“What’re you doing?” Saburo hissed. “Are you drunk?”
“Only a little,” Munetaka answered.
The Lord’s eyes narrowed dangerously at this sleight. Dozens of Minamoto soldiers nocked arrows, waiting the order to execute the impudent captain. “Who are you?”
“I am Captain Nasu Munetaka, son of Captain Nasu Tadamichi. Twelve years ago the Great Sea Beast killed my father and sank his ship. I alone survived. I saw this monster, and I told the truth. I intended to hunt it down and send it back to Jigoku. Your predecessor called me a liar and a fool. He mocked me and dishonored my father. He declared this monster a myth.” Munetaka pointed toward land. All eyes followed.
There was a giant footprint, shaped like that of a lizard, only as wide as the Lord’s warship and pressed deep enough into the sand to fit a house.
“Do you believe me now?”
~
His entire life had come down to this moment.
The sea outside Kamakura was red with blood and lit by burning wreckage. The air was choked with smoke and the screams of the injured. The Great Sea Beast’s arms were humanoid, only its hands ended in three webbed fingers, and it was swatting boats from the ocean like a child in a bath tub. Hundreds of arrows were lodged in its hide. It had been struck by balls of flaming pitch from the warships and the whaling harpoons of desperate sailors, yet it showed no sign of slowing.
A Minamoto warship rammed straight into the monster’s stomach. The flesh dimpled as the bow gave, but it did not pierce the ancient flesh. The Great Sea Beast let out an ear splitting roar, scooped the warship up and hurled it inland. The tiny dots spinning off of it were sailors and samurai. The ship landed on the rocks and exploded into a million pieces.
“Saburo!”
The scribe ran to him. “Yes, Captain?”
“Sound the horn.”
“But we don’t understand how the gaijin magic works! It could just enrage it further.”
“Excellent… Do it now.”
The scribe knew not to question. “Yes, Captain!” He ran to do as he was told.
Munetaka picked one particular arrow from his quiver. Though the shaft had belonged to his father, he’d replaced the arrowhead with one he’d fashioned himself. It was slightly different in shape from his regular armor piercing points, but the balance was perfect. He’d carved a piece of bone from the gaijin horn. If it had really come from the body of the leviathan the Great Sea Beast had been fashioned from, he would send it home. He’d had the arrow blessed by priests of every faith he’d come across in his travels. Surely some god would be listening.
Saburo blew the horn. It was nothing like the strong, resounding bellow created by the tiger priest, rather it was a harsh note that trailed off into a painful warble.
Yet, it worked. The Great Sea Beast turned and roared a furious challenge. It started toward them. The waters were shallow, so it seemed to grow taller as it walked across the seabed, exposing even more of its corpulent self to the air. The waves became increasingly violent.
Taking out his flask, Munetaka enjoyed one last drink. It was the finest sake in Nippon, and he’d saved it for a very special occasion. Only the best would do for today. Putting the flask back in his kimono, Munetaka took another look at the horizon, then back at the creature, carefully estimating its speed. “Hold this course no matter what.”
“There’s rocks straight ahead, Captain!”
“No matter what!” he shouted.
Closer.
He readied the special arrow. There would be only one shot.
The other ships were forgotten. A warship clipped the beast’s side and was sent spinning away. A single, crazed samurai leapt from that ship onto the beast’s flesh, stabbing at it while trying to climb up its body as if it were a mountain. The monster did not seem to notice. It was entirely focused on the Friendly Traveler. The warrior lost his grip on the slick hide and disappeared into the churning waters.
Closer.
Munetaka took a deep breath then slowly exhaled. His body moved in time with the violent rolling of the deck beneath his bare feet.
“We’re almost on the rocks!”
“Steady…”
The Great Sea Beast loomed over them. The air stunk of rotting fish. A black rain began to fall upon them, and he realized it was demon blood weeping from a thousand shallow cuts.
His hands did not tremble.
The golden edge of the sun broke over them. Vast white eyes, accustomed to the darkness of the deep ocean twitched and mighty lids slammed shut with an audible slap. He’d looked directly into those giant merciless eyes so long ago, and he’d wondered afterwards why it had spared him. At the time he’d thought it was because he was insignificant. He was a bug to the Great Sea Beast, not even worth crushing.
Now he understood he had lived because it was his destiny to end this abomination.
While staring into those white orbs before he’d seen that there was a tiny circle in the center, an off white pupil, only visible when you were close enough to choke on its stench and its tentacles could taste your blood on the water. He intended to put an arrow through that pupil and straight into the creature’s brain. Two hundred paces away, at an extreme angle, from a rocking ship against a rapidly moving creature the size of a castle, and his target was as big around as the bottom of a sake cup.
Only Munetaka had spent many long hours studying the bottoms of empty sake cups.
The arrow knows the way.
Munetaka drew back the bow in one perfect motion.
Father, guide my hand.
He let fly.
The entire crew held their breath as they watched the arrow streak through the blood rain.
The huge lid blinked open the instant before the arrow struck.
The arrow disappeared, sinking right through the clear jelly of the pupil.
It twitched.
The crew gasped.
