–
“Just beyond that ridge, they say that’s the area where Gilzen’s castle was. You should consider this whole region a danger zone. No, make that hell. Those behind you would be better off turning back if they still can—or is it too late?”
“It’s too late,” D replied as he advanced, steadily planting one foot after the other but doing it so lightly he didn’t leave a single track. Although this young man wasn’t the kind to care about the life or death of others, even for him the reply surpassed coldness and entered the spectrum of cruelty.
The group following him was a good five hundred yards back, and D was now about halfway up the five-hundred-foot-high ridge of rock. Suddenly, he halted. His right foot barely pressed against the snow.
“Step on a mine?” his left hand asked drowsily. “Put any more pressure on it, and it’ll blow up. Back off, and you won’t be able to get across. And you’ve got the others coming up behind you. So, what are you gonna do?” There was nothing helpful in the hoarse voice’s somewhat mean-spirited inquiry.
A heartbeat later, the figure in black soared into the air like a mystic bird, landing a few yards away, then executing another leap. He came to rest on the snow some fifty yards distant.
“What the hell? Are you leaving the rest of ’em behind?”
As if in response to the hoarse voice’s sullen tone, the ridge collapsed. Two of the places D’s feet had touched had been depressions in the ground. In each spot, the rock and snow gave way to a depth of a hundred yards.
“They won’t be able to follow you now. What are they supposed to do if the mountain folk show up? Are you gonna feign ignorance and—” The hoarse voice cut out, and then in a somewhat pensive tone it added, “You could do that, couldn’t you? But it might not do any good.”
The meaning of that last remark was unclear.
D began to pick his way along the far side of the ridge. The mountain soaring before him appeared to quietly wait for the Hunter. It was thirty minutes more before the group behind him reached the horrid remains of the ridge.
Attackers
chapter 5
I
In front of D soared an almost perfectly vertical wall of rock and snow. From here on out, his limbs would serve as his only tools for the climb.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll manage,” his left hand muttered sleepily. “It’s a good three hundred yards up to the rocky spot where that aircraft crash-landed. There’s no lack of bumps and crevices to wrap your fingers around. The problem is over there.”
Around two hundred yards from the top, the rockface jutted out more than thirty feet.
“That’s not a problem for you. The real enemy—” the hoarse voice gave a yawn, “—is this.”
Something white came to rest on the palm of his left hand, then abruptly vanished. A snowflake.
D turned to his right—northwest. Darkness was busy blanketing the sky. Like a strange gas, dark clouds were spreading toward them.
“From the look of that, inside of ten minutes this mountain’s gonna be looking at a blizzard—or more like a hurricane of snow. Dangerous even for me. Good luck! Hurry up and wake me from this sleep.”
“Now we’re ready to start a little cold-weather training before winter sets in.”
Silence descended. Then, a shocked voice inquired in a tone that might even be described as solemn, “That right there . . . Was that a . . . a joke?”
Saying nothing, D lowered the backpack from his shoulder and took out a single iron piton. Clenching it in his teeth, he approached the rockface. Apparently he’d already decided where he would start his climb.
Oh, but D was a sight to see! To climb a vertical wall of rock usually required a hammer, pitons, and vast quantities of rope. D challenged this rock wall with no rope to save him from a fall, no hammer to drive in pitons, and no more than that one piton, for that matter. It wasn’t even clear if he intended to use it. In fact, he kept the piton between his teeth and reached out for the rock wall with both hands. If anyone had been there to see him, they’d likely have let out an admiring sigh. His hands reached for the rock, and without seeming to apply any force at all, he began climbing smoothly. Smoothly? Hell, he began to climb that vertical rockface like a reptile that’d lived on that wall for millennia.
