The Withering Flame (The Year of the Dragon, Book 6)

by James Calbraith

  They found us.

  A dozen men in the uniforms of the ‘new squad’ leapt over the fence. Another group appeared among the trees to their right. They were approaching slowly, carefully, wary of the magic.

  “Over here!” Takasugi led his men in the only remaining direction, to the right, through a gap in the hedgerow. Another garden — and another line of sharp swords blocking the exit. “The fish pond.” Takasugi pointed. “Ice mages, freeze it!” They bypassed the swordsmen running across the thin ice; but there were still more coming from all directions. Takasugi, running out of breath and ideas, struggled to steer his men out of harm’s way in the maze of the estates. “The pavilion! Burn that hedge! Cut through those trees! Hold the rear — don’t let them too close.”

  “I — can’t — anymore,” gasped Satō. Her last ice spear broke harmlessly on the chest of a ‘new squad’ soldier who leapt at her from the roof of a small villa. She had to finish him with her sword.

  “I can see the gate,” said Takasugi. He rushed up to the wooden crossbar locking the last door out of the labyrinth of residences, cast it aside and pulled the door open. He looked out onto the wide courtyard beyond and halted. His shoulders sank.

  Satō ran past him. “This is not the Western Gate.”

  “I know,” he replied. “I failed. They played with us all this time.”

  It was the Southern Courtyard — the one they had been trying to avoid all along. The rest of the Chōfu warriors were already there, gathered in several circles, each bristling with spears and swords like a hedgehog, surrounded by the enemy on all sides. The largest of the groups was fighting its way out, inching towards the gate.

  “It’s still open — we can make it,” said one of the wizards, and ran out; Takasugi reached out to stop him, but it was too late. Half a dozen arrows released from the battlements turned him into a bloody pin cushion. The other wizards pulled back into the garden — but the ‘new squad’ swordsmen were closing in fast from the rear.

  “Look — ” Satō raised her hand, “the banners…”

  The Satsuma flags on the gate rolled up, and Aizu ones appeared on the battlements, instead. The hinges creaked, the wings swung, and the mighty gate slammed shut.

  Betrayed by the Shimazu… again.

  The black dragon above their heads let out a roar mightier than before; a sound louder than any noise Satō had ever heard. It all but shattered her eardrums, and stunned her for a few seconds. Staggering, unable to move, she stared as the dreadful black jaws opened, and an orb of flame formed in the dragon’s throat.

  The fireball shot to the ground, and exploded in the middle of a tight group of Chōfu soldiers. The blast raised a cloud of sand and gravel, threw tiles off of nearby roofs, bent down the trees. When the air cleared, where moments earlier stood twenty brave warriors, only a scorched crater remained. Bits of charred bone and molten armour fell from the sky in a morbid shower.

  Even the Aizu soldiers were shocked by this display. Some dropped their weapons and ran away, the dragon fear finally breaking their resolve. Others stood aghast at the destruction, looking at each other in confusion, seeking encouragement from their commanders.

  The Chōfu samurai remained in place, closing their ranks around Lord Kunishi’s banner. It seemed that they were resolved to their fate, and decided to die with swords in their hands rather than hide from the dragon’s terrible wrath.

  The beast opened its maw again, targeting another circle of warriors. The Kiheitai wizards shot a few feeble spells towards it — nobody bothered to stop them — but their magic could not have hurt the monster even at their strongest. Now, the missiles barely reached the glistening black scales. Satō’s eyes welled up in hopeless fury. This is how Yamato dies, she realised, and there is nothing any of us can do…

  She raised the gloved hand to her eyes. The last resort. No — I promised Shōin… Another blast engulfed several brave warriors. But it’s already over. It doesn’t matter anymore. She stabbed her hand with the needle in the glove, and revelled in the surge of energy. Her blood burned hot, overpowering her soul. The world around her blurred and darkened, the noises grew muffled, replaced by the incessant buzzing. She saw through people, into their souls, like candle flames dancing within, scintillating.

