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*
There's no doubt that a man — an aëronaut — like Lee Scoresby dislikes being left on the ground for traveling.
John can hear him cursing up a storm, kicking rocks and swatting furiously at insects buzzing in his ears. His hare daemon scolds Lee for making a fuss, hopping alongside him in the tall fern grass. She's soon scooped up, cradled in Lee's arm.
Sayan Kötör flies ahead, watching out for friend or foe. He can feel her like an invisible matching heartbeat in the distance.
"I mentioned I left my balloon at the mouth of the river, didn'n I?" Lee asks, giving John a mindful but irritable look. He squats down, refilling a flask with cool drinking water. Small and silvery fish dart in the corner of John's eye, vanishing downriver.
"Yes, Mister Scoresby. We are headed for the Semyonov range of mountains. It'll be a thirty minute walk."
According to Lee, the nearest port has been occupied by the Imperial Guard of Muscovy. They seized all food and transport. Residents fled. Lee managed to escape with the help of Marisa Coulter, of all persons, and acquired a boat to find John.
"I have business to discuss with the leader of the Yenisei Pakhtars. I may be their shaman, but I answer to them directly." John gazes skywards as if looking for his large, beautiful daemon in the clouds above them, his expression flat. "If I am leaving the tribe, I must give good reason," he explains lowly. "We also need supplies for our journey which they will provide for us."
Lee shakes his head. "What was it like… gettin' mixed up in them Skraeling wars out in Bering-land? Any truth innit?"
The corner of John's mouth quirks.
"What have you heard, Mister Scoresby?"
"Not much," Lee admits with a shrug. He caps his flash, twisting it shut with his brown-leather gloved hands. Hester balances on his knees. "A seal hunter said ya got yurself shot 'n killed. He was in a god-damn stupor from drinkin' vodka." John's gaze follows the soft ridge of Lee's jaw bristling with dark hairs. He's surprisingly good-looking for a wanderer. "But I 'eard it was a beheadin' in the hands of the enemy."
John's chapped mouth quirk again. He laughs. "That's quite a string of contradictions."
"What d'happen, Mister Jopari? If ya dun mind me askin'?"
"We were camped out on Sakhalin during an avalanche. Many of my tribesmen were buried under the rock, and after I dug my myself out of the snow and ice… I regret to say I could not free them. Not while they were dead and the others were starving."
Lee's face softens. Hester stoops down, her little hare-ears drooping.
"Yeah… well, I 'eard that, too," he says, climbing to his feet. "That is unfortunate."
John grits his own teeth behind his closed lips. Even now in the bright, warm daylight with his eyes undreaming, John can hear their agonized screams echoing the Northern mountains. It's so sharp in his mind. "We were measuring starlight with instruments under my command… so I fear it was my duty to ensure they would return home. I failed. I was obsessed. I did not think of chance or consequence. There was much to be found about the Aurora when you discover it leads to other worlds."
"Thought them northern lights could lead ya to your boy…?"
"I did."
A glint of moisture clings to John's eyelashes. He stiffens his upper lip.
"Let us move on from here," John orders, facing towards the line of towering white oaks and hickories. It's meant to be taken as both men walking on and from the conversation. John's already sickly heart cannot bear the further weight of thinking of Will.
Lee doesn't contest a word he says.
For once.
*
Up on the ridgetop, John locates the high-pitched whistle of his osprey daemon.
Hester glances up before Lee does, murmuring to no-one, her whiskers twitching. John knows very little about the infinite and centuries-long mystery with daemons in Lee's world, but he has gathered that daemons sense daemons very quickly.
Sayan Kötör swoops down, landing on John's bare fist. Her feathers rustle.
"What is the matter?" John asks, sensing her apprehension.
"You are close," she murmurs. "Men are following you, Jopari. I have seen the sigil on their helmets and on their airships heading for the entrance of Lord Asriel's anomaly. They're with the Magisterium." There's a hateful and beautifully harsh shudder in her voice. John's knuckle lifts to touch Sayan Kötör's feathers, smoothing them under her beak, calming her. And himself.
Lee snorts.
"We can take 'em."
He hesitates when John and John's daemon bestow him with a near identical and solemn look of disbelief. Hester clucks her tongue disapprovingly. "Okay, we can't," Lee snaps. "But I'll be damned if I die out in this stinkin' mud without seein' Lyra one last time."
John's heart clenches. Instead of pain, he feels a comforting warmth in knowing Lee's determination about his child.
"We will do our best, Mister Scoresby."
A wet, crackling noise reverberates.
John doesn't wait for permission, tugging Lee's revolver out of Lee's belt as John whirls around and raises the weapon high. It goes off with the squeeze of John's finger. One of the Magisterium's soldiers drops dead within the thicket.
