The Narodniki were on the right road. They knew that because the mutie woman had told them before they used and abused her, finally spilling her tripe in the snow with the curved blade of the bayonet of a Kalashnikov.
"Ank Ridge?" had been the question from Uchitel. "Stoppile and Ank Ridge."
She'd responded to the latter name, gesturing to the south. Her mouth was so misshapen, with only a residual tongue, that she could do no more than nod and point.
So they moved on: a long line of people, heavily furred against the bitter nuclear winter, heeling their ponies and horses toward the rising sun, rifles slung across shoulders, food and ammo weighing down the pack animals. Their eyes were cold as ice, and many of them wore clothes splattered with dried blood.
So far they had seen no signs of the legendary dangers that had for so long prevented anyone from the Russian side crossing the frozen strait. There had been no sign of flaming hot spots or of giant muties fifty feet tall with eyes of fire and claws of steel. Nor was the land utterly barren. Here and there were patches of earth free of snow, pocked and dappled with dark green mosses and stubbly grass.
They had met little opposition to their plans to drive inland. Apart from the loss of Nul, and Stena's unfortunate shoulder wound, there had been few casualties on this trip, and they had lost only two men, both to a single rifleman a day back. The sniper had ridden on a slope overlooking the hamlet they were ravaging and had shot down both men from cover. Then, as the angry guerrillas charged him, he had put a bullet through his own skull.
Two dead, three if he counted the absent Nul, Uchitel thought. Only one injured, two if he allowed for the three toes that Britva had self-amputated.
Their journey to Stoppile was taking much longer than Uchitel had been led to expect. After a two-week southeasterly trek across the Alaskan interior, they'd encountered an impossible mountain range. Changing their course to the northeast, they'd eventually found a trail that led south through the mountains. Unknown to the Narodniki, they were traveling along the earthquake-riven remains of what had once been the main highway linking Anchorage and Fairbanks.
Now that they were finally drawing close to Ank Ridge and Stoppile, Uchitel was well pleased with himself, and as they rode along, he sang an old, old ballad about the stars being the sentinels for mankind. He liked the verse about the importance of order over chaos. It appealed to his sense of the rightness of things.
Far off to the left he glimpsed the skulking shapes of a pack of mutie wolves, their bellies flat to the tundra, shadowing the party. They must be disappointed, thought Uchitel, that there were no weak stragglers in his band as there might be in a herd of caribou — stragglers that they could drag down and rend apart.
There were no weak stragglers in the Narodniki.
Toward evening the ground shook with one of the worst quakes since they'd crossed into Alaska. Rocks on a slope of ice-bound boulders ahead of them broke free and cascaded down noisily, nearly blocking the trail. The horses were frightened, and several riders, including the massive Bizabraznia, were unseated. Angered by the mocking laughter, she grabbed her animal's bridle and delivered a fearsome punch to the horse's head, knocking it to its knees. Then she kicked and lashed it with her whip until it returned to its feet. As she remounted, she was rewarded with cheers from her fellows.
Uchitel touched the cold hilt of his saber, remembering the good feeling of decapitating an enemy. He wanted to capture more enemies so that he could use the sword once more. Perhaps in the town of Ank Ridge there would be plenty of chances.
When the wind shifted to the south he caught the bitter taste of salt on his tongue, in addition to the ever-present sulfur from the surrounding volcanoes. The salt meant the sea could not be far away, which meant that Ank Ridge must also be close.
Grom, their explosives expert, reined in his horse alongside Uchitel. "That would make a fine show for my toys," he shouted. Grom was almost stone deaf and shouted all the time.
Grom pointed to a large dam with towers, set across a valley to their left. It dominated the valley where they rode, silhouetted against the amber sky, which was splashed with streaks of vivid green lightning.
"The water will be frozen, Grom," he called, facing him so Grom could read his lips.
"No, Uchitel! See ahead, there is a river that flows and there is green to its sides. Away beyond that dam you see the smoking cone of a volcano. It heats the water so that it flows. Let me burst it and wash all away down here. It would be a fine sight, I swear."
"Not now, brother. Perhaps another day, but not yet. Not now!"
"What is that, Uchitel?"
Evening was dragging its murky cloak across the wasteland, the yellow clouds turning a sullen maroon. It had snowed a little during the late part of the afternoon, dusting the trail ahead. The dam was still visible behind them. This time it was Barkhat, with the smooth, velvet voice, who spoke; as he did so, the puckered scar at the corner of his mouth twitched and danced.
"Where?"
"Yonder. Like a large ball."
Uchitel strained his eyes into the gloom. He saw several squat buildings and a large saucer-shaped object, which was cracked along one side and mounted on a tripod. It was difficult to judge its size, but it looked to be about a hundred feet in height. There was also a huge ball, half as high again, that seemed to be made from a complicated pattern of interwoven triangles. Uchitel had never seen anything like it, but it nagged at his memory. There had been something like it in one of the old history books in Yakutsk.
"I think it was a defense against firefights."
"What?"
Uchitel nodded, the facts trickling back into his mind. "It was called radar, Barkhat. It was a way of seeing great distances and watching for enemies. There were many such installations along the coasts. I have read that such buildings stood where the Sakhalin and Kamchatka lands were. But they were..." he hesitated, seeking the expression that he'd read "Da, they were 'primary objectives' for the nukes. This one must have been missed."
"Should we go look, Uchitel? Might there not be much gold?"
"Imbecile! Would there be gold after a hundred years? They were not places of wealth. No. Let us ride on by."
"Perhaps we could camp there if the buildings are safe."
Uchitel considered it. "Perhaps, brother. Perhaps we can."
"And watch for enemies," added Urach, who'd come in time to hear the latter part of the conversation.
"Our enemies are all ahead of us. We need no radar to tell us that."
"None behind?" asked Urach.
"Nyet," replied Uchitel, forcefully. "If there were, then they stayed back in Russia. They will never be a threat to the Narodniki."
One hundred and fifty miles behind the Narodniki, Major Gregori Zimyanin was leading his group of one hundred mounted militia. They were at the foothills of the Alaskan Range, spread well out, the horses picking their way carefully through the torturous mountain terrain.
Aliev, the Tracker, was a little ahead of them, waving them forward. Zimyanin had deliberately held up the crossing of the Bering Strait, hesitant at the enonnousness of what he was doing, and uncertain whether the party would approve.
But now that he was closing in on his prey, some three or four days behind, it was time to press forward at all speed. As his horse crested a rise, the officer's heart filled with pride.
This might be just the beginning.