In the year 1721 from the birth of Christ, the junior clerk Artëmy Kondratyev, who at that time served as a scribe at the police assembly court on Vasilievsky Island in the city of St. Petersburg, was sent to the Volga lands in order to capture the robber chieftain Galaktion Grigoriev, nicknamed Galan.
But young Artemka had no idea what terrible and astonishing adventures awaited him on the wide, free expanses of the Volga. The formidable Galan had been spreading fear among merchants transporting goods along the Volga for more than a year, and no one had dared deal with this brigand so far. And to make matters worse, some people in the capital itself were also not interested in Galan getting into the hands of the police…