not to mention whatever Mischa did when he was out with Grisha."
"I'm fairly certain that wasn't actually legal," Ruslan mused, once he remembered that particular incident. "His sergeant wouldn't tell me any details."
"Deniability at the court martial is always important," Symon said solemnly. "You interested?"
"If you've got details on what Mischa pulled, absolutely," Ruslan agreed, deliberately misunderstanding.
"You're going to have to buy the vodka, the sergeants cleaned me out last game," Symon said, moving one shoulder in an abbreviated cheerful shrug. "Want to come see the view from a saddle?"
Ruslan bit down on a laugh. He'd seen more than a few saddles; he'd even had the dubious joy of trying to rewire one to power a water recycling machine someone else had cobbled together from parts. But he was hardly going to turn down an invitation to actually know what he was doing if that ever came up again. "I'd be delighted," he said, "but you're going to have to drop the steps for me--there's a medsestra over on Pyatnitsa who'd have my hide for climbing anything before my leg finishes healing."
Symon sniggered, but opened the training head up into its biggest configuration and gave Ruslan enough space to get his stiff leg settled before he started pointing instruments out from the rear seat.
Ruslan squinted up at where Symon was pointing, then squirmed himself into a slightly more comfortable position, reached up and starting pointing at things himself. "Immediate vicinity mirror, area-ping mirror, internal singer, group singer, main power supply--" he said, inflecting just enough to make the words questions that invited confirmation, not correction.
" . . . Yup," Symon agreed, "though in the smaller and bigger horses the power supply gets shifted around a bit; you can look at the training book for a two later if you think this turns out to be a good idea. That internal singer also has the proximity alarm system, though that's keyed just to the saddle so everyone doesn't go deaf--"
"I assume there's a switch--probably about here--" Ruslan poked one of the overhead control panels, carefully on the casing next to a toggle switch instead of actually hitting the switch "that flips you in and out of combat mode, so the proximity alarms don't scream at you every time you dive under something?"
There was a pause from the back. " . . Why aren't you a rider, again?" Symon asked eventually, his tone incredulous.
Ruslan tilted his head as far back in the saddle as he could, just barely managing eye contact. "They never gave me the test. I think the office was trying to reach a recruitment quota; there was a kid with a nasty cough in basic and they just pretended he'd finished the endurance trials in good time."
"Remind me not to go guesting in your home terem," Symon muttered, then leaned forward, snaking his arm up next to Ruslan's. "If you drop your hand, you'll feel the toggle for tweaking the coils--"
Ruslan felt himself grinning as he obeyed.
'Verse/characters: Sibir; Ruslan Sergeievich, Symon Gavriilovich, various others
Prompt: 49A "messenger"
Word Count: 2308
Notes: After first time. I foresee a terrifying amount of research into flight panels at some point.
Also, it's been over a month since I last wrote. Please forgive the rust.
---------
They hadn't expected to lose Davidovich; the surprise had been shocking. But a wild shot from a dying troop cart and just slightly too slow reflexes on the part of the rider with Davidovich had left a gutted horse and no survivors.
They'd hoped, of course. Davidovich had been well-liked among both his artel and the sergeants. But when the third horse's scan came up blank on lifesigns Ruslan had ordered the dead horse to be left behind: they had a battle to finish.
The rest of the fight had gone as well as could be expected. They'd lost another horse--that one with three survivors, including the rider--and a near-miss on Ruslan's own had left him with a long set of burns all down his left leg. He'd gotten the fire out before it spread, and no one else had been injured. Escaping the clutches of the triage medsestra on the zastava had proved trickier. After promising that it was only the leg, and that he'd check in later to make sure the burns hadn't matured into something uglier than blisters and pain, he'd ducked out while she was distracted by a bleeding head gash.
One of Lievtenant Gavriilovich's riders had brought him a spare pair of pants, which he accepted gratefully, his own having fallen mercy to the medsestra's scissors. She'd have had his shirt and what remained of his underwear if she hadn't gotten distracted. Forcing the blush down as he thanked the rider, he struggled into the spare pants and his own boots. The left one smelled a bit of char, but seemed to have escaped otherwise, as had the skin beneath it. He was grateful for that; a foot or hand burn was enough to keep a man aboard the zastava on light duty, and he really didn't want to be trapped with everyone's paperwork, the way Lievtenant Savvov still bitched about over cards.
Ruslan hadn't been a lievtenant yet when Savvov had been injured, but the stories were . . memorable.
Stopping at the first available mirror, Ruslan checked first the casualty list for his artel, then the whereabouts of three things. Kostenko, who was last listed as checking into the sergeants' mess, which engineering bay was due for battle-damaged and destroyed horses, and Captain Leonidovich, who was . . somewhere. The system all but threw up its hands in exasperation at him for asking. Ruslan mentally noted down a possible side effect of the topical painkillers the medsestra had slathered generously over his leg, then left a message in the captain's inbox that he was still building his after-action report and would either send it or deliver it in person according to the captain's preference.
