Vow E-Book

Annelie Wendeberg

• Herausgeber: Annelie Wendeberg
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: The 1/2986 Series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

I’m the incendiary of savages. I burn down thrones.

The Brothers and Sisters of the Apocalypse aren’t happy with Micka. She’s blown up their satellite network and now passes valuable intel to their fiercest enemy — the Sequencer Council. But nothing goes as Micka plans, and soon the two most powerful global organisations want her dead.

Lines blur between friend and foe.

And Micka is out of options.

Award-winning author Annelie Wendeberg delivers a dark dystopian series that brims with fast-paced action and suspense. Based on climate science, Micka’s world gives a terrifying glimpse into our possible future.

Warning: Contains themes of war, trauma, physical abuse, violence, and other content which may be triggering to some readers.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This reminded me a lot of The Hunger Games but is much better and more realistic.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I'm a die-hard Micka fan. Annelie's writing takes you deep inside her characters and her books are not prettied up, but they are real and raw.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This is an excellent but brutal series and not for the faint at heart

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ If you like tough-as-nails, intelligent heroines, this book and series is for you!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Skillfully explores facets of human behavior few authors address. Intense relationships under adverse conditions yield a fast paced tale of conflict and humanity in the not so distant future.

Leseprobe

VOW

1/2986 - Book 4

ANNELIE WENDEBERG

Copyright 2018 by Annelie Wendeberg

eBook Edition

This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and names in this book are products of the author’s imagination. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN: 978-91-989004-7-7

Cover design by Alisha Moore (Damonza.com)

Interior design by Annelie Wendeberg. Chapter headings depict Alta rock carvings from 4500 to 500 BC.

Contents

All you need to know…

Part I

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Part II

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Part III

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Anna Kronberg Mysteries

Arlington & McCurley Mysteries

Keeper of Pleas Mysteries

More…

Acknowledgments

All you need to know…

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PartI

The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.

Thucydides

One

Chopping up a human corpse is one thing. Drooling over it is quite another. I try not to think too much about it, but my growling stomach keeps pulling my focus back to axe and meat. A small part of me wonders if it’s even necessary to cook the guy. Why not gather the small scraps of frozen thigh muscle that spatter the snow? Why not stuff them in my mouth and stop the hunger?

My stomach is a bitch. It’s not even polite enough to send bile up my throat in disgust. Just a flood of saliva. Feed me, feed me, my body screams. There’s no pretence left. I’m famished. We are famished, and the corpse is the only thing standing between life and death.

Despite the thick furs I’m wearing, warmth is sucked from my body at an alarming rate. A storm pummels my back, and fingers the gaps in my clothes. Throws splinters of ice against the narrow strips of my exposed skin. I pull my scarf higher and my hood lower, but three seconds later the wind has weaselled back in.

If the sea weren’t covered with ice, it would be a roaring battlefield of grey and white, smashing against this black, flat rock that’s Bear Island. It’s mid-April now, and temperatures are still far below freezing. The ice holds. If I can’t get our machine airborne again, we’ll have to take our sled to the mainland. Both options are near impossible.

The only other alternative is to give up and die right here. I’m not ready for that.

It’s four hundred kilometres and then some if we fly. More if we take the sled, because jumbled ice will force detours on us. Lots of them.

It’s far. Too far for the tiny amount of food we have left. We can’t wait this storm out. We can’t hunt, can’t leave, can’t do a thing. Our food is running out. The man I’m cutting up is the last meat we have. Well…maybe not quite.

There are the three sled dogs we had to release because we couldn’t feed them. They are running free on the island, catching seabirds. I saw them tear into an arctic fox once. Aside from us, the foxes must be the biggest animals here. I wonder when humans last visited this desolate place. And if they starved to death here.

I shake my head. No point thinking about that.

Before the storm rolled in, I took down two fat gulls. Blew their bodies to clouds of bloody feathers. I shouldn’t even have tried, shouldn’t have wasted ammo. My rifle is not for hunting small birds. It’s made to kill people.

I should have hunted with bow and arrow, but that’s Katvar’s speciality. Problem is, he can barely see straight, let alone aim. And I suck at bow hunting. The even bigger problem is that the blizzard has dropped visibility to near zero, and all the birds have gone into hiding to wait out the storm.

