Siege Line

by Myke Cole

  “That’s for dessert.”

  “If you want meat,” Schweitzer said, “you can nibble on my thigh. Not like I’m using it.”

  Ghaznavi wrinkled her nose and munched in silence. They gazed up at the dancing lights above them, so clear and metallic that Mankiller was continually surprised that she couldn’t hear it ringing.

  When Ghaznavi had finished eating, she settled back, and Mankiller noticed she wasn’t looking at the lights anymore, was staring instead at Schweitzer’s rapt face. After a moment he noticed too, met her stare. “What?”

  “I was wondering,” she said. “Let’s say that Mankiller’s grandfather does have a way to fix you. Let’s say that we do get rescued and beat the bad guys and all that jazz. What’s your happily ever after? I go back to DC and get a medal and write a best-selling memoir in my early retirement. What do you do?”

  Schweitzer shrugged. “Not much. I lost everything. I get vengeance, I guess. The Cell did me dirty. It’ll feel good to do them back.”

  “That’s enough?”

  “It is for now.”

  “Yeah, but after now?”

  Schweitzer shrugged again. “I guess I’ll try to find my wife.”

  “Ain’t she passed?” Mankiller asked.

  “Yeah,” Schweitzer said, finally looking away from the aurora, “but so am I. I don’t think it matters anymore.”

  They were quiet for a while at that, and Schweitzer at last looked up at Ghaznavi. “And the Director. I need to settle with him. I’d like to . . . talk to him before I finish it. If I can. It might not work out that way, but I have questions. That’ll keep me going for the time being.”

  “What questions?”

  “I’ll let you know when the time comes to get them answered.”

  “Come on, Jim,” Ghaznavi said.

  “That’s all you’re getting from me, so don’t waste your breath. If you don’t like it, kill me.”

  Ghaznavi frowned, punched him in the shoulder.

  Schweitzer gave a grim glimmer of a smile. “How about you? Why take the risk? Why not just report Hodges to the President? Why’d you agree to help him?”

  “I don’t like toeing the line,” Ghaznavi said. “Never did.”

  “That’s an odd position to take when you run SAD.”

  “You don’t seem to be friendly to authority either. Surprising for a guy in the Navy.”

  “Different in the SEALs.”

  “Different in SAD,” she shot back. “And you were a white dude.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Try being Persian after 9/11. And a woman. I spent my entire life being told that I would never get a clearance and, once I did, that nobody would ever trust me enough to promote me. I had to do everything twice as well as everyone else. I read it in one of my favorite sci-fi novels—‘Be so good that they can’t ignore you.’ Maybe that’s the real reason I want to win this.”

  “Because it means you’re good?”

  “Nah,” she said. “I know I’m good. I just want to give the middle finger to everyone who thinks I’m not.”

  Schweitzer laughed, a rasping chuckle that gave Mankiller the chills. “No wonder you’re such a badass.”

  “Meh,” Ghaznavi said. “Just driven. By baggage, like everyone else, I suppose.”

  “You ever fail at anything?” Schweitzer asked.

  “Marriage,” Ghaznavi said.

  “Well, sure,” Schweitzer said, “but that’s pretty much a job requirement in the spy business. Military, too. Other than that?”

  Ghaznavi was quiet for a while, thinking. “No, I can’t say I have. I’ve proved every motherfucker wrong who ever said I wasn’t a good American.”

  “Does it help?”

  Now it was Ghaznavi’s turn to laugh. “No. People may have to do what I tell them, but that’s not the same as liking or trusting me. I always feel like I’m . . . separate. Cut off from everyone else, no matter what I do.”

  “Try coming back from the dead,” Schweitzer said. “I’ll trade places with you any day of the week.”

  Ghaznavi smiled and turned to Mankiller. “How about you?”

  “What about me?” Mankiller knew that Ghaznavi was trying to forge a bond, the esprit de corps that knit fighters together, but she was in no mood. The Canadians and Americans were here, on Dene land, and now she was forced by circumstance to drag them to her grandfather’s doorstep. When it was over, she wasn’t sure if they would leave, what Grampy’s inkoze would mean for his future, for the future of her family and her town. There were too many unknowns, and while Mankiller liked Schweitzer and Ghaznavi, she couldn’t be certain if they were friends or mere allies.