Then he hiked--well, limped--down to the engineering bay, to say goodbye to a friend.
Nearly an hour later, leg throbbing and put entirely off the idea of eating by watching the engineers try to figure out who'd been where in the horse and what their records wanted done with them, Ruslan still came into the sergeants' mess to find Kostenko. He'd been gifted with a bottle of something he was only assuming was vodka and not paint-stripper by one of the older engineers, after the man had asked why in God the Father's name Ruslan was still there.
Seven sergeants were gathered at one of the tables, along with what appeared to be rather more than seven bottles. Ruslan figured that was all the currently offduty men, and slid carefully onto the end of the bench nearest Kostenko. Two sergeants shuffled over on the bench to make more room for him, and he nodded a thank you to both as he added his bottle to the collection on the table.
"If you made that yourself you've been holding out on us," the sergeant on Kostenko's left rumbled, and Ruslan choked on a laugh.
"The engineers," he said, and Kostenko stirred, giving Ruslan a considering look before he broke the seal on the bottle. "It's probably not as good as what you could find--"
Kostenko slid a glass over to sit in front of Ruslan, then filled it from the bottle. "This is from Dima Yevchenko's private stash, sir," he said, not slurring at all, though his hand was shaking slightly. "You must have impressed him."
Ruslan eyed the glass, then the sergeants as Kostenko filled the other glasses. Picking it up, he gravely toasted "Your health" to the group and upended the glass down his throat.
Black laughter bubbled up from several of the men, Kostenko included, and they toasted him back as formally, and drank.
---
Ruslan and Kostenko split Davidovich's paperwork the next day, after Ruslan had finished composing the message for the family to accompany the remains and his surviving sergeant had gotten over the hangover. Ruslan hadn't realised quite what that had meant at the time, but had since discovered that Davidovich had been one of those men who put off paperwork until absolutely necessary. And the man had classed 'absolutely necessary' as 'my lievtenant or the file sergeant is threatening bodily harm if this piece of paper is not filed'.
Nearly six hours later, spread out across one of the tables in the sergeants' mess because all the proper desks had been stolen by captains or senior-ranked levs, he'd finally made headway on the pile. At least he thought the to-be-filed stack was finally taller than the to-be-filled-out stack.
" . . . Lievtenant Sergeievich?" a age-cracking voice asked cautiously, and he looked up, startled. The boy--maybe one of the supply sergeants' runners? he certainly wasn't old enough to be in an artel--offered him a salute, which he automatically returned even as he replied "Yes?"
"Sorry, sir," the kid apologised, "I couldn't see your tabs, but everyone else in here was wearing sergeants' bars. Lievtenant Gavriilovich's compliments and he'd like you to meet him in the riders' training bay."
Ruslan blinked. "Did he happen to say why?"
"No sir," the kid apologised again. "Can I help you with those?" he added, wincing, as Ruslan started gathering up the paperwork, clicking the magnetic strips together to form a solid block.
"Certainly," Ruslan replied, pushing the to-be-filed gently towards him. "That stack needs to go to the file sergeant's office; any that aren't complete he can send back to me." He paused, having been about to mention that the other stack--assuming the kid could carry anything more--should go to Ruslan's quarters, but his concentration had completely broken when the kid pulled out a string bag and shook it open.
If the boy was fifteen, Ruslan would be surprised. His skin hadn't cleared up yet, and if he could grow a beard there was no evidence of it--and with the dusky tones to the kid's skin and the darkness of the hair on his head, the beard-shadow would be very visible. Unlike Ruslan's own, which grew in white-blond where it bothered to grow in at all.
Once the blocks of to-be-filed had been balanced carefully in the bag, the kid looked up, met Ruslan's stare, and flushed an intense dull red. "My babushka always made me carry a few bags for her, sir. It comes in handy?"
"I imagine it would," Ruslan said neutrally, still nonplused. " . . . Do you happen to have a second one?" he asked after a moment, because the flush wasn't going away.
"Sir?" the boy asked back.
"The other stack needs to go to my quarters until I can finish it. I'd rather the file sergeant didn't get both."
The kid winced, flush fading as he obviously remembered his own version of the file sergeant's rant, then nodded, pulling out a second bag from another pocket. "I can run these both, sir, if you want to go?"
Ruslan considered him for a few moments. "What's your name?"
"Maxim Antonovich, sir. I'm Sergeant Fedorovich's nephew," he added, knotting the top of the to-be-filed bag in an elaborately big bow.
Ruslan considered that statement as Maxim Antonovich began putting the blocks Ruslan's fingers had kept making while he was preoccupied into the second bag. String bags were a grandmother's trick; Fedorovich only played the small-stakes card games, and sent messages home every time he had the opportunity.
