Date 27/01/2060, Location 41.71136, 44.79692

The team decided to do a little shopping on the way out of Tbilisi, stopping at a large open-air market that seemed to sell a huge variety of gear. Aswon, Kai and Shimazu picked up a variety of local clothing, in a wide variety of sizes – all manner of things that should let them blend in with the locals if required, and that would also hopefully look in place for the journey across Anatolia, Turkey towards Constantinople. They haggled a little, and manged to get the clothing for a pittance, along with some dried supplies, communicating in broken Russian, very pidgin English and lots of smiling and pointing.

Hunter and Tadibya headed to the far side of the market and found a bizarre sight – a mountain of fresh fruit and vegetables, with locals picking all over it. There was a veritable feast of fruits, from common garden apples and oranges to rare stuff like kumquats – and a bunch of stuff they had no idea what to call. Tadibya piled into the scrum and started to collect food, firmly but persistently forcing her way through the melee with elbows and hip checks, gathering a selection of the stuff, aiming to get one of everything. Hunter found someone near the edge who looked to be taking money, and asked them what the story was. In broken Russian the man explained that a cargo load of supplies for some rich Prince had to be gotten rid of, a problem with the transport's engine meant they were stuck here for several days while they waited on parts. The food wouldn't last that long, and the cargo was a loss otherwise. Better to sell it for a pittance to the locals and cover at least the fuel costs so far, than run at a complete loss. Hunter nodded in understanding, then dived into the melee as well, helping clear space for Tadibya using his superior strength and size.

Back at the other end of the market, Aswon was taking the mound of clothes back to the truck. Kai and Shimazu headed in opposite directions, each searching for specific targets to be used on the journey west. Shimazu was the first to find his target – a liquor store. With the five hundred Nuyen given to him, he managed to get twenty bottles of some clear spirit. He had no idea what it would taste like, or how blind it might make you go – but booze was booze as far as most soldiers went, so it might make a checkpoint crossing easier. Kai took longer to find his target, having to wander down some very narrow side streets and into some disreputable areas, before finally stumbling across a small doorway with a beaded curtain hanging over the entrance. Pushing the beads aside, he found a bookstore with a mass of faded and yellowing old style books, jammed on the shelves and piled on the floor. In the back of the room, another doorway led into a darkened area lit by neon tubes, with chips and optical disks lining the walls, along with a small trid flickering and with some interference, but clearly showing a sex scene. He checked the price, and grabbed ten of the packages without really looking at the content, and also ended up paying his five hundred to a seedy looking shopkeeper.

As Hunter and Tadibya made their way back towards the truck with the mound of produce, Tadibya spotted a shop down a side street that piqued her interest. Offloading her shopping bags to a grumbling Hunter, she headed down the dirty and litter-covered street and into the shop, ducking to get under the large collection of dried mistletoe that had attracted her gaze. The shop smelt overwhelming, the conflict between fifty kinds of herbs and thirty kinds of poultices. Stuff hung everywhere, some in packages, some just on hooks or hanging from loops of rope. She gazed over the produce, giving the wizened old woman behind the counter just a brief smile as she concentrated. As ever, with most city-based talismongers, a large amount of the stock was pure crap – stuff designed to "look" mythic and magical, but with no real use or value. A sop to the tourists and the gullible, and an easy way for the merchant to rack up profit. But in the glass cabinet next to the ancient mechanical cash register, there were several shelves that sparkled in the astral, containing a large number of supplies. In little wooden boxes were wraps of grass and straw, bound into tiny little strawmen. They were plain and uninteresting next to the polished rocks and woven garlands displayed elsewhere, but Tadibya examined them closely.

