THE BLACK DEATH GANG

THE BLACK DEATH GANG

chapter 3

I

—

A fact of life on the Frontier, outlaw groups had been described
as a terror that stained the lives of peace-seeking villagers with vermilion fear. Each faction had its own character. Though there were some groups that merely plundered and would never kill, many others would mercilessly slaughter all save the women. The women would be sold to slave traders and taken to distant lands, where most of them were purchased by brothels. That was still better than some situations; at least they survived. About 70 percent of the outlaws who plagued the Frontier were heartless scum—demons that liked nothing better than to annihilate entire villages. Law-enforcement organizations formed patrols with considerable numbers of men and stationed peacekeeping forces at strategic points on the Frontier, but their efforts simply weren’t concerted enough and their numbers were too few for a region so vast. Day after day, merciless fiends slipped through their fingers like water through a sieve, mocking the patrols and running rampant.

This is where the pseudo vampire’s gang fell. If you were to ask even a two-year-old what they feared most, in more cases than not this brutally efficient gang would be the answer, and their dark, violent acts were beyond numbering. Pseudo vampire was a term used to describe people who’d been bitten by vampires but hadn’t become true monsters—due either to some whim of the Noble or its destruction before the change was complete—leaving these victims stranded between life and death. Although such people were generally disposed of, either by their village’s leadership or by its mobs, a few managed to escape, though fewer still were the ones who were spared the typical curse of the pseudo vampire—madness and an abhorrence of daylight. Though nothing compared to a genuine Noble, they still possessed monstrous strength equal to that of ten men and a fairly indestructible nature, able to live without food or drink as long as they had blood for sustenance. What’s more, these fiends could move about in the midday sun like human beings, something Nobles and even dhampirs couldn’t do.

And the pseudo vampire in question was cruel—packing harmless villagers, male and female, young and old, into huts before setting fire to them. Purposely killing children in front of their own parents. Letting the monsters he’d brought with him devour the children. Or, when he didn’t feel like drinking blood, he would make parents fight their offspring or siblings fight each other—something his Noble blood enabled him to do.

He was also callous—on very rare occasions he’d have the poor luck to run headlong into a posse of lawmen, and when critically injured, the pseudo vampire would leave his underlings there and escape alone. There were more than a hundred such incidents recorded. And generous—the pseudo vampire wasn’t out for riches, or even sweet blood. Merciless and wholesale slaughter was what he desired, with the pillaging being done by his followers, and since the loot was as worthless as dirt to him, he let his underlings keep it all. It was due to this simple economic incentive that some people had no qualms about joining up with such a notoriously brutal group. They had dubbed themselves the Black Death gang. There were sixty of them, each a beast without compunction about killing women or children.

The day after the meat-cleaver killing, the outlaws reached the barren plains about thirty miles to the south of Geneve. As might be expected, it was a desolate and endless expanse of nothing save dirt. The winds that blew there were definitely far colder than in other places. The grasses that grew there were despised by the sun. And the people who lived there had surely been forsaken by God.

“Boss—there’s a house!” one of the scouts riding at the front of the group shouted, pointing to a spot in the distant expanse of black. This was a man with eyes so sharp they could make out a pebble a dozen miles away in the darkness.

While his lieutenants around him brought antiquated binoculars up to their eyes, the man who’d been informed of the existence of the house only squinted a bit. “You’re right,” he said with a nod, his lieutenants shrugging their shoulders. They should’ve been used to this by now, as it was their leader’s nature to respond in such a manner.

Actually, he was rather generous and an excellent leader. But that wasn’t all it took to keep a band of godforsaken outlaws under a tenuous control. The only thing that could hold together men like this, who believed in strength alone, was an even greater power. This, their boss possessed. Because once, he’d been human. He’d had parents and siblings. He’d supported a wife and children. He’d been well liked by his neighbors. He’d had a taste for hard bread and cheese and venison steaks. He’d gotten up early in the morning, and gone to bed every evening. He’d prayed to God by the light of morn, and sworn at vespers’ bells that he’d live his best again tomorrow. He’d had hopes and dreams.

