Baal’s red eyes were glowing fiercely over Michael’s shoulder. The other man hadn’t seen. Virga felt himself spinning, spinning, spinning down a great distance.
The red eyes, like terrible siren beacons, flashed.
“James,” she said. “James.”
He called out, “Who is that?” but he knew the voice and it choked him inside as if he were gagging on something lodged in his throat. His heart pounded with a violent intensity. I want to hear your voice, he told her. I want to hear your voice.
“James,” she said again, only now it was a pleading voice that almost killed him. Tears sprang to his eyes and he wiped them away before they could freeze. “I’m here beside you. Can’t you see me?”
“No,” he whispered. “I can’t.”
“Here. I need you, James. I don’t want to go back.”
“Go back? Go back where?”
“Where I’ve been,” she replied, almost sobbing. “A terrible cold place with gray walls. I don’t understand this, James. I don’t I remember falling; I remember a hospital and people standing over me. Then nothing. Everything faded…everything turned to gray like the walls of that place. I can’t go back. Please don’t make me go back.”
He strained to see into the distance, but there was nothing. He couldn’t see her. The bite of the cold reminded him that he was still awake but he moved across the ice sluggishly, as if it were turning into a vicious paste over the tops of his kamiks. It was her voice, yes, incredibly her voice. But where was she? Where was she? Her voice. Yes. Her voice.
“Answer me, James,” she pleaded. “Please let me know you hear me.”
“I hear you,” he called. “Where are you?”
“Here beside you. I’m walking beside you but something separates us and I can’t quite touch you. Oh God, you’re so close. Why can’t you see me?” The voice was on the edge of panic; it ate into him.
He turned and thrust his arms out in all directions, flailing, flailing, finding nothing. He choked back a bitter cry of rage and frustration. “There’s nothing here!” he said.
She began to cry. The tears overflowed and ran down his own face. “I don’t want to go back! I don’t want to go back!”
“Then stay! Help me find you! Reach out and touch my hand! Can you?”
“Almost. I almost can. Something is between us. Help me!”
“How? How can I help you?” He looked around feverishly for her. The tears froze on his face, left thin crusts of ice in the lines around his mouth.
Her voice, moaning for him, died away. With a new determination he searched the darkness, his fingers grasping for a form that had seemed to be speaking just to the right of him.
And then she said, sobbing, “They want me to go back, James. They say I have to and that I can’t stay. Touch me. I don’t want to go!”
His breathing was harsh and ragged. He cried out, “I can’t find you!”
“I do want to stay. I do. Help me!”
“Yes. How?”
“That man,” she said, her voice almost cracking, “walking ahead of you. He keeps us apart. As long as he is there I can’t reach through. If he were gone then they would let me touch you…”
The images of her were flashing kaleidoscopically through his brain. There was a roaring in his head; a tremendous weight was pressing down on the back of his neck. “If he were gone…?” he asked weakly, a voice not his own.
She sobbed. “Around your shoulder. The rifle…”
“Where are you?” Virga cried out. “I don’t see you!”
“The rifle… Oh God, they’re calling me back!”
Virga was weak and off balance. He was afraid he would stumble. He saw the offered target of Zark’s back only a few feet in front of him. The man was crude and cruel, a beast, a killer. Why should he live and make her suffer? Why should he live?
“The rifle,” she said. “James…” Her voice began to fade.
“No! Don’t go…not yet!” He hefted the weapon up with his injured hand and placed his finger on the trigger. The bastard was making her suffer! He was torturing her!
“James,” she said, calling from such a distance now that it made new tears course over his cheeks.
He took no aim. From this distance he couldn’t miss. He squeezed the trigger.
Someone wheeled in front of him and wrenched the barrel toward the sky. The explosion of the shot deafened him and rocked him back. Flame exposed, briefly, Zark’s incredulous face as the hunter dodged down to avoid a bullet that whizzed over his right shoulder into the darkness.
“Christ!” Zark said.
