A FOGGY ROAD THROUGH THE ROCKS

CHAPTER 1

-

I

-

The fog rolled in just after noon. With the sinuous moves of an alluring dancer the milky white water particles clung to the driverless carriages and D, who rode beside them.

Hemmed in on either side by great craggy chunks of rock, the road ran on like a slender ribbon. You couldn’t really call it a path through the bottom of a valley—it was quite literally a road weaving between the rocks. And as it was usually easier and easier to stray from the road the thicker the fog grew, it was obvious the stone bulwarks would come in handy.

It was nearly noon. Once they traversed this pass and spent another half day crossing the plains, their destination of Krauhausen would be waiting for them at twilight.

They were finally there. But how many people harbored this relief in their heart? Naturally, there were no voices from the coffins sealed away in the carriages, and D sat astride his mount with a cold, clear expression from which no hint of emotion could be gleaned.

It was about thirty minutes after they started down the foggy road that the Hunter’s eyes took on a faint gleam. Stopping his horse and doubling back, he then rapped lightly on the carriage door.

What is it? the baron asked in a voice no one save D could hear.

“Don’t you know?” asked D. His voice could likewise be heard by the baron’s ears alone.

No. What’s happened?

“This isn’t the right road. We seem to have lost our way.”

The road had vanished at some point without their even realizing it.

That’s not like you. Although I must add that I didn’t sense anything, either. Is it due to the fog?

The Nobleman was apparently mindful of that, at least.

“Probably,” D replied.

Even with his ultra-keen senses, the fog seemed like nothing more than ordinary water particles.

“What do you make of it?” the Hunter inquired, but not of Balazs.

“It’s just plain old fog. Even I don’t have a clue why we’ve lost our way.”

At that response from his left hand, D ran his gaze over the rocky mounds to either side of them.

“Those rocks are real enough,” the hoarse voice continued. “You fixing to wait here until the fog lifts?”

“No.”

“I get you,” D’s left hand said as he raised it up high.

In the palm of it, human eyes and a nose swiftly took shape. Its mouth opened.

The whooosh that resounded wasn’t the sound of it drawing breath, but rather the groan of the wind. The fog eddied as it coursed into the palm of the hand.

Ten seconds passed. Twenty seconds.

And then, when the trailing edge of the milky whiteness had been swallowed, someone exclaimed in astonishment, “Well, I’ll be damned!”

The voice came from the very same mouth that had devoured the fog.

But even before it had said a word, D had noticed the same thing.

They were on the very same road as before. With great chunks of stone lining either side, the path ran straight for another hundred and fifty feet before breaking to the right.

Something strange is going on, the baron’s voice was heard to say.

“We’re back in the same spot again,” D replied before turning around. “While we were lost, the amount of ground we covered was roughly a hundred feet. I have to assume that something was done to us during that time.”

A mere hundred feet. Though that didn’t seem like much, getting both D and the baron to advance down that otherworldly road for such a distance before noticing anything was miraculous.

“Know anything about this?”

The Hunter’s query pertained to who might’ve set them up.

Dr. de Carriole could manage it.

“Do you know what moves he’s likely to make?”

A number of them. He was my tutor in my infancy.

“Then I’ll need you to keep your eyes peeled.”

And with these words, D flicked the reins of the horses drawing the carriage. Accompanied by the creak of wooden wheels, the horses stepped forward. They approached the turn in the rocks.

D took the turn first.

Thirty feet up ahead, there lay a dark figure. Lying face down, the person was dressed in black garments, and wore a coat in the same hue.

Like D.

It certainly looked as if the attack had already started.

D dismounted.

Stop, the baron ordered him. It’s obviously a trap. Don’t go near him.

However, they couldn’t very well leave someone lying there across the whole road.

White clouds floated in the blue sky. To either side of the path, flowers swayed in ivory beauty. And on the road lay a corpse.

Perhaps D intended to accept this invitation. Going over to the remains, the Hunter bent down.

It was just then that the corpse turned over.

A pale face looked up at D . . . with the face of D himself.

For just a second the two exchanged looks, but then D swiftly stood back up and drew his sword. There was a flash of stark light from his blade, and the head of the figure on the ground was removed from its body.

“It’s a doll,” said D.

At that point, he felt like something was softly pulling away from his own face.

Sure enough, wood was visible where the head had been severed from the figure at his feet.

