Iriya the Berserker (9 page)

As the two of them started to walk down the sidewalk, a trio of beauticians popped out of the beauty parlor, and they could only watch in stunned silence as the pair went by.

“That’s just—beautiful!” they said in voices that were practically sighs after the backs of the pair were only a distant blur.

The hymn rang out up ahead. It was borne on the wind.

The boards of the sidewalk creaked beneath the pair’s feet, and every time there was a step up, Iriya had to lift the hem of her dress.

When they came to the end of the sidewalk and stepped down to the ground, the clouds broke apart, sending a single beam of light down on the pair.

The crowd stirred. Voices clamored in admiration. For an instant, they dreamed of beauty. They didn’t awake from that dream until the pair arrived at the site of the groundbreaking. A platform had been set up in front of the framework for the schoolhouse, and Lazlo’s mother was leading the choir.

Headed for the platform to the left, Lazlo was the first to notice the pair. He let out a gasp as he froze stiff. On noticing his reaction, about thirty people in attendance turned one after another in a chain reaction, with Lazlo’s mother the last to be stunned.

After not moving a muscle for almost ten full seconds, finally the teacher began, “Everyone . . . On this auspicious wall-raising day . . . we have another cause for celebration, due to the arrival of this lovely pair . . . My . . . How gorgeous . . . It’s like a dream, isn’t it?”

No one noticed the sadness in the teacher’s tone.

“So kind of you to come. Congratulations to you both. Have you ever seen such a powerful groom or lovely bride?”

He clapped his hands. The sound spread through the crowd, with the applause of countless pairs of hands rising in the light that spilled from between the clouds.

Something glistened in Iriya’s eye.

Just then there was an angry shout of “Stop your damn clapping!”

A rough-looking man on the other side of fifty had stepped in front of Iriya. Though many of the participants were just passing through, by the look of his clothes it seemed he was from town. The man jabbed a knobby finger toward Iriya’s face, shouting, “A bride? Don’t make me laugh! See, I know her. I seen it with my own two eyes, when she lopped the heads off three guys even younger than she is in one go!”

The man’s voice quavered, and even his finger shook.

“You remember that, missy? It was about six months back, in a town in the western Frontier called Trinidad. I was in the bar having a drink when you followed them kids in! They were covered in blood, and you were clean as a whistle. The three of ’em asked the bartender and the customers for help. Some folks tried to step in, but you just pummeled ’em like it was nothing. Then you beheaded two of the boys. And the third was on his knees, begging for his life. Had his hands folded together like this, asked you to spare him, said it’d break his parents’ hearts. He was even engaged to be married—but you didn’t show him no mercy. So then, get this, you walked out of there carrying the three heads. Blood was still spraying from the damn bodies!”

There the man paused his accusations to catch his breath.

Iriya didn’t say a word. There was neither pain nor conflict to be found in her pale, beautiful features. But the raggedly breathing man and the sword scar on his right cheek seemed to be in strangely sharp relief.

“Wait just a minute, Caleb,” Lazlo’s mother said. “I’ve heard this woman’s a Hunter. Isn’t there a chance she had good reason for slaying those three boys? What do you have to say about it, Miss Iriya?”

Smiling, Iriya said, “Thank you.” She immediately turned around. “It’s a common-enough tale, D—let’s go.”

“Are you going to run?”

“Listen, you mustn’t run,” Lazlo called out to her. “You should address these charges. If you’re clear of them, we won’t stop you. However, if you had a reason for fighting them—if it was justified—you need to tell us about it. Isn’t that the duty of any upstanding person?”

“That’s right,” his mother said.

“Justified,” Iriya murmured. “If I had to say one way or the other, there’s more toward me being in the clear. But too much talking tires me out.”

Iriya was about to walk off, but she halted. D’s hand was on her elbow.

“D?”

“It seems she was justified—though that’s a word I haven’t heard in a very long time.”

For a second, Iriya made a move as if to jerk free of D’s hand while she glared at the Hunter’s face, but then she relented. Giving D’s hand a light tap so he’d release her, she headed toward the man named Caleb. The man averted his gaze. He hadn’t expected a return volley.

“Those three were frauds,” Iriya said clearly. “They’d rough themselves up and then go around asking people for help—and they’d already got two Hunters killed that way. But if I’d explained that to everyone back then, you think they would’ve believed me? Though that’s hardly what this is about, is it?”

Iriya aimed her finger at the man’s cheek.

“You were waiting for me on the edge of town, weren’t you? Told me that if I didn’t want you spreading rumors about how I’d murdered them that day, I was gonna be your bitch. Wasn’t that scar on your cheek your reward for trying to jump me?”

