Record of the Blood Battle (6 page)

“I don’t know what you might’ve heard, but since you’ve mentioned the Sacred Ancestor, I take it you’re ready to meet your maker,” D said, his voice the same wintry night as always. No, it was different. He was like someone else entirely.

“No, I’m not! Not at all!”

Perhaps sensing something from D as he merely stood there, the baron desperately struggled to get back to his feet and walk away—but it was clear he was so cowed that every attempt ended with him falling over again and crying out in pain. Still, he managed to tell D, “I see what the situation is. But if you do anything to me, you’ll regret it later. D, I’m the only Noble who knows even more about you than the Sacred Ancestor.”

Those words were even more daunting than D’s murderous intent. Who would’ve thought he’d hear such a thing from this Nobleman, of all people, in this, of all places? It was completely unexpected, as if a mole had just explained the mysteries of the cosmos.

D took a determined step forward. The chubby baron bounded back. It was rather a nice leap, considering the golden armor he wore, although he couldn’t help raining diamond necklaces and gold bracelets on the ground as he landed.

“W-will you take me with you? If so, I’ll tell you everything I know—ahhhh?”

His cry echoed from the opposite side of the hill. He’d landed, apparently surprised to find himself hitting a sloping path instead of the level ground he’d expected.

“He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” the hoarse voice said. It sounded thoroughly disgusted as it continued, “For the life of me, I can’t see how he might have any connection to you. I’m sure every word out of that little con man’s mouth is a lie.”

“What’s that you say?” a voice protested further down the sloping road.

“Put a cork in it,” the hoarse voice blurted back. “Okay, go ahead and tell me where
he
is right now, then.”

The reply came quickly. “Someplace far away, but close at hand.”

“Oh, that’s just total crap. Right?”

“No,” D replied.

“What?” the hoarse voice exclaimed in a tone tinged with astonishment.

Just then, a voice concealed by the darkness and the slope of the land had said something no one could’ve expected. They were frozen. Not just D, but his left hand as well.

“But that’s just . . .” the hoarse voice began to say, sounding like a dead man.

“You of all people must understand,” said the voice of the unseen figure, but it had become that of someone else. Though it came from ground level, it seemed to rain down on them from the heavens. “The key to making nocturnal Nobility walk in the light of the sun!” said the baron’s voice. “The Sacred Ancestor managed to come up with an equation, but he couldn’t reach the solution. I alone was able to do so. I, the one and only Baron Alpulup Macula! Of course, even if I gave them the solution, no one save the Sacred Ancestor could work it through. Once I realized the true power of those who feared the Nobility, D, I wanted to flee to the far reaches of the galaxy. However, by that point the regularly scheduled flight service had been abolished, and it was too much trouble to arrange it through shadier channels. And so I buried myself underground.”

As his voice streamed through the night air, it played a mournful melody. The song of extinction touched the heartstrings of all.

“It seems you’re not lying,” D said softly.

—

III

—

“Of course I’m not,” said the rotund figure wobbling back up the pass. Perhaps he’d bumped into a rock or something, because he had a lump on his forehead and his eyes were teary. Sniffling, he wiped his eyes and said, “That’s as far as the story goes. Take me with you if you want more, and I’ll give you bits and pieces along the way. Don’t you want to know all the mysteries about your birth, D?”

“I have no interest in myself,” D said, wheeling his steed around.

“Wait. I’ll give you a little taste,” Baron Macula shouted, quickly changing his tack. “The fact of the matter is, the ol’ Sacred Ancestor objected to my solution to the equation. Indeed, several solutions exist, and he and I arrived at ours through different methods. Either one of them can be used to make Nobles capable of walking in the light of the sun. However, they don’t live long. Six months at best. Both of us made improvements to our solutions, but that only added a few years to their lives.”

The hoarse voice went on the attack. “It’s a waste of time. The Nobility are beasts that prowl the darkness, of course. How many lives do you have to toy with in the pursuit of stupid hopes and ideas before you’re satisfied?”

“That’s the crux of it,” the baron said, his expression charged with all the excitement of a fledgling actor approaching his first big line. “To be sure, our solutions to the equation were incomplete. So, before burying myself underground, I once again went over the equation from its very core principles. And those efforts ultimately bore fruit. You see, I came up with a perfect equation and solution for making Nobles who could walk in the light of day.”

“So, you mean to say all the solutions up until that point were wrong?”

“A variable was placed incorrectly, you see. We knew it was in there, but had it in the wrong place. The Sacred Ancestor was certain we’d be fine without it, but that sort of arrogance has no place in physics. Ha, ha, ha!”

“Then Nobles will be able to walk in daylight forever?” D said, his voice like icy rain falling softly from the night sky.

The baron’s laughter was cut short. “Yes. And I told the Sacred Ancestor as much, while I was locked in a stasis field. He’s something else, I tell you. In the thirty minutes memory persisted after opening the field, he told me he’d managed to make one perfect specimen—meaning the DNA.”

“Hey,” the hoarse voice said, the word echoing hollowly in the dome of its astonishment.

In the past, an enormous presence of unknown nature had told D,
You are my only success.

Twisting around, D asked, “Are you talking about me?”

“If you want to find out, you’ll have to take me with you. Well? How about it? What will it be?”

On seeing the rider and his steed starting to walk away again, the baron leapt up.

“You truly disappoint me. Hey, wait! Would you hold
on
a minute? Naturally, the Sacred Ancestor will want the new equation. He’s certain to come see me.”

Out in the darkness, the hoofbeats halted.

“Don’t you understand? Stick with me, and you’ll see the Sacred Ancestor. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Why do you think that?” said a voice that spread through the baron’s ears.

“Because that’s the way it has to be. His hopes rocked the very foundations of the Nobility. How many lives, human and Noble, do you think have been sacrificed on that altar? Ah, even now the cries of those women and children, their babies, come back to me. You, D, and your mother—”

Suddenly, the baron slapped both hands over his mouth. He realized his error.

However, his fear-filled eyes reflected a young man in black who remained as tranquil as the darkness. “Get on,” he said softly.

“Okay!” the baron said, dashing toward the horse. On his way there, he tripped and fell flat on his face once. Apparently his amazing leaping power only came into play when he was escaping from danger. As his foot wouldn’t even reach the stirrup, D had to give him a hand up.

“It’s amazing how short the bugger’s legs are,” the hoarse voice commented with dismay. “They can’t be more than a foot and a half long.”

“Oh, shut up!” the baron shouted, wrapping his arms around D’s waist. “Do legs make the man? To the contrary. Do you think women find men over six and a half feet tall attractive?”

“Okay, what makes a man, then?” the hoarse voice inquired.

“Hmmm . . .”

“The head? You’re nuts if you think that! There’s only one thing that determines the worth of anything with human form—the face!”

“The face?” the baron said, growing introspective.

Perhaps tired of the whole matter, D said nothing as he delivered a kick to his horse’s flanks.

They’d gone only about thirty feet before they heard the distinct sound of an approaching engine behind them. And mixed with it was a low and distant cry of “Help!” It was a woman’s voice. A young one’s.

“Oh my,” the baron said, licking his chops as he turned for a gander, but then he donned a look of suspicion. “Why aren’t you stopping?” he asked the silent D. “She’s pleading for help. Shouldn’t you do something?”

Those hardly seemed the actions or the words of a Noble.

“Because it’s not our job,” the hoarse voice said, and it too seemed a bit lamenting as the sound of the engine came nearer.

Looking back again, the baron let out a puzzled, “Huh?”

Utterly naked, a girl floated in midair. She had to have been about sixteen or seventeen. The moonlight couldn’t have been faulted if it admired her tempting skin and full, shapely breasts. But perhaps it was incorrect to say she was utterly naked. From the waist down, the girl was concealed by the darkness. Lips that would’ve seemed unnaturally thin and red by the light of day trembled, spilling cries of “Help!”

“Oh, she’s a real beauty, isn’t she?” the baron said. The instant he broke into a lewd grin, he cried out in shock, “What in the—”

His words hung in the air as his body zipped forward. The cyborg horse had broken into a gallop. Clinging madly to D’s waist, he shouted, “What are you doing?” at the Hunter even as he heard a series of awful, ground-shaking sounds closing on them from behind.

