Sniper Ballad

(This story is not sexually explicit; however, it is not recommended for children. Adult themes, foul language, violence, and other inappropriate material may be present throughout, so read at your own discretion--the author will not be held responsible for a lack of responsibility on the reader's part.

Purchasing this work gives you the non-exclusive license to read, review, and discuss it, but it does not give you the right to reproduce or distribute it in any fashion. Violators of this contractual agreement will be prosecuted under any and all applicable laws.)

(Before we start, I want to make it explicitly clear how much this story is not a commendation of Islamic terrorism or fundamentalism. I do not support the oppression or slaughter of civilians by anyone.

Metric measurements will be used in this piece. Use Google to convert to standard units if needed.

I will be using limited Russian late in the story, but you should be able to figure out what I am talking about. Sadly, I do not know any Chechen, so there will not be any of that.

I think that's all I have to say for now. I hope you enjoy this one, lads and lasses. Now then, let's rock and roll.)

(2015 08 04 Update: This story has been released for free under a Creative Commons BY NC SA license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

This story is an adaptation of something I wrote back in 2008. After that, I forgot about it for some time, then I reworked a furry version of it that I intended to release for sale. I remembered it a few years ago and since it seems that no one was ever interested in buying it, you now can read it for free. Please comment, favorite, review, and watch as necessary, and enjoy one of the most unique furry stories you will ever read.)

"Come on, Mikhail. We will be valued highly; we are both deadly shots."

"No."

"It will be fun; it will be something to tell our grandchildren."

"No."

"Come now, Mikhail, do not be a 'fraidy cat. I promise we will be safe."

An audible crack echoed around the cabin--it was simple and bare, there was not much material to absorb the sound waves that reverberated against the wood and stone and brick of the plain abode. For a second, there was no noise, as Mikhail Ramanzanov slowly relaxed his grip from one of the four dishes that he owned.

Like his brother, Mikhail was a Chechen. He was Chechen in race, appearance, language, and culture; he sported dark Caucasian features--somewhat wavy, wild hair that was dark brown and a few inches long at the moment; long enough that it trailed down his sharp, angled cheekbones, hiding half his face.

Mikhail was tall for his people, significantly so. Perhaps he was 1.75 or 1.8 meters tall--he was not sure. After all, he had never been to any sort of formal medical clinic, and he had certainly never so much as heard of one of the fancy, telescoping measuring rods that were the norm for checking height in the Western world.

Toned and trim from an active life, one without the luxuries of a certain three square meals a day and with plenty of hard physical work to be done, Mikhail embodied the spirit of his people--he was tough and fiercely independent, and, in some ways, he was just a little bit savage.

This was not to say that he was unattractive, certainly not. His eyes were as dark and shiny as his hair, and he kept himself surprisingly well groomed--hygiene was, perhaps, one of the most valuable lessons his parents had had the opportunity to teach him. He was cleanly shaven and smelled vaguely of soap, one of the very few luxuries indeed that he could afford to buy on a regular basis.

He was not well-dressed, though--nice clothes were something he had never had money for, and something he would almost certainly never had money for. Still, there was a rustic appeal to the trousers and tunic he wore--they were somewhat imprecisely made and sometimes they scratched his skin in some places, but he knew that when he had bought them from an old widow who lived a few kilometers north of his home, he had given her enough money to live on for a few more days yet.

Mikhail thought of none of these things, though, as he sat at his table with his back straight. Instead, he thought of the... _ridiculous_proposition his brother had just brought forth. It was so ridiculous it made him grind his teeth--it took him several moments to find words.

"Nikolai..." he said in as gentle and sincere of a voice he could muster, "you are my brother and I love you. But please--think."

Now, Mikhail had turned to face his brother. That was because now it was Nikolai who had turned away, looking into the deep valley that their aul--their mountaintop village, their home--crowned.

"Nikolai," Mikhail continued, in his more normal, more gruff and curt tone, "this is war you're talking about. We may not be citizens of the USSR anymore, but do not think that this new Russia will treat us Chechens like human beings. You will be badly disappointed if you think it will treat us differently than the evil empire it supposedly replaced did."

Mikhail, of course, was speaking the Chechen language, the tongue of his people. In its spoken form, it was simply a northern Caucasian language. When written, however, it could dress in the clothes of the Cyrillic or Arabic alphabets, though the brothers could only read and write in Cyrillic--and even then, not so well. Advanced education was yet another luxury beyond their grasp.

But Mikhail didn't need command of the written word to speak to his brother. He just needed to speak to his brother, and through eloquence convince him of how very wrongheaded his proposal was.

"Brother," Mikhail said, trying to be gentle again, "please, think. You and I--we are the last of our bloodline. ...I know that we look alike--we are twins. But please, Nikolai, just for a moment, truly put yourself in my shoes. See the world through my eyes and with my concerns. You know I am not a coward, brother--remember, two years ago, when that leopard took our lamb?... I was the one who tracked it down and killed it. So I am not a coward, Nikolai. I just want to live. That is all."

There was silence. Nikolai had no reply.

As Mikhail had implied, Nikolai looked exactly as his brother did. Of course, they were impossible for one to tell apart at glance, but their similarities ran deeper than that. Their mannerisms--the same. Their favorite foods and pastimes--the same. They were their only companions since childhood, after all. It was natural that they had grown up as they had always lived--together, one and the same; two brothers against the world, sometimes quite literally.

Nikolai was still silent, though. He appeared to be on the edge of words, though, when Mikhail added, in a somewhat cold tone, hoping to end this discussion once and for all, "I do not even know why you want us to join the rebels, brother," he said, before scoffing, and turning back to his meal. "Tell me--why?"

Using a spoon crafted by hand from wood, Mikhail began to eat. His food was bland; colorless and flavorless. It would not excite the taste buds and it would not spice up an otherwise mundane, simple life. What it would do, though, was to keep life going--at least for one more day. So, it would suffice. After all, Mikhail was nothing if not a survivor, just as his brother was.

"Yes. Survival," Mikhail though, running a his tongue across his lips to wick away a speck of half-chewed legume. "That is what we have spent our lives doing. We have become good at it--and I do not want to throw everything we have worked so hard for away so hastily and so needlessly..."

It was just moments before sunset; this was when the brothers had sat down to eat dinner for as far back as they could remember. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that it had been during a sunset years ago when their parents had taken their last meal. It was that night that they had succumbed, in their sleep, to the same sickness that had nearly killed their sons.

The red-orange hue cast over the rolling planes, forests, and mountains a half-day's walk from Grozny added to the rugged, untouched beauty of Chechnya. Perhaps a kilometer away and several hundred meters lower in altitude, a man in robes and a thick cap herded a flock of sheep home--he was the Ramanzanov brothers' closest neighbor.

Not for years, or decades, but for generations, Chechnya's predominantly Sunni Muslim population had been oppressed by ruthless Soviet rule. Mikhail recalled that his own great grandfather, a man he had never had the pleasure of meeting, had been taken from his family "on suspicion of robbery," and never been seen again. Only Allah knew what became of him after that, but his family--the brothers' maternal relatives--had been driven away, into Kazakhstan, along with thousands of other innocent Chechens.

Not even their mother could recall how many of her own siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins had perished on that terrible journey, the harsh life in the steppes of Central Asia, and then, the journey back.

A few years back, however, when the USSR fell, there was hope--hope that, perhaps, Chechnya might be allowed independence from a government that neither represented nor understood the minority population there. After all, the new Russia was open, democratic, free; or so everyone thought.

Acting in good faith, Chechens--or at least, most Chechens--refused to used violence against the tumultuous, chaotic government centered in Moscow; they refused to kick it while it was down. It was a display of peace and a desire to negotiate that might expedite the independence of Chechenistan, or the homeland of the Chechens. Leadership, mostly local imams, mayors and wealthy men, were certain that the Russians would at the very least talk and hear out the legitimate concerns of the Chechen people.

How wrong they were.

Just weeks ago, a bombing had rocked a nearby army outpost, killing perhaps a dozen soldiers. In retaliation for the act--an attack that most Chechens disapproved of, and that most Chechens certainly were not implicit in--a military raid on a peaceful village to the northeast had ended in the unprovoked massacre of at least fifty.

Now, the rebels were recruiting in the streets.

They called themselves mujahideen; at least, some did. No doubt, Allah looked upon their struggle with approval. But this fight was largely political, secular, and few rebels held aspirations of living under a conservative theocracy, much less a Caliphate. And it would be at least a few weeks before desperation drove them to seek friends with bigger funds, bigger guns, and bigger dreams.

Slowly, Nikolai turned from the window, and looked to his brother--it was like looking in a mirror, it really was, but for one thing--the eyes. Nikolai's eyes were dark brown, as his brother's, of course. But his eyes were deep, warm, passionate, thoughtful; his eyes were the eyes of a dreamer. Whereas Mikhail's were cold, pragmatic, harsh--the eyes of one driven to survive, the eyes of one who did not dream.

It struck Nikolai as odd that he had always held the undying affection and dedication, and, yes, love, of his otherwise gruff brother. But why Mikhail loved him so, and was not shy to say and express it... this was a question that might be best left unasked.

For a moment, Nikolai struggled to make sense of what was going through his mind--images of his people, screaming in pain and begging for salvation from the merciless Russian invaders, glimpses of peaceful days in the future, when a uniquely Chechen flag waved atop embassies and businesses across the world gave way to a single sentiment.

"I want to join the rebels, brother," Nikolai said, very slowly, "because there are some things that I believe in. Freedom is one; peace, self-determination, independence from a cruel, infidel regime... these are others. But Mikhail," Nikolai's voice suddenly held the curt acidity that Mikhail's usually did, "I believe in honor, too. Honor, and pride, and fighting for these values. That is why I want to join the rebels--not because I feel that I have something to prove, or that I have to show that I am not a coward. I believe in the dignity and self-determination of our people--I believe so strongly enough to fight--to kill, and to die--for it."

Nikolai took his own dish, licked the remaining food from it--waste was another luxury out-of-bounds for himself and his brother--then set it in the sink, and washed his hands with some well-drawn water. They had no running water, and those that did were out of luck anyway, as the Russians had recently cut off service to the area.

Nikolai then turned, and walked to the room he and his brother shared--they had no money for another pad of blankets and quilts--before stopping, and speaking over his shoulder.

"I am leaving at dawn, brother. Whether or not you come with me... this is a decision for only you to make."

Mikhail's eyes trailed after his brother's retreating form, as it disappeared into the shadows of the simple enclave. The last rays of sunlight were starting to disappear from the horizon, and, somewhere in the distance, an imam armed with either a megaphone or enough passion to not care about making his voice hoarse called out, announcing that it was time to pray.

Mechanically, the snow leopard dropped to his knees, facing Mecca; a land he had only dreamed of and knew that he was far, far too poor to ever visit in his life. He heard his brother do the same in the other room, and that made him think.

Did he believe in values that it seemed were only for Westerners and their protectees to enjoy? Or, more importantly... was that brief, fleeting glimpse of his brother's disappearing form the last he wished to see of him?

They were off at dawn, after a small meal and prayer, just as Nikolai had said. They carried little--their rifles, simple Mosin-Nagants older than any living man in Chechnya; what little ammunition they possessed; two robust and reliable fixed-blade knives; and some water that was probably safe to drink in canteens.

Though the rebel camp was just a few hours' hike away, the brothers were rather slowed by Mikhail's unwonted and incessant whining. He complained about every bug bite, every difficult patch of woods, every purported blister on his foot... It was almost enough to make Nikolai feel guilty about taking his brother out from the only comfort and security they had ever known. Almost.

"I can't believe I am doing this," Mikhail hissed, as they finally approached the camp, holding their bare hands high until a few of their fellow villagers recognized them and bade them to enter. "I swear, Nikolai, I appease you far too much. Just because we are brothers, just because we are twins..." "Just because I cannot imagine a day passing without you at my side...""You should not be able to bully me into this!"

"Brother, dear brother," Nikolai smiled, wrapping an arm around Mikhail's shoulders and speaking into his ear directly. "Don't be so whiny--you are a soldier now."

Mikhail let out a frustrated groan, however, that said that just because he was a soldier he would most certainly not stop whining.

Within a few minutes, the twins had swapped their simple, hand-woven robes for tough uniforms; or, rather, several articles of clothing from several distinct uniforms, cobbled together to fit the Ramanzanovs' impressive proportions. Perhaps they had been stolen from USSR warehouses when the government collapsed, or perhaps they had been bought off some eastern European black market. The twins' rifles remained, though--the rebels had a very limited supply of arms, so every gun and every round was carefully accounted for and dealt out shrewdly.

Mikhail looked visibly uncomfortable in his uniform. Nikolai, on the other hand, could hardly stop himself from strutting, constantly examining his reflection in a nearby stream, always adjusting his collar or his cuffs, always smiling, in contrast with his brother's glum frown and sullen lack of motion.

"You have to admit, Mikhail..." Nikolai said to his brother, ignoring the baleful, dull stare he got in response, "these uniforms--they are not bad looking. What if we were to be seen by some Russian beauty, eh? An enemy sniper, perhaps? Look at us, brother... what woman would not swoon before this...?"

Nikolai struck a pose, laughed at his brother's expression and the twitches that came along with it. Mikhail was about to reply more verbally, and more harshly, but Nikolai stifled that by clapping him on the shoulder, and smiling at him widely in that way that only he could--the way that only he could.

"Rebels! Your attention!" The speaker was standing atop an overturned ammunition crate. He had typical Chechen features, and rather looked like Mikhail and Nikolai--he was bearded, though, and bald, with a large gut. His face was scarred, perhaps from battle... or, perhaps, simply from years of living a rough Chechen lifestyle.

"I am here to teach you about how we do war with the Russians--I am here to teach you about sniping and making explosives, about how to set ambushes and how to vanish from even their expensive radar screens and infrared cameras. It is not something that can be taught in a day or a week or a month... yet, I must teach as much as I can to you in four hours. After all--the infidels are coming later, this very day."

The rebel recruits were led to a nearby field. They sat cross-legged, all facing their unnamed teacher. They stopped once for prayer and water; that was all. The rest of the time, they merely listened, and, at some points, imitated on the rifles that they had brought with them or had been issued.

Nikolai was, of course, very interested in the entire session--how to make a fuse out of a cigarette pack, how to take out as many enemies as possible in a close-quarters fight without reinforcements or heavy weapons or real technology, how to defeat even the most stubborn of Russians in hand-to-hand combat.

Then, though, for him, at least, came the highlight of the day--the lecture on sniping.

"It is like hunting," their teacher said. "Sniping is hunting; it is the art of hunting your fellow man. It is the hunting of an animal, an animal so smart and so dangerous that one mistake, any mistake, even the smallest, could mean death..."

Nikolai sat bolt upright through the entire sniping hour, as did many of his comrades. He assumed Mikhail did the same, but when the class session ended, and the rebels began to stand, he just paused, and shook his head, smiling.

Then, he cuffed his brother's shoulder.

"Congratulations, brother," Nikolai said, grinning at the startled grunt that Mikhail produced. "You've graduated from Guerilla Warfare 101, fast asleep."

"Of course I have," Mikhail said shortly, grumpily, standing up with a wince--his leg had fallen asleep as well. "I can work a rifle, I can hunt, and Allah knows I can shoot; why must I--"

"Really, Mikhail," Nikolai said, exasperatedly, "how do you expect to take on the best of the Russian army--Spetsnaz, probably--if you cannot even take on your own laziness?"

It was a good point, a fair question. But, as was his habit, Mikhail took it in the worst possible way. Scowling, he replied in a rather bitter tone.

"It is not laziness..." he said quietly, not faltering from meeting his brother's eyes. "It is reacting to the needs of your body, after spending the entire night tossing and turning, wide awake, worried to sickness over yourself, your brother--your only relation, your only companion, your only friend--and the future of your blood."

That, too, was a good point. Nikolai slept beside Mikhail, and, to be sure, he had awaken several times through the night by his brother's worry. He was about to voice that and sympathy, and an apology, but Mikhail continued.

"Be a little considerate, brother," he said. "Though... I suppose that might be asking a bit much."

Nikolai's permanent smile fell at that, a little. He looked like he was choosing words, for a moment, on the verge of replying or merely hugging his brother and apologizing--that always worked--but a whistle sounded. After only four hours of training, it was time to move out.

It was then that Nikolai recalled--he and his brother had been assigned to different parts of Grozny...

"Mikhail... we will talk about this later, yes, brother? It is time to go, we must... heh..." Nikolai grinned, strangely, looking at his brother with an odd sense of realization in his eyes. "Do you realize... that, today, we will spend more time apart than we have in some months?"

It was true. Though there was limited practicality in splitting up to do work around their home and lands, the Ramanzanov brothers never, ever strayed out of eyesight of one another. At first, it was _Mikhail_that had to insist on such a policy, not Nikolai--it was strange, and, until then, the warmer of the twins had never really dwelt on it.

"Yes, I... realize it..." Mikhail's voice was strangely soft, choked; strangely hard to expel from his lips. He swallowed, and tried to say something else, or many other things--but he could not. So, instead, he extended a hand to his brother as, all around them, the rebels prepared to move out.

Nikolai took his brother's hand and shook it firmly, never breaking eye contact. The twins remained together, for a moment, before eventually splitting, walking backwards for several meters, then turning and moving on towards their respective assignments.

They were rebels, now--soldiers. They could not call after one another, embrace, and then move on when they were ready--together, never to be separated again. For some reason, though, it was Mikhail that was already feeling more traumatized than Nikolai for leaving his brother--but he did not say a word, and did not turn over his shoulder for a second, even as he walked on, numbly. He was a rebel, now--a soldier.

The Russian advance made Chechen rebels and civilians alike wonder if the USSR really had collapsed. In they came, either arrogantly seated atop tanks or sauntering behind them, hefting their flags and smug grins and a dozen articles each worth more than the average Chechen made in a year.

Several nasty incidents had broken out already--a few teeth had been knocked out, a few windows had been smashed. Overall, though, the situation remained stable--rebel leadership ordered passivity, so Mikhail spent the entire day in a barren apartment room either donated by a civilian friendly to the cause or annexed by the rebels from someone that had either fled or died, peering through the scope of his rifle, reporting on enemy tank and troop movement by way of a simple one-way radio.

It had been tedious and dull, perhaps thankfully so; Mikhail had only moved to get a better angle of his homeland's invaders or to pray, twice. There was no food and no water, and little comfort, physical or mental, as well--no matter what, Mikhail could not stop thinking about his brother, fretting about his safety, his wellbeing, his comfort, and asking Allah to grant him all of the above and more.

Finally, his "shift" finished; he was ordered back to base. Mikhail left town the same way he entered it, using the street, concealing his rifle in a rug, just in case some Russian sniper or airplane was watching. He did not have to walk much of the long trip back to camp, though--he thumbed his way to within a few kilometers of the rudimentary base thanks to a gracious merchant with a wild beard and bright, wizened eyes, which somehow made Mikhail feel that he knew exactly what his young countryman was doing. It was of some comfort to know that the cause behind which Mikhail had thrown his support was popular among the people it was designed to help, but Mikhail knew that he had never relax, fully, until he saw his brother again, and felt every inch of him to make sure that he had not sustained some malicious injury due to Russian activity.

Mikhail disembarked from the car with a smile that did not reach his eyes and a request for blessings to be piled upon the driver, before turning and promptly marching towards camp. It was starting to rain, so, soon, precipitation was washing away the fantastic colors that the setting sun splayed across the sky--red, lavender, orange, and more, soon turned to a murky amalgamation of green and brown.

The walk was lonely but thankfully short. Despite everything, Mikhail found himself somewhat taken by the beauty of his homeland. The rough, wild trees; the mist-wrapped mountains, the way the sky was devoid of pollution and smog... the noble forests and mountains that, like their people, still dared to stand against the foreign invaders.

"I feel one with my nation in a way that I do not think I would have ever understood if I had not joined the rebels," Mikhail realized as he walked directly through a grassy plain, Rain was soaking into his hair and clothes, but he barely noticed and cared even less. "I relate to it, and, I suppose, I love it, in a way. Perhaps this is just because Nikolai does... I will have to thank him for pressuring me into joining, I suppose. Now, I see why he feels that some things are worth risking everything for."

Indeed, Mikhail found himself humming as he continued the journey. The tune he selected was from an old song, a folk song, the only one he had ever known--and, for himself and his brother, it was a lullaby also.

"From the depths of the mountains gush the ice-cold springs,

But he does not fill his lean stomach there.

Rather he descends to the depths of the ravine and drinks from a warm puddle.

The wooded slope is bordered by rising fresh blue grass,

But he does not fill his noble belly there.

Coming out below the wooded hills, he listens carefully,

Anxious to avoid the dreaded hunter's gun.

Licking his long body with his slender tongue,

Sharpening his branched antlers on the flinty shore,

Striking his spotted hind leg on the plane tree's root,

Pointing his ears forward, tossing his antlers onto his back,

Climbing high on the hill, bellowing to the does,

How many stags walk without their mates?

And are there not many lads besides us of whom the same is true?"

Mikhail was strangely grateful to have some time to himself, some time without his brother. Of course, they spoke about everything to one another; everything, including what they had do to get married, and what would happen after it. Mikhail had frozen once, when Nikolai implied that it might then be time for them to build houses of their own, to live separately--then he had jumped on his brother, his only friend and companion, for a vicious, mocked wrestling match when Nikolai had said that he was only joking.

An owl hooted in the distance, making Mikhail pause and look up, for a moment. He had traveled far, yet another kilometer or so separated him from camp. Already, though, sounds of rebel activity were reaching him ... and they spoke of remaining undetectable to the Russians. Even a deaf man could have heard the ruckus, and the carelessness made Mikhail shake his head in disgust for a moment.

"I wonder what the future holds for Nikolai and I, and our homeland? Will the Russians give us independence?... I do not think so. Not unless we bloody their noses, at least," he thought "But supposing they do leave, eventually... Nikolai and I will be heroes. And then..."

Images of a more prosperous life filled Mikhail's mind. A larger house with some furniture, perhaps a tapestry or two, maybe even a television set. He would be married, and would have at least two sons and a daughter--but, most importantly, he would be with his brother, for then and forever.

