Scenes from an Unholy War (20 page)

The matter was simple enough. All the village of Satori had to do was keep possession of the site for four days. But a problem cropped up. The clearing in question was near the boundary between Satori and a neighboring village, in an area that by common agreement neither had laid claim to for the past five centuries. Their neighbors were vehement in their opposition. As the protests grew more violent, Satori decided to ignore their neighbors, who then hired a band of warriors to enforce their claim. At essentially the same time, D came into the employ of the village of Satori. Both sides had drawn their weapons to settle the matter of who owned the strange metallic sphere.

As D stood before it, a couple of men rushed over to him, forcing their way through the heavy crowd. They were public officials from Satori. One wore a tin badge on his chest—the sheriff.

“Nicely done! Our faith in you was justified,” said a skinny man with a mustache, rubbing his hands together. He was the mayor. “The sphere is ours now. We ought to throw a museum up around it and spread the word far and wide. Hey, don’t touch it!”

D was resting the palm of his left hand against the gleaming black surface.

“You’re out of luck,” a hoarse voice sneered.

The person in charge of public relations wore an expression at once angered, startled, and perplexed, for though the voice had most definitely come from D, it seemed inconceivable that it was really his. “Was that you? What exactly do you mean by that?” He intended to drill the Hunter with his questions, but they had no force behind them.

Taking his left hand away from it, D said, “There’s someone inside.”

The mayor and those around him froze. No doubt they felt as if the whole world had just iced over.

“You’re not kidding, I warrant,” said the sheriff, the first to return to his senses. With a massive frame and manly features, he was someone who could be trusted. He apparently possessed quite a bit of mettle, too.

“I have an interesting little story for you,” a hoarse voice said. “Once upon a time, there was a dog that was white all the way down to his tail. Ha, ha, ha—gyaaaah!”

Squeezing his left hand into a fist, D said, “It seems that as soon as the rocky hillside protecting it gave way, the resuscitation system was triggered. The occupant should be coming out before long.”

Low and cold, his voice called to mind exquisite steel. The group found itself spellbound by it before they could grasp the meaning of what he’d said.

Immediately returning to his senses, the mayor squawked, “When you say
before long
, how soon do you mean?” D’s tone of voice was such that it had them believing the unbelievable just like that.

D said the damnedest thing: “A minute from now.”

The pronouncement was like a bolt out of the blue. Though everyone knew what he was talking about, their inability to fathom it left them looking first at one another, then staring stupidly at D, and finally focusing their gaze on the black object before them. They were speechless. Through a silence so absolute it seemed they might even be able to hear the sunlight raining down on them, the group waited.

“Ten seconds more,” someone murmured. There was no need to say the rest.

Five seconds . . .

The people saw four streaks run from the top of the sphere all the way down to its bottom. If what D said was correct, would it be a Noble inside? If it were, they wondered if the dazzling sunlight wouldn’t reduce him to dust the instant he appeared. Or would it be the stuff of legend—a wind gusting from the darkness of history, pregnant with evil, as a Greater Noble that could walk in the light of the sun returned to life?

The object was oblivious to all their speculation.

Zero.

There was a terrific whistle as white vapor shot from the top of the object. Steam. D alone remained, with the retreating throng preceded by their screams. To them, the sphere looked like a bud made of steel.

Slowly its four metallic petals opened, and from the still-billowing steam inside a figure in black became visible. Brilliant sunlight rained down on the figure, but he didn’t cry out or writhe in pain. Instead, through the thinning white veil the figure could be clearly seen stretching both arms as he said, “Ah, yes!”

“Is that a N-N-Noble?” the mayor stammered.

“Yes,” said D. It wouldn’t do to leave his employer’s question unanswered.

“Then . . . then what we have here is a Noble who can walk in the light of the sun . . . and terrorize us by day, too?”

“That it is, I suppose.”

The mayor stared at D in shock. The last remark had been in the same hoarse voice he’d heard earlier. “Grab him,” the mayor said, his tone nearly a whisper. “Grab him for us. He’ll make a great tourist attraction.”

