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doors.
    “Just a minute!” the doctor cried after him in an agitated manner.

    The beginning of the route up the mountain was to the west of the village. The entrance to the trail up the slope was blocked by thick concrete slabs and barbed wire. Next to the door waited a middle-aged man.
    “Mr. D, isn’t it?” he called out, his words seeming to float into the air. That was on account of D’s good looks.
    “That’s right.”
    “The mayor told me to wait here. I’ll open ’er up for you straightaway.”
    To the right side of the door was a little steel hatch for making inspections. Pushing his key into the heavy lock and opening it, the man stepped to one side.
    “How long have you been here?” D inquired.
    As if in a dream, the man replied, “Since daybreak.”
    “Anyone come by besides me?”
    “Not a one. Why would they?”
    “Any other routes up the mountain?”
    Shrugging his broad shoulders, the man said, “If you were of a mind to, you could climb it from anywhere. Only you’d be stranded before you’d climbed fifty yards, I kid you not. Every place but here the rock goes straight up more than a hundred yards. What’s more, you’ve got an overhang at the top. Oh, what have we here?” On seeing the lady doctor and the giant of a man racing closer, the middle-aged man furrowed his brow. “Those two climbing too? Well, good luck with that!”
    When he turned to face D again, the young man in black was already through the doorway. As he listened to the snow crunching under the hasty footfalls of the approaching pair, the man looked up at the sky above.
    The light had dimmed. Clouds had formed. And on seeing the white flecks dancing on the slope before him, the man shuddered.
    “So, the second that young fella went through, maybe the only clear day we’ll see all winter goes to pot? And now we’ve got snow, to boot. This is gonna be a snowstorm. A hell of a time to be climbing Mount Shilla. Who in blazes is this guy?”

    “Looks like they’re following us,” the hoarse voice remarked when the Hunter came to a sign marking two thousand yards above sea level.
    It’d taken D less than an hour to climb that far. Mount Shilla reached 3,657 yards above sea level. It was a little less than twenty-five hundred yards from the village of Mungs to the top of the mountain.
    “Another fifteen hundred yards—compared to the Great Mountains of Madness in the southern Frontier, that’s child’s play . . . but they don’t have any Noble castles on ’em, I suppose. From here on out, there’s a route, but no path. The monsters out in the snow are probably limbering up their tentacles. If we reach the aircraft and there are wounded up there, we won’t be able to bring ’em down. We don’t even know if Duke Gilzen is still shut in his coffin or not.”
    Through this gloomy commentary, D silently gazed at the mountain peak. His whole body had already been plastered in white. While it wasn’t exactly a blizzard, in another five minutes the wind-whipped snow would probably earn that name.
    Setting down the pack that’d been over his shoulder, D opened it and pulled out a red paper bag. It was a heat pack intended for mountain climbing in winter. Sticking it inside his coat, D looked off to the right—and up at the snowy path that continued all the way to a rocky ridge. The path was lined on both sides with white rocks. Atop one of those to the right was a creature whose white hide was flecked with black spots, clearly poised to pounce. Had D caught its faint snarl? Or had he merely sensed its presence?
    A stark flash of light shot from D’s right hand, searing through the cold air. Piercing the snow panther’s hide, it struck a rock a few yards distant.
    “Oh, so it vanished, did it? Look for the black spots.”
    Still in the act of reaching for the hilt of his longsword, D became a statue. His eyes squinted to a thread-thin line. At the focus of his gaze—an area of white snow about ten yards