The Steppes of Central Asia Affair: Act 4
The Steppes of Central Asia Affair
-a Man from UNCLE slash fanfic by Taylor Dancinghands
Pairing: Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin; Characters: Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin
Genre: slash, h/c, BDSM, A/U: His Dark Materials Universe
Warnings: none
Rating: Mature/PG 13
Beta:gevr
Act 4: "Now that's what I call cavalry!"
Illya stood once more, peering out past milling horses and remaining patches of untrampled, tall grass to see a group of five or six Windriders and one man in the uniform of a local constable riding a motorcycle. That would be Ganzorig, Batu's brother-in-law, who was a Windrider and had his own spirit steed, but which he preferred to protect from his occasionally dangerous official duties. Most visible of all among their rescuers, however, was the Armoured Bear -not quite as heavily armoured as the chieftain, so it was almost certainly…
"Siglinda!" Illya cried. "Now that's what I call cavalry!"
"Byrn's niece? She's here?" Napoleon said, hastily drying his face with the back of his sleeve. Illya handed him a handkerchief into which Napoleon voluminously blew his nose..
"That she is," Illya answered, "along with Batu and Ganzorig with a Windrider posse, and unless I'm very much mistaken they were guided here…" The silver furred figure Illya was looking for now popped up out of one of Ganzorig's motorcycle saddlebags and a second later was springing across the trampled grass and weaving fearlessly between the horses' hooves to launch himself into Illya's waiting arms.
Now Napoleon was rising to stand beside him so that he got big, wet fox kisses along with Illya. Suddenly, Siglinda, who had been standing upwind of Ganzorig's motorbike with her head raised for several moments, burst into a run, propelling her snowy bulk at remarkable speed toward one of the Windriders just now coming up with the herd.
"You!" she roared. "Where is my aunt!!!"
The man's horse startled and the rider himself pulled hard on the reins as though to wheel away and flee. It would be interesting to see, Illya thought fleetingly, who could run faster, a Windrider and his spirit steed or an angry, half-armoured Ice Bear. The race was curtailed, however, when Siglinda roared again.
"Kidnapper!" she cried. "Your stench was all over the tent from which my aunt was stolen, but Byrn told me to leave you be, or you'd hurt her. Now I've done with waiting, you vermin! Tell me where you've taken her!"
At these words the horse skidded to an abrupt stop, and when the rider tried to urge him forward, brutally kicking his flanks, the horse thrust his head down and bucked him off.
"Noo!!" the man wailed as he pushed himself up off the ground to see his steed back away. "No, my Kifti! No! Please! I only wanted a new life for us, for both of us!"
Most of the recently arrived Windriders' attentions were drawn to this scene but Batu had finally spotted them, Illya saw to his relief, and cleared his way through the milling horses to approach.
"It is very good to see you, my friend," Illya greeted him, "but I hope you brought a tool kit."
Hands were shaken all around and Batu made a brief examination of the hardware binding Napoleon and Illya's ankles. "Ganzorig will have something, I'm pretty sure. I'll be right back."
The constable and his motorbike had putted their way over to where some of the other Windriders who'd been driving the herd were gathered. Batu caught up with him there, got something out of one of the saddlebags, and then returned to the two agents while Ganzorig made his way over to where Siglinda stood menacing over the fallen Windrider.
"The drivers Ganzorig was talking to over there said that Nergui asked to join the drive only yesterday," Batu reported as he applied the bolt cutters to Illya and Napoleon's shackles. "And that he was strangely insistent that the horses be driven precisely this direction."
"Nergui!" Napoleon said, rubbing his ankles as they were freed. "Again!"
"I presume Siglinda's testimony will be enough to put him behind bars for kidnapping at least," Illya said.
"It may be," Batu sad sadly, "but it hardly matters now. He has earned himself a fate worse than any we could mete out."
Illya, stepping gratefully free of his own shackles, looked at Batu curiously. "How so?" he asked.
