Throng of Heretics

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “If you find it funny, laugh. If you’re sad, cry. The problem with humans is they’re always so boring. Don’t they know there are so many things in this world to be enjoyed?”

  The question was posed with puzzlement and not the least bit of malice, but it stirred anger in Annette’s heart.

  “What are you talking about? If we’re dour, it’s the fault of you Nobles. By night you come into our villages and take our people, draining their blood and turning them into your kind, and anyone who opposes you gets their head lopped off on the spot. You cause fires and floods and make the earth split wide—so how are we supposed to remain cheery?!”

  “That may be,” the countess said, taking the glass from her lips and shrugging her shoulders. The gesture was so charming, Annette nearly smiled in spite of herself.

  An instant later, Annette’s jaw dropped. The countess’s profile had been plastered with a severity that seemed that of someone else entirely. Even her voice had changed.

  “That is correct. And that is why we had such hope for them.”

  “Hope?”

  “Yes. As test subjects.”

  “What do you mean by that?” the girl asked, her mouth working of its own accord.

  Up until now, Annette had harbored even less interest in the Nobility than the average person. She’d had no reason to care about them. In her home in Krishken mercenaries in her father’s employ had guarded her, so she couldn’t recall ever feeling the fear of the Nobility experienced by other villagers, and after graduating from the village junior high school at the age of thirteen she’d immediately been enrolled in a boarding school in the Capital for high school.

  In the Capital the threat of the Nobility was so slight it made the fear others had felt in the village of Krishken seem no more than a dream. Though there were those at school who showed a sincere interest in the lives and history of the Nobility and chose the scholarly path, Annette had decided from the very start to ignore all that. More than the Nobility, it was country life that she wanted to distance herself from. So long as she lived in this world, the shadow of the Nobility would menace her whether she liked it or not. Sooner or later she would run headlong into her destiny, but while she was in the Capital she wanted to maintain as much distance as she could. And for a girl of her sheltered upbringing, that wasn’t at all unusual.

  But no sooner had she left the Capital than she was attacked in the rain, narrowly being saved through D’s power. In a situation she could never have imagined in her life up until now, she’d fallen victim to successive tricks of fate that’d ultimately seen her captured underground. Now a Noblewoman sat before the girl. The mud walls of her indifference crumbled, and on her face one might catch a glimpse of the interest in the Nobility it had concealed. No, even if one had no eyes to open, the truth would be plain to see. There was no denying that the countess’s strange cheerfulness and her admission to not drinking blood had played a part in the girl’s change of heart.

  “In short, not all Nobles thought only of keeping humanity under our control,” Genevieve continued after a sip of wine. Though her tone was lifeless, the way she drank or held the glass in her fingers was the very pinnacle of refinement. Annette actually felt a little embarrassed.

  “During our golden age, there was nothing the humans could do to us, yet their resistance never abated. And what it earned was not on the level of the earthquakes and storms you’ve just mentioned. In locations around the world, hundreds of thousands of humans were executed. Picture, if you will, watching someone you know being ground into minced meat while still alive.”

  Annette felt slightly dizzy. The only thing that kept her from succumbing to it was the look of disgust on the face of the countess. Did this Noblewoman sympathize with humanity?!

  “But then, even the least of human beings know of that, do they not? Yet the fires of rebellion you felt toward us did not die out—why the troubled face? Could it be you knew nothing of this?”

  “N-no.”

  “Yes.”

  As the Noblewoman nodded without a trace of doubt, Annette had to divert her gaze. She was being fiercely buffeted by a certain emotion. Shame. At present, she heard the voice of the countess only as a distant chiding.

  “The Nobility poured millennia of time, knowledge, effort, and power into mastering and eliminating the rebellious urges in your kind. They sought to kill your spirit. It ended in failure. Neither time nor fear was able to change humanity. Finally, the board of directors of the Noble Mental Research Center in the Capital were forced to make public a certain conclusion.” Glancing at Annette, she continued, “You are familiar with it, are you not?”

  “No,” she said, her voice no more than the buzzing of a mosquito.

  The countess made an incredulous expression.

  “You don’t know it? But you’re a human, are you not?”

  The Red Hand of Evil

  chapter 8

  I

  Caught in the stare of those glittering eyes, Annette was several times more ashamed than she was scared. I never had any interest in any of that, she thought, but she couldn’t say the words. “No, I know it,” she said, mustering all her strength in an effort to put on a straight face.

  The countess nodded.

  “That made us reevaluate the human race. You might say we gave them the respect they were due. We thought your kind would need to be exterminated, or gathered up and sent off to some other dimension. Yet you simply would’ve returned—in time.”

  In her heart, Annette heaved a sigh. Not the sort prompted by being impressed. The sort that came from disgust. Are humans really such incredible creatures? The thought rose through her like bile.

  Annette held the human race in complete contempt. When she was a child, the villagers who’d come to her father the mayor with this or that request were so pitiful, so servile. The same was true of the people she’d seen in the Capital. Unable to even understand the system the Nobility had created, they sheepishly made use of what they could—perhaps one millionth of the system’s capabilities—but attempted to create nothing of their own. Yet they fervently researched the culture of the Nobility to the point of forsaking all earthly pleasures, putting together such infantile hypotheses even Annette could understand them—and to her it appeared utterly inane.

