Russian Amerika (12 page)

"We're going to attack prisons for tourists?" Grisha felt baffled.

"We are going to attack prisons because they are used to subjugate the people of the Dená Republic. If visitors are close and see the event, it will be widely talked about. If some of the prisoners escape, we have new recruits. Either way, the press will report it to their readers, and their governments. We will build international consensus to create a new republic."

"So you believe the Czar will give up the Dená Republic just so tourists will spend rubles in what's left of Russian Amerika?" Nik asked. His tone reeked with hostility.

"Nik, what's wrong?" Grisha asked. "It really doesn't sound all that far-fetched if you think about it."

"They'll send the Cossacks and
promyshlenniks
into your villages to live. They'll rape your wives and daughters and make slaves of your brothers and sons. When they finally catch you they'll use torture for amusement before they release you to death. This is a madman's dream." He stalked out and slammed the door behind him.

Grisha gave Haimish a beseeching look. "What brought that on?"

"I don't know. But he's right. They will do that, you know, if they can. We have to pick our targets carefully and hit them all at the same time. The Russians can't be everywhere at once with a large army."

"Fragment them!" Grisha said. "Take bites and chew them up."

"Yes," said Haimish. "Now it's time to master the bow."

"Bows and arrows?"

"Exactly. They are deadly and quiet." Out of a rubberized bag Haimish pulled a common recurve bow. "This is our most efficient weapon. It's light, accurate at long distance in the hands of an expert, and absolutely silent."

"We never used these in the Troika Guard," Grisha said, running his hands over the smooth wood. "But we used pretty much everything else."

Haimish stared at him. "You were in the Troika Guard?"

"Ten years and a few months. Didn't Nathan tell you?"

"Nathan never tells me anything, him and his 'shaman of mystery' crap."

"Okay, let's go play with this and I'll tell you about my military career."

Haimish glanced at his wrist watch. "Too close to lunch. Let's go eat first."

The main hall swarmed with people. The rich aroma of salmon stew and baked bread filled the air. Nik and Cora sat at a small table in one corner, talking intently.

Wing's return seemed to trigger a realization in Cora. She and Nik now spent a great deal of time together, their mutual attraction obvious to all. Yet Nik appeared to be more tense than ever.

At first Grisha escaped their notice, and he wondered if he should impose on their conversation. Then Cora glanced up and saw him. She energetically waved him to their table.

Nik glanced up at him and then resumed talking. Grisha could tell by the way Nik hunched over that his friend was in a serious mood. Feeling reluctant, Grisha went to the table.

". . . the thing is either important or it's not," Nik said to Cora.

"That's all I have to say."

Cora looked up. "Would you sit with us for a minute, Grisha?"

He sat down and smiled at her. "How are you?"

"I feel really good," she said. "I got good friends, and I'm attracted to a good man, despite the fact that he doesn't want to live with me."

"I do want to live with you," Nik said, "as man and wife."

"What do you think, Grisha?" she asked. "Should a man and woman have to marry to share their lives?"

He shielded his chest with his hands. "You're talking to someone whose wife left him for another man, and whose new companion got him thirty years hard labor for something she did. I think maybe you're talking to the wrong Ivan."

"I accept your reservations," she said. "Now answer the question."

Nik hid behind a flat stare and tightly crossed arms over his chest.

"Okay. After pointing out you two haven't known each other very long, I guess the first question would be, how long do these two plan to share their lives?"

"Exactly!" Nik said with a fierce grin.

"I don't see what that has to do with it," Cora said at the same time.

Grisha pursed his lips and nodded sagely.

"I think I see where the discussion has foundered."

"He says-" "She says-" they blurted together.

Grisha held up his hand.

"Nik, you go first."

"She says marriage is of no importance. If I love her I'll be happy to just live with her, no threads, no ties."

"You don't agree?"

"No! I want to marry her. I want to formalize what we feel for each other, I want to have a wife and someday have children. If we just lived together we'd be no better than the Cossacks and their whores."

