The Tiger in Winter

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  A gravity field generator?!

  Before the bandit could even look up into the tree in astonishment, Gilshark landed with a thud. Rubbing the small of his back with exaggerated groans, he got back to his feet and said, “I’m getting too old for this. So, what say we see whose protector is more powerful? Petty though it may seem.”

  The air rang with a sharp metallic sound. The bodies of the unicorn and Vulcan grew as blurry as a heat shimmer. A black sphere suddenly appeared in front of the steed and rider, and the instant the unicorn’s horn touched it, it swiftly vanished.

  “Did science trump legend?” Gilshark said, bending backward with a laugh. “I hate to tell you this, but that science is backed by his power.”

  As soon as he finished saying that, the harsh, grating noise stopped.

  Gilshark squinted. There was no sign of the unicorn or its rider anywhere. They’d been sucked into someplace of nigh infinite mass and almost nonexistent volume.

  “Seems the time’s come for Tiger King Van Doren’s reign of terror to end. I’m heading straight off to hit his castle now. Now it’s his turn to wait in fear, as we’ve done for so long.”

  Astride his white steed, the rebel leader galloped off with his surviving compatriots.

  Before long, there were signs of life and grunts from the forest that’d been filled by corpses and the stench of blood alone.

  The forest’s oldest inhabitants had come to feed on the carrion—ghouls. But their grunts, rather shrill sounds that rolled across the ground, stopped dead. In one spot the ground had been disturbed—a semicircular depression about thirty feet across—and something wavered indistinctly at its center like a heat shimmer. Until it resolved into a human shape, the ghouls held their breath, and even the wind stopped.

  In no time, what should come out of the depression with dusty earth crumbling from him but someone unmistakably human?

  A mouth that hadn’t yet formed lips spun a voice packed with emotion, grumbling, “So, that idiotic human doesn’t know that the blood of Nobility flows in my veins? If he wants to know about the ultimate weapon, I’ll show him just what it can do.”

  Less than an hour after the two leaders clashed, the duke received word that the rebel army was advancing. The duke in turn conveyed that information to D.

  “It would seem they’re coming down the road at considerable speed. As a result, they should be here in a day’s time—about noon tomorrow.”

  “What about your androids?”

  “They’re being destroyed, one after another. To be honest, I didn’t think the humans were that strong yet.”

  “The world keeps moving on,” D said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “What do you plan on doing? Nobody’d blame you if you made a run for it!”

  Grinning wryly, the duke clapped the Hunter on the right shoulder and said, “How often the thought has occurred to me—yes, about a hundred thousand times. But not once could I do it. And this time will be no different.”

  The Nobleman directed a nod to the air. What was projected there was the scene of a battle between android peacekeeping forces and the rebel army. All the peacekeepers’ light-based weapons were blocked by force fields or shields incorporating lenses, so they’d been forced to initiate an aerial bombardment that’d left the rebel army on the brink of annihilation.

  The rebels’ salvation came when, following a heat shimmer like blur, a black sphere suddenly appeared. It was a void that sucked in everything within a thousand yards. That included laser beams and the flames left by the bombing.

  The androids requested a strike from the plasma cannon on the surveillance satellite. When the duke authorized it, the rebel army moved into a nearby village. The duke then ordered a halt to the attack. The villagers were now hostages.

  “Here comes the gravity field!” said the hoarse voice, and at that moment the image faded. “Camera got taken out. What a catastrophe.”

  Right hand cupped behind his ear, the duke said, “The satellite was taken out.”

  The hoarse voice continued, “Looks like he got some power from him down in the depths of the earth, too. And on top of that—”

  “He altered himself,” the duke said, picking up the thread. “There’s no way a human being could supersede the power of the great one. He may believe himself to be in control, but he’s being manipulated. The fact that fear of the plasma cannon caused him to flee into the very village he should be protecting is proof of that.”

  “Is he too strong, or is the human too weak?”

