He was a middle-aged man astride a cyborg horse. As befit the Frontier, he had an expression as hard and foreboding as stone. The middle-aged man halted his steed just ten feet from the patrol. The silence that hung between the two sides was short.
“Who are you?” Donnelly finally asked.
“A colleague of yours—of all of you, in fact,” the man in the uniform said with a smile. There was a deep scar on his left cheek. A bullet wound. Against his tanned face, the white glare of his teeth burned into Donnelly’s eyes.
“Posing as an official is a serious offense, but you probably knew that, didn’t you?”
Behind Donnelly, the air stirred with slight signs of movement. His men had drawn their guns in unison. Some were single-shot pistols. Others were rivet guns or stake guns. Not counting Donnelly, that made thirteen weapons in all—and that overkill response to just one man showed how rattled the patrol was.
“It’s a serious offense, I’ll give you that,” the man on horseback conceded. “So, what’s to be my punishment, then?”
“Death.”
“Wait!” an unlikely figure called out to stop them. “This is just crazy. Talk through this.” It was Baron Macula, which was rather strange, come to think of it.
From Donnelly’s right hand, there was the sound of gas being released. A million tungsten needles launched at Mach 5, or one mile per second. They penetrated the man’s chest, pulverizing flesh and bone.
As the man tumbled out of the saddle, Baron Macula leapt up. “Wha—what have you done? You didn’t even check up on him before you—” At that point, he suddenly froze. A stunned expression on his face, he looked around at the men and said, “You mean to tell me, you’re the real impostors?”
“That’s right. You just realizing that now? You’re not very smart for a Nobleman.” Up on his steed, Donnelly twisted around to show him a mocking grin. “Have you heard about the bandit group that’s been terrorizing the Frontier recently? Well, that’s us! Four days back, a plant we had in Satori came and told us what was going on. We knew there’d be big money to be made, so we waited nearby. Fooling a hick sheriff and mayor was easy enough, but a real patrolman wouldn’t have fallen for it. Of course, thanks to that, the mayor and the rest of ’em didn’t need to be killed.”
“Hmmm. I see,” the baron said, taking one of his many chins in a pudgy hand, but he quickly inquired, “So, what do you intend to do with me?”
Slightly unnerved by the way the Nobleman’s lips had begun to twist into a grin, Donnelly replied, “Actually, just what I said back in the village. There are more government organizations and rich eccentrics who’d drool over a Noble who can walk in daylight than you could shake a stick at. See, rather than thinking the Nobility are something to be feared, they want to learn the secret of immortality. So, we bring them you, and get enough coin to buy a great big chunk of the Frontier. See, with really rich folks, the sky’s the limit.”
“You intend to sell me for money? That’s insulting!” the baron said, turning as red as a boiled octopus. Apparently he was quite upset.
“Shut up! I don’t wanna hear any complaints out of you. Play nice, and you’ll be treated hospitably, as someone who’s going to make me a tidy sum. Make things hard for me, and I’ll chop off your arms and legs!”
“Oh—oh yeah? I’d like to see you try!” the baron shot back from atop his steed. From the uncomfortable look on his face, it was clear he was bluffing.
“You still don’t get it, do you, Nobleman?” Donnelly said, turning the microneedle gun toward the baron. “Looks to me like you still haven’t gotten over your glory days. Well, let me show you just what your situation is now. We’ll start with your right arm.”
“Let’s talk this over!”
“Don’t be daft,” he said, his finger on the trigger.
A gunshot rang out, piercing his chest. Blown off his horse, Donnelly fell to the ground. He’d been killed instantly.
“Cogs—what the hell are you doing?” one of the men cried, training a revolver on the man who’d been on Donnelly’s right. That man held an identical weapon. He was the one who’d shot and killed Donnelly so suddenly.
The man waved his still-smoking gun around, protesting, “You’ve got it all wrong! It wasn’t me!” As he shouted, he kept firing. Three more riders dropped in rapid succession, and he cried, “This isn’t right!”
