In its wake, a silence so profound that not even the ever-present wind soughing through the boughs of the large pines surrounding them can penetrate, descends, and Kirsten shivers.

"You alright?" Koda asks, stepping closer and slipping an arm around her lover’s shoulders.

Leaning her head against her lover’s strong chest, Kirsten takes in the world that surrounds her. Trees, trees, and more trees, as far as the eye can see. The wind, now coming to her, carries with it the sweet scent of life, underlined with a darker, richer, almost secret scent that she can only identify as decay. And amidst this, she stands alone, save for the strong body at her back, promising her protection and comfort. And love beyond measure.

Not so alone now, she thinks. The thought brings with it a small, secret smile, and a tiny thrill of joy suffuses her chest, warming her from within even as Koda’s radiant head warms her from without.

"Yeah," she says finally. "I think I am."

"Good."

They stand that way, body pressed to body, for a long span of moments, content to allow the forest carry its secrets to them, one at a time, absorbing the peace and contentment that seems to be theirs for the wishing. She can almost…almost…forget what lies ahead, and behind, and resolves to take full advantage of this small slice of peace for as long as it is gifted unto them.

Finally, though, the words push forth from their place in her chest. "So, what now?"

Koda smiles and slips her arm away, digging her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans. "How do you feel about camping?"

Kirsten pretends to give the question serious thought. "The Beverly-Hills-‘cabin’-with-all-amenities-and-you’ll-never-see-so-much-as-a-mouse-dropping kind of camping, or the ‘let’s grab us a pup tent and a couple cases of beer and shoot us up something to mount on the wall’ kind of camping?"

"I’d say the second," Koda responds, chuckling, "minus the beer, unless you’re suddenly partial to the stuff."

"Nah. Never developed much of a taste for it. A little of Maggie’s sipping whiskey might go down real nice on a cool night, though."

Koda’s grin broadens. "I’ll see what I can come up with, then." She looks around, getting her bearings. "I’m pretty familiar with this area. My grandfather used to take us out here sometimes when the woods around our place got a little too easy for us kids to figure out. Unless it’s been torn down in the interim, there should be a pretty good camping and hunting shop not too far to the north of here. We can stock up on the supplies we’ll need and start off from there."

"How will we get around?"

"Walking seems the best bet, for now at least. I want us off the main roads as much as possible. We don’t know how many unfriendlies are still around patrolling, and we’re prime candidates for a trip to the local rape ward if they don’t recognize you. And if they do…."

Kirsten doesn’t need Dakota to finish that particular sentence for her. She well knows the size and shape of the axe hanging over her head, but is determined to push through, no matter how thin the thread holding it up there might be. "That’ll be pretty slow going, though," she muses.

"We might be able to rustle up a couple of mountain bikes. Horses, if we’re lucky. That should speed things up some, but for now, our feet are our best bet."

"Lead on, then, MacDuff," Kirsten jokes, passing the leadership of this particular part of their quest on with a sweeping hand gesture that earns her a fond swat on the backside. Her happy laughter is answered by the chirping of birds, and for this one second in time, all is right in Kirsten King’s world.

* * *

"Wow," Kirsten remarks to the woman standing before her, grinning. "If we were playing ‘Cowboys and Indians’ right now, I’d be mighty confused."

"Good thing we’re not, then," Koda replies, chuckling and looking past Kirsten into the mirror that hangs along one wall. A soft flannel in red and black hangs open over a tight, white ribbed tank top, which in turn is tucked into soft bluejeans whose cuffs are, in their turn, tucked into calf high moccasins with thick treads. A gun is holstered and hanging low on her right hip, a hunting knife at her left. A rifle strap crisscrosses her chest with the strap that holds her arrow quiver over her back. Her black Stetson is in its customary position atop her head, though a hank of braided hair hangs down, twined with the two hawk feathers she’s yet to remove. Her medicine bag lays close against the hollow of her neck, completing the picture. Leaning against one leg is a vacu-sack, all the rage in hiking equipment before the androids had made such a pleasure an outright necessity for so many. Clothes and sundries are stored in the roomy sack, then vacuum sealed, cutting their total bulk down to almost nil. The pack would fit easily over her hips and lower back, leaving her easy room to reach her weapons, should she have need for them. The tent is similarly stored.

Kirsten is dressed a bit more conservatively, in jeans and a T-shirt with a Gore-Tex jacket rolled in her pack. "Hey, look what I found back there!" She grins as she holds up her prize: a fully loaded solar laptop with all the amenities. "Damn thing’s about five pounds lighter than my old one and damn, it’s fast!!"

"Only you," Koda grins, shaking her head.

"Yeah, well, get used to it, Vet. You’re marrying a geek. Our toys come with the territory."

"Just as long as you’re the one carrying ‘em," Koda jokes.

"Don’t you worry about that. I always carry my weight."

"We’ll see."

* * *

Already dressed in her flight suit, Maggie runs out to greet Manny as he swings out of the copter, instinctively ducking low to avoid decapitation by the still slowly spinning blades, thought in this particular model, that really isn’t much of a danger. The roters are high above her head. "You get em down safe?" she shouts.

"And sound," Manny returns, giving her shoulder a quick, calming pat. "For better or worse, they’re on their way."

"Good. One less thing to worry about." Turning, she begins to walk back toward the command post, Manny at her left heel like a well trained dog at a show.

"How are things on this end?"

"Ten minutes to the deadline. We still can’t read em on radar or GPS. Line of sight only, and it’s not good."

"Has anyone figured out where the hell they came from?" he asks. "I mean, where the fuck were they when the rest of their little friends were getting shredded?"

"Don’t know, and at this point, I don’t care," the General retorts, dragging a hand through her hair. "We’ve gotta take em down as fast as they put em up. It’s the only way."

"Got a plan for that?" Manny asks slyly.

"Don’t I always? C’mon."

* * *

"You hungry yet?"

"Is supper gonna be MRE’s?"

"’Fraid so. Unless you want to stop and fish. I haven’t seen a whole lot of small game around here, yet, and I’m not too keen on lugging around sixty pounds of venison from killing one of those big bucks you keep scaring."

Kirsten’s face brightens for a moment. Then the smile fades. "It was a nice thought. We’d better keep going as long as we have light, though."

‘That won’t be long. Better start looking for a place to camp."

