“They are the enemy,” said Nagomi, as if reading his thoughts. “They wanted to kill us.”
Stop it. You’re supposed to be the merciful one.
“Be careful,” he said. “They will be waiting for us.”
“I don’t hear any fighting.”
“I know. It worries me too.”
He focused the tarian’s energy in front, and they moved forward. They passed over abandoned bows, quivers, and spear shafts. They reached a trap door leading downstairs.
“I think it’s empty,” he said, eyeing the floor below with True Sight.
“I know,” replied Nagomi. “It’s safe.”
He glanced at the priestess.
Has she seen this already? Is this why she’s so determined?
He climbed down the short ladder and summoned the Soul Lance. The shimmering golden light cut through the thick smoke. The floor was hot under his feet. Thick, oozing sweat covered his skin. The magic shield filtered some of the smoke and heat — it was the only way they could still move through the blazing building. Somewhere in front, a beam burned through and snapped, launching a swarm of buzzing sparks.
“The whole place will come crumbling down in a minute,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” said Nagomi, her voice muffled through the sleeve of her kimono. “Where is everyone?”
“Waiting in a trap somewhere, no doubt.”
The corridor wound on. Bran opened door after door, finding nothing but empty storerooms and armouries. They reached a broad staircase on the opposite end of the floor. The flames had not yet reached there, but the smoke and soot gathered at the top in an impenetrable column, snaking towards the ceiling. Bran pierced the darkness with True Sight — and was blinded by a flash of bright purple light. He staggered back into Nagomi’s arms.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’re close,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “The Fanged was here. I can feel him. The magic …” He moved down the staircase. The cold, metallic taste made his tongue numb, and a sudden chill came over his body, banishing the heat of the fire.
He stepped onto the floor. The walls burst open, showering him with shards of ice. The tarian sizzled, absorbing the magic.
Ice wizard …? Where in Annwn—
“Bran! Look out!”
He glanced up and leapt back, bringing Nagomi with him to the floor and covering her with his body. A roar of thunder shattered the air. The hair on his back stood on end.
“Hounds of Annwn! Another thunder gun! How can they have so many?”
Without looking, he reached out and shot a barrage of fiery missiles down the corridor. Another bolt of lightning crackled over his head, hitting the ceiling. A body fell to the floor with a thud.
“Come on.” Bran helped Nagomi up. “We’re getting closer.”
“And that’s as far as you go,” said a commanding voice.
Over the body of the gunner stood a samurai — the man with the broken nose, in the light-blue uniform. Behind him, in the smoke, loomed silhouettes of more men — archers and gunners, their weapons trained at Bran and Nagomi.
“You again? I thought they killed you in Heian.”
“I’m hard to kill,” the swordsman smiled. “Just like you seem to be, barbarian.”
He raised a fist and stepped back into the smoke. Arrows and bullets flew down the corridor and bounced off the tarian.
“We can do this all day,” the broken-nosed swordsman said. “Eventually, you’ll run out of power. Isn’t that how this works?”
“How would you know?”
“Your wizardess friend told us.” He chuckled.
“Liar!” Bran shot one tongue of bluish flame after another, with each step. The swordsman pulled back, behind his men. The missiles flew again.
“You die here, barbarian, you and your little priestess,” the swordsman spoke from the darkness. “For good this time.”
Bran’s tarian flashed and flickered, reflecting another volley. Lance in hand he charged at the enemy. The archers fled and in their place stood forth the spearmen, four abreast, tightly packed in the narrow corridor. The Lance whirled, slashing through the spear shafts first, then through the chests … but when the smoke cleared, the men were gone, leaving a few bodies scattered on the floor.
“I told you, we can do this all day!” the swordsman’s voice came from the darkness. “I have more men to spare than you have your fire missiles.”
Bran coughed. With the shield losing its power, the smoke and flames were beginning to reach his lungs. “I need clean air to power the shield. We have to get out of this fire. Find the stairs. Get to the lower levels.”
