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Looking up, to where fresh sunlight burned against the highest walls and
pinnacles, Sherwood saw a single drop of water, newly formed and
diamond-sparkling, trembling on the lip of a cleverly carved cornice, which
was now about to turn to melting ice&
Up there, somewhere, another figure moved abruptly; another mere human being,
trying to escape. Koba sought now to dart away from the Great Bear's teeth and
claws, but was knocked down with one swipe of a great white paw. The injured
man came crawling, sliding and whimpering, down the broad slick stairs past
Sherwood, who ignored him.
Other sounds, grown hideously familiar to the Bear who was still Sherwood,
came from up above. A chomping, slavering and chewing. And at the same time,
hitting his sensitive nostrils with almost numbing intensity, the smell of
human blood.
"Sherwood! Up there! He's eating Greg!"
Natalya tried to run upstairs past him, but slipped and fell again. She lay
on her back, firing at the glassy image of the highest bear, working the bolt
action of her repeating rifle. Under the barrage of bullets, heavy sprays of
powdered and chipped ice flew from the arched ceiling.
The gunfire weakened the support of a structure already cracked in several
places. In another moment, the high arch had collapsed under the Great Bear's
weight. Tons of loosened, fractured ice and white fur, all laced with bright
fresh blood, came down in a crystalline, crashing slide.
Sherwood, uttering a primal growl, leapt in to finish off his enemy.
Battered and bruised by falling ice, almost stunned, Natalya heard the
bear-growling drowned out in a greater roar the river ice was now totally
shattered, swiftly breaking up under the impact of the spring thaw marching
relentless poleward from the south. The flood, seemingly sprung from nowhere
in mere minutes, was hurling huge floes and cakes against the foundations of
the palace.
Water inside the building was rising, rushing, swirling around Natalya's
legs. Still clinging to her rifle, she left the palace and struggled to reach
safe ground.
Only one other followed her out. Sherwood, moving slowly though seemingly not
much hurt, came out of the rushing water a minute after her, and like a wet
dog stopped to shake his white fur dry. He did not Change to man-form until he
was back inside the tent where he had left his clothes. There he reported to
Natalya that both her brothers were dead.
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With the flooded river still rising rapidly, huge ice floes were being
hurled, dragged and shoved by the swift current, into the ruins of the palace.
By the time the couple emerged from their tent to look around, not a trace of
even the foundation still remained.
Minutes later, Natalya and Sherwood were standing with other survivors
outdoors in front of a roaring fire, which prodigally consumed reserves of
wood earlier salvaged from the wrecked ship. Already the couple were making
plans as to how they were going to get away.
One scheme involved taking one of the village kayaks or other boats, and
moving by sail or paddle, or as the current took them, east or west along
Siberia's north coast, which was sometimes navigable for great distances in
the summer. Somewhere there would be another river, another village. There
ought to be good hunting, in either direction.
The other possibility would be to wait through the brief weeks of Arctic
summer, and depart from Padarok Sivera by land when winter came again.
At the moment there was no need to decide. In any case, they would be
together.
The hours of the long day were moving on, the sun, constrained to low
altitude, marching steadily around in what would be almost a complete circle
of the horizon.
Natalya and Sherwood, feeling thoroughly warmed and dried, soon moved away
from the village fire and began a search. She decided that Gregori's bones, or
as much as could be found of them, ought to be gathered and burned.
When Sherwood came upon the relic of Grandfather's preserved body, which
someone had already cast out of its tent shrine, he seized the fabric of
distorted bones and hurled it into the river, then watched while it was swept
out to sea.
He snarled at any villagers who tried to genuflect to him, or to address him
as the Great Bear.
"That beast is dead. I saw his throat torn out." He did not say by what
agency that feat had been accomplished. "I saw his corpse washed out to sea."
And Sherwood was determined not to change again, where any of the people of
this settlement could see him.
The scores of people who through the winter had been forced to devote their
lives to the ice palace were now in a precarious condition regarding their own
survival. Several, besides Maxim and Gregori, had died, and others were
missing. But at least the survivors could now concentrate on working for
themselves.
An hour later, three people, searching desultorily for more survivors, were
prowling along the near bank of the still-rising stream, among a litter of
enormous cakes of ice. In the long-slanting rays of the sun, some patches of
muddy earth appeared nearly as lifeless as the crumbling, melting ice itself.
But here and there small plants, looking as determined as the rocks they
sprang from, still clung to life.
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Everyone in the village could begin to feel sure of it now. The Great Bear
was dead and gone.
Thus Natalya and Sherwood, moving along the riverbank with their companion,
came upon the body of a man, muddy, wet, half-frozen and half-stunned, but
inwardly still as full of life as the small plants under the snow. He was a
tough young man, and not to be so easily disposed of.
"Koba? Are you all right?" The bearded exile, wearing glasses with one lens
missing, bent over the recumbent form. Then he lifted his head briefly to
remark: "I know this man by a different name. He's one of us, I'll testify to
that a real revolutionary, a comrade from Georgia."
Now that the Bear was slain, the old purposes, old ways of thought and
speech, had already started to come back.
The one who had been called Koba moved and sat up. He still looked dazed,
leaning awkwardly on his left arm. He was holding his right arm, which had
been bleeding, stiffly in front of him.
The searcher who had said he knew the man bent over and inspected his wound
with moderate concern. Then he announced with satisfaction: "That arm's hurt.
It looks as if the bear took out some meat but I've seen worse. You're lucky,
Comrade Stalin."
AFTERWORD
On the evening of the first of September 1911, in the very presence of the
tsar in a theater in Kiev, Pyotr Stolypin was shot to death, the third
Minister of the Interior assassinated in office since the turn of the century.
No one could be sure if the gunman, Dimitry Bogrov, was in the employ of the
terrorists or of the police, or had accepted money from both organizations.
Five days later, the youthful Georgian bank robber and revolutionary called
Koba by his associates, full name Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, aka
Comrade Stalin, is known to have arrived by train in the capital, following
one of his suspiciously frequent, seemingly effortless escapes from detention
in custody of the tsarist government.
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