by Nick Harrow
“We’re not going to be able to cross the lake in the middle of the day,” I said. My eyes pored over the spirits’ cores and saw that they both had two full nodes of shio. Their little bit of sexual healing had filled us all the way up to the top. Perfect. “We’ll wait until nightfall. This fucking mist and the darkness should help us sneak right past the bad guys. And if we can’t get around them, I’ll kill them.”
“You seem pretty confident about that,” Jaga said. “Are you willing to risk my boat on this mission?”
“Your boat won’t be in any danger,” I said. “I have a plan.”
“Are you going to tell us about it?” Ayo asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Tonight.”
“What are we supposed to do for the rest of the day?” Aja asked. “Sit around with our thumbs up our asses?”
“There’s something else that I’d like to sit on,” Jaga said, her eyes hungry.
“We’ve got a little time,” I said. “But keep it down. We don’t want the whole army coming to see what all the noise is about.”
The spirits laughed at that, and I couldn’t help but smile.
Darkness was coming, but, for the moment, we were all together in the light. I decided to make the most of it.
Chapter Twenty-One
NO ONE CAUGHT US IN the act, which was some of the best luck I’d had so far. Satisfied and relaxed, we all sat on the roof of the sampan’s cabin to watch the sunset and fill our empty bellies with the last of the food we’d taken out of the Deepways cargo. Nuts and dried berries weren’t exactly filling, but we couldn’t afford to draw attention to our position with a fire.
“While you’ve been stuffing your faces and each other, I was flying around looking for bad guys,” Yata said as its claws touched down on the cabin next to me. “We’ve got three patrol skiffs between us and the island. There are a few more in the area, but I don’t think they’ll be close enough to spot us.”
“Can we slip between them?” Aja asked. “The sampan’s a pretty good size, but in the dark with the mist to hide us, we might be able to do it.”
“Yes, if we time it just right.” Yata flapped up to perch on my shoulder, careful not to pierce me with its talons. “But we can’t afford any mistakes. Once we start moving, everything has to be just right or they’ll spot us.”
“Then I’ll kill them,” I said. “If we sneak past the scouts on the way in, we’ll have to sneak past them on our way out. If we kill them all, that halves our chances of being spotted, and we won’t have to worry about being discovered until their watch ends and someone notices they didn’t come back to camp.”
“Seems risky.” Jaga scratched the side of her chin and shrugged. “We get up on them without being seen, then you have to get from the sampan over to their skiff without attracting attention, and then you have to kill them before they can raise an alarm. There are a lot of steps in your plan, and if any of them goes wrong, we’re fucked.”
“And that is why we’re not going to do it that way,” I said with a grin. “I have another plan. We’ll make our move after sundown, as soon as they finish changing the scouts.”
We waited in uneasy silence, our shoulders touching, our toes overlapped in the center of our small circle.. An impossible number of enemies was headed our way, and yet, with these women beside me, I was confident we’d win this thing.
“Thank you,” I said. “All of you. I couldn’t have made it this far without you.”
“You wouldn’t have come this way at all if it hadn’t been for us,” Aja said with a nervous chuckle. “You’d probably be in a lot less danger if you weren’t trying to get us back to our mistress.”
“True.” I gave her a wolfish grin. “But if I hadn’t met you, then I wouldn’t have advanced my core. And I wouldn’t have found Jaga, who wouldn’t have brought us all this way south. She also wouldn’t have given me the history lesson I needed to understand what the fuck I’m doing here. So, I’ll say thanks again.”
“Okay, asshole,” Jaga said. “Enough of this feel-good bullshit. The sun’s gone. If we’re going to do this, I want to know the rest of your plan.”
“I’m going to kill the scouts, you’re going to sail the spirits over to the island,” I said with a shrug. “It’s a pretty simple plan, but I’ll be happy to go over it with you again, if it’s really necessary.”