  What was this conclusion the countess spoke of? Interest reared its heavy head, then quickly returned to normal. That was something that’d happened thousands of years in the past. It had no bearing on Annette’s daily life.

  “Wait here a while. I know not what will happen later, but you’re safe for now.”

  Feeling relief seeping into her chest, Annette took a seat on a nearby sofa.

  “There was a boy with me,” she said, her lips only able to move due to the relief that filled her heart. “What’ll become of him?”

  “This is the first I’ve heard of him. Might he be with the formidable foe who pursues the grand duke? If such is the case, he is in danger.”

  “He could get caught in the crossfire?”

  “I can’t imagine what manner of battle it shall be, but it would leave him far from safe. I know not whether even we shall be safe.”

  “But that’s—” Annette had nothing to finish that with. Like the countess, she couldn’t begin to imagine what shape a battle between that giant and D might take or how it might conclude, and she was afraid to even think about it.

  On a diagram spread in midair, a green point of light was on the move. From the exterior and interior views, it was clear that the diagram was schematics for the train.

  “This is the control room—or maybe the driver’s seat would be a better name for it,” said the hoarse voice. “But since this gives us a vantage point for the entire layout of the train and tells us the passengers’ movements, there’s no way we could miss him. He’s got plenty of gumption. And he’s headed right this way.”

  “How does he know we’re in here?” asked D.

  “The train probably
told him. This is his kingdom. He’s got more unseen lackeys than you can shake a stick at. But fighting him here’s too dangerous!”

  There was no need to mention the presence of the reactor.

  D was already making for the door.

  “Hold up. I’m going, too!” Pikk said, ready to follow after him.

  “Don’t budge from here,” the Hunter told him without ever turning around.

  The boy froze in place. Still he spoke, saying, “Why not? I could be useful in helping you rescue the little lady.”

  “Instead of trying to be useful,” the hoarse voice began, “you’d be more help by not getting in our way. Just stay here and behave yourself. Oh, I just know you’re gonna tail us no matter what we say. I’ll just make you snooze a while.”

  The left hand reached for his shoulder. Just before it could touch him, the boy used his every muscle to bound toward the door ahead of him.

  “Ha! Treat me like I’m dead weight, will you? I’m through asking for help. I’ll do as I please. And when you guys get into a jam I ain’t gonna help, just remember that!”

  The door shut, cutting off part of Pikk’s final remark.

  “My, but isn’t he the spunky little bastard!” said a voice that could only be taken as a wry grin. “Sure must be sweet on that girl. The kid’s ready to give his life for her!”

  D’s lips moved.

  The hoarse voice filled with surprise.

  “But then, the board of the Noble Mental Research Center said it all. Still, he shouldn’t be so determined, so introspective at such a young age. You really can’t apply their view to all humans, no sirree. Just like the Nobility’s got some that are okay and some that are messed up, so it goes with humans too. The squirt’s okay, but to be so damned—”

  The rest of the hoarse voice’s words were also truncated by the door.

  D headed straight on an intercept course with the enemy. Naturally, there was no thought of Annette on his mind.

  “One million dalas, as agreed.”

  The bag set on the table shifted slightly. Due to the gold coins that filled it, it looked as soft and lumpy as clay. The owner of that bag sat in a wheelchair flanked by bodyguards, one of whom swallowed hard and said, “That’s a hell of a payday. For that much, you could run a whole town on the Frontier for a hundred years.”

  “On the other hand, make a mistake and that million dalas won’t be worth dirt to you,” the man in the wheelchair said in a horrible monotone that made the guard wince. “Even someone as famous across the Frontier as D can’t take on Grand Duke Drago and expect to come away unscathed.”

  “I know that name,” D replied.

  The secretary who sat at a desk a good distance away punching their conversation into a typewriter pressed her hand to her chest and slumped over the machine. Her expression had dissolved in rapture—for she’d heard D’s voice.

  “But I’d heard he’d died in the distant past,” the Hunter continued.

  “A little over five thousand years ago, or so they say,” the man—his employer—concurred with a nod.

  Though he is described here as a man, that could be determined by his voice alone. The head that emerged from his gorgeously embroidered robe was fully contained by an iron mask. Not only that, but the hands that poked from his sleeves were also sheathed in gleaming silver gauntlets all the way down to the tips of his fingers. From the tremble in his voice, it was clear that his monotone was actually due to restraining the fierce emotion from his voice.

  “Indeed, he was destroyed. But what he built still lives somewhere out on the Frontier. The legendary Tube Express, for example. It seems this enormous train, like some sort of huge hotel or perhaps a factory of sorts, races through transparent tubes at nearly the speed of sound. As to why he would construct such a thing, whether purely for sightseeing or for some other purpose—even now views vary, and any conclusions are fog-bound. One theory has it that it was built for conducting outrageous experiments, but that remains unclear.”

  “What’s gone won’t be coming back,” D said. It was a tone that could permeate rock. “Why dig it up again?”

