A hundred and fifty feet separated them, a hundred and twenty, a hundred—
“Izayoi!” shouted the boy.
The wooden sword traced an arc in front of his eyes. “Like you said, I’ve kicked things up a notch recently. Now for a little demonstration of Izayoi Kenpo.”
He brought down Asura in a vertical slash. A moment later, they disappeared beneath the crashing waves of snow. Except—the waves split in two. Asura divided everything it touched, sending the mountains of snow flying to the left and right.
Leaving the two of them untouched, the avalanche swept on down the mountain. When the primordial peace and quiet finally returned, the dome of snow over their heads also fell apart in equal pieces, revealing a sliver of the blue sky above.
Tarta looked at him with admiring eyes. “Your kenpo is something else, Izayoi.”
“Yeah, but stay close for the time being. The guys who caused that avalanche are in for a little payback.”
Kyoya concentrated strength into his legs. Manipulating the skis, he stepped out of the snow, and reflexively pulled back his head as a flash of black lightning skimmed past the tip of his nose and buried itself in the snow.
“What the—”
It was an arrow, the same as had been fired at the place where an avalanche could be most easily triggered. Kyoya directed his gaze to the top of the slope, from where the arrow had been fired.
And where there were now two of his foes. The lance-bearing knight in blue armor — Valen. The six-armed green knight bristling with bows and arrows—Mathias. Astride armored horses, they stared down silently at him.
Kyoya said softly, “I thought you weren’t big on the cowardly attacks.” Too much shouting could cause another avalanche. And these guys could tell what he was saying in any case. “Yeah, come to think of it, your big-talking boss isn’t around, is he? When the cat’s away, I guess. No honor among thieves.”
Kyoya’s voice dripped with sarcasm. Livid with anger, the two started down the snowy slopes. That alone didn’t start an avalanche, because of the anti-gravity or magnetic propulsion mechanisms housed in the horses or the armor.
“Vian is loath to leave our master’s side,” said the bow-bearing Mathias. “So we came instead. Think of that arrow just now as a test. Were it enough to kill you, it would have been better not going into battle in the first place.”
“You’re sounding awfully high and mighty for a two-bit rent-a-cop,” Kyoya spat out. He jostled Tarta on his left shoulder. “The kid part of your test too?”
The two knights exchanged glances. “Put him down,” Mathias said.
“Naw. No guarantee you’re not going to turn around and use him as a shield.”
“You plan to face off against us with him clinging to you like that?”
“Spare me,” Kyoya shot back. “While you’ve been sitting around polishing your armor, I’ve been working my fingers to the bone. Speaking of which, now would be a good time for the two of you to take a hike.”
The knights looked at each other again. Their shoulders shook with laughter. Valen raised the lance. “Then you can die with the child in your arms. I’ll skewer the two of you at once.”
“Showing your true colors, eh? So much for all that chivalry crap. I don’t know what you’re hiding beneath that armor, but after twenty-five hundred years, apparently the only thing that gets your rocks off is killing people. Don’t you find yourselves rather pathetic?”
Kyoya’s provocations had an effect, for Valen up and charged. The horse’s hooves pounded against the snow. The snow didn’t fly up and scatter. Because he was sailing through the air.
“Haa!”
With a fighting shout, Kyoya turned his back to the enemy and started down the steepening mountainside. Speed wasn’t the problem. Valen’s was nothing compared to the avalanche. But the spear flew at Kyoya’s back with the velocity of a rifle shot.
As if anticipating the course ahead of time, it turned down the slope. Kyoya raised Asura in one hand. A pretty chime of wood against metal indicated the collision. The spear jumped into the air.
The two of them crisscrossed and separated. As Valen brought up the horse and started after Kyoya again, he couldn’t ignore the strange sensation in his own body.
His right half was growing numb, the result of the blow from the kid. When they had fought in Babylon Palace in Shinjuku, he’d been forewarned of the kid’s terrific talents and after the fact had no reason to doubt them. But he’d experienced nothing like this strange damage.
Despite carrying on in his carefree manner, the kid must have engaged in rigorous, gut-wrenching training on this mountain. Checking his fear and wonder, Valen gripped the spear with his numb fingers and yanked on the reins. He descended the slope at a speed close to free fall.
“Doesn’t seem to have learned his lesson,” Kyoya muttered to himself. But that was all beside the point. The guy could do nothing but fight. Before coming here, he’d spent some time in the Shinjuku ward library going through the history books.
Perhaps because the colors of their armor—like they were scooped out of a carton of Neapolitan ice cream—called such attention to themselves, their names popped up in several reference volumes.
In ancient Assyria, three knights of Marduk served as the personal bodyguards to Queen Semiramis. Daring and resolute, it was said that on at least eighty-eight occasions, armed with a long sword, a long lance, and long bow, the three had taken on and destroyed entire army divisions fielded by their enemies.
The question was how they’d come to be reincarnated.
The memory restoration machines at the Japan section of the World Federation Government had informed Sayaka that she’d been Semiramis in a previous life, which would mean by implication that her husband was Nebuchadnezzar II. Except that how he had come back to life, and to what ends, remained up in the air.
According to the ancient manuscripts, in the vicinity of Assyria and Babylon at the time, there blossomed an advanced scientific civilization that developed methods of artificial hibernation and technologies for increasing human longevity.
The air shook. Kyoya swung his sword without turning around, relying on his senses alone. The five arrows flying at him scattered on the ground. With a sweep of Asura, one struck the other and it collided with the other, all obstructing the trajectories of the other.
Observing this may have rekindled in Mathias, closing behind him, a memory from long ago—the second knight—the skills of Semulia.
He shot six more arrows. Two burrowed beneath the snow, two veered to the right and left, the final two pounced upon him from the air. This was the secret technique called “Mathias’s Tiger,” from which no enemy could escape.
This time, he saw his target—the wooden sword—dip into the field of snow. The whole world went white. Snow erupted all around him, totally obscuring his surroundings. A second late in bringing the horse to a halt, he plunged through the wall.
“Returning the package to sender!” called out Kyoya.
The six arrows he’d shot came flying back at him, thudding into his body in six places. Together with the horse, he sprawled across the snowy ground.