Throng of Heretics

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “No, wait a moment.”

  “Why, milord?”

  Though the wording was cordial, the tone was one of repressed rage. He was infused with a rebelliousness and savagery inconceivable in the old Gorshin. But one roar from a veritable thunder god swept that away.

  “Silence!”

  In time with his command the giant’s right arm swept out. With a dull thud Gorshin was sent sailing through the air, his neck bent ninety degrees. However, a split second before he was to slam against the wall, the young Nobleman extended his hand and struck a pose as if sticking to the wall, deftly leaping back and landing on his feet in precisely the same spot he’d been standing.

  The grand duke grinned.

  “Hold. Whether he wants to fight or not, our foe shall come to us.”

  Braylow suddenly halted. There had been a disturbance to the spiraling madness of his essentially aimless wandering. The latest disruption came from a baseless anxiety and a killing lust.

  “Rattling,” he muttered almost incomprehensibly. He could hear confirmation of that phrase from his back. Somewhere, something was happening that threw his two magic swords into a frenzy.

  “So, where am I?”

  Braylow squinted his eyes. He hadn’t the slightest idea of his present location. His unbalanced psyche sought to suppress its madness—and his wandering had been in search of an outlet for his insanity.

  “So, where am I?” he repeated, and a glowing green schematic appeared before his pale and slender face at eye level. For this Braylow was of the same blood as the train’s owner.

  He was at the front of the vehicle.

  “Rattling,” the demon swordsman of a Noble murmured. “Where is he?”

  And then he began to walk like a phantom. In no time he reached the control room. The look he gave the door that impeded further progress was colored with madness.

  “Just beyond this, then?”

  In a sense, Braylow was correct. When he took a step forward, a warning howled down at him from overhead.

  “Present entry card. This is a class one security area. Present entry card. If you cannot present credentials, leave the area. Attack to commence three seconds after this warning concludes. Three . . .”

  Braylow’s eyes began to give off a red glow.

  “Two . . .”

  His right hand reached for his back. The question was, which enchanted blade would he choose, Blue Soldier or Gray Soldier?

  “One.”

  From anywhere and everywhere countless arrows of light concentrated on Braylow. A heartbeat later, the lights limned new paths, and fire erupted from the ceiling, floor, and walls. See? Dozens of ultra-thermal rays had been stopped by Xeno Braylow’s twin longsword blades. Not only that, but all of them had been deflected back. The fires all around him were like cries from those stricken.

  “Impertinence,” Braylow spat, and his right arm plunged forward.

  Before there was time to subject him to a second assault, his blade had pierced the door, quickly shredding it like paper and making an opening large enough for a person to pass through with ease.

  “He must be up ahead.”

  Without hesitation, Braylow’s tall form stooped a bit to slip through the door.

  Ah, there was a reactor in the control room. Who could say for certain that his madness wouldn’t be unleashed on it in a gale of sword blades? And more importantly, who did the Nobleman mean when he said “he” was in the control room?

  III

  Annette was lying in bed when the door opened without so much as a knock. Since anxiety denied the girl sleep, her blood ran cold the instant she glimpsed the enormous figure filling the doorway. Before she could even ask what he was doing, the giant had glided over to the bed. Though his body looked as if it must weigh a ton, not so much as a single footstep was heard. Annette was scooped into his arms as if she were light as a feather. Those arms felt more like stone than steel, as did his chest. She could barely move her head, but that was all she could do.

  Annette’s eyes shifted their focus from the giant’s chest to his face. He was looking down at her. In that dark face were two points of light, crimson and blazing. Annette’s consciousness was swallowed up by darkness.

  The next thing the girl knew, she was lying on an operating table. Though her consciousness had clearly returned, the fact she remained unable to move so much as a finger was probably due to those burning eyes.

  Off to the right there were sounds of a fierce altercation.

  “Will you not cease this already?”

  The voice was that of Countess Genevieve.

  “Don’t interfere in this.”

  That was the grand duke.

