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Ryan couldn't remember if it was Christmas or not. He thought it might be, but he'd lost track of the days during his long hike through the mountains. Not that it mattered; there would be no presents or brightly lit trees this year. Unless you counted the mortars crashing down in the streets as presents and the search light illuminated husks of burnt out oaks as Christmas trees. If so, it would be a very jolly yuletide indeed.

The first flakes of snow were just starting to drift down from a steel gray sky, and he shuddered a little. If the snow fell thick and heavy, if it began to stick to the ground, his camo would be useless, no worse than useless, he'd stick out like a sore thumb. He looked out the window of the luxurious two story mansion, he and his partner had camped out in the night before, staring at a snowflake on the flagstone outside. He breathed a sigh of relief when it finally melted. Maybe it won't stick after all, he thought.

His partner on this mission was a rabbit with the unlikely name of Jazzy. In his opinion the brown furred woman was the farthest thing from jazzy he'd ever seen. Her face was long and unremarkable, her eyes the color of partially dried mud, and her frame was boxy and almost entirely without curve. Not that he particularly cared; she was a good spotter and rarely complained. That's all he needed for this mission.

Pulling off his cover he ran his hand through his hair, it was getting shaggier than her liked, he'd been in the field too long. Scratching the side of his muzzle he picked up his rifle, an M40 he'd named Cheryl after his mother. Slinging the rifle, he popped the Kevlar helmet back on his broad head and turned to Jazzy. "We need to move out, their shelling the residential zone again today," he said. "What are they trying to do?"

Jaz shrugged. "You should have been born the rabbit; you're too timid for this. I thought you canines were supposed to be bold."

"You're thinking of wolves, us dogs are just supposed to be loyal."

"That explains the uniform," she replied smiling. She adjusted her backpack and checked her M4 for the billionth time.

The house sat on the side of a mountain, at the edge of the woods in an old neighborhood constructed sometime between the civil war and the First World War. The houses were stately and aristocratic; far enough away from town that the former landed gentry needed never rub elbows with the pitiful dregs upon which they built their fortunes. Before this war the houses were occupied by bankers and executives who wanted to be close enough to the city that they could be rich, but far enough so they wouldn't have to interact with the poor people that lived there. Now, one out of every five homes was a blacked shell of its former glory, and those that remained were boarded up and unoccupied for the most part.

The papers were already calling it the Winter War, though so far the majority of the battles had taken place in the late summer and autumn. Winter War seemed appropriate somehow. As if their neighbors from the north had brought the cold and snow of the season down with them. They hadn't of course, the first night that Ryan had actually felt cold since the fighting stared six months earlier was the night before, and that chill was the only reason they risked the house.

East was the direction they were heading, and Ryan didn't need a compass to know which way that was. Downtown would be at the bottom of the hill, and there he'd find his target. A bear whose picture he'd memorized whose face he could pick out of a crowd of millions, a target that needed to be eliminated, no matter what the cost.

They'd camped in what he guessed was once the living room of the massive Victorian, the hardwood floors were bare now, the furniture gone, like all the other houses they looked into, (why would they bother taking the furniture?) and the walls were pristine white. The front door of the house was a few paces to his right, but he knew better than to go through it. It opened onto the unadorned lawn, and with the house on top of a hill, a sniper would have a shot on him form any direction. As a sniper himself he knew what a bad position it was. They would leave the way they'd come, through a broken window in the rear bathroom.

A stream emerged from the woods two houses down from the Victorian where they'd camped. It ran straight down the side of the mountain, through back yards and next to a school, passed a library and under a half dozen streets, before bending off to the south a kilometer from Main Street. Ryan decided to follow the stream bed into town, the banks were lined with trees so there was good cover, and it was close to the houses most of the way into town so there would be positions to fall back to if they came under fire.

The banks of the stream were steep and the water was cold. It soaked through his boots almost instantly and began to turn his toes numb soon thereafter. He tried to ignore it, as he ignored his stiff neck and aching back, as he would have to ignore the snow, which was now falling in sheets of white. The fluffy flakes swirled and danced around him and Jazzy as they plodded through the creek, crunching in the frozen mud and splashing through the icy waters.

At least his pack wasn't as heavy, he thought ruefully. Of course, it wasn't heavy because he'd burned through just about all his supplies. They'd pooled the last of their food the night before and made one big meal out of it. Not exactly moms, Christmas goose, but beef stroganoff was the best of the instant meals the Marines issued him. Jazzy had contributed the chocolate pudding she'd been saving for her birthday two days later. She smiled as she handed the little white packet to Ryan, saying "Better eat it now..." but never finished the thought they were both thinking. While we're still alive.

This was a suicide mission. Both knew it, even if neither of them would come right out and say it. Tomorrow would see another sunrise, but Ryan and Jazzy would not be alive to greet it. He could have left the pack behind he realized. No use for it now. But that seemed somehow wrong, as if the pack deserved better than that. It had come a long way, some two hundred miles, and it deserved to see an end to this as much as Ryan and Jazzy.

