“Yes, yes I am.”
“Then you’ll probably be a major again, real soon.”
15
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 the Southeast. Grabbing the stalk of the plant would leave you with a handful of tearinducing 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 degrees 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 unfastened 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
