I soon came across a stop, the bus was scheduled to leave in half an hour according to the timetable. I was in no hurry. It arrived on time, just as comfortable as I expected. I was back in Simer in less than an hour.

Not far from the Church of St. Someone and That one, I found a pub that caught my eye, ordered beer and goulash, and almost in no time, I had everything on the table in front of me. Fifteen kilometers on foot, I was hungry like a werewolf, I mean a wolf, and I would even eat nails. The local goulash was really good. After the meal, I ordered another beer, pulled out a camera, and began looking at it to learn at least a little.

In addition to me, a family was sitting at the near table, parents with two children, who were probably on a sports holiday trip, a little further on, a guy in worn out clothes with camouflage colors. He had a backpack in the corner, I guessed he was one of those guys who just liked to hang out in the mountains, trying to be overlooked by the police, the park rangers, by anyone. He quite fit in here.

Slowly, I began to understand how to control the camera when I heard a car braking in front of the pub. A little too hard for the local peaceful region. I checked to see if S&W was visible, I didn't need to draw attention to myself. According to the sound, it was at least a six-cylinder engine. This meant that it was not the police and most likely no one from the locals. Two men came in, if not for the differences in their faces, one looked as if a cow had stepped into it, and the other gnawed at by a crocodile, they could be considered twins. They were both wearing fur coats, gleaming low shoes, and looked like large marching closets. They gave a quick glance to those present, and a more exploratory one to the hiker, although they tried to hide it. Then they exchanged a few words with the innkeeper and dropped out again.

When I heard them leave, I approached a window. A large range rover that would get the driver through any terrain, to the end of the world even - if it did not wear twenty-one-inch narrow-profile tires. They drove much slower than they braked, I quickly realized why. They stopped right next to the church in the insufficient shade of a small spruce.

They were either interested in the hiker or me. We'll see.

The hiker came out of the inn first. Unfortunately, he didn't expect anyone to be interested in him. He looked around indifferently, tossed his backpack on his back and headed uphill at the hills.

The two waited and watched him from the car. It wasn't until their prey turned onto the solid road that the ranger set off after the rover.

From the window of the inn, I had a good overview thanks to the rising terrain.

It was easy for them on the road, also on gravel, but much worse on the dirt and finally the soft mud. The hiker stopped, turned, and when he saw the luxury car's desperate attempt to catch up with him, he accelerated to a pace halfway between walking very fast and trotting. I could tell that this guy could walk in the hills. I believed that he could keep up the pace for a long time.

The shiny car was no longer shiny and it started to struggle with the slope and terrain more and more. Then its stern slid off and got trapped in a mud. For a while it tossed itself from side to side, then finally the engine stopped for good.

Both marching cabinets stepped out. With their physiognomy and shoes, the men had no chance of catching up with the light-footed tramp.

Or at least that is what I thought for the first twenty seconds. They set a sharp running pace and kept it regardless of the steep slope and inappropriate shoes. At every third step, they stumbled or fell.

I wondered if the best of our unit would keep that pace. Not really. And I? Maybe before, now I wasn't sure.

I left the money on the table, walked out of the pub, and quickly, but at the same time, cautiously went up behind them. I did not follow in their footsteps, but a little to the side among the trees reaching up to the built-up area. It was an old, almost wild apple orchard.

I was short of breath, my back ached from the steep climb, and sweat ran down my eyes. Still, I wasn't sure if I was as fast as the two before me.

I wasn't entirely sure why I was doing what I was doing. The two followed me, that was clear. And they were wrong, that was also clear. I should be grateful for this interplay of coincidences. But I kept going anyway. Maybe I wanted to know more about them? That was the only possible reasonable reason.

 

* * *

 

After forty-five minutes, I smelled fire. The city was far below me and I was in the middle of the forest. It was not a primeval forest, but neither a well-kept grove. It looked like it hasn’t been touched by people that much in the last few decades.

I stopped to take breathe and wipe a drop of sweat from the tip of my nose. The forehead, too. I'm not in shape, fine, I know about it, I'll take it into account.

Then another odor was added to the smoke from the dried wood, and it was not the smell of a roast, but burnt meat. I thought I heard a groan, but I wasn't sure.

I crept cautiously against the wind, and as the smell of smoke faded, I changed direction slightly to the left, down, to be able to smell it well again. And to make it impossible for them.

I saw them in a small hollow between the trees. They squatted by the fire, the ends of their coats dragged in the damp grass, each holding a stick with one end in the fire. The hiker hung upside down strapped to a strong branch. He was stripped to the waist, a large stone tied to his bound hands, which swayed just above the ground, straining all his tendons. He had several fresh burns on his naked torso. The one with the face trampled by a cow, pulled a stick out of the fire, examined its end carefully, nodded contentedly, and then thrust it into the hanged man's side. He tossed around, but the stone kept him decently stabilized, and the expertly tied gag allowed him no more than a suffocated moan. As the stick cooled down in the new wound, the man rose and pulled the gag from the tortured man's mouth.

"I have no idea what you're asking me. For real. You mistook me for someone," the hiker grumbled.

They didn't ask him anything. At least not now.

"I guess we really got the wrong guy," Crocodile nodded.

Cow and Crocodile, I baptized them.

Cow put the gag back in the tramp's mouth, I wasn't sure if the poor man had paid for it with a tooth.

