Way of the Wolf

by James Axler

  After an hour of moving through the cold and the snow, Ryan called a break. They huddled in a little group on the lee side of a massive upthrust of ice that shielded them from most of the wind. They ate double helpings of the self-heats they carried with them from the redoubt. All of them knew the dangers of exposure, and knew that they were burning extra calories simply by being out in the cold.

  Even Ryan, as hardened as he was to the harsh life in Deathlands, couldn't help feeling a little doubtful about their chances.

  "You're thinking too hard, lover," Krysty said.

  Apart in their conversation from the rest of the companions, Ryan nodded. "Can't help thinking this is a fuck-all place to be."

  "There's a way, lover." Krysty touched his face with her gloved hand, and he hated it that the cold had robbed him of the sensation. But the gesture meant a lot. "Over, under or around. There's always a way. You taught me that."

  "We'll get it done," Ryan said. "We haven't ever been stopped before."

  Then, with a clear, unmistakable intensity, a gunshot rolled over the companions.

  RYAN TOOK THE LEAD, matching himself with Jak. He stayed low to the terrain, feeling the added moisture of his breath starting to cake up the handkerchief around his lower face. He held the Steyr at the ready in both hands, but kept the sweatshirt he'd taken from the clothing bins in the redoubt wrapped around the rifle to keep the action from freezing.

  Jak paced him, twenty yards away, a pale ghost running against the snow-covered backdrop.

  More gunshots echoed over them, coming faster now. Somewhere up ahead, serious gunplay was being dealt out.

  Ryan felt more hopeful about the situation. J.B.'s minisextant had revealed they were in the Arctic Circle, somewhere below Greenland, if that place still yet existed. But the population density of the area preskydark hadn't been heavy. Doc had said that a few shipping lines used the routes during the warm seasons of the year.

  But blasters meant men, and men usually meant some way of surviving. He was even further encouraged by the sounds of running engines. Images of boats filled his mind, and he figured he'd never really thought about how good a boat could look until he was thinking about them at that moment.

  The land rose up before Ryan, but it was so white and so like the rest of the terrain that he couldn't tell the difference until he noticed that his angle to the ground had changed. His calf muscles ached from the increased fatigue, the cold and running uphill.

  Then he cleared the edge, scanning it tight against the orange skyline for just a moment. The iceberg dropped away below him, cutting inward in a bowl-shaped depression from the shoreline.

  Nearly forty people scrambled for cover below, dodging bullets fired at them from eight men ringed around them. The engine noises came from two small airwags that glided over them like giant hornets.

  The airwags weren't true planes. Ryan had seen pics of those before. These were little more than seats with wings and a pusher-prop behind. The wings were nearly three times the length of a man, though the body of the plane might have been barely as long as a man was tall. Trapped in the bowl-shaped depression, the engines sounded loud, popping and snarling.

  The forty people running for their lives didn't have weapons except for bows, arrows and spears. They dressed in furs and homespun clothing. Children ran with the adults, crying out in loud voices.

  The gunners used full-scale assault weapons and moved in a definite military pattern. Luckily they seemed to be selective in their targets. Otherwise, every person down there would have been dead.

  At another time, in another place, Ryan might not have been so quick to get involved. He'd seen massacres before, had taken part in some of them. A man wanting to keep his head on his shoulders where it belonged also kept his nose where it belonged. That had been one of the Trader's earliest remembered sayings.

  But the companions were trapped on the iceberg, which was definitely not long for the world. The gunners had assault weapons and obviously a purpose for being there, but Ryan had to ask himself who would willingly stay on a sinking iceberg.

  The other people, dressed in their furs and their homespun clothing, gave him the impression of being native to the area. And there was no better source of information than a local.

  One of the fur-clad men rose from behind a boulder, an arrow fitted to his string. He loosed it, and it crossed the distance to their attackers, catching the target in the chest. Before the bowman could get back to cover, a short burst blasted through his head.

