Iriya the Berserker (7 page)

“Will we make it in time? You don’t have a horse!” the hoarse voice said, becoming a wind that whispered in the Hunter’s ear.

As he landed, D raised his left hand.

“Fortunately, we’re downwind of them, yessir,” the hoarse voice said with satisfaction. “Those woods over there. But make it fast. I smell blood. We might be too late!”

Less than two minutes later D charged into the forest more than a mile and a quarter away from the quarry. Although it stood to reason that a dhampir would inherit some of the leg strength of the Nobility, this young man had a speed that would shock even pure-blooded Nobles. Taking no measure of his surroundings, he dashed another two hundred yards, then halted.

“There we go,” the hoarse voice said.

A clearing suddenly appeared between the clusters of trees. Just off to the right stood a black carriage with a team of four horses, and about ten feet from it Iriya crouched on the ground. Lavishly decorated with gold and drawn by gorgeous black steeds, the carriage was clearly that of a Noble. Iriya had been brought to this clearing by Lorelei. And a Noble had been waiting here. It was obvious what had occurred. Even the speed of D’s legs hadn’t been enough to prevent this tragedy from unfolding.

However—before D could even approach Iriya, he noticed something: there was no smell. Actually, there was the lingering scent one would expect to come from the gore clinging to the dagger Iriya clutched in her hand, but no scent of blood drifted from her. And her throat was free of wounds.

“Looks like she’s okay. Not only that, but she might’ve bagged a prize turkey, too.”

The hoarse voice was referring to the jet-black cape and other garments that lay midway between Iriya and the carriage. Ash-gray dust clung to them in spots.

D lifted the cape. Dust billowed up, falling back to the earth or riding off on the almost imperceptible breeze.

“A knife for self-defense and a bracelet with electronic weaponry, plus the cigar and that crest—no doubt about it, these are all that remain of Mitterhaus.” The hoarse voice trailed off in surprise.

D looked at Iriya.

“It’s just—well, I can’t really see that girl dispatching a Noble and not even getting bit . . . When you think about it, Mitterhaus is a ruthless, vile monster, one of the ten worst on the entire Frontier! To take him down so easily . . . Hmm, is that someone else over there?”

Beyond the enormous tree that loomed behind the carriage, a foot and silvery robes could be glimpsed. Going over to check, D found the corpse of Lorelei, who’d been stabbed through the heart from behind with a dagger. He also discovered the driver reduced to dust, still in his perch on the carriage.

“First, this Lorelei who brought Iriya here was stabbed from behind and killed. By the workmanship on the dagger, it seems Mitterhaus may have done the deed personally. Following that, Mitterhaus tried to attack Iriya but was slain, and his driver was killed as well.”

After that skillful explanation, the hoarse voice fell into silence for a short time.

“Mitterhaus either attacked Iriya or put her in his carriage so he could take her away. Iriya must’ve been able to stab him because Lorelei had been put down first. Iriya ran outside, Mitterhaus followed her out here, and that’s where he croaked. His driver was trying to save him when he met his end—got any problem with that?”

“Nope,” D responded. “With the spell of Lorelei’s song broken, Iriya slew the Noble. Simple enough—but easier said than done.”

“Right you are. As good of a Hunter as she might be, I could see her taking out some pseudo-Nobility or hired warriors, but not slaying a Greater Noble with millennia under his belt this easily. Not even if she got the drop on him. After all, once Lorelei’s power over her was broken, Mitterhaus probably would’ve used his own hypnotism on her. Or did it not affect her?”

Though it seemed much longer, less than two minutes had passed since D had found Iriya.

“Mitterhaus is destroyed,” D told her. “Did you slay him?”

Not moving her eyes from the spot on the ground where they were fixed, she replied, “I don’t know—can’t recall anything. The last thing I remember . . . here I was. D, when did you get here? It was you that took down Mitterhaus, wasn’t it?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

D’s gaze once again focused on the pale nape of her neck. Not even his eyes could find the faintest flaw. He put his left hand against her forehead as well, but there was nothing out of the ordinary there. And that was the end of the matter.

A tremendous mystery seemed to linger nearby with its maw gaping disturbingly wide, but D got Iriya up on her feet, then helped her onto one of the horses from the carriage.

