CHAPTER 1:

GUARDIAN OF THE FRONTIER

1

At the onset of autumn in the year 7000 by Noble reckoning, two fears plagued the village of Ardoz.

One was the presence of the OSB—outer space beings that had been waging war against Ardoz’s rulers, the Nobility, for over a hundred years. The other was the imminent visit from their overlord and overseer of the Northern Frontier sector, Greylancer.

Were this a different sector or an inspection by a local overseer, the villagers would not have much cause to fret. An overseer’s appearance in a human habitat zone was exactly that—a ceremonious procession of auto-vassals flanking a G-coffin paraded down the street, all accompanied by the solemn music of a robotic band. Nary a soul believed that an inspector, much less a lord, was acting as the menacing eye of the Nobility from inside the coffin as decreed in the missive from the Capital.

But the overlord of the Northern Frontier sector would surely come.

For over three thousand years, the Greater Noble Greylancer had ruled over this sector, becoming a legend in his lifetime. His very appearance inspired awe in his subjects.

But the villagers were shaken by a peculiar kind of confusion and anxiety.

As the appointed time approached, they glanced up at the source of their confusion, the sky itself. White clouds frolicked in the blue sky like kittens. Not even a shadow of OSB aircraft, rumored to have come from the endless void to engage the Nobility night and day in a fierce aerial battle, passed overhead.

No, it was daylight.

Lord Greylancer was expected to arrive at high noon.

In two minutes’ time. But just how was a Noble—a vampire—capable of visiting this sun-drenched village?

“Are you sure this isn’t some sham, Chief?” the sub-chief, one of ten villagers standing at the north entrance, asked Chief Lanzi. “I know he’s a Greater Noble and all, but in the middle of the day? How do you reckon he’ll get here? And bringing with him only one retainer?”

“I won’t pretend to understand the ways of the Nobility—of all the villages in the Frontier, coming to a speck of dust such as this. I suppose you and I will go to our graves never knowing.”

“But I heard he’d been here once before, when you were a boy.”

The wrinkled chief pried open his fissured eyes and blinked. “You heard right. I was four. My mother and father forbade me, but I cracked open the window and snuck a peek at the path in front of my house. I heard the sound of hooves clopping from a distance, and soon enough, this towering shadow straddling a gargantuan horse passed before my eyes. It felt as if a ghostly presence blew in through the window. I couldn’t sleep a lick that night. That was the Noble Greylancer.”

“But that was at night, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, a brilliant moon shone down over the village.”

“He aims to come in broad daylight this time. Did vampires evolve somehow when we weren’t looking?”

“Who knows what the Nobility are up to? At least he doesn’t need any more than three delegates to greet his arrival. The rumor is that the Southern and Eastern overlords demand a welcome parade costing villages a year’s revenue.”

“Nothing for you to be happy about.” The sub-chief bit a bent finger. “All I’ve heard is how cruel and cold-blooded his lordship is, like a messenger from hell. And he’s coming to this tiny village in the shining sun. I tell you, Chief, this is an omen. A sign of bad things to come. Something beyond our imagination.”

“Shh!” The village treasurer tensed, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance. “I hear hooves…he’s coming!”

The lingering villagers disappeared at once, as if scattered by an ominous black wind.

Only four remained.

The chief, sub-chief, treasurer, and…a redheaded woman. Though a hard life had aged her, she was still in her early thirties. She was the chief’s wife.

It was obvious by the way her husband eyed her like a nuisance that her presence was unwelcome.

After arguing with her husband much of the morning, she had joined the welcome delegation against his wishes.

And when two shadows on horseback appeared in the path stretching down the miasma-draped wasteland, the look on the woman’s face resembled one of enchantment, unlike the terror-stricken faces of the men next to her.

One by one, the faces vanished from windows and doors of mud-packed houses made of wood and stone. The threadbare curtains were drawn.

Though appearing to be shrouded by a dark mist from afar, the figure halting the black cybernetic horse before them was blurred by a navy and gold-tinged haze. Navy was the color of his cape, gold the color of the embroidery on his coat.

“We’ve been expecting you. I am Lanzi, Chief of Ardoz village. This is Sub-Chief Sdao, and the village treasurer, Shijog.”

“Pardon the trouble. I am Greylancer.” The voice from atop the horse sounded terribly distant, but packed enough force to send chills up the spines of the four villagers.

Long shiny black hair, a rugged face as if the bones underneath were forged from steel, a neck thick enough to support that weight, thick brows, tall nose, his tightly drawn lips red like blood. One bellow from those lips might fell birds in flight. As well, his body appeared as if flesh and skin were stretched over a steel frame. His eyes were as blue and deep as the ocean but would no doubt turn as red as his lips at the first whiff of blood.