Around them the shadows of pine and aspen lie long upon the ground. The low sun strikes glints of gold and silver from the rippling current of the Little Medicine Bow, visible here and there through the trees where the river bends west. Asi runs alongside, snuffling happily at fox scrapes, occasionally pausing to inspect the tangled roots that hump their way across their path. They have been walking steadily for almost eight hours, pausing only to take compass readings and refer to the Ordinance map Manny had stowed among their gear. Their course angles south and west from the clearing where they set down an hour after leaving Ellsworth, past the historic town of Medicine Bow and the Medicine Bow Range beyond. Here the land lies in sharp folds, rising gradually toward the higher peaks of the Sierra Madre, interspersed with streams and alpine meadows. They have seen no sign of humans. The woods and the river are as they might have been a thousand years ago, five hundred years ago, when her people first moved west into the plains, following the buffalo.

"It all seems so far away," Kirsten says quietly, echoing her thoughts. "Almost like none of it ever happened."

"This is Ina Maka’s place. Her time, not ours." Above them, a dark speck appears against the sky where the gold sheen of the westering sun meets the deepening blue of the east. It circles above them, growing larger as it spirals downward. A cry floats down to them, high and wild and triumphant.

Koda stops in her tracks, staring upward. As the speck comes nearer, it takes on the shape of wings, a bright copper tail fanned out to the beating light, its feathers sheened like hammered bronze. The cry comes again, and the broad wings cup the air to slow the hawk’s descent. "My God," Kirsten breathes. "My God."

Koda does not speak, only stretches out her arm. Wiyo lights delicately on her wrist, protected only by the thin fabric of her shirt, and walks sideways up her arm to rest on her shoulder. She ruffles her feathers once, gives a small, incongruous chirp of greeting, and settles, ducking her head to preen under a wing. Koda strokes her lightly under the throat, drawing a finger across the white breast feathers and the dark belly-band below. Around them dusk thickens as they move west, toward the mountains, the sea beyond, the crimson sky.

* * *

The midday sun beats down on the tarmac in front of the main gate, making rippling the air above it. From where she stands in the watchtower, Maggie can see metallic glints here and there that must be either droids or armed humans, but they are scattered among the tumbled buildings across the road and in the open fields beyond. She has not been able to get good instrument readings on their number or their placement. All she knows is that there are too goddammed many of the goddammed things for her depleted forces to hold off. All she can do is keep their attention on the Base and stall them for as long as she can.

And give Dakota and Kirsten as much time as she can, measured out now in minutes, in hours at best.

Next to her, Andrews settles the muzzle of his rifle against the edge of the wall slit, squinting for perhaps the dozenth time through the scope. "Nothing there, Ma’am."

Maggie sets down her own binoculars. "I know. They’re keeping under cover until the last minute."

"But Hart’ll have to show himself."

"Oh, yeah. And when he does . . .." Maggie lets the words trail off. They both know what will happen when he has outlived his usefulness. To both sides.

The early summer heat settles about them, a stillness in the air that has nothing to do with the impending conflict. It is not so much the calm before a storm as it is the earth settling into its season despite the human goings-on that scrabble along its surface. The planet, for the first time in decades, is no longer at risk from its inhabitants. Only one species stands to vanish now, eradicated by its own hand. A bee, drawn by the scent of soap, buzzes lazily in front of Maggie’s nose, and she bats it away gently. On the road, nothing moves.

Then, "Here he comes," Andrews says quietly.

Hart moves out from between the remains of a McDonald’s and an auto parts store, his blue shirt open at the collar, head bare. He no longer carries a flag of truce, only the bullhorn swinging from one hand. A snap and whine of feedback breaks the silence as it powers up. "Colonel Allen," says the flat, amplified voice. "Do you have an answer? Open the gates and surrender your so-called ‘President,’ and we will leave you in peace."

"Cover me," Maggie says, and steps out of the guardroom onto the catwalk that circles the tower. Below her, Hart stands alone in the middle of the road, the breeze ruffling his grey hair and the beginnings of a patriarchal beard. She stands in the sun, letting him see the stars on her shoulders and the one on her helmet. Letting him see, too, that her hand rests on the butt of the pistol at her waist. With five generations of gospel singers and twenty years in command of troops behind her, she has no need for a megaphone. "Hart!" she shouts. "I have a deal to make you!"

"No deals, Colonel. Meet our demand or not: that is the only choice you have."

Maggie smiles grimly. It is no more than she expects. But she says, "It’s not the only choice you have, though. What do you think your little metalhead pals out there are going to do with you when you’ve outlived your usefulness to them? Which is—" she glances ostentatiously at her watch—"right about now."

Hart shakes his head, a gesture meant to convey a response more in sorrow than in anger. "Wise humans have allied themselves with these good beings, Colonel. I am not alone, I assure you, nor am I in any danger. Nor are you or the troops under your command, if you surrender Dr. King. Your answer, if you please."

Crunch time. "Then you have it, and it is this." She pauses, letting the moments draw out, in case any other human collaborators are listening. "President King has authorized me to allow you, and any other human who has had second thoughts about cooperation with the enemy, to return to the Base to face charges of desertion in time of war and treason. If you give yourselves up, your lives will be spared. If you don’t, you will face the full penalty of the law when you are captured."

The expression on Hart’s face might almost be a smile. "And I offer you and your people the same amnesty, Colonel, provided that you hand the good Doctor over. Now."

The parley, Maggie knows, is essentially useless. The best she can do is buy a few minutes’ more time to prepare, give Koda and Kirsten a few more moments to get that much further away. Once, long ago, she had seen a film in which the hero, about to be hanged, requested time to make his confession. After half an hour, he was still owning up to affairs with "Maisie, and Gertrude, and Lollie, four times with Wilhelmina, and twice with Tom." And of course, rescue had arrived just as his captors’ patience ran out. Her own list, alas, is not nearly long enough to inspire either patience or awe. And what time she has is running out, with no help in sight. "Withdraw your android troops as a sign of your good faith, General. Then we can talk seriously."

"Bring Dr. King outside the gates where we can see her—as a sign of your good faith, Colonel--and we can talk seriously."

And that time has just run out. Hart and his cohorts have to have seen the Cheyenne take off; they have to have seen it return. They must at least suspect that Kirsten is no longer on the Base. They hope for an easy conquest, no more. Maggie steps away from the slit in the wall behind her. "Now, Andrews."

The crack of his rifle shocks the bright afternoon air. Almost simultaneously, Hart’s head jerks back violently, spraying blood and brain matter in a cloud of droplets that catch the sun, sparkling like summer rain. The bullhorn drops to rattle along the pavement as he falls. There is no sound, no movement, from the buildings across the road, nothing to give away the enemy that she knows is there.

"Ma’am! Inside!" The door behind her jerks open, and Andrews pulls her bodily back into the guardroom by the straps of the Kevlar vest she has buckled over her flight suit.

