Voices come to her on the wind of her passing, but she does not heed them. "Surrender," she says.

For answer he attempts to close with her again, this time coming on straight at her. She blocks his upward stab with a sweep of her left arm, whirling again out of his reach. Her wrist is cold and wet, but the cut is shallow. It stings, barely perceptible. The blood from Caltons cut, though, falls on the earth in dark spurts. She need only avoid injury, wear him down.

He knows it, too. Fear flickers across his face, is gone. With a yell, he comes in low and fast, butting at her with his head while his knife goes for the tendons in her left leg. She rolls with the blow, planting a foot in his gut to carry him up and over, to land hard on his back behind her. Koda scrambles to her feet, stepping hard on the wrist of his knife hand with the heel of her boot. His fingers open, and she kicks the blade away.

Behind her a cheer starts up, to be abruptly broken off as Calton grabs at her ankle, turning it hard to bring her down with him. She falls halfway across his body, rolls as he surges off his back to pin her, reaching for her throat with both hands. His fingers close around her neck, bearing on her windpipe and the great veins in her neck. Pressing down and back, seeking the leverage that will break her neck, his grip tightens as she gasps for breath, her chest grown suddenly tight. Calton’s face is a grinning skull mask above her. A shadow passes over her eyes, and she brings her knife up between their straining bodies, finds the soft spot just beneath the join of the rib cage. She thrusts straight up, the blade grating on bone, then making easy passage through the soft tissue of liver and lung, cutting upward. For a moment Calton remains above her, his hands tightening convulsively about her throat, bringing on the darkness. Then he collapses across her, blood running from his mouth in a black torrent, and is dead.

Silence holds her. Then she pushes Calton off her to stagger to her feet. His blood stains her hands, her face, her shirt, dark and wet in the dim light.

Then the sound begins, softly at first, the men chanting her name. "Koda. Koda." The murmur becomes a shout, swells, grows to a roar. "Koda! Ko-da! Ko-da!"

She lets it wash over her, drawing strength from it. She raises her head to search the faces around her, mouths straining, eyes wide. These are her men, now. Won in battle, paid for in blood. The thought sends a shiver down her spine, and she throws her head back, howling wordlessly with them.

"Koda! Koda!" It goes on and on, the rhythm carried on stamping feet. Finally she raises an arm to silence them. They quiet gradually, as her senses contract about her, and she is one human woman again, standing in a circle of men who are not entirely sure what has happened to them. "All right," she says quietly. "Get your gear. We’re pulling out now."

They move to obey, all but one. Tacoma stands before her, his eyes dark. "Are you all right?" he says. "The blood—"

"Not mine." She glances down at her ruined shirt. "Not most of it, anyway."

"What happened? For a moment there, I didn’t know you."

She meets his gaze steadily, seeing herself though his eyes. The fight, and the kill. "You saw it all?"

He nods.

"For a moment there, I didn’t know myself," she says slowly. "It’s as though something—slipped. It’s happened a couple times since—since--"

"Since your vision?"

"Yeah. I feel—different. Inside. Things look different. My hearing is different."

"You talked to Ate?"

Her hand makes a small arc in the darkness. "About some of it. This was almost like that time on the bridge. I felt—out of myself, somehow."

Some of the rigidity goes out her brother’s shoulders, and he says," It’s the warrior-gift growing in you. It can be hard to live with." He glances down at Calton’s body. "Did you mean to challenge him all along?"

She shakes her head. "That just happened. But it was so—familiar. Like I’d done it before. Like the knife was part of my arm. It knew what to do. I never thought."

Tacoma gives her shoulders a quick squeeze, stepping away from her as the first of the troopers steps out of the barn, his pack on his back, his rifle slung about his neck. The others follow, coming to stand beside the Jeeps and Humvees. Tacoma’s presence does not seem to surprise them. Like Calton, they must have assumed that Koda had men all around them. Let them continue to assume.

Tacoma steps toward one of the Jeeps, glances at the ignition. "Keys?" he asks the man nearest him.

"In the glove compartment, Sir."

