Sixteenth century...Two young Pomors, Stepan and Lavrentiy, heard that the Moscow Tsar Ivan the Terrible was leading an army to the Varangian Sea to recapture the original Russian lands from the Swedes. These strong guys who kill seals with arrows, hitting them right in the eye, really wanted to master the art of shooting from a squeaker. And I wanted to wear the red caftans of the Streltsy, made of fine German cloth. So Stepan and Lavrentiy enlisted in the Streltsy army under the command of the boyar’s son Vasily Pronchishchev. But the Pomors were unlucky. Near Narva they were captured by Sweden. They would have perished in that captivity if Lavrentiy had not inherited the magical white-flammable stone Alatyr from his sorcerer grandfather...