Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

And he thought then of Kristin, lying perfectly still in her hospital bed in Tacoma.

He raked the tip of the saw against the glacier, and slivers of ice immediately came loose, like the skin curling off a potato. Another drop or two of frigid water seeped into his glove.

He went lower still, and the light grew dimmer, more like the quality of the light that he recalled. He swam from one side to the other of a wide swath, gradually working his way down, until something in the ice looked different-a spot where it didn't sparkle quite so brightly in the concentrated beam-and he went straight for it.

The closer he got, the darker and colder the water became, but his heart was beating fast. He waved his arms and fins slowly to keep his position, and surveyed the wall. There was indeed something buried here (there had been moments, though he confessed them to no one, when he, too, had wondered if he'd imagined it all) and he quickly waved his flashlight beam at Lawson, still a considerable distance above him, to catch his attention. Then he swam even closer, peered in at the ice… and saw her face staring out at him.

But it was-and it was not-what he remembered. He had remembered a look of utter horror on her face, eyes wide and mouth shaped in a scream… but that was not what she looked like now. Although it was impossible-and he knew he would never try to explain this part of it to Murphy O'Connor-her eyes were level, and her mouth composed. She looked not like a person in extremis, but instead like someone in the midst of a mildly troubling dream. Someone who would soon awaken.

Lawson swam down toward him, the salvage line trailing behind, and when he, too, saw the face in the ice, he held still in the water, taking it in. All along, Michael knew Lawson had been secretly dubious, wanting to believe what Michael had said but well aware of the tricks that deep-sea diving can play on the mind. But this was no trick, and now he would know that for sure. If they were going to extricate her, they would have to get to work fast-there were at least several inches of ice covering her, and covering whatever else there might be clinging close behind her.

Lawson placed his saw against the ice, about five or six feet down, and indicated that he would be cutting laterally there. He lifted the tip of Michael's saw, and made a horizontal cutting motion about three inches above the woman's head. The plan was to leave just enough leeway to be safe, but no more than that-a block of ice with a body inside was going to weigh a ton as it was.

Michael tucked his flashlight back into its belt loop and let the jagged teeth of the saw bite into the ice. He drew the blade toward him, like drawing the bow on a violin, and a thin groove opened. He pushed it back and the groove deepened, translucent slivers of ice peeling away. It would be a long job, but the saw seemed up to it. The hard part was making sure that he kept his body, and his fins in particular, angled away from Lawson, who was working below.

It was also important to keep his eyes on the deepening groove and not let them stray to the face in the ice. Looking at her could make his blood run cold, and the iron chain wrapped around her neck was the stuff of nightmares. He tried to regulate his breathing and listen not to his own thoughts but to the hissing of the regulator, and the occasional groan or sputter from the ice. It crossed his mind, in the strange way that he knew humans anthropomorphized everything, that the glacier was in pain, that it could feel the bite of the saw cutting into it, that it was fighting to hold on to its frozen prize.

But it would not win. Michael made steady progress up top, and when he felt that he'd gone deep enough, he turned to making a vertical incision. Gradually, both he and Bill were cutting a box around the figure, and around the other shape-also human, or something else entirely? — that lurked behind. Michael saw Lawson check his dive watch, then hold up a hand with bulky fingers spread, twice, to indicate that they should cut away whatever else they could for ten more minutes. After that, it would be up to the winch to do the rest.

Lawson removed a dagger-sharp piton from his harness kit, and with steady blows drove it into the back of the ice block they'd been carving. Then he drove several more. The idea was simply to create enough of a fracture plane behind the block that a sudden and powerful tug would tear the whole piece loose. When he had the pitons in, he unfurled the net, wrapped it as best he could around the chopped block, and secured it with several more pieces of Alpine hardware-the same sort that Michael routinely used on mountain climbs. When that was done, and he had clamped all the hardware to the unbreakable salvage line, he gave the line three hard tugs, waited, then gave it three more.

Michael and Lawson back-paddled a few yards off and waited for the winch to kick in. The first thing they saw was the salvage line, which had shown almost no slack, suddenly straighten out like an arrow; Michael could hear a high-tension thrumming in the water, and a second or two later, he saw the ice block budge. It inched forward, then stopped; he could hear the cracking and grinding of the ice. It was like sliding a block out of a gigantic pyramid, and he suddenly had a terrible vision of the whole ice wall crumbling down around him. He moved farther back and inflated his suit to rise a few yards higher in the water.

The winch must have pulled again, because the ice block came forward on one side, then the other, almost like a penguin waddling across snow. Again, it stopped, still clinging precariously to its frozen perch, before issuing a mighty agonized groan and toppling forward, away from the iceberg, and swinging free above the bottomless sea. Lawson quickly swam toward it, and even as the winch began to haul it up and toward the dive hole, he attached himself like a limpet and knotted the back portion of the net for added safety. Michael, stunned, was quickly left behind, as he watched the block of ice, the size and shape of a big refrigerator, drifting away, with Lawson holding on and hitching a ride. The glove on Michael's left hand was leaking again, leaving his wrist feeling like an ice-cold iron bracelet had been bound around it. His air tank beeped a warning, and with his ice saw at the ready in case of a leopard seal attack, he followed the trail of bubbles up from the depths and toward the bluer waters above.

From below, the ice block looked like a crystal ornament, something that might twinkle on a Christmas tree, as it sailed back up out of the void and into the living world… carrying its strange and petrified cargo.

August 8, 1854

Sinclair sat high astride his horse, Ajax, in full uniform and regalia, his peaked black helmet, modeled on that of the Polish lancers, at a slight tilt to provide some protection from the glare of the sun. A dozen other lancers were in a neat line to either side of him, and all the way across the drill field-a distance of no less than several hundred yards-an equally perfect line of cavalrymen were arrayed, also in everything from glittering gold epaulettes to tasseled sword knots. Sinclair knew, as did they all, that they were often mocked as dandies because of the richness of their apparel- mandated by their commanding officer-but he was also confident that if they were ever fortunate enough to see battle, they would prove that they were much more than that.

The horses pawed the patchy ground, apprehensive about what was coming; all morning, the 17th had been doing lance exercises and circling-the-haunches drills, requiring close formation and precision riding. But now the lances had been discarded, and when the cornet sounded, the riders were to engage in mock, hand-to-hand combat, using blunted wooden swords. Sinclair wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, then dried his hand on the chestnut mane of his horse. Ajax had been with him since he was a colt, first at the family's country estate in Hawton, then in the regimental stables in London. As a result, there was a rapport between the horse and rider that the other soldiers could only envy. While the others were struggling to teach their mounts the most basic commands and maneuvers, Sinclair had perfect control of his own and could-sometimes with a gentle twitch on the reins, sometimes with just a word-make the horse do his bidding.