CHAPTER 20
THE GATES OF FORT ROSS
The smell of sea air mixed with the smoke of chimneys when the party finally crossed the last hill of redwoods.
Before the three prisoners rose Fort Ross.
The Russian fortress was an imposing grey sight against the Pacific Ocean.
Unlike the adobe forts of the American army, this one was built entirely of gigantic dark timbers, with octagonal watchtowers and the bulbous dome of an Orthodox church rising above the walls.
The sea beat violently against the rocky bluff just behind it, covering the place in a cold, salt fog.
Nero, Elena and Gideon were pushed through the main gates with their wrists still chained.
They expected to find a den of savagery — drunken soldiers, public executions and slavery.
What they saw instead was a surprisingly disciplined and orderly military colony.
There were Russian women tending vegetable gardens, carpenters sawing timber, and children running between the cabins.
They were led to the main house, a two-storey structure with thick glass windows.
Inside, the heat of a great stone hearth struck the prisoners’ frozen skin.
Seated behind a desk of solid oak, Commander Volkov did not look like the butchering monster Colonel Vance had described.
He was a middle-aged man with close-cropped grey hair, aristocratic features, and an impeccable uniform covered in gilded medals.
He did not shout, and he gave off no fury.
He was calmly drinking tea from a samovar of polished bronze.
Beside the desk, Gideon’s rotating reaper stood mounted on its steel frame, being examined by two Russian armourers who were murmuring expressions of pure astonishment.
Volkov looked at the three prisoners. His eyes settled on the chains at their wrists.
He sighed and made a sign to the guards with his hand.
“Remove their irons,” Volkov ordered, in fluent and measured English with a refined accent.
The soldiers hesitated, but obeyed at once, freeing the three of them.
“Sit down, if you please. Winter in California has no mercy on anyone travelling without a coat.”
Elena rubbed her wrists, suspicious. Nero stayed on his feet, the brim of his hat covering half his face, taking in every detail of the room.
“I know who you are,” Volkov said, pouring three mugs of hot beef broth and pushing them toward them.
“You are the vaquera who destroyed the Cross Ranch. And you… you are the man who killed Colonel Vance. In Russia we prize men of initiative. Did you imagine you would find barbarians here? The Russian Empire brings civilization, not barbarity. The girl, Mia, is alive, well fed, and learning the piano with my wife. She is not a slave. She is a guarantee that the Americans will not break our commercial agreements.”
“If we’re guests, give me back my Colts — and tell me how the news got here before we did,” Nero said, his voice low and cutting.
Volkov let out a short laugh with no humour in it.
“Carrier pigeons are still useful, and you invaded imperial territory armed with an experimental machine gun, my dear fellow. You are prisoners of war. But you will be treated with the dignity the Military Convention requires. You will eat our food and sleep under a warm roof… for the present.”
Eyes in the Forest
While Gideon attacked his plate of food with the desperation of a man who had nearly died of poison, Nero walked slowly to the great glass window of the hall, which looked onto the central yard of the fort.
The hunter was not focused on the Commander’s words.
His glacial blue eyes were reading the ground outside.
Nero had the instincts of a wolf, and something in the behaviour of that fortress was wrong. Very wrong.
He began to notice the details of Fort Ross’s preparations.
The great bronze cannon of the fort, originally set to point out at the ocean against enemy ships, had been dug out of their emplacements.
Soldiers were hauling them with ropes and oxen, turning their mouths inward, toward the redwood forest. Dozens of men were working against time at the base of the gates, driving iron stakes and reinforcing the timber with extra support beams. They were not building a harbour; they were preparing for a siege by land.
In the watchtowers facing the mountains the guards did not relax.
They were not looking at the prisoners. Their Berdan rifles were cocked, and the men were watching the tree line with the same terror Nero had seen in the horses the night before.
Nero wiped the corner of his mouth and turned slowly to Commander Volkov.
“You didn’t turn those cannon around because of three renegades with a machine gun on horseback, Commander,” Nero pronounced, tipping his chin at the window. “What is out there in that forest that has your soldiers praying before the sun goes down?”
