Scenes from an Unholy War Page 6

  The matter was settled most emphatically. While the drifter out of the Capital could barely hit the bull’s-eye on a life-sized iron target at two hundred yards using the very latest-model clip-fed rifle, the people he’d mocked could easily hit the same at twice that distance using antiquated bolt-action weapons.

  Outraged, the drifter challenged a villager to a sword fight, one on one. The villager chose to go with a stick he was comfortable with. It was over in an instant. Jumping back out of range of the drifter’s sword, the villager delivered a blow with his footlong baton. It slammed into the drifter’s face, knocking him out on the spot.

  Lyra treated these villagers as if they were children. If they held back against her because she was a woman, she had no qualms about knocking them senseless. Even when they gave it their all, every swing met only air, and when they were finally exhausted, she delivered the coup de grâce. In that instant, the fact that this beautiful woman was a professional combatant was pounded into them.

  Lyra had put down fifty of them and wasn’t even breathing hard when a young man stepped forward. She occasionally taught swordsmanship and martial arts. When she did, she always saw him there. “What can I do for you, Pete?” she asked.

  The young man mumbled something in reply.

  “What?”

  Perhaps catching the irritation in Lyra’s voice, the young man hastily pulled a small package out of his pocket and pushed it into her hand. Before Lyra could open her mouth, he said, “I didn’t know when it was—your birthday, that is.” His voice rose so high it cracked. This was probably the first time he’d ever given anything to a member of the opposite sex. The boy—Pete—was sixteen years old.

  Gazing long and hard at the boy and his flushing cheeks, Lyra said, “Well, I’m not giving it back now.”

  “Really? Great! See you!” And then the boy ran off. A short time later, whoops of joy could be heard behind a distant bower.

  D showed up, too. If he were human, he’d have been wheezing and panting, but his now-pale complexion only lent his handsome features more intensity, making even the jaded mercenaries freeze in their tracks. Later, a particularly rough customer named Gil said, “Man, the enemy could just kill me now, and I wouldn’t give a damn!”

  In one sense, no one could’ve been less suited to lead than D. Even looking at him from afar, men and women, young and old, just seemed to melt. When he got closer, young ladies, and those who were far from young, either grew dreamy or fainted. This being the case, he could’ve relied on his voice alone, but even that brought nothing but remarks about how refined and pleasing and utterly irresistible it was. Finally, Lyra was forced to tell the Hunter, “For the love of God, would you just get out of here?”

  Saying nothing, D was just about to turn around when his left hand shot out.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Lyra cried, one hand pressed to her rear and the other ready to slap him—but she stopped herself. It wouldn’t do to look at D’s face. “You’ve got strange tastes, don’t you?” she remarked, and then she saw that everyone else was looking. “The next time you do that, I’ll kill you.” But her threat lacked conviction.

  “Sorry about that,” D apologized in a gruff voice. “But you’re really my type, and—gaaaaaah!

  “Sorry,” D said, this time apologizing in his own voice, his left hand clenched tightly as he walked away.

  However, a short time later, a hoarse voice from nowhere in particular groused in a sarcastic tone, “Just goes to show you, they’re all a bunch of lazy bums.”

  —

  III

  —

  That night, once Rust and Lyra had left the sheriff’s office and D had returned to his room, there was a knock at the office door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Gil. Josh and Palau are with me,” replied a voice so loud and discordant it could’ve sent women and children into convulsions.

  “What do you want?”

  “Well, I was wondering if you’d like to have a drink.”

  “Sounds pretty suspicious,” the hoarse voice whispered. “Send ’em on their way. There’s no telling what they’ve got planned. They’re drifters who work for a price, after all.”

  “So am I,” D said, and when he opened the door, it was hard to tell if it wasn’t just to spite the hoarse voice.

  The three enormous men were like a wall, but they did indeed have a bottle of whiskey with them. D led them back to his room.

  Gil, who looked to weigh about four hundred fifty pounds, asked, “What’s wrong with using the office?”

