Lomonosov heard him. “You were right to send word back to Saint Petersburg. The bodies mark a team from the Imperial Academy, explorers who vanished two years ago while trying to discover the Northeast Passage. You and your crew will be rewarded for your service to Russia.”
Razin looked back. “Rewarded how?”
“The recompense will be commensurate with what we find here today and where it might lead.”
Razin frowned, clearly struggling with the councilor’s verbiage.
Vasily translated. “You’ll share in any bounty gained from the recovery of these men.”
“As I should,” Razin concluded and grunted for them to follow.
Lomonosov turned to Vasily. “Best we limit this first survey to just you and your lieutenant.”
Vasily nodded and waved for the other seamen to remain with the tender, then set off with Orlov.
Vasily quickly drew alongside Lomonosov. “Now that there are fewer ears, maybe you could explain the reason behind all this subterfuge. Why does the discovery of a lost crew from the Imperial Academy require a sealed order from Empress Catherine? Many have sought the Northeast Passage, me included.”
“It’s because this team was dispatched by Catherine herself—and not to search for a route between the Atlantic and Pacific.”
Vasily drew Lomonosov farther aside from the other two men. “Then what were they searching for?”
“At the moment, the secrecy is less about what they were searching for and more about what they might have found—especially due to the record that Captain Razin made of their belongings. I was sent to confirm what the captain described and determine the best course of action from here.”
Vasily sighed, resigned to the fact that he would have to let this play out.
In silence, they followed Razin across the camp and through oily clouds of boiling blubber. The stench choked the throat and lay thick on the tongue. Once upwind of the station, the air eventually cleared, growing cold and crisp. The sky remained an aching blue, but a dark line at the horizon warned of incoming weather.
They hiked another quarter mile, following high cliffs that bordered the rocky beach. Razin seemed to be leading them nowhere. There was no sign of any dwelling in sight.
Razin finally stopped, lifted an arm, and pointed. “You’ll find them in there.”
It took Vasily another full breath to spot a shadowy break in the cliff face. It marked the mouth of a cave. He searched the neighboring seas but failed to spot any evidence of a shipwreck. The doomed crew must have abandoned their ship, maybe after it had been trapped and crushed by winter ice. It was a sadly frequent tragedy this far north, one he came close to experiencing himself when he sought out the Northeast Passage. He grimaced as he imagined the crew trekking across the frozen sea to reach land and seeking shelter where they could.
Not that coming here had done them any good.
“I’ve work to see to,” Razin said sourly. “I’ll leave it to you crows to pick among the dead.”
When no one objected, the captain turned and headed back to the smoke-shrouded camp.
Lomonosov did not wait and set off toward the cave. Vasily andOrlov hurried after him. Once at the entrance, the lieutenant ignited a lantern and lit their way down a short tunnel.
The walls were heavily coated in ice that reflected the lamplight. Meltwater ran underfoot. The tunnel emptied into a small cavern—now an icy crypt. Four bodies were stacked at the threshold, tangled and frozen together, creating a macabre dam across the entrance. The dead men had either been washed there by the tides of melting and freezing waters or perhaps they’d been purposefully stacked there to act as windbreaks for the other five crewmembers who lay sprawled inside the cave.
To enter, Vasily and the others had to climb over the dead men. As they did, hollow eyes stared up at them. Jaws hung open in silent screams, showing blackened tongues and white teeth.
A misstep by Orlov shattered a frozen hand under a bootheel. The lieutenant hurried away, as if fearing retribution from the dead.
Once inside, Vasily fought down his revulsion and circled a ring of stones, dark with ash, marking an old firepit. The crew must have burned their sleds after using them to transport gear and food. Still, at the back of the cavern, one object had been spared the flames. Even as the crew froze to death, they hadn’t torched this artifact. It spoke to the value placed upon it.
Lomonosov stepped briskly toward this prize.
Off to the side, Orlov lifted his lantern toward a neighboring wall. A long row of names had been chiseled into the rock, likely an accounting of the crew, an epitaph written by the dead.
A gasp by Lomonosov drew Vasily’s attention back around. The councilor stood before the large artifact preserved at the back of the cave. It was a huge horn of ivory, curved, and longer than a man’s outstretched arms.
“What is it?” Orlov asked.
“Amaimantotusk,” Lomonosov answered. “Also dubbedmammon’s horns. Many such finds have been discovered in washed-out riverbeds of the north, often by the Samoyed clans of Siberia. They’re believed to be from a long-dead species of sea elephant.”
