“The Grimnoir are different than us . . . But in some ways, they are similar. They have oaths as well. I have fought them all over the world. They are stubborn and courageous, and seldom will one surrender. They are one of the few foes I truly appreciate fighting. I am thankful for the challenge they present.” The Shadow Guard looked over at Pang as he reached into his voluminous shirt. “Thus, I find this one disappointing.” And then he disappeared.
Matsuoka turned when he heard the gurgling noise. Shadow Guard Hayate had reappeared right next to Pang. The hilt of a dagger was protruding from the intersection of Pang’s jaw and throat. Blood gushed out of the obviously fatal wound. Pang was surprised and couldn’t even make a noise, but the traitor did have some fight in him after all. He surged his Brute magic and took a wild swing at Hayate, who simply Traveled out of the way, appeared on the other side of the Brute, raised one foot, kicked Pang in the ass, and sent him over the side. He fell over the railing with a splash, where he thrashed for a moment before sinking into the dark water.
“Save your gold.” Hayate went to the chest and carefully closed the lid. He walked back to Matsuoka and leaned against the rail. “We are fighting Grimnoir tonight, so expect casualties. You may divide this gold between the families of your men who perish.”
Matsuoka bowed. “That is very kind of you, Shadow Guard.”
Hayate looked at him with heavy-lidded grey eyes that seemed to glow in the dark. “That is because I am a very kind man.”
They kept a few boats stashed in the flooded first floor. Crumbling holes where the windows had been made for great hidden docks. Sullivan had been impressed by the Shanghai Grimnoir’s creativity.
Zhao was driving their little boat. He was the only one in view, standing in back, steering the small outboard motor. Lady Origami, Barns, and Sullivan were under the lifted tarp which served as a sort of tent-cabin. If they were accosted, Lady Origami was closest to the flap, because hopefully if anybody saw that there was a Nipponese passenger, the rest of them would be left alone.
Their little boat practically disappeared into the shadows of the massive freighters. It would take them a day to make it back to where the Traveler was hidden at this rate. It wasn’t going to be a fun trip, all crammed up beneath a tarp, especially since Barns had pulled his fedora down over his eyes and gone right to sleep. He hadn’t started yet, but Sullivan knew it was only a matter of time before Barns started talking in his sleep. Bunking together in the officers’ quarters had taught him that, but the sleep talking would be extra annoying on a tiny boat stuck under a tarp.
“It will be good to get back to the ship,” Lady Origami said. “I prefer to be in the air.”
“Not me. I’m all about being on the ground.”
“You are a Heavy.” She smiled. “Of course you like ground. I am a Torch. I am of fire and live in the sky, but now we are on water. However can we cope?” She gave him a wink, and when he returned it, she laughed.
Was she flirting with him again? He really wasn’t used to that. What a strange—
There was a thump. Zhao had just stamped on the boards to get their attention. “Quiet.”
Lady Origami put her ear next to the tarp. Sullivan did the same. There was a noise growing on the river. Engines. Big engines.
“Patrol boats,” Zhao hissed. “Many patrol boats.”
The Grimnoir had posted guards. They were not sufficient.
Hayate appeared behind the sentry. He was a local man. Young. Strong. Fit. With the build of a farmer or a worker. He had a Mauser rifle, slung over one shoulder, that he would never have the opportunity to use. Hayate struck so quickly that no reaction was possible. One hand over the mouth, other hand driving the blade into the spinal column and twisting until it was severed from the base of the brain. Near-instantaneous death. Hayate had lost track of how many times he had performed such a maneuver.
The Shadow Guard silently lowered the corpse to the floor. He had timed his attack for the exact moment when the sentry was passing through the deepest night. He scanned across the rooftops, noting a few brief flashes of movement as his men took down other sentries. Hayate scowled. He would reprimand the men for such sloppiness. Even though he could see in the dark with his grey eyes, the fact that he’d witnessed their sloppy takedowns meant that the act of seeing them at all had been briefly possible. Such a failure was unacceptable. He would personally reprimand them for such carelessness on such a vital assignment. And a Shadow Guard’s reprimand was usually extremely painful.
