Scenes from an Unholy War (9 page)

“Aaaaaah! Why, D?”

Arching backward as if he were going to keel over, Toma shook. Deep red blood flew from all over his body. He pressed his right hand against the stump of his left arm.

“Why, D? Why didn’t you kill me? Why’d you take off my arm and let me stab you through the heart?”

D staggered backward. Toma’s blade jabbed through his chest at an angle.

What had happened was obvious. During their deadly battle, the residual effects of the venom and the sunlight syndrome had struck him.

“This is no good, D. No good at all. You were supposed to slay me. You were the Hunter who could do it. If you can’t, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .” Bending back so far he faced the sky, Toma howled. “I’ll become a Noble!”

D fell. Without looking, Toma reached over with his right hand and pulled the sword from D’s heart.

“There’s no one now. No one at all.” A voice that sounded like a sob traveled through the brush. It conveyed nothing short of heartbreak. A short time earlier, while working to save the burning sheriff in the watchtower in Geneve, Lyra’s expression had showed exactly the same emotion. 

chapter 5

I

—

J
ust after daybreak, Old Man Roskingpan was questioned and a search was performed on the house belonging to Domon of the
Black Death gang—also known as the farmer Stejiban Toic. The reason for the search of Toic’s house was obvious enough; the old man was brought in because he was suspected of complicity with him. After all, Toic—a liquid human—had concealed himself in the bottle of champagne the old man brought.

“There’s no way I could stuff a grown man into a champagne bottle in the first place!” the drunk protested, which sounded reasonable enough. However, liquid humans could make tens of thousands of their particles fuse into one while still retaining their fluid state. Everyone knew that.

The old man, of course, maintained that he didn’t know anything about the incident. Though he could recall being in the saloon, having a few drinks, and overhearing that Rust and Lyra were in the watchtower, he said he didn’t remember going out there or leaving the bottle behind. About five minutes had elapsed from the moment when the old man called out to Rust to when the sheriff reached the bottom of the tower. After setting down the bottle, the old man had left immediately, and if Toic had opened the bottle, poured out the contents, and concealed himself in it, there was a very good chance that he’d been tailing the old man. However, Toic hadn’t been at the saloon, and the idea to go out to the tower—according to the old man’s account—had come from hearing in the saloon that Rust and Lyra were there. The chances that Toic just happened to spot the old man and then follow him were extremely remote. It was quite conceivable that this had been planned in advance.

Rust was handling the questioning, which had bogged down on that last point, when Lyra returned from Domon/Toic’s house.

“It seems Toic left his house last night, saying he was going to go have a drink. The time was—”

It was the same time Old Man Roskingpan was hanging around town; it wouldn’t have been at all strange if Toic had encountered the man before he went to the saloon. Lyra’s investigation had been thorough. On her way back from Toic’s house, she’d stopped by the old man’s place—which was less than two hundred yards from the farmer’s—and learned that the old man had passed another villager before going to the saloon.

“When this guy asked him, ‘Heading off to work now?’ the old man replied, ‘Yeah, I’m going off to give a little
encouragement
to the sheriff and his sweetheart,’ and he waved the bottle at him.”

Judging from the timing, it was possible that Toic might have been out spying when he was fortunate enough to overhear this exchange, only then formulating his plan to hide in the bottle. In other words, the old man had intended to give the bottle to Rust and Lyra from the very start.

“For the time being, we’ll let him go,” Rust decided. “The problem is, the possibility he was involved in the scheme remains. Have somebody keep an eye on him.”

“That works for me.”

Exhaling liquor-tinged breath and cursing the sheriff for a two-bit lawman, the old man was led out, and Rust moved on to his next problem.

Shortly before noon, he paid a visit to the mayor at the town hall. Two hours later, a mother and child were sent out through the main gates to the village. It was Toic’s wife and his son, who’d just turned three. The mayor of a village had the ultimate right to decide what was done with the family of a villager who’d broken the law. Discussing this was the purpose of Rust’s visit. The woman had met Toic four years earlier, when he first came to the village, and they’d had a child together. From that day until this, his wife had gone without knowing who or what he really was.