"Spirit steeds cannot abide crimes such as this," Batu replied. "And they abhor even village life and will not go near a city. Nergui thought he could take the money from these criminals and start a new life in some town, with modern conveniences and a western lifestyle, and somehow still keep his spirit steed. Once or twice in every generation it happens. Always there is someone who doesn't learn, but it is terrible to watch, every time."
"What will happen to him?" Illya asked, even as a likely picture was forming in his imagination.
"If he agrees to exile, Ganzorig will probably let him go," Batu said sadly. "He may even let him keep any money he's gotten so far. It doesn't matter. We will find him, or hear about him in some weeks or months, all his money gone, living on the streets, alcoholic or addicted to drugs or gambling. They seldom live for more than a year or two, once they lose their spirit steed. Usually less."
"He will have to tell us where Byrn's mate is, and where Thrush has their camp before he's let go," Napoleon said. "But as for the rest of it, your people's justice takes precedence, as always."
Saphina and Pasha remained silent throughout all this, mainly too full of relief for words. Together the four of them plus Batu made their way over to where Ganzorig was putting Nergui in handcuffs. The man was clearly broken, weeping and calling for his steed, but the creature had already gone, lost among the herd. Napoleon's gaze was haunted as he watched the man being led away.
"It's not the same thing, you know," Illya said. "You and I, we couldn't live for a minute without Pasha and Saphina."
"I don't know," said Napoleon. "Maybe it's just… slower." He shuddered and Illya understood his horror.
"It really can't be the same, though," Illya said. "Otherwise every Thrush operative would be deserted by their daemons and we'd be out of a job."
Napoleon thought about this for a moment, his gaze on his daemon, who walked with her flank brushing against her human's leg, both unwilling to break contact even by an inch. "I suppose you have a point," he said eventually. "All in all, though, I'm more than satisfied with the present state of affairs."
"As am I, my friend," Illya said, his own arms full of ecstatic silver fox. "As am I."
The trip back to Batu's camp, where they would stop to question Nergui, was interesting to manage, as the Thrush catspaw refused to ride any horse so ended up sitting in front of Ganzorig on his motorbike, and Napoleon refused to be separated from Saphina, who none of the conventional sorts of horses would go anywhere near, so the two of them were offered the rare privilege of riding on Siglinda's broad, armoured back. Illya rode one of the feisty little mongol ponies from the herd, which was almost big enough for him, while Pasha rode crouched over the animal's withers.
At Batu's camp a tape recorder was used to capture Nergui's confession. Once he'd given the location of the Thrush camp where Byrn's mate was being held, Ganzorig used Batu's radio to organize an armed posse who all gathered at Batu's a few hours later. Ganzorig also called in a few deputies to cart Nergui back to the regional justice center to be held until his case was settled.
Proving himself to be a man of boundless resources, Batu managed to borrow a motorcycle with a sidecar so that Napoleon and Illya could join the raid themselves.
He also had spare communicators for Napoleon and Illya to call UNCLE and make their own report. They agreed that since this seemed to be some kind of retrieval operation for Thrush, and that no mad scientist or secret plans were likely involved, any Thrush prisoners taken at the camp should be surrendered to local authorities.
By the time the assault party was ready Siglinda'd had time to run and find Byrn so that he could join them. The thick forest surrounding the Thrush camp masked their approach (Napoleon and Illya left the motorcycle and proceeded on foot a mile from the camp) and their appearance came as a complete surprise. There was a brief exchange of gunfire but then the Thrush leader made the mistake of threatening the hostage.
Byrn's massive form came catapulting, heedless of any danger, through the hail of gunfire to the man holding a high powered rifle to his mate, and bashed his head in with one swipe of his armoured paw, before he could even properly aim the weapon. Most of the rest of the Thrush men surrendered shortly thereafter, save for the few who ran off into the forest, causing some of the posse members to joke about how the local wolves would enjoy the change in their diet, if only briefly.
With the rounding up of Thrush personnel well in hand, Illya and Napoleon took it upon themselves to inspect the Thrush leader's tent, stepping around his inert and lifeless body as they entered. Inside were only a scattering of memos, maps and field reports which the two UNCLE agents took custody of. They were making a more thorough investigation of his quarters when Siglinda entered, pushing her way through the canvass door-flap.
