by Mike Miller
With a dreary groan, Conrad heaved himself upwards, a muscle in his stomach crunching from the effort. But once his head popped upwards, his balance was lost. Disoriented and confused, he tumbled, rolling to his side before falling into space. His body’s heavy thud against hard earth was a firm announcement of his position. The frozen snow on the ground against the flesh of his face was another slap back to reality.
Peeling himself from the dirty snow, he saw the hindsight of the donkey steadily sauntering away from him. The animal’s wide but half-lidded eyes stared backwards at him, if only to listlessly confirm that his cargo was lost. Without slowing a step, the animal returned its tired gaze to the road ahead as Conrad’s departure was a bygone nuisance.
A pair of hands gripped Conrad around his bicep and hoisted him to his feet.
“Rise and shine,” Douglas said cheerfully.
Still collecting his whereabouts, Conrad stood on wobbling legs in the midst of the expedition’s march. The familiar Sherpas trudged past him with tired faces from bearing the burden of the gear. It struck him as odd that all the men were now transporting the goods right on their backs instead of using the horses, when a vague recollection formed in Conrad’s mind of giving the horses away. He wondered why they had done such a foolish thing when he then remembered the dizzying gorge and its puny bridge prohibiting the animals’ continuation, except for the mule he had rode.
But there were still several gaps in his recollection. Conrad wanted to ask a question, then several, and his woozy mind was reeling on which to ask first. Douglas obliged with some pre-emptive answers to his dazed comrade.
“You’ve been out for quite some time,” Douglas informed him. “Or don’t you recall? Strangest thing. You took one look at that cliff face, and you fell over dead as a stone. But that didn’t stop your mates from hoisting you up nonetheless to keep the train rolling. No, sir.”
Conrad’s dark eyes stared off while scanning through his distorted memories for any recognisable support to Douglas’ claims. “My neck’s a bit sore,” he remarked while rubbing his throat tenderly. When peeling his thickly woven scarf back to better massage the skin, Conrad exposed a dark purple bruise from Molor’s strangling that almost made Douglas wince to see it.
“Probably from your head dangling limp for the ride,” offered Douglas. “Like you were trying to kiss your own ass.”
Conrad looked sceptically at Douglas. The chill began to bite his exposed skin, forcing him to conceal his neck back beneath the warmth of the scarf. Then he realised someone was missing.
“Where’s Baxter?” His head swivelled around to study the identities of everyone from the front of the parade to the pack.
“Aye, that’s some bad news,” Douglas said, hanging his head with sorrow.
“What?” said Conrad. “Is he okay?”
“We hope,” said Douglas optimistically. “But not likely.”
“Good God, what happened?” Conrad stepped closer to Douglas and was ready to react as needed.
The two had stopped walking to better converse while the rest of the party passed by them. Douglas eased an arm around Conrad to usher him along up the mountain.
“It was just us three at the bottom, being you, me and Baxter.” Douglas’ easy and friendly tone indicated that he had just begun to narrate a longer tale. “And we together had just fastened your limp body to the line when one of them Orientals above erupted in commotion. Once I grabbed the spyglass, we could see your old army mates storming our heels on the horizon. They were almost three dozen strong and on the bloody warpath like the Zulu nation.”
Conrad’s face wilted with concern as Douglas’ gripping tale began to hint at a dour outcome.
“Riding their steeds at full gallop, we reckoned they were no more than a few minutes away from catching the lot of us. I don’t know how you two imbeciles could’ve messed your one part of the plan, but those reinforcements were in force. Certain doom, I tell you.” Douglas’ voice grew soft with emotion. He paused dramatically.
“Baxter, that brave lad,” Douglas intoned, his voice almost tearful. “By the time we had you going up the ledge, there was but one spot left in the other harness. Before I could discuss the matter, I find Baxter’s muzzle was loaded and ready to blow. ‘No time for me,’ he says, or something of that lot. ‘I’ll hold them back while you carry on.’ A fool I called him, but a noble and heroic fool he remained. Lord, did I plead with him to accept the harness, but no. He insisted that he defend our hind side and that we carry on without him.”
