“I will kill the son of a bitch,” Danzig said, and Michael believed him. “I will kill the son of a bitch who did this!”
Michael put a hand on Danzig's shoulder, not knowing what to say, when he saw the dog's eyes flicker, then open. “Wait, look…” he started to say, when the husky suddenly let out a low, angry growl. And before Danzig could even react, the dog had lunged up at his face. Danzig toppled backwards, and the dog was on him, snarling and tearing at his clothes and skin. His legs kicked out wildly, he was trying to stand, but the dog was too powerful and too insane with rage. Michael saw the short chain, with its stake still attached, dangling from its collar, and grabbed for it. It flew out of his hands, but he grabbed again, and finally got hold of it. He pulled back on it with all his might, and the dog's jaws, dripping with blood and foam, came away from Danzig's throat. It was still snapping, still trying to bite its master, when Michael yanked it away toward the stairs. Kodiak's paws scrabbled at the wooden floor, but only then did it turn its attention to Michael, whipping around, its cold blue eyes burning with fire, and leapt up. Like a matador, Michael stepped neatly to one side and the dog went flying down the open stairs; Michael heard a thump, a splintering sound, and a loud snap… and then silence.
When he looked down, he could see that the stake had wedged itself between two of the open steps, and the dog was now swinging by its broken neck from the short chain. The stairs creaked with the strain, and Danzig, clutching his throat on the floor, whispered “help” in a weak, burbling voice. The blood was pouring out between his fingers, and Michael ripped his own scarf off, wrapped it tightly around Danzig's neck, and said, “I'll be right back with Dr. Barnes.” As he shot down the stairs, in shock, Kodiak's body swayed back and forth beside him, blood dripping from a puncture wound in its chest-how had that happened? — and matting the straw below.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
December 13, 8 p.m.
Sinclair guided the sled on a wide circle around the rear of the camp so as to avoid being seen, then across the snow and ice with the sea on one side and the distant mountain range on the other. Eleanor was battened down inside it, well protected by the voluminous coat they had stolen from the shed.
The dogs were running smoothly and seemed to know precisely where they were going. Sinclair had no idea where that was, but he was prepared to deal with any eventuality. At some point, he even detected tracks in the snow, and the dogs, he noted, were following them. He stood on the runners, gripping the reins, and though the air was frigid and the sun afforded no warmth at all, he held his face up and reveled in the cold wind scouring his skin and filling his lungs like a bellows. To feel! To move! To be alive again! No matter what happened next, he welcomed it, as nothing could prove more unendurable than his imprisonment in the ice. The red coat, with the white crosses on it, flapped around his legs. The gold braid on his uniform gleamed dully in the wintry air, but his blood felt hot in his veins and even the hair on his head seemed to tingle.
There were cries overhead, the restive cawing of a flock of birds- brown and black and gray-and though he might have hoped to see the snowy white bosom of an albatross silently keeping him company, he did not. These were scavenger birds-he could tell from their dirty color and their grating cry-and they followed the sled dogs in hopes of nothing more than a meal. He had seen such birds before, wheeling in circles in the hot blue sky of the Crimea. They'd come, Sergeant Hatch had told him, from as far away as Africa, drawn by the carrion feast that the British army had laid before them.
“Some of them,” Hatch added, “are no doubt here for me.”
For days, Sinclair had watched as the sergeant's skin went from a weather-beaten tan to a jaundiced yellow; even his eyes had a sickly tinge, and there were times he shook so violently in his saddle that Sinclair had taken the precaution of tying a rope from the man's shoulders to his pommel. “It's the malaria,” Hatch had said, through chattering teeth. “It will pass.”
The blades of the sled suddenly rose up on a hidden elevation, then dipped down again, as gracefully as a ballerina. Sinclair had never seen, or imagined, a contraption quite like it; for that matter, he could not even determine what exactly it was made of. The carriage, where Eleanor lay, was as slick and hard as steel, but lighter, much lighter, judging from the speed with which the dogs were able to drag it.
