CHAPTER 2:

EXTERMINATING
THE INTRUDERS

1

The third OSB had stolen the form of one of the woodcutter’s family members, headed straight for Ardoz, and, after transforming into one of the villagers toiling in the fields, returned to the village. Since it retained the knowledge and outward appearance of its victim, not even family members could see through its trickery.

Perhaps Ardoz was not the OSB’s destination or hiding place at all. The Glacierites lived in a town not fifty kilometers away, where it was possible to board a ship and sail down the River Benev.

Greylancer had decided to return because Michia had told Beijrot of Greylancer’s visit before the woodcutter’s body had been stolen by the OSB.

If the OSB could steal the identity of the Greater Noble, whose name was known across the Frontier, they would be able to march into the Capital uncontested. No doubt the enemy would risk life and limb to that end.

As darkness descended, Greylancer left the chief’s house.

The eyes of those peering from the windows converged on the Noble patrolling the streets.

He emerged into the village square.

Though the streetlamps were dark, a near-full moon lit the well and stone relief with a bluish glow. Several wagons were parked on the western edge.

Greylancer looked up in the direction of the grating screech overhead.

Silhouetted birds fluttered across the moon. Night migrants. The black nocturnal birds of passage alighted around Greylancer and began pecking at the shadows of the trees, houses, and wagons.

The birds used their pointed beaks to eat the ground insects gathered in the shadows at night, and because they appeared to be pecking at the shadows, they were also called “shadow eaters.”

After gazing down for a moment at the birds picking the strandlike insects off the ground, Greylancer muttered, “Seems I lack what the shadow eaters are looking for.” Nobles cast no shadows at their feet. “The night is still young. I pray the OSB are an impulsive race. The loss of Grosbec will be felt dearly,” he grumbled to himself. Spoken by this man, however, the words had the ring of scathing damnation against the OSB. “A fine moon.” After looking up for a moment, the Noble resumed his patrol.

He made no sound when he walked. Even the shadow eaters did not notice his footfall.

Of the paths leading out of the square, Greylancer headed for the west exit.

As he passed by the wagons parked at the edge, the nearmost wagon instantly began to lose its shape.

An amorphous mass the color of the wagon leapt at Greylancer.

The flash of movement gave away its presence. Greylancer twisted his enormous body to the right at an unthinkable speed.

Gripped in his right hand was the long lance he’d used to fell the ghost archer earlier in the day. The curved conical tip struck the mass and flung it against the stone wall along the path. The enemy was protean, shifting form moment by moment.

The instant the lance poised for another attack, the mass twisted into a vortex and flowed through a hole in the stone wall.

“Tch!” The Noble thrust the lance against the wall.

The wall exploded and smashed to pieces. When he cleared the rubble in his path, he spotted the fleeing mass fifty meters ahead.

Suddenly, the mass changed shape again, stealing the form of a nearby creature. A black cat scampered fifty meters in the moonlight toward a lit building with unbelievable agility. The OSB was capable of doubling the abilities of the creatures it became.

Greylancer’s lance discharged a particle beam. A purple streak tore through the darkness. The beam grazed the cat’s tail and bore a five-meter-long trench in the ground. The explosion made no sound, as if in deference to the tranquility the moon demanded.

Watching the cat disappear inside the building, Greylancer broke into a run.

When he reached the door, lively music filled his ears. He didn’t need to look at the sign to know he had stumbled into the all-night tavern found in every Frontier town.

The tavern was crowded with patrons.

The moment they glimpsed the stranger’s entrance, the faces of the patrons and bartender-cum-proprietor froze. The room reeked of smoke and liquor.

“Not one move,” commanded Greylancer before anyone could speak. “Anyone else here?” he asked, glancing at one door in the back and another to the left. The back door was the entrance into the staff room, and the door on the left led into the washroom.

Game maps for a vampire hunting game that was all the rage in the Frontier and coins and various chips and cards for wagering cluttered the tabletops. No one attempted to hide the game, perhaps petrified by the Greater Noble’s ghostly aura.

“Two,” the bartender-cum-proprietor answered, his voice stiff, perhaps surpassing the usual tremulous reaction. “My wife is in the back changing. And there is another in the toilet.”

