Dream III: Wind of Souls (Dream Trilogy Book 3)

by RW Krpoun

  “How do you know all this stuff?” Shad sat down on a low bench to remove his boots.

  “I talk to them. My point she isn’t looking for our attention; I believe her.”

  “So what is the Dragon up to?”

  “A violent overthrow of the social order, is my guess.”

  “Derek is out. I’ll put him in his room,” Fred announced.

  “Thanks. OK, she says big trouble is coming soon.” Shad stared at the wall. “We’ll sniff around while we’re preparing to head north. By the way, what are we going to do with the little buggers?”

  “I’m not sure. That’s a loose end that requires some planning.”

  “That’s your job; lemme know what you come up with. Meanwhile, I am going to get some sleep.” The warder lay down, then sat back up. “First thing tomorrow we need to work up an exfil plan in case the kid is right. You never know.”

  Chapter Six

  The Talons met for lunch the next day. For their meal the servers placed a brass urn on their table atop a ceramic tile. A firebox in the base of the urn was vented through a pipe rising through the center of the urn, heating the water to boiling very quickly. The Talons selected strips of raw pork, beef, and mutton from a platter and dropped them into the urn, fishing them out a short while later and rolling them into flatbread with smears of spiced mustard.

  As they ate the meat rolls they dropped cut vegetables and a few more strips of meat into the water, and when the rolls were finished the urn yielded up a tasty soup.

  “I’m having trouble finding a place for the kids,” Jeff confessed. “Until they fatten up it’s impossible to pass them off as anything but Hanni. I need more time.”

  “Shit,” Shad shook his head. “It’s always something. Good deeds never end well.”

  “The ripple effect,” Derek said, half to himself.

  “What effect?” Shad snapped.

  “What we do affects others,” Derek explained. “Like ripples when you throw a pebble into a pond. We saved the kids, the kids warned us. In the Realm we rescued Quails and Uttle, and they helped us. We affect other people’s lives.”

  “We impacted the Council of Twelve, that is for certain,” Fred growled. “And a lot of Goblins. And Elves, too.”

  “We’re gonna impact Cecil’s life too, if the opportunity arises” Shad nodded. “Terminally.”

  “We have helped make history,” Derek tried to pull the topic back. “We stopped the Council’s plans, and we’re complicating the Death Lords’ master plan. Our actions have meaning.”

  “Enough warm fuzzies,” Shad decided. “We need to deal with the kids and then work out the logistics in clipping three Death Lords. This won’t be new work for us, but finding them might be a challenge. Derek, what did the archives say?”

  “Nothing good. Enemy raids and patrols have dropped down to nothing in the last ten weeks. The belief is that they’re preparing for a major incursion south.”

  “Damn.” Shad drummed his fingers on the table top. “I did some checking; the military here is based on a five man squad. A Butai is either five squads of ashigaru or three squads of bushi. A Daitai is a formation built of around ten to fourteen butai, what we would call a company battle group or a half-battalion. The Samurai can fight on horseback or foot, melee or ranged, while the ashigaru are either armed with the yari-style spear or the short bow like Jeff uses.” He took a drink of cider. “The city garrison has thirty butai of ashigaru foot and six of archers, plus six butai of Samurai, mostly ronin. Iron Fan’s lawkeepers make up six butai. Plus Iron Fan has a personal guard of four butai of Samurai.”

  Jeff mentally added the numbers. “There is no way the Red Dragon could handle that many. They could deny them specific neighborhoods, maybe, but so long as the troops remain loyal they can’t take the walls or Iron Fan’s palace.”

  “Especially since there are Daitai forming up all across the country, and no matter what plan the Empire takes a significant number of them will be on the way here,” Shad pointed out

  “So we can quit worrying about the Red Dragon,” Fred nodded. “You better get the enchantments added to our gear; hunting Death Lords isn’t going to be easy. How do magical pluses work here?”

