General Gaskell was the name of the Noble who’d ruled over the largest domain in the southern Frontier. None could compare to him in coldness and cruelty, and it was said the mere mention of his name was enough to cause even his fellow Nobility to cringe in fear.

About three centuries earlier, another member of the Greater Nobility had invited General Gaskell to a ball. Smitten with one of the lovely young women in his host’s domain, he spirited her back to his own castle and struck a preemptive blow against the Nobles he knew would cause trouble, invading their lands and slaughtering not only the vampire clan and their supporters, but the entire dominion.

When there was a drop in the human serf population across the whole Frontier two centuries earlier, he’d sent artificial plasma praised as being indistinguishable from real human blood to the neighboring Nobility, poisoning them all. His intent had been to add their lands to his own fiefdom, and in order to get permission to do so, he sent word to the Capital that their deaths had been caused by a plague that singled out Noble DNA. However, the Nobility’s House of Peers was understandably skeptical, dispatching a large group to conduct an inquiry and, on uncovering the general’s villainy, ordering that he be destroyed by sunlight.

The resistance General Gaskell offered in light of their orders was known as “The G Revolt,” and after fifty years of fighting military forces from the Capital the general was captured, exposed to sunlight in ancient ruins at the summit of Gaskell Peak—the highest point in his domain—and reduced to dust. Due to the devastation of the G Revolt, sixty percent of human serfs in his Frontier sector died and vast areas polluted by radiation and biological weapons were sealed off for all time. The Capital had even considered cordoning off that entire portion of the Frontier.

However, Gaskell’s most heinous deeds involved the slaughter of his harmless subjects. While it was perfectly natural for a Noble to feed on his serfs, this is also where the varied characters of the Nobility and their views on humanity became most apparent. On feeling the thirst for blood, the majority of the Nobility would send a servant to the serfs to select a human sacrifice. Those chosen would meet with what in the medical sense was the relatively peaceful death of being drained of blood, although some were only partially drained and returned safely to villages, while other serfs became vampires and were either burned as something abhorrent or taken on as servants of the Nobility. Among the minority, there were some Nobles who negotiated with their subjects and maintained congenial relations while regularly receiving blood. In return for the humans’ sacrifice, their parents and siblings were given considerable wealth or shared in the Nobility’s highly advanced technology.

Gaskell was a villain who belonged to neither camp. Though he might’ve thirsted for blood at times, the things he did to torture his subjects seemed based solely on whim. He even went so far as to tear open the throats of fifty women and children in a single night, drinking no more than a single mouthful of blood from any of them and simply murdering the last ten. Worse yet, he gathered his clan and proposed that they have a contest to see who could drain the most residents of a given village in one night. By dawn, the entire village had perished.

In addition, the general deciphered ancient scrolls even the Greater Nobility in the Capital knew nothing about, and then went on to test the power he gained from them on his own subjects. A meteor he called from the depths of space with pinpoint accuracy had obliterated a certain village, and even now a crater thirty miles wide remained at the site. Causing earthquakes and floods or releasing new varieties of beasts and monsters was easy enough for him. On one occasion he moved an entire mountain to crush a village of rebellious subjects, and after using preservation equipment on the corpses of those he’d tortured and killed, he piled them into a pyramid that was said to have grown ten thousand feet high over the course of five centuries.

However, what Gaskell used so well to keep the forces from the Capital at an overwhelming disadvantage for fifty years of fighting was the ability to make matter disappear. Through whatever means, he was able to make a given creature or object vanish without any kind of energy conversion at all. Thousands at a time vanished from the army of emotionless soldiers bearing down on the general’s stronghold, with wide holes quickly opening in the ranks as if something had taken a bite out of the spot. That was how an account from a soldier at the front described it.

As might be expected, this apparently consumed a vast amount of power, and frequent “erasures” were impossible. Also, although many of Gaskell’s weapons were left inoperable and his forces were forced to surrender to the invaders, the Capital demanded nothing short of the general’s capture. It was due to this that the battle dragged on for fifty long years. The Capital’s aim was to make the ancient treasures General Gaskell possessed their own, at least according to common and not-so-furtively whispered rumors. The general was caught and tortured in ways that frightened even the bloodstained Nobility, but he vanished into mist on that mountaintop without ever telling them anything. What D and his left hand had just witnessed was indisputably General GaskelPs form of erasure.

“So, maybe the general survived, or maybe this is the work of someone who picked up where he left off—whatever the case, someone definitely erased that guy. But what would they want with those two?”

“No, the closest part of it is a good twenty miles to the north. Even then, thanks to the unbridled use of nuclear and mystical weapons back in the G Revolt, it’s a wasteland not fit for even an ant to live in.”

“Was erasure the only trick the general had?” D said, his question echoing in the blackness.

“So far as I can remember, according to computer records and data in the scientific facilities in the general’s castle, plus official findings from the yearlong investigation scientists from the Capital ran after the castle was taken. But according to one theory in a tome on extremely ancient practices the general had, in addition to this erasure, there was also a fragmented description of recovery. And it’s said that the general had for the most part succeeded in deciphering it.”

Sucking in a mighty breath, the hoarse voice immediately continued, “Hmm—maybe what we just saw was him still experimenting?”

Then the left hand took the tone of a celebrated detective who’d just solved a riddle. “If that’s the case, the key that unlocked the door to that mystery would be in the ruins of the general’s castle, eh? Interesting. Should we go have a look?”

“This has nothing to do with me,” D said, getting back on his horse. As he stared straight ahead, his expression didn’t betray so much as a hint of concern for the man and woman who’d briefly accompanied him.

It was unclear if D had already noticed the silvery flow silently creeping closer from all sides. Water.

The hoarse voice couldn’t help but gasp. The next thing it knew, the encroaching water had risen to the cyborg horse’s belly.

One after another the little bubbles popped. And they were slowly getting closer.

When they came within fifteen feet, D turned his eyes toward them. The trail of bubbles stopped moving. A few seconds later one huge bubble burst and, following after it, a human the same color as the water emerged from the waist up. It was a child. Dripping with muddy rivulets, the face was that of someone perhaps twelve or thirteen. The oddly distended abdomen and swollen limbs made it clear that this was a drowning victim. Though the boy kept the lightless eyes of the dead trained on D, his lips quickly twisted into a strange shape, and then he sank again into the water with the same speed as he’d first appeared.

“He smiled at you!” the hoarse voice remarked with amusement. “Probably a kid from the village. You should hurry up and put him out of his misery.”

Before the voice had finished speaking, the cyborg horse was jerked underwater. As D narrowly managed to leap into the air, below him the body of his steed was crushed as if it were a bubble being sucked into a tiny hole. In no time at all, it’d been drawn beneath the surface. Accompanied by a pillar of water, horrible chunks of the mount shot into the air just as the tips of D’s toes landed on the edge of a farmhouse roof.

Perhaps having somehow seen the dismembered limbs and head that’d fallen into the water, the hand commented in a hoarse voice, “Every last piece was all twisted up. Looks like it was pulled into one hell of a whirlpool.” Despite the ghastly scene it’d just witnessed, it still hadn’t lost the ring of amusement to its voice.

The cyborg horse’s skeleton was made of a high-polymer steel that could bear up to fifty tons. What kind of force did it take to warp and tear apart something like that in under a second?

On the rooftop, D bent his knees easily for another leap. And at exactly that moment his footing gave way. In the blink of an eye, dozens of streaks of white shot up from below to riddle the roof of the house—or rather, the entire structure. With the hem of his coat billowing out, D flew like a supernatural bird. Fearsome and beautiful was the only way to describe the sight of him, and probably no one would’ve noticed that his form was only slightly off.

A round face had appeared from the water. The face of the drowned boy. His thin and rotting lips pursed, and then a streak of white shot at where D hung in midair.

Ordinarily the Hunter’s blade would’ve flashed out to deflect the attack in a manner that exceeded the limits of human mobility yet was at the same time effortless. However, the slightest twist in his body meant that his hand was just a little too slow as it reached for his sword, and before he could touch the weapon, the streak of white stabbed through D from the left side of his stomach to the base of his right arm.

The village square was about thirty feet wide, and D headed toward the enormous tree that stood at its center. The instant he landed on one of its great outstretched limbs, he was assailed by a second attack. Silvery light flashed out, and the streak broke into thousands of drops of water that faded like a thin mist.

“Water?” the hoarse voice remarked, but before it could finish, D staggered and slumped back against the tree trunk.

Three times streaks shot at him from the water, easily ripping through the ironlike bark of the tree or else sailing off into space. They returned to their original state a mile or two up, scattering in midair and probably falling again as raindrops.

Water—that’s precisely what it was. Thanks to the powerful suction power the bloated corpse of the drowned boy had been given, he could create tiny whirlpools that tore apart whatever

they pulled in, and by his own expiration he could discharge liquids at supersonic speeds, turning them into a spear that could penetrate a steel plate. Further aided by the ability to move with the swiftness of a fish, he launched more liquid spears in rapid succession from underwater at various locations and different angles all around the massive tree, piercing and shredding the ten-foot'diameter trunk as if it were tissue paper.

“There was something about this in the records in the Capital, you remember?” the hoarse voice said. “A passage in A Catalog of General Gaskell’s Arsenal—the one about submarine attackers that make use of the dead. Turning dead people into weapons is a hell of a thing to do.”

“Huh?” the hoarse voice said with surprise. Ripples ran across the center of the palm, and what should rise to the surface but a human face complete with eyes, a nose, and a mouth. “I’m not saying I can’t do it or anything, but that’d take a hell of a lot more energy than usual. You won’t have enough left for more than one swing of your sword. Try to think of—•”

Bending over, D had thrust his left hand into the muddy water that’d risen to just below the great branch, then quickly pulled it out again.

As if that were the signal, two streaks shot out of the water, piercing D at an angle.

With thick streams of blood pouring from both sides of his abdomen, D stood up and pointed his left hand at the surface of the water. The countenanced carbuncle had already risen in his palm, and it threw its mouth open wide.

It was at just that moment that a tiny fireball fell from above D’s head. On making contact with the massive tree, the flames spread out like oil thrown onto water, swiftly covering the trunk and branches. The part of it that struck the water set off an immense shower of sparks that rode the wind back toward D.

D was already looking up again. Apart from where the light of dawn was bleaching the eastern sky, the heavens for the most part allowed themselves to be ruled by darkness. D’s eyes caught a blurry object—indiscernible as bird or human—flying gracefully through that black space. Flying first toward the east, it then turned around and sailed over D’s head before hurling down a fireball. The surface of the water was burning. Even farmhouses and barns that barely protruded from the water were engulfed in flames, which spiraled up into the heavens like dragons. Burning branches rained down on D from above, while below him the fiery water grew closer.

About fifteen feet away, something black sprang from the depths, limned a small arc, and then dropped into the water again. It was the boy.

“Finally decided to show himself, did he? But why? It’s not like he needs to breathe. Come to mention it, it seemed like he was prattling on about something. Did you hear it?”