  Even if she could do nothing against the barbarian dragon, she would still take out as many of the Aizu traitors as she’d manage. She raised the sword and funnelled the power into the blade, turning the steel into a crystal of solid ice, and aimed it at the nearest group of the ‘new squad’ soldiers…

  “The gate — look!” Takasugi’s cry broke her concentration. “Something’s happening…”

  The thick, iron-bound wings of the Southern Gate buckled, creaked, and bulged. Bright light radiated between the oaken boards. The dragon spat fire again; the flames hit the ground, vaporising another handful of defenceless samurai.

  At the exact same moment, the gate burst open, shattered from the outside by a powerful blow. Splinters of oak timber and iron binding showered the courtyard, as did bodies of the Aizu guards felled by the explosion. The beast tilted its head, surprised.

  A storm of flame and snow blustered onto the courtyard; earth rose in pillars and mounds, throwing men about like straw dolls. Thunder rolled across the sky; forked lightning bolts smashed through pillars and tree trunks.

  As the cloud of smoke and debris settled, Satō saw a short, lanky man standing in the ruined entrance. He was wearing the black uniform of the Kiheitai; his right hand was set on fire, his left — encased in a block of ice. His face was pale and covered in grime and dust. He was panting heavily. Blood trickled from his nose and ears.

  It can’t be…

  “Shōin!” Takasugi cried out and ran to the boy, just in time to support him from falling to the ground. “Shōin!”

  Two hundred soldiers of the Kiheitai Commoners Reserve had been waiting outside the gate — and now they poured forth, shooting ice, fire and lightning from their imbued spears. They were few, compared to the hundreds of Aizu warriors, but their charge was fierce and sudden; they pushed the rear of the Aizu army out of the way, and in short time managed to join up with Kunishi’s force nearest the shattered gate. The Chōfu commander saw his chance.

  “Sound the retreat!” he cried, and a bugler at his side blew the signal conch.

  Satō helped Takasugi carry Shōin onto the pavement outside the palace walls. Behind them, the battle between the Aizu and Chōfu armies erupted anew, as Kunishi’s men and the Kiheitai fought their way out onto the streets of Heian; the two forces locked up in a savage, chaotic melee, too close for the dragon to strike without harming its own.

  “I’m fine,” said Shōin. With great effort, he stood up, but fell down again. “I’ll be fine in a moment.”

  “That was some spell,” said Takasugi. “Rest up. We’ll take it from here.” He looked back to the gate. “They need me. Will you manage with him on your own?”

  Satō nodded. Takasugi drew his sword and ran back into the fray.

  “How did you get here so fast?” the wizardess asked Shōin. “Did you fly?”

  “We marched out as soon as I saw the dorako over the city…”

  “Saw it? It was in glamour until the last moment.”

  Shōin shrugged. “Not to me it wasn’t.” He coughed. “You’re bleeding,” he said, touching her forearm. His hand was still hot from the fire spell.

  “It’s the needle.”

  He frowned. “You promised.”

  “I thought we’re all going to die if I didn’t do something — ”

  Her hands trembled, her vision grew blurry again. I have to release this energy, she realised. In the rush of Shōin’s sudden appearance she almost forgot about the blood magic surging through her body. She glanced at the battlefield. If I hit them now, I will hurt some of the Kiheitai. Ironically, she suffered from the same problem as the dragon hovering above…

  “Looks like we lost this time,” said Shōin, obliv
ious to her dilemma. He tried to stand up again.

  “There will be another battle,” she replied, and forced a smile. Her veins ached, close to bursting. “We just need to figure out how to deal with those damn Black—”

  A tremendous blast silenced her words and shook the entire street, blowing away the paper windows and thatched roofs. She staggered; Shōin dropped to his knees. For a moment, she couldn’t see anything amidst the smoke and the suddenly raging flames. Then she saw what remained of the battlefield, and felt sick.

  “It struck at its own…” said Shōin, aghast. “The dorako — attacked its own men!”

  There was a crater now in the middle of the street, lined with a jagged border of smashed cobble stones. Both the Aizu and Chōfu survivors were crawling away from the wreckage, moaning and crying for help.

