The day after the meat-cleaver killing, the outlaws reached the barren plains about thirty miles to the south of Geneve. As might be expected, it was a desolate and endless expanse of nothing save dirt. The winds that blew there were definitely far colder than in other places. The grasses that grew there were despised by the sun. And the people who lived there had surely been forsaken by God.
“Boss—there’s a house!” one of the scouts riding at the front of the group shouted, pointing to a spot in the distant expanse of black. This was a man with eyes so sharp they could make out a pebble a dozen miles away in the darkness.
While his lieutenants around him brought antiquated binoculars up to their eyes, the man who’d been informed of the existence of the house only squinted a bit. “You’re right,” he said with a nod, his lieutenants shrugging their shoulders. They should’ve been used to this by now, as it was their leader’s nature to respond in such a manner.
Actually, he was rather generous and an excellent leader. But that wasn’t all it took to keep a band of godforsaken outlaws under a tenuous control. The only thing that could hold together men like this, who believed in strength alone, was an even greater power. This, their boss possessed. Because once, he’d been human. He’d had parents and siblings. He’d supported a wife and children. He’d been well liked by his neighbors. He’d had a taste for hard bread and cheese and venison steaks. He’d gotten up early in the morning, and gone to bed every evening. He’d prayed to God by the light of morn, and sworn at vespers’ bells that he’d live his best again tomorrow. He’d had hopes and dreams.
But now, he was a pseudo vampire. He sat astride a black horse covered with iron plates, and those pieces of armor were etched with a hundred human skulls. His overgrown hair covered the right half of his face, while his constantly exposed left eye was eternally bloodshot, perhaps due to the sunlight. Lips that’d once pressed against those of the woman he loved had forgotten what that felt like, but they’d acquired a toxic vermilion hue after being smeared with the blood of more than a thousand—all human. For weapons, he had a pair of longswords crossed on his back that were the work of one of the southern Frontier’s preeminent blacksmiths. The blades were forged of steel wrapped around a high-density durium core, and in his hands they’d slashed a Noble in two and kept him from healing again.
And one thing more—he desired only blood. All nostalgia, all memories of kindnesses that’d been done to him had been driven into the far reaches of forgetfulness as hunger and a lust for murder grew with each passing day. In truth, what he desired more than blood was slaughter. It filled a hunger that burned seductively in the darkest depths of his psyche like a shadowy fire, stronger even than his physical hunger. The problem was that he tried his very best to ignore it. If he didn’t acknowledge it, he could kill as many people as he liked without it ever bothering him.
“What’ll we do, Boss?” the scout asked.
“The usual,” he replied. That was his way of telling them he’d lead the charge.
“Yeah, but it’s just one little house. Let us take care of it.”
The leader knew very well his scout had no ulterior motives for saying that. “Okay,” he said, his laughter freezing his faithful underling. “One little house out in the wilderness. People living where no human being should. Go right ahead.”
In no time, three riders galloped away, kicking up the dark earth. Once they were in the distance, the leader told the rest of his gang to wait there, and then followed after the trio alone. Behind him, he could feel the tension growing in the group of more than fifty men.
When he was still about two hundred yards from the log cabin, he heard a gunshot. Several more followed, and then he heard a faint cry that made him give his steed’s flanks a kick, conjecture as to the fate of his henchmen putting a callous grin on his lips.
As he got closer, the voices became clearer.
“What the hell are you?”
“No, stay back! Our boss is even tougher than you!”
“Help! Please, help me!”
Then there was a gunshot, and the sound of a table being knocked over.
Up on his steed, he panted a little. His expectation was so great, the beating of his heart reverberated through his entire body. This would probably be the most fun he’d had in quite some time.
As he reached the cabin, the door opened and a bloodied man appeared. It was his scout. The man’s right hand was pressed to the nape of his neck. The vermilion hue spilling from between the scout’s fingers ignited the darkness in the leader’s eyes and soul. The scout noticed him there. He’d ask for help—but no, the scout whirled around instead. Was he trying to get away from his own boss?
“Seth,” the leader called out softly.
The scout’s movements seemed to creak to a halt.
“Where are you going? Come here.”
“Ye—yessir,” the scout said, turning around. Gore continued to stream between his fingers. He looked as if he’d been soaking in a bathtub full of blood.
“Were Gass and Muradashi killed?”
“Yessir,” the scout replied, but he seemed to ask, How did you know that? And why are you so calm about it?
“And the one who did it—was it someone like me?”
“. . . Yessir.”
“How many are there?”
“Two . . . A married couple.”
“Both like me?”
“. . . Yessir.”
“Good work. Now you can rest.”
“Wha . . .” the scout said, gazing stupidly at an object that had been thrust in his face.
There was a small black circle—not an inch across. The incendiary round it fired shot through the scout’s throat and into his body, breaking apart as it struck his spine, at which point the brezene incendiary compound within it sparked to life. Six-thousand-degree flames welled up. The expansive force of the fire surpassed the limits of the scout’s body, and in a heartbeat he popped like a balloon.