The old women gave her a toothless smile as she saw her examine the magical gear and ignore the rest, and after a moment pulled out one of the trays and placed it on top of the cabinet so that Tadibya could see it clearly. Tadibya took a calming breath, and then peered again, just using her astral sight now, trying to determine what the products were. She bobbed her head this way and that, examining the strange little bound figures from the sides, from the top and bottom – but being careful not to touch or disturb them. Some of the cultures she had wandered through had a strict policy on that – you touched it, you paid for it. After a few more seconds she came to the conclusion that these were all expendable foci. Each of them had a small amount of power invested in them. Destroying the foci whilst casting the right kind of spell would allow her to tap into that power, harnessing it and adding it to her own. She slipped out of the astral and back into the mundane world, letting the sparkles and bright glow of the manasphere fade into the background and once again seeing the dull and dreary mundane world, full of peeling paint, dirt and cobwebs. She smiled at the shopkeeper, but shook her head a little as well, before leaving the shop to re-join Hunter, waiting on the path outside.

"Buy anything?"

"No. There's nothing we need right now from there. But this place will be useful in the future, so I wanted to check it out first. Let's get back to the truck."

The others had made it back to the truck, and were waiting for them – a little anxiously, in fact. By the time they had their gear stowed away in the truck, time had marched on and the sun was starting to lower over the western mountains. Hunter fired up the nav and plotted their route, and Marius drove out of the car park, giving a wave to the beaming old man still clutching at his cleaning rag as they passed. He turned right, heading up the side road and looked to join the main road heading through the centre of town, slightly dismayed at the wall of traffic he encountered. The narrow valley bottoms and the layout of the town became brutally clear as Hunter spent the next few minutes trying to find alternate routes, before finally admitting they were out of luck. There were only a few routes they could take – most of the roads running parallel to the river, with massive jams wherever there was a bridge across it that backed up traffic for blocks. Even the side streets were full of locals with a bit of knowledge, and the main roads, whilst wider and in better condition, were all jammed pretty solid with commuter cars – clapped-out cheap vehicles painted in drab colours and with only the most basic of features. Most of them were even still petrol vehicles, with just a few that ran on batteries. Of course, GridGuide, the system of electrical power and vehicle control built into the road system of more modern countries hadn't made it this far.

It took them nearly two hours to crawl and queue their way out of the city, until they could finally pick up some speed and head north-west on the E60. The sun set rapidly, dropping behind the western peaks and night fell abruptly. The traffic was still fairly thick, and the low speed of their truck was a source of constant rage, it seemed, for the commuters. Their dangerous antics overtaking the truck and pulling in just in front of it to avoid traffic kept Marius on his toes and people strapped in unless they had to move about – sudden and unanticipated swerves were a common occurrence.

The road rose on a fairly steady incline, winding up into the hills with a series of long and sweeping curves that rose up on the shoulders of the mountains. As they ascended they started to see a little snow on the ground, hard packed and solid. The further west they went, the higher they climbed – but at least the traffic eased as more and more of the commuters turned off or reached their destinations. The truck powered on, the massive diesel engine having power to spare and keeping their speed constant, and in some cases they started to catch up with the underpowered lawnmowers that people called cars around here. Of course, that made life even more interesting for Marius, who had to either slow to pace them, or try and overtake in the truck with only a small speed advantage.

Time ticked by, and they continued to rise, ascending thousands of feet as the road climbed to run along a spur of the Trans-Caucasian mountain range. The air grew thinner, and they felt the unwelcome return of altitude headaches – but knew enough by now that they were already passing out water and food, and a handful of pills to combat the effects. Nadia complained about feeling light-headed, and was told to put Marius down and go lie in a bunk and try to rest, as the best way to get accustomed to the thinner air. They continued to climb, and as they did so saw more and more snow blanketing the land to either side of the road. A few patches of black ice dotted the roads, sending some of the cars sliding and drifting about – but the heav thundered on happily, the massive tyres and deep treads giving them plenty of grip.

Around eight, the weather turned. For a few minutes the wind dropped completely, then it rapidly picked up, blowing hard from the north. It drove the clouds with it, bringing thick grey clouds that were scarcely higher than they were with them, and as the leading edge of the storm hit, thick flakes of snow started to drift down. Thicker and faster it fell, until they were in a full-on blizzard, the snow cutting down visibility to mere tens of metres, and making it look like they were driving into a special effect for a sci-fi film. The road was cold, barely warmed by the passage of the sun during the day, and started to layer up, and the light traffic was not sufficient to do more than tamp down the snow or drive it into slush. Soon they saw cars pulling over to the side of the road, forming little convoys of parked cars. In some cases people got out and joined together in one car to keep warm and share company, in others they just locked their doors and sat there alone, waiting out the storm.

