by Nick Harrow
The arrows peppered the water where we’d been a moment before, their impacts churning the river into a white froth. Jiro shouted and his archers nocked another flight of missiles. The arrows glowed with an evil, venomous radiance.
“It’s now or never, Ayo,” I snarled. In my spirit sight, I saw she’d woven blue threads between her hands and the river, a tight skein of powerful connections that throbbed with power. It was an impressive feat, but if she didn’t do something—anything—it would all be for nothing.
The glowing arrows took screaming flight, plumes of vile smoke trailing across the dusky sky behind them. The deadly shafts tracked the sampan even as Jaga shoved the rudder violently from side to side in a desperate attempt to avoid them. The missiles had to be scripted with a homing technique that drew them to us with the irresistible force of iron filings to a magnet.
“Hang on!” Ayo screamed. The air thrummed with a sudden release of power, and the river spirit glowed like a blue star.
The sampan lurched forward as if shoved by a giant’s fist. The sleek boat’s hull burst from the water with the sudden surge of speed, then slammed back into the river with a shuddering crash. The impact threw a wall of water over the boat’s prow, drenching us all. I lost my footing and slid across the deck’s smooth boards toward the cabin.
Aja and Ayo were both thrown down, too, and shot across the deck to crash against the sampan’s gunwale with bruising force. We grunted and dragged ourselves back to our knees, surprised to be alive.
“Everyone all right?” I called. We’d gained a little distance on the Jade Seekers, but they’d be coming for us again.
“I’m fine,” Aja called. “Wet as hell, and I’m going to have one motherfucker of a bruise on my hip, but I’m good.”
“Sorry for the rough launch,” Ayo said, her cheeks dark with embarrassment. “It was only supposed to be a little boost. Guess I don’t know my own strength.”
“Jaga!” I shouted to be heard over the river’s roar.
No answer.
I sprinted toward the back of the boat, feet slipping and sliding on the wet deck. The pilot had been hanging onto the rudder; she’d be fine. She was the only one of us who was an experienced sailor. That little bump wouldn’t have even ruffled her hair.
I was sure of it.
But as I came around the cabin, my heart stopped.
The pilot was gone.
“Jaga!” I shouted again. The rudder banged against the hull, and I grabbed it to steady our course.
My eyes scanned the river’s choppy surface, desperate for some sign of Jaga.
She was nowhere to be found.
I clutched the wooden handle with both hands and engaged my spirit sight. Schools of fish glowed in the river’s depths like swarms of summer fireflies. Larger creatures, turtles and other denizens of the depths, gave off shadowy light from the riverbed.
There was no sign of the captain or any other life even remotely human in the river. It was as if she’d vanished into thin air.
I shouted her name again, and again. The riders gained on us, their relentless steeds carrying them through the forest at an unbelievable pace. There was no doubt in my mind they’d keep this up all night. Jiro Kos wouldn’t let me slip through his fingers again.
“Where is she?” Ayo wailed. “Jaga! Oh, Blood God, I’m so sorry.”
Aja closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and took a deep breath. She turned slowly, rotating from side to side as she inhaled deeper and deeper.
“There,” she growled, jabbing one finger toward the river behind us.
She was right. Now that I knew where to look, my spirit sight picked out the pale blue glow of the riverboat’s pilot. She wasn’t swimming, but the light of her core, feeble as it was, told me she was still alive.
At least for the moment.
My heart ached for the pilot. She’d been willing to leave us at the next village, an act that would have made our lives much, much harder than we’d hoped. I’d been angry with her when she told me, but now I couldn’t find that cold spark of rage.
I hadn’t known Jaga for long, but something told me the captain had only been doing what she’d done all her life: looking after herself as best she could. She was a loner, the kind of woman who prowled through life like a shark, always on the lookout for the next opportunity, always hungry for the next chance to jump ahead of her competition. She wasn’t used to having other people look after her, and she sure as fuck wasn’t used to looking after anyone other than herself.
