Iriya the Berserker (13 page)

How did the boy summon them?
, she had to wonder. Judging from the heat, she knew the dragons had released their flames.

There was still water in her lungs. Giving up on her question, Iriya began feverishly clawing her way through the water. Something caught hold of her foot.

She turned around. The man was on the water’s surface. It wasn’t his weird appearance that held Iriya’s attention, but rather the burn marks that clearly remained on the right half of his face and body.

The fire dragons’ flames could wound the water monster.

“I’m not letting you get away. Come here!” the man said in a voice like a wraith’s. He pulled her closer.

Wringing out her last bit of strength, Iriya spun herself a hundred and eighty degrees.

“Dive!”

The man probably didn’t realize what that cry from shore forewarned until the instant the scalding flames once again shot across the water, vaporizing the lower half of his body.

Having dived under to escape the boiling water, Iriya resurfaced to find the man had vanished without a trace.

Once she’d swum to shore, Iriya, still coughing, confirmed that Meeker was safe. Something must’ve been done to him, because his eyes were vacant and showed no emotion at the sight of her.

“Got to get him back to D. I need a breather!” the Huntress said, seemingly addressing herself, before she turned to Al.

“Thank you.”

She wrapped her arms around him.

The boy became a stone statue.

“How did you call the fire dragons?”

“Er, um . . . with a flute.”

He seemed to be in a daze after watching his home burn to the ground.

“But they got here so fast. It’s almost as if they lived around here.”

“Well, my house is on the other side of the swamp. It just happened to be watering time for them, and—”

“And they get their water from the swamp.”

Once again, Iriya hugged the young man with all her might. Even after she let go of him, Al remained in exactly the same pose.

“Let’s get going.”

Taking the two boys by the hand, Iriya was leading them toward the village square when she heard something knifing through the air.

Arriving in the square, D and Gianne collided with the throng.

Desperate cries intermingled there.

“Carry him to Dr. Torres!”

“No, he’s past saving now.”

Pushing his way through the mob, D saw Al lying at its center. Darts impaled his heart and throat. It was clear at a glance that he’d received fatal injuries.

“What happened?” D asked a nearby farmer.

“Damned if I know. Just now, he fell to the ground as soon as he stepped from that alley.”

“What’s back that way?”

“The swamp. Nothing but that.”

To D’s rear, Gianne gasped. She said, “The waters are Kraken’s domain! But—” She drew a breath. “This dart belongs to Don J. Aside from me, he’s the only one left of those Langlan hired. If he’s here—”

The archeress stiffened. And it wasn’t just her—the surrounding villagers froze as well. The young man in black stood at the focus of a dead gaze.

“It’s just a coincidence. All of us . . . We were working independently . . . You have to believe me!”

The mysterious tableau Gianne had witnessed a short time earlier flashed into her brain like lightning. As the left hand that’d consumed the entire ceramic pitcher told D that water and earth should be enough, the Hunter’s sword had flashed out, and Langlan’s fold in space—something a nuclear weapon wouldn’t be able to scratch—had been broken.

What was this gorgeous young man? For the first time Gianne had felt true fear.

However, now the superhuman killing lust had vanished, and he pressed his left hand to the boy’s bloodied throat. The boy had already breathed his last. But then, with the murderous implements still stuck in him, Al squeezed out a faint thread of a voice.

The villagers pulled back like a sudden fleeing tide.

“The dart guy . . . from the festival . . . suddenly showed up . . . Said something about . . . taking Iriya and the kid . . . to Langlan’s castle . . .”

D stood up. As soon as the Hunter’s left hand came away, Al went to his reward.

On seeing how the young man of unearthly beauty put gleaming coins in the boy’s mouth in keeping with Frontier tradition, the villagers were stunned. Those five-thousand-dala coins were worth about the same as the village’s annual budget.

“Give him the best funeral the village can offer. What’s left goes to his family.”

No one needed to be warned against trying to pocket the money.

D turned to Gianne.

“Going to kill me, too?”

The whole village froze.

“Please . . .”

That was all Gianne could manage by way of a reply. And it took her eleven seconds to muster that much.

“Show me the way to Langlan’s castle.”

Gianne could only nod her consent to D’s demand.

The whole reason Gianne had called on D was to inform him of Count Langlan’s intentions and to get him to stop Iriya’s travels. Before Langlan let Iriya exact her revenge on him, he wanted to solve the riddle of why she remained physically human despite having been bitten. Toward that end, Iriya alone was to be led back to his castle. D was in the way. Gianne had orders to get rid of him. And now—they were riding their cyborg horses night and day in a five-day trip to Langlan’s castle, and she was staring at D’s profile.