A stunned Lee recovers, obeying Hester's command of "left! go left!" and brandishes his well-oiled pistol. He shoots the next armour-clad soldier dressed in black, running towards Lee. They stagger back in the clearing, falling and wheezing out blood under their helmet. John watches Lee's expression grimace up. "Ss'alright," Hester mumbles nervously behind Lee. "It was us or them."
"No," Lee says as quiet as can be. "Remember… remember that it's Lyra or them. We a-doin' this for her."
"How many?" John murmurs, eyeing his daemon.
"Between thirty or forty."
John's stomach tosses violently. "No," he murmurs Lee's response, dragging his ash-smudged tattooed fingers over his eyelids.
While Lee checks his ammunition on him, they can hear leaves rustling on all sides. More men. "I'm thinkin' we need to haul ourselves out of here. Right now." Lee spins his pistol's cylinder with a flourish, clicking it in place. "Who's with me?"
"Me!" Hester blurts out, her animal-eyes rounding in fear. Sayan Kötör whistles reassuringly in Hester's direction.
They can hear yelling and rifles firing, stomping.
Lee throws his arm in front of John, shielding him and holding up his weapon. But there's no bullets firing their direction. John's eyes narrow. Everything goes silent after another heart-pounding moment. His ears ring deafeningly.
"Wait…" John says suddenly, clamping down on Lee's gun-hand. He forces Lee's arm to lower.
The leaves rustles harder. An old Siberian Tartar, wearing thin rags and furs, enters from the mountainous thicket. He's flocked by many more Tartars. John approaches him, as the headman speaks to John in his native Tartar language. John laughs, boomingly loud, waiting for the headman to finish bowing three times before embracing him and clapping the headman's back.
"… We're not getting paid enough for this," Hester announces.
Lee removes his hat, scratching his head in confusion and nodding.
*
The Magisterium couldn't dispatch fourteen Yenisei Pakhtars.
However, all of the Tartars killed what remained of thirty-two of the Magisterium's ruthless soldiers.
John and Lee follow them down the mountain and towards a creek flowing down. There's a line of low hills patched in snow streaked with blackened dirt. If not for Lord Asriel, it would be more heavily ice-crusted snow. Once through the shortleaf pines dotted among the lowland spruces, John glimpses the large round rock marking the boundary of the Yenisei Pakhtars's village.
Villagers — all of them with similiar facial features to the old Siberian headman — crowd through the muddy pathways. Some farm, some playing with naked children, some herding livestock to be butchered and salted, and some carrying water buckets.
All of their daemons: wolves covered in thickened grey fur.
Even the headmen himself and the Tartar warriors and hunters walk alongside their wolf daemons.
"Take time to rest while you are here," John tells an intensely curious Lee. He grasps onto his shoulder, returning Lee's revolver to him. "I will return shortly." Lee mutters in agreement, grasping John's opposite shoulder, marching away for an empty field.
As he does, the villagers take notice.
They rush to touch John's hand, seeking his words and wisdom.
John cradles their fingers to his chest and mouth, kissing their palms, blessing them.
He comes across a massive, wood-framed hut draped in animal skins. John enters, staring up to the boar tasks. Antlers of elk and reindeer. The horns themselves were arranged befitting the highest spiritual pattern, ornamented with dried, dead willow and heather and crowberry, and plaited sprays of aupaluktunnguat. A vividly purple bloom.
Standing and waiting for him, the headman's daughter.
What would one assume might be one of servitude is indeed a ruler. A queen among the Yenisei Pakhtars. She does not command armies, but all heeded and obeyed her. The headman's daughter is as old as John, with black, plaited hair flecked in silver.
She does not bow.
John bows to her, keeping his head low for several moments. The headman's daughter, slender and handsome and blaze-eyed, with her chin jutting strongly, gestures him forward as John raises his head. "You are missing your daemon, Jopari."
"Missing but not forgotten," John murmurs in her Tartar language, offering a close-lipped smile.
Her wolf daemon growls as if perplexed.
"I know of your visit. I know what of you wish. You wish to leave the Yenisei Pakhtars tribe."
"Not because I wish to," John insists. The headman's daughter frowns sternly. "I will leave because I must do what is right. You have seen the snows melting. This world is dying. We will all die if Lord Asriel does not return to his world he left behind."
"You are certain of this?"
"The only way he will come back is if Lord Asriel wins his war and we are free of tyranny in all known and unknown worlds. The only way this world of yours can be free of the Magisterium is if The Authority itself is destroyed. Until it is done, I must leave."
The headman's daughter scrutinises him as if picking through John's mind. She has that way about her.
"The man. The Navajo. You have pledged yourself to him, Jopari?"
John exhales loudly in astonishment, raising his eyebrows.
His smile reappears, widening and exposing his teeth. He bashfully nods.
"Then your journey has been decided. Return with Lord Asriel and you will be welcomed back to this tribe as our shaman."
