The morning after the state banquet at the Winter Palace—a long evening of polished courtesy veiling mutual suspicion—Tsar Nicholas I was already preparing a different sort of entertainment for his illustrious guests.
He invited Arthur Lionheart and the Crown Prince, Alexander Nikolaevich, to what he described as a "relaxing, gentlemanly hunt" in the royal hunting grounds of Tsaritsyno outside Saint Petersburg.
Victoria, meanwhile, was courteously directed toward the Hermitage Museum for a day of art and cultural diplomacy, accompanied by the Empress and the ladies of the Romanov household.
Arthur understood perfectly what Nicholas intended. The Tsar wished to remove the Queen from the scene and confront Arthur in an environment that was exclusively masculine, primal, and unambiguously Russian.
A proving ground.
A silent duel of power.
Tsaritsyno was less a curated game preserve than a vast pocket of untamed forest the Romanovs kept for their private sport. The air was bright and cold; the pines stood like dark sentinels.
Arthur, dressed in a dark wool hunting coat tailored in London and mounted on an Arab stallion, rode beside the Crown Prince. Far ahead, Nicholas I towered in his heavy Russian hunting attire, a figure cut from iron and frost.
"My dear Arthur," the Tsar called from atop his enormous stallion, his tone genial but unmistakably domineering. "Tell me—do our Russian forests not feel more *manly* than the tidy little parks your English lords call wilderness?"
"It is certainly impressive, Your Majesty," Arthur replied with a polite smile. Inwardly he thought, *A patch of wild land is still only a patch of land, no matter how theatrically you present it.*
Before he could speak further, a deep horn echoed through the forest—low, thunderous, primordial.
The ground trembled.
From the trees burst dozens of Cossack riders, forming a sweeping arc as they drove animals from the undergrowth. Their shouts—half war cry, half celebration—rose like a storm. Birds scattered into the sky; foxes and boars fled in panic.
Arthur feigned mild surprise. "What is this?"
Nicholas laughed, a booming, triumphant sound.
"Merely the opening act of our Heavenly Hunt! They are flushing out the true prize for us."
No sooner had he spoken than a roar broke through the forest—a deep, furious bellow that seemed to shake the branches.
An enormous Ussuri brown bear, taller than any man, was driven into the clearing by the Cossacks. Its rage was such that even the horses shied.
Crown Prince Alexander's eyes lit with excitement.
"Majesty! A magnificent beast—fortune smiles today!"
Arthur recognised the Tsar's intention at once. This was not sport. It was theatre. A demonstration of Russian virility, Russian ferocity, Russian dominion over man and nature.
A challenge—thinly veiled and unmistakable.
Nicholas turned to Arthur with a theatrical gesture.
"My friend, you Englishmen hunt timid little foxes with hounds and polite guns." His eyes gleamed. "Allow me to show you how *real men* hunt."
And without another word, the Tsar spurred his horse forward.
He drew from his saddle a massive double-barrelled rifle—one of the heavy percussion guns specially made for bear hunting—and rode straight toward the charging beast.
He did not circle for advantage.
He did not wait for support.
He met the bear head-on.
At twenty paces he lifted the rifle, utterly composed, and fired.
**BOOM.**
The shot cracked through the clearing. The bear's skull burst in a spray of steam and blood; its immense body lurched forward several more steps before collapsing lifeless at the Tsar's feet.
A single clean kill.
The Cossacks erupted in cheers, brandishing their sabres and chanting his name.
Nicholas exhaled softly on the smoking barrel, then glanced back at Arthur with a smug, provocative smile.
"Well, Arthur? Was our little Russian pastime sufficiently exhilarating for you?"
He added, almost benevolently, "This hide will make a fine rug. I shall have it prepared and sent to your quarters as a personal gift."
Had Arthur shown the slightest awe—or worse, flattery—he would have lost the entire exchange.
The Tsar would have drawn blood.
Instead, Arthur's expression remained calm.
Almost bored.
He offered a small, polite applause.
"Your aim is admirable, Your Majesty," he said mildly. "But to my mind, the joy of the hunt lies not in overwhelming strength."
He paused. "It lies in attempting the impossible."
Nicholas blinked. "Oh? And what would that be?"
Arthur did not answer.
He reached instead for a long, slender rifle strapped to his saddle.
It was an experimental weapon—essentially an early form of the hexagonal-bored rifled gun that Joseph Whitworth would not perfect for years. Hand-forged at Arthur's quiet instruction, it carried a long, brass-tubed *sighting device*—primitive, but real.
Not magic.
Not anachronism.
But the very edge of what British engineering could plausibly achieve under a visionary's patronage.
Arthur knelt in the snow, set the butt firmly to his shoulder, and sighted down the long tube.
"Where is he aiming?"
"What is he even shooting at?"
The Russian officers murmured in confusion. The distant landscape showed nothing but snow and trees.
Then—
A flash of movement.
A snow-white hare darted from a bush, racing across the open ground at impossible speed.
Even the Cossacks hesitated. Hares were notoriously difficult to hit at close range—much less across a field, with the creature nearly blending into its surroundings.
Arthur's expression did not change.
Through the brass tube, the fleeing creature appeared sharp, magnified, its motion predictable. He calculated its pace, the wind, the distance, the drop. All quietly, instantly.
He squeezed the trigger.
No thunderous explosion followed—only a sharp, dry *crack*, like a snapped icicle.
Far across the field, the hare flipped suddenly into the air and fell still.
Silence washed over the clearing.
A Cossack galloped to retrieve the animal and returned with wide, disbelieving eyes.
The hare was untouched—save for a single, perfect wound.
A bullet, no larger than a pea, had entered cleanly through its left eye and passed through the brain.
A kill at extreme distance.
On a moving target.
With a weapon none of them had imagined possible.
Nicholas stared—first at the hare, then at the strange rifle, then at Arthur Lionheart.
The proud flush of his earlier triumph drained from his cheeks.
Arthur rose, dusted the snow from his coat, and stepped toward the Tsar.
He offered the hare with a gentle, almost innocent smile.
"Your Majesty," he said softly, "we English value precision in our sport.
To employ no more force than necessary—yet achieve the desired result without waste."
He placed the hare into the Tsar's stunned hands.
"Please accept this small gift," Arthur continued. "In honour of our first outing together."
In the frozen silence that followed, the balance of power shifted—quietly, irrevocably.
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