Free Red Moth by Sam Eastland

where the Emerald Eye himself had lived until vanishing into the snow one winter’s night in 1917, never to return.
    Stefanov’s own departure had not been far behind. His father had continued to work at Tsarskoye Selo, even after the arrest of the Tsar and the incarceration of the royal family within the boundaries of their estate, until finally the Bolshevik guards who patrolled the grounds had warned him to leave, and take his family as well, if he valued their lives.
    That same night, Stefanov’s father led one of the Tsar’s prize horses from the stable, harnessed it to a wagon and set off with his family to the house of his brother, a butcher in the distant town of Borovichi.
    The last glimpse Stefanov had of Tsarskoye Selo was of the Catherine Palace, its rooftop gleaming like fish scales in the moonlight.
    He never thought he would see the place again, let alone race along the Podkaprizovaya Doroga in a noisy army truck, with orders to defend the place from air attack.
    It was just as well that Stefanov’s father had died years ago. The old man had spent years raking leaves from the riding paths so that they would not stick to the hooves of the Tsar’s horse as he cantered by, or composting the asparagus, potatoes and carrots which the Romanovs left from their meals, or pruning the juniper hedges so that the Tsarina, who liked to walk past them with her hand held out, flat as a knife blade, skimming along just above the deep green needles, could marvel at the precision of his blade. To see the grass this deep, the hedges wild and overgrown, would probably have broken the old man’s heart.
    The place where they had chosen to deploy the 25-mm anti-aircraft gun stood at the edge of the Alexander Park, close by the Krasnoselskie Gates. Here, the wide expanse of open ground offered a good field of fire for any planes swooping low over the Pushkin Estate. The wheels of the gun carriage had been cranked off the ground, allowing the weapon to be placed on four outrigger posts, which provided a stable base for firing.
    The blast shield had been painted with mud and dead leaves. This had to be done from scratch every time they set up the weapon. He could not rely on old, dried mud to do the trick. The colour of mud differed every time they stopped and the type of leaves might also give away a gun’s position if they were not properly matched to the environment. If the weapon was spotted and came under air attack, there was little they could do except grimly blaze away at the diving plane in a duel which rarely ended well for the crews of 25-mm guns, the smallest in the arsenal of Red Army anti-aircraft weapons.
    When Stefanov returned to the shelter of the trees‚ the other members of the gun team‚ in an unusual display of tact‚ refrained from asking what he had just witnessed. The expression on his face told them all they needed to know. Taking up the shovel which served his three-man section as both foxhole and latrine digger, Stefanov began to hollow out a shelter for himself.
    He worked quickly, and softly chanted the two-word prayer he had invented for himself when digging holes. No stones. No stones. No stones. To be effective, the hole had to be knee deep and large enough to accommodate his body when curled into a foetal position. Lined with a few strips of cardboard from a carton of tushonka meat rations and covered with his plasch-palatka rain cape, a properly dug hole would provide him not only with protection but a place to grab a few hours’ sleep before the order came to rig the gun for transport once again.
    When the foxhole had been completed, Stefanov swept his arm back and forth around the edges, scattering the dark earth which might give away his location from the air. As he performed this ritual, his sleeve caught on something which tore into the fabric and jabbed him in the wrist. At first he mistook it for a twig but, lifting his arm, he realised it was a toy soldier. The soldier was frozen in