“D . . . What on earth’s going on with me?” she asked in a tone so doleful she seemed to doubt whether tomorrow would even come.

“Take the reins,” D replied.

His good looks and cool voice seemed enough to solve Iriya’s mystery. Nodding as if she understood as much, the warrior woman gripped the reins, a smile rising on her lips.

The sun went down. The curtain came up on the “Time of the Nobility.”

D chose not the forest for their camp, but rather the middle of the plain. There was no guarantee that this location would be entirely safe, but being out on the plain gave an unobstructed view on all sides, which was clearly better than being in a forest, where supernatural creatures crawled under cover of bushes or lurked behind trees. Collecting some dead wood and dry grass, D made a fire. Before the sun had sunk they’d had their meal while still on horseback. The smell of cooking would be just the thing to draw vicious supernatural beasts. However, there was nothing the travelers could do to cover their own scents, nor could they stop the sound of their heartbeats. They could only take the chance that they’d be able to escape the ultrakeen senses of famished monsters and demons.

“So, it’s been two days—tomorrow we should hit Clements, right?” Iriya said in a somewhat relieved tone, even as her eyes remained trained on their surroundings.

She was referring to the time they’d been traveling since they’d left McCrory. For someone expecting relentless pursuit and ambushes, it wasn’t surprising she would hope the last two days of peace would carry over into the next day. The difference between towns populated with humans and the endless expanse of wilderness was truly like comparing heaven and hell.

“Don’t go dropping your guard,” the hoarse voice said. “Around these parts, the things that live out on the plains change so fast it’d make your head spin. No telling what’ll pop up. Though it still beats the woods or a forest, I guess.”

“It’s okay,” Meeker said as he laid out his sleeping bag. “From the look of the stars, we’re at the northern end of Sector Ninety-Six. Not many dangerous things up here.”

“Oh, aren’t you well informed,” Iriya said playfully, giving him a look of admiration.

A broad smile of satisfaction spread across his face.

It was always at times like this that something had to interrupt.

“Heh, heh! Interesting. This is the same squirt who can’t do anything ri—gaaaaah!”

The hoarse voice was immediately muzzled.

D sat silently by the fire, feeding it branches.

“Thank you,” Iriya told him. She was grateful he’d cut short the snide remarks.

“Sorry—I know I’m useless,” Meeker apologized weakly.

Though Iriya had spent the last two days coaching him in how to take care of the horses and how to use knives and guns, Meeker showed zero aptitude for these things. On the other hand, Iriya’s skill drew praise from the hoarse voice. “No one’s born that good!” it’d said. “The girl’s had magical instruction. Maybe that’d start to explain how she could take down Mitterhaus, eh?”

D had given no reply.

“No problem. Don’t worry about it at all,” Iriya told the boy, giving him a pat on his little back.

Stammering, “O-okay,” the boy smiled at her, but immediately looked down at the ground. Apparently the scrutiny made him uncomfortable.

Iriya glared at D—or rather, at his left hand—then looked up at the Hunter’s face as he tossed something out into the wilderness, saying irately, “Can’t you do anything about that thing?”

“Would that I could.”

Once he’d finished throwing things in all four directions, D squeezed his hand into a fist. Every time he did, a tiny death rattle pierced the night. Ten times it rang out.

As the night deepened, the air grew colder. Meeker had been right: they didn’t encounter anything dangerous. At least, nothing that lived out in the wilderness.

The only thing this strategy could be likened to was waves breaking on a beach. So long as the coast was in the distance, they went on forever, closing without a sound. They made a noise when other waves followed after them. But a single wave was silent. The same went for this “wave.”

He’d spread it three-quarters of a mile wide, then closed in on the group. So they couldn’t escape. So it could swallow up every last one of them and digest them all. It was fifty yards from its target, and the man controlling it was confident of his success.

Three miles away, this spot was beyond even a dhampir’s sight. Through a pair of the Nobility’s binoculars procured from a curio shop, he could see the three figures sleeping around the campfire. Just another fifty yards to go—now he let his stomach pounce.

