Harry Goodsir said nothing. He simply stared.
The Tuunbaq was lying on its side. The pale eyes were open but sightless in an impossibly human face, bloody mouth gone slack. Its body was riddled with old wounds incurred during previous encounters with the expedition: a great patch of poorly-healed skin where the fur had burned away and never grown back, what could be either the entry or exit wound for Lieutenant Hodgson's cannon shot, at least half a dozen visible bullet pockmarks over the protruding ribs. And it appeared to have vomited up a mass of indescribable gore immediately before or upon expiring, which now looked well on its way to drying out.
(Just how long had he spent lying here, unconscious, for the viscera to no longer be fresh? Hours?)
Cornelius Hickey - or what was left of him - lay face-down in front of the beast. Half of a forearm and everything from mid-trunk down had very obviously either been consumed or ripped off by the Tuunbaq. There was simply no other possible explanation for the state of the man's body. Goodsir could only assume that Hickey had made his attempt to parley with the creature, perhaps even assert control over it, and then paid very dearly for his hubris.
Neither sight was particularly satisfying.
How strange.
(He had been so resigned to his imminent death. He had even been prepared to welcome it, after a fashion. So the fact that they were dead and he was not was almost... a disappointment.)
Very slowly, Goodsir slid his gaze to the right.
There was Thomas Armitage some distance away, still on his back where he'd fallen, body mercifully unmolested. Private Pilkington, near an outcropping of rock; a haphazard arrangement of limbs and clothing that could only be Lieutenant Hodgson. Just past him, Sergeant Tozer, like Hickey face-down but more importantly free of his cuffs. The rush to liberate the keys from Armitage had succeeded, then, but only - it seemed - up to a point. Captain Crozier was still shackled to the chain. Where were the keys now?
Goodsir shifted his gaze to the left.
A trail of blood led to Magnus Manson's body. Not fay beyond lay John Diggle. There was no sign of Samuel Crispe, Charles des Voeux, or Robert Golding. Edmund Hoar, of course, had run off even before the Tuunbaq was upon them.
All of them, dead.
Dead, or missing and surely dead before long.
The faint disappointment curling its tendrils around his deadened heart began to give way to a creeping emptiness.
(Where were the other remaining survivors of the expedition? What had become of them? Lieutenant Little had never arrived with a rescue party, as Crozier expected of him. Perhaps there had been yet another mutiny. Perhaps they had elected to continue on south instead, rather than risk precious time, energy, and ammunition tangling with Hickey's group. Perhaps they were dead now, too. Perhaps he - Goodsir - was the only one left alive. The last man standing, out of the one hundred and twenty-nine souls who had set sail from Greenhithe three years ago.)
With an effort, he returned his attention to Silna, as she knelt next to Crozier. At first glance, the other man appeared to be free of serious injury. Unlike the others, there was no immediate cause of death to be seen. But then Goodsir caught a glimpse of his blood-soaked shirt collar. It hadn't been so, before. And when Silna moved to press her hand to Crozier's chest after touching his cheek for a long moment, evidently assessing a wound the way she had done his own, he realized: He too is still alive. I am not alone.
You were already not alone.
For a moment, I felt very much so.
Go help Silna. The captain needs a doctor. In that, you are the only one left alive.
And then: If ever I was a doctor, I am one no longer.
Perhaps that was true. (It was true, no matter what Crozier thought or said otherwise. Not after what he had been made to do to William Gibson.) (William Gibson's body.) (The distinction didn't matter.) Yet he still found himself unable to sit idly by while a fellow man was suffering. If Crozier was not yet beyond help, Goodsir would do everything within his power to save him. Even now, here at the end of things, when his own hopes for survival were gone, when he would much rather die than continue to live, and he no longer had any right to call himself a healer.
He made to get his feet beneath him and stand, but Silna — hearing the scrape of leather on stone — looked back at him and held her hand out, as if to ward him off.
Keep still, she seemed to be saying. You're injured.
Goodsir paused for only a moment before electing to pay her no heed. He was in pain, yes, but still perfectly ambulatory. Neither of his legs were injured. —though he very nearly revised that assessment, as he pushed himself to his feet with his good arm and every joint, ligament, and muscle in his body made their various complaints known. He had, obviously, never actually been trampled by a horse and carriage. But the analogy still seemed to be a wholly apt one. If he hadn't transformed into one enormous full-body bruise by day's end, he would be quite surprised.
Silna gave him a mildly reproachful look as he joined her at Crozier's side. (A mere narrowing of the eyes, nearly imperceptible, but Goodsir had spent enough time in her company that he felt he could now interpret such flashes of emotion with reasonable accuracy.) He ignored it and reached out to pluck at the bloody fabric of Crozier's shirt, peeling it away and open as best he could with his cuffed hand. Thankfully, the nature of the injury was almost immediately apparent, and further removal of clothing was unnecessary: there were two long, parallel slashes across the captain's upper chest, sluggishly oozing blood. Goodsir would venture a guess that he had caught a glancing blow from one of the Tuunbaq's mighty paws. Glancing, but still powerful enough to effect serious harm - the slashes were deep, and the slightest difference in placement or angle could have opened the jugular vein, the carotid artery, or even the trachea. Crozier was exceedingly fortunate to not have died almost instantly.