  “They’re gems called katari; we each get three. I set the enchantment to a particular task and then an incantation fuses them to the device as a runic sumbol. I would recommend an emphasis on armor protection given our situation. Put them on something you always wear.”

  “I think our best bet is going to be to swing wide to the east or west and come in behind the Death Lord main thrust, go for the lesser lights in charge of logistics,” Derek tapped the map he had spread across the table. “By the way, this isn’t Minnesota: no Great Lakes.”

  “Yeah, that works,” Shad nodded. “Jeff and Derek, you guys focus on finding the kids a situation; I’ll get the enchantments set up, and Fred and I will do prep. Everyone keep your ears peeled for word on when the Death Lords will make their move.”

  “I wonder about the lag time between the Realm and here,” Fred said quietly. “You can bet they used that last pyramid to send word. It was late fall there, and early spring here. What if there was three months lag time between the spheres? The Death Lords would have had advance warning of Cecil’s arrival.”

  “That would mean they could move right after the spring thaw,” Derek agreed. “Or before if they decide to skip plugging the holes and make their move with the Stone in first gear.”

  “Good points. Everyone keep that in mind.”

  Fred was pounding away with his M249, laying down hate and discontent on the foreign fighter mujahedeen down the street, along with the others in Jeff’s half of the squad. As an M-1 Abrams rolled forward to act as cover, its co-ax machinegun sending tracers across the building fronts down the street, Shad led the other half of his squad in a blind sprint across the roadway. Crashing into the dun-brown wall of the building opposite his starting point, he drew a grenade from his vest, pulled the pin, and let the spoon fly. Two counts later he pegged into the doorway, throwing low and hard.

  The explosion belched dust and smoke out the doorway, and Shad was through the entrance and breaking left as the debris was still rising. The room inside had two exits and no furniture to speak of, occupied only by a young man seated with his back to the far wall. As Shad side-stepped along the wall he could see that the man was more of a kid, probably seventeen, with curly black hair worn just over the ears and no need to shave yet. The hair was gray with dust, as were the boy’s slacks, tan polo shirt, and Soviet-era ‘high-chest’ canvas load-bearing equipment, heavily packed with magazines for the AKM that lay by the kid’s right leg. Blood was leaking through the slacks and polo shirt from shrapnel wounds, as well as both the boy’s ears and nose.

  The young fighter looked dazedly at Shad, his right hand pawing for his rifle; Shad shot him twice in the sternum just above the magazine pouches. The impact snapped the boy’s gaze into focus, and he met Shad’s eyes as he opened his mouth to speak, but a gush of blood drowned any words he might have said. Still staring at the Texan he slid sideways to a prone position, leaving a smear of blood on the wall.

  Sidestepping brought him to the corner of the room, and Shad was startled to see that no one had followed him in, and that the sounds of the street fighting had faded away to nothing. Movement to his left brought the M-4 tracking in that direction, only to see a little Asian girl dressed in a traditional kimono with her long dark hair spiked into an elaborate hairstyle and her face made up in the current court style walk through that door and regard the Staff Sergeant with a calm and oddly adult gaze.

  “We can speak safely here,” she said, her voice a child’s, her confidence an adult’s.

  Shad lowered the M-4. “What the hell?”

  “The dead cannot find me in this place, for now.”

  “OK.”

  “You have come here to stop the World Stone, yes?”

  Shad shrugged. “More to kill Ceci
l, but the two are sort of a package deal.”

  “You will need the Bone Lance.”

  “That idea has been brought up, but even if we could find something the Death Lords couldn’t find with vast resources and plenty of time, I really don’t think I could operate it.”

  “You couldn’t. Nor could you find the Lance; none who have sought it have ever come close to attaining their goal.”

  “Well, that is that, then.”

  “No one can find the Lance because the Lance is no more,” the little girl explained patiently. “And although you cannot possibly find it, the truth of the Lance could be given to you by those who protect it.”

  The corpse of the kid he had shot was gone, Shad noticed. “If the Lance is no more, then it can’t be given,” he pointed out.