What a strange thing to do, the baron said, his voice wavering with perplexity. If that was the work of Dr. de Carriole, I don’t recall him having any such ability. D, do you sense anything out of the ordinary?

“Not a thing,” D replied succinctly as he tossed the wooden remains to one side of the road and got back on his horse. But one thing gnawed at the heart beneath those black garments.

The two carriages passed by in silence, and the only one out in the white sunlight to hear the dwindling creak of the wheels was the severed head of the doll. But as it lay exposed to the sun, the smooth, polished wood of its face was now flat and utterly featureless. The countenance of the gorgeous Vampire Hunter had vanished without a trace.

-

Though it was daytime, the room was hemmed in by a thick darkness. The darkness jelled even further, forming two figures that were darker still—a stooped old man, and a young man who stood bolt upright and completely motionless behind him. The old man was draped in gold brocade, and he wore a long robe. The unusually lengthy garment fell across the floor behind him like a shadow.

Suddenly putting his right hand to his ear, the old man said, “It’s finished!”

“And you think that’ll take care of the Hunter?” the young man asked.

Apparently the old man had succeeded in something, and while the other man might have been his apprentice or at least his subordinate, the young man didn’t seem at all delighted by this. To the contrary, he sounded quite skeptical.

“The spell has been cast. There can be no doubt of that. However—”

“However what?”

“There is one thing that troubles me,” the old man said, his expression horribly intense as he slowly turned toward the young man.

While there were other reasons why the darkness of the chamber was fraught with tension, if one were to claim it all sprang from the old man’s look, no one would ever doubt it. Hidden beneath age spots and wrinkles and a hoary goatee, his face was like that of an ancient mummy, his thread-thin eyes brimming with a yellow light, while tremendous intellect, evil, and willpower all spilled from his green irises.

“The mask you made of him, Zanus—is it perfect?”

“Do you doubt me?” the young man—Zanus—asked in a hard tone.

“Not at all. I recognize your skill. After all, your ‘transference’ hex proved effective,” the old man said with a nod before turning back the way he’d faced originally.

“Then I shall proceed according to schedule,” the young man told him, bowing as he prepared to take his leave.

“Our foe is the same man who slew the water warriors. You mustn’t let your guard down. Be on your toes,” the old man said, his voice trailing after the young man.

Once Zanus had left, the old man didn’t move for a while, but eventually he took a seat on a nearby settee and mumbled introspectively, “Baron Byron Balazs . . . I wonder if you remember me? Do you still recall the name of the hopeful tutor who saw in you the salvation of your race?”

“Dr. de Carriole,” a voice called out from somewhere in the darkness.

As the old man spun around reflexively, his expression was awash with a respect and fear that made it clear he’d guessed who it was that addressed him.

“Oh, my—when did you get here?” the old man—Dr. de Carriole—said with head hung low, while in his heart he chided himself. His laboratory was equipped with warning systems that should’ve been able to detect even the slightest difference in the makeup of the air.

“I am always around you. It wouldn’t do to have you using the fruits of your strange research against me, now would it?”

“Surely you jest,” de Carriole replied, but to himself he thought, That was a century and a half ago.

That one time alone the old man had tried to put up some resistance. To this day, even he himself didn’t know what had come of it, for although he’d tried, nothing had changed at all. The assassins he’d sent had vanished without a trace, and the source of the voice had appeared before the doctor, just as always. And from that day to this, de Carriole had gone without a single soul ever censuring him or accusing him of any wrongdoing. Because after that, he’d sworn allegiance to the source of the voice in the darkness.

“Is my son coming?”

From this question, the voice could belong to none other than Vlad Balazs.

“Indeed he is. He’ll be here in half a day,” de Carriole replied.

“So, even with all your power, you still didn’t manage to slay him? That comes as little surprise, given that he has that Hunter for a bodyguard.”

De Carriole turned with a start toward the depths of the darkness. He could see through the gloom as clear as day. They both could. Yet his eyes found nothing save inky blackness.

“Are you familiar with ‘D,’ then, sire?” he asked.

“No.”

The doctor was at a loss for words.

“I don’t know D,” the voice continued. “Or, at least, any manhunter by that name. However, he does bear a distinct resemblance to another great personage whose name I do know. Or so it would appear.”

“A great personage . . .” de Carriole began before breaking off.

It must’ve been centuries since he’d been surprised twice in a single day. His skin, which had died ages ago and had only been reinvigorated by reanimating drugs, now rose in goose bumps.

