D quickened his pace.
Just before the rear gate, a caterpillar with a red shell was engaged in deadly battle with a number of villagers. Looking like a dozen bumps fused in a row, its body was a good twenty to twenty-five feet long. The caterpillar’s weapons were the half-dozen semicircular bladed mandibles jutting from its round head. Two vermilion-stained villagers lay on the ground, and another five were also covered with blood. Proof that they weren’t completely ineffectual came from the yellow and red ichor that dripped where a number of spears had stabbed into the bellows-like membranes linking one segment of the caterpillar to the next.
The villagers cautiously surrounded the creature and took aim at its head, but suddenly its body twisted with incomprehensible speed and assailed the men to its rear, who had let their guard down. Taking one last swipe with his longsword, a middle-aged man felt a bladelike mandible drive right through him. The shell where his longsword struck gave a hard ring. The mandibles parted, and the mouth opened, devouring the man. The crunching sounds made the other villagers cringe.
Without warning, the caterpillar changed direction, looking down. D was by its feet. Still carrying the girl, he didn’t even reach for the hilt of his longsword with his right hand.
A command sprang into the brain of the caterpillar, filling it with cruelty and hunger and a lust for battle. It bit through the prey in its mouth and flung down half of it, swallowing the other half, and then it launched an attack on the vision of beauty below it without hesitation. A silvery streak of lightning struck its head—splitting its armor with a vicious crack. Its great lump of a head split in two by a single blow, the caterpillar crashed face first into the ground. With none of the quivering death throes that might be expected from a lower organism, it was reduced to a lifeless piece of meat.
The villagers, dumbfounded, stared at its corpse. The very same monster that had given them such a ferocious battle had been rendered a harmless insect with a single blow—literally with one stroke from a sword. So great had been the change in the situation, their minds couldn’t keep pace. Their brains didn’t have the means to comprehend it.
The sudden silence was broken by the girl as she said, “D . . . You’re . . . you’re just incredible . . .”
Letting go of the girl, D walked over to the caterpillar without a word. He kept only his thumb around the hilt of his sword, cupping the other fingers to catch the ichor that spilled from the cut he’d made in the creature. When the girl saw him bring it up to his lips, her eyes went wide. His handsome head arched back. She saw a thin stream of blood fly from his lips and up into the sky.
Dhampirs must be able to spit with great force, because the geyser of blood reached some thirty feet into the air, where it scattered in a red mist. Once D had finished disgorging it, he wiped the back of his right hand across his lips and then simply stood there. And all the while the villagers remained frozen in place. Not because the young man who’d suddenly appeared to slay the hellish beast with a single blow had entranced them with his swordplay, and not because they were shocked or terrified, but because their very souls had been taken by his beauty—or so it appeared to the girl.
Finally, one of the villagers went over to the young woman and said, “Hey, Maquia!”
Just then, a weird howl shook the air. As the villagers turned to look at the defensive palisade, a shadow fell across them. It belonged to the enormous creatures that had sailed through the air and over the fence: a colossal arthropod that looked just like a scorpion gifted with a nauseatingly gaudy coloration and a mollusk that seemed to be no more than a knot of innumerable sucker-covered tentacles. Each of the creatures was the size of a small hut. The claws of the giant scorpion were wet with fresh blood.
“How many of them are left?” D inquired, but at that very instant tentacles streamed toward him like weeds underwater.
“Just these,” a villager replied.
The Hunter seemed to become a silvery flash that raced between the tentacles, severing each and every one of the hideous appendages and leaving them lying on the ground. The villagers took in the action. The deadly battle was over in seconds—but it was something they would pass down to their children and their children’s children.
The young man in black seemed to glide in a gentle arc while the giant scorpion closed on him from one side, its scythelike claws extended. The young man swept his right hand down without any particular effort. No one had actually seen him raise it to strike. Sparks flew, and the giant scorpion’s claws thudded to the ground. Only later did they learn that the claws were covered by nearly an inch of shell that was every bit as tough as iron.