  “That’s for work.”

  “Okay, I get you,” the man agreed readily enough.

  Palau, who had a black patch over his right eye, surveyed the room before remarking, “Looks like we don’t have enough chairs.”

  Though there was a sofa and armchairs, they were built for normal-sized people, and a sofa intended to seat two would be filled by Gil alone. Only D could sit in the armchairs.

  “This will be fine,” D said, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  “Wow,” said Josh, a ridiculously large, recoilless antitank rifle slung across his back and an expression of surprise on his face as he followed suit. “Now here’s a deputy who knows how to act.”

  “First, a drink,” Gil said, taking the cup that hung from his combat vest and setting it down in front of D, then filling it with an amber-colored liquid. An eye-popping stench filled the room. It definitely wasn’t the smell of alcohol. “This whiskey’s got a wild cobra head in it. Pretty cool, eh?” Though his tone was amiable, his eyes weren’t laughing.

  Starting with a drink—it was something of an anachronism, but a good way to size somebody up.

  Without a word, D took the cup and drained it in one gulp.

  “You might . . .” Josh began to say. From the way he started to reach out to stop the Hunter, it was apparent he was the most conscientious of the three, but he was too late.

  Whiskey with a wild cobra head in it was used to anesthetize monsters and supernatural creatures in the five-ton-and-over class—things like armored serpents or temblor rhinos. It was more of a drug than a drink, and almost more of a poison than a drug, and even the most seasoned alcoholic would be knocked on his ass with the first sip. Together, the three of these guys might be able to drain the cup in two or three minutes. Palau’s face seemed to say, This clown doesn’t have any idea what he’s doing!

  Saying nothing, D set down the empty cup. There was no sign of the kind of reaction the trio expected. The Hunter’s complexion didn’t change a bit. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

  After exchanging glances, it was Josh that spoke for them, asking, “How was it?” He looked apprehensive.

  “That’s no way to handle this,” Gil said, casually taking hold of the grip of an enormous revolver, while the other two reached for blades tucked through their belts. Though Josh’s was just an oversized knife, Palau’s was a machete that could lop the head off a steer.

  Sometimes this whiskey gave people nightmarish hallucinations. Apparently pursued by unimaginable visions, they would scream “No!” and “Help!” as they waved around a sword or fired wildly with a gun. It was utter madness. The men thought this was a precursor to such an incident.

  D pushed the cup in front of Gil. “Aren’t you going to have a drink?”

  Over forty years old, with a stubbly beard on his red face, the man grinned and said, “You’re damned straight I am!” Grabbing the bottle, he filled the cup to the brim.

  “Hey!” Josh called out anxiously, and this seemed to be Gil’s signal to drain the cup. As soon as he did, his body lifted a foot off the floor, as if the ground had tossed him up. It was the result of his muscles gone mad. There was a loud thud. It was the sound of Gil’s heart beating. In midair, his massive form doubled over at the waist. Then he fell. There was another thud. His face was crimson, but it wasn’t flushed from the alcohol coursing through his blood. He was bleeding. Blood gushed from every
pore in his face.

  “Hey!”

  “Gil?”

  The other two grabbed hold of his shoulders.

  “Shut your yaps,” the bloodied mercenary replied.

  “Are you okay?”

  “See if you can say, ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.’”

  He told his boisterous colleagues, “Shut up, or else!” Suddenly, he pulled a pair of automatic handguns from the plastic shoulder holsters under either arm and waved them at the other two. Taking his eyes off his now-silenced friends, he asked the Hunter, “How was that?”

  “I’d call it a draw,” said D.

  “All right. Now we can get down to brass tacks!” Gil said, cup still in hand. “The truth is, during the day I came and proposed this to the good sheriff, and he kicked my ass right out, but . . .” Gil went on to suggest that they go out and take on the Black Death gang. “All the preparations to fight them off have been made here already. But it seems a waste to just twiddle our thumbs waiting for them to get here. Let’s take the fight to them, instead of just fighting them off. What do you think?”

