The Tiger in Winter

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  Song of Loss

  Chapter 4

  When the Hunter returned to the castle, it was full of commotion. Dismounting from his cyborg horse in the front hall, D caught the screams of women and the crack of gunfire.

  “We’re about twenty minutes late,” the hoarse voice said.

  Though the Hunter had returned at a full gallop, apparently the enemy had spurred their steeds on as well. Those had been Vulcan’s orders, most likely.

  D headed straight for the duke’s private chambers. He was just about to climb the stairs when a lady-in-waiting rushed over to him. It was one of the other two who’d met him when he first visited—Mysch. The cerulean hue of her dress was vivid to D’s eyes.

  “You’re still safe?” she asked.

  “What happened?”

  “Headless soldiers attacked us. It was General Kiniski, I’m certain of it.”

  “And the duke?”

  “Given the situation, I believe he’d have moved from his chambers to the panic room.”

  “Did he fight?”

  Mysch’s breath caught in her throat. D’s voice had changed, becoming hoarse.

  “No, he evacuated immediately.”

  “The guards have taken up arms,” the hoarse voice continued. “And the soul of the Tiger is nowhere to be seen. I see you’re fine, but what about the other two?”

  “Najina was cut down. As for Shyna—I don’t know.”

  “Where’s the panic room?”

  “It’s in the basement. And the enemy knows that, too. The entrance is this way.”

  She started off on foot ahead of him. Android or not, human emotions had been input into her electronic brain. And now, the lady-in-waiting must’ve been calling upon all her courage.

  “You can get there from his grace’s room, but to reach it from the outside this is the way to go.”

  From the depths of the corridor came the sound of steel being hammered. Though their civilization had reached the heights of scientific development, the Nobility chose the weapons of antiquity when they went to war. It was said that showed just how deeply nostalgia ran in the Nobility’s DNA. And yet—

  A crimson beam of light skimmed D’s left shoulder. There was a second beam—this one making the wall to his right collapse in a steaming mess.

  “They’re using particle cannons, too,” the hoarse voice noted. “End of the line for the woman.”

  D turned around. The lady-in-waiting wasn’t there. On the floor was a grayish blob of clay that was giving off white smoke. He couldn’t even make out the cerulean hue of her dress.

  “Too late,” said the hoarse voice.

  D crouched down and ran. The pendant on his chest glowed with a blue light. No blistering particles assailed him.

  Dashing a hundred yards in three seconds, he laid his blade into the foe who appeared around a corner. But it stopped dead right above his opponent’s head.

  The soldier clutched his chest. Though he was an android, his heart was equipped to feel fear. At his feet lay five bodies in uniform, some with heads and some without.

  “How do you get to the panic room?” asked the Hunter.

  “It’s this way,” the soldier said, and he began walking down the corridor ahead of D.

  After going about ten yards, he halted.

  There were sconces set in the walls. Corridors dotted with lines of flames were also to the Nobles’ liking. The soldier took out one of the oil lamps. At the same time, the wall right next to it turned, revealing a black interior. There was no stairway, no elevator, just a hole.

  “Has the enemy gone on ahead?” asked D.

  “They pursued his grace the duke through his room. General Kiniski knows everything.”

  “If I go down, will it lead directly into the room?”

  “No, the panic room is isolated. We androids can’t get near it.”

  D sprang into action. Sailing straight down would be a nice way to say what he did, though what he did was plummet. Wind whistling in his ears, D held the brim of his traveler’s hat with his left hand.

  “Well, how about that?” the left hand said in amazement. “There must be an elevator to get back up. We’ll be coming up on five hundred yards soon.”

  He landed in a spot ten thousand feet below the surface. But he didn’t land so much as he slammed into the ground. It would’ve been enough to shatter not only a human being, but also an android. D quickly got to his feet, but his innards were still swirling madly from the shock of the impact. He spat out a wad of blood. That was it.