D said nothing as he gazed at the wildly blazing surface of the water. Both his bloodstained lower body and his paraffin-pale brow were the color of flames.

The aerial shape turned once again, and the submarine form moved into position below D. Would the gravely wounded Hunter have enough strength left to get through this?

The watery spear slashed through the air. When D’s blade deflected it, the world grew pale blue, for the left hand he’d extended had disgorged flames. Pale blue in color, they must’ve had incredible energy, because the instant they touched the water it evaporated, leaving a gap a good thirty feet deep. A split second before that, the svelte figure had leapt like a little river fish.

As the boy seemed to throw himself back into the water, D’s sword raced toward him. The tip of his blade narrowly missed the child, but then it stretched further. The instant the arcs of the blade and the boy met, there was the thud of meat being cleaved and a faint cry of pain rang out. Shortly after that, two splashes went up—one large, the other small. D’s sword had separated the head of the dead boy from his torso. In midair the boy’s eyes had sought his foe, though they held no profound emotion regarding the death he’d just suffered.

No ball of fire fell. D had witnessed the shadowy form sailing away toward the river, and a thin line ran through its body at an angle. What had kept the thing in the sky from attacking at the same time as the thing underwater was one of dozens of arrows that’d come flying out of nowhere.

“It’s the transport party,” the hoarse voice said. “From the angle of that arrow, they must be near the river. Can’t say whether they were trying to save you or not. Oh, damn—that freak’s gone off to have its revenge!”

Before D could decide whether or not to leave the burning tree, the distant darkness was tinged with red and a mixture of gunshots and shouts. But the shouts soon became screams.

Most likely the latest death of the reanimated boy had broken the spell he held over the floodwaters. As the muddy water began to draw back with stunning coldness, the ground it left exposed was caked with mud.

The Hunter had no horse. Getting down from the tree, D began to sprint across the mud. Beneath the paling sky, gigantic flames blazed as if begrudging the night. On the other side of the muddy torrent lay a road. It was definitely the transport party.

Just as he was about to launch himself into the swiftly moving water without hesitation, D fell to one knee. The flame attack his left hand had launched had used nearly all the power in his body. Making matters worse, he was badly wounded. It was nearly a miracle that he’d been able to make the ungodly slash that’d dispatched the dead boy.

“Wait! Get us some dirt now,” his left hand clamored, but D merely shook his head as he got back on his feet.

“What’ve we got here?” the hoarse voice groaned. “Earlier it was just one—now we’ve got a regular parade.”

Out in the relentless muddy torrent, coffins came along haughtily, fighting the flow. Not just one. Ten or twenty—no, fifty or a hundred. Most were rough wooden affairs nailed together, but among them were some intricately carved coffins painted black or white. All of them were pushing their way against the flow of nature, knifing through the water, surging further upstream. Although the left hand had called it a parade, this procession of coffins moved not to the music of a march but rather to a funeral dirge.

“What fun! This is a real treat. Hey, D! Grab one of’em and drag it ashore. We’ve gotta see what’s inside.”

With a speed that was incredible for a person with essentially no strength remaining, he swam toward the opposite bank. Skillfully, he slipped between the coffins. Even after he’d dashed up the bank and down the road, the procession of creepy resting places of the dead remained unabated in the light of dawn. If what slumbered in them were their rightful occupants, what did the one summoning them upstream want, and what purpose would they serve?

On reaching the highway, D was greeted by a burning road and the wagons from earlier. At a glance, it was clear they’d come under attack from fireballs from that mysterious flying object.

Though several apparent survivors were there, all they could do was stand by, powerless. None of them could pull the golden fangs or platinum bones from the great immolated beast.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes—or you would’ve been, but you’re a little too late.”

The bearded Juke and turbaned Gordo were tinged not by the present flames but by a different kind of hellfire.

Pointing to a third man, a lanky individual, Gordo said, “This here’s Sergei. He may look thin as a rail, but the truth is he’s the toughest man among us.”

The lanky man mumbled a few words that might’ve been a greeting if they’d escaped his mouth unchewed and bowed his head slightly.

“No,” Sergei countered in a voice that was like the whine of a mosquito. “There was the captain, too.”

The captain was the same man who’d tried to hire D to guard the transport party. Gordo and Juke both bared their teeth, but then, realizing it was too late, they looked at each other.

“The thing that burned the wagons—it knew that the captain was the one who’d shot him, you see,” Juke said as he scratched at his beard. Still looking down, he continued, “He did that because he knew the village was right around here. He couldn’t just stand by and do nothing about a monster dropping fireballs. But in the end, that proved his downfall. Well, I suppose you could say he brought it on himself—”

“That’s not true!” Like grinding gears, the voice was low and deep, but it had enough force to it to make Juke’s eyes bulge. “The captain was always right. And he was right this time, too. It was that flying freak that was in the wrong.”

“Yes—right you are,” Gordo said, giving the man a clap on his scrawny back to cheer him up.

“C’mon, Juke—you take that back!” Sergei growled like a beast. Nodding, the bearded one said, “Fine. The captain was right. He always was.”

To Sergei’s rear there was a hard clang. On his back was a crossed pair of swords, curved like D’s but a little longer.

“They’re coming down!” Juke said, spurring his mount forward. And as the four of them moved away, the transport wagons that’d been turned into bonfires made a great crash as they collapsed to the ground and sent debris flying in all directions.

As he fanned away the persistent sparks, Gordo looked down at D and said, “When that thing first hit us, we cut loose a couple of our spare horses. If you wait here, they should be back before long. Take one of ’em and ride off.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Juke said, raising his right hand, and Sergei nodded his gaunt face.

“Sure we do!” Juke said, finally showing a smile. The bearded man was an optimist to the core. “Our job usually consists of carrying cargo around in those wagons, but we cover the whole Frontier. A wagon gets emptied pretty fast, and you also have to take into account bandits, monsters, and natural disasters—just like what we’ve had here. In this line of work, you can’t just shrug your shoulders when you lose the whole works in an accident. But you see, wherever the trains run, merchandise gets sent to a number of secure stations, and we’ve got a system where we can go there and pick up more when our stock runs low. That’s why we’re always fully loaded.”

“The station is three miles north of here. A place called Jalha. That’s where we’re going. Get ourselves a wagon, some horses, and some guys, and we’ll be fine. Can’t say whether we’ll make it all the

way to the end of our run, but we can’t very well walk away from the job. Every one of those villages is on pins and needles waiting for those goods,” Gordo said, his words imbued with strength.

Though the fires still burned on the road, they’d died down greatly by the time several horses came down the highway.

“Take whichever one you like. A present from us to the greatest Hunter on the Frontier.”

D took the reins of one of the animals that’d congregated, and then reached into one of his coat’s inner pockets. From him a golden gleam flew in an exquisite arc, and was then swallowed by Juke’s fist.

Quickly opening his fingers for a peek at his catch, the bearded man remarked with admiration, “A golden dracze? This one coin’s worth fifteen normal gold pieces! Yeah, you first-class Hunters sure have style.”

“Please, don’t take this the wrong way. I just can’t take money from someone I respect so much.”

Though that groan of amazement echoed from the left hand D had wrapped around the reins, it vanished when he squeezed it into a fist.

“Anybody who lives on the Frontier has heard about you, either a little or a lot. Don’t know how much of it is true, but I believe what I’ve heard. Having seen the source of all those rumors up close, I see that I wasn’t wrong. You’re the real deal. Take the horse, as a favor to me.”

“Well then, we’re off—Godspeed to you,” Gordo said, extending one hand before he realized what he was doing and pulled it back again.

“We’ve gotta get to the station and make arrangements to have our colleagues buried. Not that we’ll have time to hang around for the funerals. So long. It was a pleasure meeting you!” Juke said, waving one hand and wheeling his horse around.

As the Hunter watched the shadowy forms of mounts and riders go, a hoarse voice was heard to say, “What can the three of them do?”

They were more than halfway to the village of Jalha before Juke finally broke the silence, saying, “Hope we can get enough guys.”

“We won’t and you know it. No point mulling it over now,” Gordo said with disgust.

“Then we’ll have to pay them triple—no, that won’t work either. Worst come to worst, it might just be the three of us.”

Those words, which seemed to slip unconsciously from Sergei, made the other two nod. No one had to ask what was a shame.

“With just one Hunter like that along, I could do this run alone,” Juke muttered.

Gordo grinned at that. “Don’t be stupid. Hell, we’ve got you, don’t we?”

The responses from Sergei’s bearded and turbaned compatriots earned them glaring looks, but all three men soon let their shoulders slump.

Without their realizing it, another rider had pulled up alongside them. The voice that they heard was his. Turning, Juke and the other two stared in amazement at the young man of unearthly beauty. In the predawn gloom, he had a heavenly glow.

“Since you wouldn’t take payment for the horse, I have no choice but to work it off,” D said.

“You mean to say you’ll go with us?” Gordo asked in a dazed tone. He simply couldn’t believe it. As residents of the Frontier, they knew that the most famous Hunters always remained on their own.

“For the value of a horse—that’d be until we’re across this district,” Juke told the Hunter, robotically extending his right hand. He only realized how pointless the action might’ve been after a black-gloved hand gripped it firmly in return.

More than a dozen guards rode in the freight train. All were armed with the very latest weapons and on full alert for bandit mobs. The railroad itself was exclusively for shipping and didn’t carry any passengers. Since lines were few and far between and attacks by bandits or monsters were frequent, no one would ride them anyway.

At a spot thirty minutes from Jalha Station a freight man sporting a transport-company badge brought the men some coffee. Turning a stern look on him, one of the guards said, “Take a drink of it.” Well aware that it was a common ploy for bandits to bribe someone, the freight man shrugged his shoulders and poured the steaming black liquid into a cup.

“Pour a little into each cup. Then take a sip out of each of ’em.” Giving a blow on his whistle, the freight man said, “When I get to be boss, I’d be pleased to have you boys working my security exclusively.”

On contact with air the contents of the coffeepot turned into a gaseous carnivore, but it took another five minutes for it to spill from the mouth of the container. Meanwhile, the colleagues the freight man had signaled had killed the other employees and ordered the engineer—who was also party to this—to stop the

train. After that, it would simply be a matter of waiting for the mob of bandits to arrive, collecting a handsome reward, and then making themselves scarce.

They sprayed a gas through the freight-car door that would become highly toxic when it mixed with the creature’s chemical makeup, then waited thirty seconds before going inside. There was nothing in the hold except cargo. The gaseous creature had assimilated the guards so that no trace of them remained, and it in turn had been reduced to the components of air.

Three men reached for the door to the car and tried to open it. There was still a little time before the bandits were due to come, and they couldn’t resist the urge to see what was inside. When the pale light of dawn speared in through the thread-thin opening, they stopped what they were doing.

All three of them knew they weren’t carrying anything but cargo. And if some lousy hobo had been sneaking a ride, the gas creature wouldn’t have missed him.

