I got into murderous brawls of a hundred on one and never lost once, but I never suspected it was due to the power I’d received from the great one. D, you should consider it your misfortune to have made an enemy of him. But I can’t give any credence to what Curio said. What did the antiproton computer in the valley do? Granted, you did escape my meteorite attack. I can’t help but respect you for that. Oh your eyelids are getting heavier, are they? Okay, have yourself a peaceful sleep. When you wake up, both you and the little girl will be in a better place.” Speeny laughed mockingly.
His confidence sprang from the thread he used, one end of which was connected to a spot on the moon about two hundred thousand miles away.
“Ah, yes,” Speeny said, breaking into a truly evil grin. “I just thought of an amusing game. I’m going to throw some knives at you and the girl. Try to dodge them if you can with your head and body in that state. I suppose the game can go on and on until you’re both dead.”
Before he’d finished speaking, Speeny started hurling long, thin knives with a snap of his wrist. D knocked away three aimed at Sue and took care of three more intended for him, but the fourth one sank into his chest.
Speeny was ecstatic. He’d slain a foe Sigma couldn’t destroy and even Curio had feared. He danced for joy on the unseen thread, and then dropped smoothly down toward D. He was halfway to the Hunter when his own heart shrank with an audible sound. Even in the purple sky, he could see the black raiment spreading out.
He couldn’t possibly do anything in this cold, could he?
The question that flashed through Speeny’s mind was the last thought he ever had.
Grabbing the thread and making a leap, D drove his blade through the man’s brain and all the way down to his legs. Speeny shuddered violently in midair, then immediately grew still. The blood that gushed from him gave off steam, but it quickly froze.
Dodging those icy fragments as they fell, D swung his sword once more. The thread connected to the surface of the moon that Speeny said the great one alone could cut was easily severed, and the three of them fell back to earth at a ferocious velocity. The Hunter’s frozen coat and hat, instantly heated by friction with the air, started to smoke.
“Here we go!” the hoarse voice said with excitement, the words muffled by the fingers of the left hand D held clamped over Sue’s mouth and nose.
“That Speeny was a bold fool to challenge D on his own,” the missionary Courbet said, spitting the words like a curse.
“But the explosion that rocked us was undoubtedly caused by one of Speeny’s meteorites,” a woman’s voice remarked.
As if in response, everyone looked around. The walls were crumbling, there was a great hole in the ceiling, and dislodged beams stabbed into the floor. This seemed like no place for a human being to be, let alone live, but of course the group that was assembled consisted of people who were something other than human.
“Could even D take that kind of impact? If Speeny took the battle into the stratosphere, I think his odds of victory would increase to 80 percent.”
That claim was countered by a luxuriant and scornful laugh in a voice like a golden bell. It was Callas the Diva.
“You think an unsightly creature like Speeny could triumph over that young warrior? Surely you jest. A man like that only comes along once in a thousand years, perhaps even once in ten thousand years. A miraculous jewel born between heaven and earth, he’s not the sort to lose his life in Speeny’s world, of all places.”
As she spoke, Callas stared at a certain spot in the room. There was no one there—only a bronze decanter. It was a rusty water pitcher that had sat there from the time they’d taken this as their temporary strategy center.
A female voice came from it, saying, “With friends like you, who needs enemies? The moon that glows by night watches over Speeny. By now, D has been reduced to a fireball burning up as it drops back to earth from the stratosphere.”
Callas’s eyes glittered. Silence shrouded the air.
They heard a hard knock coming from the crack in the ceiling. There was the sound of something knifing through the wind.
“Out!” Curio cried.
The shadowy figures dashed for the windows and holes in the walls. Immediately after, an object that fell from the heavens punched through the roof of the dilapidated boarding house, scattering parts of the building in all directions like an explosion. The fiends were forced to take to the air or hit the ground to escape the wave of rubble flying at them.
After the dust settled, they went back to the smoking, flaming remains of the dilapidated building. There they saw a depression pounded into the earth and the charred portion of a corpse lying in it.
Once, Count Braujou had fallen from the stratosphere because of Speeny’s machinations, but the immortal nature of the Nobility saved him. This was not the case with the object that now rolled to the feet of the group.
“The dropper ended up being the one who was dropped—it’s like a bad joke,” Courbet groaned. He sounded crushed. “Perhaps they took each other out?”
“The stratosphere was Speeny’s kingdom. And since its king was defeated—well, it’s not entirely inconceivable, but I think it highly unlikely,” said Curio.
It was so still, even the flames seemed to have lost their sounds. Before long, Courbet murmured, “But Speeny got his thread from the great one—how could D cut it?”
“If anyone could do it, it’s him,” Callas said, her voice melting into rapture.
No one grew angry or contradicted her. The assassins, who’d just lost a second compatriot, lingered silently in the sunlight.
II
That evening, there was no one to see D and his companions off as they left the village of Marthias. When it was time for them to go, the villagers seemed to remember that these people had been the cause of all their trouble, and that they had also caused their mayor’s death. While they weren’t exactly being stoned, as D and Matthew gripped their respective reins, they got cold rejection in lieu of farewells. In place of parting handshakes, they received emotionless stares through doorways or from behind curtained windows.
