Before it had even finished speaking, D’s body was sailing through the air. Although he’d undoubtedly kicked off the floor, no sound had rung out, and he’d showed no signs of bending his knees before making what could be described as an unholy leap.
A distance of six or so feet was nothing to him. However, right over the center of the flow, something went wrong. The hem of his coat and the brim of his traveler’s hat turned down rapidly. The running water was refusing to allow a Noble to pass. His graceful arc and great speed were thrown into disarray, but half of D’s boots narrowly managed to land on the far side as he stood once more on the floor.
Approaching the sleeping Rosaria, D quickly put his left hand against her brow.
“Well, I’ll be—she’s under a powerful spell. And drugs, to boot,” the hoarse voice groaned. “But luckily, that kind of drug can be treated with the same herb we just got for the antidote. Should I fix her up here?”
“No,” D said, putting Rosaria over his shoulder. In light of the deadly battles that might take place during their escape, having her asleep would keep her from getting in the way.
On this side there was a collapsible metal gangway for crossing the flow. It was set up so it could be triggered by remote control from the opposite bank. Laying it across the water with what seemed like an easy one-handed toss, D made his escape from the tower less than a minute later.
__
Though the thunder had subsided, the wind had grown stronger, and the air itself seemed to have taken on more of a chill. Juke’s condition was only deteriorating, with his breathing more labored and his body burning hot as a flame.
“Where the hell has he got to?” Gordo cursed, though it wasn’t D he was referring to, but rather Sergei.
He wasn’t sure exactly when his other companion had disappeared, but he hadn’t seen any sign of him for over three hours. The man had been pretty scrawny for a transporter from the start, but he hadn’t struck him as being irresponsible enough to take off at a time like this, and only a true idiot would run around these parts all alone. At any rate, Gordo couldn’t leave his post now since he had to watch both Juke and their cargo all by himself, but it would be evening soon.
“Shit!”
He was just smacking his fist into the opposite hand when off to his left he heard the pattering of something walking closer through the grass.
“Sergei?” Gordo inquired, his six-shooter already raised.
The footsteps halted for a moment, then quickly drew nearer.
“Answer me. Is that you, Sergei?”
It couldn’t be D. There would’ve been the sound of the Hunter’s horse. If it wasn’t Sergei, then it was likely some kind of demon or monster. Juke had been moved into the cargo wagon, but that wouldn’t withstand more than one blow from a monster’s fangs or claws, and there were also spirits that could pass right through high-polymer steel. No matter what the case, Gordo would have to deal with it alone.
“Suit yourself then,” he said, ready to do whatever was necessary. In case of emergency, he’d given Juke an incendiary grenade. It went without saying that it wasn’t intended for self-defense.
When a human form appeared from a stand of trees, he pulled his six-shooter’s hammer back almost all the way.
“Huh?”
Stiff with tension, Gordo’s expression suddenly softened.
Trampling a path through the grass was a girl who looked like she couldn’t have been a day over ten, her golden hair in braids. With clear blue eyes, she wore a neat pink dress of a kind that only suited small girls, and the legs protruding from its knee-length skirt wore gray knee socks and white shoes. A gold bracelet studded with red and blue gems adorned the arm carrying a gray flower basket chock full of blossoms. Even Gordo, who’d been so tense he was ready to explode, got the impression that the whole area around the little girl had suddenly been transformed into a splendorous flower garden.
While the man remained silent, the girl said softly, “Move and I’ll shoot,” then halted and raised both hands of her own volition. Her tone and her gestures were terribly endearing.
The muzzle of Gordo’s weapon gradually dropped.
“Don’t move, missy,” Gordo ordered her.
He didn’t know why he didn’t shoot. There was no way any decent young lady would be out in a place like this.
Arms still raised to the sky, the girl stared at him blankly.
“What’s your name?” Gordo asked.
“In a situation like this, it’s customary to give your own name first,” she said, little angelic lips releasing an equally angelic tone.
