Another burst confirmed the fact: he was pinned.
"Pendergast!"
No answer.
More shots came, stinging his face with splinters of stone. He shifted one foot, probed.
Another burst, and he felt one of the rounds nick his shoe. He pulled his leg back. He was hyperventilating now, gasping for breath as he clung to the tiny purchase. He had never felt so terrified in his life.
More shots, the stone fragmenting.
They were shooting through the thin shelf above him. Even if he didn't move, they'd get him. He felt blood running down his cheek from where the stone chips had cut him.
Then he heard a single shot, this time from below; a scream from overhead; and then another man hurtled past, Uzi flying.
Pendergast. He must have reached the bottom and retrieved the dead man's weapon.
D'Agosta began to climb down in a panic, slipping, recovering, slipping again. There was another shot from below, then another-Pendergast covering him, keeping the opening above clear of men.
The rock began to level out a little and he half climbed, half slid the last twenty feet. Then he was on his feet at the top of a scree slope, soaked in perspiration, heart hammering, his legs like jelly. Pendergast was here, crouched behind a rock, firing up again at the opening.
"Get the device and let's go," he said.
D'Agosta rose, scrambled down to the thicket of bushes, and retrieved the weapon. One of its bulbs was slightly dinged, and the device looked a little smudged and scratched, but otherwise it seemed undamaged. He slung it over his shoulder and raced for the cover of the trees. Pendergast joined him a moment later.
"Down. To the Greve road."
They took off downhill, leaping and running through chestnut trees, the sound of shots behind and above growing fainter and fainter.
And then, suddenly, Pendergast stopped again.
In the ensuing silence, D'Agosta heard a sound rising from below. The measured baying of dogs.
A lot of dogs.
{ 82 }
Pendergast listened for a moment, then he turned to D'Agosta. "The count's boar-hunting dogs. With their handlers. Coming up from below."
"Oh, my God . "
"They're trained to fan out into an impenetrable line, trap their prey, and surround it. We've no choice. We've got to go up and over the top of the mountain. That's our only chance to escape."
They turned and began scrambling up through the steep woods, moving at an angle to the slope, away from the castle. It was a tough, nasty ascent: the chestnut forest was full of brush and brambles, the ground wet and the leaves slippery. D'Agosta could hear the baying of the dogs below, dozens and dozens it seemed, overlapping into a cacophony of noise. The sounds echoed clear across the valley, from one end to the other. They seemed to be getting closer.
They climbed through an especially steep section of forest and broke out onto a gentler slope, planted in vines, leaves yellow in the fall air. They ran uphill between the rows, stumbling and panting through the wet clods, sticky earth clinging to their shoes.
There was no question: the dogs were gaining.
At the far end of the vineyard, Pendergast paused a second to reconnoiter. They were in a couloir between two mountain ridges. Above, the ridges narrowed as they approached the summit, about half a mile away. The castle lay below them on its own projecting shelf of rock, grim and dark.
"Come on, Vincent," Pendergast said. "There's not a moment to lose."
The vineyard gave way to another steep slope, thickly covered with chestnut trees. They thrashed their way upward, briars tearing at their already tattered clothes. The broken wall of some ancient ruin came into view overhead, an old casa colonica sunken in vines. They climbed past the ruin and its outbuildings and entered an overgrown clearing. Again Pendergast paused to examine the hillside above them.
D'Agosta felt his heart was going to explode. The microwave device was a dead weight across his shoulder. Staring down the ridgeline, gasping for breath, he caught a brief glimpse of several of the dogs below, running, baying. Their line was tightening. He could now make out the distant whistling and shouting of the handlers.
Pendergast was staring intently upslope, where the couloir narrowed toward the summit. "I see a glint of steel."
"Men?"
Pendergast nodded. "Have you ever hunted boar?"
"No."
"That's precisely how we're being hunted. Like boar. Up there, where that draw narrows, will be the hunters. Perhaps a dozen, maybe more, arranged in blinds. Their field of fire will completely cover the upper part of the ridge." He nodded, almost as if in approval. "It's a standard hunt. The dogs flush out the boar and drive them up a narrowing valley toward a ridgeline, where they are forced to break cover and are taken down by the hunters."
"So what do we do?"
"We don't behave like boar. Instead of running away from the dogs, we head sideways."
He turned and ran along the slope, at right angles to the fall line, following the rise and fall of the topography. The baying of the dogs was closer, their sounds echoing back among the rises of land, making it appear as if the animals were approaching from all sides.
The steep flank of the mountain lay perhaps a quarter mile in front of them. If they could get over that, D'Agosta thought as they stumbled forward, they could outflank the dogs and head downhill again. But the forest grew ever steeper and denser, slowing them down. And then, quite suddenly, they reached the lip of a small but very steep ravine, a stream at its bottom plunging down over sharp boulders. On the other side, perhaps twenty feet away, was a cliff of wet, moss-covered rock.
It was impassable.
Pendergast turned back. The dogs seemed very close now. D'Agosta could even hear the crackling of twigs, the breaking of brush, the curses of the handlers.
"We can't cross this ravine," Pendergast said. "That leaves only one choice. We must go up, try to creep through the line of hunters."
Pendergast pulled out the handgun he'd taken from the fallen man, checked the magazine. "Three rounds left," he said. "Let's go."
They resumed their climb. It seemed incredible to D'Agosta that he could go any farther, but adrenaline-and the dreadful baying of the boar hounds-kept him moving.
After a few minutes, the forest thinned and it grew brighter. They crouched, then crept forward slowly. Above, the forest gave way completely to meadows and brushy draws. D'Agosta caught his breath in dismay. The draws were full of impenetrable brush; the meadows were open and bare, dotted with isolated copses of trees. The land rose another quarter of a mile, hemmed between the two ridges of rock, finally topping over a barren summit. It was like a shooting gallery.
Pendergast examined the summit for at least a minute, despite the rapidly approaching dogs. Then he shook his head.
"It's no good, Vincent. It's suicide to go farther. There will be too many men up there, and they've no doubt been hunting boar in this valley all their lives. We'll never break through."
"Are you sure? Sure the men are up there, I mean?"
Pendergast nodded, looking back up the ridge. "I can see at least half a dozen from here. It's impossible to say how many others are hidden behind the rock blinds." He paused, as if considering. Then he spoke rapidly, almost to himself. "The ring is already closed on either side and above. And we can't go down: we'll never penetrate the line of dogs."