Grigoriy Grigorievich ducked his head and pulled down hard on the crosscut saw. Sawdust and chips sprayed across him. He automatically shook his head before he pushed up and watched the man above him pull the long saw back to start the next cut. Four more cuts, he calculated, and the last log would be planked out.
"Pull!" Dimitri said above him, continuing the cadence. "Push. Pull. Push. Pull."
Halfway through the next downward cut, the last two pieces of the log fell apart into planks.
"Letting go!" Grisha said loudly and released the saw handle. He kneaded the hardening blisters on his hands while stumbling out of the saw pit. He shook himself off and brushed madly at his hair to dislodge as much of the chips and dust as possible.
Without raising his head he glanced around the clearing, locating all four cossacks. The soldiers would give a man time to catch his breath. But the cossacks interpreted a prisoner's lack of motion as a personal affront.
Grisha waved madly until the closest cossack nodded, then grabbed a handful of leaves and scuttled into the brush toward the malodorous slit trench. He dropped his ragged trousers and balanced narrow buttocks across the birch pole that served as a seat. Carefully he breathed through his mouth while his bowels released their watery load. He allowed himself to dwell on the fact that he was still losing weight before forcing his thoughts elsewhere.
Unbidden, unstoppable, he thought of Pravda and the clean pleasure of running full out down some beautiful channel.
His sphincter clenched and he briskly used the leaves with his left hand. He pushed himself off the pole and bent to pull up his pants. A dizzying blow sent him reeling forward to fall full on his face, his clothing still down around his ankles.
Quickly he rolled onto his back and pulled his knees up over his exposed loins. Vich-something, the cossack sergeant, towered over him, legs wide, arms akimbo, and his gravel voice ground at Grisha.
"With good fortune you're blessed, pretty one," he said in Russian. "Out of twenty new mares, four of them are actually female. But soon you will know a stallion's strength, just like all the other animals on our little farm." He laughed without pretense at humor.
"Quickly return to work, you dung-eater! Or I will geld you now before your strength dissipates."
Grisha jerked the trousers up as he rolled over, lurching to his feet he ran toward the rapidly rising lodge. He knew he could kill one of them with his bare hands, but not four, especially when all were armed. He hoped to last long enough to kill at least one.
Basil, the wide-shouldered Georgian, grunted as he pried a log end up to secure the rope around it. Grisha skidded to a halt next to him, already on his knees, and pushed the noose over the squared-off tree trunk.
The straw boss, a thick Indian or Creole woman from somewhere to the west, barked a command and four women tightened the rope to take the log's weight off the pry bar. Grisha jumped up and helped hoist the log high enough to maneuver the end into the corner notch where it belonged.
At the other corner of the ten-meter wall, Basil, the wild-haired woodsman, hacked furiously to cut the place where the log's lower end would fit. Grisha scrambled up the wall and released the noose. Sallow-faced Andreivich, who had talked less and less as his strength drained, pushed the crude derrick around to position the rope above the back of Samis.
The burly army guard stepped forward and pointed his rifle in their general direction as Samis finished the cut before lowering himself to the ground. His short ax hung by a rope thong looped around his neck. He ignored the guard as he scrambled up onto the next corner. Taking a deep breath and careful aim he hacked out another joint.
As he went through the achingly familiar motions yet again, Grisha's thoughts drifted to the forest. This might be bad, but out there could be worse. Rumors told of work parties disappearing, cossacks, guards, and all, never to be heard of again.
They had been told cannibals lurked in the dense forest waiting for the unwary. No matter how grim their life under the cossacks, they continued to live.
However, he was sure they were in Dená country, or very close to it. Soldiers from here had served under him in the Troika Guard. If there were cannibals roaming the forest he would have heard about it long ago.
But slipping away without even a knife would mean starving to death, or perhaps ending up as dinner for a bear. He reflected that, in all his military travels, until now he had never been to the interior of Russian Amerika.
Irena poked him sharply with her elbow.
"You're cloud-gazing again, slave. Pay attention and help me pull the rope."
Grisha tugged obediently on the rope. Irena had arrived in the same coffle of prisoners with Grisha. He'd noticed her compact, pleasing body on the trip here, before sickness dominated his life. She was the first of the coffle to be raped by the cossacks. Even now her purpled right eye swelled as a result of further attention from one of their masters.
His willpower had dissipated in tandem with his physical strength and both approached their nadir. At the trial he had felt grateful toward the judge for saving him from the rope, even though was not sure he had received the most humane sentence. At least now the mosquitoes were nearly gone.
A breeze wafted through the trees and cleared the air momentarily. Instantly Grisha imagined himself on the deck of Pravda, the master of his domain, and free on the water. A frustrated tear leaked from the corner of his eye and he concentrated on hoisting the log onto the wall. Only three weeks completed out of thirty years.
Kazina's name stuck in his mind. But try as he might, he could no longer picture his wife's face. Last week he received official notice of the dissolution of his marriage. He used the paper at the slit trench and wondered if she still slept with the naval kommander.
Another tear broke free of his suppressed emotions and blended quietly into his sweat. In all of this upheaval and hell, he nursed but one teeth-gritting dream—to meet Valari Kominskiya one more time. He vowed she would not live through the encounter.
Hammers sounded from the small cabins grouped around the ever-growing lodge, bringing him back to grim reality. They all worked as hard as possible to finish before the subarctic winter snapped down on the land. All this for foreigners, he thought. Why would anyone pay money to vacation here?
"Put your back into it, you cockless mare!"
Grisha gripped the rope and did as he was told.