It is not what she has forgotten. It is who she has left behind.

And with him, she has left behind all her life before the uprising. Has abandoned, too, any pleasant fiction that she may just possibly survive. Her journey has been a suicide mission from the beginning.

Her thought is interrupted by the back door slamming open and a small packet thudding onto the truck’s floor. “My books,” Micah says, breathlessly. “I’ll drive if you’d like to keep your hands free.”

For a gun, he means.

“All right.”

Kirsten slides over to the passenger’s side. Micah gives a shout toward the tanker in the lead and swings up into the driver’s seat. A shout comes floating back as he settles himself and buckles the seatbelt. Kirsten says, smiling faintly, “Tell me I didn’t hear that.”

“Okay.” A grin splits Micah’s beard. “You didn’t hear that.”

But it comes again, loud and unmistakable on the clear air, “WAGG-O-O-NNS HO-O-O!” and she stares at him, disbelieving.

“Oh, yeah,” Micah answers her unasked question. “Toussaint is the last living Gunsmoke fan.”

The highway is snow-covered over a layer of ice. The tank truck up ahead takes the brunt of it, breaking a path for the rest. The going is slow, though, and a sense of urgency nags at Kirsten. The world beyond her window is white as far as she can see, wide flat expanses of fallow field, the occasional hump of a hill or low shed covered by the ten-days fall. Drifts lie deep along fence lines, completely burying some of the posts, leaving half a foot of others to jut up out of the snow in long, straight lines.

“Dragon bones,” says Micah, following her gaze.

It has been so quiet for the last several miles that Kirsten starts at the sound of Micah’s voice. “Pardon? Dragons?”

“Or dinosaurs.” Micah takes a sip from his coffee as the pace slows yet again. “I grew up in Lubbock, in the Texas Panhandle. Flattest place on earth. When I was a kid I’d pretend that the oil pumps were velociraptors. In the winter, the snow would drift up around them, and I’d imagine myself digging them up as fossils.” He grins. “Bob Bakker was my hero.”

“Bakker.” Kirsten’s memory jogs. “T. Rex and the meteor—no, wrong. That was Alvarez. Bakker claimed T. Rex was warm blooded and had feathers. He wrote Raptor Red.”

“Oh, yeah. That scene where she and her sister go tobogganing down the hill in the snow was my favorite. Totally cool.”

A common childhood love affair with brontosaurs and iguanadons keeps them talking companionably till noon. They have traveled perhaps forty miles as the road curves, less than half that in straight line distance from the farm. Twice they have had to stop to clear fallen trees from their path; once to push the remains of a two-car wreck off the road. They have been underway at a crawl for a quarter-hour when Kirsten’s stomach growls.

“Me, too,” says Micah.

“I’ll get sandwiches.” As Kirsten climbs over the back of the seat, she glances out the back window of the van. Something is running toward the road from a stand of bare woods, bounding through the snow in great arcing leaps like a fox pouncing on a mouse.

It is much too big to be a fox.

Micah has seen it, too. “Look. There’s a wolf.”

“Yeah, I see. Cheese or peanut butter?”

“Peanut butter. Thanks.”

Kirsten is back in her seat and unwrapping her own lunch when she looks out the window again. “Damn! Godamn!”

“Mmffhhmm?” says Micah around a mouthful of Jiff and grape jelly.

“Goddam it to hell! Stop!”

Honking to alert Dan in front of them, Micah hits the brakes. The van has barely rolled to a stop, Caitlin just managing not to rear-end them, when Kirsten jumps out the door and begins slogging through the knee-high-snow. “Goddam!” she yells, “Goddamit! Goddammittomotherfuckinghell!”

A bark, high-pitched and unmistakably joyful, answers her, and in the next moment Asimov is on her, huge paws planted on her shoulders, yard-long tongue slobbering a greeting. Another bark, this time deafeningly in her face, and he streaks past her, jumping up to take his accustomed place in the van. Kirsten climbs in behind him, mopping at her face with her sleeve. “Dammit, dog! I left all your food back at Shiloh! How the hell did you get loose? What am I going to feed you?”

