Aliev had no way of closing his mouth, and all food had to be sucked into his
gullet.
Across the dark cavern of his nasal orifice, Aliev had a veil of crumpled skin
as thin as the wing of a moth. It moved raggedly in and out in time with his
raucous breathing. To stand close was to inhale the odors from the entrance of
hell, as Aliev only accepted meat that was rotting and crawling with larvae. He
would bury his snout in it and devour it ravenously and noisily.
Now he dropped to his hands and knees, closing his eyes, laying his nose to the
snow, sniffing. The others watched from a distance, each man holding the muzzle
of his horse to quiet it.
Then, as he had a thousand times, Zimyanin wished that he could be transferred
to a militia unit far, far to the west. There they had petroleum in some
quantity and trucks. He knew because he had seen pictures of them. Soon, he was
told, his cavalry would be given trucks. He had heard it several times from his
superiors in the last three years. If the party told you something was true,
then it was.
“Well?”
The face turned to him, and he nearly vomited at the nauseous panting, sniffing
noise that Aliev made in his eagerness.
The brutish head nodded.
Aliev was a wonderful tracker, but he had drawbacks. Apart from the horrific
look of the man, he could neither speak nor read or write, which made
communication difficult and taught others to avoid unnecessary questions.
“The same ones? Yes. How many days gone? Five? Four? Four. Good.” He gestured
with a gloved hand for the creature to return to his place in the patrol.
Four days journey ahead of them, twenty-eight men and women seemed to be
preparing to cross the strait and move into what had been America. Zimyanin’s
heart thrilled in his chest. He knew that no unit of the party’s militia had
ever been this close to the enemy’s land. They could not refuse him promotion if
he… But this was leaping a wall before he had even mounted his horse. Nobody
would applaud the singer just for clearing his throat.
But to catch and destroy the band of slaughtering butchers ahead would be so
good. He had been trailing Uchitel and his marauders for weeks now, even closing
in at times. But if they crossed the ice river, then his band of militia might
be seen. Perhaps a camp for a day?
Perhaps the body of the man they’d just shot would yield a clue, Zimyanin’s head
was becoming cold so he replaced his fur cap and walked thoughtfully toward his
horse. There was much to think about. .
CONFUSED, NUL PULLED OFF his gauntlets and again felt the numb patch in the
middle of his chest. He felt chilled, but his fingers encountered a sticky wet
warmth. Disbelievingly, he painfully held his hand in front of his eyes. It was
dripping with blood, as though it had been thrust into the belly of a
slaughtered beast,
“Is this… ?” But his words faded.
As he lay on his side, his eyes caught the great lake of crimson growing around
him. The numbness was sliding away and there was a dull ache. He touched himself
again, and his fingers could feel the brittle sharpness of shattered ribs.
He could dimly make out a group of people. At least a mile away, they were mere
dots against the blurring whiteness. “Uchitel…?” he said. It was good that
friends came to watch you. Even that heartless bastard Uchitel. He’d come back
for him.
UCHITEL’S HORSE galloped off the jagged edges of the sea ice onto the wind-swept
boulders of the beach. “I claim the old land of America in the name of the
Narodniki. In the name of Uchitel,” shouted the rider.
Some seventy miles away, Nul lay still, eyes closed, locked into the mystery of
his own passing.
Chapter Seven
RYAN AND J. B. Dix were poring over a hand-drawn map of the redoubt and
stockpile done on six separate sheets of paper, each one showing two different
levels. The complexity of the place was staggering. It had more than seventy