Hunted

Chapter 9

It was unfortunate that we had no time to savor our surroundings on such a beautiful day. The mixed woods of Germany were the sort that deserved a good savoring—no, a savouring, with a British u in there for the sake of decadence, as colours are somehow more vibrant to me than mere colors. It was in the woods of Germany that big bad wolves ate grandmothers and girls who dressed in red. It was Germany that hid the gingerbread house of a witch who hungered for children to roast in her oven. And somewhere in the mountains that we were doing our best to avoid, Rübezahl still wandered with his storm harp, shaking the earth or fogging the skies as the notion took him.

We had successfully navigated northwest through farmlands and river crossings and had recently threaded the space between Bergen on the north and Celle on the south. As we headed into a lovely wooded stretch that gave way to dank moors here and there, the sun sank before us and filtered through the needled branches of evergreens.

Usually there are only two kinds of script one sees in forests: signs that warn off trespassers and hunters, and carved hearts in the trunks of trees with the initials of a couple who felt there was no more romantic thing they could do to celebrate their love than scar the local plant life. So when I saw a neat white envelope pinned to a tree, addressed to The Shakespearean Scholar in a neat calligraphic hand, I stopped to check it out and shifted to human.

“Hold up,” I called to Granuaile and Oberon. “I need to take a look at this. Stay alert.”

Granuaile shifted to human also. “What is it?” she whispered.

“A note.”

The envelope was sealed with red wax and the Old Norse word hefnd. Vengeance. The paper inside was a fine linen. There was no date or salutation or signature, just two lines from The Merchant of Venice, written with ink and quite possibly an old-fashioned quill. I read it aloud: “Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause; But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs.”

canines. Duh!>

“It’s Shakespeare, Oberon.”

There was no postscript. Nothing written on the back. Nothing else in the envelope.

“He expresses himself with economy.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Thinking aloud. Unwisely.” The clue was in the quote: Vampires ahead. The last time I saw him, back in Thessalonika, Leif Helgarson had told me that he would try to warn me with Shakespeare when Theophilus was getting close. Theophilus was the old vampire who’d set the Romans after the ancient Druids and had, until recently, thought we were all dead. Now that he knew we were alive he wanted to finish the job. But it wasn’t quite dark yet on our second day of running: That meant if Leif had left this note for me, he had to have left it before dawn, while we were still chugging through Poland. That spoke of an uncomfortable prescience regarding the route I was taking, even if someone in Tír na nÓg was doing the divining. The wind was behind us and I was sure he wouldn’t be able to tell, but I asked my hound anyway:

Oberon, do you smell the dead? Vampires?

My hound paused to sniff the air.

Smell this envelope. Any trace of the dead on it?

So Leif had written the note, but someone human had left it here, most likely at his instruction. Oberon confirmed this after snuffling around a bit at the base of the tree.

he said, pointing a paw south,

“Well, there are some kind of bad guys ahead,” I told Granuaile, “if this note is to be believed. It suggests vampires, but they still have a while to sleep.”

“Let’s go around.”

“Around where? We don’t know how far away they are or anything else. This note may be intended to make us change our course. If we go south, in the direction of the mysterious note delivery man, we’ll be in the Harz Mountains, and that won’t be fun. If we go north we risk getting pushed into the sea before we’re ready. What we do know are two things: There are two huntresses on our tail, who are gaining ground while we talk, and heading due west is the fastest route through this piece of country since it presents the fewest obstacles.”

“I’m sure the vampires know that too,” she said. “We should go around.”

“It’s just now dusk,” I pointed out. “They can’t all be up and waiting for us yet.”

“It’s not worth the risk,” she responded. “Let’s swing a single mile to the north and then turn west again. We’ll avoid whatever’s waiting ahead and lose no more than a few minutes.”

“All right. But let’s go as humans so our weapons will be ready. Oberon and I in camouflage, you in full invisibility. Oberon, if you smell anybody but us, you let us know.”

Granuaile disappeared from my sight and her disembodied voice said, “After you.”

I cast camouflage on my hound, and he shook as if he’d just gotten out of the bath.

Are you going to giggle? We can market an invisible plush doll of you and call it the Tickle Me Oberon.

I laughed and cast camouflage on myself. “Let’s go,” I said aloud, so that Granuaile would hear as well. I headed north and continued the silly discussion in hopes that it would help me relax.

How would poodles even know about it? They haven’t learned language like you have.

You mean put your toy in the aisle with all the other plushies?

Ha! Oh, my gods, Oberon, the imagery…

We had gone about three hundred yards when we found ourselves at a wooded lakeshore. The water looked inhospitable; we would fight both submerged plants and scum on the surface should we attempt to swim it. If we wanted to continue north, we’d have to go around. If we circled east we’d be heading back toward the huntresses; if we went west it would be toward whatever nameless threat waited for us.

“Bugger. Boxed in and we didn’t even know it,” I said. “You okay with turning west, Granuaile?”

Her voice answered from my right. “We don’t have too far to go. It doesn’t look like a long lake. We can swing back north on the other side of it. If vampires are waiting for us, I’d rather get past them if we can before they rise.”

“Good call.”

After clearing the lakeshore and turning north, we broke into an odd-shaped field that might have been natural at one time but had clearly been cultivated in the past. Now it lay fallow, with random weeds and grasses sprouting out of it. It was the sort of place one expected to find deer and the like, but no whitetails bounded away from us. No birds chirped either. Despite being in camouflage, I felt exposed. When moving quickly like this, I wasn’t exactly invisible; the camouflage couldn’t keep up with the constantly shifting background and I could be seen as a distinct blur, especially since there was still a bit of sunlight left.

Oberon, do you smell anything?

I don’t like this meadow. There’s something out—