“Look right,” boomed Greylancer to the patrons of the tavern. “If the person next to you has never left your sight, stand over there against the right window. Otherwise, raise your right hand.”

Within seconds, everyone save the proprietor stood by the window. Despite the knives and guns undoubtedly concealed among them, not one thought to reach for their weapons, as they all stared at the same two doors Greylancer did.

The enemy could not have escaped. It must have taken some damage by the earlier hit. Neither was the enemy so feeble as to flee in the face of a flesh-and-blood Noble.

Since the enemy might be among the patrons, Greylancer had no choice but to detain them.

The back door opened first.

A slender middle-aged woman, wearing a colorful corset and flared skirt, emerged from the staff room and became immediately petrified by the tension in the room.

“A N-Noble…!” she stammered, and at the same, a youth in his mid-teens came out of the left door and was stopped cold.

“Lord Greylancer,” the proprietor began to jabber. “This is my wife. And the boy there is my son. Whoever you’re looking for, I can assure you these two aren’t involved.”

Whether the Greater Noble heard him or not, his steely voice rang across the tavern. “Strip off your clothes—both of you.”

It was an order no one dared defy. Even the husband and father of the two in question could not form the words to protest.

Surely the two were desperate to know what they had done to attract such direct attention from a Noble. Surely they knew nothing. Nevertheless, the woman unlaced her corset, and the teen unbuttoned his shirt as ordered.

As the woman bared her ample breasts and taut body from the waist up beneath the gas lamp, the eyes of the patrons pleaded innocent to having any lascivious thoughts.

“Move your hands,” ordered Greylancer. The woman lowered the hands covering her breasts. “Turn around.”

Both mother and son turned once around.

Finally, anger began to seep into the eyes and faces of the patrons. They were not castrated livestock after all.

When Greylancer commanded, “Take off your bottoms,” one of the men jumped up and shouted, “That’s enough!” He pointed a gun at Greylancer.

The lance slashed the man’s elbow like a bolt of lightning, sending the severed arm sailing toward the wall. So quick was Greylancer’s attack that the man was unaware of his pain until his blood rained down on the others like rose petals. He glanced around the blood-splattered room, then fell.

Strange occurrences happened all the time in the Frontier. But not even Greylancer could have predicted what happened next.

A gunshot rang out.

The gun, still gripped in the man’s severed hand, had crashed against the wall and exploded on impact.

The bullet pierced the woman’s right breast and shot clean through her back.

A dreadful silence came over the room, and in the next instant, the woman crumpled to the floor.

“Mama!” the boy shouted and ran to his mother.

Everyone stared in terror.

The woman’s head twisted a full 360 degrees, tearing off at the neck, and sprang like a savage animal at Greylancer.

Deep inside the fanged mouth of the kindly countrywoman was the green glow of a cyclopean.

Greylancer thrust the lance inside her mouth, skewering the woman’s head as it flew at him, then crushing it to pieces.

The room filled with screams.

Pulverized bits of flesh and bone and eyes turned into grayish ooze in midair and splattered on the poor onlookers’ heads, faces, and hands.

Like the rest of the mother’s body, the gray matter stuck on the people’s skin twitched and quivered and stopped, until it vaporized in an instant.

“I shall take my leave of you.” Greylancer spun on his heel, any interest in the tavern, its patrons, the OSB, the possessed woman, much less the village already leaving him.

Another gunshot.

A tiny hole opened in the cape shrouding his massive back and disappeared as quickly as it appeared. The Noble’s garments were made of a memory fabric that restored its original shape when damaged.

Turning, Greylancer confronted the youth clutching the gun in both hands. Purple smoke plumed from the trembling barrel.

“You…killed my mother…” The boy sobbed. Tears rolled down his cheeks with every gasp.

The Noble’s reply was frigid. “The creature that I struck down was not your mother. Don’t you see that?”

“Listen to him, Lingor,” shouted his father from behind the bar counter. “He’s right!” He alone understood that the fate of his family turned on what would happen in the next few seconds. “Lord Greylancer is not responsible for what has happened here. Get ahold of yourself!”

“Nobles, Nobles, Nobles! They’re to blame for all of this. Mama would still be alive if you damn Nobles—” The boy’s anger tensed his finger before he’d intended to squeeze the trigger.

