Steel Crow Saga

by Paul Krueger

  Above, Beaky circled and circled. Tala could tell more than anything else that he wanted to help her, but he couldn’t bring himself to. She wished she had his backing; it had gotten her through some of the worst battles of the war. But now that she understood the truth, asking him to fight the other half of himself was too cruel.

  But she had Shang Xiulan, and Kou’s flashing teeth. She had Lee, and her dog-shade’s huge paws. She had the blades of the Kobaruto, the hexes of Dahal, the shades of Sanbu.

  And her heart soared to see that she would be fighting alongside Jimuro once more, even if she couldn’t believe he’d been stupid enough to come after her.

  She pointed a finger at the man, surrounded by his myriad stolen shades.

  “You killed my platoon,” she shouted in clear, ringing tones. “And you have my brother.”

  He snarled at her, his hatred wordless but clear.

  She snarled back. “Give him to me.”

  In the twenty-seven novels, eight novellas, and nineteen short stories that made up the Bai Junjie canon, the few battle scenes that existed were all tidy affairs. They were inevitably between honorable, noble Shang on one side and brutish Tomodanese on the other. Archenemies would find each other amid all the chaos and clash, steel against shade. And inevitably, it would all come to a halt when Bai’s bullet or Kou’s claws found their way into the heart of the enemy commander.

  This battle was not like that.

  In the past three days since she’d landed in Tomoda, she had run afoul of Dahali garrisons. They had been aware of her status as a member of the Shang royal family, and been eager to collect on a bounty that stipulated she be brought in alive. So they had attacked her and Lee with hexbolts—disruptive, but ultimately non-lethal.

  This battle was not like that, either.

  “So we can’t even shoot the bastard?” Lee had grumbled as they’d readied for battle. “It’s too late to change our minds about this one?”

  “We three are the only ones who know the truth about what he did to Tala,” the Steel Lord had whispered, with a grateful nod Xiulan’s way. “We can’t kill him before she gets a chance to get her brother back.”

  “Then why not tell everyone not to shoot him?” said Lee.

  The Steel Lord had frowned at that. “I want to give Tala every chance I can to rescue Dimangan. But I’m the Steel Lord now. Nothing I do is about just me anymore. I can’t send my people to face that monster with orders that might get them killed. We just have to hope that one of us four gets to him first.”

  “Well, that’s just great for everyone else,” Lee had muttered.

  Despite her own burning desire to avenge the massacred Shang troops she’d seen in the woods, Xiulan had just smiled at Lee. When Tala had gone missing, Lee had been the one to summon up Bootstrap and immediately lock onto the lieutenant’s scent. It had been a fleeting moment, but it had opened a tiny spring of hope in Xiulan’s heart.

  Now, amid this maelstrom of mayhem, hope seemed like something only other people could feel.

  All around her, the battle raged like a fire. People shouted war cries, and inhuman throats lifted up howls and roars, either in echo or in reply. Xiulan found herself confronted by shades of all sizes and shapes: a lumbering, inexorable snapping turtle. A snub-nosed crocodile-shade that charged into battle on two legs instead of four. A red-fox-shade with a writhing mass of tails. She didn’t even know which shades belonged to which side.

  The only thing she knew was that one of them, a spider the size of a child, was bearing down on her and Kou.

  Droplets of venom fell from the spider-shade’s fangs and wilted everything they touched, leaving twin trails of dead grass in their wake. But against such a fearsome foe, Xiulan stood her ground, though every instinct in her screamed to run for her life. Instead, she urged Kou to take this foul creature down, and in response her white rat leapt into action.

  His tail whipped around like a snapped cable, hammering the spider-shade right between its fangs. It hissed in fury and staggered back a few steps before surging forward and sinking its fangs right into Kou’s exposed flank. Kou squealed in pain, and the emotional feedback ripped through Xiulan’s mind like a knife in her skull. “Kou!” she cried out. Her eye fell on a rock near her feet, and she picked it up in both hands without a second thought. With a shout, she brought it down on one of the spider’s fangs and was rewarded with the sound of shattering chitin. It hissed again, but released its hold on Kou.

