The Romanov Rescue

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Guards Captain Daniil Edvardovich Kostyshakov, late of His Imperial Majesty’s Kexholm Guards Regiment, shivered uncontrollably in a slight depression on Fort IX’s forward glacis. It was a fine thing that the depression was slight, because Kostyshakov, himself, was fairly short.

And this is one of those rare occasions when I wish I were shorter still.

The walls of the cells were wet and slimy, with mold growing in the corners. As with many places where large numbers of men are held against their will, the place had an aura of misery and despair about it, greater than the mold and the slime, alone, could account for.

Fort IX was the prison camp for the hardest of cases, the worst of the repeat escapees. As such, since determination and courage know no nationality, it was at the moment, or had been in recent memory, stuffed with Brits and French, Russians and Italians, the odd Belgian from time to time, and whosoever else had found themselves the unwilling guests of the Kaiser and had tried repeatedly to remedy that situation.

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