A hundred yards up, he reached the stony overhang. Not reducing speed in the slightest, he moved on to the underside of the rock. His fingers caught hold of the tiniest protrusions and reached into the faintest depressions. All his actions were carried out with lightning speed. Clinging to one knob, he reached his right hand out and touched another outcropping. The rock fell away beneath him. The Hunter arched his upper body like a bow. D moved with ungodly speed. Taking the piton from between his teeth with his left hand, he jammed it into the rockface. Of the footlong piece of iron, all but just enough to grip sank into the surface of the rock. Like a black bagworm, D hung there by one arm, but a heartbeat later his body became a spring, and he stuck to the rockface. Less than two seconds later, he began to move again.
After climbing another hundred yards, he found his back hammered by snowy winds that seemed to have been waiting just for him.
“Pretty much . . . made it . . . eh?” his left hand remarked torpidly. It sounded like someone babbling in their sleep. The wind and snow scattered the words.
–
D was standing on a fairly wide rock shelf. The emotion that should’ve been radiating from every inch of a gorgeous young man at such a moment wasn’t evident in the least. Not even struggling for breath, without a single hint of emotion in his eyes, D was staring straight ahead—at an object that rested on its side about twenty yards away. With one wing sheared off and its fuselage crumpled, the savaged aircraft bore faint resemblance to its original form. He had finally arrived.
Heading toward it, D was walking across rock still bearing the scars of the crash landing when a faint sound reached his ears. Gunshots. For only a second he halted, turning his face toward the edge of the rock shelf, but he immediately turned back again and resumed walking forward.
–
After less than an hour of waiting at the base of the collapsed ridge, the group came under attack by the mountain folk. On seeing how few of them there were, the attackers should have unleashed a fierce fusillade—but they didn’t. This wasn’t like back on the snowfields. Here avalanches had to be taken into consideration. Instead, arrows rained down on them. Not surprisingly, both Lilia and Dust were able to deflect any that looked likely to hit themselves, but Dust had to protect Vera and Lourié as well. As he was defending them with javelin and axe, an arrow took him through the shoulder. Lilia clucked her tongue.
“Set up the refuge,” Vera called out to her.
“No can do on this slope. Not enough room for its footprint. It’d fall down the ravine!”
“Should we charge ’em?”
Lilia grinned at Crey’s suggestion. “Can you see who we’re fighting?”
She was entirely correct. No matter how carefully they looked, they could see no sign of anyone out in the endless expanse of white. That was the chameleon suits at work.
“We’re not dhampirs. We get our heads cut off, and that’s all she wrote. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“What the hell are you trying to pull?”
“I’ve decided to do my job as best I can. Our association must end here.”
“What?”
“Godspeed.”
Knocking down more incoming arrows with her longsword, Lilia made an unexpected dash for the rocky ridge.
Lourié let out a scream.
Throwing herself off the collapsed ridge, the Huntress appeared to be committing suicide. In midair, a black globe appeared. The refuge. Lilia’s form was engulfed by it. It would have been impossible to keep it from falling down the mountain if it were set up here, and she probably didn’t have time enough to allow the others to get in as well, so her shocking solo effort was somewhat unavoidable. But would even t
he handiwork of the Nobles’ civilization be able to survive a drop of several hundred yards into the ravine? Lilia was betting everything on it.
Snow billowed up from the bottom of the slope.
“Lousy bitch,” Crey cursed as an arrow jabbed into the ground right in front of him.
“How are you faring?” Vera called out.
“I’m good,” said Dust.
“You’re not good. You can’t use your right arm,” Vera countered.
“Take the kid and run for it.”
“Where?”
Crey somehow weathered the silence that came next. Their surroundings were already full of arrows. “How about we surrender?”
Dust shook his head at Crey’s proposal. “You fancy being eaten?”
“What?”
“What do you think the mountain folk eat up on a snow-covered peak like this? The flesh of climbers and fugitives. I’ve heard when they don’t have either of those, they draw lots to see who gets eaten.”
“If they’re as hungry as all that, why the hell don’t they just move somewhere else, then?”