From the very start, she’d known it was no use.

Two years earlier, as a newly trained archer, Gianne had been pursuing a group of five outlaws when she fell into their trap and was brought to the brink of death. Just as the pitch-black nothingness was about to swallow her up, D had come rushing in and laid waste to them. The keenness of his swordplay, along with his good looks, was enough to drive Gianne to rapture. She’d certainly been disappointed to learn that D had been pursuing the same outlaws.

When she’d first entered the Nobleman’s employ, she hadn’t known the Huntress had traveling companions. However, on learning that it was D that accompanied her, Gianne had given up the fight. Only partly because she was in his debt. Ever since, she’d burned as a woman. No, as a human being. In Gianne’s eyes, D was an object of adoration surpassing the ideal man—a being who would allow her to maintain her purity.

“What in the—?”

Far in the distance, a purplish light was rising from the desolate plain. At supersonic speed.

“. . . One thousand . . . One thousand five hundred . . . Two thousand . . .”

The afternoon sky was clear. When the light burst, the heavens darkened. Rain clouds. But they weren’t hanging over D and Gianne.

“Roughly thirty miles ahead of us,” the hoarse voice said. “Someone shot off a rain shell—and Kraken favors the water.”

The man—Don J—had taken great pains to avoid the water. It was the source of the opposition’s power. It existed everywhere. Though he had faith in the implements his employer had provided, the enemy was simply too powerful.

Don J also saw the point of light.

Oh, shit!
he thought, because it’d been fired from somewhere terribly close by, and the instant those dark clouds spread overhead, rain began to pound down like a waterfall. However, he had no choice but to keep going.

The man advanced his wagon and its two-horse team beneath the dark clouds. Iriya had been injected with a hypnotic drug, Meeker seemed to have had his soul sucked out to begin with, and both of them lay in the cargo bed behind him. He’d had the foresight to purchase the wagon from a farmer in advance.

The rain intensified, and the horses and wagon seemed to give off white smoke. Don J was already soaked to the skin. The rain was bad enough, but water from the wagon wheels splashed him from head to toe, forcing him to hold his breath.

“To the east it’s all swamps and lakes—can’t go that way, not even by accident!”

The fight hadn’t gone out of Don J’s eyes.

Suddenly, the horses changed direction. They turned left—onto the road east.

“Idiots! Where do you think you’re going?”

Though he madly tugged on the reins and cracked the whip, the horses wouldn’t halt their crazed gallop in the one direction they weren’t supposed to go in. Almost as if they were receiving orders from some other, more capable driver.

“What gives? Whoa! Would you
stop
already?”

Shifting his gaze from the backs of the horses to their hooves, Don J widened his eyes.

The damp black earth held a reflection of the horses’ legs and the driver’s seat. He also made out a man cracking a whip. Too shocked for words, Don J fearfully turned his eyes to his right. There was no one there. And there was no way there could be. Yet—he looked down again. There was a man. Wasn’t he covered in bandages and sitting to Don’s right, working that whip?

Don J lashed with the whip like a man possessed. The bandaged man struck as well. Though it was Don J’s whip that actually struck them, in his reflection in the water he had no whip in his hands, and the bandaged figure’s whip alone controlled the horses.

Rain surrounded him. Driving rain. And wasn’t the water Viscount Kraken’s world?

It was unclear just how much time had passed, but the world was sealed in darkness, while only the pounding of iron-shod hooves defied the sound of the rain—but they stopped unexpectedly.

Taking a repeating rifle from the weapon locker under the driver’s seat, Don J braced the weapon against his shoulder.

“Come on! I’m just waiting for you!”

His shouts were instantly obliterated by the rain.
But look!
Not thirty feet ahead of the wagon, an unmistakably human figure had taken shape. The instant Don J was sure it was a man wrapped from head to toe in bandages, he pulled the trigger on his rifle. The force of the large-bore rifle was evident in the way the nearly twelve-pound weapon kicked.

The bandaged figure’s head was blown to bits. Just like the rain, they were clear water. From the neck down the figure had collapsed, clothes and all.

“Did that finish him?” Don J said to himself, thinking he had an eternal mystery on his hands.

“Nope.”

The voice came from down at his feet.

