Noble Front

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  There was a window.

  Turning back toward Jacos, he gave the man an inquisitive look.

  “Back behind the trees—I saw one of your pals out there, Leiden. Habaki.”

  “Not a chance,” Leiden said, turning once again, and after staring intently, he got to his feet.

  “Was it Habaki?” asked Jacos.

  “I don’t know,” Leiden replied. “But I’m gonna go have a look-see.”

  “The sun ain’t down yet, but watch yourself out there all the same,” the graybeard called out to him.

  Not bothering to reply, Leiden left the room. Though he knew that Habaki had gone to Doc Chavez, he’d been told his friend’s treatment would take a while and that he should head home, which he’d done. He’d talked with Elsa, and it was clear to them at first glance that Habaki had a grim fate clawing away at him. Even without any conclusive evidence, they knew. Frontier people just had that instinct.

  But Habaki had been discharged. Either that, or he’d escaped the doctor’s care. There could only be one reason for that—he’d been turned into a servant of the Nobility.

  The day was growing ever darker. At this hour, it wouldn’t be unusual for the lowest ranks of the creatures of the night to already be out and about.

  Leiden tightened his grip on the iron bar he had in his right hand. He’d beat him senseless. A servant of the Nobility might have the strength of their maker, but they could still be killed with sheer brute strength. Plus, with this piece of armor, the man was sure he could deal with a lowly servant.

  No, this is Habaki we’re talking about! Leiden thought to himself, feeling a chill. What the hell’s going through my head?

  Circling around to the window Jacos had been facing, he focused his attention on the back yard.

  The old mayor had often boasted to his coworkers at town hall about his garden, and those who’d seen it in the flesh would agree it was a sprawling affair. Designed by a landscape architect from the Capital, it stretched out in an endless quilt of orderliness and chaos, clumps of weeds poking from between orderly flower beds and stands of trees.

  Leiden stepped into a heavy cluster of trees that shut out all sunlight. The trees and bushes were a unified family of shadow. With his fifth pace, a figure appeared from behind a tree up ahead of him.

  “You?!” he exclaimed, swallowing hard.

  “Yeah, me,” the lithe silhouette of Elsa replied. “Last night, the grand duke attacked me and drank my blood. My whole family was killed. I loaded ’em into the wagon and brought ’em out to the caves up north. When I woke up a little while ago, the worst hunger came over me. I wanted blood so badly I couldn’t stand it. So I came back to the village, and that’s when I happened to see Habaki.”

  “Habaki?”

  “Yeah. I tailed him, and he led me here. Don’t look at me that way, Leiden. Habaki’s in the same boat as me.”

  “What?”

  “On account of the poison gas he breathed in back with the monks. Maybe not the same as me, but he’s half dead.”

  “Where is he?” Leiden asked, glancing to either side. He looked back over his shoulder, and when he faced forward again, Elsa was standing almost nose-to-nose with him.

  “What the—?!” he exclaimed, and he was about to shove Elsa aside, but she shoved his shoulders first.

  Leiden was aware that he’d been sent flying. A shock went through his body like he’d been kicked by a cyborg horse. The back of his head and his spine ended up against one tree in a stand of many. Sliding down to the bottom of it, he got up again, at which point Elsa pounced for his neck.

  “Stop it!” Leiden bellowed, his right hook being blocked by Elsa’s left arm.

  The blow shouldn’t have shaken her in the least, but it sent her flying more than five yards. Slamming against the ground, Elsa leapt back up. Her whole body hung a good three feet in the air. Her muscles were monstrously powerful.

  “You’ve got some power armor on, don’t you?” she fairly groaned, the words spilling through vermilion lips. And with the words, a pair of fangs slipped out.

  Elsa kicked off the ground. She’d bounded to the left. The instant Leiden turned in that direction, Elsa shot straight at his chest. And there wasn’t even the faintest hint of her trying to change direction.

  His massive two-hundred-twenty-pound frame was sent flying once more. This time he snapped through the stand of trees and crashed to the ground.

