Blood and Ice

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

December 16, 11:30 a.m.

The wind, when Sinclair left, had been low, but it was coming up fast. He had guided the dogs down through the ramshackle buildings of the whaling station-past the blacksmith's shop, where dozens of harpoons, some as long as the lance he had carried into battle, were still mounted in racks against the wall-and toward the northwest, where he could see a low ridge of ice, obscuring anything beyond. He doubted he would find anything on the other side, but what choice did he have? Surrender himself, and Eleanor, to the ministrations of those from whom they had narrowly made their escape? Sinclair trusted no one

… and never would again.

Even, sad to say, his own beloved. He'd locked Eleanor in the rectory before leaving because, in her present weakened state, he did not know what she would do; he feared that when she awoke, she might succumb to some sudden impulse and attempt to do away with herself. How precisely that could be done, he wasn't sure. He knew that their corruption, despite its awful price, afforded them protection from maladies that would kill anyone else-cholera, dysentery, the mysterious Crimea fever… even a hundred years, or however long it had been, imprisoned at the bottom of the sea. But whatever devilish mechanism fueled their endless life could not, he suspected, withstand corporeal destruction. He glanced down at the back of his torn boot, where the dog had ripped at his calf. The wound beneath had stopped bleeding, it had even healed over, but in some indefinable way it was not living flesh. It was a patch, a scab, a plaster-something helping to hold together a walking, talking, breathing skeleton. He could break, it seemed, but he could not wither.

Not at all in keeping with the brigade's motto, he reflected wryly. It was neither death, nor was it glory. Instead, it was a sort of way station, reminding him of the idle days the Light Brigade had been forced to endure in the Crimea.

For weeks, they had done nothing but wait about, observing the infantry actions from their standing mounts, held in reserve, constantly, for a decisive moment that never seemed to come. Under the direction of Lords Lucan and Cardigan-two men, brothers-in-law, who despised each other thoroughly-the 17th Lancers had been shifted from one remote outpost to another, always held in check lest they be spent too soon. Sinclair, like many of the others, had begun to feel that they were becoming an object of derision among the other troops-the fancy horse soldiers, in their plumes and pelisses, their gold braid and their bright cherry trousers, munching on hard-boiled eggs and biscuits-while their compatriots did the dirty work of storming the redoubts. When, at one critical juncture, the Russian cavalry had been allowed to escape in total disarray without being pursued and annihilated, Sergeant Hatch, barely recovered from his bout with the malaria, had broken his pipe in disgust and thrown the pieces into the dirt.

“Is it a gilded invitation they're waiting for?” he snarled, while reining in his impatient horse and throwing a dark look up at the heights, where the Commander in Chief, the elderly, one-armed Lord Raglan, could be seen with his telescope, surrounded by aides. “They won't get a better one than that.”

Even Captain Rutherford, known as much for his imperturbable nature as his bushy muttonchops, appeared impatient, and after taking a long sip from his flask-filled with rum and water- leaned across his saddle and offered it to Sinclair. “It may be another long day,” he said.

Sinclair had taken it and drunk deeply. Ever since the 17th Lancers had set sail, the war had been a vast, costly anticlimax-a violent journey across pitching seas that had killed off countless horses, followed by endless marches through narrow gorges and empty plains, all the while leaving bodies in their wake, food for vultures and vermin… and the strange, scuttling creatures that they glimpsed only at night, lurking just beyond the pickets at their posts. Sinclair had asked one of the Turkish scouts what they were, and, after superstitiously spitting over his own left shoulder, the man had muttered, “Kara-kondjiolos.”

“But what does it mean?”

“Bloodsuckers,” the scout replied, with disgust. “They bite the dead.”

“Like jackals?”

“Worse,” he said, searching for the right word. “Like… the cursed.”

Whenever one had been spotted-never as anything more than a hunched-over shape clinging to the shadows or crawling close to the ground-Sinclair had noted that the Catholic recruits ostentatiously crossed themselves and everyone, regardless of faith, sidled closer to the campfires.

It was a far cry, the foreign land he was traveling through, from his home. And though he had seen nothing so stirring ever since, he remembered well the flags and bunting, the brass bands and fluttering handkerchiefs, when the army had first boarded the ships in England. Even the town of Balaclava, once an idyllic little seaport, had been rendered unrecognizable. Before the British troops had arrived, the town had been a favorite retreat of the residents of Sebastopol, its pretty little villas famous for their green-tiled roofs and neatly cultivated gardens. From all reports, every cottage and fence post had been adorned with roses, clematis, and honeysuckle, and light green Muscatel grapes, ripe for the picking, hung in great clumps from the vines. Orchards carpeted the hillsides, and the pristine waters of the bay sparkled like crystal.

And then the Agamemnon, the British navy's most powerful man-of-war, had steamed into the harbor, and the army-twenty-five thousand strong at that landing point alone-had made the town its base of operations. The villas were overrun, the gardens churned to mud, the vines trampled underfoot. With many of the soldiers sick or dying from diarrhea, the tiny landlocked harbor had become an immense and reeking latrine, foul with waste and refuse. Lord Cardigan, no fool, had elected to stay several miles away, on board his private yacht, the Dryad. There, his meals were prepared by his French chef, while a flock of orderlies and aides rode their weary horses up and down the steep hills to the harbor, carrying his dispatches. Among the troops, when out of earshot of an officer, he had come to be called “The Noble Yachtsman.”

“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 moment, 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.