Blood and Ice

by Robert Masello

  “Any word of Frenchie?” Rutherford had asked, but Sinclair shook his head. No letters had reached the front for weeks, nor any word from the field hospitals. Sinclair had seen his friend's leg after the horse had fallen over on it, and he knew that even if he did see him alive again, Frenchie would not be the man he once was.

  Would any of them be?

  It was a beautiful day, clear and bright, and Ajax pawed the ground, eager to move. Sinclair stroked his long, chestnut neck, and tugged gently on the black mane. “One day, my boy one day…” he said, reconciling himself to many more hours of listening to the sounds of a skirmish somewhere off in the distance, or the faraway boom of Russian cannons. For so much of the campaign he had felt like someone stranded just outside a theater, hearing the tumult and voices inside, but unable to get in the door. He wondered what Eleanor was doing, and whether she was safe, and if his own letters had ever made it back to her in London.

  Rutherford grunted and pointed his chin to Sinclair's right. An aide-de-camp had just left the commander's side, and was riding pell-mell down the almost vertical hillside. The track was barely there, and many times the horse nearly lost its footing, but the rider was always able at the last second to regain control and continue his mad descent.

  “Only one man that I know of can ride like that,” Sergeant Hatch observed from his own mount.

  “And who might that be?” Rutherford asked.

  “Captain Nolan, of course,” Sinclair put in. The same Captain Nolan whose equitation techniques were sweeping the Continent.

  The rider came on, rocks and gravel and dust kicking up behind his horse's hooves, and once he had reached the plain below, he spurred his horse on ever faster. Lord Lucan, in his white-plumed hat, trotted toward the approaching figure and reined in his horse not more than ten yards in front of Sinclair, between the tight formations of the Light and the Heavy Brigades which he commanded.

  Nolan galloped up, sweat streaming from his horse's flanks, and pulled a communique from his sabretache, slapping it into Lord Lucan's hand. Though Sinclair was well aware of Nolan's low regard for Lord Lucan (shared by most of the cavalry), still he was surprised at the peremptory manner in which he had delivered the message. Lucan had a famously bad temper, and any such misstep could lead to arrest for insubordination.

  Lucan, glowering, read the orders, then looked up at Nolan, whose horse was still pacing anxiously about, and challenged him in some way. Sinclair could not make out all the words, but he heard something to the effect of “Attack what? Attack what guns, sir?”

  Sinclair traded a look with Rutherford. Was Lord Lucan- “Lord Look-On” to his idled troops-once again going to keep his men from entering the fray?

  Nolan urgently repeated something, his dark curls shaking about his head, and gestured at the paper in Lord Lucan's hand. And then, with his arm thrown out toward the Russian batteries at the far end of the North Valley, and in a voice that even Sinclair could clearly hear, Nolan shouted, “There, my lord, is your enemy. There are your guns!”

  Sinclair expected to see Lord Lucan go into a rage at this further impertinence and order Captain Nolan to be arrested on the spot, but instead he simply shrugged, turned his horse away, and trotted off to consult with his archenemy, Lord Cardigan. Whatever had been written in that communique, it was sufficiently important that he did not wish to ignore it or to take some unilateral action.

  After several minutes of intense deliberation, Lord Cardigan saluted, not once but twice, and galloped back toward Sinclair and his fellow Lancers. Quickly, he ordered the brigade to form up in two lines, with the first line composed of the 17th Lancers, the 13th Light Dragoons, and the 11th Hussars; the second line was made up of the 4th Light Dragoons and most of the 8th Hussars. The Heavy Brigade, meanwhile, was being drawn up to their rear. The Horse Artillery, which might have been expected to follow under normal circumstances, was not ordered up-perhaps, Sinclair concluded, because the valley before them was partly plowed and consequently hard to traverse.

  If he'd had to guess, Sinclair would have said that the North Valley, into which the brigade was entering, was about a mile and a quarter long, and not even a mile wide. It was a flat plain, offering no sort of cover, and on all three sides it was under the control of the Russian forces. On the Fedioukine Hills to the north, Sinclair could make out at least a dozen gun emplacements, along with several battalions of infantry. To the south, the Causeway Heights were even more fearsome, with as many as thirty guns and a field battery that had captured the redoubts earlier in the day. But it was at the end of the valley that the greatest danger of all lay. If the Light Brigade was to attack that point, it would not only have to pass through a gauntlet of fire the entire way, it would then have to ride straight up into the muzzles of a dozen cannons, backed by several lines of densely packed Russian cavalry.