Greylancer jerked his chin toward the mounted figure behind him and said, “My retainer, Grosbec.”

The man, bowing with his hands still gripping the reins, was narrow-chested and neither as tall nor broad around the shoulders as his master. Chief Lanzi imagined his delicate head popping off with a flick of his master’s finger and blowing away into the horizon with a single breath. The mechanized armor beneath his cape appeared utterly useless or rather, in eternal disrepair.

Thin, slight brows, half-lidded eyes that appeared shut, eyes like those of dead fish, and finally a look of agony as if he’d taken his last gasp. Despite the sword hanging at his side and the laser gun affixed to his right forearm, he hardly seemed able to handle them. No doubt they were broken anyway.

Nevertheless, the expression that Greylancer directed at his only companion was one of complete trust. “Anything?” Greylancer asked Grosbec.

The villagers stared at one another in confusion.

“No different than the other villages. Inevitable, I’m afraid.” Grosbec rubbed the base of his nose, in the manner of the drug addicts in the village.

“Anyone?”

“I cannot say for certain. No one within earshot.”

“Good,” said the voice of steel. “Whatever they might feel for the Nobility cannot be helped.”

“Yes, my lord.” The man with the voice and body of an invalid pinched his nose harder.

When Greylancer dismounted his horse, the villagers heard the earth rumble—a phantom sound, of course. But no wonder—the Noble stood nearly two meters tall.

Greylancer’s deep blue eyes paused on the woman and reflected her smile before turning to the chief. “Do you find it strange to see us walking in the sun?” he asked.

“Why, er…no.”

“You needn’t hide your shock. At present, only Grosbec here and I are capable of doing so.”

“My lord,” said the chief, dropping his eyes in deference.

Greylancer’s gaze reverted to the woman. “A rare surprise seeing a woman to greet our arrival.”

“Begging your pardon,” said the chief. “This is my wife.”

“My name is Michia.” The woman bowed, perhaps to conceal the forlorn look on her face.

“Do vampires not frighten you?”

“Why, not in the least.”

“Well now…” Greylancer smiled faintly. Awl-like incisors peered out from lips that were blanched for a vampire. “Quite a woman. But rest assured. We’ll not stay long. We have been traveling the sector, but this village was not one of our planned stops. We’ve come because a surveillance satellite reported something falling from the sky in this area.”

Though the villagers had heard of the existence of several dozen surveillance satellites floating on the outer edges of the atmosphere, they were ignorant of the particulars of their use. Nevertheless, it was enough to fill the village chief and the others with apprehension. Something falling from the sky… The overlord had ridden his horse to investigate this something himself, in all likelihood, to dispose of it.

Chief Lanzi swallowed hard.

Greylancer towered over him like a giant. Unarmed. He carried neither lance, nor bow, nor sword. No one doubted his ability to crush any enemy regardless.

“Are you speaking of the OSB?” the chief asked, fearing he would incur the overlord’s wrath for speaking out of turn.

But Greylancer smiled faintly a second time. “Indeed,” he answered. “You know well. A worthy subject. Any ideas?”

2

Chief Lanzi turned to the others. The sub-chief and treasurer shook their heads.

“Wait…” It was Michia whose face clouded. As the men’s gazes converged on her, she continued, “I saw the woodcutter Beijrot this morning, when I went foraging for mushrooms in the northern forest. He said something about watching a shooting star drop into the forest last night.”

“When was that?”

“I…didn’t ask.”

“Hmm, do you know the approximate location?”

Michia’s eyes narrowed and her brows knitted as she searched her memory. Two seconds later, her eyes opened wide. “The northern forest is about twenty kilometers from this village. And then another fifty kilometers from Beijrot’s cabin to the deep forest.”

The Noble shot a look northward. “Is this woodcutter home now?”

“Yes,” answered the treasurer. “Someone saw him leaving the village not three hours ago.”

“Any inhabitants near the impact point?”

“Yes, the homes of four woodcutters,” Chief Lanzi answered.

“Their numbers?”

“One family is expecting a child any day now, but including the child, seventeen.”

Greylancer nodded. “We will take our leave. You are all to stay inside your homes. And—” He uttered something peculiar. “If the woodcutter and his family return, do not let them into your homes. Should they attempt to enter, kill them.”

An air of unease besieged the four villagers. The Noble’s every utterance affected the fates of humans living in the Frontier. Would this fistful of powder pitched into the flames cause an innocuous gunshot or a blasting charge?

“What ever do you mean?”

