The Ill-Fated Search

The Ill-Fated Search

chapter 4

I

Perhaps you could say the good omens continued. It was just shortly after daybreak that sunlight and blue sky began spreading behind the blizzard. About the same time, Lourié woke up. His color had returned, and his mind was sharp. He gave them a smile that suggested his body was in good shape as well.

“Sure you’re not in any pain?” Vera asked, to which he answered in the affirmative, nodding exuberantly. After some reflection Vera called Dust over and said, “Our friend here is going to bring you down off the mountain.”

“I don’t want to go,” the boy replied, pursing his lips tightly and shaking his head.

“Well, to be honest, you’re just slowing us down.”

“I know that. That’s why I started up alone in the first place.”

“Going it alone is all well and good, but if anything were to happen to you, we’d have to go rescue you. You’re not alone anymore.”

“Please, just go on ahead. That way, if something happens to me, you won’t know about it. All you have to do is keep moving straight ahead, and not turn around.”

“You know we couldn’t do that.” Vera let out a sigh. Her patience was wearing thin. Yet the boy had an earnestness to his manner that tempered her anger. “When we found you, you said you’d come looking for your father who was lost up here, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Is that really all there is to it?”

“Yes—why do you ask?” Lourié had lowered his gaze for a moment, but now he looked at the doctor again.

“There are other people in the village who’ve had family go missing on the mountain. There are parents who’ve lost children. But you don’t see them out searching at this time of year.”

“You’re right.”

“Yet you try to make the climb with a blizzard raging—well, at any rate, we’re with you there. But you said you’d search for your father alone. I believe you’re serious. And that’s what worries me. So, did your father really just disappear?”

“That’s right.”

Vera looked the boy in the eye. He immediately averted his gaze. The doctor knew what that meant in an instant, but not the details. Pressing the matter any further would only make the boy more recalcitrant.

“I guess we have no choice then.” Vera heaved a sigh. “At the moment, it’s possible to safely go down the mountain.”

She turned toward the door and started to walk away. Her course took her behind Lourié. The doctor’s right hand came to rest on the base of his slender neck, where she pressed the anesthetic gun she’d hid in her sleeve. Quickly catching the boy as he slumped forward, she had Dust lay him on his back.

“Get him down quickly,” she told the man, filling him in on the decision she’d made the day before.

The giant nodded. Even so, he hesitated. “I’m supposed to be guarding you, Doc.”

“If the boy were to do something stupid, it’d put me in danger as well. Getting him back to the village is the very best protection you can offer me.”

The giant said nothing at that.

“Please. Leave while the others are still sleeping.”

“Roger that.”

“And once you’ve done that, you’re not to come back here. Am I understood?”

Silence once more from the giant.

“Please. I don’t want you to end up like your daughter. Your wife cursed me to her dying breath.”

Again, nothing from Dust.

“What’s more, if anything were to befall you, it would pain me for all my days. And I’d hate those in the village office who picked you as my protector.”

The doctor spat out her confession like a gout of blood, but it didn’t bring so much as a twitch from the stony face of the giant. All it wore was a cold blankness that surpassed even hatred.

What had happened between the doctor and her protector?

“I’ll be back,” Dust said flatly. He understood what the doctor was saying but didn’t agree with it; that much was plain to Vera as well. To him, Vera was someone to be protected and nothing more. Toward that end, it would be best to bring the boy home. He’d decided that, and nothing more. “But if I don’t make it . . .”

“Don’t worry. I’m capable of defending myself. Besides, if it comes to that, I don’t think the other three will leave me to my own defenses.”

Dust fell silent, proof he doubted Vera’s claims. Two Hunters and an outlaw—when push came to shove, they seemed to him to be the last people in the world who’d give a thought to anyone else’s safety. However, about ten minutes later the village guardian left the Noble’s refuge with the soundly sleeping Lourié on his back.

