Dangerous to Hold

by Merline Lovelace

  On holy days or in celebration of some triumph, the women had cooked great platters of sugared beets and spicy pastries. Whole sides of beef had turned on spits, and astonishing quantities of vodka had disappeared in a single night. Karistani feasts rivaled those rumored to have been given by the Cossacks of old, although Alex had never seen among her mother’s people quite the level of orgiastic activity that reputedly had taken place in previous centuries.

  As she and Nate walked through the bright morning sunlight, blessed by a rare lack of wind, she saw signs of the feverish activity that preceded a night of revelry.

  Alex herself wasn’t immune to the general air of excitement. For reasons she didn’t really want to consider, she’d donned her red wool tunic with the gold frogging, freshly cleaned after its dousing in the storm two nights ago. Her hair gleamed from an herbal shampoo and vigorous brushing, and she’d dug out the supply of cosmetics she usually didn’t bother with here on the steppes. A touch of mascara, a little lipstick, and she felt like a different woman altogether.

  One Sloan approved of, if the glint in his eyes when he met her outside the tent was any measure. Ignoring him and the flutter the sight of his tall, lean body in its usual jeans and soft cotton shirt caused, Alex strode through the camp.

  Anya stood at a sturdy wood worktable, her sleeves rolled up and her arms floured to her elbows, slamming dough onto the surface with the cheerful enthusiasm of a kerchiefed sumo wrestler. Her pretty face lighted up as she caught sight of Nate, and she called a greeting that Alex refused to translate verbatim. It never failed to astound her that Anya—pale, delicate Anya—should have such an earthy appreciation of the male physique.

  Ivana, honey pot in hand, came out of the women’s tent as they approached. Alex translated the widow’s laughing invitation for Nate and Ole Red to join her on an expedition in search of honeycombs, and Nate’s good-natured declination.

  Secretly pleased, but curious about his refusal, Alex tipped her head back to look up at him. “Why don’t you go with her? I have things I must do. I don’t need you on my heels every minute.”

  Sloan hooked his thumbs in his belt, smiling down at her. “You know, Alexandra, Wily Willie used to warn me to be careful what I wished for, because I just might get it. You wanted me to stick close? I’m stickin’ close.”

  Alex wasn’t sure whether it was the smile or the soft promise that sent the ripple of sensation down her spine. To cover her sudden pleasure, she shrugged.

  “I’m beginning to think your Willie has Karistani blood in his veins. He has as many sayings as the women of this host. One of which,” Alex warned, “has to do with skinning and tanning the hide of a bothersome male. At least if one makes a rug out of him, he can be put to some use.”

  Laughter glinted in his hazel eyes. “Ah, sweetheart, when this is all over, I’ll have to show you just how many uses a bothersome male can be put to.”

  The ripple of sensation became a rush of pleasure. He’d called her “sweetheart” several times before. At least once in anger. Several times in mockery. But this was the first time the term had rolled off his lips with a low, caressing intimacy that sent liquid heat spilling through Alex’s veins. The sensation disconcerted her so much that it took a few moments for the rest of his words to penetrate.

  “When what is all over?” she asked slowly.

  The laughter faded from his eyes. “You tell me, Alex. What’s going on here? What have you got planned?”

  They stood toe-to-toe in the dusty square. The camp bustled with activity all around them, but neither of them paid any attention. The sun heated the air, but neither of them felt it.

  “Tell me,” he urged.

  Alex wanted to. She might have, if one of the women hadn’t called to Petr at that moment, asking him if he thought it safe for her to go collect wild onions for the beefsteaks without escort. The question underscored the impermanence of these few hours of reprieve, and brought the realities of Alex’s responsibilities crashing down on her.

  “I…I can’t.”

  She turned to walk away, only to be spun back around.

  “Why not?”

  His insistence rubbed against the grain of Alex’s own strong will.

  “Look, this isn’t any of your business. Karistan isn’t any of your business.”

  “Bull.”