Mikhail arrived back at camp just in time to pray for the last time of the day. He had never done so among so many people before; at least, not in living memory. His parents had once taken him and Nikolai to a mosque in Grozny, but neither of them could remember that, and the mosque itself had been bombed to pieces years before.

"Things would be different," he thought, getting on his knees along with dozens of his newfound comrades, "if Mother and Father lived. I suppose I would fight with Nikolai more. We would not be nearly as close as we are, as we'd have no reason to dedicate ourselves to each another. So, in a way... I am grateful for the way things turned out. I love my brother."

Prayer was finished, and Mikhail felt somewhat guilty for not devoting himself to the act totally--but Allah would forgive him, for Allah was all-forgiving. And it was not like Mikhail was distracted for some silly, transient reason--he was thinking about his brother, the being around which his life revolved.

Looking around, though, the snow leopard guessed, correctly, that Nikolai had not returned--not yet. Mikhail shrugged, and stepped into line to get some food; he was as hungry as a lion for a day without. It was as bad as Ramadan.

It took some finagling to get the female in charge of dealing out ladlefuls of hot stew made from lamb and goat and milk and cheese and wheat to give him an extra portion in another bowl for his brother, who, he explained, was late in returning. A flashy smile, puppy eyes, and a few rhetoric sentences made short work of the woman's normally harsh disposition, who explained that, for Mikhail, she had make an exception--after all, her sons--vanished weeks ago, all of them, and not heard from since--would have wanted her to.

"Nikolai has never been one with great regard for punctuality," Mikhail thought dully, "but he would never do something like this on purpose. He knows I worry for him easily--why has he sent no message...?"

It was late, but, of course, Mikhail had no idea how late. He had no wristwatch. But he was certain that for hours--hours--he had been pacing, allowing the two bowls of food in his hands to go cold, even as the last of the rebels returned to camp and then turned in.

It had started to rain harder, and Mikhail had had to speak quite loudly--almost yelling--to ask each and every fur he found if they had seen someone that looked just like him; a peasant farmer and hunter, a brother, a Nikolai Ramanzanov.

None had.

And now, they had all turned in, leaving Mikhail outside, alone, sitting dutifully on a downed log, waiting for his brother. Shapeless, colorless rain had long since filled and overfilled the dishes he had been holding, but Mikhail either did not notice or did not care--he was going to wait for his brother, no matter what.

"Bah. I am so pessimistic," the snow leopard thought, suddenly moving, stretching, a little, blinking the tiredness from his eyes. "My people have lived through centuries of hardship, of oppression under the Russia and its governments. We've had our children and elderly killed, our mosques and homes destroyed, the food taken from our fields and paws and maws--I should learn from Nikolai, and be a little happier. I have something that no one else in this world does--I have my brother."

"And I am sure he will return soon," Mikhail said out loud, smiling. "The poor cub must have gotten lost in the woods; he has a miserable sense of direction, and he must be confused without me anyway. I know that without him, my world has been turned on its head.

"I would even go so far as to bet that that is him," the snow leopard said, looking at an approaching truck. It did not register to him that the use of vehicles so close to camp was strictly forbidden--they attracted too much attention, gave off too much of a heat signal--it was practically an invitation for a Russian aircraft to target and blow to pieces with air-to-surface missiles.

Mikhail watched, that same, unwonted smile on his face, as the same man that had trained him, earlier that very day, came from his tent, dressed in his sleeping clothes--his uniform, minus the jacket, which he now hastily pulled on, knowing that it was morally corrupt for a man to appear in the open uncovered from navel to knee.

Swearing loudly using a mixture of choice Chechen and Russian phrases, some of which Mikhail recognized, he demanded an explanation for compromising the base, the rebels sleeping there, and the war effort itself. The truck's drivers apologized profusely, and, as rebels started to emerge from their tents, awaken by the noise, Mikhail's ears perked up.

Then, he stood.

"What is this--someone was killed? That cannot be, we were ordered to merely watch and report; we will strike later, when the Russians do not expect it. Someone was killed--who? How? Why? And by whom?"

A body was being carried out on a stretcher. Mikhail became aware that he had dropped his dishes, and that his hearing seemed to have been turned off; that his eyes were focused on that tall, slim form, concealed from view by a blanket.

Mikhail then became aware that he had started to run faster than he ever had before in his life.

The snow leopard was still a hundred meters away when the blanket shifted, moving, revealing the face of the man that had been killed. But Mikhail's eyesight was as sharp as the rest of his senses; honed into a razor-tipped edge by necessity and a lifetime of hunting and hardship.

The dead man's face... it was his own. It was his brother's. It was Nikolai's.

With one difference--there was a gaping, bloodied hole in its forehead. The downed rebel, it seemed, had been killed by a single shot to the skull.

Mikhail was in denial, though, even as he approached. One of the truck's occupants--its living occupants--quickly moved the blanket back to cover the horrific wound, before sobbing, dropping to his knees, and apologizing to the rebel commander for potentially giving away the camp's position.

The rest of the rebels were starting to wake up, now, peering at the scene from their tents. Mikhail paid them no heed, though; just as he ignored the men in the truck that questioned him and tried to hold him back, as he shoved his way to the stretcher, yelling, demanding that he see who it was again; he had to know who it was, that his eyes had played a cruel trick on him and that it was not his brother who had been killed...

The snow leopard managed to fight his way through, and froze as he pulled the blanket back.

"No..."

For Mikhail, everything went silent. His entire world seemed to have shut down, just then, as, finally, he allowed his commander to pull him away, saying that the base needed to be evacuated now, before--

An explosion, probably from a five hundred pound bomb, possibly from a shell launched from kilometers away, went off in the middle of the base, among the rebels' tents. Then men were throw up into the air by the powerful, concussive blast; dozens more were killed by trauma and shrapnel.

Finally, Mikhail's hearing returned. He paid no heed to the screaming all around him, though, nor to the additional explosions lobbed by artillery pieces or dropped by airplanes--he had only one objective. Only one.

The rebel commander tried to take charge of the situation, yelling at his soldiers to grab what they could and move. There was too much confusion, though--the darkness, the fiery explosions, the screaming--it was useless. The base took a pounding for another few seconds, killing dozens of rebels, before letting up--was this the end?

"Everyone, grab your weapons and move out!" the commander yelled, as Mikhail gingerly, tenderly lifted his brother's body from the stretcher. "Get the trucks, the ammunition, and--"

A single shot roared out. And then, the commander fell to the ground, clutching his side.

Then, more gunfire started to rattle out, flowery bursts of automatic fire emanating from the nearby treeline. All at once, there was chaos.

The rebels struggled to mount a counteroffensive, but there was little hope. They had assumed--foolishly--that their little insurgency would remain undiscovered by the Russians for some time at least, and had planned to keep that single training camp up and running for a week or so at minimum. There was little cover there, and only two machinegun positions had been set up. But even as Mikhail raised his own rifle to snap off a shot, seeing a distant Russian soldier go down with a chest wound, he heard the outgoing fire sputter and, finally, all but cease altogether.

Now, resistance was minimal, but the snow leopard had no choice but to keep fighting from where he was. The rest of the rebels had started to pull back, even as they were shot in the back by Russian marksmen and machineguns, but now and then, rifle shots would ring out, taking a toll on the blitzkrieg offensive.

Mikhail worked the bolt of his rifle one last time, then reloaded. He had been firing from under the truck, using the heavy vehicle as cover. From the relative safety, the snow leopard ensured that all five of his bullets had found their targets, but it did little good--five kills was not going to stop the offensive from overrunning him within seconds. If he was to escape... now was the time to do it.

He slung his rifle over his back, and then, with difficulty, lifted his brother's body to his shoulders. He was heavier than Mikhail remembered--their harvests had been good, of late, and he had been happy to see his brother looking less peaky than usual.

Face twisting into an unrecognizable mask of rage as he started to realize what had just been stolen from him, Mikhail started to run, directly towards the contingent of rebels that was providing covering fire for him and other stragglers. No more curling up, together, in front of the fireplace during the long, Chechen winters. No more hunting together, no more working the fields together, no more walking, talking, eating, and living together. No more.

Bullets started to land around Mikhail, making the snow leopard run faster still. A few rebels still fired past him, holding the Russians at bay, for the moment, but Mikhail was still far from safety.

Finally, as the last of his protectors started to run or fall, Mikhail leaped over a slight, rolling hill, and almost fell. Crouching, for a moment, panting, he took advantage of the temporary cover, and quickly checked that he had everything he needed--rifle, knife, radio, filled water canteen, Nikolai--good. Now, it was time to go again.

"Hey--Mikhail!" said a familiar voice to the snow leopard's right--it was a man from Mikhail's aul, a twenty-year-old with a wife and young son already. "We can escape this, my friend. Leave your brother, and we will hide in--"

"Not likely," the living Ramanzanov snarled. "Fire a few shots, Ishmael. I will run to the next hill and cover you; then we will go together, understand?"

"Are you insane?" the shorter, pale-furred snow leopard yelled, as a grenade went off, not fifteen meters from their position. Tracers arced overhead from the Russians, but also from the rebels--they had hunkered down behind the opposite treeline, and were starting to hold off the attackers.

"You cannot run fast enough with your brother--he is dead, you fool; drop him, save yourself, live!"

Mikhail did not respond. Still carrying Nikolai, he leaned against the hillside, waiting for a lull in the battle to exploit. Ishmael was less patient, though--with a frustrated curse, he got up and started to move towards his comrades.

He did not make it more than three meters. A spray of bullets from the Russian offensive riddled his chest with holes, before dropping him, making him fall, in a bloodied heap, back into the ditch that Mikhail was still hiding in.

"Wait for it... wait... wait... Now!"

The snow leopard stood as quickly as he could, and, yelling that he was a friend in Chechen, made his way to the rebel front. Astonishingly, he was struck by neither "friendly" nor enemy bullet, nor by flaming, hot explosions lain on the forest by another Russian air or artillery strike

Just as he was about to find safety, though, a larger explosion, a concussive one, knocked Mikhail off his feet. The snow leopard was blown a clear five meters into the air, and landed, heavily, on his back. Gasping, wheezing, struggling to regain the wind that had been knocked from his lungs, Mikhail tried to reconcile the blurriness in his vision from fatigue and lack of food as well as the ringing in his ears, and, shakily, stood, searching for his brother.

The Chechen counteroffensive had been cleanly broken, it seemed. Only about a dozen rebels were firing, desperately, unable to escape. The rest of their comrades had long since fallen from bullet or blast or shrapnel, and were now piled, waist-high, on the soggy, yielding ground.

"No! Nikolai--brother! Allah, help me find my brother!" Mikhail started to yell. He dug through the corpses and he searched and he tried to find his brother, his Nikolai--or at least, his brother's body.

Suddenly, a familiar paw came into view. The snow leopard froze, for a heartbeat, then grabbed it and he pulled. Nikolai was trapped under three or four fully armed rebels, and so it took a full ten seconds for his brother to get him out.

Mikhail blinked through the wetness collecting in his eyes. He had wanted, at least, to bury his brother whole and unmarred; but now, Nikolai was burned, bruised, cut, broken...

"No matter. He is still my brother, and he always will be. No matter what... I owe some things to him."

Converting his sadness to anger, the snow leopard snarled, and, again, lifted Nikolai to his shoulders. The corpse deformed more than it had a moment ago; Nikolai's spine had been broken, it seemed, but Mikhail did not care. He just stood, and started to run again.

Fighting had shifted away from him, fortunately. What rebels still stood and fought had moved a few hundred meters to the east, attempting to use thicker foliage and a group of younger, shorter trees as cover. For a moment, it seemed that they really might be able to stave off the Russian offensive and win the battle.

Then, another explosive strike effectively ended the battle.

Mikhail slowed down, now, moving more quietly. His ears were angled behind him, telling him that only a few of the rebels that stayed behind had lived, and were snapping off a few lonely, sparse bursts. Most had escaped--but this battle, this massacre, had disrupted and demoralized the entire mujahideen force.

It would be hard to pull things back together after this.

For now, though, Mikhail's last concern was the struggle against the Russians. His first and only concern was giving his brother, his brother's body, the respect it deserved.

After fifteen minutes and two kilometers, or so, the snow leopard stopped moving, for a moment. He did not sit, did not set Nikolai down for a moment--he just listened, hard, and tried to recognize his surroundings.

Back at the killing field, it seemed, the Russians were busy firing extra shots into the heads of their defeated enemies, mutilating their bodies. Perhaps a few had been captured, and what surely awaited them made Mikhail visibly shudder. But he kept his mind on his purpose.

"There's an aul not far from here," the snow leopard thought, having somewhat of an out-of-body experience to cope with his hunger, his fatigue, his pain. "There should be a mosque there, an imam; or at least some elder willing to bury Mikhail properly..."

A dry, quiet sob racked Mikhail's chest. At first, the tears that streamed down his face were cold and sat, but, a moment later, they were hot and angry. A plan started to form in the snow leopard's mind, but he forced it down--he needed his wits about him, for now.

"Do not worry, brother," the snow leopard said after a moment, starting to walk, repositioning his brother's body with incredible respect and affection for a corpse. "You can rest soon, Nikolai. I will let you rest soon."

"I've never been a devout Muslim. I pray, and I do not eat pork or drink alcohol, and I believe in the oneness of God, but I do not know the Koran cover to cover; I do not dislike people with other beliefs... I am even willing to accept that my own beliefs are imperfect.

"But this... it hurts..."

Mikhail was not a man of many words. For the most part, he tended towards passivity, allowing others to do as they wished, so long as his rights, honor, and pride, and those of his brother were not infringed.

The rest of the time, the imposing snow leopard relied on flashes of his sharp, powerful teeth, glares, and curt, sharp diction to get his point across.

This, in fact, was the first time that such tactics had failed him.

On one level, Mikhail could see why. His request--his demand--it was not entirely logical. But there was more to furkind than cold logic--that was his argument. In the end, the snow leopard lost the debate. Nikolai's right to a proper funeral, the elders had said, was trumped by their right to avoid Russian attention, and all that that implied.

So, instead of bathing, shrouding, and then, finally, burying his brother in true accordance with Chechen tradition... Nikolai's body was being burned.

Mikhail and the aul leaders had come to a compromise, of sorts. The local imam had, indeed, done what he could to ready Nikolai for his final journey--he had offered several special prayers, and, of course, apologies for not carrying out Allah's will to the letter. Still, Mikhail had been assured, due to the mercy and wisdom of the divine, Nikolai would find his way to Heaven--there was no doubt about it.

But it still hurt.

The snow leopard had been put up in a rich man's house for the time being--rich, of course, not in the Western sense of the word, but in the Chechen sense. Mikhail's host had a heater, several good oxen and milking cows, and even a real mattress. Mikhail may have enjoyed such luxuries more if his purpose at this aul was not so grim... and if it was not so blatantly obvious that he was not welcome.

After arriving, he had slept for a few hours, eaten, prayed at dawn, then helped one of his host's three sons carry wood from the nearby forest closer to the aul, creating a funeral pyre.

The youth, a snow leopard-wolf mix, a lad of only twelve, or so, seemed both intimidated and awed by Mikhail--he got that a lot, due to his stature. But now, the harshness in his walk, disposition, and his eyes--his rifle notwithstanding--made it clear that he was, from then on, a fighter. The juvenile had shyly tried to get Mikhail to tell him some war stories, but Mikhail turned him down. He was not in a mood to talk about the night his brother's--and, really, his--life had been stolen from him. Not then... and probably not ever.

Besides the imam, no one turned up for the funeral; it was just too risky, they thought. Fire would create smoke would draw attention would bring a patrol and the might of the Russian military--that was their excuse.

Mikhail stood and watched, alone, as his brother's body was slowly consumed by flames. His head was pointed towards Mecca, a land that, after today, seemed more distant than ever--without Nikolai, there was no hope for anything, much less pilgrimage.

The snow leopard found himself thinking about his life--inextricably intertwined with his brother's--as Nikolai's form slowly grew ashen and charred. This was nothing like the day the Ramanzanovs' parents had died, when so many had turned up, offering their condolences and even some money and advice for the two young, orphaned twins--nothing. Mikhail was completely and totally alone, without his brother.

Before the pyre had been lit, Mikhail had planted a kiss on his brother's forehead. He had done it before, many times--the first time it had happened, he believed, was the morning they had woken up, smiling, arm in arm, to find that their parents had passed overnight. Nikolai was the one that cried, that day--Mikhail had held his tears. For his brother, he needed to be strong, and managed to do that by calming the other cub, hugging him, telling him not to worry--it had not worked. Nikolai only calmed when his brother held him tightly, kissed him just so, between the eyes, and promised that everything would be alright, because, even though they were without parents, they had each other.

A thousand memories passed through Mikhail's mind. The fire was dying down, but the emotion wrought on by such devotion to his brother did not--it probably never would. There were few times in the snow leopard's life that could be called happy, but they all, invariably, involved Nikolai. Once, when they were thirteen, they had gone on a long hunting trip together--it had resulted in disaster; they had lost their tent and had been soaked to the bone by a sudden storm.

They refused to give in, though, and had returned home with enough meat to last them for weeks. Another time, when they were even younger, only eight, Mikhail recalled, Nikolai had played a nasty trick on him, and hidden himself. For hours, the normally cold snow leopard had searched the house from top to bottom, as well as the surrounding lands, before finally breaking down and weeping, praying, begging Allah for his brother, asking, desperately, what would happen to him without Nikolai...

"I suppose I know now," Mikhail whispered. "Without Nikolai... what is there? I almost want to throw myself into the fire with him... but I cannot do that. No, brother, you would not want me to do that, yes?... you'd want me to live on, carry on the bloodline, and find what happiness and peace I can. You'd want me to keep fighting the jihad, no matter what--and, I am certain, you would not want me to live on pain and hate and anger..."

His faced hardened. "Too bad," he said.

"I will avenge you, brother... I swear it on your grave," the snow leopard said darkly. He stared into the flames and the smoke, felt their darkness and energy enter his being. "I will avenge you--and then Allah will forgive me for... what I do next. I... have no purpose in this world without you, Nikolai. I hope you will come to accept that and forgive me too, when we meet again."

That thought was somewhat comforting. The sooner Nikolai was avenged, the sooner Mikhail could follow his brother, just as he always did.

"Heh... I followed Nikolai into war," he thought, watching, as a charred log shifted, then broke. "I am no coward. Following him to death... I do not fear it."

Minutes passed.

Finally, Nikolai's body was nothing more than ash and dust; the imam that had lit the pyre looked upon it one final time, sadly, and offered another prayer, before turning to Mikhail.

"He is a strange one," the old feline thought, hobbling, a little, to the living Ramanzanov brother. "So quiet... what's on your mind, my son...?"

Standing bolt upright like a sentinel, as he had been for the duration of the funeral, rifle slung over his back, Mikhail did not move, for a moment, before suddenly answering.

"Revenge."

"I should have guessed. But I should not deter him--not directly."

"...I understand, my son," the imam said, slowly. Now at Mikhail's side, he looked up, far up, blinking, and reached up, placing a weather-beaten paw on the snow leopard's shoulder. He felt curious, after a moment, though, and decided to attempt to distract this poor, lost soul--at least temporarily.

"Tell me... Mikhail Ramanzanov, brother of Nikolai Ramanzanov. Your names--you are, perhaps, part Russian? I do not mean to offend, of course; no matter what your blood is, you are Chechen," the imam said, waving a paw dismissively. "Just... it seems strange, does not it?... to have Russianized names, and join the rebels to fight the Russians. Strange, yes?" he said, offering a tentative grin.

"Yes," the snow leopard said quietly, after a minute. "I suppose it does."

He licked his lips.

"We are not Russian in the slightest, my brother and I," Mikhail said, before realizing... he would have to refer to Nikolai in the past tense, from now on. "At least, to our... my... knowledge. But, when we were born, my parents thought--the Russians have dominated Chechnya for so long. Perhaps it is time to accept things, and show our willingness to be one with our overlords. Practical, ah?" he suddenly sneered. "As if Nikolai's name protected him from that bullet."

"Please, my son, please, calm down..." the imam said, gently. "With your parents' approval, I will give you a new name--I will even do the same for your brother. What do you--"

"You will not have my parents' approval," Mikhail said shortly. "Nikolai is--was... my only family."

Silence passed. The embers from Nikolai's pyre crackled, softly, but that was all.

"So, only you are left... the last of the Ramanzanovs...

"Then, my son, you may consider... putting the rifle down," the imam said, softly. "You must live, you must have children--otherwise, all your sacrifices, and those of your ancestors, and those of your brother, will be in vain. This is not the time for revenge--think, my son, as your parents did. Perhaps it is time to accept things... and move on."

"Move on..." Mikhail repeated. "Move on..."

"I understand now why Nikolai always did not appreciate how... logical, how cold, how analytical I was. Yes--it would be very practical to accept things and move on..." Mikhail's voice took a turn so bitter, so hard, that the imam took a step back, flinching. "What you do not understand is the love I have for my brother. You do not--none do, and, I believe, none can. Nikolai..." Mikhail paused, trying hard to put his thoughts into words. It was not easy, considering how angry he was, just then, how tempted he was to stop speaking and just growl, snarl at the imam until he left.

"Nikolai was my brother. My only brother, and the only one in the entire world who has ever cared about me. And I was the only one in the world that cared about him in that way... so, you see, now that he is gone, there is no Sun, no hope, no tomorrow, no God--nothing. Nikolai was my entire universe... and now he is gone. So, there's nothing left for Mikhail Ramanzanov," the snow leopard smiled sadly, anger all used up for the moment.

"I do not want children, or grandchildren, or a wife, or any sort of thing--without Nikolai, nothing means anything anymore. All I want to do is exact revenge upon the one that killed him... and then follow him, again, as I always have."

If there was something more that needed to be said, just then, Mikhail did not know what it was. So, he left as he had entered--suddenly, quickly, without looking behind him once. The imam watched, for a time, and then, he too turned away. Mikhail was alone.

