Raven was alone with his dogs on the ice - alone, and far from home, and from horizon to horizon he could see nothing but whiteness and wind. It would be easy for a man to lose his senses to this landscape, but Raven was not guided by senses alone. Out here, he was one with the spirit of his dogs; together, they listened to the winter. And they perceived something coming from far away. Another musher?
He closed his eyes against the falling snow, but the approacher only became clearer; a vision. A man on a sled much like Raven's, pulled by ten dogs, moving closer to Raven by inches - as distant as springtime and morning, and yet Raven could see every detail of his face, every scar, every bristle, every windswept lock of brown hair.
Raven could see everything. This man was a stranger, not merely to him but to all living things, a stranger even to the dogs who drew him forward - and Raven smelt death in the tracks of his sled. Yet the dogs led him onward.
Even in a vision, a dog spirit would not be led false.
He opened his eyes and was snowblind - the weak winter sun shone through a thousand snowflakes, refracting until the whole landscape glowed with light, but nothing could be seen. No trail leads from winter to spring. To find the path that went westwards was beyond his weak, human abilities - but he trusted his dogs, and listened to their spirits, and would know in a moment if they sensed a threat or a false direction. They knew the world better than humans do; men would have it that this journey west across the ice would lead to the East, and that was reason enough to disregard their directions.
He saw nothing. But his dogs were breaking stride, raising white-furred ears, and beginning a throat-growl of warning. Was that a shape? A great patch of darkness, beyond the snow? He whistled his dogs to a halt, and walked forward on the ice with careful steps, fearing a crack in the iceflow.
It was not a hole into the sea that he found. It was a vast green cloth - a parachute. Underneath it was a man, trembling with cold.
*
This stranger, at least, was human; human, hurting, and in need of another human's care. Raven quickly bivouacked, setting the food for his dogs beside the man's body, hoping their heat would soothe him. He'd wrapped the stranger in the parachute, and set his own hat upon his head; he kept the tiny stove that warmed his food lit for as long as he dared, wary of running out of fuel. He prepared his medicine, and readied his spirit for healing, because he feared the man's knee was injured.
The stranger was beautiful. Raven reflected that he would not have thought so if he had met this man in the streets of a city, but here on the ice he seemed as fair as a warm June day. He was older than Raven, perhaps forty; his hair was long and silvery-blond, and Raven had unbound it and arranged it over ears and neck, hoping to help him keep warm. He could not tell from the angular shape of his face whether he came from the West or the East; this man knew no compass, and that made Raven warm to this cold spirit. He touched the stranger's brow, and felt a slight glow.
He examined the man's backpack, and found a little food, a lot of dollars and roubles, six passports issued by four sovereign nations - each bearing a different name - and a peculiarly ornate handgun. He unloaded it and lined the bullets in the snow.
Clearly this descent from the sky was unplanned.
How had destiny led Raven to the place the man lay? By means of a vision - but it was gone, he no longer remembered it; all he recalled were the beasts moving onward.
*
It was hours before the man awoke. The dogs were sleeping in a great pile atop his legs and back; Raven was watching by lamplight. He saw the man's eyes open to slits, felt himself watched, saw the shift of arms and hands beneath the cloth, saw fingers diving into the pack Raven had placed beneath the man's head. One moment he was a watcher; the next, he knew that he was prey.
"Don't move." He still seemed almost asleep, but his gun was trained on Raven's head.
Raven reached behind himself, and produced a handful of bullets. The man's eyes opened wide. He twirled his gun's chamber with a thumb, chewing his lip, and then tossed it aside.
Raven had no desire to prolong the standoff - even now the man knew he was unarmed, there was danger in those cold blue eyes. He put the bullets in his pocket, and offered some of his food and water. "I am Raven," he said. "I found you under your parachute."
He spoke in Russian, though the man had addressed him in English - after leaving Alaska, Raven had known that he would be speaking Russian in company henceforth, so why not? He didn't ask the stranger's name; he did not wish to be lied to.
"Where am I? Alaska?" the man replied in the same tongue.
"On the sea-ice." Alaska had been many weeks ago for Raven; he disliked the planes that crossed over the strait in mere hours. It would trouble him to confuse a hundred miles for a minute's journey. "We will reach Nunyamo in three days; I can take you there."
"And what will you require in return?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
He looked sceptical, incredulous. But he was part of Raven's path - this was no act of kindness, but a duty to himself and to his journey. "I have everything I need."
"I hate a man who can't be bought." No you don't. But it confuses you, he thought. "Where are you headed?"
"I'm going west, to join the East," he replied.
The man raised a thin eyebrow. "Crossing the Ice Curtain? You know, the Cold War will be over soon..."
Raven shook his head. "Winter will always come again."
He received a thoughtful look in reply. "So you're going to join the army?" Raven nodded. The stranger was examining his body, with a keenness that almost made Raven blush. "No, I don't think so. I think you belong in the GRU. I'll see to it."