  For the first time in his life, Sinclair had a distinct premonition of death. It came not as a shiver, or even as an urge to flee, but as a cold, stark fact. Up until then, even as others had fallen by the wayside with cholera or fever, or been picked off by snipers in the hills, he had never truly considered his own vulnerability. He had felt impervious. But no one, staring down the bore of the North Valley, could continue in such an illusion.

  Sinclair was riding in the first line with Rutherford on his left, and a young chap named Owens on his right. Sergeant Hatch had been conscripted into the second line.

  “Five quid,” Sinclair said to Rutherford, “that I reach the gun battery first.”

  “You're on,” Rutherford said. “But have you got five quid?”

  Sinclair laughed, and Owens managed a weak smile at overhearing the exchange. He had a receding chin and a thin face, and his skin had gone as white as whey. His hand trembled on the upright lance.

  A trumpet sounded, and Sinclair fell silent, as did all of those around him. Lord Cardigan had ridden several lengths in front of the entire company, and all alone he drew his sword and raised it. In a calm voice that nonetheless carried to the men behind him, he said, “The Brigade will advance. Walk, march, trot.”

  The sound of the trumpet had died away, and it was only as the cavalry advanced, lances held high, that Sinclair noted the strange, almost unnatural hush that seemed to have fallen over the entire valley. No rifles were fired from the heights, no cannons boomed, no breeze rustled the short grass. All he could hear were the creaking of the leather saddles and the jingling of spurs. It was as if the whole world was holding its breath, waiting to see how this spectacle would unfold.

  Sinclair held his reins loosely in his hands, knowing that the time would soon come when he would have to tighten his grip and urge Ajax on into a maelstrom of fire. The horse lifted its head, snorting at the fresh air, happy to trot at last on level, hard-packed ground. Sinclair tried to keep his gaze fixed firmly ahead, on the trim figure of Lord Cardigan, sitting erect in his saddle, his gold-laced pelisse not dangling from his shoulder, as was the custom, but worn as a coat. Cardigan never once turned around to observe his troops, for to do so, as any cavalryman knew, was to signal uncertainty, and Lord Cardigan was nothing but certain of himself. Whatever Sinclair and the other men thought of him in general, much as they might mock him for his luxurious ways and petty insistence on protocol, on that day he was an inspiring figure.

  And then Sinclair saw, at the far end of the valley, a puff of smoke, as delicate and round as a dandelion head, then another. The boom of the cannon fire arrived only a second or two later, and a fountain of dirt and grass erupted into the air. The shots had fallen short, but Sinclair knew that the Russian gunners were simply finding their range. The front line had advanced no more than fifty or sixty yards, when to Sinclair's astonishment Captain Nolan broke from the ranks and raced, in a gross breach of all military etiquette, directly across Lord Cardigan's path, waving his sword; he had wheeled in his saddle and was shouting something at Cardigan that was impossible for anyone to hear over the rising thunder of the guns. For a mom
ent, Sinclair thought that Nolan had lost his head entirely, and was trying to take over the charge. But before Cardigan could even react to this shocking display, a Russian cannonball exploded in the dirt, and a shell fragment ripped across Captain Nolan's chest with such savagery that Sinclair could see the man's beating heart. Then he heard a scream, like none he had ever heard before, as Nolan's bloody body, still somehow erect in the saddle, was carried back through the lines by the panic-stricken horse. The sword had dropped from Nolan's hand, but his arm remained inexplicably outstretched, as if he were still attempting to direct the attack. The scream continued, too, until the horse had bolted into the 4th Light Dragoons, where the body, finally silent, toppled from the saddle.

  “Good God,” Sinclair heard Rutherford mutter. “What was the man trying to do?”