"I still don't understand," she said as Illya examined the desk drawers for false bottoms and Pasha sniffed around the borders of the tent for anything suspicious. "Why was it necessary for these men to resort to kidnapping my aunt? We pledged ourselves to the task they assigned us and never once complained about the workload or anything else they required. We never asked why they wanted us to do these things; that was part of our agreement. I still don't know what they wanted us to find."
"No?" inquired Napoleon, replacing what was left of the mattress after Saphina had ripped it open from top to bottom, revealing nothing of interest. "I think Byrn might have begun to guess."
"And I think I've figured out the town whose name is connected with those events you were talking about, Napoleon," Illya put in. "It came to me last night -Tunguska is actually several hundred miles to the north, but sixty years ago it was probably the only town anywhere near here that had a newspaper in which the event could be written about."
"Tunguska?" Siglinda asked, clearly still mystified.
"Your people probably call the event the Taiga Starfall," Napoleon explained. "And there's a good chance you, or Byrn or someone like him knows more about it than anyone else on Earth. For the rest of us, it's more or less a complete mystery."
"Though there have been a number of tantalizing theories," Illya said, recalling a handful of truly fascinating papers he'd read on the subject.
"Isn't that the one that some scientists thought could be a quantum black hole which fell to Earth?" said Pasha. "Thrush would certainly be more than happy to take possession of such a powerful artifact."
"And I suppose," now came a voice from outside the tent, "that means you UNCLE two-leggers think that you are the proper guardian of the remnants of the Taiga Starfall?"
Siglinda pushed the tent flap open to reveal Byrn standing at the threshold and Napoleon and Illya, daemons at their sides, stepped past her to face the Armoured Bear Chieftain and his mate who stood close beside him.
"Not at all," Napoleon said, diplomatically. "I think you and Siglinda and… Mrs Byrn…"
"Siggrunda," offered Byrn's mate. She wore not a single piece of armour nor any other adornment, yet her manner was unmistakably regal.
"Thank you," Napoleon replied with a bow. "Napoleon Solo, at your service, and this is my partner, Illya Kuryakin. In any case, the Ice Bears have ably demonstrated their ability to keep this artifact safe and well protected, as they were charged to do long ago. UNCLE has no intention of interfering."
This announcement seemed to catch Byrn completely off guard, though not so much Siggrunda, who was clearly the diplomat of the family. "It pleases me very much to hear such from UNCLE's representatives," she said. "Those who would imply that UNCLE, like all western institutions, is no friend of the Bears', will hear differently from me."
"I too, will gladly share my experience of your honorable actions in this matter," said Siglinda. "But I still don't understand why it was necessary to bring Nergui and the Windriders into this."
"Once Thrush suspected that Byrn had some idea of what they were looking for," Illya explained, putting it together himself, "they had to eliminate even the slightest possibility that Byrn would go to the Windriders for help. It would have been unlikely, but in order to protect the Ice Bears' sacred trust, there's no length he wouldn't go to-even as far as requesting assistance from Windrider local authorities. Promoting hostilities between the Windriders and the Bears in order to close any avenue of help from that direction can't have been that hard and would have had the added benefit of distracting Byrn from his higher duties."
"Especially when Nergui artificially inflated the tribute requested," Napoleon added. "All the clan leaders I talked to said they suspected it, but nobody had any way to prove it."
"And when it looked like you were about to prove it," Saphina set the last piece in place, "they concluded that UNCLE's interference had to be eliminated."
"In a way that would make them look like especially stupid, citified westerners," a new voice contributed as Batu stepped up to join them. "Discrediting UNCLE generally throughout the whole region. Your Pasha must have broken the sound barrier to find me when he did. A minute later and Thrush would've had their way. If he were my spirit steed he'd have oats and apples every day for a month after that."
Pasha made a face at this. "I'd prefer liver snacks and belly rubs," he said.