But now, he was a pseudo vampire. He sat astride a black horse covered with iron plates, and those pieces of armor were etched with a hundred human skulls. His overgrown hair covered the right half of his face, while his constantly exposed left eye was eternally bloodshot, perhaps due to the sunlight. Lips that’d once pressed against those of the woman he loved had forgotten what that felt like, but they’d acquired a toxic vermilion hue after being smeared with the blood of more than a thousand—all human. For weapons, he had a pair of longswords crossed on his back that were the work of one of the southern Frontier’s preeminent blacksmiths. The blades were forged of steel wrapped around a high-density durium core, and in his hands they’d slashed a Noble in two and kept him from healing again.

And one thing more—he desired only blood. All nostalgia, all memories of kindnesses that’d been done to him had been driven into the far reaches of forgetfulness as hunger and a lust for murder grew with each passing day. In truth, what he desired more than blood was slaughter. It filled a hunger that burned seductively in the darkest depths of his psyche like a shadowy fire, stronger even than his physical hunger. The problem was that he tried his very best to ignore it. If he didn’t acknowledge it, he could kill as many people as he liked without it ever bothering him.

“What’ll we do, Boss?” the scout asked.

“The usual,” he replied. That was his way of telling them he’d lead the charge.

“Yeah, but it’s just one little house. Let us take care of it.”

The leader knew very well his scout had no ulterior motives for saying that. “Okay,” he said, his laughter freezing his faithful underling. “One little house out in the wilderness. People living where no human being should. Go right ahead.”

In no time, three riders galloped away, kicking up the dark earth. Once they were in the distance, the leader told the rest of his gang to wait there, and then followed after the trio alone. Behind him, he could feel the tension growing in the group of more than fifty men.

When he was still about two hundred yards from the log cabin, he heard a gunshot. Several more followed, and then he heard a faint cry that made him give his steed’s flanks a kick, conjecture as to the fate of his henchmen putting a callous grin on his lips.

As he got closer, the voices became clearer.

“What the hell are you?”

“No, stay back! Our boss is even tougher than you!”

“Help! Please, help me!”

Then there was a gunshot, and the sound of a table being knocked over.

Up on his steed, he panted a little. His expectation was so great, the beating of his heart reverberated through his entire body. This would probably be the most fun he’d had in quite some time.

As he reached the cabin, the door opened and a bloodied man appeared. It was his scout. The man’s right hand was pressed to the nape of his neck. The vermilion hue spilling from between the scout’s fingers ignited the darkness in the leader’s eyes and soul. The scout noticed him there. He’d ask for help—but no, the scout whirled around instead. Was he trying to get away from his own boss?

“Seth,” the leader called out softly.

The scout’s movements seemed to creak to a halt.

“Where are you going? Come here.”

“Ye—yessir,” the scout said, turning around. Gore continued to stream between his fingers. He looked as if he’d been soaking in a bathtub full of blood.

“Were Gass and Muradashi killed?”

“Yessir,” the scout replied, but he seemed to ask, How did you know that? And why are you so calm about it?

“And the one who did it—was it someone like me?”

“. . . Yessir.”

“How many are there?”

“Two . . . A married couple.”

“Both like me?”

“. . . Yessir.”

“Good work. Now you can rest.”

“Wha . . .” the scout said, gazing stupidly at an object that had been thrust in his face.

There was a small black circle—not an inch across. The incendiary round it fired shot through the scout’s throat and into his body, breaking apart as it struck his spine, at which point the brezene incendiary compound within it sparked to life. Six-thousand-degree flames welled up. The expansive force of the fire surpassed the limits of the scout’s body, and in a heartbeat he popped like a balloon.

The flames also assailed the horse, clinging to its armored plates. Though the steed tried to back away, its rider wouldn’t let it.

“Hang in there. I’ll stand it, and so will you.”

