Read Chapter 38: The Choice

The wind had died. That was the first thing Harlow noticed as he sat on the hard-packed snow with his back against a low drift, watching the first gray light bleed across the eastern horizon. The air was so still he could hear his own heartbeat, could hear the faint wheeze of Walsh's breath thirty yards away where the men had rigged a rough shelter from salvaged sailcloth.

Mercer sat ten feet from him, wrists bound behind his back, ankles lashed with the same rope. The captain's face was a mask of frost and bruise, his left eye swollen nearly shut from their struggle the night before. He had not spoken since Harlow had tied him. He simply sat there, watching the men move about their small camp like a man attending his own funeral.

Harlow stood. His knees cracked audibly in the cold.

"How is he?" he asked, nodding toward Walsh as Evans approached.

Evans shook his head. "Bad. The water got into his lungs. He's burning with fever now, and his hands are going black at the tips."

"Macready?"

"Jenkins is holding the bandage on his leg. The bleeding's slowed, but—" Evans hesitated. "We need to get off this ice, sir. We've got maybe two days of food left. Maybe less if we have to feed him." He jerked his chin toward Mercer.

Harlow looked at the captain. Mercer met his gaze with that same flat, unreadable expression. In another life, Harlow might have respected that calm. The ability to sit in the face of death without flinching. But he knew now what lay beneath it—the calculations, the trade-offs, the men he had already spent like currency.

"The tide charts," Harlow said. "You gave them to me for a reason. You wanted me to get here."

Mercer said nothing.

"You knew about the channel," Harlow continued. "You knew we could cross. You let us follow you."

A flicker in the captain's one good eye. "I knew you'd cross if you believed there was open water on the other side. I didn't think you'd make it."

"But you did."

"I know my ice, James."

Harlow crouched down in front of him. "Then tell me what's out there. Beyond this shore. You have charts in your head that the rest of us can't see."

Mercer was quiet for a long moment. Then he spoke, his voice low and rough from the cold. "There's an Inuit settlement two days' march northeast. They trade with the whalers. The _Aurora_ was due to meet them for provisions before the season turned."

"You're lying," Evans said, stepping forward. "You'd lead us into a trap."

"I'm not lying about this," Mercer said. "I was going to find them myself. Use their boats to reach the whaling grounds before winter closed in." He looked at Harlow. "Kill me, and you lose that knowledge. Leave me here, and you lose it anyway."

Harlow stood. He walked to the edge of their camp, where the ice met the shore in a jagged line of pressure ridges. Beyond it, the frozen sea stretched back the way they had come—a white plain broken by the dark smear of open water where the channel had been. The Discovery was gone, burned and sunk. The men behind him were all that remained of an expedition that had set out with forty-two souls.

Eleven of them now. He counted them as he turned back. Evans, Tolland, Stokes, Pratt, Davies, Barrow, plus the three wounded—Macready, Jenkins, Walsh—and Liam, standing guard near the sailcloth shelter with his rifle cradled in his arms. And Mercer.

Eleven men. Two days of food. No shelter worth the name. A wounded boy who had watched his father die on this ice, and a captain who had caused every death since.

Liam stepped away from the shelter and walked toward him. The boy had grown hard in the weeks since the _Discovery_ had gone into the ice. His face was lean, his eyes sharp. He stopped a few feet away and said, "The men are asking what you're going to do with him."

"I know."

"They're scared, Mr. Harlow. They want to be done with it."

Harlow looked past the boy, across the camp. The men had gathered near the shelter, watching him. Evans had his hand resting on the knife at his belt. Tolland had turned his back, unwilling to watch the decision being made. They had followed him this far because he had given them a chance when Mercer had given them none. But that faith was a thin thing now, stretched across the miles of ice they had crossed.

He thought of Eleanor, back in Portsmouth. Her face as she had pressed Liam's hand into his on the dock. The promise he had made without knowing what it would cost.

"Bring him," Harlow said.

Liam blinked. "Sir?"

"Bring him. And have Evans follow with a lantern."