Gordo suddenly felt much calmer.
“You’ll have to pardon me. The name’s Gordo. I’m a transporter, you see.”
“I am Lady Ann.”
“I see. Well, you certainly are a little lady. But what are you doing out here?”
“Picking flowers,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“Where’s your home?”
The girl smiled thinly. It gave Gordo the creeps.
“That castle!” she said, her voice changed now. White teeth peeked from between ruby red lips. They were tapered like an awl.
“Shiiiit!”
Don’t let appearances deceive you—that was an ironclad rule for survival on the Frontier.
Gordo pulled the trigger, and his six-shooter howled. Six thunder balls knocked the girl backward. Black earth kicked up from the ground behind her.
Her pink dress torn to rags, the girl lay there motionless.
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III
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Despite the fact that, in an objective sense, Gordo had just dealt with her in a horrible fashion, he didn’t lower the muzzle of his weapon. The greatest tension rolled over him in a wave. He’d shot an innocent little girl. Even knowing that he was dealing with a monster, her outward appearance left him with unavoidable feelings of remorse and self-reproach. Nonetheless, the instant a great hollowness filled his heart, the monster would strike back at him. That was the wisdom of the Frontier, gained from the deaths of tens of thousands.
“What happened, Gordo?” Juke called out from the cargo wagon in a thread-thin voice. Standing there on the narrow line between life and death, the other man didn’t even notice.
Ten seconds . . . Nothing yet . . .
Twenty . . . Still nothing . . .
Thirty seconds . . .
Forty . . .
The hem of Lady Ann’s skirt rustled faintly, but on realizing that this was the wind’s doing, Gordo lowered his weapon. Sweat soaked every inch of his body and his breathing was ragged. Still, he’d recovered enough presence of mind to turn around and shout, “I shot someone. Don’t come out here.”
Wiping off his sweat, he raised his six-shooter again and walked over to the corpse. On reaching her tattered feet, Gordo gasped.
“A doll?”
Hair so golden you could practically smell it, clear blue eyes, plump arms and legs—all of them were fake. The hair was metallic fiber, the eyes glass beads, and the face was made of wood. So how had she seemed so full of life a minute ago? Even the demonic expression she’d worn when she bared her fangs had been that of a living creature.
As Gordo stood stock still, feeling like someone had just removed his brain, an innocent chime rang in his ears—a singing voice like golden blossoms raining down from the heavens.
You shot Lady Ann, the voice told him. But you can’t crush me. Please, hurry and save me.
The way the girl’s voice made the blood in Gordo’s veins run cold, it was as if all his will and his life were sending a message from his brain to his body, and he grew tense. Like his body, his eyes had frozen in place on a single spot, so the sight of that hole-riddled doll rising spryly burned itself into his retinas. The right eye had been blown out of the doll’s face, but the innocent face of the girl was superimposed on it, becoming the doll’s, then the girl’s, by turns.
“I’ll give you a flower—leech grass freshly pic
ked from Lady Ann’s own flower garden.”
A childishly plump hand took a pure white blossom from the basket of flowers hanging from the opposite arm and hurled it at Gordo’s chest. In the blink of an eye, the white blossom was stained a vivid vermilion, and Gordo bent backward in hellish agony. His six-shooter barked off in completely the wrong direction as he sprawled on the ground with arms and legs spread. The now-crimson blossom was sending roots deep into his body. That much he was certain he could feel.
“What a powerful specimen you are,” Lady Ann said with glee from beside his head. “So full of blood. You’re ready for a second one, aren’t you?”
The grim reaper’s hand reached into her deadly flower basket. And as it took hold of another lovely white bloom, someone called out from behind her, “Lady Ann.”
Whoever said this had undoubtedly made their throw before she could turn. The instant her blue irises reflected Sergei, a white flower pierced her right between the eyes—a blossom of leech grass just like the one the girl held.