“It’s time to get up, but it’s still a tad bright out. Would you be so good as to close that?”

Before the last remark had finished, the trio finally managed to pinpoint where it came from. In front of a mountain of what seemed to be wooden crates of food there lay a single wooden box that was longer and slimmer. On closer inspection it differed from the other containers in that it didn’t have a single nail in it and the boards seemed to have been finished. That’s where the voice originated.

The three men drew the revolvers holstered on their hips. The freight man who’d released the gaseous creature had buckshot rounds in his weapon. Each of the thirty rounds would spread to three feet in diameter at a distance of thirty feet, and the instant the buckshot entered the target’s body it would mushroom out, causing horrendous damage.

“Hey!” called out a man in thick glasses who was cocking a long-barreled pistol. “That’s—well, you know—” “Yeah. It got put on at Vigonell Station—supposed to be experimental soil.”

“Soil—and a wooden box?” a third man, wearing a leather vest, said in a dazed tone. “The contents must’ve been checked over, right?”

“They sure were,” the freight man said, nodding his head. Wooden boxes and soil were hallmarks of the Nobility.

The men drove sharp iron stakes into the soil and exposed it to sunlight, but nothing seemed to be hidden in it. However, the voice was definitely coming from the box.

“I’m gonna open the door,” the freight man muttered. “Once the place is flooded with light, blast the box.”

The others nodded their agreement as they spoke, but the barrels of their guns shook wildly. Only one thing cheered them—it was already dawn.

Grabbing the door, the freight man threw it open with all his might. Watery light flooded the car. Reports and sparks tinged the sunlight. Splinters flew as bullets gouged holes. Large chunks of wood went flying and ash gray soil sailed into the air—that was the work of the freight man’s buckshot. The trio quickly emptied their weapons. Forgetting to reload, they focused their bloodshot eyes on the ravaged wooden box. Soil spilled from holes large and small to make little mounds on the floor.

“We killed it, don’t you think?” the man in thick glasses asked in a terrified tone.

“Yep,” the man in the leather vest said with a nod, but he turned a desperate look to the freight man. He was the one who’d dragged the two of them into this.

“Don’t worry, we put it down. Besides, if it was a Noble, it couldn’t live here in the light of the sun, could it? I’ll prove it to you now.”

Having set all this in motion, he couldn’t help but follow through. With the empty shotgun in one hand, the freight man headed for the wooden box. Leaning over one of the great holes his own buckshot had created, he used one hand to push the dirt aside.

He’d intended to say inside. But that couldn’t be right. The voice had come from within.

This continued for so long that the man in the thick glasses asked, “Something the matter?”

The man in the leather vest stepped forward. Apparently he was bolder than his bespectacled colleague.

A second later the same man tumbled backward, falling on a part of the floor where the sunlight puddled. Half his throat was torn open.

From this ghastly cadaver the other two shifted their gaze to the box. Moving naturally up until this point, the man in the leather vest and the one in glasses groaned as if burned by the sunlight and froze in their tracks. From a split in the box—and from the gray soil within it—jutted the pale hand of a corpse. It was covered in blood up to the wrist. As they watched, the hand grew hazy—as if it were shrouded in some kind of steam.

“Alas, I’ve forgotten to put on my lotion. That’s going to sting,” the voice said in an agitated manner. “Well, I suppose I shall last long enough to dispose of the last two cretins. Besides which, my long slumber has left me famished. Now that I’ve been detained here, I suppose someone will be coming along to carry off the cargo.”

The bloodstained hand went back into the soil. There was a sound. The man in the glasses and his friend in the leather vest

felt their blood freeze. A Noble who didn’t mind being exposed to sunlight—now that was a shock. And he was making the sound— a slurping, sucking noise. Cleaning the freight man’s blood from his fingers.

Behind the paralyzed pair, the door slammed shut. Darkness blanketed everything. It was as if a pitch-black banquet was beginning in the air of dawn.

The train arrived at Jalha Station thirty minutes behind schedule. It was so rare for one to be that close to arriving on time that the stationmaster and his employees exchanged glances.

D rode around back to the receiving bay with Gordo, Juke, and Sergei, and he remained mounted, as if to cover the other three after they got down off their horses. Out here on the Frontier, they couldn’t relax simply because the train had arrived safely. The names of all the stations that’d been hit by bandits just as a train arrived and then burned to the ground would make a list a mile long. Showing his work papers to a railway worker, Juke got permission to make the pickup.

When they went through the receiving bay and out onto the platform, there was a figure in vermilion walking from the far end of the train. From his top hat to the cape hanging down to his knees, his jacket to his bow tie, the man was clad entirely in one shade of red. Though his face was youthful, a neat beard graced him from the nose down, and his right hand held a blue walking stick with a golden handle. Out in the sunlight, his face and hands glistened as if they were coated with some kind of cream. Though the dapper young man had his left thumb in his mouth and sucked it as he went along, when he passed by the trio he pulled his hand away from his mouth, touched it to the brim of his hat, and bowed his head slightly. The trio ignored him—they took him for some sort of snob. This was due in part to their being so busy getting a wagon and making other arrangements after their arrival in town that they hadn’t had time to sleep.

Not seeming to take any offense, the man went back to sucking his thumb, walking another fifteen feet or so before halting. To his left was the receiving bay. D was there. The man in the top hat made an easy turn in D’s direction. Their eyes met.

Somewhere, a cry of surprise rang out. A shadow had suddenly passed across the sun.

D’s hair billowed. The hem of the vermilion cape swirled wildly. It was the wind.

Juke, Gordo, and Sergei all noticed. So did the station workers. Even with the wind and thunder and lightning, they knew that this was a battle. D was up on his horse, the man in the top hat down on the ground—and in the space between the two of them, invisible sparks flew.

“Where’d you come from?” D asked, as if he were an interrogator grilling a suspect for a confession.

Smiling thinly, the man in the top hat replied, “From quite some distance.” He said it as if he were an honest defendant incredulous of the charges against him.

“If it’s General Gaskell’s domain, that certainly is quite some distance.”

Not taking his eyes off him, D said, “That freight car stinks of blood. As does your left hand. Are you an invitee of the general?”

Astonishment spread across the face of the man in the top hat. Though he tried to hide it, he quickly gave up.

“When I received the invitation, I wondered what kind of incredible individuals I might encounter, but this is more than I ever expected. If you know the legend of the invitees, you must be—D?”

The light in the sky bleached D’s visage white. A rumble of rapture went up—it had escaped from the transport-party trio and the station staff. That instant of beauty had snatched their very souls away ... as it had another’s. He looked up at D vacantly.

“In return, allow me to introduce myself. I am Baron Schuma.” “I’ve heard of you,” D said, his words slammed by thunder.

“As you may know, I am not the only invitee. I’m sure at some point you shall be seeing all of us. May I pass?”

“In that case—” Baron Schuma turned forward again and was about to walk off to the ticket gate. Every fiber of his being was focused toward his intent—but then he halted.

The tip of the baron’s cane rose smoothly. D didn’t move. Everyone present was convinced that this unexpected battle would surely end with one of them dead.

At that moment, the ring of iron-shod hooves was overlaid with the sound of wagon wheels out at the entrance to the station, which gave way to screams of urgency that soon halted. Amidst the wind and lightning, a clear voice, but one that didn’t seem to belong to any warm-blooded human, said, “Has Baron Schuma arrived? The administrator of the southern Frontier’s third sector, General Gaskell, has sent a carriage for him.”

It was several seconds before the dire meaning of these words dawned on the station staff. Their souls had been imprisoned since D and Baron Schuma squared off.

“Dear me!” the baron exclaimed, the tension draining from his body. The smile never leaving his face, he thrust his walking stick in D’s direction. “It would appear my ride is here. That will be all for today—”

There was no change in D. The whole world might suddenly alter, but this gorgeous young man would never stop until the foe before him was destroyed. The battle continued.

The baron was about to raise his stick when a black cloud of indignant despair covered his face. In the next few seconds, matters would probably be settled between the pair one way or another.

However, heaven didn’t allow that to pass. With a series of strange shouts, humans came down from the sky. They were men with balloons strapped to their bodies, the gas-filled bags appearing to be the internal organs of some creature. There was no need to see their vicious scowls. One look at their clothes and the way they were armed with spears and swords made it clear they were a mob of bandits. There were tiny propellers attached to the front and back of their bodies, which apparently allowed them to control their heading.

Outlaw attacks from above like this weren’t uncommon at Frontier train stations, and ordinarily an eye was kept on the skies. Security was especially tight when a freight train loaded with lots of cargo pulled in. However, today of all days the people’s attention was entirely focused on the unusual pair’s face-off. The moment the guy manning the watchtower on the roof of the station building swung around the kind of heavy machine gun rarely found in poor Frontier villages, he was fatally stabbed by a bandit who pounced on him. Aided by another man who’d descended with him, the killer attached a balloon to the entire gun and its store of ammo, and then filled it with an incredibly buoyant gas from a cylinder. The weapon that floated up was an important part of their spoils, and it would be carried off to where the bandits’ cargo wagons waited in the distant mountains.

One after another grenades rained from the hands of the men in midair, blowing the station and its helpless staff in all directions.

“Get in the freight car!” the stationmaster cried. Those goods were what their foes were after. There was no way they’d blow the car carrying them to kingdom come.

The station staff also started to fight back, managing to shoot down a number of the outlaws with bows and pneumatic rifles, but caught unaware and severely outnumbered, they had no choice but to take cover in the station building.

At the same moment, the men who’d landed on the roof of the train attached a transport balloon with truly amazing speed, and the train floated up into the air like a toy.

From above D and the baron, the foes descended, raining arrows all the while. What happened next could only be described as bizarre. On landing, the bandits all slumped right to the ground. And what should be jutting from their chests and abdomens but the iron arrows they had launched at D only seconds earlier. Motionless in the saddle, he’d had the reins in his left hand while his right had plucked the deadly missiles and hurled them back at the attackers with a mere flick of his wrist.

“I should’ve expected as much,” the baron said with a grin. “They’re like infants trying to fight a grown man. I wonder how I’ll fare?”

From either side of the platform, men armed with swords and staffs barreled toward the Nobleman. Scowling viciously and churning with a thirst for blood, the men came to a dead stop about fifteen feet away. The color instantly drained from their horrified faces, and cold sweat poured from them. Their numbers were bolstered then by three men who leapt down off the freight car—but that trio was also paralyzed.

Still the villains wouldn’t move—or rather, they couldn’t move. They were stopped cold, as if taking even a single step would mean instant death.

Raising his walking stick, the baron pointed it at the pair on the right. “Come,” he said.

And with that, the ones he’d indicated tottered forward as if they were marionettes or had been mesmerized. After they’d taken a few steps, the baron’s stick was thrust forward and immediately pulled back again three times. It moved less than four inches. Squawking like chickens, the men tumbled backward, clutching their throats. It was only after they’d landed on their backs that bright blood gushed out from between their fingers. The wounds were indeed at the same level the baron had moved his walking stick. However, being more than ten feet away at the time, it didn’t appear there was any way it could’ve possibly come in contact with them.