Before even five minutes had passed, Lilia got up, came into the room, and said, “Hey, where’s the kid?” But before she’d even finished saying the words, the Huntress got a gleam in her eyes. “Don’t tell me you sent them back to the village.”

“It’s still close enough to go back. Besides, the boy’s just going to be in the way later.”

“Looks like you’ll be even more trouble, Doctor!” Lilia spat venomously. “Do you think this is a secure area? All night long I sensed things moving around out there. You’ve as good as sent them to their deaths!”

“It can’t be . . .” Vera heard a series of regulated explosions within her—the sound of her heart.

“When exactly did they leave?”

“About five minutes ago!”

“Then we might still be in time. I’m heading right out after them. You stay here. D?” she called out. “D!”

Still shouting toward the door, the Huntress moved into the living room with the gait of a predator about to pounce on its prey. Before ten seconds had passed, she returned, saying, “He’s not here.” She groaned the words, as if biting off a chunk of her own fate. “What the hell is he doing?”

At this point she put on her poker face. “Well, that’s one or two fewer children around. Good riddance, I say!” And with that, she added, “This is a hell of a way to roll out of bed. I’m going to go see if I can catch up to them. It sure would help if the big fella was carrying some sort of radio, though.”

“Unfortunately, no.”

Lilia clucked her tongue and slapped the hilt of the longsword she carried.

At that point Crey poked his sleepy-eyed head in and asked, “Hey, what’s going on?”

“The right man at the right time!” Lilia said, looking fit to lick her chops with anticipation.

“Come again?”

–

Before they’d gone five hundred yards Crey was grumbling complaints to himself. Something about how he hated wandering around out in the cold. “I’m tired. And I like it back at the refuge.”

“That’s my refuge, thank you. If you fancy pitching a tent outside tonight, by all means, go on back.”

“You lousy bitch. That’s extortion.”

Ignoring the way the outlaw bared his teeth, she looked off into the distance for footprints in the snow. “The tracks are here, no problem. At least we’ve got something to go on. If you call yourself a man, stop your bellyaching and follow me.”

“Shit!” Crey said, and as he did so he made a strange face. “Hey, what about that son of a bitch D? Come to think of it, he wasn’t in the refuge, but there’s no tracks from him either. Wonder if the jerk ran off in the dead of night.”

“No.”

“You sound pretty damn sure of yourself.”

“Over there!”

Crey focused his eyes in the direction Lilia had indicated with a toss of her chin. Just where an incline began, two figures were headed toward them.

“Why’s there two of ’em?” Crey said, and then he swiftly tensed, and at the same time understood.

The two figures at the bottom of the incline slowly took the form of D and Dust. Lourié was over Dust’s shoulder. When Dust’s rough features became discernible, the outlaw said, “Was the big fella’s face always that red?”

“This is bad!”

Lilia broke into a run, the snow tripping her up. Not only Dust’s face, but his whole upper body as well, was stained with fresh blood.

“Is the kid okay?”

Dust nodded. A flesh-toned plaster had been applied to the split in his forehead. It was an antiseptic product. Vera had most likely given it to him.

“And the boy never the wiser—lucky little brat,” said Lilia.

On Dust’s back, Lourié slumbered peacefully, not yet roused from the anesthetic.

Quickly turning her gaze to Dust’s face, she said, “That’s not such a serious wound. Who gave it to you?”

“Snow bugs.”

That was a kind of three-foot-long insect that built its nests in the snow. Due to their being entirely white, they were hard to pick out. Their weapons were teeth and claws. Both were sharp, for carving smaller insects out of the ice, but due to their sluggish movements, a well-equipped human could hold their own against up to five of them.

“How many were there?”

“A good five dozen.”

“And you got off with just that?”

Dust gave a toss of his chin to the figure of beauty beside him. “I’d put down thirty-two, and number thirty-three got me. That’s when he came along.” His expression and tone were the very picture of unsociability, but there was a glow of gratitude in his eyes.