The birds kept pace overhead, skittering and darting across the sky. By comparison, the vultures in the Crimea had been more complacent, soaring in great lazy circles, and even occasionally roosting in the tops of the desiccated trees as the columns marched by. With their wings folded about their smudged brown bodies, and their beady black eyes, they watched and waited for the next soldier, mad from the heat, dying of thirst, to stumble out of formation and crumple in a heap by the wayside. Their wait was never long. Sinclair, plodding along on an emaciated Ajax, could only look on as the infantrymen first dropped their hats, then their coats, then their muskets and ammunition, as they struggled to keep up. The ones who had contracted cholera could be seen writhing in the dirt, clutching their stomachs, begging for water, begging for morphine, and sometimes simply begging for a bullet to end their agony. As soon as their suffering stopped, and they at last lay still, the vultures would flap their foul wings and plop onto the ground beside them. After a tentative peck or two, simply to make sure of things, the birds would set to with their hooked beaks and claws.
Once, unable to restrain himself, Sinclair had taken a shot at one-blowing it to pieces in a burst of bloody feathers-but Sergeant Hatch had immediately cantered up, listing in his own saddle, and warned him against doing that again.
“It's a waste of ammunition, and might even alert the enemy to our movements.”
Sinclair had laughed. How could the enemy not be aware of their movements? There were sixty thousand men on the march, raising a cloud of dust into the sky, and ever since disembarking, they had been crawling slowly across the vast plains and the thorn and bramble-covered thickets of the Crimea. They had met the enemy at the banks of the River Alma, and the infantry had gallantly scaled mountains in the face of withering fire from the Russian batteries, capturing redoubts and sending the defenders fleeing.
But the cavalry-the 17th Lancers among them-had done nothing. By orders of Lord Raglan, the Commander in Chief, the cavalry was to be “kept in a bandbox”-those very words had circulated through the ranks-guarded and preserved so that they might protect the cannons and perhaps one day, if the army ever arrived there, help in the conquest of the Russian fortress of Sebastopol. For Sinclair, the entire campaign had so far been one long series of humiliations and delays. And at night, when they bivouacked in some mosquito-infested glade, he hardly had to speak to Rutherford or Frenchie; they all knew what the others were thinking, and they were usually too weary to do much more than swallow their rum, choke down their uncooked salt pork, and search desperately for some spring or pond where they could water their horses and fill their canteens.
In the morning, the men who had fallen sick in the night were loaded onto transport wagons, while the dead were quickly consigned to shallow mass graves. The stench of death traveled with the British army wherever it went, and Sinclair had despaired of ever scrubbing it off of his own skin.
“Sinclair,” Eleanor said, her head turned toward him now from the sled, “I see something ahead. Do you see it?” She raised an arm and pointed feebly to the northwest.
He could see it, too, a clutter of black buildings, and a ship-a steamer, from the looks of it-beached on the shoreline. But was this place inhabited? And if so, by whom? Friend or foe?
He reined in the dogs and approached more slowly. But the closer he got, the more confident he became. There was no smoke from a chimney, no lanternlight shining in a window, no clatter of pots or pans. There was no sign of life whatsoever. The dogs, however, seemed well acquainted with the place and trotted into the labyrinth of frozen alleyways and dark, abandoned buildings with complete aplomb, bringing the sled to a halt in the middle of a wide and utterly desolate yard. The new lead dog-a gray beast with a broad white stripe, like a scarf, around his neck-turned and watched Sinclair for further instructions.
Sinclair dismounted, and seeing a clawed device between the runners, he stomped on it, hard, and felt its teeth dig into the ice and frozen soil. A bolt of pain shot up his leg, reminding him of the bite he'd received; the dog had torn right through his riding boot, leaving a flap of blood-tinged leather hanging loose.
Eleanor stirred in the sled, and said, in a voice as bleak as the surroundings, “Where have we come to?”
Sinclair looked around, at the warehouses and massive, abandoned machines-in one open shed, he could see huge iron vats, big enough to boil a team of oxen in, and a web of rusted chains and pulleys. There were train tracks, barely visible here and there, crisscrossing the yard, and iron wheelbarrows even more enormous than the