The mouth of the tunnel yawned open before them. A black corridor, the darkness so thick it looked like a wall of obsidian. The brook must bend at some point ahead, Ryan figured, otherwise we'd see the light from the other side. Tunnel wasn't even the right word for the opening, it was just a corrugated steel pipe set in concrete, about five feet in diameter, which ran under the road. But it brought Ryan up short.

"What do you want to do, Ry?" Jazzy asked peering into the darkness. She'd dropped the 'Sergeant' after the first three days, but still let him make all the calls. The chain of command was still important, for a few more hours anyway, but the formality of 'sir' and 'ma'am' no longer seemed appropriate, especially if this was the person who was going to die with him.

"We should go through, if we go up top it could expose us to enemy fire," he replied.

"Lights?"

He shook his head. "Let's keep it dark, I don't want to do anything that could give away our position. Just keep a paw on the wall and stay moving."

She nodded and slung her rifle. He wasn't feeling particularly chivalrous but knew he had to go first anyway. His Drill Sergeant in basic training had once said, "The mark of a good noncommissioned officer is willingness to set an example, even if that means taking some fire." He wondered if that was true or just something she'd said to pump them up. Either way, it was advice he lived by.

The light seemed to drop dead at the mouth of the tunnel, one moment there was a gloomy light from the behind, the next it was pitch black. He traced his paw lightly over the bumpy steel of the pipe; terrified he'd get lost and end up splashing around in the dark unable to escape. He knew that was silly, he kept hitting his helmet against the ceiling, and knew he could trace the ceiling down to the side just as easy as anything. But he hated the dark all the same; it made him think of the grave.

His thoughts turned back toward home, as they so often did since setting out on the mission. He was from a town not entirely unlike this one, small but close to a city, quiet but not dull. He lived in half of a double with his mother and two younger sisters. His parents were divorced and his dad had an apartment on the other side of town. He thought of his mother a lot. She still wrote him a letter every day or at least had as of the time he set out into the mountains. She had the same silky black hair and shockingly blue eyes that he did. What his father once called "husky eyes," as if only his people could call the color their own.

His first girlfriend lived in the other half of the double and their rooms shared a fire wall. The last time he saw her was right after he was drafted. She'd gone off to college by the time he finished basic, and since had sent only a single letter wishing him well and letting him know she was thinking of him. That was nearly two years ago, but it felt like much longer. They had broken up before he was drafted, of course. Near the end of high school they had split, though at the moment he couldn't remember why. At night he thought of her sometimes, and wished he could have given her one last kiss.

He wondered what Jazzy was thinking about; if she had some sweetheart back home she was pining for. She wasn't terribly ugly, no beauty queen, but she was hardly a horror show. He wondered about her family, where she was from, what she did before, who would miss her when she was dead in a few hours.

It was several seconds before he realized he could see again. The tunnel was bending back to the left and a crescent of light could be seen a hundred yards ahead of him. It seemed the stream must have passed under a considerable section of town, much more than the two streets the old map reported. When he came to the end of the tunnel he peeked out and saw that in fact he was right, the pipe had taken them within a few blocks of their destination. But that wasn't all he saw.

The snow was sticking for one, the grass had still been visible when they entered the tunnel but now all he could see was white. The other thing he saw was even more disheartening, fifty yards downstream the creek was forming a slushy pool. It was being dammed up by a wall of furniture, a confusion of wood and fabric jumbled together to form a rough barricade.

"We need to have a better look at what we're dealing with," he told Jazzy. "One of us needs to climb up the banks and check it out. Volunteers?"

She smiled ruefully and scrambled up the snow slicked banks. The pipe emptied out into a little park dotted with stands of maple and pine. To the left stood a playground, snow clinging to the jungle gym and the swings twisting in the wind. It was a sad desolate image, as cold as any he'd seen. There was a maintenance shed a few feet to the right of the stream, not far from where Jazzy had climbed the banks. It stood on a foundation of poured concrete and the corrugated steel roof offed a little shelter from the wind and snow. He stood beneath the eve and stared at the barricade, impressed and terrified.

Ryan was just starting to shiver and wonder where Jazzy was, what was taking her so long, when the attack came. Although, attack is probably the wrong word for it. The cat was as surprised to see Ryan as Ryan was to see him. He'd been napping in the shed, catching some sack time between patrols (or rather instead of walking an endless circle around the barricade) and got up to piss in the small stream that bubbled next to his hiding spot. When he came around the corner he was face to face with Ryan and his rifle was leaning against a dusty riding mower back in the shed.

Ryan was not nearly as fast as his adversary. Before he could unsling his rifle, the feline was on him, a knife appearing in his paw seemingly from nowhere. Ryan grabbed his wrist but it was all he could do to keep from getting stabbed. His foot slipped on the icy concrete and the two tumbled down into the water. They rolled over top of one another and when they came up, Ryan lay with his back in the icy stream, a paw on his neck, both his own paw desperately trying to fend off the knife as he struggled to keep his head above water.

Looking up into the face of his enemy, Ryan saw echoed his own terror. The puma's eyes were green and filled with desperation. In other circumstances, Ryan was certain he could over power the cat, but he'd been walking through the woods for close to a month, barely eating, not sleeping well. All that exertion was catching up to him and the feline was on top, putting his weight behind the knife.

