The Saint Hunt
Semyon Budyonny. Commander of the enemy’s 1st Cavalry Army, he had distinguished himself in the Red-White Civil War and the Soviet-Polish War. In the original timeline he had also shone during the German-Soviet War. With history rewritten, he had led a cavalry corps in Ukraine and fought with real distinction, but after Ungern and Anton Denikin shattered the southern army he had fallen back to Moscow to organize its defense. At Stalin’s urging he was given a new mission: strike the rear of the Black Baron and seize the princess. The operation was code-named the “Saint Hunt.”
It was a slapdash plan. Charge in, snatch the princess, and withdraw—even if every last rider was slaughtered in the process. The Red cavalry corps would be wiped out, but if they succeeded they could always raise another. With that cold calculus in mind, Budyonny seized his own reins and galloped forward, swinging wide around the Black Baron’s main force.
As expected, the moment they broke into the rear they saw the imperial tricolor snapping in the wind, the double-headed eagle glaring from its center. The saintess had to be here.
“Red Army cavalry! Hit the reactionaries’ flank! Capture the princess!”
Budyonny’s horsemen swept in like a thunderbolt. Yet for all their speed, the princess was nowhere to be found. The cavalry that had come expecting nothing more than a decapitation strike suddenly found itself deep behind enemy lines with White Army counterattacks closing in from every side. They had ventured too far to retreat cleanly.
Before long the Cossack cavalry sent by the Black Baron appeared ahead of them. These were the men called the Tsar’s Sword, and they charged the Red horsemen without the slightest hesitation.
“What are you red scum doing in a place like this?”
“How dare you ride before Cossacks, you insolent dogs!”
Semyon Budyonny had tangled with Cossacks his whole life, but even he could not stem the tide. The Red cavalry, no matter how bravely they fought, were no match for a force composed entirely of veteran Cossack warriors. The Cossack blades turned the red riders literally red, carving through them with merciless precision.
Budyonny somehow kept the fight alive under his personal command, but the outcome was obvious. Cossacks pressed them from the front while White artillery, which had already been stung once by the surprise attack, now rained shells down on the trapped cavalry.
“Damn it all—failure!”
Amid the savage Cossack steel and the howling barrage, Semyon Budyonny screamed in rage. Moments later the Cossacks closed in and took him alive.
Just as I suspected, a shouting mass of Red cavalry had appeared on our flank. Were these people idiots? Had we truly been an unprepared army we might have been overrun, but even with our main armored force driving on Moscow we had kept reserves ready for exactly this.
“How presumptuous. To prance about in front of the Tsar’s own Sword. Cossack cavalry—annihilate those red riders who dare ignore you and charge like moths to the flame!”
The Black Baron had indeed kept the Cossacks in reserve. At his command they crashed headlong into the enemy horsemen. It was cavalry against cavalry. The Reds had a few Cossacks of their own, but thanks to my survival most of the hosts had thrown in their lot with the Whites. The newly formed Cossack corps now met the enemy thrust directly.
And the blades known as the Tsar’s Sword showed no mercy. They butchered the Red cavalry and the Bolsheviks riding with them. The enemy fought with desperate tenacity, trying to punch through, but the task was plainly beyond them. From where I sat the reports were clear: the enemy cavalry had been routed and their commander, Semyon Budyonny, taken prisoner.
Still, one had to admire their audacity. While simply tying us down would have been nuisance enough, they had actually found a gap and struck it.
“Their momentum really was impressive,” I remarked.
“They are Bolsheviks, nothing more,” Pyotr Wrangel replied, voice cool with aristocratic disdain.
He was right. Had they actually succeeded in dealing us a meaningful blow I would have been far more alarmed. Yet another question still nagged at me.
“No, what amazes me is how stupidly they charged in. Without some clear objective there would be no reason to press so fiercely, would there?”
A hit-and-run raid should have been exactly that—hit and run. Instead the Red cavalry had clung on like starving wolves. That suggested a definite goal.
“Indeed,” Wrangel murmured.
Then it hit me. If these incompetent Bolsheviks had set themselves a strategic objective, what could it possibly be? The one move that might reverse the entire situation.
“Wait… just a moment.”
Yes. That was it. There was nothing else it could be.
“What is it, Your Highness?”
“Those men… isn’t it possible they were willing to destroy themselves if it meant capturing me? To turn the tide now, they would have to take me, wouldn’t they?”
“Hoh. That is entirely possible.”
Even without targeting me the attack would have been worth attempting—if we had lacked Cossack cavalry. But the Reds were not fools; they had to know we were fielding them. To charge anyway meant they had been aiming for the high command. Only my presence at the very front had spoiled their plan.
“Strategically speaking, with their forces barely holding on through sheer numbers, the only way to flip the board in one stroke is to remove the White Army’s central pillar—me.”
“Correct. Yet because Your Highness stood at the front, the attempt failed.”
