Blood And Ice Part 27

A cold mist was coming up, spreading itself across the ground. In the distance he could occasionally hear the crack of a pistol shot. Perhaps it was only the farriers, putting the mutilated horses out of their misery. Or wounded soldiers, doing the same for themselves. An uncontrollable shudder ran down his frame, but despite the coldness of the ground, his skin was warm and clammy beneath his uniform.

Before he heard any sound of the thing's approach, he felt a tiny vibration in the earth and forced himself to lie still. It was all he could do to keep his limbs from shivering. But whatever it was, it was coming toward him stealthily, moving under cover of the clinging mist. He had the impression that it was on all fours, head close to the ground ... sniffing. Was it a wild dog? A wolf? He took a shallow breath and held it. Or could it be one of those unseen creatures that had haunted the campfires in the dead of night? The Turks had a word for them-Kara-kondjiolos. Bloodsuckers.

It was lingering now over the carca.s.s of Ajax, but all he could make out without raising his head was a pair of sharp shoulder blades hovering over the already rotting flesh. His saber was tangled at his side, still in its scabbard, and he knew he could never draw it out, much less wield it successfully, from the ground. He touched his holster, but it was empty; the pistol must have been thrown free in his fall. He reached out instead toward Hatch's corpse, felt for the leather of his riding belt, then traced his fingers along it until he found the sergeant's holster. The pistol, blessedly, was still in it. As silently as he could, Sinclair withdrew it.

The creature made a low gabbling sound, something strangely between the cry of a vulture and a human utterance.

Sinclair c.o.c.ked the pistol, and the creature stopped. Sinclair glimpsed a sleek skull, with shiny dark eyes, rising from the mist.

It crawled, carefully, over the dead horse ... and stopped to inspect Sergeant Hatch's missing features.

Then it came on, and Sinclair felt a hand-or was it a paw?- something with sharp nails in it, anyway, touching his leg. He lay still, as if dead, and felt an eager mouth lapping at the blood that covered his clothes. He knew that he might be able to get off only one shot, and he had to be sure that it counted. The beast followed the trail of blood onto his chest, and now he could smell its breath, like dead fish, and see its pointed ears. A hot tongue scoured the cloth-and even that he could endure-but when the teeth suddenly nibbled at his flesh, drawing his own blood, and the wet mouth suckled at the wound, he flinched.

The creature's head sprang back, and for the first time he could see its face, though he could never have adequately described it. His first thought was that it was human-the eyes were intelligent, the mouth was bowed, the forehead was rounded-but the shape of the skull was oddly elongated, the leathery skin stretched tight over a gaunt, grimacing mask.

He aimed the pistol, his hand wavering, and fired.

The thing screeched and a hand flew up to its torn ear in shock. It looked down on him indignantly, but scuttled backwards. Sinclair struggled to sit up. The creature was still in retreat, moving in a slow crouch, but Sinclair could have sworn that it had draped a fur pelisse around its shoulders, just as a cavalryman would do.

What was this thing?

He rolled onto his side and tried to shout, but his cries were barely audible. The mist swirled around the vanishing marauder, leaving only an empty pocket in the night. Sinclair held tight to the pistol grip and fired another round after it.

And he heard footsteps warily approaching from another direction. "Who's firing there?" a c.o.c.kney voice asked.

A lantern swung close to the ground.

"Are you an Englishman?"

And then the yellow light of the lamp fell on his face and he was able to mumble, through his ragged and b.l.o.o.d.y lips, "Lieutenant Copley Of the Seventeenth Lancers."

December 16, 6 p.m.

If he had survived all that-the doomed charge of the Light Brigade, the night on the battlefield-Sinclair now reflected, then what could he not survive? Especially with Eleanor at his side.

Driving the sled, he relied entirely upon the dogs' unerring sense of direction to find his way back to the whaling station. It was all he could do to crouch on the runners, his face buried in his hood and his gloved hands clinging to the bars. The dogs twice made a wide turn around newly opened creva.s.ses that Sinclair doubted he would have spotted on his own, but that the dogs seemed to sense. He would reward them with generous slabs of blubber and meat from the dead seal stored in the sled.

