by Jay Kristoff
“Wait!” Aleksandar roared. “He’s mine!”
The men stilled around him, pulled back half a dozen steps. Aleksandar hefted his shield, leveled his lightning hammer at the slaver’s head. The man seemed to understand, his men parting around him. He reached up to his power unit, snapped his clan banner free. He thrust the flag deep into the bodies around him, the once brilliant blue now stained muddy gray. The Dragon sigil fluttered in the freezing wind, the rain seemed a final defiant hiss at the army come to avenge twenty years of slaughter. But not without a fight. Not on his knees.
The men around Aleksandar began chanting, a rhythmic shout like a pulse, a single word. “Blood, blood, blood.” And to his shock, the Iron Samurai held his sword aloft and spoke in the Morcheban tongue.
“I salute you, brother,” he called. “I am sorry.”
Aleksandar looked across the bloody battlements at the samurai, storm crashing around him, the cacophony of slaughter thick in the air. He wondered who this man was. What drove him. Whether he lost any sleep at the thought of the butchery his people had committed. Was he a bloodthirsty warmonger? Or just a soldier following orders?
In the end, did it matter?
Aleksandar thought of his mother. His sister. His father. And then he replied in perfect Shiman, voice dripping hatred.
“I am not sorry,” he said. “And you are not my brother.”
And then he charged.
Aleksandar thundered across bloody stone, black rain in his eyes. The downpour made a noise on his shield like a thousand tiny drums, his lightning hammer raised high, poised to pound its own rhythm on this slaver bastard’s skull.
Thunder cracked overhead as they met, hammer whistling harmlessly past the samurai’s head as he sidestepped, a burst of sparks illuminating a spray of black water as the chainkatana sheared away a chunk of Aleksandar’s shield. The Kapitán swung a backhanded blow, hammer ablaze with electricity, the samurai leaning back as the weapon crackled past his face. Within a heartbeat, the slaver was on the front foot again, clipping another corner of Aleksandar’s shield away and tearing a jagged gouge across his breastplate.
Aleksandar lunged, two rapid strikes deflected, sparks bursting, blue-black smoke snaking from the clunking engine on the slaver’s back. He dipped a toe into the gore at his feet, kicked up a clod of blood toward the samurai’s face, landing a solid blow on his opponent’s shoulder. The samurai went rigid as raw current crackled over his armor, smoke rising from his skin. Aleksandar was sure the electric shock would have finished him there and then, but a riposte sent him staggering back, sparks flying as chunks of iron disappeared from his shield. The slaver was a master swordsman, fully aware that his chi-powered armor gave him an edge. For Aleksandar to become entangled was to die. To drop his guard was to die. To parry the samurai’s strikes was to risk his weapon being cleaved at the haft, and thus, to die.
Aleksandar fell back, sidestepping rather than deflecting and countering. Fuel spilled down the samurai’s back from crumpled tanks, coating his legs with thick, bubbling red. It wouldn’t be long before the tanks ran dry—the both of them knew it. The slaver sought to finish him before his armor’s speed and strength failed, for then he would simply be a man. Not a terror towering over frightened children in the streets of Krakaan or Veschkow. Not a demon cutting through men like sunlight through motes of dust. Just one little man in a suit of lifeless iron.
Time was on Aleksandar’s side. He could simply play defensively and wait for the armor to fail. But to topple a cripple in front of his entire command? He would not have his sons remember a day like that. He would have to defeat this man, stronger, faster, sharper, by using the one weapon the chi-mongers could not build for the oppressors.
His wits.
The chants of his men fell away, the army at his back fading alongside. He was back in the forest again, thirteen years old, all the bravado and energy of his hatred dissipating as the wolf stalked from the darkness, lips peeling back from fangs like knives. Great Kirill, alpha of the Dires. Terror of the Blackwood. Slayer of a hundred men.
Fooled and butchered at the last by a thirteen-year-old possum.
