SEVEN ASSASSINS

CHAPTER 2

I

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Seeing Miska as far as her carriage, the baron said, “The eastern sky is beginning to brighten. You’d do well to get some rest.”

And with that, he kissed her hand.

“I’ll thank you to tell that savage not to set fire to my carriage,” she replied, glaring at the Hunter.

“Certainly,” the grimacing baron replied with a nod. “When you awaken, we shall no longer be here. So this is farewell. Please take care.”

“And what will become of me if I should be set upon by those villains from earlier?”

“You must forgive me.”

Miska spun about indignantly and disappeared into her carriage.

Looking over his shoulder and seeing what D had in his hands where he stood behind him, the baron furrowed his brow. The dagger with an eight-inch blade had a cold, black gleam to it.

“I’ll have to operate on you before you get into your coffin,” said D.

“Why?” the baron asked without any particular concern.

“I’ve heard a bit about the flower person’s tricks. Apparently his pollen is absorbed by the body, and flowers bloom in profusion in the blood. ‘The blood is the life.’”

“I see. So?”

“Do you know what happens to a Noble when his blood is drained?”

“I’m in your hands, then,” the baron said, nodding. “There are operating instruments in my carriage, you know.”

“There’s no time for that.”

“But I—” he began to say, but his voice was abruptly choked off. Clutching his throat and coughing, the baron fell to his knees.

And what did D do? Suddenly seizing the collar of the baron’s cape, he pulled him closer.

At precisely that instant, a flash of stark light shot up from the ground . . . and D and the baron were in entirely the wrong spot. A blade more than three feet in length ran deep into the baron’s right lung.

“D—” said the baron, his voice echoing with pain and astonishment.

As well it should have. From any vantage point, it seemed as if D had pulled the baron right onto the naked steel that came out of the ground.

One great leap back carried D away from the Noble’s caped form.

His foe hadn’t fled—the fearsome assassin still remained beneath the black soil. However, even if he had dug a hole, the surface of the ground was still hard. Whoever it was, he wouldn’t be able to move freely. Realizing this, the eye D turned toward the earth was that of a man entering a life-or-death struggle.

The sensation from beneath his feet changed without warning.

D took to the air—and a stark flash of light thrust up after him. Spinning nearly one hundred eighty degrees, D countered the attack with his own naked steel. The flashes clashed together, and then one of them snapped off and flew away. Spinning around in a way that beggared belief, the blade that had shattered the attacker’s weapon was then thrust halfway into the earth beneath the Hunter’s feet.

Not even bothering to feel if it’d made contact, D pulled his steel back out and focused his senses on the ground.

In order to travel through the solid earth, his foe sent out molecular vibrations that turned the soil into sand. Furthermore, once he’d moved, the ground promptly returned to its original state. That was why the enemy’s blade had easily been able to pierce the ground, but D’s sword had only penetrated it halfway.

While D hadn’t been fatally wounded, blood was gushing from his right leg. Would he be able to parry a second attack from his elusive opponent?

For a heartbeat, stillness settled over heaven and earth. Surely D must’ve noticed what was happening. The air had a touch of blue to it, and in the forest, the birds were stirring in the treetops. In less than twenty minutes, the morning sun would be shining down on the baron. A mere twenty minutes—all the time that stood between life and death for an immortal member of the Nobility. What if his subterranean foe didn’t make a move before then?

Five minutes passed. Ten.

The shadow at D’s feet was growing ever deeper.

It was then that the carriage door opened.

“Baron!”

Standing motionless in the doorway, Miska seemed to shimmer like a mirage, backlit by the illumination from her carriage. Most likely she’d come out for a look after sensing danger.

A heartbeat later, the ground broke at D’s feet. Another blade was thrust up.

D was in the air. Not because he’d sensed the molecules beneath his feet transforming, but because he’d kicked off the ground with Miska’s appearance only a few tenths of a second earlier.

As the blade sank back into the earth, the Hunter landed and drove the sword he had raised straight down into the black soil—and all the way to the hilt.

Intense spasms traveled through the ground. Perhaps D even heard the cries of pain from the attacker in his death throes.

Earlier, when his sword had only gone halfway into the ground, it was merely an act he’d staged when he realized his opponent had already moved. The subterranean assassin hadn’t comprehended the strength of the dhampir—the fiendish might granted him by his Noble blood. And seeing Miska’s arrival as just the thing to divert D’s attention, he’d casually drifted up to a dangerous depth . . .

