The comm on his collar vibrated, and a hologram of the gunner Gallagher floated up before him. Greylancer had tasked him with watching over the central government.
“My lord, about two thousand androsoldiers have departed the Capital and are headed in your direction.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“Stand by.” With a wave of his hand, Greylancer brought up an exterior image of the mansion.
Black dots appeared in the sky lit with the first rays of dawn, grew larger, and resolved into black aircraft. The small fleet descended and landed around House Greylancer. Equipped with magnetic propulsion systems, none of the missile-shaped aircraft needed stabilizing wings.
“They came prepared. Armed to the teeth with nuclear missiles. It speaks highly of your reputation, Brother,” Laria said, her voice free of anything but sincere admiration.
Upon a Noble’s capture, his land and property were confiscated. In much the same way, his treasure, jewels, and art, as well as all arms and inventions, became the property of the central government.
Where Greylancer was concerned, however, the government’s plan was to vaporize House Greylancer whole. The central government knew full well that they were dealing with someone who knew not the word for surrender.
When the androsoldiers had taken their positions outside the mansion, a robotic voice blared forth. “Lord Greylancer, we are with the Investigation Bureau’s 25th AS Combat Police Unit. You are a suspect in the murder of the chancellor of the Privy Council. You will return with us to the Capital.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Forgive us, we have been empowered to take exceptional measures. We will have no choice but to proceed to the nuclear option.”
“Do what you must, but I shall be forced to retaliate.”
“We will count to ten. If you do not surrender, we will respond with necessary force.”
“Suit yourself,” scoffed Greylancer.
The voice of the androsoldier rang across the mansion. “Ten. Nine. Eight…”
“Now what, Laria?”
“What ever shall we do now, Brother?” Greylancer exchanged a rare, invincible smile with his sister.
Exactly ten seconds later, the Greylancer property was engulfed in white-hot flames.
A tight gravitational shield was spread over the property, so the conflagration was contained within the grounds, thereby affecting none of the outlying areas.
†
Satisfied by the news of Greylancer’s destruction, members of the central government and Privy Council lay awake inside their coffins and contemplated how they might appease the many supporters of the brave warrior in the Capital.
“A bit of a pity, really.” Zeus Macula gazed at the scorched rubble and the bowl-shaped crater in the earth on the aerial screen and emptied his glass in one gulp. The glass had contained the blood of a farmer girl who’d wandered in earlier that day. Zeus was in Mircalla’s private residence in the Southern Frontier sector’s regional capital of Salazar. “I would rather have revealed the truth before sending Greylancer to his death. Alas, it was not meant to be. He will never return to this world, irradiated and banished to another dimension as he is. No, Greylancer shall not reconstitute physical form again.”
From the depths of the moonlit space, a lyrical voice rang out, though its cadence was elegaic. “In addition to being a warrior, there was too much of the investigator in him, I’m afraid.”
At the other end of the enormous table stood the ghostly figure of Duchess Mircalla. A gentle wind swayed her hair and the grass at her feet. The two overseers were in the midst of a private banquet in an illusory meadow.
“He threatened to uncover the truth far faster than either of us imagined. Time was ripe for Greylancer’s curtain to fall.”
“Right you are.” Zeus Macula stretched and let out a long yawn. He and Mircalla had awakened from their coffins only minutes prior. Ten hours had passed since Greylancer’s annihilation.
“Chancellor Cornelius’s death was unfortunate, but the Privy Council has sent word of the next meeting with the OSB. We shall have to prepare terms so the OSB will grant us control over the Frontier.”
“Grant? You must abandon such sodden thinking.” Mircalla’s eyes gleamed as she fixed a long look on her companion. “The OSB’s reign over this planet will last for but a moment. After one or two millennia, when their power has fallen into decay, we will vanquish the enemy and regain our supremacy. To this end, waging a meaningless war that would only lead to our ruin is the height of folly. How fortunate that the Privy Council is in agreement.”
