Path of the Tiger, стр. 435

‘Hrothgar, Joao. Greetings.’

Out of the shadows came Kimiko in her samurai armour, walking with a confident stride. In her hands she was carrying a bow and her katana – part of the costume, yes, but also genuine items and deadly weapons. And now that she had exited the Halloween party, in addition to her samurai weapons a couple of firearms were strapped to her waist and thighs.

Joao could not contain his lust as he stared at her, his eyes locked on the seductive sway of her hips and the shifting of her breasts beneath her armour with each step she took. His eyes roamed over her body, unabashedly drinking in every curve and feminine subtlety, and his men murmured amongst themselves as they too cast blatantly lascivious stares in her direction. Kimiko, however, fired a glance at them that was as cold and sharp as the steel edge of her three-hundred-year-old sword.

‘Keep your dogs on their leashes, Joao,’ she snarled, ‘and I’ll allow them to keep their heads attached to their torsos.’

Hrothgar laughed loudly.

‘Welcome, Snow Leopard, the great samurai!’ he chuckled, his sonorous voice booming through the blood-drenched conference room. ‘Such a bold attitude! But don’t you worry, none of these fine fellows will be laying a finger on you, not under my watch.’

‘Dey m’ boys,’ Joao added, ‘an’ dey listen t’ whatever I tell ‘em.’

‘I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,’ Kimiko replied coldly, pushing through the throng of gangsters. As she entered the room, she could not help but pause and gasp at the extent of the carnage.

‘You’ve done it,’ she murmured, her voice hushed with awe. ‘You’ve actually done it. You’ve killed half of the Huntsmen Board of Directors. These men and women were almost untouchable; they were like gods. Yet now in one fell swoop you’ve done what the Rebels have not been able to do for centuries. Not since the fall of the Eastern Council has there been such an enormous shift in the tide of the Great War.’

Hrothgar bared his bright, too-perfect teeth in a proud grin.

‘I’ll admit, Kimiko, that Sigurd, Joao and I planned this whole thing, but without your help we would not have been able to fully execute it. For that we are exceptionally grateful.’

Kimiko’s eyes remained cold, and the corners of her mouth were turned down in a half-snarl; she could barely contain her disgust.

‘I neither need or want your thanks, slaver. In fact, the less I have to do with you and your scumbag associates the better. You know what goal I’m working toward, and it’s terribly unfortunate that I’ve had to betray my friends in the pursuit of this, but the fact is, they’re fighting for something that I cannot align myself with any longer. They’re fighting for a dream … but that’s all it will ever be. The vision they have in mind for the future of humanity, of this planet, of everything … it simply cannot work. It’s a fantasy, it’s bullshit, and this has been made clear to me, especially in light of the way the world has been going these last few decades. Their hopes, and the teachings of the Council Masters, I now understand to be nothing more than a pipe dream, a vision that cannot possibly exist in this world. I’ve had to swallow an exceptionally bitter pill and accept reality. And that is what has brought me here, to this horrid place.’

‘The Eastern Council were great men and women,’ Hrothgar said, and, surprisingly, a tone of genuine admiration and respect was apparent in his voice. ‘And perhaps if Sigurd and myself had not allied with the Huntsmen to destroy them, things may have turned out differently for the world and for mortals. We may have joined forces, the Eastern Council and our organisation, and thereby destroyed the Huntsmen forever.’

‘But you didn’t,’ Kimiko growled. ‘You chose self-interest over the greater good – as you and Sigurd and all under your banner always have. And I have no doubt in my mind that what you’re doing now is similarly motivated, but in this case your self-interest and my own motivations overlap.’

‘The Council Masters were entirely to blame for their own downfall,’ Hrothgar countered harshly, his eyeshadow-darkened eyes flickering with defensive anger. ‘We offered them our swords and guns, we offered them our partnership as allies to fight against the Huntsmen. But they rejected our aid. Never forget that, Kimiko. Never. Because that’s a fact that your Rebel friends, who hate us so, always conveniently forget.’

Kimiko remained unmoved.

‘They rejected your help because they knew why you were offering your help. They knew that you and your thugs were only out for personal gain, that you only wanted the Huntsmen gone because they were a personal threat to your own goals of empire building and consolidation of power. You and your ilk have always been driven by greed and personal ambition, and those factors alone, and that sort of motivation is entirely antithetical to what drove the Council Masters. What has driven you, through the centuries, has absolutely, fully one hundred percent always been at odds with what drove them, and you know it.’

‘You’re one to talk of honour and the greater good,’ Sigurd scoffed with a haughty sneer, ‘after what you’ve just done.’

‘I need William’s knowledge as much as you do, although for an entirely different reason … as yes, it is the big picture, the long-term future, the greater good. And whether of his own volition, or under the dream-muddied, head-in-the-clouds leadership of the Rebels, that’s never going to happen, simply because they’re unwilling and unable to comprehend cold, hard reality. They’re still idealists to the core, and this dreamy idealism, which is grounded in a hopeless, baseless fantasy of what mortalscould be, rather than the uncomfortable reality of how mortals actually think and act. It’s simply incompatible with how I have come to see the nature of humankind, and the direction in which that cancerous nature is taking