Looking up at the sky, Leda said, “Look where the sun is—is it past noon already?”
“We weren’t walking even ten minutes!”
D stood by their side, but before he could say anything, the baron cleared his throat, saying, “Allow me to explain.”
“Shut up, you bald midget!”
“Wh-what did you call me?”
“Stop it, Piron,” Leda said, apparently still trying to play the good girl. “Kindly tell us more, my good baron.”
“Don’t you know where we were? That was three thousand yards underground!”
“Hell, that much we knew,” the boy snapped back.
“So, we walked all the way out and back to the surface. That would take until noon the next day. How sad to be human. You can’t even comprehend that? Ha, ha, ha!”
“How the hell would we know that, you stupid Noble?” Piron said, kicking him again.
Perhaps the baron was a slow learner, or maybe it was a problem with his reflexes, but he let out a cry and began hopping around.
“At any rate, we made it outside okay,” D said in a hoarse voice.
Leda donned a mystified expression.
“Get something to eat and take a rest,” D said, his voice changing once again.
Leda was absolutely spellbound.
“We’ll set out before sundown. The next town is Toro.”
And with that, D became a black statue.
“Ah!” the baron exclaimed, his fuzzy caterpillar eyebrows rising. “The ground’s quaking. Damnation! The research facility’s reactor has started to overload!” To the dumbstruck siblings he said, “We’ve got to clear out. We have maybe five minutes to get at least six miles from here.”
“That’s insane! We don’t even have a horse,” Piron said, shaking his head despondently.
“Why don’t you shut it down already?” the hoarse-voiced D barked at the baron, but the Nobleman simply shook his head.
“I can’t do that. I only managed to keep it under control until a minute ago.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?” Leda asked in a tone fitting her now-pale countenance.
“The key lies right there,” the baron said, tossing his chin in D’s direction.
Though a hint of hope streamed into the pair’s faces, the ashen hopelessness swiftly returned. Not even D could possibly carry the three of them over six miles in less than five minutes.
“What’d you have in mind, jerk?” the hoarse-voiced D snapped at the Noble. “That’s just plain impossible.”
“In that case, stay here and be engulfed by the flames,” the baron said with a mocking grin. His finger was aimed at D. “But there’s no need for that. Not if you were created by the man I know. This situation should be child’s play. You may not know it, but the you you don’t know knows it. So, if you don’t want to die, try to let it out. Show your true power—the abilities of a Noble among Nobles, that he gave you. That is the true possibility of tomorrow!”
He was nearly ranting. Even the siblings, who’d been looking at the Noble like he was an idiot, were left breathless. All his grand talk had been invested with a burning sincerity.
D remained silent. Not shaken, but breathing faintly, as still as a holy winter’s night.
“One minute left,” the baron said.
“Hey, what the hell should I do?” the hoarse voice asked. The girl and her brother no longer believed it was D’s.
“I really don’t know,” the baron replied. Clutching his leather satchel, he swallowed hard. “Ten seconds.”
His tone was poised on the brink between life and death, making it seem there was no difference between humans and Nobility.
D turned his face upward. He’d just caught a certain voice that he alone could hear.
You are my only success.
In a spot in the northern Frontier, a little town was wiped from the face of the earth. The surface was gouged by a massive crater six miles across and more than half a mile deep, with not a single molecule remaining of what had once been there, but the investigating team from the Capital was surprised to find not the slightest trace of radiation.
—
III
—
A porcine grunt echoed in the darkness, and the baron awoke.
“What a revolting sound. This is a nightmare,” he murmured, and then his expression grew bitter. He’d just realized that it’d been his grunt.
Before getting up he checked on the leather satchel in his right hand, then looked all around him.
“Yipes!”
There was desert as far as the eye could see. The sunlight shining down from overhead scorched the white sand. His nostrils were assailed by the unmistakable odor of burning sand. He peered all around, but all he could see was an endless succession of sand dunes.
“Hmm, was I thrown all this way by the shock of the blast? I probably won’t be seeing any of the others again, I suppose. Well, at least I’m alive. That’s something. Leave it to the man they call D. When it came right down to it, he was everything I expected. You did well, Sacred Ancestor!”
After getting a handle on the situation and his fate, the baron held a hand up over his head, saying, “What a dilemma! It seems the fate God has in store for Alpulup Macula is to shrivel up in the sun. Damn it, there’s nothing to do but fight that, then. My kind challenged the very gods!”
His exclamations were drunk up by the stark light and blue sky.
Letting out a single sigh, the baron murmured, “Guess I’ll get going.” About to start forward, he paused. “But which way should I go? For that matter, where should I go? Back to my own domain? No, that’s too far. I have no recollection of this desert. Perhaps one of the lowly humans’ towns? No, no! As soon as they found out I was a Noble, I’d promptly have them driving a crude stake through my regal yet feeble heart. That said, I suppose I have no place to go. Damnation! I wonder if any Noble has a castle in the area. Oh, there’s no place left in the world for a Noble now. No helping that. Be that as it may, I should press on.”