“Those graybeards look upon you as their beloved. What man can resist seeing your pale flesh, hearing you whisper your desires into their ears, especially when those desires favor him?”
“The dissenters among them have been banished to some distant dimension. But they, too, might eventually come around and fall in line with the aliens.” Mircalla floated next to Zeus and cupped his rugged face in her slender hands.
Meeting her advance with a look of enchantment, Zeus fought back the desire to suckle her scarlet lips with every fiber of his body, feeling her hot breath on his face only inches away. “A millennium or two—even ten millennia is but the blink of an eye.”
Just as his lips brushed against hers, the duchess pulled away, like a fish carried backward by a current.
Zeus stood and moved to follow, but the eerily luminescent figure danced across the dimly lit meadow and evaded his grasp for several minutes, until finally his outstretched fingers touched her skin.
They tangled in the thick grass, letting out fevered breaths.
Beneath the pale moonlight, the duchess whispered, “Oh, Zeus. Your fangs upon my throat.”
“Oh, the taste of your blood! Why? Human blood is warm, but why is Noble blood as cold as our skin?” His breath turned to moans as Mircalla sank her fangs into his neck.
“Your blood soothes me like ice water. See how it runs from my mouth down to my bosom.”
Zeus pressed his lips against the swell of her chest as if the world existed only for them and began to unlace her bodice.
There was a sudden snarl of steel and a flesh-rending sound.
Zeus and Mircalla screamed.
The two writhed and tried to tear away from one another. But it was no use. Their bodies were pinned down against the illusory ground, skewered by a great lance.
When the shadow came around and hulked over them, Zeus Macula shouted, “N—Noble Greylancer!”
2
Zeus and Mircalla gaped with bloodshot eyes at the giant overshadowing them.
The intensity and unearthly aura were unmistakably those of a great warrior. But how was this possible? They had just witnessed his end via holographic projection.
“Pity that time for recreation is so fleeting.”
That voice—Greylancer was alive!
His resurrection roused many questions.
To begin with, how had he managed it?
Greylancer raised his left hand.
The image of the burned ruins of the Greylancer mansion floated in the air.
Greylancer rested a hand on the top edge of the image and then shifted it down, revealing another image underneath. There stood the mansion in its unblemished splendor.
“A live image,” said Greylancer. “To anyone else including the surveillance satellites, the mansion would appear to be in ruins.”
“The police unit…” Zeus groaned, a hint of curiosity in his anguish. “Did they not fire their missiles?”
“That they did—into uninhabited territory. The unit erred in their target and was none the wiser for it.”
Zeus and Mircalla, their mouths agape, could not speak.
“My residence remains where it has always stood, though it will appear to lie in ruins to anyone laying eyes on it.”
“How?” asked Mircalla. “How were you able to set foot into my residence, Lord Greylancer?” Her slend
er frame convulsed beneath the weight of Zeus’s body.
“I suspected your involvement when I was stricken immobile inside the catacombs at Mayerling Castle. Aside from Mayerling’s aides, the only one I’d notified of my whereabouts was you. And another: the scent that bound me was similar to your own—the smell you usually conceal with perfume. A certain woman revealed that the incense of great value to me is also made from the same substance—the DNA of the venerable von Hauptmann family. Is that not so, Mircalla von Hauptmann?”
The duchess did not answer.
“I was able to enter here undetected by the same trickery that caused the fools to fire their missiles at a mistaken target. Neither your servants nor your surveillance system could observe my coming. They were keeping watch over a different path, while I quietly made my way inside this room.” Greylancer flashed a dastardly smile. “I kept a rather incorrigible but skilled craftsman in my employ, you see. Now then, I shall reduce you to dust peacefully if you reveal the name of the traitor who gave you the incense used to produce that anesthetic.”
“Very well,” said Zeus, his voice strained. “I’ll tell you. But a peaceful death be damned. I expect nothing less than a duel.”