Michael wrenched the rifle away from Virga, his golden gaze unflinching. Virga felt his knees begin to give way but before he could fall the other man caught him and lowered him gently. Beyond Michael, Baal stood without moving, arms chained before him.
“Has he gone crazy?” Zark said. “That almost took my head off!”
“She was there,” Virga whispered to Michael, the hot tears of shame and regret already freezing down his face. “She was standing right beside me all the time and I couldn’t even touch her…”
Michael said softly, “She was never there.”
“She was! I heard her! She tried to touch me!”
“No. She was never there.”
“She was…” he began, and the terrible sound of his pleading voice stopped him.
Slowly, with a hesitation born of deep and awful emptiness, Virga let her go. Her voice had been swept away by the rifle’s blast but her image remained in his mind. Now, as he blinked away the tears, as he remembered who stood over him, he saw the beautiful face lose its color and life. The light, gleaming softly from the eyes he remembered through a thousand dim nights alone in his apartment, that place that smelled of musty books and useless pottery and rancid smoke, faded until it was only a hollow shade of reality. And now she was receding back through a gray wall of mist and he felt the fear of losing her again throb at his temples.
He reached out a hand for her.
Michael grasped his wrist. “She is dead.”
“No,” said Virga, begging. “No.”
And beyond Michael, Baal laughed like the shriek of a woman.
Michael’s eyes blazed. Virga instinctively cringed from the fire that seemed to glow from the man’s face. The younger man rose up, up, towering as he walked across the ice, finally standing with his face inches from Baal’s. There the two men, like cunning animals, weighed the possibilities of battle.
Michael’s hands were curled into claws at his sides.
“Do it,” said Baal, grinning. “Do it and destroy yourself too. You’d destroy yourself forever for the sake of an old man? No, I think not. Like me, you find this incarnation suitable.”
Michael’s teeth clenched. A muscle spasmed in his jaw. Where the gaze of the two men met the air seemed to glow white-hot.
“Do it,” Baal whispered.
Michael turned abruptly and disdainfully and walked back to Virga. He helped the man to his feet and gave him the rifle again. “I want both of you walking side by side,” he told them. “I want you to know always what the other is doing.”
“Coward,” Baal said over Michael’s shoulder. “You stupid bag of scum. You priest-fucking bastard.”
“You’re all right now?” Michael asked Virga. “You can continue?”
“Yes. I think I can.”
Zark said, “For Christ’s sake, watch him. I don’t want a bullet in my back.”
Virga could now fully recognize his surroundings; he could remember why he was here. For a black instant he’d been caught in an amnesiac solitude. He felt weakened and drained as he’d never been before.
“You’re very certain?” Michael asked.
Virga bent down and gathered up a handful of snow. He rubbed it across his eyes, then wiped it away with his sleeve before it could freeze his lids shut. His skin felt raw. “I’m all right,” he said, “but I swear before God I heard my wife speaking to me.”
>
“If you hear her voice again you’ll recognize it for what it is. If you’d killed Zark, as Baal wished you to, we would have no guide to the sea.”
“My God,” Zark breathed. He glanced over at Baal. “What kind of man are you?” He immediately lowered his eyes, remembering Michael’s instructions.
“A better man than any of you,” Baal said. “You think you’re going to stop me, Michael, contain me, kill me? You know you can’t do that. If anyone falls it will be you.” His eyes swept toward the other two men. “And what will you do then? When I finish with him, where will you hide? Hear me well. There is nowhere on this earth you’ll be able to go. I’ll find you, and I have ten million eyes to help me search.”
Virga shivered. The man’s voice cracked through the darkness and stung him.
“I’ve got a gun,” Zark said. “You remember that.”
“On the contrary. I won’t forget.”
“Move the team on, Zark,” Michael commanded. “Remember, I want both of you walking side by side. That’s right.”
The sledge continued its ragged course. The dogs seemed tired and Zark stopped repeatedly to feed them hunks of dwindling meat. Michael thrust his hands inside his furs for warmth and watched the men at the sledge for any sign of trouble.