The metallic petals continued to move, opening a full ninety degrees, while amidst the collection of unknown machinery within, a figure rose from what appeared to be a couch of sorts and stood, shrouded in black fur.

“Baron Macula?” D inquired.

A murmur went through the crowd. Did this gorgeous Hunter know the name of this Noble from untold antiquity? On further consideration, the ruins were called Castle Macula, making it possible to imagine the name of the lord of the manor. However, the people were so mesmerized by the gorgeous young man and his actions that they couldn’t even conceive of it. At the same time, another suspicion formed in the crowd’s mind:
Could it be this Hunter knew these strange events would take place today and he’d encounter a Noble?
But this suspicion vanished like mist thanks to the question D had posed and the answer that came next through the faint haze.

“That’s right,” a grave voice had replied.

“I’m D, a Hunter. You need to come with me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“
What?
” the mayor and sheriff both exclaimed. Unlike the fearsome Noble’s first reply, the second had been casual and flippant.

“This should be good,” a hoarse voice from the vicinity of D’s left hand murmured with amusement. “Looks like we’ve been thrown a curve.”

“Give us some wind,” D said in a low voice.

No one would’ve believed the sudden gale had gusted from the left hand of the inhumanly beautiful Hunter. Blowing away the faint steam, it left the Noble born from those petals exposed in the light of day.

The murmur that shook the air was like the deep rumbling of a quake.

—

III

—

The Noble floated a foot and a half off the ground. From there, he ceremoniously lowered his left foot toward the ground—but just as the tip of his boot was about to make contact, it halted. He didn’t pause because he’d remembered something. He was simply physically incapable of reaching the ground. Taking hold of the edge of one metallic petal, the man fidgeted a bit, then gave up.

“I’m getting down,” he declared haughtily. Then, in a lower voice, he added spitefully, “Are you going to give me a hand or not, you dolts?”

To the people, he called to mind nothing more than a bear cub slipping and sliding its way down a tree trunk while a gigantic predator waited below. The Noble they’d so feared was stocky, not quite five feet tall, and from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, he was covered with black, bristly fur. However, what brought gasps from the onlookers and made terror bubble up from the depths of their souls was the demonic bronze mask he wore on his face. Though they could tell at a glance that it wasn’t his real face, these people of the Frontier also felt it wasn’t
just
a mask.

“Give me some help,” he bellowed gruffly. “I can’t get down.”

It wasn’t so much an order from the mayor as a shove from behind that sent two men, presumably from the town hall, forward, with trepidation. However, just ahead of them the man-bear seemed to have a change of heart. Stretching out a plump arm, he said, “Do you think a Noble would place himself in the hands of some hideous humans? Hey, you over there—come here.”

On seeing who he was addressing, the whole group gasped; it was the handsome young man in black. The Noble’s sentiment was understandable. But wasn’t the young man a Hunter?

It may have been on account of this fact that the man-bear toned down the arrogance in his voice when he said, “What are you doing? Are you going to help me or not?”

D stepped forward. For a third time the crowd gasped. Before the ruckus had faded, D made his way through the people, took the man-bear by the arm, and roughly tossed him to the ground, chilling them all with terror.

Flipping over once, the man-bear hit the ground back first. “Oof!” he groaned pitifully.

A Noble’s pain turned to rage, which would be visited on mankind—from the age of legends right down to the present day this horrifying truth had been etched into human DNA with bloody chisels and mallets of cold terror. But the man-bear lay sprawled in a mess on the ground, just groaning for a while before slowly picking himself up like a centenarian.

“You son of a bitch. You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that!” he cursed.

However, the way he massaged and patted the small of his back was enough to cause someone to remark, “He’s like a little old man or something, isn’t he?”

It seemed their terror and expectations may have been too great, or there was something fundamentally wrong here—suspicions began to creep into the minds of the spectators, but they
were
still dealing with a Noble. The tension might’ve vanished from their faces, but the people surrounding him made no attempt to press any closer.