The voice mentioned “a great personage.” To the best of the doctor’s knowledge, there was only one person on earth he would refer to as such. However, from the way he spoke, it seemed it had to be someone else. In which case—

Memories swirled and flowed. One by one, his brain cells were lanced by the point of a needle, active cells and slumbering cells alike. Cells that had long ago fallen into disuse and ancient brain cells that his brain had even forgotten existed. And in one of them—he found it! However, it gave off only a momentary flash before fading into eternal darkness. Freezing the flash would be impossible. But he tried to comprehend it. Forgetting all about his surroundings, de Carriole focused his entire consciousness on that one point. The actual memory of the concrete information took shape for only an instant—and then it quickly slipped away. De Carriole’s concentration pursued it, and a split second before it was swallowed by the nothingness, he brushed the tail end of it.

“Now I remember . . .” he mumbled, not because the information he’d wrested from his brain needed to be spoken, but because it threatened to leave him again. “That great personage . . . did indeed have . . . just one . . . But . . . it couldn’t be . . . It’s simply not possible . . . that a filthy ghoul . . . a Hunter of the Nobility . . . could be his . . .”

“Perhaps that is the case. But then, perhaps it is not,” the voice said gravely. It was as much a confession that he himself couldn’t judge or comprehend the situation. “If the latter is true, then to us, he is merely Byron’s cohort, and we shall have no choice but to eradicate him. But if the opposite is the case, there’s much to be feared.”

And saying this, the voice gave a low laugh.

Is he prepared to bare his teeth even against the great one’s very own—de Carriole thought, terrified by the concept. In a manner of speaking, he would be making a foe of the great one himself. And the Nobility as a whole were bound by that great personage’s regard for his family like no other rule.

“Make ready, doctor! Make ready!” he was told by a voice that echoed both high and low from the darkness. “Before they enter my lands or after makes no difference. Use every means at your disposal if you must, but slay them.”

“Kindly leave it to me. You can rest easy while de Carriole handles everything.”

It was just then that a sound like a long, long sob was heard from nowhere in particular.

-

II

-

It was a woman, and no doubt she was incredibly distraught. Her grief was so great it’d driven her mad, yet still she couldn’t help but lament—that was the impression anyone would’ve gotten.

“Aside from yourself, there is one other who understands that my son is approaching. But I have to wonder, why is it that what should be a song of triumph is instead a wail such as would greet the dead?”

The voice was tinged with laughter.

“Dr. de Carriole!” it added.

“Milord!” the robed figure exclaimed, visibly shaken.

“You had best go. Not surprisingly, that’s enough to rend even my heart. I would not have anyone else hear that voice.”

“I understand,” the old man said as he bowed his head, and at that point he realized that the source of the voice was no longer with him.

“I understand,” he repeated to himself. “But who are you to speak of how it rends your heart?”

And once he’d spoken, a chill surely ran down the old man’s spine. But no bolt of lightning fell from the heavens to strike him down.

A few minutes later, de Carriole descended a lengthy spiral staircase to a depth even he was unsure of toward a certain chamber. In scattered places on the stone walls atomic flames burned with a blue light, casting flickering shadows on the steps and walls.

His descent ended abruptly, as always. As he stood in a vast hall paved in stone, guards sheathed in armor closed on him from either side. All of them were synthetic humans. They weighed over a ton each thanks to the heavy alloys, but their footfalls didn’t even make a sound. Their long spears came to bear on the doctor, the tips glowing red.

“Out of my way!”

Before the doctor had finished speaking, red glows extended from the ends of the spears to his chest and exited through his back. The rock wall behind him turned red hot, and in no time at all, holes two inches in diameter were bored into it.

When these guards were imbued with life, the first thing they’d been set to do was to slaughter absolutely anyone who happened to come here.

“Idiots! You know nothing of the world. Out of my way!”

As the doctor took a step forward, a blinding band of light shot from the sleeve of his robe and mowed through the guards. And when the light returned to his sleeve once more, the old man walked over to the door that lay before him.

The remaining guards couldn’t move a muscle, their spears at the ready but otherwise frozen in place. Though the volume of light was sufficient, there was something frosty about this subterranean illumination that gave all beneath it the doleful aspect of lifeless sculptures.

Halting before a door, the old man put his right index finger to his mouth and bit the tip of it slightly. The drop of blood that quickly welled up fell into a hole that opened in front of the lock, and less than a second later, the sound of the lock being undone rang out.