Looking quite dismayed, he started off on foot with his satchel in one hand. He was a tiny speck of a figure waddling through a world of white sand. Seen from high in the heavens, it would’ve looked as if he only went a dozen inches or so before he came to a stop.
“It’s hot!” the baron groaned as he wiped his sweaty bald head.
A sand dune loomed before him, and the thought of what lay beyond it didn’t inspire new strength in him.
“Shiiit!” he exclaimed, falling back, spread-eagled, to be baked by the sunlight.
Still, he’d walked about three miles. That was due to his strength as a Noble—though since there normally weren’t Nobility who walked in the sunlight, it was unclear whether his achievement was cause for boasting.
His consciousness had rapidly grown fuzzy. Though the Nobility were indestructible, the ability to walk in the light of day had cost him a substantial reduction in stamina.
“Something’s not right,” he suddenly murmured.
And without knowing what it was, his consciousness was swallowed by the darkness. In this case, his condition must’ve been similar to the “sunlight syndrome” that plagued D.
—
A very pleasant sensation spread across every inch of the baron, awakening him once more.
“Ah, I’m alive!”
No sooner did he shout that than water was poured over his head.
“Gaaaah! What are you doing?”
“Oh, little bald guy, were you up before we threw the water on you?”
Three men wearing turbans, sun visors, and heavy goggles were gazing at the baron, who lay on a simple collapsible cot. It was one of them, a bearded giant of a man, who’d dumped a helmet full of water on the Nobleman.
The baron noticed that he was in a tent. That was why his body had returned to normal even before being splashed with water.
Instantly reverting to his pompous, haughty self, the baron asked, “Who are you
men?”
“Who the hell are you, wearing that sort of getup?” shouted a weedy, thin beanpole of a man. “Who’s stupid enough to walk around out in the desert in broad daylight? Everyone knows you get through the days however you can, then move by night. Are you human? Maybe some kind of lunatic?”
“I—I—I’m a Noble, you insolent wretch!” the baron howled, veins bulging in his temples.
That brought an explosion of raucous laughter from the trio. The third—a solid wall of a man—clapped his hands as he said, “Like there are any Nobles that can walk in daylight, you damn fool! We rescued your sorry ass so we could get a reward from your relatives. Okay, give us your name and address.”
“I am Baron Alpulup Macula, ruler of the northern Frontier sector.”
“You still screwing with us? Hey, this guy’s a real nutjob. Let’s strip his stuff off and toss him outside!”
“Yeah!”
The trio rolled up their sleeves—but no matter how badly drained of power, a Noble at his worst would have enough strength to prevail over five or ten humans with one hand. However, the baron’s course of action showed just how cowardly he was.
“Hey, wait a second. Stay back. If it’s gold you want, I’ll show you a way to make all you could ever desire.”
“Don’t make us laugh!” two of the men snapped vehemently, but the beanpole stopped them.
Focusing an unrelenting gaze on the baron’s form, he said, “There’s something weird about this bald midget, that’s for sure. Maybe he’s one of their victims?”
“If he is, he doesn’t have no freaking scars from it,” the giant said, pointing toward his own neck.
The remaining man, built like a wrestler, grabbed the baron by the base of the throat and hoisted him into the air. “You said you’d get us all the gold we wanted. Well, let’s see you make good on that.”
“Auuuuuuugh . . . Where’s my . . . satchel? In it . . .”
The wrestler turned around, asking, “Where is it?”
Scratching his head, the beanpole replied, “We chucked it. There was nothing in it.”
“What about that?”
The wrestler tightened his grip on the baron’s neck, making him shout in desperation, “Auuuuuuugh . . . Of course not . . . I’m the only one . . . who can open my bag . . . Hurry . . . Bring it . . . here.”
“Get it!” the giant said, and the beanpole positively shot outside.
The wrestler let go of the baron, who immediately fell back on the cot.
The beanpole soon returned. “It ain’t there,” he said with an exaggerated gesture, weathering the malevolent glares of his compatriots. Four more men came in after him.
“What have you done with it, you dolts?” the baron shouted angrily. “Th-th-that . . . That had the result . . . of all my research in it. Find it . . . you damned simpletons . . . Even if it kills you!”
His voice broke time and again, not because he’d nearly been strangled, but because he was choking on his own rage.
The men’s expressions changed. They’d finally realized there was more to the bald man than they’d suspected. Exchanging glances, they nodded, and the giant commanded them, “Okay, split up and look for it!”
“Stay right there!” the wrestler ordered the baron before leaving.
Once the tent flaps had closed, the baron laid back and let the vitality flow back into him, grinning wickedly.
“Idiot. Who in the world would be stupid enough to stay here when someone tells them that? So long as I have a sheet to keep the sun off, I could survive in the desert or the heart of a blast furnace,” he chortled.
Still grinning madly, he grabbed the blanket off the bed, then poked his head through the tent flaps for a peek outside. He looked like a burglar checking if the coast was clear. Confirming that all the footsteps and shouts were a good distance away, the baron went outside.
Eyeing the sand dune that loomed before him with suspicion, he said, “What have we here? From the shape of it, this is the same dune I was about to go over when I collapsed. And these scum were on the other side of it? Shit!”