"Out! Now!" she snaps, giving him a shove toward the stairs and pounding down behind him, two steps at a time. Pulling a walkie-talkie from her belt, she thumbs on the transmit button and yell "Fire!" into the speaker just as they sprint out of the tower at ground level and into the waiting Jeep. Andrews guns the engine, zero to sixty in what seems less than a breath. A shell from one of the big guns hastily dug into makeshift bunkers that morning arcs whistling overhead to land beyond the gate with a burst of fire and a roar. The concussion sends a shudder through the Jeep and rocks them against their seats.

"With luck, that got a few of ‘em," Maggie shouts. And into her com, "Hold your fire until we have the enemy in sight or incoming! Don’t waste our ammo!"

"At least we got that son-of-a-bitch traitor," Andrews says, satisfaction in the straight set of his mouth as they speed down the Base’s main drag toward Wing Headquarters and the guns arrayed around it. "That ought at least to send a message to any other collaborators out there."

"Yeah," Maggie says, her voice grim in her own ears. "But the message they’re gonna get real quick now is that we can’t hold out against them for more than a couple hours, maybe not that, if they launch a massed attack."

"Remember the Alamo, huh?"

"Remember the Alamo," she agrees. "But remember something else. We’ve still got a few Tomcats with some fight left in ‘em."

* * *

A small fire is blazing cheerily in the center of a tiny clearing just west of the river. Next to it, coals lie in a ring of stones, and on those coals, two plump chukar roast away; lucky finds that Koda was able to take with a bow after Asi had accidentally flushed them from their hiding place while sniffing around in search of a good place to mark his territory.

The hero of the food getting venture is sprawled on his back near the fire, eyes open and alert to every movement, hoping beyond hope that his hard earned work will earn him some of the catch.

The savory scent of cooking partridge sets Kirsten’s belly to grumbling, and she covers it with a hand as Dakota looks up from her work and grins at her. "Won’t be much longer."

"Thank god for that. I’m starved!"

"Did you finish setting up what you needed on that thing?"

Kirsten’s blush is luckily hidden by the glare from the computer’s large screen. "Um…yeah, just now," she replies, quickly clicking off the solitaire game, mid-hand. The computer beeps out a mechanical sigh—it had been winning—and obligingly shuts down.

"Good." Nodding, Dakota returns to her task of sharpening the hunting knife she’s used on the birds. As Kirsten looks on, she experiences a sense of déjà vu so strong that she wonders, albeit briefly, if she’s undergoing an actual time transfer. The woman sitting next to her looks exactly the same, minus the hawk feathers and much of the clothing Koda now wears. The weapon she sharpens so carefully by the firelight is not a knife, but a sword, well used, and well loved. She looks down at herself, noting absently the similar lack of clothing, and sees, not a computer, but a flattened piece of parchment. A quill and small inkpot sit to her right.

The dark, glossy head looks up from its work, deep blue eyes meeting hers with the same look of total adoration and devotion, and Kirsten can’t help but smile until it feels as if her face is about to split in two.

A dark eyebrow lifts. "Are you alright?"

Kirsten blinks, and the déjà vu, or time travel, or whatever it is that she has experienced, is gone, and a perfectly normal looking Dakota Rivers looks back at her, a question in her eyes.

Taking off her glasses, Kirsten rubs her eyes. "Just…processing the day, I guess."

"Mm."

Taking a quick peek, she sees that Koda is already back to her sharpening, and lets go a small sigh of relief. Closing her laptop completely, she sets it to the side and stands, stretching out muscles pleasantly tired from their long hike. Simple physical tiredness, of late, has been replaced by bouts of emotional overload shot though with darts of adrenaline, keeping her on hair-trigger edge. Her body, though tired, thanks her for the respite, and she, in turn, thanks it for bearing up remarkably well under these changed circumstances. Her belly grumbles again, and she laughs, watching as her lover puts down her work and fishes the game birds from the coals, setting them on two camp plates already garnished with the fresh herbs she’s picked from the forest.

Not even using the spork provided, Kirsten rips into the stuffed bird with her bare hands, shoveling the food into her mouth as fast as it will go, and groaning, eyes rolling in ecstasy as the spicy flavor coats her palate with ambrosia. "Jesus!" she exclaims around a bulging mouthful, "this is fantastic!!"

Koda looks on in awe, decimating her own bird with more delicate motions while feeding several morsels to the raptly attentive Asimov. "Glad you like it."

"Like it? I never had something so good in my life! You should have been a chef!"

"Exercise and fresh mountain air," Koda replies, tossing another morsel to Asi. "Does it every time."

"Huh uh," Kirsten disagrees, still shoveling as fast as her hands can move, her mouth and chin liberally coated with grease. "You’ve got talent, woman. Ever think of opening up a Vet clinic with a restaurant on the side?"

"I…think that would give customers the wrong idea, don’t you?"

Kirsten thinks about it for a moment, then realizes the outcome of her suggestion. "Ew."

"Ew is right."

The rest of dinner is finished in silence, and after the leavings are buried and the dishes cleaned, Dakota sits back against an overturned log, Kirsten comfortably ensconced between her legs holding the arms crossed over her belly. Both are lost in the contemplation of the stars above. With no streetlights, no cars, no sirens, and only the wind for company, the night is profoundly silent. After a moment, Kirsten sighs.

"What’s wrong, sweetheart?" Koda asks, pressing her cheek atop the soft blond hair of her lover.

"I…don’t know, really." She laughs a little. "Maybe I’m getting an attack of the guilts or something. I mean, here I am…here we are…in…well…in paradise, while our friends are back home fighting for their lives, getting hurt, maybe getting killed." She turns a little, meeting Dakota’s eyes. "What right do I have to feel so at peace, so happy, when people I care about are dying? Because of me?"

Dakota tightens her grip around her lover, settling Kirsten more comfortably against her and pressing a kiss into the crown of her hair. "It’s their freedom they’re fighting for, canteskuye. Theirs, ours, everyone’s." She pauses for a second, then resumes. "Do you think, really think, that if Maggie had given you to Hart on a silver platter, he would have let everyone on the base just walk away?"

"Well…."

Koda remains silent, letting Kirsten think it through.

"I guess not. I mean, he’s lied about everything else, so why would he suddenly be telling the truth about that?"

"Exactly. Hart’s an opportunist. The androids cut him a deal, and he’s keeping up his end of that bargain. You might be the ‘prize’ at the moment, but every single man, woman and child outside of the control of Westerhaus and his gang is the ultimate target and he won’t stop until he has every single one of us under his thumb, one way or the other."