Greylancer regarded the chief’s terrified visage and answered in a low bass, “Do not fret. Do as I say, and you will be safe. Understand? Assuming familiarity with anyone will instantly lead to your demise. Let us meet again.” Then he muttered, “Let’s go” to Grosbec, and with a dark blue boot, kicked the cybernetic horse into a full gallop, whipping up a whirlwind around them.

Watching the riders receding between the houses, Chief Lanzi remarked, “What skill handling the reins and the horse. At their rate, it won’t take but a half hour to reach the northern end,” after which he turned to his wife and said, “From the way you were acting, I suspected you knew him, but perhaps I was wrong. His lordship didn’t even bat an eye. What a relief.”

“Come now,” Michia said, flashing a disbelieving smile. But when the men began to return to their homes, she looked back in the direction where not even a shadow of the vampire remained. She stared down at the point where he had stood. It was obvious that the thoughts swirling in her mind differed completely from those of the others.

†

The ride to Beijrot’s cabin did not take ten minutes.

Both Greylancer’s and Grosbec’s cybernetic horses had been custom built.

A tiny cabin slumbered beneath the shadow of a branch of a liza tree standing a hundred meters tall.

Greylancer went inside the cabin and immediately came out. “No one inside. From the look of the ashes in the fireplace, he must have gone out again as soon as he returned from the village. No horse. Anything?”

The mounted Grosbec had taken on a different complexion. The color had returned, the unhealthy stiffness was gone from not only his face but also his entire body, and a faint smile flickered across his lips. “At present, I sense only animals within two kilometers,” was the answer to his master’s query.

“We should have asked if the woodcutter is the curious type.”

“Indeed.”

“He seems to have a dog, but there is no sign of him. Let us go.”

They rode another ten kilometers, whereupon a cabin larger than Beijrot’s peered out from behind a grove of trees on the right.

“Anything?”

“No.”

They repeated the short exchange another three times, once for each time they passed a woodcutter’s house that Michia had spoken of.

When they came within a few kilometers of the edge of the forest, Greylancer pulled up on the reins.

Clear of trees now, approximately two hundred meters ahead in the ochre-colored mesa, there lay what appeared to be a blue metallic object that was clearly not of this world. Its brilliant sheen accentuated the desolation of the treeless wilderness surrounding it.

It resembled a saucer with three horizontal tail planes. A two-seater judging by its ten-by-eight-meter size. The two open bulges on what appeared to be the cockpit corroborated this. The body was split open diagonally from the rear of the cockpit to the tail, such that it was difficult to believe the aircraft had crash-landed safely.

The landing had not put a mark on it. The enemy aircraft was not equipped with an energy shield but was made of a super-dense alloy.

A human shadow stood in front of the cockpit.

Spiked leather vest and wool shirt. The wide-barrel hunting pistol was nicked and well worn, but the hand axe stuck behind his belt was shiny enough to reflect one’s face.

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.

3

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.

“I will take lodging at your abode tonight. We have matters to discuss.”

The color drained from the chief’s face. “Uh…shall I arrange for anyone to join us?”

“After we’ve talked.”

The giant dismounted from his horse, and his dark blue cape fluttered majestically.

†

Michia came out of the house upon Lanzi and Greylancer’s arrival.

The couple’s son was not at home, and Lanzi’s daughter had been adopted when Michia came to live with the chief. Now the girl lived with a farming family in the Northern Frontier.

After sending Michia away, Chief Lanzi was confronted by the sheer fact that a Noble stood in his parlor. The sight of the vampire lowering his frame onto the sofa was enough to stifle his breathing. The last glimmer of daylight streamed in through the window, spreading the Noble’s shadow over the room as if to shroud it in darkness.

Then, Greylancer revealed a scenario that made the chief’s blood curdle.

“I’d assumed there were only two, but when I checked the OSB’s weapon, it had discharged one blast fewer than the number of woodcutters’ family members. One of them must have survived.”

“But…none of the other woodcutters have been to the village today.”

“You said that the villagers went out to tend their crops.”

Just as Chief Lanzi began to nod, his face went blank—the meaning of Greylancer’s remark registered in his mind. “Are you suggesting one of the OSB first took the identity of a woodcutter and then switched to the form of one of the villagers?”

“I don’t know. It is possible. If there is the slightest possibility, it bears investigating.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

“You will alert the village that I will be patrolling the premises. That’s all. The villagers will wait for dawn sheltered in their homes—all except one.”

“You mean to expose yourself to draw out the enemy?”

“A tired ploy, I realize. But that it has not fallen out of favor is proof of its efficacy.”

“As you wish.” Wiping the sweat from his face, the chief contemplated the human-shaped specter before him. Just whose defeat was best for the village, he knew not.