Looking down reflexively, Don J saw on the water’s surface the figure in bandages sitting in the driver’s seat.

“Son of a bitch!”

Standing up and quickly firing a shot into the mysterious form, all he saw was a splash of water, and once that was gone the bandaged figure was in the driver’s seat again.

“You son of a bitch, you!” Don J shouted, so whipped up all he could do was adjust his hold on the rifle.

That same rifle was wrenched from his grip by a hand that’d suddenly reached around from behind him.

“What are you—?”

Was what Don J saw real? Or was it some dream reflected in the falling rain?

Grinning by Don J’s right side, the bandaged figure pulled the trigger of the gun now leveled by his hip.

Taking the kind of massive sixty-caliber round that would pierce a fire dragon’s armor to the center of his chest, Don J was blown fifteen feet from the driver’s seat, sending up a great splash as he hit the black ground.

Lowering the rifle, the bandaged figure let out a low laugh. “The water is Viscount Kraken’s domain! As soon as you were soaked in the rain, this fight was as good as over.”

He turned to the bed of the wagon.

“We may need the woman, but the brat’s of no further use. Here’s where you buy it.”

Not hesitating in the least, he turned the cruel barrel of the weapon on Meeker. The bandaged finger around the rifle’s trigger gave a strong squeeze.

A heartbeat later, there was an explosive flash.

A blast had occurred between the wagon and its reflection on the road not twenty yards ahead. The blinding flash of white light carried enough heat to instantly vaporize the falling rain. It evaporated the moisture alone, not even singeing anything else. Iriya and Meeker were both unharmed, and while the pile of bandages in the driver’s seat was steaming, the cloth wasn’t charred.

The strange heat dart had been hurled by Don J, who’d since given up the ghost. As proof of his confidence in his ability to exact vengeance on his foe even on the brink of death, his face wore a rictus that was practically hysterical with mirth.

When D and Gianne arrived on the scene, the wagon carrying Iriya and Meeker had halted, along with the horses pulling it. Though remnants of the wondrous battle between fire and water still remained, D paid no attention to them, climbing instead into the back of the wagon. He immediately put his left hand to Meeker’s brow, and the hoarse voice informed him, “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

At the same time, Meeker opened his eyes. His hand reached out for Iriya.

A drop of water splashed against the back of it.

“Kraken,” Gianne said from the back of her steed, shaking free the bow she wore over her left shoulder. It wasn’t the repeating-fire kind. Hers was an old-fashioned half-moon bow that fired one shot at a time. Nocking the first arrow, she waited with four more sandwiched between the fingers of her left hand. The half-moon bow might not have repeating fire, but it could be shot in a manner so artistic and unholy no crossbow could match it.

The silky threads of rain from the artificial storm swiftly became a torrential downpour. Covering Meeker and Iriya with a waterproof tarp from the wagon, D stood tall and looked all around.

Gianne’s breath was taken away.

The rain-hazed stand of trees ahead unexpectedly blurred like a watercolor painting dropped in a puddle, the trees crashing down as if they were pillars of water. Next, a closer tree dissolved, then a second was transformed into water.

“D, at this rate it’s going to get us too!”

D didn’t respond to Gianne’s cry. When he saw the fifth tree away from them melt into water, he threw a rough wooden needle into the fourth. An unearthly cry of pain shattered the droning downpour. The stand of trees remained as it was, and the rainfall concentrated beside it.

Shrouded in what almost looked like white smoke, a colossal figure more than ten feet tall came into focus like an image in India ink.

“Viscount Kraken?”

It was unclear whether Gianne was cowed by his overwhelming size and his air of malevolence, but on the back of her rearing cyborg horse she kept her arrow unerringly trained on the giant’s heart.

Closing his massive hand into a fist and pulling something from the left side of his chest, he hurled it straight at D with a grunt.

Easily catching the rough wooden needle that’d pierced the giant’s heart in his left hand, the Hunter introduced himself, saying, “I’m D, and I have something to ask you.” Either he didn’t realize he was in no position to be making requests, or he was showing his confidence that his deadly skill could slay the giant where he stood.

“Ah,” said the voice that fell from ten feet high, carrying evident surprise. “I believe I have heard that name before. You are an exquisite man, I see. Now I can understand why Nobles could be so taken with the sight of you that they’re easily cut down.”

Striking the left side of his chest, he said, “You made me experience pain for only the second time in my life. You’re a man to be feared. However, if all that skill cannot slay me, then it matters not! See what it is to battle in Kraken’s watery hell—and then die.”

