The Tiger in Winter

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “Only if this one doesn’t have any paralytic drugs in it,” said a voice of steel.

  Huh? the young lady seemed to say, her eyes wide as she looked at D—and then at the awfully fat shopkeeper.

  “Stuff’s supposed to be colorless and odorless, but I guess that doesn’t hold for the man known as D, eh?” the obese giant said in a voice that sounded like someone else’s.

  “No, it’d work. If you weren’t wiping away nonexistent sweat, I wouldn’t have been on my guard.”

  “Kinda overdid it with my performance, then?” the obese giant said, leaning way back.

  The buttons popped from his shirt. His stomach spilled out. Rolling over the counter, it began to fill the establishment like a flesh-colored wave.

  “Wh-what the hell’s this?! H-he’s—” the waitress Jessica stammered, frozen in her tracks.

  “He’s a freak,” the hoarse voice said.

  “Get out.”

  As if driven by that steely voice, the young lady dashed for the door. But as soon as she caught hold of the doorknob, she cried, “Ah! It won’t open!”

  “Sorry about this, Jessica. Here you’d just found a job, and now you’re outta work already!” the obese giant said, his existence now limited to simply his voice.

  The counter splintered. The blob of flesh already reached the ceiling, and was crushing tables and chairs as it pressed forward.

  “That’s one hell of a fatty,” the hoarse voice said, tension in its tone. “So, you threw this place together? Let’s have your name and your game.”

  “Lascaux’s the name, and you’d do well to remember it,” the approaching wall of flesh told the traveler. The whole shop seemed to be speaking. “As for my game—you’ve gotta know what I’m here for, right?”

  “To keep us from getting to Schwartzen? What are you, anyway?”

  “You mean it didn’t say in that message from the mayor? Then you’ll die not knowing. There’s no way you can cut me. It ain’t like you can let the air outta me like a big balloon. This might hurt a little, but hell, you’ll be at peace soon enough.”

  A wall of flesh stood blocking the girl—and D.

  “Goddamned fatty,” the hoarse voice groaned.

  “Wh-wh-what are we gonna do?” the young lady—Jessica—asked, her face the very picture of insanity.

  “Leave it to us,” said a hoarse voice brimming with confidence.

  The instant its words filled Jessica with surprise and relief, she saw a glint out of the corner of her eye. There was the sound of flesh being cleaved. Crimson stained her whole world.

  The shop around them screamed, “Gaaaaah! You cut me?! You lousy freak!”

  An incredible force swept Jessica to the rear. She knew she was about to hit something, but she broke through it with only the slightest resistance and fell down on the ground outside.

  The shop was collapsing before her very eyes. The roof and walls spread across the ground, reduced to dust that was then swept away by the wind. The place had been built from material that was supposed to do exactly that.

  And beyond the dust, a strange—although “monstrous” might’ve been more appropriate—thing was writhing. It was the obese giant, his belly spread around his feet like a flesh-colored mountain. The enormous belly was split by a massive gash, and a waterfall of blood spilled out to soak the ground.

  “I’ll get you for this!” Lascaux cried, grinding his teeth. Bloody foam ran from the corners of his mouth.

  “Hmm, didn’t hit anything vital, eh? Being a fatty has its advantages,” the hoarse voice laughed.

  “Shut up!”

  Suddenly, the fleshy carpet took to the air. It happened with such ungodly speed it drew a cry of surprise from the hoarse voice. Quickly rising a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet, it sprinkled fresh blood like a crimson rain as the obese giant flew off to the east. But as the traveler watched, the giant plunged suddenly, then sprang up again. Repeating that over and over again, he vanished.

  “Sure is good at making his escape. Weird freaking fatty. Think he’s gone back to Schwartzen to report in?”

  D went over to his cyborg horse, stroked its neck once, then eased into the saddle. As he got back on the road, Jessica followed after him.

  “Hold on, there,” the young lady said. “Give me a lift back to my house. My horse seems to have bolted.”

  “A lot of people pass this way,” said the steely voice.

  The cyborg horse had already begun to walk away.

  “Hey, wait. So, you just intend to leave a woman alone out here? Give me a ride.”

  Although Jessica ran after him, D didn’t even look back. His business there was finished. His only interest lay in his next destination.

  The air had begun to take on a bluish tinge when the cyborg horse arrived. When the Hunter asked a gawking boy where the mayor might be found, the answer he got was, “In the graveyard.”

  The old man had collapsed at noon the previous day and breathed his last then and there.

  “We’re too late,” the hoarse voice said with regret. “Our employer’s gone and kicked the bucket. The enemy’s really using their head.”

