The Desert and the Blade

by S. M. Stirling

  • • •

  “Mountain,” Reiko said, pointing past the child towards a single peak.

  “Yama,” Kiwako repeated, from her perch in the front saddle; they were using a two-seat model, one before and one behind the hump.

  “Mountain range,” Reiko said, running her finger from east to west along the line of peaks before them, the mountains that separated the Valley from the inland deserts.

  “Sanmyaku,” Kiwako echoed.

  Then Reiko took up the slate she had borrowed from Shulamit and wrote with the chalk: , accurate despite the swaying pacing gait of the camel. Kiwako giggled, repeated the word, and then made an awkward attempt to duplicate the characters with her tongue sticking out one corner of her mouth.

  “Motto tango, Heika!” she said. “More words, Heika!”

  “Enough for now, little fox,” Reiko said, putting away the slate.

  “Kiwako!” the girl said sharply, pointing to herself. “Not kitsune, Kiwako. No, no, no!”

  Never having had a name, Kiwako was immensely proud of hers now that she realized it was unique and uniquely her own, and would sometimes say it over and over again; she’d also learned how to say no in three languages. They’d been at the vocabulary lesson for several hours, and now that she wasn’t hungry and terrified the girl absorbed words the way the desert sands did spilled water, and had even grasped the concept that the characters represented words, which made her a little doubtful of her first estimate of the girl’s age. But now they were coming up to the Valley’s northern checkpost, a small adobe fort flying the running horse sigil of the Delgado family.

  Órlaith’s retainer Droyn Jones de Molalla waited there. Surprisingly, the lord of the Chatsworth Lancers and his wife were present too. They needn’t have waited in this spot—lookouts with telescopes on the heights would have spotted so numerous a party some time ago, and could have flashed messages with mirrors or smoke-signals. A little closer, and she saw two of the leaders of the Topangans as well; she congratulated herself on being able to recognize the gaijin faces immediately.

  Still, this is ominous. Something has gone wrong.

  • • •

  “Not re-enamored of your former friends, Lord Mark?” Órlaith asked.

  “No,” he said shortly. “Your Highness. And I didn’t think they were friends, even then. I thought they were allies and we could be mutually useful . . . and OK, I was wrong about that, too.”

  Truth, she thought; the Sword was by her side, and she knew he believed what he said.

  And she knew from his sideways glance he knew that she knew; her crooked brow told him that she knew he knew she knew. Then he laughed.

  “I wanted to lead the Chatsworth Lancers south through the Canyon to the sea,” he said. “And by God, I’ve finally done it!”

  Jared Tillman and Kwame Curtis both looked as if they thought the joke in very poor taste. The Chatsworth Lancers were here at the southern end of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, about a hundred and twenty of them, each with a couple of armed followers on foot; plus the Topangan levy, her own followers, Reiko’s, and the score of bnei Yaakov riders. Delgado’s eyes slid their way; they were off southwestward, downwind, to keep their camels from spooking the horses. One of the beasts raised its long neck and gave a blubbering moan, and several of the equines shied anyway.

  “A lot more of those crazy Jews out there than I thought, evidently,” he murmured. “Tough-looking bastards, and they’ve got good gear for that type of country.”

  “Yes, there are, and yes, they do,” Órlaith said. “And if I were you, Lord Mark, I would accommodate their desire to be quiet neighbors.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, fighting them would be like trying to hunt birds with a hammer, right? Nothing in the Mojave worth having anyway,” he said. “Glad to have them here now, I’ll tell you.”

  Many of the desert tribesmen were staring in blank astonishment at the sea; this position gave a good view of the Pacific. Shulamit was entranced, and she was far from the only one.

  And would that I was simply looking at the Mother Ocean in gladness, Órlaith thought. Nothing as simple as just returning victorious from my own Quest . . . or to be more precise, from helping with Reiko’s. But then, Da and Mother didn’t either—when they came back with the Sword of the Lady, the whole last half of the Prophet’s War lay ahead, years of grinding-hard bloody work, and building the Kingdom during that and after it.