  Sinclair had no idea, but to see Captain Nolan, the most capable rider in the whole British cavalry, slain so soon, did not bode well. The pace of the brigade increased, but only slightly. Lord Cardigan, who had still not so much as turned in his saddle to ascertain Nolan's fate, was leading the troops in close formation and at a measured pace, for all the world as if they were simply performing a drill on a parade ground, rather than marching into a mounting cascade of fire.

  “Close in!” Sinclair heard Sergeant Hatch call out behind him, ordering the riders to move up and fill in the gaps left by fallen men and horses. “Close in to the center!”

  The pace picked up, and Ajax lowered his chestnut muzzle, with its blaze of white, and carried Sinclair forward, his sword and sabretache slapping at his side, his helmet lowered to shield his eyes from the bright sun. The shaft of the lance grew unwieldy in his hand, and he longed for the order to lower it and cradle it beneath his arm. And he prayed that he would survive long enough to use it.

  Halfway down the valley, the brigade had come within the withering cross fire of the cannons and infantry rifles on both the Causeway Heights and the Fedioukine Hills. Musket balls and cannon shells, grapeshot and round, whizzed and blazed through the ranks, tearing into the horses’ flanks, or knocking the riders clear out of their saddles. The troopers could no longer restrain their terrified horses, or for that matter restrain themselves, and the ranks became increasingly disarrayed as horses and men galloped forward, desperate to escape the deadly hail. Sinclair heard cheers and prayers, mingled with the agonized shrieks of wounded horses and the screams of dying men.

  “Come on, Seventeenth Lancers!” he heard Sergeant Hatch shout, as his horse drew along Sinclair's right side. “Don't let the 13th get there before us!”

  Where was young Owens, Sinclair wondered, or his horse? He had not even seen the man killed.

  A bugle sounded, and Sinclair at last lowered his lance, and touched his spurs to Ajax's heaving sides. The battlefield was so clouded with smoke and dust and debris that Sinclair could barely make out the gun battery ahead. He could see flashes of flame, and hear the cannonballs crashing through the lines, taking out a dozen men at once as if they were ninepins. The noise was deafening, so loud and harsh that he could hear nothing but a ringing din. His eyes burned from the smoke and fire, and his blood was pounding in his veins. Horsemen who had charged ahead of him were scattered on the ground, blown to pieces, their steeds struggling to rise on shattered or missing legs. Ajax leapt over a standard-bearer, draped across his headless mount, and confident in his master, galloped bravely into the maelstrom. The ground hurtled past as Sinclair struggled to hold the lance straight and true. Not more than fifty yards away, he could glimpse the gray uniforms and low-brimmed caps of the Russian gunners, as they frantically loaded another shell into the cannon. He was riding straight for its barrel as they rammed the cannonball home, but he could not get out of its way. Sergeant Hatch was close on one side, and Rutherford's horse, keening with fright, was keeping him company on the other; the empty stirrups clanked, but there wasn't any sign of its rider. Sinclair would have no choice but to vault over the gun before it could be fired. He heard cries in Russian, saw a sputtering orange torch being touched to a fuse, and with his head down and his lance extended toward the man who held the flame, he charged the gun. Ajax leapt into the air just as the cannon went off, and the last thing Sinclair remembered was flying blind through a red-hot stew of blood and smoke, guts and gunpowder… and then nothing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  December 16, 11:45 a.m.

  Just when Charlotte had started to think this might not be such a bad gig, after all-terrible weather and camp fever, true, but no big medical crises to deal with-all hell had started breaking loose.

  First, Danzig had been attacked and killed by his own husky and now- now Murphy was trying to tell her that the mutilated body lying before her on the floor of the botany lab was the dead Danzig's handiwork.

  “That's not possible,” she said, for the hundredth time. “I pronounced Danzig dead myself. I stitched his throat closed with my own two hands, I hit him twice-no, three times-with the defib paddles, and I saw him flatline.” She knelt and put a hand to the side of Ackerley's cold neck. “And I saw him zipped into the body bag.”

  “Well, somehow he got out,” Murphy insisted. “That's all I can tell you. Wilde and Lawson both swear to it.”