Tacoma fishes for them, finds them. Koda comes to stand by the passenger door and shouts, "All right! We’re moving out! Follow me!"

They cheer again, and again she feels their energy surge within her, obliterating the pain of her cut, the bruises on her throat. She slips into her seat, and Tacoma steers the Jeep out onto the road.

Behind them the rest follow, raising a cloud of luminous dust in the moonlight.

* * *

The convoy moves swiftly through the night. The full moon rides high in a blaze of stars, bright enough to cast shadows in a world where the glare of civilization no longer rimlights the horizon. Koda dozes fitfully in the lead Jeep, the APC’s from Ellsworth dispersed at regular intervals down the line to ride herd on their new recruits and guard against second thoughts. The tide of adrenaline that carried her through the duel has spent itself, leaving a strange restlessness behind. Her dreams, when she sleeps, are full of drifting voices.

Dawn comes on a chilled breeze as the gates of Ellsworth roll open to receive them. The startled MP salutes as Koda passes, Tacoma returning the gesture with a snap of his own wrist. In the rearview mirror, Dakota can see him counting off the vehicles that follow her in, an easy dozen more than followed her out. The men in the Jeeps and APC’s cheer as they pass the sentry box, honking and waving their rifles in the air.

"Better see the Colonel first," Tacoma says quietly.

Koda rolls her head back, attempting to work the knots out of her shoulders and upper back. "They’re not exactly the supplies we meant to pick up, are they? Try her office first."

They catch Maggie just as she closes the door behind her, probably on her way from her cramped work space cum living quarters to the mess hall for breakfast. Koda watches her back straighten, then stiffen, as she spots the caravan sweeping up the length of the runway toward her, taking in its length and the unfamiliar Minot ID codes on the. Her fists settle on her hips as Tacoma pulls up directly in front of her, her eyebrows rising halfway to her hairline while a smile pulls at her mouth. "Well, now," she says. "Look what the cat dragged in."

Tacoma grins at her as he climbs out of the Jeep. "Thought you’d like ‘em." Turning to the line of Jeeps and troop carriers, he bellows, "Pile out! Form up!"

As the men scramble out of their trucks and prepare to stand the Colonel’s inspection, Dakota levers herself up and out the passenger door, feeling the blood rush into her tingling feet, the ache as the sinews of her joints stretch and flex. The bruises on her neck throb with her pulse.

Maggie flashes her a grin of welcome. Then her eyes widen, raking Koda from the reddening marks on her skin, down the front of her shirt, still stiff with dried blood, to the stained length of torn T-shirt wrapped around her left forearm. "Sorry," she says. "It’s not mine, or most of it isn’t. I haven’t had a chance to wash up."

"I do not," Maggie says precisely, "see any injuries on anyone else. Tell me what I’m missing here."

Koda shrugs. "What’s missing is these men’s former commander."

"You killed him?"

Dakota nods. "It was a fair fight."

"A. Fair. Fight." Maggie lays out each word precisely. "And the prize was his men?"

"Them and their equipment. At least, they seemed to think so."

"They’re from Minot?"

"They’re what’s left of it. They were fighting droids and running a protection racket while they were at it." Koda turns slightly to watch as they form ranks, straggling into line under the whip of Tacoma’s voice. "They had ambitions. They tried to get a B-52 operational. It crashed."

The blood leaves Maggie’s face, leaving her skin grey. "Gods. They could have blackmailed the whole damn country, what’s left of it. We don’t need loose nukes."

"We need to get control of those bombs." Koda swipes a hand over her face, and stares at her palm when it comes away red. There is blood even in her hair. " Not today, not this side of battle. But before someone else gets ideas."

"You need to get a shower and go to bed," Maggie says flatly. "Anything else can wait."

"I’m not—"

"No argument. Larke!"

The Corporal double-times it from one of the mid-line APC’s. "Ma’am."

"Drive Dr. Rivers home. Don’t let her argue with you."

Larke glances from the Colonel to Koda and back again. "Yes Ma’am. To the best of my ability, Ma’am."

"Have mercy on him," Maggie says pointedly. "We’ll talk later."