Aleksandar stepped forward with his lightning hammer high, allowing his shield to drop. Seeing the opening, the samurai struck, chainblade scything toward the Kapitán’s throat. Ready for the blow, Aleksandar brought his shield back up, the blade tearing through the metal as if it were butter. But though the slaver was strong as five men, though the blow would have cut a body clean in half, it was not quite enough to shear through two feet of tempered steel. The sword was snarled in the ruined shield, three inches shy of cleaving it through. Aleksandar dragged it down, bringing the samurai’s blade with it, and sent his hammer crashing into the slaver’s face.
A burst of sparks. A spray of blood. The samurai staggering back as another blow crashed into his helm, wrenching his head across his neck, buckling the iron as if it were tin. Current danced across the samurai’s armor, blood spraying between the rain as he dropped to one knee and Aleksandar brought his hammer down with both hands.
A bone-shattering crunch. Metal splitting metal. A wet sigh. The slaver collapsed, leaking blood onto sodden stone, belly-down before the Dragon flag. Aleksandar stood, shoulders slumped, trying to catch his breath from the poisoned air. The roars of his men were deafening, filling him to bursting. Finally, he stepped forward and tore the samurai’s banner loose, threw it onto the stone at his feet. And turning to the legion around him, he pointed to the keep with his crimson-slick hammer and roared at the top of his lungs.
“Kill them all!”
Hammers high, his men set about the grim task of butchery. Aleksandar stood on the battlements in the rain, looming over his fallen foe. He rolled the body over with his boot, straining with the weight. As the corpse flopped onto its back, one arm fell outstretched, fingers uncurling from a tiny picture frame on a leather cord, gleaming in the black rain. Aleksandar plucked the prize from the fallen samurai’s hand, looking down on a small portrait—a beautiful woman, a handsome boy, two pretty girls. Smiling faces, eyes shining with the joy of better days.
Not so different.
Not so strange.
He stared at the ruin of this man who called him “brother,” heart slowing in his chest as chaos filled the air, hanging in the skies with the echo of Mother Natassja’s words.
“Your sons will remember this day. How they remember is up to you.”
Aleksandar picked up the Dragon flag, lying in the blood where he’d thrown it. He draped it over the fallen samurai’s body, covered the shattered face. Thunder bellowed overhead, a deafening whip-crack rumbling down his spine. He could hear the carnage around him. Corpses toppling from the walls. Blood like rain. Men and boys screaming. His mouth tasted black, lips split and throat choking.
He said a prayer for the fallen samurai, tucked the portrait into his belt and began trudging back to command with the taste of bile in his mouth. The taste of blood. The taste that, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he would rather spit than swallow.
Victory.
12
THE HAND WE ARE DEALT
“Lady Fortune pisses on me again,” Akihito growled.
The Blackbird laughed, leaned forward with a broad grin, dragging the pile of copper bits from the center of the table.
“Uzume is a capricious bitch, my friend. Only Foxes and fools throw prayers her way. Better off praying to Fūjin like me. At least the God of Wind and Ways can pick a direction.”
Four figures sat cross-legged around a low table in the gardens of Kitsune-jō, listening to the sound of mustering troops, hammers beating anvils, distant thunder. Yukiko and Hana were in counsel with the Kitsune clanlord, organizing accommodations for the Kagé refugees. And though it was still bitterly cold, a feeble patch of sunlight had broken through the clouds, encouraging a few players to gather for a round of lunchtime oicho-kabu.
There was Akihito of course, still dressed in
dappled Iishi green and brown. His trusty kusarigama was wrapped at his waist, the sickle-blade newly sharpened, a great iron-studded warclub that doubled as a crutch close to hand. His hair was bound in warrior’s braids, beard not quite long enough to plait. One of the Kagé had given him some resin instead, and he’d fashioned his whiskers into a collection of impressive spikes.
Piotr sat beside him, the muted day reflected in the milk-white of his blind eye, the flower-blue of the other. Despite what anyone told him about the effect of Shima’s sunlight, Piotr refused to wear a pair of goggles. He was dressed in a strange jacket of deep red, his wolf skin folded up beneath him as a cushion. When he laughed, the gouge below his right eye deepened, the hook-shaped furrow leading up to his missing ear like a new smile. He was no master’s portrait, but the man had saved Yukiko’s life. The round-eye could be missing his entire face along with his wedding tackle and Akihito would still have called him brother.