“It’s okay, you know. We’ll take him back with us.” Micah soothes. “Most feed stores have dog chow. We’ll be able to find something when we get up to Moorhead.”

Kirsten blinks hard, forcing back tears that will embarrass her. Asimov leans against her, whining, and quite without volition, her arm goes around him, holding tight. Micah looks tactfully away and holds up the last few bites of his sandwich. “Hey, boy. Like peanut butter?”

4

Koda’s glance runs around the semi-circle of survivors there in the jail’s guardroom. It is an oddly tidy place: no MacDonald’s wrappers, no Pepsi or Coke cans, no papers piled in multi-colored triplicate on the watch officer’s desk. If not for the ghosts of bloodstains that linger on floor and walls, it would be almost as clean as an examining room. But that had been part of the droids’ appeal: no more mess than a pet rock. She takes a quick tally of the women huddled in one corner—twenty-six.

But no, that’s wrong. There are twenty-five women and one little girl.

A red haze passes over Koda’s mind. There is a legend in the family from generations past, of a white lawman who violated her grandmother’s younger sister. The sister’s husband and his brother had waylaid the deputy one night on a lonely road and left him deep in an abandoned mine shaft with his testicles nailed to a beam. They had also left him a knife, and a choice.

But she has more practical matters before her. She raps out, “Siebert. Hobbs.”

“Ma’am.”

“Find a store with women’s clothing. Bring back something warm for these ladies. White if you can find it.”

“Ma’am.”

“There’s a sports shop two blocks north,” says the older woman who has spoken for the group. “There was, at any rate.” Then, “Who are you?”

“Sorry. These are the free forces of the United States, Colonel Margaret Allen commanding. I’m Dakota Rivers.”

“Oh, thank God,” the woman breathes on a long sigh. “We didn’t know, you see, if there were any survivors at all, much less . . ..” A wave of her hand encompasses the soldiers in the room.

‘What’s going to happen to us now?” The speaker is a younger woman, no more than twenty, whose long, pale hair lies perfectly combed across her shoulders. It is not vanity, Koda realizes, but some small snatch at dignity where dignity is impossible.

“We need to get you to someplace safe. You know the area better than we do—where can we leave you when we move out again?”

“There’s the Scout camp.” It is the thirteen-year-old. “No one will be there now. I used to go there every summer, and so did my—“ She pauses, swallowing hard, but her eyes are dry. “My two brothers. Brian was an Eagle Scout; he was a counselor.”

Koda silently curses to hell and worse the unknown persons responsible for the disaster. A child ought not to be forced into the emotional wasteland beyond tears. That is the province of adults. She takes a step toward the girl, meaning to hug her, but reads the minuscule flinch in the child’s shoulders, the rejection in her eyes. A touch will break her.

Again the blood-crimson mist filters through Koda’s mind. She wants to kill someone, badly. Her vision narrows, shrinks to a point. This, she thinks, must be what Wiyo feels when she holds at hover before she stoops on her prey. Or the wolf, when she sees the elk flounder in the snow. It is a yearning for hot blood slipping over the tongue that cannot be satisfied by the shattering of cold metal.

She shakes her head to clear it, and her vision returns to normal. “That sounds good. How do the rest of you feel about that?”

There are nods along the line, slow and wary. One woman objects, “No! I have to try to find my family.”

“Honey.” It is the older woman again. “Honey, if your family are someplace safe, you won’t be able to find them. If they aren’t safe—better you don’t.”

“She’s right, you know, ma’am,” Andrews puts in softly. “If your family are alive, the best thing you can do for them is make sure you survive.”

“All right,” says Koda, fishing under her camos for a list she has brought prepared and a pen. She addresses the youngster “Do you—” Then, more gently, “Can I call you something besides ‘you’?”

“Donna.”

“Donna. Do you know how to get to the camp?”

Donna nods.

“Great. Can you show Lieutenant Andrews on the map, please?”

As they spread the unwieldly sheet out on one of the desks, Koda scribbles mifepristone and oxytocin at the top of the priority-1 drugs. “Johnson and Martinez. Find a pharmacy and bring back everything they have on this list. If they have herbal meds, get these, too.” Blue and black cohosh, motherwort, long used by her people to ease delivery or to end an unwanted pregnancy. If this jail is the pattern, every milligram has suddenly become precious.

