Mercenary Road (12 page)

“Do as you like,” D replied.

“But what about the others?” Beatrice asked. He was referring to Strider and Stanza, who were still back at the rest area.

“If they don’t come, we get their share. I would think that’d appeal to you.”

“Galloon galloon!” Beatrice exclaimed, expressing his thanks with words from an ancient people now long vanished. The gigantic warrior was beaming. Apparently he liked the way the conversation had turned.

“Well, time to start searching?” the warrior asked.

—

Zenon opened his eyes. Above him, he saw a strange sight: a girl with a big chunk of stone raised high above her head.

When their eyes met, the girl grimaced, asking, “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” Zenon replied, putting his hand against his feverish shoulder where the baronet had cut him. The bleeding had stopped. This waking was the same as always. It was
his
doing.

What happened, then?
he thought, even though he really didn’t want to know.

“How about you put that down?” the outlaw said to Irene, who was still holding the stone.

“I think you’ve got a point. I’ve been holding it like this for two minutes. My arms are getting tired.”

Given a good toss, the chunk of stone landed to the right of Zenon’s face. Irene let out a deep breath.

Zenon sat up. His muscles and nerves screamed with agony. He managed to express the pain with no more than a slight tightening of his cheeks as he tried to get to his feet.

“It’s too soon for that!” Irene told him, stopping him. Her desolate tone made Zenon stare at her.

“What happened?” he said, not wanting to ask,
What did I do?

Irene lowered her gaze. “The
other
you threatened me. He told me he was going to lay low for now. And he said I was free to run if I liked, but if I tried to hurt him, he’d make me pay.”

He didn’t imagine that was all it’d taken for her to want to bash his brains in. Wanting to know what had transpired after the Nobleman split his shoulder open, he once again asked, “What happened?”

Shutting her eyes, Irene leaned back against a nearby pile of rubble. It was probably part of the collapsed ceiling. Given that they could build palaces that stood up to a direct hit from a hydrogen bomb, the Nobility were funny. Decay seemed to be one of their tastes.

“There,” the girl said, pointing to the right—the direction from which the intruders had come.

Zenon stood up. His legs wobbled, and intermittent bouts of dizziness assailed him. His artificial bone marrow was working overtime to make up for all the blood he’d lost. His right shoulder was hot and numb.

He had the answer to his question soon enough—before he’d gone fifty paces. Zenon didn’t divert his gaze from the scene spread before him. It was the result of his own actions. His eyes alone weren’t enough—he had to let it all seep into his body.

Irene was still leaning against the rubble. Noticing Zenon, she asked, “You saw them?” She sounded absolutely exhausted. She must’ve witnessed the whole thing. No matter how severe the girl’s life on the Frontier might’ve been, she couldn’t see something like this and not have it affect her.

“You, too?”

She nodded, saying, “You’re really something, you know that? How many of them were there?”

“Around seventy.”

“And you killed them all in less than five minutes’ time. It made my palms sweat,” Irene said, closing her eyes. Her eyelashes were trembling. She was going through the whole scene again. There was nothing she could do to stop the memories.

Plopping himself down on the ground, Zenon laid back. “I’d tell you it wasn’t me,” he said to her, “but what’s the point? That rock you had earlier—I don’t care if you drop it on me.”

“It’s a little late for that now!” Irene replied, shaking her head repeatedly. “You saw them, right? Some of those soldiers were women and children! But you were merciless. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“If I said it was because they attacked me, wouldn’t that count for something?”

“You even cut down the ones that ran away. They were kids!”

Zenon let out a long sigh.

Silence descended, the kind of silence on which no one wished to intrude.

Soon, a faint sobbing began to fill the air. Irene’s body was quaking. Her sobs flowed through the murky world like an unending stream of woe.

It was unclear how many minutes passed. Suddenly, Irene lifted her head.

—

Fortunately, they were able to locate one magneto car that was only slightly damaged. Opening the hood to examine the engine, Beatrice stated, “It’s okay. I’ll have ’er fixed inside of five minutes.” To D he then said, “All the tools are here and everything—but are you sure you’re okay with this?”

He was talking about Irene and Zenon. Though they’d searched for an hour, they hadn’t found any trace of either one.

“Are you worried?” D asked.

