“We should have asked if the woodcutter is the curious type.”
“Indeed.”
“He seems to have a dog, but there is no sign of him. Let us go.”
They rode another ten kilometers, whereupon a cabin larger than Beijrot’s peered out from behind a grove of trees on the right.
“Anything?”
“No.”
They repeated the short exchange another three times, once for each time they passed a woodcutter’s house that Michia had spoken of.
When they came within a few kilometers of the edge of the forest, Greylancer pulled up on the reins.
Clear of trees now, approximately two hundred meters ahead in the ochre-colored mesa, there lay what appeared to be a blue metallic object that was clearly not of this world. Its brilliant sheen accentuated the desolation of the treeless wilderness surrounding it.
It resembled a saucer with three horizontal tail planes. A two-seater judging by its ten-by-eight-meter size. The two open bulges on what appeared to be the cockpit corroborated this. The body was split open diagonally from the rear of the cockpit to the tail, such that it was difficult to believe the aircraft had crash-landed safely.
The landing had not put a mark on it. The enemy aircraft was not equipped with an energy shield but was made of a super-dense alloy.
A human shadow stood in front of the cockpit.
Spiked leather vest and wool shirt. The wide-barrel hunting pistol was nicked and well worn, but the hand axe stuck behind his belt was shiny enough to reflect one’s face.
Another larger axe lay at his feet. No doubt this was the woodcutter.
Rather than the tool of his chosen profession, he held a cylindrical tube with a grip resembling that of a handgun.
He stood at a distance of five meters and pointed the cylinder at the aircraft.
A pale blue mass spewed forth from the tube, and in a moment the aircraft, taking on the same hue, became enveloped in a brilliant glow. When the glow subsided, not a trace of the aircraft remained. Scattered about the sandy earth and rocks were silver dust particles, which blew away in a blast of wind.
The woodcutter fell to his knees, clasped his hands in front of his chest, and began to drone some kind of incantation.
“That was a first,” said Greylancer, narrowing his eyes.
“I hear the OSB have no blood running through their veins.” Grosbec tightened his grip on the reins.
“Stay here.” Greylancer spurred his horse forward.
Even as he drew within ten meters of the supplicant figure, the woodcutter was still, seeming not to notice the Noble’s presence.
Climbing off his horse, Greylancer called out, “Beijrot?”
So engrossed was the woodcutter in prayer that he spun around in shock. He stared at the giant with the deep blue cape fluttering in the wind. “Who—are you?” he asked, distorting his bearded face.
“Are you Beijrot?”
“Yeah. But…you wouldn’t be…”
“Greylancer.”
“Oh, your lordship! Yes, I am Beijrot. What are you doing here in these parts?”
“I came with questions, but they have been answered. This dust scattered about you—the remains of the woodcutters and their families, Beijrot?”
“What…was that?” The woodcutter staggered backward. “I came out to investigate the thing that fell out of the sky last night, is all.”
“If you merely came to investigate, why did you disintegrate the aircraft? Which weapon will that arm behind your back reach for? The axe of the woodcutter whose identity you’ve stolen or your blaster? Which would be easier to handle in your present form?” Beijrot continued to inch backward. The sweaty, quaking figure was outwardly one of a simple, mild-mannered woodcutter. “Or perhaps neither. You must know your weapons are ineffective against vampires.” Greylancer brought his left hand up to his ear. The jewel on his ring finger reflected the sun’s rays. “Well now, this is what my retainer tells me you were thinking just now: Damn Nobles! Someday, we’ll wipe out the lot of you!”
“Right you are!” Beijrot jumped right and pointed the cylinder at Greylancer. A glowing blue mass again fired from the tube, and the vampire vanished into thin air. “Yes!” Beijrot howled and wiped the sweat off his brow with his weapon hand. The awful tension drained from him, like paint dissolving in water. “Who said the beings on this planet were immortal? I got him! The son of a bitch is nothing but a speck of dust now!”
Suddenly, the triumphant voice turned to shrieks of pain.
Beijrot grabbed at the silver head of the lance sticking easily a meter out of his solar plexus, but not before he found himself lifted three meters off the ground.
Laughing cruelly as the helpless woodcutter twitched in convulsions was none other than Greylancer.
Had not a blast lethal enough to destroy an atomic nucleus just incinerated him? And where had he been concealing a three-meter lance?
“Answer me one question and I shall put you out of your misery in one blow, you filthy outer-space invader. Where is the other varmint?”
Greylancer gave the lance a cruel shake.
Fresh blood spurted out of Beijrot’s mouth. His shrieks turned into screams.
“Still able to keep this form, are you? Never you mind. You shall suffer a painful death. Pray to your god.”
Greylancer brought down his lance with one swing, splitting the woodcutter’s body down the middle.
Fresh blood pelted the ground first and then the human entrails splattered down atop it.
The transformation occurred a few seconds later.
Split asunder by one fell swing, the two halves began to melt in the sun. The eyeballs, flesh, and bone revealed themselves as shams as they all liquefied into gray mucus and oozed in Greylancer’s direction. It managed to creep about a meter before halting its advance over the yellow earth.