“Upsy-daisy!” the man-bear cried out like some countrified codger as he stretched his back out. Looking up at the heavens, he lifted his stubby arms as if cheering
hurrah!
“Ah, what marvelous weather! And my first peek at the sun in five millennia. It hasn’t changed a bit,” he remarked with pleasure. After a pause of about two seconds, he glared long and hard at the crowd around him, asking, “Who the hell are you people?”

Though they couldn’t see any eye openings in the bronze mask, the people backed away noisily.

“What are you gawking at? I’m not on display!”

The mayor looked at D. He wanted the Hunter to begin a dialogue with the Noble. However, the handsome man in black just stood there, silent as a statue. Abandoning that notion, the mayor cleared his throat. The cough echoed through the area like the roar of a greater dragon. The silence ran that deep.

Perhaps the daunting position he was in impressed itself on the mayor once again, because he rested a rough hand against his chest, got his breathing under control, and desperately choked back his fear before saying, “I’m the mayor of the nearby village of Satori. Who in blazes are you?”

His voice trembled horribly, yet two thoughts occupied his brain at the same time. First, a Noble who walked in daylight—this was an exceptional fiend unlike any ever described. Second, a Noble who walked in daylight couldn’t exist. Based on his words and actions up till now, he had to be lying. If that were true, the mayor decided that things would not go well for this man. Or such was his intent . . . but it didn’t pan out as he’d planned.

The mask turned to him, asking, “What the hell do you want, sod buster?”

A great wind suddenly gusted by. The mayor tensed.

“So, you say you’re the mayor of these parts, you little prick? Have you forgotten my name, then? Have you? Have you forgotten the name of Baron Macula, Greater Noble and ruler of northern Frontier territories where so many rustic, pissant Nobles swaggered about?”

“No, I know that,” the mayor said proudly. His face was as drained of life as that of a wax figure. “But I’d heard that the baron died more than five thousand years ago. The very thought of him showing up again in this day . . .”

“You great, thick-skulled dunce. Whoever said I was dead? Who saw it? I’m right here. I never set foot outside my dominion. I’ve remained here in hiding for a certain lofty purpose. But it would seem I may have been a bit too relaxed.”

“What do you mean . . . a l-lofty purpose?”

The man-bear spat in disgust, “The brain of a Greater Noble is like the universe. Can the lowly maggots that crawl across the ground fathom the infinite vastness of the cosmos? Away from me!” He made a flourish of his arm, and the crowd backed away.

“But, um . . . You . . . Well, you’re walking around in daylight . . .
You c-couldn’t be a Noble!” the mayor stammered in reply.

In return, he got a sneer—no, a mocking laugh. “Bwahahaha! Do you still have such stubborn notions stuck in your heads? So, am I to believe that through the five millennia I’ve slumbered nothing has changed, that you still fear the night, and when the sun goes down you shut the village gate and bolt your doors, quaking at the slightest howl of a monster through sleepless nights? Half your short lives are night. That you would sacrifice all that to pointless, antiquated notions—well, you really are a hopeless lot. Bwahahaha!”

“But . . . that’s the way it is . . . for
all
Nobles,” the mayor insisted, though he seemed to be speaking deliriously.

However, his words had an unexpected effect. The laughter of the man-bear, Baron Macula, stopped dead. His bronze mouth muttered a hushed, “
What?
” Then, “You say the Nobility don’t walk in the light of day? Impossible. This is no laughing matter. You mean to tell me even now Nobles live solely by the darkness of night? I can’t believe it!”

The voice that issued from the mask churned with deep-seated surprise and turmoil. But before the mayor could capitalize on the Noble’s melancholy, he was silenced.

“Nobles are still creatures of the night,” a steely voice had said, causing all to turn and look. “Even now, the radiant light doesn’t belong to your kind. I need you to come with me.”

At that instant, the chubby figure leapt from the spot beside D to one ten yards distant, like a rubber ball with a good bounce.

“My guess is you have some of our blood in you. Are you one of those dhampir deals? And such a killing lust—you plan on destroying me, don’t you?”

D stepped forward without a word.

“Hey, now!” the pudgy figure exclaimed, making another jump that put him in front of the crowd. Screaming, the people pushed backward. And another leap—this time bound for an area behind the crowd.