The Rose Princess (2 page)

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I

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The road was just wide enough to allow two farm vehicles—which were relatively rare
in these parts—to pass each other. Going east, it led to the village of Sacri, while
to the west it hit the dusty highway.

Verdant waves flowed to either side of the road. Prairies and wind.

As the high stalks of grass bowed in succession, they seemed to be passing something
along. The name of the distant rulers of this world. Their lost legends. Or perhaps—the
tale of the current dictator whose manor stood on the outskirts of the village. And
the situation in the trio of wagons racing madly out of town. And the reason the horse-lashing
farmer and everyone in his family had fear burned into their tense faces.

“Halfway left to go!” cried the farmer working the reins on the lead wagon. “If we
reach the highway, they won’t give chase, since that’s outside their domain. Hannah,
what’s it look like back there?”

“The Tumaks’ and Jarays’ wagons are both doing well,” replied his wife, who’d leaned
out from where she was riding shotgun. Drawing the little boy and girl she held closer
with her plump arms, she added, “At this rate, we’ll be fine, dear.”

“It’s too early to say. We’ve still got half to go—this is where we brave the fires
of hell. I don’t know if the horses will make it or not,” he said, the words coming
out like a groan.

But any further comment was cut short by a shriek from the farmer’s wife.

Thirty feet ahead, a horse and rider draped in crimson bounded onto the road from
the high grass on the left.

The farmer didn’t even manage to pull back on the reins.

In an attempt to avoid the horse and rider that seemed to be ablaze, the team of two
steeds made a sudden turn to the right.

Packed with all of the family’s worldly possessions, the wagon couldn’t follow the
animals around that sharp curve. The wooden tongue that connected the wagon to the
team twisted, and the body of the wagon tilted as it did. The tongue snapped in midair,
and the vehicle threw up a cloud of dust as it rolled.

Without so much as a glance back at the rumbling of the ground and the tableware that
was being thrown everywhere, the horses kept galloping toward the promised land of
freedom.

The Tumak and Jaray families narrowly avoided crashing their own wagons. Desperately
whipping the hindquarters of the halted animals and tugging on the reins, they tried
to turn back the way they’d come. It didn’t look like they would even try to help
their friends who still lay on the road with their toppled wagon.

“It’s the Blue Knight!” Jaray’s son exclaimed, his cry of despair rising to the fair
sky.

The road they needed to take home was now blocked by the blue horse and rider that
stood about fifteen feet from them. However, the rider’s hue was not that of the pristine
heavens, but rather the dark blue shade of the depths that led to the unsettling floor
of the sea—the blue of freezing cold water.

With the sun still high in the sky, an air of deathly silence and immobility settled
over the three families there on the stark white road.

“Where do you think you’re going?” said the one in front of them—the crimson rider
on a horse of the same color. The people had called his compatriot a knight, and he,
too, was sheathed in armor from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. His breastplate
was wide, the pauldrons and vambraces were thick as a tree trunk, and he was so tall
people would have to look up at him whether he was on horseback or not. If he were
to ride out onto the battlefield on his similarly armored mount, he’d be such an imposing
sight it was likely the very demons of hell would recoil in horror. On his back were
two pairs of crossed longswords—four blades in all. Gleaming in the sunlight, the
weapons looked so large and heavy that they’d leave even a giant of a man exhausted
after a single swing.

“I believe we made it quite clear that it’s been decreed no one is to leave this domain,”
said the Blue Knight. He was such a deep, dark shade of blue that he seemed to drain
the heat from the rays of the midday sun and make the light drift away in vain like
soap bubbles. “Not a single soul will be allowed to flee from the village where that
little bastard wounded our princess,” he continued. “You should consider yourselves
fortunate we didn’t slaughter the whole community out of hand. But then, there’s no
need for any of you to concern yourselves with that business any longer. The stakes
await you.”