Koda cannot quite bring herself to order Larke to disobey his Colonel. She does not particularly want to go back to the house, though, doubts she can sleep with the strange energy that hums through her. A part of her still lingers in the night just past, in the ring of fire and shadow where she killed a warlord for his command. Or, more accurately, the fight has stayed with her, a humming in her blood. It is something she has never felt before, yet it seems familiar. She could name it, if only she could find the word on her tongue.

"Ma’am? Doctor Koda?"

Larke holds the passenger door for her. She is not sure whether it is archaic courtesy or whether he can think of no other polite way to get her to move. Surrendering, she folds back down into the seat she has occupied for most of the past eight hours and lets him steer the Jeep for home.

Over the mile’s distance from flightline to officer’s housing, soldiers salute her as she passes. That, too, seems strangely familiar. She waves briefly back, noting with satisfaction that Shannon is turning the sign on the clinic door to OPEN as they drive by without stopping, her own insistence dying in her throat. As they round the former parade ground, now thick with rough wooden markers for the dead of the Cheyenne, she makes note of three new plots of disturbed earth. There is no memorial for them.

The house, when she enters, is chill and empty. Asimov must be out with Kirsten, wherever she is. Her absence is a dark void inside Koda, and the sharpness of her disappointment gnaws at her.

Kirsten could not have known that she would return early. She had not known it herself.

She sheds her clothes in the hall and heads for the shower.

* * *

Kirsten pushes open the kitchen door, feeling pleasantly warm and loose from the half-mile run from the woods to the officers’ housing section. Asi, not at all tired from the exercise, gives a high, loud yip as he shoulders past her, sending the door banging against the wall next to the fridge, and dances across the tiles to his empty bowl.

"All right. All right. It’s coming."

She rummages about in the pantry, looking for the Base’s last surviving box of Milk-Bones. The ancient pipes in the wall hum and thump with water; Maggie must have come in for a shower and change of clothes. With the thought comes disappointment. Koda is not due back from Minot for at least another day, assuming everything goes well. And when, she reflects, was the last time everything went smoothly? Sometime in a past life, when she was a Washington wonk and had barely heard of South Dakota, still less of a woman named Dakota River

Asi yelps again, louder and more urgently. Kirsten stifles a surge of guilt at the thought that the big dog—the big baby, truth be told—has missed her so badly, even though he clearly has not lacked for attention. "Think of it as gaining a second mother," she says as she finds the box and rips it open. "Twice the attention, twice the walks. Twice the flea baths."

She turns to toss him the treat, but he is no longer there. From the hallway comes the sound of whining, the sharp click of his nails on the hardwood floor. Frowning, she sets the box on the counter and follows just in time to see him fling his whole weight against the bathroom door, shaking it on its aged hinges. From deep in his throat comes a howl like the winter wind over snow, and Kirsten’s breath catches in her throat, then resumes on a sigh of relief. On the floor, piled in careless abandon, lie a pair of jeans, a shirt, underclothes. The flannel shirt, in Black Watch tartan, she recognizes as Koda’s. "Easy, boy," she says, pulling at Asi’s scruff, and lays her free hand on the knob. She grins. A shower a deaux is just what Dr. King would have ordered for herself had she known her lover was home early. Asi batters at the door a second time, and in a shaft of light from the lamp in the front room she sees what Asi has smelled since they came through the kitchen door. Almost all of the shirt, and both legs of the jeans, are soaked stiff with something half-dried, something the color of rust. The sharp scent of iron rises from them.

Blood.

"Koda!" she screams, and throws herself against the door.

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

KODA SHIVERS AS she stands on the bathmat, the breeze that stirs the curtains ghosting over her skin. Despite the morning’s brightness, it leaves no warmth behind it, and she feels the gooseflesh rise and tighten along her arms. More out of habit than conviction, she turns on the hot tap and lets the water run while she collects towel and washcloth from the tall, narrow cabinet above the clothes bin. The stench of blood is on her still, mingled with sweat and dirt and the oil-and-metal smell of the APC. She is used to blood, and used to smelling of it. You cannot, after all, turn a breech foal or perform emergency field surgery and remain clean. It goes with the job.