“I won’t be stopped,” Baal said. “I’ve come too far. I’ve never been this strong before.”
“And that is exactly why I must stop you. You’re on the verge of overpowering me. I realize that. And for that reason your time must come to an end.”
“I warn you,” Baal said very quietly. “Watch yourself. You’ve thought all along you could master me. Me—one to whom hundreds of thousands have proclaimed their loyalty. And there will be more. And more. And then I will crush my enemies and take the place that was meant for me. You stupid cock-sucker, you filthy piece of shit, you overstep your bounds.”
“I overstep mine to force you back over yours.”
“Too late,” Baal said.
“We’ll see.”
“Damn you!” Baal spat at him. “Hiding behind a cross of shit! You hope to win, knowing you cannot. You meddle with the future.”
“No. I preserve it. Their wars will come, yes. Their famines, their droughts. Their crops will turn to dust and their flesh will dry beneath a burning sun, but it will not be by your hand. You’ve begun the decay. I will not allow your power to warp them beyond all redemption.”
Baal’s eyes burned, mirroring an insatiable greed and lust. He said mockingly, “My master and I offer them hate. They take it gladly. They murder and loot and spit on everything you hold sacred. They take our hand and not yours. They praise our name and not yours. They are ours and not yours.”
“Be silent!” Michael said.
Baal laughed coldly. “Ah. You smell the stench of truth.”
Michael didn’t look at him.
Ahead the ice plains stretched to the lip of the sea.
Chapter 28
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THE DOGS WERE HUNGRY. Zark could only lash his whip into the midst of the swirling pack as they turned on one of their number that had slashed a paw on jagged rocks. Fur flying and teeth bared, they bore the injured dog to the ground, while Zark shouted curses at them. The lead animal, now powerless to control against hunger, stood apart from the pack as if disdaining their cannibalism. The weaker animal fell beneath their combined weight but still guarded its throat with snapping teeth. The pack, their leads tangled around legs and throats, stood in a tight circle, waiting for an opening. And then a stout gray-flecked dog leaped in for the kill, followed by two more, and together they bore down with jaws straining for the jugular.
“Damn you!” shrieked Zark, laying in with his whip. “Back off!”
But they were hungry beyond the comprehension of pain. There was a final cry from the dying dog.
Baal was laughing. “The law of the world,” he said.
Zark could do nothing. He lowered his whip and shook his head from side to side, sickened. “That was a good dog,” he muttered. “A damned good dog.”
“How far to the sea?” Michael asked.
Zark shrugged. “A couple of hours. Maybe more. If I lose any more dogs we’ll never make it. Hell, I’m not so certain we can even make it back ourselves. Our food is gone; there won’t be another refill for the lantern. We’ll be moving in total darkness—very dangerous.”
Virga braced himself against the sledge, fighting off another wave of numbing exhaustion. His beard stubble was laced with ice and he had difficulty breathing, so sharp was the cold. Hours before, Zark had told him he had the first white patches of frostbite across his cheeks and, feeling his battered flesh, Virga felt them growing there like cold cancers. But there was nothing he could do. His feet, even in the sturdy dog-skin socks and kamiks, were rapidly growing numb. His fingers had frozen the day before. Now he kept walking only by a reserve of sheer willpower.
Nor had Zark escaped frostbite. It pocked his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Ice matted his beard, the weight of it making him stoop over, as if he were aging with every step. Virga had tried to keep a conversation going with the man in order to stay awake, but Zark seemed not to want to talk. He preferred silence, answering Virga in a low mutter that disdained communication.
Beyond them, far to the right and behind the lantern’s yellow track, were the two dark figures of Michael and Baal. They would walk in silence for what seemed like hours, then Baal would suddenly spray a string of terrible oaths directly into Michael’s face. And always, always, Baal would taunt Virga and Zark, reminding them that soon they would be his, that after he’d finished with Michael he would rip them to pieces, that after Michael could no longer give them protection they could never run far enough to hide.
