Dai-San - 03 (29 page)

She fought down the gorge rising in her own throat at the remembrance of death’s cold grasp. Even once removed—She felt again the hilt of the straight-bladed knife lying comfortably against her belly in its ceremonial scabbard. Waiting patiently, she knew, for the hand that would push its cold, white blade into her entrails.

She closed her eyelids against the wetness welling there. And for the thousandth time since the murder she thought: I am dying without her.

‘Kiri.’

She opened her eyes. Moeru crouched before her.

‘Kiri, listen to me. How much have you smoked?’

Mutely, Kiri shook her head. She had a terrible intimation, pulled from the other woman’s eyes.

‘A jhindo infiltrated Kamado. He was sent to assassinate me. Tuolin fought with him and was injured.’

‘How bad?’

‘I think you should see him.’

She felt the cold stone against her cheek. She closed her eyes.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I feel fine.’

The skin of his forehead was hot and dry.

She felt his hand softly stroking her face. So gently. There was something unrecognizable in his eyes.

‘I love you,’ he said softly.

And she could not hold it back any longer. The stoic within her relented, the tears rolling down her cheeks, and at last she let go, all the hurt and anguish flowing out of her in great sobs while Tuolin held her in his arms, rocking her, stroking her hair. She clung to him as if she were a child in desperate need, unself-conscious and, now, not alone.

‘It has been a long night,’ he said to her.

‘Surprise,’ said Du-Sing.

‘Yes,’ said Azuki-iro. ‘Most definitely. By the thrust of our main force, so will the Makkon guide the counterattack.’

‘Deployment is the key,’ said Rikkagin Aerent.

‘Yes.
Our
deployment,’ said Lui Wu. ‘Perhaps we should already have crossed the river
here
’
—
his long finger stabbed at the mulberry paper map
—
‘where it is most fordable when they counter.’

‘I do not think that would be wise,’ said Azuki-iro. ‘The Bujun, being an island people, have much experience with warfare near water and I tell you now that if we overextend ourselves and they begin to overrun us, we shall be backed up like a swollen sewer and the ensuing confusion will utterly destroy us.’

‘What then do you propose?’ said Rikkagin Aerent.

‘
Feint
a river crossing but give them ample warning,’ said the Kunshin. ‘They will come out to cut us off and when they hit the water, we attack. Use the soldiers to cover the archers, then let them come forward as the enemy founders in the mud.’

‘Sound strategy,’ said Rikkagin Aerent.

‘We shall need every device, every bit of cunning this day,’ said Bonneduce the Last.

‘We are terribly outnumbered,’ said Rikkagin Aerent.

‘What happens when The Dolman enters the battle?’ said an older rikkagin. ‘What chance have we then?’

‘Leave The Dolman to me,’ said the Sunset Warrior. ‘Everyone must concentrate on his section of the battle, else they will surely overrun us.’

‘I would feel much more secure,’ said Rikkagin Aerent, ‘if we had a clearer idea of their current deployment. Many changes may have taken place beneath this night’s concealing darkness. But we dare not waste the manpower. Those who we have sent out on previous nights have not returned.’

There was a small silence, then the Sunset Warrior said:

‘That, too, is something I can take care of.’

‘What are you doing?’ she cried.

‘There is a job to be done.’

‘You must know how ill he is!’

‘It is his choice, Kiri.’

She knelt before Tuolin’s half-reclining figure.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I am a soldier,’ he said.

‘Must you obey every order?’

‘No one ordered me to do this. It is something I want—I
must
do.’

She lifted her head and her eyes flashed.

‘What did you say to him?’

The Sunset Warrior looked down at her without expression. Behind him, Moeru stood with her back against the door opening onto the narrow corridor of the barracks building.

‘I said only that I needed his help—’

‘His help?’ Her tone was scornful. ‘You know it will kill him.’

‘Tuolin must do as he sees fit.’

She turned.

‘Moeru, please talk to them.’

‘Kiri, a decision has been made, surely—you see that.’

‘I see only that another life is being thrown away for some nocturnal foray—whose idea was this anyway? Which bright rikkagin schemed this? Let
him
go!’

‘No one knows the terrain as well as Tuolin. If the mission is to succeed—’

‘Curse the mission!’