Taking the golden doorknob in hand, de Carriole trembled. He had just reflected on the person he was about to see and what would transpire. While heaving a deep sigh, he pushed open the door. It took just as long for the door to open as it did for his sigh to end.

And then the voice that sounded like some despondent lost soul once again reached the ancient sorcerer’s ears. Who was this woman who wept in the untold depths of the earth, surrounded by guards who would slay any who drew near?

In scattered places along the lengthy corridor were set doors that seemed to be of bronze. On either side of the doors atomic fires burned.

Casting vague shadows on the floor as he advanced, the old mummy of a man looked as if he were guided by the woman’s plaintive cries.

In no time, a door appeared ahead of him, as enormous as a castle gate. The voice was spilling from behind it. However, it seemed utterly impossible that those echoes—thread-thin, low, and full of grief—could make it through the great door that towered before him.

When he reached the foot of the door, de Carriole put his blood into this lock as he had done with the last. Extracting his DNA, memory circuits within the lock then matched it against the list of people who were authorized for access before giving the OK for the door to unlock. It took but a millisecond.

Splitting down the middle, the door opened to either side. It was fifteen feet thick, and once de Carriole had gone through it, he looked up at the ceiling. It must’ve been over thirty feet high. He was greeted by light that was like that of the evening.

There was water as far as the eye could see. As proof that there wasn’t even a ripple from the wind, the dead-calm surface of the water displayed no tendency to cling to the light as it spread in a placid expanse. There was no end to it. No matter how hard you looked, you simply couldn’t see beyond it.

The floor at de Carriole’s feet formed a stone staircase with about ten steps, and the lowest one was underwater. At the bottom of the staircase there floated a boat made of bronze. The reason it wasn’t moored was because there was no movement of the water.

The woman’s voice continued to wail, rustling across the water.

Like some investigator who’d sought that voice for a century, de Carriole climbed into the boat, took the oars that were stored in it, and began to paddle through the water. The ripples spread. It had been a long time since this expanse of water had known any kind of wave.

After rowing for about ten minutes, de Carriole then ceased and listened intently. His eardrums confirmed that the woman’s voice was coming from right below the starboard bulwark. Leaning out, he peered through the surface of the water.

Just below the boat, a woman drifted with threads of blood flowing from her body. No, that wasn’t entirely correct. The woman was trapped in a single spot for all eternity. Her long black tresses didn’t drift, or sink, or float at all, but rather stayed twined around her body and the white dress that she wore, while eyes the same hue as her hair peered up with a quiet emptiness. The smooth line of her nose left an impression that carried over to the rest of her body, right down to the tips of her fingers, causing the old man to wonder for the first time in years if perhaps the water hadn’t washed all possible hardness out of her. And the woman’s lips. Bloodless and paler than even her skin, he had to wonder why they alone seemed to stand out. It was because they were moving. And through their sensuous and heartbreaking trembling, the voice was produced.

“Milady,” he called out to her after a short time had passed. “Milady, it is I—de Carriole. I’ve come because there’s something I must tell you.”

It took time for the words to penetrate the water that separated the speaker and listener.

“Thank you for coming, de Carriole,” she said, her heartbroken tone becoming emotionless as she greeted him.

The old man prostrated himself.

“Have you responded to my voice? To my cries of deepest woe?”

“Indeed I have. Milady has been privy to things even I myself do not know.”

“Being underwater, I can hear the sound of the stars moving and the world turning. The sound of coffins opening, the baying of wolves, the wailing of the sun as it sinks beyond the horizon, and the jubilant cries of the darkness.”

“Incredible.”

“My child has returned, hasn’t he?” the woman’s voice inquired.

“Indeed he has. He is now but a half day from the castle.”

“And what of him?”

“He seems rather agitated.”

“I should think so.”

“Although this is merely my own interpretation, I would say that Lord Byron has returned after acquiring power surpassing his father’s.”

“And he knows it, too. How splendid,” she said with a laugh, her voice buoyant even underwater. “Then I take it you are in charge of the efforts to hinder him, are you not?”

“Yes, milady,” he replied without any hesitation.

“And I’m sure my child will make it through.”

“No,” de Carriole responded flatly. “I won’t allow that. Lord Byron’s life will surely be taken before he enters this land.”

“You mean to suggest that a member of the Nobility would fall to humans?” the woman said, chuckling once again.