A thin sound like a note from a broken flute split the air and a short, fat old woman
clutched at her chest as she fell—Mr. Jaray’s elderly mother. The rest of the family
consisted of Jaray and his wife, their nineteen-year-old son, a sixteen-year-old daughter,
and another daughter aged twelve.

As for the Tumaks, there were six of them—the husband and wife, Mr. Tumak’s mother
and father, and a five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter.

No one seemed to be paying any attention to the old woman, who’d suffered a heart
attack out of sheer fright. Their eyes were trained instead on death as it stood barring
the way before them and behind them in the form of knights of flame and water.

Their fate was inescapable.

The two armored knights turned to the sides of the road; turned toward the fifteen-foot
stakes that were driven into either side of the road at roughly three-foot intervals.
Oh, they ran on endlessly, too numerous to count, and on their sharpened tips shook
the stark white bones of the impaled. Apparently the stakes were quite old, and less
than one in ten still had skeletal remains hanging from it. And in most cases, those
were just the spine and rib cage, while the arms, legs, pelvis, and skulls lay sadly
at the base of the stake as part of a fairly large mound of bones.

However, while the families stood there as if their lives had already been lost, the
corpses staked to either side of them were almost completely intact, their rags dancing
in the wind and the eye sockets in their skulls aimed at the road like soul-swallowing
caverns in the land of the dead. They cast a deep spell of silence.

The two knights closed the gap.

“Help!” someone shouted.

A flash of crimson cut off the cry.

The grass swayed in waves. It seemed to speak of shock and destiny.

Mr. Tumak’s aged father looked down at his chest. Blue steel ran right through him.
Tumak’s wife looked down at hers as well. The bloodstained tip of a weapon stretched
from it. The weapon that’d impaled the two people as they stood back to back had to
be more than eight inches long, but it wasn’t the blade of a sword. It stretched more
than three feet from the old man’s chest before coming to a guard that was twice as
big around as a man’s fist. The hilt then sloped upward for another six feet before
disappearing into a blue gauntlet, and it extended another three feet beyond the knight’s
little finger.

Though the gigantic warrior was over six and a half feet tall, how could he wield
a fifteen-foot lance with such skill? Both the weapon’s tip and its metallic hilt
were etched with elaborate designs. Altogether, it must’ve weighed at least two hundred
pounds, and probably more than four hundred.

The weapon bent supplely. The blue lance flexed upward, and the two victims were launched
into the air like they were on springs and came right down on the stakes as if they’d
been aimed. The old bones turned to powder and flew in all directions as the new victims
were run through the heart.

“Although our princess instructed us to wait before meting out any additional punishments,
we, the Four Knights of the Diane Rose, cannot allow this to pass. We were just beginning
to get frustrated when you were good enough to try and escape. Although this is all
in sport, you should provide a slight diversion.”

As if driven by the Blue Knight’s words, those gathered started to run. But the Red
Knight was in front of them. A crimson wind gusted between the fleeing people. Still,
they ran right by the sides of the Red Knight. Even though their heads had fallen
off five or ten feet back, they didn’t stop sprinting. Another gust of even redder
wind shot up from the ground to the sky, blocking the people and knights from the
rest of the road.

“Ungrateful insects. This is the price you pay for your foolish actions.”

Before the knights bellowing with laughter, Jaray’s wife and Tumak’s son had fallen
to the blood-soaked road. The pair hugged each other tightly.

“So, which of you shall I—” the Red Knight was saying when there was suddenly the
shrill whir of engines approaching from the village at a frantic pace.

It sounded like more than a few.

“Looks like we have company,” the Blue Knight said, gleefully rolling his head from
side to side.

Less than two seconds later, gasoline-powered motorcycles with high horsepower engines
arrived at the scene of the cruel butchery.

While their engines remained running, a white-haired figure hopped off the back rack
of the lead bike. He was an old man with a cane.

“Mayor Torsk is my name and . . .”

The reason his voice died as he was making his introduction was because he’d just
seen the grotesque corpses that littered the road.