  “Just wondering what your story was,” Ghaznavi said. “Was wondering what you’ll do after we win.”

  “If we win,” Mankiller said, “I got a town to rebuild and a lot of folk to bury. Some of ’em got family in Toronto or in the lower forty-eight. Sally’s got a sister in London who I gotta track down. Gotta make sure everyone’s informed.”

  “That won’t take more than a few weeks,” Ghaznavi said. “After that, it’ll run itself. What’ll you do after that?”

  “My job,” Mankiller said. “If you government types’ll let me.”

  “You’re a government type, Sheriff,” Schweitzer said.

  “’S different in treaty territory. We mostly take care of things on our own out here.”

  “Well”—Schweitzer looked back up at the aurora—“I don’t know if you can ever go back to the way things were.”

  “No,” Mankiller sighed. “I reckon not. That’s inkoze.”

  “Inkoze?” Ghaznavi asked.

  “Medicine,” Mankiller said. “Magic. That’s the problem with it. Makes a lot of things better, does amazing stuff. But it also changes everything. Permanently. That’s the only real guarantee with it, that things’ll be different than they were. That’s rough on anyone, but Dene people like the old ways most of all. So, it’s special rough on us.”

  “I promise,” Ghaznavi said with some heat, “I will do everything I can, and that’s a lot, to make it easy on you.”

  “Yeah,” Mankiller said. “Well, thanks. That’s appreciated.”

  “Bet that still doesn’t mean you’re going to tell us about yourself, does it?” Ghaznavi asked.

  “Nope.” Mankiller smiled, looked back up at the lights dancing overhead. “Sure don’t.”

  They sat in silence then, the cold green light playing across their faces, until Schweitzer stiffened, looked to his right. “Something’s coming.”

  Ghaznavi moved smoothly off the sledge in the opposite direction, crouching down, easing her pistol up. “How many?”

  “No,” Schweitzer said as Mankiller moved to join her. “It’s an animal.”

  Mankiller could hear it now, heavy tread, the sound of branches broken by something huge and careless.

  “Sounds like a bear,” Mankiller said. “Gimme my rifle.”

  Schweitzer kept the weapon pointed into the woods. “It is, and if we’re being fully honest, isn’t it really our rifle?”

  The bear loped into the clearing and reared up on its hind legs. It was a brown bear, nearly as tall as the stunted growth around it, paws as big as manhole covers. It roared, waving its arms. Schweitzer braced one fist against the back of the sledge and raised the Alaskan to his shoulder.

  “Don’t,” Mankiller hissed. “Look at its eyes.”

  The bear’s snout was raised in a fresh bellow, but it lowered then, and Mankiller saw the flash of burning gold she’d expected. “That’s one of Grampy’s tháydÿne. Don’t you shoot it.”

  “It’s a Gold,” Schweitzer said, sighting in. “It’s not safe.”

  “No, it’s different.” Mankiller was standing now. “There’s an ancestor i
n there. Someone’s great-grandpa.”

  She moved around the sledge, hands held out before her. The bear remained where it was, huge paws waving in the air, narrow chest still twice as thick across as Mankiller’s shoulders. It roared again, and Mankiller could feel Ghaznavi flinching on the other side of the sledge.

  The bear came down to all fours, still nearly as tall as Mankiller, and sniffed at her. Up close, she could see how skinny it was, knew that the dried blood around its muzzle came from its own mouth. Grampy said that the souls of people were bigger than the souls of animals, and so those he honored with housing tháydÿne often had trouble eating, their bodies strained to the limit with the effort of containing the ancestor locked inside them. Sometimes, the strain made them twist; sometimes, it made them bleed. Sometimes, it was too much for them altogether, but Grampy said it was the most honored end a creature could meet.

  The bear leaned forward, pressed its nose against her parka, and Mankiller felt a momentary spike of fear. The tháydÿne could be unstable, the soul of the ancestor warring with the soul of the beast. A wolf, no matter how frightening, was half her size. This bear weighed more than Mankiller and Ghaznavi combined.

