Stormdancer (11 page)

The smoke held him down with warm, soft hands, head underwater, the noise of the storm and siren and running feet all a distant murmur beneath the screams of dying beasts. Eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks, bloodshot eyes rolled back in his skull, trying to keep waking at bay. But finally the din became too much, too loud to ignore, a grating sliver of steel caught beneath an eyelid and dragging him up through the greasy chemical dream into waking.

His cabin door smashed open. Kasumi stood in the doorway, the spring- loaded serpent of a net-thrower clutched in her hands. Her hair was loose, floating in the breeze around her face like black silk, a faint blush of excitement in her cheeks.

Beautiful .
“Masaru,” she breathed. “Arashitora.”
She dashed away without another word. Adrenalin kicked Masaru in the

gut, peeling the lotus cobwebs from his eyes. He was alert, awake, veins thrumming with heat that tingled into his fingers and danced in his chest. He leaped down from the hammock and scrambled after her.

Up on deck, the cloudwalkers were gathered by the rails, pointing and babbling. Akihito was already on the starboard floodlight, kicking it into life as the wind whipped in his braids. The globe flickered and came alive, a curling spiral of brilliance in a cradle of gleaming mirrors. The light reached out into the clouds, turning bottomless black to rolling gray. The big man swung the spotlight in long smooth arcs, blinding rain frozen for split seconds in the beam, cutting through the darkness like a razor. The generator behind him growled, spitting chi fumes and mainlining power into the halogen bulb, reaching almost a hundred feet into the gloom; a finger of lightning, bright as the sun.

“Have you seen it?” Masaru roared over the wind.
“Hai!” The big man was elated. “Huge bastard. White as snow. Magnificent!” The ship lurched beneath their feet; Masaru grabbed the rail to avoid a fall. “Hold it steady, Yamagata!”
The captain stood at the helm, swinging the great wheel hard to compensate for the wind. He blinked the rain from his eyes, clad in a blood-red oilskin. “Raijin wants our arses!” he cried. “We’re lucky to still be flying, let alone flying straight!”

There was a loud cry as a great white shape flashed by the starboard side. Masaru caught the impression of jagged black stripes on white fur, wings broader than a man was tall, thrashing louder than thunder. Akihito swung the spotlight to follow its path.

Masaru stumbled to the gear cache and snatched up the Kobiashi needle- thrower, a black tube with a telescoping sight fixed to the top of the barrel. The base of the tube was connected to an iron bottle of pressurized gas that served as a shoulder stock. He slammed a magazine of hypodermics into the receiver, locked it in place and released the pressure valve. Slinging the other magazines over his shoulder, he climbed up to join Kasumi. She lay coiled in the rigging, feet twisted in the rope ladders leading up to the Child’s balloon. Netthrower loaded, a second on standby across her back, thick coils of lotus hemp leading down to the winches bolted to the Child’s railing. Her eyes were fixed over the ’thrower’s sights, following the spotlight arcing through the clouds. Rain ran in rivulets down her face, gathering in her long lashes and falling like tears.

“Are you ready?” Masaru shouted, twisting his feet among the rigging. She nodded once, eyes never leaving the spotlight.
“Give the blacksleep a few seconds to kick in, or it could break its wings in

The wind wailed; a screeching oni, all the fury of the Nine Hells breaking loose from its throat. The Child swung like a pendulum in the howling storm, thunder echoing down her spine. The cloudwalkers watched the dark, eyes and faces alight with anticipation.

“There!” cried one, pointing into the black. Akihito’s spotlight cut through the rain, fell across a blur of white. They heard a tremendous cry, an animal roar akin to grating thunder, the beating of mighty wings. The ship was knocked hard to port by the storm, nose dipping toward the ground as lightning flashed nearby, and suddenly they had it; picked out neatly in blinding halogen, easily the most magnificent sight Masaru had seen in his life.

It was power personified. The storm made flesh, carved from the clouds by Raijin’s hands, his children let loose to rollick in ozone-flecked chaos. The old tales said their wings made the sound of the thunder. The lightning was the sparks from their claws as they did battle across the heavens. The rain was Susano-ō’s tears, the Storm God overcome with the beauty and ferocity of his grandchildren. Thunder tiger. Arashitora.

The hindquarters of a white tiger, rippling muscle bound tight beneath snowwhite fur, slashed with thick bands of ebony. The broad wings, forelegs and head of a white eagle, proud and fierce; lightning reflected in amber irises and pupils of darkest black. It roared again, shaking the ship, cutting through the air like a katana in a swordsaint’s hands. Masaru shook his head, blinked hard. The rain whipping his face, the wind chilling his blood; it all told him he wasn’t dreaming. And still, he doubted.