Killing a man in a duel and taking his warband for prize does not go with a veterinarian’s job. It does not go with a warrior’s job, either, she reflects. Or it has not, at least for the last thousand years or so.

Yet there was nothing in it that was strange, or unfamiliar to her. There had been a pattern to the encounter that revealed itself as the fight played out, a choreography. It was as if she had been thrust out in front of the footlights in riding boots and a complete innocence of Tschaikovsky, and had danced a perfect Swan Queen. Tacoma had called it the warrior spirit waking within her, growing. He should know. As she had been called to the life of a shaman, he had been born a warrior. Strange, that like as they are, each has been given the other’s heart’s desire.

Koda steps into the shower and pulls the curtain to keep off the draft. The water hits her like a rush of snowmelt, so cold it burns. Gritting her teeth, she stands still, shivering, watching as the brown stains on her skin liquify and sluice down her body, swirling crimson around the drain at her feet. She unwraps the length of cotton around her arm and lets her own blood join the flow. As if, she thinks, we were making relatives in the Hunkapi. At that moment, her enemy seems as close as her own brothers and sisters, as her own lover.

Her hand, half numb, closes on the soap, and she begins to work it into a lather on the bathsponge. Just as she turns off the frigid water pelting down on her, Asi’s deep bay sounds in the hall, and the door shakes on its hinges. The dog’s howl comes again, with a second battering against the door, and with it Kirsten’s voice, high pitched in fear. "Koda!"

* * *

Kirsten’s weight hits the door for the second time, and suddenly its solidity is gone, giving way before her and carrying her straight into Dakota where she stands wet an naked on the bathmat, her hair streaming down her back and over her breasts like dark floodwater, water and blood running red in branching rivulets down the length of her legs, dripping from a long, shallow cut visible on her forearm.

The cold water soaks through her own thin shirt, chilling her. But it is the fear that causes her to shudder as she pushes Koda away, holding by both arms as her eyes run the length her body, searching for the source of the blood on the clothing still lying in a heap on the floor. But there is only the single wound, clearly not lethal, only a crimson thread against the copper of Dakota’s skin. Kirsten’s heart, lodged in her throat, slips back into its accustomed place, and she begins to breathe again. "All that blood," she gasps. "It isn’t yours."

"Not mine, no," Koda echoes. "I killed a man."

Her fingers tighten on Dakota’s arms, making small white marks where they dig into the skin. "At Minot? They fought you?"

"Not ‘they.’ Just one." Koda’s eyes are on hers, a light in them that is part triumph, part desire, part something else she cannot name. "We took his men from him."

"We?" Kirsten asks carefully. "You mean ‘you.’"

"I challenged him. None of our soldiers was killed, none of his. Just him."

Once again, she sees the tall figure racing ahead of her onto the shattered bridge at the Cheyenne, dark hair streaming behind her like smoke. Once again, the fear strikes through her, this time without the hum of adrenaline in the blood that had drawn her out of herself and propelled her across the pile of tumbled concrete after the other woman. She is still not sure whether she acted from blind trust or blind panic. "How dare you," she says softly, the words hissing between her teeth. "When so much depends on you."

"When what depends on me?" Dakota steps closer, so that Kirsten can hear her breathing, not quite steady now. The light from the open window, glancing through the blowing curtains, shimmers over Koda’s wet skin, slipping over her shoulders and breasts like silk.

She is made lean and hard, lithe muscles stretched over long bones. The form of the hunting animal, elegant in understatement—long-legged cheetah moving with harsh and angular grace through the high grass, gerfalcon stooping on her prey like a meteor out of the blue heaven.

"I depend on you, goddammit." A tremor runs through her, part fear, part not. "You have no right to risk yourself alone."

"I wasn’t in any danger. No greater than we face here, every day."

Kirsten opens her mouth to make the obvious retort, but instead looks away, silent. I risked as much, myself. Hypocrite.

But if she died, I would be so alone. So alone.

Again.