  Kou limped away, and even though his wounds crackled with magical energy, Xiulan saw the spider’s venom slowing the process significantly. She turned her attention back to the spider-shade, only to see that it had reared up again, its abdomen pointed at her like a gun. A thin tendril of webbing shot out, grabbed her by the ankle, and hauled her off her feet with the strength of a grown man. Before she knew it, she was being dragged straight toward its poisonous fangs, her coat bunching up beneath her as she slid along the ground—

  From her coat, she yanked the only weapon she had: her pipe. And as the foul creature’s jaws neared her, she sat right up and jabbed forward with all her might, stabbing the shade right in one of its bulbous eyes.

  She let go of the pipe, leaving it in so that the wound couldn’t close. Magic sparked and crackled around the wound, but couldn’t heal it shut. The spider-shade tried to scratch it away with its forelegs, but by then Kou had rejoined the fray.

  The white rat snapped the cord of web with a flash of his teeth, and Xiulan scrambled away from the spider-shade. “Finish him!” she shouted to her shade, who chittered in agreement. He dove for the panicking spider, already reared up, and headbutted it right in the underside of its own head. When the spider fell hard onto its back, Kou pounced on it, a blur of claw and fang and white fur. The spider’s legs spasmed as it tried in vain to dislodge Kou, but it was too late. In moments, the shade discorporated, leaving behind only a flash of light and a pipe half melted by acid.

  Xiulan grimaced. She was going to miss that pipe.

  “Are you well?” she said to Kou.

  His nose twitched. Yes.

  “Can you keep fighting?” For all his ferocity, Kou wasn’t a creature built for battle. He’d won her fights before, but everything around them was making her keenly aware of his limitations.

  Nonetheless, Kou’s nose twitched again.

  She grinned, heartened. “Then let us fight together to secure peace in our time.”

  She remembered when Kou had been barely larger than her hand, a small warm spot in her covers at night. It was hard to believe that this was where life had taken them both.

  A shout directed her attention to the Kobaruto, whose steel cables flashed like bolts of crimson lightning. They hunted shades like wolves after deer, tackling them in twos and threes. When they chose one to attack, cables would wrap themselves around the shade’s legs and force it to the ground. And while the creature tried in vain to free itself, another Kobaruto would bring their red-hot cable down on the shade’s neck like the blade of an ax, or else wrap the steel around its throat and tighten until its sharp sides sliced straight through.

  The Sanbunas fought, too: some with guns, some with their long machetes, and some with the aid of their own shades. They worked as a unit, soldier and shade operating with an efficiency Xiulan had to admit she’d never thought she could reach with Kou. But then she considered how many battles each soldier must have survived to make it here tonight.

  The Dahali lent to the barrage as well, their delegation’s women laying down a thick hail of white hexbolts while the men shouldered their rifles and loosed shot after shot. But for all their fire, the man in the purple coat moved with the fluid grace of violet mercury. And he seemed to have a truly limitless number of shades to conjure and hide behind, and the hexbolts barely disrupted the magic that bound him to them. The Dahali delegates held on with admirable disci
pline, but they had yet to get in a good shot.

  The crocodile-shade Xiulan had seen earlier charged through the din, jaws snapping with deadly force. It roared, its voice low and foreboding as distant thunder. But no sooner had it arrived than a tight trio of bullet wounds appeared in its chest, staggering it in its tracks. Xiulan’s head whipped in the direction of the fire, just in time to see Tala give her a curt nod.

  Steel cables shot out from the darkness as a pair of Kobaruto bound the crocodile-shade’s beefy limbs. And then, fast as a bullet himself, Steel Lord Jimuro stepped inside the shade’s guard, the sword of Steel Lord Setsuko glowing in his hands as though it were alive. His blade flashed once, twice, thrice, too fast for Xiulan’s eye to follow. Long gashes seemed to carve themselves through the shade’s thick, scaly hide, and the crocodile-shade burst apart in a flash of blue magical light.

  For a moment Xiulan dared to feel a thrill. Already, she knew the battlefield was no place for her, but she couldn’t help savoring this moment: They were winning.