Liam hesitated, then nodded and turned back toward the camp. Harlow watched him go, then looked out across the ice in the direction Mercer had indicated. Northeast. He could not see the settlement. Could not see anything but the white horizon and the gray sky pressing down on it.

He heard footsteps crunching behind him. Liam and Evans came with Mercer between them, the captain walking stiffly, his bound hands making him awkward on the uneven ice. They stopped a few feet from Harlow. Evans held a small lantern, its flame guttering in the breeze that had begun to pick up again.

Harlow stepped close to Mercer. The captain's breath fogged in the cold air, his face pale beneath the frost that clung to his beard.

"You have a choice," Harlow said quietly. "Tell me everything you know about that settlement—its exact position, the names of the traders, their customs, their language if you have it—and I'll leave you with enough supplies to make your own way. You can try for it yourself. Or you can keep your secrets, and I'll leave you here with nothing."

Mercer laughed—a dry, brittle sound. "You think I don't know what you're doing? You want to wash your hands of me. Let the ice do what you haven't got the stomach for."

"I'm not washing my hands of anything," Harlow said. "You made choices that cost men their lives. If I had my way, you'd face a court in England and answer for them. But my duty is to the living, and every hour I spend hauling your weight across this ice is an hour my wounded don't have. So I'm giving you a chance—the same one you gave those men you left behind on the _Discovery_. Take it or don't."

Mercer stared at him. For a moment, something flickered in his eyes—fear, perhaps, or fury, or some older thing that Harlow could not name. Then the captain's face closed again, and he nodded slowly.

"The settlement is called Igloolik," he said. "They winter near the tidal flats on the northeast coast. Look for the whalebone frames of their summer tents. They fish for char in the streams that run to the sea, and they trade with any ship that makes it through the lead. Ask for a man called Tullugaq—" He pronounced it carefully, _Too-loo-gak_. "He was a harpooner on English ships. He'll help you."

Harlow committed it to memory. Then he turned to Evans. "Give him a ration. One day's food, half a ration of rum."

Evans stared at him. "Sir—"

"That's an order."

Evans's jaw tightened, but he reached into his pack and pulled out a small bundle of dried meat and a flask. He set them on the ice at Mercer's feet, then took a step back.

Harlow drew his knife. Mercer tensed, but Harlow moved behind him and cut the line binding his ankles, leaving his wrists tied. Then he stepped back and said, "You know the direction. You know the ice. Whatever you do with that, it's on you."

Mercer didn't move. He looked at the bundle at his feet, then up at Harlow. His lips parted, as if he meant to speak, but then he closed them and turned away. He bent stiffly, gathered the supplies with his bound hands, and began walking.

Harlow watched him go. The captain's silhouette grew small against the white expanse, moving northeast with the same steady, unhurried pace he had kept across the channel. He did not look back.

"Mr. Harlow." Liam's voice was soft, almost uncertain. "Are we really letting him go?"

Harlow turned. The men had gathered behind them, standing in a loose line on the ice. Eleven faces, all of them looking at him.

"We're going northeast," Harlow said. "Two days' march to an Inuit settlement called Igloolik. There's a man there called Tullugaq who trades with whalers. If we make it, we'll find a ship and get home."

"And him?" Stokes asked, jerking his thumb toward Mercer's diminishing figure.

Harlow let the silence hold for a moment before answering. "He made his choice long before I gave him the chance to make this one. We've got wounded men who need a surgeon, not a trial we can't hold on a thousand miles of ice. Whatever judgment he faces, it won't come from my hand."

He bent and lifted the bundle of supplies Evans had set down, redistributing the weight of the pack across his shoulders. Then he looked at each of his men in turn.

"We move at dawn. We stay together, we keep the wounded between us, and we don't stop until we find that settlement." He paused. "I won't lie to you. Some of you may not make it. But I will do everything in my power to see that as many of us as possible walk off this ice. I owe you that much."

Liam stepped forward and fell in beside him without a word. The others followed, one by one, until they stood together at the edge of the ice, facing northeast.

The sun had fully risen now, low and pale, casting long shadows across the snow. Harlow raised his hand, and the men began to walk.