  “The Lance was remade, shaped into a weapon to defeat the enemies of the Isle. Those who seek it still look for the Lance as it was.”

  “Why us? Why would you bet your one weapon on strangers? And why wait this long?”

  “Because a weapon without a wielder is nothing. We knew that the right ones would come, and we waited and watched for them, and for the opportunity to bring warriors and weapons to the target of our dreams.”

  “What, are we are the ones in some ancient prophecy?”

  “No, the ones in an ancient plan. We taught the Council of Twelve to build roads without their knowing they were being taught. As we predicted, Fu Hao refused to let this stand, and with outlanders returning to the Prison it was only a matter of time before she was freed. You four were her servants, four men who willingly fought in the ranks of the dead. The Death Lords cheat fate, they twist the rules of life to suit them, and we knew they would use four such as you to initiate the final chapter of their plan because of your association with those recalled souls. We expected you to kill Cecil or re-take the Staff in the Realm, but you failed.”

  “Not by much.”

  “True. Still, you followed him so nothing was lost.”

  “And now you expect us to do your dirty work?”

  “You must. You are unique: Fu Hao was the last who could recall willing souls to battle, and you fought alongside them, acquiring a touch of their nature. It was that touch of death recalled which allowed you to return home alive despite being struck down in the Prison, and which made you valuable to Cecil’s plan to come to the Isle.”

  “We are four men, and the Death Lords do not fear us.”

  “We have a plan.” The walls of the building were starting to fade. “This safe place is declining in power, so I must depart. Seek Midori in the Inn of the Red Garden. More will be explained to you.”

  Shad sat up on the futon, his sword drawn by reflex. The first part of the dream was not a dream, but a memory; the second part seemed even more vivid than the memory. As his eyes adjusted he realized Jeff was also sitting up. “What’s up?”

  “You dream about a little Japanese girl?”

  “Dressed in a kimono? Yeah.”

  “It wasn’t a dream.”

  “It started out in Iraq for me, then she walked in.”

  “Me, too.” Jeff shook his head. “This is weird.”

  “It’s also late,” Fred advised from where he lay. “Can we talk about it in the morning?”

  “Did you see her?” Jeff asked.

  “Yeah, but you idiots work me up just as we started talking.”

  There was a sudden rattle of the door’s hasp and Derek burst into the room. “Guys…”

  “We know,” Shad interrupted. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “We can’t take him anywhere,” Jeff shook his head.

  “So we’re back in business,” Derek grinned as the Black Talons gathered in the inn’s common room for breakfast.

  “Sounds like,” Fred grunted. “I got cut short.”

  “She told me we need to talk to a girl at another inn. They changed the Lance into a weapon against the Stone, and they slipped the Council the information on roads so outlanders could set Fu Hao free and expose outlanders to her ability to summon the willing dead to fight for her,” Shad kept his voice low. “According to her this led to Cecil choosing us to enable his trip here, and makes us uniquely able to use the new and improved Lance. If they’re telling the truth they have been one step ahead of the Death Lords since Day One, and have been pulling the strings for a long time. The only thing that supports her claims that I can see is that we didn’t die for real in the Prison.”

  “I thought that was because technically we died on the road, not the Prison,” Derek pointed out.

  “It could be; that’s my point: this could be just another tall tale someone has told us to get us to do what they want. I’ve lost track of the people who have lied to us on our travels in the spheres.”

  “We probably haven’t even uncovered all the lies,” Fred muttered.

  “Good point. Anyone get anything else?”

  “She told me she represents a group who has sworn to defeat the Rift,” Derek added.

  “If she’s telling the truth, they have really upped the tax of suffering for the locals,” Jeff observed. “On the Prison alone the body count was pretty sizeable. Lotta gamers cashed in their chips there.”

  “That tells us that even their public face is pretty grim,” Shad nodded. “We need to keep in mind that their schemes have been accomplished without regard to the cost to others.”