“What’s their problem?” Matthew grumbled from the driver’s seat as he worked the reins. “They’re the ones who asked us to stay and
help them in the first place. And now that they don’t need us anymore, they just toss us like trash?”
“That’s right,” D said from astride his cyborg horse, which was alongside the wagon. “You’re traveling with a dhampir and a Noble. It’s only going to get tougher from now on.”
Matthew spat and turned away in disgust. He’d never had much patience, a fact that had caused his mother to worry endlessly. It was something of a mystery that he’d never gotten sick of farm life and run away.
“Stop it, Matt. Mr. D’s right,” Sue said, coming out of the covered wagon and laying a hand on her brother’s shoulder as if to steady him. She’d heard the entire exchange from inside.
Pressing her cheek against her silent brother’s shoulder, she took a glance behind them and said, “Still—it is kind of sad.”
Was she referring to the fact that they had no well-wishers to see them off, or talking about the car beside them? She’d heard from D that its owner, Count Braujou, had been slain. Duchess Miranda was missing, and she might not be in perfect shape either.
“Sad, eh?” the left hand D wrapped around the reins said in an intrigued manner. “If ol’ Braujou could hear that, he’d probably weep bloody tears of joy. There ain’t a human in ten million who’d be broken up over the loss of a Noble.”
With the sound of creaking wheels, the wagon and car set off. In their wake they left only tire tracks.
When they were only about sixty feet from the edge of the village, a number of shouts and footsteps closed on them from behind. D turned, and a toss of his chin told Matthew and Sue to have a look. The two of them leaned out of the seat and looked back.
Nearly a dozen children stood in front of the de
fensive palisade waving their hands.
“Goodbye!”
“Mr. Hunter!”
“Take care!”
“I’m gonna be a Hunter, too!” “Goodbye!”
The children shouted as loudly as they could, something sparkling in their eyes. This wasn’t a brief parting with someone who was coming back. They knew they’d never see him again.
Sue turned to D and said, “That’s for you, D.”
The exquisite young man just stared straight ahead. Sue knew he’d never look back.
As the wagon and car disappeared into the darkness down the road, the children left one or two at a time until only the last and smallest figure remained. It was the boy D had encouraged. Even when the blue darkness was painted over by a still deeper shade, the boy kept his eyes glued to the end of the highway. Perhaps he had a hunch that handsome young man would be coming back.
After a while, the boy’s mother appeared and tried to bring him home, but the boy cried and resisted her. Grabbing him by one thin wrist, she tried to drag him away. A hard, sharp pain shot through her hand, and she let go of him. The boy stood in a combat stance with the slim branch he’d picked up from the ground at his feet. It was the same stance the young man in black had taught him.
Clucking her tongue, his mother told him he’d be getting no dinner that evening. The boy stuck his tongue out. His mother cursed his unruly behavior as she left, and then the boy looked back down the highway, still holding that same stance.
There was no one there.
Shouting as loudly as he could, the boy made a thrust with the stick. After repeating that action three times and catching his breath, the boy focused his gaze again on the highway now sealed away in darkness.
Riding without respite, the group reached the boundaries of the village of Razin around daybreak.
Matthew had been twitching his nose for a while, and just as the defensive palisade came into view he could take it no longer, coughing loudly and saying, “What the hell is that smell?”
On his instructions, Sue had taken cover inside the wagon.
“Razin oil,” D said.
“What the blue blazes is that?” Matthew asked, glaring at D while the Hunter swayed in the saddle.
“A high-grade oil used in all the weapons manufactured in their village. You’ll get used to it soon enough.”
“Give me a break! My stomach’s turning somersaults!”
“Stay here,” D said.
“Huh?”
“If anything happens, give a shout. I’ll hear you.”
“Wh—where do you think you’re going?” the boy stammered.
“I smell blood mixed in with the oil.”
“What?”
Giving a kick to his mount’s flanks, D galloped off as Matthew watched in a daze.
Their map showed it was still five or six hundred yards to the village. And it was a windy day. Despite it all, D could detect the smell of blood.
“Sue, this is starting to scare me. Dhampirs really are monsters, just like the Nobility.”
At the clearing before the gates, D halted his steed. In the light of dawn, it looked like the village was sleeping. However, there was no sign of anyone in the lookout tower: a bad omen.
“That sure is one powerful scent of blood. We’re not talking one or two dozen people here,” the hoarse voice remarked, but it sounded amused.
D advanced on his horse.
Just then, the gates slowly opened inward. A horrendous stench of blood tainted the very molecules of the air.
A human figure appeared, about six and a half feet tall and covered in armor. His helmet’s steel mask shielded his face, his arms and legs hid beneath plates of riveted steel, and with every step the sound of metal grating on metal resounded from his joints. The right arm was equipped with a machine gun, while there was a sixty-millimeter grenade launcher attached to the left. The armor showed faint marks from welding. Anyone would recognize it at a glance as a combat suit. The best weapon makers in Razin had developed weight-absorption technology that made it possible for a human being to control a nearly one-ton mass of iron from the inside.