  Ryan settled in behind the Steyr, bracing it on the ground and easing the barrel past the ledge. He knew he would have only a few seconds' surprise working on his side before the gunners knew he was among them. He sighted on the middle of his targets, not going for a head shot because the chances were so slim. Then he let out half a breath, squeezed the trigger, then squeezed off a second round.

  The heavy 7.62 mm bullets skated through the air, not affected by the wind at all. Two of the gunners were going down when Ryan dropped the crosshairs on the third. He squeezed again, moving his head automatically from the telescopic lens. If he had possessed two eyes, moving onto his next target would have been simply a matter of shifting the emphasis of his vision to his other eye. With one, he had to force the shift.

  He caught the third target low in the back, ripping out a wash of blood from the man's midsection as his stomach shredded. Ryan moved to a fourth target, catching the man shifting behind cover, trying to get out of the line of fire. Ryan's round caught him flat-footed and knocked him down.

  With an ululating wail, three of the fur-clad warriors pushed themselves free and rushed the three surviving men on the ground. One of them went down, his face shot away.

  The small airwags fought to gain altitude and come around. Both of them had light machine guns mounted on the front of their craft. One of them got a line on Ryan and cut loose with a roar of autofire.

  The ice ledge in front of Ryan seemed to go to pieces, hammered by the machine-gun rounds. Giving up his position, Ryan rolled on his side to escape the barrage. He scrambled on hands and knees to get back to cover, then brought up the Steyr again.

  By that time one of the airwags was almost on top of him, the machine gun mounted on the front of it chattering away.

  The Steyr banged against Ryan's shoulder as he put around through the pilot's head.

  Out of control, the airwag slammed into the side of the ice cliff just below Ryan. It erupted into a huge ball of flame that twisted up over Ryan's head and scudded black smoke clouds into the air.

  Ryan felt the heat wash over him as he chambered a round and sighted the Steyr back on the killing site. Two of the fur-clad men had overrun one of the two surviving men on the ground. The last ground gunner was making tracks, heading over the ridge.

  Leading the man slightly, Ryan picked him off in midstride, sending him tumbling back down the grade. He searched grimly for the last airwag, seeing it fleeing the battle area and streaking away straight out to sea. Before it went far, one of the albatrosses swooped down at it, maybe merely coming in for a better look, and maybe to defend its chosen territory.

  The pilot couldn't avoid the big bird. He tried to bank his craft, but the albatross pursued, running straight over his head into the pusher-prop. Feathers flew in all directions, and the sound of the engine popping died instantly, its last echoes gasping across the icy beach. The airwag dropped into the ocean and disappeared in a heartbeat.

  "Gone," Jak said.

  Ryan nodded, confirming the albino's statement. Still, he waited for a while in case they had both been wrong. It wasn't likely, and it didn't happen. He turned, knowing J.B. could see him. The Armorer had held his position with the others in case Jak and Ryan had been forced to abandon theirs. Ryan waved them up.

  Then he stood and started down the steep side of the bowl-shaped depression, wondering whose fight he'd interrupted and which side he'd joined. More than anything, he hoped the fur-clad people had a way of
f the iceberg. He didn't relish the thought of being adrift somewhere in the Arctic Circle, but it beat the hell out of drowning.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Ryan kept the Steyr in both hands as he walked down the incline. Despite the help he had given them, the fur-clad people hadn't chosen to come out of hiding. The line of warriors shifted, coming on point to face him. Since there appeared to be only one of him, they were braver.

  One of the warriors stood and approached Ryan. He carried an ice ax in his hands. Someone had altered the handle, though, adding a four-foot-long bone shank instead of the foot-long metal handle, increasing the weapon's reach.

  Ryan halted just out of what he considered to be easy bow-and-arrow range.

  Through the narrow face of his hood, the fur-clad warrior looked Indian. His features were dark, with marked cheekbones, his hair a raven's-wing black. He wore fur mittens that covered his hands but allowed him to use his ax freely.

  The man spoke in a guttural language.

  "Don't understand a word you're saying," Ryan said in a nonthreatening voice. He looked past the man and saw that despite his actions of gunning down their attackers, he had gained no new friends. That was okay, though. It proved that the crowd he was facing was a savvy lot.