The survivors of the massacre at the rebel base were hesitant to coordinate--their radios had been compromised, so, for now, any large-scale effort was out of the question. And, of course, no one was brave and determined and hard-headed and crazy enough to act alone--with one exception.

For a week, now, Mikhail had been living in the forest. It was not easy; the nature of Chechen wilderness did not easily allow for sentient life--this was why people lived near one another in auls, or, of course, in cities. For Mikhail, though, neither was an option, which was fine by him. He had no desire to speak to anyone and he had no need for the comforts of a home.

Instead, the snow leopard had lived off the land in the purest sense of the word. Hunting with his bare paws or knife and using rivers for drinking water and sanitation gave him plenty of time.

Do not misunderstand; Mikhail was not biding his time, waiting for an opportunity--he was creating opportunities of his own. He had set himself up next to a road that carried traffic between a few important auls, and a temporary Russian military base outside of Grozny. So, for a week, now, he had been watching things, looking over things, carefully, learning about his enemy while he trained, hard. Mornings of pushups and sit-ups were followed by afternoons and evenings of climbing trees, running, and air boxing. It was not a very enjoyable lifestyle, but Mikhail did not care--God willing, it would not last very long.

"The new Russia is no different from the regime it replaced," Mikhail thought to himself, one evening.

It was evening, now, and for the enemy soldiers, dinnertime. Thus, it was the perfect time to put propaganda on military radio, on a secured, scrambled frequency, one inaccessible to anyone without a preset Russian-issue radio... such as the one Mikhail had stolen from a soldier on a long, drunk walk a few nights ago.

Though he was eating venison that he had taken for himself, Mikhail's mind was on nothing but the somewhat distorted words emanating from the receiver. The snow leopard's comprehension of the Russian language was not perfect, but he understood enough, and said words aloud to himself as he listened along.

"No point for... Chechens... struggle against Mother Russia. ...Low... casualties... guerilla-style warfare... cowardly... Terrorism... bombings and sneak attacks killing their own civilians. Enemy sniper killed... by one of our own..."

Finally--they were talking about Nikolai, it seemed. But Mikhail had to be sure, so he turned up the volume, just a little, face setting as he leaned in.

"Tanya Petrenko... short comrade, only as tall as... ...beauty of the army... merciless killer."

Mikhail struggled to keep up with the heavily accented Russia while he memorized as much of it as he could--it was not easy, but he only needed to understand the gist of things. Details, perhaps, could be found out later.

"Muslim... bastard... waiting to shoot... peacekeeping force," Mikhail scoffed. "...Shot... through head..."

So. This Tanya Petrenko was Nikolai's killer--there was no doubt about it.

"One of... theirs... killed... first... of thousands... if there is no surrender..."

Again, Mikhail scoffed, as the transmission ended. He leaned back, thinking to himself, for a moment.

It was raining, making the aura of his motherland and only home dreary, at best. Yet, the snow leopard could not complain, for such surroundings matched his mood. The forest was dark and dangerous and foreboding, and the thoughts traversing through Mikhail's mind were the same.

"Tanya Petrenko..." He had not realized he had spoken out loud. Consciously, though, he picked up his meal, and started to nourish himself again.

Now, his mind was working at light speed--he set out objectives, concerns, and advantages in his mind as he planned--not how to kill her, certainly. Not yet--Mikhail had no idea what his enemy looked like... and she was a dangerous one. The fact that she had killed Nikolai so easily and the way she had been referred to as a merciless killer who would take down thousands of rebels if necessary did not compare to a familiar, uneasy feeling Mikhail got in his gut, sometimes, when on the hunt.

Somehow, Mikhail knew that this hunt would not be an easy one. He had have to be cautious--what was it that that rebel leader had said? Any mistake, even the smallest, could result in death, or something like that...

For Tanya, the one who had killed Nikolai, and the one who even the ruthless, rarely impressed Russian army referred to as a merciless killer, this was doubly true. Defeating her would not be easy, but Mikhail _would_do it--already, he had the beginnings of a plan in mind. He would not face her for some time, quite some time; his skills were not good enough to make him a match for the beauty of the Russian army, he was sure.

It was all right, though. Mikhail knew how to be patient, when needed. His mind drifted back to the greatest hunt of his life, another vengeance killing, when he had shot a leopard that had taken one of his and his brother's precious assets--he had planned for days before taking a step outside, prepared for every contingency and possibility. And so, he had been successful--but that hunt had taught him many things, many important lessons.

And, to take Tanya Petrenko down, he had need to draw from them all, and more.

Doing this was a risk, but a necessary one. Another week had passed since Nikolai died, and now, Mikhail could feel his level of physical fitness improving by leaps and bounds. When he saw his shirtless reflection in rivers after bathing, he saw the defined lines and curves not of a peasant farmer, but, perhaps, of an amateur bodybuilder--not that he cared, of course. His muscles, like his mind, and the rest of his body, only had one purpose, and that was to exact revenge on the killer of his poor, dear brother.

Mikhail had spent that evening cleaning his rifle, polishing it, and checking that his ammunition was in working order. His knife was at his hip, and now, shirtless, the snow leopard bided his time, allowing his mind to drift to the years he had been lucky enough to spend with Nikolai--happy days.

He had to recognize, though, that he had been quite lucky to find out about this little shipment. Chechens living abroad and those friendly to the cause had wreaked havoc on Russian military Internet communications. A great deal of information, unfortunately, none of it critical or particularly useful, had been compromised, but after a few days of struggling against legions of hackers, leadership had given up, and decided to use more traditional methods of relaying information.

As it turned out, little besides a roster had been successful transferred to the temporary Russian base. The rest was being delivered by truck--and this was where Mikhail came in.

Just before the Russians realized that one of their radios was missing, Mikhail had been scanning a few rarely used frequencies, knowing that if secrets were being relayed by radio, this was where they had be. Odds of actually coming across anything useful were slim, but, it seemed, Allah was with Mikhail for once. The transmission, of course, was somewhat coded and purposefully vague, but a great deal of speculation and sheer dumb luck had put the snow leopard where he was now, only meters from a rarely used back road, ears perked for the telltale rumble of an approaching truck.

Moments later, he stood.

Mikhail's eyes were well-adjusted to the dim, pre-dusk sunlight of his motherland. Though he knew that they had reflect green in the gloom, he was not worried--even as he sprawled out, aiming his rifle down the road, waiting, he observed that the truck was still hundreds of meters away, too far for its occupants to detect him. And, as luck would have it, there was only a driver; there were no passengers and no protection--it really was trying to go incognito. In fact, the truck itself was a civilian vehicle, and if it was not for the lifelessly cold expression on the driver's face, Mikhail might have mistaken him for a native, loyal, oppressed brother Chechen.

Perhaps the snow leopard had overestimated the probability that he would go unnoticed. Or perhaps it was just a strange bump in the road--he had never know for sure. Regardless, at the very last second, when Mikhail had held his breath, carefully preparing to fire in between the beats of his heart, the truck swerved--

He reacted perfectly, however, and a single shot rang out across the land, echoing off the mountains. Mikhail was on his feet, running even as he worked the bolt of his rifle, aiming it at the vehicle, just in case, but even as he approached, he all but knew that his shot had resulted in a clean kill. The truck's windshield had shattered, spraying the seats inside with broken automotive glass, but the driver probably had felt none of this--Mikhail's bullet had traveled downrange, thrown only slightly off course by its first barrier, to bury itself in the wolf's left eye.

Knowing he could be interrupted at any time, the snow leopard worked quickly. He slung his rifle over his back, out of the way, as he opened the truck's cabin door, or tried to--it was locked. Swearing to himself, Mikhail slammed his elbow into the window, hard, but it took two blows for the satisfying pop of shattering glass to again meet his ears.

The snow leopard hauled the driver's body out of the cabin unsympathetically--his brother's body, after all, had been shown no respect, either. He felt through the dark furred male's robes, a reasonable attempt at blending in, searching for the key that would open the locked rear of the vehicle.

After a moment, Mikhail's scrambling fingers came across something, and he felt a rush. And after another moment, the snow leopard was in.

There were boxes and boxes of files--Mikhail looked through them, quickly, searching for the personnel files. As he did so, he came across a few folders full of information on armament, troop deployment, and intelligence details--at first, the snow leopard threw them away. After that, though, the spark of intuition hit him, and he held a few in his teeth, as, finally, he found what he was looking for.

"Petrenko, Petrenko, Petrenko..." Here they were, the Petrenkos deployed to the nearby base. Mikhail flipped quickly past a few pages--and there she was.

He stared at her face for a full second, before folding up the two stapled pages of her file and sliding them into a pocket. The snow leopard had what he was looking for, and, after spending another moment loading his arms with several folders of information, had vanished into the forest again.

Not five minutes after Mikhail was gone did the Russians arrive. He watched them spread out around the truck, fearful of the untamed Chechen wilderness and the creatures that lived in it, slowly coming to realize what he had done. Mikhail was satisfied, but not very--this was only the first of many steps in his path to vengeance.

Now began the insurgency that would define Chechnya from then on.

The guerilla war fought by the native population was leaderless, for the most part. Separate factions had popped up all around Chechnya, but they all shared one goal--an independent nation, a "Chechenistan." There were ideological differences, but these did not cause any significant rivalry--not yet, not so early in the war. More humane rebels occasionally spoke out against attacks aimed at Russian journalists or other civilians. Contrastingly, conservative religious rebels had started to call in foreign aid, so to speak, in the form of Arab, Uzbek, Afghan, and North African fighters.

Mikhail kept track of things for the next week, carefully, while maintaining a low profile. His side--the rebels--was mutating and splitting apart far, far too fast for the Russians to contain and understand. By acting so brutally, they had galvanized not just the Chechen populace, but other Muslim peoples as well. There was even talk of officially declaring the war a jihad.

At least fifty bombings had taken place over the past seven days, in addition to any number of ambushes, firefights, and other attacks. The Russians would not leave so easily; though their troops on the ground were starting to feel some of the pain that they had inflected on Chechnya for generations. They still believed that they had the upper hand.

And, in fact, Mikhail was inclined to agree.

That did not stop him, though, from traveling around his homeland, late at night, rifle in hand. Moonlight was present, but unnecessary--his vision without any light at all was quite adequate.

The snow leopard's destination was a house in an aul, two more kilometers away. He had come to find out that it would be used for a meeting, that very night, between a well-armed rebel leader and two or three of his sub-commanders. He had already memorized all the material he had on his brother's killer; Tanya Petrenko's papers had been carefully placed in its appropriate location among the rest of the information.

Mikhail was, at first, worried that the Russians might replace some troops deployed in his homeland, based on the fact that their identities were compromised. Then, he had realized that the fact that he had only stolen papers about soldiers that had been deployed worked in his favor--he could imagine some Russian general, smoking in his office in Moscow, being told about what had happened. Some dumb, illiterate Chechen had managed to stop a disguised truck, killing its driver... but had stolen the least useful information possible.

The radio the snow leopard had stolen was now useless; the Russians had switched to some other frequency. Still, Mikhail was not worried; the gifts he was bringing to prove that he was a worthy rebel, a truly fearless and able mujahid would be more than adequate. After all, rebel leaders were happy to take in any willing young men that they could. This was truly a grassroots movement, of sorts.

Mikhail had made his plans, and very carefully.

The situation was difficult, but, as a Chechen, the rebel leader was no stranger to hardship. Looking over a map of Grozny and its surrounding areas, though, he realized that he simply did not have the manpower to hold the capital down. His men were poorly trained, or not trained at all--if he told them to fight, they had be nothing more than cannon fodder.

He needed a real mujahid--a principled, skilled fighter for his troops to rally around. Someone that hated the Russians passionately, but someone whose passion was controllable.

Nipping at his claw, the snow leopard used a highlighter to mark off one more quadrant of Grozny. The Russians now held the majority of the capital.

"We may have to cease operations in Chechnya," he finally said. "If we continue like this... we cannot win. We are too weak."

One sub commander, a short male with a nasty burn scar on his left cheek, shook his head, at first... then realized that arguing against that point would be pointless, and impossible. Years of oppression had taken their toll on the Chechen people. They might be weak, but, in his mind, they were not defeated. Their cause was not yet lost.

"You might be right. But if we do stop fighting here--what will we do? Maybe... we can get a few men into some other country. It is true that there are many interesting things happening in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Albania. We could withdraw, temporarily, and return in time with enough force and skill to kill every Russian in Chechnya so completely that they never come back."

"That is one possibility," the other sub commander said. He was taller, and gaunt--shoulder-length black hair and hazel eyes made him a somewhat foreboding man. "Otherwise... we could disperse, and enter Russia. We could lay low in, say, Moscow or St. Petersburg for some months. And then, one day, we could all rise up... How would that be for the Russians--war in their own land, in front of with their people, with their blood shed?"

He paused.

"In other words... we should become terrorists."

"But if your idea does not work the first time, there will not be a second chance," the short male said. "I am thirsty for Russian blood as well... but imagine if your plan works, and we manage to blow up a KGB building. Or the Kremlin itself. The Russians outnumber us a hundred to one and they are rich and we are poor. They will kill us all..."

"Then perhaps we should just accept defeat."

The house--donated to the cause by the family that had once owned it and had now left Chechnya entirely--was lit only by a candle. They did not dare risk more light. While there was not an official curfew, the rebels knew that any activity after dark whatsoever easily might be met with a rapidly deployed Spetsnaz squad... or an artillery shell, or a rocket, or a hundred pound bomb.

There was a knock on the door. Before the commander registered that, he had taken a knee, raised his rifle--his subordinates had his flanks, and had leveled their own weapons at the door.

"Who is there? What do you want?"

"It is just me, it is just me--ice-cold springs bordered by rising fresh blue grass."

That was the password. The three rebel leaders lowered their weapons, and, after a moment, the short sub commander walked forward and unlatched the door. The sentry they had posted entered, followed by an unfamiliar man.

"Commander, I am sorry for the interruption. This is Mikhail Ramanzanov; he is been searching for us for some time," the sentry said, stepping aside so that they could look at the snow leopard, and see that he was carrying a large stack of papers and what looked like a Russian-issue radio. "I've met him before; he is no Russian spy."

That was a relief.

"Salaamu alaikum," the newcomer said, in a somewhat timid voice. "Sir... I've brought you some information... may I?" He nodded at the table.

"Of course, of course. What do you have for us?" the commander asked, as this Mikhail, whoever he was, set the pile of documents down. "And how did you get it?"

"I shot and killed a truck driver when I saw that he was armed, and driving to the Russian base. I got the radio, and these papers... I do not know what they are; I do not know much Russian. But I hope they will be useful, yes?"

Impressed, it was a moment before the commander answered. His knowledge of written Russian was excellent--it was only seconds before he realized that all the intelligence he had been brought was about the individual soldiers deployed. That was a disappointment... until he realized what a resourceful, determined fighter it must have taken to steal papers like that--on his own, without backup.

The commander looked at this Mikhail, this Mikhail Ramanzanov. It was not that he begrudged the tall, gray-eyed feline his Russianized name at all, but there was something about him that was... off-putting. It was not his appearance, nor his sinewy physique, nor the cold depths of his eyes--not really. It was more of a combination of all of these things, and something more. It was some unseen presence behind his eyes, an emotion so powerful and hot that it might have been lust.

Perhaps this was his mujahid.

"Tell me, Mikhail," the older leopard said, "what... motivated... this act? It must be more than just patriotism." He slowly placed his arm around the younger male's shoulders.

The taller male was silent; he did not answer for a moment. The commander was almost disappointed, he could not get anyone to rally around a man that did not speak.

"I hate the Russians," Mikhail said flatly. "They... took... everything." He snarled suddenly, so viciously that the commander flinched. "So... I am going to fight them as much as I can; I swear that I will never stop until I am dead."

The commander suddenly found himself transfixed, intimidated, rooted to the spot by those dark, hateful eyes.

"Commander... I am giving you these papers as a gift. To show you what I can do, and a taste of what I am willing to do. Please..." his voice suddenly dropped; he suddenly became a small, timid man, unsure of what to do and without a leader, "let me become your soldier. I am so lost... I do not know what to do. I joined the mujahideen, but we were found and bombed--I do not know how many survived."

The commander knew what Mikhail was talking about immediately. He patted the snow leopard's shoulder.

"Mikhail... we could use a good man like you--I assume you shoot well, yes? And, you look very fit."

"I can put a full magazine's worth of bullets into the same square centimeter at a hundred meters," Mikhail said in reply, with apparent growing excitement. "I can run, I can climb, I can... swim... I can do anything that I have to, to kill the Russians. So--I am in, yes?"

"Of course," the commander said with a smile. "As I said, we could use a determined mujahid like you."

Before he could be stopped, Mikhail dropped to his knees before the older male, and began to kiss and nuzzle at his paws. He constantly spoke rather clichéd words of praise, and later that night, when he was allowed to take the only bunk in the house, Mikhail reflected that his brother still offered him sound advice: you will catch more bees with honey than vinegar.

Mikhail was getting nowhere fast, and he knew it. But he did not care. He knew that hunting a being like Tanya required patience and self-control--haste would be punished with death.

Nikolai had been killed some time ago, by then, and the surviving Ramanzanov twin was still fixated on revenge. He had had over three weeks to get used to the fact that his brother was dead, but he had not. He never would. No, the only thing that would put Mikhail's mind at rest--before he put his body to rest, permanently--was Tanya's cold, dead body, and knowing that his paws were soaked in her blood.

The snow leopard's eyes narrowed. He could not wait for that cold feeling of satisfaction to seep through him, and he knew that it would happen someday soon.

His dappled, gray fur seemed made for excellent camouflage in his current position, at the top floor of an abandoned hotel in Grozny. The capital of even his destitute homeland, amazingly, had skyscrapers, though they were no longer populated by businessmen or tourists. They were used by snipers on both sides of what had been recognized by the world at large, finally, as war.

He had never been so high off the ground before, and if his brother was with him, Mikhail would be the stick in the mud, demanding that they go back down, that it was certain that something or the other would happen and one of them would fall and die and leave the other alone forever. Nikolai, on the other hand, would simply laugh and call his brother a coward, than pull him forward, by the arm, until he was transfixed by the sight below him--the capital city of his homeland, his Chechnya, its thousands of occupants all working and praying and living together.

Mikhail would have been motivated and humbled by the sight. Now, as he looked across the city, and its crumbling neighborhoods and buildings and towns and people, he felt nothing--complete apathy. The snow leopard's soul was as broken as the guerilla cause he represented.

Things were not all that bad, though. He had all the ammunition and food he required, and was free to walk the streets of Grozny as he wished--which he did, often, to get used to the layout of the city, and mark out the areas that he had cleared and the areas that he had not. His search for Tanya Petrenko could leave no stones unturned.

He had another gun. It was a Makarov PM; he had picked it up from the truck driver he had shot--a no nonsense handgun that the snow leopard had learned to trust and shoot with deadly skill. His rifle was still his primary weapon, but Mikhail did not have it on him. He was simply scouting things out, using a pair of binoculars to scour the city for places that a sniper like him might hide.

Tanya Petrenko's file had been extensive, but even as he searched, Mikhail found that he was reciting its contents to himself verbatim for what felt like, and probably was, the thousandth time.

"Tanya Petrenko," he murmured. "1.5 meters tall. Blonde hair. Green eyes. Species--tigress. Pale coloration. Black stripes..."

The one thing the paper did not have was a picture of the woman that had killed his brother. Mikhail felt, though, that when he saw her, he had know her. He continued to look around, planning his next move, mind working with the same obsessed fervor that it had been for over three weeks.

Sneaking back and forth between the various sections of Grozny had given the snow leopard a fairly good idea of where Tanya might hide. He knew, though, that she was a trained Russian sniper--billions of rubles had been invested into her. She had be equipped with a Dragunov SVD--Mikhail had handled one of those deadly rifles a few days prior, during a meeting with his commander and a few other high-ranking mujahideen.

In a single combat against Tanya, there was little chance that Mikhail would prevail. But in single combat against a feral leopard, a dangerous predator equipped with razor-sharp fangs and claws built to rip flesh apart, there was even less chance that a lone man could win--but Mikhail had, once, years ago. And he had done it by making his fight against that leopard on his terms, at his time and place of choosing.

It would be difficult to employ such tactics with Tanya, however. He would not be able to decide the setting of their fight--but he could decide the terms of it, if he was smart.

Mikhail looked around the tops of several nearby buildings. They were just meters from one another--traversing from one to the other, even dozens of meters above the ground, would be simple for any determined, fit being--particularly since nearly everything in Grozny bigger than a shack was devoid of life. His people had been reduced to refugee status--perhaps permanently.

It was getting time to move on; there would be Russian activity in the city later that day and Mikhail was the trump card that had been reserved for a special occasion: that evening. Concealing his binoculars under his clothing, the snow leopard began to make his way down the multitude of stairs that would eventually lead back to the street. His footsteps echoed around the empty building for several minutes after he left, but he did not need to hear them to know that he was alone.

Mikhail knew that the attack would not end well--for his targets, that is.

He had every intention of living and escaping, after taking down at least two or three Russian soldiers. Ideally, he wanted to bring down six or more, but the snow leopard would not set an unattainable goal for himself. Instead, he merely bided his time, waiting not just in the shadows, but in the hallway of the top floor of what had once been a hotel room--but was now little more than an empty shell. Heavy fighting in the capital had driven out not just those that might have rented there, but the owners, as well. Now, it was practical public property.

The snow leopard had swapped his usual peasant's garb for subdued urban camouflage pants and a black shirt. His boots fit him perfectly, and, he imagined, cost the equivalent of six months' work at his home, a property now as empty as the monolithic metal and concrete structure that he was hiding in.

The Sun seemed to be lingering just above the horizon for an unnaturally long time; it was almost as if it wished to stay to watch what Mikhail was going to do and light his way so that he could do it. Of course, the snow leopard could cope in complete darkness--but with the added benefit of sunlight, he could launch at least one more bullet into one more Russian brain.

Mikhail glanced down at a cheap, Chinese-made wristwatch he had been given. Its analog displayed showed that it would be only moments before the Russian patrols started to move out--so, quietly, Mikhail left the hallway in favor of a grand, luxurious suite--now stripped of everything but its walls, floor, and ceiling.