The truck continued to climb, barely making twenty kilometres per hour now, Marius having to slow as the tyres bit down on the thickening snow coverage and struggling for grip as they displaced the snow over the patches of ice. The sounds of the differential rose and fell as the wheels span and slid, fighting for traction and the engine struggled to distribute the power to the wheels evenly. As they rounded a sharp turn to the right, they met the full force of the storm and the howling winds were strong enough to shake even their truck. The road was cut deeply into the mountain, with a sharp drop to the left and a near vertical cut to the right. Snow was being driven in blowing sheets towards them, and for seconds at a time the view just became a wall of white. Marius was driving using almost nothing but his short range radar/lidar and cameras, and dropped his speed even further.

"Marius, pull it over. This is crazy. Unless you really can see what's going on, there's no point running risks here. We're not on a schedule or anything." Kai released the intercom button and sat back in his chair, looking out of the window at the weather as it swirled around the vehicle.

The truck continued for perhaps another twenty or thirty seconds, then just as Kai was about to hit the intercom again, pulled over a few feet to the side of the road and drifted to a halt. When the engine stopped, they could clearly hear the gale blowing outside, and felt the truck wobble on the suspension as the wind channelled down the mountainside, creating a series of eddies and vortexes that drove little twisters of snow and ice dancing across the road.

The cab cooled without the efforts of the heaters – there was no way they could keep them on without draining the batteries quickly. However the vehicle was designed to cope with the depths of the Russian winters, and was well insulated. It wasn't warm enough to be comfortable, but it kept them viable, and with seven bodies providing heat, the temperature dropped slowly compared to other vehicles. Aswon moved to make a round of tea, followed by bowls of warming porridge – the oat-based product being gratefully accepted rather than causing the usual jokes about "more oats". The bowls were flavoured with shavings of various fruits gathered from the market earlier, providing a variety of flavours that were new to most of them.

Tadibya kept her share of the fruit to the side, and studied each with fierce concentration. She studied the structure of the fruit, the thickness of the skin, the formation of the pith, the subtle changes in texture of each. She sniffed at them, eyes closed and with the pieces of fruit held under, and almost inside, her nose. Breathing deeply, she absorbed the scent of them, savouring them and locking them into her memory. Then there was a lick, with the front of the tongue. Then the underside. Carefully placing the fruit on the back of the tongue, and holding it in place against the roof of her mouth. Letting the saliva build up, and slide all around her mouth, picking up the subtle flavours. Chewing slowly, feeling how firm or tender each was, how crunchy or squishy. It took her about ten minutes to slowly chew and swallow each bit of fruit, but after she did so there were a series of hand gestures and muttered spell vocals, and a representation of the fruit appeared in her lap. Each of those was tested. Some were obvious successes, eaten with a grin, and with chunks or slices passed around. Others made her scowl with annoyance at having not quite gotten something right. One of them made her gag and quickly spit out the offending article into the bin. Overall though, she seemed pleased with her progress, and seemed to get a good mix of the fruits to her liking.

They chatted for a while, inconsequential stuff. Discussion about their new clothes, and what colours suited whom. Who liked which of the strange fruits they had found. What fruits people had eaten as a child, in whichever country they came from. The conversation drifted, and the pauses between answers grew longer as people settled down in a nest of blankets and pillows to doze, while the blizzard raged outside. By now they'd fallen into a routine, and they knew that someone would stay on watch, keeping an eye on things.

Aswon roused people at around 02:00, telling them that it was windy still, but the blizzard had stopped. Slowly they stretched, pushing off blankets and climbing out of sleeping bags, hurrying to put their boots on as the cold metal floor quickly leached the heat out of their feet. Marius strapped in and jacked in, his body giving an involuntary shudder before the ASIST over-ride clamped down on his motor functions. He could feel the temperature outside against his metallic skin, the thickness of the hydraulic fluid in his pistons. It was at least a few degrees below freezing out there, with the wind chill that number dropped into the double digits. He cupped virtual hands around the engine block, and the glow heaters fired up, warming the fuel and getting the truck ready. He started the vehicle, which always felt like a weird kind of cough – but the engine caught first time and roared into life. Moments later the headlights cut through the darkness, casting two powerful strobes of light over the white blanket laid out before him. Air started to flow through the blowers – a gust of cold, frigid air first that made people scrabble for the vents to point them away, but gradually warming and starting to bring the temperature in the cab back up slowly.