  “Looks like I win,” the girl said, mouth open wide to bare her fangs, her eyes giving off a murderous red glow—no, not murderous, but joyous at the prospect of adding a new member to their ranks.

  The tips of her fangs made contact with Leiden’s throat—and then her body was jerked back. Spinning ineffectually, Elsa fell to the ground, then lifted her head. Her look of demonic hatred became one of surprise.

  “Habaki?!”

  Giving a doleful look to his former compatriot, the figure who’d just hurled the woman away asked, “You okay, Leiden?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Good, then go back inside. I’ll take care of Elsa.”

  Leiden was left speechless.

  “Oh, spare me. Just which of us do you think you’re closer to right now?” Elsa sneered, her words streaming through the world of gloom. “Your eyes are bright red. You might not have fangs, but your breath is awfully cold. Don’t have hot blood running in your veins, do you? How about staying out of my way? I’m hungry. I’m starving. Let me feed.”

  “Elsa,” one of her compatriots murmured, but which one?

  Habaki bounded for Elsa’s chest.

  A cry of pain rang out.

  II

  Elsa jumped away. A tree branch protruded from the left side of her chest. A deep red stain was spreading across the front of her blouse. Reaching for the branch but quickly taking her hand away again, Elsa got a somewhat pained smile on her face.

  “Habaki—thank you. I’m saved at last.”

  Though it seemed like Elsa was going to just thud to the ground, she first fell to her knees, then slowly slumped forward. Just as her chest was about to hit the ground, she arched her upper body back and struck her chest against the dirt. The bloodied tip of the branch poked out of her back. Elsa shuddered but once, and then she moved no more.

  “What the hell is this?!” Leiden exclaimed in a tone choked with rage as he got back to his feet. He didn’t even know whom he was angry with. Was it with Elsa, for being turned into a vampire so easily and then just as easily destroyed by their friend? Was it with Habaki, for being so quick to drive a tree branch through the heart of their former comrade? Was it with himself, for being unable to do anything?

  Habaki turned in his direction. “I’m halfway to being on their side,” he said in a voice that seemed to echo from the depths of the earth. “I’m still half human, but I don’t know what’s gonna happen next. Take good care of Cornet, Leiden.”

  “Sure. But how’d you know to come here?”

  “Because of the state I’m in, I get these strange hunches,” Habaki replied. “Cornet’s in danger. So I thought of you, and then I wound up coming out here.”

  “I see. Well, leave him to me. But what’ll you—”

  “I’ll take care of myself. The same way I took care of Elsa.”

  “Hey!”

  Leiden had been about to step forward, but Habaki stopped him, going over to Elsa and effortlessly throwing her over his shoulder. “See you,” he told Leiden, and then he ran off, melting away into the darkness.

  “Yeah, see you,” Leiden replied as he got up again.

  “What happened?” Jacos asked as he and Docia rushed over. Apparently the graybeard had stayed back in the house. Both of the other men were armed with short bows.

  “Nothing. There’s nobody out here,” Leiden replied. He wasn’t sure how they’d react if he’d told them the truth. “I’m gonna look around a little bit more. Do me a favor and go back inside with the others.”

  “All right. We’ll
be waiting there for you,” Docia said, turning himself around to leave, and Jacos followed right behind him.

  “That’ll buy you some time. I hope you make good your escape, Habaki,” the giant of a man said, and as he put his pained thoughts into words, tears streamed from his eyes.

  Docia and Jacos stopped right in front of the former mayor’s house. The door was ajar. They were certain they’d shut it as they’d left. But the mayor’s widow and their compatriots weren’t outside.

  “This ain’t right,” Docia said, taking the arrow he already had nocked and replacing it with another from his belt. The next thing he did was horrifying. He drove the sharp arrowhead into his left eye.

  Jacos let out a little cry.

  Docia soon pulled the arrow out again. His eyeball came with it.

  “This is a ‘seeker arrow,’” he stated proudly. Through black magic the eye-bearing arrow would fly in accordance with the wishes of the one who fired it, transmitting everything in its surroundings back to him.