  And then she caught sight of the owl-shade above going into a dive, talons-first—

  —right for Lee.

  Xiulan was close, but not close enough to close the distance on foot. Even Kou, fleet as he was, wouldn’t get there in time. And Bootstrap was currently locked in combat with a horse-shade whose mane burned like silvery flame in the moonlight.

  She looked down at the rock in her hand.

  Her fingers tightened around it.

  And without even thinking, she cast back her arm and hurled the rock with all her might.

  It sailed through the air, straight as an arrow flies, and smacked the owl-shade straight across its beak. The bird’s whole body jolted with the impact—more from its suddenness than from any force she’d just exerted. Still, she stood there in disbelief.

  She’d just thrown something.

  “Don’t just stand there, you idiot!” Lee shouted. She darted out of the owl’s trajectory as it made a clumsy attempt at renewing its attack. But before it could lift back off the ground, Kou darted forward like a white shadow, leaping onto the shade’s back. The owl screeched as Kou drove his fangs into it.

  Xiulan’s stomach turned as the owl-shade’s head twisted all the way around, as if its neck were on a free swivel. Its beak flashed, and with a squeal Kou fell away from it, a fresh wound on his snout.

  But before the owl-shade could fly away, huge jaws closed around its outstretched leg. With a toss of her head, Bootstrap slammed the owl-shade hard to the ground. Its wing folded beneath it with a snap that made Xiulan cringe as a whole-body reflex.

  As Kou and Bootstrap made short work of the owl-shade, Lee looked her up and down. “Looking awful pleased with yourself,” she said, but she was smiling.

  Xiulan returned the smile with one of her own. “That’s a long walk to ‘thank you,’ don’t you think?”

  Lee’s grin stretched wider.

  Xiulan nodded to the man in the center of the maelstrom, the man in the purple coat, who lurched this way and that like a cornered, wounded beast. He’d mostly kept out of the fight himself, save to summon more and more shades to replace the ones who fell. And of course, doing so meant falling right into line with Steel Lord Jimuro’s plan.

  “So long as he can call a shade, he’s a threat,” the Steel Lord had reminded her and Lee as they’d geared up for the fight. “The only way we’re sure to take him in safely is if he runs out of them before we do.”

  The man in the purple coat was putting up as fierce a fight as he could. For all their discipline and teamwork, the ad hoc team of delegations and palace guards was taking more casualties the longer the fight dragged on. But while Xiulan had no idea how deep the well ran, she was confident if they just kept fighting, they would see it to its very bottom.

  A chill of excitement ran down her spine. Her heart swelled from the mere thought that she, fighting alongside all these good people, would bring an end to this evil in the world.

  But then the man threw a hand up into the sky. At the top of his ragged lungs, he shouted a name: “Tivron!

  A jet of gray light shot into the sky, gathering and expanding like a storm cloud as it took the shape of an immense hammerhead shark, its jaws wide enough to swallow someone whole.

  For one moment, the magnificent beast hung in the air, its forked tail thrashing wildly.

  And then it plummeted straight for the garden.

  Xiulan and Lee were well past the impact zone. Thankfully, so were Steel Lord Jimuro and Lieutenant Tala. But the same could not be said for the Dahali delegation and a large swath of the Kobaruto.

  The impact was deafening. The shock wave nearly threw Xiulan off her feet. Lee staggered back, and Xiulan’s hand shot out just in time to catch her by the wrist. Her other hand jammed her hat back onto her head just before it flew off, but her long hair whipped around her face as the cloud of soil and dust began to settle.

  As the scene became clearer, Xiulan’s heart climbed into her throat. The Dahali had been the easiest way to subdue the man in the purple coat without lethal force. But while some of them had gotten clear, others had been completely crushed beneath the hammerhead-shade’s writhing bulk. The Kobaruto hadn’t fared much better; while they were more spread out, several of their number had been caught in the impact before they could use their cables to zip away.

  A strange lull settled over the battlefield as the Steel Lord’s ragtag coalition reeled from the shock of a huge hole being blown in their battle line.