The moment the gun roared, Greylancer plunged the silver spearhead through the boy’s throat, twisting the hilt for good measure. The boy’s head tore off at the initial gouge and landed in the middle of where the patrons stood.

Screams again erupted from the crowd.

Lance in hand, Greylancer resumed his walk toward the door.

He sensed the hatred rise up and countless weapons being drawn behind him.

“Have you any idea the position you are in?” The force of his voice was enough to freeze the animosity surging toward him. “If the OSB are not destroyed within twenty-four hours of a confirmed infiltration, the area within a thousand kilometers of the invasion point will become the target of our corona cannon. I have yet to report to the Capital that the threat has been put down, and the woodcutter Beijrot made first contact with the OSB yesterday at dawn. Try as you might, there will be no escape.”

Even after the echo of his voice and its master dissolved into the darkness, the villagers could not move for a good long while.

Several minutes passed, until freed from the curse at last, they began to tremble with newfound enmity and grief, while others counted the village’s fortune at having been spared, thanks to the sacrifice of the tavernkeeper’s family.

2

Greylancer left the tavern and headed directly for Chief Lanzi’s house. His intention was to depart immediately.

He could give a damn about the collective hatred of the villagers. He had little interest in humanity to begin with. He was merely dispatching his duties as Frontier overlord. The truth was he could barely tolerate speaking to humans.

The overlordship was not determined by succession.

Before being appointed to this position by the Privy Council—the highest decision-making body of the Nobility—Greylancer had been a member of the Sub-Council and all but assured a seat in the next Privy Council.

The ladder up the ranks was a precarious one for which pedigree, skill, and proven record were requisite criteria. It was a great achievement for a Noble to earn a seat on the Sub-Council, much less the Privy Council. Yet Greylancer had easily ascended the elite ranks virtually uncontested.

The Noble Greylancer.

Though the Nobility had dispensed with such honorifics, his brethren naturally took to calling him by this appellation out of deference for his record for wiping out those among the Nobility opposed to the Sacred Ancestor.

In the Noble year 2004, the True Nobility World faction, which advocated the extermination of the human race, plotted to disperse a radioactive substance that selectively acted upon human DNA. It was the young warrior Greylancer that had killed every last one of the conspirators and foiled their plot on the eve of the operation.

And in the Noble year 3052, the Anti-Human Alliance, a larger, more powerful offshoot of the True Nobility World faction, set in motion a thousand-year conspiracy to assassinate the Sacred Ancestor. Two hundred years later, it was also Greylancer who exposed the plot within weeks and, risking his own ruin, drove a stake into the heart of the ringleader, a high-ranking member of the Privy Council.

And then again in the Noble year 3071, when humanity mounted an insurrection for the ages against the Nobility, leading the charge to put down the threat and punishing the regional Nobles that incited the uprising was none other than Greylancer.

Why this Greater Noble, embodying the full glory of the Noble race, was demoted to oversee a sector of the Frontier was a mystery even to the Privy Council handing down the order.

Nevertheless, Greylancer accepted the appointment without complaint and departed the Capital with his most trusted retainers in tow. Nearly ten thousand Nobles were said to have lined the street to soberly see off their exalted warrior.

Though he ruled over his subjects with both a gentle and severe hand, his disinterest in humans was not caused so much by this tavern incident alone as it was by Greylancer’s nature.

Simply put, humanity’s existence was beyond his comprehension. To most Nobles, humans were not much more than semiprecious vermin allowed to live only for the warm blood coursing through their veins.

When Nobles deigned to betray deep interest in humans, it was a matter of scholarship, and when the majority of Nobles gave any thought to humanity at all it was for the blood that could be got from their veins.

His business with this shit-smeared piddling town stinking of humans was done.

Upon reaching Chief Lanzi’s house, Greylancer headed straight for the stable.

There he felt his knees go weak.

The reason was obvious. The effects of the ghost archer’s arrow had drained his body. True to legend, though a wound from an iron arrow was not fatal, it was capable of burning and rotting the immortal flesh, causing infernal pain.

Such was the awesome will of the Greater Noble to endure for this long without batting an eye.

He was already inside the stable.

In a separate stall apart from Chief Lanzi’s wagon and cybernetic horse were two tethered horses. One mount had only the burden of its master’s garments.

Greylancer rose to his feet and staggered two steps in that direction before losing his balance again and toppling over.

