The Nobility populated this area with bioengineered beasts and monsters.
Mountains grew arms and legs for moving, rivers surged in different directions, and oceans acquired eyes the size of continents.
Fire-breathing dragons were prey to three-headed birds, while subterranean monsters and goblins fought over the dragon carcasses and blood. All told, the Nobility had dispersed 1,243,0778 monster species throughout the world.
This act begat an unexpected byproduct.
Aside from the Nobility’s bioengineered creatures, the evil that once lurked on this planet had stirred back to life.
Most conspicuous were the gods of the four elements, one of which was Ithaqua, the god of wind.
An encounter with this god, whom they knew not how to defeat, posed a greater threat to the Nobility than stakes or knives. Ithaqua did not attempt to destroy the Nobles it encountered. They were simply taken, never to return, and it was this vanishing act the Nobility feared more than death.
Thud! The wagon shook again.
“My lord, shadows up ahead. About twenty of them.”
His eyes trained on the monitor, Mayerling asked, “How do they look? Check their posture and eyes.”
“Rounded shoulders. Their eyes burn red.”
“Very well. Don’t stop. Push past them.”
The driver’s whip danced, and the coach picked up speed, hurtling against the violent wind.
Their dress identified the shadows as farmers. When the lead horses came within five meters, they scattered right and left with an agility belying their profession.
A single wire was left in their wake, held up about a meter high at both ends.
The cybernetic horses were unable to time their jump. As their legs were swept from under them, the two lead horses flew forward in a brilliant arc, while the rest followed. The coach was no exception; it flipped end over end and crashed down atop the horses.
A split second before impact, the coach’s computer activated its defensive program.
Four shock struts sprang out of the corners of the coach and absorbed the impact, then the stabilizer cut loose the horses and righted the coach, landing it gently upright.
The shadows descended upon the coach while it was still airborne.
Closing the six-meter gap in one leap, they pressed up against the coach and banged the sides with their fists.
They were not Nobles, but servants who’d been bitten—“half-humans.” While they possessed some of the same physical abilities as Nobles, they lacked the strength to destroy the overseer’s transport.
The driver engaged the enemy.
Unstrapping his belt, he grabbed his stake rifle and shot the first three attackers in their hearts.
The fourth and fifth attackers were aiming their crossbows. After taking one arrow in the throat, the driver spat up blood and shot down the fourth attacker before a second arrow caught him dead in the heart.
However, the fifth attacker gaped in disbelief. The arrow had deflected from the driver’s chest. The instant the attacker realized the arrow had hit the driver’s underarmor, the stake rifle howled, discharging high-pressure gas along with the shot that tore through the half-human. His body turned to dust before it hit the ground.
Meanwhile, a sixth attacker perched atop the coach crept up to the driver from behind. His weapon was a meter-long machete.
Whirling around, the driver leapt onto the coach and sank his teeth into the half-human’s carotid artery.
The half-human swung his machete and lopped off the driver’s head. The driver, not yet realizing his death, continued to tear into the enemy’s neck until first his body, then his head rolled on top of the coach.
When the driver went down at last, the remaining shadows dragged him to the ground, hacked his severed head to pieces with machetes, and skewered his body with countless blades.
The shadows had already accomplished their initial goal.
Without a sound, they leapt away from the coach, lay low, and waited for the fruits of their labor.
A fragmentation bomb placed beneath the coach exploded and engulfed the transport in scarlet flames.
When the flames and blast threatened to consume them, the shadows scrambled to safer ground.
A dark silhouette wavered in the colorful flames.
When the fire-drowned mass lurched away from the coach, the shadows let out voiceless screams. The ten-thousand-degree heat should have incinerated even a Noble’s bones.
Suddenly, the dark figure collapsed and was swallowed by the flames once again. When the half-humans saw this, triumphant smiles appeared on their rough faces. Only six of them remained.
It quickly became four. Something had stretched out from the fire, sliced off the heads of the two lead attackers in one sideways swing and cut across their chests on the return.
The survivors did not understand what had happened. What they saw was a human hand sticking out from the flames. With the fingers in a line like a blade, the hand slashed right.
Two more heads rolled on the right.
“Mayerling’s claw…” groaned one of the remaining two. They had received orders to kill Mayerling before he wielded it.
The hand rose again. Out of the flames rose Mayerling, his purple cape swirling in the superheated wind currents.
The flames of death, falling away from his cape with one shake, had not burned any part of his skin or mane.
Against the flames consuming the coach in the background the figure appeared strangely still, as though it existed in a different world.
Here stood Vlijmen Mayerling, overseer of the Western Frontier sector.
“If I have incurred the enmity of my people, then I am to blame. But this does not appear to be the case. Whom do you serve?” Was this the voice of the same man that had been consumed in flames just now? How gentle he sounded. Like the sound of snow falling on the Holy Night.
Mayerling stepped toward the shadows.
His steps were fainter than the sound of falling snow.
Shaaah! The shadows bared their fangs.
But they were unable to move. Paralyzed by the handsome, young vampire’s aura, their bodies were numb to their bones.
“Can you not speak?” Mayerling extended a hand and beckoned the shadows closer. His fingers were slender and beautiful like those of a woman. “Then come closer.”
