The strange voice made further retching sounds, and the left hand vomited up fluid. It wasn’t blood, but rather clear, like glass.
“Cut me loose—Hurry!”
Before the hand could vomit a second time, D’s blade flashed out. His left hand fell to the ground, where a human face quickly formed in its palm. Its features were twisted by horrible pain, and fluid gushed again from its nose and mouth.
In a voice like a death rattle, it wheezed, “Such . . . poison . . . For him . . . living must be . . . hell . . . He lives . . . to have his revenge on you . . . D . . . Him and his wife . . . both . . . need . . . to die!”
Then all five fingers clutched madly at the sky before unexpectedly going limp. And the face began fading from the palm.
Saying nothing, D picked up his left hand and tucked it in a pocket inside his coat. A faint darkness shrouded his body. The day was beginning to dim. Before long in one section of the forest where a stir from the push of darkness could be heard, a tall figure in black looked terribly solitary. D, now you are truly alone. Look down at your feet. You aren’t even casting a shadow.
“How much longer?” Meg asked.
Danae replied, “Approximately ten minutes.”
Though it looked as if he were working the vehicle’s control stick, in truth his hand was merely resting on it. The vehicle was avoiding the trees and rocks ahead all on its own.
Meg was deeply impressed. She wondered if a vehicle like this that moved without touching the ground might not work on the seas as well. If it did, fishing would become remarkably easy. She could make trips out to the fishing ground and back or catch up to schools of swift-fins quickly, and it would be easy enough to keep storm wyrms from ramming her craft.
“Girl,” Danae said.
“I have a name. It’s Meg.”
“Very well, then—Meg. What brings you to the island?”
“I already told you. I’m here to rescue the folks you and yours snatched.”
“That much I have heard. What I wish to know is the real reason.”
“The real—?! I told you!”
Infuriated, the girl was just about to give the Nobleman a tongue-lashing when his words hit her like a physical blow.
“You wish to be immortal—am I wrong?”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Meg exclaimed, adding that he was an idiot. “When the time comes, everyone gets weak and dies. That’s normal and natural. When you’re human, that’s your fate. Just the thought of living forever gives me the willies.”
“Gives you the willies?”
“It means it frightens me.”
“Why is immortality frightening? It means living forever without pain or the fear of death!”
“I’m not afraid to die!” Meg snapped back. “Imagine day in and day out listening to the roar of the dark sea in the middle of the night. You get the feeling all the seas in the world are snarling out there. The roll and crash is fine. But then suddenly, one of them rolls way far away. And by one of them, I mean a portion of the world’s seas is suddenly far off, like you’d think it’d gone to the ends of the earth, only you can be sure it hasn’t vanished. Listen real close, and this time you’ll hear it coming. Its roar creeps closer, murky, real murky, until you think, Oh no, here comes the hell wave! This is the end of me and my village. This incredibly tall mountain of a wave is gonna swallow everybody and kill us. You can’t sleep. You’re scared, so scared all night that when you’re a little kid, you cling to your mother’s breast. But when you’re bigger, you lie in bed alone and cry. You don’t ever wanna put out to sea again. You don’t even wanna look at the sea. But the next day you’ve gotta go out in your boat. You’ve got no time for crying or daydreaming.
“And once you’re out on the waves, it’s hell beneath the ship’s planks. You run into bore sharks that can poke a hole through an iron hull, krakens that are about a hundred times the size of this island, and dancer rays that whip up giant whirlpools. Have you ever seen the sky from the bottom of a whirlpool half a mile wide and twice as deep? When you do, you’re not supposed to look at what’s all around you. Bones and pieces of ships sucked down centuries ago are spinning around in those sheer walls of blue-black water. Even though the skeletons have gone to pieces, their cave-like eyes meet ours and they call to us. Come, come to us. Join us, they say.
