Enlil landed the modified Goa'uld transport ship just outside of a small cluster of cottages that didn't show anything that registered as "human" or "near-human" on the lifesigns detector. We were far enough in the wilderness that these were likely hunting lodges or waystations used by people in the lumber industry when they traveled from the deep siberian wilderness to the relative civilization of Verkhoyansk by comparison to the untamed permafrost of Siberia. By the way, the "frost" part of "permafrost" is not just a suggestion. Even in June it was frigid.

Anyone who has lived through a Chicago Winter will probably believe that they have a good sense for cold. And I've been in some nasty Chicago Winters. The sort of weather where you don't walk to your car without seven layers and a sherpa. So when I say that Russia is cold, Russia is freaking cold.

I realize that I'm not exactly breaking new ground with that one. But hell's bells Russia is freaking capital C.O.L.D. - cold. As we left the Sky Beetle I was forced to retract my mask due to the sudden buildup of ice over my visor as the vicious gusts of wind sliced across my helmet. To my surprise, it was not met with the biting cold that one should expect from that weather but what felt almost like a gentle autumn breeze. Apparently the influence the Winter Court had over my power extended to being comfortable in Winter weather.

My compatriots were not similarly gifted - one in particular. I channeled fire through my staff, enough to make the runes glow and cast a small corona of heat to stop Mumina from dying of hypothermia the second she hit the ground. I hugged her close to me to avoid a potential loss of heat and did my best to ignore the very pleased noise she made as I did so.

"Thank you, Lord Warden." Mumina purred as Ammit and the others disembarked. "I - am not worthy of such attention."

"You're not exactly dressed for sub-zero weather and I can't have you dying in the wilderness." I joked. I watched as the Russians and Kincaid spread out to the buildings, checking them one by one for occupants or useful items. As I looked back from their canvassing of the area, I noted that she was still shivering in spite of the heat coming from my staff. She wouldn't complain but bare feet and permafrost did not mix. "I don't know if you should come with us, Muminah. This is going to be dangerous and I don't want your death on my conscience."

"You are the one who tells us that it is right and righteous actions that define a man." Muminah replied in a voice of utter conviction. "There is a child in danger. You are going to save her. That is all I need to know."

I recognized that tone. I hated that tone. It was the tone and tenor that every member of the clergy adopted when they were quoting scripture back at me in an effort to use my own words as evidence for why they should be doing what they damn well pleased. I knew full well that I was a hypocrite without needing an entire class of society devoted to documenting it.

"This isn't a test of faith, Muminah - this is your life." I growled in irritation. "Koschei is old - impossibly old and dangerous. I don't know if I will be able to take him out. Everyone who is doing this probably isn't coming back."

"Then I cannot think of a better place to die than in the service of my god." Spoke the priestess, as though that ought to have been obvious to even the must patent dullard. She traced her fingers along the runes of my staff, flickering embers of magic dancing out and dissolving into her intricate tattoos. Orange little sparks jumped in and out of her markings, dancing from her fingers down to her toes and onto the frozen ground. "To serve you even to my last breath? It is my greatest wish."

Right - she was a zealot. "Not dying for the cause" probably wasn't my best pitch. But if she was going to do the whole "Hail Ha'ri" thing, then maybe I could use that to my advantage. "The as your god, I am ordering you back on that transport."

"It is the duty of every man and woman to use their mind and heart to tell them when they must act, even if it is in defiance of the gods themselves." The priestess eyes twinkled mischievously as she replied. "So spoke the Lord Warden and so shall I act in the conscience of my heart."

"Unbelievable…" Now she chose not to listen to me by listening to me. I just couldn't win.

I thought about the Zat gun I'd used to subdue Thomas. Only for a moment though, it was an empty plan even in my own head. Muminah was a girl. It might be a stupid, regressive, and retrograde part of me but I just couldn't bring myself to hurt a girl. Yes, I knew it was dumb. Yes, it had caused me more troubles than I cared to think about, but I still just couldn't do it. Girls were special and beautiful. Men just shouldn't hit them. They most definitely shouldn't shoot them with ray guns.

It was a rule.

And rules didn't always have to make sense.

I lifted her chin so that she looked up at my face. "Muminah, you don't have to prove anything to me or to anyone else. I believe that you're a good person."

Her eyes got a bit misty as she choked on her reply. "I know. That's why I can't leave, Lord Warden. Good people don't leave when they can do the right thing. It's what you would do."

She might as well have slugged me. This woman had literally walked barefoot into hell and she still wanted to keep going, just because there was a child who needed her. Stars and Stones - these people were willing to throw their lives away for a worthy cause just because they believed its what I would do in their place. I couldn't even find fault in her logic. It's literally what I was doing. And given the sorts of creatures I'd fought outside my weight class when I'd been a P.I. - who was I to judge her for wanting to take a potshot at the geriatric of doom?