The beast was immense, a wingspan of nearly twenty-five feet, claws like sabers, eyes as big as Akihito’s fist. Iron hard, sleek and growling, an engine of muscle and beak and claw. He wondered how much blacksleep it would take to bring it down.

“Where the hells did it come from?” yelled Kasumi.
“Let me get two volleys into it!” he cried. “It’s too big!”
Kasumi nodded, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. The cloudwalkers pointed in

slack-jawed wonder as the beast wheeled overhead. It was obviously as fascinated with them as they were with it, screaming a piercing note of challenge, wondering who these interlopers were that dared to brave its sky.

Masaru pressed the trigger on the needle-thrower, the device spitting out a chattering, angry hiss as he emptied the entire magazine in a single burst. Two-dozen hy po shafts sailed through the dark, at least four sinking into the beast’s hindquarters. The arashitora snapped left and swooped under the keel, shaking the Child with its bellow of rage. The sky folk ran across to the port side, saw the silhouette rise up over the railings and tear a great gouge through the hull. The impact was explosive, wood spraying in foot-long spears, the ship rocking on its haunches amidst the groan of breaking rope. One of the cloudwalkers lost his footing and plummeted over the side with a wavering scream. Another almost followed, saved only by the hands of his comrades.

“You pissed it off, Masaru!” Akihito’s face split in a wide grin. He swung the floodlight around, listening for the sound of pinions over the tempest’s din.
“Strap in!” roared Yamagata to his men. “Or get below deck!”
The crew lashed lengths of hemp around their obi and scattered to their posts, several climbing up into the rigging to secure broken cables. A scream split the air, the smell of ozone, rumbling thunder. A white shape plummeted from above and crashed into the portside engine, tearing it away with the shriek of tortured metal. The Child dropped thirty feet out of the sky, spitting a bright trail of flame.
Cloudwalkers cried out in terror as the inferno reached up toward the inflatable, burning tongues licking at the balloon’s flank. Fire and water kissed, giving birth to great clouds of choking, black smoke, a haze that flooded over the deck and cut visibility down to a handful of feet. One sailor fell screaming from the rigging, landing on the timbers with a sodden crunch, his clothes and hair ablaze. Smothering sheets of rain beat the flames back from the balloon, leaving a trail of long black scorch-marks on the canvas.
Masaru gritted his teeth and emptied his second magazine as the fleeting shape disappeared underneath them again, needle-thrower hissing, bolts sailing harmlessly into the black. He cursed the smoke beneath his breath, blinking the blinding rain from his eyes.
The crunch of tortured gears spilled from the flaming tear in the Child’s flank, and the entire vessel was rocked with another explosion as a secondary fuel tank ignited. Flames vomited from the torn and smoking hull. The ship bucked beneath them and listed sideways, the thrust of the remaining engine threatening to tilt the entire vessel onto its wounded side. Yamagata bellowed at his men, demanding that someone find Old Kioshi and get the Guildsman below deck to shut off the port fuel lines. He clung to the wheel with a white-knuckle grip, breath heaving in his lungs, teeth drawn back from his lips as he roared at Masaru.
“The bastard’s tearing us to pieces!”
A crag of rock loomed out of the darkness dead ahead and Yamagata cried a warning, leaning into the wheel with all his weight. The Thunder Child swung hard to port as the captain poured on the burn, the single propeller shrieking in dissent and spewing exhaust into the rain. Rivets popped along the engine housing as the ship rolled almost ninety degrees, showing her belly to the tempest. Cloudwalkers fell screaming from the rigging, those who’d had time to strap themselves in were jerked to a bone-jarring halt at the ends of their lines, watching their less-fortunate comrades plummet off into the mouth of the storm.
Masaru clung to the rigging and scanned the darkness, looking for a flash of white, listening for the sound of rushing wings over the crackling flames and rolling thunder and screams of dying sailors.
“Four darts’ worth of blacksleep,” he growled. “Hasn’t even slowed him down.”

Yukiko was crouched up near the bow, her arms wrapped around the chi barrels, Kin beside her. The boy looked frantic, almost petrified, his eyes fixed on the cloudwalkers gathered on deck. He hunched down below the level of the barrels, jaw clenched, face drawn and bloodless. He winced as the fuel tank exploded, the light of the roaring flames reflected in terrified eyes. Yukiko meantime was transfixed by the sight of the thunder tiger, mouth slack with awe, eyes shining and bright.