However, a second later the master of that stomach was gripped by a feeling that something wasn’t right. A feeling akin to fear. Though he’d discharged the contents of his stomach and taken every precaution, his stomach had begun to devour something. It didn’t seem possible anyone could detect its presence, its movements. Except for D, perhaps?

“Go!” he bellowed, his cry carrying despair.

His stomach shot up like a colossal cloud—and then a vicious pain turned him into spasm-racked stone.

Did he finish it off?

At the same time he felt the death tremors of his stomach, he drew his dagger and cut off the esophagus that protruded from his mouth. He was three miles off. More than enough distance to make his escape. However, as he got to his feet again, his body was racked by a huge—and final—tremor. When he thudded to the ground, the arrow that’d diagonally pierced his throat from above gleamed faintly and deeply silver in the moonlight.

“Don’t move,” D told her, but as soon as he’d got up and left, Iriya heard the voice of a woman in the distance. At first she tensed at the thought that it was Lorelei, but she quickly remembered that the sorceress was dead. Besides, this sounded like shouting. She didn’t think to call out for D. Her warrior’s blood raced through her.

Making sure that Meeker was asleep, she concentrated her gaze in the direction of the voice, and there something like a white mist hovered in the depths of the darkness. On realizing that it was drawing closer, Iriya went for the hilt of her longsword.

In less than two seconds’ time, a woman in a long white robe took shape. She had a countenance so lovely it made even Iriya sigh in spite of herself, and it seemed as if the moonlight illuminated her face alone.

Come.

The sweet, sad voice that echoed in the Huntress’s ears was indeed that of a woman.

Come to me, and I shall make you forget all the pains of this world.

Sight and sound—her brain must’ve been devastated by the alluring beauty that crept in through those two of her senses, because Iriya rose unsteadily to her feet.

The woman was right before her. Her arms were spread, the sleeves of her robe flowing down like the Milky Way.

Come to me, and I shall make you forget everything and anything. Like so.

Looping her arm around Iriya’s back, the beautiful woman smiled. It was at that very instant that the lovely countenance split in a cross shape. The rent portion was a noxious hue and had patterns that called to mind a nose and eyes. They were unquestionably the petals of a flower. But the petals had the luster of steel. And then the bud that’d been her head reared back, preparing to assail the blank-faced Iriya.

Though it probably intended to swallow not only the Huntress’s head but also her entire body, it was unable to do so. When the woman put her arm around Iriya, the Huntress’s hand had never left her weapon’s hilt. And the instant the demonic blossom reared back its deadly head, a horizontal slash mowed through its torso, cleaving it in two.

Falling to the ground without a word was the upper half of the gorgeous woman, which quickly became a bizarre tangle of roots, and the lower half—spurting something that could’ve been either blood or liquid nutrients—also quickly transformed into a weird stalk and several ambulatory roots.

Leaping ten feet away to avoid a fountain of digestive fluid, Iriya landed and let out a deep breath. That was all it took to return her breathing to normal. A second later, Iriya was gazing down at the bisected remains of the monstrous plant as she returned her blade to its scabbard.

No sooner had she turned her back than there was a cry of “Look out—behind you!” Even before Iriya caught Meeker’s words, she was swinging her blade behind her. It was instinct. Before the sword had stopped moving, she leapt off to one side.

Slashing down through the spot she’d occupied and slicing a stone on the ground in two was a whip-like filament that stretched back to the wound in the stock-still lower half of the creature. As its severed portion writhed on the ground, Iriya made a bound for the gravely wounded creature pulling back its deadly whip, this time splitting it lengthwise. The lower half of the creature collapsed in a heap, transforming into the beautiful woman as if that were its swan song, then immediately resuming its true form as it ceased moving.

“Are you okay?” her savior asked, racing toward her, yet the warrior woman seemed ungrateful as she shouted at him to stay back, continuing to glare down at her foe.

“It’s dead. You cut its roots off,” she heard Meeker say.

“You’re right—but how do you know about this thing?”

“Well, it’s something called a thrice-split baron. There’s not many of them, but they’re one of the dangerous creatures found in these parts. Humans rarely run into them, so you don’t hear much talk about them, but when they find their prey, they take a similar form to it in order to get closer. I didn’t realize that’s what it was until it had its arm around you . . . She sure was pretty. I’m surprised it didn’t fool you.”