He had gone as far north as he thought safe and wise, searching for any sign of further habitation, but he feared that they had truly been transported to the end of the earth. He remembered that the Coventry, long ago, had been sailing south, driven by the punishing winds, accompanied only by the lonely albatross circling above its yardarms, and from everything he had been able to glean of their present surroundings, he and Eleanor had arrived at a place so remote, so frozen, and so barren that it could only be the Pole itself ... that most dreaded destination of all.

But the seal might help. He had seen Eleanor failing, and he knew that what the bottles contained was old, and foul, and not nearly so potent as it had once been. He was surprised, given its origins, that it had any efficacy at all; on their journeys through Europe, he had been reduced to siphoning the blood from the dead he came across on battlefields and charnel houses. He had gone in search of fresh meat, fresh blood, even if it was only animal, and he had found it down among the bleached skeletons and wind-blasted rocks along the sh.o.r.eline. There, the seals liked to bask in the cold glare of the sun, sprawled among the millions of broken bones, like so many bathers at Brighton Beach. He had avoided the larger ones, no doubt the bulls, one of whom had waddled toward him, trumpeting, and instead picked what was probably a female, with sleek brown fur and long black whiskers. She was off by herself, lying under the vast arc of a whale's backbone, and as he approached her, she showed no fear. Indeed, she showed little reaction at all, watching impa.s.sively as he shook his sword free of its scabbard. He stood above her, planting his boots to either side. She looked up at him with bulging, liquid eyes as he tried to judge where her heart might lie. He wanted the wound to be as small and precise as possible, so that the blood would remain inside the carca.s.s rather than pooling across the ground. He touched the point of the blade to the spot he'd chosen-and only then did the seal look down at it, slightly curious-before he put all his weight into it and pressed down. The blade entered smoothly, and the animal buckled from both ends as the sword went clean through and struck the permafrost below. He did not withdraw it, but let it stand in order to stanch the flow, and within a minute, the seal had ended its contortions and lay still.

While the other seals had looked on, still unalarmed-indeed unconcerned, about what had just befallen their compatriot-he wiped his sword clean on the snow, then dragged his prize back to the sled. There would be provisions for some time to come ... though what he and Eleanor would do in the longer term was as dire a prospect as it had ever been.

Sinclair was no sailor, but as someone who had been on the run for well over two years after Balaclava, he had learned to read the weather signs as well as anyone. He could tell that the temperature, brutal to begin with, was falling even more, and the sky on the far horizon was growing darker and more ominous by the minute. Under normal circ.u.mstances, Sinclair had a fine sense of direction- more than once he had advised his fellow cavalry officers on the proper course to follow-but in this accursed place it was well-nigh impossible. There was no night, so there were no stars, and there was no day-not day as one would commonly know it; how could one gauge the movement of a constant sun, or track shadows that barely changed? And as for landmarks, at times he could make out-though inland, and too distant to be reached-a black ridge of mountains, snaking through the otherwise flat expanse, like a jagged scar on a smooth white cheek. But that was about all.

Once he had gotten under way again, the weather changed even more rapidly, the wind buffeting the sled, the dogs often having to pull straight into it. He was fortunate to be wearing, atop his own uniform coat, the new red coat, with the white crosses on the back and sleeves, that he had salvaged from the shed-and to huddle behind the windbreak provided by the sled itself. His knees ached from crouching there, but to stand up was to risk being blown clear of the sled altogether. He worried, too, about Eleanor and what condition he would find her in. He had not liked to lock her in the rectory, but he feared for what she might do. Whether she was in possession of her wits, or temporarily out of them, he could not be sure.