  But that wasn’t enough for the blood-thirsty dragon. Fire spewed from its maw like molten iron out of the crucible. There was nowhere to hide from its wrath, nowhere to run. The ‘new squad’ soldiers, standing firm and fearless even as the flames licked the eaves of the gatehouse, blocked the palace entry.

  She heard Kunishi’s voice over the din, ordering his men to scatter into the narrow streets of the merchant district. With one sweep of its giant wings, the dragon rose a hundred feet higher. From that altitude, it began shooting missiles of red flame after the fugitives, indiscriminately, starting a dozen fires at once throughout the city.

  Satō frowned. “It’s gone feral,” she said, remembering the term from Bran. “That’s the only explanation…”

  “Oh, I assure you that is not the case,” said a female voice behind her, bearing a familiar, blood-curdling coldness. “Everything is going according to our plan.”

  Satō turned around and saw a woman in a long hooded robe of silver silk. Her eyes gleamed gold, and her teeth glinted black like onyx. Even before she spotted the crest of the Eight-headed Serpent on the robe’s shoulders, she knew who the woman was.

  I knew I recognised that attack pattern.

  “Excellent,” she said, her voice almost matching the coldness of the enemy, even though inside she was burning. “I needed a good target.”

  She pointed the tip of her sword at the mocking smile of the woman, closed her eyes, and with a single whispered “Bevries,” released all the pent-up magic out of the frozen blade.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  The crackling and shattering of an ice storm rose over the noise of the raging flames. Takasugi scanned the street, searching for the source and spotted Satō, standing over a kneeling Shōin, both enveloped in a cloud of whirling snow and hail; a stream of frost gushed from the wizardess’s sword at what looked like a pillar of ice, seven feet high, branching out into a crystalline web that covered most of the avenue and linked with buildings on both sides.

  He pushed a panicked, half-burned Aizu spearman out of his way and rushed towards the scene. The icy whirlwind had dissipated by the time he got to Satō. He expected to have to support her as he had with Shōin earlier, but the wizardess showed no signs of exhaustion. He gasped when he saw her face. Her eyes glowed crimson; her skin glimmered, covered in tiny crystals, quickly melting in the heat of the dragon flame exploding all around them. She looked monstrous and beautiful at the same time.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she replied. She shook ice off her sword, as if she wiped blood. “Where’s the rest of the Kiheitai?”

  “Fighting their way to the river,” he said, still shaken. “It’s the only safe place…”

  The glow in her eyes subsided, but the faint redness remained. She helped Shōin to his feet. “Let’s join them, then.”

  They passed a couple of blocks of the inner city, and found themselves on the shores of a river — not of water, but of men; the people of Heian were fleeing from the conflagration, streaming down the broad north-south avenue. Satō recognised it from earlier in the day — it was the street of the Butsu temples.

  The temple gardens, so peaceful and charming in the morning, now served as firebreaks. The dragon flame raged on both sides, but had not yet passed over the ponds and lawns. The human river poured forth, hemmed in between the walls of fire.

  They were mostly commoners, carrying their belongings in bundles on their backs; the children were weeping, the women wailing and the men cursing at each other to get out of the way — but overall, the column of the refugees moved surprisingly smoothly.

  “They are remarkably composed,” noted Satō, as they struggled to make their way to the other side.

  “They’re used to it,” replied Takasugi. “This city burns down at least once a generation.”

  Just then, the human flood stopped, wavered, heaved, and burst into panic, spreading in all directions. Satō rose on tiptoes, trying to see over the people’s heads. A column of fire rose in the middle of the street, a few hundred feet away. She looked up. The Black Wing hovered right above her head, searching for a new target. She felt the cold stare of the reptilian eyes on herself.

  “Run!” she cried and barged into a burly man carrying a precious vase in his arms. The vase shattered into pieces; the man raised his fist in anger, but then covered his head and ran off into the crowd.

  Pushing through and swerving out of the way, they reached a narrow street running towards the river. The houses on both sides were already on fire; it was an alley of cloth merchants, and the raging flames burst in all the colours of the rainbow, as they consumed the vats of dye.

