North Dark | Chapter 6 of 21

Men wrapped in wolfskins reach up to their biceps into garbage cans filled with vegetable alcohol.

Two Crows does not know how long he has slept. The pain in his head has dulled and the rocking of the boat has made him nauseous. He draws the squirting IV needle from his arm, pulls himself from the bed and climbs to the porthole. The cell is dark and he has a difficult time manipulating the latch, but he solves it, swings the window open, leans out into the freezing air and, convulsing in pain, vomits into the sea.

He hangs his head out there for a long time. The cold spray of the ocean slaps the back of his neck as he listens to the waves. He gags and heaves again but there is little left within his body. Long stalks of bloody drool and mucus hang from his mouth and nostrils. He watches the moonlight pool on the surface of the ocean; enormous pale creatures breach and call mournfully out into the distant dark. Three mountainous blue icebergs sit grouped in the water. Even at this distance, they smell so strange, so pure and old. He leaves the cabin and wanders topside, careening from doorway to doorway with the motion of the boat.

When he reaches the top he sees that no crew yet works the deck. He is alone. He stands near the prow and watches the icy water.

He turns around and sees his father, bearded and healthy, standing down the deck regarding him.

Dad?

No answer. The man just watches him through the dark with burning eyes.

Dad!

Two Crows steps forward but his father’s blackening image withdraws as though being sucked backward or seen from the wrong end of a twisting telescope.

*

It is Doctor Bell that finds him in the morning. She helps him up and sits him on a bench.

“Trying to get some fresh air, maybe?” she says.

It is crisp daylight now and the other women standing on deck are staring at him. They do not know what to make of this wounded man.

Doctor Bell touches his head again with both hands and positions it so that sunlight falls directly onto his battered face. “How are you feeling? You are dehydrated. We need to get you back on fluids.” She turns to another woman. “Take him back below. He needs another IV bag.”

Two Crows shakes his head. No.

Doctor Bell looks at him. “What do you mean?”

He shakes his head again. No. I want to stay here, in the air. It keeps me awake. Alert. Thinking clearly.

“Are you saying no to the IV or no to going below?”

He turns his eyes to the sky.

“Okay. We can bring the bag up here.”

A younger girl pins his IV bag to a hook on the wall, sterilizes the dull needle with a cigarette lighter and inserts it into Two Crows’ arm. He sits there and watches. She speaks not at all and her fingers tremble slightly. He looks into her eyes.

“Sorry,” she says. “It’s difficult to do this while the boat is moving… I’m not a doctor. I’m training. Most of us are training.”

He looks at the crew.

“We’re headed to Rexroat,” she says, “to help the sick that are there. We’ll be resupplied in a few months and then we’ll move on. I don’t know where to after that. That’s what we do, help the sick.”

He nods.

“You’re welcome. You just make sure to sit upright. If you need to sleep, flag someone down and we’ll take you back downstairs.”

All right.

“Do you think you could write down what happened to you? We might be able to treat you better if we knew more.”

He shakes his head no.

“Okay,” she says, swallowing dryly. “Okay.” She stands and leaves him.

*

Two Crows leaves the medical ship at a noisome, bedraggled port in Rexroat. Doctor Bell watches him walk away into the stinking, ragged crowd. Feeling the heat of her eyes on his back, he stops, turns, and they establish eye contact. She seems to be asking him something with her eyes; he does not know the question, but he answers her no by turning away and walking into the foul arms of the city.

As he wanders, people stare at his injuries. He is feeling better, his skin feels invigorated, his lungs pump oxygen, colors he had forgotten—gold and violet—return to his vision. Doctor Bell has helped him, has neutralized a little of the sharp, constant ache.

The rigid mask of scabbed blood, swelling, and bruising that is his face creates in him a confidence that he will not be recognized by the hood when he finds him. The hood. He has to stop thinking of him as that. He has a name now. Thrall. A name and a face. That is all he needs to find the man.

He walks up and down the crowded streets at dusk, memorizing the layout of footpaths. Old men, once sailors, now insane, squat cupped in shadow on the streetsides. They mutter to one another about nothing, exchange nothing with their hands, exist only to fill the wet seams in the gridwork of this place. Birds circle overhead and flap from the liquid garbage on the streets to their nests packed into the broken mortar and rank ivy growing from cracks in the buildingsides. When night falls entirely, he visits tavern after tavern looking for Thrall but never sees him. He walks up and down the district, entering and leaving the same small lodging houses again and again. He catches the same stares from the same drinkers and he is beginning to show too much of himself to this place. He is giving away his advantage. Thrall does not know what is coming for him. Best not to tell him. Best to position and strike from perfect shadow. When he makes this decision, he is standing in the doorway of some rugged pit packed with drunks and toughs. Men wrapped in wolfskins reach up to their biceps into garbage cans filled with vegetable alcohol. They fill their drinking horns, slosh and nudge against one another in rough play like bears.