The smart thing to do was to leave her to her fate. We had the boat, and while I wasn’t an expert at navigating the rivers like she was, I’d be able to manage. If we kept going, we might outpace the Jade Seekers. Another day, day and a half at the outside, and we’d reach the Lake of Moonsilver Mist.
And I’d hate myself for it every minute of the way. How could I save the world if I couldn’t even save this one woman?
“Use your powers to make the water grab her!” I shouted to the spirit. “I’ll pole us back upriver to get her.”
“My core’s nearly empty,” Ayo moaned. “I don’t have the strength.”
And there was no time to recharge the spirit’s nodes. I was Jaga’s only hope.
“Stick to the river.” I grabbed Aja and Ayo by the shoulders, stared at each of them in turn. “It will take you all the way to the lake.”
“What are you talking about?” Aja asked, her eyes wild and frantic. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Going after Jaga.” Before either of the spirits could try to change my mind, I stepped onto the gunwale and dove into the river.
The water closed around me like an icy fist and squeezed the air from my lungs. My body wanted to draw in a breath immediately, but I clamped my jaw shut and forced my arms and legs to propel me back toward the surface. It was hard work to swim against the current, and the effort burned precious oxygen out of my blood as I clawed my way toward fresh air.
Finally, my head burst free of the rushing water, and I gulped a huge breath to fill my lungs. There hadn’t been much opportunity to learn to swim in Floating Village, and my strokes and kicks were not as efficient as they could have been. Still, my clumsy efforts were aided by the strength I’d gained from advancing my core to seabound, and the light of Jaga’s core grew brighter by the second.
A quick glance over my shoulder showed me that the sampan was getting farther and farther away by the moment.
The riders on the shore seemed confused about what to do next. Their captain wheeled his horse around as if intent on pursuing me, then spun back toward the sampan. The other Seekers milled around him in confusion, unsure what their captain wanted from them.
Good. Anything that slowed those fuckers down worked in my favor.
The tremendous effort of clawing my way through the water burned the sacred energy out of one node. I still had nine more filled with rin, and I hoped that would be enough.
A minute had passed since I’d entered the water, and every second of it had felt like an eternity. The power inside me kept me alive; it just didn’t do anything for the aches and pains that built up as I pushed my body to its limits and beyond.
Jaga’s body bobbed in the water ahead of me. She was face down, her arms and legs spread-eagled across the river’s surface, her dark hair fanned out around her head like a twilight crown. Her core glimmered with pale blue shio, but the spark had almost gone out of her.
With a desperate effort, I kicked forward and grabbed hold of the sampan pilot. Jaga had lost her vest to the river’s greedy clutches, and my hands slipped and slithered across her naked torso. She slid out of my hands, and the current nearly swept her away again before I latched onto her wrist. We turned in circles, faster and faster, as the river shoved us downstream with its wild strength.
“Archers!” Yata shrieked from above me. The three-legged raven circled overhead, its wings flapping furiously to maintain its position. “Dive!”
I took a qu
ick breath and followed my familiar’s imperative. I looped an arm around Jaga’s waist and dragged her below the icy water. She shuddered against me as we descended, but her eyes stayed closed, and she didn’t try to gulp a breath. Whatever survival instincts were still kicking around in the back of her brain had kept her alive so far, but it wouldn’t be long before she ran out of air and her desperate lungs took their final, deadly breath.
A flight of arrows plunged into the water around us. The river had robbed them of their speed and deadly accuracy, and they hung suspended in the river for a few moments before the current carried them away. We were safe, for the moment, but we couldn’t stay down here.
Then I had an idea.
The catfish had proven a challenge, but it had also opened my eyes to part of being a shaman I hadn’t really explored yet.
I opened my core to the world and sent a thread of rin snaking through the water toward a curious smallmouth bass who’d emerged from its lair beneath a sunken boulder to see what the fuck was going on. The crimson thread caught the creature before it could escape, and I lashed a connection around its core and gave a little squeeze.