“Zanus has already gone out to meet him.”

The woman’s laughter ceased.

“Zanus has?”

“Indeed.”

“So, that’s who’s gone, is it? I see . . . Perhaps Byron will be slain.”

“It is as you say, milady. And the Hunter acting as his bodyguard is already under our control.”

“This is merely the prelude, de Carriole. Merely the prelude.”

“Yes, milady. The next person you lay eyes on shall be Lord Byron or myself—and the other one shall never look upon you again.”

“It was so good of you to inform me of this, de Carriole. You have my thanks.”

“Think nothing of it.”

And then, without any further words of parting, de Carriole began to row the boat away again. But his vessel came to a dead stop just as the stone staircase and the doorway began to take shape.

“Milady,” he muttered.

He was working the oars. He could even feel them digging into the water. And yet the boat didn’t move an inch. He then saw something calmly reach up for the gunwale from the surface of the water. It didn’t take him any time at all to realize he was sinking.

“Am I to take it that you don’t wish me to lay a hand on Lord Byron? Very well, then.”

Rising, he held his right hand out parallel to the water’s surface. Water had already begun to creep into the boat over the gunwales. From the sleeve of his robe something like a silver thread shot out with a trail behind it, but it mixed with the water and quickly diffused.

As the water rose to his ankles, de Carriole set one foot out of the boat and onto the water’s surface. He didn’t sink. The other leg followed—but even after he’d put his entire weight onto the water, its surface supported him as if the soles of his shoes were resting on a stone floor.

He watched coolly as the bronze boat sank like a petal off a flower. The shore was still quite some distance away. Letting out a single sigh, the aged scientist slowly began to walk back on the path he’d created across the surface of the water.

-

III

-

While they still had about an hour to go before leaving the rocks, one of the cyborg horses twisted an ankle. Inspecting it, D discovered that an artificial ligament in its heel had snapped. He decided to take a rest so that he could repair it. The condition of the other horses would also need to be checked.

“Once we’re through here, we’ll head for the plains,” D said as if addressing someone. “For your foes, that’ll be the last redoubt. They’ll be coming at us full force.”

Not necessarily, Baron Balazs countered. No, they may come at us, but they won’t play their trumps until after we’re in the village. I’m sure that’s how Dr. de Carriole would do it.

“Do you know the names of the most powerful opposition in Krauhausen?” D inquired.

First of all, there’s Zanus, the voice replied. Though he’s Dr. de Carriole’s star pupil, I don’t know all that much about him, only that while the doctor continues to grow older and older, Zanus seems to stay just around twenty. If he’s not a Noble, he’d have to be a synthetic human. Ordinarily he serves as the doctor’s assistant, but it’s said that he can act autonomously when the need arises. As for his ability—I really don’t know. From all that I’ve heard, he’s a fearsome opponent—that’s all they say.

“Who’s next?”

Chlomo the Makeup Lover, the baron replied, a ring of distaste to his voice. He’s the captain of my father’s personal guards, and from morning till night the man plays with cosmetics. And he applies them not only to himself, but to others as well. Although I don’t know exactly what that accomplishes, one theory has it that the person he applies them to takes on a personality befitting that makeup.

“And the third?”

Sai Fung of the Thousand Limbs. He’s a martial-arts genius. They say that using only his bare hands he can beat opponents armed with ranged weapons. It seems that the brutalized remains of his enemies look as if they’ve been pummeled by a thousand people. And those are our three greatest foes. In addition, there are their underlings. They are also formidable. Each is probably worth about ten ordinary soldiers.

“Yet they haven’t come out to meet us.”

Once he finished inspecting his cyborg horse, D settled into a hollow in a nearby rock. No matter how exceptional a Vampire Hunter he might be, so long as he had Noble blood in him, he would find it far more exhausting than a human being to labor out in the sun. By nature dhampirs sought darkness in the daylight, yet at the same time, their recuperative powers transcended those of ordinary people.

With the carriages parked out in the sun and D melded with the darkness formed by the rock, the road through the boulders was visited by an ancient stillness that early afternoon.

It was perhaps a few seconds later that the horses whinnied.

D came out of the hollow.

Cut free of the carriages with a flash of his sword, the cyborg horses galloped forward. They and D alone had noticed the flapping of wings closing on them from beyond the rocks. It wasn’t a sound that human hearing could easily detect—it was a hum even fainter than the buzz of a mosquito.