After halting at the gate, he spotted D. He paused for about two seconds, and then there was the clank of metal as he entered the clearing. The cold sunlight starkly illuminated the vermilion springs that shot from the chest portion of his armor. He was a little over twenty feet from D.
The man in the combat suit raised his right arm, training the barrel of the machine gun on D’s face. A black gale flew to one side, while the head of the cyborg horse was reduced to a bloody mist. The bullets ripped through the air and vanished into space.
The top half of the combat suit turned to the right, and the black gale raced directly at D. It was followed closely by a burst of flames. D twisted his body out of the way, as if he knew the path the fiery blast would take. His movements were far quicker and more agile than those of the combat suit’s motorized upper body. As the combat suit turned to face D, a diagonal slash of his sword cut through the shoulder and chest of its fifth of an inch of iron plate as if it were tissue paper.
The suit halted its movements for a second, and then its right hand made a jerky movement as it reached for its mask. Lifting it revealed the face of the person within. It was a young man with a drawn-out countenance. Neither his vacant eyes nor his slobber-covered lips showed a hint of pain. Yet D’s blade was apparently stuck in his body.
“He’s crazy, isn’t he?” D’s left hand said.
Just then the combat suit moved its left arm. The barrel of the grenade launcher turned to D, right in front of him. The madman grinned slightly.
A crimson beam of light pierced the suit through the chest from behind.
D jumped.
The burning-hot laser beam had gone through the ammo stored in the suit. A fireball much larger than the suit of armor ballooned out, along with a cloud of choking, oily smoke. Behind him, the Hunter heard the sound of more explosions and falling pieces.
When stillness returned and D picked himself off the ground, white smoke rose from the back of his coat in several spots. It had been kissed by flames and pieces of burning iron. D twisted his upper body, his coat whirled through the air, and the smoke vanished.
D’s eyes reflected a figure standing at the top of the palisade. He had short hair, a tanned face, and a black eye patch covering one eye. The brown fatigues he wore were the kind used by anti-Nobility guerrillas, and they were now a rare sight.
“You okay?” the man called down to him. “I don’t mean to tell you your business. But you should take off instead of getting any closer to this place. Razin’s a dead village now.”
D turned toward the gate without answering the man. As soon as he was through it, he saw a person lying in the road, and then another, and still more beyond that. Redness seeped from the bodies of the fallen.
“So, you came in anyway? Suit yourself,” the one-eyed man said from the lookout tower behind the palisade as he peered down at D.
“What happened?”
At the same time D posed this question, the man leaped down, landing right beside the Hunter. He touched down without a sound, as if he had wings. This was no ordinary farmer.
“I don’t really know. I’ve been in the Capital for a while, and just got back three hours ago. The fog was still heavy, so I couldn’t tell what was happening in town."
He’d found it very strange that there was no one in the lookout tower, and ignoring the immovable gates, he’d climbed over the palisade. He’d gotten the impression the fog was tinged with red. There’d been that much blood.
“I knew straight away there’d been a whole lot of killing. The stink was so fresh, it had to have been within the last hour.” And with that, the man turned to D and introduced himself, saying, “I’m Greed—I work for the village as a warrior.”
III
D went back to Matthew and Sue and told them they’d be leaving right away.
“Hold on! We�
�ve been riding all night, and we’re beat,” Matthew protested. “Maybe I’d be all right, but Sue can’t take this. Let us get some rest.”
“It’s dangerous here. The village has been annihilated.” Matthew’s eyes went wide. “That’s preposterous!” he said. “I’ve heard about this place. If it’s not the best-armed village on the Frontier, then it’s a close second. Bandits won’t even attack the place. No way could it get—”
“I saw it for myself.”
Matthew fell silent.
“Let’s go,” D said, wheeling his steed around.
“We can’t. Sue needs to rest!” Matthew yelled out shrilly after the Hunter.
Standing defiantly in the driver’s seat, the boy almost seemed possessed as he twitched from head to toe. Words flew wildly from his bloodless lips.
“She’s always been weak, since the day she was born. It’s a miracle she’s made it this far. I’ve got a responsibility to look out for Sue. I say we take a break here.”
Quietly watching the ranting boy, D said, “If we leave now, we can reach an outpost by night.” “Outposts” were lodging facilities constructed by Frontier administrators to protect travelers from monsters and bandit attacks when the distance between villages was great enough to necessitate camping out overnight. They were stocked with food, water, and weapons, and in many cases they also had a caretaker.
“Sue can’t make it!” Matthew said, stamping his feet angrily in the driver’s seat.
“There’s something funny about this clown,” D’s left hand groused in a low tone.
“Stop it, Matt,” said the frail figure who appeared from the covered wagon’s interior. Though her dainty face certainly had a haggard look to it, it wasn’t the kind of patient-at-death's'door look that would’ve warranted Matthew’s behavior.
“Mr. D is right. I’ll be fine. Let’s keep going.”
“But, Sue!” Matthew began to protest again. Sue leaned against her brother’s back.
“Please, Matt.”
“Okay,” Matthew said, patting the back of his sister’s hand and nodding.
Vampire Hunter D 16: Tyrant's Stars Page 19