The woman’s body was writhing with passion, but Glen knocked her down with a rough shove.
Letting the most lascivious of smiles rise to her lips, Samon said, “Well, I’ll be going now. I have to meet with my colleagues and decide what our next move in this battle will be.” Giggling, she added, “But I’ll be back in your bed again tonight.”
Once Samon had walked off, Glen turned to face the sea alone. And just after he did, the most astounding remark came from behind him.
“You just don’t die, do you, pest?”
When Glen turned in a completely unhurried fashion, he was confronted by a muscle-bound giant standing fifteen feet away.
“My name is Egbert. I suppose Samon’s told you about me.”
As the man poked the iron staff in his direction, Glen smirked and said, “You’ve been there behind the rocks for some time now, haven’t you? Yes, I have indeed heard your name. So, what’s your business with me?”
“I want you out of town right now. Although, from what I just heard, I don’t think you’re likely to comply. So I’ll have to feed you to the Nobles’ fish the same way you were about to give them Samon.”
Egbert’s staff sank, and the tip of it touched the cliff, where it slowly began to etch a thick line in the stone. Glen didn’t know yet what this action signified.
The tip of the cliff where Glen was standing was roughly twenty feet wide. After he’d completed drawing a line across the entire width, Egbert smiled and said, “Where you’re standing—from this line on—is my kingdom. And now I’m about to smite an invader. I’ll smite you in the name of King Egbert!”
Glancing at the iron staff the giant had braced for action once again, Glen sneered, “You think you’re good enough to kill me? Fine. But I can’t believe there’s a warrior stupid enough to throw his life away because he’s lost in the charms of some worthless slut. I don’t have the use of my good arm,” he added, “but I should still have everything I need to show you just how much better I really am. Come on.”
Egbert’s immutable, dignified countenance was ablaze with rage. After joining forces with Shin to attack D and failing miserably, he hadn’t returned to the group’s hideout, but had walked around the village instead. Gyohki and Twin had their own roles to see to, but Samon hadn’t been around since the previous night. As Egbert had convinced himself there was no point in heading back yet, the real purpose of his wandering had been to find the woman.
Of the five enforcers, Egbert seemed to have the most human blood coursing through his veins. As a result, he’d been drawn to Samon, whose nature was diametrically opposed to his own. Perhaps he hadn’t expressed those feelings to her because he’d considered how many dissimilar points there were between Samon and himself, but when Egbert learned of Glen’s existence from Shin—who’d followed the woman that first night she left their hiding place—his body burned with a terrible jealousy. Since Samon’s compatriots understood that she had to throw herself at Glen in order to manipulate him, the giant hadn’t voiced his personal opposition to the arrangement, but he swore to himself he would eventually settle matters with the swordsman. Finding just whom he sought there with Samon on the cliffs at the edge of town had left him almost demented with joy. And now that Shin had been slain and Samon had left, he was free to settle matters with this rival suitor completely unfettered.
“Hyah!” Egbert cried in a voice as sharp as tearing silk as he braced his lower half for battle, and then kicked off the ground.
Throwing a look of pity and contempt at the giant form as it made a pointlessly high leap into the air, Glen was then astonished as he tried to make a thrust with the sword in his left hand. His blade seemed to weigh five times as much, and it moved with a proportional sluggishness. When he barely parried the few dozen pounds of iron bar swinging down at him, it was not due to any miracle, but rather to sheer dexterity.
His sword shattered.
“Would you look at that,” Egbert cried.
Dodging a horizontal swipe of the staff, Glen was forced back to the tip of the cliff. While his opponent’s speed hadn’t changed at all, the swordsman’s was only a fifth of what it usually was. The instant Glen realized how truly dire the situation was, a powerful blow landed on his torso, sending him flying.
There was no rocky terrain below him. Without a sound, Glen the “seeker of knowledge” fell headfirst from a cliff nearly one hundred fifty feet high into the choppy sea full of monstrous fish.