Taking a step toward the monstrous bug as it tumbled backward, the Hunter lashed out with his naked blade, driving it deep between the creature’s beady red eyes and then flinging the massive fifteen-foot-long, two-ton form at the mass of tentacles to its rear with a single movement of his right arm.
The mass of tentacles backed away. As it barely dodged the giant scorpion, the figure in black, following the scorpion’s trajectory, landed by its side. Split in two, the mass fell into two halves and ceased moving; almost simultaneously, it became countless individual tentacles that scattered. There was no sign of a body connecting them. It was unclear whether the creature had been a swarm of sentient tentacles or if a single intelligence had united them. The stench of their compatriots’ blood told them this was a formidable opponent, and they were massing together again when their foe’s blade carved out a deadly world for them.
The rear gate was still open wide, and when the frozen villagers saw the new figure that dashed through it, they finally moved again. Staring at D, one of them muttered, “What in the world are—”
Just then, someone called out, “D!”
Shrieking, the girl pulled both hands up over her heart.
The voice had come from the giant scorpion.
All the villagers were paralyzed.
“There should be no need for me to introduce myself. The girl you were protecting is now in my custody. I believed her brother had been
captured as well, but it would seem there’s been some interference. At any rate, I can read the stars. I learned to do so after being exiled to the depths of space. We shall meet sooner or later, D . . . just as the stars say. It would seem that your journey and mine were for that very purpose. Won’t that be pleasant? And then we might finally learn what thread of fate binds the Ultimate Noble Valcua and a lowly Hunter. But in order to find out, you’ll have to keep from being slain by my lackeys. The things you face from here on out will all be monsters whose flesh and spirits I’ve strengthened with my own two hands. I would not think it odd if any one of them were to slay you. If that happens, then it will be fate. I shall have to curse the stars. But just wait, D! And go north as fast as you can—into my world!”
This wasn’t an invitation. It was an order.
The giant scorpion moved no more, but a number of villagers were left reeling, and a few people fainted. Such was the power the source of that voice carried.
Had Valcua created these monstrosities and attacked the village merely to tell the Hunter this? Did the stars of which he spoke portend D’s coming even before his encounter with Maquia?
Sheathing his sword, D asked the villagers, “Do you have any horses?”
In about ten minutes’ time he was all set with a cyborg horse. The villagers didn’t once mention what the giant scorpion had said to D. All they could do was stare in amazement at the far-too-handsome young man. While they gave the Hunter no complaint, they expressed no gratitude either. They just wanted to be rid of him as quickly as possible.
After giving the cost of the steed and a saddle to Maquia, D put one foot into the stirrups. When he got up into the saddle without using his left hand, a stir went through the villagers—they’d finally noticed that it was missing. The opponents that lay ahead were daunting, and now D lacked his left hand.
The young man had appeared without warning and
was leaving just as abruptly, and the villagers said nothing as they watched him go.
As the forms of horse and rider became one and they started off toward the road, Maquia rushed over, saying, “Thank you, D. Thank you—and I know we’ll meet again.”
But even she didn’t believe the last remark.
“I don’t know what to say at a time like this, but where are you going?” Maquia asked, walking alongside him.
Unexpectedly, the horse broke into a run. D had given it a kick to its sides.
Pulling away, the reeling Maquia somehow managed to stay on her feet. There he goes, she thought. They’d met in the woods, and he’d carried her under one arm back to the village. That was it. He hadn’t said a single word to her since reaching the village. And yet, her heart burned.
“Um—next month, I’m getting married,” the girl whispered, with at least some of her reason returning. Her sweetheart was among the villagers behind her. After going a few paces more, Maquia halted. Tears suddenly spilled from her eyes.
The rider in black had turned left on the highway and was already out of sight.