He kicked the thin paper wall. Breaking through room after empty room, he led Nagomi past the flames until they reached another stairwell.
“Bran …” Nagomi caught his hand. “If that swordsman was here, waiting for us—”
“I know. That means Satō’s already gone.”
“Then why are we still—”
“There will be clues. This is why they started this fire — to get rid of clues, evidence.”
“It’s too dangerous. We should get Emrys and leave while we still can.”
“Don’t you want to know where they took her?”
Nagomi bit her lip. She looked down the stairwell, then ran past Bran and disappeared in the shadows.
“Wait … damn it—”
He charged after her, but by the time he reached the floor below, she was nowhere to be seen. The smoke had begun to clear a little — the source of the fire was no longer spreading throughout the corridors.
“Nagomi! Where are you?”
“Here, Bran! Ah—!” Nagomi’s voice broke in a cry, and was replaced by the sound of clashing arms.
He launched towards the noise, dropping the tarian and the Lance. His heart beating madly, he reached a large sliding door and rammed it down with his shoulder.
He barged into an octagonal hall, its gold-painted walls covered with soot, crimson stains, and runes drawn in red paint. Nagomi stood in the middle of the room, a bloodied dagger in her hands, and a body in a light-blue uniform at her feet. She was surrounded by a dozen more swordsmen.
At first Bran couldn’t grasp why they were so reluctant to approach her. Then he noticed: the priestess was enveloped in a dazzling white, slowly receding aura.
When the men spotted Bran, they turned to him — an unarmed boy a seemingly easier target than Nagomi. He faced them with a bwcler on his left hand and the Lance in the other, but both were flickering and crackling with dissipating energy.
I can’t sustain it. I need a sword.
They charged at him from three sides at once. He ignored the left attacker, who struck at the bwcler, and cut through the right one’s sword with the Lance, but the third weapon dug into his forearm, its blade trapped between the bones. He bit into his lip to suppress a cry of pain and thrust forward with the Lance. The light blade vanished, leaving a gaping hole in the enemy’s chest.
Bran retreated into the corridor, pulling the sword out of his forearm. For a moment, the pain and shock blinded him. He covered his face and neck with the bwcler, just in time to reflect two more forceful blows.
Once he felt the sharkskin grip in his hand, Shigemasa’s memories came flooding in. Like the Yamato language, the skill in swordsmanship was still embedded deep in Bran’s mind.
He parried, blocked, and dodged the first few strikes to ascertain the enemies’ skill, but within seconds he counter-attacked, pushing the surprised samurai back into the octagonal room. With the tip of his blade he drew a smooth, deadly triangle, slashing through the thigh and stomach of one attacker and the shoulder and chest of another. The others pulled back beyond the range of his sword to regroup, and strike again.
He could not see Nagomi or her aura through the enemy ranks. They were pushing him back into the hallway: even Shigemasa’s memories could not help him hold out against ten skilled swordsmen, once the surprise a
nd magic ran out. The bwcler disappeared, as his strength spilled out of his forearm along with the blood. He picked up the dead samurai and used his body as a shield, but even this, he knew, would not last long. His legs trembled, and his grip on the sword grew weak.
Two swordsmen leapt at him from left and right. He pushed the dead body at the left one, and reached forward to parry the other’s attack, but the force of the blow threw the weapon out of his hand. The blade reached his shoulder and dug deep into the collarbone. He fell to his knees. The enemy raised his sword again to finish the job.
A roaring thunderbolt struck him with full force and threw him across the corridor.
Nagomi ran up to Bran and supported him from falling. Behind her, in the octagonal room, Takasugi, Koyata, and Tokojiro stood back to back, their kimonos splattered red. Around them lay the bodies of a dozen dead samurai in light-blue uniforms. The blue electrodes of the thunder gun in Koyata’s hands still smouldered.
Bran leaned against the wall and watched how Nagomi’s blue light penetrated deep into the wound in his forearm. No matter how often he’d seen it, it was always a fascinating sight: the way the blood congealed on his skin, and the tissue, nerves, and blood vessels reconnected, first into a pink, jelly-like mass, then into a more familiar shape of muscles and skin.