Still, our dogs manage well enough. I’ve tried to steal what they catch, or at least find out where they’re hunting. But they won’t let me get close enough. They don’t trust me anymore. I’ve cooked most of their pack members.

I’ve had no luck fishing, either. Wasted hours hacking holes into sea ice, hours waiting and freezing my ass off in this storm. For nothing.

There’s only one source of calories left — the man I shot in Longyearbyen. Katvar and I have been skirting around the issue for the past two days. I don’t know what it does to a person to eat another person. But we can’t wait any longer.

I gaze down at the axe in my hand, at the chunk of hairy thigh I’ve severed. Fuck. We are about to eat one of the Sequencer’s best sharpshooters, and I can’t find a shred of regret in me. That’s the biggest problem I have right now — I’m not even disgusted with myself.

I pull down my scarf and spit in the snow. Or mean to, but the wind smacks the saliva right back at me.

‘How is your head?’ I ask as I crawl into our snow hut and secure the entrance.

Katvar lifts a shoulder in a shrug. It’s only been four days since a bullet grazed the side of his head. The memory of his limp body in the snow, a pink and scarlet cloud spreading around him, makes my throat tighten like a fist.

I swallow and hide the meat behind my back.

He lifts a hand to signal he’s feeling better. I ask if he’s hungry. Stupid question. Of course he is, but he pretends not to be.

He’s set up the burner already. Snow is melting in a blackened pot. I drop the meat next to it, and tuck the bear pelt tighter around Katvar’s frame. It annoys him, my hovering. He’s still too pale, too haggard. We both are.

‘Stew is coming up in a bit,’ I say, trying a smile.

A jaw muscle feathers. He knows what’s on the menu, but neither of us mentions it. I want us to live. Katvar’s undemanding love has sneaked into the cracks of my black heart, and losing him would kill what little empathy I have left. The world could go to fucking hell if it weren’t for him. I’m still breathing because of him. As unfathomable as it is, he loves me. Even my geography of scars, my chasm of darkness.

That’s why I do what needs doing. For him, I stomp through the whiteout to a frozen corpse in the snow, axe in hand. And I’ll keep doing it until we’ve eaten it all, and get out of this white hell. Until we make it, and dreams of food aren’t mere fantasy. I’d kill for mashed potatoes with butter, string beans, and blood pudding. Or roast duck. The thought makes my legs buckle.

I crouch down and begin carving slices off the hunk of meat, drop them in the pot, and add a small handful of lichen for flavour. Or rather, to cover the flavour of human flesh. Whatever it tastes like. I haven’t tried it yet.

I’d thought of cooking inside the airplane because I didn’t want Katvar watching me do this. I don’t want the scents clinging to our bedding long after we eat. I don’t want to be reminded of this meal when I kiss Katvar’s skin. But we can’t afford to waste the heat from cooking with the little fuel we have left.

He’s watching me. My neck prickles and my hands feel clumsy. I force myself to work fast. Shaving off the hair is the least I can do. I can’t skin the thigh, because we need what little fat it provides. If I had butter, I would…

I swallow a mouthful of saliva.

‘Did you know that before the Great Pandemic, people thought starving was sexy?’ I say, and cut a sideways glance at him. He looks like he’s waiting for the punch line. ‘I’m not shitting you. They really thought this…’ I wave at my bony frame, ‘…was hot. They starved themselves. Called it dieting.’ Scoffing, I stir meat shavings into the pot.

Katvar cocks an eyebrow. ‘No wonder they’re all dead.’ A noise draws his attention to the block of compacted snow that serves as the door to our hut. I hear it too. The dogs have caught the scents of our cooking. The wind carries their yapping. I crawl to the entrance and dig a gap in the snow. Ghostly shadows flit through the whiteout. Wind snatches barks from snouts, and hurls them out to sea.

Yep, I’m stalling. It’s completely irrelevant whether the dogs are right here or farther away. The food isn’t for them. It’s ours.

The stew comes to a boil, and I switch off the burner and secure the lid, then wrap the pot in layers of reindeer skin. It takes longer to cook that way, but saves a lot of fuel. Tucking my chin against my knees, I shut my eyes and breathe slowly, conserving energy.

A rustling makes me look up. Katvar is moving on our bed of brush and furs. I ask how he’s feeling.

