Iriya the Berserker

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  A silver arrow scored a direct hit on a floorboard near the center of the bridge while the carriage was still a hundred yards shy of it. An arrow made of silver. Just one. Who would’ve thought it capable of such destruction?

  The instant the arrow found its mark, all the nuts and bolts securing the bridge shot into the air. And that was just the start. It was unclear what kind of damage the bridge had received, but it was now pulled back in the direction the arrow had come from, and a few seconds later it plunged toward the rapids three hundred feet below, twisting and turning like a dying serpent—even though no one was present to witness its throes.

  It was about ten minutes later that D caught up with the carriage, halted some twenty yards from the cliff. No matter what the speed of his cyborg horse might’ve been, it was hard to believe how quickly he’d erased the carriage’s lead of a dozen miles.

  Going straight over to the carriage, D checked the interior and promptly returned.

  “She’s not there,” he told Meeker, who was crestfallen.

  Before the boy could ask where she’d gone, the hoarse voice said, “A terrific amount of energy was unleashed here. Before we arrived, a fight of some sort took place.”

  D looked around.

  What had happened? The rocky cliffs and forests to either side of the road had been wiped away, leaving flat land for as far as the eye could see. The plain was so vast, anyone who hadn’t known about the existence of the cliffs or forests would’ve thought about building a home there.

  “How much would this take?” D asked. He was wondering how much energy would be required to work such a transformation on the place.

  “Roughly fifty billion—” the hoarse voice began, but then a prismatic mist blew their way, like a rainbow borne on the wind. In front of D on the ground and Meeker on horseback the mist changed shape, swayed, and in the blink of an eye resolved into a pair of human figures.

  “Miss Iriya?”

  “Albidozen.”

  In response to the cries from Meeker and the hoarse voice, the man in the cape made an elegant bow. Surprisingly enough, Meeker bowed his head in return. The Nobleman’s actions were so refined the boy couldn’t help himself.

  “So good of you to come all this way,” the viscount told D and Meeker. From the sincerity in his voice, it seemed he meant every word. “However, the girl has kept me from doing much.”

  He gazed lovingly at the pale visage of Iriya, who stood like a zombie by his side. Suddenly, his eyes filled with naked hate and his gaze shot to the plain to his left.

  “Wherever can you be, you hateful yet remarkable archer? By all means, take another shot once I have dealt with this hindrance.”

  “The bridge was shot out?” D said, seeming to glean the truth.

  “With but a single arrow. My driver and the guard both plunged into the ravine below.”

  “Then you can go and join them.”

  A silver flash shot up from D’s back. The blade came out without a single wasted movement.

  Powder in all the colors of the rainbow flew through the air. The second the blade had split his head, both the viscount and Iriya had turned to dust.

  “Albidozen’s sorcery? Watch yourself,” the hoarse voice said.

  “Stay right there,” D told Meeker, and then the Hunter shut his eyes. He was searching for a sign of the Nobleman.

  “Here I am. Right here.”

  Once again the prismatic fog drifted, taking the form of the Noble and the Huntress. Straight ahead of D—and to his right and left, and behind him—the unmistakable image of the pair took shape while the viscount laughed scornfully. “Not even the superkeen senses of a dhampir can see through my pack of duplicates.”

  Now more than twenty viscounts were undoing the top buttons of the same number of Iriyas and stroking the pale throats that were exposed. The Iriyas groaned in a low voice. For all its loathing, the tone also carried an inescapable ring of desire.

  “D . . .”

  Though D didn’t move in response to her moan, when the viscounts charged at him from all sides, his right arm flourished his blade, reducing each and every one of the attackers to dust.

  “Quite an accomplishment. I see my duplicates don’t return to normal. So, this is the man they call D?” one of the viscounts exclaimed, unmistakable fear and admiration in his voice, and then he dashed toward the cliff with Iriya in his arms.

  “Watch yourself!” the hoarse voice urged.