John bows deeply. "Thank you. We will need rations and supplies if you have any to spare."
"We do. Now go."
He steps out, making sure to never turn his back to the headman's daughter before stepping off the wooden planks. Another of the Tartar villagers holds a conversation with John about an injured scout, and then John hurries for the empty field.
Lee has been fast asleep against a boulder, his hat tilted over his eyes.
Sayan Kötör perched herself above the boulder, for who knows how long ago, seeming to guard Lee. Hester, curled up in Lee's lap, blinks her eyes open drowsily. John crouches down next to his companion, wrapping his fingers gently to Lee's elbow.
"Mister Scoresby?"
"Hhm," Lee grunts aloud, shifting himself and yanking out of John's grasp.
"Would you like some supper, Mister Scoresby?"
He can't see Lee's expression but Hester herself jerks to attention, nose quivering. "Why didn'ya say so in the first place?" Lee complains, shifting himself back up and adjusting his brown-leather hat. He re-grasps onto a smiling John's hand.
*
There's a scent in the air like woodsmoke and jenniver spirits.
Lee has settled himself on a log, rolling a ceegar with freshly cut smokeleaf. He sniffs it in approval. John tends to the injured Tartar hunter babbling away to his wife scolding him for his recklessness. An infected, bleeding wound in the Tartar's calf.
He makes note of replenishing on harp-flower for his bloodmoss ointment, needing to boil the root until it blackened.
"Where'd ya learn that?"
"Another shaman named Turukhanik," John informs him softly, not looking up from swabbing the wound already numbing of pain. "A very humble but knowledgeable man, Mister Scoresby. I have learned a great deal living with the Tartars." He nods and murmurs to the hunter's wife, watching as she half-carries him away and patting off his hands, closing his medicine-knapsack.
Lee puffs a little on his ceegar. "Tartars are best known as cutthroats, last I 'eard," he says absently.
"They're only men, Mister Scoresby," John argues. "Cutthroats, perhaps… but with wives and husbands and lovers and children. They live based on their principles and traditions and societal expectations they made for themselves as anyone in London experiences. Tartar politics are as complicated as our own." John huffs a laugh. "It was quite a stir when I was initiated."
"M'sorry," Lee mumbles, smiling sheepishly. "That sounded ignorant, didn'nit?"
"… May I show you?"
"Pardon?" Lee asks, and then hesitates. He witnesses as John parts his hair, digging his fingertips to expose his scalp. Along the top of John's head, there's healed but scarred skin. "Well, I'll be… that's trepanning, issit? I 'eard you volunteered."
"Two days and a night with a bow drill and a fire," John admits. "I hardly remember most of it."
"Suppose it hurt?"
"You suppose correctly. I remember waking up and vomiting, and then finding myself waking up five days later."
Lee's thumb runs along his mother's ring. A familiar motion.
Two of the village women pass by, staring fixedly at Lee's ring and then Lee, giggling to each other.
"… They think you've been pledged to someone," John says helpfully to a now dumbfounded but frustrated Lee.
Lee scowls at no-one in particular.
"Betrothed, y'mean?" Lee crinkles his nose. "To who?" When John doesn't say anything, but smiles in his odd shaman way, the metaphorical bulb flickers over Lee's head. "Mister Jopari…" Lee says this like a warning. Hester's ears flatten.
"I may have forgotten to mention this… but I can assure you that it is nothing to be concerned about…" When Lee doesn't appear convinced, John simpers. "Usually… when one of the tribesmen brings in an outsider and introduces them to the tribe… it can imply that you have pledged yourself to them in for some manner and are seeking the tribe's approval…"
"Oh no," Lee declares. He rubs the bridge of his nose with his non-ceegar hand. "Tell me you wouldn' have…"
John hmms. "I do recall giving you a ring, Mister Scoresby." He's only teasing, but the manner in which Lee's face reddens feels… gladdening. "You and I are pledged to a common cause. Nothing more, I can assure you."
Somehow, this only further infuriates Lee.
"Wh'ss wrong with me? Hmm?" he demands, pinching out his ceegar. "Ain't I good enough for the likes of a shaman?"
Hester sighs, aiming a long-suffering and pleading glance to Sayan Kötör craning her little head. Help me.
"Forgive me…" John peers over Lee, smiling doubtfully. "But I fear I am being given unreliable information by you…" Lee rolls his eyes and scoots off the log, fisting into John's tattered vest. He tugs John in, covering his lips to John's mouth in a kiss.
"How 'bout that?"
"Much better," John breathes, like he's dreaming awake, like there's nothing more wonder than this moment. He raises his hands to grasp Lee's face and kissing him himself, savouring the irresistible warmth. Savouring every little touch and breath.
This journey led them to be together.
He's ready for anything now.
*