After a few minutes the screen had cleared and the heating elements in the sensors had also de-iced the pickups and optics. Marius engaged the crawler gears and after a little rocking, the truck powered up over the snow, wheels cutting through the loose pack and sending snow flying out behind them like a rooster tail as the rearmost wheels span. A bow wave of snow built up in front of the truck, breaking in half and spreading like the wake of the ship on both sides as the truck ploughed through the snow. The engine revved high, and the gauges showed their fuel economy dropping like a stone, but they drove forward. It wasn't quick, but it was progress – and they were the only thing moving. Occasionally Marius would bring the truck to a halt, and back up in their tracks, before getting a good run up at a drift or bank, smashing through it and sending snow flying like an explosion. They made slow but steady progress for a few miles, but then Marius braked to a halt and stopped entirely.

The others peered through the scene ahead, lit by the headlights of the truck, and their hearts fell. A large tanker truck had lost control at some point the previous night – maybe on ice, maybe because of a drunk driver, or idiots in cars cutting him up. The cab of the truck was pointed almost back at them, and the leading edge of the tank was firmly wedged into the corner of the cab. The back end of the tanker must have slid forwards, and was equally firmly wedged into the cut face of rock on the right of the road. The jack-knifed vehicle had slid forwards a little, and now the cab was wedged into the barrier strung along the left side of the road, overlooking the steep drop. The road was completely blocked, and traffic had slid to a halt on both sides – some more successfully than others. By the looks of things a tiny little two-seater commuter car had slid on ice and had impacted on the bars running down the side of the tanker, and had gotten wedged into the wheels. Along with the wedging of the tanker and the stalled vehicles littering the road, everything was also covered in thick snow, ranging from half a metre on the open road to nearly a metre by the obstacles. The situation was royally borked.

They sat and looked out of the truck at the scene for nearly thirty seconds without anyone saying anything or moving.

"I guess we'd better go check on the cars, see if we can get people moving, yes?" Aswon was the first to break the silence, but the rest just looked through the windscreen in silence. "Fine, I guess I'll go check then." He pulled a face, then pulled on a coat and gloves, grabbed his radio and earpiece and attached them, and cracked the door open. The wind shrieked through the opening, and what his speech had failed to do, the tendrils of frigid air had no problem accomplishing, as the rest of the team were stirred from their reveries. He smiled and then leapt from the truck, letting the door swing shut behind him.

He landed in the snow and sank, up to his waist in the drift. Cold wet snow and slush penetrated his trousers and a moment later he just stopped moving and let out an inarticulate moan as the frigid water soaked through his crotch and into his groin. Sure, he'd travelled around a bit. He'd seen various countries in Europe, done service with a couple of different merc units and gotten cold and wet before. But for someone born in central Africa, this was a whole new level of cold. His mind flashed back to his first sergeant in the Blackshields, a small merc band that had been the only group willing to take a chance on a then young African tribesman. He thought that day, the first day through an assault course in Italy had been cold. He remembered swimming through the metre wide tunnels that dipped down into the brown swampy water in the bottom of the camp, kept perennially wet with the runoff from the streams and hills nearby. He'd swum through – barely – despite acing all the other obstacles, shocked to his core with the temperature of the water. The sergeant had been waiting for him, and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, asking him what the matter was, and laughing as his teeth chattered, his massive incisors carving lumps out of his lips. He'd bellowed at him, mocked him, dunked him back under the water – once, twice, then a third time, pulling him up and abusing him every time as he spluttered and shivered in the biting cold.

This. This was colder.