  “The eye’s a prosthetic,” he explained. “Whatever it sees I’ll see through my right eye.”

  “You don’t say,” Jacos groaned, sweat spreading across his brow.

  “Don’t get spotted,” Docia whispered to the arrow, drawing the string tight and letting it fly into the house.

  As instructed, the arrow would go quickly at times, slowly at others, creeping along the floor or skimming the ceiling to accomplish its mission.

  “I’ve got a picture!” Docia cried out from where he sheltered to one side of the doorway. His tone was charged with self-confidence, but that suddenly changed to shock and fear. “The lady of the house, Pike, and Pilica are all dead. Shit, their heads are still barely connected to their bodies!”

  “Who the hell did this? And when?” asked Jacos.

  “Somebody who came in this way right after we left. No, I think it might’ve been through the window—at any rate, they got in somewhere.”

  “Someone on Bezo’s side?”

  “Who else? But I don’t think anybody in the village would’ve killed ’em like that.”

  “Think it’s them? The Professor’s thugs?”

  “Yeah,” Docia replied with a nod, and then he started blinking his remaining eye furiously. “My arrow got taken down. Run for it!”

  Shooting him a glance as he nocked another arrow, Jacos ran off down the street. So blue, he thought to himself. It was already the time of monsters.

  Once he was through the gate, the secretary turned and looked back. He saw Docia fire that second arrow. A streak of black shot to his windpipe. And then the archer’s throat split open and, with his vertebrae apparently severed already, his head flopped limply against his back. Deep red blood sprayed out as if from a faucet, recoloring the stepping stones and the walls of the doorway.

  “Oh shit!” Jacos heard himself squeal as he raced down the street.

  When he’d gone more than twenty yards, from behind a stand of trees a female voice beckoned to him, “Jacos—this way!”

  Diving into the trees, the secretary was greeted by a red-haired woman.

  “Ann?! You made it out okay?”

  “Yes. Now, be quiet,” she told him, putting her index finger to somewhat plump lips. One of the two female co-conspirators, she threw a cautious glance out toward the street.

  “What in the hell?!”

  Four streaks of black went rushing by like streams of water in the same hue.

  “Those things must be what cut everybody’s heads off. Docia said he saw something with his ‘seeker arrow.’ What are they?” asked Jacos.

  “Claws!”

  “Claws? Are you kidding me?!” the secretary exclaimed, his narrow eyes going wide, but then something suddenly dawned on him, and he continued, “That’s right—one of those guys had really long fingernails!”

  “Valen!”

  “Yeah, him! No question about it. But are those his nails? We’re more than twenty yards from the house! Can he make ’em grow?”

  “Six hundred miles long, easily.”

  “What?!” the accomplished secretary exclaimed, giving a piercing look to his coworker, but just as he saw a disturbing smile rise on her lips, a red line zipped across his throat. Black blood gushed from it with terrible force, and the secretary’s head fell against his spine like it was a backpack.

  Looking down at Jacos’s body as it dropped to the ground, she remarked, “Poor bastard. But I didn’t really enjoy playing the traitor.” Recalling the toys from the Capital she’d be able to buy her children with the money she’d received for playing that part, Ann Dadorin from Family Records in town hall immediately got a smile on her face.

  As she left, a boy watched her go from the dark cover of the trees. Puma, the son of the former mayor. He’d also gone out looking for Habaki before his mother and her friends were murdered.

  “That jerk killed my mother—I’ll make her pay! Her, and the Professor’s thugs, too!” the boy cried, his grip tightening on a rifle. But another hand grabbed him by the wrist.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” Leiden told him sternly.

  “Chaney here,” the Professor said to the grayish figure who appeared on the communicator’s screen. “This is my regularly scheduled report. Nothing out of the ordinary at present,” he stated flatly.

  “I see. Continue your negotiations with the grand duke. Our day of victory is close at hand!”