“No, not really,” Beatrice replied, already busy with his repairs. Wherever his fingers made contact with the exposed engine, blue sparks flew.

“A long time ago, I heard about a certain Hunter of Nobility. It seems he was even better at repair work than he was at Hunting.”

“Wow, that’s really something else.”

“Only, he had one fatal flaw.”

“Really? What’s that?”

“He was too kindhearted.”

“I see. That’s not the sort of thing that mixes with the Hunter profession, is it?”

“I hear that’s why he retired. He was only active for about three years.”

“But in that span of time, I bet he put a lot of ’em down, eh?”

“A hundred and one, I heard.”

“How about you?”

“Not even close.”

“I’m sure he regrets it. Taking all those lives, I mean, Nobility or not. He probably realized that sooner or later, his time was gonna come, too. And once he did, he couldn’t work as a Hunter anymore. He must’ve got out to live his life, taking the money he’d socked away and starting a repair shop for farm equipment somewhere or something.”

While this conversation was taking place, the gigantic warrior’s hands continued their deft movements, and before two minutes had elapsed, he stood up again and said, “All right, now she’s just perfect!” Slamming the hood shut, he gave it a couple of pats.

“Shall we go?” D said. The darkness was receding from his face.

Beatrice turned his gaze to the east. Shadow and light were swapping places.

“It’s dawn,” he said.

From much higher up, a single streak of light knifed obliquely through the darkness. Death and darkness left as a new time began.

Zenon’s face took on a white glow.

“Dawn!” Irene declared.

—

Carrying the Hunter and the warrior, the magneto car ripped through the wind with a speed that hardly suited its stocky appearance. Beatrice had settled into the driver’s compartment, while D was in the combination seating area and cargo bed behind him.

“What’d I tell you? She’s just perfect. She’ll do up to a hundred twenty. If we gun it, we could get to the ruins in three hours.”

“If there ain’t interference, that is.”

“You know, it’s creepy when you do that hoarse voice, D. Knock it off.”

“I wish I could.”

“Damned joker,” Beatrice grumbled, and then he turned his head and twitched his nose. “Something smells good. Hey, D, you think maybe there’s a service area around here that hasn’t—”

“It’s the enemy.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Still—”

He cut the wheel sharply to the right. They raced through a dense forest.

The palm of D’s left hand was placed against the scruff of the warrior’s neck.

Mumbling something unintelligible, Beatrice decreased their speed as if in a trance. A second later, the vehicle pitched wildly. The two men and their cargo flew through the air. While the magneto car rolled, kicking up black soil, D watched from the spot where he’d landed more than fifteen feet away. In his arms he carried Beatrice, the machine gun, and the ammo. Only the box of grenades was in the car.

“That’s some lousy driving.”

Not replying to the hoarse voice, D stared straight ahead. “It was control smoke,” he said.

“Hmph. That stuff can even reel in someone with a full stomach. But it ain’t the army.”

“The lord of the forest?” D said in reply, but just then from beyond a stand of trees to his left there was a sound like a great rumbling in the earth drawing nearer. The sound of something scraping against the ground.

—

III

—

What pushed its way through the stand of trees resembled a ham split down the middle. It was easily fifty feet high. As for its length, that was unclear—it stretched back into the forest. D noticed that above them and below them, to their left and to their right, innumerable forms were running or flying toward it. Rabbits, fox monsters, forest hippos, bristle beasts, fire tigers, flying snakes, air squids—the kind of menagerie that could be found only on the Frontier. And it was obvious that all of them had been drawn by the “control smoke.”

A small hole opened in the center of the sharp, semicircular muzzle, and then spread across its entirety. All the creatures, large and small, were sucked in. Once the last of them had disappeared, the bizarre mouth—or entrance—returned to normal, and the enormous creature wriggled like a titanic serpent as it vanished back through the stand of trees.

Putting his left hand against the crown of the giant’s head, D returned Beatrice to consciousness. And then he broke into a run. Beatrice followed him. Reaching the rolled magneto car, D easily righted the vehicle. This time, he took the driver’s seat.

“Oh, yeah!” Beatrice exclaimed, seating himself in the back.

D stepped on the accelerator. They didn’t move. Though he made five attempts in a row, the result was the same every time.

