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 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 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 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 Dená 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.