"I know this," Kirsten says, shifting a little. "In my head, I know this. It’s just…."

"Your heart. You feel because you’re human, because you’re a compassionate person, and because you love."

"This being human stuff is hard," Kirsten mumbles, snuggling further into Koda’s warm embrace.

"But worth it, don’t you think?"

Kirsten’s grin is hidden in the folds of Dakota’s shirt. "Oh yeah."

* * *

"Isaac Asimov King, you get your furry, flea bitten behind out here this instant!"

Chuckling, Dakota opens the smallish two-man tent’s flap a bit wider and spies Asi lounging in royal splendor over their sleeping bags, his head daintily placed on Kirsten’s camp pillow. His tongue lolls as his tail beats a tattoo against the side of the tent.

"I mean it! Right now! I built a nice blanket nest out here for you to lie on, so get out here and use it! Now!"

Asi’s tail beats harder against the fabric of the tent, putting on his best ‘ain’t I lovable?’act.

"Don’t make me come in there and pull you out by your ears, son."

Dark, doggie eyes roll over to Dakota, who smirks. "I think she means it," she says, sotto voce.

Asi whines.

"Oh, believe me," Kirsten replies sarcastically, "she does."

With an Emmy-worthy groan, Asi rolls over and stands, then begins to slink, tail and ears drooping, toward the exit, like a convict on his way to the Chair.

"Save that load of bull for the fertilizer salesman and get your hairy butt moving."

With a last, mournful look at them both, he exits the tent and sniffs at the blankets Kirsten has set up for him right outside the entrance. In a quiet flutter of wings, Wiyo glides down from her perch on a nearby tree to land on the tent’s support post.

"Look," Kirsten says, "Wiyo’s here to keep you company."

That gets an interested look from Asi, who, on the spur of the moment, decides to try out his newly acquired partridge flushing skills on the newcomer. Wiyo, who isn’t anything close to even resembling a partridge, is particularly unimpressed. Asi barks softly and noses the tent again. Wiyo ruffles her feathers and hisses at him, making him take a step back in surprise and growl low in his throat.

"Play nice," Koda orders softly, eyeing both of them as she urges Kirsten inside the tent.

She receives two supremely innocent looks in return.

The tent is just tall enough for Kirsten to stand up straight, and she does, hands clamped to the small of her back as she stretches it, groaning unhappily. "Dear god I’m stiff."

"I’ve got just the cure for that."

Kirsten looks over her shoulder, a smile forming. "You do, do you?"

"Mm. Take off your clothes and lie down."

Kirsten chuckles. "Honey, you know I love you, but I’m about as sore as one person can be and not require large doses of Morphine. I don’t know how much I can contribute to--."

"Just take off your clothes and lie down, please."

"Well…if you insist."

"I insist."

Slowly and stiffly, Kirsten removes her clothes, then slowly kneels down atop the opened and connected sleeping bags, stretching out on her belly with a loud groan. "I think it’s gonna be a toss-up as to whether I can ever get back up again."

"Oh," comes Koda’s smooth voice from above and behind her, "you’ll get up. Now just close your eyes and relax."

Doing as she’s bade, Kirsten jumps just a little as something warm and heavy is laid across her shoulders. "Mm. What’s that?"

"Warm packs. Just stay relaxed and let me do all the work."

Several more packs find their way across her back and legs, their warmth immediately penetrating her overstressed muscles and coaxing them into gradual, and welcome, relaxation. "Oh," she moans, "this is bliss."

Something faintly spicy scents the air just then, and Kirsten wakes up from a half-doze to feel her right foot cradled gently in Dakota’s large hands. One strong thumb comes down on her instep, making her hiss with pain, then groan with pleasure as heated oil and gentle pressure soothes its way into the tender sole of her foot. "I’m in Heaven," Kirsten croons off-key, her voice slurred against the incredible pleasure she’s feeling. "God, what hands you have, my love."

Dakota’s laugh is soft as she continues to tend to every muscle, every pore, every inch of skin on Kirsten’s foot, soothing the aches with deft strokes of her strong, gentle fingers. Then she lays the limp appendage down on the sleeping bag and lifts the other, repeating the process until Kirsten’s blissful snores fill the tent.

"That’s it, cante mitawa," she whispers lovingly. "Let it go for tonight. Just let it go." Brushing a kiss against the foot she’s holding, she places it down with its mate, languidly removes her own clothing, and slips into the sleeping bag next to her partner. Removing the warm packs, she presses her length against Kirsten’s naked side, places the palm of her hand on the small of her partner’s back, and falls quickly asleep, a small smile on her face.

CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

"THEY HAVE HEAVY guns here, and here, in the valleys." Tacoma points to the rippling contour lines on the ordinance map spread out on the table before them. "And we’ve been taking rocket fire from higher elevations here." He taps the map again, indicating the low hills to the west of the base that gradually rise into the sacred Paha Sapa. "They’re spread out all around us. We can backtrack and return fire, but we have no way of knowing what else they have or where it is. And we’re going to run short of ammo in a very short time."

"We need recon," Manny observes. "Let me take an Apache up, General. Or the Cheyenne—I can get it up high enough, quick enough they won’t be able to hit it."

"Hell," says Tacoma, with a grim smile. "One sight of that thing’d scare the bejesus out of ‘em if they were human."

Manny shoots him an aggrieved look over the bandana that wraps the lower half of his face, even though Maggie suspects he agrees. Goddess knows she does. Soot from the burning HQ building drifts through the air, settling under the canvas flap that constitutes the temporary command post and falling as fine dust on the map. Further away, black smoke pours from a burning fuel tank, shot through with tongues of flame. Its stench, rank with oil and kerosene, comes to them on the thick air. Maggie waves a hand in front of her offended nose and says, "We don’t just need recon. We need aerial fire power."

"And we need it now," Tacoma agrees. "Toller knows the Base as well as Hart. Sooner or later they’ll get the range on the planes."

"Shit." Manny jerks the kerchief of his face. "General, Ma’am—"

"Get suited up," she says tersely. "Meet me on the flightline."

Manny sprints from underneath the makeshift canopy, holding the bandana again over his face. Tacoma watches him go, his eyes troubled. "With respect, General—"

"With respect, Major Rivers. We have two Tomcats fueled and ready. Two planes, two pilots. You’re in charge on the ground as of now. End of discussion."

"You know they’ve probably got anti-aircraft missiles out there."

"They probably do," Maggie agrees. "We’ll just have to dodge them as best we can."

"We’ll do whatever we can to draw their fire, General."

