White Devil Mountain (40 page)

“Goodbye,” she said. There was nothing else to say.

But someone else had something to add. From beside Lilia, a voice said, “It’s still too early for that!”

III

The instant their blades locked together, the Hunter felt that Gilzen’s strength surpassed his own. But D had greater speed. Parrying the Hunter’s blow, Gilzen put his weight behind his blade and forced it back through D, but the man in black broke free and made a slash at the Nobleman with ungodly speed. Gilzen groaned. Beneath his rent cape his clothes too were split open, and fresh blood spilled from him.

As if to crush that disgrace, Gilzen lashed out with his blade. Clangs rang out from steel on steel to the accompaniment of showers of sparks, and every time the figures in gold and black changed direction like the wind, their murderous intentions shifted as well.

“Urrh!”

With a cry that sounded like his abdomen was about to burst, Gilzen struck at the Hunter, and D parried. Gilzen smashed into the Hunter shoulder first. A normal human D could’ve easily deflected, but this was someone with the monstrous strength of a vampire—and D was knocked backward, impacting on a stone wall. As his body sank, he made a horizontal swipe of his sword. Having casually pressed forward, Gilzen found his right knee devastated, sending him reeling backward.

“Gaah!”

While he listened to a howl worthy of a beast, D also heard the grinding sound of sliding stonework behind him.

Gilzen smirked at him.

“Did you bump the door controls? Have a good look, D! See what the interior of my reactor is like.”

Not turning, D reached back with his left arm and held out the palm of his hand. Behind him was a white-hot river of slime. From an unknown source to an equally unknown destination, the goop that could only be described as boiling sludge coursed from right to left.

“This is no nuclear reactor!” Gilzen said. “Initially I used nuclear power from a light water reactor, but through torture I obtained the secrets of the aliens’ energy. D, this is the core of a galactic drive!”

It was a writhing, foamy river of white-hot slime that crept by, bubbles bursting—but D didn’t know whether or not it flowed all the way to the far side of the Milky Way. However, when the young man pulled his left hand back after no more than the span of a breath, his expression contained only a beautifully frightening air of the supernatural and nothingness.

“If you were to fall into it, you’d be banished to the ends of the galaxy. What say you, D? Will you not calm yourself and aid me in my aims?”

D leapt into the air. As he avoided the blade being swung straight down at him, the Hunter also changed the angle of his own attack, and Gilzen rubbed his empty hand against his right cheek. Wiping up some of the blood that spilled from his deeply carved flesh, he put his fingers in his mouth and licked them.

“Just what I would expect from the Sacred Ancestor’s sole success. When I first laid eyes on you, even I had to wonder if perhaps
he
had truly chosen the correct path.”

The duke’s eyes had begun to give off a terrible light. Blood light.

“Oh, my!” the hoarse voice said, sounding frightened. For a new air had begun to spill from Gilzen, one both unknown and unimaginable.

“However,” Gilzen continued, “I regret that now. I’m forced to by the alien power that fills every inch of me. Look, D, at the wounds you dealt.”

The Nobleman didn’t need to tell him. D had seen with his own eyes how the wounds to Gilzen’s abdomen and knee, as well as the one the Hunter had just left on his cheek, had all vanished without a trace. Even considering the Nobility’s startling regenerative powers, such a recovery was impossible.

“Oh, how it fills me! The energy of another world, fostered on the far side of the universe. D, experience it and die!”

The Nobleman spun himself around as he swung his sword hard at the Hunter, but this was no longer the same Gilzen. Still poised to parry, D was sent flying backward a great distance. The blade didn’t touch him, yet his black garb split open in a straight line. Not only that, but the Hunter’s blood went flying as well.

As D landed, the hoarse voice said to him in a cramped tone, “Cut you in exactly the same place, didn’t he?”

Before it had finished speaking, Gilzen charged forward with a deadly flurry of blows—D parried or dodged them, but was driven back to the brink of the boiling sludge.

“Have at you!”

Striking from a high position, the sword blade suddenly swished down low, shooting up from below in a scooping motion. Blood spouted from D’s right knee. It had been a blow neither his fighting instincts nor his reflexes had been able to stop. As the Hunter staggered, heat struck his back.