Tuolin got up, the pain showing on his face. He gripped Kiri, stood holding her. He turned to them.

‘Let me talk to her for a moment.’

They went out of the chamber. Moeru closed the door behind them. They stood in the hall, waiting.

It was quite still.

After a time, they heard Kiri’s muffled: ‘No!’

Then Tuolin came out, alone. Together, he and the Sunset Warrior went down the hall away from the quiet room.

A whippoorwill sounded in the dead of night.

They crouched in the dense shadow of a stand of poplars. In the distance, they could hear the rushing of the river. The moon had gone down and the night was still starless, dense with climbing cloud. Mist hung in the treetops like a spider’s ghostly web.

Tuolin pointed off to their left. Through the longer, lower branches of the trees, they could see movement, black against black.

Cautiously, they moved within the stand of trees until they could hear the muffled chink of metal against metal, the harsh, guttural whispers of the enemy.

The pair moved closer, flitting among the deep shadows of the tree trunks. They were clothed in black. Each carried a pair of long-bladed stilettos, scabbardless, tucked into their wide sashes.

Now they could clearly make out fully a score of the squat warriors hard at work on one of the huge war machines. They had posted guards at intervals around the work perimeter.

Snow covered the ground and with the temperature still falling, it had become brittle, forming a thin but solid crust. The hazard now was sound, not sight.

Crept through the close copse of poplars, their tops already hidden in the descending mist, carefully through the crunching snow, and they were rolling, into a kicked up, silent blizzard, as the long bodies dropped out of the trees, giant black bats, piling into the pair.

It began to snow. The night turned gray.

White plumes of their breath clouding the chill air, they grappled with their foes.

These are new, thought the Sunset Warrior, and I know why they were standing guard at night.

They had eyes like owls, large and round and light brown. Quick, missing nothing. Their heads moved on their stubby necks in the same manner as birds, as if their eyes could not move in their sockets. Nose and mouth ran together, a hooked cartilaginous mass that was, nevertheless, not quite a beak. Hands beating wing-like with fingers long and thin, sinewy as rope.

They made no sound.

Their eyes were bright beacons.

The Sunset Warrior used his Makkon gauntlets, his fists like heavy hammers as he sought the sockets, junctures of bone against bone, against which he applied great force.

Desiccated. Fleshless, they seemed to have been baked in hot desert winds for eons. They were implacable warriors. They gave no quarter.

Tuolin struggled to pull a stiletto from his sash, feeling the oblique strikes against him. He twisted his left shoulder away. Reached up. Slashed the weapon into the breast of one of the creatures. Heard a sharp crack, unnaturally distinct in the cold, damp air. The blade stuck, as if wedged into a seam in the bone.

He used his forearms as a defense against the ferocious strikes, acutely aware of the numbness which gripped his left arm. Used his legs finally, seeking purchase, finding a humped ridge of ice and earth, kicking outward from that base, his boot tip sinking into the juncture of the thighs.

A grunt and the creature rolling off him, only to be replaced by two others.

The Sunset Warrior crossed his wrists and twisted. With a dry snap, a creature’s neck snapped, canted at an impossible angle.

Hands like boards, stiff and deadly, blurring through the dense, smoke-filled night, smashing bone and cartilage.

He crouched, breathing deeply, the center of a low mound of corpses.

Tuolin feinted with his useless left arm, broke through a creature’s defense with a lightning strike of his right elbow. Broke the cartilaginous were-beak, gouged into the wide cold eyes. While other hands, clawlike, at his throat, throttling his windpipe. Stars dancing before his eyes, lungs burning for air. Arms pinned, he doubled his legs, broke upward, his boots describing a precisely measured arc, tearing through the leather corselet just below the avian rib cage. Flurry of sticky blood. Snow a pink hail and he averted his face, rolling away across the sharp frozen ground. Stopped by the strong hands of the Sunset Warrior.

‘Let us away from here,’ he whispered, sucking in lungfuls of air. ‘Quickly now.’