  “I should think so. Ah, the Nobility’s devices—it’s said if we knew how to tap even a millionth of their potential, it would be power enough to make a toddler ruler of the world. I think perhaps today I might have an opportunity to see some of them.”

  “We’ll be eagerly awaiting your next report. Don’t let us down, Chaney. You know what fate awaits you if you bungle this, I take it?”

  “I’m well aware of the consequences.”

  “Very well, then,” the figure said, fading away.

  Reflected in the black screen, Professor Chaney raised his head. Usually, he had a bitter look on his face. But tonight, a thin little smile took its place.

  “You can eagerly await this—marking the day I become supreme ruler of the world.”

  Slamming the screen shut, he went over to the closet, opened the door, and began primping himself with the aid of the mirror that hung inside.

  Somewhere far off in the distance, Vyken sensed the lid opening. And then the approach of the grand duke. Unsettling footsteps echoing down long stone corridors, the Nobleman headed his way. And now, he was just outside. The knock at the door made the odd-looking young man rise from his chair. It couldn’t be—he was much too early.

  “Who is it?” Vyken asked.

  The door replied, “Who do you think?”

  “I’ll be damned—Baron Agrippa?”

  “Right you are!”

  Lacking sufficient energy to respond, Vyken stood rooted in his tracks.

  “May I come in?”

  Sparks flew in the man’s head, bringing him back to his senses.

  “Kindly give me a moment, I’ll get the door for you.”

  Running over to the door, he opened it.

  “Many thanks,” said the massive figure that entered, looking swollen as some anthropomorphic balloon. “Why do you live in such squalor?”

  The grand duke’s best friend, Baron Agrippa was a prominent member of the Greater Nobility in the eastern Frontier. Yet here he was, paying a visit on a lowly human guard.

  “I don’t have any particularly pressing business,” the baron continued. “But for some time now I’ve wondered if you realize your true worth.”

  “My true worth?”

  “Yes,” the Nobleman replied, hands clasped behind his back as he grinned and stared at the young man.

  “To be honest, I have no idea. Though I like to think I’m of some small service to his grace, the grand duke.”

  “And to the rest of your kind—the villagers?”

  “I suppose I’m a traitor,” he stat
ed, then turned away in a snit. As a result, he didn’t notice the wicked grin of amusement that spread across the baron’s meaty face.

  “Hmm. Just as I thought, you really don’t realize how valuable you are, do you? What an uncommon breed of man you are.”

  “Are you here to appraise me?”

  “There’s no need for that. Such was already done by the time you came into Bergenzy’s service. And you still live.”

  “Is that supposed to mean I made the grade?”

  “To my way of thinking, at least. By the way—and this is the biggest question I have for you at this time—how do you feel about Bergenzy?”

  “He’s a respected member of the Greater Nobility who—”

  “Oh, please, spare me!” Baron Agrippa interrupted, his massive form suddenly executing a succession of backflips. His feet never touched the ground. Spinning around and around in midair, his prodigious stomach quickly became almost impossible to see, moving so fast it was nearly transparent, but then he gradually slowed, plopping to the ground.

  “Oops,” the baron said, massaging his battered rump as he got to his feet. “A little more of that and I would’ve assimilated everything. I really must do something about this habit I have of getting overexcited too easily.”

  Sensing something unsettling in the Nobleman’s leisurely tone, Vyken looked all around him. Having lost most of their color and shape, the stone walls were distorted, as if they were being viewed through water. The same was true of the floor and ceiling. If allowed to continue, the man wondered if they might not turn into thin air.

  Is that what he means about assimilating them?

  Feeling like his heart was caught in someone’s grip, Vyken raised his right arm. He intended to wipe the sweat from his brow. But his hand stopped. Vyken had noticed that his right hand was half transparent.

  “You’ll recover soon enough. Although it may not work exactly the same as it did before.”

  Here the baron gave a mirthful laugh, but he quickly reverted to a serious face. Vyken was biting down on his right forearm. As a stream of red linked his arm to the floor, color and shape returned to his surroundings.