The stick shifted to the Nobleman’s left hand—and pointed at the men to his right.

“Come to me,” the baron said, his voice like some suggestion they simply couldn’t resist. That pair also staggered forward.

One of them—a man with a staff—barely managed to plant his feet, and with a savage cry he swung the weapon. Though the staff was about six feet long, at least that much distance remained between him and the baron. A split second later, a black chain flew from the end of the staff and wrapped around the baron’s walking stick. Like a man possessed, the outlaw tugged with all his might. Not only was he skilled with the staff and chain, but he was also a giant of a man. And though he seemed to be three times the size of an ordinary person, his incredible muscles were so well defined that he actually looked slim for his size.

Pulled tight, there was no slack in the chain, but the baron didn’t budge an inch. Suddenly, he waved his cane. What resulted was a phenomenon that was physically impossible. While the two of them remained exactly where they were, a series of waves raced down that once-taut chain, driving the staff against the man’s wrists. His wrists broke, along with his staff.

It was shortly after that that the man let out a scream. Once the extended walking stick waved four inches from side to side, fresh blood spilled from his throat and the man collapsed on the spot, still clutching his new mouth.

Only one remained. He was motionless, as if entranced, but the baron called to him, “Come to me.”

The spell was broken. The man made a break for the railroad tracks, but the train had already floated up into the air. As he ran directly under it, he fiddled with the gas cylinder and propeller on his belt.

The baron said, “Observe.” Whether that was addressed to D or a concession to his own Noble vanity was unclear.

His cane limned a vicious arc. All the ropes on the balloon lifting the train were severed, while blood shot from the men who’d held them.

The fleeing man had just left the ground. The falling train struck him in midair, and the instant his feet were pressed back down to the ground, he was transformed into a titan bearing the weight of the world. His screams were effaced by the crash of the train and ground coming together.

Another sound rang out. Off to D’s left, someone in midair had lobbed a grenade. On the back of his spinning horse, D raised his left hand to fend off the blistering-hot shrapnel flying toward him, and then swept out with his right hand. The rough wooden needle that went sailing through the air pierced the man through the windpipe as he prepared to hurl a second explosive, and both he and his grenade blew apart in midair. Needles jabbed through three more in rapid succession, at which point the thieves began to flee, spewing invectives all the while.

As D remained motionless on the platform, Juke and his two companions raced over to him. Apparently they’d offered what resistance they could, as their clothes were torn and they were filthy with blood, sand, and gunpowder residue.

“We saw what happened, and it was incredible! You never even got down off your horse in that crazy skirmish, and you put down around ten of them in the blink of an eye.”

Ignoring their cries of joy and astonishment, D had turned his gaze to the end of the platform.

Just as he was about to slip through the turnstiles and out of the station, Baron Schuma halted and turned in the Hunter’s direction, bringing one hand to the rim of his hat and giving an easy bow before disappearing.

“Impossible! He was walking around in broad daylight,” Gordo said. His previously yellowed turban was now stained with blood.

“A Noble who can move by day—he’s unstoppable,” Sergei said in a subdued manner.

“He said he’d been summoned by General Gaskell, didn’t he? What’s that supposed to mean? For a long, long time now the general’s been . . .” Gordo muttered, not seeming to want to say the rest.

Juke elbowed him, saying, “We’re talking about the Nobility here. He must’ve come back to life. Time means nothing to them.”

“I guess not—oh, the carriage has taken off! Does that little weasel think he’s off to see General Gaskell?”

“What’s it matter? It’s got nothing to do with our route. That’s a relief,” Juke said, letting out a long sigh.

At this point the station staff came over and asked them to inspect the cargo of the smashed freight car.

“This’ll take all day. Sorry, D, but we’ll have to ask you to stick around,” Juke said apologetically.

Fortunately, out of the three freight cars, the one that was left had more cargo in it than the other two combined. Having hired people to help load their wagon, it was well past noon when they finally left the village.

before sundown,” Juke said from the driver’s seat with displeasure. “At any rate, we’d best hurry.”

The eyes these words lit a fire in were not Gordo’s but rather those of Sergei, who sat beside him in the front seat. The normally taciturn man took an uncharacteristic glance at the sky and said, “We’ve got three hours till sunset. It’ll take another three hours after that to reach the village. How about we camp out and get there first thing in the morning? That’d only put us two days behind the date in our agreement.”

“You idiot! Don’t you know how anxiously those villagers are waiting for this stuff? If the medicine we’re bringing gets there even an hour late it could mean somebody’s baby dies from a poison scarab bite. I hear any more crap like that out of you and I’ll knock you flat.”

At the sight of Juke with veins popping out of his forehead, Sergei quickly fell silent. He didn’t seem at all the sort of man who lived out on the Frontier.

Having heard their exchange from the top of the wagon, the grinning Gordo walked to the back, climbed down to the rear deck, and called back to D, who was guarding their rear, “That Sergei’s an odd bird. He’s not a bad person, and he does a good job. It’s just that he seems to lack a certain something for living on the Frontier. Everything he says is so damned rational. Guess maybe he’s what you’d call an intellectual. Whoa! We’re picking up speed. Looks like oP Juke is hell bent on reaching Jelkin before the day is out.”

Presently their surroundings grew more desolate. They were on a road through plains without a speck of green to them. In scattered places there were huge holes perhaps a hundred yards across, and strange rocks were piled in pyramids in what might even be described as some kind of bizarre art installation. As the white smoke that rose in so many places was a poisonous gas, the area was littered with the bones of countless birds and beasts.

“The wind’s taken a bad turn. It’s blowing right toward us,” Gordo yelled down to the driver’s seat, having returned to the roof of the wagon.

“No problem. There’s not all that much of it. If you were to breathe some in, it wouldn’t take more than a few months off your life,” Juke replied.

The two of them then heard a masculine but captivating voice say, “Not today.”

Nearly falling under its spell, the pair—or actually, all three men-—quickly scanned either side of the road. Normally the white smoke merely drifted weakly across the ground, but suddenly it was coming toward them, churning and white, so heavy it hid the color of the earth beneath it. The distant forests and mountains were also hidden by white smoke, leaving only their silhouettes— and soon even those slipped from sight.

Juke shouted to him and to Sergei, “Shut your eyes and hold your breath. We’ll be through this in a minute.”

“Hyah!” Juke shouted to his team, cracking the reins to make the horses pick up speed. Though the gas wasn’t advancing at a great speed, the cargo wagon was also at a disadvantage. It was heavy.

Having already hidden the road behind them, the gas was pursuing the wagon, just like a living entity.

“It’s no use. It’s gonna catch up to us,” Sergei said, managing to squeeze the words out in a despairing tone as he looked behind them.

To either side of the driver’s seat there was room for three guards to sit. D had come over from his own galloping steed. After forcing the two men to the far end of the front seat, the Hunter stood like a guardian deity gripping the reins. A sudden change came over the horses—that was the only way to describe the way their speed increased.

“Oh, shit!” Gordo exclaimed in amazement, clinging for dear life to a handle on the wagon’s roof.

“They’re fast. Damn, they’re fast! These horses have gotta be top notch!”

Ignoring the closely pursuing cloud of gas, the wagon started to pull further and further away, and before long the road ran into a valley with cliffs rising to either side of it. D raced onward. All he had to do was hold the reins and the team of six cyborg horses tore up the turf like thoroughbreds groomed for the honor of the winner’s circle. Even running over the smallest rock made the wagon jolt madly—or perhaps exuberantly.

Since D had taken the reins, the man had spent more than an hour clinging to the handle. Along with the wagon his organs had been jolted and his brains rattled, and his bones had been snickering at him. For a whole hour now. The other two gripped the handrails, and the ride was so rough they had all they could do to keep from falling off.

While they were shrieking and groaning, they came out of the valley, the road descended slightly, and between verdant trees the homes of villagers began to come into view. Leaving the shouts and screams of the three men in its wake, the wagon tore into the village of Jelkin. The gates weren’t locked during the day. Ignoring the villagers, who didn’t know what was going on and thus froze in their tracks, they went down the main street and straight into the square. Sparks shot from the horses’ hooves as they struck rocks, and the wagon wheels tore into the earth.

Pushing the hunched-over Sergei off his back, Juke got up. “You okay?” he called up to Gordo on the roof.

“It wouldn’t surprise me.” Looking down from the front seat, the thought that slipped from his brain was, Oh, damn!

A mob of villagers was closing on them, and every last one of them wore a wrathful visage. Naturally some of them carried spades and mattocks, others sickles and longswords—some even had bows and arrows at the ready. There were cries wanting to know who was in charge and the men looked around with eyes as big as saucers, but there was no sign of D.

Turning to the mob, Juke said in a loud voice, “We’re cargo transporters.”

“So you say, but you sped through here like damn maniacs,” one of the farmers shouted, waving a giant scythe. “Scared my granny half to death, and she nearly threw her back out!”

“What are you gonna do if you scared my chickens so bad they stop laying, huh?” a young farmer said, gnashing his teeth.

“Oh, no!” a panicky voice cried out in the distance. “Yapei’s mother started foaming at the mouth! ”

If Juke and his two compatriots dealt poorly with the villagers crushing forward, they wouldn’t get off easily.

Just then, an indistinct voice that sounded like it surely came from a mouth missing quite a few teeth called out, “Come on. Hold up now.”

Suddenly the lust for blood drained from the villagers. The mob parted, revealing an old man bent over parallel to the ground and seemingly a century or two in age. The cane he used was a thick tree branch that’d been polished.

“Long time no see, Mr. Juke,” the codger said with the same slack mouth. “And Mr. Gordo as well—the other fellow’s a newcomer,

I take it? It’s been a good six months since the last time I’ve seen you, but I remember you sure enough.”

“We appreciate it, Mr. Mayor,” Juke said, relieved to the very bottom of his soul.

“You fixing to unload your goods? Okay, everybody, let’s give them a hand.” The mayor made a toss of his jaw.

Who knew what had become of their malice, because the villagers were all smiles as women, children, and old folks alike pressed toward the wagon.

“Keep back!” Juke shouted at them. Perhaps he was used to doing this, because his tone was loud and rattling.

“Oh, don’t be so cold. I’m just trying to help you out is all,” said the aged mayor.

“That’s okay. Just step back,” juke said, letting them see the pistol he wore on his hip.

“Okay, set the goods down. And don’t let anyone come any closer,” he ordered his two compatriots.

By the time the goods had been unloaded and they’d received payment from the mayor, it was sunset. Amazingly enough, D had covered a distance that should’ve taken three hours at top speed in less than one. Paying enough to stay for a single night, the trio was preparing to pitch camp when they found that D had come up behind them.

“God! ” Juke exclaimed in surprise, inquiring somewhat caustically, “Uh, where have you been up till now, anyway?”