  Albidozen stood stock still, unable to flee any further, while the Hunter’s blade rose to strike him down—but at that instant, D felt a change in the ground beneath his feet. He’d stepped out into empty space! Without saying a word and with his sword still raised, D was swallowed by the darkness.

  III

  However, as D fell, he thrust his sword into the rockface before him. Perhaps it was a result of his otherworldly pose, or maybe it was D’s skill, but the blade sank halfway into the rock, supporting its wielder. But D didn’t move after that. With no footing for a leap upward, he was left hanging in midair—literally high and dry, as the saying went.

  “You are a stalwart foe,” Viscount Albidozen laughed, standing on a rock just shy of the edge of the cliff a scant fifteen feet above the Hunter. Iriya was in his arms. “However, you find yourself in quite a fix. You may hang there, helpless as a bagworm, and watch as I make this girl mine.”

  His lips latched onto her supple neck. Iriya writhed, but when the lips came away, there was no wound there. Apparently it’d been an ordinary kiss.

  Although it seemed like the viscount wanted to sink his fangs into her, he sounded somehow dissatisfied as he said, “I was going to take this girl to Kraken’s castle. Though at first he intended to kill her and dispatched assassins toward that end, he came to harbor the same doubts that I do and changed his mind. There is something unusual about this girl. She leaves me ill at ease. As a result, I have decided to grant her the blood of the Nobility here and now. Forgive me, Kraken. But you share the anxiety I feel. Now, I will remove the need for it.”

  His mouth opened wide, and within it gleamed a gruesome pair of fangs. More than anything, it was the blood-crazed look on the Noble’s face that spoke of his true intention this time.

  Strength flowed into D’s right arm. His muscles became iron. His body rose immediately. With nothing but the power of one arm, he propelled himself upward. There was a whistle as the black streak knifed through the darkness—the Hunter had extracted his longsword, as well.

  Albidozen bent backward almost reflexively, escaping with just a cut to the end of his nose only because the timing of the blade had been thrown off. The Nobleman backed off a few yards, and on seeing D on top of the cliff, he pressed his accursed lips to the throat of the enthralled Iriya.

  Iriya’s body stiffened—then relaxed. Her vacant expression was quickly transformed into one of rapturous delight. No matter what a person’s state of mind, from the peaks of excitement to the murky depths of despair, the kiss of the Nobility would put them in a trance.

  When the viscount turned and grinned at D, his lips were stained with blood. Licking them, the Nobleman lifted Iriya with the intent to hurl her at the charging Hunter. In his hands, the Huntress’s body spun agilely.

  “Wha—” the Nobleman grunted and froze in his tracks; Iriya had landed behind him and plunged her dagger through his heart from the back, while D’s blade raced forward, bringing with it the cruel crunch of severed vertebrae.

  As the viscount’s head sailed through the air in a gentle parabola and dropped into the gorge, it rotted away, turning to dust. D looked down at the Noble’s equally dusty cape without a word and then crouched by Iriya’s side.

  “Do you remember now?”

  Some time passed before Iriya looked up. Her expression was one of extreme fatigue, and she looked around dazedly, but on noticing the items at her feet, she finally expressed surprise.

  “This is Viscount Albidozen’s . . . D, did you do that to him?”
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  D looked down at his left hand.

  “She ain’t tugging your chain. She’s had her memory wiped clean,” the hoarse voice said.

  Closing her eyes almost as if she’d been wounded, Iriya said, “My memories wiped clean? Did I do something?”

  “You slew Albidozen,” said D.

  “What?” Iriya exclaimed, her face slowly contorting with shock.

  “But before you did, he fed on you, though there are no marks on your neck. It’s like you were never bitten.”

  “What do you mean? You’re telling me I was bitten, but there’s no wound on my throat? You must’ve seen it wrong, then!”

  “Of everything you’ve said, there’s just one name whose meaning remains unclear. It might be tied to your missing memory.”