After waiting several seconds to confirm the OSB’s death, Greylancer shook the lance one last time. Every last drop of the gray blood spattered the ground. He lowered his lance and called Grosbec’s name.
3
A voice inside Greylancer’s head answered:
I’ll be there in a moment.
Soon, Grosbec appeared out of the trees on horseback and pointed the horse toward his master.
When his servant was but ten meters away, Greylancer spied a black shadow dropping down from overhead.
“Take cover!” Greylancer yelled, too late—
A bloody mass shot out of Grosbec’s heart, and Grosbec toppled forward off his horse.
A steel arrow. Greylancer glanced down at the arrowhead buried deep in the ground and swung his lance.
There was a beautiful clang of metal as a second and third arrow fell out of the sky.
So he was no ordinary woodcutter, thought Greylancer, and then a bloodied voice crept inside his mind.
My lord, the enemy is a ghost archer.
Grosbec’s thoughts. Greylancer slapped the rear of his cybernetic horse, sending the steed cantering away, and darted toward his loyal companion lying on the ground.
He also sent Grosbec’s mount away and struck down a fourth arrow.
Grosbec’s body was already beginning to disintegrate. His pale skin was sallow and emitting a haze of decay.
He must have been in one of the four houses, disguised as a visitor. I will avenge you in a moment.
To a dying man, perhaps his tone sounded heartless.
The Greater Noble stood up. He hoisted his lance above his head and threw it without taking aim.
The lance vanished, leaving behind a loud buzz. Only the two vampires present understood that it was flying toward the OSB that had loosed the arrow that had pierced Grosbec’s heart.
My lord?
Grosbec’s shock ran through his master’s mind. A black arrow sprouted from the right side of Greylancer’s chest. It had struck him when he threw the lance.
It’s all right. It missed my heart.
Greylancer
wrapped his left hand around the shaft and plucked out the arrow with neither wince nor shudder.
Hurry…you must return…to the village. Iron-tipped arrow…look after the wound…or your insides…will decay.
Will you survive?
That was a question to which Greylancer already knew the answer. Among those serving him, the men with telepathic abilities numbered fewer than five. Grosbec was among the precious few.
Even a telepath with the ability to read and transmit thoughts within a kilometer radius was defenseless against an attack outside of his “earshot.” Greylancer took to one knee next to his irreplaceable servant.
I believe not.
Grosbec’s thoughts sounded oddly clear and lucid in the Noble’s mind.
Where will you go?
Perhaps the Sacred Ancestor was right, my lord. Now that my end is near, I finally understand his words.
Transient guests are we.
Indeed. Even as we’ve attained immortality, I leave you now. I pray you will never come to feel the same way that I do.
With a start, Greylancer looked up and stared off into the distance.
“Between the eyes,” he said aloud. The Noble was capable of sensing the outcome of his lance attack from two thousand meters away.
There, I have avenged your fall. Go now, rest in peace. You need not worry about your wife and boy.
I am grateful…how strangely peaceful…
Greylancer paused for a moment and then stood up.
There were piles of grayish-blue dust packed around Grosbec’s cape and armor. One pile, which poured out from the right sleeve, held the shape of an open hand until the wind blew it away.
Taking a deep breath, Greylancer gathered up Grosbec’s garments and murmured, “OSB—you will pay dearly for his life.”
†
At the outset of war a hundred years prior, both the Nobility and OSB were shocked to discover the powers they had in common.
Whereas the Nobility turned other creatures into one of their own and controlled their wills by feeding upon their blood, the OSB wielded the same influence over humans via the power of metamorphosis. But though they were able to assume the form of others, the OSB were incapable of breeding like the Nobility.
The Nobility stood at a tremendous advantage in the beginning. The OSB’s primary weapon was an atomic blaster capable of incinerating objects, but the Nobility were able to reconstitute their forms after being struck by the sizzle of plasma.
The OSB were thrown into perfect confusion. The way the immortal Nobility were able to rise again from an atomic blast was beyond comprehension—beyond even their concept of regeneration.
Regeneration, as the OSB understood it, signified cell reproduction at the atomic level. Vampire resurrection defied analysis.
That the Noble garments, too, rematerialized intact shocked and terrified the OSB. They repeated meticulous tests on capes and rings and various other spoils, only to find that they were made of ordinary silk and cotton. Though the pieces had been specially engineered to restore their shape after experiencing primitive sword and gun damage, they could easily be burned to cinders. Nevertheless, these same items were reconstituted from ash along with their wearers.
It was not until a year later, when—as gleaned from human knowledge—they drove a stake into a Noble’s heart, that the OSB grew wiser to the supernatural forces fueling vampiric existence. Only when they bore witness to the Noble succumbing to death’s call, his flesh along with his garments crumbling to dust, did the OSB finally understand the words—legend, curse, occult, and evil—swirling inside the memories of their human prey.
Though the Nobles were vulnerable to natural sunlight, they were impervious to the artificial light produced by the OSB. Wooden stakes were ineffective unless driven precisely into their hearts. Even if his head were severed at the neck, a vampire could come back from the dead, its head reattached in a matter of seconds. But only if reattached within ten minutes.