The men’s bullets converged on their colleague.
That was when the nightmare began.
“Take that, you bastard!” one of the men sneered, just as the man to his left blasted a bolt through his left temple with pressurized gas.
“My hand—it just did that all on its own!” the second man screamed, while another drove his knife into his belly.
It seemed as if a cloud of bloodthirsty insanity drifted over the men. They shot their compatriots in a wild melee. Horses mercilessly trampled the men who’d fallen.
Finally, only one remained.
“What the hell . . . Everyone just started shooting . . .” he groaned in disbelief as his hand rose to his temple. His bolt gun spat flames before the man even figured out what had caused all this.
The weight of the dead exerted a modest pressure on the earth, and in return the ground thudded dully. A very brief silence visited the twilight.
“Wow,” Baron Macula finally muttered, his pudgy face turning to look straight ahead. Toward the first person who’d been shot—the real patrolman.
“Hey, you got what you wanted. You can get up now.”
After the Noble spoke, the man got up, without any stiffness. He still had a gaping hole in his chest.
“I’ll be damned,” the baron groaned. He seemed impressed. “I can pretty much guess what happened, but it was you who killed these guys, wasn’t it?”
“I suppose it was,” the man replied, knitting his brow as he inspected the damage to his chest, then put his right fist into the hole. Time and again, he put his arm through all the way up to the elbow. There was something humorous about the act, though on further reflection, it was also chilling.
Watching with an expression of intent fascination, the baron said, “You’re quite an interesting fellow. Say, you wouldn’t happen to be after me, would you?”
“That’s right,” the man replied, nodding as he pulled his arm back out. “We’ll wait here a little bit. The gang should be along soon.”
“You’re a bandit, too?”
“Right you are. I had a plant of my own in the village of Satori. But as coming through this here valley was a little too hairy, they took the long way around. I couldn’t be bothered with that, so I went on ahead alone. I’m the boss, JQ,” the man with the hole in his chest said, grinning at the baron. “I imagine you know the deal with this valley. I bet you planned on letting these assholes go in without saying anything, figuring you’d be the only one to survive.”
“Hmph!” the stunned baron snorted, as the man had apparently been right on the mark.
“You’re kind of a slimy bastard for a Noble. But you’re worth a fortune, no doubt about that. Those folks in the Capital will piss themselves for joy. All right, get down from there.”
Though the baron was still stunned, he suddenly pulled down the bottom of one eye with his index finger and stuck his tongue out at the man.
“What the hell?” JQ remarked, and the moment he understandably furrowed his brow at the unconventional response, the baron delivered a spirited kick to his steed’s flanks with his stout little legs.
“I’ll be damned,” JQ shouted to the heavens.
The baron and his steed were like one as they leapt over the man’s head, landed some fifteen feet away, and galloped into the valley without a backward glance.
“Seems I might’ve underestimated him,” JQ muttered just before the thunder of iron-shod hooves faded in the distance. “I was able to make it through once, but I don’t think I’d ever like to set foot in that valley again. Looks like I’ll just have to let him go.” Af
ter glowering at the stony world around him, he finally broke into a grin. “Well, he still has a long way to go. At some point, when he’s clear of the valley—”
JQ didn’t finish what he was saying as he whirled around with lightning speed. He hadn’t intended to turn—he’d been compelled to do so by a sense beyond comprehension.
Far down the same road the bandits had traveled, a horse and rider had suddenly taken shape. The ring of iron horseshoes striking rock was growing closer.
“Who goes there?”
There was no answer.
JQ then did something rather odd. “Who goes there?” he asked again, and then he viciously snapped, “Shut up!”
There was a reason he reprimanded himself. He was chilled to the marrow of his bones. Just hearing his voice might’ve been enough to bring the approaching rider down on him. He knew he couldn’t avoid him. And now the horse and rider were about to pass right by.
The man astride the cyborg horse wore a wide-brimmed traveler’s hat, a pendant of a deep blue hue, and a pitch-black coat, and an elegantly curved longsword swayed to and fro on his back.