“Seven times Dad and me have looked up at the sky from the bottom of a whirlpool. Such a little spot of blue, but that’s the world where we live. White clouds sailing by, and gulls flying around. I wanna get back there. I wanna live to see that sky again—and with that determination, I’ve made it back. And yet, you know, sometimes I’ll suddenly think back on those whirlpools and kinda miss ’em. If one of those times the walls of water came crashing down, I could stay there under the water with all those bones, and that seems like it’d be a real happy life. I’m not afraid of death anymore. You get that? I think it’ll be real easy, and peaceful. And going to the end of time without dying would just be exhausting!”
Meg had let all that out in one burst.
Danae fell silent.
That did the trick, she thought, but she was mistaken.
“In order to know death, you must know life. You merely long for death as a rejection of life.”
He said it so matter-of-factly.
Meg bared her teeth, shouting, “I’m not running away from life, and I’m not tired, either. I don’t need any monster telling me how it is!”
“Monsters we may be, but we were your masters. We made exhaustive studies of human beings, both your bodies and your psyches. Though I would not say everything was left entirely clear.”
“Of course not. How could a Noble ever understand the human heart—”
The girl shuddered as she said the words, and at the end, they were punctuated by an impact.
Danae twisted his body around. Blood sprayed into the air. Stained red from the neck down, Meg screamed, and perhaps it was her cry that made the vehicle go crazy. Its unshakable glide went into disarray, and the vehicle crashed into a gigantic tree to their right.
Meg and d’Argent were pitched forward, sailing through the air. The girl knew they’d done two and half cartwheels before hitting the ground. Her right shoulder came to rest against something strangely soft. Meg’s brain was numbed by the impact, and she waited to give it time to recover. A few seconds sufficed.
Turning around, she asked the groaning d’Argent if he was okay.
“I’m all right. Sure felt that, though.”
“Hang in there. You’re ageless and indestructible, after all.”
“No, you heard what the Nobleman said. I just don’t get any older. So, what happened?”
“The vehicle and Lord Danae got shot.”
“Shot? By whom?”
“I don’t know. But when Lord Danae was sent flying, I heard a gunshot off in the distance. And we know our ride must’ve got hit, too, because of the way it spun all of a sudden.”
“A Noble, I guess, or one of their underlings. I’ve never seen them use firearms, though.”
“I think I might know who it was,” Meg said, helping d’Argent to his feet.
Just then, the ground trembled.
“Huh?”
A certain foreboding made the two of them stop cold, like they were made of iron. Their eyes dropped to their feet. The soft ground that’d spared them both looked for all the world like a normal expanse of dirt and grass. But it sank appreciably.
“You know, this looks like a trap,” Meg whispered to the former teacher. “It’s a pitfall for trapping enormous creatures. The earlier group of settlers must’ve made it. Any more weight than we’ve got on it now and we’re goners!”
The pair began slowly walking across it, bound for firmer ground.
“Just three more feet,” Meg told d’Argent. “Hang in there.”
“I know.”
With their next step there was a sound like something snapping, and the ground subsided massively
. Feeling like her blood was about to freeze, Meg leapt.
The instant they touched down on solid ground, a scream rang out from d’Argent.
“Suck it up!” the girl shouted, turning around.
Their former location had been transformed into a bowl-like depression in the earth. It was swallowed up without a sound, leaving only a colossal hole.
II
As Meg stared down into it in disbelief, from beside her d’Argent asked, “So, it was a trap after all?”
“It sure was. Just look. The bottom of the pit has a bunch of stakes pointing up. We were gonna be impaled on ’em!”
Then she remembered something. Scanning their surroundings, she called out at the absolute minimum volume, “Lord Danae, are you okay?”
There was no reply.
“He was shot, but it’d take more than that to kill a Noble. I wonder if he’s lying low,” said d’Argent.
“I don’t know, but if that thingy is out of commission . . .”
Meg tried to envision their next move, but it didn’t go very well. Under the present circumstances, an immortal without the use of either arm was about as useful as tits on a bull.