"Within prudence, Major. Within prudence. You’ll be able to see at least one of us. When you do, open up and give ‘em everything you’ve got. Andrews."

"Ma’am."

"Let’s go." She turns again to Tacoma. "You remember I have to answer to your sister for you. Don’t do anything that’ll lose my hair."

A flash of white teeth is her answer as he turns back to the study of the map, punching coordinates into his hand-held. Maggie races for the Jeep, her flight boots ringing hard on the pavement. Andrews paces her stride for stride. The dash for the flightline is, if anything, more harrowing than the white-knuckle race from the gate, clipping corners and bouncing over speed bumps with the kind of jolt that would knock the doors off a civilian vehicle. She holds fast to the rollbar and mutters a quiet prayer to Yemaya, cc’d to Koda’s Ina Maka.

Let us get there on time. Let us make it into the air.

Halfway there, a mortar shell goes screaming over their heads to land somewhere near a maintenance hangar. A second follows it before Maggie can draw a breath. The twin strikes hit like thunderbolts, blurring out the rattle of the Jeep and its snarling engine in a fog of white noise. Smoke rises from the street that runs along the flightline, and a second column from somewhere on the other side of the row of hangars. Maggie’s heart rises up and lodges in her throat, stifling speech. The enemy have found their range. "Go!" she yells, and Andrews floors the accelerator, rattling her teeth and shaking her bones loose in their sockets. The last half-mile streaks by in a blur, while the rockets begin to fall around the flight line like deadly hail, on ripping into the street just ahead of them, gouging a crater that Andrews barely misses, the tires of the driver’s side skirting its rim by millimeters.

Thirty seconds later, the Jeep skids to a stop on the apron that flanks the main north-south runway. The two Tomcats sit just outside the hangar doors, one with its canopy up, the other, Manny, suited and helmeted at the controls, already closing down. Throwing off her Kevlar vest and field gear as she runs, Maggie snatches her helmet from the waiting tech sergeant, slaps it on her head and scrambles up the ladder into the front cockpit of her craft. She straps in one-handed, fixing her oxygen mask in place, punching in the sequence for the automated systems checks that would normally occupy a quarter hour. Today they will run exactly as long as it takes her to get into position for takeoff. The green and red LED’s dance across the small screen, but the only figures that matter are the ones that tell her that she’s taking off fuel tanks topped off and the readout that confirms the ready status of the missiles that bristle along the undersides of her wings. It comes to her that this may be the last time that she will ever fly, that she has nothing to gain and only time to lose, but habit is too strong, and she continues to follow the check-list even as she shuts down her lexan bubble. The numbers still flickering in front of her, she revs her engines and begins her taxi to the north end of the strip.

She has beaten it into her student pilots’ heads for a decade and a half. If you’re going to fly, you don’t have options. Do it right. Do it right the first time.

Do it right the last time, too.

With a wave of her hand, she motions Manny into position at her left wing, just to one side and behind. As she turns to make her run, a rocket tears into the tarmac just behind her, and she opens the throttle, no time now for gradually gathering speed, and hurtles down the runway, pulling G’s before she ever reaches the end, Manny streaking along beside her, keeping pace. Then she pulls the nose up, feeling the lift of air beneath her wings and is airborne, climbing almost straight up into the sun.

At 10,000 feet she levels off, scraps of cloud like drifting feathers beneath her where she hangs in silence over the folded valleys and greening fields below. Sun glints off the nose of her plane, catching the edge of the lexan bubble as she banks to sweep in a wide arc south and west. Below her she can make out the rectilinear grid that is Rapid City and the dark ribbon of the highway where they made their stand against the droids a day, a lifetime, ago. She levels her wings and swings back toward Ellsworth, punching the display from the copilot’s monitor forward to her own screen. The radar might not be able to pick up the enemy, but the cameras should be able to find them. Even if the damned metalheads have found some way to shield themselves from long-wave frequencies, even if they can make themselves effectively invisible, they can’t make themselves transparent. If she can find the anomalies, she can bomb them.

And put an end to them once for all.

Far to the east, the sun strikes fire from a streaking silver shape that must be Manny’s Tomcat, turning as she is now to quarter the land beneath them. The gorges and ancient lava flows that spread out between the Base and the Black Hills ripple away beneath her, their shapes flowing across the screen. The camera’s lens, powerful enough to show a single buttercup growing in the summer meadows, singles out nothing of interest. No armored columns, no grinding mass of titanium canon fodder.

The blip appears on her screen without warning, something rising toward her from a winding gorge branching off from the Cheyenne’s south fork. She kicks up the Tomcat’s nose, and a Sparrow air-to-air missile streaks from beneath the left wing, locking onto its target as Maggie climbs and rolls away, sweeping back toward its launch point and punching coordinates into the laser guidance system that will drop 500 pounds of high explosive on the enemy. The offending blip disappears from her readout a half-second before she sends the bomb on its way. With luck, it will take out a whole nest, but it is luck she cannot count on. Neither can she afford to be free-handed with her payload.

Another ground-to-air rocket rises up as she loops back toward Ellsworth from the north, and she dispatches it, and its launcher, as easily as she did the first. There is still no sign of the android force that appeared around the base earlier that morning; the only indication that they were not an hallucination or some weird sort of image projection is the artillery fire that pours down on her ground forces even as she seeks out their operators, and even then, they are evidence of no more than one operator apiece.

What if . . ..?

But that is a fantasy. They have to be here somewhere. Have to be.

If I were a mule, where would I go to get lost? If I were a metal killing machine with printed circuits for brains and copper wire for nerves, where would I go to jam radar and avoid detection by conventional means?

Maggie sweeps low to obtain a clearer image of a line of vehicles on a farm road, but they are only more of the ever-present wreckage of the first days of the uprising. Putting on speed, she climbs again, sweeping up through wispy clouds to the relative safety of the sky. Beneath her, the land rises steadily, from black bedrock deposited by volcanoes when the northern prairies lay beneath an inland sea into the uplift of the Black Hills themselves, sacred ground to the Lakota from time before time.

Where would I go?

There’s gold in them thar hills.

Gold.

Not gold. Uranium. Vanadium. All of it lying exposed to the sky in the tiers of the huge strip mines gouged out of the earth at the turn of the century, shut down by treaties renegotiated by the Oglala and Northern Cheyenne less than a decade ago and never remdiated.

Radioactive ore, huge masses of it, busily throwing off electrons on its own bandwidths. It has been a sore spot with local citizens for years, disrupting the endlessly running talk radio stations, reducing cell phones to sputtering static, interfering with transmissions from civilian aircraft. How much? Maybe enough to mask the output from lesser masses and scramble incoming locator signals, even the special military frequencies.

