Stormdancer (21 page)

Birthed from the stinking cracks of the Iishi hell gate, heeding the call of the Red Bone Warlord. Dragging themselves from beds of flint and pits of rancid blood, thunderous drums echoing across dark places, bidding them up into the light of the night.

Servants of a deeper darkness. Crouched on her bone mountain in the sunless depths of the Yomi underworld, empty eyes and blackened womb, a tarnished wedding band clutched in the palm of one bloodless hand. She Who Feasts in the Dark, Broodmare of Demons, Queen of the Hungry Dead, whom the Book of Ten Thousand Days calls Endsinger. They, her servants, her faithful, her children. Leaking through rifts of stone into a world she has promised to destroy, a dark and rising tide, swelling drop by drop until it becomes the flood that heralds the Last Day.

Their feet are as an earthquake upon the ground. Their swords are sharp as razors. Their war clubs thick as tree trunks. Black words crawl along their spines, thrumming in their veins, filling them with blackest rage at the loss of their brethren.

Yukiko crouched in the tree beside Buruu, knife clutched in her hand, nestled inside the arashitora’s mind. Eagle eyes, needle- sharp, piercing the darkest shadow. There was no movement in the forest but the flutter of tiny beasts and birds, mirrored in the flutter of the pulse in her veins. But she knew they were close.

She reached out with the Kenning, straining to her limits, feeling the terror of small warm things at the oni’s approach: a multitude of giants, belts of skulls, eyes aglow, feet thundering upon the earth and sending tiny, frightened shapes scampering into the dark.

The Kagé crouched in the trees beside her, mere shadows against the pattern of green and black, swelling and shifting in the chill night wind. Yukiko could see Kaori, wakizashi naked in her hand, folded steel painted with lamp- black to avoid the glint of lightning or stray moonlight. The approaching monsoon growled in the dark skies overhead. The crack of thunder shook her insides and Buruu purred like a kitten in the aftershocks, the boom resonating in his chest as he stared with longing up at the gathering clouds.

The Kagé were grouped in a tight knot, three, sometimes four to a tree. Isao was wrapped around the branch above Yukiko’s head. She looked up and found him glaring at her, eyes narrowed to knife-cuts. Her voice was a whisper, “How do you know the demons will come this way?”