Maybe I should just leave him behind?
That upstart of an idea skimmed through her head, but was swiftly forgotten. Out in stormy weather, she’d let their catch flop back into the sea because she wasn’t paying attention. It’s not my fault, was how the train of thought started, and it had gotten all the way to I never even wanted this job in the first place when the fist struck her. Meg’s father grabbed her and shook her bodily, saying, Love it or hate it, if you’re on the job, you gotta take responsibility for it. The world’ll be more than happy to pile responsibilities on top of the ones you deserve. When it does, don’t you dare run from ’em. Not even if it kills you. When you feel like calling it quits, that’s when you’ve really gotta bite your tongue. That was the first time her father had ever looked that scary to her, and the last.
“At any rate, we should hide,” d’Argent said, and he too scanned in all directions. “If push comes to shove, don’t you worry about me. Take off on your own.”
Well, what do you know? He’s braver than I thought, Meg mused.
“Because I’ll do the same,” the former teacher added.
So, you’d ditch your responsibilities, eh?
“Okay, I see,” the girl replied, and then she heard the sound of something treading grass behind them.
“Over there!”
Meg dashed over to a gigantic tree, and she and d’Argent took cover behind a trunk that looked twice as large as they could get their arms around.
There hadn’t been any road there to begin with. Anybody who’d walk through a world so choked with trees couldn’t be considered normal.
The girl was poised with her harpoon.
The footsteps were coming from up ahead and off to the right, and seemed to run along a stand of trees.
“Psst,” d’Argent said, gesturing to the weapon on his right arm. “Use this. A lousy harpoon won’t do you any good.”
“Who asked you? I’ve had nothing but harpoons to get me this far.”
“You were just lucky.”
“Screw you!” she snapped at him, but just then a figure she recognized pushed his way out of the high grass.
“You?!”
The hirsute giant had no trouble catching Meg’s voice.
“Who’s out there?!” he said, drawing the longsword from his back.
The rasp of it leaving a sheath almost ten feet long made d’Argent tremble. He’d started out a teacher. He probably wasn’t used to the field of battle, and now that he’d lost the use of both hands he’d probably be afraid of his own shadow.
The giant bellowed, “Come on out. Garigon’s the name. I’m a Hunter. I came here to hunt the island’s Nobility. So forget all that running and hiding and come right on out.”
“Some acquaintance of yours?” d’Argent inquired.
Meg nodded. In a sense, she was running into a member of her party again. She wanted to jump right out of hiding. However, something held her back.
“Oh, not coming out, are you? If you’re out milling about with the sun still bright, that means you ain’t a Noble. What are you, some reject who only got half drained? Not that it matters. I’m gonna flush you out right quick!”
The giant thrust his longsword out in front with both hands and held it level to the ground. The instant the swordsman’s eyes closed, Meg felt a powerful shudder go through d’Argent’s body. She herself had twitched.
The longsword stretched. Or rather, a beam the same width as the weapon shot from its tip. On coming into contact with a stand of trees, it tore through them like they were paper, then zipped off into the far reaches of the woods.
“Get out here!”
The giant spun. The beam of light filled the pair’s field of view. Meg had quickly ducked down, and now the air above her head wavered. Instinctively, she shouted, “Run for it!”
Beside her, the trunk of the gigantic tree they’d been hiding behind fell, shaking the earth in the process. The cut end was facing her, and it was so smooth it left Meg amazed. She’d thought it’d been a heat beam, but there were no signs of charring. Meg decided it had to be the work of a kind of energy beyond her imagining.
“It’s willpower, you know,” d’Argent said from right behind her. He hadn’t been kidding about being a teacher. “Though the human will is colorless and shapeless, there are times when it takes one form or another. Which is what that light is.”
As the mystery was explained away, a voice befitting that gargantuan form called down from overhead, “Why, if it ain’t Meg! Never would’ve expected to run into you out here!”