  He advanced down the stone corridor at a rapid pace. He quickly discovered the door. It was open. Undoubtedly General Kiniski knew the password to open and close it.

  D put his left hand against the wall by the entrance.

  “We truly regret this, my liege,” General Kiniski could be heard to say. Apparently it had taken him and the others quite a while to get there. It seemed they’d just arrived.

  “Though I find myself in this position—threatening you with death—I had hoped you would fight back. That’s what the one they call the Tiger would do. Though I’ve been given a new mission, if I should fall to the Tiger’s counterattack, that would be an admirable result. Such is my wish. But even with your would-be murderers before you, your grace doesn’t lift a finger to fight. Why do you not take up the staff that rests by your side? It may be naught but a piece of oak with a gold grip, but if swung by Duke Van Doren it would be enough to smash the worthless clods behind me to pieces in less than a minute. So why is it you’ve remained seated in that chair since the moment we burst in here? Because standing would mean fighting? No matter how old he may be, the Tiger bares his fangs at his enemies. I thought surely you would do me that honor, my liege.

  “But you have changed. Was it when you had to deal with Master Leavis? When Master Kazel was taken away? When Master Sebastian abandoned his home? So easily the Tiger’s fangs were pulled, but I faithfully awaited the day they would grow in again. However, that day never came, and here we are now. My liege, are you not ready to take up arms? Cow us with a roar from the Tiger, bat us to the ends of the Earth with a swipe of your paw—will you not let us see you like that once more?”

  “General—I’m sorry, Kiniski,” the duke could be heard to say from not far away, “you conceal the most important point. Surely you must understand. It wasn’t dealing with Leavis, or losing Kazel, or Sebastian leaving that changed me. The Tiger is not so fragile as to fly into a rage at his children’s rebellion or caprice. Even now, I would cast them into the fires of Hell without a moment’s hesitation if need be. My mistake, however, might have been in taking Sirene on as a maidservant.”

  A different feeling clung to that last remark.

  “Kiniski, humans are weak things. I have never thought differently. And Sirene didn’t teach me that they were strong. What I learned was that Nobles are also weak.”

  “My liege?”

  “And when I did, I came to understand how I should’ve been. When I had to deal with Leavis, I should’ve felt pain. When Kazel was taken away, I should’ve known hate. And when Sebastian turned his back on his home, I should’ve felt loneliness. More than anything, I should’ve understood what they were feeling. And so I was left alone. I haven’t lost the will to deal with the traitors. I do not fear my own destruction. However, what I should raise my hand to is the events of days gone by. And there is no way to undo them.”

  Silence descended. It was the sort of silence born of solitude and despair.

  “Kiniski, who changed you?”

  “It was the head of the bandits.”

  “And his name?”

  “Vulcan Lura, I believe.”

  “I don’t know him,” the duke said, immediately adding, “but what is the purpose of slaying me?”

  “To learn the location of the weapon your grace used in the Battle of the North.”

  “I no longer remember.”

  “My liege?”

  “All I recall is th
at it was too terrible a weapon. I sealed it away, and the memories of all who knew of it were erased. As a result, no one knows of it. It has gone to its eternal rest. There’s nothing else to say. Kiniski, run your sword through me if you like.”

  “But I—”

  “You can’t, because your new master won’t allow it. Stab me.”

  “You leave me no choice. Forgive me.”

  D stepped through the doorway. Including General Kiniski, there were four invaders. On sensing the arrival of a new presence, two of them turned and were stabbed in rapid succession through the heart, while the spear stuck out by the third was pushed away by the Hunter’s left hand before he took a step forward and brought his sword down. Pale blue waves of electromagnetism snaking from him, the headless soldier fell, split right down the middle.

  D squared off against General Kiniski. The room had a faint blue glow.

  “What are you doing here?” the headless general asked. “I’d heard you were here to take my liege’s life. You need only sit back, and your wish will be granted without any effort!”

