Record of the Blood Battle (11 page)

“Yes, from the human point of view.”

“Is the Noble point of view any different?”

“That’s a good question.”

“Don’t the Nobility have any bad guys?”

“I’m sure there probably are.”

“Well, how about good guys?”

“There are probably those, too.”

The boy’s expression changed. He’d caught a strange timbre to D’s voice. The Hunter sounded happy.

From a short distance away, the baron laughed mockingly. “What a fanciful load of tripe. You think there’s good or bad Nobility? Nobles are Nobles—they’re all one and the same beast.”

—

With the coming of dawn, the group set out. During the night, D had used branches and slim tree trunks to fashion a sled, which Piron and Leda now rode on.

“You’re quite the handyman,” the baron remarked in a tone dripping with venom.

For a while, Piron continued to stare at the baron in mute surprise. He couldn’t believe there was a Noble who could be out in daylight.

“What are you staring at? Haven’t you ever seen a Noble before?”

“No.”

“Hmm, I suppose you haven’t, have you?” the baron said, unamused.

“You’re moving around in daylight, and you’re a Noble?”

“What’s wrong with me moving around? I’m special. A unique specimen singled out from all the Nobility. I’ll thank you not to lump me in with all those other idiots.”

“Who singled you out?”

The baron fell silent.

“Stay just as you are,” D ordered sharply.

Both Piron and the baron saw his left hand rise into the air.

“That same bastard from last night?”

The baron bugged his eyes at that hoarse remark, while Piron tensed even more.

At some point, the land to either side of them had become vast plains. D turned around. The forest was no longer visible.

“Lie down on the ground,” D said.

“What’s this all about?”

The baron’s eyes followed D’s left hand, and his pudgy face suddenly paled. At the same time, a black shadow fell across them. The blue sky’s sunlight had suddenly changed to darkness. But there weren’t any clouds. To be precise, it wasn’t actually darkness. The road and the plains, the distant rocky mountains and forest could all still be clearly discerned. But there was no way to describe it except to say the whole sky had suddenly seemed to cloud over. And everyone knew the reason.

A single streak of blue light connected the sky to the distant plain. The light rippled across the ground’s surface like waves. Without a second’s respite, a streak of black vividly linked heaven and earth. In an instant, it was pulled back into the heavens. In its wake, an enormous crater remained.

“It’s a lightning sucker. Stay under this.”

A blue cloth fell over the group. It was a blanket from the saddlebags on the Hunter’s cyborg horse. Almost completely resistant to fire, water, cold, and heat, it was just one example of an item that took advantage of the Nobility’s technology. It was also resistant to electricity. It was the great rise in travel to the Frontier some eight millennia earlier that’d provided the impetus to develop this sort of blanket.

“What, you’re not getting under it, too?” the baron asked, his face poking out from under the blanket, looking at where D lay on the ground beside his steed. His face was tinged with blue light. This time the bizarre streak stretched out, and there was a flash of lightning in a spot several miles away.

The term “lightning sucker” was used to refer to something that lurked in the sky. No one had ever actually seen one, and it was known only by its savage manner of eating. First, darkness would spread across the sky, electrical shocks would flash, and then a colossal tube would suck up all the living creatures on the ground.

Just look. From far off in the distance, the long, thick tube had closed to within six miles of D and his group. The tube of dark red flesh that sucked all the electrocuted creatures a good six miles up into the darkened sky had to be at least fifty yards in diameter. Against something on that scale, a shockproof blanket seemed like it’d be about as useful as a wet tissue. But D had chosen to use it because of a strange habit the lightning sucker had.

“You intended to take the thing’s electrical shocks without any protection? Even a Noble couldn’t withstand that. It’ll make a corpse of you and suck you up!”

The lightning sucker first blanketed the ground with electrical shocks to exterminate the living creatures, then sucked them up with its enormous tube. As it did so, any creature that still drew breath was ignored. How it told the living from the dead was a mystery, when it sucked everything up with such force it carved great craters in the earth.

Its electrical shocks ran as high as fifty million volts. There was some question of whether the blanket could take that much, to say nothing of D out in the open.

The air turned blue.

“Here it comes!”

At D’s cry, the baron gave a squeal and pulled the blanket back over his head. The blanket, D, and the plains were all tinged blue.

“Ah, I’m going numb!” the baron shrieked under the blanket.

“And you call yourself a Noble,” Piron growled. Ordinarily, he should’ve been afraid of the Noble even if D was there with him, but this boy not only wasn’t troubled by the baron; he actually mocked him. Though the boy’s personality may have played some part, surely the baron’s display of cowardice was to blame.