Somewhat fondly, he drew his rifle from a series of covers designed to make it look no more threatening than a folded-up easel. There were very few constants Mikhail now had in his life, and that somewhat beat up Mosin-Nagant was one of them.

After checking that the magazine was loaded, Mikhail cracked his neck, and waited, holding the rifle out of view. His placement was perfect--anyone looking into the windows of the hotel would be hard-pressed to see him, but he could see outside perfectly. And yet, there were so many potential places that a sniper might be positioned--for all he knew, he had already been tagged as a potential threat, and someone a thousand meters away was already preparing for a shot that would separate him from life, and, more importantly, his revenge.

The snow leopard felt no fear--he simply felt caution, but not much. Skilled snipers were hard to come by; even an army as large as Russia's could only have so many. Those that were deployed in Chechnya were probably hunting men like his commander or hiding out near strategic crossroads and such--Mikhail would be in little danger until he racked up great deal of kills and notoriety.

Maybe he had adopt an alias, or perhaps the Russians would give him one. Mikhail actually smiled as he had that thought, and spoke out loud.

"That would be something, would not it, Nikolai? What sort of nickname do you think I will receive, brother?" He waited for an answer. But then, his smile faded when he realized that he would not receive one.

Sadness was again starting to overtake the snow leopard's mind when a squad of a dozen or so moderately armed soldiers double-timed their way in his general direction, from three quarters of a kilometer away.

Their presence steeled Mikhail, and, before he realized it fully, he had shouldered his rifle, resting its barrel on the windowsill. Steadying his breath, the snow leopard had no reason to wait--his mission was simply to kill as many Russians as he could, then get out.

The most cursory of glances over the squad told him that Tanya was not among them. So, Mikhail took a few moments to pick out their leader--it was hard; since the Russians were in an active war zone, they maintained operational security and did not salute or issue paw signals. The only way for Mikhail to tell who the ranking soldier was for him to look at their insignias. The task was difficult but not daunting--he had been given the opportunity to memorize what emblems signified what ranks several days prior.

The ranking officer seemed to be a sergeant, a sharp-looking, gray-eyed wolf armed and dressed like his subordinates. He was the third soldier in the double line formation that the squad used to cover one another while jogging down the road for who knew what reason--probably to kill or rape another defenseless Chechen family.

Mikhail spent a moment considering his priorities. After shooting the sergeant, he had take down the machine-gunner--the next greatest threat in the squad. By then, the rest of the soldiers would have broken formation and dived for cover, so Mikhail would generally have to take shots whenever he could get them. He did not see any snipers among the squad--there was good chance that he might be able to take down every single soldier that presented him with a shot. After all, he would not be in any danger.

The snow leopard worked the bolt of his rifle quickly, smoothly, chambering a round. He adjusted the power of his scope, a little, so that he had a wider view--of course, it would be harder to make a precise shot, like that, but easier to keep track of things.

By then, the squad was perhaps four hundred meters away--Mikhail could not miss. With that in mind, he tracked the sergeant's head with his reticle, for a second, making a few last minute adjustments for bullet drop and wind... before he pulled the trigger.

Mikhail's shot was perfect. The deadly, supersonic cone of metal he fired entered the wolf just below the left eye, cracking through fur and bone before exploding out of the back of his skull. The gaping exit wound--which Mikhail saw, as the canine dropped, turning due to the impulse of being shot--was wide and gory, thanks to the fact that water, the primary component of his brain, was incompressible.

By the time the sergeant had hit the ground, spilling a pint of blood all over the dirty, somewhat uneven Chechen street, Mikhail had chambered another round and retargeted. The rest of the squad started to run, almost but not quite panicked--their second-in-command, whoever that was, had ordered them to get down but not to take cover.

It was easy for Mikhail to line up for his second shot, as the squad members shouted at one another, looking all around for the shooter that had just killed their sergeant. Once or twice, the snow leopard felt sure that their gazes drifted over him, but he felt no concern--he was a lad that had grown up with a rifle in his paw, and knew how to hide and wait and shoot and never be found.

Since the squad had dropped either to crouching or prone positions, their helmets offered them a great deal of protection. Mikhail did not want to risk a non-fatal shot by attempting to crack through the tough, Kevlar and metal spheres, so, instead of going for a headshot, he went for a somewhat smaller target.

The snow leopard hit the machine-gunner directly in the neck, blasting a nasty, ragged hole through the other male's throat. Blood and gore and shattered cartilage sprayed across the street--Mikhail did not hover over his kill for more than a second, though. He was already chambering another round, preparing for another shot.

By then, however, the squad had realized that they were taking fire from a sniper--one that they could not see, much less engage. Breaking apart, messily, they dived for cover at the sides of the road, behind trashcans or fences or houses. Mikhail managed to take one more, with a hastily-aimed shot through the upper chest, as he dived towards a series of nearby bushes.

He worked the bolt of his rifle again, and scanned the area for targets. Few men, then, would have seen anything of note--the street looked empty. But Mikhail was a hunter by nature--he saw things that others could not, and would never be able to without a lifetime of practice.

To the snow leopard, the wolf curled up behind a painted fence, with slats less than an inch wide was so obvious that he may as well have been sitting out in the open. Mikhail considered going for a headshot, but the Russian soldier was crouch, shoulders hunched up to protect his head in addition to his helmet. So, skeptical of his bullet's ability to travel through two inches of wood, a powerful chunk of muscle and bone and then score a lethal strike, Mikhail adjusted his aim.

A shot into the wolf's armpit was just as deadly, though. The bullet and the splinters it carried with it tumbled, yawing, creating a horrific wound in the male's chest. His lungs and heart were torn apart in the torrent of wood and lead fragments, killing him in seconds.

Mikhail chambered another round, and scanned again. The squad's survivors, though, had scattered--the snow leopard knew that they had taken cover that neither his rifle nor his sight could penetrate. That meant that there was no reason for him to stay in the area--and that meant that it was time to get going.

The snow leopard concealed his rifle, again, and spent a few seconds searching for ejected casings--he recovered them all, and, after concealing them in an inner pocket, he was ready to go.

Mikhail quietly walked down the dark, abandoned stairwell, knowing that he had only minutes before the entire area was swarmed with Russian troops. It would not take him very long to make his escape, though--this was, after all, his motherland and not theirs.

Within fifty seconds, the snow leopard was on the street parallel to the one he had done his killing on. Mostly, he was alone; the men and women that lived in the area had all hidden. Mikhail could feel their eyes on him--they knew he was a rebel, an insurgent sniper, and he knew that if the Russians entered the area, all he had have to do to avoid capture was hide his rifle and dive into a house. Any one of the families there would cover for him--he was, after all, a fellow Chechen, another poor, small man suffocating under the foot of Russian oppression. He was everything every Chechen wanted to be--a noble warrior that put his own life on the line to liberate his homeland.

Loyalty would keep him safe, if needed. But, as Nikolai continued to walk, failing to be accosted after several minutes, he thought to himself that perhaps Nikolai was keeping him safe... somehow. After all, his brother could no longer protect his life with his own paws.

The war had raged on for over two months, by then, but, maddeningly, neither side could find real purchase over the other. Anger had been collecting in Chechnya for generations--not just anger at the injustice of their situation, but anger at the complete lack of regard for life the Russians displayed. Soon, both sides were in an ethical race to the bottom.

It was true that, mostly, the Chechens fought with snipers and shock troops. They waged their guerilla war like ambush predators--after time, they came to realize that they could, in fact, hold out against the enemy aggressors. Their resistance did not require strict leadership--all the factions' commanders had to do was distribute weapons and intelligence in double-blind ways as a form of preemptive damage control, even if they were somehow breached. Of course, flashier, riskier missions required a closer relationship between the soldier and the leader--Mikhail had already been part of three successful bombing operations, causing a combined death toll of perhaps twenty-five Russians.

It was also true that the Russians fought back with snipers of their own, as well as aircraft and artillery and overwhelming force. They tried to fight with money, as well, paying Chechens to turn in their own people--it did not work. At first, some managed to pocket the money and vanish, ironically using much of it to fund the rebels themselves, but soon the Russians wizened up and recovered their monetary losses, in a fashion, by leveling another house, or shop, or mosque, or village.

Regardless of how they fought, though, in the end, the real losers were clear: the Chechens themselves. Soldiers died in any war, but civilian losses of this scale were not implicit in modern conflict. The amount of needless bloodshed was maddening--worst of all, no one would ever truly know how many civilians would meet their end thanks to a poorly constructed bomb, or a devious artillery shell. Chechnya was a practical third-world country; there was no rule of law and there were no records. Entire families were wiped out without leaving a trace of evidence of their existence behind.

Mikhail felt no guilt over what he was doing, though. His job was simple, and ethically responsible--he shot Russian soldiers, and that was all. He shot to kill quickly, and, therefore, painlessly and without causing unnecessary trauma. He did not care about that, however, not much--fast, clean kills were just the best way to do things. Mikhail was not a sadist, and took no pleasure in harming the Russians--though he probably would, if given the chance, enjoy ending Tanya Petrenko's life.

She probably returned the sentiment. Because, over the past sixty days, Mikhail had killed... he did not know. At least eighty Russians; perhaps many, many more. He had joined the precious few elite snipers that existed in history with more than fifty confirmed kills.

He had shot Russians at every distance, from every angle, from every hiding place. He barely ate, rarely slept--he was always plotting out his next shot, his next kill, but he had never forgotten, even for a second, what his end goal was. Mikhail was not looking to be the next Simo Häyhä--in fact, it was unlikely that his exploits would ever be recorded. His commander had told him to keep a low profile, to prevent the Russians from completely destroying the decaying husk of an aul he had left behind in revenge--precious few other mujahideen, even mujahideen leaders knew that one man was responsible for all of the bodies being sent back to Russia: perfect in condition, except for one or rarely two bullet wounds.

But the Russians themselves--or at least their leaders--knew that a lone sniper was doing most of the killing. Mikhail and his leader had ensured it: they sent untraceable letters to the Russians, every few days, telling them about the next killing--when it would take place, where Mikhail would put his bullet, what angle he had shoot from, how many he had kill.

Maybe the Russians had named him. They probably had. As he sat down for a lonely dinner, in the basement of some former warehouse, spreading out a map of Grozny and a small flashlight, Mikhail wondered if Tanya often dreamed of killing him--as he so often dreamed of killing her.

The war was getting harder to fight, and it was not the Chechens' fault. Rather, it was their Muslim "brothers" who'd abandoned them in their moment of need, and everyone knew why: Chechnya had been written off.

Afghanistan, for example, had been a fiercely independent nation since the time of Alexander the Great--Chechenistan scarcely existed in history books about the geographical area that it occupied. Money, arms, manpower, interest--everything had shifted away from Chechnya, because everyone knew that it was a lost battle. Tragedy and oppression had defined the Caucasian area for the generations--war, this was nothing new, nothing special. People in Western nations watched houses being bombed, said a few words about the gravity of the situation, then went back to eating their dinner.

The war was over, in the sense that the victor had been decided. All that was left was for the mujahideen to realize it.

Or, perhaps, the war was not over--perhaps it had just changed to a state that bore little similarity to the massive, open conflicts that had defined war for centuries. No, there would be no battalions marching directly toward one another, there would be no more brazen attacks--but it seemed that the mujahideen--or what remained of them--would never give up.

Fighters were being pulled out of Grozny. Many were sent into hiding, into foreign camps to train and wait and prepare for another attack. A few, under the control of more fundamentalist leaders--they were sent into "the region"--Afghanistan and rural Pakistan. It was unlikely that the extremists that existed in those areas would help Chechnya, not with more achievable goals being dangled in front of their noses, but it did not matter. _Mujahideen_no longer fought to win--they fought simply to express the outrage, the pain, the absolute loss they felt.

This was especially true in Mikhail's case.

He had not seen his commander in several days, and he doubted that he ever would again. The snow leopard had everything he needed; he no longer had any use for the older male. The least of what he had stolen, scarcely bothering to cover his tracks, was ammunition--and lots of it.

If the mujahideen ever found Mikhail, they would not treat him very kindly. But it did not matter--again he was working in complete solitude.

More time passed--weeks, really. But time had no meaning for Mikhail.

He stopped killing for the most part, and it seemed that the mujahideen were taking a slight break as well. The Russians had not left Chechnya; of course not, they never would. There were just less patrols, less offensives--both sides were getting dug in, it seemed; both were preparing for something big.

Mikhail still had seen neither hide nor hair of Tanya Petrenko, but he knew she was out there. Every so often, the body of a dead Chechen sniper would be broadcast on Russian television--and Mikhail knew that it would take skill, and lots of it, to take down one of the men that still fought, still evaded capture or death. Tanya was alive, and still in Grozny--but going as he was, Mikhail was searching for a needle in a haystack. Something needed to change.

One evening, he was alone, as always, scanning Russian television and radio in a makeshift "base" he had set up in an abandoned shack at the edge of Grozny. There was no food--oppression was starving his people, and he had not made time to rob a market or pedestrian. But Mikhail could deal with his hunger--he could deal with anything that might prevent him from doing what was necessary to avenge his brother.

Unlike most that lost their brothers, Mikhail never had the fear of forgetting what Nikolai looked like. If he ever needed to be reminded of the precise shade of his dear brother's soft, gray fur, or his height or his friendly, ever-ready to smile face, all Mikhail had to do was look into a mirror.

He had one, in fact, a very small piece of polished steel that he had set up next to the television. In between mouthing the Chechen translations of what he was watching and listening to--Russian, still, was a language unfamiliar to him--he had look at that sliver of metal. Sometimes he had even smile. Sometimes he could fool himself into thinking that Nikolai was right there with him, smiling back.

Mikhail's brow furrowed, though, as he switched channels to a Russian news station. The official leader of Chechnya--a Chechen, to be sure, but a tool of Moscow--was going to make a live speech on the war in two weeks' time

There was no pencil and no paper to write with, but Mikhail could make do--he was a Chechen, he always had.

It was the usual lies and propaganda, and Mikhail could not help but wonder if anyone at all, anywhere, actually bought what the fascist was telling them. He hoped not, for the sake of his people, but it did not matter. In his opinion, Chechnya was doomed no matter what its people did.

The details of this speech, though--these interested him. Location, time... there was not much more given, but it did not matter. Mikhail knew everything he needed to.

Even before the proverbial ink had dried on the folds of his mind, Mikhail considered the possibility that the entire speech was a trap--for him, and any of the other predators of opportunity operating in Grozny. It was very likely, it seemed--he had heard that Chechnya's official leader had quirked eyebrows in the Kremlin. It was true that the cowardly bastard had not gone against his leaders, not even a little bit, but he was power-hungry. Already, he had assembled a large, powerful militia, and was hard at work creating a veritable cult of personality.

In short, Russian leaders wanted him out of the picture and soon, replaced by a more stable, predictable, dependable figure.

The speech was a set up. Either that, or the Chechen tool giving it was even more stupid than he seemed. Either way, Mikhail knew that Tanya would not be far. She had probably be in a set of flats, somewhere, waiting behind a dark screen--yes, that is right, at the time the speech would be given the Sun would be over here, yes, which dramatically _in_creased the positions available to Mikhail...

Before the snow leopard realized it, he was peering over a detailed map of Grozny, mind working at light speed. Everything else was ready--if he could not out-shoot Tanya, well... he had be ready regardless. True hunters were always ready to adapt.

Chechnya had a surprising moderate climate year-round--its weather was perhaps comparable to that of the northeastern United States. Of course, this applied to Grozny, the plains, and the feet of the Caucasus Mountains. In the mountains, themselves, things quickly got cold.

Cold, snowy, inhospitable, dangerous in every way.

This is where Mikhail went to hunt the leopard that had killed his lamb.

It was not that the small, somewhat cute creature was the snow leopard's pet--life was simply too hard to allow himself to become sentimental to ferals. He had his paws more than full caring about Nikolai and himself, after all. It was a matter of justice--principle dictated that he pursued and exacted vengeance upon any being that wronged him.

Mikhail recalled a story he had once been told--he could not recall by whom, perhaps it was his father. It was about an old man that bought a turkey and fed it well, anticipating the day when he would slaughter and eat it.

Then, one day, his turkey was stolen.

So, he called his sons in; told them to find his turkey. The sons, laughed, of course, and lived their lives normally for a few days--then, they came to know that their father's horse had been stolen. So, of course, they went to their father and asked what to do, prepared to fight and to kill and to die--but their father told them to forget about the horse and to find his turkey.

Of course, his sons searched for the horse and forgot about the turkey. After a few days, they forgot about the horse, too.

And then, a few days later, the old man's daughter--his sons' sister--was raped.

Of course, the sons were furious, and went to their father with their rifles in hand. They seethed and swore revenge, but their father just laughed and shook his head.

"No use in showing your temper now," the old man had said. "It is all because of the turkey. Once they found out that they can get away with the turkey they found out that they can get away with anything."

This story made an impression on Mikhail. He was an orphan, a Chechen orphan; if he let anything, even a mindless feral do anything to him or his brother without paying for it in blood then the world would trample him underfoot. No one was going to steal his turkey and get away with it.

Even if it meant leaving his brother for days, forsaking the relative warmth and comfort of his home for a Spartan existence in the wild.

Mikhail did not have a fold-away nylon tent. He did not have a GPS, matches; the only significant tools he carried were his rifle and his knife, and they were really all that he needed. The snow leopard knew his way home, and he knew how to make do in the mountains with even less than a gun and blade.

Tracking any animal--even walking, in fact--would have been impossible for anyone but a Chechen to do in the northern Caucasian mountains. The snow was at least one meter deep and coming down hard; several times, even Mikhail had had to stop, waiting for near-whiteout conditions to better.

His path took him up and down the steep, sheer slopes of the mountains that had neighbored his home ever since it had been built. Mikhail was an outdoorsman, but it was rare that he was so high up in the mountains for so long. Even among his people, what the snow leopard was doing would be called risky, at best--more like crazy.

He did not actually walk with his rifle in his hand, that was pointless. There were low chances that he had see his prey until he put himself into a very, very specific position--and if he did and attempted to point-shoot it, he had just waste his ammunition.

Mikhail knew that the leopard knew he was there--how could it not? The dark-haired man had no snow camouflage; in his simple robes, boots, and coat, he was easily visible in the blizzard-like conditions currently overtaking their position. Mikhail also knew that the snow leopard would never try to attack him, not unless he got too close to it--and he had no plans to do that. He was going to shoot the cat dead from at least two hundred meters.

His fingers would have been numb if he had not tucked them under his jacket hours ago. No, not numb--more like black and frozen and dead. It was so cold that despite his mask, Mikhail knew that there were small, rather annoying icicles on his nose.

Stopping, though, would be mindless, in a blizzard like this. Mikhail had to keep going until he got into a forest--then, he could build a fire and then he could curl up in the homemade sleeping bag he had brought. Until then, he had have to tough it.

He was making his way, then, through a real nightmare. On either side of him were two tall slopes, so steep that in weather like this even Mikhail could not climb him. The danger, of course, was an avalanche--and the snow leopard had no way of knowing what the carrying capacity of the slopes around him were. But he had no choice--he had to take the risk of going through the dangerous pass because there was no speedy way around it.

The possibility of death, though, simply did not exist in Mikhail's mind. He had to come home to Nikolai--period. Even if he failed to shoot the leopard, he had to get home to his brother.

It was getting to be dark by the time the snow leopard had stalked, silently, carefully, through the entirety of the crevice. If he was less focused on his goal, just then, he might have noticed, even for the briefest second, how picturesque the scene before him was--the snow had diminished, greatly, so that the high-altitude alpine forest before him was so isolated and so untouched and so pristine and so perfect, with its white-frosted trees and almost welcoming ground level that any nature photographer would have risked even his deadly climb to get even a single shot of it.

Mikhail, however, saw only a means to his goals: shoot the leopard, then bring his brother its coat. He had every intention of accomplishing both objectives--and until he did, the snow leopard would be cold, obsessed, blind to all but the most basic needs of his body.

Robotic in his mind and actions, he worked, quickly, gathering tinder and branches until he had enough wood to build a fire that would last the night, keeping the worst of the freezing cold at bay. Fifteen minutes later and the snow leopard was sitting before a growing blaze that offered him enough heat to let him take his gloves off to warm his paws.

Nibbling, sporadically, on the food he had brought--smoked meat and some bread, nothing more--Mikhail constructed plans for the next day. He had achieved his intermediate goal of scaling the mountain and getting into the forest--next, he had have to actually track the leopard down, following it to its home. There were any number of hiding places in these mountains, though, and only someone that had spent his life talking to older, more experienced hunters and exploring them with his brother when the weather was better would have a hope of finding an elusive apex predator.

The odds were stacked even more against Mikhail by the fact that he was not yet fifteen years old.

Night passed without event for the snow leopard. If he had any dreams he did not remember them--his mind simply shut itself off so that his body could recover for a day that would be as taxing as the one before.

He woke to dawn--and a clue. Of course, there was no pugmark or trace of the leopard anywhere near him, but Mikhail knew what to look for and where. He sighted on a hopeful spot, some five dozen meters up the side of the mountain--it was the natural crossroads of several sloping, hardly discernable mountain paths.

No non-Chechen would have seen what the snow leopard did; not even a so-called Russian expert on the dangerous, breakaway region of what had so righteously been called the Evil Empire. Mikhail saw the slightest of deviations in the snow, through the scope of his rifle--his prey had been there, he was sure of it, and had carelessly brushed its side across the mountain slope.

Judging by any number of factors, most of which Mikhail could not have explained to someone else if he had wanted to--except for his brother--the leopard was still farther up in the mountains. It was running from him; it knew that it was being tracked and, in desperation, it sought to evade Mikhail by taking refuge among slopes too treacherous to be navigated.

Leopards are a species that have senses even more supercharged that Mikhail's. The animal he was talking was no exception--it could detect him easily at a distance if he allowed it to.