  The little harbor that the Topangans had made was much more crowded than usual. The Virgen de las Esmeraldas and the Astorian merchantman had been gone for days, but four ships were anchored in line a hundred yards from the shore, within easy catapult range. All of them were three-masters, all with the squared-off bow that she recognized from the naval battle in the Glorannon, and all were flying the same flag. One with a broad red stripe running the length of it, with a white circle and a red star in its midst, and narrow strips of white and then blue above and below.

  “Bakachon,” Reiko said grimly. “The reason the jinnikukaburi did not pursue us into the desert was that they planned to intercept us on our return if their first efforts failed.”

  Órlaith nodded. “My father was fond of saying that the enemy, those dirty dogs, have a plan of their own . . . which is why we call them the enemy.”

  Egawa gave a slight snort at that, amused even in this situation. He seemed calmly confident, doubtless because his Tenno now bore the Grass-Cutting Sword. Órlaith was less so. The Sword of the Lady was a terrible thing to confront in battle, but it didn’t make her invincible or immortal; to be a weapon in the common sense was not its primary role. When she grasped it and closed herself off from the world of common day, the thing that Reiko now bore at her side seemed to shine with a radiance of sheer power, but how decisive an aid it would be in a fight . . .

  That we do not know yet. I’d rather not depend on an unknown when so much is at stake.

  The comforting thing was that the Korean ships were not alone in the water. The Tarshish Queen was standing to a little farther out, her sails half-furled, beating slowly back and forth in the wind from the northwest. And farther out still, the long dark shape of RMN Stormrider waited, coming about slowly as she worked back and forth too; the portlids of her broadside were pointedly open and her boarding and splinter-netting rigged.

  The locals had a telescope longer than a man was tall mounted on a complex tripod, some pre-Change amateur astronomer’s pride and joy salvaged later; rather ironically, its labels proclaimed it was made by Nihon Seiko. Delgado and the Topangan Brains were using it to examine the Stormrider carefully.

  “That frigate is one impressive piece of ship, Your Highness,” Delgado said, and Kwame nodded agreement.

  “I gather that’s the state of the art up north?” Kwame said.

  Heuradys nodded. “Pride of the fleet, Captain Curtis. I just wish we had two of them here now. That would make things much more . . . controllable.”

  “We have the pair of trebuchets,” Kwame said thoughtfully.

  Sir Droyn looked between the ships and the berm that hid the Topangan weapon. “I suspect they could saturate that area with napalm shell before you did serious damage,” he said. “Unless your artillery got lucky, of course. Trebuchets are best against large stationary targets.”

  Órlaith handed her knight her helm and stepped up to the telescope. She adjusted the aiming knobs and scanned the enemy ships. The powerful instrument put her vision right on top of them, which wasn’t entirely positive. She could have done without the memory of an armored man looking back at her with a pair of binoculars while nibbling on what was obviously a salted, smoked human hand and occasionally spitting out a small bone. More important . . .

  “They’ve got Eaters on board,” she said. “Local ones, I mean. Though I could swear I recognize one from the action in the Bay, or at least his ax, but they must have g
otten the most of them from the LA tribes. A hundred or so on each of the ships, besides their usual complements.”

  Jared Tillman whistled softly. “That’s . . . a lot of the bastards.”

  “More than I’ve ever seen,” Delgado said. “They sneak in by ones and twos and small groups sometimes and we have to hunt them down, but nothing like this.”

  “We can hold the Canyon, and I think they know it,” Kwame said. “They haven’t attacked yet, and they’ve been here two days now.”

  “They haven’t attacked because they haven’t had the targets they desire within striking distance,” Órlaith said. “Which is to say, myself and the Majesty.”

  She nodded to the frigate and Feldman’s ship. “And if they send their fighters ashore, they make themselves vulnerable . . . more vulnerable . . . to those. With the Eaters, they may have enough for a ship action and one on land, though.”

  Decision firmed. “Reiko, can I borrow your Captain Ishikawa, and his men?” she said.

  The Nihonjin nodded decisively, and spoke a word of command to her followers.

  “Johnnie,” she went on.

  Her brother was in full plate. They were all in complete war-harness now, back to the smell of rancid canola and the bake-oven feel, though after the Valley of Death she was never going to complain of ordinary heat again. His fist-to-chest salute made a martial clank.