That’s where I’d go if I were a droid.

Turning south again, she lays down a pattern of sweeps that covers the expanse of more hospitable terrain between the Black Hills and the Badlands to the south and east. Flying with one hand and only half her brain, the years, the decades, of practice more ingrained now even than instinct, she scans the ground beneath her, zooming the camera in on every outcrop she does not recognize, every glint of sun off twisted metal or the rippled surface of a stock tank.

For twenty minutes she flies low and slow. The camera shows her cows grazing, a stallion running with his mares, a coyote arcing up out of the tall grass in pursuit of something invisible beneath its green stalks, one human with a gun who stands transfixed as she passes, not even bothering to run for cover. The mines themselves stand deserted, great open wounds in the Mother’s body, their tiers descending into the earth like the narrowing circles of Dante’s hell. There is no sign of the droids.

Disappointment washes through her, leaving the taste of acid in her mouth. The damned things might as well be invisible. Maybe they are invisible. Maybe her brain has shorted out under the stress of the last several weeks.

Maybe Hart was right. She is not command material, never was.

Maybe she’s not even a goddamned decent pilot.

Banking one more time over the snaking canyons of the badlands, she follows the twisted paths of dry rivers among the bare rock where the relics of eons past lie open to the sun that stands now halfway down from noon, raking the landscape with harsh sidelight. The rocks stand forth like nightmares out of legend; giants turned to stone, Lot’s wife, looking back toward her burning city, transformed to a pillar of salt. Now blindingly bright, now running in shadow, streams that feed into the White River wind through them, the sun striking upward from their surfaces in sheets of light.

And there, in a bend of a narrow stream, the glare off their metal bodies blending with the reflection of the water, they are.

Thousands of them. Motionless, they stand in ranks as stiff as the terra cotta soldiers of Tchin-tsche Huang-ti, as unaware of the heat that beats off the dry rock as the rock itself. As she passes, a shiver of movement runs through them; their sensors are not shut down. But by the time they can react, she is far away again to the west, entering the bomb-release sequence into her console as she loops back. She passes again, high above them this time, laying down the long stick of 500-pounders that will reduce them to shards of molten metal. Her vid shows her the perfect string of explosions that follows in her wake, clouds of smoke and dust rising up out of the canyon, here an overhang toppling onto the wreckage of the droids beneath, there a tower of basalt crashing down.

Hoka hey. It is a good day to kill.

Maggie allows herself a grim smile as she makes a second, then a third, turn to check for enemy till standing. She finds none; nothing on the visual but tumbled stone and scrap metal. Satisfied, she allows relief to break over her and gives her wings a waggle, partly just in case Manny or someone on the ground can see her, partly out of sheer satisfaction. She can feel the knots loosen in her neck and in the muscles along her spine, unraveling like strands of rope.

Mission accomplished. She takes her heading and turns for home.

As the land slips by beneath her, badlands and prairie, she allows her mind to turn to what awaits her on her return. Obviously the droids and their human allies—or perhaps masters? At this point she is not sure what Hart was, dupe or agent, hostage or mole—had meant to pound them senseless with artillery, tear up the runways to ground their air defense, and move in at leisure. Not necessarily in numbers, though. She will need to make the circuit of the Base, spending her remaining missiles on the gun emplacements. They won’t destroy the howitzers or heavy mortars, but they should reduce their crews quite nicely to smithereens. Two keystrokes shift their mode from air-to-air to air-to-ground; the big guns generate enough heat to home them in. Always assuming Manny hasn’t already bombed them right into their next lives.

Q: Where does a bad droid go when it dies?

A: Helliburton.

The joke is as old as Westerhaus’ first military models, a dart aimed at his rival Army contractor. Ancient history now.

Maggie passes over Rapid City, looping around to the north to scan the valleys around Ellsworth. She sees only the river, running gold in the westering sun, the woods, the mass of the Black Hills thrusting up toward the sky. She feels an odd sense of homecoming, partly the welcome she always associates with the completion of a successful mission, partly something she cannot quite name, something that emanates from the sacred ground beneath her. All clear.

At the far eastern arc of her circle, she passes over the highway where the wreckage of the battle lies strewn for miles. Her monitor shows her only the tortured metal remains of tanks blown open and burned out from inside, the tumbled length of the first defensive wall. Nothing moves except the wind in the trees. She can go home.

As she banks, the sun glances off something miles up the road to the east. Something bright, something metal.

Something moving.

Maggie pulls back on the stick and streaks for the clouds again, kicking in the afterburners for speed. Once she levels off, she scans the stretch of tarmac that stretches out beneath her.

More droids. Not thousands, perhaps no more than several hundred, marching in a tight column toward Ellsworth. Reserves? Latecomers? She has no way of knowing. Neither has she the firepower to take them out. Manny might, but Manny obviously has not seen them. With luck, they have not seen him, either. She will not break radio silence.

She has only one weapon left. She checks her fuel guage. The Tomcat carries close to 20,000 pounds of jet fuel; close to half that remains in her tanks. Enough for the job.

Her premonition returns to her. With the runways and hangars pounded by enemy guns, this is her last flight. She will make it count.

Carefully she calculates the distance and trajectory to the enemy column and enters the coordinates into the autopilot. Loosing the last of her missiles, she aims the Tomcat’s nose toward the earth with one hand and jerks on the ejection lever with the other.

Nothing happens. The ground rises up at her, the column of droids growing clear in her sight. She pulls the lever again, and again.

On the third try, the bubble pops and she flies free of the plane as it gathers speed in its descent. But the delay has cost her, and her head strikes the canopy, hard, as her seat becomes a projectile. She sees the flash of silver as her Tomcat streaks toward earth, the blue sky above her.

And then the dark comes down.

The night is blue around her, the deep blue of the deepest sea. Overhead the stars dance in stately patterns, throwing off streamers of flame as they spin and whirl, jewels burning cold in shades of amethyst and emerald and sapphire, blazing ruby and topaz with hearts of fire. A breeze slips cool over her face, soothing against her skin. It stirs the pine needles that ring the clear space where she lies, soughing softly.

There are voices in the wind. If she tried, she could make them out. But she is tired, so tired. She lies under a billow of white silk. Perhaps she is dead, and it is her funeral pall.

If she is, she decides, death is not so bad after all. She knows that one leg lies twisted under her and is undoubtedly broken; from the way the blood pounds in her head, that may be broken, too. She can feel the grass through a cool wetness above one ear; more strangeness. Something has apparently happened to her helmet. Perhaps whoever has laid her out has removed it. Odd, though, that she seems to be lying on earth. No coffin, no burial platform, no piled wood. Just the silken pall.

