Free Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane by Hideyuki Kikuchi

too.”
    Clay bared his teeth in a pearly smile. “That’s fine by me. I had me a good upbringing,
     and I ain’t too tough. See, I hate to go anywhere alone. But this other guy says he
     don’t wanna go back, so I don’t reckon there’s any way to satisfy everybody here.”
    The men didn’t even exchange glances with one another.
    “Is that a fact?” the leader said. “In that case . . .”
    Seeing the middle-aged man’s hand go for the firearm in his belt, Clay swung his right
     hand up from below. The broadsword he’d hidden up his sleeve became a flash of white
     that pierced the man’s throat. The man’s hand was on his gun; Clay saw the muzzle
     of it turn toward his chest. It disgorged flame. The breechblock moved back, and a
     sleek empty cartridge flew from the weapon.
    Taking a hit from an explosive round that could’ve easily blown a human head apart
     on impact, Clay just smiled. The inner lining of his shirt came from the bark of the
     armor oak, which was harder than rock. His right hand flowed across the strings of
     his harp releasing a tremendous sound.
    The man at the fore of the group became an ash-gray statue, and an instant later the
     same fate befell his horse. They both fell to the ground in a dusty cloud. There would
     be no further attacks; the three others behind the leader had turned to dust, too.
     Perhaps the only reason one rider and mount at the very back still retained their
     original shape in this sandy form was because they were at the very end of the audibility
     range for the sound.
    “Maybe they don’t die, but they seem to turn to dust just fine,” Clay said as he raised
     his right hand and hacked off one of the motionless horse’s legs. Not bothering to
     watch the new pile of sand the collapsing figures created, Clay looked up. He had
     no idea where they’d been hiding, but another horse and rider now galloped away about
     fifty yards from him. “Son of a bitch!” he moaned, cursing his own carelessness.
    Taking his harp in hand, he turned it toward the rider fleeing over a rise. The device
     generated ultrasonic waves that destroyed the molecular structure of any material,
     and as if to compensate for the cruelty of those sound waves, the vibrating strings
     also created splendid melodies.
    However, Clay didn’t have a chance to unleash another deadly attack with his fingers.
     The one surviving attacker suddenly saw a figure standing in the road before him.
     His horse didn’t stop. The moment it looked like the beast’s iron-shod hooves were
     going to trample him, the shadowy figure leapt up. Even after D landed, with his long
     coat spread out around him, the horse and rider kept right on running. But when the
     longsword clicked smoothly back into the sheath on D’s back, the rider’s head finally
     left his shoulders and rolled across the road.
    “Glad you could pitch in at the end there,” Clay said as sarcastically as possible
     to D, who walked toward him without even glancing at the results his own skill had
     wrought. “Where the hell did you run off to after you found out the girl was missing?
     Weren’t trying to get a preview of my skills, were you? No, you wouldn’t do any petty
     shit like that. Went to check out the neighborhood, right? You’re a cold customer.
     Didn’t you give any thought to what’d happen if I found the girl? And you left me
     to handle all of them, too. If I got killed, the old bag and girl would’ve both been
     goners, you know.”
    “You didn’t get killed,” was all D said.
    Clay had no reply, and that was the end of it. But three pairs of frightened eyes
     greeted the approaching beauty in black.

THE LIVING DESERT
CHAPTER 3
    .
    I
    .
    The man said his name was Lance and that he was part of a farm group improving crops
     in the northern Frontier. The group had developed a new strain that would bear fruit
     even in cold areas without water; they’d selected this desert to stage their experiments
     some