The priestess gasped and doubled down. The blue light dissipated.
“I’m sorry,” she stuttered, “It’s all I can—”
“It’s all right,” he said, stroking her hand. “It’s enough.”
“But your shoulders, all your other wounds—”
“Just dress them, please. It’ll be fine.” He turned to Takasugi. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at Tennoji?”
The kiheitai commander kicked one of the slain men onto his back and studied his face for moment, before moving to another one.
“We thought you could use some help,” he replied.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” said Tokojiro.
“But what about your men? What about the monastery?”
“They’re still fighting — I hope. We don’t have much time. Can you stand up?”
Bran attempted to rise, but his legs buckled under him and he slid back down to the floor. “Give me a moment. Have you found him yet? The man with the broken nose?”
Takasugi leaned over the last of the bodies. “He’s not here. Kuso. He got away again.”
“And so must we,” said Koyata. He reached out to assist Bran to stand up. “This place won’t remain empty for long. Come.”
“Wait.” Bran raised his hand. “We have to find out what happened to Satō.”
“We tried to find a clue,” said Takasugi. “They were very thorough — two whole floors burned to ash. There’s nothing left.”
“Just … wait.”
Bran took a deep breath and straightened himself, ignoring the needle of pain in his chest. He closed his eyes and let the streams of magic flow through his mind. They were quickly dissipating, but he could still sense them. He knelt down and put his hand to the floor.
“A teleportation hex. From this room,” he said. He opened his eyes and looked around. “Those runes on the walls … that’s not red paint.”
He approached the nearest wall. There was plenty of blood on the bodies around, but he sensed it was better to use his own. He dabbed a finger in the wound in his shoulder and touched the rune.
His left leg exploded with light. He cried in pain. The runes on the wall lit up purple and blue, sucking the offered blood to the last drop. A web of dark, wavy lines came together in the middle of the hall, and a single, thin thread came out, disappearing into the wall.
Bran crouched down, cradling his pounding head in his arms.
Nagomi ran up to him. “Bran?”
“I’m fine. I’m fine. That wall.” He nodded. “What … direction is that?”
Koyata stood in the middle of the room, with his arms outstretched. “We came up from here, the main gate is there, so I’d say … east?”
“More or less,” added Tokojiro. “Can’t really be sure—”
“No,” said Bran. “Look at this room. Eight walls, eight directions, straight like the compass, am I right?”
“It would seem so,” replied the kiheitai commander. He walked up to one of the walls and scrubbed the soot and blood from it, revealing a painting of a long, zig-zagging spit of golden sand, covered in pines.
“This is Amanohashidate, Heavenly Bridge,” he said. “Due north from Naniwa. I bet there’s a painting of the Koya Mountain on the southern wall, then Hyōgo or Okayama to the west, and so on.”
“What’s to the east, then?” asked Tokojiro. “Edo?”
Takasugi and Koyata scrubed off the layers of grime and dirt from the north-eastern wall. They only needed to reveal a few inches of the painting before everyone in the room realized what it showed.
“Mount Fuji,” said Bran.
“It’s just a direction,” said Takasugi. “There are many other cities and castles—”
“No,” Bran replied with conviction. “That is where they’re taking her.”
CHAPTER X
Takasugi put a hand on the dorako’s neck. He was angry with himself at how much his hand trembled. He knew the beast was on his side, and he had studied it before, but his fear was no lesser for it.
“You don’t have to do it, Bran-sama,” he said. “You’re both wounded, and tired. We’ll manage.”
“No.” The foreigner shook his head. “I asked you for help, and I will pay it back. We’ll meet you at the Sakai harbour.”
“Take care, Takasugi-dono,” said the priestess with a warm smile.
The dorako flapped its wings and launched off the roof. It soon became just a dark dot in the morning sky.
“Yeah, we better move too,” said Koyata. “Let the men know we’re coming.”