Having determined that the foe whose face he’d never even seen was dead, D raced over to the baron. Miska was already cradling his head.

“D—why?” asked the baron.

He wanted to know the reason the Hunter had put him in front of the oncoming blade. However, his discomfort seemed far less than before, and his breathing was deeper. The wound to his lung wouldn’t have caused him great pain, but what had become of his earlier agony?

“From the way you were breathing, I could tell there were flowers blooming in your right lung,” said D.

Though Miska was glaring at him, her cheeks flushed unconsciously.

“I could’ve removed it myself, but the enemy showed up.”

The baron’s eyes went wide with disbelief.

Even Miska lost all her Noble restraint as her jaw dropped.

“You mean to say you turned his thrust against those flowers? Impossible!” Miska cried.

“You seem to be breathing easier,” said D.

Everyone fell silent.

If this were true, then in a split second, D had gauged the speed of the sword shooting up from the ground and the location of the malignant growth in the baron’s chest and excised the bizarre flowers with that thrust of the blade. He’d used one of the assassins’ attacks to remedy the damage they’d caused earlier . . .

Through the silence, a roseate glow suffused Miska’s cheeks.

Suddenly rising to his feet again, the baron used one hand to fend off the sunlight as he turned to D and said, “You’re a man of incredible practicality.”

“We’ve got a long road ahead of us,” D replied. Rarely did he answer each and every comment made by someone else.

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†

After the two Nobles had returned to their respective carriages, D got on his horse. As the mount and rider started off in the watery light, the baron’s carriage creaked after them.

When they came to the road leading out of the forest, D didn’t even look back. They’d left the white carriage in a clearing no human was likely to visit before nightfall. As the horses meekly continued to wait for further instructions from their slumbering master, their manes sparkled in the sunlight, and occasionally they’d make a movement that made it look like a bolt of white lightning had shot down their backs. No one would disturb them. Even if someone did come along, one look at that carriage would undoubtedly send them packing.

When the woman in the white dress awoke again, the stars would be twinkling forlornly above her. It was a horribly lonesome image.

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Although they had to gain as much distance as they could by daylight, their foes’ attacks would likely become more intense. D regarded the battle the previous night as a mere test of his strength. The real battle was still to come. At any rate, there was a small village a little over a mile ahead.

On entering the village, D and the blue carriage were the focus of the fearful stares of the inhabitants. A young man of inhuman beauty with a gorgeously luxurious carriage—everyone knew what that meant. Whispers of Noble, Noble flooded the morning street, spreading like ripples on a pond. Yet those who looked up at D on his steed got a rosy flush to their cheeks. Irrespective of age or sex, his heavenly beauty was enough to enrapture anyone.

In no time, D and the carriage had pulled into the blacksmith’s on the edge of town. In point of fact, the blacksmith had a workshop the size of a small factory. Not only did he produce and repair farm equipment, but he also sold automobiles and basic electronic devices. To conduct the latter sort of business, it was critical to have suppliers in the Capital.

On hearing D’s request, the smith’s eyes went wide.

“Half of that we can do here, but the other half is impossible. You’d need one of them ‘traveling smiths’ for dangerous riggings like that.”

“How long would you need for the half you can handle?”

“Let me see . . . Roughly two days.”

“Kindly do it in one.”

“In that case, I’m gonna have to ask you for one hell of a fee,” the blacksmith chuckled, a despicable grin plastered to his face.

“How much?”

The amount the smith quoted was five times the going rate.

“Fine,” D said with a nod.

As he surveyed the other man’s handsome visage, the smith’s grin was bisected by a stark flash. His greasy face had been split from the forehead, along the nose, and right down to the tip of his chin. Although only the skin had been broken, it was incredibly painful. Still, the smith couldn’t move an inch.

The gorgeous young man before him had been transformed into another creature entirely. And from him an unearthly aura blustered.

“There’s your special bonus,” said D. “I’ll pay you the regular rate right away.”

“Ye-yes, sir,” the blacksmith stammered weakly. He was stained with red from his face to his chest. “My regular rate will be good enough. I won’t charge you a bit more than what I’ve got coming. I promise you that.”

“I’ll pay you double,” said D.

“Huh?!”

“With you doing two days’ work in one day, that’s fair compensation.”

The blacksmith’s expression made it clear he had no idea what was going on. Some time after D had walked off, he finally muttered, “There’s just no telling what a guy that good looking is likely to do.”