“No place left to go!” Gilzen jeered. In his eyes, D was no longer an opponent. The Nobleman’s eyes had the look of a huntsman who stands before a wounded beast. Confidence, frenzy, and murderous intent were there—and he raised his sword beside his head like a bat. And then he switched the blade to his left hand with unbelievable speed, to be driven straight down—right at Gilzen’s feet.

The shadow cried out. It was a cry of agony to make anybody’s hair stand on end.

“G-Gilzen . . .”

“Imagine finding you still lurking about, Mother,” Gilzen said unpleasantly, never taking his eyes off D. His face had begun to depart from human lines, but expressions only a human face could wear surfaced on it, alternating between looks of love and hate. “Your son has become a new sort of Noble, fundamentally changing the very nature of the Nobility. All the old things are fated to be disposed of. That includes you, dear Mother.”

The shadow’s voice could no longer be heard. Gilzen stepped off to the side. A small shadow remained at his feet. It quivered two or three times, then moved no more.

“I’ve done away with my mother,” Gilzen said proudly. “The one who held me back, the traitor who schemed to have me banished to the far reaches of the Frontier! D, don’t even think of asking how I could do such a thing to my own mother.”

Once more, the Noble raised his sword by the side of his head. D held his blade out straight in front of him, aligned with Gilzen’s eye.

“I’ll have your head, D. Know that the blood that drips from it will create a new chapter in the history of the Nobility.”

The figure that charged forward was an enormous mass of energy. D didn’t flee, but rather ran forward too. As they passed each other, the cutting sounds overlapped. When D turned to look back, his left arm was missing from the elbow down. However, Gilzen had slumped over badly.

“D . . .” he groaned, green blood flowing from his mouth. Then his head fell off—right into the stream of white sludge. When the splashes from the torso that followed it had subsided, D finally let the strength drain from his body and simply gazed at the sludge.

“He said that was the energy of the galactic drive,” the hoarse voice murmured. “Will Gilzen’s damned head and body be carried to the ends of the universe?”

D turned around. “I must thank you,” he said in a low voice.

There was no one before him.

“Why didn’t you hit me with a psychic attack?”

A voice issuing from nothing replied, “My aim from the beginning was the duke.” The source of the voice had to be the man known as Budges.

The instant the two combatants had made their final exchange, Gilzen’s movements had frozen in an unnatural manner, and in that heartbeat D’s blade had flashed out.

“You’ve seen how the duke acted,” Budges continued. “That’s why I did it.”

“And it never occurred to you to take
me
out while you were at it?”

“You left me no opening. Besides—”

“Yes?”

“I once had an audience with the Sacred Ancestor. He was so much like—”

The voice stopped there. D’s eyes had given off blood light.

“Oh, those eyes . . . Just a glare from them makes even bodiless me feel like I’m being physically torn apart. Come to think of it . . . Could you really be . . . Could
your highness
be . . .”

Returning his blade to its sheath, D bent down and retrieved his left arm from where it lay at his feet. He lined up the wounds.

“What’s this?” the hoarse voice cried out, and a tiny face surfaced in the palm of the Hunter’s left hand. It furrowed what might’ve been its brow, or perhaps just more wrinkles.

The arm wouldn’t fuse at the elbow.

“What the hell!”

“It’s the way Gilzen cut me,” D replied stoically. Anyone who didn’t know the young man’s true nature would’ve thought this exchange some sort of joke or parlor trick. “It’ll reattach sooner or later. It’s just that it may take a day, or a week, or a month.”

“That ain’t good. In the meantime, if you were to get—” The left hand suddenly held its tongue. It’d recalled the presence of the formless being. “At any rate,” it continued, “Gilzen’s been slain. Meaning your work should be finished. Let’s get going.”

“I have something to do first,” D said, putting his left arm into an inner pocket of his long coat. “I heard that Jeanne had the child. Where are they?”

“Come with me,” the formless voice told him.

w
Just as Gilzen had said, Lourié was in one of the castle’s rooms with Jeanne. It was the infirmary. Jeanne continued to give makeshift medical care to the large number of wounded soldiers, while Lourié learned by watching her, and also pitched in.