The simple creature only had a single note of raw shio, and I plucked the energy from its core with ease. Confused by what had just happened, the bass struggled against the connection. It wasn’t hurt, just bewildered, and I let it go back to the safety of its hole.
The little creature’s energy bubbled around inside my core looking for a way out. It wasn’t alive, not really, but there was an animal essence to it that made it hate any sort of captivity. One of my nodes flickered and a fine patina of gray-green scales formed across its surface.
Like the catfish, the energy I’d taken from the bass affected me, though much more subtly. When I pulled the remnant of the scaled node and fed it into my arms and legs, it didn’t transform me into a fish. It did, however, make my swimming much more fluid and efficient. Even with Jaga under my arm, I could swim faster than the sampan ahead of me. I counted to twenty, then burst out of the water like a dolphin and crashed onto the deck on my back, Jaga hugged tight to my chest.
“Get us the fuck out of here!” I shouted to Ayo. “The Seekers are confused, but they won’t stay that way for long.”
“Holy shit, you’re alive!” Aja brushed tears from her cheeks. “We thought we’d lost you both.”
“Not yet,” I gasped and eased Jaga onto the deck where I could get a better look at her. I spared a glance toward the shoreline and cursed at what I saw there.
The mounted archers had realized that I’d tricked them and charged through the forest in a desperate rush to catch us. Another minute, maybe less, and they’d be back within bow range. If they had any more of those green arrows, we’d be fucked.
“I need energy,” Ayo said. “I burned all I had last time.”
Shit, I’d known that. There definitely wasn’t time to fully recharge Ayo, but we’d have to make do. I stood, grabbed the river spirit around the waist, and pulled her body against mine. I kissed her, deep and hard, my hands roaming over the firm curves of her ass and then up to the soft globes of her breasts. I bit the tip of her tongue, and she gasped with surprise. A rush of rin burst from my core and flowed into Ayo.
She shuddered and her hand clenched around the bulge in my breechcloth. Our hearts beat quicker at the contact, and her breath gusted hot and humid against my water-beaded chest.
“No time for that now,” I said, my voice low and hungry with desire. “Aja, get to the rudder. Ayo, get us moving.”
The spirits jumped to follow my orders, and I dropped back to the deck to focus all my attention on Jaga. Her skin was pale, lips tinged blue from the cold and lack of oxygen. Her eyelids were covered in a network of fine red splotches, a sure sign she’d been on the verge of suffocation. I needed to get her breathing again.
“You have to wake up,” I whispered and rubbed her hands vigorously. I pulled her body into my lap and hugged her to my chest, praying the warmth would help to revive her. Her core’s light was almost gone.
Because Jaga wasn’t a spirit or an animal, it was harder for me to touch her core. People naturally built up defenses around their souls, a way to keep the world outside and hide their true selves from strangers and enemies. It was a survival mechanism that separated us from the animals. That defense made us stronger in some ways. In other ways, though, the wedges we drove between ourselves and the world made us much, much weaker.
Jaga curved into the warmth of my body, just a little, but enough to let me know she was still alive. I clutched her tighter, hoping to fan the sparks of life still in her core into a full-blown fire. It hurt to see the fierce pilot so weak. She deserved better.
My hands roamed across her back, trying to rub warmth back into her. Her heart beat against my palm, a faint and thready rhythm that reminded me of a baby rabbit I’d once found in the forest near Floating Village.
“Come on, goddamnit,” I cursed. I kissed her forehead. I pressed my lips to each of her eyes, breathed across her face, then kissed her blue lips.
Unconscious, she couldn’t have known it was me. But her lips parted, just slightly, and she responded with a faint groan. It wasn’t much, but the moment of intimacy was enough of a connection to let me push sacred energy from my core into hers. The thin thread of crimson power curled into her lungs, then slipped deeper through the rigid shell around her spirit.
Her blue shio rebelled against the intrusion, recoiling from my power like a mouse from a snake. Jaga shuddered in my arms, her arms and legs flopping weakly in protest.