As a result, Mikhail had to spend the better part of the next day simply preparing to shoot. After making a near-vertical climb up a mountain face somewhat parallel to the area his prey frequented, the snow leopard sat.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The danger of maintaining motionless in such frigid temperatures was blatant. Quickly, icicles began to form on his facial fur--but Mikhail made no motion to stop the process. To do so, he had have to move and although he could not see his prey, he knew that the leopard was out there, somewhere, waiting, watching--if he did anything to spook it, it would be many more days before he had have an opportunity as good as this one.

Snow came and it was his friend. To be sure, it was hard to see beyond a few hundred meters but the very limit of his visibility was where Mikhail believed his target would appear. On the other hand, the leopard itself would be lulled into a false sense of security by the conditions--it would think itself relatively safe, and move around less cautiously.

Mikhail's state for the next hours was difficult to describe. He was alive and conscious but he barely expended a single calorie on anything but basic bodily functions and heat. He managed to keep himself warm and he managed to be aware enough to know when the leopard came--but apart from that, the snow leopard had withdrawn all of the energy he usually outputted and focused it inward.

He did not really like what he found in himself--there was not much. All he was, after all, was a simple and somewhat cold orphan farmer. His possessions were few... but he had Nikolai.

It saddened him to be so far from his brother for so long. Well, he had be back soon enough--and he had be back with the news that their animals would be safe from the vicious claws of feral beasts at least for some time. Nikolai would be proud of him, and later that day, perhaps they had go to town.

And if Mikhail could bring back the leopard's skin to sell... Nikolai would not be just proud of him. He had have a new coat and a new pair of gloves as well--and his financial security for the next decade at least would be secured.

With that thought in mind--his brother testing out the fit on an expensive pair of wool gloves--Mikhail budged. Then he moved.

The leopard was in view.

There it was, across a valley and a forest unknown to any map or Western GPS. Its angular, powerful form was not dissimilar from Mikhail's--but it could be out and about in such weather indefinitely if it wanted to. Somewhere along the evolutionary path that separated anthros from ferals, Mikhail's ancestors had instead replaced natural protection against the cold with clothing.

The same evolutionary process, though, was what empowered Mikhail to use a gun. And, in a moment, they had find out for certain which was the more desirable trait--a thick, insulating fur coat to keep warm or dexterous fingers to aim rifles and pull triggers.

Mikhail shouldered his weapon: an act so instinctive and automatic to him that he did not have to think about it. Perhaps that was what made the distant leopard pause--then seek an alternate route through the snow--but it might well have been simple coincidence. Conditions were deteriorating to the point that even the feral's natural defenses against the elements were being tested.

The temperature plummeted below zero degrees with every gust of wind, and in a valley before Mikhail, the air pressure differential was that much more. He had to move soon or risk badly frostbitten fingers or worse. Hypothermia could be induced in just minutes in conditions like that--already, the snow leopard could feel himself slowing down, calming, breathing more slowly.

Well. Until he died, what was happening to him was helpful.

Mikhail could not shoot yet, though--not yet. The wind was too strong and too variable and the snow was too thick for him to be certain that he had hit his target how and where he wanted to.

"Let things calm down, just a little; let the leopard come closer..." Mikhail adjusted his rifle the slightest amount to take into account bullet drop. But as the leopard continued to walk, continuing its slow path through the wilderness, Mikhail realized--the weather was not going to let up, not even for a moment.

Things got worse. The snow began to come down more heavily; large, drifting flakes of white crystal obscuring visibility beyond a hundred meters to little more than blurs and guesses. The wind did not speed up but it did increase in variability somehow. It would drop to near nothingness for a split second and then return full force an unpredictable measure of time later over and over again in a completely non-cyclic fashion.

Mikhail shivered once, and that was bad. His control over even the most basic instincts was nearly absolute and the fact that he had not been able to suppress the need to create heat by moving was frightening--it meant that he really was getting quite cold.

He had to act soon. But the leopard was now hidden from his sight; the snow was too thick. Mikhail could only barely see the distant trees were the animal had been seconds before.

The snow leopard carefully looked through his scope for another few seconds. And then he saw movement.

And without thinking about it too much, lest he go back on his decision, he fired.

The rifle's report was loud but it was not as loud as the wind's howl. Mikhail's weapon jerked in his paws but that did not disrupt his aim--he had to confirm the shot from where he was because he had given away his position. He had probably missed, but even if he hit his prey there was no way that it was a lethal shot--the conditions were just too hostile. If Mikhail got down from the mountain and went into the forest... then, the hunter would become the hunted.

He looked on for a moment and saw neither blood nor a corpse nor movement nor any other sign of anything. Mikhail did not know what to make of that--but he could not wait any longer. If he did not move immediately, then he was going to freeze to death.

So the snow leopard stood up, though slowly. If he rushed to get his blood flowing again then he might well collapse out of exhaustion and pass out--and that would just as surely kill him as failing to move then and there. Somewhat gruesomely, he felt his body thaw out--although the clothing he wore was thick and warm and the best any Chechen had ever had, it was not capable of miracles.

With his rifle at his side, ready to be snapped and fired at any second, Mikhail began to walk. The path down the side of the mountain was treacherous, but despite the weather and the condition he himself was in, Mikhail did not fall. He only focused on putting one foot in front of the other where it was safe to do so--and in this manner, he made his way down into the valley.

Now things were going to get dangerous.

Slowly, Mikhail entered the forest. His intention was to be as sly and invisible as a ghost but he knew that there was no creature in all of Chechnya as sly or ethereal as a leopard--if he had not seriously injured his target, then it was out there, somewhere, waiting for him to get into a position where a rifle would not matter but claws and teeth would.

Mikhail breathed a little more quietly and thought of his brother. And then he kept going.

It was difficult to find the area where he had placed his bullet. It was not that the forest was homogenous in any way--but the snow certainly skewed Mikhail's perception.

The leopard was out, there, though--dead or alive it was out there and Mikhail was not going to leave until he found it. Rather than continuing on in silence, wasting time and effort in the process, Mikhail walked briskly and rather more loudly than he generally did--let the leopard know he was there and unafraid and then they would see who was the real apex predator of Chechnya.

There was no attack, though. Not even after the snow leopard paced around the general area where his bullet had been fired--he thought--several times. That was strange, and Mikhail did not like it. He had been patient for so long; why did Allah postpone the satisfaction of his curiosity, at least?

And then Mikhail saw why the leopard had not attacked. Its fur pattern, from where the snow leopard saw it, was perfect--the feral blended in with a thicket of dead bushes so well that Mikhail was not sure what he was looking at until he touched it with the muzzle of his rifle.

The leopard rolled over, frozen solid. It was dead.

Mikhail stared at his kill for a moment. He saw no bullet hole--was this just a trick somehow? Impossibly, was the leopard waiting for him to lower his guard and rifle before jumping up, alive and angry and with a desire for vengeance?

After that crazy though, Mikhail saw that he had indeed hit the leopard--directly through the left eye. That is why he had not seen the injury at first.

Normally, being shot through the skull would have caused a great deal of bleeding. But the cold froze the leopard's blood the second it left the animal's rapidly cooling, rapidly freezing body--Mikhail had made a clean kill, literally.

There was satisfaction from that, to be sure. But there would be no excitement and none of what could truly be called happiness until Mikhail was home to share his prize with his brother.

And so the snow leopard worked quickly to remove the leopard's coat from its body. He had sharpened his knife before he had left for the mountains and that might have been the one reason he was able to get the solidifying mass off of the entity that it was designed by nature to never be removed from. It took Mikhail time--largely because he had never butchered a feline before.

By the time he was finished, he was covered with frozen blood and gore but he had what he had come for--proof that he had avenged the killing of his and his brother's goat, and a rare and highly valuable asset.

Now it was time to go home.

The march down the mountainside did not take nearly as long as the ascent--this time, Mikhail had more to carry, it was true, but he did not have to worry about being quiet or avoiding detection and he was not struggling to pull himself up a sheer rock face, either. Now, the snow leopard could take the easy path back to his aul.

He was tired and hungry, but food and rest would come later. Mikhail walked the whole night through with only the stars and the knowledge of Chechnya that only a Chechen could have to guide him. His kill was on his shoulders and in his arms; he held it carefully so that it would not undertake damage from simple transport. For this reason, Mikhail kept his rifle on his back and not in his hands--that was something no Russian could ever do in Mikhail's homeland.

Dawn came and with it the realization that Mikhail was going to pass by another aul on his way home. It seemed that he had passed beyond the mountains that he and Nikolai had explored some years before without realizing it, into unknown and uncharted territory--and for that reason, it would still be another hour before he saw his brother again.

Mikhail had no intention of stopping until he got home. But then he saw something that he could not ignore.

The worst enemy a Chechen had was not a Russian--not normally, not when there was no war and no insurrection. Normally, the worst enemy of a poor villager out in the mountains was some Grozny bureaucrat looking to make a quick buck before disappearing to Moscow or out of Russian altogether. In Chechnya, taxation was often literally theft--when government officials used their uniforms and their law enforcement thugs to steal from those that could not afford it.

Of course, the well-connected, the strong, the rich, and families with hot-blooded young men that did not allow their turkeys to be stolen were usually left alone. Mikhail and Nikolai had never been visited by the so-called leadership of Chechnya before and this was a trend whose continuation they intended to ensure.

The oldest residents of their broken homeland, however, had no power. They were therefore highly vulnerable to attack by scavengers with the weight of the law behind them. There were few phones in Chechnya; so unless the grandfathers and grandmothers of the land were within eyesight of other villagers they could be bullied into anything at all.

It used to be that the thugs from Grozny would come into the countryside and do their dirty work and then leave before they could be dealt with. Now, things were more complicated--messengers would be sent out to the poor and defenseless who would in turn be told to come to Grozny some time later that week or that month with payment for the government that had never given them anything but pain and hierarchy.

Non-compliance, they warned, would be met with death. These threats were widely regarded as blown out of proportion--until a series of unexplained fires wreaked havoc in one of the smaller, more remote _auls_in Chechnya immediately after an old man turned away one of the tax collectors.

Now, taxation was something that was taken quite seriously.

Mikhail knew this, but he promised himself that anyone that came to the Ramanzanov house to take money would leave less their soul. Someone had to teach the thugs in Grozny that they could not take whatever they wanted, not without paying for it in blood.

Of course, the snow leopard was thinking of none of this when he came upon a scene that was shocking even to him, a born and raised Chechen.

It was two hundred meters away from him and outside of the forest, which meant that when Mikhail heard the voices--raised and passionate--he had time to set down his kill and take cover in the shadows.

He knew the house, it seemed; it was set at the top of a hill overlooking a small farm with just enough stock to sustain its owners. Mikhail did not know how the old man and his chronically ill wife managed to scratch a living out of such circumstances, but they did it and they always had smiles on their faces. One time when Mikhail and his brother were younger--cubs by Western but not Chechen standards--they had visited the aged couple and then they had gone home with their pockets full of candies.

And now Mikhail was watching the old man's wife being thrown to the ground while a man in a black hat with a staff bellowed for money.

Of course, the old man rushed to obey--perhaps to some secret box of money or heirlooms reserved for a rainy day. Mikhail watched this, through the limited window of view offered to him--and he did not see what happened next.

But he could guess.

The snow leopard could shut his eyes, and he did, tightly, turning away and flattening his ears. Despite that, however, he could not ignore what he was hearing: the old couple was being beaten, perhaps brutally, perhaps to the point of serious and life-altering injury.

The ordeal continued for some minutes and although Mikhail took out his rifle, he did not dare shoot. At most, he could see one or two thugs at once, and there had to be at least seven of them inside the old couple's house--worse yet, Mikhail only had three extra rounds with him. There was nothing he could do to stop the horror that continued to unfold right in front of his eyes.

At last, the tax collectors left. They spat and cursed at the old man as they did so, breaking his windows and knocking over a pile of firewood to rub salt into the old snow leopard's wounds--but they were not totally merciless; at least, that was the claim put forth by their leader apparent.

The old man would be given ten days to come into Grozny and give their government something nice. And if they did not, then the promised retribution would ensure that no one ever mentioned either of their names again.

When the old man begged for mercy and, crying, asked Allah what he had done to deserve such treatment, the tax collector snarled and grabbed him by the collar of his robes and lifted him off the ground.

Someone higher up than him on the never-ending Chechen food chain was running low on funds; there was not enough money for his planned Hajj the next year. With that in mind, he had told the tax collector to gather a truly fantastic sum--otherwise, the collector's daughter--sick with cancer in a Moscow hospital--would not be worth the rubles of the Soviet Union.

Mikhail had a clear shot. And so he considered ending the collector's moral and emotional turmoil prematurely. But then, his hired thugs might go into the old couple's house and do... anything.

So, for that reason and no other, the snow leopard held his fire. He held his aim too, though--if at any point the collector turned around and went to kill the old couple, he would not get far. That did not happen, however--instead, the man and his guards simply left as unexpectedly as they had appeared, leaving the injured old man to crawl back into his house and ask his sobbing wife what they were going to do.

Mikhail put his rifle away. He picked up his kill and began to walk away--but then he stopped in his tracks and looked back at that old house, all alone on the hill. He could hear only crying, but it was not hard to imagine that in between bouts of sobbing the two oldest people Mikhail had ever seen in Chechnya might be begging Allah for some way to avoid carrying the lives of the innocent on their souls when their time on the Earth was finished.

Fighting, after all, would accomplish nothing. Neither would begging, either to the collector or the rest of the aul--times were hard and no one had an extra ruble, much less the hundreds that the collector was asking for. They would be killed, it seemed, along with who knew how many other poor Chechens. All that was left now was to wonder how their acts would be judged.

Life was harsh.

But there was a solution, in this case--a solution that would leave no one dead. But it would leave Nikolai without new gloves or a coat...

Mikhail stood still for a moment. He looked around--no one was watching him; he could very easily keep walking and no one would ever know that he had seen what he had seen. Allah might--but He was sympathetic and all-forgiving. And to just ignore something like this was certainly not sinful...

...

He tried not to think so much about what he was doing because if he did then his decision would surely change. Mikhail lifted the leopard coat in his hands and gave it one long last look, before slowly walking toward the house as quietly as he could. When he was within twenty meters of the building, he moved a bit more slowly still, keeping as low of a profile as possible.

In that manner, the snow leopard got right up against the house. He hid with his body pressed against a somewhat rudimentary but well-maintained stone wall, and, listening carefully, slid his leopard coat into the window next to him until it was draped over the sill.

And then Mikhail left, quickly and quietly. He did not break out of his careful jog until he was behind the treeline again--at which point the snow leopard turned around to make sure that he had not been seen. Crouching next to the somewhat flaky bark of an old, large tree, he listened and watched--good, there was no sign that the old Chechens had seen him.

Mikhail was not sure how he felt, then, but he knew that there was no reason to stay any longer. He was out of food and he was tired, and home was not so far--

He heard a scream and dived to the ground, fur extending as though he had been attached to a high-voltage generator by the tail. Wide-eyed, the snow leopard watched the house again and listened as the old man's wife got over her shock--and realized that the leopard hanging on her windowsill was dead and not alive.

Mikhail almost smiled. The reason his happiness was not complete was not that he felt any regret or guilt--but his brother was not there to share the moment with him. And of course he would never tell Nikolai what he had done--he had tell his brother that he had... shot the leopard and killed it in a place beyond his ability to access. He had never had the coat, he had say--and his brother would have to accept that the leopard was dead as a matter of faith in Mikhail's word.

The old couple's words could not be heard completely, not where Mikhail was. He could extrapolate, though--it sounded like they were praying. They were not thanking Allah, not exactly, but they were asking Him how He had given them a leopard coat--they wanted to thank their benefactor personally.

It was time for Mikhail to leave. The two old ones would be out to look for him, soon, and he did not want to be found. This gift... he wanted its motives to be completely selfless. He wanted nothing in return, not even thanks.

He would not get his wish.

Mikhail was used to blending into his homeland without trying. Most Chechens could--but the Ramanzanov brothers were particularly adept at the art of simply vanishing at will. Mikhail did not commonly have to look around for his brother, however, so until then he was not aware of how stunning it was to see nothing--and then see a fully grown and armed Chechen snow leopard standing in the forest not twenty meters away.

"I saw what you did there, Mikhail."

Nikolai was smiling, but it took a moment for Mikhail to breathe normally again and take his paws off his rifle. He gave his brother a look--not quite a glare, but a sort of exasperated leer. Nikolai opened his mouth to continue speaking, but Mikhail spoke first in a low, somewhat threatening growl.

"Brother," he murmured, "what are you doing here? You were supposed to be at home--now, no one is at home. What if something happens? We will never know who was responsible or--what are you doing? Get away, I do not want--"

Nikolai had let Mikhail say perhaps ten words before starting to walk. His grin split his face in half and before his brother could get away, the friendlier of the two twins had wrapped his arms around Mikhail and squeezed tightly. He did not let go for a long moment--not until he felt his brother's struggles cease.

"Mikhail..." Nikolai leaned back, although he did not let go of his brother. His paws were still on the snow leopard's broad but lithe shoulders--and his expression was one of beaming pride. "I do not see why you act so tough all the time when your heart is so beautiful. Brother--I am not sure that I would have done that, but you did." He hugged his brother again and then unflinchingly kissed the other snow leopard on the forehead.

"Allah is on my side," Nikolai grinned. "He must be, to give me such a noble brother... such a noble, loving brother."

They were some distance away from the old couple's home. They were within the aul, still, but there was almost no chance that anyone would find them. Chechnya was remote, and the forests outside of Grozny were again remote. The two brothers were practically in their own world--there was only them, some trees and foliage and the blurred backdrop of the rest of the forest.

For a long moment, Mikhail did not know how to react. He tried to keep his face sullen and stern but failed, eventually, and he knew better than to even try to speak in his usual gruff, curt tone. He swallowed and retained eye contact with his brother--before smiling--just a bit.

That was all Nikolai wanted. That was all Nikolai needed. And once he had seen his brother smile, he grinned, brightly, and started to lead them both home.

Mikhail had no way of knowing what was political loud mouthing and what was actual military strategy. But in this case, he had to assume the worst.

After the leader of Chechnya had spoken, some Russian leader had gotten on and said that the war was going well, that it was going so well that there might be a reduction in troop levels ahead of the speech. It would be a good faith gesture, he said, somehow without laughing at himself--if the Russian military showed its willingness to compromise and work toward peace, then surely the rebels would disarm and disband.

If that was his hope, he was a damned fool. If the general was being honest and there was a withdrawal planned, the rebels would accept it, sure--for a while, they had be quiet. And just when the Russians really started to leave, they had attack with extreme force and extreme violence.

Mikhail did not care much about that. But he did worry that the Russians might take Tanya out of Grozny, if the withdrawal was genuine at all. She was a great sniper, to be sure, and probably one of the most valuable assets they had in the area--but she could also be a loose cannon. Mikhail knew that because more Chechen bodies were turning up than there were active mujahideen.

And so if the rebels ceased major attacks but she continued to kill, the Russians might win the war--but they had lose the war of international opinion.

And yet, Tanya could not leave Grozny. If she did, Mikhail would lose her forever.

The withdrawal announcement was probably a lie, through and through--and even if it was not a complete lie, it would probably amount to nothing more than grandstanding. A few foot soldiers might be moved out and a few bases' staff sizes might be reduced, leaving the army capable of everything it needed to do to keep Chechnya under its thumb... and yet, Mikhail could take no chances. He had to keep Tanya in Grozny--which meant that he had to stop the withdrawal before it could happen.

The rebels would not like his actions, but he did not care. All he cared about was Tanya, and killing her.

He had have to move deliberately, and blatantly, and violently--but carefully. He had to cancel the withdrawal but not the speech, and that called for action of a very specific sort--and soon. The next day, in the morning... Mikhail would act.

He already knew how.

The center of Grozny was surprisingly active by that hour, despite the war. Violence was down and many citizens had more or less returned to their normal lives--sure, they had avoid going out after dark and maybe they had keep to themselves a bit more, but life always went on, in one form or the other. The Russian patrols, once a source of fear and contempt, became simple fixtures of everyday life. They did not bother anyone that much, these days--at most they had ask for ID and do pat-downs on young men, but that was all.

To the east and west were lines of vendors, selling fruit and grain and freshly-slaughtered meat. Some sold clothes and other necessities as well, but that was all. Chechnya was simply too poor for bazaars to sell any sort of luxury and turn a profit--the most expensive things that were sold in the area were firearms, shuffled around on the black market, far from the open-air carts and vans that lined the streets of the town square.

There was not much security there. Now and then, a patrol would pass by, and a few guards with pistols rather than full military load outs had been stationed to deter theft, but that was all--at least, to all appearances. Mikhail knew that any number of the surrounding buildings could hold snipers--they probably would not shoot, except for in the worst of cases, since the area was so packed with civilians that even a perfect shot would have plenty of collateral damage. The snipers were probably there to observe only, keeping their eyes open for suspicious persons and wanted figures. Many rebels, even rebel leaders, walked in the streets openly without fear, even to that day.

Mikhail was not worried about getting caught, though--he looked like every other Chechen in the street. He was poorly dressed and thin, almost gaunt, and there was a tired, accepting sadness about his face that was impossible to mistake. And yet, he walked with his head held high and proud, just like every other Chechen on the street--he might be robbed or oppressed or killed, but his spirit would never be broken.

But he knew better than to look too proud. The last thing he wanted was a sniper's reticle on his head for any amount of time--because soon enough, he had give them all the justification they needed to shoot, and much, much more.

Mikhail walked around, slowly, as if he was tired or fatigued. He pretended to look at the wares that were being sold, even getting into a brief bidding war with another man over a thick-looking coat--but the entire time, his mind was elsewhere. He was waiting for a patrol to come by--and he hoped it would be soon. Mikhail could be patient, of course, but the longer he simply hung around, the higher his odds of being asked for ID and frisked were--and if that happened, he was in trouble. He was in big trouble.

As luck would have it, though, a patrol had just entered the town square, albeit at the end farthest from Mikhail. He looked up just in time to see the uniformed soldiers march into the bazaar, carrying their rifles openly and looking around constantly. They seemed too observant--there had not been a significant attack for several blocks in any direction for over a month. Something was keeping them on their toes...

And then Mikhail saw it.