  Even as he stood there, several warriors were seeking out the men he had shot. They finished off those who survived with knives, and took the weapons, brandishing them and yelling in that same guttural language as the warrior who addressed Ryan.

  "You speak English," the warrior said.

  "Yes," Ryan replied. And from the look on the man's weathered face, he didn't know which of them was more surprised about the other's ability.

  The warrior nodded. "You're Russian?"

  "No."

  "Then what?"

  Ryan shrugged. "I'm from a place called Deathlands. Heard of it?"

  The warrior shook his head.

  "Had another name a long time ago," Ryan said. "Called itself the United States."

  "American," the warrior stated.

  "Guess so." Ryan didn't really consider himself anything but free. But when the companions had made a jump to Moscow, Ryan had been surprised to find how much patriotism remained in him for the old, dead country. "Those men were Russian?"

  "Yeah."

  "Who are you?" Ryan asked.

  "My name's Harlan," the warrior said. "I'm chief of this tribe. Have you got boats?"

  Ryan shook his head. "I was hoping you would have."

  Harlan narrowed his eyes. "How did you get here?"

  "That's a long story, Chief."

  "Don't have time for a long story," the chief said. "As soon as Vitkin finds out his search-and-capture team is dead, he's going to come hunting."

  THE ALLIANCE between the companions and the fur-clad people was uneasy. Ryan and his small group sat together, except for Doc and Mildred, who helped with the wounded. The med kits they had packed in the redoubt to carry them through their excursion exhausted quickly, but most of the Inuit were taken care of.

  Ryan knew Chief Harlan didn't buy his story about having been part of a trading ship that had blown off course and went down only a short distance from the iceberg, but the Inuit leader didn't press the issue. Ryan didn't want to give up the gateway, or the redoubt, if he could help it.

  Harlan's own story was that he and his tribe were trying to get some of their people back from the Russian Captain Gotfrid Vitkin after the chunk of glacier had split off from the main mass.

  Ryan hadn't quite gotten used to the way the chief could slip from his native tongue into English so easily. Harlan said his ancestors had been part of a British science observatory in the Arctic Circle at the time of the nukecaust, and they'd been taken in by the Inuit. When everything froze over, there weren't many other places to go, so they'd become more Inuit than British.

  "The quakes had gotten worse than usual in the area lately," Harlan said. "Still, no one expected all the ice masses to tear free the way they had. We tracked this iceberg for two days before we found the right one."

  "Where are your boats?" Dean asked.

  "Vitkin's sailors shot them up," Harlan answered. "We got caught coming onto the iceberg less than an hour ago. Vitkin's got to be getting desperate."

  "Why?" J.B. asked. "If he's a captain, then he's got a ship."

  Harlan laughed without humor. "He's got a ship, all right. But it's mired in the ice. Been there since skydark."

  The battle between the Russians and the Inuit had raged for decades, according to Harlan. They had started out trading back sixty years earlier when Harlan's wandering tribe had found the Russians.

  "Vitkin has a ship?" J.B. asked, pausing in the middle of stripping a piece of pemmican one of the Inuit women had passed out to the companions.

  "Yeah," Harlan said, then added a Russian phrase. "Means Red Star of Glory or something like that. After all these years, who cares, you know?" He shrugged. "Anyway, the story my ancestors handed down to me—and most things are stories around here, because paper and pencil is a luxury, not to mention extra weight you have to lug around—the Russians were some sort of strike team sent into the area to take out some secret base the Americans were supposed to have. Who knows if any of that is true?"

  Ryan ate his pemmican, working around the salty taste of it, and didn't say anything.

  "Vitkin's father's father or something like that, so the story goes, was the original captain of the ship," Harlan went on. "Supposed to have been some other ships, but they all got lost in a battle. Only thing that survived was the Red Star of Glory. And it's locked up in the ice."

  "Vitkin has some of your people?" Krysty asked.

  "Yeah. See, back in those days, you didn't find many Russian sailor women," the chief said. "Vitkin's ancestor, to keep up the population, started trading with the Inuit people—other tribes than ours—and traded a few guns for young women. Chiefs made the deals. Up here, a large tribe is a pain in the ass to take care of. You're always on the move, always looking for enough food to get you by."

