By morning, the storm abated to fitful flurries from leaden clouds racing eastward overhead. Ten inches of snow had fallen, much of it now blowing in the wind and forming drifts. For the Southern men, it was a strange and foreign sight.

Two days of hell left all the men tired and unable to prosecute any warfare, but they had finished the stockade and set ramps for guards to see easily over the wall. The palisade extended as well, blocking direct and easy access to the sheltering valley.

There were no marks left by the Robber King on the wooden stockade.

Forgoing any followers, Robert made his way past the pond, intent on walking to the Island shore. It was still too early in the season for a solid layer of ice to form on the pond, but the fragile hoarse frost grew close to the water, a crystal grass that was beautiful to look at but too brittle to touch. The question in Robert’s mind was if the lake would require the same time to freeze as the pond.

He crossed to the woods, intent on the lakeshore. It seemed an eternity since Robert had seen the bodies floating in the pond. It was significant somehow, the link between the quarry and pond. There was no other cave on the island, so the Indians must have used the same cave to reach the island, but beyond those few assumptions, Robert did not know what it meant, as if a piece of the drawing hid from sight.

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Pine trees gave way to birch, tall white and black with skeletal branches clacking in the intermittent breeze. Within a dozen paces, Robert stood at the shore of Coal Island. Very little iced graced the shore, gray waves choppy in the distance. It was a lonely view filled with impossibility; a situation Robert was now thoroughly familiar with.

“Why was Private Holm spared?” The question had preoccupied him for an entire sleepless day. That thing stared at Holm long enough. Holm was the man who told the story. He provided the history that all the men on the island knew by heart.

Could it be that simple? The Robber King wanted men to remember its existence. Holm was the messenger? Its prophet?

Robert rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin. How could he understand the motives of something so incomprehensible? He could only address its actions, a method which placed the Robber King within the capabilities of military understanding. Every battlefield was simply preparations leading to choices.

Preparations were well underway in this hidden valley. The protection afforded by the stockade was good enough to fend off Lieutenant Pace, but woefully inadequate against the Robber King as proven only hours earlier; it need only lean against the timbers to topple the walls.

In the distance, a long line of gray clouds drifting closer. If his time on the island had taught Robert anything, it was to know when a storm was coming. More snow soon.

Robert had to engage Lieutenant Pace in battle as soon as possible or find peace quickly if Private Holm was to get off the island. If Holm used one of the fishing boats to escape, he would have room for an additional passenger, one more lucky soul, to survive Coal Island.

Robert turned and reentered the woods, knowing his next goal. The proper battle had not changed, only the context of the ending.