He rolls his eyes. That’s when I remember that I’d just asked him the same thing a few minutes before. His injury makes me nervous. It’s not healing, and last night it started bleeding again.

‘I want to take a look.’

‘You just did this morning,’ he signs.

‘And I’ll check it again and again until I’m happy with it.’

With a soft grunt, he lies back down, and lets me do my thing.

I undo the bandage around his head and check the sutures. Blood and clear liquid seep from torn skin. Looks exactly like it did a few hours ago. I spray disinfectant on the wound, just to make sure. Then I replace the bandages and gently press the gel pillow of the ultrasound scanner against the side of Katvar’s head. I’m looking for dark spots. I’m terrified he might be haemorrhaging. But there’s nothing.

He brushes his hand against my wrist and entwines his fingers with mine. ‘Micka,’ he croaks with his terribly damaged voice. ‘Lie with me.’

Startled, I almost drop the scanner. He rarely ever speaks. His scarred vocal cords make speaking painful and taxing. A leftover from the infection that nearly killed him when he was a small boy.

‘Rest for a bit,’ he signs. ‘Put your head on my shoulder.’

My vision swims. I swallow. ‘Are you giving up?’

He shakes his head. ‘I just want to hold my wife.’

His words tip me over the edge. The sharp precipice I’ve been walking for days. No — weeks, months.

A sob explodes from me, and I drop my head on his chest. He lifts a corner of our bear pelt and I sneak inside, curl a leg over his, wrap my arms tight around his frame that’s painfully sharp from starvation.

It all pours out then. That I am terrified. That I don’t want him to die. I can’t remember ever wanting to live, but now I do. I want to live with him. I want to cross this stupid, unforgiving sea and find a nice, warm place for us. Eat lots and lots of food. Have kids together. Not worry about injuries, death, war, and the BSA every single moment of my waking hours, and every one of my nightmares.

Katvar draws soft circles on my temple with one hand, and on the small of my back with the other.

I wipe snot and tears from my face. ‘So when the hell did we actually marry?’

He stiffens and draws back to look at me. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—’

I grab his signing hands. ‘Don’t compare what we have, with what the BSA did to me.’ Did to me makes those two forced marriages sound harmless. I was lucky with one, and not so…lucky with the other. Memories of my dead daughter rise, and I shove them back down.

Katvar’s lids lower as his gaze slides to my mouth. He tugs me closer and kisses my temple.

‘But, really,’ I say. ‘Did I sleep through the ceremony? The elders you picked must have sucked.’

Katvar snorts and I start to giggle.

‘I don’t need anyone to declare us husband and wife.’ His signing is a bit awkward with me in his arms. ‘I’m yours. As long as you want me. And…probably long after that.’

I shift to look at him. A severe mouth, dark eyes. ‘I want you. But… But there’s one thing I can’t do. I can’t have more than you.’ That’s my cringeworthy way of telling him that I’ll never follow the tradition of his clan — the Lume — where women have several partners to increase the chance of survival for their children.

Understanding relaxes his features. ‘I know. I would never ask that of you.’

I almost ask if his clan would demand it. But no, there’s no going back for him. When he came of age, his clan banned him from ever choosing a wife because of what his father did to his mother. Katvar is the product of brother raping sister. To the Lume, he has “bad blood.” That he and I are together violates one of their core values.

‘What is it?’ he signs.

‘I’m sorry you can’t go home because of me.’

His lips pull into a smile. He touches my face and curls his hand around the back of my neck. Pulls me in. Kisses me softly. And whispers against my mouth, ‘You are my home.’

Two

Heartbeat.

The word tastes of honey at the back of my tongue. Like a sweet marble, polished and perfectly round. About to slip down my throat as I open my mouth to release its syllables. And as the last hard consonant dies away, the marble bursts open.

The flavour that bleeds from its core will depend on…many things.

When I lower my eye to the scope of my rifle and slide the crosshairs over the target, my heartbeat slows. When my index finger squeezes the trigger, and the round is fired, my heart pauses for a beat. And my mouth fills with flavours of tree bark.

Not just any tree. It’s the constricting bittersweetness of the ancient cypresses of Taiwan that creeps across my palate.

Then my heartbeat tastes of Basheer — Runner’s name as a boy when the BSA killed his brothers and his father, all his clan, and dragged his sister and mother away. I wonder if he would mind if he knew that every time I stop someone else’s heart, the taste of his childhood fills my mouth. I don’t think he would. It was he who taught me killing.