"And you shall have them," promised Illya. "As many as you like."
NEXT
-a Man from UNCLE slash fanfic by Taylor Dancinghands
Pairing: Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin; Characters: Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin
Genre: slash, h/c, BDSM, A/U: His Dark Materials Universe
Warnings: none
Rating: Mature/PG 13
Beta:gevr
Act 4: "Now that's what I call cavalry!"
Illya stood once more, peering out past milling horses and remaining patches of untrampled, tall grass to see a group of five or six Windriders and one man in the uniform of a local constable riding a motorcycle. That would be Ganzorig, Batu's brother-in-law, who was a Windrider and had his own spirit steed, but which he preferred to protect from his occasionally dangerous official duties. Most visible of all among their rescuers, however, was the Armoured Bear -not quite as heavily armoured as the chieftain, so it was almost certainly…
"Siglinda!" Illya cried. "Now that's what I call cavalry!"
"Byrn's niece? She's here?" Napoleon said, hastily drying his face with the back of his sleeve. Illya handed him a handkerchief into which Napoleon voluminously blew his nose..
"That she is," Illya answered, "along with Batu and Ganzorig with a Windrider posse, and unless I'm very much mistaken they were guided here…" The silver furred figure Illya was looking for now popped up out of one of Ganzorig's motorcycle saddlebags and a second later was springing across the trampled grass and weaving fearlessly between the horses' hooves to launch himself into Illya's waiting arms.
Now Napoleon was rising to stand beside him so that he got big, wet fox kisses along with Illya. Suddenly, Siglinda, who had been standing upwind of Ganzorig's motorbike with her head raised for several moments, burst into a run, propelling her snowy bulk at remarkable speed toward one of the Windriders just now coming up with the herd.
"You!" she roared. "Where is my aunt!!!"
The man's horse startled and the rider himself pulled hard on the reins as though to wheel away and flee. It would be interesting to see, Illya thought fleetingly, who could run faster, a Windrider and his spirit steed or an angry, half-armoured Ice Bear. The race was curtailed, however, when Siglinda roared again.
"Kidnapper!" she cried. "Your stench was all over the tent from which my aunt was stolen, but Byrn told me to leave you be, or you'd hurt her. Now I've done with waiting, you vermin! Tell me where you've taken her!"
At these words the horse skidded to an abrupt stop, and when the rider tried to urge him forward, brutally kicking his flanks, the horse thrust his head down and bucked him off.
"Noo!!" the man wailed as he pushed himself up off the ground to see his steed back away. "No, my Kifti! No! Please! I only wanted a new life for us, for both of us!"
Most of the recently arrived Windriders' attentions were drawn to this scene but Batu had finally spotted them, Illya saw to his relief, and cleared his way through the milling horses to approach.
"It is very good to see you, my friend," Illya greeted him, "but I hope you brought a tool kit."
Hands were shaken all around and Batu made a brief examination of the hardware binding Napoleon and Illya's ankles. "Ganzorig will have something, I'm pretty sure. I'll be right back."
The constable and his motorbike had putted their way over to where some of the other Windriders who'd been driving the herd were gathered. Batu caught up with him there, got something out of one of the saddlebags, and then returned to the two agents while Ganzorig made his way over to where Siglinda stood menacing over the fallen Windrider.
"The drivers Ganzorig was talking to over there said that Nergui asked to join the drive only yesterday," Batu reported as he applied the bolt cutters to Illya and Napoleon's shackles. "And that he was strangely insistent that the horses be driven precisely this direction."
"Nergui!" Napoleon said, rubbing his ankles as they were freed. "Again!"
"I presume Siglinda's testimony will be enough to put him behind bars for kidnapping at least," Illya said.
"It may be," Batu sad sadly, "but it hardly matters now. He has earned himself a fate worse than any we could mete out."
Illya, stepping gratefully free of his own shackles, looked at Batu curiously. "How so?" he asked.