“Ah!” Lady Ann cried out, backing away. As she’d prepared to throw the flower she held at her new foe, the white bloom against her brow had swiftly turned red. The figure that staggered and fell was beyond a doubt the real Lady Ann.
Racing over, Sergei bound her with the rope every good transporter wore on his belt, then went over to Gordo and reached for the flower stuck in his chest. The bloom looked to have swollen to twice its previous size. In his hand, it felt like a damp sponge—when he tightened his grip on it, there was a squeak. The flower had squealed. On drinking Gordo’s blood, it’d been transformed into a different form of life.
“Damn it!” Sergei cursed, giving it a hard pull. Loosing a shriek, it came out of Gordo, its roots still embedded. Getting to his feet, Sergei yanked. Dripping lifeblood like mud, the roots came out. They were a good fifteen feet long.
Discarding the plant, Sergei turned his gaze back to Gordo’s pale-as-a-sheet face and grumbled, “Damn, you’re gonna need a transfusion, aren’t you?”
But where was the blood for that? And did he even have the necessary apparatus?
Nevertheless, Sergei turned around—looking back the way he’d come—and struck his chest in a confident manner, saying, “You’re a lucky man, Gordo. You should thank me.”
__
“There’s something funny about this,” the hoarse voice said in a tone no one save D could hear. He was in the inner courtyard with Rosaria on his back.
“This has all been too easy. That just doesn’t seem right in the castle of a man like Gaskell. There’s definitely a trap of some kind.”
“Know what it is?” D asked.
Going straight through the courtyard, they would cross the forecourt and go out through the gates—retracing the exact same course by which they’d entered.
“No, at the moment I don’t have a clue,” the hoarse voice replied. Every time the tiny lips opened, pale blue flames danced in the depths of its throat. It burned with energy for healing D’s eyes. For earth it’d eaten the soil from the flowerbeds, and there was wind as well. The water was D’s blood. They lacked fire, but then that might’ve been asking too much.
The sky was a dusky blue–the creatures of the night would soon be awakening. Or in the case of this castle, perhaps it would’ve been better to say they’d be reclaiming their old lives. Nevertheless, there was no way Gaskell hadn’t long since noticed D’s intrusion and Rosaria’s rescue, though it was strange that there hadn’t been any further obstacles.
D suddenly broke into a run.
“You seriously thinking of charging right down the middle? This should be fun.”
Common sense dictated that if you knew your presence had been detected and you had to cross such a large area, you’d creep along the edges, using trees and buildings for cover as you went. But running straight down the middle of the courtyard—while in keeping with D’s character, it could also be described as the epitome of recklessness. Considering that he had Rosaria on his back, it was particularly rash of him. If someone had accused him of using her as a shield against bullets and arrows, he wouldn’t have been able to protest.
But did D know what was going to happen? That was precisely how it seemed. For he cut across the courtyard, through the forecourt, and escaped the castle without any harm befalling him.
“Funny,” the hoarse voice muttered, but D seemed to pay it no mind as he raced down the road. “Did you know you weren’t gonna be attacked?”
“If any attacks were going to happen, they’d have come before I reached the tower,” D said, offering a rare explanation.
“Is Gaskell soft in the head? No, there’s no way that could be the case with a man known as such a great general. Which means—”
“He’s being stopped—”
“What?”
“Most likely.”
“Who’d stop Gaskell?” the hoarse voice said, its tone making it clear it was already looking within itself for the answer. The wait wasn’t terribly long.
“There’s no point giving it much thought. There’s only one person it could be. But why would he do that?”
There was no answer.
As the vast blue twilight spread, D dashed off down the steep incline. Thanks to his ungodly skill, Rosaria wasn’t jarred in the least.
He was halfway down the slope when a voice called from far off in the distance, “Heeeey!”
Why did D halt when there was still so much space between them?