“What are you talking about, you little bastard? Once D out there’s been sucked up, I’ll drain the blood from you and your sister.”

“Screw you! Go ahead and try it, if you like. I’ll drive a wooden stake through your heart before you get that far.”

“N-now you’ve gone and said it!” the baron sputtered.

“Yeah, I did. You bastard scumbag piece of trash!”

“Why, you little—”

The Nobleman was just about to pounce on the boy when D’s voice was heard beyond the blanket. “Direct hit incoming.”

“
What?
”

Even the inside of the blanket was tinged blue.

“Gaaaaaaah!” the baron shrieked, writhing. Electromagnetic waves had passed through, conducted by the metallic ornaments he wore. “Help me!” he cried, trying to latch onto Piron.

“Keep back!” the boy said, planting a kick of his youthful foot square in the middle of the baron’s face. The numbness assailed Piron, too. The boy, and his older sister as well, twitched violently.

A blue fog rolled out. No, not fog, but rather smoke. Under the ferocious electrical assault, the blanket had begun to burn.

“Oh, no! We’ll be burnt to a crisp! Heeeeelp!”

The electromagnetic waves were coursing through his body, the fire was scorching him, and he was suffocating from the smoke. Suffering from a triple threat beyond imagining, the baron finally threw the blanket off.

“Huh?”

Light had returned to the world. Though various spots on the plains had enormous, fifty-foot-wide holes, the lightning sucker had apparently left.

“Oh, that’s right—what about D?”

The cyborg horse still lay on its side, and the baron looked beside it. He swallowed so hard, Piron got his coughing under control and poked his head up, asking, “What is it?”

There wasn’t a trace of D.

chapter 6

I

—

O
ut in the middle of the plains, the baron and Piron were stunned. Searching their surroundings, they found no sign of D. It was certain. He’d been swallowed up by the lightning sucker’s tube.

“In which case he’s dead, right?” the baron murmured in amazement, while beside him Piron took the cyborg horse by the reins and pulled it up. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Piron flatly told the dubious baron, “There’s no point standing around reflecting on a dead man. Now, get us to Zappara, just as agreed.”

“Idiot. I’ll have nothing more to do with the two of you,” the baron sneered. And with that he grinned from ear to ear. “I’m free now. Free! Now no one can stand in my way. Even if
ten
millennia had passed, I’d still have things I need to do. Ah, that’s right. Very well, if you’ll help me with my work, I’ll bring the two of you with me.”

“Not a chance.”

“What?”

“You think we’d hang around with a Noble? Especially a creepy little one who can move around in the daylight? So long, sucker!” the boy said in a forceful tone that made him sound like someone else altogether—and the speed with which he jumped onto the back of the cyborg horse was likewise that of a different person.

“No, wait!”

Before the baron could reach out for him, the boy delivered a kick to the steed, the rope tethered to the sled carrying his sister pulled taut, and the cyborg horse began to gallop across the earth with terrific speed.

“Wait. At least leave me my bag!”

The baron chased after the dwindling figure for two or three steps before halting and beginning to stomp his feet with anger.

“Wait! Come back, you little brat! I’m a Noble! A human would presume to leave a Noble behind? Damn you! I curse you till the end of your days. The next time I see you and your sister, I’ll drain you of every last drop of your lowly blood!”

By the time he’d finished shouting, the horse and sled had shrunk to the size of a pea far down the highway.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shiiiiiiiit!”

When he was finally done stomping his feet, the baron took a seat in the middle of the road and looked up. The sun continued to shine down radiantly on him, all alone.

“Stupid sun! Don’t you know how to do anything besides shine?”

After that complaint, the baron rested his hand against his cheek and began to think. “Good enough,” he murmured a few seconds later. “Guess there’s no way around it. Off I go.”

Rising with a cry of “upsy-daisy,” he waddled off in the same direction Piron had ridden.

—

“What’s this?” the baron cried after he’d gone about three miles, squinting his eyes.

The tiny figure and the object he’d seen some way off had turned out to be the boy and the sled. Apparently the boy had noticed him as well, but he made no attempt to run off, remaining sitting by the roadside instead.

“You little bastard. I’m going to suck the life right out of you!” the Nobleman declared, but by the time he reached Piron and the sled he was dripping with sweat and panting for breath.

“Oh, sir!” Piron cried out, throwing himself at the baron’s chest and causing the Noble’s head to spin. He would’ve knocked the boy away, but such strength no longer remained in his limbs. If anyone had been there to witness it, they’d probably have taken it for a joyous reunion between an old man and his grandson.

