odd-colored eyes. Something was real wrong.
“You want directions somewhere? Are you lost? Where you from?” His finger
touched the Remington’s slim trigger, a three-inch nail that had been used to
replace the original trigger when it had rusted through.
Uchitel ignored him, flicking through the pages until he found what he wanted.
Holding the book in his right hand, he raised his voice so that the rest of the
Narodniki could hear and admire. As he was about to begin, he heard a snigger.
“Perhaps, Krisa, I shall give you some cause for laughter in a while. You can
laugh as your rat’s belly is slit and filled with pyrotabs, then set on fire.”
“I am sorry, Uchitel,” whispered Krisa, blinking his narrow little red eyes in
sudden gut-twisting fear.
“Who the fuck are you guys?” asked Jorgen Smith. “I don’t know none of you.”
To Uchitel, the man’s accent was barbaric and grating, yet Uchitel still tried
to communicate. “Good morning. Can you direct me us them to the house or
mansion? We are awaited.”
Jorgen’s eyes opened wide with bewilderment. “What the fuck are you talkin’
’bout? You a fuckin’ crowd of stupe muties?”
Uchitel tried again. He could feel a pulse beating at the corner of his right
eye, which meant he was at risk of losing his temper. This imbecile was trying
to make him look like a fool in front of everyone.
“We are—” he paused, deciding to use the Russian name “—Narodniki.” He turned
the pages with clumsy haste, his eyes brightening as he found what he wanted. “I
he she it we they want wants food.”
“Food! You crook-talkin’ bastards want our food?”
Something was going wrong. Uchitel could sense it. He blinked, trying to clear
the reddish mist that clouded his vision. The man facing them was waving his
rifle in a way that was clearly threatening. They could all see that.
Stena, nicknamed the Wall because he was six feet tall and five feet wide,
heeled his horse forward to the side of Uchitel. “The dog threatens us. Let me
kill him, Uchitel?”
“Nyet. Wait.”
“Get the fuck out, you snowsuckin’ bastards! Go piss up an ice rope.”
Jorgen put the Remington to his shoulder and aimed at the man who’d been doing
the talking. Stena saw the move and kicked his heels into the flanks of his big
bay mare and, yelping his delight, drew the 9 mm Makarov pistol from his belt.
Jorgen Smith’s old gun barked first, the 7 mm bullet hitting the big Russian in
the right shoulder. Stena fell from his saddle, landing with a great crash on
his back in the snow.
Jorgen grinned at his success, frantically struggling with the makeshift manual
ejector on the ancient Remington. A few yards away, Uchitel stood in the
stirrups and yelled a command to his band.
“Do not shoot! Nyet! He is mine.”
During his foraging through the ruins of Yakutsk, Uchitel had found a glass case
among the rubble of some public building. A card had said that the item within
the case had been used by Comrade General Denisov in his valiant fight against
the forces of capitalism and fascism during the first months of 1919.”
Now it hung from the pommel of Uchitel’s saddle, a long cavalry sword with a
slightly curved blade, angled and weighted for a downward thrust from horseback.
The hilt was padded with rotting maroon velvet tied with fine gold wire that had
long frayed through. The ferrule was brass, the guard and knuckle bow, silver.
An indentation on the back of the flat blade was engraved with hunting scenes.
From the tip to the dog-head pommel, the sword was only two inches short of four
feet.
As Jorgen prepared another round, Uchitel drew the saber from its leather
sheath, feeling the cold hilt against his palm. Hearing the stamping of hooves,
the American looked up at the last moment and parried the lethal down cut of the
glittering sword with his rifle. Uchitel put so much force into the blow that it
smashed clean through the stock of the rifle a couple of inches behind the
finger guard, cutting Smith in the right shoulder. He dropped the splintered