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†

The villagers watched with unsettled looks on their faces as showers of sparks and pale electromagnetic discharge shot from the blacksmith’s windows all day long.

“They’re still at it. Looks like they’ll be working through the night,” said the man gazing off through the darkness before he returned from the terrace to the room with a thin grin on his face. He was on the second floor of the village’s only inn. Though the blacksmith’s shop was nearly a mile away, apparently the man had eyes as sharp as a hawk’s, and even by the dark of the moonless night he could see as clearly as if it were midday.

There were four other figures in the room. Reclining on the sofa, seated on the floor, or leaning against the wall, they varied widely in dress and appearance, but each had a disturbing air that made it plain they were no ordinary travelers. Each had arrived alone during the past hour.

“What do you suppose they’re doing?” asked a tall man wearing a brown cape. He was the one D had called Crimson Stitchwort.

“Rigging up some nasty surprises for the lot of us, I wager. I suppose they’re adding something to the carriage,” said the man with the darkness-piercing eyes.

To that, another man in priestly vestments remarked, “We’ll simply have to ask the blacksmith when we set out tomorrow. However, if we wait, it could prove problematic.”

“Should we go toss down the gauntlet before they’ve had a chance to finish their work, then? But who’ll go? They’ll be up against the same guy who took out Tunnel,” said the man who’d come in from the terrace. His face was strangely narrow, and he was dressed in a needlessly restrained wardrobe of black.

“I want no part of it,” said a man who’d been in one corner of the room the whole time staring off into empty space. His right hand was in front of his face and his left was held up by his chest. Though it looked like he was tugging on something, there was nothing to be seen.

“Lost your nerve now that he’s seen through your tricks once, Mario?” the man with the narrow face inquired sarcastically.

In response, Mario pulled down the collar of his yellow coat. The nape of his neck had been split more than an inch.

“How did you get that?” asked the man in priestly garb.

None of the others seemed concerned by it. Before taking this job, each of these men had been wounded as badly countless times and had survived far worse injuries.

“I knew he used throwing needles. I even saw his hand go up. Yet I still wound up like this. But that’s not the real problem. Watch this,” Mario said, spreading his fingers in front of his eyes.

As the others watched, blank looks took over their faces.

“I still don’t have complete movement in them. Why do you think that is? His sword cut my puppets in two. And I could feel it in my hands!”

Now the men looked at each other. They were all competent Hunters gathered from across the Frontier. However, they were only disquieted for a second before they all smiled thinly.

“In that case, why don’t we all hit him at once? All but the cowards, that is,” said the man whose eyes pierced the night.

The reaction was unexpected—everyone looked rather perturbed.

“If we do that, we’ll have to split the reward, too.”

They all nodded at the remark from the man in the vestments.

“If we’re going to move against them, then daylight’s definitely the time to do it. You said something about throwing down the gauntlet, but that fellow certainly is a force to be reckoned with. Plus, the baron’s bound to be up by now.”

“So we’re just supposed to sit on our hands and let them prepare their countermeasures?”

“No, I’ll go give them some trouble.”

“What?!” cried one as the eyes of all the others bulged in their sockets.

“You trying to jump to the head of the line? D might be fair game, but I thought we already settled on the order we’d get a crack at the baron,” Crimson Stitchwort protested.

The man in the vestments replied softly, “Relax. I’m simply going to make them stop working. Besides, my turn is the one after next. I would think I’m entitled to at least go and survey the target.”

The men in the group exchanged glances. An unsettled air filled the room.

But onto the deathly still waters of that silence plopped a sudden droplet.

“That’s fair enough,” said the fifth man, drawing the attention of the entire group.

He was the youngest of them all. He didn’t appear too different from D or the baron. His countenance was oddly pale—like paraffin. Up until now he hadn’t said a word, but had merely leaned back against the wall. The reason he’d been ignored wasn’t because he was disagreeable or less than impressive, but because even a vicious mob like them found him somehow unsettling.

“Go, then. But before you do, listen to the next set of instructions.”

There were cries in the affirmative as they all turned to face him.

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II

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It was roughly a month earlier that a strange request had reached these men scattered across the Frontier. A miniature communication disk had told them, You are to assemble in certain ruins in a southern Frontier sector. I would like you to exterminate a young Nobleman while he’s on the road. Details as to your compensation shall be discussed later. In addition to yourself, I am summoning six other Hunters. As proof that this is no fool’s errand, you should be receiving sufficient funds to cover your traveling expenses to the ruins at about the same time this disk reaches you.