"Spirit steeds cannot abide crimes such as this," Batu replied. "And they abhor even village life and will not go near a city. Nergui thought he could take the money from these criminals and start a new life in some town, with modern conveniences and a western lifestyle, and somehow still keep his spirit steed. Once or twice in every generation it happens. Always there is someone who doesn't learn, but it is terrible to watch, every time."
"What will happen to him?" Illya asked, even as a likely picture was forming in his imagination.
"If he agrees to exile, Ganzorig will probably let him go," Batu said sadly. "He may even let him keep any money he's gotten so far. It doesn't matter. We will find him, or hear about him in some weeks or months, all his money gone, living on the streets, alcoholic or addicted to drugs or gambling. They seldom live for more than a year or two, once they lose their spirit steed. Usually less."
"He will have to tell us where Byrn's mate is, and where Thrush has their camp before he's let go," Napoleon said. "But as for the rest of it, your people's justice takes precedence, as always."
Saphina and Pasha remained silent throughout all this, mainly too full of relief for words. Together the four of them plus Batu made their way over to where Ganzorig was putting Nergui in handcuffs. The man was clearly broken, weeping and calling for his steed, but the creature had already gone, lost among the herd. Napoleon's gaze was haunted as he watched the man being led away.
"It's not the same thing, you know," Illya said. "You and I, we couldn't live for a minute without Pasha and Saphina."
"I don't know," said Napoleon. "Maybe it's just… slower." He shuddered and Illya understood his horror.
"It really can't be the same, though," Illya said. "Otherwise every Thrush operative would be deserted by their daemons and we'd be out of a job."
Napoleon thought about this for a moment, his gaze on his daemon, who walked with her flank brushing against her human's leg, both unwilling to break contact even by an inch. "I suppose you have a point," he said eventually. "All in all, though, I'm more than satisfied with the present state of affairs."
"As am I, my friend," Illya said, his own arms full of ecstatic silver fox. "As am I."
The trip back to Batu's camp, where they would stop to question Nergui, was interesting to manage, as the Thrush catspaw refused to ride any horse so ended up sitting in front of Ganzorig on his motorbike, and Napoleon refused to be separated from Saphina, who none of the conventional sorts of horses would go anywhere near, so the two of them were offered the rare privilege of riding on Siglinda's broad, armoured back. Illya rode one of the feisty little mongol ponies from the herd, which was almost big enough for him, while Pasha rode crouched over the animal's withers.
At Batu's camp a tape recorder was used to capture Nergui's confession. Once he'd given the location of the Thrush camp where Byrn's mate was being held, Ganzorig used Batu's radio to organize an armed posse who all gathered at Batu's a few hours later. Ganzorig also called in a few deputies to cart Nergui back to the regional justice center to be held until his case was settled.
Proving himself to be a man of boundless resources, Batu managed to borrow a motorcycle with a sidecar so that Napoleon and Illya could join the raid themselves.
He also had spare communicators for Napoleon and Illya to call UNCLE and make their own report. They agreed that since this seemed to be some kind of retrieval operation for Thrush, and that no mad scientist or secret plans were likely involved, any Thrush prisoners taken at the camp should be surrendered to local authorities.
By the time the assault party was ready Siglinda'd had time to run and find Byrn so that he could join them. The thick forest surrounding the Thrush camp masked their approach (Napoleon and Illya left the motorcycle and proceeded on foot a mile from the camp) and their appearance came as a complete surprise. There was a brief exchange of gunfire but then the Thrush leader made the mistake of threatening the hostage.
Byrn's massive form came catapulting, heedless of any danger, through the hail of gunfire to the man holding a high powered rifle to his mate, and bashed his head in with one swipe of his armoured paw, before he could even properly aim the weapon. Most of the rest of the Thrush men surrendered shortly thereafter, save for the few who ran off into the forest, causing some of the posse members to joke about how the local wolves would enjoy the change in their diet, if only briefly.
With the rounding up of Thrush personnel well in hand, Illya and Napoleon took it upon themselves to inspect the Thrush leader's tent, stepping around his inert and lifeless body as they entered. Inside were only a scattering of memos, maps and field reports which the two UNCLE agents took custody of. They were making a more thorough investigation of his quarters when Siglinda entered, pushing her way through the canvass door-flap.