He gazed down at the flames creeping up his boots. The heat-, flame-, and water-resistant artificial leather slowly burned away, and the six-thousand-degree heat reached his flesh.

“Could a genuine Noble stand this? Or would they die, driven mad by the heat, then rise again? They’re such fucking masochists.”

The leader got down off his horse. The animal bolted away, as if that were exactly what it’d been waiting for. It was trying to put out the flames that enveloped its legs.

As he headed for the door, the man used his left hand to draw another weapon—a twenty-three-millimeter automatic handgun tucked through his belt. The flames had begun to spread to the wall of the cabin.

The second he stepped inside, he was greeted by a terrible, foul odor. As it entered his nostrils and coursed through his body, it was so overpowering that he came to a halt and even felt a bit dizzy. It was a sickeningly sweet smell. Abhorrently pure.

“I smell blood,” he declared.

But two fifty-millimeter shotgun shells had been waiting to empty their contents into the right half of his chest.

—

II

—

The close range and angle of the shot kept him from being knocked over. In fact, the blast went clean through him.

“What’s this?” he asked, the danger of the situation finally shaking him from his sweet intoxication. His left hand probed the crater in his chest. “It’s plain gone,” he muttered, looking forward again.

The man holding the double-barreled shotgun looked like an ordinary farmer.

Pain began screaming through the leader’s body. To escape it, he turned.

The green shirt the farmer wore was damp and black.

“That’s my men’s blood, isn’t it?” the leader managed to say. He hated the way the pain made his voice quaver.

Saying nothing, the farmer cracked open his shotgun and removed the enormous shells. White wisps of smoke still rose from them.

“That’s not like what you’d use on a human, is it?” the leader said, pointing feebly.

The farmer took two fresh fifty-millimeter shells out of his chest pocket and loaded them into his weapon. There was the sound of the gun clicking shut again.

“What the hell are you?” the farmer asked.

“I’m the same as you.”

The farmer could be heard grinding his teeth. Shooting a glance over to the window and his wife, who looked to be about the same age he was, he quickly looked back, saying, “I thought the two of us could live in peace out in a place like this, fake Nobility or not. Truth is, that’s just what we’d been doing for the last decade. But then you show up . . .”

Gunfire rang out.

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!

As the leader emptied his handgun wildly, it delivered a comfortable kick to his hand that was more than a human being could’ve handled, and the top half of the farmer’s head was blown away. The outlaw’s wrist was about to break. The bones creaked. It felt good. Really good. Ricocheting off the back wall, bullets shattered commemorative plates that hung on the walls. The glass was blown out of the window, and gigantic holes opened in the wife’s chest and abdomen.

“Listen to the song of death. This is its melody. It’s comforting. So comforting! Won’t you die listening to it? Please, die now.”

Suddenly, there was silence. The slide on the handgun remained back. He didn’t bother to put in a fresh clip. Half of the blown-away portion of his chest hadn’t regenerated yet. Having been knocked back against the wall, the farmer and his wife were trying to rise again. Their wounds were starting to close. Their injuries were different than his. The rate at which pseudo vampires recovered varied based on the physiology of the individual.

“Just as I thought—you two aren’t going to die after all,” the leader said, his tone choked with sadness. “You can’t die, can you? You can’t. Well, doesn’t that just make you sad? Doesn’t it?”

“We gave up on sadness a long time ago,” said the farmer’s wife. “And we lived here in peace. We thought we’d do so for the rest of our days. You ruined everything. Your friends will be along shortly, I’m sure. We’re going to kill them all. But before we do, we’re going to make you pay.”

“Luna!” the farmer cried out. “Stop it. I’ll kill him now. Don’t get a whiff of the scent of blood. Control yourself. Go on outside!”

“It’s no use. It was always going to be like this. I knew it from the very time you suggested we live out here—so I’m just not going to fight it anymore!”

His wife’s mouth opened as if this were something that’d been a long time coming. Her lips and mouth were both the hue of blood. But it was the white of her fangs that was truly eye catching.