Takasugi shot a red flare into the air, and the three of them ran back inside the keep. Koyata was the first to reach their target — the only room on the fourth floor untouched by fire: the thick walls, lined with iron and gold, indicated that this had once been a safe room, intended for just such an occasion. He reached a mahogany chest of drawers standing by the wall and pulled on the middle bottom drawer, marked with the crest of six coins. This released the secret lever, and the chest slid away, revealing a hidden staircase.
They had never planned to reach the castle and save Bran and Nagomi. Not even when one of their bakuto guides showed them the secret passage leading from the Tennoji outer gardens to the keep. It was just a historical curiosity — legend had it, that it was this passage that Lady Yodo, the wife of Taiko, the last lord of Naniwa, had used when the first Tokugawa besieged the castle. It was Tokojiro who’d insisted on going. He believed it to be an omen, a sign from the Gods.
“We cannot simply ignore this being here,” he’d said. Reluctantly, the other two agreed.
Takasugi was the last to enter the hidden staircase. He glanced into the corridor one last time and heard the cries and steps of the guards climbing up the stairs from the floor below.
Too slow. What held you? He pulled the lever at the back of the chest of drawers and retreated into the darkening passage.
The tunnel under the city was spacious and well ventilated. The layers of lichen, dust, and cobwebs told a lonely story of the passage not being used for decades, if not longer — but it had been in use in recent days. The rust on the torch holders had flaked away, and the dust on the floor had been freshly swept to cover footprints.
The distance to Tennoji was almost a full ri, a quarter of an hour of a steady run before they reached the other end. The exit of the tunnel was disguised as a well, marked with the same six-coin crest as the drawer in the castle.
Takasugi climbed out first. Above the well he saw the relieved, nervous face of the kiheitai private they had tasked with guarding the passage.
“Oh thank the kami!” he said, helping Takasugi out. “I thought I would be left all alone
here.”
He’s just a boy, Takasugi noticed. Younger even than Shōin …
“What about the others?” he asked.
“M-most have already left for the harbour, as soon as we saw the flare, tono” the boy stuttered. “There are only a few of us left, defending this part of the gardens.”
“And the Aizu?” asked Koyata, clambering out of the well. His face and kimono were smeared with blood, dust, and soot. He resembled a goblin.
I must look the same. No wonder the boy’s terrified.
“Left for the castle as soon as they realized our attack was just a ruse.”
“We’d have met them head-on if we had moved on the surface,” remarked Tokojiro.
A nearby explosion shook the ground beneath Takasugi’s feet. The clash of blades grew nearer. The boy turned pale and glanced in the direction of the fighting. Takasugi reached for the gourd at the boy’s belt. He drank its entire contents in a few quick gulps, snorted, sniffed, and shook his head. “Right.” He slapped the boy on the back, and handed him one of the thunder pistols they had taken from the castle. “Take this. Here’s the trigger. Get everyone around, we’re breaking out of this place.”
“Y-yes, commander!”
The boy vanished into the hedge. Takasugi plopped down on the grass and supported his head on his elbow. He looked at Koyata and Tokojiro, both breathing heavily, leaning on their sword sheaths.
“Is it just me,” he asked, “or is this shaping up to be a very tiresome day?”
They reached the Sakai market at noon. The place was empty. There would be little business done at this time even on a normal day, but the news of fighting near the city cleared everyone away to safety. Garbage shifted in the lazy breeze. The stench of unsold fish, rotting in the sun, drilled deep into Takasugi’s nostrils. He knew it would linger for hours.
Behind him, a hundred pairs of feet kicked up the dust of the market street. The column grew with every step they took closer to the harbour. At first these were just the men Takasugi had brought with him from Tennoji, but soon they were joined by the ragged bands breaking through from the countryside. The news of the final stand of the kiheitai had spread quickly. There was neither a way nor a need to conceal their march anymore.
The Shattering Waves (The Year of the Dragon, Book 7) Page 11