They would have stood out anywhere in Russia. With fur scarlet or auburn at the darkest and features completely dissimilar to anything Mikhail had ever seen before, the half-dozen foxes carried cameras and machinery and communication equipment of all sorts. They were journalists, from England--they were with the BBC, but Mikhail had no way of knowing that. All he knew was that his fellow Chechens seemed as curious and confused by the vulpines as they seemed wary and cautious of his people.

The media presence was good. Mikhail's shot might be seen the world around--the Russians would have to respond to it, one way or the other.

Mikhail found that he did not have to think to keep himself calm. All of his waking hours since Nikolai had died, he had lived outside of his body. He was not sure how to explain it, but he felt like a puppet master, pulling strings attached to his body to make it act in certain ways. It was terrible and lonesome and it could not last for long--but it kept his breathing calm and his heart steady, even as he coolly, slowly made his way behind the group of Russian soldiers.

He could not be too close to the cameras--he did not want his face to be seen. If he was identified, the Russians would punish his aul as a whole, media presence be damned. But he had to be close enough that everyone from Moscow to London to Washington DC could see the shocking images of dead soldiers, shot in the back of the head. Everyone had to know that the war in Chechnya was not over and would not be over, not until Mikhail had his revenge.

He felt the eye of a distant sniper pass over him. And the­n he drew his pistol.

It was his Makarov. He had carried it and practiced with it but he had never used it, until then. At long last, it had found its sole use--Mikhail had no extra ammunition for it. There was only the magazine in the pistol itself and a spare in his pocket--that was all. But he doubted he had have time to reload.

Mikhail had never shot a pistol before in his life, and it occurred to him, as he lifted the unfamiliar weapon, that maybe he ought to have practiced a bit first. But it was too late now--he just centered the sights of the automatic on the base of the nearest soldier's neck and then pulled the trigger.

Before the Russian's flesh exploded in a cloud of blood, Mikhail had re-targeted and fired again.

By the time he had finished shooting, there was screaming and he was running. He discarded the empty magazine and tried to reload--he fumbled--and then he gave up entirely and disappeared into the throngs of people all around him.

The Russians were yelling, too. Mikhail was not sure how many he had killed, but those that were still alive were shocked and angry and terrified, and if the cameras had not been there, directly behind them, they would have just aimed their weapons into the bazaar and held down the triggers.

As it was, Mikhail was somewhat surprised that they had not killed a few people--just to send a message.

Though he was running as fast as he ever had, Mikhail kept calm still. He suspected that he might have been spotted--the Russian soldiers were shouting "stop, stop!" over and over, and for all Mikhail knew, they were talking to him.

A moment later, something flew past his ear and buried itself into some old man behind him. And then there was the roar of rifle's report--and the old man fell.

An enemy sniper had just tried to take him down. He had been spotted, which meant that he had to go to plan B to escape.

Purposefully, Mikhail changed direction, somewhat, so that he had be harder to target from the building he presumed the sniper had fired at him from. He counted to five in his head--and then dived to the side. Another bullet had been fired and another bullet missed and Mikhail was at his immediate destination.

The Russians were closing in on him, though, and even if they could not get all the civilians out of the way if they got enough to get down they might just start to fire anyway. Mikhail had no time--and yet he had to escape.

The manhole cover was heavy but in Mikhail's arms it weighed nothing. He lifted it off the ground and then threw it aside--and then, without hesitating for a second, he stepped forward, crossed his arms over his chest, and fell.

Mikhail was running before his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. It smelled bad and water contaminated with who knew what splashed from where his boots hit the ground, but he did not care--he had to get away, at least fifty meters farther, before the Russians came down.

Predictably, they did not follow him immediately. Rather, they yelled at him from above ground, and then stuck their weapons into the sewer system and fired a few bullets after him--that was less than useless. Mikhail found himself simply shaking his head, the slightest amount, and then running faster--he was not far from his goal now.

It was difficult to say how many were following him down, or even how far away they were without looking. Even the slightest noises echoed in the metal and stone sewer network--every word the Russians shouted at him and one another reflected and refracted and distorted and twisted a thousand times so that in a second it was incomprehensible from Mikhail's own footsteps and the sound of fluid scattering from where he came in contact with the floor.

They shot at him again, but he had rounded a corner. Their bullets spanged off the walls without touching him once--but he was not the only one running by then.

Mikhail could see comparatively well, by then. He could see where the sewers led and if he had looked behind him, ten seconds before, he could have seen the Russians too. He could even see Nikolai's face when he looked down at the ground--no. No, that was his face, he reminded himself. It was his face--he just looked exactly the same as his brother did, plus the hardness and the brutality and the darkness.

Mikhail came to what he was looking for. It was where he had left it, resting against the side of the sewer so that it could be picked up in a hurry--he was glad that he had thought ahead like that. It did not take the snow leopard a second to grab his rifle by the forend and work the bolt to load it.

He did not run much farther--just until he came to another bend in the tunnel. He made the sharp, roughly ninety degree turn, then, but came to rest at the ground. It was dirty and smelled foul, but Mikhail did not care--he just looked into the darkness for a flash of motion.

He saw one, and, immediately, fired. His rifle roared, playing Hell with his hearing in such tight quarters--but a Russian soldier went down, shouting about being hit. Mikhail heard his body hit the floor with a wet splash--and forced himself not to flinch at the barrage of gunfire that was directed his way.

A few bits of metal shrapnel hit him, but they were of such low mass and velocity that he barely noticed. The Russians had little idea of where he was, it seemed--they had just returned fire reflexively, pointing their Kalashnikovs into the darkness and snapping off long, threatening bursts.

Mikhail would not be frightened, though. He was a sniper--they were just frightened beasts. He worked the bolt of his rifle and picked another target--and did not hesitate before firing again.

Another Russian went down. But by then, the squad--or what remained of it--had grown disciplined. Mikhail could tell from the pattern of firing that they were snapping off staggered, short bursts to save ammunition--and ensure that they did not end up reloading at the same time. Were they advancing? The answer to that question was yes, probably--and that concerned the snow leopard, greatly.

He fired again, but this time, he did not hear the characteristic splash of a Russian body hitting the floor. And yet, there was definitely something moving, or shimmering at least, there, just there, at the side of the tunnel--

And then Mikhail realized what was going on. The Russians could not see him and he could not see them, but they had figured out how he was shooting. One of them had taken a length of cloth, or something similar to it, and had stuck it in between some pipes on the wall adjacent to him. Mikhail had taken the motion as that of a soldier--but now that he realized he was being misdirected, he changed tactics.

The Chechen aimed his rifle down the middle of the tunnel again. This time, he did not look for obvious motion--rather, he waited until more subtle deviances in the darkness suggested the process of rapidly moving boots, or set, silent faces, determined to find him and kill him.

He saw the pool of water at the bottom of the tunnel shift, some distance away. Mikhail aimed at that disturbance, then tilted his rifle up a few degrees... and saw nothing. He saw nothing, but he had seen something. And so he fired again--and heard a pained shout followed by a heavy, wet fall, as another Russian went down.

With a grim sense of satisfaction, Mikhail worked the bolt of his rifle again. He was taking quite a bit of fire by then, but he did not care. He had no option but to hold his position and fight back until all the Russians were dead or gone.

And he would not die. No, he certainly would not die. He had not yet accomplished his goal--he would not allow himself to die.

Another flash. Another shot. Another Russian soldier died, then, in that filthy, miserable wet darkness. Their outgoing fire slackened, just a little, and Mikhail heard them yelling at one another--were they fighting more than one soldier, or was it a lone, vicious tiger that had killed so many of them without going down?

"No," Mikhail thought, grimly, as he pulled the bolt of his rifle back. He pushed it back forward and then took aim again. "It is not a tiger you are fighting, Russian bastards. It is a snow leopard..."

He held his aim for a moment, even as he tilted his head. Something was wrong--the Russians had stopped firing but they were still there, damn it, they were certainly there. He could smell them--no, he could _feel_them, somehow, and he knew for a fact that they were there. They were advancing, he realized, too slowly and quietly for Mikhail to do anything about them until they were close enough to pose a real danger to him.

And so Mikhail withdrew from the rest of the world. He forgot everything but that which was relevant to his battle--the metal surfaces round him, the water, dirty and cold and opaque at his feet, the air, and the Russians, still far away but getting closer every heartbeat--and his brother, of course. His brother was relevant to everything that he did.

Mikhail shut his eyes for a long moment. He listened and heard nothing. He smelled and he smelled nothing, and he knew there was nothing to see but darkness and shadows and reflections. He felt and he felt nothing but the rifle in his hands and at the soft, scraggly fur at his cheek--and his brother's paw, it seemed, on his shoulder, guiding his actions, telling him that he could do what he needed to.

A motion. Mikhail aimed and shot--and there was a scream. Then there was more gunfire and shouting, but Mikhail knew that it was all for naught. Now, they thought he was advancing, that the terrible Chechen tiger was coming through the darkness for them.

He would receive no better opportunity to escape. And so he did not hesitate to take it. Mikhail stood up, turned on his heel and ran without looking back. Bullets could not chase him around the twists in the sewer system, but their reports, like the cries of pain and anguish of those he had shot, could and did.

Mikhail just kept running. He did not stop until he came to a ladder that led to a manhole in a part of Grozny so poor that it could not feed itself, much less support an insurgency, much less stomach the Russian response. Then he climbed up out of the darkness into the sunlight, brushed himself off, and walked back toward his "home" without a second thought.

The Russians would not leave Chechnya, now, not until well after the speech--perhaps years after it. Singlehandedly, Mikhail had condemned his people to potentially unnecessary pain and suffering under the yoke of foreign occupation, but even as he walked past mothers crying for a way to give their children life, he could not bring himself to care. He lived only for his brother--no one else.

When he got back to where he had been spending the past days and weeks, Mikhail found himself strangely tired. He wondered why, at first--he had been eating properly, or at least as close to "properly" as he ever had in his life. And while he did burn hundreds of calories in sporadic acts like the one he had just committed, he spent most of the day effectively resting--simply going over what he had read about Tanya Petrenko in his mind, or... ah. That was interesting. Perhaps he had done more than just think about Tanya Petrenko.

The walls around him were no longer bare, he observed. He had apparently scratched her name into them a thousand times or more, each time followed immediately by phrases implying varying levels of brutality and hate. He had done all this, he realized, yet he remembered none of it...

There was something to learn from that. There really was. But Mikhail was too tired to think about anything but sleep. He set down his boots and his rifle--how had he gotten it into the sewer, anyway? And how had he gotten it back?--and lay down on the pad that he used as a bed. For a moment, he lay still, almost peaceful--and then all at once he was bolt upright and alarmed.

No. No, it was not the Spetsnaz, coming to knock on his door with sub-machineguns and tear gas and handcuffs and a ticket to a prison in Siberia. It was just him and his thoughts and his fears--he got out of bed, rapidly, and scrambled on his paws and knees there, there, just there, where he had kept all of it--

It was gone. It was all gone, except for a dull, chemical scent in the air that told Mikhail that it had once been there. Had it been stolen?... he did not think so. He did not think so but he did not remember moving them or doing anything else with them. But he knew he had planned to do something else with them, something vitally important that he could not remember.

Mikhail sat on the ground. Gripped his head in his paws so tightly that it might have imploded. But he could still remember nothing... and yet the speech was coming soon and would not move for him or anyone else.

He shut his eyes. He gritted his teeth so tightly that his gums bled--and then he remembered a little bit. Flashes of images from days and weeks passed, flickers of memories recently made...

He had used it all right, all that gear he had stolen from the mujahideen. He had used it--and he prayed that he had used it wisely, because if he had not then he was dead. He was dead and neither his nor his brother's death would be avenged.

He was exhausted but he had to check--he dragged himself to a table he had brought down, some time ago, and checked over a few paw-sized black objects with wires sticking out of them at some points. He had followed the directions he had stolen to the letter, but who knew how well they would work? He did not remember if he had done any tests at all, and he certainly could not have done a full sized, real test--but at that point, it did not matter. It did not matter at all.

All he could do now was to praise Allah that Sheikh Osama bin Laden had not forgotten Chechnya entirely, and that his mujahideen and their tactics and training and weapons and manuals had reached the Caucasus.

And all he could do was accept that the speech would go on in two weeks. That Tanya Petrenko would be there, and then, that no matter what, one of them would die.

One of them at least.

Mikhail's attack had boosted the rebels' morale. If one man, one true mujahid was willing to take such risks, to shoot Russian soldiers in broad daylight from close range--then what the Hell were they doing? There were more attacks in the days that followed, but Grozny stayed quiet. The capital of Chechnya was the one place in the area where the Russians brought people from the UN and international community to show that the war was not that brutal or that bad and that their tactics were not that barbarous--but the rest of the northern Caucasus was an all-out warzone.

There were shootings left and right. Kidnappings everywhere. Bombings now and then, and hate and insanity every second of every minute of every day. How civilization itself continued when there was such madness going on for so long was a miracle in itself, because it did. Those in the West, the East, and many in the Muslim world itself simply did not find it within themselves to care about Chechnya. The Chechens' was a forgotten suffering--even in the future, few outside of the region would ever know the name of the war-torn region.

Mikhail did not care. He simply did not care. He spent his time laying very low indeed. He scarcely left his apartment--now and then he had to for food, but apart from that he stayed where he was and spent his days and his nights sleeping, plotting, dreaming, scheming. Oh, how badly did he want to taste Tanya Petrenko's blood...

His time would come, but still more things had to be done. He had to relocate--he could not just walk to where he intended to take the shot with his rifle in hand the day of the speech, or even the day before. He had to move slowly...

And so he did. He moved his rifle first, and then the rest of his things. The process took a full day, due to the precautions Mikhail had to take. He had to wander around and get to his destination in a roundabout, inefficient way, just in case he was being watched or followed, and he had to give passing Soviet soldiers no reason whatsoever to take a second look at him. Often, when it seemed that a squad was getting curious, the snow leopard pretended to be sick or old or weak--he would cough, violently, and spend minutes or more simply resting against whatever building was closest before hobbling away again. The tactic worked surprisingly well--Mikhail was not harassed once in the days that followed, although he was the man that was going to forever change the flow of events in the northern Caucasus.

The days and hours and minutes and seconds ticked down. Regardless of whether he was conscious or not, Mikhail was thinking of Tanya Petrenko. His new base of operations' walls soon bore her name as well, but nothing else in addition. He was obsessed with her and her and only her--not killing her, not breaking her, nor doing any of the other horrible things he had previously wanted to do to her. All he wanted was her--and when he had her, the rest would come.

Mikhail woke up one day before dawn. Without a thought he concealed himself and his rifle and lay down to wait.

The speech was upon him.

"? ???? ???."

They were up with the Sun. They were up before the Sun--they had to be. After all, if something was going to happen in Grozny then something was going to happen in Grozny that day, in just a few hours.

Many of them had gotten up at midnight and engaged in light calisthenics and mind games to keep themselves sharp in every possible way. It was odd, to do so so deep in enemy territory--their base was within Grozny itself--but none of them joked or laughed or smiled or spoke. All of them were killers, practically born and bred to protect ?????? ???????.

In that way, she was no different.

True, she was short. True, she was a tigress, whereas most of her comrades were wolves.

And true, she was a female.

But none of these things had stopped her from being the deadliest sniper of them all.

Early in her career, she had kept track of her kills. She had written about them in a log book. But then one day in Afghanistan, she had lost count--and those Muslim monkeys were not at all memorable anyway. Chechens were better, marginally, and she occasionally encountered those among the Caucasian _mujahideen_that gave her a challenge.

But no one had bested her yet. No one would best her, ever, on any side of any conflict anywhere. She was the best sniper in the world, though a lot of her record was classified. She had done work with the ??? several times, but resisted their pleas for her to join up. She belonged in the army, fighting on the battle field--special ops business was fun, from time to time, but when open war called she could not resist the temptation of bumping up her body count by the dozens.

She was a beauty. There was no denying that. Although she was a foot shorter than the current average for models in the West, she was well-proportioned and her unmixed Slavic features were angled and sharp.

She was a little frightening, as well, even to her comrades--even to her superiors. Many of them suspected that she was not, in fact, fighting for her country--she was fighting for the sake of fighting. There was no Russian equivalent for the word "sociopath" but if there was, it would have been ???? ????????'s nickname.

Not that she cared. Why would she care about something like that, particularly when it was true? She never hid the fact that there was nothing in the world she liked more than the spray of blood when her bullet passed through a sentient skull.

Hopefully she had see some of that today. Hopefully. Things in Grozny had been painfully quiet, recently; all the rebel activity was taking place in rural Chechnya, and ???? ???????? was getting antsy. Why she had to stay in the Chechen capital she did not know, though she had made repeated requests to be stationed elsewhere, where she might actually be able to take a toll on the mujahideen.

Then again, the tigress noted, as she worked the bolt of her rifle, it was somewhat flattering to think that the rebels might have been terrified out of Chechnya because of her. After all, she was the most active sniper in the city by far, and she knew that she made a lot more kills than her competition.

Would not it be nice, she thought, as she checked that the rifling of her barrel was in good condition, if a few mujahideen found out who was responsible for sending so many of their boys home in body bags--or whatever pathetic Chechnya equivalent thereof the thugs used? They had be humiliated to know that they were being beaten so badly by a small Russian blonde; an orphan of all people!

The rest of the operatives there wore masks. Some fancied themselves part of the ???--some _were_with the ???, or had been, until the ???? had "collapsed". All of them feared being identified--none of them feared dying, of course, but all of them had things and people to lose: families and wives and cubs. All of them except for her, of course. She was as alone in every sense of the word--alone in her class, alone in the world, and alone in the dark, malicious mindset she carried every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

It was this mindset that made her the best sniper in the world, ???? ???????? reflected. No one could touch her--no one could make her blink. Most of her prey did not even challenge her anymore--it was a rare treat when she came across a target that she could not point-shoot to bring down.

Simply sniping men from long range had, in fact, gotten boring for her. And she was a creature that had a sense of adventure--she was sometimes like a cat, and, occasionally, when she came across mice that were smart and fit and dastardly enough to do more than roll over and die, she played with them. She played with them a little bit before consuming them. And she had a feeling that she had get to play that day. That she had get to dance that day.

That is why she had dressed up for the occasion. ???? ???????? was beautiful enough as she was, but when she put on makeup, she was almost too good-looking to be real. Indeed, the moment she had walked into the briefing room with her red lipstick and her mascara and the small amount of powder and blush she had used to accent the tone of her fur and her lips and her eyes, she had made several of the males--several of the most disciplined, heartless killers on the planet--gasp and stare and wonder if they were looking at an angel.

And, in a way, they were. ???? ???????? was an angel--an angel of death.

She barely paid attention to the words that her masked superior said. She barely even gave the pretense that she was--several times in the presentation, she had simply lifted her paw before her face, examined it and the diffused glint of her claws, before stretching or cracking her neck or simply blinking and lethargically turning her attention back to the pale-furred wolf that was their leader.

She already knew everything about Grozny and the speech and the Chechens; everything that was worth knowing, anyway. She had pored over maps, marked out the areas from which she had shoot if she was going to kill the speaker, and she had even gone so far as to mark out likely escape routes that any attackers would take.

Technically, she was supposed to turn all of this information over to her superiors. But she would not do it and they knew she would not do it and they knew that she set up the best sniper and counter-sniper teams in the world. When the presentation was over, she had be called to the front of the room and given as long as she needed to explain to her colleagues where they would be placed, where they would watch, and what they would be doing.

Usually, ???? ???????? put the objectives of the mission high. Usually. But she had gotten hungry of late and her hunger was one that had to be satisfied first, no matter what. This time, the mission was not coming first--she was.

Mikhail was taking no chances. Tanya Petrenko was as dangerous as he was--more_dangerous than he was, as she had better weapons and better intel and reinforcements and he only had his rifle. And yet he had his advantages--_he was deciding their coming battle's details.

It was true that the Russians had decided the time and location of the speech. And it was also true that they had done so carefully--that part of Grozny was one of the most difficult for a sniper like him to shoot in, the amount of enemy activity going on there notwithstanding. And yet Mikhail would determine the time and placement of his first shot, at least if he was half-decent.

A hundred possibilities lay before him, and the armored trucks were only starting to roll in. Journalists and thoroughly vetted and searched Chechen civilians would come in later, but as far as Mikhail was concerned, now was one of the most valuable parts of the day. This was when he could observe without the pressure of a thousand eyes before him, all wary and terrified and searching.

And this was when Tanya Petrenko would be deployed into the area.

Mikhail already had a few ideas where she might be, but he was not stupid. He was not stupid at all. He was invisible from all positions the Russians were likely to take and therefore he was unable to see the positions the Russians were likely to take, much less engage them.

But that was what he wanted. He knew that in a ten-on-one sniper battle, he was unlikely to find and kill Tanya Petrenko before she or one of her fellows got him first. He had to be patient; he had to use a diversion; he had to make the kill on his terms and no others.

Oh, he would have his kill. He would harm Tanya Petrenko in a manner that most would call certainly fatal, definitely fatal, fatal beyond a shadow of a doubt, but Mikhail Ramanzanov was not going to take any questions. He would not stop until he saw her dead, bleeding, broken body himself--and had put a magazine of bullets through her hateful green eyes.

Sniping and counter-sniping were different arts, but ???? ???????? was a master at both. She knew what a would-be assassin was likely to do, and from where, and how, and when. She knew all these things, and yet she aimed not to protect the Chechen leader--she aimed to get in at least one kill that day, and to do that, she was willing to spend the lives of her own fellows and that of the Chechen tool as well.

And so she positioned her lessers out in the open. Out in the open, where they were blatant threats to the mujahideen and deadly protectors of the Chechens that wanted submissive peace. There was nothing to protect them, not stealth or armor or even a difficult shot, as the elements were on the side of the shooter, but ???? ???????? simply did not care. They were not snipers, as far as she was concerned--they were bait.

Security on the ground was intense as well, and so a full-scale attack did not concern ???? ????????. Unless the rebels were particularly resourceful and the army regulars on the ground and their superiors and their eyes and ears among the Chechens were particularly incompetent or cowardly or corrupt (or treasonous--or involved in conspiracy), any mujahid that tried to go directly for the leader of his pathetic nation would quickly become shaheed.