In Frontier villages, it wasn’t rare for people to do what Toic had done. Therefore, communities made their own distinct sets of laws intended to root out such people. In the case of Geneve, there was a strict clause that stated:
Anyone married to someone from outside the village who has any reason to suspect their spouse of behavior unbecoming a villager, no matter how slight, should contact the sheriff.
Toic’s wife was considered to have breached this rule. The mayor, the deputy mayor with his bandaged face, Rust, and Lyra were present as judgment was passed, but Toic’s wife refused to accept their decision, protesting that she hadn’t known anything.

“There’s no way that a person capable of turning into a liquid wouldn’t betray that with some sort of abnormal behavior. Even if the woman’s denials are to be believed, having lived with him without noticing it makes her an accomplice, and her actions are still considered suspect.”

That was the mayor’s decision. Though the deputy mayor tried to suggest that perhaps he was being a bit too hard on her, it was his habit to find fault with every little thing the mayor did, and as always his objection was ignored. Their deliberation proceeded smoothly, and it was decided that they would
generously
allow the mother and her son to go to a neighboring village while it was still light out. Toward that end, her neighbors loaded all her furniture and possessions into a wagon.

As the woman wept and pleaded with them to at least let her child remain, she heard the sound of the gates closing behind her. But the two of them remained. Though the mayor himself stood atop the gate, entreating her to hurry up and get going, the woman asserted that she wouldn’t leave the village. Even with no one answering her, the woman never stopped crying out mournfully.

The villagers were in the middle of their combat training, and they threw themselves into it more than usual. During martial-arts practice, the villagers fought like mad, as if trying to ignore something, and fighting against them, the professional mercenaries couldn’t help but get serious as well. One person after another got hurt, and it was decided to cancel practice while they still had some strength left for the actual fighting. The villagers guarding the gate, the farmers diligently tending their fields, the workers busy in the town hall, the mayor and the deputy mayor, and Rust and Lyra all heard the woman’s voice. It was almost enough to shake their callous rules. However, not one of them suggested letting her back in. The woman from next door who’d nursed Toic’s son when his mother was bedridden and who’d brought him to the doctor when he had a fever covered her ears, but even she didn’t ask that they not be driven away. For these people knew from the day they were born what it meant to live on the Frontier.

The sun went down. Everyone expected that the mother and child would leave.

The cries beyond the gates became curses. Taking her son in her arms, the woman shouted, “Look at this boy! What has he done?” There were no tears in her eyes. She’d long since cried herself dry. Not understanding what was happening, her doleful-looking child began to cry.

All the men just inside the gates had to cover their ears and grit their teeth. Some even burst into tears.

The village and the world were about to fade into blue. Finally, she had to give up. Staying there any longer would just make them prey for monsters. Laying curses on the lot of them, the woman took up the reins of her wagon. Wheels creaking, they rolled into the darkness.

“Hurry!” someone muttered.

Even after the wagon had vanished from sight, the cries of the child still trailed along after it. But his whimpering stopped abruptly.

All the villagers knew in an instant what that meant. Several people ran to the gates, climbing up them, but even before they’d finished, a guard in the watchtower shouted, “It’s Gil’s guys!”

The emergency siren began to wail across the sky above the village.

Just prior to this, Rust had suddenly noticed he was alone in the sheriff’s office. Villagers had been coming to ask about their stations in battle or how rations were going to be distributed, but since the mother and child had been exiled there’d been no sign of anyone. Rust wasn’t to blame, and everyone knew it. So no one gave him a hard time about it. But aside from the mayor, the sheriff was the other face of authority. At times like this, people always needed someone to be a sacrifice—the one they looked away from.

A figure in blue came in. It was Sheryl, carrying bread and a hunk of cheese.

“What’s all this?” Rust asked her.

“Daddy—er, the mayor—told me to bring you this. It’s the cheese they make out at Stephan’s place. It’s the best in the whole village.”

“Well, I’ll be. Give your father, the mayor, my regards.” At this point Rust noticed she was gazing intently at him, and so he asked, “What are you looking at?”

“Oh, nothing. Would it be okay if I had a seat?”

“Sure.”

Sitting down across the table from him, Sheryl set down her basket and said, “There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you for some time now.”

This was the thing Rust feared the most. Nevertheless, he asked in return, “What’s that?”

“When your term’s up here, where will you go?”

“You mean, do I have somewhere special I’m headed?”

“Yes,” said Sheryl, never taking her eyes off his face.

Wishing he could escape her gaze, the lawman replied, “There never has been, and there never will be.”