Then there’s the flavour I hope never to feel on my tongue again. It’s the taste of a stutter. Of a compacted muscle that wants to give up, as I’m pressed to the floor by my second husband. A furry, scratchy, mouldy taste. I feel his heart beating against my back. His sweat.

My blood.

And then his.

I cut him open and bled him empty, the day after he murdered my newborn daughter.

I think of her every day. Of the day I was too weak to protect her. When grief digs its claws in too deep, I think of Katvar. His heart has a slow, deep rhythm. I want to wrap myself in it. Around him. Taste him. In a desert of ice and snow, the man with no voice has given me back my words and the flavours each of them carries. The BSA took them from me, and Katvar offered them back with a smile, a soft touch, and blueberries in reindeer milk.

Since then, his name tastes of exactly that: blueberries and reindeer milk.

He shifts and I open my eyes. The corners of his mouth curve. He reaches for me and trails his fingers through my hair. We could kiss, maybe even make love if we had the energy. We could forget our dire situation and make ourselves remember who we are. But I clench my teeth and say, ‘Food is ready.’

The stew is mostly meat, water, and bits of green. The man was lean. I wish he’d been fatter. We need lots of fat to survive the Artic. We’ve been pushed beyond our physical limits. Have been for weeks. Our bodies are beginning to self-consume.

I unwrap the reindeer skin from the pot and divide the stew into two bowls. Katvar sits up without help. It’s mostly stubbornness on his side. He doesn’t want to look as weak as he feels. I don’t tell him that I see right through him, as I hold out his bowl.

With trembling fingers, he accepts the food. And suddenly, I am deeply ashamed. I hated killing our dogs and cooking them for us. They were Katvar’s friends and I took them away, one after the other. I told myself we would get over it. You do what you must to survive. You harden yourself. You get the fuck through it.

But at what point is the cost of survival too high? Can we eat this human and not lose our humanity?

Katvar and I hold each other’s gaze as we lift the bowls to our mouths. It’s like a silent agreement. If you can do it, I can do it. Each of us wants the other to survive.

He swallows. His eyes water as he clenches his teeth. Fuck, I know precisely what he feels right now. I stifle a moan. The meat is the opposite of what I expect. It’s delicious. Tender, juicy, and quite similar to young mountain goat. Much, much better than dog.

‘I checked for GPS trackers,’ I blurt out for the sake of distraction. ‘Found two and ripped them out. One in the cockpit, and a smaller one in the taillight. The battery is at nine per cent. We need a day of sun. And then…’ I take a measured sip, so Katvar doesn’t think I’m greedy. ‘And then I just need to fix the broken ski. Maybe I’ll salvage parts from the sled.’

His eyes flare. He sets the bowl down to sign, ‘If you cut the sled apart and can’t fix the airplane, we are stuck here.’

‘I know, but…’ An idea starts creeping in. I take a big gulp of my soup and nod at Katvar’s bowl.

He blanches. ‘I don’t think I can stomach another drop.’

I catch myself before asking if he doesn’t like the taste. I could totally gobble up his leftovers. ‘It’s that or the dogs.’

He pauses, squeezes his eyes shut, and methodically forces the stew down his gullet. He’s not going to eat another of his dogs, not if he can help it.

I follow his example and very nearly throw up. The knowledge of what we are eating and enjoying puts my stomach in knots.

‘The aircraft is our biggest asset,’ I say. ‘We have to take it with us. The sled is less important. We can get a sled anywhere in the North, but not an airplane. We blew up the entire satellite network. Global communication is fucked, which means that getting from one place to another real fast will give us an edge.’

Katvar’s gaze darkens.

I lower my bowl. ‘I’m not in a warmongering mode. I’m just trying to not be stupid. The BSA are still around. We merely clipped their wings. But we clipped those of the Sequencers, too. Our main problem besides the obvious…’ I tip my head at the empty pot, ‘…is that both organisations hate me right now. So once we cross to the mainland, we have to hide our machine. Keep it safe. If the Sequencers find it, so be it. But I’ll blow it up before I let the Bull Shit Army get their dirty hands on it.’

‘How do you hide a thing that big?’ Katvar asks, but behind his eyes I see a strategy already blossoming. ‘Is there a manual?’

