White Devil Mountain (24 page)

“His opponent’s not bad, either. It’s keeping the same Gilzen who defeated you on the defensive!” the hoarse voice said, making sure to place special emphasis on the “who defeated you” part. But then it let out a gasp of surprise.

Changing his footwork, Gilzen halted for a moment. Not missing that chance, his foe whipped its long spear around in a flashing arc—which Gilzen dipped at an angle to avert, his bizarre rib sword then bursting from his torso and stabbing into his opponent’s abdomen at an angle. Letting out a cry that fell short of words, the Nobleman’s foe swung its long spear, severing the stark implement of death before the creature made a great leap back.

“Looks like the tide has turned,” the hoarse voice said, its words surging forward.

Gilzen pursued his foe, while Lourié remained where he was. Like a swallow in flight, D dashed over and scooped up the diminutive figure, pulling him back out of the heat of battle.

II

“So, you came, D?” Gilzen said to the Hunter without turning to face him. “Looks like your DNA responded to the alien presence after all. Yes, this is an invader from far beyond the Milky Way! As you are no doubt well aware, since Earth was first created, countless aliens have visited it. Of them all, none ever held more sinister intentions than these.”

His opponent hauled back its long spear, then hurled it at Gilzen. Easily batting it aside with his scepter, the Nobleman aimed the black jewel adorning the scepter’s top at his foe. The beam it unleashed was black as ink. It bounced off his opponent’s chest, melting the floor by D’s feet and sending up scalding vapor. It was an insanely powerful beam.

“This light can penetrate three floors—punching through a hundred feet of rock,” said Gilzen. “It looks like I have a foe unaffected by beam weapons.”

“When did you get that weapon?” the hoarse voice inquired. “Ten thousand years ago, the Nobility might’ve been physically far superior to human beings, but I never heard their science was equally advanced. The technology they’ve got now is the result of ten millennia of progress. You were asleep all that time, yet you’ve got command of a science beyond modern levels. Is that alien technology?”

“Indeed.”

Gilzen bent down. A crossbow-like weapon on his foe’s back had just popped up over its shoulder. There was a sound like the dull hiss of escaping gas, which was then coupled with the strident clash of iron on steel.

“Oh?” A cry of surprise escaped the Hunter’s left hand.

Pressed to the left side of his chest, D’s fist held a black arrow. It’d been fired at Gilzen, who’d deflected it with his scepter and sent it to assail D, to his rear.

The golden cape danced out. Spreading in the air above his opponent’s head, it looked like a gold cloud. His foe’s right hand reached for some kind of gun. A crimson beam pierced the gloom and the gleaming cloud. Flaming, the cape hit the floor—but when the foe realized it was
only
the Noble’s cape and turned, its body was pierced from behind by an arcing, scimitar-like rib sword. No doubt imagining the scene to follow, his foe tried to flee. But its body was pinned by the rib and held fast. The scepter brought down from overhead smashed the foe’s head and sent orange brains flying in all directions.

“Cause me trouble, will you?”

Looking down at the titanic form that lay at his feet and confirming that it was dead, Gilzen turned his eyes toward D. There was a loud snap by the Nobleman’s chest. The arrow D had hurled had been caught by Gilzen’s chest, stopping it dead.

“So, the man called D favors cowardly acts?”

“You did it first,” the hoarse voice shot back.

The fact that the arrow Gilzen deflected had gone straight at D was no coincidence.

“At any rate, the technology in this castle was obtained from these creatures. When they came to Earth ten thousand years ago, it was not the human race that tracked them down and fought them off, but
our kind
. Although the science of their weapons was more advanced than our own, none of their weapons could slay immortals. We destroyed their spaceships and exterminated hundreds of their kind, taking fewer than ten of them captive. The Sacred Ancestor ordered that they should be disposed of immediately, no doubt because he was loath to have anyone but himself acquire their technology. I was entombed deep in the earth because I stood at the fore in the battle against the Sacred Ancestor, but also because I disobeyed him in this.”

In Gilzen’s fingers, the metal arrow twisted as if it were made of rubber. His eyes were burning red, as if running to ground the memories of the past.

