Russian Amerika

“But if they had any vision, they could see the possibilities—”

“Did you?” Haimish snapped. “Face it, laddie, you were pushed into this by the Russian Amerika Company and the Okhana.”

“So push them.”

“Patience,” Chan said with an enigmatic smile. “The day is coming when they will all choose. But they will see it as something they want to do. We won’t have to push, the Czar will do it for us.”

Grisha was beginning to appreciate how well the minds of Chan and Haimish meshed. Nathan arrived two days after the Toklat people reached Minto and spent long hours with Nik. The former Czarist soldier offered his memories to the Dena Republik, to mine for what usable ore they could discover.

While Wing operated a cunning little tape recorder from California, Nik recounted his life from adolescence to present, with Nathan concentrating on him. Nathan asked questions that sometimes seemed pertinent, sometimes pointless. Nik answered them all.

Grisha asked a few questions of his own about Nathan, and sometimes got evasions, sometimes pieces of answers. Chan allowed only that Nathan was a very perceptive man. Wing unwittingly revealed that Nathan had Russian, Dena, Yu’Pik, and Kolosh ancestors; she thought it common knowledge.

Grisha tried to slip into his charter-boat camaraderie in an attempt to hear if anyone ever entertained a negative thought about Nathan. If they did, they wouldn’t talk about it. Few would even allude to the possibility of feeling negative about the man.

Slayer-of-Men told Grisha that he would never go wrong by following Nathan’s orders. Finally he found one man, an old man who had weathered over sixty winters in Minto, who seemed open about the subject.

“Nathan Roubitaux? He was a strange kid. You could be pissed as hell at him, then he’d show up and all you could do was like the little shit. I gotta admit, he’s done a lot for the People.”

A faint apprehension slowly took shape in the back of Grisha’s mind. In the meantime, Nik struck gold.

Gnady Ustinov wondered if he were wasting his time. For over a year he had been hearing stories about the Dena Separatist Movement fighting the wicked Russians in order to free the Athabascan People. At first he thought it was just a drunk’s bull crap.

Then his good friend, Ambrose Ambrose had visited from Nabesna. They had only met a total of five times in the last twenty years but due to a heavy correspondence they were as close as brothers. Ambrose brought important news.

“My cousin in Tetlin Redoubt says there’s going to be a war and many of our People will be killed.” His eyes had grown large with earnestness and Gnady believed him.

“Who will kill them?”

“The Czar’s army, and Cossacks, and promyshlenniks.”

“Why?”

“The DSM has been killing many Russians and the Czar told the Imperial Army to put a stop to it.”

“I have heard the DSM is everywhere, how can the soldiers get them all?”

Ambrose grinned. “They can’t, and that’s a good thing.”

“Why, my friend?”

“Because I am in the DSM, and I think you should be, too.”

“And who would see to my store?” Gnady poked a thumb toward the structure he had built with his own hands before stocking it with a modest supply of goods he knew everybody needed or wanted. After five years he was making a good living, and he owned the land on which his store sat.

“What about Tatania?”

“My wife would rather talk than sell goods, I would be destitute within a week.”

Ambrose laughed. Gnady smiled with him until Tatania smacked the back of his head.

“I can run our store just as good as you can, maybe better—people don’t walk away from my bargains feeling cheated!”

The very next week brought news of this great council along with more rumors of war. So he came to find out what would happen if there was a war, and what would happen afterward. If the Dena drove the Russians out of Alaska, would the deed to his property still be valid?

Who would make what sort of decrees? The Czar had always been comfortably remote even if his Cossacks and promyshlennik tax collectors had not. But the system had been in place for over a century and a half, it was a known thing.

Which Dena would rule the new government? Some half-Eskimo from Russian Mission or Holy Cross, way down at the mouth of the Yukon? This required his personal attention.

In the end, he and four others from their area brought two dog sleds down the frozen Yukon to Minto. He learned that news of the impending council of war had gone out to the frozen reaches of the Dena Republik by dog sled, skier, and in two ironic instances, via Russian mail plane. Over the following week delegates and freedom fighters began arriving.

Gnady talked with many people and learned of the recent success at Toklat. Many he spoke with didn’t seem concerned about the Russian Army. There were many others who thought the DSM were a band of brigands and outlaws who in no way represented the average Dena.

Three weeks after the fight at Toklat, the War Council convened.

“I will act as chairman until this assembly elects one,” Chandalar Roy announced. “And that will be our first order of business, so be thinking about who you’d like to nominate. Every man and woman in this room who has reached the age of fifteen, as well as those standing outside, have a vote.”

Gnady listened closely, watching for word traps or ambiguity.

“We’ll vote on everything,” Chandalar said, “including who gets to make the hard decisions about where and how we’ll fight the Czar. I suggest we use the rules in this little book to run our meeting, they make sense for this many people.”

He covered the main points in Robert’s Rules of Order and then grinned as shuffling feet and whispered conversations in the room began to drown him out.

“Okay! Nominations are open.”

Chandalar was unanimously elected First Speaker. Gnady voted for him because there wasn’t anyone else in the room he trusted that much, even though he’d never met the man before this night.

“Each representative will speak for one thousand people. In some cases that will be two or three villages, in others probably up to ten,” Chan told them.

“So every delegate needs a voter herd?” somebody asked. They all found that funny.

“Within your area—” Chandalar pointed to a map with villages outlined

“nominate two candidates, people you trust, people you know will do a good job for you as well as themselves. Then the people from the same area will secretly vote for one of the candidates. Whoever wins will be your delegate to the War Council.”

Gnady joined the throng at the map. His area included Circle and Eagle as well as his own village, Old Crow.

“There are signs with the names of the villages on them all around the room,” Chandalar shouted over the din. “Go to the sign that has your village’s name on it. If you can’t read, ask somebody who can, we’re all in this together.”

Gnady knew eleven of the twelve people under the “Circle-Eagle-Old Crow” sign. A long-haired, mustached man with somewhere between forty and thirty years, wearing well-made moose-hide clothing leaned against the wall under the sign. His face proclaimed him to be angry.

They all stood around looking at each other as the people in the room sorted themselves out. Their number stayed at thirteen.

“I’m Waterman Stoddard,” the man in moose hide declared. “I want to be your delegate.”

“Why?” Gnady asked, surprising himself.

“I’ve been to university, I know how to talk to politicians no matter where they’re from.”

“But how do you feel?” Gnady asked. “Why do you want this, because you can talk? Who can’t?”

“Feel about what?” Clara Oldsquaw asked.

“About this new government, about the old government!” Gnady threw his hands up. “If you think it’s worth fighting the Czar, and for what? What do want to have happen when this is over? We know people by what they