Cora's cheek turned red, and her smile went completely flat.

Grisha nodded to her. "Cora?"

"If a man and a woman love one another, why do they have to formalize it? We're both soldiers in a rapidly changing world, in a revolution. Who has time for sewing, cooking, babies, and warm goat's milk at night when there's a war to be fought?"

Her eyes shone and Grisha realized she was about to cry.

"This is our lives! Right now." A tear coursed down her cheek and dripped off her chin. "All of us could be dead tomorrow, or the day after, or. . . ." She turned to Nik. "There are no oaths or ceremonies that will stop death. I know. We must seize the time we have and live it to the fullest."

"Will you marry me?" Nik asked.

"Not until the Dená Republic is a fact. Then I will marry you. I'll marry you twice."

Grisha felt caught in their emotional energy. Once, as a young man, he crewed on a boat that lost power and ended up on the rocks. At this moment he felt very much the same way he had before the boat actually ground into the teeth of that North Pacific island-completely alive and scared, and knowing things were going to change drastically.

"Okay," Nik said. "When the Dená Republic becomes fact, we will be married."

"You witnessed this, Grisha," she said, glancing at him then back to Nik. "So when the time comes he can't get out of it."

"I'm done being a deserter," Nik said with a smile for her.

Suppressing his envy as best he could, Grisha pushed away and ambled toward the kitchen. Neither of them noticed.

"Snagging usually doesn't start until the ice goes out on the Yukon," Wing said, coming up beside him.

"Snagging? What's that?"

She laughed. "Mating season. You know, like the birds, go out and snag yourself a mate."

"I always thought snagging was an unfair way of catching a fish." Grisha liked looking at Wing and tonight she seemed more radiant than the last time he saw her.

"And your point is what?" They both started laughing at the same time.

"I haven't had a chance to ask since you got back. How was your trip?"

"Good," she said. Her eyes lost some of their sparkle. "There's just so much to do and so little time."

"So spread the work around, stop trying to do it all yourself."

"Don't worry, Grisha, there's plenty for you, too. We realize how fortunate we were when you decided to join us."

"Not as fortunate as I was when you saved my life. I'll do anything I can to further the movement. I'm collecting old debts, too."

"We know. Well, I have to meet with Chandalar before I can go to bed, so I'll say good night." She turned and went through the door.

"Good night," he mumbled, feeling bereft. He assessed his feelings and didn't like what he found. "Not good," he said, his voice barely audible.

"You'll just get hurt again."

He pulled back into his mind where he sheltered his vulnerability. There was no time to waste being giddy and weak-kneed, he decided. Perhaps after the revolution.

Perhaps never again.

18

Tetlin Redoubt

Wolverine White, his skinning knife jutting from his gory throat, slapped Bear Crepov on the shoulder and demanded, "Where is their blood? You vowed to avenge me!" He slapped Bear a second time. "Where?" his voice gurgled with blood.

Again his shoulder jerked, more from the psychic blow than the physical one. The fourth blow made him dimly aware that it wasn't Wolverine speaking from the grave.

"Bear! There is someone for you," Katti said, slapping his beefy shoulder again.

" 'Nuf, you can stop punching around on me now," he mumbled. "Who wants ta see me?" He opened his eyes slowly, knew the vodka hangover needed only movement to explode behind his eyes and take his scalp off.

"A Cossack," she said, and he finally heard the fear.

"A Cossack wants to see me?" He sat up in the stained bed and dumbly endured the painful hammering in his head. "What for?"

"I don't know. But he knows you're here." Katti's chubby face usually maintained a shade of pink. Now the pink mixed with apprehensive gray and her wide-eyed gaze remained nailed to his face.

"Don't worry about it, Kat. He's just a damned messenger boy."

"For you, maybe. But for me he can be big trouble when you're not around."

Bear yawned and scratched his hairy belly before pulling on the soiled cotton trousers constituting his uniform. He carefully rose and shuffled to the cabin door and opened it. The Cossack stood outside in the minus-thirtydegree weather.