Johnson scans the list quickly, then meets Koda’s eyes. She salutes. “Right away, ma’am.”

“Hanson. Larke. Food and trucks, per plan. Check the jail garage. See if the sheriff’s vans will do and if you can get anything useful out of their gas pump. Reeves. Collect all the guns and ammo you can find here. Then help Hanson and Larke.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The soldiers scatter to her orders, and Koda marvels at their cohesion. They are a mixture of Air Force, Marines, regular Army, working as smoothly as if they had all been together since basic training. And all of them under the unlikely command of a veterinarian. “Hump it,” she adds. “We move out in an hour and a half.”

In the end, they set out fifteen minutes early, a box truck packed with supplies, and the rescued women riding double and triple behind the soldiers on their snowmobiles. A couple more of the machines have been liberated from the sports outfitters and are now piloted by some of the former captives themselves. A half dozen of the troops have no passengers, ranging loose before and beside the small procession, weapons ready. Koda watches them swing out onto the road, then glides into position at the front. A small warm spot has taken hold somewhere under her rib cage. It is one thing to stop the enemy. It is another to take back what they have stolen. Counting coup.

Koda glances upward, where a hawk keeps pace with them, her rust colored tail spread against the hard blue of the winter sky. Lelah wakan. It is a good sign indeed.

5

Three nights later, they are camped in a stand of woods beside the Lac aux Mortes. The foraging parties have left the convoy at East Grand Forks, just before crossing the Red River. Tomorrow the rest will turn back, and Kirsten will go on to Minot alone

They are still far enough away from the Base to risk a proper campfire. The pines give them shelter from aerial surveillance; infrared sensors will pick up body heat and the residual warmth of engines in any case. Aidan, bowl in hand, scrapes the bottom of the Dutch oven hopefully. “Ochone,” he says. “There’s not a molecule left.”

“Come sit down, Aidan.” Dan pats the fallen log beside him. “We have some convincing to do.”

Kirsten glances around the circle of faces, bright in the firelight, and knows with absolute certainty what is coming. “No,” she says. “Thank you. But no.”

“Kirsten,” says Alan. “It doesn’t make any sense for us to turn back now. At least let us go another twenty-thirty miles with you.”

“And before you say no again,” Caitlin interrupts, warding off her objection, “remember that none of us has any idea what kind of outward perimeter they’re maintaining. If there’s nothing, fine. If they have roadblocks or booby traps, though, you’ll stand a lot better chance if you’re not alone.”

“And a much greater chance of getting you all killed.”

Dan says softly, “It’s a risk we’ll be taking every day of our lives from now on, my dear. It’s no worse with you than anywhere else.”

“Ye’re a canny one,” adds Aidan, “but just one. Muscle helps sometimes, so long as it isna betwixt the ears.”

At Kirsten’s feet, Asimov raises his head and whines. “Hush,” she says, and to Aidan and the others, “No. If they have a defensive line set up, one person stands a better chance of slipping through than half a dozen, not to mention three trucks. I’ll leave the van behind at some point, in any case.”

“You’ll have no way out, then,” Micah objects.

She shrugs. “I scavenged that van. There will be vehicles on the base. I can take one of them.”

Asimov whines again, a deeper sound. “Look, I appreciate it. I really do. But right now I need to take Asi for a walk. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She calls the dog and escapes into the trees. They are not so thick overhead that they hide the sky, and a full moon shines down, its reflection a luminous mist upon the snow. For the last three days she has hardly taken a breath alone except to sleep. Much as they are concerned for her, much as she values their concern and, she admits to herself, their friendship, she feels crowded, pressed in upon by so many other people.

Too, she wants some time with Asi. This farewell will come no more easily than the first.

The shepherd lopes loose-limbed along beside her, his black and silver mingling with the shadows and the snow. He seems as eager as she is for a respite from the others, and she ruffles the fur of his neck as they walk.

