Darkness and snow are falling quickly. The dogs chew on their portions of frozen meat. I watch every one of them for signs of fatigue. Gull has been limping today. We took her off the line and let her curl up on the sled. Now she chews quietly and contentedly, eyes half closed, puffing small clouds of her warm dog breath.

The white expanse, the solitude, quietude. I could lead this life for as long as I live. Well, I guess that’s what I’m doing here, anyway. I try not to think of Svalbard too much, of the Vault and what awaits me there. What might await me there. And what has been.

There are too many memories I want to forget. They keep coming, going around and around in my skull. I need them all, this horrible knowledge to finish what I’ve begun.

I wonder how people back then prepared for battle; if they found it more important to win and come out alive, or if bringing down their enemies, knowing their loved ones at home remained safe was what made them go out in the first place. 

I don’t have any loved ones at home. I don’t even have a home. I don’t miss those things and never did. But should anyone ever ask me why I’m going to war against the BSA, my answer would be simple: revenge.

I cannot forgive.

Balto pricks his ears and his head snaps up. The other dogs follow his example. Food is forgotten. Hackles rise. 

A warm shiver crawls up my neck as I squint into the dark forest. I prick my ears but don’t detect anything that hints at danger. My first thought is Katvar who went out to hunt an hour or two ago. As the first growls roll up the dogs’s chests, I jump to my sled and fetch my rifle. I lift the scope to my eye and see a green-and-grey silhouette staggering toward us. After long, painful moments of scanning the perimeter for approaching danger, I sling the weapon over my shoulder and run.

‘Katvar!’

Crackling of frozen twigs. Crunching of boots in snow. I almost bump into him. Something glints in the moonlight. His face is wet, his side, too. I touch him there and my fingers come away sticky. 

‘What happened?’ 

He trembles. The dogs are going berserk, trying to get to him, unsure if he’s friend or foe. Whatever odours he’s giving off, the dogs sense danger.

I grab his elbow and lead him to our camp, bark at the dogs to shut up as I remove bow and quiver from his back and sit him down on the sled. I light the oil lamp and move it closer to us, scanning him from head to toe. So much blood. His coat is ripped at the left shoulder, down along his left arm. Blood covers his face and chest.

‘Katvar, talk to me!’ 

He lifts his right hand in an attempt to sign. His fingers are trembling so badly, he can’t get a word out. Gingerly, I take his face in my hands and make him look at me. ‘Show me where you’re hurt.’

He blinks in confusion, then moves his flickering gaze over his body. He shrugs and gulps a large breath. A sigh and a huff later, he croaks, ‘Bear,’ and nods in the direction he came from.

I snatch my rifle from my back and stand. ‘Wait here.’ 

He grabs my wrist and shakes his head. ‘Dead,’ he signs.

‘The bear is dead?’ 

He nods.

‘Are you sure?’

He nods again.

‘A bear at this time of the year… How far away?’

A frown and a long moment later he signs, ‘Twenty, thirty minutes.’

I exhale. ‘Okay.’ I’m not sure he’s assessed the distance correctly. But the dogs have calmed down, so I guess there’s no immediate danger. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up.’

I help him stand and get into the snow hut. We take off his coat and I’m relieved to see that most of the blood isn’t his. There’s a gash on his upper arm that I clean and dress quickly while his shock is wearing off. His breathing gradually goes from staccato to shallow to calm. 

‘Better?’ I ask and touch his cheek.

He gives me a single nod and signs, ‘There’s a big chunk of meat waiting for us.’

I burst out laughing, lean into him and curl my arm around his shoulders. ‘Don’t do that again, okay?’

‘Accident,’ he croaks in his ruined voice and I place my hand over his throat to tell him he shouldn’t speak and hurt himself even more.

‘I’ll go see what I can do with the carcass,’ I say. ‘You okay?’

He nods and signs, ‘I help.’

‘No way! You take it easy tonight.’

‘You can’t move it. It’s too heavy.’

‘I’ll roll it onto the sled. No problem.’ I move back, ready to leave the hut. 

He blocks me. ‘The dogs will go crazy. It’s a bear, they’ll try to kill it all over again if you can’t control them. I’ll come with you.’ He shrugs his tattered coat back on and slips outside. His knees are still wobbly.

With my night-eye, I keep checking the perimeter for an angry, injured bear set to maul whatever crosses its path. But there’s nothing.

Katvar leads the dogs through the woods and they grow more and more agitated. When I spot a faint infrared signature ahead of us, the dogs are ready to snap their lines. 

Slowly, we get closer. My rifle is pointed at the bear. It doesn’t twitch a muscle, not even with the dogs barking their heads off and snapping their teeth. I suck in air; there’s an axe sticking out of the large animal’s skull. 

‘Holy shit, man.’ I look back at Katvar. ‘How did that happen?

‘Attacked me. I had an axe.’ He shrugs. 

‘Don’t you give me that I-don’t-know-what-you-mean-because-I-kill-a-bear-every-day shrug!’

He shrugs again and I have to pull myself together so as not to punch his injured shoulder.

I step closer to the bear and poke it with my rifle. No reaction. I wiggle the axe handle and jump when its hind legs give a mighty twitch.