“You said it was perfect, didn’t you?” D said softly, giving Beatrice a look.

“I thought so. There’s gotta be some mistake. It can’t be my repairs. The car’s the problem.”

“The whole point of repairs is to fix the problems.”

The gigantic warrior growled.

D quickly alighted from the defective vehicle. At the same time, he bounded off the ground. That was normal for D, but Beatrice did likewise.

Where the two of them had been, nearly a hundred slender blow darts jabbed into the ground. White smoke poured from the earth.

The blow darts had come from all sides. As the two dashed toward the only safe zone—the point at which the enormous serpent had disappeared—gleaming darts pursued them. The blow darts D fended off with the hem of his coat fell to the ground, while those that stuck into Beatrice fell free again. He’d applied a fresh layer of the protective spray before entering the forest.

Out of the trees dropped figures with machetes in hand. Beneath them, D’s right hand flashed into action. By the time a bloody cloud had engulfed each and every bisected torso, D had already dashed off.

Next to the Hunter, there was the endless staccato of gunfire: Beatrice and his machine gun. Even carrying a twenty-pound gun and more than a hundred pounds of ammunition, he still kept pace with D. What’s more, not a bullet fired at their scattering foes went to waste. With short bursts of three rounds each, he took them down surgically.

Suddenly, their way was blocked by enormous figures in gray. It was said ten-foot-tall soldiers like these had been created to suit the Nobility’s own tastes. They already had the longswords in their right hands raised high.

As a blade seared through the air, D was beneath it with his own sword ready to parry, though it didn’t look up to the task. The instant the swords crashed together, D’s blade shot upward. His arms raised as if in a cheer, he made a second strike. He cut halfway through one giant’s torso. Ignoring its titanic frame as it fell with a force that made the earth tremble, D leapt, evading the sword of a second one and slashing him open from the top of his head all the way down to his sternum. Beatrice gunned down two more.

The giants fell back. They formed a ring, with their two foes in the center.

“Maybe they wanna talk this out, you think?” Beatrice said, using one hand to mop the sweat from his brow.

“Can you come up with terms for a cease-fire?” the hoarse voice asked.

“Here they come,” said D.

In front of the giants who’d tasted his sword, new gigantic forms appeared. Above their heads they held wooden clubs covered with barbs. They swung them wildly toward the ground. The reverberations that rose from the depths of the earth knocked Beatrice on his side. There was another blow—and not only did the shock of the impact throw the warrior into the air, but it completely upset his inner sense of balance. He was vomiting before he even had a chance to try to keep it in. This was no time for firing his machine gun. His internal organs felt like they’d been flipped upside down and turned inside out.

But a hand with a grip like steel grabbed the warrior by the scruff of the neck. It was D, his face clearly distorted with pain.

“If this keeps up, my guts are gonna . . .”

Nevertheless, there was nowhere to run.

They were standing on the ground. Beatrice immediately felt himself being hurled into the air. His innards settled down. At that moment, he realized what he was supposed to do. From fifteen feet in the air, he opened fire on the ring of giants. Two of them dropped to their knees. The circle was broken.

D sprinted. Becoming a black gale, he wove his way between the giants. In the span of two breaths, all of them lay on the ground.

Turning, the Hunter saw Beatrice running toward him. Behind the warrior came the sound of footsteps crushing forward like a tidal wave. Since the giants had failed, the forward guard had been sent in.

“Yee-haw!” Beatrice shouted, and he was just bringing his machine gun to bear on them when he was asked an odd question.

“Can you climb trees?”

“Huh?”

By the time the warrior replied, the Hunter was flying like a black supernatural bird to land on a thick branch in a colossal tree.

“Well, let’s see how he does,” the hoarse voice said with amusement, and just then, Beatrice leapt onto a massive branch in another tree about ten feet away. “Wow, carrying the gun and ammo, to boot. Not too shabby.”

It was at this point that figures in green appeared from the direction D and the warrior were facing. In the light of dawn, the soldiers crashed together like waves of gray and green. Battle cries, gunshots, and the ring of steel on steel filled the forest, and occasionally flashes of what seemed to be lasers streaked across the dawn sky.