‘For the aircraft?’

He nods.

‘Don’t know. But we can see if it’s in my SatPad.’ I dig through my bag, thinking back to when Runner and I were crawling through the Taiwanese forest, our backpacks heavy with ammo and explosives, survival and communication gear. My hands still. I wonder if this war will ever be over. People have a tendency to keep pissing each other off on a global scale. So why try to end this war if some asshole is guaranteed to start another, two weeks later?

Katvar touches my shoulder and pokes his chin at my bag. ‘What’s this?’ he signs.

I almost forgot I took this. ‘It’s an MIT FireScope.’

He lifts an eyebrow in question.

‘I…um…found it in the Vault.’

He knows I’m not telling him everything, so he just waits.

I brace myself. ‘I took it so we can sequence your genome.’

His throat works. He lifts one hand, then slowly the other to sign, ‘Hope is a two-edged sword.’

‘I know. But no hope at all is worse. Will you let me do it?’

He scans my face, and gives me a brief nod. I’m pretty sure I won’t find any genetic defects, despite his being a product of inbreeding. I think of the large black tattoo on his chest: theTaker — the ritual knife the Lume fear and hate. The mere sight of the Taker and its obsidian blade hauls up in all the Lume a collective memory of infanticide. The knife is used to kill newborns who are too ill and weak to survive. Katvar said the Lume have little choice. For semi-nomadic hunters, a baby who will forever be sick is a danger to the health and well-being of all the others. They can’t afford to raise a child who’ll never be able to provide for the clan, who’ll always need help to accomplish the smallest of tasks. To the Lume, the Taker is a bitter necessity.

And because Katvar is the child of brother and sister, the ritual knife was carved into his chest when he came of age, so that no woman would ever want him. So that there is not the slightest chance of him fathering defective kids.

But he’s here, and I am not afraid. Chances are that our children, should we ever have any, will be healthy because he is healthy. But he himself needs proof. Something he can trust. To have a child who couldn’t live would destroy him utterly.

I clear my throat. ‘I used it only a couple of times. I have to read up on it again.’

‘I’ll do the reading. You have enough to do as it is.’ He’s been feeling useless and weak, but the curtain of insecurity is pushed away with one word. ‘Priorities.’ His hands cut through the air. He tugs the furs closer around his shoulders. ‘I’ll figure out what we need to get off the ground. Do you think the GPS still works?’

I shrug.

‘And maybe it’s not too late to tap into some kind of weather forecast?’ He chews on his lower lip and frowns. ‘The destruction of the global satellite network will be completed in a week, but if we’re lucky a few weather satellites are still up there and can show us which way the storm is moving. Shit. We might be visible once the sky clears. But the Sequencers and the BSA will have bigger problems than to go looking for us. They are probably trying to get a fix on this.’ He twirls a finger at the ceiling of our snow cave, indicating the burning satellites in the sky.

‘Shit tends to hit the fan when I’m around.’ I press my knuckles against my eyes until lights pop in my vision. ‘Our main problem is food. We’re running out of it, no matter what we decide to do next. We could take the sled, but we have only three dogs. None of them trust me, so they won’t let me catch them. Even if they were already in their harnesses, it’s four hundred kilometres to the mainland. We have three quarters of a corpse left. That’s less than fifty kilograms of lean meat.’

‘Brain has a high fat content,’ Katvar interrupts.

‘Ugh, thanks. Anyway. Flying shortens the travel time, but I don’t know how to navigate the aircraft without a GPS. We have a compass and some old maps in the machine, but flying over sea ice, we’ll have no reference points. We’ll get lost.’

‘How’s that any different from when we found our way to Svalbard? You forget the Lume never had access to satellite navigation. Give me a stretch of clear sky and I’ll tell you which way we’re heading.’

‘Oh, right. Okay, but…there’s still the food problem.’

‘Why not check if there’s a book about Bear Island on your SatPad?’

I huff. Of course, I’d only ever checked how best to get off this island, not how to survive on it.

He grins at me. ‘Show me how to work this thing.’

I log in, and tell Katvar that the SatPad uses voice recognition. I hold it to my mouth, say, ‘I give operating rights to…’ and shove it in his face.

He blinks, swallows, and croaks, ‘Katvar.’

‘Operating rights to Kark Var, please acknowledge,’ the machine squeaks.

