"Fang tells me that his father, a famous and illustrious detective named Lo Quan Zhan, somehow knew that something was about to happen and sent him here to help"
To Fang
"Do you know how your father knew that this was going to happen? Had somebody told him or does he have the ability to forsee the future? Do you know anything more about what is happening?"
To Digger
"I practice the art of Yoga. I am but a novice as yet but I hope that, in time, I might earn the title of Guru. And I assure you that it is NOT a confidence trick. My powers are limited but they ARE real"
"Hey, sure, pal. Just cause they're marks don't mean Aunt Maria ain't got the visions."
Johnson rubs the bridge of his nose. "I- You know what, nevermind. Anyway, tracks suggest a woman was dragged this way. Looks like a kidnapping. We should call the police, but I'll go check it out, just in case..." In case it's like that child in Bijapur "...in case we can help."
Closing the jacket against the cold air, he starts following the tracks, rifle at the ready.
"Not that he told me, although there is much that he has told me from time to time that I do not understand."
Digger's eyes widen when the rifle is brought out. "Say, limey, what kinda quack carries a piece like that?"
Naajy takes a moment to listen to the vibrations that resonate through the broken arrow and the bullet.
Around the arrow he senses...a strangeness. No a Weirdness. In the ancient sense of the word. He has a flash of a man, clad in winter clothing. A great fur cloak. Perhaps the fur of a polar bear? Something white and powerful. Strange energies surround the man, like nothing he has ever seen.
The bullet is more straight forward and familiar. A flash of a man, wearing a hat and a long wool coat. He carries a strange gun, like a short rifle with a steel circle hanging from it. Naajy doesn't know what this means. The man has the look of a common criminal. Dark eyes close together.
As Dr. Johnson makes to follow the tracks further into the wood, there is a loud thump from the overturned auto. Something inside is moving. As you turn toward the vehicle, you see that there is a man pressed against the now vertical windscreen, pressing against it as though trapped.
Turning at the noise, Fang walks over to the car to see what is going on.
The risk of having an open mind is that your brain may fall off.
"The kind of quack who was in the Boer wars, boy. Ever heard of the Mafeking siege? I was there. And in India before that."
The thump spookes William, who turns around and trains the rifle on the car. "Bloody hell, there's a survivor. Take 'im out, would you?"
"The arrow and the bullet come from very different sources. The person who shot the bullet seems basically like a thug, using a gun the likes of which I've never seen. I'd recognize him if I saw him.
But the arrow was shot by something very strange. A man wearing a fur cloak shot it. A cloak of white fur. But the man was strange. Something was very, very off about him. I've never seen the like."
Fang approaches the overturned car. He sees a man, perhaps the driver of the car, pressing against the cracked windscreen of the car. The man's eyes look confused, gazing far away. He notices the approaching Fang and begins to bang on the glass.
"Well, I've heard of India, so let's just--s&~&, he's right! Fella's alive in there!"
Fang will casually shove his fist through the window and bodily pull the man out.
Fang smashes through the already cracked glass, grabbing the injured man and pulling him free. Fang is surprised to find that man smells as though he has soiled himself. The driver's eyes continue to fail to focus. As Fang takes a closer look at him, the man opens his mouth wide and clamps down on Fang's arm. The teeth and lips are colder than Fang would expect.
"Mother Mary! What the hell!?"
Digger, shocked, tries to figure out what thisbmaniac is doing.
As the man attacks Fang, Johnson acts on instinct. The rifle is already in his hands, and for a moment he's back in the sieged city, holding off the Dutch troopers. Firing the shot is not even a thought.
Unfortunately, the rifle jams. Letting out a stream of obscenities, the doctor instead draws a revolver from his leather bag.
"What the heck is happening?"
"He has obviously gone into hysterics. Somebody knock him out"
If you'd allow it, he'd try and push Haamid into grappling the man
Sigh :-(
Haamid, just grab the man. Don't hurt him, just grab him. Darn it cat, please fo what I say. What has gotten into you anyway?"
Haamid lowers his neck and growls at the man, but is unwilling to approach him.
As the man tries to bite him, he discovers that Fang's arm is tougher than he imagined.
Without thinking about it, Fang mechanically smashes his fist from his free arm into the man's face.
Jazz cuts deeply into the man's torso, causing him to release his grip on Fang's arm. Were Fang not holding him, he would fall limp to the ground. Strangely, the wound does not bleed, even though you can see the gap in the man's jacket, shirt, and flesh.
The driver moves no more.
"HOLY S%*~ THAT IS A BIG SWORD," Digger utters. "And that weren't no human man, not for a while."
"It certainly looked human even if it didn't act like one. I've heard stories of Vetala, spirits inhabiting corpses. Maybe that is what we just faced?"
Fang looks down at his wound, sighs, and pulls one of his shirts out of his satchel, then tears it and begins wrapping the wound like someone who has experience with doing such things.
"It's so hard to get shirts in my size, too. Oh well, I wonder if they have any shirts here that would fit me?"