JQ was left reeling, but it wasn’t from relief that the rider went by without so much as glancing at the bandit corpses that littered the ground. Rather, he’d caught a glimpse of the man’s profile between the brim of his traveler’s hat and the upturned collar of his coat. For all his fear, it left him swooning and intoxicated.
As he watched this second figure disappear into the valley, JQ groaned to himself almost deliriously, “Could you—could you get him to kill himself, do you think?”
“Child’s play,” was the immediate reply.
“Let’s follow him,” JQ said, and he began walking.
“What for?” asked a voice tinged with faint laughter.
“To hire him to catch that Nobleman and transport him. That man could do it. Even through the Valley of the Salamander.”
After a short pause, the other voice said, “No, I wouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“With looks like that? He’s just too dangerous! One little misstep, and you and I will both wind up dead. For today, I say we fall back.”
There was another pause, and then JQ said, “I agree. We’ll get him sooner or later.”
“Clever boy.”
As if challenging the voice, JQ glared in its direction, but he immediately thought better of it, silently walking toward his cyborg horse in the blue light of dusk. Still with a fist-sized hole in his chest.
THE MONSTER IN THE VALLEY
chapter 3
I
—
D chose the Valley of the Salamander because it was the shortest route to a neighboring village. The valley was feared, and with good reason. However, that meant nothing to the young man. The road through the valley was covered with rocks. Every time the hooves of his cyborg horse struck one, it sent tiny sparks flying.
After proceeding for about half an hour, he heard a pitiful voice ahead calling out, “Please, help me! Somebody! Anybody!”
“It’s our little friend, isn’t it?” said a voice from the Hunter’s left hand, which gripped the reins. “What an embarrassing display! Hardly seems worthy of a Noble.”
Even D said, “He’s a strange one.” The Nobleman must’ve made quite an impression.
After the Hunter had advanced another hundred yards, he saw a chubby figure lying in the middle of the wide road. He was clutching his right ankle with both hands. Leisurely, the Hunter rode up beside him, then looked down without saying a word.
“What are you doing? Hurry up and help me!” the Nobleman cried, squealing with pain.
“What happened?” asked D.
“I was just getting down from my horse when I twisted my ankle. It really hurts. Hurry up and help me already.”
“And a Noble blubbers over something like that?” D remarked, his words intended to cut like a knife to the chest, but they didn’t seem to have any effect at all on the baron. He continued to scream a litany of cries: “The pain! It hurts! Help me!” There was no sign of his horse. Perhaps it’d been startled by his cries and run off.
“Leave him be,” the hoarse voice said in disgust. “The sun will be down soon. I bet if that ol’ salamander shows up, his foot will heal fast enough. You could snuff him, but unfortunately no one’s hired you to do it. Hurry along now.”
D voiced no objection. His steed moved forward.
For a moment, the pudgy Nobleman looked puzzled—then he cried, “Oh, so you intend to just leave a wounded person lying here, you bastard? You’re a lousy brute. Ah, where has all the humanity gone in the last five thousand years? Oh, the pain! There’s really no point in living any longer. No, there’s still life in me, but my soul has died. If you’re just going to leave me here, you might as well kill me. Oh, the pain! The pain!”
There was no way his somewhat exaggerated cries of agony would cause D to deviate from his course. The Hunter’s steed proceeded another dozen paces or so, but then it came to a dead stop.
The air in the wooded valley froze. An ever increasing blueness surged into the world.
The baron cried out about his pain.
“Here it comes!” the hoarse voice said, fraught with tension.
Far down the road, something was coming. D’s right hand slipped into his coat. Searing the air, a rough wooden needle was swallowed by the blueness down the road.
—
“No effect. It’s still coming!” said the hoarse voice.
D’s figure shook. It was his steed. The cyborg horse was backing away. Whatever was coming frightened it. How terrifying would the thing have to be?
Leaning over, D slapped his steed’s flank. The horse stopped.
“This is something else, all right!” the hoarse voice groaned. “But I think we should fall back. I’ve come up with a good idea.”