‘Acknowledged,’ I say, and give him an apologetic shrug.

He takes the SatPad from me and scoots back to give me more space. For a moment, I hesitate. I want him to rest, not work. But then, reading can be done in bed. Quickly, I show him the main functions of the SatPad, and then say, ‘I’m going to check on the ice anchors. Make sure the storm can’t move the machine. Or rip out the anchors and tear the aircraft to shreds.’ My nerves are raw. I knuckle my thighs. So much can go wrong…is going wrong already.

He shifts his gaze to me, and brushes his fingers over my cheek. ‘We are alive, Micka. We have food; we have ways to get out of here.’

We might have a little food left, but ways to get out of here? I can’t see those, but I don’t have the heart to tell him that. Not yet. I blink the burning from my eyes and look away.

‘What?’ he rasps. ‘What’s wrong?’

Shit. Most days Katvar sees straight into me. It’s scary sometimes. Slowly, I pull in a breath and tell him. ‘There was a rattling when I checked the ice anchors last night.’

He narrows his eyes. ‘It was loud enough that you could hear it in the howling storm?’

I nod once and drop my head. ‘I don’t know how to get us out.’ Admitting this to him is hard. I don’t want him to lose what little hope we have left. My throat hurts. ‘If there hadn’t been a thick layer of snow covering the ice when I crash-landed, half the plane’s belly would have been ripped open. The snow cushioned the landing, but I broke one of the skis and damaged the undercarriage. Something is loose, probably bent. Maybe even cracked. That’s what’s rattling. And the…’ Angry, I slam a fist against my knee. ‘The fucking storm has exposed the jumbled ice. We can’t take off without a runway, and even if we had one, the landing gear would probably fall off before we got in the air. I screwed up. I’m… I’m so sorry.’

Three

Katvar grunts ‘Uh-huh,’ stares at the SatPad for a long moment, and signs, ‘Once we reach the mainland, where are we heading?’

‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’

He lifts an eyebrow. ‘Are you giving up?’

‘I’m just being realistic.’ Truth is, I’m exhausted. I haven’t stopped running for months.

‘Let’s assume we make it, okay?’ His expression is soft, as though I’m a wild animal that might bite if he’s not careful.

I open my mouth to point out that we never thought we’d survive this trip, so naturally, I didn’t plan beyond the impossible task of getting us to Norwegian territory, didn’t fool myself into thinking anything more could be done. But somehow, Katvar’s stoicism is infectious, and it lightens my exhaustion. ‘Do the Lume have connections to the peoples of northern Scandinavia? Do you think we might find someone friendly with your clan?’

‘I was with the Sami once, travelling with a small group of reindeer herders through Swedish territory. Birket would know if there are any tribes higher up north who are friendly with the Lume.’

Birket is chief of Katvar’s clan. Or he was, when we left them. A wise man and a good leader. I liked his wry humour. ‘I hope they are safe,’ I say. The chances that the BSA haven’t found the Lume, and retaliated for them helping me, are…slim.

Katvar doesn’t look up as he nods. ‘I need maps, a compass, paper and a pen, if we have any. The manual for the aircraft. Fifty kilograms of lean meat left, you said?’

‘Less than that, I think.’

‘In this cold, we’re using up a lot of energy. I don’t think lean meat alone is enough. We need a lot of fat, but meat is all we have, so…we’ll probably need to eat about four kilograms each day.’

‘Like, together?’

‘No, each. That’s eight kilos a day for the two of us. Which means…’

My stomach drops. ‘Food runs out in four or five days.’

‘Yeah,’ he croaks, and runs his fingers over a stubbly chin.

‘You are anaemic. You need to eat even more than that.’

He sits up straighter. ‘Then I will eat more. Make stew. I’ll do some thinking.’

While Katvar plans our next steps, I chop our corpse into five day’s worth of rations. The brain will serve as our daily energy boost. I cut it into five parts, each about the size of a large duck egg. More than half of the brain tissue is fat. I hope I’ll never again have to hack into a human skull, let alone turn its contents into dinner.

The liver will supply us with vitamins, and is divided into five portions as well. Then I put everything back in the airplane, out of reach of the dogs. I cut through the bones of the corpse’s left arm, add today’s ration of brain and liver to it, then push my way back through the storm and to our cave.