III
As D galloped north on the road, he seemed no more than a speck of dust to a certain woman. She wasn’t underestimating him. Rather, it was a matter of perspective.
Callas the Diva was astride a giant eagle soaring fifteen hundred feet above the earth. A song of unearthly beauty flowed through the air—even birds in the distance seemed to be listening. This eagle had wings that were over thirty feet long, and with the width of its body, its total wingspan reached sixty-five or seventy feet.
Callas and Courbet had received their orders to dispatch D from Grand Duke Valcua in the forest near the fortress. Both she and Courbet had been brought back to life by their lord’s power. Valcua had commanded them both to do away with D. He put it this way: “You mustn’t let your guard down, but it’s not imperative that the two of you work together. Slay him together, and you shall have my praise. Accomplish it alone, and you shall also be rewarded. Ah, yes—perhaps I shall give you control of the moon!”
Valcua had led the starry-eyed pair to the spot where D and the Dyalhis children had fallen into the subterranean waterway.
“I leave the rest to you,” Valcua said to them before he faded away.
Of course, the two assassins had no way of knowing where the water had carried their targets. Believing they would seek out civilization where they washed up, Callas headed for the village of Toja. Courbet elected to follow the course of the waterway. Its route had been input into his memory at the time of his resurrection—that must’ve been Valcua’s doing. But Valcua’s statement that they need not fight side by side was impeding any cooperation.
When Callas reached the village, the weird insects that had sprung from Valcua’s footsteps were in the midst of their attack on the community. Callas had merely watched as people were horribly devoured or chopped up by oversized claws, for no human soul remained in the diva after Valcua revived her. And now she flew across the sky on a giant eagle, following D as he raced along the ground. As she watched his tiny form, now smaller than a grain of pollen, her eyes not only displayed the same rapture that had always been there, but they also held a hint of terrible obsession capable of shaking any who saw it. Most people would’ve called it hatred. Those with a keener understanding of the mind’s workings might’ve called it something else: love.
“The sun is high, but I am higher still,” Callas murmured. Her words were a song.
Her hair fluttering in the breeze, she filled her lungs with the crisp air before looking at the birds that surrounded her.
“Would you care for a bit of exercise?” the diva sang, her voice still gentle.
D wasn’t riding aimlessly. Since he’d left the village, he’d been listening to the sound of the water flowing beneath the earth’s crust. Before long, the water would be rushing back out to the surface. Where the waterway ended, he should find Sue—who’d been abducted by one of Valcua’s assassins—as well as Matthew.
Was the assassin in question Callas or Courbet? D had witnessed Callas stabbing Courbet, and then the two of them being engulfed by napalm flames immediately thereafter. However, that hardly meant that Valcua’s subordinates were dead. Or was it another one? The last of the seven . . . the foe known as Seurat.
Whoever it was, having Sue as a hostage would undoubtedly make him or her a fearsome opponent—or so ordinary reasoning suggested. D raced like the wind. Not a glimmer of fear or uncertainty showed in his horribly handsome features. From the very start, this young man had been utterly devoid of feeling regarding those he must slay.
A shadow unexpectedly passed across the sun, as if a cloud that wasn’t there had suddenly appeared. D lifted his head a bit to look up at the heavens. The blackness that spread overhead was no cloud—it was expanding in all directions. Or rather, it was drawing closer.
A second later, thousands—or even tens of thousands—of birds assailed D and his cyborg horse. There were little four-winged birds, birds of prey, winged dragons, and great ravens—and while they surged with a beating of wings to shake both heaven and earth, a naked blade danced out.
Holding his longsword in his teeth, D pulled a scarf from one of his coat pockets and wrapped it around his steed’s eyes. He would guide it by use of the reins. A blinded horse would have to be junked, after all.
D’s swordplay was neither wasted nor ineffective. Every time he swung his blade, dozens of birds fell to the ground. However, that did nothing to decrease the ranks of his foes.
