The Iron War

GREGOV, GORGOVNA
Winter, 2E8


Aleksy Zuykov Ilyich was formerly a peasant from the town of Tineşti where he struggled to get by as a farmer with his wife and two sons. The town was divided into communities by the noblemen that owned the serfs and free peasants that lived off the land. The indentured serfs lived in communal estates built on the land owned by the three Boyars that shared ownership of the town; having divvied up the township between themselves, they sold portions of the lands to the local free men and peasants that inhabited the surrounding region. Aleksy was separated from his family in 1E192 at the ripe age of 24 for national service. He served under one of First Marshall Dmitri Porfiry Yaroslavovich’s many underlings during the construction of The Iron Highway primarily as a labourer, though he was armed and outfitted as a soldier of the Voskan Army.

He fought alongside his fellow countrymen, repelling a vampiric onslaught as they colonised the newfoundland beyond the inhospitable westernmost reaches of the cruel and unforgiving Iron Teeth Mountains. Sixteen years had passed since the day he’d been separated from his family and still he served under the Voskan Army in those lands, awaiting the day he could retire and return home to his family as a free man. He would receive a payment of Я1,500*(*The Rinska was the common unit of currency in Voska, established originally in 1E78 during the rule of Vladimirovich Vladyslava Ivanovna; son of Vladimir Ivanovna: the founder of Voska) as his retirement along with his freedom upon serving the mandatory minimum of 10 years servitude, with a maximum of 20 years of service in exchange for a retirement payout of Я5,000. Unfortunately, due to disciplinary action, his mandatory duty had been extended to a minimum of 18 years of service, of which he still had two years to go. His time was nearly up and Aleksy had spent the majority of it plotting out what he would do upon receiving his freedom; having set his sights on following through with a solid 20 years of service in exchange for the maximum payout. He often fantasized of buying his own plot of land and spending the short remainder of his life with his wife, Dunia, and his two sons; living off the land and passing it down to the eldest son whilst giving the monetary inheritance to the younger son when the time inevitably came.

His sons, Alexei and Petyr Ilyich, were 20 and 17 years old; Alexei had just reached the minimum age of eligibility for selection into national service and his mother was worried for him. She wrote to her husband regularly over the years and they’d maintained consistent communication via post. In the last letter she wrote on Alexei’s twentieth birthday, she told her husband of the growing discontent back home in Tineşti; it was rumoured that the Voskan Army was starting to make moves to muster more troops across the country. Upon completion of the Iron Highway in 1E199, a second draft had been enacted, though their boys had been too young to serve in those days. Now however, there were rumours that yet another draft would soon spread across the nation, sweeping through the cities, town, and villages like a murder of carrion crows.
Aleksy worried for his sons; the Voskan Army made national service a mandatory requirement of all men between the age of 20-25 and the minimum requirement was 5 years, though in the event of a mandatory draft all selected draftees were required to do a minimum of 10 years. The required time of service could also be extended as a result of disciplinary action or simply because a commanding officer didn’t like a particular soldier or wanted to hold onto an exceptional one. For those reasons Aleksy feared for his sons’ futures, as well as his wife’s. Petyr was still too young to be selected for duty, though it wasn’t certain when the draft would be enacted if there was any truth to the rumours. Though Aleksy hoped that neither of his sons would be snatched away from their homestead, his mind also drifted to the subconscious fears for his wife’s well-being.
They were both beginning to feel their age creep up on them and she couldn’t take care of all the duties of the estate on her own. Until he could retire from the military and buy their freedom from the Boyar that owned them, Aleksy and his family were the property of Nikolai Koval Surikov. The Boyar’s brother, Vasiliy, was a notorious alcoholic and womaniser with countless accusations of rape and sexual assault against him from the peasantry, even amongst the children. Being of nobility, Vasiliy was above the law and quite often found himself taking blatant advantage of the fact. Those he couldn’t intimidate with his social standing he bought off with his money and so he never found himself in much trouble for very long at all, though his brother often berated him and was often found publicly shaming and humiliating him for his lecherous, perverted, and consumptuous ways.
Aleksy did not like being so far from his wife and unable to protect her from such situations, though there was little he could do to prevent it even had he been around. Floggings were all too common a punishment for the peasantry and besides; Dunia was fully capable of handling her own against the wretched man. He hadn’t expressed any interest in her for nearly twelve years; she had made her feelings towards the abominable drunk quite clear after rejecting his advances by breaking several of Vasiliy’s toes with a swift stomp of her foot. She was entirely capable of defending herself, but still; Aleksy loved his wife and so he worried for her as well as his sons. Shaking himself out of his thoughtful reverie, the Voskan peasant-soldier brought himself back to the present; it was his turn at watch duties and everything was dead silent and still in that late hour of the night.

“Privet, my friend; lost in thought?” Josef chuckled, pouring himself a glass of vodka and pouring a second for his friend.

Aleksy laughed and shook it off, telling his fellow soldier of the watch that he’d just been starting to nod off, accepting the vodka that would help to renew his vigour. They drank a couple rounds and took long drags on their pipes, chatting between themselves of the Voskan current events and politics and exchanging tales of their hometowns. The pair were both from the more mountainous southwestern farming region; Josef’s hometown of Lyšça was very similar to Aleksy own hometown in many ways and the two bonded over it. They had both been farmers in their former lives as peasants, primarily growing tuber plants such as potatoes, turnips, and beets and growing barely enough to get by after the local Boyar had deducted his taxable share of the crops.
So it was that they laughed and made jokes about the system they lived under, relating to one another and enjoying the semi-pessimistic camaraderie that they shared. They saw the flaws of the world in which they lived and accepted them as the immutable facts of life that they were, choosing instead to laugh about them together rather than dwell on it in a constant state of hopelessness. Josef poured a third round and Aleksy declared it to be his last, feeling the first two starting to creep up on him. Even as Josef teased him jokingly, the pair continued in their mirth and downed the drinks, taking a break to smoke their pipes as they attempted to regain their senses momentarily. A shot cracked off and startled the pair out of their routine night of watch duty, whizzing just inches from where Josef’s head had been moments ago prior to leaning back to exhale the drag he’d just taken from his pipe…