Noble V: Greylancer (2 page)

Another larger axe lay at his feet. No doubt this was the woodcutter.

Rather than the tool of his chosen profession, he held a cylindrical tube with a grip
resembling that of a handgun.

He stood at a distance of five meters and pointed the cylinder at the aircraft.

A pale blue mass spewed forth from the tube, and in a moment the aircraft, taking
on the same hue, became enveloped in a brilliant glow. When the glow subsided, not
a trace of the aircraft remained. Scattered about the sandy earth and rocks were silver
dust particles, which blew away in a blast of wind.

The woodcutter fell to his knees, clasped his hands in front of his chest, and began
to drone some kind of incantation.

“That was a first,” said Greylancer, narrowing his eyes.

“I hear the OSB have no blood running through their veins.” Grosbec tightened his
grip on the reins.

“Stay here.” Greylancer spurred his horse forward.

Even as he drew within ten meters of the supplicant figure, the woodcutter was still,
seeming not to notice the Noble’s presence.

Climbing off his horse, Greylancer called out, “Beijrot?”

So engrossed was the woodcutter in prayer that he spun around in shock. He stared
at the giant with the deep blue cape fluttering in the wind. “Who—are you?” he asked,
distorting his bearded face.

“Are you Beijrot?”

“Yeah. But…you wouldn’t be…”

“Greylancer.”

“Oh, your lordship! Yes, I am Beijrot. What are you doing here in these parts?”

“I came with questions, but they have been answered. This dust scattered about you—the
remains of the woodcutters and their families, Beijrot?”

“What…was that?” The woodcutter staggered backward. “I came out to investigate the
thing that fell out of the sky last night, is all.”

“If you merely came to investigate, why did you disintegrate the aircraft? Which weapon
will that arm behind your back reach for? The axe of the woodcutter whose identity
you’ve stolen or your blaster? Which would be easier to handle in your present form?”
Beijrot continued to inch backward. The sweaty, quaking figure was outwardly one of
a simple, mild-mannered woodcutter. “Or perhaps neither. You must know your weapons
are ineffective against vampires.” Greylancer brought his left hand up to his ear.
The jewel on his ring finger reflected the sun’s rays. “Well now, this is what my
retainer tells me you were thinking just now:
Damn Nobles! Someday, we’ll wipe out the lot of you
!
”

“Right you are!” Beijrot jumped right and pointed the cylinder at Greylancer. A glowing
blue mass again fired from the tube, and the vampire vanished into thin air. “Yes!”
Beijrot howled and wiped the sweat off his brow with his weapon hand. The awful tension
drained from him, like paint dissolving in water. “Who said the beings on this planet
were immortal? I got him! The son of a bitch is nothing but a speck of dust now!”

Suddenly, the triumphant voice turned to shrieks of pain.

Beijrot grabbed at the silver head of the lance sticking easily a meter out of his
solar plexus, but not before he found himself lifted three meters off the ground.

Laughing cruelly as the helpless woodcutter twitched in convulsions was none other
than Greylancer.

Had not a blast lethal enough to destroy an atomic nucleus just incinerated him? And
where had he been concealing a three-meter lance?

“Answer me one question and I shall put you out of your misery in one blow, you filthy
outer-space invader. Where is the other varmint?”

Greylancer gave the lance a cruel shake.

Fresh blood spurted out of Beijrot’s mouth. His shrieks turned into screams.

“Still able to keep this form, are you? Never you mind. You shall suffer a painful
death. Pray to your god.”

Greylancer brought down his lance with one swing, splitting the woodcutter’s body
down the middle.

Fresh blood pelted the ground first and then the human entrails splattered down atop
it.

The transformation occurred a few seconds later.

Split asunder by one fell swing, the two halves began to melt in the sun. The eyeballs,
flesh, and bone revealed themselves as shams as they all liquefied into gray mucus
and oozed in Greylancer’s direction. It managed to creep about a meter before halting
its advance over the yellow earth.