“Yeah,” Iriya replied with an embarrassed grin, and then she turned to the right. D was just coming back. What remained in Iriya’s brain of the beauty of that transformed plant monster now melted away like ice.

Giving her head a shake to push the gorgeous new countenance out of it, Iriya said to Meeker, “You saved me. Thank you. You sure know a lot about Frontier creatures, don’t you?”

“Only what I’ve read in books,” Meeker replied bashfully, rubbing the back of his head with a bit of pride.

“Well, thanks to that I’m still alive. You remember that: you saved my life. And I’ll be grateful to you for as long as I live.”

As the boy nodded, the two of them noticed that D was looking at them. Though there was no change in his fierce beauty, the two of them had to smile. They’d gotten an impression of a different sort of expression.

An hour later, D found Nogia’s corpse. His stomach had gone for the pieces of jerky D had scattered around, and within days that stomach would be filling the bellies of other creatures in the wilderness.

Iriya and Meeker exchanged suspicious looks.

“A falling-out with his partners?” Iriya murmured, but Meeker shook his head. Memories of the incident with the demonic insects, which he’d managed to repress until now, rose to the fore. He described what’d transpired to Iriya.

“In that case, I wonder if it means we’ve got an ally? D, any idea who it could be?”

Although there was no reply, the two of them got the distinct impression a cry of pain had once again risen from D’s left fist.

It was late afternoon when they arrived in the town of Clements. With a chain of mountains for a backdrop, the small town sat alone in the wilderness. The remaining light colored the peaks to the west and created a brief world of vermilion before the evening would be enveloped by blue.

“Everyone looks so red. It’s incredible!” Iriya exclaimed.

“Yeah, it’s like everything’s soaked in blood!” the hoarse voice added.

And how did D look in that crimson world? The people on the wooden sidewalks, the men driving wagons, the travelers high in the saddle, the crane operators, the miners with their carts of ore, the prostitutes who might as well have been naked—all of them were drawn at first to his gorgeous visage but pulled back again with looks of horror on their faces. In fact, a traveler’s horse and one of the miners’ carts collided, knocking all parties involved to the ground.

When they were halfway up Main Street, Iriya turned to a building on their right and said, “If you’re looking for the hotel, it’s right here.”

All D said was “I have somewhere to go.”

“Where?” she asked, but then she caught sight of Meeker’s face as the boy rode on the horse next to hers. He was utterly crestfallen. Before they’d reached the town he’d spoken less and less, and since entering he hadn’t said a word. That told Iriya all she needed to know.

“You’re going to put him in an orphanage?”

The Hunter nodded slightly.

“You know where it’s at?”

“I saw it on a map once.”

Iriya was just about to tell him not to, but then she held her tongue. She considered the trio’s respective futures.

“I suppose it’s the only way,” Iriya said, returning to the boy’s side. That was all she could do for him.

Presently, D turned right off Main Street. The road of packed earth stretched like a thread to a distant forest. Five or six hundred yards up ahead stood a simple yet elegant building hardly befitting a mining town. An orphanage.

Iriya snuck a look at Meeker out of the corner of her eye. His little face was turned toward the ground, and tears welled in his eyes. In her heart the woman heaved a sigh, and just as she was about to turn her eyes forward again she heard him say, “I don’t wanna go there!”

Iriya shut her eyes.

“I wanna stay with you, Miss Iriya! I wanna travel with you forever and ever.”

She couldn’t hear him. She mustn’t. Iriya vehemently reminded herself that it was in the boy’s best interest to have a settled existence. Three hundred yards to go. If he said nothing the rest of the way, it would be done. All she had to do was hold out that long.

“D?” she said when they’d closed to within a hundred yards, her brow furrowing.

D had got there first, but he didn’t turn. Catching up to him, Iriya looked closely, then in spite of herself she said, “What—it’s closed?”

In the vermilion light, they could see the building’s doors were boarded up, and the curtains were drawn on every window. Naturally, there was no sign of anyone. All they found was an uninhabited ruin.

Turning to Meeker, Iriya whispered softly, “Lucky for us, eh?”

“Not very smart, are you, girlie?”