“Virga,” Baal called suddenly over the growling of the dogs, “you stumbling sack of shit, you’re going to die out here, do you know that? You think I don’t know you’re slowly freezing to death? What good will you do your precious God when your body is a solid lump of ice? Answer me that.”
“Shut up, you bastard,” Virga said weakly, not knowing if Baal heard him or not. He raised his voice. “Shut up.”
“Virga,” Baal said through the dark curtain that separated them. “Virga, pray to your precious God that He freezes you to death before I can have my revenge. Come over here to me, Virga. I’ll keep you warm.”
“God help us all,” Zark muttered. “We should have killed that man a long time ago.”
“Zark,” Michael called out. “Do you need help with the dogs?”
“No. I can take care of them.” He saw that they’d almost finished with the carcass. He took his rifle from the sledge and with the butt began to shove the animals back from the dead dog. He reached down and pulled the torn mass of flesh away. He waded among them, watching for any bared teeth or upraised tails, and calmly straightened the leads. The one-eyed black brute turned to face the rest of the team, ready if need be to protect his master. In a few moments Zark had disentangled the leads and they were free to continue.
As they neared the coastal shelf the land began to rise up in winding hulks of rock and ice. Forbidding masses of stone, all agonized edges, suddenly materialized out of the gloom to bar their path. Zark corrected their course, taking a smoother but longer route to avoid any more injuries to his animals. A strong wind whined in from the sea; it began high above their heads, where they could hear it screaming, turning upon itself in blasting convolutions, and then dropped directly into their faces. Virga huddled for warmth but it was no use; he was slowly, as Baal had said, freezing to death.
They crawled against the wind through a wide black band of scabbish rocks to face a sight that froze the breath in Virga’s lungs.
Balanced on the precipice of the ice-bound horizon was the moon, huge and blood-red, a bullet hole in ebon flesh. The ice reflected its brilliant crimson back onto the faces of the fur-clad men. For miles and miles the ground was smooth and bloody, bright a
nd distant as a foreign desert.
Zark said over his shoulder, “Melville Bay,” and Michael nodded.
There was no sea noise, no sound of breakers over rock; the thick layer of ice acted as a muffler. The only noise was that of the fierce wind, wailing now from the Pole, as it lashed across the bay and whirled through coastal rock on toward Greenland’s interior.
Michael said, “I want to find a place to cut through the ice.”
“What?” Zark twisted around. “Now you want to go chopping holes? Christ!”
“How thick is it?”
“Several meters. This coastal ice is like iron except during summer thaw.”
“It’s thinner ice further out?”
“Hell!” Zark said. “My agreement was to bring you to the sea and no further. Not onto the ice.”
Michael ignored him. “I seek a place of great depth. I presume that would be a kilometer or more out?”
Beside him Baal’s eyes were burning slits. He looked from Michael to the hunter and back again.
“Maybe it would be,” Zark said. He swore. “Maybe a kilometer or so.”
“Will you take us?”
Zark laughed harshly. “Hell,” he said, “do I have a choice?” He called to the dogs over the rush of wind and they pushed ahead, dragging the crippled sledge over a last fringe of rock-dappled land before reaching the bay’s bleak smoothness.
“What are you going to do?” Baal asked.
Michael was silent.
“Doesn’t the condemned man deserve to know?”
Michael fixed his gaze on the red-streaked horizon. The moon hung before him like a frozen sun.
“You bastard,” Baal said, barely loud enough to be heard. “I warn you. Soon you can’t turn back. Let me go while you still can.”
Baal waited for the other man to reply. Michael seemed not to be listening. “You must want to be destroyed very badly,” Baal said. “And what will it be for? Nothing. You will be scattered like dust in the stars and for what? Look at those two. Look at them! Fine examples of what you want to save. Weak, crawling, begging slabs of filth, no more. One already dead on his feet and the other soon to be.”