"I still don't understand," she said as Illya examined the desk drawers for false bottoms and Pasha sniffed around the borders of the tent for anything suspicious. "Why was it necessary for these men to resort to kidnapping my aunt? We pledged ourselves to the task they assigned us and never once complained about the workload or anything else they required. We never asked why they wanted us to do these things; that was part of our agreement. I still don't know what they wanted us to find."
"No?" inquired Napoleon, replacing what was left of the mattress after Saphina had ripped it open from top to bottom, revealing nothing of interest. "I think Byrn might have begun to guess."
"And I think I've figured out the town whose name is connected with those events you were talking about, Napoleon," Illya put in. "It came to me last night -Tunguska is actually several hundred miles to the north, but sixty years ago it was probably the only town anywhere near here that had a newspaper in which the event could be written about."
"Tunguska?" Siglinda asked, clearly still mystified.
"Your people probably call the event the Taiga Starfall," Napoleon explained. "And there's a good chance you, or Byrn or someone like him knows more about it than anyone else on Earth. For the rest of us, it's more or less a complete mystery."
"Though there have been a number of tantalizing theories," Illya said, recalling a handful of truly fascinating papers he'd read on the subject.
"Isn't that the one that some scientists thought could be a quantum black hole which fell to Earth?" said Pasha. "Thrush would certainly be more than happy to take possession of such a powerful artifact."
"And I suppose," now came a voice from outside the tent, "that means you UNCLE two-leggers think that you are the proper guardian of the remnants of the Taiga Starfall?"
Siglinda pushed the tent flap open to reveal Byrn standing at the threshold and Napoleon and Illya, daemons at their sides, stepped past her to face the Armoured Bear Chieftain and his mate who stood close beside him.
"Not at all," Napoleon said, diplomatically. "I think you and Siglinda and… Mrs Byrn…"
"Siggrunda," offered Byrn's mate. She wore not a single piece of armour nor any other adornment, yet her manner was unmistakably regal.
"Thank you," Napoleon replied with a bow. "Napoleon Solo, at your service, and this is my partner, Illya Kuryakin. In any case, the Ice Bears have ably demonstrated their ability to keep this artifact safe and well protected, as they were charged to do long ago. UNCLE has no intention of interfering."
This announcement seemed to catch Byrn completely off guard, though not so much Siggrunda, who was clearly the diplomat of the family. "It pleases me very much to hear such from UNCLE's representatives," she said. "Those who would imply that UNCLE, like all western institutions, is no friend of the Bears', will hear differently from me."
"I too, will gladly share my experience of your honorable actions in this matter," said Siglinda. "But I still don't understand why it was necessary to bring Nergui and the Windriders into this."
"Once Thrush suspected that Byrn had some idea of what they were looking for," Illya explained, putting it together himself, "they had to eliminate even the slightest possibility that Byrn would go to the Windriders for help. It would have been unlikely, but in order to protect the Ice Bears' sacred trust, there's no length he wouldn't go to-even as far as requesting assistance from Windrider local authorities. Promoting hostilities between the Windriders and the Bears in order to close any avenue of help from that direction can't have been that hard and would have had the added benefit of distracting Byrn from his higher duties."
"Especially when Nergui artificially inflated the tribute requested," Napoleon added. "All the clan leaders I talked to said they suspected it, but nobody had any way to prove it."
"And when it looked like you were about to prove it," Saphina set the last piece in place, "they concluded that UNCLE's interference had to be eliminated."
"In a way that would make them look like especially stupid, citified westerners," a new voice contributed as Batu stepped up to join them. "Discrediting UNCLE generally throughout the whole region. Your Pasha must have broken the sound barrier to find me when he did. A minute later and Thrush would've had their way. If he were my spirit steed he'd have oats and apples every day for a month after that."
Pasha made a face at this. "I'd prefer liver snacks and belly rubs," he said.
"And you shall have them," promised Illya. "As many as you like."
NEXT