“It’s my boat,” Jaga said plaintively. “If it gets blown up, what am I supposed to do?”
“Stick with us,” Ayo said. “We’ll get you a new boat. A nicer one.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Jaga said with an exasperated sigh. “Look, I’m a riverboat pilot. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at. People almost never try to kill me, and as long as I stay away from city watch patrols and the few guards who roam the rivers, I can pretty much do whatever the fuck I want.”
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” I assured Jaga. “I’ll deal with the scouts. It’s not a problem.”
“Okay,” the captain said. “Fine. The scouts won’t be a problem. What about the White Tiger army? What about the fucking Jade Seekers? What about the next hundred assholes you pick a fight with who decide to kill me because I happened to be nearby?”
Jaga’s eyes were wide and wet. I felt the pain in her heart, the worry about what she’d gotten involved in when I jumped on her boat while Ulishi burned.
“You’re right,” I said. Ayo and Aja stared at in shock. “This isn’t your fight. I never asked what you wanted, and I should have. You were going to leave us upstream before the Jade Seekers showed up and screwed that plan right in the ass. I don’t have any right to ask any more of you. You’ve done more than I could have hoped, and you’ve only bitched a little bit.”
“I’m not bitching,” Jaga grumped. “It’s called expressing a concern, motherfucker.”
“I know.” I reached out, took Jaga’s hand, and squeezed it between both of mine. “I’m only going to ask one more favor. Get us to the island. I’ll clear out the scouts, you can do whatever you want after we land. Turn back, skirt around the lake to find another river, whatever you feel like. No one will know you helped us here tonight.”
“God, when you say it like that you make me sound like such a bitch,” Jaga moaned. “Fine, it’s a deal. I like you, Kyr. I like you girls, too. But I can’t risk all I’ve got for you. No fuck, not even the best fuck of my life, is worth that.”
“I understand,” I said and kissed her cheek. “But you’re going to miss out on a lot more fucks if you leave now.”
Yata landed on the cabin’s edge with a faint squawk.
“The guards have changed over,” it said. “If you two are done playing kissy-face, it’s time to fuck some shit up.”
“Remember the plan,” I said to the three-legged raven. “If you see anything, let me know right away. I don’t want any surprises to fuck this up.”
Before anyone else could ask me about my plan, I dove off the cabin’s roof and into the river. Fish darted in every direction as I speared through the water’s depths, and I looped a strand of rin around a speedy little perch before it could escape. Its energy flowed into the node I’d emptied to capture it, and its essential fishiness temporarily became a part of me. My swimming improved, I could hold my breath longer, and my skin slid through the water as if I were greased.
My spirit sight showed me the first guard, his core a pale gray blob just above the water’s surface. He only had a single node, and it held just a faint splash of sacred energy to sustain him. He had no techniques, no special skills that would save him.
Good.
I knifed through the water toward my target, the animal energy I’d taken into my core filling me with a bestial urge to hunt and kill. When I was a yard from my target’s core, I rose from the water in a silent rush. A final kick shot me up and out of the water, and I landed behind the guard without a sound. He only knew I was there because the skiff rocked beneath us, throwing him off-balance.
The guard tried to scream, but it was too late. The razor-sharp tips of my claws dug into his throat and scooped his trachea out. Blood sprayed into the air along with a feeble sputter of rin from his shocked core. I caught him before he could fall and then eased him down to the skiff’s rough planks. He hadn’t had a chance to make a sound, and none of the other scouts were near enough to us to notice what had happened. They were still out there, blind and deaf to the danger that was coming, bored stiff and all alone on the river’s black surface.
The next guard didn’t fare any better. I surged up out of the water in front of him, grabbed his ankles, and pulled him down into the dark water with the smallest of splashes. A single swipe of my claws opened the warrior from throat to crotch, and his blood filled the surrounding water with a metallic tang that made my throat itch and my mouth ache to bite. I hadn’t felt like this since I’d left the crimson bear, and Mielyssi’s presence seemed strengthened by my savage attack. Her spirit was all around me, stronger than the blood in the water, stronger than even the scent of my own flesh. She was inside me, where she belonged, and I yearned to be back inside her.