William blinks repeatedly, frozen. The attack was so sudden that he had no time to think and evaluate the situation, and attacked blindly. He actually looks relieved that his shot misfired.
"Christ, a bloody longsword? What are you, Lancelot? Anyway," he says, moving to examine the body. "I'm sure we all love ourselves a gory tale of spirits and monsters, but this man was likely crazed from the attack. Although I've never heard of people going rabid after a day, the reported cases were kids who'd grown up in the wilderness... You ever read Kipling? Like Mowgli. And can't be rabies, because it takes months to show..."
He kneels next to the body, checking it for signs of whatever pathology could have caused his condition and muttering to himself.
"I wouldn't dream of lecturing a learned doctor but you might notice that he is NOT bleeding. I didn't think rabies stopped one from bleeding.
And yes, I have read a little bit of Kipling"
It doesn't take much of a sense motive to realize that he is being quite sarcastic about the "learned doctor" and that he absolutely loathes with a fiery passion the racist bastard Kipling.
"Maybe he was a vampire or somethin such as!"
"Well, if you'll excuse me, I'll look for the rational explanation before we assume that the faerie queens caused this cold, Dracula's come to NYC to wreak havoc, or that thunder and lightning come from the rage of the gods."
But it is weird that he didn't bleed from such a large cut. By all accounts, he should have been dead...
"Well, if you'll excuse me, I'll look for the rational explanation before we assume that the faerie queens caused this cold, Dracula's come to NYC to wreak havoc, or that thunder and lightning come from the rage of the gods."
Naajy tries to resist the temptation to stir Dr Johnson up. He really does. However, he just cannot resist
"Don't be silly, everybody knows that thunder and lighting aren't the rage of the Gods. That is just crazy talk. Clearly, megham are associated with the emotional states of the mind, physical states of the world and the circumstances related to life. Dark ominous clouds portray trouble, chaos, and the onset of difficult times. It is only Blue clouds that suggest the divine power at work"
Fang watches the conversation while he binds his wound but says nothing.
|
Jazz responds to people talking about his sword It was on my back as well as the rifle I have here. Anyway the Spanish-American War, sometimes you got up that close, me anyhow as I preferred it, especially on Stealth missions. And anyway, it is not mathematically,
scientifically possible for that man to not be bleeding, even in 0 degree temperatures. Not to mention, being in war, that has never happened. World War I, I wasn't in, but I heard about biological warfare going on, either that or some kind of Cryptzoology is going on like Digger suggests
Johnson sighs at Singh's words. "Fine, have it your way, but if you cut yourself, I'm going to use leeches."
"And how so very nice of you to provide us with your scientifical assessment, Doctor Kraz. And your experience in war, unparalleled when compared to either one of us peaceful souls. Yes, it looks like the man died in the crash, and yet he was clawing his way out of the car. This means that we are facing a likely unobserved, most surely undocumented natural phenomenon, a mystery."
Fiddling with two sharp, silvery knives, he cuts off a slice from the back of the man's deck, placing it in a Petri dish.
"I'll examine it thoroughly when I get back to town. As it is now, I'd say some sort of parasite hijacking the nervous system. Could be a fascinating subject of study." And very well worth a Nobel Prize, if I can replicate it.
After cleaning his hands with an alcohol-soaked rag, William closes his bag. "Are we following the tracks? Do you want me to patch- ah."
He points at Fang, himself, the wound and the bag, hoping that the Chinaman will understand what he's trying to say.
Naajy turns to Fang
[Spoiler=Chinese]
"He is offering to bandage your wounds and give you first aid. He is a doctor practicing Western Medicine. I don't know if he is any good or not but, for what it is worth, personally I'd let him patch me up. My regiment has a couple of doctors practicing Western Medicine and they have been very effective on wounds."[/b]
Fang nods at Naajy and then shows his arm to William.
"Alright then, it's not deep, nothing torn... I'll clean and bandage it, should be right as rain in a couple days, as long as he doesn't open it."
William's touch is soft as he quickly swabs gauze in carbolic acid, brushing it against the wound, then spraying alcohol over the torn shirt and tying a bandage.
"There."
Fang flexes his massive arm to test it, and then nods appreciatively to Dr. Johnson.
"The doctor knows his trade. This does not hurt much."
As William is tending Fang's wounds, he sees that his skin is incredibly tough, and that his arm has an excessive amount of scars on it for someone who could be no older than 18.
To Dr Johnson
"He thanks you for the first aid. He says that you;re obviously a very good doctor"
"We should probably follow the tracks that I found. They seem to lead into the woods, and likely to the person who killed that man."
Fang points at the tracks and moves to the head of them.
As you head further into the wood, you have no difficulty following the tracks. Here the snow falls heavily, and the tracks of the men are easy to see. Perhaps in a few hours, the tracks might be obscured, but, for now, the going is easy.
About along the path you find a spot where the group you are following met either two men on horseback or simply had two horses tied up. From there, it is even easier to follow them. A mile further along, the trail passes through a small clearing among the taller trees before continuing uphill and out of sight. A large steamer trunk likes half-buried in the snow, apparently dropped or discarded by those who hastily passed this way.