  “He didn’t die; he was killed,” a boy of twelve or thirteen said, looking D square in the face. His innocent young face was ablaze with fury.

  They were at the mayor’s home. D had waited out in front of it for the family’s return, having learned the house’s location from the boy earlier, who hadn’t gone to the funeral. The graying widow and her son were accompanied by a man who identified himself as the mayor’s secretary.

  “I read about the situation in the message,” D said.

  “We received your reply from the town hall in the neighboring village,” the widow replied softly. The impression she made was just as tranquil as her tone, having supported her husband for five terms over the last decade. “My husband looked like he was in heaven when he got it. He couldn’t believe that you—D—had taken the job. He said now the village and the human sacrifices would be spared.”

  “And now he got sent off to heaven, so there’s nothing we can do,” the boy spat.

  “Don’t say that, Puma,” the widow said, glaring at her son, and the boy fell silent. “Your father had a heart condition, and Dr. Chavez told us that, didn’t he? So stop bringing up those baseless accusations.”

  “But Pa was so healthy,” the boy replied. “I can’t believe his heart’d just give out like that. There were no warning signs at all, were there? I can’t say exactly what, but lately, something’s gone out of whack. They were talking about offering human sacrifices, for pity’s sake! Is that anything for a scholar from the Capital to say?!”

  “Damn straight.”

  All of them turned stunned looks toward the voice—and D. He was standing near the door, his back to the wall. While that looked like the best position for responding to any attack by an enemy, that didn’t seem to be the case here.

  “Let’s hear all the details.”

  The bereaved family members and the secretary exchanged looks.

  “Before we get into that, there’s something I’d like to tell you,” the widow said, gazing at D with a determined look in her eyes. “I’ve heard what it was my husband hired you to do. Had I known ahead of time, I think I would’ve stopped him, but it’s too late for that now. However, Grand Duke Bergenzy is a Noble to be feared. Should the mood strike him, he could make slaves not only of our village but of everyone in his domain in less than a night’s time, poison the very earth, sow curses in the wind, or make rain fall from the sky until the end of time. And no one knows if that’s the full extent of his power or not. Also, we’ve heard that the retainers who’ve been with him since ancient times are fearsome devils, and this time, you’ll also be making an enemy of the scholar who’s come from the Capital and his guards.”

  “To be honest, they’re a creepy bunch,” the secretary interjected. “I find it hard to believe he’s an official from the Capital. And those others are F
rontier warriors, no question about it. Just to be sure, I checked their names against all known lists, but they aren’t listed in the ‘warrior’ section. Which leaves the ‘brawler’ section. But they don’t show up there, either. In other words, they’re either brand new to the game, or they’re ‘nameless,’ who work without letting anyone know who they are.”

  “Not that,” the boy groaned. A bead of sweat rolled down his cheek.

  Out on the Frontier, any child over the age of three knew how terrible the “nameless” could be. They were fiends, and one of them might destroy an entire town singlehanded just so he could leave without anyone knowing his name or what he looked like. There were no wanted posters put up for them because everyone they went after wound up dead.

  “The grand duke won’t be your only foe. I discussed the matter with Mr. Jacos, and have decided to withdraw our request to you. We’ll have no more pointless bloodshed. Fortunately, you haven’t been paid yet. We’ll reimburse you for your travel expenses out here. Please, just move on. I beg of you.”

  The widow got up from her chair, put her hands on her knees, and bowed deeply.

  “What I want to know is the details of the situation.”

  D’s reply made the mother and son look at each other.

  Surely he doesn’t intend to—

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba, Japan in 1949. He attended the prestigious Aoyama University and wrote his first novel, Demon City Shinjuku, in 1982. Over the past two decades, Kikuchi has written numerous horror novels, and is one of Japan’s leading horror masters, working in the tradition of occidental horror writers like Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King. Many live-action and anime works in 1980s and 1990s Japan were based on Kikuchi’s novels.

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  Yoshitaka Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan in 1952. Recruited as a character designer by the legendary anime studio Tatsunoko at age 15, he created the look of many notable anime, including Gatchaman, Genesis Climber Mospeada (which in the US became the third part of Robotech), and The Angel’s Egg, an experimental film by future Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii. An independent commercial illustrator since the 1980s, Amano became world famous through his design of the first ten Final Fantasy games. Having entered the fine arts world in the preceding decade, in 1997 Amano had his first exhibition in New York, bringing him into contact with American comics through collaborations with Neil Gaiman (Sandman: The Dream Hunters) and Greg Rucka (Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer). Dark Horse has published over 40 books illustrated by Amano, including his first original novel Deva Zan, as well as the Eisner-nominated Yoshitaka Amano: Beyond the Fantasy—The Illustrated Biography by Florent Gorges.