“It’s time to get up. You’ve been asleep for hours.” Nik stood and laid wood on the coals of the fire. Coals.
Grisha didn’t feel like he’d slept at all, but he pulled himself out of the warm bag anyway. His full bladder added proof he had slept. As he relieved himself he noticed the overnight temperature had risen slightly.
“Nik?” he said, walking back to the fire, suddenly chilled.
“Yeah?” He was packing his bag.
“Why didn’t the other guards talk to you?”
Nik froze for a long moment; then continued stowing his gear.
“Because I could read. Because I had gone to school for more than three or two years. Because my English is as good as my Russian even if I didn’t come from southeast.”
“That’s what I thought,” Grisha said with finality. “But I wanted to hear you say it.”
“Why? Do you think me incapable of lying?”
“I think I could tell if you were lying, and I don’t think you are.”
Nik shook his head. “Are the Kolosh a perceptive people?”
“Sure, most peoples are or they wouldn’t have lasted long enough to become a race. My mother’s people can tell by a person’s name who they are related to, where they fit in the house where they live, and even where they fit into the village.”
“My God, that’s even more stratified than Russian life!” Nik said.
“It’s more complete, I think. It’s also a clan culture, not something that would work in St. Petersburg and maybe not even St. Nicholas.”
“Does anybody ever pretend to be something they are not in your mother’s culture?”
“Why would they bother, to make a joke? Everyone would know they weren’t telling the truth.”
“But you’re part Russian, too, Grisha. Did your father know where he fit in Russian society?”
“Yeah. At the bottom,” Grisha said, his voice revealing the bleakness he suddenly felt. “I started from the bottom and worked my way to major’s flashes in the Troika Guard. Then I was sacrificed for political reasons and had to start over, got back to where I owned a boat and was master of my life.”
“What happened?” Nik asked, his face rapt.
“I’m not sure, and I’ve thought about it a lot. I took a charter job where the customer wasn’t what he said he was, went places we weren’t supposed to go, and did things we weren’t supposed to do.”
“Sounds like smuggling to me.”
“No, at first I thought that’s what was going on, too. But, we picked up a woman who knew the man and on the way back they talked about the other North American countries. You know, the U.S.A, the Confederacy, all them.”
Nik nodded.
“Then Karpov, the guy, got drunk and tried to snag the woman, got real direct about it. So there was a fight and we killed him.”
“We?”
“Da. While he was choking me, she hit him in the back of the head with a halibut club, the spiked kind.”
“So why did you end up in Tetlin Redoubt? Did they only hang her for murder?”
“She told them I did it. They were going to hang me, but then they changed their minds and sentenced me to thirty years hard labor instead.”
“You wouldn’t have lasted another thirty days,” Nik said with professional disdain.
“I thought I was going to die that day. If the Dená had waited another minute before attacking, I’d be dead. Life is strange.”
“It’s getting light. We need to go.”
“Nik, I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why you’ve turned into a moody bear.”
“I don’t think you’d understand.”
Grisha swallowed the anger that immediately flared through him. It left a bad taste in his mouth.
“Why not, because I don’t have enough education?”
“You wouldn’t like me anymore, take my word for it.” Nik strapped on his skis and pushed off down the trail, heading for the cut that dropped into the next valley.
“Nik!” Grisha yelled. “I want a real answer, a real reason!”
The Russian stopped and looked back.
“I’m a traitor. I’m a traitor and I can’t stand to live with myself.”
Then he skied away and Grisha scrambled to follow.
20
Bear wasn’t sure about this helicopter stuff. He didn’t understand what held the damned things up. But it sure covered the distance as they raced along twenty meters above the treetops in excess of sixty exhilarating kilometers an hour.
They had flown from Tetlin Redoubt to St. Anthony Redoubt the day before and spent the night there. They left early this morning, long before the winter sun rose, so they would be in the target area during the brief subarctic day.
He noticed the captain watching him with her superior little smile that said he was only shit and she knew it. He wished he could catch her without her bodyguard corporal and his machine pistol. Today the dog of a soldier even carried a Kalashnikov.
Between the three of them they could stand off a dozen Indians. He thought them heavily armed for this mission. The captain remained adamant about only the three of them going into Indian country alone.
With Wolverine White dead, there wasn’t anybody he trusted to fight at his back anyway. Now he faced the world alone.
“Ten minutes to landing zone, Captain,” the pilot said in his jovial voice. He would stay with the aircraft and keep the engine warm. If the other three weren’t back in exactly twenty-four hours, he would return to base without them.
The captain and the corporal rechecked their weapons and gear. Bear stifled a comment and peered out the window. A promyshlennik never neglected his weapons; they were ready when he walked out the door of his cabin.
The two soldiers laid their automatic rifles down and tested straps and bindings. When they finished with themselves, they glanced at each other to double-check. Bear felt certain the look they exchanged wasn’t regulation.
Cossacks were like that, he mused. The enlisted men were animals, the officers were clever at manipulation, and they all worked in tandem with the Czar’s intelligence service. Bear had to keep telling himself that these people weren’t really Okhana agents, merely hired mercenaries.
He didn’t like them, but they paid good, steady wages and he didn’t have to take their orders if he didn’t want to. He could always quit. Promyshlenniks were known for their independent spirit.
“Are you ready, Crepov?” the captain asked.
“Am I ready for what?”
“Are you ready to take the field and find these men for us?”
“I wouldn’t have entered this borscht-maker if I wasn’t.”
“Good.” She turned to the corporal. “Crepov will lead, I will go behind him, and you will follow me.”
“But, Captain, I think it’s not good for you to be between him and me. What if he attempts—”
“Corporal, I am armed.”
“Da.” The corporal evenly regarded Crepov, then stared out at the passing scenery.
You’ll pay for that one, pet.
The engine changed pitch and they banked to the left. Crepov looked out his window and found himself staring straight down at a snow-covered meadow. A branch of the Toklat River, frozen and brittle, wound along about a kilometer away.
The craft dropped in a tight spiral and Crepov’s heart tried to fly out his mouth. He swallowed in a vain effort to make it retreat. His gorge attempted to follow, but he successfully kept it down.
Just as Crepov thought the noisy machine would crash into the ground, it leveled off and gently landed. The engine died and the great blades swooshed to a stop. He slid the door open and stiffly dropped to the snowcovered ground.