Soon. I swear.
Her fierce spirit goaded me on, and I rose to the surface to take a quick breath before disappearing to hunt down the next foolish scout.
That was when everything went to shit.
I was halfway out of the water when a bolt of red-hot agony shot through my right side. The unexpected blast of pain doubled me over in mid-leap, and I crashed down onto the skiff’s deck in an ungainly pile.
“What the fuck?” the scout gasped in surprise. He fumbled for something at his waist, and I knew if he found it we were completely and totally screwed.
The torture in my side made it impossible for me to stand, so I did the next best thing. I raked my claws across the back of the man’s ankles, severing his tendons. If I couldn’t reach his throat, I’d bring his throat down to me.
Shock robbed the scout of his breath, and he crumpled to the deck alongside me. He’d retrieved the spirit whistle from a pouch hanging off his belt. If he broke it, the siren’s hellish wail would call every soldier within a mile straight to our location.
We couldn’t fucking have that.
Tearing the man’s throat out wouldn’t stop him from breaking the thin bone item and unleashing its alarm. Even tearing out his brain might not be able to stop him for calling for help.
I slashed my claws through his wrist, just above the edge of his padded leather jerkin. The severed hand popped off the end of his arm, twisted in the air twice, and splashed into the river. Not even a bubble of air rose to mark the spot where the hand had vanished.
The lance of pain in my side disappeared with the man’s hand. I dragged myself back to my feet and glared down at my fallen foe.
The man stared at me from where he lay on the deck. His eyes were so wide they looked ready to pop out of his skull. He didn’t seem afraid, or even like he wanted to cry out. When he finally spoke, a simple question fell from his lips.
“What are you?”
“The end of this world.” I tore out his throat and he rolled away, convulsing as his life gushed from between his fingers. His body splashed into the river with no more sound than a big bass leaping up to catch a firefly.
“And the beginning of a new one.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
THE MIST ABOVE THE lake’s surface glowed like silver under the moonlight, so dense and thick I didn’t realize I’d reached the island until the water became too shallow for me to swim through. I crawled out of the lake and onto dry land, only to find that the mist was much thicker here.
The stink of corruption was everywhere. This island lay at a nexus of dream meridians, all of which were tainted with some hellish spirit poison that I now knew had been used to fight off a demonic invasion decades ago. The defenders had won at a terrible cost. It might’ve been better to let the demons win, to let this world slip away to be replaced by another.
And then what of me, shaman? I would have gone with it, and you would have died alongside me, your spirit trapped forever at the top of Mount Shiki while the world you’d once known vanished from the pages of history.
“Fine, I’m wrong,” I whispered, a faint smile on my lips. No matter what the crimson bear said, I was glad to hear her voice and feel her presence still with me.
I waited on the beach for the others to arrive because there was no way they’d be able to find me any deeper into the mist. A few minutes later, Yata appeared out of the fog, wings flapping, talons extended to land gently on my shoulder.
Jaga’s sampan glided up onto the gravel beach moments after the raven appeared, its smooth hull scraping across the fine, water-polished rocks at the island’s perimeter. Ayo and Aja immediately leapt out of the boat, our meager gear over their shoulders, eyes dancing with the blue radiance of spirit sight. The boat’s captain appeared on the prow, one foot resting on the rail.
“You do good work, Kyr,” she said. “I’ll miss that cock of yours, but I certainly won’t miss the rest of this shit. I’ll give you a quarter of an hour to get back from doing whatever the fuck you came here to do. If you catch me before I leave, I’ll happily take you with me to my next stop. Otherwise, good luck. Something tells me you’ll need it.”