  “Take the Nihonjin sailors, and go there.” She pointed west, past the giant old-world wreck. “There are some longboats at the saltworks. Take them, and . . . the crossbowmen from the Protector’s Guard, and a few others, say four, pick them yourself. Feldman’s shorthanded for a full-scale action; you reinforce him. And tell him to cooperate fully with Captain Russ of the Stormrider.”

  He shot her a swift look of surprise, and she stepped closer and spoke softly; there was no need to let the Topangans or Delgado in on the full details of her little disagreement with the High Queen Regnant.

  “Johnnie, Reiko has her Grass-Cutting Sword the now. We’ve done what we set out to do. Now we go back to Mother, roll on our backs, wave our paws in the air and whimper for forgiveness. She’ll recognize a magic sword when she sees one! So will anyone with the least bit of the Sight, without Reiko having to do anything too . . . dramatic.”

  Deor Godulfson was standing close. He nodded. “It burns,” he said. “Like carrying the very sun in your hand. . . .”

  John nodded himself, giving it a glance. “Why not just have everyone go out to the Tarshish Queen and show them our heels?” he said.

  She shook her head. “They’ve some on those ships who could sense Reiko and me moving, given what we bear,” she said. “They’d be waiting for us on the water, that they would. For you, not so much. We pin their attention here.”

  Deor made a soft sound of agreement at that, too; and John obviously remembered how he’d tracked the Haida shaman at the battle in the Bay.

  “Also I’m not inclined to leave our new subjects in the lurch,” she said, and tapped her sabaton-armored foot on the dusty faded asphalt with a clank.

  For this part she let her voice ring. It was the truth, and the truth of her heart, but kingship always included an element of show. Symbol and performance were of its essence; you just had to remember to truly be what you wished to seem to be.

  “This is Montivallan soil now, and by Macha Red-Locks and Nemain of the Blood-Shout and Badb Catha of the Crows, these are our folk, every one of them, and House Artos stands with them! The Shadow Queen bear witness!”

  He nodded, saluted again, and collected the crossbowmen; Deor went with him, and Thora. Ruan Chu Mackenzie spoke a word to Karl, who looked at her. Órlaith wasn’t surprised, though an outsider might have been; folk tended to underestimate Mackenzie discipline. She wasn’t exactly a clanswoman herself, but she wasn’t exactly not one either, and she understood them inside the skin. She nodded, Karl grinned and thumped his comrade on the shoulder, Mathun tossed him a spare bundle of arrows, and the young archer-healer from Dun Fairfax pelted after John’s party with his bow pumping in his hand. When he caught up he and Deor exchanged an instant’s brief fierce embrace.

  A fleeting memory went through Órlaith’s mind at the sight, some ancient sage she’d read: Indeed, an army of lovers would be invincible, for under the eyes of the beloved the lover fears nothing but shame, and each is driven to noble deeds.

  “Though to be sure the same applies to comrades and true friends,” she murmured, though she still felt a little envious.

  No life is complete without friendship. On the other hand, it isn’t complete without love, either.

  Heuradys chuckled, following the byplay and the thought. Then her head nodded to the enemy ships. “They’re moving,” she said.

  They were; at least, one longboat was rowing towards the shore. Órlaith stepped up to the telescope and adjusted it. One large boat of the sort most substantial ships towed or carried on davits, with six oars to a side. The first look through the eyepiece showed her a close view of a naked, muscular back seamed with whip-scars that seemed to ripple with the flexing effort. Then she focused on the bows, and frowned.

  “That’s odd,” she said, with a sinking feeling in her stomach. “They’ve got a truce-flag on a stick, but there’s a man in Nihonjin armor in that boat . . . two . . . and one’s carrying the Hinomaru.”

  They both had their hair dressed in the samurai way, with the pate shaved back to the topknot. One was a man of no great years, perhaps a decade older than she or Reiko, though oddly his hair and sparse chin-beard were speckled with white. The other . . . it was impossible to judge from his face.

  Mainly because parts of it were missing, including most of the lips.