“How sweet of you to remember me,” Meg said, running her eyes across their surroundings as she got to her feet.
Suddenly, a vast clearing seemed to have come into being. All the way into the distance trees had been mowed down at the same height, with toppled trunks, branches, and leaves stretching on and on in a new land. No one would’ve believed all that had been accomplished by one man with a single swing of his longsword.
“You bet your buns I did,” the giant replied with a belly laugh. “Back in the tunnel, I got separated from the others. Hell, I didn’t even think you’d made it out okay. So, who’s this you’ve got with you?”
“A survivor from the group of settlers. Seems everybody else was killed.”
“Well that’s great,” the giant said, his eyes gleaming. “I haven’t run into nobody yet. So, tell me all about these Nobles.”
“I’m d’Argent. I was a teacher.”
“A teacher? You don’t say,” Garigon remarked, his smile becoming a mocking sneer. Teachers would be the eternal bane of ruffians like him.
“Know what became of the other bounty hunters?” Meg inquired in an effort to dispel the awkward atmosphere.
Immediately shaking his head, the giant replied that he didn’t. “The sheriff’s boy—his name was Wesley or something like that, right? He’s dead.”
Meg was at a loss for words.
“He took Lancer’s spear in the belly and was dying. With a wound like that, he was a goner.”
“And you didn’t try to save him or anything?” Meg asked as she tried to choke down something hot rising within her.
“Give me a break. I had these freaks on my tail, you know. Didn’t have time to dick around with that.”
Meg nodded twice. With the first she recalled the young lawman’s smiling face, and with the second it disappeared. He’d been swallowed up by rough seas. That was what Dad had taught her to do when somebody died.
“So, you headed anywhere in particular? Like the Nobles’ home?”
“We were doing fine until a little while ago,” Meg replied.
The girl searched for the vehicle, but couldn’t find it anywhere. But even if they had it, without Lord Danae along they wouldn’t know where to go.
“Things can neve
r be easy, can they?” the girl groaned, but just then an unsettling laugh from nowhere in particular reached her ears.
“It’s close,” Garigon said, training his eye on the sky and turning to the left. That was the direction he’d come from.
The trio’s eyes focused on the figure that appeared from the bushes.
“A Noble?” Garigon groaned.
One look at the azure cape and clothing that called to mind the sea and a mask studded with jewels, and anyone else would’ve come to the same conclusion.
“No, scratch that,” the giant continued. “It’s still daytime.”
“They have items that let them walk around by day,” Meg said, countering Garigon’s assessment.
“You don’t say. So, it’s the real thing, then?” Garigon asked, his longsword still unsheathed. “That suits me just fine. I bet you thought rescuing the villagers was a job for the lawmen, and the rest of us were just along as bodyguards. Now, to get down to work! You two, hit the dirt.”
As he said that, the great blade flashed out, howling through the wind—and the masked Noble was visibly shaken as he made a great leap back. When he landed some fifteen feet away, Garigon already had the tip of his sword aimed straight at the Noble’s heart. The giant’s lips twisted into a smile. That smile was rooted in his overwhelming self-confidence. Would he call upon that same technique again?
“Down!” Meg shouted at d’Argent, lying flat on the ground. An endless sword of light flashed over their heads.
The gleaming willpower split the masked Nobleman’s head from his torso, then returned to being a normal blade.
Garigon’s eyes bugged. The Noble’s head hadn’t fallen off, and he saw his foe’s hand going for the sword on his hip.
“Raaah!” he snarled in anger, flashing out again with the blade of light.
Though split in two from head to crotch, the Noble bounded, his sword in turn cutting the giant in two from the head down to the lungs. An enormous quantity of fresh blood became a red wind whisking through the world and staining everything the same hue.
As Garigon dropped limply to his knees, Meg could only stare at him with desperation in her eyes. How could a giant of a man with such a tremendous ability be cut down so easily?
Undead Island Page 10