They traveled the first days during early morning to mid or early afternoon, making camp in the daylight to have time to build a shelter and a fire and dry their clothes before dark. A hot meal, their largest of the day and then exhausted sleep set in, huddled in a snow trench, sometimes taking turns if it seemed that predators might be near. More often, though, both falling into exhausted sleep with one hand around a knife, either the real one or the shiv Bruce had made from scrap metal from the shuttle. More than once Clark saw Bruce's hand flinch as he woke, preparing for attack before realizing the reason he wake was the man stirring beside him, not an attack.

After four days they were able to switch to glacier travel, best done at night, when surfaces were more constant, and runoff streams less likely. Then the sleep was during daylight, and the relative warmth and sunshine made for strange dreams and groggy disorientation after waking. Still they pressed toward their goal, following as best they could both Bruce's almost disconcertingly preternatural sense of terrain and a crude map ripped from a dead man's journal.

It was on one of those cobalt and white nights, crossing glassy ice that they heard it, the softest trickle of that which they had most been hoping to find. Bruce crouched down with his hands on his knees, and closed his eyes for a moment when they did finally see the river that must lead the way out. More ice than water, there was water nonetheless, and as they followed it downstream, the ratio changed, ice giving way to water's insistent force.

They were following another man's path, and Koslov's journal had marked the way. It had led them true, and when they began walking beside the river, icy but blessedly not frozen solid, they began to see signs left by the man who had placed them there forty years before.

A scrap of rag, a pile of stones, natural landmarks drawn by hand in the books pages showed up, one by precious one, and with each find, Clark watched Bruce relax in the tiniest of increments. For the first time in at least a week he saw the man smile when he found the cairn with the wolf's skull and seven rocks beside the crook of the river, a sign left by a man for another, long dead, yet used by strangers so many years since it had been planned.

The river widened and thawed, rushing faster, and beside it too the ground showing through the snow more and more often, coniferous trees becoming thicker and more prevalent and one morning after waking Clark was bending to get a drink and splash his face when he saw the first fish. He yelled to Bruce, who was lashing up the last of their supplies so that they could move forward for the day, and Bruce looked up at him, not hearing or maybe not believing. They had lived on small animals, rodents and the occasional other small furred unnamed creatures that were like some kind of rabbit or nutria, for so long by now and because there was no other food, that Clark could gut and skin one as quickly and efficiently as Bruce, nearly. He knew which organs must be consumed first, even those from the skull, and how to remove the layer of fat that lay over the kidney to reserve it for later. The fish, combined with the idea that plants might be available soon, tubers or some kind of other edible vegetation, filled him with a sense of hope that rushed through him with a strength greater than the force of the river, churning so loudly that Bruce hadn't heard him.

But then he knew Bruce had seen it too, the flash of a leaping fish, silver scales glittering in the weak sun, and Bruce laughed, honest to God laughed. They moved only a little further downstream and that afternoon they set up camp a hours earlier than they normally would, so that they could fish, using sticks and twine and small fasteners that had once held the shuttle together for their hooks, and pole in hand, on the bank of a river, they sat on ground that was cold but not snow-covered and they fished, side by side. Were it not for what they wore and the way they looked, haggard and gaunt, they could have been any two men, out fishing for a lazy afternoon.

Clark leaned against a tree and closed his eyes and did not think about anything but this for a long time, until Bruce, lying flat on his back with his elbows propped, interrupted the silence finally. "They're going upstream." he said, "it's spring,"

"Probably," was all Clark said, voice as soft as Pa had taught him. "That's what it usually means."

"It also means our calculations were right."

Clark smiled, still not opening his eyes. "I never doubted your calculations."

*****

That night, after feasting on fish cooked over the flames, Clark again against a tree, rough bark at his back. He felt like an Indian or cowboy, feet stretched out to warm against the circled rocks.

Bruce poked the fire with a stick, making a small blue flame rise up from the embers before banking, ruby red coals so full of hearth and comfort that Clark, full and warm, sighed out loud, stretching closer to the warmth like a cat in the sun. The movement of his foot shifted one of the stones and he tilted his head, catching a glint of something metallic. "Bruce," he said slowly, "give me that stick you're using."

From where he sat on his wolf pelt, Bruce handed it over. "What is it?"

Clark surveyed the swept circle of dirt, the stones circling their campfire. "This … we built it right on the spot where we found the cairn, didn't we?"

"The rocks were already there. A starter set, anyway."

"So yes." Clark poked the dirt, and more metal showed. A squared, serrated rim. He dug deeper and the stick snapped in two. "It's a can," he said. "Or maybe just a lid."

Bruce grabbed a pointed rock from the other side and skimmed it at him. Now they were both crouching over the dirt, and it was indeed a can. Or a tin, more correctly. One that had been opened, then the lid carefully replaced. He dug it out of the hole and held it, a Russian label indicating some small preserved fish crumbling at the edges, and carefully peeled back the lid which had been curled, then flattened to original again before placing it on top.

"Open it," Bruce said, quite unnecessarily, and Clark had to grin at him because his hands were shaking with the excitement of seeing what he'd found.

Under the lid was a rectangle of yellowed paper, and on it, the stilted, right-leaning cursive they knew so well.

"Koslov…" Bruce said at his elbow, reading over his shoulder.

"It's like we know him."

"He's… he left it for Baranova. Mashchenko if he made it and they followed him to the ship."

"He's hurt," Bruce said.

"Was hurt. That's past tense. Broke his arm and holed up here for a while. Now he's moving on."

"But he's lightening his load," Bruce scanned quickly. "He got food here… set up traps and weirs while he was laid up, lived on the game, and dried the fish."

"He's leaving some of his supplies behind," Clark said. "Too weak to carry it all. Burying it… a little further up the bank. The dirt's too hard here, so—"

"Damn." Bruce bit out the word and Clark stopped translating for a moment.

"What?"

"I've been a fool." Bruce's jaw was set and grim, and Clark had to snap "What?" again to make him explain. "There must have been missives all along," he said. "Under the cairns."

"Well, maybe so," Clark considered this. "And?"

"So who knows what information we haven't recovered? Passing by these obvious signposts? Ignoring the most important aspect?"

"More than likely they just told us what we already know," Clark said. "Obviously he kept going. And I don't think he knows any more than we do about what's coming up."

"He obviously knows more about his rendezvous." Bruce's voice was a bitter growl and in the dark and starred night, Clark could almost see the cowl's silhouette. "I cannot believe I let us just hike past them without investigating—" He was staring back into the darkness, turning to look at the way they'd come.

"Well I'm not going back." Clark focused on the note again. "And I didn't think of it either."

"You're not the detective."

If Clark had been Dick he would've rolled his eyes but he didn't and he also did not point out that he'd actually been the one who detected the note itself. "He says," Clark said a bit sharply, waiting until he had Bruce's full attention, "that he left a cache of supplies a few yards upstream and up the bank. Under a deadfall, marked with a piece of orange ribbon."

Bruce sighed dramatically. "Well, we can't go tonight."

"No." Clark smiled and lay back on the pelt he'd taken to sleeping on. It was the pelt of the tiger that'd attacked him. At first he hadn't wanted it, but then it got cold enough that every pelt was desirable, and by now he'd decided that his survival was the ultimate victory. He pulled another one over his legs, this time a wolf he'd killed himself, and let his body curve around the warmth of the fire, listening to Bruce move to his own spot, find his own pelt. The fire was warm and sweet on his face in the darkness and he slept well, dreaming of treasures buried under deadfalls in the wilderness.