Noble V: Greylancer

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  Noble V: Greylancer

  Copyright © 2011 Hideyuki Kikuchi

  Originally published in Japan by Asahi Shinbun Publications Inc.

  English translation © 2013 VIZ Media, LLC

  Design by Sam Elzway

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art © 2013 Vincent Chong

  No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.

  HAIKASORU

  Published by VIZ Media, LLC

  295 Bay Street

  San Francisco, CA 94133

  www.haikasoru.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kikuchi, Hideyuki, 1949–

  Noble V : Greylancer / Hideyuki Kikuchi ; Translated by Takami Nieda.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-4215-5417-4

  1. Vampires--Fiction. I. Title.

  PL855.I3846N66 2013

  895.6'36--dc23

  2013008821

  Haikasoru eBook edition

  ISBN: 978-1-4215-6442-5

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  GREYLANCER

  Overseer of the Northern Frontier sector

  The Nobility’s greatest warrior

  MAYERLING

  Overseer of the Western Frontier sector

  DUCHESS MIRCALLA

  Overseer of the Southern Frontier sector

  ZEUS MACULA

  Overseer of the Eastern Frontier sector

  VAROSSA

  Longtime weaponsmith serving House Greylancer

  MICHIA

  Villager from Ardoz who comes to the wounded Greylancer’s aid

  LETICIA

  Country girl from the Western Frontier who happens upon the injured Greylancer

  GALLAGHER

  Marksman serving as Greylancer’s retainer after being captured

  SHIZAM

  Swordsman practicing the Streda style

  CONTENTS

  Copyright page

  Dramatis Personae

  PROLOGUE: A FRAGMENT FROM A HISTORICAL TEXT

  CHAPTER 1: GUARDIAN OF THE FRONTIER

  CHAPTER 2: EXTERMINATING THE INTRUDERS

  CHAPTER 3: THE PRIVY COUNCIL’S DECISION

  CHAPTER 4: CRIMSON SONG

  CHAPTER 5: THE ARCHER NAMED ARROW

  CHAPTER 6: THE BENEVOLENT OVERLORD

  CHAPTER 7: DUCHESS MIRCALLA

  CHAPTER 8: RAIN OF JAVELINS

  CHAPTER 9: CONSPIRATORIAL PURGATORY

  CHAPTER 10: THE FIERY CHARIOT

  AFTERWORD

  BONUS: AN IRREPLACEABLE EXISTENCE

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE:

  A FRAGMENT FROM

  A HISTORICAL TEXT

  In the vermillion-colored tide of the Nobility’s proud history, no period illuminated their eminence more than the three thousand years during which the Nobility contended against the enormous boulder disrupting the raging current.

  The Nobility magically manipulated science to their will and confronted this enormous obstacle.

  The enormous boulder was an enemy. An enemy from outer space.

  Even the Nobles, endowed with eternal life, might let slip a mournful sigh at the mere thought of the endless depths of the constellations. It was from there that the enemy known as the Outer Space Beings—the OSB—came.

  These three thousand years—tinted vermillion, stained crimson, marked by death shrouds and bloodshed—glorified the Noble warriors. After enjoying five thousand years of peace, with humanity held in servitude, for the first time, the Nobility engaged in a daily battle that, aside from drinking the blood of humans, might appropriately be called Evil’s calling.

  I shall spare you the particulars.

  Only to say that the Nobility pitched themselves into battle with a blood frenzy.

  Black bats and pale-faced men tore across winter’s moonlit sky. Noble warriors stood against OSB aircraft. The enemy’s thunder tanks and single-seated tanks, their gold-chromed armor protected by some invisible energy force, clashed against the Nobility’s science and magic. In time, traveling troubadours sang their reverence, not for the grand battle, but for the vast wasteland turned burial ground.

  The war took place in the Frontier, far from the Capital.

  It was there the humans lived. The Frontier, a stark contrast to the splendor in which the Nobility lived, was where these trifling beings had been consigned—nay, allowed—to exist.