Running over, his wife pounced. She was like a she-wolf. As she bit down on the man’s throat, the two of them began to shake.

“Luna!”

Her husband’s voice meant nothing to her. There was no sadness in it, no anger, no despair, no futility—for despair wouldn’t kill her.

Gurgling, she continued to suck down the man’s blood. The expression on her face was one of supreme bliss. She seemed to want this to go on forever.

Unexpectedly, she lurched back. Two vermilion streams connected the wife’s lips to the man’s neck. The farmer could make out the steely black shape that’d poked out of his wife’s back. For some reason, he wasn’t surprised. What the farmer felt was a mysterious peace.

Sputtering nonsensically, his wife grabbed the blade in her chest. Her body still fought for life. As she grabbed it and pulled, her fingers dropped off one by one. Like a doll whose mainspring had snapped, the woman’s body gave two great shudders, and then moved no more.

Keeping his foot pressed against her belly, the leader pulled his longsword out of her. Her head flew all the way to the farmer’s feet. She’d already begun to decay.

“I really must thank you,” the farmer said, waving farewell to his wife. “Would you be so kind as to kill me, too?”

“With pleasure,” the leader replied, his left hand pressed against his neck. He’d dropped his gun on the floor.

“I wanted to die. I’ve wanted it the whole time we’ve been out here. Morning and night, I’ve pictured nothing but my own death. And yet, I didn’t have the courage to do it myself.”

“I feel the same,” the leader said, sympathizing with the farmer from the bottom of his heart.

“I thought maybe some traveler who stopped by our place could do it, but none of them were up to the task. Instead, we actually ended up killing visitors who came out here to steal our money. So, tell me something: where do you find death?”

The shotgun barked. The buckshot traveled out into the wilderness through the open door, while the farmer looked up above him. And there the outlaw was. For a moment, he appeared to stop in midair, but then he drifted back to earth without a sound.

Bright blood gushed from the farmer’s body, making a sound like rain beating against the roof as it drew a crimson X on his form. It was unclear when the leader had unsheathed them, but the swords he held in either hand had cut the farmer from above one shoulder down to the opposite hip, forming that X.

Once the farmer had fallen, a bloody mist still whirled for a while before the outlaw’s eyes. Perhaps he’d only dreamed most of this.

“He’s dead,” the leader said with a strange sort of acceptance. He got the feeling something he’d long forgotten had come back to him. “Will that happen to me, too? I have to wonder. But who in the world could do the same to me? If there were such a man, I’d probably fight him out of fear for my life. When will I meet someone like that?”

Returning his two swords to his back, he looked around the room. If there was nothing of value, they’d take food. That was his henchmen’s job. But the corpses of two of his men lay on the floor.

As he was heading for the door, he suddenly halted. Something still seemed to bother him. With a heavy gait, he trudged into the kitchen. A large refrigerator caught his eye. There was a lock on it.

“A safe? No, I don’t think so.”

Grabbing the lock, he tore it off the door. The lock had been made to stop human beings.

The iron door opened. A stark chill struck his face. One look was enough to survey the refrigerator’s contents. Seeing them, he waited a moment before giving a nod, and then he began to laugh. It was like the laughter of a man having a fit of insanity. Tears even streamed from his eyes.

“They tried to fight it, my ass! What was that about them resisting? All that talk about wanting to die but not being able to kill themselves! No, these two never had any intention of dying.”

He slammed the refrigerator door so hard that the whole house shook. Then he went back into the living room. His swords felt unbearably sweet as he drew them from their scabbards. They felt equally good as he whacked them into the corpses of the farmer and his wife. He continued to do so for what seemed an eternity. And all the while, he never stopped shouting. “What about me? Am I just like you? Do I really want to stay the way I am now? Could it be I don’t really want to die? Well, what is it?”

He continued relentlessly hacking up the already-decaying remains. In this hell, with no one there to see or hear him, he showed his true self.