"Planning to join up when you're old enough?" Ruslan asked, testing his theory, and Antonovich paused, the second-to-last block dangling from his fingers.
"Yessir," he said after a moment, going back to his task and tying the second bag's top in a much simpler knot. "Uncle Kostya's helping me study in his offduty hours and the supply sergeants always need extra hands."
"Good luck," Ruslan wished him as he stood up. His leg protested the sudden change in position after sitting so long, but he caught the edge of the table and stretched it carefully before trying to put weight on it.
"Thank you, sir," Maxim replied, smiling shyly as he hefted the two bags. "If your quarters are locked I'll leave these with Uncle Kostya?"
"That's fine. Thank you--"
"No trouble, sir," Maxim demurred, and slid out of the mess as only a skinny, healthy teenager could. Ruslan swore the kid'd got through a gap narrower than the stacks of paperwork pads he was carrying.
---
By the time Ruslan got down to the riders' bay his leg had loosened up, stride still a little stiff but no longer limping as he had the day before.
The bay was almost entirely empty, which didn't surprise Ruslan. Most of the riders either slept or borrowed real horses to practice maneuvers in their off-duty hours, if gossip was true. He didn't actually mean to listen to it, but the sergeants had a way of easing extra information in to any conversation, and it sometimes came in very handy.
An arm rose from one of the training heads, waving to attract his attention. As he crossed the threshold of the bay the gravity coils shifted lighter, just enough to trip the unwary, but Ruslan knew about the shift--and why it existed--and just lengthened his stride.
Symon Gavriilovich was in the process of extracting himself from the horse's saddle, he saw, and the rider-Lev gained his unencumbered feet just before Ruslan stopped outside the training head.
"I had an idea," he announced as he slid down the side to join Ruslan.
"And you're telling me because I don't outrank you and cannot forbid you to do anything?" Ruslan shot back, mildly worried that he might be telling the truth.
" . . . No, but good thought! I'll keep that in mind," Symon replied, grinning. "No, I was thinking about starting a cross-training program--"
Ruslan blinked. "I thought the riders claimed there wasn't a thing the infantry could teach them that they didn't already know how to do."
"That was before we saw what you bastards can do with a couple of knives and some shells," Symon corrected, "Not to mention whatever Mischa did when he was out with Grisha."
"I'm fairly certain that wasn't actually legal," Ruslan mused, once he remembered that particular incident. "His sergeant wouldn't tell me any details."
"Deniability at the court martial is always important," Symon said solemnly. "You interested?"
"If you've got details on what Mischa pulled, absolutely," Ruslan agreed, deliberately misunderstanding.
"You're going to have to buy the vodka, the sergeants cleaned me out last game," Symon said, moving one shoulder in an abbreviated cheerful shrug. "Want to come see the view from a saddle?"
Ruslan bit down on a laugh. He'd seen more than a few saddles; he'd even had the dubious joy of trying to rewire one to power a water recycling machine someone else had cobbled together from parts. But he was hardly going to turn down an invitation to actually know what he was doing if that ever came up again. "I'd be delighted," he said, "but you're going to have to drop the steps for me--there's a medsestra over on Pyatnitsa who'd have my hide for climbing anything before my leg finishes healing."
Symon sniggered, but opened the training head up into its biggest configuration and gave Ruslan enough space to get his stiff leg settled before he started pointing instruments out from the rear seat.
Ruslan squinted up at where Symon was pointing, then squirmed himself into a slightly more comfortable position, reached up and starting pointing at things himself. "Immediate vicinity mirror, area-ping mirror, internal singer, group singer, main power supply--" he said, inflecting just enough to make the words questions that invited confirmation, not correction.
" . . . Yup," Symon agreed, "though in the smaller and bigger horses the power supply gets shifted around a bit; you can look at the training book for a two later if you think this turns out to be a good idea. That internal singer also has the proximity alarm system, though that's keyed just to the saddle so everyone doesn't go deaf--"
"I assume there's a switch--probably about here--" Ruslan poked one of the overhead control panels, carefully on the casing next to a toggle switch instead of actually hitting the switch "that flips you in and out of combat mode, so the proximity alarms don't scream at you every time you dive under something?"
There was a pause from the back. " . . Why aren't you a rider, again?" Symon asked eventually, his tone incredulous.
Ruslan tilted his head as far back in the saddle as he could, just barely managing eye contact. "They never gave me the test. I think the office was trying to reach a recruitment quota; there was a kid with a nasty cough in basic and they just pretended he'd finished the endurance trials in good time."
"Remind me not to go guesting in your home terem," Symon muttered, then leaned forward, snaking his arm up next to Ruslan's. "If you drop your hand, you'll feel the toggle for tweaking the coils--"
Ruslan felt himself grinning as he obeyed.