  Ironically enough, it was because of humanity’s very helplessness that the responsibility fell to the Nobles to protect the humans from the OSB invasion.

  Many of the overlords—overseers of the Frontier—forfeited that responsibility, a fact that later became the root of humanity’s distrust and the Nobility’s eventual decline. Distrust joined with hate and turned into a rallying cry for revolt. Humanity left few records of the Nobility during this period. Hatred elected to extinguish rather than to chronicle.

  However, humanity preserved the names of a select few in its annals.

  Most of the names have already become legend and all but vanished, as if inscribed into crimson-colored history by a zephyr wind. The Nobles were remembered only in fragmentary verses of ballads and sagas. Yet some villagers in remote corners of the Frontier, defying the winds of time, strove to pass on the meaning of these names from generation to generation.

  This is a story woven by their chapped lips and shuttered eyes, and also the first name to be spun out of blood, darkness, and moonlight.

  CHAPTER 1:

  GUARDIAN OF THE FRONTIER

  1

  At the onset of autumn in the year 7000 by Noble reckoning, two fears plagued the village of Ardoz.

  One was the presence of the OSB—outer space beings that had been waging war against Ardoz’s rulers, the Nobility, for over a hundred years. The other was the imminent visit from their overlord and overseer of the Northern Frontier sector, Greylancer.

  Were this a different sector or an inspection by a local overseer, the villagers would not have much cause to fret. An overseer’s appearance in a human habitat zone was exactly that—a ceremonious procession of auto-vassals flanking a G-coffin paraded down the street, all accompanied by the solemn music of a robotic band. Nary a soul believed that an inspector, much less a lord, was acting as the menacing eye of the Nobility from inside the coffin as decreed in the missive from the Capital.

  But the overlord of the Northern Frontier sector would surely come.

  For over three thousand years, the Greater Noble Greylancer had ruled over this sector, becoming a legend in his lifetime. His very appearance inspired awe in his subjects.

  But the villagers were shaken by a peculiar kind of confusion and anxiety.

  As the appointed time approached, they glanced up at the source of their confusion, the sky itself. White clouds frolicked in the blue sky like kittens. Not even a shadow of OSB aircraft, rumored to have come from the endless void to engage the Nobility night and day in a fierce aerial battle, passed overhead.

  No, it was daylight.

  Lord Greylancer was expected to arrive at high noon.

  In two minutes’ time. But just how was a Noble—a vampire—capable of visiting this sun-drenched village?

  “Are you sure this isn’t some sham, Chief?” the sub-chief, one of ten villagers standing at the north entrance, asked Chief Lanzi. “I know he’s a Greater Noble and all, but in the middle of the day? How do you reckon he’ll get here? And bringing with him only one retainer?”

  “I won’t pretend to understand the ways of the Nobility—of all the villages in the Frontier, coming to a speck of dust such as this. I suppose you and I will go to our graves never knowing.
”

  “But I heard he’d been here once before, when you were a boy.”

  The wrinkled chief pried open his fissured eyes and blinked. “You heard right. I was four. My mother and father forbade me, but I cracked open the window and snuck a peek at the path in front of my house. I heard the sound of hooves clopping from a distance, and soon enough, this towering shadow straddling a gargantuan horse passed before my eyes. It felt as if a ghostly presence blew in through the window. I couldn’t sleep a lick that night. That was the Noble Greylancer.”

  “But that was at night, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, a brilliant moon shone down over the village.”

  “He aims to come in broad daylight this time. Did vampires evolve somehow when we weren’t looking?”

  “Who knows what the Nobility are up to? At least he doesn’t need any more than three delegates to greet his arrival. The rumor is that the Southern and Eastern overlords demand a welcome parade costing villages a year’s revenue.”

  “Nothing for you to be happy about.” The sub-chief bit a bent finger. “All I’ve heard is how cruel and cold-blooded his lordship is, like a messenger from hell. And he’s coming to this tiny village in the shining sun. I tell you, Chief, this is an omen. A sign of bad things to come. Something beyond our imagination.”