.
III
.
Tousled by the cool breeze, Su-In’s hair fell across her face, forcing her to repeatedly brush it out of the way with her fingers. The chill borne on the wind was due to the chunks of ice offshore. The weather controller’s unfathomable logic also held sway out there, but when summer called on the village, it didn’t extend out to the far reaches of the ocean. Cold air brought by the north wind grew tepid out over the sea, becoming a cool breeze that blew through the coastal town, normally unheard-of in summer. It was their summer wind.
Su-In was standing on a promontory. It was early afternoon—about the same time Egbert and Glen were engaged in their deadly conflict. The bluish green of the sea before her hurt her eyes. Although partway out it should’ve changed to a freezing ash gray, the sea that was visible from here was the color of summer, as if it’d been emblazoned with the blue of the sky and the green of the grass.
Pale ice floated out beyond the invisible line, while a little shy of it—about three-quarters of a mile from shore—a number of mid-sized power boats ripped the waves into white bits as they chased schools of fish. Based on their position, she thought they might be after rumble tuna.
She was at a spot about a twenty-minute walk from her hideout. It was called “Cape Nobility.” She’d come here countless times as a child, and the initials she’d left remained scratched on the rocks and carved in the trunks of nearby trees.
As she’d looked out at the sea back then, she’d thought, I’m going to live here! But things were different now. She wondered instead, Can I really live here?
Fatigue rode heavily on her shoulders. Up till now, she’d had a way to deal with that. But over the last few days, Su-In had come to feel a strange sense of loss over how extremely important Wu-Lin and Grampa Han had been to her. She’d thought she had the confidence to live—the confidence to live entirely on her own, that is. But then her younger sister and grandfather had been taken from her. Su-In realized she wanted to go somewhere far away once the summer was over. She didn’t think she could bear the next winter.
A certain face drifted into Su-In’s mind, making her tremble in the warm air. The man she’d seen in the tunnel—he’d been in her dream last night, too. But she could swear she’d never seen his face before. And yet, something ineffably heavy and dark was closing around her heart.
Who was he? That was the biggest mystery, although she could accept that much. But another question welled up in her, and it brought terror with it: What is he to me?
Shaking her head, Su-In tried to call to mind a different face—the face of a young man who was far more handsome; colder, and harder. Though he hadn’t told her a single thing about himself, she simply knew he’d traveled a path rougher and more horrid than anything she could ever imagine. And the mere thought of this lifted the weight off Su-In’s chest and gave her a serene feeling.
However, the Hunter was bound to leave someday. That, above all else, was a certainty. Perhaps the whole reason she had him looking after the bead was because she didn’t want him to leave. The truth of the matter was that Su-In was terribly afraid of the way her heart was behaving.
Her eyes were filled with an indistinct view of the sky and the sea, but they suddenly focused on a single point. One of the power boats towing nets out by the ice floes had suddenly listed to one side. And what the woman saw next left her speechless.
In the time it took her to unconsciously blink two or three times, the bow of the vessel was raised high in the air,
the men on board were thrown into the dark water, and then the boat slid down into the sea so effortlessly it was unbelievable.
Noticing what was happening, one of the vessels accompanying the ill-fated boat cut free its own nets and swung about.
Su-In gasped.
In the sea off the ship’s starboard fore, something black suddenly reached from the water. At this distance, it merely looked like a thin line, but Su-In pictured it as a crab’s claw.
The captain of the boat that was racing to the rescue noticed it, too. He cut the wheel hard. The thing was less than six feet away. But the desperate life-or-death curve of his course only served to give whatever lurked in the sea the perfect angle to attack.
Su-In saw the limb that protruded from the sea pierce the bow of the boat. The vessel’s own speed just served to make the claw seem all the more trenchant as it ripped its way down the hull like scissors slitting paper, and when the gash had gone halfway down the length of the boat, both the hull and its gaping wound sank into the sea. It took less than two seconds for the boat to list to the port side.