More dazzling than the snowfields, the one he referred to kept his silence.

“They may be a little on the slow side, but those claws move ten times faster than a man. And there he was, taking out five at a time, six swipes of his sword to finish the lot without taking even a scratch. I’m not sure which one’s the monster. I’d never seen what a dhampir could do before.”

As they walked side by side, Lilia asked D, “So, Mr. Dhampir, mind if I put a question to you?”

“That depends.”

Furrowing her brow at the hoarse tone, she said, “What were you doing outside? Don’t tell me you noticed the two of them had gone and went after them.”

“That’s the ticket,” the hoarse voice croaked.

Lilia said nothing at that.

“Truth be told, I’m a big softy. Sweet natured—oh, it’s a beautiful thing, heh heh heh!” The chortling ended in a choked cry of pain.

His left hand still balled in a fist, D said, “I was surveying the area.”

“I expected as much. No way a man like you’d be worried about anyone else. After all, you’re a little prince descended from the blood of the Nobility.”

There was a stark flash before her eyes. A clang rang out, accompanied by sparks. D’s blade was stopped right in front of Lilia’s nose by her dagger. It quickly came away.

While D sheathed his blade as if nothing had happened and started to walk away in silence, she called out after him, “Was that supposed to be some sort of threat? Sorry, but I’m a pro, too. Still, it was pretty good. I didn’t even have time to draw my longsword. You’ll get your payback when this job is finished.”

“Let it go.”

“What?” With that angry question, Lilia turned and found Dust, who was also about to walk away. “Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Without halting, he said in a grave tone, “I’m surprised he let you live. Treated you like a lady, I guess. He’s a softy, that much is for sure. But a softy to be feared.”

“Take that back. I stopped his sword,” Lilia retorted, unable to restrain herself. Her pride as a Hunter was at stake.

“Because he cut you in a way that would allow you to stop him.”

“Allow me to stop him? And what’s this about cutting me?”

Lowering his left hand, Dust rubbed the tip of her nose with his index finger. “Get that taken care of. It’ll spoil your looks.”

“Just a—” she shouted to him as he walked away with the child strapped to his back, but then the Huntress noticed something out of the ordinary. Feeling an itch, she touched her index finger to her face, then held it out in front of her eyes.

“It can’t be,” she groaned in a low voice. It was a tone she’d never heard herself use, full of surprise, fear, and despair.

Her fingertip was damp with red. It was Lilia’s own lifeblood, trickling from the wound D’s blade had dealt her.

II

It was an hour later that the whole group set out. Once they’d partaken of some of the emergency rations the refuge was stocked with for humans, it only took thirty seconds to pack up the refuge. On seeing how the structure folded up into something the size of a slim music player with one press of a switch, Crey whistled.

“That was a hell of a thing for ’em to make. Were the Nobles into mountain climbing in the snow, too? You know, because it was there? I bet they enjoyed skiing in winter.” Clutching his belly, Crey laughed. “What do you think, D? Picture it: pretty boys with fangs in black capes and women in evening dresses getting in a little night skiing. Laugh it up. C’mon! Give us a smile.”

Naturally, D didn’t reply; he just walked on ahead of the rest.

“Hey, wait up!” Lilia was about to chase after him when a hand reached for her shoulder, but the woman’s form spurted forward as if driven by a gust of air.

Crey was grinning. That was probably par for the course with him. “A long time ago, I went to this island nation that’d half sunk into the sea. They had this weird phenomenon, a kind of mirage they called ‘the fleeing water.’ Just when you were about to touch it, it’d be off in the distance again. You’re ‘the fleeing woman.’ ”

“In that case, try touching me,” Lilia said, twisting her body provocatively.

“Maybe when you’re a little more my type,” he replied. “That reminds me—is D alive?”

“What?” Lilia looked at the outlaw as if he’d lost his mind. Then a spiteful look rose on her face, and she replied, “Only half, I suppose.”

“That explains it.”

“Explains what?”