From experience, he knew that the fever could come and go, like the bouts of malaria that Sergeant Hatch had endured, but he also knew that the terrible craving never went away. It was always there, sometimes running like an underground stream, at other times bursting forth and demanding gratification, and he wondered how Eleanor-slim as a reed at the best of times, and so young- continued to survive its relentless pull. Their affliction was at once their salvation, preserving them from a hundred mortal frailties, and the curse that held them forever in its own dark power. Liberator and jailer, simultaneously. There were times when he doubted Eleanor's will, and even her desire, to go on under such circ.u.mstances. But the force of his own will, he felt sure, was strong enough for them both. Whether she wished it so or not, she needed what he was bringing to her-and, above all, she needed him. He shouted at the dogs, urging them on, but the wind seemed to gather his words and fling them back into his chattering teeth.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.

December 16, 8:15 p.m.

MICHAEL LEFT THE INFIRMARY with his thoughts teeming. It was all too unbelievable, too astonishing, too impossible to comprehend. Had he really just been talking to someone who'd been frozen in the ice for over a hundred years before he'd even been born?

He had to calm down, he told himself. Take things logically. Go one step at a time. And just then, those first steps, as he clung fast to the guide ropes strung between the modules, took him past the glaciology lab. He knew that Danzig was out there somewhere, but why not make sure he wasn't just hiding out in the lair where his body had been deposited? Murphy had no doubt checked on it already, but Michael needed to confirm it with his own eyes. At least that would be one thing he could nail down, beyond any doubt, and if there was anything he needed at that moment, it was certainty. Of something. Anything.

With reality threatening to slip its moorings completely, he was more determined than ever to tie it to the dock.

Betty and Tina, to his relief, were nowhere in evidence. Warily, he clambered down the icy steps into the vault where Danzig's body had been laid. The plastic body bags had been ripped apart and lay in shreds on the frozen slab. The tableau reminded him, unavoidably of some terrible version of the resurrection. Jesus rising from his tomb and leaving only the shroud behind.

Once he climbed back to the top of the stairs, there was more bad news. When he stopped at the plasma crate to check on Ollie, he found the box empty. The wood shavings in back were still shaped like a nest, but apart from a loose gray feather or two, there was no sign of the bird at all. He took some fried grits from his pocket-he'd snagged them when he fetched the food for Eleanor-and dropped them in the box, in case the bird returned. It was only a skua, considered no more than Antarctic riffraff, but he was going to miss the little guy.

Then, with his head down, he made his way back, past the rec hall, where he could hear some raucous voices and piano playing. Normally, he might have gone in and joined them, but not right now. At the moment, all he wanted was time to think, alone, and let his thoughts settle.

Fortunately, Darryl was not in their room. He drew the curtains across the horizontal windowpane and turned on the desk lamp, with a rare incandescent bulb that he had "liberated" from a tiny lounge area at the end of the hall. Then he kicked off his shoes and sweaty socks and dug his toes into the s.h.a.g carpet. Work. He just needed to focus for a while on his work; he'd been letting it slide. He took the bottle of Scotch from the shelf in the closet and poured himself three fingers' worth. With his laptop on the table, he started downloading the dozens of photographs he'd taken since first arriving at Point Adelie. There were shots of the Weddell seals, which had been whelping on the ice floes for the first few days there, and others of the birds-the snowy petrels and a.s.sorted scavengers- who frequented the base. His fingers hovered over the keyboard for a second as he wondered anew what had become of Ollie.

There were shots of the dive hut, and a couple of Darryl inside it, looking like one of Santa's elves, in his full dry suit and his red hair wet and shining; in one, he was holding a speargun like a javelin over his shoulder. There were a bunch of pictures of Danzig and the dogs, some posed, and some that Michael had taken on the fly when the team was being exercised. And there was one with Kodiak licking the ice crystals from Danzig's beard. Selecting a few of the best shots, he moved them to a separate file. Then he downloaded another batch and found himself looking straight into the face of Sleeping Beauty.

Or Eleanor Ames, as he now knew.

Her eyes were open, and she was gazing out through a thick film of the ice. He enlarged the photo, and her green eyes came into even greater relief. It was as if they were looking right at him, and he felt as if he were looking right back. As if he were looking across a chasm of time, and the gulf between life and death. He took another sip of the Scotch. Was that indeed what he'd been doing?

The wind came up another notch and battered the sides of the module. The curtains stirred; the window would have to be closed more tightly.