“Why in blazes are you acting so oddly?” the baron asked, still gasping for air. “And the horse—what happened to the horse?”

“I got this far, and then a great cat crossed the road right in front of me. The horse was so startled it threw me right off and bolted. It was all I could do to get the rope to the sled undone!”

“You brought this on yourself, you dolt!”

“Help us, sir.”

“Are you kidding me, you little traitor? I’ll leave your miserable hide to die out here. Why should I care what happens to you?”

“Pleeeeeease, sir.”

“Don’t try sucking up to me, you damned louse,” he shot back indignantly.

But right by the Noble’s ear, a voice said, “Oh, don’t say such things.” The sweet whisper was clearly that of a woman.

Turning, the baron gasped. “Why, you’re—”

“I’m his big sister, Leda.”

Getting up off the sled, the girl wrapped her pale arms around the baron’s neck and pulled him close. When her warm, soft cheek brushed against his, the baron was in heaven.

“Wh-what are you doing? Are you some kind of nympho?”

“Oh, my. That’s just a greeting. It means we’re counting on you.”

Leda smiled. She couldn’t have been five years older than Piron. Though she appeared to be fourteen or fifteen, the blush of her cheeks, the look in her eye, and the way her lips had parted ever so slightly were all quite alluring. An old man with a Lolita complex would’ve fallen head over heels for her at one glance.

However, the baron twisted himself around, pulling free of her pale arms.

“Dear me!”

“What do you mean, ‘dear me’? And don’t look at me that way. What’s a little girl like you doing coming on to me that way? I’ve used countless kids your age in my experiments. Every last one of them screamed and cried. What’s that to me? You don’t seem frightened at all. I guarantee you this—I’ll use the both of you in my experiments before I’m done.”

“Oh, but you can’t use us in them if you don’t take us with you. Isn’t that right, Piron?” Leda said, gazing at the baron as she fixed her hair. It was a sidelong glance.

“Yeah, that’s right. Let’s go,” Piron said, linking arms with the baron.

Shaking free of him, the Nobleman said, “Pipe down, you two little deviants. How did you even wake up in the first place?”

“We were attacked by a lightning sucker, right? It was the electrical shock from that.”

“Hmph! It’d been better if you’d died of electrocution.”

“Oh, don’t say such heartless things!”

“At any rate, I’m going. If I stay out here in the sun, I’ll dry right out,” the baron declared resolutely.

“Aren’t the Nobility indestructible?” Leda asked, the smile never leaving her face.

Disgusted, the baron replied, “Like I said, I can walk in the light of the sun. In return, my innate Noble powers have been unavoidably reduced. Alas!”

“But you won’t die, will you?”

“No. I shouldn’t, at least. However, if this state were to continue, death would be preferable. I believe I understand now why some might take their lives.”

“Wow, you mean even Nobles hang themselves?”

“They don’t
hang
themselves. They cut their heads right off!
Ker-chop!
”

Seeing the baron make a horizontal chop with his hand, the boy said, “Oh, so that really does it?”

The methods of slaying a Noble were well known throughout the populace, but there were few who’d ever had an opportunity to put them to the test. They remained mere speculation. Cut off the head, drive a stake through the heart, submerge in running water, burn with fire—those were the accepted methods, but there were also some childishly ridiculous ones, like feeding Nobles sweets until it killed them, or standing next to a coffin for three days, screaming insults.

“Be quiet, you. Don’t concern yourself with such trivia. Humans should prostrate themselves before the Nobility. And the two of you can remain here forever.”

Perhaps some of the Nobleman’s strength had returned, because he waddled off again with his reclaimed leather satchel in hand. Then his movements stopped dead. When he turned around, his face wore an evil grin he couldn’t conceal.

“On further consideration, it would be too cruel to leave two young children out here on this forsaken highway. Very well, then. Follow me. I’ll see you safely to human habitation.”

“Really?” Leda threw her arms around the baron’s neck and began showering him with kisses.

However, if she could’ve seen the words inscribed in his heart at that very moment, her reaction would have been very different.

Oh, I could leave you two to a terrible fate. However, you can both be of far greater use to me. Noble or not, I get hungry and thirsty. And when I do, your blood will be my lifeline
.

—

And so the three of them began walking, each with their own ideas.

After a while, the baron inquired, “What are you looking at?” For he felt the two of them needling him from head to toe with their gazes.

“That sure is some finery you’re wearing,” Leda said indifferently.

The clothes beneath his cape were covered with copious amounts of gold embroidery and trim and set with jewels that gave off a blinding gleam. Obviously, there were bracelets and pendants. Regardless of the value of the man wearing it, the outfit must’ve been worth more than a hundred million dalas.