An instant later—and not ten feet in front of him—there was a vicious crash as a purplish figure dropped from the sky. In the several seconds it took for the ground to finish quaking, D sensed that it was a person garbed in something like an enormous chitinous exoskeleton—or rather, that it really was an exoskeleton. It definitely wasn’t a traditional suit of armor. Standing ten feet tall, with arms and torso swollen to grotesque proportions, the rough design was far different from the elegant work the Nobility had produced in their later years. It may have even dated back to the chaotic times of territorial disputes between different Noble factions and fighting off extraterrestrial invaders. But rough though it might have been, the one within it had come to the castle to serve the general, and the knight’s exoskeleton didn’t have so much as a crack in it when he got up without a single mechanical sound.
“Were you a bit surprised?” the man quickly inquired in a deep, rich tone. This alone would be enough to make many a young lady’s heart beat faster. “When I called out just now, I purposely made it sound like I was much further away. And then, all of a sudden, here I am right in front of you. How was that?”
His tone was extremely earnest. He seriously wanted to know the answer.
“You’re a Noble, aren’t you?” D said.
“No, no!” the man replied, waving his right hand as if his suit were out of control. Being a device made by the Nobility, its movements were every bit as smooth as a human being’s. “It’s more correct to say I was originally a Noble. You see, I was banished by the Sacred Ancestor.”
The armored figure guffawed.
“The fact of the matter is, I womanized a little too much, to the point where I even worked my way through all the court ladies assembled in the Capital. But as it happened, one of them was the apple of the Sacred Ancestor’s eye—on account of which I wound up sealed away in a coffin for more than two millennia. My brain was set so that all I could do was remain conscious, and let me tell you, that was hard. I was so bored I thought I’d lose my mind! If my daughter hadn’t saved me, right now I’d—well, I shudder just thinking about it. At any rate, while I was buried deep in the earth, I was stripped of my Noble standing. Now I’m just a plain-old man of leisure. My original name was Roland, Duke of Xenon.”
“The Duke of Xenon?” a surprised tone called out from the vicinity of D’s left fist. “Roland? That bastard Gaskell’s called in a heavy hitter.”
“Why are you here?” D inquired.
“I don’t know,” he
said, shrugging his armored shoulders. When executed by a ten-foot-tall robotic figure, the act was simply humorous. “If I thought about it for a while, I might remember. Come to mention it, I get the feeling there was a reason, but it’s all in a fog now. But as a soldier from the Capital, I fought against General Gaskell to a deadlock. And now I take orders from him. It seems even Gaskell himself doesn’t know the reason. Yeah, it’s pretty interesting.”
“Madame Laurencin; Roland, the Duke of Xenon—he’s collected the Nobility’s greatest warriors. Wonder who else he’s got?”
The muttering from the Hunter’s left hand made the armored form stand up a little straighter.
“Oh, your left hand talks?” he asked with admiration. “I hear that’s the source of your life, and I can’t say I’m not tempted to cut it off and find out. Now, don’t get worked up into a murderous rage. Even through this exoskeleton your aura gives me goose bumps. You’re no average Hunter. You’re not even like ordinary dhampirs.”
“Have you said your piece?” D asked him. Anyone who heard this would know it was a quiet declaration of war. Suddenly, even the wind died down.
“No, not yet. However, I have to slay you. If I don’t, my dear daughter will be put in harm’s way. Lady Ann’s her name—do you know her? Hmm, don’t suppose you would. Though I have nothing against you, I’ll slay you for my daughter’s sake. Forgive me!”
And as he spoke, his right fist assailed the Hunter. A punch moving in excess of Mach 1 blistered through the air, and the smell of ozone immediately prickled in D’s nose.
D narrowly dodged the blow by a fist twice the size of the average person’s face. As he leapt back fifteen feet, his sword glittered in his right hand.
The armored fist spouted blue fire. It was the work of the blow D’s sword had dealt it while the Hunter was on the move.
RUINS ON AN ANCIENT BATTLEFIELD
CHAPTER 3
I
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The armored giant pressed his left hand to his fist. Pale sparks shot from between his fingers, and tendrils of electricity snaked out.
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