The wind ripped at the three figures crossing the barren Arctic wastes, rusting the polar bears' fur and threatening to rip the human's hood off his head. Yana was in the lead, her sword slung on her back as she marched confidently forward, followed by her mate, a human named Mark who'd come to this frozen hell expecting an entirely different experience. He clutched his coat tight against his body with one hand and held his hood down with the other, keeping himself as protected as possible from the stinging snowflakes. Andrei was bringing up the rear; Mark knew little about him save that he was subordinate to Yana, which was evident both in his mannerisms and his smaller frame. "Davay, krolik!" the chief called back, "We almost there!"
Mark's Jeep had been left behind, as was his expensive drone, his anti-bear shotgun, and his warm coffee pot. He wondered what would become of them in the snow and ice, whether they'd be preserved or absorbed into the frozen dunes when he got back. If he got back. Yana had made it explicitly clear she intended to take him as a husband with both broken English and the way she'd violently made love, and now that he was most of the way back to their home camp, the chances of him making it back to his Jeep were slim at best. "How much further?" he shouted over the wind, "I think I might be getting frostbite..."
"Oh, hush, krolik, no much further." The human was a tad envious of his imposing companion, both for her fur and her muscular physique. Mark looked down to her legs, admiring the thick sinew underneath her coat, the way she plowed through the snow effortlessly with her massive paws. Then his gaze climbed a bit higher, staring at her rump as his mind began to fog up with a twinge of lust. She'd stolen his sleeping bag to make new clothing for herself, fashioning it into a bright orange skirt, bra, and armband, but the new clothes did little to hide her wide hips. His mind began to drift into delightful memories of earlier that morning, with her gorgeous ass bobbing up and down on his lap, fucking him silly while showing off her goods...
"It is about seven hundred meters more." Andrei snapped Mark out of his daydreams with his matter of fact statement, making the human shamefully shift his gaze to the ground. "About half of a mile in amerikanskiy." Mark looked back to see the slimmer polar bear fiddling with his spear point, tying the jagged metal tip tighter with a bit of hide cord. That was another thing that Mark knew about Andrei: he had a far better grasp on English, and it sometimes seemed that he knew things about American culture. Maybe the bear was like Tyrion Lannister, making up for his lesser size and strength with knowledge. But how did he learn stuff as part of a primitive tribe? There probably wasn't a library he could have learned it from... was there?
The three continued on in silence for about 12 minutes more until they reached a sizeable icy wall. Mark kept walking until Yana gently grabbed him by the forearm. "Sasha, Sergei," she called out seemingly to the wind, "Ya vernulsya sta khoroshimi novostyami!"
Suddenly, two white figures stood up on the top of the ice wall, each shaking off a light dusting of snow and unknocking their bow. The polar bears had been nearly invisible in the snow with no clothes on, and they still didn't stand out much against the pale sky and clouds. "Chto eto sta toboy? Podozhdi, eto-"
"Da, eto chelovek," Yana replied as she raised Mark's arm above his head, "Pervy za mnogiye gody! Speshite e razoruzhite lovushki, stareyshiny dolzhny eto uvidet!"
"Da, mem!" One of the bears hopped down from atop the wall, then fiddled with something that sounded like metal before calling out "Vse chisto!"
Yana gave her human a small pat on the back before continuing onward, and as he realized that Andrei was advancing as well, Mark took the hint to move on. He crossed the threshold of the wall with a little bit of caution, a caution that sharpened into acute fear as he saw what the wall guard had been disarming. It looked like something straight out of a horror movie, with jagged metal spikes affixed to a bar that would swing forward when triggered. Looking down, Mark could see the faint outline of a pressure plate in the snow, and he took great care in stepping around it. The bear had apparently given the all clear, but he didn't want to risk getting impaled with no chance of medical treatment.
His paranoia eventually lessened enough for him to look up from the ground, and he was confronted by a strange sight, to say the least. At first, he thought it was some kind of trailer park, with several shelters on wheels clustered around a big clearing and surrounded by the ice wall. Then he realized that the shelters looked more like gypsy wagons than propper trailers, and wondered whether the polar bears were somehow related to traveling and trade. Then he realized that all the wagons were built from what almost looked like military vehicles, with industrial rivets and stencil-painted symbols peeking out from the overlapping plates and hide adornments. Where the hell did they get all this stuff?
As he scanned over the area, taking in all the wagons and the polar bears going about their daily routines, Mark's attention gradually focused on the largest shelter in the circle, which faced the ice wall's gate and was adorned with all sorts of livery. There were lots of bells, painted hides, mirrored bits of metal, and strange runes across the wagon, and he got the feeling that the head honcho probably lived there. "That your place?" he asked Yana, nudging her with one elbow and pointing to the heavily decorated home. "Looks pretty."