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Comes The Dark	By : IcarusComplex Category: G through L > Ginger Snaps Views: 2073 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own or reap any financial profit from GINGER SNAPS or any characters from the movies. Hannah/Louise and all new characters and situations are mine.

Chapter List
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Moving Mountains – Two Steps From Hell

Chapter 4: Open Season

Darkness draped over the fort as an altar draped for black mass. Midnight watch was about to begin. Slipping between the buildings, Hannah was glad to be done for the night; her watch relief had shown up as the last of the molten sunlight trickled off the ragged rim of the horizon. Down off the wall, she breathed in the familiar reek of camp with a sense like coming home. The darkness rapidly chilled the air, peeling off a layer sweatsalt and sun-warmed wood to reveal the complexities of the fort’s underpinning perfume. Churned up earth; burning fat; unseasoned wood still oozing sap here and there; cooking meat and kerosene lamps; the tang of raw metal from the forge and too many too rarely washed bodies.
Her watch relief had told Duchene his relief would be a moment more (wrapping up a hand of cards in the barracks) and taken the spyglass from Hannah. “That’ll do ye as well, Han. Git some warm vittles in ye an’ catch a bit o’ shut-eye,” Patrick said, thumping ‘Han’ heartily on the back. “Jensen’s taken sick – squirts or summat – and ye’re takin’ his watch tomorreh.”
Hannah’d been tired and beyond protesting. Between them, she, Milo and Finn Mahoney held the lowest ranks in camp. Only Jeffery and Para, the Lieutenant’s wife, could have been lower, but relation to Lieutenant Rowlands spared them even that. Hannah—Hank nodded in acknowledgement and left the wall.
Jensen’s watch. Dog’s watch: the eight hours between evening watch and dawn. She scrubbed a hand over her eyes then through her still alienly short hair. Thirty-five men in the camp or thereabouts. Thirty-five men… and ‘Hank’. Once again she wondered if it was worth running as far as the very edge of Man’s reach to escape the disappointment, the scorn of Whitcomb’s Landing. Against her chest, beneath the bindings, the wolverine’s tooth lay hot against her skin. Of course it was. A curse was a curse.
The darkness clotted like drying ink as night settled in, punctuated by lamps striking up here and there behind murky windows. Somewhere in one of the barracks rowdy singing and the loomlike thump of clapping started up. Two years and some in the Company, Hannah mused, touching her jerkin over the tooth; six months in Fort Bailey. One blandly-worded letter from her father, an aching absence of letters from Jonah, and a soot-smudged wolverine’s tooth on black cord around her neck. Two shouts ahead of her and the sound of slamming doors.
The past had her so tangled up in its snare that the present literally slammed her in the face.
“Sober up, would ya, ya sodden excuse for a mother’s son,” someone shouted in tipsy good humour, and then Woolsey collided with her shoulder. They went spinning off the plank walkway. Mud squelched up to the ankle of her boot as Hannah stepped back automatically to compensate for the sudden weight hanging off her.
The stocky veteran staggered backward on the walkway trying to identify his leaning post through drink-slitted eyes half buried by coal-vein eyebrows. One hand groped blindly for her shoulder again. “Who’z—” Miner turned company for the money; newer to Fort Bailey than Hannah.
Finding her shoulder, he swayed back to her. “You, lad. Thu’ preddy one… I’ve been meanin’ t’ talk t’ yuh…”
“See that he gets back to his bunk, would ye lad?” laughed the man hanging half out of the barracks-cum-pub.
Woolsey was already meandering down the lane. Hannah couldn’t exactly go back the way she’d come… The torso retracted and the barracks door closed.
Following at a wary distance, she heard,
“Who wazzat?”
“Scrapper. Not Finn, the other one—”
Woolsey was nowhere in sight when she rounded the corner. Hannah stopped, suddenly unnerved. The cold night air still billowed with the cauldron steam of ‘camp’—but no whiskey-sweet. No metal and leather and lye of an enlisted man in person. She squinted into the shadows of the lane. On one side was the infirmary, the other a storehouse; both dark and devoid of movement. She took a step forward.
A hand clamped down on the back of her neck. “Now, lad, le’ss ‘ave that talk abou’ you avoidin’ me.”
Whiskey steamed in the air beside her face, made it reek of saloon and opium dealers. Woolsey shoved her off the walkway into an alcove stacked with barrels. More sloppy mud sloshed around her boots and the hard calluses of Woolsey’s palm tore at the nape of her neck. She wasn’t a shrieking mahala anymore. The scream died in her throat, leaving only a taste like copper on her tongue.
“Yore preddy enou’ for a lad.” He shoved her again as she was climbing to her feet. The force sent her almost backwards over a barrel. “Almos’ preddy enou’ to be a lass…”
“Mr Woolsey,” Hannah started, reaching for the knife in her boot.
“Shuddup, lad,” slurred the miner. “Ain’t nobody around t’ see. Iss open season on runts like you… ’m gonna get me a skin.” He grabbed a handful of her shirt, wrenching her upright – away from the knife – and flattened her against the barrel. Knuckles stabbed into her stomach; Woolsey dug underneath her belt and pawed at the buckle.
“Get off me!” Hannah yelped. If he got close enough to work out she was missing a few vital parts—