Waterboarding built character.
Hayate drew his short sword and waited. It was the preferred weapon of the Shadow Guard, small enough for close quarters, but sharp enough to remove a limb. It was not a fighting weapon. It was a killing weapon. Fighting was for the Iron Guard. Victory belonged to the Shadows.
The final rooftop sentry was visible for a moment, silhouetted against the city lights. He walked around a corner and simply did not reappear. There had been no sound. No sign of struggle. That pleased Hayate. That was how it should be done.
With the guards eliminated, now the real test began. They would take their time and search for inscribed spells of warning. The Grimnoir excelled at such things. Then the Shadow Guard would enter the apartment and begin killing. It would be a race to see how many lives they could end before the alarm was raised.
Hayate froze. The sound of a motor began far below, and a small boat appeared from beneath one of the rusting overhangs, leaving a white wake through the muck floating on top of the water. The timing was unfortunate, as that meant someone had just slipped his grasp.
Major Matsuoka would have to pick them up with his patrol boats. The small boat did not matter, as long as it wasn’t Toru. The life of Tokugawa Toru belonged to one of his thousand brothers. Tokugawa Hayate intended to take that life tonight.
Lance Talon had been having a hard time going to sleep. He’d taken his boots off, but was still dressed, lying on a shitty mat in a shitty apartment building, wired from too much coffee and too much dwelling on the insurmountable task before them to even begin feeling tired. Maybe it was the excitement of being in a foreign city again. After all, he had been an accomplished world traveler in his youth. Maybe it was the idea of striking such a wild blow against the Imperium, which had murdered his family. Maybe it was because deep back in the recesses of his mind, he knew that this time they’d bitten off more than they could chew, and they probably wouldn’t make it out of crashing this particular party. Whatever it was, Lance couldn’t sleep.
Neither could Diamond, apparently. The Mover was sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the big room, reading a skinny paperback book. Since they were in the middle of the building and the windows had been covered, it was safe to have a little light, and Diamond had opened the shutters on an oil lamp just a crack.
“Hey, Diamond.”
The Mover looked up and pushed his glasses back on his nose. “Am I keeping you up? I can kill the light.”
“Naw . . . Can’t sleep. What’re you reading?”
Diamond chuckled and held it up. “Believe it or not, it’s one of your adventure books.”
Lance immediately recognized the cover. It was a hunter about to get run down by an elephant stampede, and even though that had never actually happened to him, and the scene wasn’t even in the book at all, that exciting cover sure had helped sell a lot of copies when it had first come out. “No shit? How about that?”
“I found it on the Traveler.”
Somebody must have brought it along as a joke. That often happened when Lance ended up working with unfamiliar Grimnoir. At some point, usually over dinner, with a big crowd, somebody would make a big deal about getting his autograph, and everybody would have a good laugh. It wasn’t like any of the knights ever actually read it. “What do you think of it?”
“I’m a bit of a critic. I used to write reviews for the local paper even, but it’s pretty good . . .” Diamond grinned. “Maybe a little far-fetched,
though.”
“Far-fetched?” Sure, he embellished his life a bit, what writer didn’t? But for the most part, that was how it had really happened. He’d always had the wanderlust. Ironically enough, the only thing that had ever got him to settle down was meeting the right woman, and it just so happened she’d turned out to be a member of a magical secret society. “Says a guy who’s about to fight the whole Imperium in order to defend the world from a magic-eating outer-space monster.”
“Oh, not the adventure parts, or the cattle drive, or the auto racing, or the bare-knuckle boxing, or the logging, or the panning for gold in Alaska, or the big-game hunting on the savannah. Those I can buy. It’s the chapter where you went looking for sunken treasure wrecks around the South Pacific that tests my suspension of disbelief.”