  “They’ve got, at most, sixty men,” one of the others chimed in. “There’s a pseudo Noble in the mix, but for the regular ones, the three of us could kill half of ’em if we had you on our side. It won’t take long at all. Hit ’em while they’re sleeping, take out as many as we can, then fall back. We’re talking a surgical strike here. They’d never expect us to come out and hit ’em while they’re still thirty miles out. It can’t fail!”

  Three pairs of eyes bored into D. They weren’t thinking about the village. There was only one thing running through all three heads—winning in battle. And in that regard, they were true professionals.

  “When do we go?”

  D’s reply brought cheers from his visitors. The gorgeous dhampir was an integral part of their plan.

  “Tonight, right away,” Gil replied, licking his chops. “Our cyborg horse could do the thirty miles each way in about two hours. Add in another hour for the wet work, and we’ll be back here in three hours, having ourselves another drink. We’re all set to go. As soon as you’re ready, meet us out at the north gate.”

  —

  The sound of a cyborg horse’s hooves grew louder and closer. It was by the north gate. The three large figures standing beside their horses turned in that direction.

  “Did he come?”

  “Yeah, it’s D.”

  “Must be nice to see so well at night,” one of them growled in a low tone. If that tone were used in normal conversation, it would’ve seemed like he was spoiling for a fight.

  Tonight was their turn guarding the gate. In another thirty minutes the next shift would arrive. It was for that reason they’d chosen to go out through the main gate instead of just sneaking out through the back gate to the south.

  The hoof beats stopped. A handsome visage appeared, like another moon in the darkness.

  “Okay, let’s move out!” Gil said, reaching up for the pommel of his saddle.

  “Hold it,” said a voice, but it wasn’t D’s. It came from behind a flower-covered trellis to one side of the gates. Two new figures now stood before the trio.

  “D, you dirty—”

  “Sorry, boys, but he’s working for me,” Sheriff Rust said, scratching at the back of his head. After hearing about Gil’s plan, he’d set out on foot to head them off.

  “You stinkin’ traitor!” Josh shouted.

  “Simmer down,” Lyra told him.

  D was on the back of his horse, completely unfazed, not moving a muscle, his face devoid of emotion. He seemed like a gorgeous god of fate in heaven above, coldly staring down at arguing dolts.

  “Stop all this foolishness,” Rust said. “Right now, every fighting man we can get is worth more than all the Nobles’ gems. I can’t have you three getting yourselves killed. No ‘surgical strikes.’”

  “You told him all about that, you bastard!” Gil said, his entire face swollen and vermilion.

  “I’m working for him,” D said in his own voice.

  The three mercenaries groaned, the sound of a curse that couldn’t be put into words.

  “Swear to me you won’t try anything like this on your own again. If not, you’ll all be dismissed without pay,” Rust told them dis-passionately.

  “Hey, we were just—” Gil began to protest futilely.

  “Do you swear it, or don’t you?”

  The matter was settled quickly enough.

  “Okay,” Gil said, shrugging his shoulders. There was nothing a mercenary feared more than missing a payday. It was stipulated in their contract that payment could be stopped at any point if they didn’t follow the sheriff’s orders. “There was nothing in our agreement about any fines.”

  “Good thing, eh?” said Rust.

  Giving Lyra a wink, Gil said, “Be seeing you, sweetheart.” Raising one arm, he got up on his horse.

  All three of the men started to ride back toward town.

  “Hold up,” Rust called to them.

  Halting his steed, Palau twisted around with a look on his face that asked, What is it now?

  “Where do you think you’re going?” asked the sheriff.

  “Where? Back into town, I guess. Later on, we’re gonna pound that freaking Hunter into a pulp.”

  “If you wanna pound someone into a pulp, do it out there,” Rust said, pointing toward the gates.

  “What?”

  “As sheriff, I’d like to propose a certain plan. Basically, it’s a lightning strike at the Black Death gang’s camp thirty miles south of here to deal some damage to their equipment and personnel.”