Douglas sighed heavily and patted Conrad’s shoulder compassionately. “I sure was wrong about that one, Conrad. May God have mercy on his soul.”
Conrad shrewdly nibbled his lips while working on Douglas’ tale and the supposed fate of his friend. He shrugged off Douglas’ comforting hand, a clear look of anger and irritation brewing beneath his eyes. Douglas opted to move ahead, hoping to let the fib settle into place.
Watching the ground beneath his feet, Conrad treaded forward in a daze. His footfalls were shaky and unbalanced like he was sleep-walking in a nightmare, or still crossing the old bridge. His chest became heavy as the frigid air wheezed through his lungs like an old set of bellows.
He noticed Private Gregory marching past, and he caught the boy by the shoulder, spinning him about to face him.
“Corporal Murray!” he exclaimed, the words starting out with a tone of fear but settling into pleased relief. “You’re awake.”
“What happened to Baxter?” he asked. “Where is he?”
“Oh, Private Griffin,” he said mournfully. “Nobody told you?”
“No,” Conrad snapped. “But you better.”
Gregory fidgeted under the pressure of the interrogation. “Well, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you,” he began. At the melancholy introduction to the boy’s version of events, Conrad wasn’t sure whether to feel angry or vengeful quite yet, so he staved off any reaction before hearing the next few sentences. “I’m afraid Baxter remained behind to protect us.”
“From what?” Conrad demanded sharply.
“Why, Colonel Snider and the old fellows were hot on our tail. I don’t know how they did it, but they were storming along right behind us.”
Conrad ran his hand over his face as if ripping away the anguish. “Did you see them?”
“Who?” said Gregory blankly.
“The army, you dolt!” Conrad roared. “Big red idiots with rifles and moustaches! Did you see them?”
Hurt at the remark, Gregory shied away but still responded quietly. “No.”
Conrad grew wild, ready to smite Douglas and any other culprits from the mountainside for the death of Baxter.
“But everybody else did,” added Gregory. “I was up ahead, but I could see the Asians and other fellows behind grow quite agitated over them.”
Stifling any bold reaction, Conrad had to snap his senses back to a logical evaluation of the circumstances. “Are you sure?”
“Ask Sek,” Gregory suggested. “He’s the one who filled me in on things in the first place.”
Noticing the two had fallen behind the rest of the troop, Gregory shuffled impatiently, ready to begin marching again and distance himself from the bereaved Corporal Murray. Conrad, however, was fine to intently muse upon the evidence. Between two similar versions of what felt like a lie, Conrad’s mind drifted in limbo.
“Sir?” Gregory said.
Conrad didn’t respond or acknowledge the boy. But he began to walk again, following the other men up the mountain.
“It was mighty brave of Baxter to sacrifice himself like that,” Gregory said as he brought up the rear of the group. He was afraid to stride parallel to the emotional old man, but still wanted to help. “We won’t let him die in vain.”
Conrad grunted something short and indiscernible in response, and Gregory was too afraid to ask for clarification.
Chapter XXVIII
The White Death
The world was white.
Everything was clean and blank to the horizon’s oblivion. Everything was silent and numb. To Baxter, it was splendid and peaceful, this limbo of nothingness.
Then his cheek stung. The pain was a reminder to him that he even had a cheek. In his daze, he had forgotten his own corporeal form. Another jolt of pain flashed from the side of Baxter’s face, now with more intensity. The throbbing sting travelled through his blood and nerves giving form to the rest of his skull.
Baxter did have eyes, and they were closed. He could feel them sticking tightly shut in a seal, but then they fluttered open. They flapped disjointed and erratically like drunken butterflies.
The whiteness flashed and dimmed. The blank infinity deformed into swirling clouds of colour and shape.
A voice called indistinctly, muffled and far off. When it called out again, it could be more clearly heard to say, “Baxter.”
Baxter awoke. Lying on his back on the cold ground, he groggily looked up into the clouds of a blue and pink twilight sky. Then a familiar face entered his view to peer down upon him.
