Page 53 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)
Book Two of The Dragon’s Paladins
S he ran out of rice ten days after leaving Prato, Italy.
Then she ran out of tea, her favorite jinjunmei , the beautiful golden eyebrows that always reminded her of the mountains of home.
Its bright-red color and lingering sweetness allowed her to fool her gnawing stomach.
Or so she told herself. But even though she could brew a handful of the fermented threads a dozen times in her portable kit, she could not produce more of the expensive tea once her airtight foil pouch was empty.
A journey pre-flare that would have taken four or five days of steady walking had taken twice as long.
Given her pace, she was still weeks away from Trieste.
She should have pilfered food from the empty farms she’d passed.
The broad valleys and cultivated plains of the Emilia-Romagna countryside weren’t home.
But they were a welcome sight, nonetheless.
Liú Xiù felt tears spring to her eyes, but she ignored them.
She’d barely had time to choose a route and pack her rucksack—a combination of spy go-bag and basic survival pack—before setting out from the Italian city known as Little Shanghai.
There had been no time to study the terrain or plan for contingencies.
If she hadn’t grown up in Nanping northwest of Fujian province, she would have never survived this hasty trek through the rugged landscape dominated by dense forests and steep mountains.
Since leaving Prato, she’d encountered very few people in the Mugello Valley, the northernmost region of Tuscany.
She’d avoided main roads and cities and hiked mostly at night, more than once detouring long kilometers to find shelter or evade other travelers—or dangerous wildlife.
In the woods north of Monte Morello—barely a day outside of Prato—she’d nearly stumbled into the midst of a boar hunt led by a pack of wolves.
That had focused her attention on more than fleeing disintegrating human society and what that meant.
Nature was far from benign to the unwary traveler.
As she’d made her way through the rolling Tuscan landscape, Xiù had seen little beyond olive groves, iconic cypress-lined ridges, and abandoned farmsteads.
She had no idea where the farmers had gone.
It would have been better for them to remain in their homes, far from the madness she knew must grip the urban areas by now.
Closer to the Apennines rising to the north, her route had taken her through wooded foothills where she gave the isolated villages wide berth, not sure what she would find there.
And then she’d entered the densely forested Apennines, where the chestnut and beech trees sheltered haunting remnants of World War II fortifications.
The Nazis and their Italian fascist partisans had dug in along the scarped ridgelines late in the war, drilling machine-gun nests and digging trenches along the Gothic Line, the last barrier to Germany.
Japanese Americans, known as the Nisei, had broken that line—and broken the Germans.
Within days, the Nazis in Italy had surrendered to the Allies.
The ghosts of the dead, the heroes and the villains, watched among the deeply shadowed, remote forest. Xiù had climbed in silence, gooseflesh crawling over her skin.
She touched the St. Michael medal she wore, saying a soft, devoutly sincere prayer.
Peace descended upon her, and the spirits shrank back into forgotten history.
As she’d approached the Passo della Futa—nearly a thousand meters above the valley below—she’d discovered two couples camping in a bivouac along the ancient Roman Flaminia Militare, the road linking Bologna to Arrezo.
From their half-naked bodies and empty wine and liquor bottles strewn around the small camp, it was unclear whether they knew that civilization had ended.
Xiù hoped that they didn’t. But she suspected they’d opted to have a drunken orgy in a desperate attempt to put off facing reality.
It had been her experience that it was better to confront whatever scared you.
Had been being the operative phrase.
In this new world, she was alone with little to motivate her save the last cryptic message from her handler, her spiritual handler.
Not the cold man who gave her orders for the MSS, the Chinese intelligence apparatus that had sent her to Italy to further the state’s goals through business deals.
No, the gentle Bishop of Shanghai, her cousin and confessor, whom the government had hidden away on house arrest. Even so, she’d trained for intelligence gathering and social engineering, not hiking for weeks through wilderness and hostile territory.
Exhausted and uncertain after cresting Futa Pass, Xiù had stopped at the Monte Castel Guerrino, her heart beating heavily and her breath nearly gone.
Around her, the forested slopes of the Apennines opened into a natural balcony, offering her the first sweeping views of the Romagnolo hills and the cultivated plains beyond.