  “He is waiting. Just one more step, and our aims will be achieved. Surely you must understand what a fabulous future this will unlock for the Nobility. And not for the Nobility alone!”

  “This will serve humanity as well? Have you not noticed? You are living in the past. You remain a slave to a nightmare you cannot escape!”

  The voice of persuasion was joined by the sound of a heavy impact, which then became a scream. Far past Annette’s head, there was the noise of a body slamming into a wall or something else.

  An overwhelming presence approached Annette.

  “No, don’t,” she said, her mouth moving. Though she couldn’t guess what was going to happen next, the fact that it was happening to her inspired terror far beyond imagining.

  The presence stopped beside the table. Immediately his words rained down on her.

  “Child, you shall be an invaluable lamb sacrificed for a greater purpose. Chances are you will not survive. However, by giving your life and soul, you will truly bring us one step closer to our goal. You have my gratitude!”

  “Stop it!”

  Annette tried madly to undo her bonds. Not so much as a strand of her hair stirred.

  “What are you talking about?! Don’t do this. Help me, Daddy. Mommy!”

  “Everyone called out as you do.”

  In Annette’s heart, a faint hope sparked. She’d felt a sadness in the grand duke’s voice she didn’t recall ever hearing there before.

  “I understand how you feel,” he continued. “It is not as if you were born to meet such a fate. Weep if you will. Joanne, Peter, Rita, Agnes, Tevis—all tortured me so. Turn my blood to ice. Give unto me such sadness it will still my heart. And always remember this: when your cries and pleas reach my ears, it is not that I’m unmoved. I am no murderer. Yet I must play the murderer. The surgery system I developed was not conceived to open your abdomen without the benefit of anesthesia and pull your heart out. My hands were not made to toy with your brains and turn them to pulp. Yet a greater purpose commands that I do so. Do not hate me alone. Though he was insistent, I, Grand Duke Drago, spent seventy long days in deliberation before deciding to take part in this project. Ah, if there is a God, let His punishment be swift. The moment our aim is achieved, let me be torn limb from limb. That would be fitting retribution for what I have become.”

  Annette’s mind was thoroughly deranged. Considering her position, the giant’s confessions were the ramblings of a madman. They were nonsense. A murderer’s contrition counted for nothing. However, it conveyed to Annette a mournfulness that surpassed mere sincerity. Once the giant’s ends had properly been met, he would undoubtedly tear himself to pieces.

  “Forgive me.”

  His voice, doleful and choked with anguish, brought Annette back to deadly reality. What was he going to do? What would happen? Her heart stopped.

  “Stop this!”

  In the time it took the girl to realize that desperate cry had come from the countess, the giant’s presence moved away. There was a clamor that dwarfed the earlier altercation, and it came from almost the same vicinity. There was a breeze and a different presence drawing nearer, and then a pale hand touched Annette’s brow—and the spell over her was broken.

  As the countess undid the girl’s straps one after another, Annette
stared at her in amazement. Far off to the right, between mechanisms of unknown purpose, the grand duke was pulling his massive form to its feet while purple sparks showered him. Apparently the force of his impact had shorted the machinery. The thought that somewhere inside her this delicate woman had power enough to throw that giant actually frightened Annette.

  Undoing the last of the straps, the countess said, “Flee,” and pointed to a distant doorway. “Your hero is just outside. I wished for such a husband.”

  After being told to hurry and getting a push to her back, Annette got down off the table and started to run. Halfway there, she looked back.

  The countess had just leapt right in front of the grand duke. With her elegant skirt gathered up, she delivered a savage kick to the giant’s jaw. As the grand duke reeled backward his right hand swung around, and the countess was pitched hard against the floor. Annette saw brains spill onto the floor from the countess’s head.

  Why would she do all this for me? the girl wondered. She’d heard that humans captured by the Nobility were either drained of their blood and made into servants, or else used as playthings or the subjects of weird experiments. And that was correct. However, there was no denying that at present a Noblewoman was engaged in deadly combat in order to protect her, a human. Head split open, the woman crawled across the floor.