  But the man in the purple coat wasn’t taking any such reprieve. Once again, his voice rose up over the din of battle.

  And that voice shouted, “Dimangan!”

  Dimangan heard his name and came when he was called.

  He fell into existence like a bombshell. As he solidified, he saw horrified stares in every direction: Shock from the Sanbunas. Disgust from the Tomodanese.

  Horror from Lala.

  No, he thought, and tried to will his muscles to remain still. But his will was no longer his own. He belonged to Mayon, and Mayon wanted him to kill everyone.

  He pounced forward, his huge hand grabbing a nearby cat-shade and slamming it face-first into the ground as though it were a mallet. With a roar, he brought its body back up, then snapped it in two over his knee. It dissolved into pure magic in his hands, then streamed straight back to its Sanbuna partner, who recoiled in terror and revulsion at the sight.

  Since Lala had pacted with him, she’d been the only Sanbuna face he’d ever seen. While he was almost always glad to see his sister, he’d often yearned to be able to walk among his countrymen again. He missed being able to walk up to a shop and press his nose against the window, or to buy some puto from a cart by the side of the road, or to sidle up to a handsome boy and tell him exactly how handsome Dimangan thought he was…

  But the look that soldier gave him now made him strongly desire never to look upon another Sanbuna face as long as he lived.

  The shades he fought were all in a tangle, but the ones that belonged to Mayon shone brightly in Dimangan’s vision. It was easy enough to step out of the way of that snapping turtle as it bit a woman’s leg off. To shove a lizard-shade out of the way of a charging stag beetle, grab it by the horns, and hurl it into a cluster of blue-robed Tomodanese. To step over a snake-shade so he could envelop a man’s head inside his entire hand and crush it to bone and pulp.

  Bolts of white energy crashed into his broad back, one, two, three. With each impact, his body popped with small spasms of pain. These had to be Dahali hexbolts, devastatingly effective against human targets. But Dimangan hadn’t been human for a very long time.

  So he shrugged off the hexbolts. They felt like little more than wasp stings, tiny interruptions of the signal that kept his form cohesive, and nothing more. The pain mounted as the Dahali poured more fire into him, but it wasn’t
enough to stop him from picking up Mayon’s snapping-turtle-shade and flinging it straight at the clustered Dahali. The foremost Dahali soldier was reduced to a red smear by the impact. The rest were scattered and dazed, but Dimangan didn’t spare them a further thought. Mayon’s other shades could take care of them, because he had already moved on to his next target.

  He was disgusted by how methodically he moved. It wasn’t as if he’d never used his strength to kill before, but that had always been in times of desperation and war, and Lala had always trusted him to hold back as he saw fit. Mayon had no such restrictions. And as long as he didn’t, Dimangan didn’t, either.

  A guiding pulse of will appeared in his mind, and suddenly he felt as if the only thing that mattered in the world was slaughtering the blue-robed Tomodanese warriors who tried in vain to restrain him with chains that moved on their own like serpents. Dimangan recognized them by their blue-and-white kimonos. He’d even seen one of them before on a streetcar in Lisan City, on his very last day as a human. They were the legendary order known as the Kobaruto, holy guards of the Steel Lord, who trained from childhood to be unparalleled combatants. But even the best warrior couldn’t move faster than someone whose legs were strong enough to carry him for hours without tiring. Not when that someone decided to really move.

  He tore huge holes in the turf with every footfall, but it only took one to close the gap between him and the nearest Kobaruto. His body moved so fast, his own eyes could barely keep up with him as he threw a full-power punch that sent a man’s head flying from his shoulders. One of his sisters-in-arms, a tall woman with gray hair and a hard face, shouted in fury and swung a red-hot cable straight through his wrist to retaliate, neatly slicing his hand off. But she didn’t get a chance to issue a follow-up attack; before the cable could snake away, Dimangan grabbed it with his remaining hand and yanked with all his might.

  The woman was pulled off her feet, tumbling end over end toward him. He jerked the cable again, spinning himself with all his formidable strength. The woman whipped with him as he let go, and she careened headfirst into a nearby wall with a spray of crimson and a scream cut short.