Brash words, given that he was skewered to the ground by Greylancer’s lance, his co-conspirator wedged beneath him. Zeus had thrown down a gauntlet that Greylancer had no cause to take up.
Nevertheless, the great warrior said, “Agreed,” and drew out the lance from the chests of the two Nobles. Was this the will or the fate of warriors?
“Do not interfere.” Rising to his feet, Zeus raised a hand toward the blood-smeared Mircalla behind him.
A long black whip uncoiled like a serpent and cracked against the ground, sparks flying in every direction. Zeus must have kept it hidden wrapped around his torso.
Another crack, and the whip was joined by another.
When Zeus revealed a third whip, Greylancer thrust his lance.
This was no prod to provoke the enemy, but a full-bodied finishing blow. One whip wound its lash around the lance before the tip could reach its target. Greylancer thrust the lance again. This time the whip unraveled and flew out of the handler’s hand. The force of the blow sent Zeus flying backward.
Zeus groaned where he landed. “Twisted the haft, did you?” Although he’d been deprived of one whip, the lashes gripped in his hand now numbered five. “That you can knock me back so easily…you are a formidable warrior. Then how about this?”
Another whip shot out.
What appeared to be a spearhead glanced off Greylancer’s lance. His hands stung—the whip was barbed with steel.
“What it lacks in power, it makes up for in dexterity!” The whip circled over Zeus’s head and attacked Greylancer again. The Greater Noble repelled the spearhead again, but the supple spear wrapped its tail around the lance like a serpent and tried still to plunge into his heart.
The whip—no, the snake—will not stop no matter how many times I turn it back. How do I kill it?
“Attack!” Zeus shouted and unleashed the five snake whips at the Greater Noble.
A flash of steel streaked through the air in a straight line.
The whips raveled around the lance and threatened to slither up the haft.
Zeus gawked in disbelief.
The whips had stopped.
“You will not have them back,” said Greylancer. “Unless my lance tires of them.”
With the whips fastened tightly around the haft, Greylancer raised the lance over his head and swung it around. Just once. The five whips twisted around, went slack, and were flung off in the blink of an eye.
“Damn you!” Zeus jumped back as Greylancer thrust his lance once again toward the traitorous Noble’s chest.
Suddenly, a pale white figure caught the blade in her bare hands.
“What skill is this?” muttered Greylancer, furrowing his brow.
The duchess, who’d intercepted the deadly attack, let slip a sorrowful smile.
“Do not interfere, Mircalla!” barked Zeus. This was a battle between Noble men.
“Forgive me, Zeus.” The woman’s voice was barely audible and strained with tension. Her entire body trembled, as she mustered every ounce of strength and tried to stop the blade inching ever closer to her heart. “Quickly!”
Does she mean for me to flee? Zeus bellowed, red-faced, “This is my fight! Stand back, woman!”
“No, my beloved!”
Greylancer gave away a look of amusement upon hearing a hint of affection in the words of the cold-blooded woman. She was prepared to die for the man she loved.
“Your chest wound still bleeds. It will not heal without attention. Quickly, you must escape. I will hold Lord Greylancer here.”
Greylancer recognized the meaning behind her words.
If the lance pierced her chest, blood would be spilled. The scent of her blood would likely render Greylancer paralyzed.
“You dare allow a woman to secure your escape?”
Zeus’s face flushed. He put a hand on Mircalla’s shoulder and seethed, “Back, I say!”
“I will not!”
Greylancer had expected Zeus to push Mircalla aside, but then what?
What transpired next confounded his expectations.
Letting go of the lance, Mircalla lunged forward.
Greylancer retracted his lance, but not before the blade pierced the woman’s heart.
So unexpected was this outcome that Greylancer stood transfixed. The blood gushed from Mircalla’s wound. Dark pearls of blood sprayed the left side of his face.
Greylancer pressed a hand against his cheek. Black smoke swirled up from between his fingers, as the infernal pain shook his entire being.