After waiting several seconds to confirm the OSB’s death, Greylancer shook the lance
one last time. Every last drop of the gray blood spattered the ground. He lowered
his lance and called Grosbec’s name.

A voice inside Greylancer’s head answered:

I’ll be there in a moment.

Soon, Grosbec appeared out of the trees on horseback and pointed the horse toward
his master.

When his servant was but ten meters away, Greylancer spied a black shadow dropping
down from overhead.

“Take cover!” Greylancer yelled, too late—

A bloody mass shot out of Grosbec’s heart, and Grosbec toppled forward off his horse.

A steel arrow. Greylancer glanced down at the arrowhead buried deep in the ground
and swung his lance.

There was a beautiful clang of metal as a second and third arrow fell out of the sky.

So he was no ordinary woodcutter
,
thought Greylancer, and then a bloodied voice crept inside his mind.

My lord, the enemy is a ghost archer.

Grosbec’s thoughts. Greylancer slapped the rear of his cybernetic horse, sending the
steed cantering away, and darted toward his loyal companion lying on the ground.

He also sent Grosbec’s mount away and struck down a fourth arrow.

Grosbec’s body was already beginning to disintegrate. His pale skin was sallow and
emitting a haze of decay.

He must have been in one of the four houses, disguised as a visitor. I will avenge
you in a moment.

To a dying man, perhaps his tone sounded heartless.

The Greater Noble stood up. He hoisted his lance above his head and threw it without
taking aim.

The lance vanished, leaving behind a loud buzz. Only the two vampires present understood
that it was flying toward the OSB that had loosed the arrow that had pierced Grosbec’s
heart.

My lord?

Grosbec’s shock ran through his master’s mind. A black arrow sprouted from the right
side of Greylancer’s chest. It had struck him when he threw the lance.

It’s all right. It missed my heart.

Greylancer wrapped his left hand around the shaft and plucked out the arrow with neither
wince nor shudder.

Hurry…you must return…to the village. Iron-tipped arrow…look after the wound…or your
insides…will decay.

Will
you
survive?

That was a question to which Greylancer already knew the answer. Among those serving
him, the men with telepathic abilities numbered fewer than five. Grosbec was among
the precious few.

Even a telepath with the ability to read and transmit thoughts within a kilometer
radius was defenseless against an attack outside of his “earshot.” Greylancer took
to one knee next to his irreplaceable servant.

I believe not.

Grosbec’s thoughts sounded oddly clear and lucid in the Noble’s mind.

Where will you go?

Perhaps the Sacred Ancestor was right, my lord. Now that my end is near, I finally
understand his words.

Transient guests are we.

Indeed. Even as we’ve attained immortality, I leave you now. I pray you will never
come to feel the same way that I do.

With a start, Greylancer looked up and stared off into the distance.

“Between the eyes,” he said aloud. The Noble was capable of sensing the outcome of
his lance attack from two thousand meters away.

There, I have avenged your fall. Go now, rest in peace. You need not worry about your
wife and boy.

I am grateful…how strangely peaceful…

Greylancer paused for a moment and then stood up.

There were piles of grayish-blue dust packed around Grosbec’s cape and armor. One
pile, which poured out from the right sleeve, held the shape of an open hand until
the wind blew it away.

Taking a deep breath, Greylancer gathered up Grosbec’s garments and murmured, “OSB—you
will pay dearly for his life.”

†

At the outset of war a hundred years prior, both the Nobility and OSB were shocked
to discover the powers they had in common.

Whereas the Nobility turned other creatures into one of their own and controlled their
wills by feeding upon their blood, the OSB wielded the same influence over humans
via the power of metamorphosis. But though they were able to assume the form of others,
the OSB were incapable of breeding like the Nobility.

The Nobility stood at a tremendous advantage in the beginning. The OSB’s primary weapon
was an atomic blaster capable of incinerating objects, but the Nobility were able
to reconstitute their forms after being struck by the sizzle of plasma.

The OSB were thrown into perfect confusion. The way the immortal Nobility were able
to rise again from an atomic blast was beyond comprehension—beyond even their concept
of regeneration.