Crey tossed his chin in the direction of the snow. “Pretty as a picture. Not a track on it.”

There was no reply.

Those behind him—the doctor and her protector with the burdensome boy—also looked down at the pristine snow, then turned their eyes toward D with unsettled looks on their faces.

Did the sunlight of this fair day wish to conspire with him? Or was it that the endless silvery expanse would expel him, eternally cursed as he was? Whatever the case, no trace of the figure in black could be seen any longer.

“Heeeeeeeeey!”

The shout was in a man’s voice. D halted, started to turn around, and then halted again.

“What is it?” asked the hoarse voice from the vicinity of his left hand.

“If I turn around, my head will fly.”

“What?”

“I’m walking on the course.”

“The course? Damn, I didn’t know that was there. You’ve got to get off to one side.”

“It’s no use. Once you’re on this route, you could walk forever. We’ve got to somehow find the exit.”

“Hmm. I hadn’t even noticed. When in the blazes did we . . .”

“You’re useless,” D said, his tone colder than ice and snow.

“Shit. The cold air’s dulled my senses. What’ll we do?”

“All we can do is go on.”

“Is their sword faster than yours?”

“It’d be close. But if my head were cut off, I’d need to be brought back to life. Could you manage that?”

The hoarse voice hesitated. What came next was a distressed groan. “To be honest, my eyelids are feeling pretty heavy. I’d appreciate it if you could pull through this on your own.”

“Useless.” D’s tone was cold, but there was no blame in it. Even without his left hand and the hoarse voice, the young man could go it alone. However, the path passed by a rocky ridge. Would it lead to death before he reached it?

“What’ll you do?” the hoarse voice asked, even hoarser than usual.

D walked on without replying. Features gorgeous enough to shame the white snow showed no change, nor did his stride alter. It was only three more yards to the ridge. Two yards. One. Now, just a few more—

The wind whistled behind him. The sound raced toward D’s neck. A flash of light met it. Fresh blood sailed into the air, tingeing the snow. D’s blood. He pressed his left hand to the right side of his neck. Blood poured from his wrist, and from there it sailed up into the air, scattering red spots six or seven feet ahead of him. The gleam returned to D’s hand. A dazzling sword blade.

Down on the snow, groans of pain rang out. If they’d known they issued from the Hunter’s severed left hand, whoever was behind him would’ve lost their nerve.

D moved swiftly, pressing the stump at the end of his arm to the wrist where it stuck out of the snow. He raised the limb. All five fingers worked normally. He then pressed it to the wound on his neck. Although D had brought his left hand up to shield his neck, the blade of his unseen foe had still cut him. But the lifeblood spouting from it stopped dead. His left hand came away. Only a thin red line remained there.

“You did it!” exclaimed the hoarse voice from his left hand. “You wiped it out without ever seeing it or knowing what it was. It’s stuff like this that makes me not wanna be around you in the mountains, at the sea, or anywhere. Still, it was a hell of a mountain beast to be a match for you in speed. And the way you closed on it like you didn’t give a . . .”

The voice petered out.

Quickly, its tone became angry. “I don’t care how badly you wanted to keep your head from getting lopped off, you’re an idiot for using me as a shield. Thanks to you, I’m in a world of pain! Hey, where are you going?”

D had begun walking back across the snow the way he’d come.

“It wasn’t destroyed.”

“What?”

“I cut it in a vital spot, but it’ll take a moment for it to succumb to the wound. That moment is the problem.”

“Oh, you can’t be serious. They’re coming!”

D was walking right toward them. He hadn’t been walking for five minutes when five figures came into view on the snowfield before him. Even the boy was walking again.

“Can you sense its presence?” asked D.

“Nope.”

At that frank reply, D quickened his pace.

“Oh!” the hoarse voice exclaimed, sounding both surprised and impressed.