Where lodging for travelers was concerned, rooms could usually be rented in villagers’ homes in smaller communities, while in larger ones there were full-fledged inns for just such a purpose. If they were to spend just a little more money, there’d be no need for them to sleep on the ground.

through the twilight. “You might be the very top of the heap in Hunting, but you don’t know a thing about anything else, do you? If we gave the folks in this village any kind of opening, they’d pick this wagon clean inside of a minute. Look over there, behind that house and those trees. There’s a couple of people hiding there, right? And every one of ’em is out to get our goods.”

And that was the reason why he’d forced the villagers back when they wanted to help the men unload their cargo.

“Being responsible for all this, I’d have to beat the holy hell out of anyone trying to rip us off. But I really like these folks. Out here in the sticks—in a little hick village where you take one step out of town and the place is crawling with monsters raised by the Nobility— they’re living as best they can. Hell, of course they’d wanna steal something. If I was them, I’d have long since lifted half of what we’ve got left. In that respect, they’re kinda thickheaded and kindhearted.” Juke had a tranquil look in his eyes. “Just like my dad.”

But just as he was saying this, Sergei came from the opposite direction and asked, “Could I have just two hours off?”

“There are ruins on the edge of the village. I’d like to have a peek at them.”

“What?” he exclaimed, teeth jutting from his beard. But glancing at the darkening sky, he told the man, “Be back in an hour and a half.” Sergei thanked him, and Juke watched the man as he was leaving, his brow furrowed as he said, “He’s a strange one.”

Urging his cyborg horse to run as fast as it could, the man arrived at the ruins in less than thirty minutes. Stretching beneath a sky that nearly

had the hue of darkness was a wasteland devoid of a single blade of grass. These were called ruins because of the strange things that poked out of the sand. Things that looked like twisted metal antennas, parts of massive cylinders that called to mind turbines, pieces of intricate machines the true nature of which no amount of head scratching was likely to reveal, and chunks of saucer shapes that were rumored to be aircraft—if any archaeologists from the Capital had been there, they’d have been ecstatic over this mountain of treasure.

As Sergei headed into the ruins on his horse, his face wore an intellectual excitement that made him seem like an entirely different person. Approaching a metal form that’d obviously been ravaged by a heat ray, he ran his hand over it, studying it. Circling a half-broken crystalline mass repeatedly, he seemed to bore into it with his gaze. It was as if the Frontier delivery man had suddenly been transformed into a scholar. For Sergei, the better part of an hour spent here was pure bliss.

Looking up at the sky just as the darkness closed over the last trace of light, he clucked his tongue.

D walked over to stand beside him. “The world of the Nobility will be here in less than five minutes. Better head back.”

“You’re right. I just got so absorbed. Close call.” After looking around once more, he muttered regretfully, “Looks like I won’t find out after all. Damn!”

Sergei had no way of knowing how rare that actually was—that it was akin to a miracle. Looking like the head of the class fielding a question in his best subject, he replied, “These aren’t really ruins so much as they’re the remains of an ancient battlefield. Just look at the stuff lying around here—the wreckage of giant radar dishes, generators, tanks. The better part of them is underground, and if you were to do some serious excavating out here, you’d probably

hit Noble weapons no matter where you dug. And do you know what battle was fought here? This is the site where General Gaskell and forces from the Capital vied for supremacy. Sheesh, it makes my skin crawl. Ah!”

With a snarl like a beast Sergei waved his right hand. On seeing D, he finally returned to his senses.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I got carried away again. Looks like this transporter’s just a big ol’ jabberjaw, eh?”

At that point he tried to avert his gaze, but his eyes were drawn to D’s and couldn’t pull away.

“There’s supposed to be a repository out here that holds an account of the battle,” he confided. The fervor was beginning to sweep over him once more. “The legendary conflict between the general and the allied forces of Nobility. Wouldn’t you like to know more about it than we already do? More than just what the fight was about and what its outcome was? Even among the Nobility this battle was legendary. In fact, no one even knows how it really played out. Buried somewhere in this battlefield is a building made of marble and an impenetrable metal, and inside it the truth is hidden.” “Quite the scholar, aren’t you?” D said quietly.

“Give me a break. I’m just a delivery man with a bit of an interest in history is all. Okay, I can accept it now. Let’s head back. Even with you along, D, the night still kinda gives me the creeps.”

That was all D said, and as he advanced, his horse started to go faster and faster. Like a man bewitched, Sergei drove his horse on, too. The pair galloped full speed into the heart of the darkness, which was like a black cloud.

After about ten minutes, D halted his steed. Still in the saddle, Sergei adjusted the beam on a light that he carried. That he’d managed to somehow keep up with D was no mean feat. Having finally set the beam, he looked all around from the back of his horse, protesting, “Hey! There’s nothing out here at all!”

“Say, just where do you—” Sergei began, intent on climbing down and going after him, but the darkness was so deep it put terror in his legs and just as he tried to advance, he tripped.

“Damn!” he exclaimed, hurrying off after D. The young man in black was becoming an inky shape, as if to challenge the very darkness. Sergei didn’t feel like being left alone out there.

“There were footprints. Yours, I take it. You must’ve raced to the village like that because you wanted to come out here, right?”

Their walk through the darkness ended before they’d gone thirty feet. D halted. Before him stretched nothing save darkness and desolation. But more than this bizarre situation, it was the view of the beautiful Hunter from behind that left Sergei dazed.

D raised his left hand. Sergei got the feeling he might’ve been gauging the speed of the almost imperceptible night wind, or else checking the weight of the light from the stark moon in the heavens above. And then, from the front of that hand, an oddly hoarse voice was heard to say, “Okay. Accursed repository, open now!”

From the Hunter’s palm, a streak of deep red shot out in the moonlight. It was swallowed by the depths of the darkness far beyond what Sergei could see. When D lowered his hand again as if nothing had happened, not a single drop fell from it.

What in the world.1 Harboring his doubts, Sergei was terrified both by the fact that he already knew the answer and by the answer itself. Would it come back to life? The legendary thing of which the odd voice had spoken—the accursed repository. Would it?

Through the soles of his feet, slight tremors reached him. The wind pounded him head on, and the pain of it made Sergei put his hand over his face before he could even turn away. Still, he peeked between his fingers. And swallowed hard. His breath froze in his lungs.

A glittering silver cloud that plowed across the earth bore down on him from the depths of the darkness. The only thing that kept him from turning away was the immovable silence of the figure that stood before him. The silvery cloud had already covered both the heavens and the earth, with the ground rumbling noisily. Just as it was about to swallow D, Sergei closed his eyes. Every inch of his body stiffened to meet his fate. Expectations of terror and pain nearly made Sergei pass out. However, he held on to some hope that he’d be all right so long as he was with the young man before him. Incredible air pressure pounded every inch of him—and then stopped.

Sergei opened his eyes. He was scared. Something no one was ever meant to see probably lay before him. He saw D’s back. Relief pierced his chest for a heartbeat.

The immense object that towered before the beautiful young man caught Sergei’s gaze. The silver cloud. It was moving. Its surface eddied without making a sound. And yet, it wasn’t spreading either. Sergei shifted his gaze upward. The silvery cloud seemed to stretch all the way up to the sky. He wasn’t sure when it was that he was finally able to speak, only that it was after he noticed something moving to the rear of D.

“The repository,” that hoarse voice said. Sergei didn’t even have enough presence of mind to wonder whom it belonged to.

“Earlier, the time wasn’t right for it to make an appearance. Okay, come with me,” D said, walking away.

After some hesitation, Sergei followed after him. Rather than be left alone to face the monsters and ghosts of the battlefield, he definitely preferred to go with this young man as gorgeous as the dead and step into the world of the unknown. However, he wasn’t sure whether or not that was really the right thing to do.

The sea of clouds swallowed D’s form. Halting before the whirling miasma, Sergei took a deep breath and then a giant step forward. It didn’t even feel like he was shrouded in fog. Sergei opened his eyes. Blue light surrounded him on all sides. For he was in the heart of the cloud. As D stood stock still up ahead, he had to wonder if perhaps the Hunter hadn’t moved at all from the very beginning.

“Where else do you think we’d be?” the same hoarse voice sneered back at him.

Sergei realized he’d been shut away inside a hidden space. The ceiling, walls, and floor were all eddying cloud. They formed a space twenty or thirty feet in each direction, and that was where the pair stood now.

“Don’t stand there like a dolt. Take a look outside. It’s not every day you get to see the inside of a repository.”

He soon learned what the hoarse voice meant by that. Through the sea of clouds, the scene outside was visible. And the space that surrounded Sergei and D had become a sphere and was now on the move. However, what a vast and desolate panorama it was! Even the ancient battleground itself hadn’t been filled with such death, stillness, and nihilism. Dark and black, a plain of steel stretched as far as the eye could see. Despite the fact that darkness crushed his field of view, Sergei could distinctly make out the wreckage of some sort of vehicles and the enormous ruins toppled on the plain.

“This isn’t the same as outside. We’re inside the repository. The ruins are what’s left of defensive systems to guard against invaders, and the vehicles were the tanks and mobile artillery those invaders used,” the hoarse voice said steadily. “Those who came in search of the repository’s secrets weren’t little archaeologist worms like you. They were some of the Nobility’s greatest military forces, and there were visitors from another galaxy as well. From what I see now, the fighting inside the repository must’ve been more intense than it was outside. Look at this ghastly death and destruction.” But compared to the tone of the voice that spoke, the scenery that flowed steadily under his watchful eyes was a million times more tragic. Collapsed buildings snaked off to the distant horizon, and when occasional flashes that didn’t seem to be lightning palely illuminated the plain, voices that couldn’t be identified as living or machine formed a plaintive chorus. Did they still live, sealed away in the darkness as eternal victims of that light?

“That a shooting star?” the hoarse voice said as something white split the darkness far away. In no time a blue flash shot from the distant terrain, seeming to spread in that direction for the briefest of seconds before vanishing without a trace.

“Or maybe a meteor missile some Noble shot over here? They have bases in the asteroid belt, but it’s been thousands of years since anyone alive was able to control them. Still, I’m surprised they were able to punch a hole in the repository’s shields.”

Sergei also got the impression that a great part of history was coming back to life.

“Where we’re going next, no one else has ever been. No one, that is, except for its creator, General Gaskell—and the Sacred Ancestor.”

What’s this? Kinda cold, isn’t it?” Gordo asked as he squatted by the fire.

Juke had just finished walking around the wagon, and Gordo offered him a tin cup full of hot coffee. After taking a sip, Juke grimaced. The dried coffee travelers used was nicknamed “black chili peppers.” Nevertheless, they drank it because its natural properties made it act as a stimulant but without any side effects.

Popping a piece of candy into his mouth to get rid of the taste, Juke crunched on it as he said, “Come to mention it, it is kinda nippy for this time of year.”

And having spoken, he turned his eyes to the watchlike module he wore on his right wrist. At the touch of one small button the device switched from the standard Frontier time to a display of his present coordinates or his vital signs. Machinists in the Capital could only produce ten of them a year, making these units exceedingly difficult to get out on the Frontier. Since a person might wind up being killed for it, those that owned them seldom let anyone else see them.

