LORD ROCAMBOLE
CHAPTER 5
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I
—
After they’d raced three miles to the south, Juke finally halted the wagons. Everyone—even the villagers—turned to D. Though rapture glazed their eyes, this time there was more than one cause of it: his good looks—and his sword.
“We managed to break out, but the real problem is what comes next,” Juke declared. “The surrounding villages have probably been notified that victims of the horrible fountain plague have escaped—meaning they can’t go anywhere. If they were to go to another Frontier sector, everything would be fine, but we don’t have time for that. So, what do we do?”
They all just tilted their heads to one side.
On the Frontier, people simply didn’t like strangers. Even if they were to make a new village, as soon as they were discovered, the flaming arrows were sure to fly. If they couldn’t settle anywhere, they’d be left no choice but to become drifters, but travelers were checked quite strictly, and people would be ready to deal with them no matter where they went.
“We have to get other villages to recognize that they’ve been cured,” D said.
Sergei nodded and added, “Yeah. If we could do that, they could find some free land and start over again.”
“There is a way.”
Everyone held their breath at this, and then let out a cry of something like joy. If this young man said it, then they all believed it.
“The Frontier Medical Corps from the Capital is supposed to be making the rounds in this part of the Frontier. If they were to check these people out, they could send guarantees to all the villages ahead that there’s nothing wrong with them.”
“Yeah—the Medical Corps!” Gordo said, pounding his beefy chest. “That’d fix everything. If we told ’em about the situation, they’d know how to handle this.”
The villagers hugged one another, and their tears began to flow.
Watching them out of the corner of his eye, Sergei whispered to Juke, “But where’s the Medical Corps? We can’t fall any further behind in our deliveries.”
“If everything goes smoothly, we should reach the post town of Cactus by this evening,” said D.
“Yeah, if things go smoothly.”
“Then we’ll leave that to heaven above,” Juke declared.
Leave it to heaven above—these were usually famous last words on the Frontier.
—
The next thing Lady Ann knew, she was lying naked on the ground. There was rope around her hands and feet. She focused her strength on the amateurish bonds, but they wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t a matter of the rope being resilient, but rather a case of having lost her strength.
The location seemed to be an abandoned hut for huntsmen. The stench of the blood and gristle of beasts clung to the walls and floor. Through the broken windowpanes, a tired excuse for sunlight filtered in.
Lady Ann guessed it was shortly before dusk. She grew alarmed. The membrane the general had given her to protect her from sunlight should be losing its efficacy about now. Though she took a panicked look at her hands and feet, they weren’t burnt or decaying. There weren’t even any indications of such a thing starting to happen.
Just as relief came over her, a voice from the left end of the room said, “It seems you’re awake.”
“Major General Gillis. You certainly have some nerve,” the cute little girl said, her countenance becoming that of a demoness.
“It’s no use. Look at the shadows.”
“What?”
Looking down at the floor, the girl was astonished. Although the light from the window illuminated her exposed abdomen and thighs, they cast no shadow.
“ ‘Shadow stealing’ is a Dark One trick—since ancient times, it’s been believed that taking someone’s shadow takes her life. You can’t move.”
“You’re right. Give it back, you coward.”
“Regrettably, I can’t do that. If I were to let you out of here, you’d no doubt go right back to that Hunter named D.”
“Of course I would. He’s my beloved, after all.”
“That pains me. The truth is, I’ve had a thing for you since the moment I first laid eyes on you.”
Lady Ann may not have been too happy to hear this outlandish confession. A few seconds later, she gasped as she looked down at her own nakedness.
“I see. So that’s why I’m like this. Pervert! You’re just an old lecher. Give me back my clothes!”
“Oh, I suppose I’ll be able to do that a little later,” the voice said in a reluctant tone. It came from the shadows at the end of the room. They had a somewhat human form to them.
“What do you mean by later? Oh, now I see. Seven hundred years ago, it was you that was spying on girls in the bath in the Capital’s residential quarters and stealing their underwear, wasn’t it? I’ll make you pay!”
“I haven’t done anything for which I need to pay, nor have I stolen any underwear. I’m just enjoying myself a little.”
“Pervert! I’d sooner die than let you have your way,” Lady Ann said, her eyes filled with a stern determination as she glared at the shadow at the end of the room.
The shadow looked a bit rattled by this.
“Well, what I’m doing—it’s not like that. I have no intention of being imprudent, so be at ease. For my soul has been captivated by your innocent beauty.”
“You’ve done this a lot, haven’t you?”
“I’d prefer not to dwell on that matter.” Coughing once, the voice then suggested, “So, would you be so good as to run away with me?”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“Listen to me. Our great general has decided to revive Lord Rocambole by sacrificing three lives, including your own. If you escape, the lord will have no choice but to fight D in a less-than-optimal condition. In other words, you would be doing something to help save the man you love.”
“By joining hands with you, right? I’d rather die. Besides, even if Lord Rocambole were to destroy me, you think he could ever beat D?”
“Love is clouding your judgment in that matter.”
“Shut up!” Lady Ann exclaimed, writhing.