"Fine - but you don't die." I spoke in a voice of utter conviction. "You hear me - not today. You're not allowed to die."

"Don't suppose you'd care to extend that one to the rest of us, Warden?" Ammit intoned in a voice of dry amusement. "Or is it just your pets that have a mandatory lifespan?"

"They're people, not pets - Ammit." I replied to the deamoness as she lifted a half-frozen axe from a stump next to a pile of chopped wood. It looked pathetically small in her hand as she swung it in a coupe bored swipes before embedding it back in the stump. The stump cracked in half as she let go.

"What else do you want me to call food you won't let me eat?" Ammit held up her oversized crystaline foci, channeling enough energy through it to cast a beam out light out before her to illuminate the side of the building. "Odd, this place is well maintained for somewhere that has been abandoned."

"You could tell them that." I gestured at the military men as they continued their sweep of the area. Not that there was much conviction in my voice. I didn't especially like either Kincaid or the Russians when it came down to it. "Save them some time."

"If they're not willing to believe a combat class threat detection system on a Scarab Class transport from the height of the War of the First World then I doubt that my nose is going to be the determining factor in convincing them of the error of their ways." She sniffed the air deeply, inhaling the breeze. "There haven't been humans here in days. Plenty of creatures, but no Tau'ri for miles."

"Then let's get out of the cold." I exaggeratedly made an effort to show discomfort that I didn't really feel and frog marched Muminah into the largest cabin. I wasn't overly surprised when I found that the cabin didn't have any apparent locking mechanism. This far in the back country and people were more worried about making shelter accessible than they would be about burglars.

The inside of the cabin looked like the Russian Fess Parker movie knockoff what with the log walls, piles of fur and an iron stove. There was a mix of furniture from different styles and eras, mixed together in a mish-mosh pattern that seemed to have valued comfort and durability over appearance. It all looked distinctly Soviet, though someone had decided to spruce up the drab mass produced kitchcet set by using bright pastel colors to paint flowers over a blue background the wooden chairs and table.

A haphazard pile of board games with such thrilling titles as "Chemical Warfare," "Reds and Whites," "Circular Race," and "For Healthy Living" briefly reminded me how lucky I'd been to grow up in America - even if Monopoly had taken forever to finish. The previous occupants seemed to agree with my assessment of the board games, electing instead to play with a particularly well-worn chess set. It had seen better days, to be sure. It looked like the family dog had had his way with the pieces at some point. There wasn't a single one of them without a tooth mark. The people who'd been here before us had apparently left in the middle of a chess match just before Black could manage to kick White's ass. Two moves from checkmate by my reckoning.

What kind of a sore loser ended a game that early?

I walked over to the wardrobe next to the stack of furs and opened it. I ignored the thick wool sweater and pants, not feeling inclined to fight the pointless battle of convincing her that it really was ok to wear wool, choosing instead to grab a tolstoy shirt and embroidered pants made of linen. I shoved them into Muminah's arms before grabbing a long fur-coat and fur-lined leather boots on from the closet.

"Lord Warden - I don't know if... " I flashed my eyes angrily, silencing her.

"This clothing follows the arbitrary rules of the clergy. You can, and you damn well will, wear it." I snarled, earning an amused chortle from Ammit as she sliced open a tin of canned beef with a talon and started feeding herself large hunks of it.

"No.. Lord Warden, I can wear it." She looked guiltily at the cabin around us. "But… we're stealing this clothing from whoever owns this cabin. I don't know if I'm comfortable with that. Stealing is wrong."

Lord Almighty save me from my own doctrine. I pulled a gemstone out of one of the compartments at my waist and left it on the kitchen table. "We're not stealing. We're commandeering."

"At the cost of a decent sized city, apparently." Ammit pointed to the gem with a beef coated talon. "We really need to discuss exchange rates at some point Warden. You fundamentally don't seem to understand wealth."

"I use it to make problems go away." I considered exchanging the large stone for one of the smaller ones I'd brought with me, but opted not to. I had entire vaults full of stones even larger than the one I'd used as payment. I could afford to be generous.

"People who use wealth to get rid of problems generally run out of wealth before they run out of problems, Warden." Ammit opened a second tin of beef as I pulled out a second coat and put it over my armor. "Don't use a tool as a solution."

I cinched up the fasteners on my fur coat, pulling the hood up and over my head as I looked back in the closet pensively. "Definitely not as a solution for you - it would seem."

"Excuse me?" Ammit replied, half offended, as she downed the can in a meaty gulp.

"For your coat I mean." I gestured at the contents of the wardrobe. "They're not sizing this stuff for you."