The real threat at a time like this was an assassin. A sniper, or perhaps a bomber of some sort--but ???? ???????? was mostly concerned about the former. There was nothing she could do to stop someone from pressing a button and sending the entire city to Hell from kilometers away, and in addition to the vetting process used to hand-pick Chechens to throw into the crowd gathered to hear the speech, there were other deterrents to the violence ???? ???????? knew existed in their minds. All over Grozny, there were undercover agents in groups of one or two or three, ready to move and eliminate whole families without a moment's notice.

???? ???????? watched the horizon. The tops of the buildings and the shadowed holes covering them that had once been windows. She watched and she waited in her perch with her rifle in her paw, and then she reached behind her head to undo the single ribbon that kept her mid-back length golden-blond locks of hair from falling free.

Something was coming, ???? ???????? knew. Something big--someone with all the will and intent and malice of the Devil himself. When he came, ???? ???????? would kill him, of course. But she wanted to do so not just as the best sniper in the world, or the most skilled counter-assassin in Chechnya--she wanted to make that day's kill as a woman.

"Breathe slowly..."

Mikhail was calm. He was loose and he was relaxed and he was breathing so quietly and softly and slowly that he might have been asleep. Air entered his lungs--stayed--and then left, seconds later, in silent, hot hisses that were too gradual and slight to be detected by any man or machine anywhere, every.

"Focus on your target. There is nothing but it and you and the gun and the bullet."

Mikhail's left eye was shut. Not tightly, but it was shut. His right eye was fully open, but it was not quivering with anticipation or fear or bloodlust, even as it peered through the scope of his weapon at the black-clad figure, there, distant and lit up by the pale yellow rays the early morning Chechen Sun cast down upon it.

"Be one with your environment. The temperature, the wind; all these things affect your shooting."

Mikhail was not from Grozny but he was Chechen to the core. He had never lived anywhere but the homeland that his family and his ancestors had lived in down the centuries since before the Prophet Mohammad--peace and blessings be upon him--had even existed. He knew his land, and he knew that the air was thin and cold and when there was no wind, as was the case that day, bullets flew far and fast and straight and deadly.

"Plan your shot. See it before you fire it. Before your bullet reaches your target you must be prepared to fire again."

Mikhail watched his bullet scream through the air. Watched the sonic pulse caused by the cough of his rifle reach the ears of his enemies, all of them, significant and not, from the Chechen sycophant walking on to the stage below to Tanya Petrenko herself. He watched his target's chest explode in a brilliant red fanfare--and he had not even fired yet.

"Do not pull the trigger. Squeeze the trigger as gently and slowly as you possibly can and do not worry if it takes you five seconds to make the shot once you are ready to fire. If your aim is true, then it does not matter how long it takes you to squeeze the trigger. It does not matter to your target how long it takes for you to put a bullet through his brain."

This was it. This was it. This was it. This was the moment Mikhail had been preparing for since his brother had died. This was when he would avenge his brother and this was when he would kill Tanya Petrenko. This was when Mikhail Ramanzanov fired--

From above, Grozny looked like any other city in the Caucasus. There were few skyscrapers and not too many large buildings. There were no true slums, although poverty was easily seen even from a distance, and despite the war and the horrendous assaults Grozny had endured, it was still surprisingly clean. There was no trash in the streets and the debris left by Russian and Chechen explosives alike had been cleared away, along with the bodies among it.

There were people out and about, here and there, but not many. Not many at all. Why would one go out in Grozny, after all, when that was practically an invitation to being kidnapped by the Russians or the rebels or shot or blown up or vanished for no reason at all? Fear had ground economic and all other activity to a practical halt and that was why Grozny was quiet. It was very quiet, so quiet that the clamor of the speaker's words and the false applause that his audience produced could be heard for blocks in any direction with ease.

As could a gunshot. It, too, could be heard at a distance with ease, although not by a member of the crowd nor by anyone on the ground. The applause and the speaking were simply too loud for the snow leopard's weapon's distant report to be audible to them.

But ???? ???????? heard it. ???? ???????? heard it and reacted not a second after she did--but what could she do? She looked around for the shooter or the fiery explosion that marked where he was and she saw nothing. She changed her viewing angle and looked away from the field where a sniper was most likely to fire from and to secondary locations--that apartment building, that once-proud hotel, that store, that restaurant--

There was another shot, then, and ???? ???????? heard that too. With her eye still welded to the cold glass of her rifle's scope, the tigress hissed, quietly--why could not the audience shut up and stop cheering and clapping and calling? Why could not they be quiet for just a few seconds after the death of their leader--

And then ???? ???????? realized that the Chechen was still alive. He was still there, speaking and waving his arms and raising the crowd into an utterly false frenzy. He was not the target.

The other snipers were.

Someone had taken the bait. Someone had taken the bait--and there was another shot, and another sniper went down with a hole through his brain--and ???? ???????? did not know where he was. She could not see him, could barely hear him--no. No; no, wait a moment. She could not hear the roar of a rifle shot--she could hear the snap-hiss of a bullet breaking the sonic barrier.

His rifle had been suppressed. The only reason she could hear him was because he was firing directly past her.

And he was still taking out the other snipers. Soon, ???? ???????? would be out of bait.

But that did not worry her. That did not phase her, did not make her feel even a prickle of fear. Instead, it made her grin, widely, and raise her scope to her face again. She concentrated on one sniper in particular, a silver-furred wolf--

Another suppressed shot. Wait for it--and then another kill. ???? ???????? watched the canine's brain smash and liquefy and then leak out of the twin holes the bullet punched in his skull without even the pretense of remorse or sympathy--she simply turned around and began to scan the rooftops for a gunner, but there was none. And so she looked more carefully, and lower, but she still saw nothing.

This was no mere mouse she was fighting, it seemed. This Chechen mujahid was not just a random killer--he was a true assassin. A true sniper.

And so ???? ???????? grinned even more widely. She pulled something out of her pocket and reached behind her head, and a moment later she had pulled all of her shoulder-length blond hair into a single, neat ponytail.

"All right, little Chechen sniper," she murmured. "Let us dance..."

She was hidden. She was well hidden because Mikhail had no idea where she was, and she was not coming out of hiding to look for who was killing her comrades. And yet she was there--somehow, he knew she was there because he felt her. He felt Nikolai's paw on his shoulder, encouraging him to avenge his death--and he felt the hate and the anger that he had come to associate with Tanya Petrenko ever since he found out it was her that had killed his brother.

At least she could not find him. Because if she had, he would have been dead moments ago.

But what was she doing? He had already killed three other snipers--none of them had been her, he had confirmed it--and so she and her fellows had to act. Indeed, the others who had noticed that their comrades were starting to go down were taking cover and setting up their rifles and speaking rapidly into their radios to one another to try to figure out who was shooting.

But none of them could find him. None of them would find him, because none of them were Tanya Petrenko. And she might find him. Especially if he shot again--

Which he did. This time, he did not go for a clean kill. He shot the wolf through the gut, eviscerating his kidney and stomach with the same bullet. It was a fatal wound, of course, but now the other sniper would have to suffer for a few hours before he bled out from internal trauma. That shot had been cruel, but Mikhail did not care. All he cared about in the world was Tanya Petrenko.

But where was she?

Mikhail looked away from the other snipers and simply raised his head from his rifle. That might help--after all, his eyes were brown and sharp and very powerful and there was flicker of motion--

He ducked a heartbeat before a bullet crossed through the space where his head had just been. The next heartbeat he had shouldered his rifle and fired and he had realized, another heartbeat later, that he had just found Tanya Petrenko.

He was a clever one. And a dangerous one. Rather than simply firing from the rooftops like an amateur, ???? ???????? had believed that this sniper was in some apartment building--and that was true. That was true, but misleading. Because he was hiding in an apartment building--three blocks away.

The building had been cleared by ground forces repeatedly, because despite how far away it was it made a difficult target for her and the other snipers thanks to the Sun and its bearing. He must have snuck in at least a week before the speech and hidden somehow--but it did not matter. It did not matter at all.

Because ???? ???????? had just centered her reticle on his head and pulled the trigger. After she did, she blinked--she had already put a bullet through his head long ago, had not she? And yet there he was--

That was impossible. There was no way--that was impossible. He had dodged--it was a coincidence. ???? ???????? aimed at him again and then pulled the trigger again--and this time, he was in no position to dodge.

And so ???? ???????? smiled. Not maliciously, but sweetly, running her broad, feline tongue over every one of her sleek, sharp teeth.

She looked up from her rifle and then she reached back to take her hair out of its ponytail. Well, it had been fun--a lot more fun than she had had in some time. No matter that it was short lived, this man was truly worthy of the title "sniper". He had taken out three of the second-best snipers in the new Russia and he had actually made her miss.

The tigress sighed.

"Good game, comrade," ???? ???????? said. "But you are not in my class."

She felt her tunnel vision fade. Once again she was aware of the darkened room she was shooting from--

And that was when her scope exploded.

Mikhail had not had time to shoot like he liked to. There was no time with Tanya Petrenko to do more than point and pull and pray, because she was fast. She was dangerously fast, and deadly accurate as well. He fired and then he watched his bullet spiral through the air, trailing displaced air in its wake--and then he had watched it vanish and then turn around and he had wondered what on Earth was going on before he jerked his head to the side--

And that was when his scope exploded.

Glass fragments threatened to tear apart the snow leopard's eye, but his paw had reflexively come up to protect him. The rest of the shrapnel simply glanced off his fur and fell away in broken crystalline fragments, but Mikhail paid attention to neither them nor the almost musical tones they made as they struck the floor. He was focused on his enemy--and there, where Tanya Petrenko was, he saw a shower of light, of color--and he knew what had happened.

He had shot out her scope. She had shot out his scope.

And that meant that she had an advantage. Because Mikhail had no immediate way of getting the twisted mass of glass and metal atop his rifle off--and that meant that she could shoot at him with impunity.

That meant that it was time to go.

The snow leopard dived and hit the floor with his chest, but he did not notice the pain. What he did notice was the distinctive crack of a bullet striking a wall on the far side of the room, followed by the lower-pitched roar of the rifle that had fired it. He crawled, just for a moment, when he realized that he had no time--even then, Tanya Petrenko was doubtlessly snarling into a radio, calling his position in to Spetsnaz teams already gathering at the ground floor of the building. He had to move, and he had to move fast.

He got up and he started to run, purposefully taking an unpredictable route not immediately in Tanya Petrenko's sight. Her next bullet got close--but it did not touch him. He would never let her touch him, not until she was dead and he had shot her just as she had shot his brother.

Tanya Petrenko, Mikhail grudgingly acknowledged, was a deadly predator and an even deadlier sniper. He allowed himself to respect her, just for a moment, as he kicked down a door in the building to keep running--but if she did not respect him by then then she did not deserve his respect. Because as deadly as Tanya Petrenko was, as good of a sniper as she was, Mikhail Ramanzanov was deadly too. And he was a hunter.

He reached into a pocket as he ran. Took out a paw-sized radio unit and then pressed a button. And then, Tanya Petrenko began to see that she was not just dealing with some brainwashed rebel--she was dancing with a true Chechen mujahid.

???? ???????? did not have a target. She could barely see him, that tall, fair-furred snow leopard that had just shot out her scope. He was running too fast for her to easily track and he was only visible for split-seconds through smashed windows and beyond decaying support beams. She could not lead him and she could not set up an ambush shot because he was agile and unpredictable and he had reached into his coat--

???? ???????? felt the floor quake beneath her. The skyscraper that she was stationed in shifted dangerously and for a moment, she looked up from what she was doing with her green eyes opened wide. Dust and little bits of rubble trickled from the ceiling of her darkened sniper's room to the floor and the walls themselves seemed to flex and sway and give--and then she became aware of the horrified chatter coming from her radio unit.

Someone had blown up a building. No--someone had taken out the very supports of a building; someone had gone underground and used enough carefully-placed high explosive to destabilize a building to the point that it was no longer sound. ???? ????????'s head snapped to the side and then she watched in shock as the building directly adjacent to the crowd began to fall.

At least two dozen civilians would be crushed by the collapsing skyscraper. Many more would be injured by shrapnel, and many more again would be trampled in the chaos as Chechens and Russians alike ran for cover. ???? ???????? watched as the men on top of the skyscraper--her snipers, her comrades--struggled to stay on their feet, for all the good that would do them. Their fates had been sealed the moment the building started to fall.

Two seconds had passed since ???? ???????? had looked away from her mark. She realized that and turned to target him again. At first she was angry, but then she was almost laughing, darkly, as she worked the bolt of her rifle and prepared for another shot.

"Was that you, little Chechen sniper?" she purred. "If so... congratulations. This is no longer a sniper battle," she murmured. "This is now our sniper ballad."

Mikhail did not hear the explosion, but he did not expect to. What he was expecting was the dull reverberations that his explosives would cause, if they even went off--and he received those, shaking him from his feet to his tail to the top of his head. A moment later, that was followed by screaming, shrill and distant yet loud enough for his ears to begin to pull back against his head.

So. His bomb had worked--good. Now, if only he could get the scope off his rifle--

But he did not have anywhere to simply take cover and force the mangled object off his weapon. The walls in the apartment were too thin to protect him from Tanya Petrenko's bullets, so he just had to keep running. And more than running--another wall, perpendicular to Mikhail's course, was directly in front of him and he could not go around it. If he did, then Tanya Petrenko would be able to see him for a full three seconds, and that was more than enough for her to use to shoot him dead. But one section of the wall seemed weak--

Without thinking, Mikhail leaped into the air and held his rifle close with one paw, striking out with the other. There was a flash of debris and dust and noise and pain--and then he passed through the shattered wall. He messily rolled to his feet and kept running while another bullet chased him--but harmlessly passed by him and out of the building entirely.

Mikhail tried to punch the scope off his rifle. It did not work--he nearly lost his weapon and so he simply snarled and kept running. He was approaching the end of the apartment, but that did not scare him. For his brother, he was prepared to make leaps of faith greater than he ever had before, even if he was just jumping into open air--

"Is he crazy?"

???? ???????? asked this of herself before she tried to fire again--and then she realized that she had not chambered another round. So she worked the bolt of her rifle and stopped halfway through when she realized that she was out of ammunition. So she changed her magazine and by then, her target was out of sight again.

Impossibly, the Chechen had jumped out of one apartment building--fallen a floor--and then managed to get through the window of another apartment building. He had presumably taken the energy of the fall to his legs and then rolled to recover lost moment before taking off again--there he was again, but although ???? ???????? fired again, it was as if he knew when she was going to shoot, because he dodged her bullet. Again.

And he was still running--and now, ???? ???????? could not see him. She could not see him because the viewing angle of her sniper's nest was small and designed to allow her to hunt static snipers, not men that crossed between buildings, twenty stories into the air.

For the first time that day--for the first time in_years_, ???? ???????? tasted just a breath of concern. She shook it off, then, and holding her rifle by the forend she threw open the door of her nest and ran toward the stairs. Then, she began to climb, snarling and seething no longer with interest, but with anger. This Chechen, this mujahid, this sniper, was no longer a particularly challenging target--now, he was starting to become a real thorn in her side.

Mikhail crashed through a window, but since his boots struck through the glass and the wood holding it in place, he felt no pain from that. Pain did come when he hit the floor with his feet incorrectly, somehow, but he managed to recover to keep moving. He dared look at the apartment where Tanya Petrenko had been placed--it was still far away from him, and his scope was still firmly attached to his rifle.

Worse, he had miscalculated.

Tanya Petrenko had not been positioned where he had expected her to be at all. She had not gone down with the building Mikhail had already leveled--and even as the snow leopard set off the second bomb he had planted, he knew that she would be more or less unharmed from that, as well, unless the structure he had targeted went down very unevenly.

It did not. Mikhail saw the building adjacent from the building that Tanya Petrenko had used as a perch shiver, as if in pain--before it plunged straight down.

Maybe she would be shaken by the blast and its resulting collapse. But Mikhail doubted it. After all, Tanya Petrenko was not his lesser--she was his equal in their sniper ballad.

???? ???????? had been in a stairwell when the second explosion had been triggered, and so apart from placing a paw as dainty as it was precise and malicious and cold against a wall, for a moment, she was unaffected by it. Although the concussion and the sounds of cracking, shattering support beams and cement shook her to her core--literally--she remained calm and focused and as determined to kill her prey as she ever had been.

Her blond hair trailed in the air behind her, and it was not just because she was moving fast. Her hair was light, not only in shade, but in weight. And yet it was thick at the same time. Males had said this to ???? ???????? many times, and every time it had made her smile, sweetly, with those bright red lips of hers. She knew she was beautiful; she knew everyone said she was beautiful--and so perhaps this Chechen mujahid's death would not be so bad. He was going to end up dead anyway, someday--he might as well die at the paws of a beautiful woman.

In that manner, ???? ???????? considered herself merciful--even altruistic--as she threw open a door to cold, clear Chechen air. She was on the roof of the building and now nothing and no one would prevent her from putting a bullet through the Chechen's brain. She knelt at the edge of the building--now, he was close enough that she did not have to go prone to kill him--and began to track him with iron sights. But he was still too fast and too agile and too hidden and yet he was getting closer. What was he doing...?

As Mikhail's distance to Tanya Petrenko closed, she began to fire less and less frequently--and he knew why. They were on two completely different floors--he was far, far above her, and while that did not mean much at long ranges, the closer he got, the great the angle Tanya Petrenko had to shoot at became. Now, the floor was protecting him as much as the walls and the broken, tattered remains of Chechen families.

Mikhail had seen much as he ran, but he had paid no attention to it. All there was for him were materials, and their respective abilities to keep Tanya Petrenko's bullets from reaching him. There were neither colors nor objects, just assets and dangers and the laws that governed the way the world worked. He had to manipulate everything, even the nature of physics themselves, to prevent himself from falling or slowing or hesitating for even the slightest fraction of a second--because now, he was within fifty meters of Tanya Petrenko. Now, she did not have to be a sniper to kill him--she just had to be a good shot, and a quick one.

But he would not let her kill him. He would not let her kill him, not until he had avenged his brother.

And yet... he was not going to take any chances. He dodged to the side, dancing out of an opening that Tanya Petrenko would have used to put a bullet through his brain--and then he reached into his jacket, and took out the last radio unit he had. This one had been the most difficult one to build--the instructions had been stained by water and dirt and they had been unclear from the beginning. But Mikhail had done his best to do as they said, so all he could do now was trust in Allah.

He pressed the button--nothing happened and so he threw the unit aside and then he kept running. He took out his Makarov and as he ran, he fired two shots, just to let Tanya Petrenko know that he was still alive and still gunning for her--just to let her know that although she was a tigress, he was a snow leopard. She could not hunt him unless he was hunting him, too.

He kept running.

Now, he was within thirty meters of Tanya Petrenko--then twenty.

As he ran, he considered the malicious beauty of his motions--and even of hers. They were locked in a struggle that only one of them would survive at best--and so every sense that they controlled, every asset, every atom in every molecule in every grain of substance all around them was defined by them. The entire world had stopped, just for them, just to watch as they danced.

Every shot she fired was an aggressive, beautiful step forward, and every jump and every dive and every duck, dodge, and dive Mikhail executed was a passionate, masculine response to her movements. She was a tigress, blond-haired and petite and beautiful, and he was a snow leopard, dark-haired and tall and strong and rough and hard. And so, even though he wished only to kill her with every fiber of his being, and she him, they were a couple, of sorts, locked into a beautiful, deadly dance that maybe neither of them would survive: their dance was a sniper ballad.

Mikhail reached the end of the apartment. Open atmosphere gaped before him, but he did not slow down and he did not turn or dodge or do anything else. He simply shouted the name of his Lord and he jumped--

She had to reload at the worst possible moment.

???? ???????? had wasted another magazine, gunning for a target that was too fast and too agile and too smart for her to lead or ambush. Every time she swore she had a target, he would dance out of her sights and every time she tried t point-shoot him, he simply was not there. And then she had a target--

And she flinched when two bullets he fired came within inches of hitting her. She fired again, but her shot went wide--and her magazine was empty.

And so ???? ???????? reloaded. She reloaded and for the first time since she had started to dance with that Chechen mujahid, she felt real fear. She could not kill him even then, though he was thirty meters from her and getting closer and closer and closer and closer--

And then he jumped. He jumped out of the apartment he had been running through and he seemed to fly, though he was snow leopard and not an avian. He opened his arms and then, in the middle of open air, he raised his pistol--

Now, it was ???? ???????? who needed to dodge. And she did, a heartbeat before he could put a bullet through her brain. She pressed down against the roof beneath her boots and she dived, before rolling cleanly to her feet a meter away.

Time had slowed down, and so she was aware that he had tracked her. His bullets had not been sprayed at where she had been--they had followed her, getting with an inch of severing her tail from her body at one point--but they missed. And so she raised her rifle as fast as she could, noting that the snow leopard's slide had locked back--

She fired again.

And this time she hit him.

She saw the spray of blood in the cold, thin Chechen air just for a second before wind blew it into invisible, reddish haze. She worked the bolt of her weapon as she watched his body crumple in response to the trauma of the injury she had done to him--but there was no point in firing a second shot. He had committed suicide the second he had jumped off the building...

And then she saw that he had not simply launched himself into open air, into the hands of God. Shockingly, he had launched himself off from the apartment with such force that he had a chance to land on the roof that ???? ???????? had shot at him from--until she had shot him. Now, he had no hope; no, he was going to plunge down and down and down to an early death.

She looked eyes with him for second--and she smiled that thin, bright red smile of hers. Her face, like her lips, were both beautiful and venomous, but, for once, ???? ????????'s smile was sincere. She wanted to thank him, she truly did, for being such a good sniper--such a good dancer. She had remember the ballad she had shared with him for as long as she lived--

And then she saw him snarl. She saw his lips pull back over his teeth, but she did not hear the vocalization or the curse that shrieked from his maw. She only saw the energy and the intent and the hate pouring out of his soul, so thick and black and shocking that she took a step back.

He did not land on the roof. But he got one paw on it--and then the other. And then he started to pull himself up, until ???? ???????? raised her rifle and shot his finger off.

