Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
Aka-i-tsuchi
slashed downward, through the guard of one of the creatures, cleaving its head from its body. Viscous black blood spurted, congealing almost instantly in the cold.
The second creature reared up and attacked with a ferocity bordering almost on desperation. It seemed intent on following Tuolin down the black hole of the cave mouth.
The Sunset Warrior stepped aside and with an ill-aimed swipe it was by him, loping for the underground entrance.
Aka-i-tsuchi
flashed outward, the dense air crying with its swift passage, and the creature collapsed to the snow.
The Sunset Warrior heard a cry from within the cave and he sprinted over the white ground, disappearing into the blackness.
Ahead he saw a fitful, feral glow. There came, echoing down the cave’s long corridor, the clash of metal, then a brief cry, choked off.
He went downward, feeling the chill dissipating until it grew quite warm.
Around a turning, he found Tuolin back up against the cave’s wall, slimy with humidity. Two squat warriors lay dead at his feet. Wordlessly, he pointed ahead.
Before them, the cave ended in a cul-de-sac. Piled up. Within its warm confines, were perhaps ten score spheroids, glossy, iridescent. As they watched, a crack zigzagged its way across the shining shell of one of the spheroids.
It broke open.
Bathed in slime, a tiny creature pulled itself out. It grew before their eyes and, as he saw the formation of the two glossy black insect eyes in its head, the Sunset Warrior lifted his sword and slew the infant.
‘Eggs,’ he whispered. ‘Sorcerous eggs.’
And now cracks were appearing in more of the shells. Too many for him to slay, and turning, he grabbed the burning torch from Tuolin’s hand and fired the dead creature. With a pop the thing blazed up and now he fired the eggs as they split until the small fires were so numerous that they rushed together, covered all the splitting mound.
Noxious gases bloomed from the blaze and thick oily smoke filled the underground chamber.
The Sunset Warrior threw the torch into the flames, and coughing, they made their way upward to the surface of the world.
Out of the clearing they raced, hearing distant calls of alarms drawing nearer. Over the dells, they ran, conscious that little cover lay ahead until they reached the copse of firs just this side of the river.
Numbness had reached his hip and now Tuolin stumbled over a rock hidden by the thick carpet of snow. He sprawled on the ground, tried to pick himself up. The Sunset Warrior reached down, pulled, and they went on, hearing the cries gaining in intensity. There came the fierce barking of dogs.
The trees were in sight now but the numbness was traveling swiftly down Tuolin’s leg and he could no longer feel the ground with his left foot.
The Sunset Warrior was otherwise occupied. He peered ahead through the fog and the swirling snow at the stand of firs, certain now that their configuration had altered somewhat. He called to Tuolin and unsheathed
Aka-i-tsuchi.
Their haven was alive with the enemy.
The squat warriors had set up a line of defense and now, before the swaying firs, they came together.
Aka-i-tsuchi
sang through the night. Tuolin jabbed with his stiletto, his body concentrating on the efforts of combat while his mind composed a poem.
He slew two of the squat warriors with his weapon before he was felled by a blow through his stomach. Still, he killed the attacker before he collapsed to the cold earth.
They were through the line but the air was alive now with the deadly whisper of black arrows as their pursuers closed in. The howling of the dogs grew in intensity.
The Sunset Warrior knelt beside him, about to carry him off.
‘Wait.’ His voice like a sigh on the night. ‘My friend. I will not last the river crossing.’
‘We have accomplished what we came here for,’ said the Sunset Warrior.
‘That was my line,’ said Tuolin, smiling thinly. His blood blackened the snow around him. With his cupped hands the Sunset Warrior attempted to keep Tuolin’s organs within his rent flesh.
‘Oh, my Sha’angh’sei,’ Tuolin said, his breath a whisper. ‘I will never see your crimson skyline again.’ He paused for a moment as if to gather strength. The dogs were howling hysterically, nearer now. ‘I think she understood, in the end.’
‘I am sure she did.’
‘I could not stay there in that yellow hole to die. I am a warrior. I am happy now.’ The rustle of the snow, powdering his upturned face, whiter than white. The Sunset Warrior wiped the sweat from his eyes. ‘I love her, you know.’