The anger swelling on his face conveyed a shame for which not even death could atone.

Lurching like a boulder with arms and legs, Greylancer brought himself up on one knee.

And then he heard a gasp from outside the door.

The patter of footsteps, and then a pale hand rested on his shoulder.

“Were you watching, woman?” Neither an expression of gratitude nor joy, the Noble’s words were imbued with a ghastly chill.

She seemed to tense for a moment and then quickly replied, “Yes, I was.” The determination in her voice shook his look of menace. “Let me help you.”

“Are you the chief’s wife?”

“Michia, yes.”

“Do not meddle where you do not belong.”

“Yes, I know. But this an expression of my appreciation.”

“Appreciation?” Greylancer’s neck made a grinding sound as he twisted it in the woman’s direction. “What are you talking about?”

“Come inside the house, if you care to know.”

“No,” he growled. “Move over there.” His eyes gestured toward the pile of calorie weeds before him. The color and shape of an ordinary haystack, it was actually synthetic grass, the primary energy source for cybernetic horses.

Bearing down on one knee, he labored to his feet. The pit of his stomach burned like fire.

He shrugged off the woman’s hand, sending her reeling several steps back, but she managed to keep her footing and returned to Greylancer’s side, undeterred.

Again, her arm wrapped around his. No longer trying to break her hold, Greylancer lumbered forward and slumped against the pile of calorie weeds. Crushed under the weight of the giant, the haystack crackled like a mound of tiny crushed bones and compressed under him into a thick bed.

Michia repositioned him, threw open his cape, and found the wound on his stomach. A black stain seeped through his green and gold embroidered shirt and spread downward.

Michia nodded. “Stay here,” she said and stood up.

“Wait. How did you know that I would return here? You were not outside.”

“I’ve been waiting here in the stable. Knowing you, I expected you would come directly here without saying goodbye.”

“Knowing me?”

“Yes, my lord.” Nodding kindly, she twirled around and hastened out the door.

Within ten minutes, she returned with a white med case hanging from her shoulder.

Human medicine was useless in treating vampiric injuries. Michia hoisted the case, nonetheless, and revealed a false bottom. Greylancer’s eyes glimmered at the sight of the items she produced from the case.

The red plastic packets were dehydrated blood. Were they discovered, the entire family would surely be crucified as servants of the Nobility. Even more astounding were the plastic vials stored in a cryogenic agent.

When Michia removed the lid from one of the vials pluming white smoke, a sweet bouquet crept into the Noble’s nasal cavity.

“What is…?”

“My blood, your lordship. If we ever had occasion to meet, I wanted you to have a taste.”

“You’ve been collecting blood?” Greylancer regarded the chief’s winsome wife as if he were looking at an unfamiliar creature.

“Yes.”

“It’s true that human blood is the best elixir for healing my wounds. But if anyone should find this—”

“I would be torn to pieces, yes. No matter, I have cut my own wrists and collected the blood you see here, and another cache that I’ve collected over seventeen years is in a freezer in the basement.”

“But why? What appreciation do you owe me?”

“In due time,” Michia said. “Please drink first.” Handing him the vial, she turned her back and waited.

“I am healed.”

When Michia turned around, the vampire’s mouth was painted crimson, a line of blood streaking from one edge of his lips and dripping off his chin.

She averted her eyes before Greylancer wiped the blood with the back of a hand.

“The blood is good. But I have no memory of the taste.”

“If you did, I imagine I would be your servant instead of wedded to another.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Seventeen years ago—perhaps the years mean nothing to you—I was fifteen years old. One summer day, my school had planned a field trip by steam bus.” Michia took the unfinished vials from Greylancer’s hand and returned them to the case. Her distant look seemed to reflect the sweetness of the memory.

Buoyed by good weather and the steady performance of the bus, the class ventured twice as far as they’d planned to go to the western forest.

She began picking flowers and gathering various edible plants, and by the time she looked up, darkness had already unfurled in the western sky.

The teacher chaperone turned pale. After boarding the students onto the bus and departing back to the village, he realized he’d left one girl behind.