His paws vanished from the roof, but ???? ???????? did not pause for a second. She ran forward, right to the very edge of the roof, and she looked down.

And she did not see him.

Mikhail fell--but not far. He managed to get his feet on a windowsill on the floor just below the roof, and after a second of trying to balance, he managed to grab the wall itself and throw himself into the building.

He hit the ground but after a second of struggling, he got up. He got up, though his vision was blurred and his heart was racing--and then he put a paw on his chest. He took it away and he looked at it, and it was covered in blood.

Tanya Petrenko had shot him. She had shot him, just like she had shot his brother--but he was still alive. He was still alive, and so he would go on; he still had his pistol and he would use it to kill her--

And then there was motion, not eight from him. He was looking right at it as it happened but his reflexes and his mind were slowed by fatigue and malnutrition and madness and injury, so although he raised his pistol he did not have a chance. It did not matter that she had just taken a three meter drop on her feet--she turned on her heel and she shot again.

???? ???????? stood precisely still for half a second in a posture that most others would have found awkward. And although her body was contorted and the recoil of her rifle should have knocked her over, she was as natural and agile and beautiful as ever. She tracked the Chechen with her rifle for a moment--and then ???? ???????? smirked.

She had shot the pistol out of his paw. He was not injured from that, but the bullet she had put through his chest, just next to his shoulder--she could see that it was taking its toll. And the shot she had used to knock him off the roof--it had taken off his finger, it seemed, leaving behind a bloody, furred stump that he caressed with the rest of his paw.

As ???? ???????? turned to face her foe head on, she saw how tall he was. He towered a full head over most other peoples of the Caucasus, and several centimeters over most Russians well. He was a true Chechen mujahid, scaled up in size--with a thick beard, dark, wavy hair, and hawkish features. His eyes were dark and deep and angry and dangerous, even then, as she walked toward him with her rifle in her paw.

Now, there was only poison in her smile. She could see him quivering under his fur, muscles rippling with desire he dared not convert to action--he knew that she had his life in her paws. He knew that, and he hated for for it in addition to the rage he had been taught from birth to show to all Russians--much less Russian military members, much less special operations, much less the snipers that made it impossible for his people to do anything meaningful for themselves.

But he could not keep his eyes off her.

Chechen women, she knew, covered themselves almost entirely from head to toe. But beyond that, they simply were not blondes, or green-eyed beauties with the money and time to buy and use lipstick, mascara--she did. She did, and so her lips were a bright, cherry red, and her eyebrows and stripes were neat and defined.

And her body was stunning, even under the uniform, the ammunition, the weapons. She was slim and she was petite and yet she was curved, obviously, despite the calisthenics and training she went through regularly. Her fur itself was so thick and soft-looking that as she walked toward him, she saw his paw twitch--he wanted to touch her. He wanted to run his fingers over her fur, her hair, her body, and more...

And that is what made her smile so poisonous. Because she would never let him touch her, not in a hundred years, no matter how great a sniper, a warrior he was. He was still a Chechen and she was still a Russian.

But there was something about him. Something about him was so strange, so hauntingly familiar, particularly when she looked at his face--when she looked into his eyes especially, she was filled with a sense of déjà vu that simply did not make sense. And then understanding came over her--and she grinned.

"You Chechens all look alike," she murmured in her own native tongue, locking eyes with her enemy. "Would you believe it, little mujahid--I shot a man that looked just as you do at the beginning of this war. It was a beautiful kill," she purred. "I loved killing him... and, so, I will love killing you."

She gave her flaxen hair a toss, so that it flowed down the sleek contours of her back. And then, slowly, she began to raise her rifle when he surprised her, speaking accented but fluent Russian. He had understood her--he had understood every word she had said.

"It is not that we Chechens all look alike," the snow leopard said. "That man that you shot through the head... that was my brother," he explained. "My twin brother... Nikolai Ramanzanov."

And then ???? ???????? saw something she had never seen before. She saw a male much taller and stronger than many of the weaklings she was forced to work with, a Chechen, a snow leopard, cry. His tears were not great in volume, nor were they coupled with chest-heaving sobs, but there was no denying it--they were there, shining and burning wet, darkened trails down his cheeks.

She was touched. And so, she touched him.

With her rifle resting against his gut, ???? ???????? reached out and placed a paw many times smaller and more fragile than his on his chin, on where his ruff would be if he had been a tiger. She trailed that petite, feminine appendage across his strong, defined jawbone, for a moment, before again holding her rifle with both paws.

Although fear of him had risen in her when he had launched himself through the air to kill her, now it was entirely gone. He was injured, and crying, and he had lost the war in his mind--now, nothing mattered anymore, except for her. She owned him more completely than he would ever be able to appreciate, because he would die in only moments.

But until then, he was in good enough condition to speak. And her curiosity had been piqued.

"So... it is fate that brought us together, today, so that you would be given at least a chance," she said, "to avenge the death of your twin brother. But it seems that you have failed, little Chechen." She shook her head, slowly, and then let a brief sigh out through her nose. She made eye contact with him again, smiling with such venom that he flinched, visible, and positively pressed himself against the wall behind him.

But he shook his head. And that piqued her curiosity again--and so she held her fire, tilted her head to the side, and waited for him to speak.

"It was not fate," he said. "I hunted you down. I prepared for so long... I stole the explosives from the mujahideen, I built the detonators myself, and when it seemed that you might have been pulled out of Grozny, it was I that shot those soldiers in the city, in broad daylight. I almost died keeping you here... I would have done anything to even have a chance at killing you."

His ears were flat, and his head was turned to the side. Only sadness was on his face, and that was what made ???? ???????? feel the slightest twinge of sympathy.

"And you got close, my little Chechen," she purred. "Much closer than anyone else has, ever. You did all these things, just for me?... I am flattered, my little Chechen. The dance we shared... even now..." she placed a paw on her chest, on her heart, to show the depth of her emotion. "I feel you, my little Chechen. You gave me what no one has ever given me until today. And so I thank you."

She took a slight risk, then, and in doing so she took something from him that he had only ever given to his brother before. She moved forward--and she planted a kiss on the corner of his maw. She would have kissed his lips, but he was tall and she was short and besides, a split-second later, she was standing before him again, with her rifle again against his belly.

"It is a shame that you are a Chechen and I am a Russian," ???? ???????? said. She reached back, and with a single swipe of her paw, unleashed her straight, blond hair from its ponytail. The pale locks shimmered in the air for a moment, distracting the snow leopard with their golden glow, before ???? ???????? faced him again. She was still smiling, but this time, there was sincerity on her sharp, Slavic features.

"Someone as tall as you... someone so resourceful, so smart, so powerful... so willing to share yourself with me. I am touched, my little Chechen," the tigress said. "And so... I will share myself with you."

She paused. Licked her lips. And then she lowered her rifle, and then she set it on the ground--but before he could register that, she had her pistol in her paw, half-pointed at him.

She started to undo her jacket's zipper, so that the heavy outer garment, weighted down with extra ammunition and a squawking radio unit shortly slid from her shoulders and hit the floor. And then, as her unarmed paw began to travel down the length of the blouse shirt she wore unbuttoning as it went. She looked him in the eye and began to speak.

"I was born outside of ???????," ???? ???????? said. "My family was never poor, but we were not rich... we lived in the kind of neighborhood that had shootings, robbing, raping, more." She shrugged. "But I was always safe. My mother and my father, and my older brother... they loved me so much. And so when that fire started..."

She shut her eyes for a moment. Deep, searing pain lanced through her, and for a moment, she was shaken--but she stood on her own two feet. She had to--she had to be able to, because there was no one else to support her. Apart from the Chechen, the mujahid, there was no one else in the apartment with her--but she was alone. She always had been, ever since the fire.

???? ???????? breathed in--and then, still undressing, she told that Chechen, that mujahid, more about herself than she had ever told anyone ever before.

"It started after midnight; no one in the building had a chance. And my family was on the highest floor--we ran down as quickly as we could, but there was so much smoke, so much noise, so much flame..." She shivered. She had undone all the buttons on her shirt, and so she began to tug it aside, slowly, baring her torso to him. Centimeter by centimeter, the vertical band of bare flesh on her chest began to grow.

And despite herself, despite how beautiful she knew she was, ???? ???????? blushed. She saw his eyes, locked on her body--but not just her body. Now, he could see more than her body; he could see something that no one else ever would. He could see her heart.

"It was my older brother that carried me... I was too small to run by myself; I was just a cub back then. He was the only one to get outside with me--I do not know what happened to our parents." Her ears flattened for the briefest moment. "They died, I know... but their bodies were never recovered. The building collapsed when the fire was done, so there was no chance of finding anything."

She looked at him for a moment--and after a moment, his eyes flickered up from her chest and found hers. And so ???? ???????? blushed and turned aside, briefly... and then she began to peel her shirt off of her shoulders entirely.

As she shrugged out of the sheer, cotton garment, she shivered--it was cold, after all, and they were many meters from the ground. That was the excuse she gave herself. After all, it could not possibly be that she sought his approval, his validation--after all, he was a Chechen and she was a Russian.

Her shirt hit the floor, then, leaving her nude from the waist up, save for a white brassiere. It supported her breasts, somewhat, but ???? ???????? was young and fit and so it made little difference. It covered her, though--and she was grateful for that.

He was still staring at her, and so she turned around, once, just for him--just so that he could see her back, her side, her profile, her hair. She never let go of her weapon, not for a moment, but she did not point it at him--she did not need to, because somehow, some way, she trusted him.

Her frame was thin, and now, he could see it almost in its entirety. Her belly was smooth and sleek and flat, although she was not so petite that she looked starved. And her breasts were full and round, just like her face--just like her hair and just like her eyes. She was so beautiful that despite the brightness of the Sun and the sky and the clouds all around them, she seemed to shine.

"My brother did not survive to see the next day," ???? ???????? said. "I spent the rest of the night at his side, holding him and trying to get him to wake up... but once he became unconscious, there was nothing that could be done. But do you know what, my little Chechen?" she asked quietly--and he shook his head, of course.

"Even though he was unconscious--and probably dead within an hour of the fire--he kept me warm all night, until the police finally came. He was so..." She searched for words. Failed. And then she looked down at herself, past the sleek flatness of her belly and before the flickering shadow on the ground that indicated that the cuffed tip of her tail was twitching behind her--and then she began to unzip her pants.

"You should have seen him, my little Chechen," the tigress said. "He was taller than you, and so strong. His chest..." She sighed. "No one was as big as he was. Nor as strong. But he died that night... he died for me, and for Russia. That is why I joined the military... because it is what he would have wanted."

She paused. She turned around, so that she only faced the Chechen, the snow leopard, over her shoulder. Then, slowly, she began to pull her pants down.

Of course, he did not see her fur immediately. Her underwear matched with her brassiere, and so her rump was hidden from him--but that did not stop her from hearing him sharply gasp. She knew she was beautiful from head to toe, and so she smiled, no in relief, but in certainty. She had known from the beginning that he would lust for her the moment he saw her fur--it had nothing to do with any needs she herself had.

A moment later, ???? ???????? stepped out of her pants. She faced him head on again, wearing only a set of cotton military underwear. Apart from those brief coverings, she was nude, and so he could see almost every centimeter of her flesh, her fur. Her coloration was fair--very fair, even for a Russian. She was not a white tigress, precisely, but she was very close to it.

Her stripes, however, were thick and defined and dark. They tapered down rapidly when they crossed the sides of her body and approached her belly, which was itself pure white. Every part of her was beautiful, almost unnaturally so--from her lips, to her eyes, to her face, to her hair, to her legs, rump, breasts, belly, and more. She was capable of making even a Chechen mujahid stand there, half-gaping, staring at her with his goal and his brother forgotten.

She looked to the side. Crossed her arms over her belly, and looked into the wind. Her hair was blown away from her head, but she did not blink, did not look away. She felt the pistol in her paw, weighing against her fingers, her palm--how easy would it be to let go and to forget, like he did. She could just forget about everything--even that he was a Chechen and that she was Russian--for at least some time.

After all, though she was an Aryan, he was a noble creature in his own right. He was tall, after all, and strong, with the face so masculine and defined that when she looked at him, she felt attraction. And he was a feline as well, though he was a snow leopard--but still, he was fair-furred and his coloration, no doubt, would blend well with hers if they were to dance again...

He was looking at her, she realized. But he was not looking at her body, he was looking her dead in the eye with an expression and an intent so fierce that though ???? ???????? had looked upon the faces of the men of the Caucasus many times, she flinched. She took a step back--and then she glared back at him and began to raise her pistol. All right, he did not want to be with her--she had no further need of him.

"It is a shame, my little Chechen," ???? ???????? said. "We could have danced together until the end of time." She paused--grinned--and shook her head, looking deep into his eyes again. "I do not fear you, you know. I never feared you. The only thing that scares me is fire."

???? ???????? held her pistol in both paws. Punched it out before her, slowly, and lined up the sights with the Chechen's head. Standing still, so far above the ground in an apartment building in a town as terrible as was implied by its name, she prepared to kill the only male she had ever considered to be a true man. It did not matter that she did not know his name--he had decided his fate the moment he had looked at her like that.

But then he spoke. He spoke, and the first two words he said shocked ???? ???????? so much that she lowered her pistol to stare at him.

"???? ????????," he said, in a deep, vicious, snarl of a voice, "you have not told me anything that I did not already know. I stole your file from a truck, ???? ????????, and it told me everything--your name, your history, your appearance. It told me everything... except that you are a slut."

He could see her jolt back on her feet like he had struck her. He saw her eyes, green and pale and shining and hateful, widen--and he prayed that he had counted the passing seconds properly. He saw her glare and snarl and start to bring her pistol up again and he ran forward in a panic--

And then Mikhail Ramanzanov's entire world was consumed by flame.

The final detonator he'd used had a time delay circuit built into it. After some moments, it would send its signal to the explosives planted below the building--but Mikhail had only planted a few pounds of explosive in a painstakingly careful pattern. His paws had been guided by Allah himself--he'd somehow known precisely how to position the explosives and the chemicals and the gasoline just so, so that when the explosives were set off, the building was not taken down. Rather, flames were started that reached from the ground all the way to the top floor.

The fires below Mikhail were intense enough to catch and sustain themselves; from his floor upward there simply was not enough to burn and they were too far from the original source of the flames anyway. The concrete and the metal that built the building kept the worst of the heat out, for the moment--it was still oppressively hot, and flames still burned, but that was alright. As soon as Mikhail forced himself to get to his feet, he knew that it was alright.

He ignored the flames and the heat and the screams of the people of Grozny, so far below him. He ignored the smoke and the panic rising in his own heart--and he just ran forward until he found her, screaming and crying and curling into fetal position with her paws around her head. He found her and he straddled her pale, her beautiful form, and he grabbed her by the hair and he forced her onto her back.

And then he hit her. He hit her again and again and again and again with violence that even he did not know he had in him. Even he, a Chechen, a man of the Caucasus whose life was defined by violence and uncertainty, was shocked by the sheer brutality of his blows. He struck her repeatedly with his fists, his claws--sometimes he stood up and he kicked that female, that beautiful, that fragile, that hateful, cursed, evil form--and sometimes he grabbed her by the face and bashed her head against the floor.

And he enjoyed every second of it. He loved the feedback of force when his fists struck her face--he loved the blood, the broken teeth, the dull, fleshy thuds his blows made as they connected with her body. He loved her screams, and he loved how much weaker than him she was. Although she tried to fight back, using her paws to try to block his paws or attack his face, she was terrified and injured and she was a female, a Russian--and he was a man, and a Chechen and a mujahid.

She did not have a chance.

And so she started to cry. She started to beg him for mercy, tried to plea to the compassion and the mercy in his heart--and she failed. Ever since Nikolai had died, there was only hate left in the fragments of Mikhail's heart that had not simply fallen away.

And then she apologized. She begged his forgiveness for killing her brother and she pleaded that he stop hurting her--that he protect her, that he get her out of the heat and the smoke and the fire. And that made him angrier. He drew his fist back again--and then he stopped and he looked down at her.

She was a mess. She was bleeding and she was bruised; her face and her maw had both been severely deformed by his repeated, brutal punches. He'd likely broken several of her ribs in addition to her jaw, her cheekbones, and he did not know how many teeth. She was crying and her hair was matted with blood and now the heat made her eyes shimmer with energy that was no theirs--and his paw collapsed.

He took her by a tuft of fur on her chest. Pulled her in close--snarled--and spoke in a growl so black and vile and evil that she dared not look away from his wild brown eyes for a second.

"Do not you dare apologize to me, Tanya Petrenko," Mikhail sneered. "Apologize to my brother. Apologize to the other one who was the last of my bloodline--apologize to at least one of the men you killed, you slut. Do it," he suddenly bellowed, "now!"

And so she did. She sobbed and she shut her eyes and she apologized to the snow leopard, the peasant farmer, the brother, the only one that had been with Mikhail Ramanzanov--she apologized to Nikolai Ramanzanov.

And so he released her.

She fell to the floor, and the impact of her head against the unfurnished concrete made her eyes glaze over--but Mikhail's work was not finished. Though the air was bright with heat and dark with smoke and increasingly washed by varying shades of red and yellow and orange, his work was not finished.

"My brother is a merciful man. A loving man--not like me," Mikhail murmured. He placed his paw on her chest again--stroked her fur--and with his other paw, he drew his knife. And then he stood up, lifted her to her feet, and began to walk.

He tossed her against him, held her by wrapping his arm around her lower back, and felt her chin rest on his shoulder. Her hair flowed down her shoulder and his chest, inches from his muzzle--but he ignored it. He just kept walking, coldly, calmly, with all the malice and purpose of the blade in his paw, and he whispered into her ear.

"Goodbye, Tanya Petrenko. I hope that your God has mercy on you, because I do not think that Allah will. I am sorry that we did not meet... under different circumstances," the snow leopard said. "You and I are not so very different, and if you were not a slut and a Russian oppressor, I would have been proud to dance with you forever." He sighed. And he kissed her on her cheek, before he pressed his knife into her gut so hard that its pointed end came out of her back.

Perhaps she died then and there. Mikhail was not sure. But it did not matter--the disposal of her body would be as close to the disposal of his brother's body that he could manage.

He held that beautiful, pale tigress in his arms--and then he threw her down the stairs. Her body struck the floor, collapsed, bounced, and then rolled off into the flaming pit that had once been the stairwell. And so the last time Mikhail saw Tanya, she was burning and going to a place where he would not shortly follow.

It was over.

And now Mikhail Ramanzanov did not know what to do.

He had felt satisfaction--somewhat--when he had run Tanya Petrenko through with his knife and then thrown her to the flames. And then he had felt a quiet sense of relief, of accomplishment--and now he felt nothing.

It was hot near the stairwell, so he walked away from it. He walked away in a daze and eventually he found himself at the window that he had used to enter that floor in the first place, and he looked over the city.

Grozny, Chechnya--the capital of Mikhail's homeland. Though he had visited the city now and then throughout his life, and though he had spent the last weeks of his life there--it still felt like a foreign land to him. He knew no one and no one knew him, and even in his own country, his own Chechenistan, he was an outsider--an other, a terrorist, a foe. His people had been oppressed by Russian since before anyone could remember, but he had not spared a thought on them since his brother had died. Since Nikolai Ramanzanov had died, Mikhail Ramanzanov had been Nikolai Ramanzanov's brother and that was all.

Nikolai had given him direction in life--even in death, Nikolai's existence had driven Mikhail to be the greatest mujahid Chechnya, the Caucasus, or the entire world had seen since the time of the Prophet Mohammad himself--peace and blessings be upon him. It was Nikolai's smiles and hugs and occasional kisses that had given Mikhail the drive to live, and to love life--and it was the sight of Nikolai's dead body, burning, that had given Mikhail the drive to hunt a being a thousand times as dangerous as any leopard could ever be.

And now it was all over. And now, Mikhail did not know what he was going to do.

He had planned suicide, that day, all those weeks ago, when Nikolai's body had been removed from the world just as his soul had been. But now, although the building was burning and smoke was pouring up into the sky and that floor that Mikhail was one was getting increasingly, dangerously hot--he found that he did not want to die. He did not want to die although he was not sure he wanted to go on living, but he did not want to die like that, burned to death in a building that he had set on fire himself.

He sighed. And then he climbed into the window, holding himself in place with paws that were bloodied and injured and tainted. He looked down--and there, way down there, who knew how many meters or floors below--there was a dumpster. And if it was filled with paper, or clothes, or organic waste... then maybe, just maybe--he had a chance to live.

Mikhail looked to the sky. He tried to see past the clouds to see something, anything, that might signal that his brother was there--but he could not. He did not. He did not know if his brother was trying to see him or was hiding from him in shame of what he had done.

And so Mikhail Ramanzanov looked to the ground. He shut his eyes, but that did not stop a tear from rolling down his cheek.

"I'm sorry, brother. I hope you will forgive me when I die, someday..."

Mikhail opened his eyes. And then, just as he was about to jump--the building shifted.

The fire and the explosions were more powerful than he had intended. The building was going down--it was swaying and moving and Mikhail's paw could not retain its hold on the wall--

He fell, then. He fell into the open air and he tumbled as he fell down, and down, and down, and down. He tried to find direction and purpose and anything at all to hold onto but Nikolai was dead and gone and he was alone. And so he just fell, all by himself, plummeting toward the ground without even control of how he landed.

He did not scream, though. He did not cry, and after a few seconds of struggling, he felt no fear, either--just a strange, calm sort of acceptance, even as the building he had set on fire began to collapse to come down on top of him.

Heaven and Hell might join to crush Mikhail Ramanzanov, but he did not mind.

He would not be apart from his brother for much longer.

A boy was alone.

He dug into the ground and he planted a lone seed and then he sat back on the grass.

He wrapped his arms around his knees and he ducked his head into the collar of his shirt and his teeth chattered, for he was cold.

He looked into the distance, across the plains and the forests and the rivers and he waited.

And for a long, long time, he was alone.

And then someone put a paw on his shoulder. He looked up and he placed a paw on that paw and he smiled.

He was not alone anymore.