Are either of us really so fortunate, Goodsir thought, as he gingerly sat back on his heels.
(He had never been like this before. Before, he had been full of optimism and hope and a frankly embarrassing amount of naivete. He had managed to hold on to those qualities for far longer than some of his fellows. But the past handful of weeks had burned them out. All light, all hope, all innocence: all taken away from him, piece by piece, until he had nothing left.
Or so he had thought. So he had believed.
And yet Silna was next to him now as if she had never been forced to leave.)
"He needs medical attention," Goodsir said, voice rasping again; he swallowed to wet his throat and continued, meeting Silna's eyes. "A doctor."
No, he wasn't slighting himself, not this time. Doctor was one of the first English words he had taught her. She would understand what his saying it now meant.
"We made camp, a… a camp…" The world was still spinning, but very slowly now. Words kept slipping away from him. What was it she had taught him, her word for their encampment on the ice? He couldn't remember. Something simpler… "Tupiq." Tent. That would do. And he made to point in the direction they had come, but his wrist caught on its cuff and suddenly the attached boat chain was dragging his arm down. He didn't have the strength to raise it. Silna, following the aborted gesture, caught his hand in both of hers and lightly rattled the cuff, looking back at him with a question in her eyes.
How do I free you?
Keys. Where were the keys. Tozer was free of his cuffs, but Crozier was not; one or the other must have dropped them. They would still be nearby. "Keys," he said out loud, even as he began to look around - then he saw Tozer and Hodgson again, and swiftly dropped his gaze to his knees as his gut lurched.
(Too much blood. Goodsir had never been particularly bothered by the sight of it; he had a strong stomach, and his endless curiosity over all things scientific had always won out over whatever squeamishness he might have once felt. But not anymore. Now he was thoroughly tired of the sight, the smell, the feel. He would be quite happy to never see a drop of the stuff ever again.)
How to explain to Silna, who had no knowledge of keys or locks? Gently, he pulled his cuffed hand back, and carefully mimed inserting an object into the lock and turning it, as best he could while keeping his left arm still. She watched his movements intently.
"Keys. They will fit here… do you see?" Goodsir twisted an imaginary key with his fingers again, then winced as his shoulder gave a sharper throb of pain. "Like so. Metal. Three or four, on a ring…"
Silna was already looking about, keen eyes searching the pale wash of the rocks surrounding them; Goodsir wasn't at all certain that he had managed to make any sense, but he trusted that she would recognize anything she didn't recognize and fetch it over accordingly. Whatever else the other men on the expedition had thought of her intellect - and they frequently weren't complimentary of it - he knew that she was actually quite perceptive. What she didn't immediately understand, she was quick to intuit. An uncivilized savage she might be by British standards, yet she had a greater capacity for learning than not a few of his fellows at university.
(Edinburgh, with its University and his home at 21 Lothian Street, could not have felt farther away than it did now while he sat here, lost in a literally uncharted land many hundreds of miles away from the barest speck of refined civilization.)
Goodsir didn't realize he had fallen into a daze of a reverie until the noise caused by Silna jumping to her feet yanked him out of it; he blinked, and suddenly she was hurrying past him towards the boat sledge. He shook his head slightly in an attempt to clear it. The pain in his shoulder seemed to be trickling its way into the rest of his body, evening out into one all-encompassing ache and producing a low drone in his ears, and he didn't think he had ever felt so exhausted in his life. Crozier, still quite insensible, wavered and blurred for a moment before coming back into focus. Goodsir blinked again, and looked up at Silna as she reappeared at his side. With a jolt of unexpected pleasure, he saw she was holding the ring of keys.
(The pleasure was more reminiscent of a teacher's pride in a student. The relief it ought to have been was entirely absent.)
She went through three of the four keys, inexpertly fitting them into the lock, before the twist of her fingers followed through with a click and the cuff fell open. Goodsir watched as she moved on to Crozier, tugging the other man's wrist free of its bonds, and still the relief failed to materialize.
He was free. He was safe. Both he and Crozier were free. They were both safe now.
Weren't they?
The Tuunbaq was no longer pursuing them. Hickey was no longer a threat to kill and eat them. They would return to the camp, he would see to Crozier's wounds and tend to himself, and when the captain awoke… then what?
Attempt to rejoin what was left of the expedition? Thank Silna and urge her to return to the safety of her own people - again - and say their goodbyes - again? She couldn't come with them. And even if she could, why on Earth would she even want to, after all the misfortune they had caused her? Her father, dead; her friends, dead. Her ability to speak, gone.
(Why was she here? How had she found them? How had she known to come?)
The three of them staying together did not occur to him at all. They came from two different worlds. They should never have met, and it was very evident to him now that - no matter how much he had wished and worked for otherwise - their two worlds could not co-exist.
Silna went to the sled she had left behind on approach to the Tuunbaq. Harry Goodsir sat on the rocks next to Francis Crozier, looking ahead to the future, and seeing only emptiness and death on the horizon.