  A tall, three-storey wall of a silk warehouse collapsed in a spiral of dust, blocking their way. They turned a corner, then another; Heian was built on a grid, so it was easy to keep to the general direction, despite the inferno raging all around them. They reached a narrow canal — it was just a hundred feet or so to the river from there. A large group of merchants fought each other to get onto the flat-bottomed barges, normally used to carry saké and building material to the city warehouses.

  A woman ran out of a burning broom store in nothing but her undergarments, holding a baby in her arms and pulling a little girl behind her. She squeezed her way through to the boats, crying for help, but the panicked men paid her no heed. One of them pushed her away; the woman fell down, dropping her baby. It landed on a soft mound of earth raised by Shōin with a swipe of her hand.

  Takasugi drew his sword and slapped the rude merchant on the back with the flat of the blade. Using his weapon like a club, he cleared the path to the canal. Shōin helped the woman up and led her onto the boat, while Satō guarded the rear, waving her sword threateningly before the eyes of the angry men. Leaping from boat to boat, she got to the other side of the canal and turned to watch as the helmsman pushed the barge downstream, to safety. The merchants renewed their quarrel over the other vessels.

  “Come on!” Takasugi urged her.

  A group of Chōfu samurai appeared on the shore of the canal, a block away. The dragon spotted them, shrieked and spewed a cone of flame to block their way. The fire touched the barge with the fleeing family; in an instant, the boat, and everyone on it, turned into cinders.

  Shōin was the first to break the stunned silence.

  “We have to destroy that monster.”

  “We can’t,” said Satō, trembling. “None of our spells can harm a dorako. Oh, if only Bran was here instead of on some stupid mission!”

  Shōin winced, and averted his gaze for the moment, but then his eyes lit up again. “Your orb — it was too weak, I suppose?”

  “My orb?” She gawped at him.

  “I — I assumed you’ve already tried to use it…”

  “Everything happened so fast… I’m sorry. ” She said and stopped. She knew there was no excuse. In the rush of the battle, she forgot about the one thing that could have stopped the rampaging monster… She drew the jewel from the pouch on her sash and raised it to the light in both hands.

  It absorbed the blood from her palm, and shone a dazzling red light, brighter than ever before. Just like that nigh
t on the slope of Hinoyama Mountain, the world around her turned into a mist of white and grey shapes; all the noises were replaced by the buzzing of the Otherworld. Only the dragon remained real; a monstrous, black presence in the world of spirits. It spotted her and focused its attention on the jewel.

  She felt as it struggled with the rider on its back, as it broke from the human’s control. She felt the beast’s growing wrath… and fear.

  The orb burned her fingers, and drained what was left of her energy. She squeezed it, like she had before, but it remained solid, and hard. The dragon folded its wings and swooped at her. She poured the last of her power into the stone. The buzzing sound grew stronger, and the mist around her darkened at the edges. The stone began to change shape and soften, turning slowly into the beating heart she expected.

  But the dragon was too fast.

  “Get down!” Shōin pulled her to the ground; the dragon passed over her head with the force of a hurricane, a whirling cloud of dust and debris in its wake. A stream of flame from its maw missed her, slashing through a house behind her like a sword through straw; a terrible pain pierced her back where the fire had grazed her skin. The Tide Jewel rolled from her hand, almost falling into the canal. Shōin reached out and grabbed it.

  “Again.” He pushed it in her hand. “You almost had it.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’m spent.” The orb no longer reacted to her touch, the light inside grew dim.

  “It’s coming back,” said Takasugi, reaching to pick her up. “We’d better get to that river if we don’t want to end up as broiled eel!”

  Shōin and Takasugi supported her on each side, and this way they managed to pass the final hundred feet to the river.

  The narrow beach was filled with people, trying to find safety in its cool waters, or swim to the other side. The near side of an arched Third Bridge stood in flames; across it, a group of firemen fought to keep the inferno from consuming the houses of the entertainment district on the left shore.