  “What name?”

  “Alucard.”

  Iriya squinted her eyes, poring through her memories, but she quickly shook her head.

  “So, this Alucard person set it up so that when I destroy a Noble, I lose all memory of it?”

  “While you’re fighting them, it’s not your memories you lose, but your emotions. The memory erasure is so you’ll forget that you’ve been bitten. The human psyche isn’t equipped to deal with that shock. Just getting bitten would probably take every last bit of fight out of you.”

  “In that case, when I’m fighting and slaying Nobles, I wouldn’t remember anything, right?”

  “That’s about the size of it,” said the hoarse voice. “But I don’t think there’s a witch doctor or sorcerer in the world who could keep the kiss of the Nobility from going into effect. But you say, ‘Alucard,’ ‘Alucard.’ ”

  “D—are we setting out soon?” Iriya inquired, turning a doleful countenance toward the Hunter.

  “It’ll be dawn soon. We’ll wait till then.”

  “In that case, come with me. My brother’s remains are in the carriage.”

  He was a pile of dust and rotting bones on the floor. Putting them into her big brother’s jacket, Iriya left the carriage and went to the edge of the cliff.

  “Ashes to ashes,” she intoned in a faint voice, her eyes shut. “Dust to dust. Be borne off on the winds, carried with the rain, lost in the ground. Bring forth new trees and new grass, new flowers and new grains. Bring forth new life.”

  She scattered the dust. The girl watched without expression as her older brother’s remains spread like smoke, melting away into the darkness.

  “It’s done,” she told D, and there were no tears in her eyes.

  The strength was returning to her stride as she walked toward Meeker, and watching her go, the hoarse voice remarked, “She does away with her own blood, and she ain’t even upset about it. That’s gotta warp you!”

  “In what way?” D asked the hoarse voice.

  “If I knew that, it’d save us a lot of trouble. It’s lousy for her, but hopefully it’ll work out good for us.”

  As the Hunter walked back to his cyborg horse, Meeker called out to him, “How are we supposed to cross here? Now that the Noble we were chasing’s been slain, will we turn back?”

  “No, we’ll keep going this way.”

  Looking at D with utter disbelief, Iriya said, “We’ll fall!”

  Still facing the cliffs on the opposite side, D said, “Load the horse into the back of the carriage. The interior is an area of distorted space. You could fit ten thousand of them in there.”

  “What’ll we do then?”

  Giving no reply, D went back into the carriage, then quickly returned with a spool of wire over his shoulder.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Iriya’s voice carried a tone that said, You can’t be serious.

  “The supports are still there.”

  In the darkness, the black iron supports that’d secured the web of cables at both ends of the suspension bridge still towered on either cliff. Walking over to the brink of the cliff with the massive spool of steel wire, which must’ve weighed hundreds of pounds, D faced the opposite cliff and uncoiled about five yards of wire that he began to twirl over his head like a lasso.

  Iriya muttered to herself something about how he must be joking, but her remarks were obliterated by a forceful whistle in the wind. And it wasn’t the whispering of a breeze; it was the angry howls of a gale. Even before Iriya and Meeker could react, the cyborg horses backed away.

  D’s right hand shot out, and the two-millimeter wire flew like a javelin to a support on the opposite side, which it coiled around as if it were a snake. It was a distance of over six hundred feet. Giving a good tug to test its strength, D drew his sword and easily cut the wire with about five yards to spare, which he then wrapped around a support on their side of the cliff. Once the entire procedure had been repeated, there were two thin wires bridging the cliffs.

  “Get in the carriage,” D told them, not showing a sign of exertion.

  “Wait just a second there! You planning on crossing on those wires?”

  Meeker looked pale, even in the darkness of night. Iriya had a distinct look of fear on her face.

  “Let’s go!” D said, mounting one of the cyborg horses and heading for the carriage.

  A few minutes later, the carriage began to race across the new bridge. It looked for all the world like it was flying above the abyss.