  I’ve got to help her.

  The giant was closing on the girl. Though he was still over thirty feet away, the wind he whipped up and his unearthly aura buffeted her face. Fear forced Annette toward the doorway.

  The iron door was open. She probably had the countess to thank for that, as well.

  As soon as Annette was through it, from off to the right a voice called to her, “Little lady!”

  There was no need to ask who it was.

  “Pikk—you came to find me?”

  “No, to rescue you.”

  Annette set off behind the boy with the daring smile, but then she tumbled forward. The sudden lull in the strain had swept the legs out from under her. As soon as he noticed, Pikk came back, and with one glance he knew what was going on. Without so much as a cluck of his tongue he squatted down and lifted Annette.

  “Think you can walk?” he asked.

  “No.”

  No sooner did Annette notice the boy bending down than the next thing she knew he was carrying her on his back.

  “Are you okay?!”

  “Yeah, I’ll manage,” the boy replied. “A long time ago the village I lived in was attacked by the Nobility, and I ran around in the mountains all night long with Mom and my little sister on my back. Had to stop and rest about a hundred times, though.”

  “What became of your mother?”

  “We finally reached a valley with another village, and the Nobility attacked there too—and that time they got her. Got ’em both.”

  Annette didn’t know what to say.

  “Put the stakes through both their hearts myself.”

  Annette had the wind knocked out of her. It wasn’t all that strange. On the Frontier, almost everyone had had similar experiences, but she asked, “How old were you then?”

  “Eight, I suppose.”

  An eight-year-old boy driving stakes through his mother’s and sister’s chests—Annette tried to push the cruelty of it all from her head, but she didn’t fare well. Instead, however, she got a clearer sense of the broadness of the boy’s back and the strength of his gait than anyone anywhere.

  Something hot slid along the side of her nose. Just as she finished desperately fighting a hiccupping sob, behind them a cry of rage went up.

  The grand duke was out. What about Countess Genevieve?

  “Damn it, here he comes,” said Pikk. “And we were so close to getting to that car.”

  “It’s no use. We’ll never make it.”

  “You’ll never make anything if you always think it’s no use. You’ll have to go on and board it alone. I’ll hold off this bastard!”

  “You’re not going to escape with me?” Annette asked, surprise lowering her tone.

  “Well, I’m your guard.”

  “I fired you.”

  “Well, I’m a volunteer guard. Don’t you worry yourself about it.”

  The auto-car platform came into view. Taking the distance to it and the speed of whoever was closing on them from behind into account, Pikk thought to himself, We might not make it.

  “Ouff?!”

  There was a cry of surprise, and just a brief moment later a thud from the ground. When Pikk turned to look, his eye caught sight of the giant sprawled on all fours, like he’d made a dive.

  “Help from Heaven above.”

  The auto-car was a four-seater. Loading Annette in first, Pikk then got in and started it up.

  The giant, now rising to his feet, rapidly dwindled in the distance.

  “We’re in luck!” the boy exclaimed. “We just might make it out this way, eh?”

  “Think we’ll manage?”

  “At the moment, not really. Sure would be nice if God were to lend us a hand, though.”

  “Huh?” Annette said, listening attentively.

  “What’s wrong?” Pikk asked.

  The girl just cocked her head and said, “I don’t know. It’s just, I was certain I heard someone say, ‘Would you settle for little ol’ me?’”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  With that, Pikk forgot all about what Annette had said. The auto-car would soon reach its final stop.

  “So, what do we do next?” Annette asked apprehensively. She’d told the boy she could walk now and was no longer on his back.

  “Ain’t it obvious? We get outta this creepy train.”

  “But in order to do that you’d have to get it to stop first. Jumping off would be suicide!”

  “That’s why we’re going to the engine room now.”

  Annette was astonished.

  “The engine room—can you operate this thing?!”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s fantastic! Where’d you learn to do that?”

  Pikk furrowed his brow. “Out in the sticks. They had a steam engine that was a lot like this.”

