The Lord of the Sands of Time (11 page)

J
APAN A.D.
248

Once it was clear that the beast would never again be a threat, the men turned to seek their next target. Child soldiers, too young to wield the rams, approached cautiously and severed every tendon they could find, one by one.

“A Jumper!”

A single-legged ET the size of a little girl bounded wildly out of the woods, brandishing a thin blade like it was a strip of swirling silk. The blade dismembered men amid fountains of blood. The air filled with howls and screams. A group of soldiers with wooden shields surrounded the ET and hemmed it in. The Jumper kept moving, waiting for its chance, then tried to escape the circle with one tremendous leap, but a toughened warrior seized its leg. The men surrounded the fallen Jumper and killed it with a frenzied hacking of swords.

A call for help floated up to the ridge from below. A group of warriors were in full flight up the slope. Gaps in the trees behind them revealed another full-grown Reaper. Takahaya called out to them, in a voice loud enough to shake the leaves, “Make for the stockade! We’re dropping the sledge!”

The soldiers reached the ridge, stumbling over each other into the stockade. Waiting troops ran past them and cut the rope holding back a huge sledge made of logs, planed flat and lashed together. The sledge skidded down the mountain, sweeping the Reaper with it.

From all directions, bamboo war trumpets had been sounding from watchtowers along the ridges, warning of attacks. Now, one by one, the trumpets fell silent, a sign of successful clashes with the enemy. As Miyo listened from her quarters inside the stockade, Takahaya entered, drenched with sweat. “The enemy is nearly routed in the third valley,” he said.

Miyo had stopped using Kan to communicate with her senior commanders. It wasted precious time; moreover, it was no longer necessary to maintain Miyo’s aura of dignity.

“Good work. Send reinforcements to North Point and the Tama Cliffs. Help is needed there,” said Miyo.

“I sent forty to the cliffs this morning.”

“They’ve been repulsed. Send a hundred more.”

“As you command,” said Takahaya. Since the beginning of the fighting, Miyo’s orders had been prescient. Takahaya left with an air of complete confidence. But her directives were not the result of divination but were instead due to Cutty’s comprehensive grasp of the evolving battle lines, and to the Messenger, who fought ceaselessly on the front lines.

When the mononoké made their first incursion onto the plain of Iga, the Messenger went out alone and returned with a small specimen he had captured alive. He bound it to a tree with heavy rope and summoned Miyo’s captains. At first, they feared to approach this creature they had only heard about in legend. The Messenger walked up to it boldly, striking and touching it with his bare hands. Even the mononoké were not invulnerable, and their bodies were subject to decay. With the right technique they could be restrained, immobilized, and killed.

After careful explanation and encouragement, the Messenger gave the soldiers swords and cut the ET’s ropes. Then he faced the frenzied beast armed with nothing but a fighting staff. The men mustered their courage, attacked, and succeeded in killing the monster. In truth, this ET was in a greatly weakened state, but the men were heartened by their success and swore to follow the Messenger in battle.

The Messenger showed them how to use log rams to topple the enemy and shields for defense. He introduced the wheel and the crossbow. Till then, the Yamatai warriors had relied mainly on bronze swords, polearms, and wooden bows. When the soldiers saw firsthand how a crossbow bolt could penetrate a thick tree trunk at a hundred paces, even their armorers were dumbfounded. Nor was engineering neglected; roads were graded, bridges built; forts sprang up and barriers snaked across the mountains and valleys of western Iga.

The Messenger sent runners to Yamatai, summoning visiting traders and princes from the chiefdoms to observe the conflict, to see how the strange and barbarous mononoké were laying waste to Iga, and how Yamatai’s forces were pressing them back. Back in their homelands, the visitors were likely to exaggerate what they saw to their rulers and headmen. This would create far more impact than if Miyo had sent envoys to describe the events taking place. The war with the mononoké had been raging for two months. They had had to improvise, but Yamatai’s army held firm as it waited for more than just token reinforcements.

Miyo’s quarters stood on a hill overlooking the plain. All around her was the din of an army camp: shouts of men raising log walls, the shrill voices of women distributing food, the bellowing of captains overseeing the training of green recruits, angry demands for quiet from men trying to steal a few moments’ sleep. From the mountain at their back came the ceaseless ringing of the woodsmen’s axes.

Miyo was visited by an endless stream of messengers, soldiers, and captains. She had only the briefest periods of rest. As shaman, she was used to compelling obedience behind a screen of silence; never before had she been obliged to deliver immediate responses to question after question. Even with the
magatama
providing most of the answers, she was tired of talking and mentally worn out.

When the stream of visitors stopped for a moment, Miyo sent her maidservants outside, sat back, and muttered, “I am weary. I’m beginning to feel light-headed.”

“If you don’t feel well, I can examine you,” said Cutty through the
magatama
.

“You play at healing too?” Miyo shot back, then shook her head. “The problem is my spirit, moreso than my body. Two months ago I’d never have imagined this would be happening. It’s like some awful dream.”

“Wake up,” said Cutty. “This is not a dream. It really is happening, to you and your country. You can’t just quit. Still, I must say you’re holding up well. Until now there have been so many leaders who were ultimately of little use to us.”

“‘Of little use’? That’s rather harsh,” said Miyo.

“Please don’t be offended. O rates you very highly.”

At that Miyo felt so awkward she could not reply, and when she realized her own awkwardness, she winced. In truth, she’d hoped that cooperating with the Messenger would help her escape from all this. But now she was saddled with a responsibility that sapped her spirit.
What a miscalculation. If only this upheaval could somehow end soon…

Her mind was wandering aimlessly when cheers of welcome came from the stockade gate. Soon the Messenger’s lanky form appeared in the doorway. He sat down, exhausted.