Renowned professionals of proven mettle, these men would’ve normally sneered at the thought of teaming up with anyone else, yet all of them complied with the request because of the almost indescribable regality of the voice on the disk, and because of the sum for traveling expenses that’d surely arrived slightly before or after the message. Even if they were to use the most extravagant means imaginable to travel to the ruins and back, that sum would’ve been enough to make the trip more than ten times over. To put it in simpler terms, it was basically equivalent to what each of them earned in a year.

At the ruins waited an old man in black who was vaguely reminiscent of an insect. His dried and shriveled lips had issued a request that they assassinate a certain Noble. Neither the reason for the assassination nor the name of their client was made clear. Though they normally might’ve tried to extort that information from the old man, he had an unearthly air about him that hardly left any of them inclined to do such a thing. The compensation would be enough to buy up half a Frontier sector. As proof that this was no empty promise, the old man had given each of them an ingot of a precious metal the Nobility alone had been able to synthesize.

“That alone is valuable enough to allow you to live in luxury for the rest of your days. You can take it and leave without accepting the job, for all we care. However, it goes without saying that a professional of the very highest order has ambitions that are also of the highest order. I don’t imagine any of you are so simple minded you could turn a blind eye to the rest of the reward. It shall be up to you to decide how the work is carried out. Whenever necessary, instructions shall be relayed to one of your number. The target’s location and description will be given to you presently. We wish you luck.”

And then, as if suddenly remembering something, the old man looked up and said, “Ah, yes, there’s one thing I neglected to mention. Although only six of you have gathered here, there is in fact one other. A rather unusual individual and somewhat difficult to reach, but I finally managed to make contact this very day. Though they shall be operating independently, it appears they’ll take the job. The name is Shadow. Even I myself don’t know their sex. But don’t forget that you have an additional colleague.”

And then the old man crumbled on the spot. The eyes of the six assassins were met by black clothes filled with pale gray dust and a miniature disk that contained both the whereabouts and a description of the Noble—Baron Balazs.

They promptly went into action.

What would they do? How would they kill him? Would they go after him one at a time, or all at once? Based on their characters, individual strikes would be most likely, but they knew better than anyone that a Noble’s power left little margin for error.

They talked the matter over right then and there. While they were all in this together, the flames of hostility were hardly hidden in their fiery discussion. And then an arrangement was reached—they agreed there would be no trying to steal a march on the others, but to avoid the kind of equal split they all despised, they would attack in turns based on a strictly maintained order decided by a drawing. While they were free to attack solo, if the person in question sought and received additional aid, the reward would be split evenly by the attackers in the event of a successful completion.

And having reached this accord, the six Hunters raced off to Baron Balazs’s location . . . but the baron wasn’t there. What they beheld was naught save the melted ruins of a castle. As a result of an exhaustive search, word had reached them just ten days earlier that the young Nobleman was headed to Krauhausen. What’s more, that knowledge was accompanied by frightening information. The Noble had been out looking for D.

D’s name was quite familiar to them. Though these murderers had absolute confidence in their own abilities, each of them realized at that moment that they had to hit the Noble before he met up with D, and they began hatching plans to that effect. The results had been disappointing—they were too late. Having allowed the two to meet, Tunnel had taken his turn and was slain quite handily, while Mario—who’d aided him—escaped with minor injuries. And he was afraid to be involved in the next attack.

__

While it was unclear when the pale man in black had come into possession of the miniature disk player, he pulled it out of his raiment and set it on the table, where it began to play back a hoarse tone familiar to all. It was that of the old man.

It would seem you’ve been having a difficult time of it, he remarked.

Everyone grew tense at these words.

The voice continued, Allow me to share his destination with you. It’s the village of Krauhausen. Though any number of roads lead there, if you follow him for a while, you’ll soon know his route. Lie in wait for him along the way. Some gear that should be of use to you has been left in Shabara Canyon. Very well—good luck.

His last words were threaded with laughter.

The five conspirators looked at each other. Their expressions were indignant.

“Well, then,” the elderly man in priestly garb said to the others, but no one replied.

__

At the blacksmith’s workshop, everyone from the smith to his apprentices was hard at work. And each and every face was marked by awe and surpassing terror.

With the setting of the sun, the door to the blue carriage opened and a caped figure alighted. Without ever seeing his gorgeous features, it was easy enough to imagine his true nature. What’s more, the young man who was there to greet him was even more inhumanly beautiful.