Such phenomena were best understood as supernatural rather than physical, but since the OSB were only capable of processing reality within the material realm, these supernatural beings shook the OSB and wreaked havoc with their primitive DNA memory.
Had the OSB not learned, from consuming human knowledge, that a wooden stake or steel blade to the heart would destroy their enemies, the war would have lasted less than a month, much less the century of attrition the human pawns had endured.
The knowledge of their human victims aided the OSB. Enlightened now by humanity’s age-old slaying methods, the OSB took human shape, infiltrated the realms of their immortal enemies, and drove stakes through their hearts. They destroyed the Nobility’s defense shields, and the OSB’s mother ship launched warships and aircraft to rain countless steel blades down upon the Nobility during the day while they slept. The blades pierced through Noble coffins, skewering the sleeping vampires in the heart.
The Nobility mounted a counterstrategy with dimensional shields and telepaths.
They recruited humans and Nobles that possessed extrasensory powers and dispatched them throughout the land, save for the Capital where few humans dared live.
Before the OSBs in human form could brandish their stakes, the telepaths, sensing their murderous intent, aided the Nobility in felling the intruders.
Until the covert presence of these telepaths had come to light, the OSB invasion had stalled.
Shifting their target from the Nobility to the telepaths, the OSB now waged an offensive against these formidable psychic counterspies.
As rare as the telepaths were to begin with, their decimation threatened the very survival of the Nobility. The vampires protected and harbored them, and after DNA analysis of the surviving psychics, the Nobility endeavored to engineer new telepaths by breeding the best of their kind.
The past century of war had seen the rise and fall of generations of telepaths, with Greylancer just now losing one of a precious few.
†
Greylancer returned to the village of Ardoz an hour later.
The blue winter sky began to grow dark.
Chief Lanzi greeted Greylancer in the public square, which looked as if it might be crushed by the cold and coming darkness. “Your lordship.”
Noting Grosbec’s conspicuous absence, the chief bowed with a smile belying his sadness. The villagers milling about the square had retreated to their homes when the watchtower alerted them to Greylancer’s arrival.
“How many have come to the village during my absence?”
“Four, your lordship,” answered Chief Lanzi. “One was a traveling medicine man, another a sword grinder, the third was a villager returning from an errand in a neighboring village, and lastly a traveler en route to Jarmusch.”
“Any of the travelers still here?”
“No, they stopped in for a drink at the tavern and went on their way. The watchtower guards can confirm their departure.”
“What of those tending to their crops?”
“Yes, I have word that they’ve all returned not too long ago.”
Frontier towns like Ardoz counted the numbers coming and going from the village in order to prevent raids by bandits—and now to keep out the dreaded usurpers, the OSB.
“I will take lodging at your abode tonight. We have matters to discuss.”
The color drained from the chief’s face. “Uh…shall I arrange for anyone to join us?”
“After we’ve talked.”
The giant dismounted from his horse, and his dark blue cape fluttered majestically.
†
Michia came out of the house upon Lanzi and Greylancer’s arrival.
The couple’s son was not at home, and Lanzi’s daughter had been adopted when Michia came to live with the chief. Now the girl lived with a farming family in the Northern Frontier.
After sending Michia away, Chief Lanzi was confronted by the sheer fact that a Noble stood in his parlor. The sight of the vampire lowering his frame onto the sofa w
as enough to stifle his breathing. The last glimmer of daylight streamed in through the window, spreading the Noble’s shadow over the room as if to shroud it in darkness.
Then, Greylancer revealed a scenario that made the chief’s blood curdle.
“I’d assumed there were only two, but when I checked the OSB’s weapon, it had discharged one blast fewer than the number of woodcutters’ family members. One of them must have survived.”
“But…none of the other woodcutters have been to the village today.”
“You said that the villagers went out to tend their crops.”
Just as Chief Lanzi began to nod, his face went blank—the meaning of Greylancer’s remark registered in his mind. “Are you suggesting one of the OSB first took the identity of a woodcutter and then switched to the form of one of the villagers?”
“I don’t know. It is possible. If there is the slightest possibility, it bears investigating.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“You will alert the village that I will be patrolling the premises. That’s all. The villagers will wait for dawn sheltered in their homes—all except one.”
“You mean to expose yourself to draw out the enemy?”
“A tired ploy, I realize. But that it has not fallen out of favor is proof of its efficacy.”
“As you wish.” Wiping the sweat from his face, the chief contemplated the human-shaped specter before him. Just whose defeat was best for the village, he knew not.
CHAPTER 2:
EXTERMINATING
THE INTRUDERS
1
The third OSB had stolen the form of one of the woodcutter’s family members, headed straight for Ardoz, and, after transforming into one of the villagers toiling in the fields, returned to the village. Since it retained the knowledge and outward appearance of its victim, not even family members could see through its trickery.
Perhaps Ardoz was not the OSB’s destination or hiding place at all. The Glacierites lived in a town not fifty kilometers away, where it was possible to board a ship and sail down the River Benev.
Greylancer had decided to return because Michia had told Beijrot of Greylancer’s visit before the woodcutter’s body had been stolen by the OSB.
Noble V: Greylancer Page 2