“Sh-shut your damn mouth! Who the hell would believe you? All of you—you know me! I’m from right here in town! Don’t listen to no damn Hunter vagabond.”

“Stop it, Caleb,” said a strong female voice from atop the platform. “Now you’re the one under suspicion. Is what she said true?”

“C’mon, Mrs. Lazlo!” He pointed at Iriya, preparing fresh abuse.

“Enough, Caleb,” said the sheriff as he stepped from the crowd. “It so happens we got word from the Trinidad sheriff’s office about that incident. It’s like the girl says. Okay, back to your home. You two get going, too.”

Taking Iriya by the arm, D turned around. As they started to walk away side by side, behind them a voice shouted, “Screw with me, will you, bitch?”

Drawing the revolver from his hip, Caleb steadied the weapon with both hands as he took aim.

“Stop!” the sheriff shouted, going for the gun on his hip.

A horizontal glint of silver split the field of view of those present. A hiltless blade thin as a willow leaf had mercilessly slashed through Caleb’s carotid artery. The Huntress had kept a concealed weapon.

Blood spurted out forcefully to assail Iriya’s dress—and a wall of black intercepted it. D’s coat. It stopped the bright blood, protecting her spotless outfit.

“D . . .”

“Let’s go.”

Iriya’s right hand was still extended toward the man. Without even bothering to look at her, D gave her a tap on the shoulder.

The crowd was frozen. Facing them, Iriya bowed her head.

“Goodbye—and thank you.”

No one responded to Iriya’s parting words. The crowd saw only death.

As they left, D said, “It was self-defense, sheriff. No need to take a statement.”

The light was once more concealed behind the clouds. As the pair of melancholy figures walked off into the gray world, the hymn continued to echo from on high.

We shall not veer from Thy path

The path Thou hast shown us . . .

Once the pair had gone about three-quarters of a mile from town, a chain of rugged mountains and the remains of what appeared to be a factory came into view beneath the sea of clouds.

“What’s that?” Iriya asked, gesturing with one hand.

“Why, it’s the ruins of an iron mill,” the hoarse voice replied.

“Pretty creepy place. If I were a Noble, I’d live somewhere like that!”

“Great idea,” the voice said with a mocking laugh.

Iriya was glaring at D’s left hand when she heard—

“
D . . .
”

His name repeated over and over, like an echo.

D turned in a certain direction. Though the voice had seemed to rain down from heaven above, he’d determined at once where it came from.

“Seems someone has business with me. Stay right here.”

“I’m going, too!”

“I thought you had a pressing engagement.”

Not giving the flummoxed Iriya so much as a backward glance, D gave a kick to the flanks of his cyborg horse.

Precisely five minutes later, he returned. The voice had not ceased calling his name.

D turned toward the ruined factory. It was Iriya they were after.

Still on horseback, he passed through the entranceway. Death filled the sprawling institution. Enormous blast furnaces and conveyor belts for carrying ore had long since stopped operating, and Death, in the guise of Time, had nestled the whole place under its black wings. D searched for a sign of life. Less than two seconds later, he found it.

Beneath a skylight in the great ceiling hung a room that seemed to serve as some kind of surveillance center, and before it stood figures in green fatigues. There were two of them. And between them were Iriya and Meeker!

“We’ve got ’em both!” the figure on the right called out. “The name’s Gathlin Rhoda, bounty hunter. And this here’s my partner Rin Shikou—‘Woody Deathspark’ to his friends.”

He pointed to the man on the opposite side of the hostages.

“To be perfectly frank, we’ve got no beef with you, but if we grabbed the girl, you were sure to follow. So, that being the case, we decided to take you out quick. Now be a good boy and die for us!”

“I’m sorry, D,” Iriya apologized in a dejected tone. “As soon as you left, they showed up with Meeker. They grabbed him from the teacher’s place on the way here.”

“We’d been waiting in town since yesterday. So we borrowed ourselves a spybird and kept an eye on you with a high-def camera from an altitude of about thirty thousand feet. We saw you call at the teacher’s house and had a real good idea what you were jawing about. Hell, I knew using the brat probably wouldn’t stop you, but it’d work on the girl. And I reckoned the girl would work on you.”

Drawing a dagger from his belt, Gathlin put it to Iriya’s throat.

“I’m right, ain’t I? If you value their lives, throw down your sword.”

D was gazing at Iriya.

The body of the man so sure of his victory jolted faintly. Gathlin looked down at the left side of his chest and the stark needle protruding from it. From the spot on the ground where D stood to his own position was a distance of roughly two hundred yards as the crow flies. The seasoned bounty hunter hadn’t sensed anything as he was run right through the heart—a testament to the skill of the young man known as D.