Perhaps finding her somewhat difficult to handle, the shadow at the end of the room said, “You’re a terrible little shrew. Though I must say that’s part of what I like about you. If you’re opposed to running off with me, I guess there’s nothing more I can do. I shall have to go alone.”
“Brilliant idea,” Lady Ann told him, and then her eyes grew wide.
From the shadow at the end of the room, what was clearly the silhouette of a hand had slid up the wall, carefully avoiding the sunlight as it drew the blinds.
A feeble darkness ruled the hut.
“Since it’s come to this, there’s nothing else I can do. Rather than let a young man like him have the girl I love, I’ll have my way with you right here before I reduce you to ash, which I’ll put into a lovely little bottle and keep with me always. I’m sorry, but you’d best prepare yourself.”
“Wait. Please, stop!”
In her panic, the girl had slipped back into polite speech. On the floor where the shadows were dense, one particularly heavy black shadow glided toward her, and the silhouette of a hand reached out to embrace the naked beauty.
“Help!” Lady Ann shrieked like a little girl, and her cowering clearly twisted the shadow’s features into an expression of delight.
“Excellent!” he chortled. “Your fear is driving me wild. A mature woman in the same situation couldn’t do that for me. There’s nothing cute about them at all. Go on. I need more fear! More terror!”
The shadow’s hand crept across the girl’s pale thigh, moved to her waist, and then rose to her youthful breasts.
“No! Stop! Don’t! Father!” Lady Ann sobbed on the cold wooden floor.
The sexual deviant couldn’t have asked for a more arousing sight. His other hand slid around to her derrière.
“Sto
p it!” she shouted, but her mouth was covered by that of the black shadow.
Lady Ann looked like some small, unfortunate animal caught in the coils of a perfectly flat serpent.
A second later, the Dark One—Major General Gillis—cried, “Oof!” as he leapt away. It wasn’t so much a leap back as it was a matter of the shadows on the floor retreating, but something else moved: a single crimson bloom. Lady Ann’s skill with supernatural flowers still worked. It pierced the two-dimensional shadow in a three-dimensional manner.
“You—you little minx!” the shadow bellowed. His anger was prompted by an undisguisable agony. “You shall pay for that. I’ll tear you to pieces before I have my way with you!”
“We’ll see about that, you pervy bastard,” Lady Ann jeered.
Though the unclad girl looked to be only ten, she was a peerless warrior who’d risked her life for centuries in battle.
“Lucky for me you didn’t know what my power was. Did you think I was just a naked little brat? I have one more kill to my credit than my father did! Now be a good little boy and let my flower feed on you.”
Gillis groaned in pain.
The bloody bloom grew out of the floor, its petals turning blacker and blacker. It was drinking, absorbing the shadow’s blood.
And then the light within the hut faded rapidly. Something huge had passed by the window outside. Major General Gillis’s shadow melted into these new shadows—and by the time sunlight had returned to the window, a reddish black flower lay on the floor.
Lady Ann bit her lip. She had a foreboding of Gillis’s next attack. However, she heard no triumphant laugh or angry shouts. It appeared that wherever he lay in the hut’s shadows, the Dark One now focused his attention on someone other than Lady Ann.
The wooden door opened. And the form so massive it made the interior of the hut seem cramped was that of none other than the great General Gaskell.
General! Major General Gillis was about to cry out, but apparently Gaskell already knew where he was, because he looked to the north wall of the room and said, “While you are in my domain, there’s nowhere to run from me, Major General Gillis. We’ve taken Grand Duke Mehmet’s life, but I don’t know where Schuma is. Even factoring in the Duke of Xenon’s child, we’re still short one.”
“My good general—you wouldn’t,” the major general said, his voice choked with fright. He understood very well what Gaskell was driving at. “It was I who came up with this whole idea. Great general though you are, if you were to do such a thing to me, your name would live in infamy for future generations.”
“It already does,” Gaskell said with a wry smile. In that respect, there was something strangely human about him. “But there is something to what you say. Let’s do this, then. Go find Baron Schuma. Do so, and it will keep you off the list.”
“With pleasure,” the shadow said.
Then, as if something had suddenly occurred to him, he asked, “What will you do with this girl?”
—
II
—
You could say the matter the transporters had left to heaven above had been left in very good hands.
In the evening light, the group arrived at the post town of Cactus to learn that the Frontier Medical Corps had arrived about three hours earlier and had set up a temporary hospital on the outskirts of town. Bringing the eight villagers there, the transporters explained the situation, and while the men in the corps were astonished at first, the villagers were now in the hands of doctors who traveled the Frontier. Quickly performing examinations, the doctors gave within thirty minutes their expert opinion that all of the villagers had been completely cured of fountain plague. Putting the survivors up in their hospital, the doctors also said they’d send word of their findings to the surrounding villages.
Juke and the others happily shook each other’s hands, while the eight villagers wept for joy.
Returning to their inn in high spirits, they found someone in a second-story window calling down to them, “Hi, folks!”
Looking up, all of them—including D—had surprise in their eyes.
Leaning out of a roofed passageway, wearing a pair of pink pajamas and waving to them, was Baron Schuma.