‘Yes.’
‘I told her.’
‘I know.’
The arrows had ceased. The warriors must be very close.
‘That was so important.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She loved me.’
‘She understood, my friend. She is a warrior also.’
‘She loved me. That was why she cried out “No!” when I told her.’ His eyes were glazing. ‘I know. You must go.’
‘I will not leave you.’
‘No, it is I who must leave.’ A rustling beyond the firs’ branches laden with snow. Foot soldiers. Barking, sharp and insistent. He grasped the Sunset Warrior’s arm with his right hand. Those fingers were the only part of his body not numb. ‘Now listen,’ he whispered thickly, ‘listen to me:
On a journey, ill,
Over endless, withered fields
dreams go wandering, still.’
His eyes closed as if in dream.
The Sunset Warrior could hear the animals’ panting, the harsh scrape of metal, the creak of leather.
He bore Tuolin up in his arms and, ducking his head, went into the stand of firs.
Out the far side of the stand and down the brush, into the black swirling water. The snow hid them and in any event the river washed away their scent. The pursuers would not cross the water this night.
On the far bank, he waded through the reeds and climbed onto the humped earth.
Now he took his time, picking a space away from Kamado’s hulking walls, away from the field of battle.
Silently, he buried Tuolin.
He lay his stilettos across the rikkagin’s chest at an oblique angle.
Then the earth bore him away.
‘It is beautiful.’
‘Yes.’
‘You told her, of course.’
‘Everything.’
‘Good. It will help, I think.’
The windows were open. It was quite still outside in Kamado in the last several hours before dawn. Mist hung like smoke.
‘Do you think there are more?’
He watched the burnished light on the soft planes of her face. Her skin shone like silk.
‘The caves?’ He shrugged. ‘Who can say?’
Outside, boots crunched in the snow, climbed down wooden steps. A door closed.
‘What will you find, do you think, at journey’s end?’ Her blue-green eyes caught the light for a moment as she turned her head. They flashed white, then black, as shadows stole over her.
‘Vengeance,’ said the Sunset Warrior.
‘For your friends who are long dead?’
‘For all mankind, Moeru.’
‘And what of us? You and I? You said once that we were bound.’
‘There is no time now to think of that.’
‘It is important—’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is.’
‘Because both our dreams are wandering still—’
In the streets of Kamado even the dogs were silent as if aware of the coming of this last dawn and of its portent.
On the vast plain, the tattered banners are waving.
War horses snort and stamp nervously, nostrils dilated, producing plumes of smoke.
The numerous ranks of foot soldiers deploy themselves under the direction of their rikkagin. Men still march out from Kamado, a long, brave line, toward the flanks of the army of man.
Dawn had come but the smeary light was thin and watery, as if the pale sun was at last too spent to shine. Pink light spilled across the plain, vaporous and unnatural.
The chink of metal against metal.
The clash of dented armor.
Battle standards of the various Bujun daimyos waving slightly, rising above the flashing helms of the mounted warriors.
Dogs running free, barking.
A sneeze.
Then the harsh ram’s horn sounding and the ranks of cavalry prancing down the slight incline and across the plain, past the stands of poplars, toward the dull water of the wide river. They stared curiously at the rent war machine, destroyed just before dawn by a raiding party led by the Sunset Warrior and Rikkagin Aerent.
As the cavalry drew closer, a kinetic wave undulating over the earth, the riders saw the far shore black and teeming with the legions of The Dolman.
Just behind the cavalry, as the council of war had planned, marched the archers, bows already strung taut, dense forests of arrows across their backs in quivers. They loped after the cavalry, crouched, expectant.
Rikkagin Aerent led the cavalry charge and gradually he speeded the wave of horsemen forward until they were galloping over the undulating turf.
A flock of blackbirds quit the high grass at their thunderous approach, flung themselves into the cloud-laden skies.
The plain shook to the music of half a million hoofs. Clods of brown and white earth and snow flew upward in their wake.
There was shouting from the far shore, flung across the turbulent gray water, and as the cavalry approached, the enemy hurled themselves down the bank and into the water, moving out to meet the charge.