  She stiffened and shot him an angry look. “It’s not bull. I’m the one responsible for seeing these people don’t starve this winter. I’m the one who has to keep the White Wolf away from our herds.”

  “There’s help available. The president…”

  “Right. The president. He’s so caught up with the troubles in the Middle East and Central America and his own reelection difficulties that he doesn’t have time for a tiny corner of the world like Karistan.”

  “He sent me, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, and Three Bars Red.” Her lip curled. “As much as we appreciate the offer of your services, Karistan’s problems need a more immediate fix.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t you take the aid package that was offered?”

  “You know about that, do you? Then you ought to know what this so-called package included. No? Let me tell you.”

  Alex shoved a hand through her hair, feeling the tensions and worries that had built up inside her bubble over.

  “Some fourth-level State Department weenie came waltzing in here with promises of future aid…if I agreed to open, unannounced inspections of Karistan by any and every federal agency with nothing better to do. If I converted our economy and our currency to one that would ‘compete’ on the European market. If I agree to an agricultural program that included planting rice.”

  Sloan’s sun-bleached brows rose in disbelief. “Rice?”

  “Rice! On the steppes! Even if my ancestors hadn’t turned over in their graves at the thought of our men riding tractors instead of horses, these lands are too high, too arid, for rice, for God’s sake.”

  “Okay, so some bureaucrat didn’t do his homework before he put together a package for Karistan…”

  The blood of her mother’s people rose in Alex, hot and fierce. “Let’s get this straight. No one’s going to put together anything for Karistan, except me. I didn’t ask for this responsibility, but it’s mine.”

  He took her arm in a hard grip. “Listen to me, Alex. You don’t have to do this alone.”

  She flicked an icy glance at the hand folded around the red of her sleeve, then up at his face. “Aren’t you forgetting the ground rules, Sloan? You won’t touch me without my permission, remember? Unless you want to feel the bite of the nagaika.”

  His fingers dug into her flesh for an instant, then uncurled, one by one. Eyes the color of agates raked her face.

  “You better keep that little horsetail flyswatter close to hand, Alexandra. Because the time’s coming when I’m going to touch a whole lot more of you than you’ve ever had touched before.”

  He turned and stalked away, leaving Alex stunned by the savagery she’d seen in his eyes. And swamped with heat. And suddenly, inexplicably frightened. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to understand the feeling that gripped her.

  She could remember feeling like this only once before. One long-ago summer, when the half-broken pony she was riding had thrown her. She’d been far out on the steppes, and had walked home through gathering dusk with the echo of distant, eerie howls behind her.

  With a wrenching sensation in the pit of her stomach, Alex now realized that Nate Sloan loomed as a far more powerful threat to her than either the gray wolves of the steppes or the White Wolf of Balminsk. Not because she feared him or the look in his eyes. But because her blood pumped with a hot, equally savage need to know what would happen if… when…he touched her as he’d promised.

  Swallowing, she watched him brush by Katerina with a nod and a curt word. Her cousin’s brows rose in astonishment as she, too, turned to stare after him.

  No wonder Katerina was surprised. The Sl
oan who strode through the camp was a different person than either she or Alex had thought him.

  This wasn’t the dusty outsider who’d laughed when she threatened to teach him to dance, Cossack-style.

  Nor the man who’d warmed her frozen toes with his hands, and her heart with his tales of his improbable youth.

  This was a stranger. A hard, unsmiling stranger who radiated anger and authority in every line of his long, lean body. One who challenged her as a woman as much as he now seemed to challenge her authority.

  Alex gave a silent groan as a scowling Katerina made her way across the square. Still shaken by the confrontation with Sloan, she was in no mood for more of her cousin’s dark looks.

  “So, cousin. The Amerikanski stomps through the camp like a bear with one foot in the trap, and you, you pucker your lips like one who has eaten the persimmon. You fight with him, no?”

  Alex ground her teeth. “Can’t a person have a single conversation or thought in this camp without everyone watching and commenting on it?”