Katvar barks a laugh, sneaks past me, and jerks the axe out of the bear’s broad skull. The animal kicks at the snow once and falls still again.

‘It looks emaciated. The shoulder blades and ribs are visible. Maybe that’s why it woke up so early?’ I push at the carcass to assess its weight. ‘It’s a female.’ I point at the engorged nipples. ‘Should we try to find her cubs?’

‘The wolves will find them,’ he signs.

‘Hm.’ I nod.

He leads the dogs to the bear so they can sniff her and be sure that she’s dead and harmless. They push their noses aggressively through her fur, tug at it with their teeth, whine and yap, lick at the wound and, finally, they calm down and wag their tails. 

The way they look up at Katvar, one must think they totally adore him. Look, chief killed a bear. Isn’t he the damn coolest dude?

It takes a lot of huffing and grunting to cut her open, bleed and gut her, and then roll the heavy animal onto the sled. We transport her to our cave and skin her. There’s very little fat on her. She must have been starving and ventured out to feed herself so her milk wouldn’t run dry. Her cubs will die in a day or two.

While Katvar cuts up the carcass, I scrape the skin clean, carefully removing the thin layers of fat. It’s dirty and hard work. When the sky begins to pale, I strap the skin inside out onto the sled so it can dry in the crisp air. Such thick fur. It feels wonderfully warm and will come in useful now that the nights are growing even colder.

Back at our camp, Katvar makes a fire. I feed the dogs their share of meat, and finally, we sit and rest while my first-ever bear meat sizzles and pops, spitting droplets of blood and fat into the embers. I taste it and find it tough and a little musky, but delicious.

‘We’ll stay here today. I need to fix your coat and we need to sleep. Shouldn’t we have run into the Nenets by now? We are what, three, four hundred kilometres from the coast?’

He frowns. ‘I thought so, too. Maybe the messengers didn’t travel as fast as we did?’

‘We don’t need them. We’ll load the sleds with meat and…’ I stop when I catch him shaking his head.

‘Why do you always believe you don’t need anyone?’ 

I open my mouth and close it when my teeth ache from the cold wind. ‘Because I learned to deal with my own shit, solve my own problems. So far, it has worked just fine.’

He tips his head. Amusement dances around the corners of his mouth. ‘Two thousand kilometres across an ice desert. How much meat will twenty-four dogs need? Tell me.’

‘A reindeer every three days. I’ll shoot a few before we cross to Svalbard.’

‘How many reindeer?’

I huff and say, ‘We race the dogs across for, um, ten days. That’s three to four reindeer.’

He nods at the sleds. There’s space for four reindeer if you cut them up. ‘Three hundred kilograms of meat per sled. For the dogs only. What will we eat? Will you carry all our equipment and provisions on your back? What if we can’t race the dogs all the way? What if a sled breaks?’

I don’t like where this is going. ‘Why did you come, Katvar?’

His eyebrows shoot up.

‘You volunteered. You know your dogs. You know about the sea ice and how far it is. So why did you come if you already know how very hard it is to get there?’

He scowls. ‘The ancestors of the Nenets knew how to cross the ice. The Nenets tell stories about how it was done. They will help. Crossing the ice is hard, but it’s not impossible.’ 

Judging from his forbidding expression, I seem to have hit a nerve, so I keep digging. ‘That doesn’t explain why you volunteered for this mission.’

‘I’m a good dog handler. The best.’

‘But you can’t cross the sea ice without help.’

That gives him a pause.

‘Why did you come, Katvar?’ I ask softly.

His warm brown eyes rest on mine and there’s a lot flickering past his irises. I neither speak nor move. I want him to be honest, so for once, I try to listen with ears and eyes wide open.

His right hand lifts tentatively. ‘I…’ he begins, then absentmindedly scratches his chest where the Taker marks him. I can feel what he wants to say. The words almost form on my tongue.

‘I am half a man. I can forget about the missing half when I’m far away from my people.’

There it is. I can taste his pain now, it makes my tongue feel brittle. The darkness shining in his eyes, the abyss his father has punched into his soul. ‘You are not your past,’ I whisper. Before my lips have stopped moving, I realise that I’m saying this to myself as much as to him. ‘And you are not your genes,’ I add. ‘Were your parents siblings or half-siblings?’

He blinks and signs, ‘What?’

Maybe the concept of half-siblings doesn’t exist in the Lume culture. 

‘You father and your mother, did they have the same father?’

He shrugs. ‘Probably not.’

I lean closer to him and sign, ‘I will make you a promise, my friend: I will find a way to analyse your genome, so you will be able to believe me.’

‘Believe what?’

‘You are healthy. Your children will be healthy, too.’

He pales. There’s hope flashing across his features — just for a moment. And then his expression closes. He’s wiped it clean, and shakes his head no. Just one short twitch.

‘You are afraid,’ I say softly.

He takes it as a challenge, leans forward, his signing hands almost touching my nose. ‘Okay. Sex. In the hut. Now.’

Now it’s my hackles rising. My index finger wants to feel the pressure of a trigger.

‘You are afraid,’ he signs and leans back.

A punch in the face couldn’t have had more effect.