But he remembered the bellowed 'advice' he had been given that day. Keep moving. Keep the muscles active. Let them warm the water on the inside. Don't stand still, don't cool down, and don't die. Your buddies are counting on you, and you don't have permission to give in. He ploughed through the snow towards the first car, close to the cab of the tanker.

It was a small car, like most of the cars they saw on the road. Some kind of Lada, or Skoda or something – some European brand. They were basic, little more than an engine, shell and four wheels. But, they were cheap to make, and easy to fix, and very practical for poorer countries – just no good in poor conditions. He scraped at the ice on the window, and then rapped on it with his knuckles. His hand ached from the impact with the cold glass, but in the diffuse light cast from the truck, he saw movement. The mass on the backseat stirred, and slowly turned into two people, wrapped up under blankets and coats. With some squirming, they managed to separate and sit up from their positions, then with bleary eyes look out of the window. At the silhouette of Aswon, his dreads being whipped around in the bitterly cold wind, looking like the very devil himself. The female passenger gave a scream, and the male groped on the floor for a moment, before brandishing a small screwdriver in front of him.

Aswon move to the side, realising they wouldn't be able to see him clearly like this, and then smiled. As he parted his lips, the huge lion canine implants became visible. Strangely, it didn't seem to reassure the occupants of the car, who just shrunk back from the visage. He tried to give them a thumbs up, but got only pointing and muffled shouting from inside. Well, at least they were alive and well. He slogged through the snow, heading for the second vehicle, the one wedged into the back end of the trailer.

He scraped the snow and ice off the window and peered inside. No movement. Rap, rap, rap. No movement. He pulled out the little pen light from his coat pocket, and shone it through the window. He made out the vague outline of a man, clutching at the wheel, but unmoving. He rapped again. Still no movement. Labouriously he made his way back to the truck, calling on the radio as he did so.

"Think we got a problem with this one, no movement, no responses. Maybe dead, but can't get into the vehicle yet. Going to need some bodies and the first aid kit. And someone put some towels near the heater will you?" He pushed round to the side of the truck and unlatched the toolbox, pulling out the folding spade from the holder, and then returning to the car – thankfully an easier journey now the snow was broken.

Soon he set to digging, clearing out a space next to the driver's door, throwing the snow out of the way one shovelful at a time. After a few minutes work he had enough space to pry open the door with some difficulty, hearing the crunch of ice as the hinges finally relented. Inside the man was still, unmoving. Aswon reached in and checked for a pulse, cursing under his breath as he failed to find one, then realising it was because his fingers were so numb. He cupped his hands over his mouth and blew on them, trying to warm them and get some feeling, and checked again. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Then a weak bump, almost undiscernible. He pushed the button on his radio, and called again for aid, finally hearing the truck door bang as someone came to help him. He started to pry the man's fingers from the steering wheel, and realised that they had frozen into place on the battered surface, the fingers welded to the exposed metal where the vinyl had cracked and peeled away. As he pulled off the man's hands, he saw the flesh rip away leaving large red patches of exposed dermis – but fortunately perhaps, the flesh was so cold that no blood oozed from the wounds. Kai and Hunter arrived, with the first aid kit and blankets, and between them they managed to pull the man from the car and get him back to the truck. Working fast, they stripped him and put him in cool water, and started to work on getting his core temperature back up – but not so fast that it would kill him by sending him into shock.

Tadibya meanwhile hopped out of her body and checked the cars on the other side of the truck, to save Aswon from trying to tunnel under the tanker or risk climbing round the mountain side. She found life signs in all the cars on the far side of the tanker too, all reasonably healthy. Only the one driver, it appeared, had been caught without warm layers and blankets in his vehicle. She came back to her body and reported in, and then on seeing the state of the wounded man's hands, rapidly set to casting her healing magics upon him. Moments later, the back of the truck was bathed in warm golden light as his hands regenerated under her touch. Slowly his core temperature started to come up, and his vitals steadied, but they kept a close eye on him.

They discussed what they had seen, and what their options were. Hunter scanned the map, and reported that he couldn't see any alternative route than the road they were on at the moment – not given the weather conditions. The only way they were going to push on was to get the tanker truck moved – but that meant either waiting for snow-plows and recovery vehicles, or doing something themselves. With no experience of Trans-Caucasian League civil abilities, they decided they had to do something themselves.