  “Thought it was wolves,” Schweitzer said.

  “It always was before,” Mankiller said.

  She turned back to the bear, careful to speak to it in Denesuline, which Grampy had always said was the language of inkoze. “Hey there, necácho dléze. What’s goin’ on?”

  The bear nuzzled her parka, gold eyes level with her gut. She was intensely aware of how close the huge mouth was to her stomach, how easily it could snap its jaws and rip her open if it had half a mind. She swallowed her worry. The tháydÿne might forgive her fear, but the bear soul at war with it would not. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, tried to find her center, slow her pounding heart. “Did Grampy send you?”

  The bear thrust its head forward, rocking Mankiller back on her heels, forcing her to grab the sides of its shaggy head to keep her balance. “Whoa! Easy, big guy.” The bear stank like an open grave.

  With a final snort, the animal turned and trotted back off into the trees.

  Mankiller turned, raced back to the sledge. “Rope up.”

  “We’re following that thing?” Ghaznavi asked.

  “Yup. Reckon it’s going to Grampy’s.”

  “Don’t you know the way?”

  “Yah, but not in the dark. This’ll make things faster.”

  “Did he send it to pick us up?”

  “You ask a lot of questions. Mush.”

  “Mush,” Schweitzer agreed.

  “Gimme my rifle,” Mankiller said.

  “You know, I’ve kind of grown fond of it.”

  “I’m not playin’ with you, dead man,” Mankiller groused as she struggled back into the loops of rope.

  “I ask for so little, really. No food, no water. No quality time. All without complaint. I ask for this one little thing.”

  “I don’ have time for this.” Mankiller was already pulling at the ropes, dragging the sledge sideways while Ghaznavi raced to get the harness buckled up. Mankiller was determined to pull the damned thing herself if she had to, but Ghaznavi had learned much in just one short day’s labor, and within moments, they were jogging along the rising ground, following the bear’s shrinking back in the darkness.

  They navigated mostly by sound. This far into the woods, the trees were close around them, canopies blotting out even the aurora, the darkness almost palpably thick. Schweitzer’s augmented vision helped some, and while he would occasionally call “left” or “right,” the cracking boughs and the spray of pine needles against her face were a far better guide than Schweitzer’s commands.

  Ghaznavi followed Mankiller’s lead, and the sled only had to pull cockeyed for a moment before the SAD Director corrected, grunting with the strain. The bear set a grueling pace, and Mankiller kept worrying that Ghaznavi might stumble and fall, but she kept up, her grunting breaths the only indicator of the strain.

  And then the tree line ended. Mankiller burst out into a steeply sloping clearing, the dwarf trees clinging tenaciously to a rare rise in the landscape, creating a natural bowl laid open to the aurora’s shimmering glare.

  Ghaznavi doubled over, panting, hands on her knees. “Why . . . why’d we stop?”

  “We’re here,” Mankiller said.

  Grampy had built his shack into the side of the rise, raised the roof out of the earth and tangled roots of the scrub trees. The low wall was wooden, painted with creosote, and patched with corrugated plastic framing around tiny windows. A single metal stovepipe pushed out of one wall like a cowlick. The single door was a patchwork of shipping pallets, covered in metal street signs to give it weight against the grasping winter wind. The structure was tiny, a gray smudge on the white and green hillside, easy to miss if you didn’t know what you were looking for. The sight had never failed to fill Mankiller with a deep and abiding calm. She exhaled, the fatigue dropping away. For the first time since she and Yakecan had seen the helicopter dropping off its terrible cargo, she felt that things might be all right.

  Slowly, Ghaznavi’s breathing evened, and she began to straighten.

  Mankiller stopped her with a hand on her back. “Don’t freak out.”

  Ghaznavi jerked upright, eyes widening. “Why would I freak ou . . .”

  The answer was immediately apparent. The bear had run up the cabin’s sloping sides and stood on the roof, the network of roots and packed earth easily supporting its weight. It stared at them, the twin fires of its golden eyes burning.

  It was only one of at least a dozen pairs.