The riders of the roughly ten motorbikes were speechless as well.

“What the hell is this?!” said the rider of the bike that’d carried the mayor, spitting
the words one by one.

Although he was more than fifteen feet away, the Blue Knight must’ve had unnaturally
keen ears, because he then looked at the rider and muttered, “A woman?”

“So what if I am?!”

Stripping off an apparently homemade cloth helmet along with her goggles, the rider
was then revealed to be a beautiful young woman with a slight pinkish flush. Her hair
was cut shockingly short, and her eyes were ablaze with anger.

“What the hell . . . ,” she groaned once more, the words sounding crushed and lifeless
as she turned the nose of her bike toward the Blue Knight.

Two steel pipes pointed forward from either side of the vehicle—four in total. If
the pressurized gas in the tank to the rear were to launch the steel arrows within,
they were certain to fly straight and true into the heart of the knight.

“Ah, more prey to amuse us? And this one looks to have a little fight in her,” the
Blue Knight replied, his mere words freezing the atmosphere again.

“Knock it off, Elena,” the mayor of the village said, breaking the silence. Turning
to the two butchers, he said, “I’ll make no complaint about those already dead. But
could you at least be so kind as to show mercy on the last two?” he pleaded in a hoarse
voice as the wind stroked his profile.

The grass was singing,

—

Stop, I say, stop,

For they will never spare you

—

“These people disobeyed an order from our princess,” said the Blue Knight. “Until
the one who attempted to take her life is captured, no one whatsoever is to leave
the village. Nor is anyone to enter. Anyone attempting to leave without her permission
will be considered to be in league with the culprit and be promptly executed. And
it is our duty to see to it her word is upheld.”

“The only reason they tried to leave was because you enjoy killing everyone just for
the fun of it!” Elena shouted. “That hag of yours ordered more than just that. If
the guilty party hasn’t been caught within ten days of her decree, ten villagers will
be impaled on stakes. And every day after that, five more are to be drawn and quartered.
It’s only natural for some people to try and get away!”

“Only natural?”

The two knights looked at each other and laughed.

“And we could say to you and your whole village that what
we
do is only natural. Take a good look around you at this verdant land and bountiful
fields of grain—just who do you think made all of this possible? Lowly humans scratching
away at the untamed wilderness with rusty hoes like stupid beasts? Do you recall what
it was you said to the princess back then?”

Elena gnawed her lip. Agitation swept like a wave through the group behind her—and
judging from the way they were all dressed alike, she was undoubtedly part of the
same group. However, Elena quickly looked up at the knight and shouted, “That was
a long time ago!”

“What?” the Blue Knight growled, his lance rattling slightly in his right hand.

“Now, hold on a minute,” the Red Knight interjected. “There’s no point arguing all
that here and now. We’ve disposed of those who disregarded the rules. Take those other
two back with you.”

Joy suffusing his countenance, the mayor stammered, “May I—may I really?”

“You may. Be quick about it.”

“Very well—Come along now, you two,” Torsk said, extending his arms toward the exhausted
woman and child.

But neither of them said a word, and foam spilled from their lips. It wasn’t the world
around them that filled their eyes, but rather death itself.

“Oh, this isn’t going to work. Come now, let’s be quick about this,” the mayor seemed
to tell himself with new resolve as he advanced across the bloody road.

One more step and the two of them would be within reach—but at that instant, the wind
snarled.

Even before the geysers of blood went up chasing the two heads that flew into the
air, the grass was already singing,

—

Stop it, just stop it,

For they shall never spare you

—

Just as the Red Knight’s blade returned to its sheath in a gust of bloody wind, the
Blue Knight’s lance danced out.

The fluid of life gushing so vainly from the stumps became a thousand droplets in
the wind, forming a crimson curtain that slapped against the people’s faces.

From behind it, the Red Knight called out, “The rules are the rules, and we make no
exceptions. And now, to deal with the little monkey bitch who called our princess
a hag.”