Setting it to thermal mode, he remarked, “Thirty-eight degrees? Normally it should read fifty-five. That’s odd.”

“You don’t suppose the villagers are up to something, do you? You know, like letting us freeze to death so they can snag the rest of our goods?”

Gordo’s words only met with a snort from Juke. “You think they’ve got a climate controller or anything like that in this village? It’s probably just some supernatural aura.”

“If this cooling isn’t from a climate controller, that’s all it could be. Even the villagers changed into their fur coats.”

“Just perfect,” Gordo said, throwing another branch on the fire. Sparks danced upward.

“Yeah, at a time like this, we could use every man we’ve got. I know about Sergei, but what’s going on with D?”

“He kinda gives me the creeps. He might have skill and good looks, but in the end he’s still a dhampir, and when he’s nearby the air seems ...”

Cold, just like it was now. The pair exchanged glances. They were getting goose bumps, and not merely due to the night air.

“Hey,” Juke said, turning his face to the right and furrowing his brow. “You hear that?”

Closing his eyes, Gordo listened intently and gave a nod. “That’s the sound of a carriage.”

“That’s right. The one that Noble named Schuma took. It sounds just like it did back at the station.”

“Well, I trust your ears, then. What’s he been doing up until now? I’d thought he’d long since hurried off to the domain of that long-dead pain-in-the-ass general,” Juke cursed, his ears now distinctly catching the ring of iron-shod hooves pounding through the darkness. From the south to the north.

“He’s coming,” Gordo said, getting to his feet. Cocking the multibarreled rifle he’d scooped up off the ground, he pressed the selector and set it to fire all barrels in unison. If struck by all thirty-two of the quarter-inch slugs at once, even an enormous monster would be killed instantly.

The sound grew louder. Partly it was because it was drawing closer, but all other sounds had also died out. The village had noticed it, too! Fiendish footsteps approached through the deep, dark night. Juke put his hand on the grip of the bolt gun he wore on his hip, checking that it was still there.

“Fifty yards,” Gordo said. The sweat rolling down his brow glittered in the moonlight. “Forty ... Thirty ... Twenty ... Ten ... Here he comes!”

At the same time, the horses halted outside the gate. The sounds of hooves and carriage wheels came to a dead stop. Graceful was the only way to describe the manner in which the carriage had halted so suddenly.

While listening to the pounding of their own hearts, the pair of transporters stood stock still in the darkness.

“I am Baron Schuma,” a crisp tone informed them. He had to be using a microphone, but it sounded like his unaided voice. “I have business with the Vampire Hunter in this village. Open the gate. If not, I’ll have to come in.”

It wasn’t a threatening tone at all. But the way the night air suddenly froze attested to the fact that it left the villagers terrified.

“I shall do nothing to the village. My business isn’t with its inhabitants. I merely wish to see the Hunter. Or would you be so kind as to come out instead, Vampire Hunter?”

Juke closed his eyes. Now they were done for. In a situation like this, he knew only too well how the villagers would react.

“I shall give you three minutes. If I receive no response in that time, I can’t be held responsible for what comes next. You had best be prepared for the accompanying casualties.”

Before the baron had finished speaking, voices and sounds rang out in various places in the darkness. A door opened, and

“Let’s chase ’em out right now. And if they’ve got a problem with that, we’ll kill ’em!”

At the cries of the approaching mob, Juke and Gordo looked at each other and grinned wryly. Not that they weren’t scared, but you got into trouble like this when you hauled merchandise all over the Frontier.

“Oh, hell!” Juke exclaimed, downing the rest of the coffee. “Ready now? I suppose you’ve got a will all made out, right?” Gordo inquired.

“I write one up for every run. Don’t want all my earthly possessions going to you guys, after all.”

Around them, waves of villagers were already closing on the pair. Hostility splashed from those waves. And through all that a conversation was taking place.

“So, you haven’t written one, then? You haven’t, have you?” Juke continued as he looked out over the mob.

“No, I haven’t!” Gordo finally snapped. “Why? You trying to say I can’t sign on to a transport party without writing a will or something?”

“Know what?” the man replied, finding his bearded compatriot’s behavior disturbing.

Bending backward in an exaggerated manner, he executed a flip with the flexibility of thin steel. Seeing how both hands hung down by his side—he hadn’t exhibited any killing lust or given them an opening for a second—the enraged villagers halted their advance. Those in back, however, didn’t stop, so there was a bit of pushing and jostling.

“Well, looks like everyone’s here—what can we do for you?” Juke said with a grin.

In the hands of the villagers there gleamed mattocks, spades, sickles, drum-fed rifles, old-fashioned pneumatic pistols, and gunpowder weapons. The second their murderous intent collided with the villagers’ malice and sent sparks flying, the pair’s fate would be sealed.

“As you can see, there’s no one like that here,” Juke said, feigning innocence.

An unsettling silence took over the villagers, and then a second later their ring tightened.

“I honestly don’t know. A Vampire Hunter couldn’t do his job too well just hanging around us. But he’ll probably be back just as soon as he catches the scent of that Noble,” Juke said with a toss of his chin in the direction of the gates. “He’s a Vampire Hunter, sure enough. You’ve probably heard of him. D is what they call him.”

A clamor went through the villagers. One word was enough to buoy the selfish human psyches. That one word was D.

“I’ve never seen a man so beautiful. That’s just not human. And if he’s not human—he could even kill a Noble.”

Juke nodded gravely at the faces and voices before him filled with selfish hopes and expectations. “Just leave it to us. He’ll be here soon.”

A particularly rousing cheer went up. But it was coupled with a new announcement: “You have one minute left.”

Chilling the blood of all of them, the Noble’s voice issued from beyond the gates. The looks on the villagers’ faces underwent yet another change.

“The village is done for. We’ll all have our throats torn open and our blood drained!” a girl exclaimed, her cry splitting the night. It wasn’t the loss of her life she feared, but the defiling of her soul.

“He ain’t gonna make it in time. I guess we’ll have to send you two out after all.”

“Hey, Juke! ” Gordo called over in a muted tone. “I’m more scared of a human mob than I am of the Nobility.”

The cries of the villagers overlapped. Though the content differed, they all sounded the same.

The villagers pressed closer. Their faces were no longer human. Tinged with madness and fear, they were the faces of demons.

Like a great wave crashing, the villagers drove forward. But they halted at the neighing of a horse—and a cry of surprise.

“Who—who are you?” And after a short pause, this was followed by, “Wait! Where are you going?”

The cries were clearly those of Baron Schuma. The last thing he said was trampled by hoof beats and the creak of carriage wheels. They were dwindling at an incredible speed.

As the villagers cried out with joy, it came as little surprise that Juke and Gordo looked at each other.

A piercing light penetrated the inky darkness: Baron Schuma’s gaze. He was leaning out the carriage window. The reason he’d turned so easily from meeting D and destroying the village was somewhere out in that darkness. Though he couldn’t see it, the molecular changes could be measured, and a particular sensor that could locate them showed a green shape on its screen. What he pursued was traveling through space in what might be described as a terribly dilute gaseous state. However, he had no idea as to why his carriage—racing along at a speed of seventy-five miles per hour—-showed no signs of closing the gap. Perhaps what he chased was driven by a firm intent?

The better part of a mile from the village, the baron did a double take. The green shape had vanished from his sensors.

“Did it turn into nothingness?” the baron muttered after getting back in the carriage. He then turned to his golden bracelet and ordered, “Stop the carriage.”

He was on a moonlit road through the forest. The silhouettes of the trees interlaced with each other. When the baron climbed down from his carriage, he had no shadow of his own at his feet. He took a deep breath of the night air.

“I can go into a frenzy wondering where it’s gone, but if I don’t know then I guess I don’t know. At any rate, I suppose I should fill my lungs with this sapid air and return to that vile hamlet—where D is.”

Suddenly the baron looked down at his feet, and then bent over to examine something. In the grass there swayed a blossom whose name he didn’t even know. Picking it up and bringing it to his nose, he sought the perfume of the night. However, before the baron could accomplish this, he discarded the flower, which was now just a stalk. Its lovely petals had begun to wither the second his hand touched it, and by the time he’d lifted it up, they’d all crumbled.

“The only ones we can smell are the ones we make ourselves, eh? That may be the Nobles’ fate, but I find it a disconsolate one!” he muttered sadly.

The reason he stared at it not with shock but rather in a daze might’ve been because the form of the girl who appeared like a trick of the night was far too real. Suddenly materializing before him in front of the village gates, then vanishing, the girl had appeared three times in the distance on the road, enticing the baron—but where was she trying to lead the Nobleman?

The baron’s outstretched fingertips touched the girl’s arm. The sensation he got was certainly that of skin, soft and real—as was the warm blood that flowed beneath it. Focusing his strength, the baron seized her arm. He then knit his brow. It felt like whatever was between his fingers was melting. The baron squeezed his fingers. But the girl wasn’t there.

Moonlight continued to fall on him like a faint drizzle. The baron blinked. The girl was farther down the road, as if that was where she’d been all along. A black shadow fell at her feet.

“You’re trying to tell me to take this road?” the baron said, finally understanding. “Fair enough. As you wish, I shall travel through the night. This may be a dream and the trip may be contrary to the wishes of General Gaskell, but I have no fear.”

Spinning around, he returned to the carriage. Leaving particles of light brushed from his shoulders whirling in its wake, the carriage sped off.

When the baron halted his carriage once more, it was in part of the ruins. Spotting the two cyborg horses, he climbed down from the vehicle. A silvery cloud eddied beyond the steeds. Boring through the darkness, the eyes of the Noble then began to sparkle.

“So that’s it, then? The reason he didn’t reply to my summons was because he wasn’t there after all. And is this cloud the repository the general mentioned? If so, I wonder what sort of world lies within it. I’ll have a look.”

The baron’s glittering eyes scanned the ground. Finding two sets of footprints, he began to walk after them and was quickly swallowed by the silver cloud.

More than an hour had already passed since they’d begun navigating the sea of clouds. And more than twenty minutes had elapsed since they’d entered the area where the hoarse voice said none but General Gaskell and the Sacred Ancestor had ever set foot. Only the steel plain spread beneath them, with what looked like equally steely mountain ranges appearing from time to time, but aside from that there was no sign of anything moving. Light had long since faded from the horizon.

Wondering just how wide this world stretched within the cloud, Sergei began to sense something disturbing. Even though he wanted to ask about it, D had his back to the man as he remained facing forward, and his unwavering solemnity made it impossible to pose any question.

Was this the Nobles’ civilization1 Admiration was synonymous with horror here.

Without warning, the blue grew deeper. A forceful impact threw Sergei to the floor.

“So it’s still alive after all, is it? It’d be dangerous to keep going like this.”

The man looked up desperately at the source of the hoarse voice. D still stood in the same place.