  Is My Blood That of Friend or Foe?

  chapter 7

  I

  The carriage raced on until daybreak with Iriya and Meeker sleeping within. When the girl awoke, she realized the carriage had halted in the woods. It was nearly noon.

  Leaving the still-slumbering Meeker as he was, Iriya decided to step outside. The door wouldn’t open. A Noble’s lock was on it. There was no sign of D anywhere; when he’d gone outside, he must’ve locked the door. That would prevent anyone from getting inside while he was gone. She was about to give up and return to Meeker’s side when she heard the sound of the lock disengaging, and the door opened.

  Outside was D—and a short way off stood a boy who wore protective armor made of high-polymer rubber over his clothes. To his rear were five or six lesser fire dragons. He was a dragon master, which indicated they were close to the northern Frontier.

  D said there was a village called Jassum nearby. The boy was from there. On seeing Iriya, he informed her that today was a festival day. Apparently it was the date when the guardian deity—also named Jassum—had descended to Earth and told the founders to build a village there. Now that the boy mentioned it, she noticed the sound of what might have been firecrackers in the distance.

  Looking back at the carriage, Iriya said, “Meeker will be overjoyed! Let’s take at least one day off. Give a thought to your traveling companions for once.”

  “Please do,” the youthful dragon master said, grinning with pleasure. His blue eyes reflected Iriya. “My family runs an inn.”

  Behind the boy, the fire dragons blew fifteen feet of flames in unison. The reason for that display was unclear.

  Jassum was a miniature garden of a village that looked as though it might be swallowed up at any moment by the clear blue sky. Its population couldn’t have exceeded a hundred. Strings of firecrackers draping down narrow streets and across the roofs of houses exploded into flame, one after another; people wearing masks and costumes representing dragons, one-eyed beasts, armored serpents, and gods of all shapes paraded down the street; and old men who’d drunk their fill of the wine spilling from a portable shrine slumped all around. Meeker’s eyes were alight, and his upper body swayed to the tune of what were most likely folk songs drifting from unseen speakers.

  On the west end of the square stood the establishment run by the boy—Al—and his family: the Bumper Crop Inn.

  “Keeping dragons and running an inn—your parents have their fingers into everything, don’t they?” Iriya remarked, half in jest.

  “We even do modifications on cyborg horses,” Al replied, beckoning to the trio to follow him in.

  Rooms to rent were on the second floor, with the f
irst floor occupied by a dining room, a small parlor, and the management’s living quarters. The dining room also served as a bar, where more than a few people were buying drinks to enjoy in the lobby. The half dozen guests they had took one look at D and Iriya and froze in their tracks. Ignoring the whiskey that spilled from tilted glasses to splatter on their knees, they stared stupidly at the pair. All of them were male. But beauty knew no gender.

  Once in their room, Iriya ordered a soda water without even bothering to set down her load, while Meeker immediately began pleading, “I wanna go outside!”

  “Sure thing, so long as D goes with you,” the Huntress said.

  “No way. I couldn’t relax at all,” he retorted somewhat impertinently.

  “Then no. There’s no telling who’s gunning for us.”

  After that, she wouldn’t hear any more the boy had to say, and he started crying before crumpling on his bed at last.

  Success! she thought, but just then Al came in and invited her to go to the festival with him. Inside, Iriya was cursing and grinding her teeth, but she resigned herself to it and said, “Sure. Is it okay if the boy comes with us, too?”

  Disappointment showed on Al’s face, but he didn’t say no.

  Iriya decided not to ask for D’s permission. Clearly it wouldn’t be forthcoming. She thought it’d be fine as long as they came back fairly soon. However, she had no firm idea of what would constitute “fairly soon.”

  “They’re heading out,” the hoarse voice said.

  D headed for the door. He could hear the voices in the next room as if the wall wasn’t even there. His right hand took hold of the doorknob, and at the same time his whole body turned to the right.