“I don’t know much about their circumstances. But they say they were connected to the Nobles who used to live on this mountain.”
“Hmm. Ever catch any of ’em down by the foot of the mountain?”
“Nope. We have found remains, though. The toothed-up bones of five or six of them.”
“That’s sick!”
Just then, the world darkened. As flecks of white blew around them, Crey groaned.
“Just perfect! A snowstorm!”
“Relax. At least we don’t have to worry about the cold anymore.”
Sensing something in Dust’s tone, Crey glared at him. But he understood what the man was saying. Now that Lilia had run off and Dust was wounded, they wouldn’t be able to hold off their attackers the next time there was an assault. No matter how good Crey was with his Deadman’s Blade, an attack by invisible cannibals would spell certain death. A tinge of despair colored the outlaw’s still-intrepid face.
“Tell me something, Doctor: does it hurt when you die?” Lourié asked in a trembling voice as Vera lay over him like a shield.
“It’s all right,” she said to him kindly. “It’ll all be over soon.”
Silence enveloped the white world. The next time the killing lust coalesced, death would be unleashed, falling down upon them.
“Damn it all!” Crey groaned. Did he still vainly cling to an urge to fight?
The darkness increased in depth.
A scream rang out. At the same time, the reports of rifles echoed in the air.
“What’s that?” Crey twisted around with the agility of a beast.
Something had appeared on the snowfield ahead of them—where the mountain folk lurked. Crey could see one spot where the darkness was unnaturally heavy. Another scream resounded, so mindless it changed the looks on both Dust’s and Vera’s faces.
“Please, help me!” someone cried in a human tongue. “Don’t come any closer—stay back—nooooooo!”
The cry was cut short, and a single gunshot echoed across the snowfield. And then—stillness.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Crey inquired in a low tone. He didn’t know how, but the mountain folk had been wiped out in the blink of an eye—that much was certain. But rather than rejoicing, this was cause for whispering. How he knew that, he wasn’t sure.
“It’s coming!” Dust said.
“What is?” asked Vera. Beside her, Lourié too had his eyes peeled.
“The darkness. Look.” Crey seemed to understand.
A faint darkness enveloped the group’s surroundings. A still-denser darkness was slowly closing on where the mountain folk had been. Whatever lay within it had wiped out the mountain folk. It had dealt with cannibals of unparalleled wickedness in mere seconds. At the very least, it seemed unlikely to pay them a friendly call.
“Doc,” Dust called to the woman, keeping his voice low. “Take care of that kid.”
Perhaps realizing that the man wasn’t talking about defending him, the boy’s face went as white as a sheet.
II
“Do you know what it is?” Crey asked, sounding tense for the first time.
“I don’t wanna think about it—”
Dust’s reply wasn’t really an answer at all, but it pointed Vera’s mind at the impossible. It can’t be. It just can’t. But it was something that could throw a shadow across the sun, and use the darkness while slaughtering humans. It can’t be.
“Jump for it, Doc!” Crey shouted.
“Huh?”
“If that’s what I think it is, you’re better off dead. Plus, Lilia’s at the bottom of the ravine. She’s a dirty dealer, but she’d probably help you folks, at least.”
“Yeah, do it,” Dust advised her.
“Okay, but only if you guys do, too.”
“I ain’t too taken with the idea of splattering in the ravine,” Crey replied, his eyes focused straight ahead. “Besides, turning tail without a fight’s as good as suicide. That don’t sit too well with me. If you’re taking anyone with you, make it your bodyguard over there.”
“As soon as I’m dead, jump for it.” Dust’s eyes, too, were trained straight ahead. There was no question he was an excellent bodyguard.
“I can’t do that. Dust—I . . .”
“There’s no way around it. As far as the business with my daughter, sorry about that—but at any rate, my job here is to keep you safe.”
“Five yards off. Hurry up and get going!”
Dust got up. “You’re up next!”