His horse staggered. The snout of a small, winged dragon had struck it in the nose.
A rocky slope came into view up ahead. The road forked. D chose to go left. Though he would stray from the path of the waterway, there was no helping that at this point. A rusty chain was stretched across the entrance to that road, and a signpost stood beside it. As the horse and rider bounded over the former, the latter listed to one side.
Although Callas couldn’t read the words warning of danger from so high up in the sky, the clear and resounding song that she used to control the birds suddenly stopped.
“Why would he go that way?” she mused, furrowing her brow.
Shielded on either side by stone walls, the road ran down a rather steep slope into the bottom of a ravine. As D and his steed made their way down, they were obscured by what looked like a multicolored sea of clouds, or a bizarre gaseous creature. On reaching the bottom, D pulled on the reins. Avian monstrosities and demon birds fell to his blade, but twice as many came to replace them.
“I’ve summoned all the flying creatures in the area. This is a new power bestowed on me by my liege Valcua. No matter how good a Hunter he may be, it would take him three days to kill them all. Oh, are they down again?”
Spying winged creatures to the north, Callas began to sing her bewitching tune. Perhaps it was out of satisfaction with her victory that she forgot all about the road D had chosen. It wasn’t until the moment the flock of birds began to move again that a flash of inspiration sparked in her brain.
“What is it now? Wait—why did he pause at the entrance to the valley?”
D had already advanced about halfway through the ravine. White mists rose here and there like strips of cloth across the barren wasteland, devoid of a single blade of grass. Suddenly the mists grew thicker. That was when Callas noticed what was happening.
“No—get out of there!” she screamed in something other than her singing voice.
Suddenly, the white mist blanketed the bottom of the ravine. A minute fissure that hadn’t been evident on casual inspection ran across the floor of the ravine. The white mist that issued from it—or rather, the colorless and odorless gas—killed the thousands of avian creatures instantly.
Just look. Only D and his cyborg steed emerged from the far side of the white haze. D had memorized a map of the surrounding area back in the fortress of Lamoa, so it was only natural that he’d remember this deadly valley. Of c
ourse, the bottom of the ravine wasn’t always full of lethal gas. It erupted periodically, like a geyser. D had also committed its schedule to memory, and he’d halted just before entering the ravine because it was too early and he needed to kill some time. He’d held his breath while they galloped through the gas. And his horse, which usually breathed the surrounding atmosphere, had been instructed to rely on its internal oxygen supply. That was the signal he’d given the beast when he pulled back on the reins.
Coming up out of the ravine by another road, D got on the highway. Without decreasing speed, he and his mount bounded into the forest to their left. Not a single chirp was heard. All the birds in the vicinity now slept the sleep of death at the bottom of the ravine.
Letting his horse’s breathing return to normal, D swiftly got out of the saddle, went over to the base of a tree about ten feet away, and closed his eyes. Three seconds passed. Five. And then his dark eyes opened and looked up coolly.
“Took refuge in the forest, did he? Ah, such is to be expected from the man who’s stolen my very soul. But I won’t let him get away.
I’ll show him it’s not the birds of the air alone who fall under the spell of Callas’s song.”
After muttering this, the unholy singer gave a little cough and then began to fill the air with a clear and resonant soprano. Like an invisible shower, it rained down to fill the ears of every living creature.
When D was nearly finished with what he was doing, he noticed footsteps closing on him from the distance. This time it was the creatures of the land. Those who were closest would probably come barreling through the forest in a veritable avalanche in less than thirty seconds. Sensing their presence, the Hunter’s cyborg horse whinnied fiercely.
D got up, put what he’d made under his left arm, and wheeled his steed around toward the right side. Its whinnying stopped dead.
Only one irksome task remained. Drawing his blade, the Hunter stuck his left wrist out in front of himself and made an artless chop at it. From behind him, a single black shape sailed forward—with the speed of a shooting star.
Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four Page 4