“That girl was me. When I realized that I’d strayed from the group, I found myself in an old, magnificent abandoned graveyard. A thoroughly devastated ruin. Gravestones were overturned; the names engraved on them were scraped off and unreadable. The earth had been torched with gasoline. It must have been a Nobility graveyard destroyed back in the days of the human uprisings. Only the doors of the tomb were untouched by the devastation. A most ominous and beautiful graveyard. I understand now the entire property had been proportionately designed to appear aesthetically pleasing, but at the time, I simply could not tear myself away from the wicked beauty of the place.”

And then she came to another realization—her classmates were long gone and she was utterly surrounded by darkness.

Terror embraced her entire being. When she started running in the direction of the bus, Michia heard the sound of stone grinding against stone behind her. She did not need to turn around to recognize that the tomb door had opened. Or that something had risen from the tomb and was now lurking behind her.

The putrid odor of soil assaulted her nostrils, penetrating her consciousness until she grew light-headed. She collapsed into his cold embrace.

A voice whispered in her, “So very warm. And delicious.”

3

“You’ve cut your finger. Was it a blade of grass, perhaps? You have shaken me out of my slumber. My body swells for this tiny life. Allow me to sample a taste.”

The smell of decay and dirt drew closer to Michia’s neck.

It was at that moment another voice called out, “Wait.”

“That voice reverberated frostily but forcefully in my mind. In that instant, I was able to escape the curse of the dark presence behind me.

“‘She is a subject of my sector, Lord Joyceron,’ said the voice. ‘I am Greylancer, your successor as overlord of this sector.’

“It was the first time your name was burned into my heart.

“‘I know you, Greylancer,’ the voice behind me said. ‘I have felt the passing of time from inside my grave. I have known about you since your youth. Do not interfere.’

“‘You were relieved of your post as overlord for fomenting the human uprisings. If you lay a finger on one of my subjects, I will have to intervene.’

“‘You dare oppose another Noble to protect a human?’

“‘That, too, is the Nobility’s fate.’

“The shadow behind me leapt at my rescuer, tracing an arc over my head. Then there was a strange sound as I glimpsed the spearhead pierce its black-caped back. In an instant, the shadow fell to the ground, dust.”

In the darkness, Michia had recognized an even darker shadow with a great lance in its outstretched hand. The sinister figure stood against the night as if it might penetrate the darkness.

Michia stood motionless, unable to speak.

The figure that had rescued her from one horror was a horror himself. But the emotion swelling inside her heart was neither terror nor fear, but excitement.

Greylancer, she recognized, was none other than the name of the current overlord.

Those around Michia condemned the Noble as the devil, citing legends of countless atrocities he’d perpetrated. Michia believed in those legends.

Yet how strong, rugged, fierce, and gentle was this immoveable mountain of a man before her.

Saved from the clutches of a cursed death. Perhaps given the extreme prejudice she’d previously had, her impression of the Noble had been completely overturned.

Much to her shock, Michia had found herself in love with Greylancer from that moment.

“Are you all right?” the shadow asked, a voice like steel.

“Yes,” answered Michia, in a voice that was unexpectedly clear.

“Good. Then go.”

“It seems I’ve been left behind. I am alone here.” Then she uttered a question that even she could hardly believe. “Would you take me back to Ardoz?”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, you are Lord Greylancer, overseer of the Northern Frontier.”

“And you ask me to return you to your village?”

“Why yes. You said that it is your duty to protect us, just before.”

The shadow fell silent. Michia sensed something tremendous and inexpressible roiling inside the giant.

It soon subsided and hardened into steel.

“Very well. But swear this. You will never speak of your time with me.”

“I swear,” Michia answered immediately and then added, “Why?”

“Do not ask.” His earth-rattling voice shook Michia’s heart.

“I understand.”

At last, the girl realized that her rescuer was unmistakably a Noble.

And now she spoke before him again, in the stables of her husband. “You departed first and I followed you out of the forest. In the moonlight, I could make out a single-passenger wagon—no, a chariot made of gold and steel—which you helped me onto. You then escorted me back to my village. Rocking in that chariot by your side was a most heartwarming time. The cries of the night birds or cursing winds did not frighten me. I yearned to ride to the ends of the earth with you. After you dropped me at the edge of town, I watched you ride off and I wept. I have been dead ever since.”

Michia finished recounting her childhood incident quietly and with great feeling.

Greylancer’s reaction was immediate. “I do not recall,” said the voice of steel.

