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dirty snow. Below the low hem, he could glimpse dark gray stockings and slippers made from the dark fur of some animal, possibly a wolf. She wore silver at her wrists and her ears, and a thin chain of pale gold around her throat.
    She was very old. Old enough, Bill thought, to be his grandmother. Her long gray hair was long and straight, but raggedly cut around her pale, lined face. Years of wrinkles were in the corners of her eyes and her mouth. One eye was cloudy, as if a cataract was forming there. The other was as gray as her dress, and disturbingly alert and direct.
    One of the old Soviets, Bill thought. A doctor or nurse who left her hospital or lost her job when the old system collapsed back in the nineties. He had read that there were many of them on the fringes of society in Putin's Russia, former professionals making do as best they could, living on the remains of their pensions and helping people when they needed it. Could she have seen our tent and called in a rescue for us?
    She walked quickly up to the bed and threw back the covers, exposing him to the waist. She laid one hand on his forehead, and the other on the inside of his elbow. They were both frigidly cold, and he flinched away.
    “What...”
    “Hush,” she said in a distracted tone. “You'll make me lose count.”
    Confused, he held his tongue, even as he blushed in embarrassment. After a few moments, she removed her hands and smiled at him, displaying slightly crooked teeth in a careworn face.
    “Well, the fever is gone, and your pulse is steady. The hand is well?”
    He held it up and wiggled the fingers experimentally. “It seems to be...Doctor...”
    “I am Polina,” she said. She pulled the covers the rest of the way down, ignoring both his startled yelp and his nudity. His feet, he saw, were as undamaged as his hand. She tested them briefly with her hands, then nodded, satisfied.
    “Your feet are recovered as well.” Her cold hand dropped briefly to the inside of his thigh, and she examined his groin. “No damage there, thanks be to the High One.” To Bill's intense relief his cock lay limp and flaccid against his leg. Despite the fantasies of young men, he knew enough to know that women nurses and doctors did not fall madly in lust as soon as one of their patients displayed an erect penis.
    It would be even worse to do it in front of a woman who was obviously long past such recreational thoughts.
    Polina tsked irritably. “Well, I suppose that will need some time to recover. You have had an intense trauma, after all.” her voice was slightly accented, but she spoke English well. She looked at his torso critically, counting the ribs in his too-thin chest.
    “Excuse me,” Bill said. “I don't quite understand. Are you a nurse? A doctor? Where am I? What happened to my friends? ”
    “Your friends?” she asked. “That would be the men and women in the cloth hut a short distance from where you collapsed? Seven of them?”
    “Yes!” Bill said eagerly. “Are they still there? Why didn't you rescue them, too?”
    Polina's voice was confused. “Why should I save them? You are the sacrifice. You were at the stone pillar. I saved you. They are the ones you gave your life for. Their lives are in your hands now. What would you have happen to them?”
    Something is very wrong, Bill thought. Either I am going crazy, or we are speaking the same language with entirely different meanings.
    Think, Carter.
    He had been dying of malnutrition and exposure, and had medical issues which modern science could not cure. He was now lying in a bed, warm and safe, with all his wounds healed.
    Reason said this was impossible.
    Reason could go fuck itself, Bill decided. Either I am still dying, and all this is a hallucination before I slip away entirely, or this is reality. Either way, I have to try to help my friends.
    “Let me make sure I have this right,” he said slowly. “The place you found me means that I am a sacrifice. Which means that you now

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