7
Cole came to and made the mistake of opening his eyes. A stinging whiteness—more of that harsh light—invaded his retina like an infection just waiting for an open wound. Between the blows to the back of his helmet and the lance of photons, it felt as if his skull had been split wide open. He kept his eyes squeezed tight and tried to concentrate on his surroundings with his other senses.
Whatever he lay on seemed to be swaying with a gentle motion. He could hear a group of men talking and laughing in the distance. Over that, he heard the sound of runners plowing through snow, coupled with the rhythmic crunch of heavy weight on wet pack.
The temptation to crack an eye and look around was fierce. Even stronger, though, was his desire to avoid pain, which he knew would come with any more of the light. He tried to move his arms, but he could feel that they were tied in front of him. His elbows were also seized to his body and his wrists had been bound tight. They’d left him on his side, on a metal deck of some sort, and taken away his helmet and gloves.
Cole wiggled his elbows back as far as they would go and brought his hands up. Something kept them from coming all the way: a line that tugged between his hands and his feet. He bent over, curling into a ball, and was able to reach his mouth with his fingers, but couldn’t get his wrists high enough to probe the knot with his teeth. He relaxed his body, giving up. They’d tied him up good. Almost as if they’d had plenty of practice.
Cole patted his chest and felt the mound in one pocket created by his red band. The knife was gone. If he remembered correctly, Riggs had it last. Thinking of his old friend—and not knowing what they’d done with him—very nearly caused him to open his eyes and look around. Cole cursed to himself. He curled his cold fingers around each other to warm them, and then he felt something hard across his chest.
The other welding plate.
The voices were coming from somewhere ahead of him, so Cole went into a tight fetal position and slipped the plate out of his pocket. Holding it by the edge, vertically, he brought his hand up to his chin and adjusted the plate until the other side pressed tight against one eye socket. His head was still woozy from the crash and the blows to his back, so he concentrated hard on which eye he was about to open before cracking it.
Light reflected around the edge of the plate, creating a halo of the brightest white that rimmed Cole’s vision, but he could still squint and see. To either side of him stood bundles of gear—sacks and crates—all tied to a metal deck with line made out of some natural-looking fiber. Beyond, he could see half a dozen figures, all covered in fur. They looked like wild game teetering on hind legs, smoke trailing out of their mouths as they yelled and laughed. A few of the men worked handles on a tall mast in the center of the deck, but the thing had no sail. It was just a flat, vertical bar with slits running up and down the length of it. The men kept working on something at its base. They would look up the pole, glance ahead, and then repeat the procedure.
Cole shut his eye to rest his retina from the halo of leaking light; he wiggled back against a pile of goods. One entire side of his body was almost completely numb from the cold metal, but he didn’t want to attract attention by sitting up. He worked the edge of the plate tight to his face again and cracked his eye to look for Riggs.
There was no sign of him, but he couldn’t see the entire deck. He craned his neck as much as possible, but the uncomfortable position and the constraints of his bound hands didn’t give him much of a vista. One thing he did notice was the absence of snow on the deck. Looking past the fur-clad men, he could see it was still driving sideways in heavy sheets, but none of it was in the air around the little craft. He couldn’t quite make out the bow of the ship, but something up ahead must’ve been splitting the flurries, sending the flakes to either side.
He raised his head to investigate, and one of the furry figures tapped another and pointed in his direction.
Cole froze. The alerted figure marched back in his direction, descend-ing the few steps from the platform around the mast. At the base of the steps, the man stopped by a wooden barrel crisscrossed with ropes and pulled something from the lid—a mug of some sort. Stooping down in front of the barrel, he came up with a trail of steam rising from the mug, which wafted back in Cole’s direction.
The smell got to him before the man did: chocolate with a hint of rum. Or more like rum with a hint of chocolate. Cole felt paralyzed with indecision, wondering whether it was better to hide the plate and await his fate in darkness, or stay alert and have it stolen from him. Before he could decide, the figure was before him, crouching down close.
“I’ll have that,” the man said, snapping the plate out of Cole’s hand.
Cole squeezed his eyes shut and held them tight. The man’s accent was a bit different from the others, but there was still a hint of something foreign in it, or perhaps something archaic.
“Who are you guys?” Cole asked, his own voice shaky from the cold and fear.
The response was a loud sip from the mug, then the figure smacking his lips. Cole heard him put the mug down, followed by the sound of fluid being swished inside a vessel, like someone shaking a thermos back and forth.
“Who are we? We’re the same as you lads,” the man replied. “We’re the tainted.”
Before Cole could ask what that meant, he felt a wet rag laden with the smell of something chemical pressed to his face. He held his breath as long as he could, but he finally had to gasp for air.
As soon as he did—he was out again.