“Forty men lost,” he said. “I told them not to go forward so quickly, but I couldn’t stop those young soldiers from pursuing the enemy. I should’ve brought more seasoned men.”

“You held the cliffs alone? The reinforcements were too late?” said Miyo.

“They helped all the same. Thanks to them, I got some rest before I came back here. I’m thirsty.” One of the maid-servants brought a pot of water. He refused the ladle, stood and raised the pot to his lips, gulping water like a stallion. He said to Miyo, “I’m going to the watchtower.”

“You’re leaving already?”

“Come with me. You need to see the overall situation.” They climbed the watchtower on the ridge. The Messenger pointed toward the center of the Iga Plain. “See there? Along the river?”

“You mean where the sunlight flashes?”

“That’s the spot,” said the Messenger.

“They look like the scales of a fish,” she said. The banks of the river bisecting the plain were lined with rank upon rank of greenish panels. Probably the height of a man, each appeared tiny in the distance. They resembled a patch of scabies spread across many acres of tranquil, early summer farmland. Miyo felt her skin crawl.

“Those are solar panels fabricated by the enemy,” O said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Think of them as the mononoké’s paddy field. They draw nourishment from them. I don’t know what they’re doing for energy in Kunu, but it looks like this is the only way they can fill their bellies here. If we can destroy those panels, we can starve them out, in Iga at least.”

“Destroy them, then.”

“I can’t do it alone. That looks like more than two thousand panels, and they’re adding more as fast as they can make them. I’d need five hundred soldiers, but we have to protect the borders. We can’t spare that many right now. We’ll destroy them after we build up our strength here. That’s the most urgent objective.”

“Once you destroy them, will you reinforce the border crossing further on?”

“No. We can’t stop there. We have to push beyond the borders and keep pressing them. We can’t stop till we’ve destroyed the nest. This isn’t like fighting a human chiefdom, where you can pause once you’ve done a certain amount of damage to the enemy. As long as the mononoké live, they can and will replicate without limit. And they’ll keep trying to kill us.”

“It’s enough to drive one mad…” Miyo sighed, but the Messenger’s stern expression was unchanged. “Come,” he said, and climbed from the watchtower.

His destination was the edge of camp. As they passed, soldiers and peasants dropped to the ground and prostrated themselves before their queen. On the outskirts of the camp they came to a small, jumbled mountain of greenish-white metal fragments, the broken and melted bodies of dead mononoké. Miyo grimaced in disgust. The Messenger hefted a fragment in his hand.

“Right now they’re using zinc. That’s what this metal is called.” The Messenger called to a captain nearby. He handed the soldier the fragment and told him to see if he could shatter it. When the captain placed it on a boulder and struck it with a stone, it broke apart easily.

“As you see, zinc is not a good material for their purposes. Fire weakens it. They’re probably using this because they can’t get their hands on anything else.”

“There are large deposits of this metal in the mountains to the east,” said Miyo.

“Then we know where the enemy’s stronghold is,” said the Messenger. “We know where Earth’s mineral resources are located as a matter of historical fact. But the enemy has to do their own prospecting. In that sense, we have an advantage.”

“So the enemy, he is weaker than he appears?” asked Miyo.

The Messenger shook his head. “Maybe for the moment. If they can find a source of ore, they won’t need to carry out major mining. The ones who need the ore the most will ingest it. The main thing is whether they can reach an ore source. We hold western Japan, with the mines at Izumo, and that gives us the upper hand. But there are huge ore deposits in eastern Japan too, in Emishi territory.”

“By the time they reach Kamaishi, the enemy’s capabilities will probably be far stronger,” interjected Cutty. But Miyo heard this strange new prophecy as if from somewhere far away. She had never heard of the place Cutty named. How the mononoké’s power might change because of some different material was beyond her understanding. She felt more and more frustrated. Nothing seemed real.

“Even before they reach Kamaishi, there are small deposits of iron in Chichibu and Osaka. And the other ore fields are not completely devoid of iron. In any case, the longer we wait, the more our advantage slips away. It’s no use wishing we were stronger,” said the Messenger.

“I see,” said Miyo.

As they retraced their steps to her quarters, Miyo struggled to understand the Messenger’s words. The mononoké must be destroyed. As long as they drew breath, they would never stop attacking. That they could be destroyed meant they were neither demons nor devils. They were different from the gods of water and wind that the people of Wa had fought for ages without number. They were not like the days, the months, the seasons, which changed and returned in their endless cycles; not like the animals or the insects that might die, yet be reborn from an egg left behind. They were things, things with will, Things That Came. Suddenly, Miyo’s hazy images of her old adversaries seemed robbed of substance. She stopped in her tracks. “Messenger O. What are the mononoké?”

He turned and looked at her like a father gazing at a daughter. “That’s a very good question. But if you know too much, you might lose hope.”

“Have you lost yours?” asked Miyo.

He looked away and muttered, “I don’t know.”

“Messenger O…” Miyo suddenly felt a surge of anger toward this man who would tell her almost nothing, though she was sure he must know everything. After all, they both shared a common fate. Wasn’t there much more he should be telling her? But her thoughts were interrupted by a shrill voice. “Lady Miyo! Where are you?”

“Kan! I’m here!” Miyo waved. The boy ran up, out of breath. He gave a short, almost disrespectful nod to the Messenger and prostrated himself before Miyo.

“An urgent message from the palace. A pack of mononoké has appeared in Isonokami, attacking people and livestock!” Isonokami was only twenty-odd
ri
from the palace. Too close indeed.

“What!” Miyo turned to the Messenger and saw him frown for an instant. “Messenger O? Cutty? What of your vigilance now?” she cried.

“What indeed?” said the Messenger. He hardly seemed surprised. Would he say something like this was anticipated? No matter. Miyo turned to Kan.