Though Crey and Lilia looked for all the world to be casually ambling along, they’d leapt to either side in unison. An instant later, they had knife and longsword in hand. No one had even seen them draw. Their movements were like a jump in a spliced piece of film. But something unseen sent a cry of pain into the air.

“They did it,” the left hand groaned from the vicinity of D’s waist. “Seems you’re not the only one here good enough to lay into something that can’t be seen or sensed. And there’s two of ’em, at that.”

“Hey, did you see that, stud?” Crey called out, hand cupped beside his mouth.

The group came running over. The boy was at the fore.

“You must’ve seen that just now, right? One jab of my knife!”

“Oh my, that was nice work,” the left hand replied. “But the goddess here apparently begs to differ.”

Alone, Lilia walked over magnanimously, but when she finally joined them, she glared at Crey. “I’m sure you aren’t claiming all the credit, or are you?”

“You’re a fine one to be making claims to the contrary. It was my knife that did the trick. You know, kid, that thing was going for you. And your good buddy Crey saved your bacon. I hope you appreciate that.”

“How would the kid know? You’re the lowest of the low, stacking one lie on top of the next. Scum!”

“Oh, you’ve got some nerve, saying that. You trying to tell me it was that little trinket of yours that saved the kid?”

“Well, it was faster than that butter knife of yours, at least.”

“Perfect!” Crey grinned, taking his hand off Lourié’s head. “I haven’t liked you from the get-go. I’ll show you what a woman’s place is!”

“Oh, that sounds like a fun proposal. I was just thinking how a certain talentless, brainless man needed to learn his place.”

The Huntress and the outlaw, two people who could never have been expected to understand each other, were enveloped in the air that suited them best—the lust for blood. Lourié was frozen in his tracks, but the doctor wrapped her arms around him from behind. The wind that blustered by carried the chill of the ice fields. Even colder than that was the murderous intent that seemed to freeze even the form of the Hunter of unearthly beauty.

III

“Hey,” the hoarse voice asked in a low tone, “are you sure you don’t wanna stop this? Now, I’m well aware you didn’t come back because you were worried about them. You came to take care of that wounded monster, right? Still, this is getting serious. Why don’t you stop ’em?”

From D—silence.

After that, the hoarse voice continued in a disgusted tone, “Don’t tell me you wanna see what the two of ’em can do. One’s gonna end up dead! Hell, if things go badly, maybe both of ’em.”

Not so much as an eyebrow raised in that heavenly visage as it gazed at the man and woman squaring off. So beautiful, and so cold. Is that what you are, D?

However, the truth was made an eternal mystery by the sound of something slashing through the air. And not just one thing. It was the light whistle of innumerable things closing from above. A gleam danced out. Sparks flew, and a metallic clang traveled across the ice fields. All around the group, steel arrows struck the ground. There had to be at least fifty of them.

“Who the hell is it?” Crey said, looking ahead and to the right.

“The mountain folk, I’d say.” Lilia was facing in the same direction.

“Set up the refuge,” D instructed her.

“No, they’ll ruin it. It cost me a fortune!”

As Lilia turned away in a snit, Vera shouted, “We’ve got a child here!”

At the same time there was the report of a rifle, and something hot scraped past the Huntress’s cheek. Everyone but D dove to the ground.

“That does it!” Lilia reached for the folded refuge tucked through her belt. There was no other option.

D’s right hand came up. In the same direction Lilia and Crey had looked, a succession of cries D alone could hear rang out. He’d thrown his rough wooden needles. More than a hundred yards away, a number of red splotches spread on the snow.

“Not too shabby,” Crey said, and when he turned there was a gleam in his eye. Had he known the weapons that’d flown over a hundred yards were light, slim needles of wood, he might’ve wet himself. A fresh gunshot made him turn his head once more. “Sons of bitches! They’ve got rifles.”

“I can’t see them.”

“That’s what the mountain folk around here are known for. They wear chameleon suits.” Vera’s words explained the mystery.

