White Devil Mountain (23 page)

“Really? Who helped him, then?”

“I believe I told you not to ask any unnecessary questions. You don’t need your tongue to work on me.”

At that threat, Vera couldn’t help but button her lip.

In the next few minutes they turned untold corners, ascended a slope, and halted on a stone pathway. Before them lay a row of iron doors. As Jeanne approached, one of them opened without a sound. At the same time, she collapsed.

Dashing over out of pure reflex, Vera asked, “Where are you hurt? Forget that for the moment—can you stand?”

Bracing one hand against the floor, Jeanne tried to lift herself but swiftly sank again. Vera guessed she wouldn’t be able to move the woman.

“Lie down. Where’s the trouble?”

The young woman managed to lie flat on her back. Her resolute bearing up to their arrival had been the result of great self-denial.

“You Nobles don’t make it easy, do you? Open your cape.”

The problem was undoubtedly beneath it.

The instant she saw the left side of the woman’s chest, Vera had the wind knocked right out of her. The heavy chest plate had been split diagonally, and fresh blood stained the woman’s upper body.

“D?” the doctor murmured.

“That stripling?” Jeanne laughed in a low voice. Hers was the pale face of the average Noble, but to Vera it looked like a death mask. “This was a punishment from the duke. When you’ve been cut by the master, the wound won’t close until his anger has subsided.”

“That’s just insanity. Nobles are ageless and immortal—meaning you could remain in pain forever?”

Jeanne donned an odd expression. “Does that bother you? I should think a human would rejoice at the thought of a Noble in pain.”

“Not when it’s my patient. I’m a doctor, you know!”

Vera tried to remove the woman’s chest plate, but couldn’t even understand how to work the clasps.

“I can’t do anything for you here. Is my medicine in this room?”

“Yes, it is.”

“And this armor—can you get it off?”

Jeanne gave a small nod and reached for the armor with her left hand. Her painfully slow movements spoke volumes about the depth of her wound.

“Hold on,” Vera said, getting back up and turning toward the door. Heavy footsteps and what sounded like voices had rung out behind her.

“
What?
”

Only the astonished Jeanne down on the floor turned to look, as Vera was paralyzed.

Fifteen feet behind the doctor, a shadowy figure stood at the other end of the corridor. In its right hand it carried a long spear, and when a fist that looked like a mass of intertwined wires twisted in the opposite direction, the weapon grew another six feet in length.

“But . . . you’re . . . ? When . . . did you . . . get out?”

The object of Jeanne’s groaned query stood almost six feet eight inches and was covered by a tangle of silvery-gray wires. Although generally human in appearance, there was one difference—this thing had four arms. On its back it had something resembling a crossbow, there was a longsword on its right hip, and on the left hip was a weapon that could only be a pistol with a grip mounted on the front. Its head and neck were covered by a domed mask. Perhaps it was this mask that lent the creature its inhuman sense of menace; there wasn’t a single bump or recess on it. Apparently its mask was responsible for sight, hearing, and the other senses.

Jeanne groaned, “Get back . . .”

The figure didn’t move. This mysterious warrior who would not follow a Noble’s commands in a castle of the Nobility was a creature from another world. Its spear pointed at Jeanne.

Jeanne twisted herself around. Her right hand moved toward the sword on her hip. Her movements felt like those of a tortoise with a million miles of road before it.

The figure didn’t even move its hand, but the spear flashed out to pierce Jeanne. It seemed that certain death would result.

Black stars winked in the young woman’s face: her pupils. Pulling herself up, she grabbed the sword at her side without hesitation and headed for the door.

“Better now, are you?” a hoarse voice said with admiration. Jeanne knew the masked figure grinned, even though she couldn’t see its expression.

The deadly spear stretched. And then it stopped.

The shadowy figure turned and looked. It faced the opposite direction from which the two women had come.

“You’ll have to deal with me!”

Face pale, lips alone strangely crimson, and baring beastly fangs was the warrior woman now made a compatriot of the Nobility, Lilia, reaching for the longsword on her back with her right hand.

Assassin from Another World

chapter 2

I

T
o be honest, Lourié was wandering willy-nilly. The place was just too huge, and he had no idea where Vera and Dust might be. A vast hall without a single person in it spread before Lourié. A small airfield would easily fit inside it. On all sides of him was stone—but the surprising thing was that there wasn’t a single seam in the walls, floor, or ceiling. This place had been hollowed out of the rock. He’d thought about turning back, but the door had shut just seconds after he entered, and now it wouldn’t budge at all. This was a one-way street—the room didn’t allow you to exit again.

Shaking his head, Lourié cleared it of all thoughts of going back. Right up until the time he vanished, his father had kept telling him, “Don’t look back, son. Taking the long way around is fine. But don’t look back. If you look back, you’ll want to turn back. And that keeps you from moving forward. The important things always lie ahead.”

Along with Crey, the boy had been brought back outside. The cells had been opened and the two of them freed by a shadow cast on the floor. Or perhaps it would be better to describe it as something
like
a shadow. As it had no substance, it was difficult to make that call. Two parts of the black mass had stretched like hands through the bars to grab both of them by the ankles. An instant later, they were both outside the castle. Their backpacks had also, generously, been left there. The snowstorm had abated, and stars blinked in the darkened sky. If they wanted to make a run for it, it looked like their chances were good.