  “So are we going to help them?” Derek asked.

  Shad shrugged. “I’m getting tired, and I want to die on Earth; this business of being at the center of other people’s conspiracies is getting real old, too. But I guess we ought to hear what the contact has to say.”

  “I’m in. Any shot at Cecil needs to be explored,” Fred glowered.

  “It can’t hurt to hear what the current offer is,” Jeff nodded. “However bad these dream-talkers are, they can’t be worse than the Death Lords.”

  “All right. Did anyone get a time to go with the name and the place?” No one had. “So do we trot over like good little minions, or do we take today to go about our business and see what shows up in our dreams tonight?”

  “Go now,” Derek didn’t hesitate.

  “Wait,” Jeff said, and Fred nodded.

  “Three to one, then,” Shad motioned for the serving girl. “If there is no dream tonight, we’ll prep today, go tomorrow, and take the kids. The kids can do a dismounted recon of the area before we go in. Jeff, make sure they have a selection of clothes.”

  “Whay do you suppose they used a little girl? In the dream, I mean,” Derek wondered.

  “To hide the sender’s identity. In those situations one’s identity cannot really be hidden, but the sender can choose any age in their life. That could have been a boy under a wig and makeup,” Shad explained. “Identifying the sender from how they looked at age four would be tough, even tougher if the kid was dressed like an adult. Same with us: I was in Iraq, so I was younger, leaner, covered in dirt, and dressed in what locals would see as a truly outlandish style.”

  “Clever,” Derek nodded.

  Shad chose to craft all three of his katari to offer armor protection, and mounted them on a simple ivory plate which he wore around his neck on a cord; Fred did the same. Derek and Jeff chose one armor katari and two intended to increase damage to Undead; Derek put both of the latter on his katana, while Jeff put one each on his swords.

  The Black Talons loitered around the inn, drinking and either practicing with weapons or working on the physical manifestations of their arts; in short, looking for all the world like a well-heeled Ronin and his entourage between jobs.

  “The one thing this place has got right is bathing,” Shad observed as he and Derek emerged from the Inn’s bath house. “Hot water, steam, and a sweet young thing to rub you down.”

  “Yeah,” the Ronin nodded absently.

  “Oh crap, you’re not falling in love with a local again, are you?”

  Derek flipped him the bird. “No. But I was wonde
ring about something.”

  “What?”

  “Those girls are Hiemin. I wonder what they think of the Dragon?”

  Shad glanced back at the bath house. “You thinking that a lifetime of training wouldn’t do a bushi much good if the bath girl cut his throat?”

  “Along those lines, yeah.”

  “Interesting,” the warder conceded. “But it isn’t easy to cut someone’s throat.”

  “That was the sticking point for me: recruiting wouldn’t be that hard, but recruits don’t win wars. You need men and women who can see the deed done.”

  “Pillow talk would be the best use for them.”

  “Actually we’re the only ones getting the full treatment.”

  “What? Why?” Shad was immediately, and predictably, suspicious.

  “We tip,” Derek grinned. “That isn’t how things are done here.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. You’ve been dropping a week’s wages on them every time you come through.”

  “Bullshit. A bu, that’s all.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You’re kidding, a silver bu for a week’s work?”

  “Close enough to be counted as true. And you take at least one bath a day.”

  “I like baths. I like being clean. I do my best thinking in the shower at home,” Shad muttered.

  “It isn’t just you, we’ve all been tipping. I never considered that as being unusual.”

  “How did you find this out?”

  Derek shook his head. “I talked to mine. They are people, you know.”

  “I have never mistreated a paid girl, or an unpaid one, for that matter,” Shad jabbed a finger at the swordsman. “I am a gentleman when dealing with women.”

  The Ronin rolled his eyes.

  Shad carefully checked the finished coin and stowed it. “What do you think about lunch?” He asked Fred, who was scowling in concentration as he sliced tiny curls of wood from a disk.