"That's right," Nathan interrupted. "And you are suspect."
Nik's eyes narrowed as he stared back at Nathan.
Why was Nik so tense? Grisha wondered. Hadn't he come with them in search of a better life? Didn't he hate the Russian Army? Was he so indoctrinated that he wouldn't be able to do this?
"Where are you from, Nikolai?" Chan asked as he sat down with a platter of meat. "Here, fellows, try some moose."
"I was raised in St. Nicholas Redoubt."
"What schools did you attend there?" Chan pressed.
"Primary, secondary, university, and military." He sounded nettled. "What else do you wish to know?"
"Why you are so defensive," Nathan said.
"I just deserted my life and family as well as the army. I tried to establish some rapport, but I really don't feel welcome here." He shut his mouth, jaw muscles worked under his skin.
"Look at the situation from our viewpoint. You're still an unknown to us, you could even be a spy."
Nik laughed. "Perhaps you're taking yourselves a bit too seriously?"
"Perhaps," Chan said. "But I'm afraid there are more questions I have to ask."
"The answers to which could help us a lot," Nathan said.
"What were you trained to do in the army?" Chan asked.
"To kill. To instantly obey any and every order given me by anyone with more stripes than I had on my arm, no matter how stupid the order or the person giving it."
"With your education I am surprised they did not offer you a commission."
"They did. I refused."
"Why?" Chan asked.
"A conscription lasts only three years. To obtain a commission one must commit to six. I had no desire to stay in the army for six years, even as an officer."
Chan smiled. "The military must have been hell for you."
"I'm here, aren't I?" Nik said. "They gave me every shit detail they could find and showed no sign of stopping. So I decided to desert. You people made it easy for me."
Chan and Nathan looked at each other. Nathan nodded.
Chan said, "With your military training we would like to have you in the Den Army. Or you can help maintain the camp."
Nik glanced around at the three men. His eyes fastened on Nathan. "Is Cora in the army?"
Nathan nodded.
"She's a lieutenant," Chan said. "One of our best."
"I can believe that." Nik frowned. "I'll join your army."
"Enlistments are for the duration," Nathan said.
"Are you joining to fight or to be with Cora?" Chan asked.
"Does it matter?" Nik's voice carried an edge.
"Not really," Nathan said. He stared into Grisha's face. "And you, Major?"
First French Algeria, then all the wrongs visited on him since that last day on Pravda had filled him with a determined anger to hit back at the Czar and his corrupt machinery. These people not only had rescued him from certain death, they now offered him an avenue for revenge.
Before Grisha could respond, Chan said, "Oh, here's Moses now."
Grisha turned and immediately recognized Corporal Danilov. The ex-trooper stopped in his tracks, came to attention, and saluted. "Major, it's so good to see you."
"You're looking good, Moses." He held out his hand. "But call me Grisha, I haven't been a major for quite some time."
Moses shook his hand and smiled. "You're here in Toklat. Are you joining us?"
"Yes, yes I am."
"Then you'll probably be a major again, real soon."
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15
On the Toklat River, October 1987
Grisha panted to a stop. Hiking in snowshoes proved as pleasant as whipsawing planks and reminded him of running through the desert in heavy boots. However, his speed and endurance showed improvement.
Nik stood on the crest of the small ridge ahead of him. The man's long legs made snowshoeing an easy exercise. Grisha tried to feel envious but couldn't; he'd always been comfortable with his compact size.
Nik was having a hard time of it. Not that he couldn't keep up with the physical training. In fact he'd started out in much better form than Grisha and was at least a decade younger.
Grisha knew the man's tight-lipped boorishness of the past few days was due to his frustration with Cora's continued evasiveness.
"I'm a deserted deserter!" he'd wailed in their cabin the night before. "First Wing told me how wonderful it was that I was going to be part of the movement and what an asset I would be with all the knowledge I had. Then she starts talking about Cora, her deep mind and her big heart.
"She even told me that Cora had commented on my preoccupation with books, that she liked intelligent men. Since then Cora has all but shunned me and Wing told me to shut up after one day on the trail."
"My God, you whine a lot. What, you need the help of one woman to win another?" Grisha laughed. "Maybe Cora is waiting to see if you can complete this little training course, maybe she wants to make sure you're all you're supposed to be."
Suddenly Nik fixed him with a hard stare. "What do you mean by that?"
Grisha frowned, shrugged. "What part of that didn't you understand? She probably just wants to see you become a fully accepted member of the DA before she loosens her heart to you.
"Hell, I don't know. I used to think I knew women and what they wanted, but over the past year I've been brutally disabused of that notion. Maybe you should follow my example and concentrate on what they're teaching us, forget about women."
"That'll be the day," Nik said with a grunt.
In the five weeks since their arrival in Toklat they and twelve other trainees met and conquered every challenge thrown at them by the DA. Most of them related to physical fitness and arctic survival skills. Grisha's body filled out and the convict pallor faded. He had regained his old Troika Guard physique.
"Think of this as a refresher course, Captain-Major Grigorievich," Chan had said, then laughed. "I'm sure it won't be long before you're in command."
Grisha had laughed with him.