Rikkagin Aerent could see the black, insect-eyed generals calling to their soldiers, fearful that they were spreading themselves out in too ragged a line.
At the last moment, Rikkagin Aerent flung up his right arm and the horsemen jerked on their reins, parting down the center, their horses wheeling toward the army’s flanks. Thus the archers were revealed. In the first line, each man sank to one knee and, drawing forth arrows, let fly with a thick volley into the midst of the wading enemy.
The air was momentarily black with metal rain as the deadly cloud passed over the heads of the passing cavalry. The heavy air hummed and soldiers midway across the river died clutching at throats and chests, sinking beneath the waves, drowning in great numbers.
But now over the soldiers’ writhing backs leapt the deathshead warriors, tall and gaunt, almost skeletal, who bled not blood but a fine gray powder in a mist, whose snapping jaws could sever a man’s leg.
The battery of archers on the near shore fired again—the second line, then the third, behind it—and again the air grew dark across the river. Yet the deathshead warriors were unaffected. They swatted at the arrows which had buried themselves in their bodies as if they were insects, snapping the hafts, ignoring the buried points. Coming on in a pale tide, dripping and invulnerable.
And now the air was filled with the harsh hiss of their fanged globes which they swung above their heads by metal chains. Rearing up from the heavy silt, they crashed into the first line of archers and the crunching of bones was a constant noise on the plain.
Rikkagin Aerent had jerked the reins of his mount and was already calling his cavalry inward from the flanks. They attacked the deathshead warriors from two sides.
Behind him he saw the foot soldiers sweeping across the undulating plain, down the bank of the river, as they began to engage the enemy along either flank.
He drew his sword as his horse broke through the enemy lines. He swung in economical arcs. His blade clove through a gaunt skull and gray dust puffed like the breath from a tomb in the humid air.
The archers were caught, dying by the score under the onslaught of the hissing globes, but now Rikkagin Aerent’s cavalry had closed its ranks, pressing inward with a rush, and the deathshead warriors turned from the center outward to meet the attack. The remaining archers scrambled up the near bank, retreating.
The wan light of the sun had disappeared altogether as burnt billowing clouds tumbled across the sky, close and hanging like incipient tears. An icy sleet began, oblique and gray, adding to the din of the battle.
Banners flew back and forth across the field as small forays and skirmishes were won and lost. The bright, sharp standards of the Bujun could be seen advancing, always advancing.
Drawing his great blue-green blade,
Aka-i-tsuchi,
the Sunset Warrior urged his crimson luma down the near shore, wading into the thick of the battle at the great river crossing.
Aka-i-tsuchi
carved a wide swath through the enemy warriors. It seemed to sing in the air, delighted in the carnage it was wreaking. The peculiar metal, forged for so long and with such love by the smithy high on the snowbound slopes of Fujiwara, appeared to glow a deeper blue-green and the desiccated flesh of the deathshead warriors sizzled where it cut through to the white bones.
Inhuman jaws with their pointed fangs clashed upward at him and the luma reared to take him out of danger. The hissing of the globes increased until it sounded like the onset of a swarm of famished locusts as the enemy jammed about him, trying to bring him down.
Moeru and Bonneduce the Last, both mounted, were fighting their way across the plain and now they grabbed their reins, kicking into their steeds’ flanks, racing for the river crossing.
The sleet increased to a driving, pelting rush as hard as hail. It rattled off the armor and weapons of the warriors. And now even the shouts of the victorious and the screams of the dying were but muted background sounds to the clashing of metal upon metal and the hideous drum of the chilling sleet.
The banks of the river, muddy with the alluvial soil at the beginning of the battle, ran red and the bodies of the fallen, dead or not, were ground into the earth by hoof and boot alike until the combatants fought on a higher level, battling across an expanse of shifting, crunching soil without dirt or grass.
Already strike forces, composed of the combined Greens and Reds, who were more familiar with the terrain, had been dispatched by their taipan to disable the great war machines of The Dolman. Certainly, it was unlikely that they would be used once the armies came fully together but the rikkagin felt it incumbent upon them to destroy the machines’ effectiveness.