With effort, but with no pain, she turns her head. Just beyond her reach, a large cat sits watching her, fur silver-gilt in the strange not-moonlight that shimmers in the air, eyes deep amber rimmed in shadow. The paler fur on her belly lies in darker swirls, made, Maggie knows, by her nursing young. Elegant in its length, her tail curls about her feet.

You wander, sister, the cat says in the silence, Igmu Sapa Winan.

Where? Maggie answers without sound. And why?

You stand with one foot on the Blue Road. If you wish, you may cross over.

If I wish?

Or not. Do you want me to summon help from your own kind?

Her own kind. She thinks about that for a moment. She knows of only three of her own kind, maybe four, who might hear a call like that. None of whom can be spared from duty.

It would be easy to slip away. A picture forms in her mind, unbidden, of sky-tall trees ringing a lake whose deep purple waters lap at shores dotted with gentians and spurred columbine. As she watches, a winter buck limps up to the shore, blood oozing from a wound in his shoulder, laid open to the bone. Maggie winces for what must be the pain of it, but as he bends to drink, the blood stills. Flesh folds back on itself, skin and fur spreading to cover it, and he stands there whole, sunlight streaming down through the trees about him. A woman stands beside him, her leather dress died green, yellow shells and beadwork running in rows down its length like kernels on an ear of corn. Her black hair spills down her back almost to her knees; silver shines at her ears and wrists.

Mother, Maggie says silently, awe washing through her.

Selu, the woman answers. And this is Ataga’hi, where the hunted may come to be healed. Though you are a warrior and have killed more two-foots than most, you have never harmed one of your four-footed brothers or sisters. Hunters may not come here. Will you drink, Black Cat Woman?

My people, are they safe?

They are.

For answer, then, she rises up and steps carefully toward the lake. The grass bends gently under the pads of her feet, and she is not surprised to find that her spine has shifted so that she does not stand erect. Her ears, inhumanly sharp, take in the murmur of small life around her, the calls of birds like music. The water, when she bends to lap, slips cool across her tongue, and she drinks her fill, life pouring back into her, and purpose with it.

Then she is back in her own body, and she gasps as sensation floods back into her from cracked bone and torn muscle. The puma, though, still regards her quietly. I will call, she says.

For an instant, Maggie thinks she is seeing double. A second great cat stands beside the first, gazing at her with eyes of warm brown. And there is a bobcat, too, grinning at her with open mouth.

Hang in there, he says. We’re on our way.

The blue begins to fade to black about her. The puma fades with it, a liquid shadow in the night. Pain from her leg rises about her on a swelling tide, bringing its own darkness with it. Just, she says to the wind as words begin to desert her altogether. Just move your asses.

* * *

The antelope crashes through the undergrowth, plunging through the copse that borders the open prairie to the east. Koda follows, making no effort now to be silent, her hat scraped off her head somewhere back there where she first entered the strip of woodland, her bow in her right hand, arrow nocked. Ahead of her, the young male’s rump patch flashes white, and she sweeps low branches away from her face as she fights her way through the whip-like saplings after him. Sweat runs stinging into her eyes, blurring her vision, but she cannot pause to wipe it away. If she can just keep in range, she will have him when he breaks from cover on the other side.

The wood is wider than she had first thought, and she slides down a steep bank toward a stream, bracing her feet against a fall like a skier. The antelope, ahead of her, splashes through the water and is up the other side before she can draw back her arrow. Neither is there time to unsling her rifle and aim; by the time she has it into position, he will be on open ground again. Pronghorn can sprint at speeds approaching seventy miles an hour, fast as a cheetah. If she is too far behind when they reach the edge of the grass again, she will lose him altogether. She crosses the ankle-deep brook in two strides, scrabbling for an instant on both knees and one hand as she races up the limestone outcrop opposite, ignoring the sudden burn as she scrapes her palm against the rock. Her heart slams against her breastbone, and her breath comes in short, panting gasps. She has run the better part of two miles, about half of it flat out, since cutting the yearling out of a bachelor herd. The meat will let them save their packed rations against emergencies, gain them another day or two. And Asi, held back by main force from following the chase, will appreciate his share.

The sun breaks through where the wood begin to thin, the pronghorn sprinting now nimbly through the mould and leaf litter that carpets the ground between the trunks of pine and aspen, gaining speed. With a last burst of speed Koda throws herself after him, even as he breaks from the trees and is gone. Koda swears under her breath, what she has of it, and follows, her blood not ready to give up even though her brain tells her that the antelope is already beyond range.

Somewhere just ahead of her, the crack of gunfire shatters the still afternoon air. Abruptly, Koda pulls up just short of the edge of the trees, unstringing her bow and sheathing it and its arrow even as she shrugs her rifle off her shoulder and into her hands. Carefully she steps to the edge of the treeline, keeping a pine trunk between herself and whoever has fired the shot. Squinting into the sun, she can make out only the rippling billows of short grass, interspersed here and there with clumps of scarlet sage and mountain globemallow, thick with rose-colored blooms. Behind a screen of the tall spikes, something moves. Something large, bending down now toward something else on the ground.

Koda steps away from cover, gun leveled. She is not quite prepared to kill another human for her supper, but neither is she prepared to give it up without protest. Not when she has done the work, not when she has given fair chase. Keeping the muzzle of her gun pointed toward whatever or whoever crouches on the other side of the dense shrubs, she gathers her breath and bellows, "Hey! You over there! Stand up! Slow! Or I’ll shoot!"

Two seconds pass. "Now!" she yells, and pumps a round into the ground at her feet. "Next one won’t be a warning!"

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE

"OKAY! OKAY!" IT is a man’s voice, rich and resonant. He steps out from behind the sage spires, black curling hair and close-trimmed beard glistening in the sun, a sheen of sweat silvering his bare chest and the hard muscles of his arms and shoulders. He is tall, taller than she is, and made like a wrestler. For a moment he looks as though he might be made all of bronze, something cast by Michelangelo or Bernini to taunt their bloodless patrons tripping along the halls of the Lateran Palace. Then a sheepish grin splits his face and his hands spread open at his sides. "I’m sorry. Was that your pronghorn? I thought a cat might be after it, that’s all."

"Yeah," Koda says, more equably, the muzzle of her gun never moving from its aim at his belly. "W— I’ve been after him for a couple miles or so, now. From back on the other side of that treeline." Go on, be a good boy. Give it up.