Five minutes later, they all met in the lobby. Aside from D, the group was bristling with murderous intent, but the baron told them to settle down and asserted that he no longer had any intention of fighting them. The reason, according to the baron, was “because the great general is out to take our lives.”
When D asked if he was talking about Rocambole, the baron couldn’t conceal his surprise.
“My, but you are good. Grand Duke Mehmet was killed before my very eyes. Lady Ann and I will be next. Like the saying goes—where there’s life, there’s hope.”
“What are you doing here?”
At D’s query the Nobleman shrugged his shoulders. “No matter how I might try to run, I can’t go beyond a certain range. I must be caught in the general’s drifting domain. If that’s the case, there’s no point losing my head about it. Besides, the hot spring at this inn has quite a reputation.”
“This is one odd bird,” Gordo remarked.
“As long as I remain in the general’s domain, Rocambole will come for me sooner or later. I don’t intend to die easily. D—will you help me?”
“This is all too convenient,” said a cool voice that carried not the slightest concern for the life of a foe.
“I thought you’d feel that way,” the baron said, smacking the back of his neck a few times and getting to his feet. “After bringing us back to life, he has no problem with disposing of us once we no longer suit his needs. Who in the world decided that was to be our fate?”
The baron left with a desolate hue coloring his eyes.
D went outside. He intended to take in the night air. Shadow and light—this young man belonged to both, but given his Noble blood, it came as no surprise that the darkness of night brought the most out of his good looks.
“D!”
The trio was coming up behind the Hunter on the street. Off in the distance, the strains of a guitar could be heard. It was playing a song called “Whenever and Wherever.”
“We have a job—well, really, it’s more of a request,” Juke said, looking back at the other two. “It concerns the squirt—Lady Ann. Could you do something to save her?”
Saying nothing, D stared at the faces of the men.
“You see—the three of us talked it over. I don’t know all the ins and outs, but at this rate, she’ll wind up getting killed. If possible, we’d like you to rescue her.”
“This is the same girl who tried to kill you,” D remarked, his eyes on Gordo.
The bearded man nodded his head. Looking D straight in the eye, he said, “I know that. She’s a real piece of work, but she’s traveled with us the past few days. And knowing she’ll be killed, we just can’t leave her to her fate.”
“If you don’t wanna do it, we won’t force you to. We just thought maybe there was a chance you would. Sorry. Forget we mentioned it.”
Clapping D on the shoulder, Juke headed back to the inn with the other transporters.
“Ain’t they a strange bunch,” the Hunter’s left hand remarked in a suspicious tone. “After spending a day or two with the same little girl who tried to kill them, they go and ask you to save her—sure are a bunch of softies . . . Huh?”
On witnessing something strange, the hoarse voice stopped speaking.
D was silently gazing at the backs of the three weary men. A smile had begun to form on his lips. If Juke, Gordo, or Sergei had looked over his shoulder at that point, he would’ve told people for the rest of his life about how he’d put it there. It was just such a smile.
A clamor went up on the street. As this was a post town, most of the buildings on either side of the road were hotels, inns, or places where travelers might be entertained. Even after the sun had gone down, there was still a lot of foot traffic. But in unison the pedestrians had turned the
ir eyes to the opposite end of the street from where D was, and then rushed into the nearest buildings to take shelter. As if a black tide were rolling over them, one shop after another extinguished its lights.
D could already feel with every inch of his body the murderous intent billowing toward him. The lust for killing that had driven even ordinary humans to evacuate radiated from the statuesque armored figure coming from the far end of the street.
“It’s Lord Rocambole,” his left hand said. “Probably here to do away with Baron Schuma. Better not get mixed up in this. If you do, he’ll just take off.”
But as if to mock what the hoarse voice had said, Lord Rocambole halted about forty or fifty feet from the Hunter.
“Interesting,” said a voice that was somehow unsteady. “I’ve already slain the one known as Mehmet. Two more and I shall live again. Yet here’s a man who by himself would suffice. I am Lord Rocambole. What name do you go by?”
“D.”
“Oh?” the armored figure exclaimed in surprise. “D—I’ve been summoned to take care of a man by that name.”
D didn’t move. The exchange between the pair consisted of words alone.
An evening scene in a peaceful post town—who knew it could be transformed into a battlefield heavy with the shadow of death? No one save warriors might survive here.
“Hey!” someone called out behind D.
In front of the entrance to an inn stood a man wearing vermilion clothes and a top hat and carrying a walking stick, a devilish grin on his face.
“And here’s another one—D, we shall meet again,” said the armored figure. Then, with a gait that suggested he’d forgotten all about D, he walked toward his second target—Baron Schuma.
“This should be something to see,” the hoarse voice said with relish, as if they were going to watch a play.
D remained still. Saying nothing, he watched the two men. He’d already seen the baron do his thing at Jalha Station—this man could make his opponents stop and cause blood to gush from their throats without any physical contact at all. No matter how the Hunter’s left hand might’ve feared this Lord Rocambole, one had to wonder if the armored figure could stand up to such a bizarre ability.
Vampire Hunter D: Dark Road Part Three Page 9