The shadows began to walk without hesitation. They ambled closer to the Noble as if they’d lost the will to resist.
“Perhaps now I can hear you. Now speak. Which master do you serve?”
Their lips began to move. The shadows attempted to utter a name.
The moon caught a glint of metal in the darkness.
Before the crack of the gunshot reached anyone’s ears, one shadow’s head shattered to pieces, and another shadow fell over in a spray of blood.
Mayerling.
He had expected an unceasing barrage of bullets.
The Noble held up a hand in front of his handsome face.
When a tiny hole appeared in the palm, he swung the hand downward and—
A lead bullet hot enough to vaporize his blood burrowed into the black earth.
Turning his head just a hint, Mayerling stared into the distant darkness. It was unmistakably the direction from which the bullet had come.
But only for an instant, as he turned in the direction of the burning coach.
A tall shadow stood there. Behind him loomed an enormous tree, in the shadow of which he’d likely been lurking.
But Mayerling’s eyes were drawn to the two swords strapped in a crisscross behind the shadow’s back.
The rough-hewn hilts protruding from either side of his head were quivering.
Trying to suppress his surprise, the shadow said in a low, low voice, “I’m trembling with excitement. You felled those humans in two swings. Perhaps you are qualified to rule as overseer.”
“Are you with the sharpshooter?” Mayerling made a loose fist. When he opened
it, the bullet wound on his palm was gone.
“The damn gunner failed. I didn’t want to go along with his dirty trick to begin with. Now you shall suffer the might of the Streda, a style of swordsmanship I have practiced to defeat you Nobles.”
“So there will be no more bullets.” The wind coaxed a faint smile over Mayerling’s lips.
The bullet he’d caught in his palm was supposed to have crushed his face and head. As ineffective as the attack was against Nobles, it would have taken at least a few seconds for Mayerling to recover completely, allowing the tall swordsman to close in and pierce his heart.
But Mayerling had caught the first bullet, and a second did not follow. With the reason still unknown, another battle was about to unfold in the depths of night lit only by the moon.
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am the swordsman Shizam. Take that name with you to the netherworld.”
“Then see that you do not forget your name,” said Mayerling. The white fangs peering from his lips gleamed in the moonlight.
†
The gunner had waited for his chance in the bushes just below the northbound road.
He had readied three rifles. He had also brought thirty bullets with him, but if all had gone according to plan, one would have sufficed.
Yet he had wasted two bullets to silence a confession. Good for nothing bumpkins! At least you’ll go to your graves regretting how you lost your worthless lives!
Because his rifles were antiquated flintlocks, in which the powder and ball were loaded through the muzzle and the powder ignited in the flashpan with flint, he was not able to fire repeated shots. That was his greatest weakness. But his long-range marksmanship, perhaps more accurately called remote marksmanship, more than compensated for this weakness. In fact, the distance to his intended target had measured more than ten kilometers.
But at present, he could only tremble with fear. The target crystal at his feet projected an image—his lethal shot had missed. No, it had been blocked.
“Impossible!” he’d told himself a hundred times over.
The skills he’d acquired through dreadful, diligent toil enabled him to shoot down a butterfly fluttering about at one end of the continent from the other side.
And yet that Noble had…
This first-ever blunder had caused him to forget himself. By the time he had grabbed another rifle, loaded the powder and lead bullet in the muzzle, and poured the gunpowder into the flashpan, a full minute had elapsed since his miss. His distraction had caused him to overlook another extraordinary mistake.
When finally he took aim and cocked the hammer holding the flint, there was a voice: “A magic shot. First I’ve seen a human practice it. From the direction the muzzle is pointed, your target is a traveler heading toward the Capital. Who employed you to kill the overlord of the West?”
The gunner spun around at lightning speed.
Before he could pull the trigger, the rifle was snatched away from him, and the gunstock swung up and smashed against his chin.
Next to the callow gunner lying on his back, Greylancer stood, momentarily absorbed by the rifle. Then he glared in the direction the rifle had been pointed. “It appears you have many enemies, Mayerling.”
CHAPTER 7:
DUCHESS MIRCALLA
1
Greylancer returned to Bistoria, the regional capital of his sector of the Frontier, three days later.
Five minutes after boarding a gyrocopter at the border checkpoint, Greylancer returned to his castle, where a shocking piece of news awaited.
Mayerling had wielded his evil claw and grievously injured Chancellor Cornelius inside the halls of the Privy Council Ministry.
“You have orders to report at once,” said the chief steward.
Though Old Cornelius did not perish, he was still being treated in the Nobles’ own hospital, where science and magic met.
“I expected nothing less,” Greylancer said with a smile.
This same smile floated to his lips once again, when Vice-Chancellor Pitaka issued Greylancer his orders:
“Lord Greylancer, I’ve been waiting for you. Mayerling has returned to his sector, following his attack on Chancellor Cornelius. He will likely hole up in his castle and engage our army there. The Privy Council has appointed you subcommander of the counterinsurgency forces.”
“Who is the commander?”