Still, the man that Gathlin had called Rin was a veteran bounty hunter, too. He’d been pinning Meeker with one hand, but now he drew the boy nearer, wrapping his arm around Meeker’s neck as he should’ve done from the very start. Or maybe he should have put a knife to his hostage the way his partner had.

Before the boy’s little face turned purple from the constricted flow of blood, Iriya’s form sailed into the air above the pair. When she landed without a sound, the bounty hunter’s body collapsed at her feet. The dagger buried in the top of his head was one Iriya had taken from Gathlin.

As Iriya raced over, Meeker leapt into her open arms.

“You’re okay, aren’t you?”

Meeker nodded.

At the time of the ceremony at the school, the boy had suddenly grown sleepy in one of the rooms at Lazlo’s house. When he woke up, he was being held prisoner in the factory.

“Let’s go.”

Taking Meeker by the hand, Iriya was just about to walk away when a murderous intent of the fiercest kind prickled the back of her neck. Pushing Meeker down and leaping off to the right, Iriya executed a flip before straightening up, at which point the ash-gray figure that’d sailed over her head was standing right in front of her.

“It can’t be . . .”

Iriya was gripped by a shock akin to terror.

Still expressionless, Rin Shikou seized the dagger stuck in his head and pulled it free. As if a switch had been thrown, his head sank down into his torso, while at the same time a lump of approximately the same shape jutted from between his thighs. It was the face that’d just vanished. No, not just the face but the entire head, now free from injury.

“This is the real me,” he said. “What you stabbed was just a growth. It’s been a burden to me all my life, but just now it saved my bacon. I can do a few tricks too—here’s the first.”

Pulling back in to avoid the dagger Iriya had hurled at it, the true head popped up from the top next. Suddenly it split lengthwise, and a massive quantity of liquid fountained from it, shooting high into the air. It rained down on both Iriya, who’d made a great leap out of the way, and Meeker, who was lying on the ground.

The stunned Iriya was prompted to cry, “What is this—oil?”

“That it is.”

Though the voice carried laughter, the face was lacking in emotion. Its mouth opened wide. A tiny flame was visible in its depths.

“You might be able to run, but I’ll turn the brat into a torch! Unless you wanna see that, come into the surveillance center.”

“What about the boy?”

“I’ll hold on to him. So long as you’re still against me, it looks like he’ll be useful.”

“You coward!”

“Is that your professional opinion as a Hunter? Bounty hunters would give a play like this a round of applause!”

A thought unexpectedly shot through Iriya’s mind:
D.

At that point, the gorgeous Hunter was already halfway to the top of the stairs to the surveillance deck. His racing footfalls didn’t make a sound.

It was as he took his next step that he sensed danger. Left hand on the rail, he threw himself into the air—and only D could’ve detected the attacker coming at him from behind out of thin air. A silvery arc was limned. The slash the Hunter made while in midair barely missed, and the thing flew back the way it’d come.

“An attack drone,” said the hoarse voice, seeming to issue from the handrail. “It flies at Mach 2—faster than your blade! Someone’s gotta be controlling it.”

As she headed for the surveillance center, Iriya glanced at Gathlin’s corpse. It knocked the wind out of her. Gathlin was dead. That was for certain. She knew as much from seeing the man’s death throes. However, something was moving—his right hand. He was lying with his arm stretched in front of him, but his wrist was raised, and his five fingers were making intricate movements. Even on closer inspection, they seemed to be doing no more than tapping the floor at random. Yet to Iriya, it looked like something else. To her, they seemed to be controlling something.

“Here it comes!” the hoarse voice snapped.

Its words were replaced by a strange slicing sound, and then D fell toward the ground like a beautiful black stone. A black shooting star followed behind him. No doubt it intended to intercept D in midair. However, before it could, something fell from above to cover it. D’s left hand, detached at the wrist!

Its balance upset, the drone began to decelerate from its supersonic speed. At that instant, the tip of D’s blade shot up from below—impaling both the drone and his own hand. At the same time, D fell flat against the concrete. He immediately got up again and swung his sword. His left hand and the attack drone hit the floor.

“You’re a real tyrant,” the left hand kvetched. The stab wound was rapidly fading. “I go to all that trouble of figuring out its speed and direction so I can land on it, and you turn me into shish kebab! Without so much as a thought about all we’ve been through together.”

Perhaps the left hand was just a complainer by nature, because as D looked up at the surveillance center he paid no heed to the grumbles about how cruel the world was or how he must have a death wish. He noticed something was falling over them like rain from above.

“Oil?” the left hand cried, and just then, a small flame sparked in the surveillance deck. Covered by what had become a rain of fire, D’s body became a torch burning at thousands of degrees.

Once D had thudded to the ground and the flames enveloping him had faded, three figures looked down at him from the stairs.