Michael sat back, staring at the photo and wondering what Eleanor was doing now. Was she sleeping? Or was she awake and terrified by her new captivity?

And then he thought he heard something-a lot like a human cry-mingled with the howling wind. Rising from his chair, he parted the curtains, hooded his eyes, and looked outside, but in the swirling snow he couldn't see a thing. For that much, he was grateful. What could he have done, he wondered, if it had been Danzig ...

He gave the window crank another turn.

But then he thought he heard the cry again, and this time he could have sworn it was a deep voice, wailing words that were indecipherable. But even after turning off the lamp, hooding his eyes and staring out again, he could see nothing.

Whoa, he thought, drawing the curtains firmly closed, that Scotch must be higher proof than I thought.

He plopped back into the chair, and after one more look at the photo of Eleanor, flicked open some shots he'd taken of the abandoned whaling station. The rusted hulk of the Albatros gaped on the beach, piles of bleached bones lay scattered among the rocks, gravestones leaned at crazy angles in the churchyard. The curtains stirred again, but he knew it wasn't because of the window. The door at the end of the hallway must have been opened, and that always sent a draft blowing straight down the hall, all the way to the communal bathroom and sauna. It was probably Darryl, and Michael was already preparing what he would say-or not say in respect to the discovery of Eleanor-as he listened to the sound of wet footsteps trudging down the hall. He closed the file on the computer just as they stopped outside. He waited to hear Darryl's key enter the lock-locked dorm rooms had become the rule, according to Murphy-but instead he simply saw the doork.n.o.b turn. Just a little bit, before the lock kicked in.

He could see a shadow under the door, and he could hear breathing outside-labored breathing. The hair on the back of his neck suddenly p.r.i.c.kled, and he got up, slowly, and tiptoed barefoot to the door. He took hold of the door handle, just as it was jiggled again; he held it firm, and put his ear to the door. It was thin plywood, and never in his life did he wish harder for a slab of solid oak. A trickle of icy water ran under the door and touched his toes.

The handle was tried again, the other way, but it still didn't give. Michael tried not to breathe.

He heard a full exhalation, and the sound of rustling, frost-covered clothes. Michael pressed his ear tighter against the door and leaned his shoulder against it, too.

"Give ..." the voice mumbled " ... it ... back."

Michael's blood froze in his veins, and he waited, ready to do anything to blockade the door, when he heard some laughing at the other end of the module-the bathroom end-and the snapping of a towel.

"Grow up!" someone shouted.

The jiggling abruptly stopped, and the shadow under the door disappeared. There was a rapid, squelching sound-wet boots on dry carpet-and a few seconds after Michael heard the outer door slam at the far end of the module, the bedroom door started to open. He was still holding the k.n.o.b, and he heard Darryl mutter, "f.u.c.k this key ..."

Michael let go, and the k.n.o.b turned. Darryl came in, in his bathrobe and flip-flops, with a towel wrapped around his neck. He looked startled to see Michael standing there behind the door.

"What are you, the doorman now?"

Michael ducked around him and stuck his head into the hall. "Did you see anybody out here?"

"What?" Darryl said, vigorously toweling his head. "Oh, yeah, I think somebody was just going out." He tossed his key onto the dresser. "Why?"

Michael closed the door and locked it. The icy trickle had already begun to dry on the carpet.

Noticing the open laptop, Darryl said, "You were working?"

"Yeah," Michael said, turning it off now. "I was."

"Turn up anything interesting at Stromviken?"

"No, nothing new," Michael said, turning away to conceal any expression that might betray him.

Spotting the gla.s.s of Scotch, Darryl said, "I'll have a shot of that."

While Michael poured some of the Scotch into a gla.s.s, Darryl tossed his towel toward their dresser. It fell off, carrying a hairbrush and some other stuff with it. "Sorry," he said, "my three-point shot was always weak." He bent down and picked a few things up off the carpet, but the last item he weighed thoughtfully in his hand.

When Michael handed him the gla.s.s, Darryl offered him the item he'd just retrieved-a walrus-tooth necklace that unspooled into Michael's palm like a snake.