  All around the cabin, ranging up the steep slope and clustered about a small, weed-choked bog, were wolves, swiveling their heads to take in the newcomers. All their eyes matched the bear’s.

  “Shit,” Ghaznavi breathed.

  “It’s okay,” Mankiller said. “They won’t hurt you.”

  “They’re fucking Golds,” Schweitzer said.

  “They’re not the same. They’re family.”

  “Your family is wolves,” Schweitzer said.

  Mankiller ignored his tone and nodded. “Yeah. Cousins, uncles, and grandparents, and not jus’ mine. Folk from all over come to Grampy to bring ’em back.”

  “Why not bring them back into people?” Schweitzer said.

  “Don’ work that way,” Mankiller said as she shrugged off the ropes and sighed gratefully.

  “It did for me,” Schweitzer said.

  Mankiller shrugged again. “Talk to Grampy; I’m no expert.”

  The wolves were coming closer now, sniffing the air, pointing gray-black muzzles in their direction. Some had the stuttering step Mankiller had come to associate with the tháydÿne. Some had their heads cocked at unnatural angles, broken tails, bent legs, and stooped shoulders. More than one bled from their eyes or noses.

  “You’re sure they won’t hurt us?” Ghaznavi asked.

  “They never hurt me,” Mankiller said, “but I’m Dene. Who knows what they’ll do to Bescho Dené? Don’ try to pet ’em or anythin’.”

  “Not funny,” Ghaznavi said as the cabin door swung open.

  Charles Plante had been small in his prime. Old age had only made him smaller, scarcely bigger than a boy, bent and dry in a way that reminded Mankiller of a spider’s corpse. His white hair was thinner than she remembered, but otherwise he looked exactly the same, from his cracked, leathery skin to his deep-set, smiling eyes.

  “Hey, sweetie,” he drawled in Denesuline, “I had a feeling you’d be up my way. There’s coffee on.”

  “Does he speak English?” Ghaznavi asked.

  “Sure does,” Mankiller said. “Better ’n me. French, too. Spends most of his days reading.”

  “Hey, sir,” Ghaznavi said. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Who is t
his?” Grampy asked Mankiller, still in the Dene tongue. “She looks like Dene and sounds like Bescho Dené.”

  “I thought you said he spoke English,” Ghaznavi asked.

  “I do speak English”—Plante switched to English—“but I’m also older ’n dirt and that means I don’t have to do anythin’ I don’ wanna. Come on in ’fore you freeze. Leave the bodies on the sledge; the tháydÿne won’t bother ’em.”

  “Don’t think I count as a body,” Schweitzer said, and Plante stiffened at the words, stepping out into the snow.

  Schweitzer shifted on the sledge, looking at the old man, his burning silver eyes shining bright enough to compete with the aurora’s ghostly glow.

  “What’s this?” Grampy asked, coming forward. “Is he dead? Is he tháydÿne?”

  “He was,” Mankiller said. “But it’s his body. The tháydÿne was another, older spirit, to hear him tell it.”

  “His eyes are silver. That only happens when the wolf wins.”

  “Huh.” Mankiller knew better than to ask Grampy questions. It irritated him; best to just let the old man know that she was listening, and leave it to him to fill in the blanks himself.

  “That never happens,” Plante said. “The animal always holds on to some extent, but a human soul is stronger, bigger.”

  “Well, this was a human and a human,” Mankiller said.

  “That’s impossible,” Grampy said. “Who are you?” he asked Schweitzer.

  “I’m Jim Schweitzer,” Schweitzer said. “I was created by the same magic you use on these animals. The people who created me are bad people, and they are here looking for you. I can stop them, but I need your help.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Plante said. “There are no others like me. I am Lived-With-The-Wolves.”

  “I’m sorry, Grampy,” Mankiller said, “but it’s true. There are more of ’em. Dead men faster and stronger than any living man I ever seen. In each of ’em, the wolf lost, but they’re more wild than any wolf I ever seen. Only one of ’em can think like a living man, and he leads them. It’s him that wants you. He wanted me to lead him to you.”

  Plante pursed his lips. “The tháydÿne had seen the soldiers searchin’ the woods. I wasn’ sure what they were looking for.”