Another ten yards and she picks it up faintly, just on the margins of her hearing, soft footfalls under the trees. On the edge of a small clearing, Asi freezes, coming to a sudden stop with ears forward. Almost imperceptibly, shadow moving upon shadow, the tip of his tail twitches from side to side. Kirsten’s hand goes to her gun.

She stands without breathing for a long moment, as the sounds become less faint, moving nearer. Not human, not droid. Wrong season for bear. Asimov whines again, almost eagerly. Just across the glade she thinks she sees a form moving, pale against the paler reflection of moon off snow. Asi gives a sharp yip, a greeting. There is no answer.

Kirsten takes a step backward, her eyes never leaving the space between the trees where she has sensed movement. “Come on, boy. Time to go back.”

As she steps back again, a wolf paces into the clearing, its coat leached white under the moon. Asimov looks back at Kirsten. Then, as if suddenly slipped off the leash, he crosses the space with a bound, and disappears into the pines. For half a second the wolf remains, staring at Kirsten with eyes that gleam red in the pale light. Then it, too, is gone.

I should go after him, she thinks.

But she does not move, and after a time she turns to make her way back to camp.

Better that he be free.

As she is free. And alone.

6

The moon swings low above the pine trees, framed in the old-fashioned divided window pane. Its brightness hangs in a mist above the snow, a shifting of light and shadow like old ghosts wandering. From somewhere in the woods there comes a deep-throated baying, a sound that seems to begin somewhere down in the vitals of the earth itself, pass up through the crevices of the mountains to find its way at last into a mortal throat . It is answered by a second voice, and a third. Others join in until the sound begins to invade Koda’s bones, sliding along her muscles in a chant older than her people, older than her species. She feels her tendons flex; her spine reconfigures. Smells bring her the history of the past day: sweat, blood, the scent of human mating. Over it all lingers the acrid stench of gunpowder, which is death to her and her kind. Her legs gather under her to flee, and bring her abruptly to her feet and awake before the dying embers in the fireplace, M-16 at the ready.

Dream. Just a dream.

Not quite a dream. The wolf pack, miles away across the hills, still sings as it courses the snow. Close to, she can still smell the black-powder smoke that clings to her clothing. Yet the night is peaceful. The freed captives of Mandan jail sleep quietly in the cabin’s sturdy double bunks, some snoring softly, others whimpering now and again in their sleep. Koda bends to poke at the embers glowing in the grate of the massive fireplace and sets another couple pieces of split oak above them. Built by WPA workers in the 1930’s, Camp Sitting Bull—formerly, judging by the not-quite-obliterated sign over the cabin door, Camp Custer—is low-tech and therefore comfortable this winter’s night.

Koda makes her way, soft-footed, between the tiers of bunks. All is well. Still quietly, she slips outside, not quite knowing why except that there is something that awaits her. The moon is full, bright enough to cast shadows, and she finds her way easily to a stone bench set under the tall pines. From it, she can see smoke curling from the chimneys of three more cabins, one housing more of the freed women, the other two temporary barracks for her troops.

Her troops. She turns that phrase over in her mind, examining it from all angles. She comes from a long line of warriors. Her grandfather’s grandfather followed Tschunka Witco, whom the whites called Crazy Horse, on the Powder River and at the Greasy Grass by the Little Big Horn. A hundred years and more removed, her mother is a cousin of Red Cloud. Battle is in her blood, and she has known it for as long as she can remember knowing anything. More than once as a girl, she cried for the vision that would call her to fight for her nation and her land, to return the sacred Black Hills to a free Lakota people. Yet it has never come, and she has been true—as a healer, as a woman--to those that have.

Her troops. A Lakota chieftain did not command troops. Warriors followed him because he was successful, not because rank or organization compelled them. Despite the cultural dissonance, despite her strictly legal status as a civilian, she knows that she has somehow become a commander and that these men and women following her north into danger are her troops. Andrews may be the nominal leader of the mission, but he defers to her, as do all the others. Some of their respect may reflect the obvious awe in which they hold her top-gun, kick-ass, take-no-prisoners cousin Manny ; some may have rubbed off onto her from the Colonel, who seems to be indistinguishable from God in her squadron’s eyes. But that does not explain the easy companionship or the instant equality she has found with Maggie herself.