  No one answered the hoarse voice.

  After a little while, the duke turned to D and said, “I’ll thank you to keep out of this.” He was referring to the final decisive battle with the rebel army.

  “I’ll be the one to slay you,” D replied.

  Just then, the face of a beautiful woman appeared in the air. There was only her head. And it was gazing up at the group from where it rested on the ground.

  “Shyna?!”

  “Dr. Valerie ran amok at the excavation site,” the lovely android informed them coolly, and then the image dispersed in the air.

  “What’s going on over there?” asked the duke, eyes still trained on the now-empty space.

  “I’ll go see,” D told him.

  II

  Even before dismounting from his cyborg horse, D noticed something strange about the silence. Stillness alone didn’t mean death. If there were people alive there, the place would’ve burned with their life force. It would be a palpable presence. But here, there was nothing save unmistakable death.

  Standing on the brink of the great subsidence, D looked down. And immediately leapt in.

  Corpses were strewn there. The throats of all of them were rent. Each had been carved in a neat crescent, with deep red fluid still pooled in the wound.

  Shyna’s head lay down by the Hunter’s feet. When D stooped down and reached for it, her lips moved faintly. Perhaps she was saying, Don’t . . . look . . . at . . . me . . .

  “Where’s Valerie?” D said, asking only what was pertinent.

  “She came . . . out of . . . the hole . . . Was possessed . . . by something . . . Can’t . . . control . . . herself.”

  D looked all around.

  “Can’t detect her,” said his left hand. “It’s his power. Done a hell of a job of erasing her presence.”

  “What caused all this?” D asked, gazing at Shyna’s head.

  “Something . . . underground . . . Valerie . . . wouldn’t let them . . . dig it up.”

  “What was it?”

  “Don’t . . . know,” Shyna said, her voice suddenly sounding distant. Her energy had run out.

  “Thank you, Shyna. You did an excellent job.”

  “Was I . . . of . . . service?”

  “Very much so.”

  She might have tried to smile then. But every trace of emotion vanished from Shyna’s face.

  Taking her head in both hands, D stood up. Setting it at the edge of the subsidence, he backed away a step and tipped his traveler’s hat. He then turned right around and exited the hole.

  From the north, thunderheads were starting to build in the otherwise clear sky.

  “That’s the direction the rebel army’s coming from,” the hoarse voice remarked. “Looks like it’ll be a hell of a storm.”

  D slowly started forward on his cyborg horse. Clouds and a storm—the story was beginning to set a fitting stage for the gorgeous young man.

  When darkness fell, people always locked the doors to their homes, shut the windows, and drew the curtains. After that—all they could do was wait. But tonight would be different. The rebel army had just left. Though the tiny village hadn’t been turned into a battlefield, it still resembled one, with no less than fifty of the villagers shooting off fireworks to celebrate the army’s push forward.

  “He was a good lord, though,” they would say. “But all that’s over now. There’s a world coming that’s ours alone.”

  “Yeah, Captain Gilshark’
s on the move. The rebel army’s going in. Our lord has had it. Let it all go up in flames,” others laughed.

  We don’t have to fear the Nobility any more, they all thought. Therefore, every house in the village had its doors and windows open wide despite the distant rumbles of thunder and the wind rocking the tree branches, determined to be free of that which had held them for millennia. Now it was their turn to lick their chops, and an old protest song flowed from every house.

  It’s only the night breeze coming in,

  Not a Noble’s breath, so stop worryin’.

  D.

  The Hunter was certain someone had called his name. He turned toward the window.

  The suite the duke had given him consisted of five rooms. It was so spacious, a hundred assassins could’ve snuck in and hidden there.

  The voice he heard came from outside the window. D went over to it and looked down. His sword and sheath, taken from his back, were in his right hand.

  He was on the fifth floor. At the base of the plunging walls lay a moonlit lawn. And there stood Valerie.