The Blackbird sat opposite, broad and barrel-chested, slouched beneath the brim of his enormous straw hat. In the ongoing war of the beards, the cloudwalker captain was the clear winner—whiskers thick enough to plant a rice crop in, plaited three times down his belly. The Blackbird had a deep, booming voice and a laugh Akihito could feel in his chest.
Lastly amongst the card players, there was Yoshi. The bruises on the boy’s face had almost faded, but Akihito could still see the damage, within if not without. The boy’s hair was tied in a plain topknot, blond roots showing. He didn’t join in with the banter, but Akihito considered it a miracle he’d been able to drag the boy from his room at all. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Yoshi’s infamous lopsided smile.
“All right, deal again, you Dragon dog.” Akihito tossed the deck to the Blackbird. “And I’m watching you shuffle.”
“I’m thinking you should quit while you’re behind, Akihito-san.” Michi looked up from her calligraphy desk. “You don’t strike me as the lucky type.”
The girl sat nearby, smoking some of Piotr’s honeyweed, teeth clamped on the stem of a bone pipe. Bee-stung lips and pale skin bereft of paint, hair tied back in a simple braid. Without making an effort, she still turned the heads of many of the Kitsune soldiers, but the chainsaw blades at her back ensured most kept their stares to themselves.
She was bent over a small table, a rice-paper scroll weighted with smooth river stones, a paintbrush and pot of cuttlefish ink in her hands.
“What’s that you’re writing, girl?” the Blackbird asked.
“Mind your cards, Captain-san.”
“The way this poor lump plays, I could win blindfolded.”
Akihito hid his pout in his beard, sipped his saké.
“If you must know, I’m writing a book,” the girl sighed.
Michi held up the scroll case in which she carried her work. It was crudely carved of unfinished pine, some hasty kanji etched into the surface.
“The Lotus War…” Akihito read.
“Mrnm. Not sure on the title.” The Blackbird stroked his beard. “What’s it about?”
“Fishing.”
Piotr sputtered a mouthful of smoke. Akihito found himself chuckling, gave Yoshi a nudge. The boy just scowled.
“Very funny,” the Blackbird bowed. “What’s it really about?”
“It’s a history of this war. Yoritomo. Yukiko. Masaru. Aisha. Daiyakawa.” Michi waved her brush over the Kitsune fortress. “Us.”
“Why?”
“So people will remember.”
The Blackbird sipped his saké, made a face. “Sounds like a waste of good rice-paper to me. Nobody ever won a battle with a bottle of ink.”
“You don’t think people should know what happened here?”
“Oh, I think they should know, no doubt. I just don’t think they’ll care.”
“How could they not?”
“Because it will be different next time. It always is.”
“Different?” Akihito frowned at the cloudwalker captain.
“Different,” the Blackbird nodded. “Whatever they fight over. It’ll have a different name or a different shape—religion or territory or black or white. People will look back on us and say ‘we could never be that blind.’ People don’t learn from history. Not people who count, anyway.”
Michi’s reply was sharp as steel. “Everybody counts.”
“Not everybody is a Shōgun,” Blackbird said. “Not everybody commands an army—”
“An avalanche starts with one pebble. A forest with one seed. And it takes one word to make the whole world stop and listen. All you need is the right one.”
“You really believe that, girl?”
“I have to.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s something so wrong with this place it makes me want to scream. And I suppose you could be right, and all this counts for nothing. But suppose I’m right, and I do have the power to change things, but instead I sat back and figured someone else would speak up. That I shouldn’t bother trying. What would that make me?”
The Blackbird scratched his beard, looking slightly abashed.
“Trying costs nothing if I’m wrong,” Michi said. “But if I’m right, doing nothing costs everything.”
Yoshi sighed, climbed to his feet. “Fuck this noise…”
“Where you going?” Akihito asked.
“Someplace a little heavier on the mellow and a little lighter on the drama.” The boy slouched off with his hands tucked in his obi, eyes fixed on the rumbling sky as he walked away.
“Well, he seems lovely,” Michi mused, turning back to her calligraphy.