The flames also assailed the horse, clinging to its armored plates. Though the steed tried to back away, its rider wouldn’t let it.
“Hang in there. I’ll stand it, and so will you.”
He gazed down at the flames creeping up his boots. The heat-, flame-, and water-resistant artificial leather slowly burned away, and the six-thousand-degree heat reached his flesh.
“Could a genuine Noble stand this? Or would they die, driven mad by the heat, then rise again? They’re such fucking masochists.”
The leader got down off his horse. The animal bolted away, as if that were exactly what it’d been waiting for. It was trying to put out the flames that enveloped its legs.
As he headed for the door, the man used his left hand to draw another weapon—a twenty-three-millimeter automatic handgun tucked through his belt. The flames had begun to spread to the wall of the cabin.
The second he stepped inside, he was greeted by a terrible, foul odor. As it entered his nostrils and coursed through his body, it was so overpowering that he came to a halt and even felt a bit dizzy. It was a sickeningly sweet smell. Abhorrently pure.
“I smell blood,” he declared.
But two fifty-millimeter shotgun shells had been waiting to empty their contents into the right half of his chest.
—
II
—
The close range and angle of the shot kept him from being knocked over. In fact, the blast went clean through him.
“What’s this?” he asked, the danger of the situation finally shaking him from his sweet intoxication. His left hand probed the crater in his chest. “It’s plain gone,” he muttered, looking forward again.
The man holding the double-barreled shotgun looked like an ordinary farmer.
Pain began screaming through the leader’s body. To escape it, he turned.
The green shirt the farmer wore was damp and black.
“That’s my men’s blood, isn’t it?” the leader managed to say. He hated the way the pain made h
is voice quaver.
Saying nothing, the farmer cracked open his shotgun and removed the enormous shells. White wisps of smoke still rose from them.
“That’s not like what you’d use on a human, is it?” the leader said, pointing feebly.
The farmer took two fresh fifty-millimeter shells out of his chest pocket and loaded them into his weapon. There was the sound of the gun clicking shut again.
“What the hell are you?” the farmer asked.
“I’m the same as you.”
The farmer could be heard grinding his teeth. Shooting a glance over to the window and his wife, who looked to be about the same age he was, he quickly looked back, saying, “I thought the two of us could live in peace out in a place like this, fake Nobility or not. Truth is, that’s just what we’d been doing for the last decade. But then you show up . . .”
Gunfire rang out.
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!
As the leader emptied his handgun wildly, it delivered a comfortable kick to his hand that was more than a human being could’ve handled, and the top half of the farmer’s head was blown away. The outlaw’s wrist was about to break. The bones creaked. It felt good. Really good. Ricocheting off the back wall, bullets shattered commemorative plates that hung on the walls. The glass was blown out of the window, and gigantic holes opened in the wife’s chest and abdomen.
“Listen to the song of death. This is its melody. It’s comforting. So comforting! Won’t you die listening to it? Please, die now.”
Suddenly, there was silence. The slide on the handgun remained back. He didn’t bother to put in a fresh clip. Half of the blown-away portion of his chest hadn’t regenerated yet. Having been knocked back against the wall, the farmer and his wife were trying to rise again. Their wounds were starting to close. Their injuries were different than his. The rate at which pseudo vampires recovered varied based on the physiology of the individual.
“Just as I thought—you two aren’t going to die after all,” the leader said, his tone choked with sadness. “You can’t die, can you? You can’t. Well, doesn’t that just make you sad? Doesn’t it?”
“We gave up on sadness a long time ago,” said the farmer’s wife. “And we lived here in peace. We thought we’d do so for the rest of our days. You ruined everything. Your friends will be along shortly, I’m sure. We’re going to kill them all. But before we do, we’re going to make you pay.”
“Luna!” the farmer cried out. “Stop it. I’ll kill him now. Don’t get a whiff of the scent of blood. Control yourself. Go on outside!”
“It’s no use. It was always going to be like this. I knew it from the very time you suggested we live out here—so I’m just not going to fight it anymore!”
His wife’s mouth opened as if this were something that’d been a long time coming. Her lips and mouth were both the hue of blood. But it was the white of her fangs that was truly eye catching.
Running over, his wife pounced. She was like a she-wolf. As she bit down on the man’s throat, the two of them began to shake.
“Luna!”
Her husband’s voice meant nothing to her. There was no sadness in it, no anger, no despair, no futility—for despair wouldn’t kill her.
Gurgling, she continued to suck down the man’s blood. The expression on her face was one of supreme bliss. She seemed to want this to go on forever.
Unexpectedly, she lurched back. Two vermilion streams connected the wife’s lips to the man’s neck. The farmer could make out the steely black shape that’d poked out of his wife’s back. For some reason, he wasn’t surprised. What the farmer felt was a mysterious peace.
Sputtering nonsensically, his wife grabbed the blade in her chest. Her body still fought for life. As she grabbed it and pulled, her fingers dropped off one by one. Like a doll whose mainspring had snapped, the woman’s body gave two great shudders, and then moved no more.