"When you get back to the world," Darryl said, "I guess you could always mail it back to his widow. She'd probably like to have it."

December 16, 8:20 p.m.

Once Michael had left the infirmary-and Eleanor was sorry to see him go-the doctor ushered her into the bathroom, showed her how the hot shower worked, and left her everything else she'd need. There was a slender cylinder, for example, soft to the touch, that emitted a paste for scrubbing the teeth-the taste reminded her of lime-and a brush, too, with very fine, clear bristles. Eleanor wondered for a moment what animal the bristles could possibly have come from.

"You need anything else, I'm right next door," the doctor said.

And then Eleanor was alone-alone in a lavatory that resembled nothing she'd ever seen, with fresh apparel to put on, for the first time in over 150 years, and with no idea what would happen to her next. Or to Sinclair, wherever he might be. Was he still reconnoitering? Or hunting? Had he been caught, too far from the church, in the midst of the storm, and was he stranded in the alien landscape?

Or had he come back, only to find the bolt on the door thrown back and the room empty? He would know that someone must have intruded on her. She felt a sharp pang, the pang she knew she'd have felt if their positions had been reversed ... if she'd had reason to believe that Sinclair had been taken from her, G.o.d knew where. Ever since the day he had been brought back from the battlefield, and she had seen his name on the roster of the newly admitted, they had been united in a way that she could never have explained to anyone.

How could anyone else have ever understood?

She had found him in one of the larger fever wards. Stained muslin curtains hung from sagging rods, and since few of the doctors, or even the orderlies, cared to risk the chance of contagion, there was no one to ask about exactly where he had been billeted. Ignoring the piteous cries for water or help, from men dying of thirst or lost in some terrible fever dream, she had stumbled through the ward, looking everywhere ... until she spied a fair-haired head lying on a straw bolster on the floor.

"Sinclair!" she'd exclaimed, running to his side.

He looked up at her, but said nothing-and then he had smiled. But it was a dreamy smile, a smile that told her he did not believe she was really there. It was the smile of a man consciously enjoying what he knew to be a reverie.

"Sinclair, it's me," she said, falling to her knees beside his flimsy pallet and taking hold of his limp hand. "I'm here. Truly."

The smile faltered, as if her touch was eroding, rather than reinforcing, his fragile dream.

She pressed her cheek to the back of his hand. "I'm here, and you're alive, and that's all that matters."

He withdrew the hand-peeved-at this further intrusion.

Tears welled up in her eyes, but she searched the ward until she found a pitcher of stagnant water-the only water available at all- and returned to mop his brow and face. There were flakes of blood in his moustache, and she wiped those away, too.

The soldier lying on the floor behind her, a Highlander judging from what was left of his uniform, clutched at the hem of her skirt and begged for a drop of the water. She turned and poured some of the water over his cracked lips. He was an older man, somewhere past thirty, with broken teeth and skin the color of chalk. He would not, she knew, be long for this world.

"Thank'ee, Missus," he murmured. "But mind you, steer clear of him." He meant Sinclair. "He's a bad 'un." He turned his pallid face away, suddenly overcome by a barking cough.

Delirium, she thought, before turning back to Sinclair. But it was as if, in those few seconds, his mind had cleared somewhat; he was looking at her now with comprehension. "My G.o.d," escaped his lips. "It isyou."

Her tears burst forth, and she bent to embrace him. She could feel his skin and bones through the thin nightshirt he had been issued, and wondered how quickly she could fetch some hot porridge from the kitchens. Or find him a proper bed.

He was weak and frail but able to speak a few words at a time, and Eleanor filled in the rest. She didn't want to exhaust him-and she knew that she had duties to fulfill-but he seemed to be gaining strength from her very presence and she dreaded leaving him, even for a few hours. When, finally, she had to do so, promising to return at her first opportunity, he followed her with his eyes until she was obscured by the muslin curtains billowing like shrouds.