“Nope. All true.” Lance smiled, thinking back, good times. He’d learned how to use an atmospheric diving suit and had walked on the bottom of the sea. He’d even used his Power to play with the sharks. “Every last word of it, completely truthful.”
“The ladies really don’t wear any clothes there?”
“Hardly a bit. Just little skirts made out of grass.”
Diamond went back to the book. “Well, how about that? And all these years I’ve been working for the society in boring old America, I’ve been missing out.”
Lance rolled over on the hard mat which served as his bed. “You Pittsburgh boys lost a man back at the North Pole, didn’t you?”
“Our Healer. Heck of a thing . . .” Diamond sighed. “You know how it goes.”
“Sure do . . .” Lance muttered. “Damn sure do.”
A piece of paper floated up from the ground and landed in the book. Page marked, the book closed itself, and then drifted to the ground. Diamond took off his glasses and rubbed his face. “You know what? You’ve inspired me, Lance. When this job is done, I’m moving to someplace warm and filled with beautiful, young dancing girls who don’t wear hardly any clothes.”
“Fiji was pretty nice.”
“Fiji? Naw . . . I’m moving to Las Vegas. They made gambling legal there a couple years back. Just imagine how much money a telekinetic can make playing suckers at the roulette tables. I’ll build a casino and social club with the winnings.” Diamond waved one hand through the air as if he was taking in the majesty of it all. “I’ll call it ‘Diamond Steve’s.’”
“License to print money,” Lance agreed.
“Beats being a book reviewer.”
Lance laughed. “Hell, it beats being whatever it is I am now.”
And then a ninja appeared in front of Lance and stabbed him in the chest with a sword.
Chapter 16
It has long been my philosophy that magic comes with a price.
—Baron Okubo Tokugawa,
Chairman of the Imperial Council,
My Story, 1922
Free City of Shanghai
Toru was pleased. The armor was coming together nicely.
Tonight was merely a test to see what needed to be fixed, corrected, or adjusted. Before he wore it into battle, he would ritually cleanse himself with bathing, meditation, and prayer. Each piece would be laid out carefully and donned in the order which was most conducive to awakening his warrior spirit. Everything had its place, a mixture of ancient tradition and modern effectiveness, all in a search for unachievable martial perfection. That was the manner in which Toru had lived, so that would be the manner in which he chose to die.
Getting the helmet on without an assistant was the most difficult part. Once the shoulder guards were in place, it was difficult to get his now-cumbersome limbs and thick steel hands into the correct angle. Not to mention that if he was sloppy, and burned his Power too hard while willing his limbs to move, he could potentially rip his own head off.
The world seemed different through the mempo. There were delicate kanji engraved onto the inside of the thick, shatterproof glass. They came to life and began feeding him information. The Nishimura armor did not just make him stronger, faster, and damage resistant, its true force-multiplication abilities came from the integrated system which kept him apprised of the battlefield around him. He had not worn such a device since the academy, but one would never forget such a magical marvel. As the American knights were fond of saying, it was “like riding a bicycle.”
He needed to replace the helmet padding, because the steel ridges were cutting into his skin. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. Despite cleaning it repeatedly, it still smelled like tobacco smoke. When this was over, Pang was getting a tetsubo to the face.
Toru studied the magical kanji unfolding before his eyes. Sadly, the helmet had taken more damage than he had expected, because it was sensing an impossible amount of magic in the vicinity. The Grimnoir tended to be above average Actives, but the majority of them had gone back to the other safe houses or returned to the Traveler. There were less than twenty of them remaining here, but the Nishimura kanji was sensing four times that number. Toru would have to adjust the sensitivity—
No . . .
The helmet had been carved with kanji to pick up outside sounds and amplify them to the user’s ear. They were designed to cut out once the noise reached a dangerous level in order to protect the user’s hearing, but whereas normal armor made a warrior less aware of his surroundings, the Nishimura had the opposite effect. There was a noise coming from the floor above. The briefest cry, then a sort of sliding. It was the gentle lowering of a body as the life pumped out. A trickle of plaster dust fell from the ceiling.