  “I could say the same to you,” D replied.

  “What?”

  “Which of us gets the first crack? Shall we settle that?”

  “That sounds intriguing,” the general said, his right hand already resting on the “weather weapon” slung over his shoulder.

  D’s surroundings were suddenly bleached white.

  II

  “Fifty degrees below zero. Dhampir or not, that will keep you from moving.”

  Glittering beads of white began to form all over D’s body. Even the chair and wall by him were tinged with frost.

  “If I pierce your frozen heart, that should kill you. You made a mistake coming here, D,” the general said, using the same hand to reach for the hilt of the broadsword he wore on his left hip. The blade was long and thick and looked rather heavy.

  Lowering the temperature to minus sixty degrees just to be safe, the general stood before D.

  “You’re like a doll, your blood frozen solid—I’d love to hear why we’ve feared you so long.”

  And as he said that, the tip of his blade sank toward D’s heart.

  It was only a machine’s speed that allowed Kiniski to take a reflexive step back. The diagonal slash that he took from the base of his neck to his left flank sent tendrils of electromagnetism out in all directions as the general staggered wildly.

  “Y-you bastard! How could you?!”

  D suddenly stepped forward, leaving the frozen zone. His body was immediately enveloped by flames. The weather weapon had created a blistering zone of five thousand degrees. Furniture that’d been frozen and white swiftly melted away. Unable to withstand it, D was driven to his knees on the floor, but he hurled his sword as if it were a throwing knife. It took the general through the heart, and he ceased to function, falling to the floor.

  D stuck his left hand out of the heat zone. A tiny mouth appeared on the palm of his hand, which was facing forward, and it began sucking in air with alarming force.

  When the Hunter got to his feet and stepped out of the heat zone, his body and even his raiment had returned to normal. Using the discarded weather weapon to make it rain so as to check the spreading flames, D then shot a look over to where the duke remained seated in his chair.

  “Greetings,” the duke said, raising one hand. His smile was free from worry.

  Anyone other than D would’ve cursed the Nobleman for that and tried to cut him down.

  “Thanks to you, I’m saved. You’re every bit as strong as I expected. That’s the Vampire Hunter ‘D’ for you. You’ll have to pardon me for asking you the same question as Kiniski. Why did you save me?”

  “About that ultimate weapon—you say you’ve lost all memory of it, but is that the truth?”

  “Indeed, it is.”

  “What about where the Sacred Ancestor is concerned?”

  The duke didn’t move. However, something else seemed to enter his body.

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “You used the ultimate weapon. But wasn’t he the bastard who built it?”

  “D, my good man,” the duke began absentmindedly. His terror was that great. “Know you no fear? It is unforgivable to refer to the great one that way . . . to call him a bastard.”

  “One other thing,” D said. “Your second son, the one you said was taken away—I don’t think the Tiger would just smile and nod at that. Was that the bastard’s doing, too?”

  “D, what do you think this world is? It is not man’s, nor the Nobility’s, but it belongs to the great one alone. What makes you think it was the great one who took Kazel away?”

  “I know of other cases.”

  The duke said nothing to that.

  “Did your son ever come back?”

  Nothing.

  “Any rumors about him, even?”

  Still no reply.

  “Come tomorrow, things are going to get busy around here. You might’ve lost your teeth, but that doesn’t mean the beast called greed is going to go easy on you.”

  D started walking toward the door.

  “Sirene hired me to get rid of you only after you’d slain your attackers. She said she wanted the Tiger to roar once more.”

  Even after D had left, the duke didn’t move a muscle. Somewhere in the castle, the moonlight reactor was at work. So long as it ran, he would not perish. Time had shown him a road to eternity. One who could never know destruction need never feel longing or loneliness or even fear.

  In no time his guards came, but before they did, the Nobleman murmured, “D, who in the world are you?” He then added, “And Vulcan Lura. Who gave you that name?”