Volkov’s smile vanished instantly. The Russian officer set his tea mug on the desk.
The silence that followed in that hall was as heavy as the Pacific fog.
Commander Volkov walked to the samovar, but he poured no more tea.
He took up a bottle of clear vodka, measured a generous portion into a pewter cup, and swallowed it in one go.
The heat of the alcohol seemed to be the only thing capable of loosening the rigidity in his aristocratic face.
“Judging by the sound of thunder we heard echoing high on the mountain a few hours ago…” Volkov looked directly into Nero’s cold eyes. “…I believe you already know the answer, stranger.”
The Russian officer walked back to the desk and set both hands flat on the map of the Pacific coast.
“They have lived on the highest and most isolated peaks of the Sierra Nevada since before the Spaniards ever set foot on this land,” Volkov explained, his voice low and strained.
“But when winter comes early and the cold punishes the continent, the fog comes down. The weather down here becomes the same as the weather up above. And they come down along with the ice.” Nero narrowed his eyes.
His hand was buried in the pocket of the duster.
“They?” the hunter questioned.
Volkov let out a heavy sigh, his gaze lost for a moment.
“With only one of them, my men barely survived last month. We lost half of a forward patrol in a single night.”
“How many are we talking about, Commander?” Elena broke in, taking a step forward, feeling the same chill up her spine that she had felt when she heard the creature mimic her own voice in the forest.
“I do not know,” Volkov admitted, straightening his posture and taking his heavy military bearskin coat off the back of his chair. “But there are many. Put on your coats and come with me. I am going to show you something.”
The Monster in the Yard
The air in the central yard of Fort Ross was thick with the smell of sulphur, burnt fat and frozen blood.
Russian soldiers armed to the teeth cleared the way as the Commander advanced, flanked by Nero, Elena and Gideon.
In the middle of the fort, raised like a macabre monument and a warning to the garrison, a post of thick timber held up a monstrous impaled corpse.
Gideon covered his mouth with his hand, holding back his vomit.
It was the same abomination they had faced on the mountain.
The grey, stretched skin looked like hide cured by ice, and the long, disproportionate arms ended in claws that looked like iron scythes.
Even dead, the creature gave off an aura of pure malevolence.
Its ribs were exposed, broken by dozens of impacts of heavy lead.
“The good news…” Volkov said, pointing at the monster’s shattered chest, “…is that they die by bullets.”
“They are not ghosts. They have flesh, they have bones, and their blood burns where it touches the snow — but they bleed.” The Commander turned to Nero, and the desperation hidden beneath the military fa?ade finally came to the surface.
“The bad news is that we do not have bullets enough. Fort Ross is cut off. The Czar’s next supply ship will not arrive until spring, and the cannon and the Berdan rifles spend powder faster than we can manufacture it.
If they attack as a pack when the fog closes over this fort completely… we will all be slaughtered.”
Nero walked to the base of the post, studying the creature’s sharpened teeth and elongated jaw.
“There’s something else,” Nero said, without looking at the Russian. “They play with the mind.” Volkov nodded slowly, his face darkened by the shadow of his cap.
“Beyond the physical horror… these things know things about our lives that we cannot understand how they came to know. They circle the walls at night and whisper. They imitate the voices of our mothers back in Russia, the voices of wives left behind in St Petersburg, secrets a soldier has never told a living soul. They break a sentry’s sanity before they tear his throat out. ”
Elena felt a knot tighten in her stomach.
She looked at the main house of the fort, thinking of Mia.
If those things knew everything, the girl was in unimaginable danger inside that building.
Volkov looked meaningfully at Gideon, and then at the rotating reaper that was still under guard in the hall.
“That is why I did not order your execution,” the Commander confessed.
“That mechanical machine you brought here… that is a masterpiece of destruction. Three desperate killers and a weapon that spits two hundred shots a minute. I propose an arrangement. I return your weapons and I protect the American girl. In exchange, you help us keep the gates of this fort standing against what is coming in the fog. Three more lives to fight with are worth more than any corpse.”
Nero turned his back on the impaled monster and faced the Russian officer. The line between enemies and allies had just been erased by winter.
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