But there was no way to lengthen legs. Finally, breathing heavily, he trudged up next to Nik, his training partner.
"There has to . . ." he gasped, ". . . be a better way to move around."
"They're quite functional," Nik said with exaggerated pomposity. "There's approximately a meter-point-five to two meters of snow beneath us. Think how far you'd sink if not for those fat webs hooked to your feet."
"True, they've kept me from sinking completely out of sight every time I fall over."
Nik sobered and gazed out over the flood plain. "Nice view from up here."
The frozen Toklat River wound between snowy, tree-covered banks. Grisha constantly compared the land and vegetation with Southeast Alaska. The variety of trees and shrubs were as varied as those of his childhood home, and almost completely different.
Tamarack, white and black spruce, birch, and a wider variety of willows had all been new to him. The best part was the lack of devil's club, the needle-spined broadleaf plants that grew in thickets in Southeast. Grabbing the stalk of the plant would leave you with a handful of tear-inducing spines nearly impossible to extract.
Surrounded by mountains, the small valley before them appeared piebald where willow thickets and stands of birch stood naked waiting for new spring leaves. The tamarack and spruce appeared furry and deceptively warm from this distance. Already the temperature hovered at minus twenty degress Celsius and only the exercise kept their faces from showing the cold.
"What's that?" Nik asked, breaking Grisha's reverie.
"Where?"
"On the river."
A row of dark spots well out on the ice snaked into view from behind the next ridge.
"Dog team," Grisha said, squinting mariner's eyes.
"Yeah, it is. I wonder."
"Don't you have your field glasses with you?"
Nik pulled off his backpack and unfast
ened the top cover, rooted frantically through the contents before triumphantly producing binoculars. He dropped the pack and focused on the distant team. The sled cleared the ridge, becoming visible on the seemingly glowing ice.
"The wide-shouldered Indian at the cossack camp, what was his name?" Nik asked.
"The brother of Slayer-of-Men, you mean?"
"Da."
"Mugly? No. Malagni!"
"Da, Malagni. He's driving the sled. Looks like he has a passenger, full load anyway."
Grisha watched the sled move steadily down the river ice. Another dark object popped from behind the bluff.
"What's that? Sure isn't a dog team."
"Where?" Nik pulled the glasses away from his face.
"There, about two hundred meters behind Malagni."
The glasses went up to his face again. Grisha watched Nik chew his lower lip. The tall man suddenly grinned.
"Wing! It's Wing on skis!" He lowered the binoculars and grinned like an idiot. "She's back."
"Nikolai, my friend, don't get your hopes up. She might not stay, and if she does, she might not help you with Cora."
A shadow moved across Nik's face.
"You're right, damn it. I can't take anything for granted. I must stalk Cora like the woods creature she is." He bent over and put the glasses back in his pack, closed it, and lifted the straps over his arms.
"But I'm sure Wing will help me."
Even though Grisha managed a ten-meter lead on Nik, the man passed him within minutes. By the time Grisha reached the bottom of the ridge only shoeprints remained to keep him company.
"God," he muttered to himself, "I hope she can match them up."
He maintained his pace and covered the last mile in under an hour. The unloaded sled lay on its side. The dogs, staked out and fed, slept curled on pallets of dried sedge with noses tucked under tails.
Grisha unstrapped his snowshoes and stepped away. He felt as if he could fly without the awkward bulk of them anchoring him. Leaning them against the wall, he pushed into the lodge.
"Here's Grisha, now," Chan said. Beside him, Nik, Malagni, and Wing faced the door. About half the village stood around the first two tables. All went silent.
A man Grisha didn't recognize turned to peer at him. The man's small stature, coarse, dark hair running down to the backs of his hands, and a clean-shaven, weather-beaten face that barely contained bright blue eyes gave him a fairy-tale aspect.
Grisha immediately thought of a gnome.
"So yer the cossack killer, huh?"
The clipped aggressiveness sounded like an alien variant of Tlingit. Grisha knew it to be a dialect from the eastern part of Canada or the United States. He once served with a sergeant who spoke with the same choppy-flat speech.
The room seemed to hang there, waiting for his response. Abruptly Grisha felt nettled for being singled out.
Probably more training for the ex-officer.
"I have killed one cossack. I was terrified at the time," Grisha said.
"Then yer nae fool. Good." He pronounced it "gud."
"Is there food?" Grisha asked the group, ignoring the little man.
"Haimish McCloud," the man said, holding a hand out to him. "Late of the great state of Vermont, U.S.A., proud ta be a Green Mountain boy."
"You fled the United States to live in Russian Amerika?" Grisha asked. The fellow didn't look like a boy to him, not with those raven's tracks around his eyes.
"I've come ta help create the Den Republic, the Russians jist don't know they're beaten yet."
Everybody in the room laughed and the tension flowed out of Grisha. He shook the man's hand.
"I like the way you think," he said, smiling.
A tight, almost absent grin put even more creases in the man's face.
"That's good. I'm agonna be trainin' ya."
"You look a lot better than the last time I saw you," Malagni said with a sniff.
"I'm glad to see you, too," Grisha said, flattening his smile.