Chameleon suits were clothing that mimicked certain animals’ ability to make their bodies blend in with the coloring of their surroundings. Just as black clothes let one meld with the darkness, these suits would make the wearer suddenly disappear from view. Moreover, they took away the perception of depth, making it impossible to spot them. In the endless expanse of white, a foe like this could close on their prey more easily than a snow panther, then strike with their weapons. It was said that if they could maintain a certain distance, the outcome of the battle was one hundred percent clear.

“Hey, get down!” Dust shouted to the Hunter.

“Leave him be,” said Crey.

“He’s a dhampir!” Lilia added.

Apparently this was something that the two of them could agree upon. This exchange exposed the natures of the three people.

When D bent down, shots zinged over his head. Three of them.

“Six, all told,” the hoarse voice whispered.

“A scouting party,” said Lilia. “Leave this to me.”

“Quit it. You’d just piss yourself!”

A look burning with fierce flames of loathing speared Crey. “You’re going to regret saying that soon!”

“Sorry, but the only thing I regret is being born into this sorry world.”

“Knock it off!” Dust growled in a low voice, and then Lilia stood up.

“What?” someone gasped—Lilia herself.

One step ahead of her, the figure in black dashed by, his right hand swinging around behind him, filling not only his own field of view with white but Lilia’s too. That slash of D’s blade had thrown up a cloud of snow. While it allowed the hot lead to pass, the snow closed on the gunshots like a storm. No doubt the marksmen had underestimated D’s group. After all, it seemed impossible to pinpoint the shooters’ location by the sound of their gunshots alone. D’s needles had already slain four of them. And gunshots had rung out since.

A white whirlwind arose in one section of the snowfield. Suddenly it changed to crimson, and two red figures fell without a word and writhed in the snow.

“Oh!” The hoarse voice was directed at Lilia, who was beside D and had just made a swipe with her longsword. Fresh blood spattered across the snow.

“I won’t have you grabbing all the glory!”

Perhaps the hoarse voice’s cry was a reaction to her smile. At last she had an opportunity to display her skill—her smile said as much. And this woman, too, was a gorgeous warrior.

“Well? Ready to admit I’m every bit as good as you are?”

“Idiot.”

Lilia turned around indignantly. She was greeted by Crey’s sarcastic smirk.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Crey gave a wordless jerk of his chin toward D, who was stripping a coat from a man’s bloodied corpse.

“See? He struck his opponents in the head, so that the chameleon suits could be used. You, on the other hand, had to be the showboat and cut them open from the base of the neck down to the lungs. A coat we could’ve used, down the shitter. That’s the kind of dumb move I’d expect from a woman.”

“Now you’ve done it, you cheap little thug!”

A vortex of hatred radiated from every inch of Lilia. And Crey held a gleaming knife in his right hand.

However, the showdown between the incompatible compatriots was unavoidably interrupted by a grave masculine voice. “Stop. When the scouting party doesn’t return, it won’t be long before more mountain folk come. This is no time for squabbling among ourselves—look!”

Their eyes nearly popped out of their heads as they followed Dust’s gaze, colored first by amazement—and then anger.

Carrying an essentially undamaged chameleon suit and a rifle over one shoulder, D had started walking toward the ridge.

“That bastard’s just doing his own thing.” Crey’s tone was neutral, his anger having passed.

“Let’s go,” Dust called to Vera and Lourié, stepping forward with solemn strides.

“Oh, hell. Next time, then,” Crey spat, following after them.

“Damn it all,” Lilia said, and she was just about to press forward when Dust and Vera turned to face her.

“There’s another set of gear.”

“Oh—the refuge,” she said.

Lilia halted, and with seeming trepidation she began to turn her face to the left. The black dome of the refuge she’d set up at D and Vera’s request loomed on the snowfield. Folding it up was quick enough. With a glum expression, Lilia followed the group with her gaze, watching as they walked away without a backward glance, and then, with resignation, bending over the corpse of a fallen bandit.

–

“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.