His body had washed up against a fallen log about thirty yards downstream, tangled in the branches like driftwood. His head was at an angle that made my chest tighten, and even from this distance I could see the gray pallor of his skin.
"Oh no," I whispered.
It took all four of us to pull Stephen's body free of the river. The water had made him heavy, waterlogged, and my hands kept slipping on his jacket. My leg screamed in protest every time and by the time we'd dragged Stephen onto dry ground, I was soaking wet and shivering so hard my teeth chattered. The bandage around my thigh had come loose, trailing against my torn trousers and I felt the warm trickle of fresh blood down my skin.
Nathan knelt beside the body. "Ellie, absorb whatever power he has left."
"What?"
"His magic. We can't afford to waste it." Nathan's tone was flat. "You're the only one who can. Do it."
"Nathan, he's been dead for hours…"
"Do it anyway."
I stared at him, horror and fury warring in my chest, but I was too tired, too cold, and too shaken to argue. I knelt beside Stephen's body, my wounded leg folding awkwardly beneath me, and had to bite back a whimper. My hands hovered over his chest.
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
I reached for the stored magic, a mental pull like drawing on a thread. For a moment I felt nothing, just cold flesh and the sick knowledge that I was literally draining a corpse. Then it came. A rush of power, clean and bright andeasy, flooding into me. More than I’d take from the living volunteers back in the lab.
I yanked my hands back, gasping.
"How much?" Nathan asked.
"I got what I could." I was starting to trust him less than I had before, and for some reason, I didn’t want to tell him I’d absorbed everything. Nathan just nodded, already moving on.
"Good. We need to salvage what we can and make a plan. Leave him here. There’s nothing we can do for him now."
“Can’t we bury him?” I asked, hating to just abandon the man that I’d laughed and joked with the night before.
"With what? Our hands? The ground is frozen six inches down and we don't have tools. We don't have time."
He was right. I hated that he was right.
I looked down at Stephen's face. His eyes were closed, at least. The river had done that much for him. His hair was plastered to his forehead, dark with water and mud, and there was a deep gash along his temple where something—a rock, a branch—had struck him. I wondered if that had killed him, or if it had been the cold, or the water in his lungs.
"Stephen," I whispered. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
I reached down and closed his jacket, smoothing the fabric over his chest with hands that wouldn't stop trembling. It was a stupid gesture, but it was all I had. I couldn't bury him. I couldn'teven say the right words because I didn't know what they were. So I zipped his jacket and pressed my palm flat against his chest where the magic had been, and closed my eyes. I had no faith of my own, but I sent out a plea to whatever gods resided in this place that they watch over him, wherever he was now. Then I stood, ignoring the fresh pain in my leg, and turned my back on him.
The inventory took less than twenty minutes because there was almost nothing left to inventory. Nathan had his pack. The scanner had a crack running down the casing, but when Nathan powered it on, the display flickered to life. Megan had managed to save one of the food packs, but the rest was gone. The tents, the extra clothing, the backup medical supplies, — all swept away or destroyed.
"That's it?" I asked, staring at the single pack.
"That's it." Megan's voice was steady, but her face was drawn. "Maybe three weeks' worth, four if we ration carefully."
We stood in a rough circle, staring at our pathetic pile of salvage. Dev was sitting on a fallen log about twenty yards away, his broken leg stretched out in front of him. His face was grey with pain, but he hadn't complained once. That somehow made it worse.
"We need to go back," I said, shifting my weight off my bad leg. "Back to the stone circle. Abort the mission and return to our own time."
"No." Nathan's response was immediate.
"Nathan, look around! We don't have enough supplies to make it to the source and back. Stephen's dead. Dev's leg is broken."
"We have enough. We'll ration carefully and forage as we go. The mission continues."
"Are you insane? We're barely holding together. We need to retreat, regroup, and come back with proper support."