"Look," he says, the ingratiating smile never leaving his face. "You chased it, I shot it. Share?"

It is not, under the circumstances, a bad bargain. Half the antelope is still a substantial prize. "All right," she says, lowering her rifle without taking her finger from the trigger guard. "I’ll help you field dress it." She may have to set down the gun, but she will still have a knife in her hand. The sudden gleam in the man’s brown eyes tells her he understands and is not offended.

Far, it would seem, from it. He extends one huge paw toward her. "Ariel Kriegesmann. Call me Ari."

"All right," she says, shifting her 30.06 to her left hand and offering her right. "Koda Rivers."

He gives no sign of recognizing the name, merely nodding in acknowledgement. His shake is firm, but not the finger-crushing grasp that she has encountered from men out to prove their macho. "Welcome to Elk Mountain, ma’am." He gestures toward the line of hills that rises to the west across the miles of grassland. The peaks of the Medicine Bow Range lift into the sky beyond them, glittering even now with late snow.

"Koda!" The shout rings out from behind them, punctuated by furious barking. Asi streaks across the distance from the trees, Kirsten following more slowly, her own weapon at the ready. Koda’s vagrant Stetson perches on her head, casting hard shadows on her face. "You all right?"

Kriegesmann’s eyes dart between the two of them. One eyebrow canting upward, he asks, "Friends?"

"Friends," Koda confirms, not at all sorry to have the back-up. "Asi," she says, "Annie, meet Ari. We’re gonna split dinner."

With a quick glance under her lashes at Koda, Kirsten extends her free hand, and Asi allows a quick scratch of his head and ruff. "Nice dog," Ari says, admiringly, turning his thousand-watt grin on Kirsten. "You taking good care of your ladies, are you, boy?"

"Need help?" Kirsten asks, slipping their packs from her shoulders. Asi stretches out beside them, tongue lolling. Koda shakes her head, and Kirsten sinks down crosslegged onto the makeshift cusion, rifle still propped across her knees.

Koda lays her own gun down and draws the knife that hangs at her waist. Kneeling beside the antelope, all his grace and beauty now still, she begins to chant softly:

"Tatokala, misakalaki

Antelope, little brother,swift runner,we thank you for giving your lifeso that we might live.

Walk the Blue Road in peace.

May you have green grassand clear water,may you run freeforever.

Han!"

"Han," Kirsten repeats softly. She has seen Dakota do this before, and can follow the sense of the prayer if not yet all the words.

Kriegesmann listens respectfully, his eyes lowered. Looking up to meet her eyes, he asks, "That was Lakota, wasn’t it? You traditional?"

She nods, bending to her work as she opens the antelope, picking out the liver and kidneys for Asi, who comes to her whistle and settles down to his meal with obvious pleasure. Ariel glances from Koda to Kirsten. "Both of you?" he asks.

"Both of us," Kirsten answers. The tone of her voice is crisply authoritative, and Koda smiles silently. Translation: Keep off my turf.

"I can dig it." Kriegesmann shrugs, unperturbed. "My community’s pretty traditional, too."

"Community?"

"About fifty of us, mostly from Caspar. A bunch of us from my bank were up here snowshoeing, snowmobiling and like that when the uprising hit. We’ve picked up a few more survivors since."

"Your bank?" Koda gives him a disbelieving look.

"First American. I’m an accountant. Or was."

"You don’t look like a banker," she says bluntly.

"That’s ‘cause you haven’t seen me in a jacket and tie. See that?" He grins and points toward one eye. "That’s the true capitalist glimmer."

He is either amazingly disingenuous or going out of his way to be charming. Koda has known very few disingenuous bankers in her life. None, in fact. She waits for what she is almost certain is coming next.

It does. Kriegesmann sits back on his heels and wipes the sweat off his forehead, his hand bloody to the wrist. "Say. Why don’t the two of you come on back to the camp?" Asi looks up from his feast, growling and laying his ears back, and Kriegesmann chuckles. "It’s okay, boy. The three of you. I don’t know where you’re headed, and I’m not gonna ask, but you might want to spend a night under a roof. We’ve got a generator. And we’ve got hot water and showers."

"Thanks," Koda says evenly, "but we need to get on."

"We also," he says, and his voice turns serious, "have a couple sick kids. The way you’re dressing this buck, you’re either a professional meat-cutter or you’re a doctor. We’d appreciate it if you’d look at ‘em. And we’ll send you on your way with a full pack when you leave."

"Your kids?"

"My sister’s girl and a couple others. They had something with spots a few weeks back, before the weather broke. Now it’s like they’ve got a permanent cold."

Spots and a lingering respiratory infection. All sorts of unfortunate things can happen in the aftermath of measles or chickenpox. With the near-disappearance of many childhood diseases, more parents than not have chosen to avoid the possible side-effects of vaccination. Worse things can happen with scarlet fever. Not good. "You got any antibiotics?"

"Just what was in the first aid cabinet at the lodge. They’re gone."

And probably misused, and overused. She looks up at Kirsten. "What about it?"

"Okay by me," Kirsten says. "How far is it?"

Kriegesmann points at the rising slopes of Elk Mountain in the distance. "About three hours, maybe a little less."

Koda wipes the blood from her knife on the grass, then gathers a handful of stalks to cleanse it more thoroughly. "I’ll cut a pole. We were headed that way anyway; we won’t lose time if we stay over for the night."

Ten minutes later, the rough-dressed antelope is securely lashed to a straight branch of aspen. Koda shoulders one end, Kriegesmann the other. Asi paces beside them as they set off across the expanse of prairie, Kirsten pacing with the rifle still cradled in the crook of her elbow. Shadows lengthen as the sun begins to slip behind the mountains, and the breeze turns cool. Clouds darken the horizon to the south. Above them, a hawk rides the thermals, wings and tail spread as she coasts the currents of air. Her call drifts down to them, sharp and bright as steel. Kriegesmann glances up, admiration in his face. "Red-tail," he says. "There’s lots of them around here. Golden eagles, too. Only you call them spotted eagles, don’t you?"

"Wanblee gleshka," Koda answers. "Wakan."

"Right," says Kriegesmann, and keeps walking.

Dusk lies thick about them when they reach the lodge. Kirsten has limped for the last mile or so, and even Koda’s muscles are beginning to stiffen. The thought of hot water, faint temptation at first, has grown into a massive obsession. . Steaming water. Real soap. Standing under the shower while the spray pounds against her skin, working the knots out of her neck and scalp. Baths for the last several days have been cold-water exercises in endurance, hygienically adequate but a long way from comfortable. Even further from comforting.