The Black Baron nodded in agreement. At a glance it really was the only path left to them. That was why they had been willing to feed their precious cavalry into the meat grinder. If they could seize me, even as a hostage, the war would change. Or perhaps they had simply meant to kill me outright.
“They gained no strategic objective and simply bled themselves dry.”
“Even so, the Bolsheviks still possess considerable numbers.”
They did. Far too many. If most of them were true believers it would have been terrifying, but their lack of spirit suggested they had been press-ganged. Men in that state usually wanted to surrender—yet the moment they tried, a bullet would find the back of their skull. That was how Red officers kept conscripted peasants in line.
“Trying to stop us with bodies alone is pathetic. They are proving they possess neither legitimacy nor a righteous cause. Countless subjects will die because of it.”
“To uproot Bolshevism entirely, some sacrifices cannot be avoided. You must steel your heart, Your Highness.”
“To break them in one stroke we will have to accept a certain amount of bloodshed.”
“They will defend Moscow at any cost. Still, even their manpower has limits.”
Of course it did. The situation was nothing like the original history. The Bolsheviks had won their revolution only to see public support collapse almost immediately. Continued conscription had only made things worse; unlike the timeline I remembered, more and more people were turning against them and joining the Whites.
“Are there no collaborators inside Moscow?”
“The Ohrana has agents inside the city, as far as we know. Let us wait and see.”
I doubted it would work. No matter how capable the Ohrana was, the Reds would keep Moscow under the Cheka’s iron fist. A protest might be possible, but an actual uprising inside the capital seemed unlikely.
“By now there must be considerable discontent even within Bolshevik ranks. Perhaps we should use our aircraft to drop leaflets promising amnesty to anyone who surrenders and urging Moscow’s citizens to rise against the Bolsheviks.”
“An excellent suggestion. I will instruct the air corps at once.”
Leaflets were always most effective at times like these.
The Battle of Moscow was brutal. Yet where the enemy’s morale had plummeted, the White Army’s soared to the heavens. With the princess and the Black Baron personally directing the defense from the front lines, the soldiers fought as if possessed.
The White infantry, armed with the improved Fyodorov Avtomat, cut down the enemy soldiers who charged desperately to defend the city.
On the other side the Bolshevik commissars screamed their own slogans.
A savage, swaying melee raged between the two armies. The White infantry advanced behind British Mk tanks and French Renault FTs received from the Entente, supported by the domestically produced A-1 Tanks developed with exiled German engineers. The armored spearhead crushed everything before it while infantry followed with submachine guns and Fyodorov Avtomats, slaughtering the Reds without mercy.
Screams rose as men were chewed beneath tank tracks. Bolshevik soldiers who froze in terror at the sight of the steel monsters were gunned down by their own political officers from behind.
“Do you want to die, comrades? Why aren’t you stopping those reactionaries?! Or are you all secretly licking the princess’s boots? Fight, damn you!”
Trapped between political officers’ pistols and White tanks, the Red soldiers died where they stood, buying time with their bodies. In the skies the Russian Ilya Muromets heavy bombers and Austrian Hansa-Brandenburg G.I aircraft rained bombs on the enemy lines, while White fighters—German-supplied F1s and British Sopwith Camels—swept the Red aircraft from the heavens like autumn leaves.
Superior weapons, superior training, and superior morale allowed the White Army to advance steadily against an enemy that could only hurl bodies forward. Anton Denikin’s southern White forces joined the assault from the south, hammering the Moscow perimeter without pause. Trench after trench fell as Bolshevik defenders were shredded by machine-gun fire and finished off by White infantry.
Yet the Reds kept feeding men into the grinder, and Moscow still held. Naturally, the growing discontent inside the city could not be suppressed forever.
“Why must we die?”
“If you want to die so badly, go out and fight yourselves! Don’t sacrifice my husband and children for nothing!”
“Instead of honoring the fight to protect the Soviet from reactionary invasion, you dare riot like this!”
Gunfire crackled as Ohrana agents who had slipped into Moscow stirred up protests among the discontented, only to be met by Cheka gunfire. The very fact that reactionaries had penetrated the capital was a profound shock to the Soviet leadership. It meant the enemy was preparing an uprising in the very heart of Bolshevik power—just as the Bolsheviks themselves had once done.
The Cheka was unleashed to hunt the infiltrators, but their numbers only seemed to grow. Inside the Kremlin, even the leadership was beginning to fracture.
“Comrade, we are holding for now, but I cannot say how long we can maintain this.”
“What exactly are you suggesting?”
“Comrade Bukharin is right. Comrade Lenin is the living symbol of world revolution. At this point it may be best for you to leave Moscow.”
The suggestion that Lenin himself should abandon the capital had finally been voiced. The Moscow defense line was that fragile. A defense built on grinding civilians into paste would inevitably turn the Soviet people against the regime. After all, the same populace that had already turned its back on the Tsar had no special reason to remain loyal to the Bolsheviks.