  “Shh!” The village treasurer tensed, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance. “I hear hooves…he’s coming!”

  The lingering villagers disappeared at once, as if scattered by an ominous black wind.

  Only four remained.

  The chief, sub-chief, treasurer, and…a redheaded woman. Though a hard life had aged her, she was still in her early thirties. She was the chief’s wife.

  It was obvious by the way her husband eyed her like a nuisance that her presence was unwelcome.

  After arguing with her husband much of the morning, she had joined the welcome delegation against his wishes.

  And when two shadows on horseback appeared in the path stretching down the miasma-draped wasteland, the look on the woman’s face resembled one of enchantment, unlike the terror-stricken faces of the men next to her.

  One by one, the faces vanished from windows and doors of mud-packed houses made of wood and stone. The threadbare curtains were drawn.

  Though appearing to be shrouded by a dark mist from afar, the figure halting the black cybernetic horse before them was blurred by a navy and gold-tinged haze. Navy was the color of his cape, gold the color of the embroidery on his coat.

  “We’ve been expecting you. I am Lanzi, Chief of Ardoz village. This is Sub-Chief Sdao, and the village treasurer, Shijog.”

  “Pardon the trouble. I am Greylancer.” The voice from atop the horse sounded terribly distant, but packed enough force to send chills up the spines of the four villagers.

  Long shiny black hair, a rugged face as if the bones underneath were forged from steel, a neck thick enough to support that weight, thick brows, tall nose, his tightly drawn lips red like blood. One bellow from those lips might fell birds in flight. As well, his body appeared as if flesh and skin were stretched over a steel frame. His eyes were as blue and deep as the ocean but would no doubt turn as red as his lips at the first whiff of blood.

  Greylancer jerked his chin toward the mounted figure behind him and said, “My retainer, Grosbec.”

  The man, bowing with his hands still gripping the reins, was narrow-chested and neither as tall nor broad around the shoulders as his master. Chief Lanzi imagined his delicate head popping off with a flick of his master’s finger and blowing away into the horizon with a single breath. The mechanized armor beneath his cape appeared utterly useless or rather, in eternal disrepair.

  Thin, slight brows, half-lidded eyes that appeared shut, eyes like those of dead fish, and finally a look of agony as if he’d taken his last gasp. Despite the sword hanging at his side and the laser gun affixed to his right forearm, he hardly seemed able to handle them. No doubt they were broken anyway.

  Nevertheless, the expression that Greylancer directed at his only companion was one of complete trust. “Anything?” Greylancer asked Grosbec.

  The villagers stared at one another in confusion.

  “No different than the other villages. Inevitable, I’m afraid.” Grosbec rubbed the base of his nose, in the manner of the drug addicts in the village.

  “Anyone?”

  “I cannot say for certain. No one within earshot.”

  “Good,” said the voice of steel. “Whatever they might feel for the Nobility cannot be helped.”

  “Yes, my lord.” The man with the voice and body of an invalid pinched his nose harder.

  When Greylancer dismounted his horse, the villagers heard the earth rumble—a phantom sound, of course. But no wonder—the Noble stood nearly two meters tall.

  Greylancer’s deep blue eyes paused on the woman and reflected her smile before turning to the chief. “Do you find it strange to see us walking in the sun?” he asked.

  “Why, er…no.”

  “You needn’t hide your shock. At present, only Grosbec here and I are capable of doing so.”

  “My lord,” said the chief, dropping his eyes in deference.

  Greylancer’s gaze reverted to the woman. “A rare surprise seeing a woman to greet our arrival.”

  “Begging your pardon,” said the chief. “This is my wife.”

  “My name is Michia.” The woman bowed, perhaps to conceal the forlorn look on her face.

  “Do vampires not frighten you?”

  “Why, not in the least.”