  The site where the survey party was given permission to dig was the remnants of an ancient castle out in a wasteland about a dozen miles north of Castle Van Doren. The Van Doren clan had been appointed administrators/feudal lords of this area three millennia ago, but these ruins predated that. Everyone in the survey party was brimming with expectations. Though they’d excavated Noble ruins here and there, ones from this era were few and far between.

  Before an excavator so enormous the survey party had worried it might cause their transport plane to crash, the gantry crane, the atomic-powered drill, and other equipment could be put into operation, the group members first had to perform an assessment. They got results almost immediately. With just a little digging around columns and a domed ceiling that had been exposed at the surface, they discovered an entrance to an underground cavern.

  “The place was destroyed by the OSB. There are records of it,” Valerie said at the entrance to the enormous cavern, her eyes agleam.

  It was nearly noontime, and the sky was so blue it could cut right through you.

  “Let’s go have a look,” one of the members urged. It was someone the others hadn’t seen before. The night before, Professor Lovick had fallen into a coma for reasons unknown, but luckily this local man had come by this morning and been hired to work in his stead.

  Though the other archeologists gave him unpleasant looks, Valerie didn’t seem to mind, saying, “We’ll head in, at any rate, but there’s no telling what could happen. The rest of you’d better wait out here.”

  “You sure you’ll be okay with just him along?” another member asked anxiously.

  “This is the Frontier,” she replied. “Any danger too great for two to handle would be just as bad for ten of us.”

  Wrapping the rope around their waists and carrying a video camera, lanterns, and enough food for two days, the two of them vanished into the blackness.

  Using the rubble and the rock’s recesses and protrusions, they climbed down more than a hundred yards, taking a break at the bottom of the massive rock wall.

  Valerie said to the new guy, “Pretty generous of the Nobles, eh? We can take as much as we want.”

  “Yeah, it’s a hell of a thing. Noble stuff from this era doesn’t go for less than a thousand dalas, even if it’s just a handkerchief o
r a single glass. It’ll make a hell of a war chest.”

  “Just a minute, there. The deal was that your share’s whatever we leave behind!”

  “I know. Relax.” The new guy stuffed a cracker into his mouth, swallowed it after hardly chewing at all, and continued, “I’m surprised the others let you come down here alone, though. They were looking mighty greedy. Don’t they think you might keep it all for yourself?”

  “They know how honest I am! But I can’t really blame them for being greedy. Even now, the Frontier is so poor. Young folks leave their villages and head for Frontier cities or the Capital, and famines aren’t uncommon out here.”

  “That’s what the Nobility are there for.”

  “The Nobility’s support is slack all over. That’s why everyone’s getting out of the Frontier sectors. You should know that.”

  Scratching at his head, the new guy replied, “That’s why our work’s gotten easier to do. One good drive, and we could put control of the northern Frontier sectors back in human hands. But the duke’s might is still nothing to scoff at, and his troops and weapons are so far ahead of us in both numbers and powers the difference is like night and day. We need a real ace up our sleeves.”

  “There’s no guarantee digging up this place will find it for you. We don’t even know if the duke remembers where it is or not.”

  “It existed, and even if they say it got disposed of, so long as there are legends that it survived, it’s worth checking out. Even if we only find part of it, that might lead to discovering the whole secret weapon.”

  “What do you plan on using it for?” Valerie inquired, her tone changed.

  “To fight the Nobility. What else would we use it for? They may say their kind looks to be going extinct, but out on the Frontier their power’s still great. Even in a fight we’re certain we could win, we’d be ready to have ourselves a party if our chances of victory were even thirty percent. To break them, we really need this weapon they say Nobles used to defeat other Nobles. How long do you think human beings have been ruled by vampires? A few tiny uprisings went down in history. But not one of them succeeded. This time, we’re going to score a victory, then turn that into an opportunity to keep on winning.”