Toru surged his Power, bent his knees, and leapt. The suit lurched upward with surprising agility. His fist went right through the boards. The kanji bonded directly to his nerves, and he felt the steel as if it was his own skin. He caught hold of something soft, an ankle, as gravity pulled him back down. He pulled a man right through the floor.
He released the leg. The man hit the ground next to Toru, surprised and choking against the spreading cloud of mold and dust. Toru looked him over. Nipponese. Young. Strong. Dressed in greys and dark browns. Knives in his belt. A Nambu pistol with a sound suppressor had fallen on the floor next to him. The Nishimura warned that this man had been branded with three kanji.
The Shadow Guard looked up, and the shocked expression on his face said that he realized he was lying at the feet of a mighty Iron Guard. Toru could tell that the Shadow Guard was confused and had not been expecting to see one of the ultra-rare suits of Nishimura armor here, and best of all, since he automatically assumed they were on the same side, he did not try to escape. Shadow Guards were usually Fades or Travelers, so they could be slippery.
A single drop of blood fell through the hole in the ceiling, spilled from the neck of the Grimnoir the Shadow Guard had just eliminated. The drop landed on one of Toru’s horns and rolled down in a red line.
“What are Iron Guard doing here?” the Shadow Guard hissed. “This is Master Hayate’s operatio—”
Hayate?
Toru lifted one metal boot and stomped on the Shadow Guard’s chest. He’d forgotten the intensity of the strength-amplifying abilities of the suit, and the Shadow Guard nearly popped as Toru put his foot through the floorboards. Hayate was one of the best assassins in the Imperium. If he had found them, then their entire mission was in jeopardy. He jerked his foot free and moved to the corner where his weapons had been stacked. He took up the spiked steel tetsubo. The mighty war club felt like a pencil in his new steel hand.
The armor would be tested more thoroughly tonight than he’d expected.
Lance saw the sword pierce his ribs before he felt it. The ninja went to shove it in deeper, but Lance grabbed hold of the blade. It sliced through his palm, but he locked down hard. His other hand reached for the holstered revolver resting next to him.
The ninja shoved. The blade slipped through his bloody palm. Now Lance felt it like a fire filling his lungs. He yanked the big revolver from the holster, thumbed back the hammer, and jammed it up into the ninja’s armpit. Lance levered it i
n toward the vitals. The Traveler realized what was happening, but too late, as most Travelers weren’t near as quick as Faye had been.
Lance blew the ninja’s heart out his side.
There was movement everywhere. Diamond’s oil lamp fell on the floor and ignited. Black cloth boots with the weird Imperium toe cuts were landing around him. Lance grimaced as he pulled the sword out and it scraped against his ribs. There was blood everywhere. Blood from his chest. Blood from his hand. Blood from the other knights who were being hacked to pieces in their sleep. A black shape loomed over him, but Lance fanned back the hammer with his injured hand while holding down the trigger and gave the ninja three rounds to the chest.
Before that one was even done falling, Lance had sat up and discovered that Diamond was in a wrestling match with a ninja, so he shot that assassin in the back of the head. There was one more headed his way. Lance aimed and the masked face and fired his last shot. That ninja went grey the instant he pulled the trigger, and the bullet passed harmlessly through the Fade.
“Shit.” Lance dropped the empty Colt and went for his other one.
There was a glint of steel. The Fade drew a throwing knife and hurled it, end over end, directly at Lance. It struck him in the arm in a splash of red, and he lost his grip on the other revolver. “Aaaahhh!”
The ninja quickly drew another knife and flung it.
This knife froze inches from Lance’s eyes and hung there. Then it flipped around and shot back at the ninja like it had been launched from out of a cannon. The Fade couldn’t react in time and the knife hit him right in the forehead. The ninja went limp and hit the floor.
Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles Page 30