  Come out, D.

  Her voice couldn’t reach that high. However, D’s ears caught the words distinctly.

  Opening the window, D inquired, “What do you want?”

  Please, help me, the archeologist said, her voice colored by a mournfulness devoid of deception. Something else is controlling me. A little while ago, I drank the blood of some people in a village somewhere.

  D threw himself out the window. Though he landed right beside Valerie, he still didn’t make a sound. He’d dropped five floors. And each of those floors was easily twice as high as in an ordinary building. It’d been at least a hundred and sixty feet.

  “I know why this is happening. Some power possessed me when I was down there, underground. An incredible power. A power so great, it can turn humans into Nobility without ever drinking their blood.”

  Valerie slowly opened her mouth. Captivating though they were, her canine teeth were plainly fangs.

  “I haven’t completely turned into a Noble yet,” Valerie said, closing her mouth. There was a shadow at her feet. It was only half as dark as a normal person’s—just like D’s.

  “I still have my own will. That’s what makes this so painful. I just—it was his will that made me do it, but I remember everything. In other words, it wasn’t my will, but it was still me that did it.”

  “I got a firsthand account from Shyna,” D said.

  Valerie covered her ears.

  “It was his will that they not dig up the thing they found underground. You’re being manipulated to enforce it.”

  Valerie nodded. “I came out tonight to get rid of that thing. But I was able to fight it and come to see you. The blood that I drank probably helped me. It made me stronger.”

  Valerie’s shoulders trembled, and she squeezed her hands into tight fists. Her head hung low.

  “Can you keep it in check?” D asked flatly.

  “I can manage, for the moment. But ten minutes from now, I really can’t say. D—kill me,” Valerie said, looking up at him. Her eyes gave off a red glow.

  In a single, fluid motion, D drew and struck with the sword he carried. It definitely went right through Valerie’s neck. The Hunter felt it slice through her vertebrae. However, Valerie didn’t budge, and her head didn’t fall off. She just grinned at him.

  “D, who are you, anyway?” Valerie asked, her hands up by her chest, the fingers curled like hooks. “I understand just a little—about him, I mean. What does it mean when he says that you alone are special?”

  She was slowly moving closer.

  “Tell me, D, was he trying to change the world? Was he trying to make a world without Nobility, even though he’s a Noble?”

  Suddenly, Valerie raised her hands and clawed at her hair. A scream split her lips. Anyone who heard it wouldn’t be sleeping again for quite some time.

  Before D could take a step forward, Valerie kicked off the ground. Leaping away a good ten yards, she turned around and vanished into the darkness.

  D went straight into a run. And while running, he whistled. As he left the garden, his cyborg horse came galloping from the direction of the castle entrance. He leapt on and galloped away.

  “We ain’t gonna catch up to her, you know,” the hoarse voice remarked, its words streaming in the wind. “So, her destination—think it’s the excavation site?”

  “It couldn’t be anywhere else,” D replied, his words torn and scattered as soon as they left his lips. “How long can she last?”

  “Don’t know, but she can’t have long. It’s too much to carry. For him, he’s possessing her with maybe all the power in his fingertip, but to a human—”

  The Hunter galloped on—and reached his destination. Everyone from the camp was dead, leaving the place lying there like a graveyard beneath the night wind and the moonlight.

  Going to the edge of the ruins, D got off his cyborg steed. He placed his left hand against the ground.

  “She’s underground,” the hoarse voice told him. “Something’s rumbling.”

  “Think she intends to destroy it?”

  “That’s what she said—but I wouldn’t call this the sounds of destruction.”

  “What, then?”

  “What if her will’s winning out?”

  “Then she’d put that thing back into operation?” D asked.

  “Well, looks like that storm’s the least of anyone’s concerns now.”

  “Let’s go!”

  “What the—?!” the hoarse voice exclaimed.

