Captain Mark Halloway's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Halloway rode until the pines thinned and the river turned to ice. Snow lay deep over the grass, the frosted blades poking through like white hair. His horse balked. He dismounted, strapped on the wide snowshoes, and went forward on foot. Something dark broke the white ahead. He crossed to it and stopped. Bones lay half-buried in the drift. A skull grinned up at him, picked clean. Snow filled the ribs. Rags of a soldier's coat clung to one arm, the blue faded, the fringe torn. Halloway crouched. He could not tell the man by his face. The cold had taken that. He dug with his gloved hands until he found a strip of leather at the hip, and a book beneath it. The journal was swollen with ice. He pried the cover open. On the first page, in careful ink, a name: Daniel Crewe. Halloway shut the book. Three days of hope died in his hands. Running Wolf had been right. Daniel was dead, and he had died out here alone. There was no reason to search north anymore. The man he came for was bones. Then Halloway heard the scream. It came from up the slope, past a rocky rise. A man's voice, high and breaking. Halloway knew it. He had heard that voice every morning on the parade ground. Tim. Tim was alive, and Tim was screaming. He ran. The snowshoes slapped the drift. The rise opened onto a cave mouth cut into the rock, snow banked on the stone above it. The screaming came from inside, then stopped. The silence was worse. Halloway drew his saber and stepped into the dark. Cold air breathed out at him, sour with rot. His eyes adjusted. Tim lay on the ground, one leg twisted wrong, dragging himself back with his elbows. A shape crouched over him. It looked like a young man. It wore a coat older than Daniel's, the cut of a war before Halloway's war, the buttons dull. Its skin was pale and tight over the bones of its face. It turned and smiled at him, and its teeth were red. "Captain," Tim said. His voice shook. "Captain. It don't bleed. I cut it. It don't bleed." Halloway's mouth went dry. The story he had written down as folklore stood in front of him, smiling, cold and alone in the dark. A young man in an old uniform. Running Wolf's warning rang in his skull. "Come away from him," Halloway said. He raised the saber. His hand was steady. The rest of him was not. The thing in the old coat rose to its full height. It did not run. It stepped toward him, slow, still smiling, like a guest come for supper. Behind it, Tim screamed again for him to run. Halloway did not run. He planted his feet between Tim and the creature, and the dark closed around the three of them.