Russian Amerika

“Don’t ever touch me without first asking permission. I heard you coming and recognized your lumbering tread, otherwise you would now be holding your guts in your hands.”

“When you are done boasting, wake up your junior scouts here and see if you can find us.” Crepov bared his teeth in a wolf’s leer and turned back to his men.

Tulubev barked at his men and scrambled to secure his gear.

At least, Crepov reflected, he didn’t have to deal with the forty army troopers and two tanks left behind at the burned construction site. Somebody had to clean up that mess, and he didn’t want those children in uniform out here alerting the quarry. The rangers had reluctantly stayed at the camp to protect the relief troops in the unlikely event the DSM would return.

A breeze moved through trees now darkly silhouetted by the slowly lightening sky. He smelled someone out there who hadn’t come down the trail with him, and they were close. Stepping next to his closest friend and best tracker, he bent over and whispered in his ear, “Company ahead on the trail. I’ll go left.”

Wolverine White wordlessly rolled into the brush and faded like mist. Crepov stepped into the trees and moved swiftly forward. The black spruce, birch, and willow grew far enough apart to allow a man to make good time if he knew how.

A flicker of movement, dark on dark, caught his eye. He froze, stared off to the side, slightly away from the location. Another ripple of shadow over shadow.

Crepov gazed intently now, easily smelling the man, wondering if he was alone. A slow deliberate step revealed the clear definition of an arm braced against a tree. The spy peered around the trunk, allowing only his head to show if someone in the Russian camp should glance up.

Bear unsheathed Claw, his razor-edged skinning knife, and crept forward, silent as death.

12

On the Tanana River Trail

Grisha plodded along mechanically, senses alert, closely followed by Nik Rezanov, who had ceased muttering to himself some time ago. Two meters ahead of Grisha, Wing moved steadily, effortlessly, almost gliding through the brush. He again wondered how many followed.

Grisha hated promyshlenniks almost as much as he hated Cossacks. Ruthless opportunists who totally lacked discipline, they would wipe out a game population rather than use forethought and harvest animals with conservation in mind. Two islands near Akku no longer held the otherwise plentiful Sitka black tail deer because of promyshlennik butchery.

As far as the hunters were concerned, the animals existed as a gift from God and Czar. Their proprietary manner in small communities often caused those of a different mind to move on to greener pastures. Grisha had never chartered his boat to any party containing promyshlenniks.

They also did the Czar’s dirty work along with the Cossacks. Half of every man’s earnings belonged to the Czar. The promyshlenniks proved themselves foully adept at finding hidden potatoes, moose hides, and dried fish—not to mention money.

The year after his father’s death, four promyshlenniks had come to his mother’s door, demanding the Czar’s share of her earnings. She told them she was a widow with nothing to spare. They threw young Grisha out into the snow and spent the afternoon extracting what they wished from her while he beat his hands bloody trying to open the cabin door.

No more loathsome creature inhabited the subcontinent of Alaska. They prided themselves on being the worst. Grisha felt sick with loathing and apprehension, knowing that human weasels followed his party.

He pulled his attention back to the problem at hand. The sun came up over his right shoulder. They were moving west? But then did the sun really come up in the east this late in the year? Alaska’s interior was as alien to him as the Republic of California.

Wing held up her hand, stopped, and cocked her head to the side.

“Listen,” she said.

Grateful for the stop, Grisha tried to listen. All he could hear was his heart beating. Leaning against a tree, he opened his mouth wide to baffle the pounding pulse. Still he heard nothing.

Wing shook her head. “It’s gone now. I thought I heard a scream.”

“You did,” Claude said from behind the panting Nik. “I think it was the last sound that person will ever make.”

Grisha shuddered, glad he missed the whole thing.

“How many are following us?” Nik asked.

“Lynx said a dozen at least,” Wing answered. “Alex was to get a better count and then catch up.”

“Maybe they got Alex,” Claude said in a low voice.

“That’s the conclusion I reached about a minute ago,” she snapped. Wing turned away from them. “Let’s go.”

Grisha stifled a curse and hurried after the fast moving woman. Nik followed and Grisha heard him ask Claude if Alex was related to Wing.

“Actually he was my cousin,” Claude said in a low voice. “But he was her lover.”

Nik cursed in Russian. “She must be in great pain,” he said while trying to see her around Grisha. “And she just keeps going. What a woman.”

Grisha glanced back at Nik. “Do you want to change places?” he asked in a joking tone.

“Yes!”

Before Grisha could respond, Nik darted around him and closed on Wing.

Grisha shrugged and wished his feet would stop hurting. As his stillwasted body ached into the rhythm of the pace, he forced his mind to range beyond the physical just as he had during his imprisonment. Movement became automatic. He concentrated on the country they traveled through.

Small tributaries fed into the Tanana, and every tributary rushed from the heart of a small valley. Some they crossed on fallen trees, others they waded through up to their chests.

Growing up on the Inside Passage of the Alexandr Archipelago, Grisha’s idea of natural beauty differed somewhat from this. He loved the lush rain forest, the thirty-meter trees, the impressive fjords of Southeast Alaska, and the North Pacific Ocean.

The Tanana mocked him, hinting of the ocean to which it eventually traveled, which now sparkled forever out of his reach.

Valari Kominskiya entered his thoughts. Why had she thrown him to the Czar’s wolves? They could have talked their way out of Karpov’s death.

Had she set him up? No way of knowing. But there was no obvious reason for that. She must have just panicked. Her panic had cost him his old life, or what was left of it. He was surprised at how much he missed his boat.

At the top of a ridge the trail forked in a wide clearing. Wing signaled a halt and waved them up to her.

“Behold.” She pointed. “The Great One.”

A range of majestic snow-capped mountains lay unguessable kilometers in front of them. At the center of the range reigned a gleaming monarch reaching into the bright blue sky half again higher than any neighbor. Grisha and Nik stared dumbstruck.

“Claude,” Wing said. “Watch the trail behind us.”

“My God!” Nik said. “I’ve seen this from St. Nicholas Redoubt, but I had no idea it was this big!”

“That’s bigger than Mt. St. Elias,” Grisha said. “Even from here I can tell that. What did you call it?”

“Denali, the Great One.” She stared proudly for a long moment. “That is the holy place of the Dena. You might say this the heart of why we fight the Czar and kill his Cossacks—this is the only ikon in our church.”

“But you don’t kill his soldiers,” Nik said. “Why?”

Her eyes flicked over both of them before settling on the soldier again.

“We’ve discovered that most soldiers of the Czar hate their life. They’re merely slaves in uniform. We need soldiers too, but ours share with everyone else, they’re not a lower class to be used like animals. They’re