Perhaps whatever was approaching sensed something out of the ordinary, but as a noisy trio came around one of the rocks to close swiftly on D, a stark flash of light blazed from behind the Hunter. All but one of the sounds were lost, but as the streak of light was drawn back into the carriage, strange ripples passed across the black surface of the last noisy invader. Most likely it was some kind of vibration.

The flapping of its wings was replaced by a groan as the object collided with a rock on the opposite side of the road—and exploded. More than the explosion itself, it was the sight of the fireball that devastated the rock wall that made it clear it’d been some kind of incendiary bomb.

The fireball swiftly spread, assailing D and the carriages as the Hunter rolled over. A shock wave accompanied the hundred-thousand-degree flames. The pair of carriages were easily knocked on their sides and slammed against the rock face. Even now, blistering winds beat against the vehicles.

A few seconds passed—after the flames had raced away down the rocky road, only the tempestuous wind was left in their wake.

Are you okay, D? the baron’s voice inquired.

The road belched white smoke like some burnt and twisted caldera, while out in the middle of it sat a black shape that hadn’t been there before. Flames swayed here and there and black smoke poured from the shape as it rose gracefully. It had taken on human form. That of the most gorgeous young man in black.

“Are you okay?” the Hunter replied, the baron’s question apparently having served to prove that the Nobleman still lived.

D said nothing more as he struck the shoulders and chest of his coat to extinguish the flames. No one there noticed the crude belch of satisfaction that escaped from his left hand. With a coat made of special fibers—heat resistant, cold resistant, and impact resistant—and a left hand that could gobble up flames, D had safely emerged from the fiery inferno.

-

In the far reaches of the plains, a steam-powered coach was parked. The steam engine at its rear looked like a cylinder crowned with a bell, and on top of it a man sat cross-legged.

“Look, a fire’s broken out,” he muttered, adding, “but—”

With one hand he held a pair of binoculars to his eyes. As for the other hand, it had been engaged for quite some time now in scratching roughly at his back through a fishnet garment. He was reaching over one shoulder to get at his back—but astonishingly enough, his hand hung all the way down to his waist.

“—I don’t think that’s all it’ll take to finish off Lord Byron. Especially not with the man called D as his bodyguard.”

His tone was that of a casual conversation.

A reply came from inside the coach.

“I realize that. The firebombs were simply a test. I checked into something I wanted to know.”

“That’s good. So, what exactly did you cook up?”

“A face transference.”

“You can’t be serious!” he exclaimed as the hand stopped scratching away at his waist. “You went and—If you screw this up, Zanus, you’ll be—”

“I’m ninety-nine percent confident.”

“You could be ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent sure and it’d still be a far cry from perfect. Who were you gunning for, anyway?”

“D.”

“Holy shit!” the man cried, reeling backward.

His momentum had him just about to fall off the engine, or rather, he actually dropped about three feet, and then stopped there. His long right leg was braced against the bell-shaped head.

“What complete madness! That pretty boy’s not of this world, you know. I don’t care how damn good you’re supposed to be at making masks, that’s just plain suicide!”

“No, it’s not,” Zanus countered in a voice brimming with self-confidence. “As I believe I just told you, the results have been verified. As a success, I might add.”

“Is that a fact? I find that hard to swallow . . . even for that son of a bitch Chlomo.”

Like a water strider skipping across the surface of a pond, the man lithely hopped back to the very end of the engine, where he let out a great laugh.

“Don’t let me hear any more of your idiotic guffawing, Sai Fung!” Zanus said, his voice charged with wrath.

“Okay, dammit, okay! But that son of a bitch Chlomo—”

But once he’d spoken, his mouth hung open in apparent surprise as he cautiously peered around in all directions with a look of fear that was not an act. What’s more, he sensed a chilling air from inside the coach that was normally unthinkable.

“Don’t talk about him,” Zanus ordered.

“I read you.”

Standing up gracefully on top of the engine, the man—Sai Fung of the Thousand Limbs—brought the binoculars up to his eyes once again.

“Hot damn! Now this is something! Let’s hurry up and get the hell out of here. The whole damn neighborhood’s waking up!” he exclaimed.

Presently, there was a sound from inside the cylinder like a robot or a set of gears going into action, and with a keen whistle white smoke shot out in all directions from exhaust vents around the joint of the bell-shaped head. This unconventional vehicle that didn’t rely on horses turned around at a good clip and began speeding back to the village of Krauhausen, which lay a quarter of a day’s trip away.