"What do you want?" The cold air invaded the mat of hair on his chest and hardened his nipples. His bare toes tried to curl away from the cold but he wouldn't allow them to move.

"The colonel wants to see you, now."

"I'll be there as soon as I get dressed." Bear shut the door in the man's face.

Now what do they want?

He pulled on his clothes while Katti hovered, looking anxious in her ragged dressing gown. He'd taken her out of an arriving coffle two years before. She would allow him to do anything he wished to her to keep from facing the Cossacks again.

She'd gotten fat, he decided. She really looked like a peasant now. Her eyes begged for answers, but he ignored her. Keep 'em off balance, that was the way. He pulled on his heavy socks and boots.

The cold bright daylight became knives that attacked his squinted eyes. He wanted a drink of vodka to numb the pain, but he'd emptied his last bottle the night before. Maybe the colonel would have some.

Despite his heavy coat, chill permeated him by the time the heavy barracks door shut behind him. He pushed into the colonel's office, leaving the door open, and dropped his bulk onto the wooden bench. The colonel looked up from the papers on his desk.

"What's the big hurry? I was in bed with my woman."

The colonel kept his face neutral and nodded toward the door. "The captain here wished to see you as soon as possible."

The door slowly swung shut to reveal a woman of medium size, a bit too much on the thin side to suit him, but not hard to look at. Her dark blond hair molded tightly around a face composed of angles and planes.

Her mouth was too wide for her face, he thought, and the dark eyes held more intelligence than he cared to deal with in a woman. He sat up straight.

"Well," he said, "now she's seen me."

"This man," she said holding out the photograph he'd seen in this office before. "You have seen him?"

"Da. I almost killed him in the bush."

"How fortunate for all of us that you did not," she said dryly. "Can you take me to the place where you last saw him?"

"Yes. Or I could show you on a map."

She pointed to a large wall map. "Do so."

He moved over and traced their trail with a dirty fingernail.

"This is where the construction site was attacked and destroyed. They went this way, along the Tanana River, there's a very old trail. They camped here the first night and our party stopped here."

"Didn't you check the construction site first?" she asked.

"I sent in one volunteer, a Cossack, to look for fool traps."

"And?"

"He found one. He exploded with the rest of the camp. Everything burned."

Something moved in her eyes and she nearly smiled.

"So you sent in a fool to start with."

Bear stifled a retort about all Cossacks being fools.

"Da, Captain. I did just that." He turned back to the map. "We caught an Indian the next morning, but couldn't get him to talk before he died."

"There are techniques," she began.

"He threw himself on my knife when I began skinning him."

"Oh. Please continue."

"That's when they discovered we were on their trail and they split up their party. We did the same. I followed the group with your friend in it."

"He's not my friend," she said in a flat voice.

"They set up an ambush here at the trail junction, right where I thought they would. We flanked them and moved in. Again I had a Cossack volunteer who agreed to be first into the open."

Bear licked his lips and continued. "When nobody shot at him, he thought we'd been wrong. He walked up through the meadow toward the junction.

"But I had spotted the convict in the photograph. He also spotted me, so I pretended not to see him. When I wished to move, I stared at a tree behind him. As soon as he looked away in curiosity, I ran behind him and fired."

"How is it that you missed?"

"When he looked back and I wasn't there, he had the presence of mind to drop to the ground. My shot went over him. I fired a second time but he had already rolled clear, down the slope away from me."

"Hmm, perhaps his old training has resurfaced after all."

"He was scared pissless and reacting to the moment. Then much shooting happened and the Cossack dropped. I slipped into an old wolf den and waited with my knife and rifle for them to discover me."

"You were outnumbered, weren't you?"

"I would not have died alone."

"They obviously didn't discover you."

"No. After they left I found my dead friend and then I returned here."

"How many were in their party?"

"Four."

"How many were in your party?"

"Four."

"How many of your party came back?"

"Only me. What are you trying to say?"

"I thought you
promyshlenniks
were the best woodsmen in Alaska."