I strode down the beach and snatched Jaga off the boat’s deck. I held her in my arms, cradling her against my chest like a child, and stared down into her eyes. They were the brightest green, like chips of polished jade in the sun. The faint white scars that cut through the deep tan of her cheeks and forehead shone like faint wisps of silver. I kissed her, gently, and squeezed her tight.
“You’re a hell of a woman, Jaga,” I said. “You’ve done more than I could have expected. I’ll always remember you.”
“You fucking better, asshole,” she said with a grin. “It’s just my luck we’ll meet again, though. My pussy tends to chase after the pricks most liable to cause me fucking trouble. Better hurry; the clock’s running on that time limit,”
She wriggled free of my grip and jumped back onto her boat with ease. The spirits joined me to wave goodbye to Jaga, then dragged me deeper toward the island’s misty interior. Aja handed me my war club, and grinned up at me.
“Our mistress’s temple is at the heart of the island.” Ayo seemed positively giddy with the prospect of returning home. I was glad to see her happy, but it pained me to realize that our time together was coming to an end. By morning, there was a very good chance I’d be alone or dead.
I wasn’t sure which would be worse.
“Temple?” I asked. “She’s a priestess?”
“No,” Aja laughed. “She’s the Witch Goddess of the Lake of Moonsilver Mist.”
Oh, well, that changed things.
“You could’ve said something about that earlier.” I followed the spirits, watching for danger on all sides. My spirit sight didn’t show me any immediate threats, but the tainted shadows of corruption were everywhere. They could easily hide dark forces intent on ripping out our guts and chewing off my balls.
I’d pass on both experiences, thanks.
“We could have,” Ayo admitted. “But she told us not to until after we reached the island. No sane man would turn down a goddess’s plea for help. We only wanted you to do this if it’s what you truly felt was right.”
“Blood God,” I muttered. “You’d have let your mistress, and yourselves, die because I wasn’t saving you for the right reason?”
“Yep,” Aja said. “Imagine our relief when you turned out to be a real hero and not a complete piece of shit.”
“You’re
welcome,” I said. “But I’m no hero. I’m just a half-naked fucking shaman.”
The spirits both laughed at that, and their musical voices lightened the mood as we made our way deeper into the island’s interior.
The temple emerged from the fog ahead of us, its peaked roof rising far overhead, silver beams of moonlight playing in the thick coils of mist between the tall columns at its entrance. This place had once been beautiful, I imagined, though the shadows and moonlight now made it look sinister.
“She’s in there,” Ayo said excitedly. “I can feel it. Faint, but she’s there.”
“Wait.” Aja grabbed the white-haired sprite by the wrist and brought them both to a halt. “Something’s wrong.”
She’d no sooner gotten the words out than a heavy iron club longer than I was tall swooped down, clearly intent on crushing me like a bug.
I threw myself to the side, and the club slammed through the space where I’d just been standing. If I’d been a half second slower, it would’ve pulped me into a red mist sprayed across the island.
The weapon’s wielder was enormous, at least twenty feet tall and too big for me to reach around with both arms. It strode toward me on a pair of ebony hooves at the end of long, hairless legs the color of spilled blood. The creature wore a loincloth around its thick waist, and a pendulous belly covered in open sores and weeping tumors dangled above its heavy chain belt. The humanoid beast’s flaccid breasts hung down to its belly, nipples leaking green ichor that stained its skin. The monstrosity’s arms were thick with corded muscle, and massive ivory tusks jutted from either side of its slack mouth. Wide eyes, pitch black and surrounded by a faint smoky aura, bulged from its misshapen skull as it advanced on me.
“That can’t be Ohsa,” Ayo gasped. “It can’t be.”
I didn’t care what the monster was. It was clear only one of us would get out of this fight alive.
It swung its club again, a clumsy backhand strike that missed me by a good yard, and I ducked under the blow and charged in close where the creature would have a harder time smashing me flat. With a savage howl, I tossed my war club away and activated the Crimson Claws technique.