Sheryl looked down at the floor. “Good,” she said. She seemed to savor the word. “In that case, you could stay here, couldn’t you?”

A terrible calm flowed into Rust’s heart. He’d earned the right to just soak in it. He was just about to tell her that was right, but then his ears caught something—the mother shouting out beyond the gates.

“No,” Rust said, shaking his head. That’d been a close call. “I don’t wanna seem rude, but I’m not like you people. I can’t live here like the rest of you do.”

“Why not?” Sheryl asked, leaning forward.

The intensity of this girl, who usually spent her days by her father’s side with eyes lowered, telling him his schedule or scribbling notes, left Rust more than a little surprised. Her earnest gaze was trained on him. Rust looked away, as if to escape it.

“A person’s path in life is set when they’re born. It’s a legacy from their fathers. Step off that path, and there’s no getting back on it again. The next thing you know, you’re lost in a fog. Out there, there’s a cliff called ruin, but you never know it till you’ve fallen from it.”

“And you—you’ve fallen, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, just once. And ever since, I’ve been lost.”

Closing her eyes, Sheryl said, “Maybe your path led you here. Isn’t that conceivable?”

Rust was going to say no, but instead he told her, “Thank you.”

“Wouldn’t you be good enough to give me a straight answer? The mayor wants to know, too.”

“Someday I will.”

“When might that be?”

“Don’t look at me that way. I don’t know what to do when you look at me like that.”

“I just want an answer.”

“You’ll get it when this business is settled. Judging from the size of last night’s explosion, the enemy will be delayed a few days in getting here. But that’s all. They’ll be coming for sure. Since D, Gil, and the others haven’t come back, you could say we’ve lost more of our strength than the enemy has. Still, the villagers and I have to fight them—and you do, too.”

Sheryl gazed at him softly. She didn’t see the face of a sheriff gripped by anxiety. It was the face of a hard man who seemed chiseled from stone. “You’re right. I got a little ahead of myself. I’m sorry.”

As Sheryl was leaving, Lyra came back in. Following her out the door with her eyes, the warrior woman told Rust, “Sorry, but I could hear you from outside. That girl could be in some danger—the danger being that she likes you.”

The sheriff said nothing.

“If I were your enemy and I saw how tough you were, I’d use someone important to you to get some leverage.”

“You’re right.”

“What do you intend to do?” Lyra asked bluntly.

“It’s obvious. Once this job is finished, we move on. My path is already set.”

Lyra nodded. “I’ll be the one that puts you down. Don’t worry about that.”

“See that you do.”

The two looked at each other and laughed for the first time in ages.

Just then, the siren that alerted villagers when an emergency had occurred resounded through the night sky.

—

II

—

When the pair dashed outside, a guard from the main gates who’d raced there on horseback informed them that Josh and Palau had been spotted. He also said Gil and D weren’t with them.

“What could’ve taken them a full day?” Lyra mused, her lovely features becoming those of an intrepid combatant.

It was clear what she wasn’t saying. A party that had gone off to fight a pseudo vampire had returned a day later under darkness of night. It would be odd to think that they were still okay.

Hopping onto the horse tethered in front of his office and speeding to the main gates, Rust inquired, “What about the woman and her child?”

“Apparently she gave in, since she left just five minutes ago.”

“Bad luck. She’ll run right into them, won’t she?”

“That’s right,” the guard replied as they scrambled up to the top of the gates.

The highway had been twisted to run not fifty yards from the gates, and a road thirty feet wide connected it to the village. There were three lights atop the gates that illuminated the ground forty to fifty feet away. It looked like the pair had just stepped from the darkness into the enormous circle of light. No, not a pair—there were four people. Palau had Toic’s wife in his arms, while Josh held the three-year-old boy.

When the four of them had closed to about thirty feet, Rust put a megaphone to his mouth and ordered, “Hold it right there!”

The villagers and mercenaries lined up to either side of him were already drawing a bead on the hearts of the four with bows and firearms.

Palau and Josh halted. Squinting his eyes as if blinded by the light, Josh said, “This is a fine welcome we get! You must’ve seen the damage we managed to do last night. Is this how you greet your heroes?”

“What have you been doing all this time?”

“My horse got taken out,” Palau said, shrugging his shoulders. “The wilderness is crawling with all kinds of monsters. We had to fight our way through them the whole way back. It wouldn’t kill you folks to show us a tad more kindness.”