There was an incredibly long pause. Then the creature’s eye began to spasm wildly, like it was about to leap from its head. It leaned back, head jerking, tentacles thrashing. Webbed fingers clutched at its face. The horrific noise it let out threatened to split the world. The noise trailed off into a moan.
“Turn hard to port! Hard to port!” Munetaka ordered. “Now!”
The crew did as they were told. Seconds later their hull made a sickening sound as it ground against the rocks. Salt spray came up over the side from an impact, but they kept moving. To stop was to perish.
Lumbering forward, the Great Sea Beast continued to clutch madly at its misshapen head, but it was too late. The blessed arrow had worked its way deep into vulnerable tissue, and no living thing could survive for long bleeding from inside its brain. It stumbled then began to fall. It was like watching a great tree being felled by an ax, only they were beneath the tree.
Munetaka’s crew knew what to do. They understood what would happen if they didn’t get out of the way in time. There was no need to give instructions because they were already working hard. So Munetaka simply stood there, watching, as the Great Sea Beast fell. Live or die, it no longer mattered. His duty was complete.
The Great Sea Beast collapsed. The gradual impact of its bulk threw up a huge wall of water before it. They were lifted and pushed on the wave as sailors held on with all their might. The Friendly Traveler was hurled through the maze of rocks. They hit open water, violently spinning, and a few men were flung over the side. Yet, they were through the rocks. Normally that would have raised a cheer amongst the crew but the monster was still collapsing on top of them, and all they could do was watch and hope.
It struck. The world was consumed with thunder. For a moment all of them were blinded by spray.
The Great Sea Beast’s head smashed into the rocks right next to them, tons of flesh and bone compacting and rupturing against the unyielding earth. A spine came crashing down, shearing effortlessly through the Friendly Traveler’s mast and rigging. Captain Munetaka stepped calmly aside as the r
azor tip of the spine cleaved through the deck where he’d been standing.
And then they were away.
The Great Sea Beast lay still. Ooze pouring from its head in such great quantities that the Friendly Traveler was floating on a sea of black.
It was silent except for the creaking of wood and rope.
“It is finished.”
~
They were heroes.
The crew of the Friendly Traveler were welcomed in Kamekura and showered with gifts. Lord Minamoto Yoritomo granted every member of his crew lands and titles. Songs were sung about their long journey along the shores of foreign lands, and their battle against the Great Sea Beast grew larger with each telling of the story.
Captain Nasu Munetaka sat alone beneath the shade of a tree, watching the tide come in. It was good to escape the noise of the adoring crowds, but the silence made him realize a few things. His father was avenged. His family’s honor restored. Yet, what good was a samurai without a purpose? He took out his flask and raised it to his lips. He was a great captain and probably the best archer in the world, but he did not know what came next…
Are there other monsters in the world?
Then perhaps I shall find them.
He poured the rest of his sake into the grass.
His hands did not tremble.
Animikii vs. Mishipeshu
C.L. Werner
Marcel Clerval stood atop the gantry and stared across the scarred landscape of Michipicoten Island. Before his mining company had arrived, the place had been almost pristine wilderness, devoid of any mark of man’s construction beyond the old lighthouse at its eastern extremity. The Canadian government had been loath to relinquish the island, to allow it to slip away from the protection of the Ministry of Natural Resources. It had been a long and tedious legal battle fought in both Canadian and French courts of law to get them to accept the legitimacy of his company’s claim to the island.
Centuries past, Michipicoten Island had been known as Isle Maurepas, named after the Count of Maurepas, then serving as France’s Minister of the Marine. Jean-Frederic Phelypeaux had been a powerful man in his time, responsible for the funding and maintenance of France’s naval forces. Many awards and honors had been bestowed upon him. Among these had been the Isle Maurepas in France’s New World colonies. The documents proving the land had been awarded to the Count of Maurepas hadn’t come to light until after the Second World War, discovered in the bombed-out cellar of a family named Phillipe outside Rouen. Ownership of the island was in the form of allodial title, granting the count and his descendents complete control over the land without any restrictions or duties owed to any higher authority, even the French Crown.
Devastated by the war, the Phillipes had sold the title to an American serviceman for a few hundred dollars. From the soldier, the deed had passed through a string of American and Canadian speculators before finally coming into the hands of Munsaint Limited. The first surveyors dispatched by the corporation had done so under the pretence of studying forest caribou, the true nature of their job concealed by the front company they ostensibly worked for. It had all been cleverly arranged, investigating the mineral composition of the island had been simply another part of their research into the caribou population and its conservation. The samples they brought back told far more about the natural resources within the island. It was rich in copper and a second expedition determined the mineral wealth to be extracted was almost unbelievable in magnitude. When global copper prices began to rise, Munsaint set their lawyers to enforcing their claim on Michipicoten Island.
Now the operation was in full swing. The wild island had been transformed in the space of a few weeks into a thriving enterprise. A modern dock had been erected on the west side of the island, bunk houses for miners, warehouses for equipment and storehouses for ore had been built all along the shoreline. The copper veins were so close to the surface that it had proven efficient to cut the timber away and strip mine several acres at a time. Two enormous bucket-wheel excavators had been brought in to clear away the masses of dirt to expose the ore. The waste deposits extracted from the growing pit were discarded in the little lakes dotting the island. Marcel thought it immensely convenient that some retreating glacier had left those natural depressions behind. It made the operation faster and more convenient.