She shoved him hard in the chest. Snarling, he stumbled away, recovered, then came back swinging. A sloppy right hook caught her above the eye. Blinded by the gloom and the knock, Hannah drifted in a daze. Wood cut into her stomach: the edge of the barrel. She was face-forward over it, Woolsey heaving whiskey-sweet air onto her neck like a bellows as he fought her coat aside.
“Who was that?”
“Scrapper. Not Finn, the other one.” Doc’s voice.
Black stars behind her eyes.
The whiskey-sweet on her neck for the second time in her life.
Wood furrowed in her stomach.
The wolverine’s tooth twisting to bit into her skin like a living thing.
“Just you be nice, lad,” rumbled Woolsey. Hannah stomped on his foot. Her forehead bounced off the barrel, Woolsey’s sweaty palm against her scalp.
Red stars.
Wolverine’s tooth.
Leather rustling. Hannah let out a low groan of pain and the taste of old blood rolled onto her tongue.
A hand clapped down on her crotch.
“Hey!” Woolsey was spinning away from her; burning torchlight rimed his face in scarlet and gold. Yannick was shaking him. Shouting. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing?” Yannick was supposed to be on the wall. Yannick was Duchene’s relief. Yannick was here, and he’d pulled Woolsey off her, and she was still safe—
Hannah sagged against the barrel she’d been bent over a moment before, trying abstractly to focus her blurry eyes.
Someone held a torch up to her face. Metal scraped on wood. “Han? Han? Henry, lad, can ye hear me?” Doc. Cool brisk fingers smelling of mint and sphagnum moss touched her cheekbone and brow. Gaining the measure of her wounds. “Lad?” The torch rose again.
Dimly, in the background, “Hey, stop that! The lad’s fine! Lookit!”
This time Doc’s face – greyhaired and owlish behind his spectacles – wavered into focus. “Are ye with us, lad?” he inquired.
There was a response here. Something she was supposed to do. Creakily she managed a nod, clutching the lapels of her jacket together. The torch drew away. “He’ll be right as rain by morning,” Doc decreed. He turned back to the small assembly now gathered. Yannick and Seamus held Woolsey, who appeared to have passed out; they were turned so Seamus’ body was between the snoring miner and Black Bear. Hannah hadn’t imagined it. The metal-on-leather and blood, that was the hunter, looming up out of the shadows on Yannick’s heels to pull a knife on the recalcitrant Woolsey. Now he held the blade pointed directly at Woolsey’s nose. Yannick and Seamus eyed it cautiously, but they didn’t seem especially upset. Of course. The scuffle was over.
Brisk but not unfriendly hands chivvied Hannah back onto the clunky solidity of the walkway, into the warmer solidity of a person. “Here. Get ‘im back to his bunk and warm him up. See that he drinks something hot.” Doc was brusque, already turning to check over the gently snoring Woolsey. “Mr Bouchez, don’t you have watch? I’m sure myself and Mr Fitzpatrick can manage t’ get Mr Woolsey back to his bunk.”
Yannick nodded and strode around the corner towards the wall with only a perfunctory glance at Hannah. With a minimum of grunting and effort, the Doc and Seamus got Woolsey sorted and staggered awkwardly off with him.
Hannah was at a loss for what to say. Remnants of the daze still wisped around her mind like will o’wisps, fogging her thoughts and sticking her limbs.
“Hannah.” Said so quietly as to be almost a figment of her imagination.
She felt like a hundred, and sixteen at the same time; each defenceless in their own way, neither what she was. The look in Black Bear’s direction took almost all of her remaining strength. If Woolsey remembered anything tomorrow…
The disgust she expected was absent. The disappointment, the scorn, and for one chaotic moment it was her father’s face she saw, her brother’s— Then it was his again. The calm set, the unreadable eyes; neither condoning nor condemning, but understanding just the same. The tiniest twitch of his eyes in the direction of the quartermaster’s. Hannah followed without a word as he turned on his heel and made for the storehouse across the square. Through the doorway to the parade ground, torches cast infernal spears into the dust. Black Bear skirted them as he crossed and Hannah did likewise.
Once inside the storehouse – upstairs, in the cosy Quartermaster’s Assistant’s quarters, Hannah allowed herself to collapse onto her pallet. She was hardly aware of having stripped off her muddied clothing. Sorted it, folded it, stored it…
Black Bear handed her a tin mug of tea and crouched on the other side of the brazier. He sipped his own tea. Waiting. Watching.
Hannah touched her bare ankle with a toe and thumbed the hot side of her mug. She’d thought, safe, away from the threat, she’d feel better. She didn’t. Instead there was a bone-deep numbness spiderwebbing shoulder to fingertip, hip to toe.
She met Black Bear’s eyes. Traced the line of his coat lapel, the indent of an absent quiver strap, the red of his mouth, the black of his beard. “He didn’t feel anything.”
“Looked like he got a pretty good opening to.”
Hannah winced, but she didn’t waver from returning the measuring gaze. “If he did, I’ll find out tomorrow. Dogturd was drunk enough to bugger Owens.” She said it bravely, but a tiny part of her, the part that hadn’t been stamped out moons ago like embers of an unwanted campfire, quailed.
Black Bear scented smoke. His eyes narrowed. “Better hope so. If they don’t execute you, you’ll be out of the white men’s camp. These woods’ve killed men a hundred times more worthy of life than you. You’re a long way from your camp, half-breed.”
He dumped his tea into the brazier on his way out.
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Comes The Dark