  "Seems to me," Albert said, "that the Russians would have the same problems. Did they trade for food?"

  "A little. Stuff that they wanted. They had a lot of stores on ship, though. And the original Captain Vitkin didn't want to become dependent on the Inuit."

  "Except for women," Dean said.

  "Right. But after a while, he started raising his own women. Didn't want to lose the Russian bloodline, you see."

  "How inbred are they?" Ryan asked. He had seen small villages so phobic they killed outlanders outright with no thought at all to their own gene pool, degenerating quickly in a matter of a few generations.

  "Pretty badly," Doc said, approaching the group.

  "Got a lot of stale genes," Mildred added. "Those dead guys I got a look at have mismatched arms and legs, cranial problems, cleft palates, no chins, and an assortment of other prime indicators that daddy's not been rutting far from the old homestead." She hunkered down and helped herself to the pemmican.

  "That's what the latest Captain Vitkin was doing when he captured our people," Harlan said. "Trying to add to his bloodstock. After his father started killing some of the Inuit who came to trade with him, getting medicines and guns, everybody said fuck him, who needs it? They go out, pound a seal to death when it's asleep, had a new set of clothes, fat for their lanterns if they had or wanted them, and meat for a week. Russians were the ones who needed something."

  "But he captured your people?" Ryan said.

  Harlan grinned. "Sure. We let him."

  "Why?" Krysty asked.

  "Vitkin has guns," Harlan said. "With the ice breaking up the way it has, hunting and fishing areas among the Inuit are getting more tense. Man who has the most guns is going to get to hunt and fish. Everybody else is going to starve. Me, I intend to have a bigger tribe."

  "And do what?" Ryan asked.

  "Mebbe go south," Harlan said.

  "Lot of ocean to cover."

  "V
ikings did it," the chief said confidently, "in really small boats."

  "Then why let Vitkin capture your people?" Dean asked. "Seems stupe."

  Ryan gave his son a glance, letting Dean know he had said more than was necessary.

  Dean nodded.

  "Actually it's a pretty smart thing to do," Harlan said. "Vitkin's numbers aboard the ship have gotten low. They're having a lot of stillborn lately because their gene pool is so messed up. But the Russian sailors are lazy. They get our women on the ship, they have sex with them, hope they turn up pregnant and use them as slaves to cook and clean."

  "You sent those girls into that?" Doc asked in an incredulous voice.

  "That's cruel," Mildred said.

  Harlan looked defensive, as if afraid he were going to lose the goodwill of his new friends. "I asked for volunteers. I had four girls who said they would go. No pressure from me. Sex is sex. Enjoyed sex a time or two with a couple of them myself. You've got to have something to do when it's too cold to go out and do anything else. Hated to see them go."

  Ryan didn't like the idea, but he saw the logic in it.

  "And they were trading off a few months of discomfort against a training that would make them valuable," Harlan went on.

  "As maids and gaudy sluts?" Mildred asked.

  "I don't know about gaudy sluts," Harlan said.

  "A girl who sells sex for money," Mildred elaborated.

  "No." Harlan waved the accusation away.

  "Cooking and cleaning aren't the only things the girls get trained on. Vitkin also puts them to work making reloads for their weapons and doing some repair work on the guns." His eyes widened. "Do you know how much those girls will be in demand when they get away from the Russians?"

  "Why hasn't anyone ever done it before?" Ryan asked.

  Harlan swiveled his gaze to the one-eyed man. "Hell, they have. You think I thought of this all on my own? A lot of Inuit tribes who have chiefs like me have thought of this. I bet there's nine tribes I know of right now who've benefited from their girls getting on the Russian ship, then escaping and bringing back the knowledge they learned. This is just business. Why do you think the Russians try to hang on to their own gene pool so long? They have sex the second and third generations because the kids generally won't try to escape the ship. Soon as they're born and up and around, the Russians kill the mother. Or the mother escapes and leaves them there because it's too hard to escape carrying a baby."