The boy lifted his mask to spit down onto the leaves below. He stared at her for a long, pregnant moment before he answered.
“The mountain gives them only one approach.” He nodded west. “The pit traps funnel them in this direction. We have been preparing for this night for years. Though in truth, we thought it would be men of flesh who came for us, not oni. Iron Samurai and bushimen. Servants of your Shōgun.”
Yukiko felt a grudging admiration in Buruu’s chest.
You like these Kagé.
THEY SEE. THEY KNOW.
What do you mean?
THEY TURN WEAKNESS TO STRENGTH. THEY USE THE EARTH. NO BARRICADES OF DEAD TREES. NO BULWARKS OF STONE. THEY ARE FEW, FACING MANY. AND THEY ARE NOT AFRAID TO DIE.
No fanatic ever is.
THEY WILL WIN. THOUGH IT TAKE A HUNDRED YEARS, THEY WILL TOPPLE YOUR SHŌGUN. BURN HIS FIELDS AND CITIES. FADE AWAY INTO SHADOW. INTO PLACES HIS ARMIES CANNOT REACH. MORE THAN FLESH. THEY ARE AN IDEA.
She watched the thunder tiger in the darkness, acutely aware of how much he had changed since the crash. His animal instinct, the primal aggression inside him, was being gradually tempered with elegant thought, complex concepts, all too human impulses growing through their bond. She realized that the link between them was changing him, her humanity leaking into him like irezumi ink spilled on cotton weave. He was becoming more.
But what might she become?
He is not my Shōgun, Buruu.
He blinked, tossed his head.
SO. ARE YOU RONIN TOO, THEN?
I cannot be ronin. I was never samurai.
YOU SEE. THE RED SKY. THE BLACK RIVERS. YOU KNOW.
She sighed, running her hand across her eyes.
I don’t know anything.
She looked up again, found Isao was still watching her, open hostility in his stare.
“What are you looking at?”
“The servant of my enemy,” he growled, averting his gaze. “Do not expect many here to weep if the oni kill you, girl.”
Buruu’s growl was low and soft. Yukiko reached out a comforting hand to quiet him. The thunder tiger stiffened, rising up into a half-crouch, hackles raised. Yukiko closed her eyes and looked into his distance, saw tall silhouettes moving in the dark, tiny pinpricks of glowing blood-red. She ignored the cold dread seeping into her gut.
“They’re coming,” she hissed to Isao.
The boy nodded and cupped his palm to his mouth, making a sound like cricket-song. The signal echoed among the trees, a chorus of insects armed with sharpened steel. A subtle shift among the shadows; weapons being drawn, grips tightened. The world held its breath for a moment, as if preparing for a deep plunge. And then, with a blinding flash of lightning and a deafening crack of thunder, it began to rain.
It was a chattering hiss on the leaves, a gray veil drawn across the eyes of the oni as they lumbered forward. No order or form to their line, just a tangled mass of tetsubos and ten-span swords hacking the undergrowth, glowing eyes and guttural, croaking voices, a language too black for human ears to comprehend. The rain glistened on their skin, myriad shades from azure to midnight blue, fangs of ivory and rusted iron, eyes like fresh blood. The scrub behind them was flattened, swathes of green cut low, bleeding sap into trampled earth.
Gods, there are so many.
The thunder crashed again.
SOON THERE WILL BE LESS.
The demons drew closer, slashing their path across the emerald green, wading through the curtain of rain. The Kagé remained motionless as the horde passed below, not a single red eye upturned, black speech coursing under the sound of thunder. As the last oni drew level with their positions, the cricketsong rang out in the dark, drifting among the shadows and giving birth to sudden, savage motion.
Silhouettes dropped from the trees, sword and spear buried glittering to the hilts in the backs of the oni rearguard. Bubbling screams. Black blood hissing in the rain. Steam rising from awful, mortal wounds. Heads lopped from shoulders, throats opened to the bone, guts spilling and steaming in the dark. The first to fall had no chance at all.
The horde turned at the wails of their brothers, blinking in the darkness. They saw corpses crumpled on dead leaves, shadows of men in the black. The one who walked in their vanguard, bone armor on his chest and the ancient skull of a sea dragon covering his face, raised a bloody femur into the air and roared; a guttural, reverberating command in a language that none of the Kagé spoke, but every one of them understood.
And so it began.
Buruu dug his claws into the branch as Isao dropped past them, black shuriken stars spinning from his outstretched hands. Yukiko felt the bloodlust build inside the arashitora, the hair on her flesh standing up as raw electricity cascaded along his wings. She bared her teeth and growled alongside him, fingernails biting into her palms.
CLIMB ON MY BACK.
. . . What?
YOU HEARD. FLY WITH ME.
Yukiko blinked away the amazement and scrabbled up the arashitora’s shoulder, thighs clamping his ribs, one hand wrapped in his feather mane. Buruu unfolded his wings, stretching out in the darkness, and Yukiko had a brief moment to catch her breath before the world was rushing up toward them, leaving her stomach on the branches above.
They plummeted from the gloom, screaming with one voice, crippled lightning flashing at the edges of their feathers. They were clutching an oni a moment later, shoulders caught in their fists as their claws tore its insides out, spitting a mouthful of throat onto the ground as blood scalded their tongue. The flesh that was Yukiko rolled off into the grass and crouched among the lightning strobe, hacking at the ankles of another oni as the flesh that was Buruu rose up and tore off its arm in one razored talon.
Two sets of eyes watched the enemy, moving in symbiosis between the scything arcs of sword and war club. Fluid as water, flowing beneath iron and steel, crashing with sudden ferocity, liquid between the spittle and death screams. Flesh parted before their fingers, steel and talon slicing midnight blue and giving birth to great floods of steaming black.
There was no time. There was no gravity. There was no Yukiko. There was no Buruu. There was only motion, bloody, brutal motion as their father screamed his joy overhead, thunder rumbling across the clouds, lightning painting the butchery as bright as the day. The shapes of men fell about them, red blood washing away in the rain, screams of pain lost beneath the roaring sky. But they were unstoppable, untouchable, eyes in the backs of their heads, transcending thought and laying all before them to rest.