Tadibya started off by calling on the spirit of the mountains, summoning it to her aid. It appeared next to her in astral space, and she politely asked it for its aid with clearing the road of snow, so they could work effectively. It looked a little unhappy, as spirits were wont to do when asked to materialise in the physical plane. When materialised they were resistant to damage – but not immune. A hard enough hit could banish one back to its home realm and cause it pain and suffering that would take weeks to heal. It grumpily agreed though after Tadibya assured it that nobody was going to hurt it, and moments later it appeared on the roadside. A couple of small boulders supported a larger boulder "body", and a whole ring of small stones. The stones formed themselves into a ring, or very shallow tunnel, and moments later a whirling vortex of snow spat out of the back of the ring, sending snow in a plume over the edge of the road and out into empty space.

Tadibya changed her focus, turning her mind from the realm of the mountain to that of the sky. As she did so, she felt her control over the mountain spirit fade away – leaving its domain meant she was no longer able to interact with it directly – but it should carry out her last command until either it was done, or the dawning of the new day. She called to the wind, and pulled down another spirit, bargaining with it as before. It too appeared, this time as a swirling whirlwind, like a miniature tornado it span rapidly, flinging snow up and away from the crash scene, gradually clearing the road of snow and ice.

Whilst the spirits were busy clearing the road, Kai went through the man's pockets and then braved the snow to rummage through his bag in the car, and found some ID – "Nikolus Harid" apparently worked for a tool company in Tbilisi and lived in a nearby town. With the address in hand, Hunter did a quick search and found the town nearby – perhaps only fifteen kilometres away, further down the main road.

"Idiot. What kind of local travels these roads without preparing for the conditions they must surely know about?" Aswon didn't seem impressed with his lack of preparedness. Kai smiled at him and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Maybe he thought he could get home before it hit? Who knows? But let's see if we can get him back to his family. Tads, with this address, can you see if you can track it down?"

Tadibya looked at the address, then at the map that Hunter had on screen, and gave a shrug.

"I'll try. Very hard to match a map to astral space, though. Back soon." She settled into her bunk, made herself comfortable and then floated free of her body. Her astral form zoomed through the night, and in a blink of an eye she was hovering over a valley, several kilometres down the road from her physical body. Ahh, there – some lights. She looked down and noted how few lights were showing in the town, and drifted down. With the blanket of snow covering everything, and a lack of visual references she found it hard to work out where she was, and it didn't look like the map that Hunter had shown her. What she did experience though was a feeling of being watched – by something or someone. She spiralled up into the sky, looking around her for a tail and prepared to flee at high speed back to the Chechen camp – her "go to" place in case of pursuit. But she could see nothing, and feel nothing attacking her. She flew back to her body as fast as she could, the world blurring past her in an unintelligible riot of colours. She landed inside the van, slipping through her wards with ease, but didn't rejoin her body. Instead she manifested, appearing as a ghostly outline. The team could hear and see her, but in this form she didn't show up on cameras or other technological devices – someone would have to tell Marius any message she had.

"Couldn't find his house – the town is really small, more like a large village, but it doesn't look like the picture Hunter has, especially in the snow. Unless I do a door to door search, I think we'll have to go there physically. But I did sense something else – I'm just going to investigate." With that, she was gone, swooping back to the town in another blink of the eye, and looking down upon it from on high. She slowly turned her gaze about her, looking for something odd.

Ah-ha! There! She spied a large tiger, just nestled in under some conifers. She flew lower, trying to get a better look at it, to make out more details. Was it just a tiger, or something more? As she flew lower, it turned its head and looked at her – unmistakeably looked at her. Their eyes made contact, two brown, two an icy piercing blue. Tadibya felt transfixed, staring into those blue eyes, and found herself drifting lower and lower, closer to the tiger. Hot breath misted in front of it, but it maintained an unblinking watch upon her as she closed the distance towards it.

With a supreme effort of will she broke free, averting her gaze for a moment. She realised she had drifted down and was now no more than four or five metres from the tiger. It wasn't that big – a juvenile perhaps, but she picked up the telltale glimmer in its aura that told her it was some kind of awakened species. She could certainly guess as to at least some of its powers – she had been totally entranced once it concentrated on her.