“Don’t mind him,” Akihito shrugged. “He lost someone. Someone special.”
“Just one? He should thank his stars, then.”
Akihito turned back to the sky-ship captain, brow furrowed. “You make a funny sort of rebel, Blackbird-san. You don’t talk like most of the folk around here.”
“That’s because most folk around here wouldn’t know their tackle from their rigging.”
“Well, why the hells are you helping us?”
“Blood-debt. The Shōgunate killed my baby brother.”
“Forgiveness,” Akihito covered his fist and nodded. “How did he die?”
“Yoritomo-no-miya blew his head off. After he failed to return with that damned thunder tiger your girl rides around on.”
Akihito’s jaw fell into his lap. “… Your brother was Ryu Yamagata?”
A slow nod. “Captain of the sky-ship Thunder Child.”
“Then I ask forgiveness again,” Akihito said. “I knew him. A good man. A brave man.”
“Well, now he’s a dead man. But he won’t be sleeping in the hells alone.” The Blackbird knocked back the last of his saké with a sigh. Scooping up his winnings, he stood and stretched. “Anyways, work to do. Kimono to chase. Thanks for the drink.” A smile. “And the coin.”
Akihito watched the captain saunter away, tipping his ridiculous hat to the serving maids as he passed by. The big man’s brow was still creased and he fidgeted with his beard, running fingers and thumb down the resin-hard spikes.
“Akihito-san,” Piotr said. “Talk me with you.”
Akihito looked at the gaijin sideways. “So talk.”
The gaijin cast a wary look over his shoulder to Michi, leaned in closer, his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper.
“Girl,” he said. “Your pretty girl.”
“Hana,” Akihito frowned. “But she’s not mine.”
“She Touched. She Zryachniye.”
“What does that mean?”
“I can still hear you, you know,” Michi said, eyes still on her calligraphy.
Piotr scowled, leaned closer, pointing to his blind right eye. “Touched!”
“I haven’t laid a finger on her, if that’s what you mean. We’re just friends.”
Michi coughed, mumbled something inarticulate. Akihito ignored her.
“No, no, can’t do for the touching.” Piotr seemed alar
med. “She Zryachniye. Is white, da?”
“She’s half white. Half Shiman. And I talked to her about her eye. If there’s something special about it aside from the color, she hasn’t noticed it in four years.”
“Of course.” Piotr looked at the big man like he was simple. “She sleeping.”
“Sleeping?” Akihito rubbed his temples. “Listen, no offense, but you make as much sense as my grandmother when she’s smoked her ‘arthritis medicine.’”
Piotr sighed, exasperated. His eyes roamed the floorboards as if the dead leaves were scattered words, searching for the right ones to collect into a sentence.
“Gods?” he finally said. “You Shima have gods? Uzume? Fūjin? Izanami?”
“Izanami is a death goddess.” Akihito made the warding sign against evil. “But we have gods. So what?”
The gaijin held his hand to the sky. “Gods.”
He held his other hand down low. “Girl. You pretty girl.”
“Izanagi’s balls, she’s not mine…”
Piotr reached down with his “god” hand and lightly touched his palm with one finger. Looking impossibly pleased with himself, he smiled and said “Zryachniye.”
Akihito blinked, then downed the rest of his saké. “Zryachniye…”
“Da! Good is for him.” Piotr clapped his hands, tapped his forehead. “Was thinking he for slow, but no, no, is good. Haha.”
“Right.” Akihito lowered his voice to a mumble. “Round-eye corpsefucker…”
The drum of pounding footsteps hushed Akihito’s thoughts. The big man looked across the garden, saw Hana sprinting along the verandah toward them. Her jagged bob was tangled about her face, cheeks flushed, her eye wide and bright and all aglow. Akihito found himself swallowing a sudden lump in his throat.
The girl stopped beside the table, bent double, gasping for breath. Michi put aside her calligraphy, placed one hand on her chainkatana. Akihito leaned on his crutch, pulled himself upright and put one hand on Hana’s shoulder.
“Are you all right?”
The girl shook her head, glanced at Piotr, trying to catch her breath.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”