An arrow whined through the air, sinking into the Nobleman right between the eyes. Seemingly having no effect at all, the arrow came out through the back of his head.

“Did you imagine an arrow would have any effect on water? The man known as D is special!” Viscount Kraken declared in a voice like bubbles bursting. In fact, something foamy was actually spilling from his thick, toad-like lips. It didn’t fall to the ground, but rather rose high into the darkness.

“You know, there’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while now,” Gianne said in a fashion that was actually rather bold. “Isn’t water supposed to be taboo for the Nobility?”

“Correct,” Kraken replied without the least delay. “Before I became like this, I was a Noble living on dry land. That was four and a half millennia ago. However, one spring day a faulty setting on the aircraft carrying my wife and daughter caused it to crash in the lakes region.
This
is the result.”

Changing the subject, he continued, “What do you think are the ways to destroy a Noble? A wooden stake driven through the heart, decapitation, burning in fire? All will suffice, and all do a splendid job of reducing us to dust. All save drowning. My wife and daughter were ladies who placed more value on their Nobility than anyone I know. All their lives it was so. I know not how many times they scolded me for my own lapses. However, when the two of them were fished from the lake, they were foul swine bloated with all the water they had inhaled. It was then that I swore I would master water. And it took me some three thousand seven hundred years to reach this point!”

“A Noble who wanted to be a fish—that wouldn’t even make a good routine for some comedian out in the sticks,” the hoarse voice spat venomously.

“I of all people can solve the riddle of this girl’s physiology. Why is it that time and again she has felt the fangs of Nobles, yet instead of being made their servant she raises her hand against them? This may very well be a boon to the declining Nobility. D, I shall take the girl now!”

A great splash of water bounced off the waterproof tarp. Focused rain.
And look!
The tarp, shrouded in gray, misty spray, lost its shape and color, and then began to disappear as if it were dissolving in the water—along with the two figures beneath it.

“That ain’t good!” the hoarse voice exclaimed from the Hunter’s left hand. D had just placed it on the tarp.

See how that veritable waterfall of rain became a single column of water that was swallowed by the mouth that opened in the palm of the Hunter’s hand.

In the darkness, the mountain of a Nobleman gasped.

Gianne’s bowstring twanged twice, sending its projectiles toward his heart. She knew full well the attack was in vain. However, when they pierced the heart of that colossal figure, they became scorching balls of flame.

“Gaaaaaah!”

Kraken—the great sea beast—doubled over, clutching his chest. Beneath his hands, it glowed crimson. Just then, fireballs and black smoke gushed from his mouth, nose, and ears, followed shortly by more from his stomach and crotch.

“Count Langlan was good enough to give me these flame arrows. He thought if there was any weapon that could slay Viscount Kraken, this was it.”

The giant jerked his head back and opened his mouth. Smoke still poured from his mouth like it was a chimney, and his whole body twitched.

D didn’t wait for the smoke to stop. The instant he saw that the rain on the tarp had diminished with the viscount’s spasms, the Hunter launched himself into the air. His legs were so powerful he easily sailed more than thirty feet, drawing his blade an instant later and swinging it at a neck as thick as a giant tree trunk.

The Nobleman’s head fell. By the time it passed his chest it had become a ball of water devoid of eyes and a nose, and before it hit the ground it had fallen to droplets.

“What the—” Gianne exclaimed, pulling tight on the reins as the Nobleman’s body also turned to water and gushed toward her.

D was immersed in the weird water up to the waist, though it quickly receded again.

“That was easy, wasn’t it?” Gianne said, but her expression was stiff. It was
too
easy. There was no way defeating him should’ve been so simple.

D went back to the wagon. He wanted to check that the pair under the tarp were okay.

Meeker gave him a weak thumbs-up.

“D,” Gianne called out.

His left hand told him why. “We got company!”

From the way D looked up, it was clear he’d been aware of thatas well.

A stubby aircraft descended without a sound from the same sky that continued pelting them with rain, coming to rest on the ground a scant twenty yards away. In the sunlight, it would probably have appeared silver. D watched as part of the craft opened and three shadowy figures appeared.

The one in the fore glanced up. He stood well above the others as they walked toward the Hunter. Lightning flashed. A face appeared from the shadows.

“Count Langlan,” Gianne murmured in a tone that carried fear.