  D intended to go below. It was the roaring from the earth that stopped him. First, the wind had billowed out. It came with such a lack of force, it was as if the ground, in its death throes, had seemingly breathed its last. Suddenly, there was devastation. To D’s eyes, it looked as if everything had become some weird beast aiming for the sky. Pillars, canopy ceilings, roofs, bulwarks, foundations—all of them leaving noise and shock and destruction in their wake as they flew upward willfully and generously. Was it outer space they sought, or freedom?

  Had all that been buried down there? A billion tons of masonry, a hundred million of machinery, a thousand tons of art, and a million of frozen blood. And then they would fall. Rising to the heavens, hands grasping but failing to catch the stars—

  Once again the earth rumbled. It was as if every sound since the dawn of creation had been assembled in one place. Pillar collided with pillar, smashing each other, ceilings clashed against the enormous idol with the force of a nuclear weapon, everything plummeting back down into the depths of the earth—

  As D was struck from head to toe by waves of sound from the destruction that still roared across heaven and earth, his left hand inquired, “Her doing?”

  “Wish I could say it most certainly is, but I can’t,” the Hunter replied. “What’s going on with that thing underground?”

  “World will probably come to an end before it could ever be dug up. Is that what he wanted?”

  As D was passing through the foyer, he encountered the duke. When the Nobleman asked him what’d transpired, the Hunter told him, “You’re too late.”

  “I was off in a nearby village, you see.”

  D explained the situation.

  “So she did it,” the duke lamented. “Then she lives no more. However, this may be for the best. That thing must never be brought to the surface.”

  “So long as it’s out there somewhere, the desire to dig it up will take root. Can you assure me it won’t?”

  “No one can offer such assurances. Such is the world we live in,” the duke replied, heaving a sigh. “According to reports from the front, the rebel army will arrive at break of day. Once the battle begins, you’re to evacuate to another location. I shall supply you with a guide.”

  “No, I won’t,” D told him flatly. “I can’t have you getting away from me.”

  “I would never do such a—” the duke began to say, a grin rising on his lips. He’d just real
ized the meaning of D’s words.

  In order to escape, he would have to be alive. And D knew the old man they called the Tiger wasn’t the kind of man to run from his foes with his tail between his legs. If he lived, it would mean he’d crushed the enemy.

  You’ll be fine—that’s what D was saying.

  Not saying a word, the duke clapped D on the shoulder. There was something feeble about the way he did so.

  III

  D suddenly opened his eyes. A shadowy figure was standing by the same window where he’d heard Valerie’s voice.

  You?!

  There was no need to ask.

  “Why are you here?”

  To meet you, probably.

  “Probably?”

  Sometimes, I can’t fathom why I do the things I do. Perhaps I’m not myself.

  “That’s no excuse for all the things you’ve done.”

  Take the long road. From what I’ve seen, it seems unlikely to change your fate. No matter where you go, the road leads to carnage.

  The shadowy figure wavered.

  When D got up, all his weight was focused on his left hand, which rested on the bed. Using the force of the springs, he took to the air. In midair, he drew his blade and struck at the shadowy figure’s neck in a single motion. A heartbeat earlier, something the shadowy figure hurled had pierced the left side of D’s chest.

  “Your fate is an instantaneous death,” the figure said.

  And as he listened to those words, D swung his sword down. It made contact.

  Opening his eyes, D gazed down by his feet. A black iron arrow had been cut right in two. The front half was embedded in the floor. The blade he’d swung at his foe in the dream had cut down an arrow that had flown in through the window in reality.

  The sky was an ashen gray. The wind was strong. Night was already at an end.

  “That apathetic bastard the Tiger seriously doesn’t have any force fields up?” the left hand groused, its curses flowing through the faint gloom.

  D went over by the window.

  The far reaches of the grounds around the castle were swarming with countless people and weapons. The air whistled. Thousands of black streaks were flying into every window in the castle. Catching one in his left hand, D used it to bat down a second, then a third.