Michia could find not a foothold from which to scale this impenetrable fortress. In which case perhaps a ladder was in order. “I remember, and that is enough. You dropped me at the entrance of the village and told me to forget. Ironically enough, it was those words that stayed with me,” said Michia, her eyes glistening.

“That is in the past,” Greylancer said gruffly. “Your blood was warm and sweet, nevertheless. I am reborn. But perhaps I shall have another taste.”

“Then please.” His pale fingers twined around Michia’s hand clutching the vials. She was frozen by the pain like steel wires digging into her flesh.

“Why must I drink such dregs when your hot lifeblood is so plentiful here?” Greylancer drew her into his arms. “My eyes can see the veins in your body. My ears can hear your blood flowing. My mouth yearns to drain it dry.”

“My lord…” Michia moaned. Her eyes grew shrouded in mist. Hot breath escaped her lips. Under the tyrannical gaze of the oppressor, humans most often cringed and cowered and seethed. Perhaps Greylancer recognized that Michia was an exception. This woman showed none of the inescapable fear or hatred that his victims usually betrayed when under his spell. “How I have waited for this moment,” she gasped. “Take me where you will. Turn me into whatever you please. It has long been my wish to die by your hand, ever since you rescued me when I was fifteen.”

When she threw her arms against his chest, Greylancer faltered.

This was an uncommon experience for the brave and peerless warrior. That look of blatant terror on the victim’s face just before the “kiss” was the one thrill a vampire existed for. Yet here was this woman throwing herself into his embrace.

Greylancer put a hand on her chin and gazed into her face. “Your kind have always looked into my eyes and could do little else but cower in terror. You are not like them. Are you not afraid of me?

“Why no,” she answered, her voice dreamy. “Had you not found me in that forest seventeen years ago, I would be an entirely different woman. You saved my life. It is yours to do with as you please.”

Greylancer furrowed his brows. “Are you weeping?”

“I do not know.” Another luminous tear rolled down her cheek.

“I don’t understand it. The act of crying, that is. The Nobility have never shed tears. Nor have I. I have heard that humans cry for two reasons. Fear and sorrow. If you are not afraid, are you sad?”

“No.” Michia shook her head. “I have cried out of sadness only once in my life, shortly after I was born. I have never wept since. That is the same for all humans on the Frontier.”

“Why is that?”

“We have no time for tears if we want to live,” answered Michia, looking away for a moment. “Half of the children die within two months of their birth. The land in these parts can barely grow a tenth of the crops that we need to survive.”

“You receive necessary rations from the Administration Bureau in the Capital.” Greylancer’s tone turned serious. Overseeing the Northern Frontier sector was his responsibility.

For the first time, an incredulous expression came into Michia’s eyes. “Do you not know?”

“About what?”

“The rations we receive from the Bureau do not last any of the villages more than a week.”

“That’s absurd. I’ve seen to it that you will never go hungry. Your welfare has always been a priority.”

“But you do not deliver the supplies yourself.”

“You’re not suggesting—my vassals? Profiteering?” He shook his head. A ferocious gleam began to burn in his eyes. “Why do you weep now, amid this reality too hard for tears? And…”

Greylancer swallowed his words, as a faint smile crept across Michia’s face.

“There is another reason why I weep,” she said, hopeful and bashful at the same time.

“Speak it now,” said Greylancer gravely.

Her pale arms twined around his neck.

It was a moment best described as a miracle.

No other time in history has a human, neither spellbound by a Noble’s gaze nor seeking servitude, ever willingly desired a Noble.

“I weep because—” Michia stopped. Greylancer looked up at the entrance. “What’s wrong?”

“An unfortunate intruder.” Greylancer clenched Michia’s hand.

Four silhouettes rushed inside and scattered about the stable.

“Michia—what are you doing?” The earth-scorching cry belonged to Chief Lanzi.

Though she let go of his hand, rather than pulling away, Michia collapsed over Greylancer’s lap.

“What are…my lord, just what have I done to earn your disfavor?” The chief trembled violently.

Two of the men appeared to be the chief’s hired hands, and the other, Greylancer recognized. The man had been the one glaring at Greylancer with murderous intent at the tavern.

“My lord…what is…this?” An emotion unlike despair and shock swelled in the chief’s voice.