"I have no need of a coat." Ammit waved off the very suggestion, opening up the pantry in search of more tinned meat. She rummaged through the cans, pulling out a can of pineapple and giving it a speculative look. She sniffed it twice, opened it with a talon and gagged at the taste. "That is foul."

"People you eat but pineapple is too much for you?" I inquired, rummaging through the thick pile of fur. No, they were all too small to be of any use. "And you do need a disguise. This is Earth. Nobody has seen an Unas in thousands of years. I don't want to have some Russian farmer shooting at you because he doesn't know better."

"Mortal weapons are hardly a concern for either of us." Ammit discarded the pineapple in the sink and removed a tin of tuna. "And I'm a carnivore. I eat meat."

"Muminah isn't bulletproof." I grinned wolfishly as my eyes fell upon a bear pelt that someone in the back bedroom had been in the process of sewing up with the intention of turning it into taxidermy. It wasn't a coat per-se but if I tied it off with a couple of the other pelts… it might work as a passable disguise. "And it's only till we find the Keeper."

"Till the Keeper finds us, you mean." Ammit pawed Tuna into her maw, struggling to keep the loose meat in her fingers. Bits of loose meat fell down her face and from her fingers as she licked grease from her fingers. "We are wandering into the heart of his territory."

"You seem oddly calm considering that we're wandering into an obvious trap." I replied. "I mean, Chauncey couldn't have broadcast "trap, I'm sending you into a trap" any harder if he'd offered the information for free."

"I must admit, Warden, I'd rather believed that you took his information at face value." Ammit arched a scaled brow. "You believe the Keeper genuinely has a chariot?"

"Of course he does. Chancey relies on his reputation for reliable trades. If he burns a god with false information nobody will ever trust him again." I shrugged. "But if he uses a fair trade with a god to destroy that god he moves up a couple tiers importance in the Down Below - maybe even earns some serious favors with the Fallen. I mean, anyone who has a way to access a way to Koschei's stronghold who has been able to keep it has to have some major mojo behind them. This guy is Mother Winter's Kid for cripes sake. He isn't going to tolerate someone having his spare garage door key."

"Consider this a Geography lesson then, Warden." Ammit pulled a framed map of the world from the wall and put it down on the table, gesturing for me to draw closer. "So you know the parts of the world that were our dominion correct? We ruled these parts of the world without question."

She moved her talon along the equator, moving across the world and drawing her talon down south. "But we did not extend north. The native species objected to our presence."

She gestured to Eastern Russia and North America, before resting a talon on Australia. "Some tried… and failed miserably."

I looked up at her in surprise. "The humans repelled you? Even at the height of your power?"

Ammit shot me a disgusted look. "Not the Tau'ri - not even the Hok'tar, could repel us at our height. No, Warden. I mean the dominant species of this planet. The only thinking ones that evolved her without outside intervention."

Our discussion was cut off by a loud snap-bang that I briefly mistook for weapons-fire before I recognized it as the ignition starting on a primitive petrol engine car. Wait? Primitive - when had I started thinking about cars as primitive? I was getting spoiled by all the Goa'uld tech to which I had easy access.

Then again, considering the Soviet era POS that was making the noises, "primitive" probably wasn't the most inappropriate choice of words. I helped Ammit into the bearskin, tying it shut with several interwoven fox pelts and wrapping her head in a thick woolen balaclava. It did little to make her less intimidating, but at least she just seemed "massive and threatening" as opposed to "the most obvious alien on earth."

We exited the cabin to discover Kincaid and Colonel Zhukov arguing with each other over who got to drive the hideous soviet-made van. I poked my head into the crew compartment, and found the other three Russian Soldiers piled in the rear three seats out of a potential six. Ammit leaned over me, gave a dismissive sniff at the tiny seats, and opened up rear doors to sit in the back compartment of the rear cab - slamming the door behind herself as she muttered about. "Pitiful design."

I helped Muminah to fasten her seatbelt, counted to three, then walked over to the two grown men still squabbling over who gets to drive the van, addressing them in Russian. "Is there a specific reason you're delaying our departure?"

"He should drive." Kincaid affirmed, brandishing a folding map of Russia at the Colonel. "He is from this country and most familiar with the roads."

"Nyet." The Colonel Disagreed. "It is because I am familiar with how things are done in Russia that means I should be reading the map. It is foolishness not to take advantage of this."

I let out a long exhalation of breath that sent a long tendril of inky black starscape out to dissipate into the frigid air . "Gentlemen. It has been a long, difficult day, for all of us. I appreciate that. But if the next words that come out of your mouths don't lead me to believe that you're doing something other than delaying saving The Archive - a freaking child - because you're in a dickmeasuring contest to determine which of you gets hold your gun while the other guy is forced to drive - I swear to all that is Holy - I will set you on fire, then let Ammit eat you."

The Colonel practically flew into the driver's seat.