“Thank God you’re alive,” Colonel Snider gleefully declared. His thin moustache seemed to curl in on itself like an overly ripe smile. He rubbed his hands together with enthusiastic mirth. “Good work, doctor. I’ll be sure you get a fantastic commendation for saving this man’s life.”
Another man’s head bobbed in then out of view quickly. It was Christians, the squad’s resident medic. “Thank you, sir,” he said before bowing away in exit.
Baxter squinted as Snider’s head moved back, unleashing the bright sun and blinding him. It turned Snider’s head into a dark silhouette.
“You know, the men here didn’t believe we’d get you, but I always did. I had faith.” Snider tugged Baxter with both hands to an upright seat on the ground. Here he could now see rows of familiar soldiers from his corps. Off to one side were the local thugs he had battled back at the tavern for the precious map. Almost lost among the group was the woman from the train. Though bundled in similar looking furs as many of the others, her soft, incandescent features clearly distinguished herself from the rest. She looked back with large, sad eyes.
Indeed it seemed that everyone whom he had crossed or betrayed from the onset of this trip had banded together before him. As his friends who had abandoned him were long gone, he was now left alone in judgment for their collective sins. Baxter sighed deeply as he realised that he was about to become the sole focal point of the assembled tribunal’s revenge.
“I’m not sure if you felt any of the first few,” Snider declared as the spokesman for the group, “so here’s another one for good measure.”
Snider smashed an open palm across Baxter’s cheek, the slap cranking his head to the side as he tumbled onto one hand for support. “That sure felt swell,” Snider said cheerfully.
Baxter spat blood and saliva onto the ground from a cut that opened inside his cheek. He said nothing, but simply stared proudly back at his tormentor. The whole in his flank hurt only a little, the relatively lax amount of pain made Baxter marvel at the doctor’s work in repairing him.
“We almost lost you there,” Snider said. “You lost quite a bit of blood while Christians was digging around for that slug. Thankfully this temperature and atmosphere slowed down the bleeding enough for him to stitch you back together in time for us to give you a proper farewell, one deserving of a scoundrel like yourself.”
Snider kicked one leg up on a nearby rock, then leaned on his raised knee. Comfortably closer to Baxter, Snider’s brown eyes fluttered up and down over the African. “Might I ask, are you happy, Baxter?
Baxter refused to respond and earned an ireful backhand across his right cheek. As the blow came from the opposite direction as the last, it helped to balance the ringing in his head.
“Are you happy, damn it?” Snider reiterated, now drawing his pistol to aim at Baxter’s head. Still, Baxter held fast, his grim expression never wavering despite the threat of death.
“Stubborn fool,” Snider muttered with irritation. He cocked the pistol, then butted its muzzle up against Baxter’s forehead. With his off arm, Snider raised his hand to his head then plugged his ear with an index finger while grimacing with clenched teeth. In the background a few of the horde winced in fear of the pending gunshot.
Snider withdrew the firearm, lazily pointing it at the sky. “Hmph,” he snorted, almost with reverent appreciation.
He marched backwards and grabbed the girl roughly by the upper arm, tugging her forward. He held the gun to her temple and said, “Answer the question, are you happy?”
“No,” Baxter blurted, his stern demeanour broken into a merciful plea. “No, I am not.”
“Good,” Snider said cheerfully. “That makes me happy.”
Once he released Janice from his grip, she scowled at him. “Curse you,” she growled while shying away from him. “I shot the man as you asked, now let me go as you promised.”
“That may be true,” Snider said, his gaze still lingering on his prey before turning to the girl. “But that was before you acquired a new role. See, our man Private Griffin here has a soft spot for you and all your kind. He thinks you are all weak and innocent, to be protected and defended. But that’s because he is a simpleton. He has no idea what is really happening.”
He tugged at her cloak, and the violence made Baxter rise to his feet. The clatter of rifles and guns informed him that the gesture would be futile. A swift blow to the gut from Finnegan’s rifle crumpled Baxter back to the ground.