“Duchess Mircalla of the Southern Frontier sector.” A faint smile came over Greylancer’s lips, at which Vice-Chancellor Pitaka glared and quickly added, “Your army will assemble tomorrow. Best you go to the War Ministry to meet with Mircalla immediately. You two will have full operational control.”
“I must ask. What has become of the engagement against the OSB?”
“The Privy Council holds your command and victory on the moon base in high regard. Consider this appointment as subcommander as an expression of our appreciation. If you return having performed your duty, I have every expectation that more accolades will follow.”
“What of the OSB vanguard?” he pressed.
Whether Vice-Chancellor Pitaka recognized the force behind the question was not apparent in his expressionless face. “If you’ve returned to your sector, then you received the government decree. The plasma attack on suspected OSB enclaves was originally set for tomorrow. In light of the rebel insurgency, however, zero hour has been pushed to three days after Mayerling’s surrender.”
†
When Greylancer arrived at the counterinsurgency headquarters taking up a corner of the spacious War Ministry, the awestruck faces of the officers, and the beguiling smile of the duchess, greeted him.
“Lord Greylancer, it has been too long,” Mircalla said.
“Indeed.”
Mircalla’s smile turned affectionate, like that of a mother admonishing a mischievous urchin. He is as unsociable as he was a millennium ago, she thought. The faint scent of fragrance tickled the warrior’s nostrils.
“Given the sudden turn of events, we haven’t much time. What is the plan?”
The moonlight filtering in through the window illuminated the two overseers and officers. The walls were hewn stone, the room devoid of computers and machines.
Mircalla crooked a pale finger as if to beckon.
The space near the ceiling sparked to life, and an image of the moon suddenly appeared.
“The headquarters have already been fitted to your needs, I see.”
“Yes, excuse me.” Her finger, adorned with a diamond ring of a size that might be mistaken for the moon itself, danced in the air, and the moon image melted, giving way to a map of a vast land. “The Western Frontier sector, Lord Greylancer. ” Despite having been appointed commander, Mircalla maintained a tone of respect toward her subcommander. Greylancer’s glorious military service and skill as overseer demanded it, to say nothing of the reality that no one dared oppose him. “The key departments have already determined the composition of the troops. With this in mind, the strategy I have devised is the following.”
The map transformed into a three-dimensional graphic.
In the air were bombers, while on the ground were missile tanks, giant mechanized infantry, and a battalion of regular infantry.
Greylancer grabbed a bomber in his hand and took a good look. It was a saucer-shaped object about three centimeters in diameter. The actual aircraft measured fifty meters. “How many?” he asked.
“Fifty bombers.”
“Missile tanks?”
“Fifty. As well as a hundred giant infantry and a thousand regular infantry.”
“A tricky business—punishing a Noble.” Greylancer returned the aircraft and smiled bitterly. “If we fire an antiproton missile from the Capital, the entire Western Frontier sector will be destroyed. But it would not kill a single Noble.”
“Yes, wooden stakes, steel swords, sharp arrows are the only effective weapons in bringing us down in any age.”
“In order to destroy Mayerling, we must penetrate the castle
walls and rely on the infantry’s swords and lances and bows. Mayerling will not sit back quietly. A frontal attack of the likes outlined on this map will spell heavy damage for our side.”
“The central government has already anticipated as much.”
“Are the giant mechanized and regular infantries comprised of androids?”
Mircalla shook her head slowly. The gold hair clip and diamond-studded crimson dress sparkled in the moonlight. “The giants are AI, and the regular infantry comprised of half-human soldiers.”
“Your proposed attack will cause untold fatalities.”
“Odd…” Mircalla touched a finger to her lips and smiled. Her fangs flashed beneath her lips; they were snaggleteeth unbecoming a duchess. She, too, fed upon human blood. “The Greylancer that I know would feel no compunction over sacrificing his subjects in order to carry out his purpose. He is a true Noble among Nobles.”
“To carry out a purpose,” he affirmed quietly. “But those sacrifices were ones of necessity. They died for a just cause. They have never been sent to their deaths for my self-interest, nor for senseless wars.”
“Such misguided—or shall I say, compassionate—thinking.” Mircalla dropped her head respectfully. “If you have objections to my proposed strategy, I would welcome hearing them.”
“No, I believe this is the best strategy.”
“I’m pleased to have your approval.”
“But this will be the outcome.” Greylancer moved toward Mayerling’s castle. The scale holograph of the battlefield stretched twenty meters long and ten meters wide. “I shall defend the castle.” With a grumble, he said, “Commence your attack.”
Mircalla answered with a nod.
†
“I don’t believe it,” said Mircalla, her voice filled with shock. “That my army would be so easily defeated as this.”
“Not defeated. Annihilated.” Greylancer cast a frigid look down at the dead troops and tanks lying in ruins on the holographic battlefield, then craned his neck to the right and left. His joints cracked. Flames and black smoke rose up in the air. They were holographic, of course, but they would burn you if you touched them. “This is the outcome I foresee based on the arsenal Mayerling has at his disposal. The strategy was mine, but I expect Mayerling to employ a similar one. But beware, Mircalla. He may have weapons of which we have no knowledge.”
Noble V: Greylancer Page 11