Their flesh was together again, one astride the other without knowing who was which, feathers wrapped in fingers and pounding at the air, longing to fly again. The need swelled inside them, denial of an impulse so primal that it filled them with rage, spreading across their severed feathers and screaming at the sky, spattered in warm black blood.
The red warlord answered, holding the bleeding bone into the air and bellowing, a cruel iron sword twisted in the other fist. It charged toward them, lips curled back from jagged tusks, knocking aside its fellows in its haste to taste them. They turned to face it, roaring again. Two mouths, one voice, echoed by the raging storm.
The curved sword fell in a ten-ton arc, slicing raindrops in two. They bounded into the air, wings tearing at the space where flight was born, finding only momentary lift and the awful clutch of gravity. But it was enough to carry them over the blade and onto the oni’s torso, claws tearing its chest, piercing bone armor, knuckle-deep in steaming black. With a bellow, it brought the bleeding bone across their brow. A blinding white light arrived with it and knocked them senseless. They rolled apart, shaking their heads, blinking the blood away from their eyes. The flesh that had been Buruu staggered, eye swelling closed, sharing the pain with the flesh that had been Yukiko and feeling it fall away by half. She loaned him her eyes and slipped into the shadows beneath a cedar, his fingers running across the fox tattoo on their shoulder. They began to climb.
The warlord lunged, Buruu’s flesh lashing out at the thing’s face with one razored fist, bringing it back, sticky with blood. The oni roared and they answered, laughter rolling across the clouds. Rain turned the blood-soaked earth to mud, the sounds of battle around them dropping away to whispers. There was only this. There was only them.
ME.
Lightning cracked the sky, burning away the black.
WE.
The flesh that was Buruu danced backward, bringing the oni with it, eyes aglow with hatred. The flesh that was Yukiko sprang from the tree, twelve feet high, tantō clutched in both hands. The knife plunged to the hilt in the oni’s back, gravity and momentum pulling them earthward, flesh parting down to the spine and peeling away like the rind of swollen fruit. The blood was blinding, the scream of deafening white pain filling their ears, drowning the storm. They leaped toward the wounded oni, claws outstretched, smashing the sea dragon skull to splinters and tearing away the demon’s face in their hands. Beak to throat, savaging until there was nothing left but broken bones and empty, twitching meat.
The storm howled in triumph.
They screamed, faces to the sky, knife clutched in their bloody claws. What was left of the oni band turned and fled into the night, pounding back through the broken green, spears and shuriken whistling about their ears. Broken and defeated.
And then there was only the sound of the falling rain. The Kagé didn’t cheer, didn’t goad or gloat. They simply watched the giants disappear into the shadows, nodding to each other, heads bowed in silent prayer for their dead.
Kaori was looking at Yukiko and Buruu with awe, swallowing great gobs of hot, wet air, drenched to the elbows in steaming black gore. Daichi wiped a sluice of oni blood off on his sleeve and slid his katana back into its scabbard. He watched them as their blood calmed, the Kenning receding as the heat of the battle died in their veins, leaving them sundered in its wake. Yukiko felt lessened somehow, reaching out toward Buruu as if to reassure herself he was still there. He purred, satisfaction rumbling across the ground, tectonic and primal.
GOOD. IT IS GOOD.
“You are one,” Daichi said, wiping the sweat from his eyes. “You and the arashitora are one in the same. You are yōkai-kin.”
“Stormdancer,” whispered Isao.
Yukiko glanced at the boy as he covered his fist and bowed, eyes turned to the ground in reverence. She looked around at the other Kagé as they repeated the gesture, bowing one after the other in the pouring rain. She felt the hair on her arms and the back of her neck rise, a thrill of fear surging in her gut, tightening her throat, the word rippling among them like the forest wind through the liriope grass.
“Stormdancer.”
She knew what she must look like. Spattered with demon blood, knife clutched in one white-knuckle fist, the arashitora beside her spreading the saw-toothed fan of his wings and roaring at the storm above. She felt Buruu’s triumph rising in her chest, and it was all she could do to stop herself from screaming with him again, to hold onto some small part of what she’d been, and see in Daichi’s eyes a stark reflection of what she was becoming.
“You are yōkai-kin,” he repeated.
“I am yōkai-kin,” Yukiko nodded, breath still burning in her lungs. “I hear the voices of beasts in my head, can speak to them as easily as I speak to you now. Do you really think the Shōgun would send one of the Impure to spy on you, Daichi-sama? When Guildsmen burn others like me on pyres in the Market Square for sport? Do you think Yoritomo would be stupid enough to brand an infiltrator with his own irezumi before sending her up here?”
The old man stood silent for a handful of heartbeats, amidst the clawing wind and shapeless white noise. With agonizing slowness, he finally shook his head.
“No. I do not.”
Yukiko ran her hand across Buruu’s flank, smearing the blood through his fur. “So where does this leave us?”
Daichi looked around his men. Some still stared at Yukiko, but a few were busy slinging the bodies of their fallen comrades over their shoulders. Two others had begun the grisly task of dismembering the oni corpses so they could be disposed of elsewhere. The rain washed the blood from their flesh, down into the earth, soaking into hungry roots and sodden mud. All so transient. Soon there would be little to show that they had ever been here at all. Nothing but the shadows they left behind.
“We must talk, Kitsune Yukiko.” Daichi nodded in the direction of the village and turned to walk away.
Yukiko’s voice pulled him up short, “Talk about what?”
The old man looked over his shoulder, a strange sadness in his eyes.
“Murder.”
Yukiko tried to swallow the cold lump in her throat, ignore the dread in her belly.
“Murder and treason.”