  Reiko gasped aloud. That itself a sign of something desperately wrong. Órlaith stepped aside, and the Nihonjin ruler stepped up to the telescope.

  Her face went gray-white beneath its usual pale honey tint. “Yoshihito,” she whispered. “My brother.”

  • • •

  “If this is Prince Yoshihito, will you draw the Grass-Cutting Sword against him, Majesty?” Egawa asked.

  It was a little over a thousand yards to the little group waiting by the boat drawn up on the shore, and the Japanese were keeping to a steady, slightly slow pace. Reiko concentrated on her breathing for a moment, until the dizziness passed. The noonday sun was blinking on the rippled surface of the water ahead, turning the figures of the men on the beach to black silhouettes against brightness.

  “If I do, will you be with me?” she asked.

  His speech gave a strong hint; in strict law, Yoshihito was the Tenno, and she the Princess. Her elevation had been on the assumption that he had perished. And perhaps he had, even if he still breathed.

  “Yes, Majesty,” he said; quietly, but without hesitation. “To the death.”

  The four samurai at her back echoed that with a soft-voiced hai! Reiko nodded.

  “I shall proceed as seems best under the circumstances,” she said. “I do not wish to have my brother’s blood on my hands.”

  Her left hand was resting on the scabbard of the reborn Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, and a feeling of warmth spread from it. Warmth, life, power.

  The situation makes me feel helpless, but I am not, she thought. I have cherished my memories of him, of watching him in the dojo or at ceremonies or playing go with me in the private quarters. I have seen him teasing a kitten with a feather, and playing his flute, and winning a line-capping game, and making little Yoko laugh by making faces at her. I sat with him and ate sweet dango as we watched the waxing harvest moon. I have grieved for Yoshihito, and lit incense at his grave marker for Obon. Let that remain.

  There were two men in Japanese armor . . . armor that looked old and not particularly well maintained, as if it had been sitting in a storeroom for years and just recently taken out. One was Yoshihito . . . but aged a decade beyon
d his true tally of years. The one with him was a ruined horror, with only the twitching of the eyes to show that it was a living man. Egawa grunted and then spoke a name softly; not one she knew, but probably one of the guards who had been on her brother’s ship when it sailed and never returned. Behind them were half a dozen Korean warriors in their mail-and-plates shirts and spired helmets. And another man, in motley, shaggy clothing.

  Kangshinmu, she thought, her left hand clamping harder on Kusanagi. Sorcerer.

  • • •

  “Where is Kiwako?” Shulamit said suddenly, and frantically.

  “What?” Meshek asked, tearing his eyes away from the drama below.

  “She was right here!” his sister said, looking about and doing everything but patting her pockets. “She was right in the rear saddle—”

  Suddenly she pointed downslope, towards the sea. “She’s running after the Heika! Come back, you little idiot!”

  Shulamit threw herself out of the saddle, landed like a bouncing ball and dashed off. Meshek leaned far over and began to snatch desperately at her as she passed, but she was as lithe as a snake as she swayed aside . . . and he didn’t complete the motion anyway. As he knew from painful experience in practice sessions, she was as good in the art of krav maga as anyone her age and weight could be, so he couldn’t just clutch her hair unless he wanted a dislocated thumb for his pains. When she focused on doing something, she gave it everything she had, and she was fiercely protective of the feral toddler.

  “Ha-matzav khara!” he swore desperately, and flung up his hands to halt the onward surge of the bnei Yaakov riders after the daughter of the Shofet. “No! If we all go it will seem like an attack!”

  The camels were groaning and burbling, catching their masters’ building alarm. “Dov, keep them in order. Everyone, quiet, and leave this to me! Now!”

  He slapped his bow back into the case on his saddle, leapt down, threw the reins to a man who made a surprised but successful grab at them, and took off after his sister with his left hand gripping the scabbard of his shamshir to keep it from flapping. He ran crouched over, instinctively using folds in the ground to stay as invisible as possible to anyone looking up from the beach, a skill learned in long training. And by experience even more savage, ground into him stalking and being stalked by Apache raiders with death by torture as the price of failure. With a little luck, using the ground and the neutral earth color of his robe would keep eyes off him until he could . . .