“What are they doing?” Baron Balazs asked D as he faced the workshop.

“Rigging up something in case of attacks,” D responded coolly.

“So, to protect myself from the blows of lowly humans, I’m forced to enlist the aid of other lowly humans?”

“Arriving safely is the primary concern.”

The baron’s lips twisted.

The craftsmen all turned to look at him in unison. They’d felt his ghastly aura.

“I believe I’ll take a stroll out in the night,” the baron remarked as he started to walk toward the door.

“Don’t forget your promise,” said D.

“You have my word,” the baron replied with one hand raised as he stepped out onto the darkened street.

“Still as proud as ever of his Noble blood. Someone like him could cause problems for the humans,” a hoarse voice remarked from the vicinity of D’s left hip. “You think it’s safe to let him go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hmm. His foes are nearby, too.”

“I realize that. So does he.”

“Oh, you mean to tell me this arrangement isn’t based on mutual respect? Hmph, that’s just great!” the voice said in a sarcastic tone.

D’s fingers creaked into a fist that cut off the voice.

But then another voice rang out.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” the smith shouted angrily.

Before him, a middle-aged craftsman with a vacant look on his face was cooling a piece of melted iron.

“Well, I was just—”

“You put that in the damn water right now and you’ll make air pockets in it. If you can’t get the goddamn fundamentals right after ten years working here, I’ve gotta wonder what you bums—”

Right before the smith’s bulging eyes, the craftsman foggily replied, “Well, I just kinda thought that was what I should do.”

“What?!” the smith bellowed, wrath on his face as he grabbed the front of the craftsman’s shirt. “Listen, I’m not out to help anyone allied with the Nobility. To be honest, I’d just as soon chuck this whole job right out the door. But I’ve already taken it on, so there’s no backing out. We’ll do the best we can. I don’t care who we’re working for, I won’t have any slipshod work or screwing around in my shop. And that includes you. You got that?”

Having lambasted the craftsman, he turned to the rest and said, “You’re all clear on that, right?”

But the second he spoke, there was a massive burst of electromagnetic sparks from the other side of the workshop, accompanied by a scream.

“You damn fool,” the smith said as he rushed over and dragged the injured man away with the help of another craftsman who’d been nearby.

Pale blue lightning had scorched his powerful shoulders and arms.

“How did that happen?” the smith asked the other craftsman.

“This idiot went and turned the voltage up into the danger zone all of a sudden!”

“What?! Why in the hell would you do a stupid thing like that?” he shouted at the man they’d just saved.

His face and chest were horribly charred. His mouth opened a crack, and the thin thread of a voice that he squeezed out said, “Somehow—I thought that was what I should do . . .”

“You, too?! What in the hell—” the smith began to say, but then he froze.

And he wasn’t the only one. The other craftsman and even the molten iron seemed to have been transformed into an icy forest.

D was standing beside the smith.

“You, you’re . . .”

Ignoring his question, D asked the wounded man, “Why did you think that?”

“I don’t know . . . I just thought so . . . I had to obey . . .”

“Obey? Who’d you have to obey?” the smith interrupted.

“I don’t know . . . Just someone . . . important . . .”

“Someone important?” the smith said, glancing at D with an expression of utter confusion on his face. “Damned if I know what you’re talking about. My wife will patch you up in the back room. We’ll have to make do without you.”

“Boss, you think maybe I could lie down for a while, too?” asked the first craftsman he’d reprimanded.

“What are you talking about?!”

“Er, I just thought that . . .”

“That you should? What, did the almighty sun order you to? Or was it someone important in heaven above? Well, I don’t need any of your crazy talk in my shop. Get the hell out of here. And don’t bother coming back!”

“Hey!”

“Shut your hole! Get your ass out of here, and Yama and I will do the rest.”

“Boss,” Yama called out. “Sorry, but I don’t feel up to it, either.”

With the veins rising in the smith’s forehead, D walked off toward the door. Reaching the street, he looked to either side before advancing at a rapid clip in the same direction that the baron had gone.

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For the baron, a nocturnal stroll wasn’t necessarily sheer pleasure. The stars shone through crystal-clear darkness to make it bright as day for him. The night air was filled with the perfume of nocturnal blooms and the scents of creatures—odors that goaded the cells of his still partially slumbering brain into action. And yet the baron’s expression was stiff, his breathing erratic enough to threaten the stillness of the night. To be precise, he was thirsty for blood.