“Hey!” Beatrice called over. His hand was over his lips, and the words themselves didn’t escape. It was a means of conversing unique to Hunters. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Looks like father and son have locked horns. We’ll look for an opening, and then get going,” D replied in the same voiceless manner. He didn’t even have his hand up to his mouth.

“Oh, it seems such a waste to just run off,” Beatrice responded.

Nothing from the Hunter.

“Look how fierce the fighting is. To the rear, it’s gotta be just as chaotic. I’m gonna go filch us some transportation. Don’t try to stop me!”

And saying this, Beatrice leapt down into the eddying melee without even waiting for a reply. He was soon swallowed up by the chaos of swordplay, shooting, and grappling.

“Ain’t he the reckless one,” the hoarse voice remarked, dumbfounded.

Not replying, D merely kept his gaze trained where Beatrice had vanished. Whether he was worried about the warrior and intended to stop him were the real questions. Even the ever-intensifying battle below grew calm before long, with only groans flowing out into the forest by the rays of dawn, and those also quickly ceased.

“That’s an awful lot of death for the start of a day,” the hoarse voice said, and it too sounded weary.

D easily alighted from the massive branch.

“Ol’ sissy name’s not coming back, is he?” the hoarse voice whined.

“Is that what you think?”

“You think I’m wrong?”

D turned his head slightly. He turned his left hand in the same direction.

“Eh?” the hoarse voice exclaimed, as it heard the sound of an approaching engine.

Before long, an incredibly outdated internal-combustion-driven single-seat vehicle with two wheels—in other words, a motorcycle—deftly wove its way through the corpses to stop beside the Hunter.

“Heya!” said Beatrice, of course, lifting his goggles up onto the leather helmet. He wore a leather jacket as well, and he had the machine gun and ammo in his right hand.

A wry smile wafted to D’s lips. He realized he’d underestimated Beatrice’s startling ability to procure things.

“Well, hop on! The magneto car didn’t work out too well, but this baby’s easy to drive and fix.”

Saying nothing as he watched the enormous warrior slap the seat behind him, D got on.

“Hmm, your legs have no problem touching the ground, eh? Kinda strange how all your height’s in them instead of your trunk. Well, this’ll probably toss your guts around pretty good. Ha ha ha!”

Quite pleased with himself, the cackling Beatrice clutched his belly as he started the bike.

“We’ll cut through the forest for a ways.”

Skillfully weaving between stands of trees, they sped along.

After a while, D said, “Looks like your right hand’s carrying quite a load.” It was rare for him to make such a comment.

“And?”

“Would you like to pass it to me?”

“Sorry, but it’s just not in my nature to trust folks. Let’s say you were to drop it, and then I needed it. I wouldn’t blame you, but I’d be mad as hell with myself for being so stupid. Don’t worry. Both my arms have had cyborg upgrades. You know, back in my old job—huh?”

The faces of both men turned simultaneously toward the highway—or the sky above it, to be precise. A stocky flying machine was zipping along there. The rapidly dwindling craft had a small window at its center, and through it they saw someone.

“That’s Stanza!” Beatrice said, clucking his tongue. “Those idiots. That’s what they get for lying around. I bet they’re both in there!”

“Probably.”

“Where do you think they’re headed?”

“The ruins, most likely. It was green.”

The flying machine had been painted in Grand Duke Dorleac’s color.

Seeming blinded by the light, Beatrice looked up at the dawn sky and said, “They went to the trouble of taking ’em prisoner. I don’t figure they’ll kill ’em soon. More than that, I’m worried about whoever took refuge in the castle ruins earlier.” He paused for a moment. “Because I get the feeling that freak’s got one hell of an appetite.”

There was no reply. This in itself signaled the Hunter’s agreement.

Suddenly, Beatrice’s form stiffened. “That big vacuum-cleaner deal earlier—that’s not . . . I mean, that monstrosity . . . it’s just sucking up living creatures indiscriminately . . .”

“You know it.”

“I thought I told you to stop using that creepy old voice,” Beatrice shouted. “Imagine dozens of those things. If left to their own devices, they’d drain all the life not just out of this area, but from the whole damned planet!” he said in a horrified manner. “And all of it gets sucked up by Dorleac . . .”

“Step on it. At this rate, we’ll be there by noon!”

“Quit it with that geezer voice!” Beatrice shouted, twisting the throttle as if to shake off his fears.