  “No, one cannot,” Katerina retorted. “You know that! Nor can one spend every waking moment with a man and not raise comment. Why has he stuck to you like flies to the dungpile these last few days?”

  Alex twisted her lips at the imagery.

  Katerina mistook the reason behind that small, tight smile. Planting her hands on her hips, she glared at Alex.

  “So, it appears you change your mind about him, no? Is that why you dress yourself in your prettiest tunic? Is that why you wear the lipstick? Do you now think to take him to stud yourself?”

  “Don’t be crude, Katerina.”

  “I, crude? I’m not the one who proposed such a plan. You said you didn’t want him, cousin. You said one of us was to have him.”

  Alex’s temper flared. “You may have him, Katerina, I told you that! If you’re woman enough to hold him.”

  Katerina stepped back, her eyes widening at the sharp retort.

  Alex wasn’t about to stay for the next round in this escalating war between them. She’d had enough of Katerina. Enough of Nate Sloan. Enough of this whole damned cluster of goathide tents and curious aunts and cousins and aged, bent warriors.

  “Tell Dimitri I’ll be at the ice cave. And you, my cousin, may go to—go to join the rest who cook pastries and pour vodka!”

  Whirling, Alex strode to the north pasture. In three minutes she had a snaffle bit and saddle on her gray. In five, she was heading for the retreat that had been her special place since childhood.

  With the feel of the gelding’s pounding hooves vibrating through her body and the sun beating down on her shoulders, Alex rode across the plains.

  For an hour or so, she would leave the camp behind. She would leave her responsibilities and her worries and her cousin’s animosity. She would pretend, if only for an hour or so, that she was once again the thin, long-legged teenager who had galloped across the steppes as though she owned them.

  When she reached a line of low, serrated hills, Alex guided the gelding toward a rocky incline. Halfway up, she found the narrow, almost indiscernible path between tumbled, sharp-sided boulders. After a few moments, Alex reined the gray in on a flat, circular plateau surrounded by boulders and dismounted.

  “Well done, my friend.”

  She gave the gray’s dusty neck a pat, then slid her rifle from its case and pulled the reins over the animal’s head to let them drag the ground. Trained by Petr himself, the gelding would not move unless or until called by its rider.

  For a moment, Alex paused to look out over the rim of tumbled rocks. High, grassy seas stretched to the distant horizon. Gray-green melted into blue where earth and sky met. From this elevation, she could see the jagged scars in the surface, the sharp ravines and deep gorges carved by centuries of rains and swollen spring rivers.

  She could see, as well, a distant horseman patrolling a small, barbed wire compound. Inside that wire, beneath a grassy, overgrown mound, was a cylinder of steel and death.

  The missile site looked so innocent from this distance and this height. A slight bulge in the earth. A patch of shorter grass in a sea of waving stalks. Miles from the deserted launch facility that straddled the border between Karistan and Balminsk.

  From her research, Alex knew that the U.S. missile sites scattered across Montana and Utah and Wyoming were just as isolated, just as remote. Just as innocuous-looking. Linked by underground umbilical cords to launch facilities hundreds of miles away, the weapons themselves were protected by an array of sophisticated intrusion-detection systems.

  In more peaceful times, cattle had grazed near the Karistani site and scratched their backs on those twists of barbed wire. Soldiers in Soviet uniforms had come to inspect the warheads and the intrusion-detection systems. Now the soldiers were gone, and only a lone Karistani rider patrolled the site. Watching. Waiting. As they all waited.

  Sighing, Alex turned toward a crack in the stone wall behind her. Angling sideways, she edged through the opening and left the twentieth century behind.

  She stood in a high-ceilinged cavern lighted by narrow fissures in the cliff overhead. The air was cool, the temperature constant. It was an ice cave, her grandfather had told her when he first brought her here, so many years ago. It had been cut into the rock by long-ago glaciers, and had been used by hunters and travelers down through the ages.