Two Crows pushes toward a counterway where some kind of tavernkeeper dripping in knives and leaning on the stump of an arm amputated at the elbow eyes him with open suspicion. He leans close to Two Crows, spits on the ground, and says, “Do you need a doctor?”

Two Crows shakes his head. No.

“What do you need?”

He does not know how to answer that.

“It costs money to drink in here, bud.”

Two Crows reaches into his pocket and fishes out a single loose copper round. He stands it on the bartop and draws his horn from his belt. He hands it to the bartender. The bartender fills the horn with beer from a brass spigot and hands it back.

Two Crows looks at the oily beer shining in his horn and considers. If he drinks this it will be the first liquid other than water or blood he has consumed since his moment with Thrall. He applies the flaking rim of the horn to his cracked lips and tilts his head backward and slowly absorbs the sharp, bitter beer. The rattling carbonation crackles in his throat. He swallows painfully, mechanically. Wincing, he drinks the entire contents and snaps the horn toward the ground, clearing it, and slides it back into his leather belt. He leaves the barkeeper and walks around the tavern, finds a chair and sits. He does not know what else to do. People come and sit at his table, look him over, growl to themselves, drink, stand, and leave. It happens many times over. A drunk stumbles around the room until someone kicks out his feet and he falls. A small party of squalid Maunders shuffle into the tavern, hands held cupped before them and heads bowed in attitudes of submission as they beg for bullets or food; they are all quickly and violently ejected. Hours pass and a fat man cloaked in garbage bags escorts women into the bar. The women remove their coats and reveal themselves to be wearing very little beyond straps of pale leather, crinkled sheets of plastic, and feathered bibs framing loose pale breasts. The men caw and wail, reaching into their pockets and purses for handfuls of jangling bullets. Fistfights erupt.

A long time slides by and the woman that approaches him wears long red hair. She looks at his injured face, touches his shoulders because she does not want to touch his face, and says, “Handsome, can you talk with that mouth?”

No.

“Want to walk me upstairs? Let’s take a short walk.”

A bed in an upstairs room. A sheet of dirty leather lays spread across the lower half of the bed for those who will not remove their boots.

She disrobes and lays her body across the mattress. Trembling, Two Crows unbuckles his belt and climbs atop her. He lengthens instantly. He guides his slender self into her cold body and jacks in and out. Her muscles close around him. Her once soft face grimaces. He looks away and orgasms dully.

He pulls out and shakes himself and pulls up his pants.

How much was that?

“Ten bullets.”

He reaches into his pocket and counts out the rounds. He cups them in both hands and transfers them into hers. He leaves the room and leaves the bar. Walking in the mud street, he pushes away a hobbling goat and continues on beneath the cold gray moonlight. Two men follow him. He can see them in the corner of his vision as they fall into step fifty feet behind him. They are watching him and not speaking. Had they been speaking, he would not have noticed them. He stops and turns around to face the men.

Well?

They are stunned by this. The whites of their eyes glow blue like milk in the moonlight when they look at him. The men are young, as young as Two Crows. They wear sparse beards and new parkas. They each carry their hands in their pockets.

Are they under the employ of the bawdmaster who brought the women into the bar? Are they just independent roadmen looking to rob the unaccompanied? They glance at one another, unsure what to do. Whoever they are, they are not very experienced.

Two Crows draws his fire iron.

The men remove their hands from their pockets. They hold two knives each.

They run at Two Crows and he runs at them.

They get on either side of him and he chooses the one with the younger face, taking a full twohanded swing at his midsection. The barb of the fire iron strikes the man in the ribs, pierces, and holds there. The man winces and drops his knives, reaches for the iron now standing in his side.

The other one slashes at Two Crows and the knife bangs into the side of his head. Two Crows draws his knife in one hand and his drinking horn in the other. He cuts the man across his chest and smashes the horn into his face. The man falls backward and scrabbles in the mud. Two Crows falls atop him and jams the knifeblade into his belly; air escapes in gasps from the wound. Two Crows stands and turns to the other, now running away, the fire iron still embedded in his side. Give that back! Two Crows chases after him and reaches out for the iron. He takes hold of it by the grip and rips it from the man’s body. He cries out. Two Crows strikes him in the same place and bones crunch loudly in the night air. He can feel the destruction of the ribcage through the length of the iron. The man falls to his chest. Two Crows, out of breath from fighting and running, stands over him and takes the iron in both hands, reaches up and swings it down directly into his head, smashing the skull like a pumpkin.

Two Crows returns to the other one, now on his back in the mud, gasping, dying. Two Crows takes back the drinking horn and knife.  He stands up in the moonlight and looks at the work he has just done. The street is empty. No one has seen the violence. Blood runs down the side of his face. A low pain begins to radiate on the side of his head. He touches the wound. He does not have a right ear anymore. He cut my ear off? He looks down at the street and finds the small scrap of his ear in a pool of mud. He picks it up and looks at it. He does not know what to do with it, so he hides it in his pocket and jogs away.