He spoke Italian. The pronunciation was pretty good, but I couldn't tell if he was a native speaker. I only knew the basics.

"Probably yes. The guy who crippled Macaiya wouldn't get caught so easily."

The cow returned the end of the stick to the fire. The hiker watched them pleadingly, obviously not understanding a word.

A rusty squirrel showed up on the spruce I was hiding behind. It strode across its branches without a care in the world, oblivious to my presence. When it came to moving secretly through the forest, jungle, simply the landscape, I had no equals.

"A coinflip?"

A what?

"You lost," Cow told Crocodile.

He cursed, spat, then pulled something from his belt, which turned out to be a folding shovel, and began digging. Grave, I understood after a while. Cow, meanwhile, pulled out the red-hot stick and stabbed the hanged man in the side again. He didn't ask him anything anymore, he was just killing time.

I stepped out.

"What a nice day, isn't it?" I said in broken Italian.

"It's not going to rain, is it? How about a bottle of grappa?”

That is about all I could manage with my limited active vocabulary.

"That's the son of a bitch we were supposed to find," Cow muttered.

Crocodile, still holding the shovel, just looked at me, without taking any action. Maybe he thought his partner was enough.

I had a sports windproof jacket unbuttoned so that I had an open path to the revolver. Cow closed his mouth. We were no more than five meters apart, just the right distance for a two-and-a-half-inch barrel.

A Glock 19 with a Brugger & Thomet silencer appeared in his hand. This is a prohibited accessory in most civilized countries. Cow obviously didn't mind.

I don't know why I pulled the trigger three times, but it saved me.

The first shot of .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum hit him in the stomach. It slowed him down, I saw his hand with the Glock lose its swing, yet it kept aiming in a position where it would hit me in the stomach with a shot. Another bullet weighing 23 grams hit him in the chest at a speed of about 600 meters per second. He shuddered a little, but he was already pointing straight at me. I knew his Glock could throw up a flood of bullets in an instant. I was not an elephant to resist them. And then I hit him in the throat with the third shot. That was it. He folded down on the ground like a stepladder.

Then it was my turn to fall to the ground, barely avoiding a shovel hissing over my head and cutting through the trunk of a young larch.

Damn.

The croc was after me with his slippery low shoes. A Glock in one hand and a dagger in the other. No, a bayonet.

A short dose, fortunately an inch above my head. Gold ankle boots. I replied with a single shot, I was no longer that focused, so it was a miss too. With my other hand, I accidentally touched a stone and without thinking I hurled it at him, making another series of rounds miss.

He was moving towards me, lying on the ground I rolled onto my side and with a bit of luck managed to trip up his legs. He was about to shoot even in the fall. I deflected his aim with a kick in the forearm, the other three shots went out. Does it have a standard magazine or an extended one? It seemed endless.

He landed on me, I saw him drop the weapon, I pressed my chin to my chest just in time to keep my throat from getting crushed, but his forearm found its way to my neck anyway, and he started choking me. Smith and Wesson positioned somewhere between us. I hope it was aimed at the stomach. His, not mine.

I pulled the trigger, the shot and the recoil dampened by our tight clinch. I didn't feel the pain, and neither did he, if the escalated pressure was any indication. I didn't know what was wrong, I started fighting again. I managed to turn and protect the carotid artery from the pressure of the edge of his palm, but my larynx suffered hard.

I swiped with my legs, surprisingly he didn't expect it, we rolled over, it helped me slide my right hand between us to lessen the pressure.

As if to end it quickly, he stopped bothering with the finesse of fighting on the ground and put all the effort into strangulation. If he couldn't put me to sleep, he could always suffocate me. I also exerted all my strength. He grunted - actually, I grunted. Before I began to choke, his grip weakened. I broke the lock around my throat and dug my fingers into his face. He reacted surprisingly slowly, I could feel the eye with my thumb, his defense was only symbolic, I pressed on and dug out his eyeball. He didn't seem to care about it anymore.

I staggered to my feet. At first, he almost got me, and then he gave up just like that? As soon as my eyesight and strength returned and I was able to move sensibly, I understood why. I shot him in the stomach. He should go out immediately, a bullet of that caliber and energy should have squeezed life out of him in a single moment. But he almost killed me. Could the bullets not have the power they were supposed to have? Strange, it didn't look like that during the shooting test.

I leaned against a tree and exhaled for a moment. Then I looked at Cow with a gaping hole in his throat. The first bullet got stuck in his stomach, the second one that I found by touch, was splat on the rib. Then a thought struck me, and I poked at him. It was as hard as an oak wood. I tried it with a knife, I didn't stab it deeper than half an inch. In fact, it could go deeper into a real oak wood.

I returned to Mr. Crocodile to see why he had died so easily. Relatively easily. I hit him in the abdomen directly in the white line, in the sinewy junction of the straight abdominal muscles. As a result, the bullet penetrated his body and made his intestines so choppy, that he reluctantly died. These were not ordinary people, but glyhenes, servants of powerful vampires altered to the extent, that there was virtually nothing human left in them. I've heard of them before, but I haven't met them yet.

"Huhua!"

The hung hiker tried to get my attention and succeeded. I realized he'd been trying to do so for a few minutes already.

I cut the stone first.

"You won't scream?" I asked with a smile before pulling his gag.

He shook his head eagerly.

"Good, I could use a hand."