—

Before the sun went down, the man who’d gone out on a scouting mission came back. He wasn’t one of the villagers, but rather a drifter who’d been hired for the job. Twenty people had signed on for fifty dalas a day. Most of them had come to town looking for such work after hearing rumors that a band of outlaws was on its way. This was happening all over the Frontier, but both the mayor and Rust were surprised the vagrants had arrived so quickly. After all, the mayor hadn’t believed the Black Death gang would arrive for quite a while. But the information possessed by the expert fighting men who wandered the Frontier was more accurate than anyone else’s. Of course, they’d be risking their lives, but those who came to offer their services were professionals, and few of them would be inclined to run off during the fighting. The village was still careful about whom they hired, and naturally, payment was made in advance. However, the history of the Frontier was rife with tales of people who’d collected their pay, only to promptly turn tail. Therefore the villagers didn’t wholly trust them, and they would keep an eye on the hired guns until the very end.

At least the man’s report on his reconnaissance mission was accurate enough.

“Thirty miles to our south, eh? That’d put them here inside of three days.”

Rust immediately set to organizing efforts to repel the attackers. The village’s defenses were checked and reinforced, and armaments that’d been waiting in warehouses were set up in previously designated strategic positions. The weapons they had amassed were ones that had been purchased from the Capital through arms dealers in the five decades since the village was incorporated. Not only did they have the very latest-model intelligent mortar, but they also had quite a few old-fashioned fuse-style cannons.

The villagers needed no further training than their daily life. In a manner of speaking, every day on the Frontier was a day spent in combat. From the time they were toddlers, children practiced with swords and spears, and past the age of ten they had to master the use of firearms. Even if they weren’t professionals, the men and women of the Frontier were born warriors. The drifters who’d temporarily taken on employment—mercenaries, in a manner of speaking—knew this quite well and didn’t look down on the villagers, except for one amateur, fresh out of the Capital, who saw the townspeople practicing with their firearms and snickered.

Lyra was putting them through their paces. On hearing the laughter, she asked, “Care to try your luck against them, then?” She was wearing a thin smirk.

The matter was settled most emphatically. While the drifter out of the Capital could barely hit the bull’s-eye on a life-sized iron target at two hundred yards using the very latest-model clip-fed rifle, the people he’d mocked could easily hit the same at twice that distance using antiquated bolt-action weapons.

Outraged, the drifter challenged a villager to a sword fight, one on one. The villager chose to go with a stick he was comfortable with. It was over in an instant. Jumping back out of range of the drifter’s sword, the villager delivered a blow with his footlong baton. It slammed into the drifter’s face, knocking him out on the spot.

Lyra treated these villagers as if they were children. If they held back against her because she was a woman, she had no qualms about knocking them senseless. Even when they gave it their all, every swing met only air, and when they were finally exhausted, she delivered the coup de grâce. In that instant, the fact that this beautiful woman was a professional combatant was pounded into them.

Lyra had put down fifty of them and wasn’t even breathing hard when a young man stepped forward. She occasionally taught swordsmanship and martial arts. When she did, she always saw him there. “What can I do for you, Pete?” she asked.

The young man mumbled something in reply.

“What?”

Perhaps catching the irritation in Lyra’s voice, the young man hastily pulled a small package out of his pocket and pushed it into her hand. Before Lyra could open her mouth, he said, “I didn’t know when it was—your birthday, that is.” His voice rose so high it cracked. This was probably the first time he’d ever given anything to a member of the opposite sex. The boy—Pete—was sixteen years old.

Gazing long and hard at the boy and his flushing cheeks, Lyra said, “Well, I’m not giving it back now.”

“Really? Great! See you!” And then the boy ran off. A short time later, whoops of joy could be heard behind a distant bower.

D showed up, too. If he were human, he’d have been wheezing and panting, but his now-pale complexion only lent his handsome features more intensity, making even the jaded mercenaries freeze in their tracks. Later, a particularly rough customer named Gil said, “Man, the enemy could just kill me now, and I wouldn’t give a damn!”