Having noticed the danger in the sea, another vessel began to flee. But before it’d gone thirty feet from the scene of the disaster, something happened. Although it didn’t list and its speed didn’t decrease at all, the distance between the boat’s gunwales and the surface of the water was rapidly dwindling. As his vessel became a veritable submarine and sank beneath the waves, the captain threw himself into the water.
Unable to determine what was going on, another group of boats some way off started closing on the scene while Su-In shouted at them to stop, but they hauled the panting men from the freezing water and sped back toward the harbor without anything else transpiring. Nothing, that is, except for a certain pronouncement.
Although it didn’t reach Su-In’s ears, a heavy, dull voice that might well have issued from the king of all water demons echoed from the bottom of the sea, saying, “Know that any who venture out to fish shall meet the very same fate. The sea is now your enemy. If the thought of that fills you with dread, then do as I say. There is a girl in your village by the name of Su-In—you must take the bead she has and cast it into the sea any time within the next three days. Once you’ve done so, I shall once again return this sea to you.”
The rescue boats returned to the village at full speed, and while the survivors were brought to the hospital, several other people hurried off to the mayor as quickly as possible to give him the urgent news. Insisting that the summer festival mustn’t be disrupted, the mayor ordered the sheriff and members of the town council to assemble immediately for a committee meeting. The messenger sent to Su-In’s house found D there, and when the young man appeared in a room in the town office like a black gale, the gloomy countenances were replaced with intermittent looks of rapture and horror.
Although D leaned back silently against one wall while the mayor first explained the current situation, then demanded some clarification about the bead and that it be turned over immediately, once the other man had finished speaking, the young man told them in an unhurried tone, “I don’t have the bead.”
“What in the—?!” the mayor said, the words dying in his mouth.
Everyone present exchanged glances. But no one was about to take D to task. They felt as if the threat from the deep suddenly stood right before their eyes.
“We have three days, don’t we?” D said in the same steely tone as always. “During that time, either the bead has to be found or whatever’s out in the sea has to be destroyed. That’ll be fine with you, won’t it?”
Once again the council members looked at each other, but all they could do was nod their agreement.
“Just what the blazes is that bead anyway?” the mayor said in a tone that made it clear this was the one question that couldn’t go unasked.
“Even I don’t know,” D replied.
“Why did Su-In have it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was that creature in the water?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is Su-In?” one of the council members asked sharply.
“She said she had some shopping to do and was headed off to the village of Kraus. I don’t know when she’ll be back.”
Kraus was the name of the port town where the ferry had landed.
“And another thing,” the council member said doggedly. “As soon as you walked in here, it felt like all the air in the room had frozen. You’re going to tell us just exactly what you are.”
“You’ve got some nerve, saying that,” Dwight interjected. As leader of the Youth Brigade, he was also part of the town council. “All I know is, he’s a traveling bodyguard. Someday he’ll be leaving our village. And isn’t it the law of the Frontier that you never ask travelers about their past or where they’re going?”
“This is hardly the time to be bringing that up, I think,” the council member said to Dwight, thinking he’d found the perfect angle for his attack. “His answer to every single question boils down to ‘I don’t know.’ Yet he has the gall to say all we have to do is defeat our enemy, like it’ll be no problem. I’d sure like to hear just how we’re supposed to do that. And even supposing the thing in the sea is taken care of, what guarantee do we have that a second or third threat won’t surface as long as the bead and those connected to it remain in town? I’m worried about what’ll happen next. Fine—we’ll let him take care of the situation. But even if he squares everything away nice and neatly, I want you to remember that the matter of whether or not Su-In will be allowed to stay in the village will hinge on what kind of explanation we get when all is said and done.”