“Dhampir or not, there’s no way he could stand three thousand degrees of flaming oil.”

At Rin Shikou’s words, Meeker clung tighter to Iriya.

“It’s okay.”

That was all Iriya said. The indestructibility of dhampirs, with their Noble blood, was quite well established. But flames burning at three thousand degrees would char him right down to the bone. In fact, the fallen D wasn’t moving, and oily black smoke billowed from him.

“That takes him out of the way,” Rin said, breathing a sigh of relief. His eyes blazed with desire as he looked at Iriya. “I’ve gotta get you to my employer before the day is out. He’s waiting in an abandoned village called Vinmel about six miles from here. Don’t drag your feet.”

Iriya and Meeker were still soaked with oil, and a flame danced in Rin’s maw.

“Got that? Let’s get a move on,” Iriya told Meeker, turning her back to the bounty hunter and briskly heading toward the door.

“Wait. Where are you going?” Rin asked, teeth bared in surprise and anger.

Over her shoulder the girl replied, “You’re a fool not to know what a dhampir can do.”

“What are you—”

Suddenly, fear lanced Rin’s heart and he tottered, his body bisected lengthwise. His lips, now split down the middle, trembled as he said, “A Noble . . . would’ve burned to death . . . How . . . ?”

“See, this guy’s human.”

Before the hoarse voice had finished its reply, Rin’s body opened like a folding fan, the halves arcing to either side to hit the floor.

Iriya gazed intently at D as he sheathed his sword. She’d held Meeker’s face against her belly so he wouldn’t look, but now she relinquished her hold on him.

“Don’t look,” she told the boy, turning his head the other way before she continued. “You’re even better than I’ve heard—you don’t have a drop of blood on your blade! I get the impression you could slice someone open, and they might not even notice for two or three days.”

“You familiar with Vinmel?” D asked flatly.

Iriya somehow managed to adjust her tone, saying, “I’ve heard about it. I’m pretty sure it’s what they call ‘The Village of Those Who Wait.’ ”

“Oh, so that’s where that is?” the hoarse voice suddenly said, and Iriya stared at D’s left hand. She gave an unsettled nod.

“That’s right. One of the last ‘mystery spots’ left on the Frontier. There was a village there once, but they say no one knows what it really is.”

“Well, that Noble mustn’t value his life much if he’d pick that place for a meet-up. Probably planned on getting rid of the bounty hunters,” the hoarse voice declared in a tone so crusty its face, if it’d had one, would have been wearing a look of skepticism. “First Mitterhaus—and now this one seems pretty stuck on you, too. Any idea why?” the hoarse voice inquired.

“Nope,” Iriya replied, looking D straight in the eye. “I’d sure like to know, too. But all that aside, what are we supposed to do about the kid?” Staring down sadly at the little boy, who was still looking the other way, she continued, “If we were to bring him back to Clements, we’d be a good half day late getting to Vinmel. Whoever hired these two might try a different tack. If I want to kill him, I’d better set out on time. Or would you be willing to bring the boy back to Clements for me, D?”

Two pairs of eyes were trained on Meeker.

A few minutes later they were off. The boy had responded to the warrior woman’s query with a grin that made it clear there was only one possible answer: “I’m going with you.”

“Well met,” said the shadowy voice that flowed from the darkness. It had the ring of a man who’d known the pride and privilege of a ruler since the day he was born—the voice of a Noble. “So good of you to bring the woman. I shall give you your reward. Come.”

He was brief and to the point.

The mounted figure beside Iriya rode forward.

“Your attire has changed, has it not?” said the Noble.

“It got sliced up,” the figure replied.

“Remove your scarf.”

Even in the darkness, the Noble’s eyes could make out the other figure distinctly.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the figure pulled down the gray scarf that covered his face from the nose down.

“Rin Shikou was the name, was it not?”

The figure nodded in the depths of the darkness.

“There can be no mistaking the voice or the face. Bring me the girl.”

A black-gloved hand seized the reins of the cyborg horse Iriya was on. The two horses started forward as if they were harnessed together.

They were in the central square of the village. The cobblestoned ground fifty yards in diameter was illuminated by moonlight, and lights burned in the surrounding houses.

Lights? But this was the Village of Those Who Wait. Hadn’t its residents long since vanished, leaving a disturbing area where no one lived?

That night, lights burned there.

When they were still a good six feet away, the Noble told them, “Right there.”

Both steeds halted.

In the light from the houses, the gorgeous carriage drawn by a team of four horses stood out. Its black body was ornamented with gold, and it glittered with jewels just as Mitterhaus’s carriage had.

“So, your partner was slain? Well, that matters not. You were pitted against the man known as D. Was he slain as well?”