In one sense, no one could’ve been less suited to lead than D. Even looking at him from afar, men and women, young and old, just seemed to melt. When he got closer, young ladies, and those who were far from young, either grew dreamy or fainted. This being the case, he could’ve relied on his voice alone, but even that brought nothing but remarks about how refined and pleasing and utterly irresistible it was. Finally, Lyra was forced to tell the Hunter, “For the love of God, would you just get out of here?”

Saying nothing, D was just about to turn around when his left hand shot out.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Lyra cried, one hand pressed to her rear and the other ready to slap him—but she stopped herself. It wouldn’t do to look at D’s face. “You’ve got strange tastes, don’t you?” she remarked, and then she saw that everyone else was looking. “The next time you do that, I’ll kill you.” But her threat lacked conviction.

“Sorry about that,” D apologized in a gruff voice. “But you’re really my type, and—gaaaaaah!

“Sorry,” D said, this time apologizing in his own voice, his left hand clenched tightly as he walked away.

However, a short time later, a hoarse voice from nowhere in particular groused in a sarcastic tone, “Just goes to show you, they’re all a bunch of lazy bums.”

—

III

—

That night, once Rust and Lyra had left the sheriff’s office and D had returned to his room, there was a knock at the office door.

“Who is it?”

“Gil. Josh and Palau are with me,” replied a voice so loud and discordant it could’ve sent women and children into convulsions.

“What do you want?”

“Well, I was wondering if you’d like to have a drink.”

“Sounds pretty suspicious,” the hoarse voice whispered. “Send ’em on their way. There’s no telling what they’ve got planned. They’re drifters who work for a price, after all.”

“So am I,” D said, and when he opened the door, it was hard to tell if it wasn’t just to spite the hoarse voice.

The three enormous men were like a wall, but they did indeed have a bottle of whiskey with them. D led them back to his room.

Gil, who looked to weigh about four hundred fifty pounds, asked, “What’s wrong with using the office?”

“That’s for work.”

“Okay, I get you,” the man agreed readily enough.

Palau, who had a black patch over his right eye, surveyed the room before remarking, “Looks like we don’t have enough chairs.”

Though there was a sofa and armchairs, they were built for normal-sized people, and a sofa intended to seat two would be filled by Gil alone. Only D could sit in the armchairs.

“This will be fine,” D said, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“Wow,” said Josh, a ridiculously large, recoilless antitank rifle slung across his back and an expression of surprise on his face as he followed suit. “Now here’s a deputy who knows how to act.”

“First, a drink,” Gil said, taking the cup that hung from his combat vest and setting it down in front of D, then filling it with an amber-colored liquid. An eye-popping stench filled the room. It definitely wasn’t the smell of alcohol. “This whiskey’s got a wild cobra head in it. Pretty cool, eh?” Though his tone was amiable, his eyes weren’t laughing.

Starting with a drink—it was something of an anachronism, but a good way to size somebody up.

Without a word, D took the cup and drained it in one gulp.

“You might . . .” Josh began to say. From the way he started to reach out to stop the Hunter, it was apparent he was the most conscientious of the three, but he was too late.

Whiskey with a wild cobra head in it was used to anesthetize monsters and supernatural creatures in the five-ton-and-over class—things like armored serpents or temblor rhinos. It was more of a drug than a drink, and almost more of a poison than a drug, and even the most seasoned alcoholic would be knocked on his ass with the first sip. Together, the three of these guys might be able to drain the cup in two or three minutes. Palau’s face seemed to say, This clown doesn’t have any idea what he’s doing!

Saying nothing, D set down the empty cup. There was no sign of the kind of reaction the trio expected. The Hunter’s complexion didn’t change a bit. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

After exchanging glances, it was Josh that spoke for them, asking, “How was it?” He looked apprehensive.