Viscount Kraken had been turned to water, and now, amid howling wind and rain and flashes of light, Count Langlan, the last of the Nobles in question, had appeared. In the sun, his golden cape would’ve undoubtedly called to mind waves of light. Now its hue was subdued, and whipping in the wind, it was reminiscent of the spreading of dark, thick blood.

D climbed down from the wagon. Straight ahead of him, the group halted about ten feet away. This time it was D’s face illuminated by the lightning.

“My word—the stories don’t begin to do you justice,” the tall Nobleman declared in a tone of obvious admiration. “I imagine you have already learned as much from the archeress, but I am Count Langlan.”

“D.”

Flashes of light illuminated the two figures by turns.

“I watched you battling that bastard Kraken from above. You did well to dispatch that monster.”

“He’ll be back soon.”

D’s reply drew a surprised reaction from the count. He groaned at the precision of the Hunter’s assessment.

“Before he does, I should like you to accompany us to my castle. You have my oath that you shall come to no harm. I think it most unwise to wait for Kraken in this rain. But I would ask that you not awaken the girl in the wagon. What I wish to know will be more easily discovered in her present condition.”

“It’s you that she’s after.”

“I realize as much. And once I learn what it is I wish to know, I shall be only too happy to let her attack me.”

“And you won’t go back on that, will you?”

“I saw her from above. How she has grown. And her years are a measure of my sin.”

“Very well.”

“You will be so good as to accompany us?” The count commanded the guards to either side of him, “Prepare our guest for the journey.”

“No need for that,” D said, turning his back to them. Until the Hunter entered the aircraft carrying Iriya and Meeker, the count remained there as still as a statue.

†

“It looks like we’ve arrived,” the left hand informed the Hunter less than ten minutes after they took off.

Beyond the door that now opened, a vast castle loomed.

“If you would be so good as to proceed to my research center.”

As the count led the group down a corridor, D said to him, “It’ll be daybreak soon.”

The time when Nobles must sleep was coming. Even when shielded from sunlight, Nobles as a rule fell into a kind of coma from daybreak to sunset. It was this major failing that made the humans’ resistance to their rule possible.

“Even during the daytime I am able to move about freely. I do require the aid of the darkness, however.”

“So, you’ve modified yourself, eh? And here I thought the Nobility were so full of themselves they didn’t make any progress.”

Perhaps the count was perfectly aware of the nature of the hoarse voice, because he didn’t show any confusion as he replied, “Actually, that is precisely the case. My research is not born of doubt and denial of the Noble condition. It is the result of purely academic pursuit.”

The group walked down a long corridor, boarded a linear elevator, and then walked some more before entering a room where old-fashioned lab equipment sat side by side with the very latest technology.

“I would have them wait in a back room until preparations are complete—through that door.”

Once D had set Iriya and Meeker down on sofas in a room resembling a salon, Gianne—who’d followed him—said, “Lovely girl, isn’t she?”

As she gazed at the sleeping Iriya, the archeress wore the expression of an ordinary woman. Hunters couldn’t really be human. But there were times when this ironclad rule was broken. There, beside the one who’d made her lower her guard, Gianne set down her bow and quivers and leaned back against the wall facing the doorway.

“D,” she called over to the Hunter, “I don’t think the girl’s cut out for this.”

“How can you tell?”

“There’s no better way to read a person’s true character than to look at their face while they’re asleep. She’s too peaceful.”

She got no reply. Without another word, Gianne hit the wall with her hand.

D was standing on a sunlit plain. The winds that riffled the grass made his hair flutter.

“Off in the distance are silvery mountain peaks and a lake like a bright blue jewel,” the hoarse voice commented. “Such childish imaginings.”

“How romantic. How sentimental. How humanistic. Is this the true nature of the Nobility? Do they really just wanna be human?”

That harsh tone caused D to return his gaze to the archeress.

The Nobility’s virtual reality technology could create original scenes or duplicate sights they’d actually seen. Which was this?

The scenery changed.

It was evening in a valley. The river’s flow reflected the color of the dusky sky, and by its banks lights glowed in a lone log cabin. The smoke from a cooking supper rose from its chimney.

Watching in silence, Gianne suddenly pulled away from the wall and turned toward the house. Without hesitating, she stepped into the river, waded across undiscouraged by its rapid flow, and approached the log cabin.

D heard a number of people laughing.

Gianne halted at the front door; then, after a moment or two, she went over to a window and peered in. Light spilled out. Her expression was peaceful.

Someone began singing to the accompaniment of a strummed tune. A young woman.