Snider pulled free the woman’s necklace and displayed its pendant forward for Baxter to see. “You know this woman is a lady of the cloth?” he pronounced, holding a gold cross in the centre of his palm.
Baxter bowed his head remorsefully.
“Breaks your holy heart, doesn’t it?” said Snider with chipper satisfaction. “From what I understand, this poor girl was one of your cons, while also the first victim of this rampage.” Snider allowed the silence to help the information burrow deeper into Baxter.
“But then did you also know that this woman is also an opium smuggler? Which makes absolute sense, as that would be a far better reason to favour this wretched part of the world than saving worthless souls. She does not save people, but she destroys them, and under false pretence of piety too.” Baxter raised his head at the accusation, and the lady’s shy and humiliated gaze informed him the accusation was true.
“So do you see what kind of dumb, ignorant and inferior savage you really are, Griffin?” Snider sneered. “I know you see the world in simple platitudes of right and wrong, good and evil. It’s how you can think this woman is an emissary of goodness and God, when she is anything but.”
“That’s not true,” Janice muttered sorely.
“Why are you telling me this?” Baxter asked plainly.
Snider scoffed. “Why, to torment you, you daft African.” He placed his hand on Baxter’s head, playfully rubbing the thick hair like petting an animal. Baxter angrily slapped the hand away, which riled the crowd, but only amused Snider.
“I know you and your simple, native philosophy of good and evil, heaven and hell. So I just have to be sure, one-hundred-and-one percent, that when I send you to your grave that you go to your hell a miserable man.” Leaning down to see into Baxter’s eyes, he said, “Some of these Orientals think that the way a man dies, his mood at that time of passing, dictates his eternity in the afterlife.”
From the audience behind the two men, a voice cried out. It was Chiksai, whose long-winded diatribe sounded of impatience and anger. “He says to hurry up, that we’re losing the others,” Janice informed the Englishmen, while Chiksai’s men began to muster their gear for departure. Baxter also noticed some of the British anxiously shifting their weights and rubbing their hands as the cold permeated them while they stood immobile.
Snider turned and hammered Baxter across the face with a closed fist. As his powerless prey fell backwards from the ambush, Snider followed through with some vicio
us kicks to the downed man’s sternum.
“Even your so-called ally abandoned you, you pathetic bastard.” He hopped into another swift boot to Baxter, forcing a large breath to be gasped out in a blot of mist. Leaning over to within a few inches of Baxter’s face, he sneered, “You deserve this, nigger.”
Though writhing from the painful attack, Baxter knew that with Snider this close, now was the time to retaliate. While he could never escape the rest of the company, he at least would be able to damage Snider in a final rally.
But instead of suicidal revenge, Baxter resigned himself to his doom. He let the colonel’s foul breath be one of his final experiences of his terrestrial life. There was no point to taint himself with further violence.
Baxter inhaled deeply through his nostrils and said, “I do deserve this, sir. So I thank you.”
The show of courtesy confused Snider, also alarming him that maybe he had not broken the man. Or possibly broken him too much.
“Company!” Snider cried and then stomped back to the rest of his men. Realising they had been addressed, the soldiers jumped to attention from their daydreaming. “Present arms!” Their weapons clattered to the ready while bullets could be heard pinging off the stones below as the men scrambled to properly fill their weapons. Private Horace, whose head was swollen and bandaged, was the first man ready to go. His musket gleefully pointed at the blasted African who had humiliatingly defeated him twice now. He was starving for reprisal.
“Private Baxter Griffin,” Snider announced, his voice booming for all to hear, “for your dastardly crimes of treason against the Crown, and the cold-blooded murder of good men, I hereby condemn you to death.”
Snider drew his sword from its hilt to better conduct the ceremony. While the cold and anxious men fumbled with their weapons, Snider permitted a wide teeth-baring grin to spread across his face despite the purported solemnity of an execution.
Disgusted but refusing to be distraught, Baxter looked away from his executioners. Instead he found the woman of the group watching him in ostensible lamentation of what was to come.