The executive looked past the scarred terrain to gaze in pride at the titanic excavators. They were mounted on gigantic crawlers, each supporting a boom sixty meters long. When operating at peak efficiency, each of the machines could clear 180,000 cubic meters of overburden in a workday. They represented a considerable expense for Munsaint, imported from Germany and with expensive compliments of operators and mechanics to maintain them. Marcel felt, however, that the excavators would quickly prove their value.
Value? For all the trouble clearing their ownership of the island, Munsaint was expecting a considerable profit. Marcel knew if Michipicoten Island didn’t pay significant dividends, he’d soon find himself out of a job. Beyond the expense of the legal battle, beyond financing the men and materials to extract the copper, there was the public relations cost to consider. Conservation groups were howling for blood, calling Munsaint everything from barbarians to Nazis for the despoiling of the island. Munsaint had been compelled to endow a few scientific studies to prove that their operations on the island wouldn’t harm the indigenous wildlife, and it had taken extra effort to find credible naturalists who would endorse the results Munsaint expected their research to reveal. More capital had been expended to smooth over politicians in France, Canada, and the United States to ensure no environmental agencies disrupted their work. Indeed, Munsaint had been compelled to process the extracted ore in America so several senators could justify their support of the operation by claiming the mine was creating jobs for their constituents.
Most vexing of all, at least for Marcel, had been the protests of the Ojibwa tribe. They held that the island was a sacred place and must not be defiled by the greed of men. Their legends claimed a great monster slumbered beneath the island, and the copper Munsaint was taking had been put there to ensure the beast’s sleep. Their ancestors had suffered terribly from the monster until their medicine men discovered it could be placated with copper. Using the metal, they’d lured it to the island. It had soaked up the energies of the ore like a snake sunning itself on a rock. Eventually, the monster wearied and crawled into one of the lakes. While it slept, tribes from across the region brought all their copper to the island and buried it in the ground so that the monster could never again stir from its lair.
Marcel smiled at the absurdity of the legend. The monster, a thing they called Mishipeshu, was said to be a great scaly beast, the greatest of the creatures they called water panthers. So mighty was Mishipeshu that even the natural foes of the water panthers, the mighty thunderbirds, had been unable to oppose him. Only by placating the brute with copper had the Ojibwa finally been able to end his depredations.
Well, if Mishipeshu had ever existed, Marcel had entombed it far more thoroughly than the Ojibwa. Tons of overburden had been dumped into the lakes, reducing them to nothing but muddy puddles. There was a lesson there, for all backwards, superstitious people who insisted on standing in the path of progress, if only they had the wit to see it.
Marcel turned away from the strip mine and looked out towards the waters of Lake Superior. An empty ore barge was just pulling up at the dock to take on another load. At present capacity, the mine was able to send a load of ore to be processed once every two weeks. Marcel thought they could double that capacity once enough land had been cleared. He still fumed at the decision to process the ore in Chicago rather than someplace closer, but he was realistic enough to understand the concessions demanded by political graft.
The executive had been leaning against the metal rail of the gantry. Now he recoiled from it, staring first at his hands and then back at the railing. Perplexed, he reached out and gripped the rail again. There was no mistaking it;
he hadn’t imagined the weird pulsation, the shiver that was vibrating through the metal. Marcel shook his head, unable to account for the weird phenomenon. Shouts from mine workers around the camp told him he wasn’t the only one to notice the occurrence.
A moment later, however, the miners and their boss had bigger things to occupy their attention. A stand of half-dead trees near the camp began to sway. Chains suspended from the winches at the dock began to shudder. It was a matter of seconds before every bird left on the island flew into the air, squawking and shrieking as they hurriedly made their way inland. Then the tremor struck in earnest.
Marcel was sent reeling as the whole gantry began to creak and groan, threatening to tear itself free from its moorings and pitch him into the strip mine hundreds of meters below. The executive clung to the railing, unable to believe what he was experiencing. An earthquake? Here? It was impossible?
Away to the north, Marcel could see the earth heaving, undulating like a turbulent sea. The great spoil heaps came crumbling down, splashing across the landscape in an avalanche of waste. Near one of the lakes, a great plume of dust and debris shot into the air, propelled hundreds of meters skyward with a force almost volcanic in its violence.
Marcel’s mouth dropped open in horror, all color draining from his face as he considered that prospect. Volcanic activity? Was it possible Michipicoten Island was simply the caldera of a sleeping volcano? Had their digging and drilling disrupted some tectonic pressure beneath the island? Was the whole place going to erupt in a firestorm of magma?
Even that apocalyptic explanation would have appealed to Marcel a moment later, for at least it would have been something his secular, materialistic mentality could have accepted and understood. When the earth heaped about the lake suddenly lurched upwards, when it came cascading away from the titanic body of an unbelievably huge creature, everything he had ever believed in, every concept of reality he’d held, was shattered.
Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Page 44