  As her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, Alex sought the faint, fading splotches of color on a far wall. Propping her rifle against the stone, she went over to examine the paintings. She had too much respect to touch them. She wouldn’t even breathe on them. A team of paleontologists from Moscow had examined them some years ago, promising funds to study and protect them. But these pictographs, like so much else, had fallen victim to the disintegration of the Soviet state.

  One of Alex’s goals, when—and if—she secured Karistan’s future, was to protect this part of its past.

  Her fingers itched for her sketch pad as she studied the outline of a shaggy-humped ox, an ancestor of the yak that had migrated centuries ago to Tibet and Central Asia. She drank in the graceful lines of a tusked white tiger, similar to those that had inhabited these parts long before encroaching civilization drove them east to Siberia. And the artist in her marveled at the skill of the long-ago painter, who’d captured in just a few strokes the determination of the naked, heavily muscled hunters moving in for the kill.

  Alex walked farther into the cavern, to where the chamber divided into smaller, darker tunnels. There were more paintings in these spokes, she knew, and a few piles of bones.

  The hunters had wintered here, according to the paleontologists. They’d eaten around fires in the main cavern, stored their supplies of meat and roots in the tunnels, wrapped their dead in hides and left them in the small, dark fissures because the ground was too frozen for burial. If they’d believed in burial.

  Ducking her head, she entered one of the narrow tunnels. Enough light came from the main chamber behind her to show her the way, although she’d been here often enough to know it even in the dark. She was halfway to her special place when a faint rattle made her pause.

  She glanced over her shoulder, listening intently. Was someone or something in the main cavern? It couldn’t be Dimitri, or anyone else from camp. They would call out to her, signal their presence.

  An animal? A bear, or one of the silver foxes that made their lairs in the stony precipices?

  No, her horse would have whinnied, given notice of a predator’s approach.

  A rodent of some kind, a cave dweller whose nest she had unwittingly disturbed in passing?

  Another chink of stone against stone told her that whatever came behind her was too large to be rodent.

  Instinctively Alex dropped to a crouch and balanced on the balls of her feet. Her arms outstretched, fingertips pressing against cool stone, she peered through the dimness.

  Only shadows and stillness stretched behind her.

  Her heart began a slow, painful hammering
. Her eyes strained.

  One of the shadows moved. Came closer. Took on the vague outline of a man.

  Alex didn’t waste time cursing her stupidity in leaving her rifle in the cavern. Her grandfather had taught her not to spend energy on that which she could not change. Instead, she must concentrate on that which she could.

  All right, she told herself. All right. Someone was between her and the Enfield. Someone who had seen the gelding outside. Someone who now stalked her with silent, deliberate stealth.

  Alex took a swift inventory of her weapons. She had the bone-handled knife in her boot. And the short braided whip looped around her wrist. And the fissures along the tunnel to conceal herself in.

  The dim shadow, hardly more than a notion of movement along the dark wall, drifted toward her.

  Her breath suspended, Alex eased upright and flattened her back against the stone. Moving with infinite caution, she inched her shoulders along the wall until the left one dipped into a crevice.

  When her left side fit into the opening, Alex wanted to sob with relief. Instead, she swallowed the fear that clogged her throat and carefully moved her body into darkness. She didn’t let herself think what might be behind her. If there were bones, they could do her no harm. If there were pictographs painted on the slick, cold stone, she’d explore them some other time. Assuming she lived to explore another time.

  She didn’t have any illusions about what could happen to her if the man coming toward her had, somehow, slipped across the border from Balminsk.

  For many years, just the threat of her grandfather’s retribution had laid a mantle of protection over the women of the host. Justice was swift and sure to any who violated a Karistani woman. But the wars, the killings, the mutilations—by both sides—had stripped away the thin veneer of civilization of the people of this area.

  They were descended from the Cossacks. Some from the Tartars, who took few prisoners and made those they did take beg for death. That so few of the Karistani men survived today was evidence of the savagery and the hate the wars with Balminsk had generated.