“That’s no way to handle this,” Gil said, casually taking hold of the grip of an enormous revolver, while the other two reached for blades tucked through their belts. Though Josh’s was just an oversized knife, Palau’s was a machete that could lop the head off a steer.

Sometimes this whiskey gave people nightmarish hallucinations. Apparently pursued by unimaginable visions, they would scream “No!” and “Help!” as they waved around a sword or fired wildly with a gun. It was utter madness. The men thought this was a precursor to such an incident.

D pushed the cup in front of Gil. “Aren’t you going to have a drink?”

Over forty years old, with a stubbly beard on his red face, the man grinned and said, “You’re damned straight I am!” Grabbing the bottle, he filled the cup to the brim.

“Hey!” Josh called out anxiously, and this seemed to be Gil’s signal to drain the cup. As soon as he did, his body lifted a foot off the floor, as if the ground had tossed him up. It was the result of his muscles gone mad. There was a loud thud. It was the sound of Gil’s heart beating. In midair, his massive form doubled over at the waist. Then he fell. There was another thud. His face was crimson, but it wasn’t flushed from the alcohol coursing through his blood. He was bleeding. Blood gushed from every pore in his face.

“Hey!”

“Gil?”

The other two grabbed hold of his shoulders.

“Shut your yaps,” the bloodied mercenary replied.

“Are you okay?”

“See if you can say, ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.’”

He told his boisterous colleagues, “Shut up, or else!” Suddenly, he pulled a pair of automatic handguns from the plastic shoulder holsters under either arm and waved them at the other two. Taking his eyes off his now-silenced friends, he asked the Hunter, “How was that?”

“I’d call it a draw,” said D.

“All right. Now we can get down to brass tacks!” Gil said, cup still in hand. “The truth is, during the day I came and proposed this to the good sheriff, and he kicked my ass right out, but . . .” Gil went on to suggest that they go out and take on the Black Death gang. “All the preparations to fight them off have been made here already. But it seems a waste to just twiddle our thumbs waiting for them to get here. Let’s take the fight to them, instead of just fighting them off. What do you think?”

“They’ve got, at most, sixty men,” one of the others chimed in. “There’s a pseudo Noble in the mix, but for the regular ones, the three of us could kill half of ’em if we had you on our side. It won’t take long at all. Hit ’em while they’re sleeping, take out as many as we can, then fall back. We’re talking a surgical strike here. They’d never expect us to come out and hit ’em while they’re still thirty miles out. It can’t fail!”

Three pairs of eyes bored into D. They weren’t thinking about the village. There was only one thing running through all three heads—winning in battle. And in that regard, they were true professionals.

“When do we go?”

D’s reply brought cheers from his visitors. The gorgeous dhampir was an integral part of their plan.

“Tonight, right away,” Gil replied, licking his chops. “Our cyborg horse could do the thirty miles each way in about two hours. Add in another hour for the wet work, and we’ll be back here in three hours, having ourselves another drink. We’re all set to go. As soon as you’re ready, meet us out at the north gate.”

—

The sound of a cyborg horse’s hooves grew louder and closer. It was by the north gate. The three large figures standing beside their horses turned in that direction.

“Did he come?”

“Yeah, it’s D.”

“Must be nice to see so well at night,” one of them growled in a low tone. If that tone were used in normal conversation, it would’ve seemed like he was spoiling for a fight.

Tonight was their turn guarding the gate. In another thirty minutes the next shift would arrive. It was for that reason they’d chosen to go out through the main gate instead of just sneaking out through the back gate to the south.

The hoof beats stopped. A handsome visage appeared, like another moon in the darkness.

“Okay, let’s move out!” Gil said, reaching up for the pommel of his saddle.

“Hold it,” said a voice, but it wasn’t D’s. It came from behind a flower-covered trellis to one side of the gates. Two new figures now stood before the trio.

“D, you dirty—”

“Sorry, boys, but he’s working for me,” Sheriff Rust said, scratching at the back of his head. After hearing about Gil’s plan, he’d set out on foot to head them off.