  If she didn't know better, she'd have asked if they were drunk at the time, or flying high on something even more potent. But she knew Michael and she knew Lawson and she knew they would never make up anything so awful. And this was indeed about as awful as it could get. The throat and shoulders had been savagely torn, and the gushing blood had saturated his shirt and pants. Somehow his glasses, though spattered with gore, had managed to stay on throughout the attack. Whoever, or whatever, had done this, was something far worse than anything she had encountered even on the worst night in the Chicago ER.

  “I know you'll want to do a more thorough exam,” Murphy said, nervously pacing behind her, “but in view of what's happened to Danzig, I'm not taking any chances.” She had already noticed the telltale bulge of a gun and holster under his coat.

  “What's that mean?”

  “I'll show you.”

  What it meant, Charlotte discovered, was that the body was to be packed up and then loaded, by the two of them, onto a toboggan, which they then dragged, as inconspicuously as they could, around the back of the out buildings and to a seldom-used storage shed and meat locker. The old meat locker turned out to be a cavernous, dilapidated shed. In it, there were crates of Coke and beer and culinary supplies. Murphy went all the way to the back, then with one arm swept a couple of cans and utensils off a long crate about three feet high. A thick metal pipe, with flaking red paint, ran along the wall just above it.

  “Let's lay him down here,” he said. Murphy took the shoulders, and Charlotte the feet, and they put the body down as gently and respectfully as they could. As Charlotte straightened up, she saw that the crate was stamped, in black letters, MIXED CONDIMENTS: HEINZ.

  “And why is this better than taking him to the infirmary for the autopsy?” Charlotte said.

  “Because we can keep it quiet,” Murphy replied, “at least for a while. And it's safer here.”

  “Safer from what?” Whatever that Danzig situation turned out to be, did the chief really think that this mutilated corpse was going to make a comeback?

  Murphy didn't answer that, but she certainly didn't like the look in his eye, or the pair of handcuffs-handcuffs? — that she now saw dangling from his back pocket. “Give me a minute alone, will you?” he said. “I'll be right out.”

  Charlotte went outside and stood on the ramp. The wind had really kicked up-a storm was blowing in. What in the world was going on here? Two dead in a matter of days? And though she felt terrible even thinking about it that way on a personal note she did have to wonder-was this going to look bad on her record as resident medical officer of Point Adelie?

  “All squared away” Murphy said, coming up behind her and securing the door with a padlock and chain, wrapped in a tight plastic sleeve to keep
the moisture out. “Needless to say, I've told Uncle Barney that this unit is off-limits till further notice.”

  Charlotte vowed, just to be on the safe side, never again to use a Heinz condiment of any kind.

  “And I don't need to tell you, I want all of this kept on the q.t. At least until we've got a better grip on things-Danzig in particular.”

  December 16, 2 p.m.

  Eleanor was only vaguely aware of what was going on. She remembered being helped, nearly carried, to the door of the church, then being placed atop a cumbersome machine, on a sort of saddle. She had been encouraged to put her arms around the man sitting in front of her-Michael Wilde, he'd said his name was; she wondered if he was Irish-but that would have been far too forward and with her remaining strength she had resisted.

  The other man had then tied a rope around her, made of some thin but sturdy fiber, and fastened the hood of her coat down tightly around her head. The machine had roared off across the snow like a stallion, but the wind, and icy spray, was so strong that, like it or not, she had had to lean her head down and rest her cheek against Michael's back. And before long, just to keep her stability, lift her arms around him.

  If not for the hood, the noise might have been deafening, and as they rumbled across the barren landscape, she felt herself oddly lulled. All day, she had been growing weaker, and fighting to resist the allure of the black bottles Sinclair had left in the rectory, and now she felt the last of her energy ebbing away. Her eyes closed, and her limbs relaxed. She felt powerless, but not unpleasantly so. The rattling of the machine reminded her of the thrumming of the engines on the ship she had taken to the Crimea… under the ever-watchful eye of Miss Nightingale. But oh, what would her employer make of a scene such as this? She knew perfectly well that Miss Nightingale disapproved of her nurses fraternizing with the soldiers or breaking with most of the social conventions. Scandal was to be avoided at all costs, and for all of her natural ease with the troops, Miss Nightingale often seemed humorless and inflexible with her female staff.