Even as she looked at herself now in the spotless lavatory mirror, she could perfectly remember the look on his face, and see it as clearly as her own. She turned the shower handles as the doctor had shown her-and after piling the last of her clothes atop a wicker hamper, stepped gingerly into the hot spray. The water poured from a circular device, and seemed to pulsate as it rained down on her. A bar of soap-green, of all things-lay in a shallow niche on the tiled wall. And just as the paste she had used on her teeth had a taste of citrus, the soap had a fragrance, of evergreen trees. Did everything in this strange new world bear a foreign flavor or aroma? Eleanor let the hot torrent fall over her arms, then her shoulders. Unsure how long the miraculous cascade might last, she put her face up to the spray. Everything was so alien, and so unexpected, it was as if she had landed in the Crimea all over again.

The water felt like a thousand tiny raindrops drumming on her eyelids, coursing down her neck and b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Slowly, she inched forward, until the water was rushing over the crown of her head, draping her long brown hair down either side of her face. It was one of the most delicious sensations she had ever experienced, and she stood there for many minutes, leaning forward with her palms flat against the white tiles, steeping, she thought, like tea leaves, as the water made a shallow pool around her feet. For the first time in ages, her skin felt warm, all over, and she wondered, if she stood there long enough and the water did not run out, if its heat could finally penetrate as far as her heart and a.s.suage the unremitting ache that had been her companion for so long.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE.

December 17, Midnight THE BELL IN THE STEEPLE was ringing when Sinclair finally returned to the church, but it was only the wind banging the clapper. Still, the sound had helped him and the dogs to find their way through the storm. He staggered in, the dead seal draped around his shoulders, and the dogs, released from their harness, yapping wildly around his feet. In an instant he saw that the rectory door was ajar. Throwing the seal upon the altar, he crossed to the open door and looked inside.

The fire was dead in the grate, and Eleanor was gone.

He stood there, his arms extended to either side of the doorframe, breathing hard. It was possible, though unlikely, that she had found some way to unfasten the lock and escape. But where?

And why?

"Eleanor!" He shouted her name again and again, setting off a reciprocal chorus among the dogs roaming the aisles. He thundered up the stairs to the belfry and peered into the cyclone of snow and ice, but he could barely see the warehouses and sheds below. Even if he ventured out into the storm on foot, the blizzard was so intense he would not be able to orient himself or move in any consistent direction. If Eleanor had gone into it, he would never be able to find her ... or his own way back.

There was nothing to do, he knew, but wait. He must bide his time until the storm abated. Though he hated to concede it, it was conceivable that she had done something rash and unforgivable ... that she had chosen, of her own free will, not to go on. He was well aware of her despair, being no stranger to it himself ... but in his heart he could not accept that she had done that. He scoured their humble quarters for a telltale sign of farewell, or a message of any kind, torn from letters in the hymnals perhaps. But there was nothing, and he knew that Eleanor, no matter how possessed by grief she might have been, would not have left him that way. She would not have left him without a word. He knew her too well ever to believe such a thing.

Which left only one alternative ... that Eleanor had been taken.

Against her will.

Had men from the camp come in his absence and made off with her? Any tracks they might have left in the snow would have already been obliterated, and with the wet dogs in the church, it was impossible to see any footprints the intruders might have left there, either. But who else could it have been? And where else but their camp could she have been taken?

Finally-and that was where all his thoughts were tending- how could he best effect her rescue?

The obstacles to that were immense, especially because he could not see what the endgame would be. Even if he were successful at finding and freeing her, where could they flee on this ice-bound continent? He felt as if he were staring down a narrow defile to certain doom, just as he had done on that brisk October morning in Balaclava. But somehow, he reminded himself, he had survived that apocalypse, and even worse. Regardless of how black the page, he had always managed to turn it and move on to a new chapter in his life.

And he did have certain advantages, he reflected grimly. A cup of fresh seal blood rested like a chalice at his elbow, next to a book of poetry that had traveled with him all the way from England to the Crimea, and now to this dreadful outpost. He opened it, and let the pages fall where they would. His eyes dropped to the yellowed paper, stiff as parchment, and there he read ...

Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea!

And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony.