It was only after Scorpio had come to the old necropolis, that he began to realize the difficulty in tracking a vampire, or even a group of them. When the storms boiled up that afternoon, he watched from the shore as several of them floated as mists between the various tombs and charnel houses still standing. The hunter stood, in clothes he had not changed in days. The leather pants he wore were dirty, the beadwork and stitching hidden by the grime of three days imprisonment, a sword fight, and the rigors of having to hike around Lake Tarafu rather than paddling across the marshes and open stretches of that lake. The vest was stained with the juices of leaves and sap from the trees, the swiping strikes of the great moss beards of those same trees, and a long blood rimmed rip, where one of the kasa-tur spine beasts had managed to graze him with a launched quill of pain and agony. The new boots were now definitely broken in now, scuffed and dirty as the rest of him.
Ten risings of the sun had come and gone since Scorpio had faced the Night Mace in battle and won. Ten risings which in the towns of Cosarali, and nearby Rantini, were met with joy, and sorrow for the bodies to be buried. Ten risings, but now the eleventh setting was happening. The hunter let the sun sink, not sure if the light would be friend or foe on this foray. He intended not to make more than an initial scouting, mostly from as great a distance as he could, to avoid a fight. But intentions paved roads to the netherworlds, or so the tales he had heard said.
As he waited for the sun to set, he spent the time reflecting on things less foolish than most would have. He merely observed the foe, as they wafted with and sometimes even against, the wind from tomb to tomb. His mind filed what he saw, and when there was nothing to observe, he still looked, and thought about taking the alchemists who made the salves and lotions to keep the mosquitoes at bay into the swamp for a live demonstration of the effectiveness, or lack there of, for their wares.
The clansman was patient, letting the twilight show him more than storms had as the sun lowered from the noon heights. Sometime during his observing, he realized it was a show for him, bait to lure him into a trap in the city. The hunter knew that he would be hunted sooner or later in this mess. He even had worried they might be trying to sneak out some to hunt him, but the sun broke through enough before setting to preclude that. Unless some ancient tunnels or paths led out under his position, and into the woods behind him. As large, old and well used as this city of the dead was, it would not surprise the hunter to find such things here.
His eyes traced the many ways to cross the medium sized stream that carried a faster and larger flow due to the rains. The three bridges still standing were all dubious, the tree that had recently toppled across the channel looked far sturdier. Too much so. There had not been storms strong enough to topple such a giant of the woods. It was the trap, to channel any who feared the decayed wood structures and lone stone bridge with many holes. This time, though, the hunter looked far further into ways across the channel. He scanned many ways, then smiled as he found one, reaching for the rope he had purchased from the Mochizuki merchants on the road to the west.
===
Yoritoko sat in the Daimyo's chamber, silent as he paced the floor. Once she had told him the hunter had taken the coin, the lord knew only two things. It might take a few days or even a greater moon cycle of twenty four or so days, but the problem would be solved was the first. The second was his own life would be forfeit soon, for harboring an assassin in his holdings. It was the sacred law, dating back to the days before the Thrones, when those from distant Wa had landed in this land, and set up their petty kingdoms, to each rule the peaceful folk who lived here then, with a sword over their heads, and a culture that was superior in warlike intent. The conquest had saved the land, but during that period, the clan that had practiced assassinations had run rampant, setting up the warlords they chose, and betraying them without a single thought about the lack of honor that caused. When the great families and lesser warlords had enough of this, they had turned on the assassins, slaying them all under the leader whose own son was the first to ascend the Jade Throne. But two sets of Thrones had come since, as over the fourteen centuries, the Imperial bloodlines had faded or lost out to rebel lords who tossed aside a family to become emperors themselves.
Nineteen rebellions had occurred, and six times the rule of the Thrones had been broken all together. But never in all those years and trials had a warlord, or even an emperor, broken the sacred trust of all the lords, by letting an assassin walk or reside in the lands of the peninsula. No peasant had paid to have a lord killed to gain his freedom, no merchant given coin to gain more trade, nor any spouse or relative been able to find one willing to slay for pay to gain an inheritance. It was just something never done in the lands of Ankhgor.
Never, that is, until he had come to his castle, and been approached by a member of the Allegiance of Blades, and told they would merely use the town as a staging base, to negotiate jobs, re-supply between jobs, and hold meetings of their leaders. In return, he would be able to hire "bounty hunters" to bring back criminals who had fled justice, or those who merely fled foolish deeds, not realizing the law allowed their forgiveness, after the offender made the proper apologies and repayments.
Having no spare guards left to those jobs, being young and gullible, he had accepted. The Allegiance had given him advice, sent many of the "bounty hunters" to his town, letting him reclaim it from the bandits and pirates who had overrun it a decade before, when he had not yet been able to lift a sword to fight back after his parents were slain.
The assassins had trained up his guards, his soldiers, even recruited ronin to serve as samurai under him. Once the prefecture was secured, they had slowly gone their ways, leaving or visiting occasionally. More coins of other realms had come his way, more coins of his own realm as well, for the coins being available had spurred a more vibrant economy than the closed ones of the older prefectures, the ones not on the neck of land that connected them to the rest of the mainland.
But Gomi Sorin had never used them for more than bounty hunters, to bring them back, until two years before. That terror, the one they called the Witch Leech now, it had driven him to taking steps he had not liked. He had handed over coins, and told the leader of the assassins to make it fast and bloody. He had wanted folks to know someone had bought her death, to secure the town. But the guild had acted with circumspect skill, and the kill had come after she had fled his lands, and kept the knowledge of who had bought the blade that killed her secret, to protect their base.
Yoritoko had suspected, and come here again, to act as inquisitor for the Emperor. Her word was now law of the land, though he still gave the orders. When this was all over, Sorin was certain, she would give him back only his short sword, and a piece of rice paper. He only hoped his son, now five winters old, would understand what his father had done.
"Stop pacing, its not becoming of a Lord." The voice of the inspector was harsh, even if she was a woman. The deaths had taken their toll on her as well.
"You do not understand. I will have to kill..." She cut him off with a gesture.
"If so, my body will lay next to yours. I gave the young hunter coin as well. The law says against a living citizen. It says nothing of buying the destruction of non-citizens and the walking dead." She passed a hand over her face, slowly to remove some of her own strains, and recompose her face to a more lordly look. "We knew from the beginning, and all the council agreed that what happened then was allowable. Now sit and relax, you will see your son grown to manhood, but not if you work yourself into a heart attack."
The Daimyo of Cosarali Prefecture had frozen at the admission of Scorpio being paid. His face went white. The Kenrai hunter, paid to destroy vampires was a thought he had only nightmares about. That member of the Blades had a reputation for getting the job done, even when others could not. He did worry if the town, let alone the region, would survive the hunter's rampage to come.
He would live, perhaps. But would his town and lands survive? That only the hunter could determine.
===
It was only as Scorpio approached the way he had found across the channel, that the hunter saw the splash of red color. There, stuck in the trunk of the tree was a red dagger, with the marks of the Allegiance, the Prefecture, and glyphs of blood and shadows on its hilt, and hanging from it was the crimson lacquered sheath, bearing only two hieroglyphs, those of utter destruction and vampires. And balanced on the blade was a bag of coins. The Allegiance of Blades had blessed the job he had taken. Somewhere in the woods, he knew, the one everyone else thought was just a knife maker lurked, backing his moves. There was little else he could do, but press on, but only after taking the blade, sheathing it, secure the red blaze to his belt. The hunter did not forget to place the coins into his pouch, being truly of his guild at the moment. This he spent more time on, to ensure they would not rattle or clink to give away his position. Deep inside him, the remains of the boy he had been asked why there was more money than what was already accepted. But the boy could be ignored for now.
The hunter spent more time checking the rest of his gear. He tossed the spear he had brought with him across the channel, used his rope to snag the large branch over the channel, and swinging across swiftly. The bank was soft, and he nearly fell back into the still swiftly moving waters, coming from the low hills westward of the city of the dead. He grabbed the spear, and began this sortie quickly. He no longer cared for stealth. It was time to hunt openly, to take lives, or end undead ones.
He grabbed the spear, its broad bronze head and shaft marked with all the markings he could remember that would aid him. It had the last of his sacred eagle feathers, the sigil of the sun, the mark of the earth, some of the water stones inlayed in the handle carefully, and a single large firestone on the end of the shaft, He also had the anti-witching marks old Uliqua, the Shala of the Yarocha clan, had used in casting the protective spells on the medicine pouch he had again taken to wearing around his neck.
He did not wander the island the necropolis had become over the centuries, but moved to a certain mausoleum, one he had noted seemed to be a nexus for the various movements he had observed by daylight. The least moon was racing across the sky, changing rapidly in its light as it cut its path across the vault of the night. The greater moon was full tonight, making it a good night to hunt.
He had given up on looking for footprints, these vampires had fed enough that they could shift to mist at will. Fogs that never touched the ground so they left few traces of passage. But marks were indeed left. From his last great hunt of the blood drinkers, years ago on the southern continent, he knew that a vampire did not truly become mist, but instead became dust. When they transformed to the dust, and moved as a cloud of it, some of the blood they had drunk most recently was left behind. As was a small trail of it as they moved. This was why they had become so hungry, they lost much of their nourishment in turning to the cloud form. His eyes looked over the entry, noting the amount of now drying blood on the edges of the door, the stairs leading up to the entry, and the ground between this tomb and the others they had flitted between.
There was a lot of it. Too much for his liking. Others might have gotten sick or gone insane at the rusted brown stains, the puddles of blackening blood. For Scorpio, it only fueled his rage. In that mess, he knew, was the ichor of children, the blood of innocents, and it was calling to him for revenge. He fought down the impulse to begin screaming his rage, tamping the anger down took an effort, one he spent time doing to ensure that even if he failed here, he would take as many to the hells with him as possible.
The skin between his shoulder blades, where the pronounced ridges of his mother's heritage marked him as having elven blood, tingled in the way he knew as a hunter meant he was being stalked. He straightened up from his hunched pose, and turned to face a thicket of trees around another of the tombs. This one had no traces of blood, nor had there been activity around it. Which had let him know where at least a few had set up their day time resting spots.
"Uh-ah-la-na, let us fight, blood drinker. Show yourself, if you dare. I am here, the hunter has taken coin for your endings." He spoke calmly, not to taunt, but to let them know that indeed this was no charity job. "There will be no living dead left. The blade and sheath both are red, but should have been black to reflect your souls. You have no blood of your own left for me to take."
From the cluster of brush two small tornadoes of dust erupted, spinning their dervish dance to the left and right to flank him. Once they were about three spear lengths from him, they stopped, and tightened into human form. The eyes of the hunter narrowed in surprise and sorrow, one was a harlot from the inn, the other was Jenro. His friend in the guard looked gaunt, thin, and pale. Those were the marks of the recently converted, who had yet to feed. But that meant the thirst for blood in him would be incredible. A freshly made vampire was the most dangerous, for they had to feed before sunrise of their rising, or become scattered dust in the winds.
Scorpio stood still, leaning lightly on the spear, waiting for his foes to take the initiative. One thing he had learned in Kvaeg, during that awful hunt for vampires of that city, was that the ego of a vampire required them to taunt their victims and foes first. He decided to see if he could gain any insight into the plans of this gathering of the foul beasts. His years as a hunter on the prairies of the Kensori Plains came into play now. This was now a waiting game, one in which the hunter had the advantage of years of practice.
Silence ruled the little glen in the city of the dead for a short span, less than a finger's breadth of the sky as the least moon flew in front of the stars. Jenro twitched, smelling the rich iron smells of blood, fresh and enticing, as it moved in the body of his former friend. At last he started forward, moving with none of his warrior's grace or intelligence as the hunger took him. The guardsman charged with a frightful speed, only to find the bronze spear suddenly set to impale him. Without his first taste of blood, his powers were still dormant, giving him no advantages save the strength of the undead.
The newly made vampire's body twisted in the air, as he leapt to the side, avoiding the offered spear. The creature once known as Jenro then found out why spearmen were so feared, as the haft spun, rapping the being's ribs stoutly. The sound of dead brittle bones breaking filled open area, as Jenro was tossed to the stairs of the mausoleum. Then the spear was flashing through the air, thrown at the female vampire with a suddenness that froze her with surprise. She had figured the hunter would worry more about her new child, and concentrate on the guardsman. The bronze head pierced her chest, carrying through her and lodging firmly into the tree behind her.
Scorpio pulled out the red blade, and turned back to the now rising Jenro. The dance of vampire and hunter began, both circling slowly in the opening steps of the dance of death that had to play out. Jenro had to feed by dawn, driven to it by new instincts that could not be denied. The men both made feints and lunges to test the other, moving in a smoothness that was nothing like the fight in town with the Night Mace thug. There was a grace to the movements of both of them, a fluidity of motion like the waves on the beach, reaching in, then flowing back in swirls and eddies as it retreats. Several times they clinched, the hunter breaking the strength of many that his friend now had only with difficult effort and the skills he had learned over the years.
At last, Scorpio made a mistake, the vampire grabbed his shoulder and head, instinctively twisting the bounty hunter to the ground, exposing his neck for the feast. But the vampire to be never finished the move, as the knife slid between his ribs, and the spells written in garlic juice on the blade burned his flesh away from the blade. Jenro staggered back, the hole in his chest spreading as the unbinding of his flesh progressed. The guardsman's arms, shoulders, and head fell to the ground behind him, as his torso vanished into dust. Slowly the rest of the body followed. Scorpio looked at the head, as the neck slowly crumbled away, and Jenro's arms disintegrated.
"Thank you, my friend. Beware, they know you are..." The guardsman's jaw disappeared, leaving the thought unfinished.
Scorpio spoke before his ears and eyes went, "I know. I wanted them to know that the hunter of the dead had come for them." A gust of wind at that moment scattered the remains beyond even a skilled necromancer's ability to reconstitute his victim.
The hunter rose, and turned to look at the bane of his friend. "How many did you take, foolish demon child? A squad, or just a choice few? Not that it will save you." He walked over to the vampire, who had worked her body along the spear's shaft. "You did not even realize what hit you, did you fool? Look at what you are daring to accept."
The hiss of an enraged vampire was all he got. Her eyes were a blaze of red that lit the glen suddenly as she attempted break him to her will. "You will succumb. We will make you one of us, and unleash your hunger of the rising on children!" She forced her way forward, not noticing the answering glow of the firestone, as it opened a gateway to the realms of flame. Oblivious until her end, she walked the stone into her own flesh, unleashing a conflagration in which her decayed matter exploded, loud and quick. The rising nightly breeze from the interior gathered in the bits, raining them out across the islands of the Necropolis as it sought the sea.
Scorpio spoke to the ashes and burning flesh as it left. "Perhaps, but you will be in whatever hells await you before I die."
After waiting for the flames to die, and the stone to cool, the hunter approached his slightly charred spear. He worked it free of the depths of the tree. They would know now he had come prepared for battle, with weapons they had not thought of. Now the true hunt would begin. That of the hunter seeking to find predators who would not want to meet him alone.
The teeth of the hunter glinted in the moonlight. It is a good day to die, he thought. But a better night to slay in. The red knife was sheathed, and he thanked silently whatever mage Toruzu had found to enchant glyphs in vampire bane on the blade. With a whisper of leather and leaves, he stepped into the brush, seeking any clues his foes may have left.
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