On the wildly bucking floor, the man felt his bile rise. When the voice spoke of something still being alive, it must’ve meant the defensive systems. The slumbering machinery found in this new foe wanted an opportunity to display its might.

“You mean to tell me this thing we’re riding in doesn’t belong to the repository? Whoa!”

A reddish hue challenged the blue of the room. It was a spark. For some reason, Sergei was relieved.

Then a hoarse voice was heard to say, “Oh, my! Looks like the identification devices are malfunctioning. At this rate, we’ll be blasted out of the sky!”

“Do something! ” Sergei exclaimed as the floor tossed him upward. Apparently it’d taken a hit.

“Huh?” Sergei said, his eyes bugging out even as he covered his head. Not a second had passed. The figure in black before him began walking from right to left.

Sergei got up like a man possessed. Though his spine and his left shoulder hurt terribly, he didn’t have time to worry about it. There was no sign of D. Sergei rushed over toward the left wall. Suddenly, he was suffocating. There was no oxygen. Sharp breaths were impossible, his lungs panted frantically, and his heart groaned.

As the hoarse voice spoke, something cold was blown into the man’s mouth—and his breathing immediately became easier. It was only after D’s left hand came away from him that he coughed loudly.

“There’s no air here fit for human beings. No doubt the aliens who invaded this place changed it to mirror their own world. But relax-—now you’ll be fine in either.”

Sergei looked around through teary eyes. They were right in the middle of the plain. Here and there lay the wreckage of what seemed to be towers and combat machinery. All of them took shapes beyond anything Sergei could’ve imagined.

“The aliens’ weaponry,” the hoarse voice said. “This whole area was their forward base. They eventually had to pull out, but up against the Nobility, they did well to get this far. Hey, D—what do you say to poking around to see if we find the secret of the general’s power.⁷”

“How?” said the gorgeous voice that hadn’t rung in Sergei’s ears for some time.

“Go into that building behind you. It’s the operations center. You can control the remaining weaponry.”

Changing direction, the man and the Hunter entered the iron fortress to their rear. The wind struck their backs, and a black metal wall loomed before them. When D collided with it, its surface rippled, flowing over him like water. The same happened with Sergei.

The hoarse voice said something. The sounds were utterly impossible to make with human vocal cords; it may have been an alien language. Suddenly their field of view widened. Everything seemed melted in this space. There wasn’t a single straight line anywhere. All was black and stagnant; no amount of effort could give it any sense of depth. There wasn’t one device or item there that Sergei could understand. The walls and floor were warped like some cephalopod, yet at the same time seemed unrelentingly hard. Recesses in the floor were filled by ash gray forms. A number of lengthy appendages stretched from them.

Are those hands1 Feet1 Sergei thought, feeling something cold on the nape of his neck. This is the operations center, right? Are those things in the hollows alien remains?

“Hey, you—pull that stiff out of there and get in the hole. The size should adjust to fit you. Your head, your toes—any part will do. If you don’t, you won’t fall under the protection of the defense circuits here in the control room.”

It went without saying that Sergei hastened to comply. When he actually tried to do this, he found the recess oddly long and narrow and was puzzled as to how D had managed to get into one. Having been told that any part would do, he shoved his right arm in up to the shoulder. There was no change. It remained hard.

“That seems fine,” the hoarse voice said. “Now, shall we show them what the aliens had up their sleeves?”

After a short pause, Sergei groaned. A flash of light had exploded in his eyes. Something was happening in his brain. It was boiling. His brain was on fire.

His whole body bent backward in pain, and every bone in his spine creaked at once. In exchange for his punishment, he was granted vision. His field of view had widened to three hundred sixty degrees.

It’s an attack, said the hoarse voice that rang through his head. Each and every word seared itself into his brain. As everything became jumbled and melted together, his eyes alone moved across the landscape. Black lumps rose on the plain of steel, swiftly taking the shape of flying machines that zipped, one after another, toward the horizon. That was the scene that was actually taking place outside. The vast plain was a factory for producing fighter aircraft for the aliens, a hangar, and a runway.

Flight distance 798442891. Still no sign of the enemy, the hoarse voice said. No, strike that—up ahead, aircraft sighted at 39, 41, 66. This should be fun. Okay, launch the attack.

This side’s fighters numbered exactly a thousand. The installation’s weapons were antiproton cannons and missiles. In the darkness, thousands of balls of light sprang into being, and then vanished again. It reminded Sergei of a scene he’d witnessed at a festival in some northern village.

All shots were direct hits, the hoarse voice informed him, quickly adding, Ah, but they didn’t even make a dent. Come to mention it, while we know the position and speed of the targets, we don’t know the size or shape. What were those alien bastards attacking all those years ago?

In some unknown spot up ahead, points of light formed—and just as Sergei realized this, his whole field of view, his very brain, was engulfed by white light, and he lost consciousness.

When he came to, D was carrying him on his back. They were outside, on the plain of steel. And only the wind blew at them from the distance. He looked back. There was nothing. Had D covered that much ground while the man on his back was unconscious? No, Sergei got the feeling that from the very start, all of it had been a dream.

Suddenly, he was dropped. While Sergei groaned from landing on his ass, D walked forward without saying anything to him.

When he managed to get up and go after the Hunter, he noticed that he felt no pains aside from the fall he’d just taken. That was probably due to D’s left hand.

“Took a strike from the storeroom’s defensive systems,” the hoarse voice then said. “Leave it to that Gaskell. This place will probably be safe until the end of the world. It’s no surprise the aliens took to their heels after the first battle.”

“So, it looks like we’re left to our own devices in the end. We’ll reach our destination soon. You’d best brace yourself for it.”

“Soon? What about those defensive systems? Won’t they do anything to us? Say, where are we now anyway?”

“About ten times further than we were when that fighter was destroyed. And the defensive systems—they won’t do a thing.” The pendant on D’s chest gave off a blue light.

Even Sergei could make out the human form that stood in the distance on the plain.

“Him again? If it isn’t a rotten Noble who hangs around whether it’s night or day'—Baron Schuma,” the hoarse voice declared. “Looks like he was able to come this far because the defensive systems were stopped. What’ll you do? Gonna take him out?”

The baron was approaching. Displaying not even a mote of murderous intent toward this new foe, the gorgeous Hunter awaited him impassively, as if it were fate.

At a spot about fifteen feet away, the baron halted. His cape fluttered in the black wind.

“I find you at last,” the baron said with an elegant bow. “You’ve done well to make it this far. The average Noble would’ve long since been reduced to his constituent atoms, you know. D—who are you?” “What brings you here?” D inquired. His tone suited the steely plain. It was heavy with death.

“I had intended to just keep going straight to General Gaskell. It would be embarrassing to be tardy. However, along the way, I had some communication from the general while I was slumbering in my carriage. He told me there was a Vampire Hunter of unearthly beauty in the village of Jelkin. And he wanted him destroyed. Such are the circumstances behind my hasty return.”

“The invitation bore his name and was in his handwriting,” the baron said, tapping the end of his cane to his forehead.

“I really couldn’t say. No, I’m not trying to hide anything from you. In fact, the agreement that I would respond when summoned dates back to the time of my father.”

The baron fully expected that D would accept this. But the gorgeous young man maintained his silence.

Left with no choice, the baron tapped his walking stick against his forehead again and continued, “About a hundred years ago my father entered into an agreement with the general that if a signed invitation from him were to arrive, I would go to him without any questions. The existence of a diary recording that agreement was also noted in the invitation. It further stated that until the general explicitly told me I was finished, I was to do exactly as he commanded.”

“It certainly is,” the baron said with a thin smile. “When and why did the general come back to life, and why has he summoned me—these are all questions of great interest to me. But D, I must ask you, why have you come out to this repository?”

Sergei suddenly stared at the young man’s dashing profile. That was the very thing he’d most wanted to know.

“Records were left here of the battle between the general and the forces from the Capital. Is that what you were after?”

“Since days of old, no personage among the Nobility has been as shrouded in mystery as General Gaskell. To commemorate his triumph over the forces from the Capital, he built a repository here and sealed in it an account of his life. That’s what you were after, isn’t it? But why?” “Gaskell will be an obstacle to my journey.”

“You can’t be serious,” he said. “It can’t be—I’d noticed that you were acting as a sort of guard for the transport party, but did you seriously break in here just to discharge that duty—to protect a bunch of lowly human delivery men wandering the Frontier? And you mean to tell me my role is to dispose of a Hunter charged with such a boring obligation? Is that really the case?”

As he let out a groan, the baron covered his face with one hand. The gesture was so exaggerated it seemed as if acting might’ve been a hobby for him.

“Oh, D, what a foolish thing you’ve done. How pointless it was to come back for you. But forget about all that. D, would you be so kind as to turn back now?”

“If you desist from raiding the repository, there shall be no need for me to slay you here. I should like to put that off for another time. You see, watching you do battle back at the station, I was a tad impressed.”

“It may be that the general’s desire to have me slain has nothing to do with the repository and its contents.”

On hearing this, the baron narrowed his gaze. “Now that you mention it, I heard nothing about you going after his storeroom. Although I knew you were in the area, even I didn’t have your exact location. Why, then, would the general be out to get you?” Here his eyes grew thread thin as he muttered, “Is that to mean the girl was sent here by the general?”

At the hoarse voice, the baron donned a dubious expression. “While I was paying a call on the village, there appeared to me a young lady who led me here. Although she quickly vanished.” “What was she like?” This time it was D that spoke.

After he’d finished, a hoarse voice from the vicinity of D’s left hand said, “It’s Rosaria, ain’t it? But what happened to the girl? To make her lead a Noble, one who’s out to get you, right to us, I mean. I guess the general must’ve brainwashed her or something.”

The baron shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, I’d completely forgotten. I was ordered to slay you. However, as I just said, I wouldn’t have to if you’d be good enough to turn back now.”

“I have my own way of doing things, you see. At my age, I see no particular reason to be concerned with the relationship between my own father and a general I’ve never laid eyes upon.”

“Very well, then,” the baron replied. And that was all. That alone was enough to catapult the pair into a battle to the death.

Sergei wanted to leave the scene but was stiff with tension. He couldn’t move his legs.

D’s hands hung naturally by his sides, while the baron pointed the tip of his stick at the Hunter’s chest. What would arise from the current standoff?

“Ah!” the baron gasped quietly, taking his eyes off his opponent. D followed suit after sensing a presence behind him. Twenty to twenty-five feet away stood a pale young woman.

“Rosaria,” said the hoarse voice. D wasn’t one to speak other people’s names. “I’d thought she’d fallen victim to the general’s old tricks—but it looks like that ain’t the case, eh?”

“Indeed. Is she some acquaintance of yours? How ironic that she would lead one who seeks your life right to you.”

“Where did you go?” D inquired. “And where are you going now?” “Help,” Rosaria repeated. Her pale face was colored with grief and fear. “I don’t know how this happened to me—help me.”

