Read Chapter 7: The Hunt Begins

The wind had teeth in it now. Harlow felt them through his greatcoat as he crossed the last fifty yards of grinding floes, the dying ship groaning at his back like a wounded beast. The eastern sky was a bruised purple, and the ice underfoot shifted with a sound like broken glass grinding together. He carried the chart rolled inside his shirt, pressed against his ribs where the cold could not reach it.

The floe camp came into view—a scatter of tents and crates, the black stain of the coal heap, the cutter resting on its runners at the far edge like a patient animal. Cole stood at the perimeter with his arms folded, watching Harlow approach. Behind him, a knot of men had gathered outside the galley tent, their breath hanging in clouds.

“You were gone longer than you said,” Cole called out.

Harlow did not slow. “The ice between here and the ship is shifting. We have less time than we thought.”

He walked past Cole toward the galley tent, where Bryant had set up the makeshift chart table. Miller and Yates were already there, bent over a rations ledger. Harlow unrolled the chart on the table and weighed down its corners with a tin cup and a fistful of musket balls.

“Listen,” he said, loud enough for the men outside to hear. “The Discovery is lost. We all know that. But there is a route west—a passage that follows the current through the pack. If we wait for the spring thaw to break the ice, we can take the boats through. We don’t need to march a hundred miles dragging sledges. We wait for the water, and we sail.”

Yates leaned over the chart, squinting at the faded ink. “Where’s this lead to?”

“A settlement marker. Fishing station. At the edge of the chart.” Harlow tapped the small “F” written in Mercer’s hand. “From what I can read of the notes, it’s an old whaling outpost. If the ice breaks by late spring, we can reach it before the worst of the summer storms.”

“If,” said a voice from the tent entrance. Cummings pushed past the canvas flap, his red beard bristling with frost. He was the second officer, a man Harlow had never trusted—not for cruelty, but for the way he watched others work without ever doing any himself. He stepped into the tent and let the flap fall behind him. “If the ice breaks. If the current holds. If this chart is worth the paper it’s drawn on.”

“The chart is Mercer’s,” Harlow said.

“Is it?” Cummings’s eyes flicked to the rolled edges, then to Harlow’s face. “Or did you draw it yourself? After you killed him.”

The tent went silent. Miller’s hand stopped mid-motion over the ledger. Outside, the murmur of the crew died.

Harlow kept his voice even. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Mercer’s cabin stripped bare. His log missing. You come back with a chart no one’s ever seen, and a story about a ghost captain who handed it to you like a gift.” Cummings spat onto the ice floor. “And the day before all of this, you disobeyed a direct order and left him to die on the pack.”

“I came back for him.”

“You came back too late.” Cummings took a step closer. “The men are asking questions, Harlow. Questions I’ve been answering honestly. They want to know why you’re so eager to take command of a ship you can’t even keep afloat. They want to know what happened out there on the ice, when Mercer was left alone with the tide.”

Harlow felt the weight of thirty pairs of eyes pressing through the canvas. The accusation was not new—he had carried it himself since that night, the image of Mercer’s receding figure burned into his memory like frostbite. But Cummings was not speaking from grief. He was speaking from ambition, and his voice carried.

“Mercer is alive,” Harlow said. “I spoke to him. On the ship.”

Cummings laughed—a short, sharp sound that cut through the cold. “And I suppose he handed you this map and wished you Godspeed.”

“He told me the compass would show the way. He told me the chart is real.”

“The compass.” Cummings turned to the men now gathered at the tent’s mouth. “The compass that points east instead of north. The compass that leads us on a fool’s errand across a frozen sea to a cache that could have killed us all.” He faced Harlow again. “I say you found Mercer’s body out there, stripped it of anything useful, and swore the crew to silence with lies about a living captain. I say you mean to lead us to your own benefit, not ours.”

“That’s enough.” Cole’s voice came from behind the crowd, and the men parted to let him through. He ducked into the tent, his bulk filling the space. “Cummings, you’re out of line.”

“I’m speaking for the men,” Cummings said, but his voice had lost some of its edge.

“You’re speaking for yourself.” Harlow reached into his coat and pulled out the torn log page, creased and brittle with cold. He held it up where the lantern light caught it. “This is from Mercer’s journal, dated before we left England. It describes the plan to drive the ship into the pack, to strand us here deliberately, to leave a westward passage marked on a hidden chart. Mercer planned all of this months ago. He wanted us here. He wanted me to find this.”

Cummings stared at the page. For a moment, something flickered in his eyes—doubt, or calculation.

“That proves nothing,” he said, but quietly.

“It proves Mercer is not dead.” Harlow folded the page and tucked it back into his coat. “It proves he set this course long before any of us set foot aboard the Discovery. And it proves that if we follow the chart, we have a chance of surviving until the ice breaks.”

The crowd murmured. Harlow could feel the balance shifting—not decisively, but enough. Men turned to one another, weighing the evidence against their fear.

Cummings saw the shift too. His jaw tightened, and he stepped forward until he was chest-to-chest with Harlow. “You think because you can read a dead man’s handwriting, you can command us? You’re a first mate. A subordinate. You have no authority here.”

“I have the authority of the only man who knows the way through that ice,” Harlow said.

“And I have the authority of the men who would rather not follow a murderer to their deaths.” Cummings raised his voice. “Who’s with me?”

For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then a few men at the back shifted their weight. Harlow saw Pence among them, his face pale, eyes darting between Cummings and the tent poles.

Harlow did not look away from Cummings. “Bryant.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Arrest Mr. Cummings. Confine him to the supply tent. Post a guard.”

Bryant stepped forward, and Cummings turned to face him, fists clenching. “You lay a hand on me and I’ll—“

“You’ll do nothing.” Harlow’s voice dropped to a flat, hard edge. “You’re relieved of duty until this expedition is fit to judge its own command. Cole, you’ll take over the hunting parties. Miller, you have the rations.”

Cummings’s face went red, then pale. He opened his mouth, but Bryant had already taken his arm, and the fight drained out of him like water from a cracked hull. He let himself be led past the crowd, muttering something Harlow could not catch.

When the tent flap fell shut, Harlow turned back to the chart. His hands were steady, but his chest was tight.

“That was necessary,” Cole said, his voice low. “But it cost you.”

“I know.”

“Cummings has friends.”

“I know.” Harlow traced the line of the passage with his finger. “We leave for the hunting grounds at dawn. I want every man who can walk carrying a rifle. We need meat, and we need to show them we’re not afraid of the ice.”

Cole nodded and ducked out of the tent. The murmur of the crew picked up again, but it was quieter now, threaded through with unease.

Harlow waited until the tent was empty, then pulled the brass compass from his pocket. The needle sat steady, pointing west toward the “F” on the chart—toward the marker he had told the men was a whaling outpost. But Mercer’s message echoed in his mind, and he turned the compass over in his hands, feeling the cold metal bite through his gloves.

*It just points where you’re already going.*

He looked at the chart again, at the faded ink of the annotation he had not shown the men—the one beneath the “F”, written in a hand that was not Mercer’s:

*They will not follow you through the water. They will follow you through the ice.*

Harlow folded the chart and tucked it away. Outside, the wind picked up, and somewhere beyond the camp, the ice groaned like something waking.