Perhaps due to the fact that this area had been liberated from the Nobility’s control long ago, lights burned in the windows with undrawn curtains in many homes, and laughter spilled out in the streets along with the glow. The form that flitted by one window was that of a woman with long, flowing tresses. It stimulated the baron, stoking the fires of his hunger.

The baron’s carriage was stocked with dried plasma. Three times a day he dissolved it in water to fill his empty stomach. Synthesized by the Nobility’s science, it didn’t differ in the slightest from human blood in scent or taste or nutrients. But it was still no use. For the Nobility, feeding wasn’t about ingesting nutrients. It was about sustaining the psyche. Victims cowered like rabbits in the sight of a fierce wolf. There were thrills to be found in chasing prey, pushing her to the ground, and searching out the pale nape of her neck. What a joy it was to see the faint blue of her veins. And the instant the baron’s fangs sank in, his mouth would be filled with a sweetness and warmth for which there were no words. When he paid a second iniquitous call on his victim several days later, she would let him into her bedroom and expose her own throat—and then he would taste the rapture of conquest! That was how a Noble fed.

Safe as this region might be, apparently there was no one who ventured out on the streets at night. That, coupled with the promise he’d made D, would serve to keep the baron from drinking any blood.

Just then, a figure appeared before him. It was apparently a young girl from the village. In her right hand she held a basket of flowers. The baron suddenly realized he’d entered an ornamental garden. To either side of the path, pale blossoms reflected the moonlight as a sweet aroma wafted from them.

Spotting the approaching baron, the girl froze in fear. A human could sense a Noble, just as a rabbit always recognized a wolf.

“You . . . you’re . . .” the girl stammered, the words falling from her lips unbidden.

“What are you doing?” the baron inquired.

He could think of nothing else to say. An impulse that was difficult to describe seemed to be building in the pit of his stomach. Restraining it, he asked, “Are you picking flowers?”

The girl nodded.

“Tomorrow I’ll be leaving the village . . . so I thought I’d give them to my friends as a farewell gift . . .”

Eyeing the white blooms that filled her flower basket, the baron came closer and took one, which he then raised to his lips.

The girl was trembling. Waves of fear and a fragrant aroma emanated from her body. And the pale nape of her neck swayed before the Noble’s eyes.

“Such a lovely scent,” the baron said as he returned the flower to her basket. “The night is dangerous. Hurry back to your home.”

The girl looked up at him dumbfounded.

“Why . . . ?” she asked, her tone dripping with perplexity.

The baron smiled.

“You mean why aren’t I going to suck your blood?”

“Yes . . .”

“I would like to do so, but you see, I’ve made a promise. If I were to break it, I’d be left all alone. In my present situation, that would be problematic.”

The girl didn’t know what to say.

“Go.”

The girl backed her way around the baron, finally turning once she was behind him to run off. The sound of her shoes pounding the ground faded into the distance.

The baron let out a deep sigh. Somehow he seemed to have overcome his urges.

He turned back the way he’d come. His cape whirled out. From within it, a fierce flash of light raced off to assail a figure some sixty feet ahead of him.

“Oh my!” the figure cried out in surprise—and the old man in priestly garb threw himself to the ground.

The flash that sailed over his head didn’t vanish into the darkness, but rather spun around and was swallowed by the interior of the baron’s cape.

“What’s wrong? Get a bit too close?”

At the baron’s remark, the aged priest slowly got back up again and sheepishly stroked his bald head.

“Woe is me, it is just as you say. I happened to observe you speaking to that lass from the village, and I’m afraid my zeal to see what would happen next got the better of me. Nice to meet you. My name is Yoputz. I’m one of those that’ve been sent to do away with you.”

“A filthy little Hunter, are we? Well, today is the last day of that for you,” the baron said, his eyes pulsing with a chilling light.

With a loud squeal, the elderly priest—Yoputz—turned tail and made a mad dash in a decidedly un-Hunter-like fashion.

From the baron’s cape shot a golden glitter that skimmed by Yoputz’s neck.

Yoputz didn’t stop. After running an additional thirty feet, he fell limply to the ground. Or his headless torso did.

Once more the flash of light returned to the interior of the Noble’s cape.

“Fool,” the baron spat in a tone as cold as ice. He began to walk toward the corpse, but halted almost immediately.

A darkness deeper and more beautiful than the dark of night took human form and stopped beside Yoputz’s remains—by his decapitated corpse. The old man’s head lay in the road about fifteen feet closer to the baron.