However, that’s not what the two of them had done.

“I’m going back in,” Crey had murmured as he gazed at the towering castle walls about a hundred yards away, seeming to gnaw the words off. His right hand gripped a knife. Whether it was the one he’d been carrying or a new one that’d been stashed in his belongings was unclear.

“Squirt, get while the getting’s good. I’ll raise a ruckus so no one goes after you.”

At Crey’s words Lourié had shaken his head, saying, “I’m going back, too.”

“Why on earth . . .”

“Mr. Crey, are you going to go rescue Miss Vera and Mr. Dust?”

When those clear, innocent eyes looked straight at him, the outlaw grew embarrassed. “Well, actually—oh, you know how it is, right?”

“So you won’t go look for them, will you?”

“Aw, don’t say it like that. It’s just—”

“That’s why I’m going back.”

“Hey, we didn’t come up here to rescue anyone! That’s just their fate. In a situation like this, you’ve got to think of yourself first, am I right?”

“Mr. Crey, why are you going back to the castle?”

“Well—I’ve got reasons a kid wouldn’t understand, you little dope.”

“If you’re going back into that castle, Mr. Crey, I think it must be a pretty important reason. Do what you have to do. But I can’t leave those two behind.”

“Squirt, how can you feel so much responsibility when you’re still just a little kid? The weight of it’s gonna crush you. Besides, what do you think you can accomplish going back to that castle alone?”

“It’s better than doing nothing.”

Crey glared at the boy. He quickly said, “Okay, do as you like. I’ll stick with you till we’ve snuck in. But if you run into that shadow that saved you, you be sure to thank it all proper like, okay?”

“Of course.”

And so the two of them returned to the castle.

The nearest wall had a rusted iron door set in it.

“Guess I don’t have much choice, do I?” Crey said, drawing his knife. “Don’t screw with me, you two-bit Noble.”

His right hand flashed out. All the boy saw was a white streak like a shooting star. The lock portion of the iron door was cut out in a neat square.

As soon as they were in, the pair split up.

“I’m going upstairs. Wanna come along?” Crey invited the boy, but he shook his head. Though he had no way of knowing for sure, he suspected the prison could only be underground.

Descending staircases and getting on moving sidewalks, Lourié traveled down farther and farther. And now, after stone walls and corridors as far as the eye could see, he was in an empty hall. There was no point in just standing around. Lourié began walking toward the center of the room. The enormous weight of the rock seemed to press down on his diminutive form from all sides, and time and again Lourié had to take a deep breath.

When he’d more or less reached the center, Lourié saw a rectangular hole open in the floor before him. A section fifteen feet long and ten feet wide had suddenly subsided—that was the impression he got. Though he was poised to run off at any moment, his eyes were drawn to the hole.

–

He’d found no escalators or elevators, and the stairways simply went on forever, so Crey finally sat himself down cross-legged in the middle of the stairs. Sweat dripped from him in endless streams—but he didn’t even have time to spare for noticing how unpleasant that felt as his lungs gulped for air.

Someone was coming down from above.

Wiping his sweat-stung eyes, Crey looked up the stairs to where they dissolved into darkness.

A faceless creature with four arms was coming down. Its mask and garments, even its body that looked like intertwined wires, were all silvery gray, with its cape alone being crimson. The inscribed baton it carried to its right drew Crey’s gaze. It was a weapon. Power instinctively flooded into the outlaw’s legs and drained from his upper body.

Just twenty steps above him, the figure in the crimson cape halted. The baton in one of its right hands grew with a swish. It was a long spear. Tension knifed through every inch of Crey, becoming a will to fight that set him ablaze. Aware that his breathing was growing heavier, he turned his body into a spring and bounded off to his right.

“Come and get me!” he shouted.

–

D stood before the door. His gait hadn’t faltered once as he traveled there, as if this had been his goal from the very start.

“I don’t know either. What’s behind this thing?”

The words of his left hand were overlaid with the sound of a door opening and closing.

D went inside.

It was a vast hall. Save for a few exceptions, it was a plain of stone as far as the eye could see. The exceptions were clustered near the center of the hall. There were three figures. A short one was sandwiched between a taller figure squaring off against a giant. Two of them the Hunter recognized: the short one—Lourié—and the figure in the golden cape that towered before him.

“What’s that bastard Gilzen doing here?”

No sooner had the hoarse voice muttered that than the figures, who’d been halted like a movie still, went into motion in unison. The one on the other side of Lourié—a figure in a featureless mask wearing a green cape—made a horizontal sweep of its right hand. The baton grasped in a fist that looked like twisted wire grew to over fifteen feet in length, mowing through Gilzen’s neck. Sparks flew. Gilzen’s right hand—and the gold scepter it carried—had parried the blow. Both actions had occurred with a speed imperceptible to the naked eye. D alone had caught them.

The gleam of the opponent’s weapon drew back, then came at the Nobleman again—this time falling from above as if splitting firewood. Gilzen dodged it, changing his stance. But a split second before he did so, the long spear slashed up at him from below. It looked as if the Nobleman was constantly on the defensive. The movements of the two were succinct, with crimson sparks glowing incessantly in the gloom. Minute piled upon minute, with Gilzen always on the receiving end.