“Yes, the Sacred Ancestor buried me in the cold, dark earth. He said our minds weren’t yet ready to acquire the technology of an alien world. Such preening. If we had adopted that technology then, the Nobility could’ve ruled the world without waiting for nuclear war first. I have read the record matrix stored in this castle that remained here aboveground but disassembled, and I know what has passed in the last ten millennia. The Sacred Ancestor is a fool! Had we done things my way, we would’ve ruled over the humans while their power was still intact, and could’ve avoided our present decline. D, do you know what kind of future he wanted?”

The fearsome scepter was pointed at D, but he didn’t flinch in the slightest.

“To a degree,” he said.

“Then this should be easy to explain. To tell the truth, the Sacred Ancestor and I adopted the same approach. However, unlike him, I also used the aliens.”

Lourié, who was clinging to D’s waist, suddenly looked up at the Hunter.

“So they were sealed away in this castle and subjected to memory analysis? But it seems that wasn’t enough.”

That came from D.

Gilzen lowered his scepter and grinned bitterly. “You’re right. I believed we’d adopted their techniques perfectly, but there was some flaw in the way we put them to sleep. They escaped, and now they wander the castle searching for a way out.”

“How many are there?”

“Four—now three remain. They’re formidable. What do you say, D? Will you give me a hand?”

“This has nothing to do with me.”

“Nothing to do with you?”

Lourié’s body flew a good fifteen feet, where the boy landed on his ass on the stone floor. One sweep of D’s arm had done that.

“I was hired to take the contents of that coffin alive—or failing that, to destroy it. Gilzen, will you accept that you’re on the road to your own destruction?”

“No, thank you.”

The Nobleman’s right hand rose, and then a terrific spray of sparks exploded in front of his face. The distant stone walls shook from the impact. His scepter had parried D’s blade, striking in the same motion the Hunter had drawn it.

“Are you in a hurry to die, D?”

As Gilzen leapt back ten feet, he aimed the black jewel in his scepter at D. But the strange beam that could carve through a hundred feet of rock didn’t fire. With D approaching right before him, Gilzen projected his scythe-like ribs from his sides. It looked as if the one his opponent had lopped off earlier had returned as well.

A sweet-and-sour stench assailed Lourié’s nostrils. A sword for a pen, and blood as the ink? In this hall where the stink of alien blood had begun to waft, they would write of a new battle, a new tale of life and death.

However, the fray came to a hasty conclusion. D and Gilzen had both turned to look in the same direction Lourié had initially come from.

“That voice—he’s been finished, I suppose.”

Gilzen made a light leap. D’s blade flew after him. All it cut was a piece of his cape, and by that point Gilzen had reached the door.

“I’m going on ahead. I shall be back. But, D, what would’ve happened if I wasn’t here right now, but rather was standing behind you?”

Before the Hunter knew it, the door had opened, and now it closed behind Gilzen.

“That bastard’s gained the power to teleport! The Nobility’s scientists couldn’t make that a reality for all their trying, but it looks like the aliens had the technology to do it. Anyway, I
do
wonder what would’ve happened.”

Despite the needling tone, D kept his silence, but his eyes suddenly shot toward Lourié. The diminutive figure was just being swallowed up by a pit that’d opened without warning. A black dagger whistled from D’s right hand, sinking halfway into the gap between the closing floor sections. Walking over like a shadow, D grabbed the dagger’s hilt with his left hand, and in an instant had twisted it in an impossible direction. Far off to the right something heavy moved. Beyond a concealed door loomed the entrance to a passageway wide enough for two adults to walk abreast.

“Looks like things aren’t going your way, eh? D, are you gonna look for the kid? Or—”

“The search for Gilzen comes first,” D informed the hoarse voice in a low, clipped tone before walking toward the passageway.

–

The woman had a hole in her chest that you could see clean through.

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

To Vera’s query, the Huntress Lilia replied, “A little. I’m sure for the real Nobility, something like this would be a walk in the park, but for the half-baked version like me it’s not quite so easy.” Looking at the door to the back of the room, Lilia said, “Forget me; how’s she doing?”

“She” was the owner of the room they were in—Jeanne. The two of them were in an artlessly appointed living room with just a table and a few rough chairs, while the owner of the room lay in bed in the back bedroom now that her injury had been tended to.