“Wait,” the baron said, stopping him. Lowering his walking stick, he swiftly stepped in front of D, making no attempt to disguise the gleam of curiosity in his eyes as he stared at Rosaria. “Hmm.

I didn’t realize General Gaskell was an expert at making space vanish. Wait a moment, and I shall help you.”

Raising his stick, the baron slowly began to move the tip of it as if to strike the space. “First, we have to find a weak spot. Here’s one.”

In the blink of an eye, his stick came to a gentle stop at a spot three feet in front of him and about six feet off the ground.

“I’ll seal it,” he said. His cane came away immediately. “Done. Next—”

“The girl herself has undoubtedly become the passageway through space. She must be fixed in this location.”

It soon became apparent that her cry wasn’t directed toward the baron’s actions. The surface of the ground rose in snakelike shapes that tried to swallow the baron headfirst. A second later they broke into a million pieces, revealing the baron and his upraised cane.

More cylinders also attacked D. Perhaps God was more repulsed by the thought of them touching D than the Hunter himself, for before D’s longsword flashed out, a bolt of lightning flew down and shattered the head of every last steely black serpent.

“D!” Rosaria called out. Through her form, the scenery behind her became visible.

“Too late, was I?” the baron said disappointedly as he made a swipe with his cane.

“That’s an unusual walking stick,” D remarked. “They say Gaskell got a hint about how to move through space from someone. Would that be your father?”

“Well informed, aren’t you?” the baron said, widening his eyes in feigned surprise. “More than ever, I see you are no ordinary Hunter. But alas, you’re mistaken. The technique didn’t come from my father. It came from me.”

How many centuries—or millennia—had this man actually lived? Smacking the palm of his left hand with the stick, he said, “It’s also thanks to General Gaskell that this contains circuits to modify and repair the defensive systems.”

The Nobleman’s body glowed pale blue—it’d been pierced by lightning. Letting out a slight sigh, the baron raised his walking stick high above his head. The light was drawn into the end of it. One bolt of lightning carried a billion volts. And all of the energy from the flashes that fell in rapid succession was effortlessly absorbed by the baron’s cane.

“This is a waste of time. Might I ask you to leave this to me?” the baron inquired, looking askance at D.

Holding the stick in his right hand parallel to the ground, the baron stood ready and aimed it at the distant horizon.

“Modification circuits to full power,” the baron said, the words coming like an announcement.

The wind that crossed the plain grew more violent. D’s coat and the baron’s cape streamed out, and in the heavens there echoed a roar unlike any sound on earth.

“You’d best exercise caution,” the baron declared, his eyes squinting in the wind. “The defenses are increasing their power, and they aim to slay me. Though I have every confidence in the modification circuits, I can’t say what’ll happen in the end. There is cause to fear you might become embroiled in this. If one of us is injured, our showdown shall have to wait for another time. Are you amenable to that?”

At the far reaches of the plain, a pale light sparked. Glittering like sunlight, it wavered, tapered, and took the shape of a woman.

Sensing something strange, Sergei backed away. As a living organism, his sense of life or death was telling him to run for all he was worth.

The woman who was untold thousands of miles away could be seen as clearly as if she were right before them, and they could also tell she was the same size as themselves. The woman raised both hands in the air and yelled something. Was it a scream? It might just as easily have been a song.

Clutching his heart, the baron fell to one knee on the ground. He’d just experienced an incredible pain. At precisely the same time, D also reeled.

The hoarse voice said, “On hearing that voice, even the mightiest of Nobles will have his heart stopped and his blood befouled. All machines stop working, reduced to simple metal boxes. But that’s the defensive system’s last stand. It’s crazy. So crazy it can’t tell the difference between you and that thing. Is there anything we can do?”

D supplied the answer to that. He’d stood up straight right where he was. Without so much as glancing at where the baron and Sergei were doubled over in agony, he drew the sword from his back and made a great swipe with it. Did he intend to hurl it at that woman? She might be thousands, if not tens of thousands, of miles away, if she was anywhere at all.

The blade was hurled. There was no need to wait. A heartbeat later, the woman tumbled backward clutching her heart, and the outline of the sword could indeed be glimpsed between her breasts.

The world was stained with crimson. Feeling like a gigantic hand was crushing his heart, Sergei lost consciousness without making a sound.

CHAPTER 6

Air surged into his lungs. When he came around, Sergei found that he was lying at the bottom of a hole with sides that sloped like an ant-lion pit. D was right in front of him, having just pulled his left hand away. In the palm of that hand was what looked to be an animated human face, but then he blinked his eyes and it was gone. Or rather, D had lowered his hand.

“Where are we?” he asked, still struggling with the cold air that filled him.

“At the site of the ancient battlefield. Not ten feet from where we tied our horses.”

He didn’t even think to himself, That’s impossible! So long as that young man was around, things like this were bound to happen. He looked up overhead. The stars were out.

“How much time has passed?”

“Exactly a minute.”

This time, his mouth actually formed the words. “That’s impossible!”

Sergei looked all around. The hole was a hundred feet in diameter, and above it the moon and stars shone. The hole was roughly fifteen feet deep.

Turning his back to Sergei, D bent over and reached one hand down to the floor of the pit. Catching hold of something, he pulled.

Five somewhat slender fingers had latched onto the edge of a thick sheet. What rose from the ground was a stone tablet six feet long and three feet wide. It must’ve weighed in excess of a ton.

Was this the monstrous strength of a dhampir—the power of one of Noble blood? Sergei was left speechless.

Leaning the tablet back against one of the earthen walls, D brushed the dirt from it and pressed the palm of his left hand against it. He didn’t seem particularly concerned with Sergei. And Sergei didn’t feel alienated. The fact that the world of the gorgeous Vampire Hunter had no connection to his had already seeped into the marrow of his bones.

“Did you get that okay?” the hoarse voice asked. To Sergei, it seemed that the Hunter’s left hand had to be talking.

“Then it’s locked, as I might’ve expected. Looks like it’ll take some time to undo that. Bring it along,” said the gruff voice.

Sergei was bewildered as to how the Hunter was going to carry away a stone tablet that looked to weigh about a ton.

D’s right hand rose. When he swung it down artlessly, the massive tablet shattered easily beneath his fist, instantly reduced to a mound of dust. Sticking his right hand into the huge pile, he quickly caught hold of something and plucked it out.

“See that?” he said. Stuck to the tip of the finger he held up to Sergei’s eye was a bit of metal a fifth of an inch square.

This was the only word Sergei managed to say. What of the endless plain of steel from earlier, and the lightning? What of the alien base? Had all of it been an illusion?

“He was thrown by the shock when the defensive system was destroyed. Don’t know where he went.”

We probably haven’t seen the last of him, Sergei thought. A freak like that wouldn’t be killed that easily.

By the time the man turned to where D had spoken, the figure in black had already begun to climb the slope. Muttering complaints to himself about who’d left this hole here, Sergei walked up the collapsing side as well, finally reaching the top. The horses were fine.

“No ride for the baron here, eh?” Sergei said, and after looking around he turned his eyes to the ground. There were ruts left by wheels both coming and going. Had the carriage brought its passenger out here and taken him away again? Or had it gone off in search of him when he vanished?

As he stood there absentmindedly, a succinct remark reached him, heading off in the same direction from which they’d come: “Let’s go.”

They’d covered roughly half the distance back to the village of Jelkin when they met Juke traveling in the opposite direction. Informing the two of them as to what had happened back at the village, Juke also told them that he’d guessed the damned baron’s sudden disappearance was due to his going after them, and that they’d left the village because their welcome had worn thin. Leaving Gordo to wait with the wagon in the middle of the road, he alone had gone into the ancient battlefield to see what was happening.

Never taking his eyes off the dubious Juke, he continued, “Nothing happened out on the ancient battlefield. There was just old junk lying around. The baron must’ve gone someplace else.”

“Nothing happened.” Repeating this, Sergei glanced briefly at D and said, “I just had a strange little dream, right?”

Sergei thought, That’s fine. After all, the handsome young man belonged to an entirely different world from theirs. A world of endless night and moonlight and wind. It came as no surprise that he grew taciturn now.

“Our business is done in Jelkin, so let’s go camp somewhere for the night. Tomorrow we set off for the village of Krakow,” Juke said, grinning as if nothing but their next stop interested him. For the transporters who traveled the Frontier, maybe there was no such thing as yesterday.

Gordo stood out in front of the wagon looking like he didn’t know what to do. From the look of relief that rose on his face on seeing them, Sergei sensed that something had happened. Apparently Juke did as well, and on dismounting he asked, “What happened?” He also scanned their surroundings with a sharp gaze, for good measure.

After hemming and hawing, Gordo gave a meaningful look to D, who was still in the saddle.

Shrugging his shoulders, Gordo reached for the door to the living quarters behind the driver’s seat. Inside were beds for four people. On peering inside, Juke exclaimed, “Huh?” and quickly looked back at the others.

“What? What is it?” Sergei said, following after him. He was intrigued. Although he also quickly turned again, his eyes were full of surprise when he looked up at D.

Dismounting, D calmly approached the door. Still as a wintry night, what his dark eyes beheld was a girl with long hair lying on a bed. She was snoring faintly, as if she’d just returned from a long trip.

The ride to the village of Krakow took two full days. During that time-—or to be more precise, on the very first morning—Rosaria opened up to the rough men.

They’d camped out, and even Gordo—-who’d been on guard duty—had fallen fast asleep, but before they knew it, breakfast had already been prepared. The usual “cup of hell” had been replaced by insanely strong coffee, and the instant-food packs that were ready three seconds after you pulled a string had been transformed into crispy bacon and eggs, golden brown toast, and vegetable soup.

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I went ahead and helped myself to what was in the freezer,” the girl apologized shyly, while the men could only stare at her stupidly.

When it came to travel out on the Frontier, it was always a dangerous undertaking, but for transporters carrying valuable goods, the danger was particularly acute. If members of the party took so much as a pebble by the side of the road to be a threat, they’d be on it mercilessly in a second’s time. Needless to say, all manner of bandits, monsters, demons, ghosts, or any other fiendish entity would attack them to get at both their goods and themselves. For this reason, transport parties needed to have skilled guards and more than enough weaponry. To make the rounds in three villages they’d need ten men at the very least, while covering a whole Frontier sector would generally call for more than thirty. That was why transport companies were constantly trying to recruit new personnel and had to enter into contracts with arms dealers in the Capital to acquire the latest firepower. At present, the run Juke and the others had undertaken would hit five villages in all, but common sense said that doing so with a mere five people was akin to committing suicide. However, quality could be better than quantity at times. The three transporters were forced to believe that.

After eating, the first danger zone they encountered was a heavy forest. Frontier forests were teeming with demons and supernatural creatures—it was said you gained a gray hair for every hundred yards you traveled through one. As soon as they entered, the whole group sensed countless sources of malice and eeriness. Every inch of their flesh ached as if it were being needled, and their body temperatures dropped by the minute. And as soon as terror swept over them, the pernicious fangs would flash into action.