He felt the water raising, or rather his head sinking, over his neck, now to his cheeks. He moaned in fear and desperation. He didn't mind dying, but to be drowned before he could complete his mission, after coming all this way, seemed a very cruel joke. He struggled, trying to buck the cat off of him but it was useless. His head slipped under the water, and he could fight on no more. He was just about to open his mouth and let the water fill his lungs when the paw on his neck loosened, and the arm trying to stab him went slack.

His head breached the surface and he pulled in a panicked breath. Jazzy stood over him, a paw extended to help him out of the frigid water. Her left paw clutched a knife and was covered in gore to the wrist. Her expression was difficult to read but he detected a hint of relief. She's happy I'm alive, he thought. Not that it's anything but a temporary reprieve. She's just glad I'll be alive to take the shot. Not that it was a particularly difficult shot, or that he was anything special, but Jazzy would never make it. Not that she wouldn't try.

They climbed out of the water, and up the banks. Ryan stood shivering and wet on top of a slight rise that Jazzy showed him. He now understood why there wasn't any furniture in the houses they passed. A massive confusion of tables and chairs, of couches and recliners and bookshelves and vanities and dressers and everything else a house could hold was erected into a giant barricade that encircled the downtown shopping district. The wall was thirty feet high and shabbily constructed, any climber attempting to gain the top would likely fall and break his fool neck. There were only two openings set on opposite sides and manned with dozens of serious looking soldiers with red maple leaves sewn on the arms of their uniforms.

Jazzy looked shell shocked as she stared down at the improvised fortification. Ryan felt as amazed as she looked. He hadn't realized just how much junk people kept in their houses. He shook his head and tried to ignore the wall. His mission wasn't to scale a jumble of furniture, and he needn't try to succeed in his mission. Around, under, through or over, those were the only options for dealing with an obstacle. The wall was circular so around was out. There were guards posted periodically around the perimeter and dozens manning the gates, so through was probably too costly. He might be able to get under it, if he knew anything about the underground of the city, but he didn't.

He was racking his brain for a plan when a bell began to strike noon. Is it that late already, he wondered to himself. He looked up at the flat gray sky, and the idea struck him. He looked out over the little downtown a few hundred yards below and found it. The bell tower was connected to a church that looked as old as the town itself, if not a bit older. It was made of dark gray stones, roughly rectangular and forming a traditional t shaped church. It was only a dozen feet from the piles of furniture, and if he could gain the bell tower he'd have a clear shot on city hall, and the target that had taken it for his command post.

Creeping up to the church was the most frightening part. Soldiers were constantly walking around the outside of the barricade, and even a passing glance their way would give Jazzy and Ryan away. The bright green of their camouflage did nothing to disguise them against the bright white snow. Somehow, they made it inside the church and began to search for a way up to the tower.

Jazzy found it, a rickety ladder of worn wooden rungs behind a door that looked like a broom closet from the outside. It was in the vestibule between the churchyard and the sanctuary. She looked at him, with serious brown eyes and nodded. He felt like he should say something but he couldn't think what to say. Slinging his rifle he began the ascent into the bell tower, scarcely sure he would ever feel the earth beneath his feet again. At the top was a short hallway, only a few feet wide and floored with dusty gray wood, beyond was the bell.

He broke out three slats in one of the windows and set the M40 against the frame. It was a long shot, but from this height he had a clear view of city hall, a white sandstone building with marble columns and a wide stairway of a dozen steps. There were dozens of flags and soldiers were crawling all over the steps and stalking the street in front of it. He smiled to himself, confident that all the soldiers in the world wouldn't save General Starzyk today.

The door was opening when Ryan thumbed off the safety. Two hundred miles, a range of mountains, a vast forest, night after night of sleeping on the cold ground, and after all that he finally put his finger on the trigger. The bear emerged from his den, and Ryan smiled to see there was a little frosting of white around his muzzle. The years were creeping up on the immortal Ice Bear of the North, but Ryan would halt them in their tracks.

He heard Jazzy gasp and fall, but never took his eyes off the target, even when the accented voice said, "Hold it right there." Ryan's partner was dead, he knew that as sure as anything, but it didn't bother him so much. It must have been quick, which is about all she could have hoped for.

"Drop your weapon!" the soldier shouted. But it was too late; Ryan had the bear's white muzzle in his sights. "You pull that trigger you're a dead man."

I was dead the moment I took this mission, friend, he thought as he pulled the trigger. The second loud crack sounded like an echo of his shot, but the pain that exploded in his back told him a different story. He fell forward and was engulfed by darkness before his face touched the ground. It was blessedly quick.

Killing a general, even a brilliant general, does not a war end. The Winter War beat on for another sixteen months, and ended in the spring. The battles were fierce and many brave men and women gave their lives for causes in which they believed. But in the end, Ryan and Jazzy's sacrifices proved crucial. Without the brilliance of General Starzyk's leadership, the Northern army fell. The unconditional surrender was signed on April 10th. The day was declared a national holiday called "The Triumph of Spring."