“For your information, he was a Hunter out to get me,” said the baron.

Nodding, D turned around again. He didn’t tell the baron to go back. He’d merely followed Yoputz’s presence out there.

“So he was after him, just like we thought. But the way he took that clown’s head off was something else. I wouldn’t wanna tangle with him,” a voice remarked from the Hunter’s lowered left hand.

There was the sound of footsteps behind him, and then the baron walked to D’s left.

“Why don’t you continue your stroll?” D suggested.

“No, thank you. I wouldn’t call this a particularly pleasant evening,” the baron said in a frosty tone, seeming a completely different person from the terrifying butcher he’d been a minute ago.

__

A short while after the pair walked off, a low voice like that of the dead could be heard down on the dirt road where only the moonlight lay, saying, “Dear me! Chopped in half again, am I? However, I did overhear something interesting in the bargain. My good baron, it’s not right to deny yourself!”

__

III

__

Early the next morning, D left the village. But before doing so, he parted company with the blacksmith in front of his workshop.

“Good journey to you,” the smith said, his face looking every bit as enervated as his voice sounded.

Surprisingly, D said in return, “We’re in your debt.”

Pulling a little bag out of his breast pocket, he poured the contents into the smith’s outstretched palm. The golden flow continued.

“Hold up a second! You’ve given me too much there,” the smith shouted, his scraggly beard jolted by his cries.

The pyramid of gold that’d been built on his palm was twice the sum he’d initially demanded.

“That’s to get your workers patched up and to cover your hard work,” D said softly.

On returning the previous night with the baron, he’d seen the smith silently continuing solo after all his craftsmen had thrown in the towel. All by himself he’d done a job that four people would’ve barely been able to finish.

“Okay. Since you put it that way, I’ll take you up on your generous offer.”

D mounted up in front of the somewhat bashful-looking smith.

As if he’d suddenly remembered it, the smith called out, “Oh, there’s something you’ll wanna keep in mind. Lately, bandits have been running rampant to the north of the village, and a bunch of travelers have been killed. What’s more, even though we know what kind of characters got them because they’d been cut and their valuables were missing, the immediate cause of death has been drowning or being buried alive in mudflows. Come to mention it, there’ve been a lot of mountain tsunamis, downpours, and thunderstorms lately. I don’t see how they could possibly be connected to the bandits, but you’ll wanna watch yourself.”

D raised one hand lightly. That was his farewell.

“So long. I don’t suppose we’ll meet again,” the blacksmith called out forlornly to the back of the dwindling figure.

But the echoes of his words were soon effaced by the creak of the wheels from the carriage that began to move with D.

__

†

In about an hour, they reached a mountain pass. It was roughly ten feet wide, and as the road climbed, the left-hand side became narrower, as if the ground had been sheared away. If one were to lean over on his horse, he could glimpse the silvery ribbon running one hundred fifty to two hundred feet below. It was a tributary of the three-hundred-mile-long Mertz River, one of the major rivers in the western Frontier. Though they could’ve gone around the pass instead, D had chosen this route precisely because it would make it difficult for pursuers to make a move. As rough as the going was for them, it would be just as arduous for anyone following behind. If they were to ride through the night, they would reach a certain location by dawn. For the time being, that was D’s goal.

Hearing what sounded like a drumbeat nearby, D gazed up at the sky. A shadow formed on his handsome features.

A black cloud churned and spread like a drop of ink falling into water. Purple lightning streaked from one corner. The roar came later.

It took less than a minute for the whole world to blur as a pelting rain assailed the carriage and D. The raindrops struck with such force they would’ve left the average person’s limbs swollen even through foul-weather gear, but the cyborg horse advanced effortlessly. And on the mount’s back, D was completely unaffected, as if he were beneath clear skies on an Indian summer day.

Just then, from the carriage to his rear, a voice said, “Someone’s coming.” Sounding as if it’d risen from the very depths, the voice was terribly low, yet it pierced the pounding rain to reach D’s ears. It was that of the baron.

The vampiric Nobility naturally required physical rest by day. However, there were a few Nobles able to operate almost as they would in the dark so long as they weren’t directly exposed to sunlight, though their biorhythms dipped unavoidably. Extremely rare, such individuals were almost invariably members of the clans that had been dubbed the Greater Nobility. The Balazs family was precisely that.