As he muttered to himself, he walked over to where the cyborg horses were hitched. By now he realized the men were huntsmen who specialized in desert work. Grabbing the reins of just one of the cyborg horses tethered to a fence of steel piping, he slapped the hindquarters of the rest and shouted, “Hyah, off you go!” As their reins were lightly twined around the hitching post, the slightest panic was enough to undo them.
A scream rang out. It was that of a female—a young girl, the baron noted. Jumbled with it were odd voices and the reports of firearms.
“What the—” the baron cried despondently, and with good cause. The last cyborg horse had whinnied, reared on its hind legs, and promptly galloped off. He was just about to chase after it when he heard a shout of, “It’s a water beast!” The cry that shook the heavens was far more desperate than the baron’s.
“Oh shiiiit!”
He was going to flee in the opposite direction from the voices when right in front of him, some men popped out from behind the tent. The trio he’d just met was there, too. All looked like they’d seen a ghost.
The baron’s face was tinged with black, for the thing that’d reared up on the other side of the tent had blotted out the sun.
It was a colossal, ocher insect a good fifteen feet long. With a body that resembled a collection of lumps fused together, it displayed no eyes or any other sensory organs. Its hide probably had a metallic luster because of the way it burrowed through the earth to move.
“Shit! The horses are gone!”
The Nobleman was about to run as fast as his legs could carry him when a sharp voice barked, “Don’t go anywhere!”
“Yipes!”
The baron froze in his tracks, but then he heard forceful cries of “Okay!” in reply, and gunshots rang out. The men were unloading their firearms into the enormous insect.
“Save that kid!” shouted the wrestler.
“Huh?”
Turning, the baron noticed that the men had their attention focused on something near the water beast’s fingertip-shaped head. Just below it clung a girl he recognized.
“Leda?”
At that point, the girl finally shouted down to them with complete abandon, “Help meeeeee!”
FIVE MILLENNIA OF ANIMOSITY
chapter 8
I
—
Like the baron, Leda had apparently been blown there by the energy overload. Only she’d been somewhat unlucky—though perhaps it was safe to say she was fortunate just to be alive.
More than Leda’s cries, it was the leather satchel hanging from her shoulder that drew a gasp from the baron. “That’s mine. Damn that little sneak thief. Hey, get that back for me!” he said, shaking the man beside him by the shoulder.
“And you call yourself human?” the man retorted, knocking the Nobleman over.
“The hell I do!” the baron shot back.
From overhead, something black fell, winding around the man who’d knocked him down. Another water beast had poked its head over the sand dune. This one was thirty feet long.
“What is that thing?” asked the baron. While he couldn’t make out its details, it did seem to have a certain solemnity to it. The baron’s tone was one of admiration.
The man he asked glanced quickly to either side with bloodshot eyes before replying, “It’s a water beast! One of the monsters the Nobility let loose on the world!”
“Why would they do that? Isn’t that rather dangerous?”
“That’s a question for the Nobles, damn them.”
“Hmm—well, I’m sure they must’ve had their reasons.”
“You stupid asshole!” the man shouted, and then he was lifted easily into the air. All that was clear was that the other water beast had caught him. Though the thing had coiled around him, it didn’t have hands or feet to hold him, yet it seemed to adhere to him as it carried him away.
“
Break out the mortars!” the beanpole shouted. Blood streamed from his forehead.
Two men dove into the tent, then each carried out a black cylinder supported by a base. Apparently the cylinders were already loaded. Setting them down in the sand, they took aim through the sights and pulled the firing levers. Two streaks of white smoke and flame arced elegantly into the air, sinking into the water beasts. Fireballs formed. They were the color of blood. The beasts were blown apart.
Pieces of them rained down. The baron covered his head. However, it wasn’t blood and chunks of flesh that rained down on him.
“Water?”
Right beside him, the giant remarked with apparent disgust, “What’s so surprising about that? They’re liquid creatures that move through the ground, after all. They say it’s easier for them to move as a liquid than a solid. Say, are that kid and Ernie okay?”
Ernie must’ve been the name of the man who’d been carried away.
One of the men headed toward the dune, checked the figure on the ground, then shook his head.
“Didn’t make it, eh? How about the girl?”
“She’s all right,” the wrestler called out from the other side of the tent.
“Well, that’s something,” the giant said, heaving a sigh.
“Are you guys idiots?” the baron asked in utter amazement. “You got knocked around and lost one of your own, all for one little girl. Which is more important to you: some girl you’ve never seen before, or one of your compatriots? Well?”
The baron wore a frightened expression as the men who surrounded him stared him down.
“So, you think a man should run off and leave a little girl to her fate? You call yourself human, you son of a bitch?” the giant said, shoving the baron’s shoulder.
“Wh—what do you think you’re doing?” the baron shot back.
“No, you’re wrong. He’s a Noble!”
All eyes focused on Leda, who stood by the side of the tent. The girl’s clothes were tattered, her right shoulder exposed, and she was covered from head to foot with sand, but she pointed at the baron and shouted, “I know that guy—he’s a Noble who can walk in the light of day! Don’t let him trick you.”
Record of the Blood Battle Page 13