Ah. Raven couldn't be bought, but this man was buying him anyway. He seemed used to being important - or, at least, in control. "Are you a communist?" he asked, thinking curiously about this very capitalist exchange of favours.
"No. I'm a patriot." He smiled, and sharp teeth showed between his lips.
*
Raven had underestimated the difficulty of the next day's journey. The dogs were not troubled by the additional burden; compared to his bulk, the stranger was but a feather. Rather, the problem was keeping him warm. It had taken Raven many years to learn to accept the winter without fighting it, to see heat and cold as one and the same - he couldn't teach someone that skill in one night. So he draped the man in spare clothing, blankets and the parachute, and held him between his arms at the front of the sled, supporting his weight to aid that twisted knee. The stranger still wore his hat, so Raven tied a cloth about his own ears and nose to ward off frostbite.
The snow fell much less heavily that day. The sky became clearer, and for a few twilight hours in the middle of the morning, they could see the sun, moon and stars all together. He could feel the traveller in his arms becoming smaller at the sight, humbled by this meeting with nature and the sky - perhaps the first time he'd encountered an adversary he could not kill or cajole. When they camped in the evening, Raven said as much. The man smiled. "The second time, I think. Why, I once met a man who..."
Raven drank in his stories of Cold War intrigues, of secrets and shootouts and this man who was titled 'Big Boss'. "And you can call me Ocelot," he added absently. Raven thought the name appropriate; long fingers, blue catlike eyes, and a predatory smile.
*
The next night, Ocelot had Raven tell the stories; everything from his late teen years in Anchorage to the trials and bounties of a shaman's life in the mountains. How he'd learned to track and trap. How he'd studied the Ear Pull, and learned to be one with winter. Raven knew that these stories were tracking, surveillance - Ocelot wanted to know his capabilities, and his weaknesses, and where best to lay the noose.
And Raven didn't care.
He'd been sitting shirtless, stooped over in the tent - it was too short to accommodate even his half-height. Ocelot's eyes - that pale blue of early morning - were level with his own, and tonight he felt his face was as scrutinised as his body. He sensed the noose being laid, the thrill of a capture, the bringing flesh close to the flame. When Ocelot raised his hand to Raven's neck, he went willingly into the snare.
The cat was well named, he decided, as his flesh was gently clawed and kneaded. He stroked Ocelot's hair, followed its fall around his shoulders, and reached inside the thick folds of clothing. Ocelot swore at the chill touch of his hands, but only moved closer. He leaned his face into Raven's, and took the shaman's lower lip between his teeth.
Perhaps everything this creature did involved a little pain. Everything he did with other humans, anyway.
The blond stroked Raven's hips into a crouch, and then loosened his trousers with surprising rapidity. "Oh boy," he whispered, licking his lips greedily.
He was surprised Ocelot was not put off by the stares and bayings of the huskies, but then he thought of the feral snake eater he had spoken of with such warmth and adoration, and understood.
Later they shared the last of the food, and Raven prayed that the weather would be fine in the morning, because if they could not reach Nunyamo he didn't know what they'd do.
*
He need not have feared. It was the mildest day of his whole journey, and they encountered a sure sign that spring was near; a huge crack in the sea-ice, a crevasse that spanned many miles, probably stretching all the way to the open sea. They wasted two hours in searching for a place to cross over it; eventually they found a spot where it was only a foot wide, and Ocelot guided the dogs over one by one. Raven lifted the sled on his back, let Ocelot steady him with hands on his shoulders, and stepped over the creaking ice.
It was late in the evening when they reached Nunyamo. The villagers seemed glad to see a musher, and their children petted his dogs merrily; Raven was ready to trade seal skins for any food and fuel they could spare, but, "Don't bother," said Ocelot, and took a wad of cash from his pocket. He offered it to the headwoman in return for use of her emergency radio-phone, and seemed unsurprised that she preferred to be paid in dollars.
Raven listened as he spoke into the transmitter - sometimes in Russian or English, often in nonsense-sounds, 'la-le-lu-li-lo' repeated many times over.
Eventually, his transmission evidently over, Ocelot announced that a helicopter would arrive for them in the morning, to take them to Vladivostok and perhaps hence to Moscow. "I guess you're leaving the huskies here, comrade," he said. Raven nodded; the villagers would have a use for them, as workbeasts or breeding stock or possibly as food. Comrade. He was still a shaman and an Inuit, but no longer an American, if he'd ever been one. He was not, as Ocelot had called himself, a patriot, and he suspected he never would be.
But he understood camaraderie, as they settled for rest in the settlement's storage hut, making a bed of sleeping bags and borrowed blankets. He could sense loyalty in the spirit of this conniving, controlling coward, and knew that Ocelot would have laughed in his face if he had put that thought into words. He took the man in his arms for what would not be the last time, but certainly the last for a long, long while.