While it was unclear whether the baron’s unsettling pronouncement had come as news to D, the Hunter didn’t turn around at all but silently advanced on his steed.

It was three minutes later that the white carriage drawn by a pair of horses caught up to them. Naturally there was no driver, and the windows had heavy curtains to block the sunlight.

“Dear me, you seem to be in much less of a hurry than I imagined.”

Shadowy though it was, the voice that seeped from the white carriage was also a bit showy. It belonged to Miska.

“Look who we have here,” the baron’s voice whispered. The way that he spoke made it easy enough to picture his wry smile.

D didn’t even bother to look back.

“For your information, I haven’t come this way in hopes of traveling with the two of you. Even if the opportunity were to arise, I don’t expect I should undertake a lengthy journey requiring mutual trust with the kind of Noble who would leave a frail woman to fend for herself, or with his bodyguard. Therefore, our meeting here is sheer coincidence. You needn’t offer me the slightest consideration.”

Having said all of this without needing to draw a single breath, and delivering the words so coolly they seemed like a prepared statement, the owner of the white carriage then abruptly fell silent. For a while, the only sounds to be heard were the pounding of the rain and the creak of wooden wheels.

“We’ve got trouble now,” the voice from the blue carriage then whispered in a tone D alone would hear. “Can you do something about her?”

After a short pause, D replied, “Yes, I can.”

“What?”

“If she’s interfering with my work, I can always do what you hired me for.”

The baron’s voice fell silent. The implications of the Hunter’s words had dawned on him.

“For a guard, you sure are a dangerous customer.”

“The woman’s a lot more danger to you than I am. Even if she came here by chance, she may cost you your life. This would be the second time one Noble asked me to destroy another, but I don’t mind.”

Call her a Noble, call her a vampire, the beautiful young flower of womanhood in question still only looked to be sixteen or seventeen. Knowing this, what kind of cruel, cold psyche did the Hunter possess in order to say such a thing?

“It would seem you hate the Nobility, too,” a somewhat depressed tone remarked from the blue carriage.

At that moment, the world turned white.

A tree that’d been struck by lightning fell over. Directly beneath it, D gave a kick to his horse’s flanks and raced forward.

Perhaps it was the bole’s impact that made the ground give way. The earth had already been loose, and after the rain had seeped into it, there must’ve been more than enough danger of it collapsing.

Tilting wildly to one side, the two carriages didn’t right themselves again, but rather slowly fell down the incline along with an avalanche of dirt. And then the mountainous terrain beneath the advancing D went as well, with the Hunter maintaining extraordinary equestrian form as he dropped toward the silvery river below.

What awaited him was a raging torrent. There weren’t even banks. Swollen by the sudden downpour, the waters swallowed the shore, covered boulders, and roared like a beast as they continued to rush by. D and his mount quickly vanished from sight, and even the pair of carriages whizzed along like two little arks as they floated away without the slightest resistance.

And when they came to a sharp turn two or three hundred yards later, some sort of net hung down from the rock ledge above and snagged the pair of carriages and their horses. The carriages stopped.

Up on top of the ledge, the other end of the net was attached to a powerful winch, and as the pair of carriages banged repeatedly against the rocky face, they were hoisted up.

There were three men by the winch. Each wore a vicious scowl and had weapons strapped to his back and waist. As one of them operated the winch, the net went slack and the teams pulling the carriages stood up.

Aiming a powerful magnetic pistol at the horses’ heads, the third man said, “All right, I’ve destroyed their control chips.”

At that, the other two hopped up into the respective driver’s seats.

“Well, this sure is a hell of a thing to have fall into our laps,” the man who’d climbed onto the blue carriage said, sounding greatly impressed. “No doubt about it, this here’s a Noble’s ride. It’s probably still inside.”

“So long as it’s daytime, we’re safe enough. The bastard’s probably still dreaming about sipping someone’s blood,” the man on the white carriage replied, giving a shake to the reins.

The horses changed direction to face the rock ledge, where a hole fifteen feet in diameter opened up. It appeared to be the home, or at the very least an outpost, for the men—the bandits.

“What about the other one—the guy on the horse? We just gonna let him slide?” asked the man who’d gone back over to the winch and was peering down at the raging flow of the river.

“The boss would never let something like that go to waste. We’ve got a net set up just waiting for him a little further downstream. We’ll nab whatever he’s got on him, take his life . . . and then all that’ll be left is a waterlogged corpse,” the driver of the blue carriage declared blithely.