But what did Zanus mean by a success? And who was this third man named by the baron as one of the three greatest warriors in Krauhausen and so feared by the other two—Chlomo the Makeup Lover?

-

Before they had come out of the rocks, D noticed the wall of smoke rising high into the heavens.

“Looks like a brush fire,” said his left hand. “Those flames earlier probably started it. The wind’s blowing toward the village. Our best bet is to just wait here.”

From where D sat, that seemed like the wisest plan, too.

Flames shot up from the grass, and the gusting wind only served to fan the fire. Everything in their field of view was tinged with voracious hues of orange and black.

Just then, the earth shook terribly. The rocks to either side of the group creaked, and sparks flew where they banged together. The instant a diagonal crack opened across a massive boulder that looked to weigh a hundred tons, D had already doubled back and whipped the hindquarters of the horses hitched to the lead carriage. After sending the second carriage—Miska’s—on its way as well, the Hunter was about to take off when the ground sprang up as if something incredibly huge was wriggling below.

The rock went flying. Both D and his horse flew into the air, too—almost straight up. After rising nearly thirty feet they halted, and as the mount and rider dropped straight back to earth, that hundred-ton boulder came right down on top of them.

Literally escaping by a hair’s breadth, the figure in black leapt from the back of the horse as it was quickly crushed into an unrecognizable pile of meat, electronic parts, and steel framework, and he then flew like an arrow toward the exit from the rock-lined road. The way he curled into a ball and shot from the exit, it seemed as if he was riding the shock waves of the massive boulder that’d fallen behind him.

Out in the middle of the flames a good sixty feet from the rocks, D tried to see where the carriages had gone, but even with eyes that could see through the black smoke as if it weren’t there, he could find no trace of the two vehicles anywhere.

“Oh, that baron should do just fine, I’m sure. Even if he can’t get out of his carriage by day.”

Flames blew into the left hand as it spoke.

“The village is on the other side of this,” the left hand continued. “If we don’t hurry up and go, the fire will spread here, too. There’s no telling when the wind might change.”

A mass of flame shot up by D’s side.

“Oh, looks like there’s a nest of firebugs or something down there. One false step onto that baby and that’ll be the end of the story.”

The voice was moving forward. Stepping right through the flames, D broke into a run. The ground was spitting up fire, and the air shimmered in places from the heat. A mass of flames went up. The hem of the Hunter’s coat flashed out, and the flames dispersed feebly in all directions.

“Wow! I thought without a horse you’d be in a bad way, but it doesn’t look like it makes any difference at all on flat ground. You’re something else!” the hoarse voice remarked.

As D ran, he turned and looked back. There were footsteps following him. And more than just one set—the quaking of the earth testified to that.

A terrific force struck the ground, echoing like a tremor.

D’s eyes caught a shadowy group rolling forward like a fog beyond the flames. It was spearheaded by a massive swarm of giant black caterpillars covered by needlelike bristles. Behind them was a pack of ten-foot-long plains rats, followed in turn by three-headed boars and burrowing pythons—and this mob of plains-dwelling creatures stretched as far as the horizon in a wild stampede. Fearing fire, they raced off in search of someplace safe, and if caught in their path, even a fire dragon would be crushed by the hoard. One giant black caterpillar already engulfed by the flames couldn’t help but slow down, but in a heartbeat it was caught up in the stampede and crushed underfoot before it even had time to let out a scream.

It was only another three hundred feet to D. Even he didn’t possess the speed necessary to outrun them. There was only one thing to do.

“You’ve got no choice but to get up on their backs,” said his left hand.

Two hundred feet.

A hundred fifty.

However, when they had closed to within a hundred feet, the strangest thing occurred. Perhaps it was something they saw, perhaps something they sensed, but the caterpillars in the foremost rank tried to halt en masse. Sparks flew madly, but of course they couldn’t stop the stampede. The force of those behind them surging forward promptly crushed those in the vanguard, and those responsible then suddenly tumbled forward.

D leapt backward. From midair he saw it.

Between himself and the rampaging beasts, the earth had split open in a straight line. The sight of the creatures falling one after another into that black abyss resembled nothing so much as the dead being swallowed by hell. The chasm continued to grow. It even stretched to where D would land.

“This is incredible!” the left hand exclaimed with misplaced admiration as D drifted, right toward the black and bottomless abyss.