The girl was following them. But whose footsteps were those? The shadowy form charging toward them from some twenty yards away wasn’t that of a girl. It was a machine that consisted of four enormous steel limbs and a bare frame. Nevertheless, it moved with a smoothness reminiscent of an animal. Its neck stretched a good fifteen feet into the air, and the end of it fused with the girl’s lower body.

“What the hell is this thing?” the baron said, eyes bulging.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this being in the valley,” the hoarse voice said with equal amazement.

“I saw it in the cavern,” stated a cool and composed voice.

That was followed by the hoarse voice, saying, “You’re responsible for this. Some of your property escaped before the explosion!”

Once the hoarse voice had pointed that out, the baron suddenly cried, “Ah!” His eyes filled with recognition. “Now that you mention it, I have seen her before! Actually, it was a device that utilized a woman as bait to catch humans.”

“Who’d build something like that?” asked the hoarse voice.

Puffing his chest, the baron replied, “Who but
I
could’ve built such a thing?”

“Yet you forgot all about it?”

“It was a silly little proof of concept. And it didn’t even work terribly well. As punishment, I relegated it to a corner of the warehouse, but it managed to escape, I see. Ouff!”

The baron’s words gave way to a cry and he fell from the back of the horse. He’d just taken an elbow to the face from D. Bouncing a few times like a rubber ball, he came to rest at the side of the road. The enormous mechanical beast raced past him.

“His attitude a little more than you could stand?” D’s left hand inquired.

“Too heavy,” D replied succinctly, leaping up on the back of his steed. Keeping the reins in his left hand, he stood, his right hand reaching for the scabbard on his back. Over his head, the naked girl was drifting down.

“Help! Help! Help!” Tears welled in her eyes, and her willow-thin eyebrows quaked with fear. Her trembling lips knew only how to form that one word. “Help!”

From somewhere in the frame of the machine, a black whip whistled out. It would split the flesh of any man snared by the girl’s entreaties. The instant it was about to touch D, his steel flashed into action.

The moon alone was witness. It heard the hum of what remained of the black whip, and saw how exquisitely D sailed through the air, even if he didn’t fly close enough to it. Ah, the hem of his coat spread like wings, the blue pendant conspired with the moonlight, and the blade in his hand let that same light of the moon testify to the keenness of its edge.

Though the neck of the mechanical beast was eighteen inches thick, D’s sword went halfway through it. The machine arched backward. The way its limbs twitched was reminiscent of a human being. Black fluid gushed from it. Not blood, but oil. Still, the writhing machine sprayed it around like blood, looking like a titanic beast in its death throes. And at the end of its neck, the pale girl cried out for aid. An unending cry of “Help!”

Cutting the whip once more when it came whistling at him, D then hacked his blade into the gore-spurting neck again. Cruelly enough, he struck in exactly the same place. The head came off. At last the great beast fell. Its speed unchanged from its charge, its upper body slumped forward, and the instant it made contact with the ground, the enormous form flipped over. Sheer momentum was the only way to describe it. Shaking the earth, crushing rocks, it could only keep flipping end over end in an accursed roll. Before long, the rumbling of the earth and the beast’s twitching died down as the young man in black stood on the steely corpse in the moonlight. That young man, who stood in one place so long, as if contemplating life and death. D. Walking along the neck of the great beast, he leapt down to the ground from the end of it. At his feet, a pale figure cried out softly and sadly, “Help!”

Whether or not he heard the cry was unclear. D walked on. With his fifth step, he looked back. The massive form was turning transparent and being swallowed by the darkness, like a fade-out in the movies. The device hadn’t been built to self-destruct.

At that point, D heard a voice issue from the heavens.
We meet again. It’s been quite a while.

D’s left hand reached into his coat, but the hoarse voice stopped him, saying, “Don’t bother. It’s no use.”

Was there nothing you could do, D?

When the baron managed to drag himself over a short while later, covered with cuts and scrapes and feeling like he had one foot in the grave, the young man was standing stock still with his sword already sheathed, looking terribly isolated with his faint shadow.