“What’s that?” asked D.
“Leave him here. We can make our escape while the salamander’s eating him.”
“That is a good plan,” D conceded.
“Please, help me!” Baron Macula cried. “How can you call yourself human? I mean, a dhampir? I’ll curse you till the end of your days. Leaving the weak and defenseless while you make your escape—you’re the scum of the human race.”
Considering that the Nobility had always treated humans like they were insects, calling D the scum of the human race was more absurd than infuriating.
Cruelly enough, D wheeled his horse around.
“You coward—help meeeeeee!”
In the blink of an eye, the pounding of the cyborg horse’s hoofbeats against the baron’s eardrums faded into nothingness.
“Shit! He’s a lost cause. There’s just no trusting a looker. He doesn’t understand the workings of the world. The next time I see him, I’ll make him sorry. Oh, the pain! The pain!”
The Nobleman lay there on his belly, already having spilled a good quart of sweat. He crawled, or rather rolled, toward where his leather satchel had fallen by the side of the road.
“If only I had that . . . Shit . . . A lousy salamander . . . Of all things . . . Huh?”
Raising his pudgy face, the baron turned his bloodshot eyes to the left, toward the far end of the road. Something weird was coming.
“Hey, what’s that?” Squinting his eyes, he said, “Is that a horse’s ass?”
It was the steed that’d run off and left him behind. Now, it was backing toward him. Just like D’s steed, it was terrified of something up ahead. A creature that had taken a wooden needle from D and continued forward undeterred—was this the dragon-like salamander of legend?
From heavens streaming with the colors of darkness, a woman with disheveled hair descended. Along with a yellowed cotton blouse, she wore a long skirt that was like a tattered rag. Even as she descended, her ash-gray hair covered her face, hiding her features. And though the woman landed backward on it, the horse didn’t so much as whinny. It was paralyzed with fear.
There on its back, the woman raised her hands. The gray hue of her fingers was no trick of the light, and from them stretched wicked, yellowed claws. Reaching back with her left hand, the woman caught hold of the horse’s mane. With a damp, tearing sound, she ripped it off. Not only did she take the mane, but the hide and flesh below it pulled free as well. The woman’s right hand flashed into action. Chunks of flesh flew from the horse’s back and hindquarters, spraying a bloody mist everywhere. In less than a second the cyborg horse had been entirely stripped of flesh and lay on the ground as a mere skeleton. The whole area was covered with a lake of blood and oil. In the center of it, the woman knelt down, completely ignoring the baron as she took up one of the scattered chunks of meat and began to eat it.
This was the legendary salamander?
Her speed was incredible; eating an entire horse—meat, organs, right down to the bones—took less than a minute. She was a wretched sight that sent reason and even fear itself packing, and as the baron was staring at her, she suddenly twisted her head in his direction. Beneath her ashen hair, eyes aglow with blood light transfixed the baron. The woman raised her hand in front of her chest. Her splayed fingers made clutching motions. Anything they touched, even a genuine fire dragon, would be torn apart. A beastly howl spilled from her unglimpsed mouth.
The woman pounced.
“Oh shiiiiiiit!” the baron cried, and he tried to scramble away—but he crawled less than four inches.
The monstrous woman was still in midair when a stark flash of light struck her between the eyes. Perhaps she was hit this time because she was focused on her prey, the baron. The woman writhed as she fell at the Nobleman’s feet. Contorting and wailing in agony, she was a sight unparalleled in its ugliness and cruelty.
The baron was so riveted by her violent death throes that he hadn’t noticed the sound of a horse riding up behind him.
“Killed it.”
“Yeah,” the baron replied, although the hoarse voice hadn’t been directed to him, of course.
The spasms of the woman on the ground began to subside. Noticing he wasn’t alone, the baron turned to find the young man in black and his cyborg steed. If the needle of rough wood that’d pierced the monster between the eyes wasn’t the baron’s, there was only one other person who could’ve been responsible.
Record of the Blood Battle Page 4