“Leave it to me!” Crey thumped his chest. Still, there was something untrustworthy about the man. In the fateful moment when their lives hung in the balance, there was no telling whether or not he’d come through for them.
The heavens howled. The darkness enveloped Dust.
“Stop!” Vera cried out.
Her cry was coupled with a shout of “Don’t go!” from the diminutive figure that dashed from her side—Lourié.
“Mister!” The tone of the boy’s voice spoke volumes about a bond that he’d apparently forged with the rough giant of a man during this trip. His tiny form was swallowed by the darkness. Or rather, the boy plunged into it on his own.
At the instant pitch blackness closed him off from the world, Lourié stopped in his tracks. It wasn’t due to the cold, nor was it out of fear of the omnipresent black that plastered his field of view. He was paralyzed to the very marrow of his bones by a presence that radiated darkness. And it wasn’t so much a something—it was someone! A short distance from him, he sensed Dust’s presence. But there was someone else in the darkness!
So good of you to come.
Those were the words Lourié’s ears caught. He couldn’t quite tell if it was a voice or the sound of the wind. But he felt certain that the words came from the other presence. Was it a man, a woman, or the wind? That he couldn’t say. And yet, he felt quite distinctly that the source of that voice or sound was shrouded in delight.
So good of you to come.
He heard it again.
I’ve been waiting. Waiting for young blood brimming with life. My child, I shall catch your blood in a golden goblet and drink it dry.
“Who is that?” Lourié finally managed to ask. “Who . . . Who are you? You called me your child—I don’t know you!”
My children number in the millions, said the presence. Now, you shall join their ranks. Consider it an honor.
“Stop it!” Dust bellowed, but he seemed a million miles away.
“I came up here in search of my father. You—you’d better stay away!”
Suddenly, the presence stood before the boy. He couldn’t even speak. Thought itself eluded him. It was as though the daunting mass of a rock wall loomed before him. No interest as to the nature of this being stirred in him. Its very existence was too strange.
Come.
What was that supposed to mean?
A part of Louri�
�’s anatomy suddenly stopped. At the same time, the presence quavered. A slight abnormality had occurred in a star that’d formed over the course of hundreds of millions of years. It had been introduced from the outside.
This time the boy heard it clearly. Interesting, the presence murmured. The voice held clear surprise—and a ring of being deeply touched. You should see this, too.
Lourié felt something heavy come to rest on his shoulders. Were they hands? His body turned like it was a sheet of paper.
And Lourié saw. He couldn’t tell how far off it was. But he was there. The figure in black had a rifle in one hand and was staring his way in a manner that could only be called quiet. But how beautiful was the face below that traveler’s hat! It was the unearthly air that radiated from every inch of him that made it seem so. The snowstorm abated. No fear. Even the wind stopped. Intoxicating. D.
I recognize him as my foe, the voice declared close to the boy’s ear. A foe for which I, Duke Gilzen, would search the entire world.
The next instant Lourié found himself standing alone, whipped by the wind and snow. A number of voices were calling his name. He felt neither relief nor excitement. The wind struck his cheeks, and snowflakes melted against him. Oddly enough, he didn’t even feel the cold.
“Are you all right?”
That was Dust. His rough hand caught the boy’s shoulder, shaking him. Both head and body wobbled.
“I’m fine,” he replied.
“Are you okay, Lourié?”
That was the doctor, Vera. Her face was right in front of his. She was peering at him intently. Her worried expression changed.
“That’s odd.” Reaching out one hand, she lifted his eyelid. There was no pain. He didn’t even shed a tear. She took his right hand. “His pupils are dilated. And he doesn’t have a pulse.”
Dust’s eyes glinted with curiosity.
Vera put her hand under the boy’s nose, waited about three seconds, and then shook her head. As she gazed at Lourié, she wore a look of terrible solitude and loss. She stated plainly, “This child is dead.”
Vampire Hunter D Volume 22 Page 8