“Children shouldn’t have an interest in such things. For a Noble, attire of this sort is only meet.”

“But you’re special, sir. You’re so charming, and I’ve never seen a man wearing soooo many of these things.”

“My, but you have good taste for a little kid,” the baron remarked, grinning like an idiot. “That’s exactly right. I, the great Baron Macula, am not quite like the countrified Nobility you find scattered about. The gold and jewels they use to adorn themselves are all synthesized, while mine are all completely natural, formed from the very elements by Mother Nature and brought to the surface by the miracle of geological shifts. What I wear at present alone would fetch a good five hundred billion dalas.”

“Wealthy men are simply the best!”

“Girl, you have a way with words,” the baron said, finally beginning to smile. Neither the girl nor the boy noticed that as he stared at them, his eyes were as cold as iron.

—

II

—

That night, they camped out. Though they were in the middle of the plains, the boy and girl somehow managed to gather some dead branches.

As he watched the flames, Piron murmured apprehensively, “I wonder if any beasts will come around.”

Leda gazed at the baron with cold eyes. Not that she was sizing up whether or not he was reliable—her gaze was focused on the baron’s jewels as they glittered with the light of the flames. Suddenly grinning from ear to ear, she said in a sweet tone, “It’s okay, Piron. We have the good baron here with us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the baron instantly replied. “Why would I save your little brother? If some strange beastie were to gobble him up, it’d be one less thing to worry about and make my journey all the easier. And once he’d been devoured, I’d do away with the thing that ate him, leaving twice as much for you to eat.”

“Please, don’t say such things,” Leda said, snuggling closer to the Nobleman.

He immediately went soft on her, showing that even Nobles could be embarrassingly stupid. “Leave it to me. As long as Baron Macula is here, nothing will lay so much as a finger on you.”

He rapped his fist against his chest.

As if in response, there was a groan in the darkness off to their right.

“Eh?” the baron exclaimed, turning toward the sound. Every hair on his body instantly stood on end. Not an iota of his tough talk remained. “Just a moment—I must go attend to matters.”

Getting to his feet, the baron walked off a short distance, then put his hands against the ground. Down on all fours, he started to wriggle away.

“Sis, he means to take off on us!”

In response to Piron’s remark, Leda said, “That groan was a ‘walker.’ Hold your breath, and don’t think about anything.”

The two froze in place, as if they were stone.

—

Some fifty yards from the fire, the baron halted. An inhumanly sweet female voice had whispered in his ear, “Please, wait.”

Could that be Leda?
he thought, but he immediately realized it wasn’t. Any question about when she might’ve followed him was whisked aside the second he heard that voice.

The Noble’s eyes reflected the darkness, as well as the thing that’d halted before him. It lacked eyes, a nose, and a mouth. It was a sphere about six feet in diameter.
A mass of transparent liquid
, the Nobleman’s eyes told him.

At that instant, the mass rolled over, swallowing the baron.

A single streak of light struck the watery mass. A terrific cloud of steam rose from it, obscuring the moon and stars. It was about five seconds later that the baron plopped down on the ground like a drowned rat. Aside from the foggy vapor, no trace of the watery mass remained.

A pair of figures raced over to the coughing, sputtering baron.

“Nothing will lay so much as a finger on us, eh? What a disappointment.”

Naturally it was Piron who spat that remark, while Leda switched off the heat beam emitter concealed in her ring and ran over, crying, “Baron?”

“I’m melting! It’s burning me!” the baron shouted as if delirious, his hands and face shrouded in steam, and his skin coming apart like a stack of waterlogged papers. It was clear that he’d been exposed to strong acid.

“His clothes and precious metals have dissolved. It’s no use now. Let’s just leave him and be on our way, Sis.”

“What are you talking about?” Leda said reproachfully, winking one eye at her brother. “We can’t leave the good baron wounded like this. I’ll see to it he has the loving care he needs.”

“Are you stupid or something, Sis?” Piron snarled at her. “He’s a Noble. No matter what happens to him, so long as he doesn’t get a stake driven through his heart, he’ll come back to life. He doesn’t need any care!”

“You’re the one who’s stupid!” As Leda gently stroked the peeling skin of the baron’s cheek, she whispered to her brother, “That’s why it’d be dangerous to just leave him here. If we run into him again somewhere, he’ll have his vengeance on us. Nothing works better on guys like him than lies and sweet talk.”

“You think it’s that easy to work human psychology on him? He might be short and bald, but he’s a Noble.”

“But the shape is exactly the same. And their heads work the same way, too. I’ll manage something.”