“You stinkin’ traitor!” Josh shouted.

“Simmer down,” Lyra told him.

D was on the back of his horse, completely unfazed, not moving a muscle, his face devoid of emotion. He seemed like a gorgeous god of fate in heaven above, coldly staring down at arguing dolts.

“Stop all this foolishness,” Rust said. “Right now, every fighting man we can get is worth more than all the Nobles’ gems. I can’t have you three getting yourselves killed. No ‘surgical strikes.’”

“You told him all about that, you bastard!” Gil said, his entire face swollen and vermilion.

“I’m working for him,” D said in his own voice.

The three mercenaries groaned, the sound of a curse that couldn’t be put into words.

“Swear to me you won’t try anything like this on your own again. If not, you’ll all be dismissed without pay,” Rust told them dis-passionately.

“Hey, we were just—” Gil began to protest futilely.

“Do you swear it, or don’t you?”

The matter was settled quickly enough.

“Okay,” Gil said, shrugging his shoulders. There was nothing a mercenary feared more than missing a payday. It was stipulated in their contract that payment could be stopped at any point if they didn’t follow the sheriff’s orders. “There was nothing in our agreement about any fines.”

“Good thing, eh?” said Rust.

Giving Lyra a wink, Gil said, “Be seeing you, sweetheart.” Raising one arm, he got up on his horse.

All three of the men started to ride back toward town.

“Hold up,” Rust called to them.

Halting his steed, Palau twisted around with a look on his face that asked, What is it now?

“Where do you think you’re going?” asked the sheriff.

“Where? Back into town, I guess. Later on, we’re gonna pound that freaking Hunter into a pulp.”

“If you wanna pound someone into a pulp, do it out there,” Rust said, pointing toward the gates.

“What?”

“As sheriff, I’d like to propose a certain plan. Basically, it’s a lightning strike at the Black Death gang’s camp thirty miles south of here to deal some damage to their equipment and personnel.”

Gil and Josh turned and gaped in amazement. Palau’s jaw dropped.

“Our cyborg horses could make the trip there and back in less than two hours. Figuring in the time for the actual assault, we could be back in the village drinking wild cobra whiskey in three hours.”

Baring his teeth, Gil started to say, “Hey, that’s what I—” Apparently he couldn’t help himself.

“Yeah, D told me. I was surprised how close our ideas were,” the sheriff said smugly.

“Hold on, there—that was my idea!”

“In that case, you shouldn’t have any complaints about it.”

“What’s the problem, then?” Gil shouted. Though he was desperately trying to restrain himself, he started cracking his knuckles. It was his instinctive way of demonstrating his resolve. At his enormous size, he definitely got the point across.

“The problem’s whether it can actually be done or not,” Rust replied flatly. “I think it can.”

“You’re damned straight it can. The one and only Gil Mandalay came up with that idea!”

“I’m surprised we both came up with exactly the same thing—so, should we give it a shot?”

Josh and Palau’s expressions changed.

Grinning, Rust said, “Then you’ll have to try out my idea. Too bad I won’t be there to see it happen, though.”

Gil was still spoiling for a fight, his lips pursed, but the other two men became rather amiable.

“You mean we can go ahead?” asked Josh.

“Yes, you guys and D. I couldn’t have picked anyone better for the job.”

“You didn’t come up with that plan at all, did you?” Gil barked, jabbing a finger as thick as a baby’s arm at the end of Rust’s nose.

“It doesn’t matter who came up with it. This is how it’s going to be. Get yourselves back here tonight. That’s an order.”

“You dirty—”

If Lyra hadn’t stepped between them, Gil probably would’ve lunged at the lawman.

Seeing how he grit his teeth and restrained himself, a hoarse voice jeered, “My, aren’t you the feminist.”

“I don’t wanna hear any funny voices outta you, you damned traitor! Okay, Sheriff, we’re gonna go out there and stir things up. But the leader’s gotta be—”

“Me,” D said, naturally.