Regeneration, as the OSB understood it, signified cell reproduction at the atomic
level. Vampire resurrection defied analysis.

That the Noble garments, too, rematerialized intact shocked and terrified the OSB.
They repeated meticulous tests on capes and rings and various other spoils, only to
find that they were made of ordinary silk and cotton. Though the pieces had been specially
engineered to restore their shape after experiencing primitive sword and gun damage,
they could easily be burned to cinders. Nevertheless, these same items were reconstituted
from ash along with their wearers.

It was not until a year later, when—as gleaned from human knowledge—they drove a stake
into a Noble’s heart, that the OSB grew wiser to the supernatural forces fueling vampiric
existence. Only when they bore witness to the Noble succumbing to death’s call, his
flesh along with his garments crumbling to dust, did the OSB finally understand the
words—
legend, curse, occult,
and
evil
—swirling inside the memories of their human prey.

Though the Nobles were vulnerable to natural sunlight, they were impervious to the
artificial light produced by the OSB. Wooden stakes were ineffective unless driven
precisely into their hearts. Even if his head were severed at the neck, a vampire
could come back from the dead, its head reattached in a matter of seconds. But only
if reattached within ten minutes.

Such phenomena were best understood as supernatural rather than physical, but since
the OSB were only capable of processing reality within the material realm, these supernatural
beings shook the OSB and wreaked havoc with their primitive DNA memory.

Had the OSB not learned, from consuming human knowledge, that a wooden stake or steel
blade to the heart would destroy their enemies, the war would have lasted less than
a month, much less the century of attrition the human pawns had endured.

The knowledge of their human victims aided the OSB. Enlightened now by humanity’s
age-old slaying methods, the OSB took human shape, infiltrated the realms of their
immortal enemies, and drove stakes through their hearts. They destroyed the Nobility’s
defense shields, and the OSB’s mother ship launched warships and aircraft to rain
countless steel blades down upon the Nobility during the day while they slept. The
blades pierced through Noble coffins, skewering the sleeping vampires in the heart.

The Nobility mounted a counterstrategy with dimensional shields and telepaths.

They recruited humans and Nobles that possessed extrasensory powers and dispatched
them throughout the land, save for the Capital where few humans dared live.

Before the OSBs in human form could brandish their stakes, the telepaths, sensing
their murderous intent, aided the Nobility in felling the intruders.

Until the covert presence of these telepaths had come to light, the OSB invasion had
stalled.

Shifting their target from the Nobility to the telepaths, the OSB now waged an offensive
against these formidable psychic counterspies.

As rare as the telepaths were to begin with, their decimation threatened the very
survival of the Nobility. The vampires protected and harbored them, and after DNA
analysis of the surviving psychics, the Nobility endeavored to engineer new telepaths
by breeding the best of their kind.

The past century of war had seen the rise and fall of generations of telepaths, with
Greylancer just now losing one of a precious few.

†

Greylancer returned to the village of Ardoz an hour later.

The blue winter sky began to grow dark.

Chief Lanzi greeted Greylancer in the public square, which looked as if it might be
crushed by the cold and coming darkness. “Your lordship.”

Noting Grosbec’s conspicuous absence, the chief bowed with a smile belying his sadness.
The villagers milling about the square had retreated to their homes when the watchtower
alerted them to Greylancer’s arrival.

“How many have come to the village during my absence?”

“Four, your lordship,” answered Chief Lanzi. “One was a traveling medicine man, another
a sword grinder, the third was a villager returning from an errand in a neighboring
village, and lastly a traveler en route to Jarmusch.”

“Any of the travelers still here?”

“No, they stopped in for a drink at the tavern and went on their way. The watchtower
guards can confirm their departure.”

“What of those tending to their crops?”

“Yes, I have word that they’ve all returned not too long ago.”

Frontier towns like Ardoz counted the numbers coming and going from the village in
order to prevent raids by bandits—and now to keep out the dreaded usurpers, the OSB.