  Gil and Josh turned and gaped in amazement. Palau’s jaw dropped.

  “Our cyborg horses could make the trip there and back in less than two hours. Figuring in the time for the actual assault, we could be back in the village drinking wild cobra whiskey in three hours.”

  Baring his teeth, Gil started to say, “Hey, that’s what I—” Apparently he couldn’t help himself.

  “Yeah, D told me. I was surprised how close our ideas were,” the sheriff said smugly.

  “Hold on, there—that was my idea!”

  “In that case, you shouldn’t have any complaints about it.”

  “What’s the problem, then?” Gil shouted. Though he was desperately trying to restrain himself, he started cracking his knuckles. It was his instinctive way of demonstrating his resolve. At his enormous size, he definitely got the point across.

  “The problem’s whether it can actually be done or not,” Rust replied flatly. “I think it can.”

  “You’re damned straight it can. The one and only Gil Mandalay came up with that idea!”

  “I’m surprised we both came up with exactly the same thing—so, should we give it a shot?”

  Josh and Palau’s expressions changed.

  Grinning, Rust said, “Then you’ll have to try out my idea. Too bad I won’t be there to see it happen, though.”

  Gil was still spoiling for a fight, his lips pursed, but the other two men became rather amiable.

  “You mean we can go ahead?” asked Josh.

  “Yes, you guys and D. I couldn’t have picked anyone better for the job.”

  “You didn’t come up with that plan at all, did you?” Gil barked, jabbing a finger as thick as a baby’s arm at the end of Rust’s nose.

  “It doesn’t matter who came up with it. This is how it’s going to be. Get yourselves back here tonight. That’s an order.”

  “You dirty—”

  If Lyra hadn’t stepped between them, Gil probably would’ve lunged at the lawman.

  Seeing how he grit his teeth and restrained himself, a hoarse voice jeered, “My, aren’t you the feminist.”

  “I don’t wanna hear any funny voices outta you, you damned traitor! Okay, Sheriff, we’re gonna go out there and stir things up. But the leader’s gotta be—”

  “Me,” D said, naturally.

  DEATHS HAND IN H
AND

  chapter 4

  I

  —

  A thousand yards shy of their target, the four men dismounted.

  They’d heard the Black Death had scouts with keen hearing and the ability to see well in the dark. From experience, they knew they couldn’t go any closer without being detected. Though it was D who ordered them to dismount, no one voiced any complaints.

  A light danced in the distant darkness, most likely a fire at the outlaws’ encampment.

  “The enemy probably has scouts out,” Palau said as he looked all around. The hair that covered half his face glowed with the strange green light from his electronic eye.

  “We’re counting on that peeper of yours. Come through for us, big guy,” Gil said, giving him a slap on the back. Since they were both huge, the other man didn’t even budge, though someone D’s size might’ve been sent flying.

  “Well, I can see a structure. A farmhouse?” Palau ventured.

  “That wasn’t on the map,” said Josh, cocking his head to one side.

  “Let’s move.”

  With this signal from D, they started off on foot, leading their horses behind them. After they’d advanced about five hundred yards, they saw a couple of riders to their right who were apparently on watch, but the four men slipped by them without the outlaws noticing, reaching a spot where they could make out the rest of the hostiles around the campfire.

  “We’ve gotta find where the enemy’s got their weapons stashed,” Gil said, lowering his electronic binoculars and turning to Palau.

  “Leave it to me.”

  Taking off his backpack, Palau pulled a remote control and an odd-looking bundle out of it. When the remote was switched on, the bundle immediately transformed into an airplane with a three-foot wingspan. He apparently carried it around all folded up.

  “I bought this little reconnaissance plane off a traveling arms merchant,” Palau said with delight as he fitted a hemispherical piece containing a lens—apparently a camera of some sort—into the metallic frame of the plane. “All set. Now, whatever this baby sees will go right into my eye. Stand back, guys.”

  He worked the levers on the remote with one hand, and the plane glided off into the darkness without a sound.