John nodded grimly. “We’ll spend the night here. I don’t want to take any risks.”
When they set off the next morning, the rain had stopped. The sun broke through the clouds, and it wasn’t long before the forest was as muggy as a midsummer day. Damp haze rose up among the tree trunks, and the mosquitoes nearly ate them alive. Karl’s blood was apparently the sweetest, as he was worst affected.
Karl asked himself for the hundredth time what he was doing here. The doctor suffered from some kind of terrible disease, and they were making their way through the wilderness in search of the castle where a ghost was supposed to live, an undying mass murderer who’d been hanged a long time ago. This was all complete madness! And still he followed the doctor because . . . because he couldn’t help it.
Because I love him.
Karl would stay with Faust until his dying breath. He had sworn it to himself after Leonardo hadn’t been able to help them. The great Leonardo. Karl could have learned so much from him. The brushwork alone, the play with light. A few times Karl had been lucky enough to observe while the master painted. Was Leonardo still alive? He had written his will on the eve of their departure.
From the inn they followed the road west but soon left it, turning onto a narrow, overgrown path that Karl would never have found on his own. He admired John Reed, who seemed very much at home in this wilderness and who was superior to him in many other areas, too. His admiration was tainted with a quiet jealousy. He and Greta had always been best friends, and it hurt him to watch how she moved further and further away from him now. But he understood. Greta had changed a fair bit in the last few weeks. She had become even more withdrawn and serious than before. Wearing the pilgrim’s garb, she indeed looked like a future nun who would take her vows at Fontevrault Abbey.
Soon Karl’s freshly dried clothes were drenched again, this time from his own sweat. The ground was marshy, and in places the track was covered in ankle-deep water. The few villages they passed in the following hours were drab backwaters inhabited by dull-eyed peasants in torn clothes who stared at them like the undead.
When they set up camp in an overgrown clearing that night, everyone was so exhausted that they soon fell asleep. Karl, who had volunteered for the first watch, struggled to keep his eyes open. After a while he heard the howling of wolves, and this time it sounded much closer than the night before. He thought he also heard a low growling not far from their clearing. It was probably Little Satan; Karl hadn’t seen the dog in a while. He picked up a burning log and cautiously walked toward the black wall of trees. A pair of eyes glowed between the branches. Karl hurled the log at them and the eyes vanished. But instead he saw something else.
A man was standing among the trees.
Karl could clearly see the outline of a man half-hidden behind a tree only a few steps away from him. Before Karl could say anything, the man saw him and disappeared with lightning speed behind the tree trunks. Karl heard a rustling, but then it was as if the man had never been there. His heart racing, Karl rushed back to the camp and awakened John.
“I saw someone,” he whispered urgently. “Right by the edge of the clearing!”
John was instantly awake. He picked up his long knife and stood quietly.
“You stay here,” he whispered. “Wake the others. I’m going to take a look.”
A moment later John had vanished into the woods. Again the wolves howled, and there was a rustling and cracking in the undergrowth. Karl listened. Was it John or someone else?
Or something else, thought Karl. Then he called himself a fool. All this talk of an undead knight was messing with his mind.
He sneaked over to Greta and shook her awake, and then he woke Johann. Together they sat and listened but couldn’t hear anything apart from the howling of the wolves. They sat this way for a long while, listening in silence, but John didn’t return. The minutes seemed to stretch forever.
“What could have happened to him?” asked Greta, her face pale, her hair tousled. “Why isn’t he coming back?”
“I don’t know, damn it!” said Karl. “I only know that someone was in the forest—some man.”
“Tonio?” asked Johann. “Do you think it might have been Tonio?”
“It was too dark. And besides . . .” Karl fell silent when they heard footsteps. Branches snapped. Karl was about to call out to John with relief, but then he stopped. What they heard were clearly the sounds of several people. Karl realized that the dog still hadn’t returned.
“John?” shouted Greta. “Christ, John, where are you?”
There was no reply.
Karl’s hand moved to the hand cannon he was keeping under his blanket. He cursed under his breath when he remembered that he hadn’t loaded it. What good was an unloaded pistol?
Well, at least potential attackers wouldn’t know that it isn’t loaded, he thought.
He rose abruptly, clutching his weapon. “I’m going to take a look myself. I’ll be back soon.”
“I don’t think we should all split up, God damn it,” said Johann. “We must stick together and . . .”
But Karl had already disappeared among the trees. As soon as he left the clearing with the campfire, everything around him became pitch black. Again he heard furtive steps sneaking through the woods and another growl, and this time Karl thought he could make out Little Satan.
“Satan,” he hissed. “Come here!”
Karl thought saying this unholy name out loud in the dark of night sounded like a bad omen. He clutched the handle of the hand cannon tightly, holding it out in front of him like a protective amulet. He listened for a while longer. When nothing happened, he walked back to the clearing.
And froze.
“What