“Those burns shall never disappear from your face…” gasped Mircalla. “But Lord Greylancer…the same blood that has scarred you…my blood shall endow you with new powers…Spare him, Greylancer…my spirit…shall remain…eternally grateful.”
Mircalla crumpled to the floor, her skeletal remains and white dress besmeared with dust and blood.
Even as Greylancer continued to twitch in pain, he pointed the lance at Zeus’s chest, only a jab away from certain death.
“Do it,” groaned Zeus. “My surviving by the hand of a woman is a disgrace on the Macula name. Strike me down, Greylancer.”
The giant remained still, perhaps stirred by the death of the Noble woman. Beneath the moonlight, a breeze blew around him. Strands of smoke rose up from between his fingers and drifted away into the distance.
Zeus seized the lance tip with both hands and drew himself to his feet. Aiming the blade at his chest, he lunged forward, plunging the lance into his heart just as Mircalla had.
The blood-smeared tip pierced clear through his back.
Greylancer muttered, “Like husband, like wife.” As the gentle breeze caressed the moonlight, the warrior suddenly found himself alone in the meadow.
†
Several hours later, a matronly servant left the farmhouse at the edge of the Western Frontier and made her way down the steep hill toward the general store.
At the bottom of the hill, she came upon an uninhabited farmhouse. The moon shone down upon the property, which still hinted at a life abandoned only recently.
The maidservant spotted a caped shadow standing at the gates and nearly fell on her backside. Despite being called slow and dimwitted, she sensed a sinister aura that made her hair stand on end.
Without bothering to turn to address the petrified woman, the shadowy figure asked, “Where is the family that lived here?”
Perhaps some part of the maidservant’s heart warned her of the fate that might befall her if she did not answer. Instinctively, her mouth opened. “They moved away three days or so ago,” she answered, surprised by how easily the words came out of her mouth.
“I see. There was a blind girl and her brother, a skilled archer. What has become of them?”
“Why, they left together. I don’t reckon I kn
ow where. The rumor is they headed for the Northern Frontier.”
“North,” said the shadow in a low murmur.
The woman felt an imperceptible pang in her heart, though she knew not the reason why.
“You have my thanks.” The shadow threw down several coins at her feet. It was enough gold for the woman to live on for the rest of her days. “Tell no one of our encounter. If you do…”
The woman shook her head vigorously, knowing well that this unilateral promise was one both intended to keep.
The shadow strode off and disappeared around the corner of the abandoned house. The rattle of a wagon echoed and soon faded into the night.
†
When the woman returned home, the other maidservants of the house took one look at her blanched face and asked what had happened.
“Why you’re as pale as death!”
“Darn if you don’t look half Noble.”
“I’m all right,” said the woman to the others gathered around her and hid beneath the tattered bed covers.
Her body glistened with sweat, and she shivered as if stricken by malarial fever.
Yet in her heart, she felt terribly at peace.
At least tonight, she felt strangely comforted that she had encountered someone lonelier than she.
3
Two days passed. A band of Nobles boarded an OSB aircraft that descended upon the grasslands north of the Capital, whereupon Greylancer and his vassals stormed into the clandestine meeting, killing over twenty OSB—all save one—and capturing the traitorous Nobles.
Greylancer hastened directly for the Privy Council with his captives in tow and demanded the immediate assembly of a council board of inquiry.
The assembled members of the Privy Council examined Greylancer’s complaint and were aghast.
The suit disclosed details of the cabal and demanded the dismissal or execution of the current Privy Council members. Also included as part of the demands was the suspension of the planned plasma attack on the Frontier.
Ten members of the Sub-Council gathered in the council chamber to conduct the inquiry. On this night, those Nobles usually in the position of adjudicating such cases found themselves playing the role of defendants.
With Greylancer, who wore a black and white mask over the left side of his face, before them, the accused leveled a barrage of questions against the lone plaintiff.
Noble V: Greylancer Page 17