Later, in the deep darkness:

‘I have heard of a place. Three Reds we killed while on patrol. I was with Greens. They killed two outright before I could stop them. The third—’ A snow owl hooted forlornly in the branches of the copse of trees to their left. ‘The third I took care of and he talked before I allowed him to die. I thought then that he spoke in delirium, but now I think we should check his story.’ The snow fell on all about them, their friend now, deadening sound. Breath clouding the air in front of their faces. ‘A cave, it is said, where things—are born.’

‘What things?’

‘I do not know.’

‘What of the location?’

‘This way—’ Pointing off to the left. ‘Somewhere beyond the trees.’ He started up.

The Sunset Warrior put a gauntleted hand on his arm.

‘Have you the strength?’

‘We must go now.’

The Sunset Warrior handed him one of his stilettos but Tuolin shook his head, saying softly: ‘I can only use one at a time now.’

They raced across the open field and into the tangled cover of the trees, moving cautiously now, lifting their boots high in order to avoid the invisible outthrusts of roots. Not far away, they could hear the rush of the river. The sound increased until they broke cover and found themselves on the reed-lined bank.

‘The water is sufficiently shallow to cross here,’ said Tuolin.

They slipped past the reeds and into the freezing water. Black boulders strewn near the banks of the river here caused the racing current to slow, eddy, and whorl back upon itself so that the long passage was made somewhat easier. In mid-river, the current was still swift and once or twice Tuolin lost his balance.

They reached the far bank without any untoward incident, scrambling up the brush-filled shore and racing for a stand of scrubby firs.

They sat and listened. Tuolin shivered slightly.

Far off a bell, muffled and somehow sad, seemed to be tolling. Then nothing but the quiet hiss of the snowfall. Surreptitiously. Tuolin felt along his left side, down across his ribs. Numb.

‘This way,’ he whispered, moving on.

Past the trees, they came to a series of dells, as if the land here was serrated, and now they took great care for they were heading deeper into the territory of The Dolman. Secretly, the Sunset Warrior perhaps hoped to come across the path of one of the Makkon, for he still remembered what one had done to those close to Ronin, but the night was quite still and they saw no Makkon.

Increasingly, the dells became more rocky, until by the fourth one, there seemed no earth whatsoever.

They crouched on the high verge, peering through the snow, two Hack boulders among the many.

Both saw it at once.

A brief flicker of orange.

Using the rocks as cover they crept down into the dell, careful that their boots did not dislodge any loose stones.

The snow fluttered down, increasing in intensity, softly numbing.

They had an anxious moment crossing a small patch of open ground before clinging to the sloping sides of the ice-encrusted rocks but the visibility was down now.

Slowly they wove their way through the maze of stone until they could observe the tiny clearing.

Around the fire sat a pair of the dark, insect-eyed generals. Past them, slightly to the right, several squat warriors were going in and out of a cave entrance, blacker than the night.

They drew back for a moment.

‘You have no idea what is inside?’ said the Sunset Warrior.

Tuolin shook his head.

‘All right, there is only one way that I can see that we will have any success. I will engage the creatures while you explore the cave.’

‘There seems to be no light in there.’

‘Yes, I know. You will have to use a torch from the fire.’

The Sunset Warrior withdrew
Aka-i-tsuchi.
The long, blue-green blade seemed to glow in the night, the snowflakes whispering against its angry metal skin, turning to watered tears.

With a great leap, the Sunset Warrior bounded into the clearing and, with two great sweeps of his sword, slew three of the squat warriors before they could make a move against him.

The insect-eyed generals rose and withdrew their weapons, great serrated sickles as thick as cleavers, purple-black, single-edged.

He rushed them and their blades clashed together, beginning the heavily percussive music of combat.

While behind the broad back of the Sunset Warrior, Tuolin raced for the fire, scooping up a burning brand and rushing headlong down the ebon throat of the tunnel.

Out of their unhuman eyes, the black creatures spied the blur of Tuolin’s back and moved to follow him. The Sunset Warrior blocked their path.

Aka-i-tsuchi
screamed in the air as it battered the generals in a swift series of oblique strikes.

Now that he was close to them, the Sunset Warrior saw that their faces were triangular, composed entirely of sharp angles. They had tiny mouths and no noses, merely slits in the hard, shell-like flesh of their faces. From their cheeks, protruded curving, hornlike tusks like those of the stag beetle.