“What do you mean, you heartless old pig?!” Dwight shouted, rising indignantly. “You lousy bastard! You think you have the right to say that about Su-In, or anyone in her family?! When that wild son of yours got lost out in the middle of a blizzard and wandered off into the Nobles’ resort, who was it that nearly froze to death out there finding him? Was it you? Was it any of you vultures sitting here around the table? Hell no, it was Su-In and Wu-Lin! And I hate to say it, but the last time you fixed up the house you still live in, just who was it that loaned you the funds you needed to renovate? Sorry, but was it the mayor? Was it the circuit bank? No, it was Su-In’s grandfather!”
The council member averted his now-pale face. Logically speaking, what the man had said a moment earlier made sense. However, in a village like this where, aside from their one week of summer, they basically lived on sticks and twigs and slept in snowdrifts, a sense of obligation in interpersonal relationships had to take priority over pure rationality. The harshness of life on the Frontier wouldn’t allow them to live any other way. If there was one thing people here detested more than a thief or a murderer, it was an ingrate.
“Yeah, but Dwight,” another council member interjected, “there’s some truth to what Tolso’s saying. As long as we’ve got access to the sea, we can make a living. But even if everything gets taken care of now, what are we supposed to do if more of these strange characters come and pull the same thing a second or third time? I’m afraid that, in the end, Su-In’s going to have to bear the responsibility for this. Bringing something as dangerous as a Noble into our one week of summer is a pretty serious offense.”
“You bastard! Are you trying to tell me that this is the fault of someone living in the same village as the rest of us or something?” Dwight said, stepping away from his chair. His whole body shook with rage. “Great! That’s just perfect!” the Youth Brigade representative shouted, waving his fist in front of the gloomy council member’s face. “Well then, I’ll bear the burden for my friend’s crime. I take it you won’t have any complaints if I get rid of that monster for you!”
“Now, that’s not what we were saying at all!”
“Shut up! I don’t wanna hear any more of your excuses!”
Dwight was just about to pounce on the other man when an arm in black stretched out in front of his chest. For a second, th
e expression the young fisherman wore made it look like he’d just been plunged into the heart of winter, but the man in black didn’t even glance at him. Instead, he turned to the others, who were all swallowing hard.
“You mentioned the Nobility, didn’t you?” D said like a beautiful shadow. “I heard it came from the sea. If I take care of this threat from the deep as well as the Noble, you’re not to do anything else about Su-In or the bead. You needn’t worry about a thing.”
A buzz that fell shy of actual words filled the room. While the statement sounded preposterous, at the same time, everyone there sensed that this dashing young man might actually be able to make good on it.
“And how do you propose we destroy a Noble—particularly one that comes from the sea like no Noble should be able to do?” asked the sheriff. Fear and expectation intertwined in his voice.
“I’m a Vampire Hunter.”
Now everyone’s eyes went wide.
The mayor immediately said, “Well, now—in one sense, that’s more than we could’ve ever hoped for. But I don’t care how good a Vampire Hunter you are, what we’re up against here is no ordinary Noble, you know!”
“I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” a dignified voice jeered through the open window. “He’s a dhampir—so he’s part Noble himself!”
Everyone‘s skin rippled with goose bumps. Even Dwight bugged his eyes, and he couldn’t say a word.
Though D tossed his gaze toward the garden, the voice was heard no more, and all signs of anyone being out there had also vanished. The Hunter then quickly turned and told the group, “That’s right.” In an indifferent tone he stated, “All I ask is that you stay out of my way for three days,” then exited with silent footsteps.
Everyone in the conference room was in a state of shock, and they slumped back in their chairs as if they’d lost consciousness. But before long, Dwight groaned in a troubled tone, “Oh, Su-In—what’ve you gotten yourself into?”
.
Shortly before D exited the meeting, the professor was leaving the vicinity of the town office at a rapid pace, walking down a narrow path that fed into the main street of the village as he said, “I believe that should suffice to restrict D’s movements. All that remains is to locate the bead as swiftly as possible, but I don’t know where it’s gone—perhaps I should go back and scour that spot again?” he mused.
Mysterious Journey to the North Sea, Part 2 Page 9