"If it's ok with you, Mr. Tiger, I don't want to be eaten! Not today!" She rocketed upwards, away from the beast, and with a corner of her eye saw it looking up at her, mouth opened wide as if to roar - but there was no sound. It stretched, far below her now, and then turned and wandered under the canopy of trees, and was gone from her sight. With a shrug, Tadibya flew back to her body and merged.

"See anything?" Kai asked.

"Still didn't find his house, I think we are going to have to go there on foot. Or in the truck, really. It's too far to walk." Tadibya busied herself with getting a mug of tea whilst she spoke. If Kai noticed that she hadn't exactly answered the question, he didn't say anything.

They waited, keeping an eye on the scene outside which was showing a remarkable difference. In the grey light of pre-dawn, the road had been blasted clear of snow, and the cracked and potted asphalt could be seen now for a good ten metres on either side. They could see a few people pressed up against the glass in their cars, watching with open jawed amazement as the spirits went about their work. It was a sign how poor the area was, and how basic the cars were of course that the occupants could be seen at all – nearly all vehicles were fitted with one way glass these days to prevent those inside from being seen.

The team got out of the truck – apart from Marius and Nadia. Marius started to warm up the systems and ran a quick diagnostic and Nadia assumed her usual position. The rest of them wandered over to the cab of the tanker and started to rap on the door, waking up the driver. He appeared a minute later, wrapped up warmly and looking at them blearily. By the looks of things his cab had a sleeping compartment in the rear, so he'd been absolutely fine after crashing and had just gone to bed.

Kai beamed a smile at him, and started to speak, stretching his knowledge of Russian considerably. He greeted the man, told him they were going to try and rescue his truck, and clear the road so they could all be on their way. He kept up a broad smile, but couldn't understand why the man just kept staring at him, his mouth agape.

Hunter and Aswon were standing by the side of him, weapons slung and ready, and they looked at each other and frowned, as they heard some of the words. Did Kai really mean that? Wasn't that the Russian for explosion?

Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or that he'd spent too much time in the company of people with organised crime links – but between the three of them, they suddenly realised that what Kai had meant to say, and what he'd actually said while close, was somewhat different in linguistic nuance. What he'd actually said was something along the lines of "Nice truck, shame if we had to push it over the edge of the mountain, with you in it, and you died in a horrible explosion."

Kai's voice petered out, and Hunter and Aswon raised their hands and waved at the trucker to get his attention, giving a fake but hearty belly laugh to show it was "just a joke". Between them, they motioned the idea of getting a tow cable on the cars to pull them out of the way, and then freeing the truck – to the relief of the truck driver.

Over the next twenty minutes they moved the cars back that were still mobile, and managed to use the tow cable on the truck to pull out the mangled and crushed car from under the side bars. It was clear that the car was not going to work again – the engine was deformed and mangled by the impact, but the back of the tanker looked ok.

Pulling the tanker free took a little longer, as it was a heavy and ungainly vehicle, so Tadibya summoned another spirit of the mountain, and asked for its assistance, and between the powerful military winch and the power of the spirit they soon had the back end of the tanker pulled free of the side of the cliff, amidst some shrieking of metal and grinding noises – but without any major structural damage. Getting the cab straightened up afterwards was a relatively simple job, though the driver still seemed very unsure about if the team was helping him, or about to rob and execute him and steal his truck, and kept his shotgun handy just in case. The team ignored him – having seen the shotgun and knowing it was another of the basic and cheap knock-offs that they'd seen before in the area, they knew he wasn't likely to hit them, let alone hurt them.

The road was clear, and they had a good twenty metres or so of space to get up some speed before they hit the snow again. To be safe, Tadibya asked the mountain spirit to guard them against accidents and bad luck, whilst they travelled on the mountain road. Marius put the truck in gear, and started to rev the engine, ready to set off again on their journey – but with a brief diversion a few kilometres ahead to drop off Nikolus Harid at his home. Marius put the truck in gear, and they started to roll.