Closing her eyes, she reached out through the storm, feeling the world fall away beneath her feet. She pawed through the blackness, a blind girl in search of the sun. And then she touched it, searing hot, fury coiled among the soporific gravity of the poison, clouded and dark. She felt the need to destroy. To rend. Animal rage layered over ferocious intelligence, indignant that it had been challenged by this wooden insect, this slug with no wings, dragging itself through the sky and reeking of dead, burning flowers.

And then it felt her. Confusion. Aggression. Curiosity. Its voice bounced around the inside of her skull, as deafening as the peals of thunder crashing through the skies around her.

WHO ARE YOU?
Yukiko.
Intrigue overcame anger, wheeling closer, and in that moment it returned

her touch. A ghost of a whisper, the strength of a steel spring coiled behind it, waiting to be unleashed.
WHAT ARE YOU?
The wind rushed beneath them, the raging storm nothing but a summer breeze, electricity tingling on their flesh as the lightning flashed. And then they felt pain, a series of deep thuds into their belly, piercing, venomous. Sleep curled out along their veins, and rage rose to challenge it, a scream building in their throats and spilling forth to fill the skies.

“You got him!” Akihito cried, swinging the blinding light overhead. The creature roared again, a faint tremor of fatigue underscoring the anger.
Kasumi leaned over her sights, braced the net-thrower against her shoulder. “Now!” Masaru yelled.
A sharp burst of compressed air. Sixty feet of tightly bound lotus hemp
spilled out into the night, gossamer threads as strong as steel, a choir of locusts
buzzing in their ears. The line spooled out from beneath the weapon’s belly,
weighted strands engulfing the bellowing thunder tiger like a spider web. Masaru was already leaping down to the deck, sending the motorized winch spinning. Kasumi fired the second net-thrower, another volley of lines closing over
the beating wings, pressing them tight against flanks now heaving with fear,
fight giving way to flight.
But too late. Too late.
The beast plummeted from the sky, blacksleep pounding in its veins and
knocking it senseless. It dropped away below the starboard railing, falling
down into the dark. The Child lurched sideways, dragged down by the colossal
weight as the winch lines snapped taut, motors screaming in protest. Cloudwalkers cried out in panic as the remaining engine strained to recover, Yamagata pouring on the fuel and pressing down on the wheel with the aid of his
navigator. The storm battered the ship, as if Raijin himself were furious at their
attack on his offspring. Several crew disappeared over the side, dangling by
their lifelines over the whistling drop to the ground hundreds of feet below. But
stubbornly, gradually, the sky-ship righted itself, limping back onto an even
keel.
“Get him up on deck, he’ll tip us over!” Yamagata bellowed.
The winches groaned and began reeling in the weight, lines smoking, engines
spitting fumes into the rain. The cloudwalkers hauled their stricken brethren
back on deck and then pitched in to help with the thunder tiger, reaching down
with gaff hooks to catch hold of the nets. Gradually the shape came into view,
curled tight in strands of black swaddling, narrowed eyes staring at the men with
toxin-clouded hatred.
Sweating and heaving under the weight, the crew eventually employed the
Child’s motorized cargo crane to heft the beast onto the deck. Rain sluiced down
in waves, freezing cold and relentless. Lightning arced dangerously close, their
ears splitting with the peals of thunder.
It took twenty men to drag the beast into the cage. Masaru urged caution,
warning the crew to be careful with the tiger’s wings. Akihito was foremost
among them, muscles stretched and humming, joy plainly written on his face.
Kasumi stood to one side, needle-thrower in her hands, watching for any sign
of awakening. She radiated a quiet pride, lips pressed into a tight smile. When the beast was locked behind bars, the bedraggled men gathered
around and cheered, slapping each other’s backs and saluting the brave hunters
and their grim captain, still hanging onto the wheel of his wounded ship. Yamagata saluted back, managed a weary grin. Masaru beamed like a proud
father, eyes aglow, disbelief still etched plainly on his face.
They had hunted an arashitora. A beast of legend, only a dream. And they
had bested it.
Only Yukiko hung back from the throng, sorrow welling in her eyes. She
watched the men dance and caper around the beast, feeling for its mind amidst
the blacksleep haze. Only the barest whisper of it remained beneath a blanket
of thick sleep, a smoldering cinder, a spark of blinding rage that burned her
mind when she strayed too close.
Indignity. Disbelief. Fury.
KILL YOU.
She could feel it fighting off the poison, fueled by a purity of intent. A promise to itself, to her, which bore it up slowly out of the blackness on a wind of
hate and rage. Not yet.
Not yet. But soon.
KILL YOU ALL.