She bit my lip, and the unexpected shock of pain made me so happy I could almost cry.
“You ever kiss me without asking again,” she snarled, “and I’ll cut your balls off and feed them to your stupid bird.”
“I was trying to save your life.” I leaned away from her. She was still too weak to rise from my lap, but she was alive, and the light in her core grew stronger with every passing breath. She’d live.
Unless the Jade Seekers caught up to us.
Chapter Eighteen
AYO’S COMMUNION WITH the river didn’t earn us as big of a push as I would’ve liked. Without a full core, the best she could manage was to double our speed for a quarter of an hour. The boost kept us ahead of the Jade Seekers, but not by much.
While it would’ve been nice to take the time to fully recharge her nodes with another bout of full-contact carnality, we didn’t have time for those luxuries. Jiro and his merry band of fuck nuggets weren’t about to slow down.
“Thanks for saving my life,” Jaga said. “It’s a shame your friends are going to kill us all.”
“They’re not my friends,” I said. “And they haven’t caught us yet.”
Jaga and I were back by the rudder, watching the Jade Seekers on the west shore. The river had narrowed as we went downstream, and we had to hug the east side of the waterway to stay just out of bow range. I’d have preferred to stay on the river until we reached the lake, but maybe it was time to get off the water and head overland. That would put some distance between us and the Seekers. When I raised the idea to Jaga, though, she shook her head.
“There’s a bridge at the village ahead, where the river narrows. Those fucking gold horses can cross there and catch up to us before we can escape.” She blew out an exasperated sigh. “You really are a pain in my ass, shaman.”
I stared out over the rushing river, hoping to find some inspiration. My eyes fell on the spirits seated at the boat’s prow. Ayo meditated in a desperate attempt to gather more shio for another speed boost, while Aja watched for hazards on the water ahead of us. It was well into the afternoon by that point, and we were all worn ragged by the events of the day. The spirits, despite Jaga almost drowning, looked the worst of us all. Their energy was flagging, and their cores were nearly empty. If we didn’t come up with a new plan soon, they’d start to fade away.
And by we, I meant me.
“There’s no branches off this
river?” I asked Jaga. “Even if it goes out of our way, it’d be worth it to get the fuck away from those horses.”
“I don’t think so.” Jaga frowned. “We’re closing in on the lake, so all the branches we’ll find are smaller tributaries feeding into this river. We’d have to paddle upstream, and those assholes would catch up to us in no time.”
I racked my brain, trying to think of some way I could use my shaman abilities to get us out of this mess. Unfortunately, even with my now much more orderly core, I didn’t have techniques that would be of any use in avoiding our pursuers. My claws would cut the guts out of one Seeker, no problem, but they wouldn’t hold off the whole enemy force. My mantle was strong enough to shield me from any arrows that came in, but it wouldn’t last forever, and it couldn’t protect the spirits or Jaga. My Earthen Darts technique might take down one or two of the Seekers before I ran out of rin, and then the rest of the bad guys would swarm me and carve me into bite-sized shaman chunks.
The dream meridian that flowed along with the river held enough senjin to seriously power me up, as long as I could take the time to purify it with the spirits. Which I couldn’t. It was endlessly frustrating to have a font of such immeasurable power that would kill me if I tried to put it to use.
But if there was a dream meridian of this power, then maybe there was another way out.
“The Deepways,” I said to Jaga. “Are there any near here?”
“Maybe,” Jaga said, a dark look in her eyes. “They don’t work anymore, not since the Yellow Serpent Kingdom lost control of them during the War of Shudders. But maybe... Here, take the rudder. Don’t run us into a rock or anything.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I called after the pilot as she headed toward her cabin.
The Seekers had closed the gap between us to just a few hundred yards. Their supernatural horses seemed to be picking up the pace rather than flagging. We had less than an hour, as near as I could tell, before Jiro and the rest of them drew close enough for another round of pin the tail on the shaman.