Wing led Nik over.
"You both have done well," she said, bending the scar on her cheek. "Tell me, Grisha, why is this one so distant?" She nodded at Nik.
"Do you want me to tell you right here?"
She peered into his eyes, frowned the scar into an arc again.
"No, I guess not." Her eyes moved all over his face like a blind man's fingers before she pulled her gaze away. "C'mon, Professor, take me for a walk." She pulled Nik toward the door.
Grisha exchanged glances with his friend as they left. Nik seemed more upset than ever. Grisha shrugged mental shoulders.
I'm glad I'm not in love.
"Here's food," Karin said, handing him stir-fried moose and late vegetables.
"Thank you." He watched her walk across the room. At eighteen she had attained complete physical maturity. The medical trainee, one of three being taught by Cora, easily claimed the title of prettiest woman in the village.
"I think if I were twenty years younger," Grisha muttered to himself as he watched her, ". . . you could make me do foolish things." He sat down and began to eat.
Chan sat down beside him. Haimish McCloud stood nearby, alone in the full room.
"Wing is correct. You both have done very well, all the trainees have," Chan said. "Now your training takes on a different aspect. Now you discover what it is you are really fighting for."
"I thought it was Denali," Grisha said around a mouthful of food, "and to keep all that one earned. That's what Wing told us."
"Denali is our ikon, if you will. But the heart of our cause is much more elusive."
"Chan, I'm just an old soldier and a new sailor. I'm here because I'm pissed off at the way things are in this country and I want to help change them. All that philosophy stuff is wasted on me."
"It's not philosophy, call it, ah, higher deductive reasoning."
"I know even less about that than philosophy."
"That's because you're not trained yet," he said, beaming.
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16
Tetlin Redoubt
Bear Crepov stared at the photograph and wondered what the words at the bottom meant.
"Yeah, he was one of 'em. In fact I damn near killed him."
"Be thankful you did not," the cossack colonel said. "You'd probably have lost your balls."
"For killing a convict? That's what you people pay me to do!"
"This one is different. They want him alive." The colonel snatched the photograph out of Bear's hand.
"We didn't wait to notify St. Nicholas about the ambush before sending you out. However, they already knew about it and were adamant that we not 'unleash' any hunters." He absently rubbed a knuckle under his heavy mustache.
"There for a minute, I thought they were going to have my balls."
Bear didn't like the total bewilderment he felt. Somebody was busy pissing on his boots, but he couldn't figure out exactly who or how. Or what to do to stop them.
"Those bastards killed my best friend as well as another promyshlennik and a fuckin' cossack sergeant on top of that!"
"I'm sorry about your friend. Friends are much harder to come by than promyshlenniks or cossack sergeants. But for now you must not attempt revenge."
"I swore on Wolverine's body!" Anger surged through him. He'd have to visit Katti tonight. "How long do I have to wait?"
"I don't know. They're sending a cossack captain out from St. Nicholas to talk to you."
"I don't care if he is a captain. If they don't let me hunt those animals down, I'll tear off his head and piss in the hole!"
"Her head," the colonel said dryly.
"What?"
"The captain is a woman."
"Even better." Bear licked his lips. "I'll tear off her head and—"
"Get out of my office," the colonel said icily, "now."
"—fuck the hole!" he bellowed. He stomped from the office. As he went thro
ugh the door, the noise of the combination army post and prison washed over him.
The wind blew from the latrine today, unusual for this time of year. He also smelled meat cooking and went in search of it.
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17
Toklat, November 1987
"Don't rub all the bluing off, just pick up the piece and snap it in with authority," Haimish said.
Grisha stifled a curse behind his blindfold and tried to remember where the piece fit in the automatic rifle; it had been a long time since he had done this.
"It 'as its place, just like a person in any society. The weapon needs all of its parts to work. If just one piece is missing, the weapon doesn't function."
"And I suppose you're going to tell me that societies won't function if one person is missing?" Grisha felt waspish. The dimly familiar pieces under his fingers eluded him. The scent of gun oil brought back memories, and beckoned with a promise of strength and a precarious future.
"Human societies aren't nearly as perfect as the weapon in your hands. There are pieces beyond count that are interchangeable in our societies, and each piece slightly alters the direction, affects the warp and the weave of human enterprise."
"Y'know, Haimish," Nik said from across the small room, "you're the first person I've seen who could wear a man out from three directions at once. Do you ever stop talking long enough to give a body time to think?"
"Don't be cocky with me, Nikolai. You may be ahead of Grigoriy in field-stripping weapons, but yer jist as lackin' in political science."
"It all boils down to power," Nik said. "Those that don't have it, want it. Those that have it, want to keep it. What's not understood?"
"How to share it, that's what's elusive," Haimish said with authority. "In Russia the Czar rules with the advice of the Duma—which means he rules as he wishes. But he really isn't the power, he's only the figurehead."
Grisha pulled off the blindfold in exasperation and threw it on the table. He quickly reassembled the weapon and pulled the trigger. The hollow clack filled the small room.
"Who rules in Russia if not the Czar or the Duma?"
Russian Amerika (ARC) Page 9
