The Great Alone Read Free Page A

deep valley and survived. At the beginning of the voyage, he had been plagued by a mild queasy feeling, but the heaving motion no longer bothered him.
    The stomachs of some members of the hunting party were not so strong. The stench of seasickness mingled with the fetid odor of unwashed bodies and tainted the wind. Near him, someone groaned at the sudden lurch of the shitik into the next trough. Luka glanced indifferently at the man half sprawled on the deck and half propped against the rail. The man held his stomach with limp arms while his head lolled to the side, his eyes shut and his mouth sagging open, vomit drying on his beard and clothes.
    Disinterestedly, Luka watched the Cossack Vladimir Shekhurdin move from one ailing man to another, wetting lips with a moist cloth and squeezing drops of water into parched mouths. Luka looked over his comrades on deck. The hunting party was composed of a rough breed of men, some fifty in number, promyshleniki by trade, but their backgrounds were varied. Some were criminals—thieves, tax evaders, or murderers. Others were exiles, others serfs fleeing the tyranny of their masters. And some were like himself, the sons of promyshleniki, possessed by a lust to roam. Their assorted pasts mattered little to him. His own life had its shadows, its brutality and violence.
    His glance fell on the distinctive features of a Kamchadal—the thickly lidded eyes and the broad, heavy facial bones of the Mongol race. He touched a hand to the scar on his face, feeling the coldness of hatred course through him for this tribal cousin of the Chukchi who had butchered his father and permanently disfigured him. A handful of Kamchadals were included in the hunting expedition, baptized by the church and thus the equal of any Muscovite. But not to Luka—never to Luka.
    Jostled from behind, Luka swung testily around, then controlled the impulse to retaliate for the accidental shoving as Yakov Petrovich Chuprov regained his balance on the heaving deck. He held the steady gaze of the man’s wise eyes for an instant, then curtly nodded to him. Chuprov’s reputation as a hunter was well known to him, and Luka chose not to tangle with this sandy-bearded man who might be elected to lead the hunt. Only moments ago he’d seen Chuprov talking with the navigator.
    “How long before we reach the islands? Did Nevodchikov say?” Luka asked. Since passing the Komandorskie Islands, they’d seen no land, only slate-gray sea and sky with occasional glimpses of the sun splitting through the clouds.
    “He thinks it will be soon.” A seagull swooped low across the shitik’s bow. “According to him, the seabirds are a sign we’re near land.”
    Luka noticed the increased number of birds in the air, but he recognized few of them. He was versed in land animals rather than the creatures of the sky and sea. The prospect of finally seeing the land that had haunted him these past years filled him with hard satisfaction. “Do you believe Nevodchikov?”
    “The winds have been steady and the weather fair.” The promyshlenik shrugged. “He’s been here before. I have not.”
    From the starboard side of the deck, one of the seasick Kamchadal natives called for water. The tall, erect figure of the Cossack Shekhurdin made its way across the crowded deck. Luka gazed with contempt at the Cossack’s proud, lean face with its neatly trimmed beard.
    “Are you going to waste our water on him, Vladimir Andreivich?” Luka challenged, addressing him by two names as was the Russian custom. The first was his own, the second his father’s, Vladimir son of Andrei.
    “The man is thirsty.” Shekhurdin continued, undeterred.
    But his way was quickly blocked by a second promyshlenik, a big, heavily muscled man. “You might as well heave it over the side as to give it to him. That’s where it’s going to end up anyway.” Belyaev’s grin revealed the wide gap that separated his front teeth, giving him a deceptively stupid look, but