  “Well now…” Greylancer smiled faintly. Awl-like incisors peered out from lips that were blanched for a vampire. “Quite a woman. But rest assured. We’ll not stay long. We have been traveling the sector, but this village was not one of our planned stops. We’ve come because a surveillance satellite reported something falling from the sky in this area.”

  Though the villagers had heard of the existence of several dozen surveillance satellites floating on the outer edges of the atmosphere, they were ignorant of the particulars of their use. Nevertheless, it was enough to fill the village chief and the others with apprehension. Something falling from the sky… The overlord had ridden his horse to investigate this something himself, in all likelihood, to dispose of it.

  Chief Lanzi swallowed hard.

  Greylancer towered over him like a giant. Unarmed. He carried neither lance, nor bow, nor sword. No one doubted his ability to crush any enemy regardless.

  “Are you speaking of the OSB?” the chief asked, fearing he would incur the overlord’s wrath for speaking out of turn.

  But Greylancer smiled faintly a second time. “Indeed,” he answered. “You know well. A worthy subject. Any ideas?”

  2

  Chief Lanzi turned to the others. The sub-chief and treasurer shook their heads.

  “Wait…” It was Michia whose face clouded. As the men’s gazes converged on her, she continued, “I saw the woodcutter Beijrot this morning, when I went foraging for mushrooms in the northern forest. He said something about watching a shooting star drop into the forest last night.”

  “When was that?”

  “I…didn’t ask.”

  “Hmm, do you know the approximate location?”

  Michia’s eyes narrowed and her brows knitted as she searched her memory. Two seconds later, her eyes opened wide. “The northern forest is about twenty kilometers from this village. And then another fifty kilometers from Beijrot’s cabin to the deep forest.”

  The Noble shot a look northward. “Is this woodcutter home now?”

  “Yes,” answered the treasurer. “Someone saw him leaving the village not three hours ago.”

  “Any inhabitants near the impact point?”

  “Yes, the homes of four woodcutters,” Chief Lanzi answered.

  “Their numbers?”

  “One family is expecting a child any day now, but including the child, seventeen.”

  Greylancer nodded. “We will take
our leave. You are all to stay inside your homes. And—” He uttered something peculiar. “If the woodcutter and his family return, do not let them into your homes. Should they attempt to enter, kill them.”

  An air of unease besieged the four villagers. The Noble’s every utterance affected the fates of humans living in the Frontier. Would this fistful of powder pitched into the flames cause an innocuous gunshot or a blasting charge?

  “What ever do you mean?”

  Greylancer regarded the chief’s terrified visage and answered in a low bass, “Do not fret. Do as I say, and you will be safe. Understand? Assuming familiarity with anyone will instantly lead to your demise. Let us meet again.” Then he muttered, “Let’s go” to Grosbec, and with a dark blue boot, kicked the cybernetic horse into a full gallop, whipping up a whirlwind around them.

  Watching the riders receding between the houses, Chief Lanzi remarked, “What skill handling the reins and the horse. At their rate, it won’t take but a half hour to reach the northern end,” after which he turned to his wife and said, “From the way you were acting, I suspected you knew him, but perhaps I was wrong. His lordship didn’t even bat an eye. What a relief.”

  “Come now,” Michia said, flashing a disbelieving smile. But when the men began to return to their homes, she looked back in the direction where not even a shadow of the vampire remained. She stared down at the point where he had stood. It was obvious that the thoughts swirling in her mind differed completely from those of the others.

  †

  The ride to Beijrot’s cabin did not take ten minutes.

  Both Greylancer’s and Grosbec’s cybernetic horses had been custom built.

  A tiny cabin slumbered beneath the shadow of a branch of a liza tree standing a hundred meters tall.

  Greylancer went inside the cabin and immediately came out. “No one inside. From the look of the ashes in the fireplace, he must have gone out again as soon as he returned from the village. No horse. Anything?”

  The mounted Grosbec had taken on a different complexion. The color had returned, the unhealthy stiffness was gone from not only his face but also his entire body, and a faint smile flickered across his lips. “At present, I sense only animals within two kilometers,” was the answer to his master’s query.