For a moment she couldn’t bring herself to step forward on the path to the deceptively peaceful plain below. She’d shifted her rucksack, which, despite the belts at chest and waist, had grown almost too heavy in her weakened state and threatened to topple her.
Then she’d seen the horses and their riders heading east, toward the unknown town. Something about the horses sparked hope in her soul. It had been enough to propel her down the mountains and across the plains, dotted with vineyards, canals, and quiet villages.
Now she stood in a vineyard, gorging herself on sour-sweet black grapes warmed by the sun, their juice staining her mouth and fingers as she spat the seeds into the dust. Every few moments she stilled, jaw tight, eyes flicking toward the vineyard’s edge, listening for hoofbeats, footsteps—anything that hunted as she did.
The only movement was the slow drip of juice from her fingers.
Silence pressed in, thick as the heat. Then came hoofbeats on packed earth, faint but deliberate, just beyond the far rows of neatly tended vines.
Their rhythm was slow and even, a quiet reassurance—they weren’t in a hurry.
They didn’t expect her to run. The St. Michael medal, lying under her shirt, warmed uncomfortably against her skin in warning.
She might not have instruction in combat operations or fieldwork outside of offices, but she knew enough to hide.
Hauling her rucksack onto her back, she ran toward the stone storage house, without a door and partially overgrown, at the end of the row of grapevines.
Inside was cool, musty, and thick with cobwebs, but the shadowed interior gave her a place from which to observe the newcomers.
And defend herself if need be.
She set the rucksack down next to a wall and knelt beside it before opening the flap that covered the weapon compartment.
She removed the Italian Beretta pistol she’d purchased on the black market and a clip, which she slammed home in the grip before racking the slide and seating a bullet in the chamber.
She might not have been taught to carry a firearm, but she’d prepared herself to do so.
The 92x handgun held two fifteen-round clips, and she was proficient in its use, standing, lying, or on the move.
More than proficient, if truth be told. She was an uncannily accurate shot, a talent given her, the woman whose first name meant, among other things, outstanding in Mandarin.
And from the looks of the men who’d ridden into the very part of the vineyard where she’d only moments before been eating pilfered fruit, she’d need to be if they chose to surround her hiding place.
There were five of them, not a large party, but each and every one of them looked as if they’d sprung from the Emilia-Romagna soil itself, suntanned and muscled.
She’d had no idea that Italian men grew so large.
In fact, the obvious leader, the one riding a proud chestnut horse whose coat gleamed in the sun, had thickly corded forearms and heavy thighs.
All wore rough work clothes, sturdy leather boots, and intent gazes.
And they were all armed with handguns strapped on their thighs like American cowboys.
Two carried shotguns across their laps, a Beretta 686 Silver Pigeon used for hunting and a Benelli M4, a tactical shotgun used by the military and law enforcement.
But it was the last weapon, a Beretta ARX160, and the upright posture of the man holding it, that gave Xiù pause. It was a modern military rifle, and, if her intuition was right, in the possession of a man skilled in using it.
The leader cantered by the place that she’d stood, his gaze angling toward the ground before coming up to arrow toward the stone storage house.
He reined to a halt, his men moving on either side of him in a line.
The marksman jumped down and went to a knee to study the packed earth where Xiù knew he’d see little more than vague impressions and grape seeds in the dust.
Yet they all waited in silence, looking toward the stone storage house. The marksman nodded up at the leader before mounting his horse and joining the group.
“Signora, we all know you’re in the storage house,” said the leader, his voice a pleasing timbre. “Why don’t you save us some time and spare us from having to come in there.” It wasn’t a question.
Xiù’s breath caught, but she eased it out before glancing around the rough wooden door jamb. Taking careful aim, she fired a shot a hair’s breadth wide of the marksman, now sitting his horse at the end of the line.
The shot echoed around the unspoiled vineyard, suddenly pregnant with violence.
The marksman didn’t flinch, but Xiù saw the wind of the bullet’s passing as it ruffled his hair. Keeping his gaze fixed on the doorway as if he could see her, he dipped his chin in acknowledgement of her skill.