  “A dozen days ago, I gave a traveler lodging at my home. That was the first mistake. At first blush he looked to be a timid man, but at night his true nature suddenly became apparent and he killed my entire family. I asked him then who he was, and he told me he was a human who’d been transformed by Grand Duke Drago. Five thousand years ago he was abducted by the grand duke and used as a guinea pig in certain experiments. As a result, he said his veins flowed with the blood of a Noble who by day might walk in the light of the sun without harm. And when he called on our house, it had been by the sunlit hours of day. Oh, if only I had noticed then. His face was fine as any peach blossom, his eyes calm. His neck was fully exposed and free of fang marks. But that doesn’t absolve me of sin. My children were against letting him stay with us. No doubt a childish instinct or something let them see through him. I’d scolded my children, told them our family had a tradition of showing compassion to strangers, and invited him in. Compassion? Tradition? What had I done?

  “He said he wouldn’t make me one of them. Told me to put my family to rest. And as he left, he added something. That the Grand Duke Drago who’d made him what he was had sped about the Frontier in a train that resembled a huge castle. Though the train and the tube around it have vanished beneath the sands, they neither rust nor decay. Even now it lies quietly beneath the sand, awaiting the hour of its resurrection. Naturally, its master Grand Duke Drago too is merely in a long slumber, awaiting his own hour of resurrection in a coffin secured somewhere in the train.

  “My mission in life is set. D, find where that train rests out on the Frontier and drive a wooden stake through Grand Duke Drago’s heart as he slumbers there. And once the grand duke’s been destroyed, drive another one right through the center of his ashes. In all eternity I can never make up for my sin, but once you’ve done this the souls of my three children, my wife, my parents, and a score of our servants will be able to take their place with God at last.”

  The man in the iron mask trembled violently from head to foot. It was a mad spasm of grief and anger. There could be no doubt it would become lunacy in a matter of seconds.

  A black-gloved hand grabbed the bag.

  “You’ll take the job, then?” the employer’s other guard said, the words escaping in a tone of relief.

  “I’ll contact you periodically,” D told him, and then he turned his back to the man.

  “I’ll go, too,” his employer said, his voice following the Hunter. “I’ll go with you. Let me drive a stake through Grand Duke Drago’s heart. Please, take me with you.”

  D slipped out the door.

  The voice continued to howl madly. “Vengeance for my children. Vengeance for my parents and my wife. Rip the grand duke’s heart out and let me drink its gushing blood.”

  Was the iron armor intended to deny his employer his freedom? Beneath that mask, did he gnash the fangs of a Noble?

  D closed the door. Suddenly, he was in a vast area.

  “Well, if this don’t beat all,” the hoarse voice said sarcastically, though its tone carried some surprise.

  Countless gravestones and monuments loomed before D.

  “A train with its own graveyard? Maybe we should call this the Afterlife Express? Oh, they’ve got names carved in ’em.”

  “They’re all human names,” said D.

  “All the folks who died after being used in their experiments? That’s one unexpectedly thoughtful Noble. But what’s the meaning of these flowers?”

  Before every grave were flowers that looked freshly picked, and their petals were even covered with water droplets.

  “No way that was the grand duke’s doing. Who in blazes, then?”

  Of course, from the very start no reply had been expected from D, but sensing something beyond the pale, a face formed in the palm of the left hand. Its tiny eyes took in the vast graveyard—and caught sig
ht of the gigantic figure standing at one end of the car.

  “Such a gorgeous man. Your beauty has earned an introduction. I am Grand Duke Drago.”

  “D.”

  The grand duke’s enormous frame quaked for an instant, but it was unclear whether D caught that or not.

  “Oh, such murderous intent. Man who calls himself D, even your killing lust is exquisite. At the moment, I’m trembling. It’s so pure, so unalloyed. But something else makes my chest quake. D, D, D—who named you thus? I know. No, I know nothing. Your left hand—something inhabits it, does it not? He said so. Said that you were his only—something. He? Who is he?”

  The giant spoke without once pausing for breath, and it took several seconds for him to finish. However, it was clear he was in a confused state. What was it that startled this ancient fiend risen from the far reaches of time, and how would D counter him?

  II

  Who hears the voices of the dead? Screams short of actual words shoot from lungs choked with moldering earth, and the dead awaken from dreams of the great nebula. The hellish pain of being pierced by swordlike cosmic rays becomes their curse on the two who look down at their graves. Though to them it probably sounds like the most beautiful singing in the world.

  “Where are we?”

  Even to D, that must’ve seemed an odd question.

  “What have I done here? Do you know, D?”

  “His memory seems confused,” the hoarse voice said with great interest. “Maybe it’s because he slept for almost five thousand years? Or else—”

  “He wanted to forget?”

  That icy assertion silenced the hoarse voice for a moment. Its next words even sounded mournful.

  “Could be.”

  D’s right hand went for the longsword on his back. Both the grand duke’s hands sank beneath his cape.

  For these two, was battle a dirge for the dead?

  Eyes on both sides held a crimson glow. D’s eyes. The grand duke’s eyes.

  The dead sang. The prelude to the final battle of Armageddon.