  “A steam engine? Are you talking about some half-assed bumpkin railway line?”

  “Hey, no need to call ’em half-assed.”

  “I think it’d be best not to lump this train in with some countrified steam locomotive, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Oh, is that a fact?” Pikk said, turning away in a snit. “Anyway, let’s get moving. We don’t have any other play. If I can’t operate the thing, I’ll bust its engine and make it stop.”

  “You’re out of your mind!” the dumbfounded Annette shot back.

  The boy gave her an equally disgusted look. “You talk about this like you’re just on the sidelines. I’m doing all of this for you!”

  “Don’t take that patronizing tone with me. No one ever asked for your help!”

  “You got a problem with that?”

  “No, you’ve got a problem with that!”

  Just as their argument was beginning to escalate, figures alighted from the ceiling to stand before the pair.

  “What the hell?!” Pikk exclaimed, backing away.

  Annette couldn’t say a word.

  “Did you think you merely needed to board the auto-car to make good your escape?” Xeno Gorshin asked, stark fangs bared.

  “We were waiting outside the operating room all along on orders from the grand duke,” Benelli added, giving Annette an impassioned look utterly at odds with the image his garb projected.

  “How come you let us be this long?!” Pikk asked, stepping in front of Annette to shield her.

  “Because if we waited until you believed yourself safe, your despair would be all the greater.”

  Gorshin’s fine jacket shook in time to his laughter. Apparently it was a bit large for him.

  “You sick Nobles.”

  Pikk planted one foot and was ready to spring on them, but then t
hought better of it. He had a responsibility to guard Annette. However, now faced by these two Noblemen who were even more wicked and powerful than before, he wasn’t sure if he’d ultimately be able to fulfill that duty.

  The vibrations of the train came to the boy faintly—yet far stronger than always. It was a moment later that the shaking took on a mass like solid rock and slammed against all of them.

  The Hellfighter Express

  chapter 10

  I

  Screaming, the two Noblemen were pitched to the rear. As Annette, too, flew into the air, Pikk grabbed her by the arm, and before his eyes the bulkhead loomed closer. He planted his feet with strength enough to offset the shockwave. Annette stopped in midair—in truth his pull was perfectly balanced with the push of the shockwave, leaving her floating, but to Pikk it seemed nothing less than a miracle. And he continued to think so even after Annette quickly fell to the floor, and, once he’d confirmed that she was okay, he turned his eyes to his ankle—which he could see had a pale, disembodied hand wrapped around it.

  “Th-that’s—?!” the boy stammered, eyes wide.

  “D’s left hand. You probably remember my voice,” it said to him.

  “D?!” His name had the same effect as spring water sipped out in the blazing heat.

  “That’s right,” the hoarse voice replied. “Okay, let’s hustle. Those two will be on us in no time!”

  “Hell, I know that. Are you okay?”

  Annette nodded yes.

  “Okay, now let’s find an emergency door and get outta here.”

  The left hand protested Pikk’s suggestion. “No, we stay inside. He’s looking for the grand duke.”

  “He—you mean D?”

  “Bingo.”

  “But we can’t stay like this. For starters, why’d the train make an emergency stop?”

  “I don’t know that, either,” the hoarse voice replied.

  “Here they come!” Annette cried shrilly, pointing up ahead.

  From the other end of the corridor a pair of figures were taking shape, and they were filled with madness.

  “Go back,” the left hand said tersely. “There’s a stairwell on the right. Climb it.”

  Panting for breath, they finished their climb at a vast hall. Luxurious sofas and a bar were arranged along a row of oversized windows. As Pikk surveyed their surroundings, an incredibly soft melody flowed into his ears. The musicians assembled at one end of the hall were bringing life to their golden instruments. However, their outlines were somehow indistinct, and the background bled through them. They were three-dimensional projections—phantoms. After thousands of years, they finally had an audience before them. The song was so beautiful and their performance so splendid both Pikk and Annette forgot that they were being pursued and listened for a while.