Keeping his foot pressed against her belly, the leader pulled his longsword out of her. Her head flew all the way to the farmer’s feet. She’d already begun to decay.
“I really must thank you,” the farmer said, waving farewell to his wife. “Would you be so kind as to kill me, too?”
“With pleasure,” the leader replied, his left hand pressed against his neck. He’d dropped his gun on the floor.
“I wanted to die. I’ve wanted it the whole time we’ve been out here. Morning and night, I’ve pictured nothing but my own death. And yet, I didn’t have the courage to do it myself.”
“I feel the same,” the leader said, sympathizing with the farmer from the bottom of his heart.
“I thought maybe some traveler who stopped by our place could do it, but none of them were up to the task. Instead, we actually ended up killing visitors who came out here to steal our money. So, tell me something: where do you find death?”
The shotgun barked. The buckshot traveled out into the wilderness through the open door, while the farmer looked up above him. And there the outlaw was. For a moment, he appeared to stop in midair, but then he drifted back to earth without a sound.
Bright blood gushed from the farmer’s body, making a sound like rain beating against the roof as it drew a crimson X on his form. It was unclear when the leader had unsheathed them, but the swords he held in either hand had cut the farmer from above one shoulder down to the opposite hip, forming that X.
Once the farmer had fallen, a bloody mist still whirled for a while before the outlaw’s eyes. Perhaps he’d only dreamed most of this.
“He’s dead,” the leader said with a strange sort of acceptance. He got the feeling something he’d long forgotten had come back to him. “Will that happen to me, too? I have to wonder. But who in the world could do the same to me? If there were such a man, I’d probably fight him out of fear for my life. When will I meet someone like that?”
Returning his two swords to his back, he looked around the room. If there was nothing of value, they’d take food. That was his henchmen’s job. But the corpses of two of his men lay on the floor.
As he was heading for the door, he suddenly halted. Something still seemed to bother him. With a heavy gait, he trudged into the kitchen. A large refrigerator caught his eye. There was a lock on it.
“A safe? No, I don’t think so.”
Grabbing the lock, he tore it off the door. The lock had been made to stop human beings.
The iron door opened. A stark chill struck his face. One look was enough to survey the refrigerator’s contents. Seeing them, he waited a moment before giving a nod, and then he began to laugh. It was like the laughter of a man having a fit of insanity. Tears even streamed from his eyes.
“They tried to fight it, my ass! What was that about them resisting? All that talk about wanting to die but not being able to kill themselves! No, these two never had any intention of dying.”
He slammed the refrigerator door so hard that the whole house shook. Then he went back into the living room. His swords felt unbearably sweet as he drew them from their scabbards. They felt equally good as he whacked them into the corpses of the farmer and his wife. He continued to do so for what seemed an eternity. And all the while, he never stopped shouting. “What about me? Am I just like you? Do I really want to stay the way I am now? Could it be I don’t really want to die? Well, what is it?”
He continued relentlessly hacking up the already-decaying remains. In this hell, with no one there to see or hear him, he showed his true self.
—
Before the sun went down, the man who’d gone out on a scouting mission came back. He wasn’t one of the villagers, but rather a drifter who’d been hired for the job. Twenty people had signed on for fifty dalas a day. Most of them had come to town looking for such work after hearing rumors that a band of outlaws was on its way. This was happening all over the Frontier, but both the mayor and Rust were surprised the vagrants had arrived so quickly. After all, the mayor hadn’t believed the Black Death gang would arrive for quite a while. But the info
rmation possessed by the expert fighting men who wandered the Frontier was more accurate than anyone else’s. Of course, they’d be risking their lives, but those who came to offer their services were professionals, and few of them would be inclined to run off during the fighting. The village was still careful about whom they hired, and naturally, payment was made in advance. However, the history of the Frontier was rife with tales of people who’d collected their pay, only to promptly turn tail. Therefore the villagers didn’t wholly trust them, and they would keep an eye on the hired guns until the very end.
At least the man’s report on his reconnaissance mission was accurate enough.
“Thirty miles to our south, eh? That’d put them here inside of three days.”
Rust immediately set to organizing efforts to repel the attackers. The village’s defenses were checked and reinforced, and armaments that’d been waiting in warehouses were set up in previously designated strategic positions. The weapons they had amassed were ones that had been purchased from the Capital through arms dealers in the five decades since the village was incorporated. Not only did they have the very latest-model intelligent mortar, but they also had quite a few old-fashioned fuse-style cannons.
The villagers needed no further training than their daily life. In a manner of speaking, every day on the Frontier was a day spent in combat. From the time they were toddlers, children practiced with swords and spears, and past the age of ten they had to master the use of firearms. Even if they weren’t professionals, the men and women of the Frontier were born warriors. The drifters who’d temporarily taken on employment—mercenaries, in a manner of speaking—knew this quite well and didn’t look down on the villagers, except for one amateur, fresh out of the Capital, who saw the townspeople practicing with their firearms and snickered.
Lyra was putting them through their paces. On hearing the laughter, she asked, “Care to try your luck against them, then?” She was wearing a thin smirk.
Scenes from an Unholy War Page 5