Soon, some of her strength returned. She pressed her hands against the dirt to lift herself up, and froze when under her touch the soil turned into sticky mud. It reached to her in finger-like clumps. Fear clutched at her heart. She pulled, but her palms remained fixed to the ground.
The tomb opened up and swallowed her whole.
The room was stuffy and dark, filled with silk curtains, which moved noiselessly with her every breath. Beyond the layers of cloth sat a young man, with his back to Nagomi, reading. The back of his robe was adorned with the chrysanthemum crest, embroidered in golden thread.
She stepped forward. The silk rustled. The boy turned in fright.
“I know you,” she said.
His eyes wandered to her hair, dark red among the flowing curtains.
“I’ve seen you too,” he said. “In my dreams … and over Heian.”
She gasped, suddenly remembering, and dropped to her knees. “Heika!” She lowered her eyes to the dusty floor. “Please forgive me!”
“No, don’t—” He stood up. “I’m not the Mikado here. I’m … I’m nobody anymore.”
“You are my sovereign and liege, the Divine Mikado of all Yamato,” she recited. “My eyes are not worthy to gaze at your countenance.”
“Stop this. Get up.” He walked up to her and reached out but his hand passed through her body. He stumbled and stepped back. “You’re not here!”
“No, heika. I’m in Naniwa … I think?”
“Why have you come here?”
“I don’t know, my liege. I don’t know what this place is.”
“It’s a cabin on Shimazu Nariakira’s ship. Somewhere off the shores of Chinzei,” the Mikado replied, nodding sadly. “Looks like this is my palace now. My prison.” He glanced again at her hair. “Who are you? Why do you stalk my dreams? Are you a kami? A yōkai?”
“No, heika. I am just a lowly priestess from Suwa. I have a certain gift. Or a curse. I see things—”
“Like a Scryer?”
She nodded. “But I don’t always understand my gift. I don’t understand why I was brought to this place, now.”
The boy — it was strange to think of him as God, he was so young and innocent-looking — touched his forehead with a painful grimace. As he did so, his robe moved, revealing a pendant — a comma-shaped jade jewel on a silver chain. “I remember a voice,” he said, straining, “a woman, reciting a poem …”
“The Prophecy,” she said in a whisper. “You are part of it, heika. The boy who can’t be seen.”
“Yes! That was it. But … me? Why me? I’m powerless!” He grimaced. “A pawn in the game of daimyos and Taikuns. What can I do that’s worth mentioning in some prophecy?”
“Maybe that’s why I’m here, my lord. To help you figure it out. I — my gift—” She looked at her hands. The sticky clay from the tomb ... “Lately, the dreams have eluded me. I did not understand why …”
“And you do now?”
“I think I needed strength for this.” She looked around the cabin. “I have never ventured so far in my visions.”
The Mikado shrugged. “You have wasted your strength, then. There is nothing that I can help you with.” He spread his arms. “Unless you have questions about me and my family. Apart from calligraphy and ancient history, it’s the only thing I know ...”
She studied him for a moment, then pointed at his neck. “What is this stone?”
He recoiled in surprise at her question, and covered the necklace with his robe. “It’s just a gift from my mother.” His cheeks turned deep red, and he turned his face away.
He’s lying. And he’s not good at hiding it.
“May I see it, please?”
“No!” He pulled away. “It’s not important.”
Eyes closed, Nagomi pressed her forehead to the floor. The boat wobbled on a wave.
“She’s from this island, you know,” she heard after a pause. She dared to look up again. His fingers played with the jewels under the robe. “A strong woman, fierce, independent. My father said so. He brought her to Heian to serve as one of the many concubines, but I turned out to be the last child he ever spawned. The only son.”
There was a short pause and the Mikado continued in a quiet voice. “That means he never lay with another woman after her.” He gazed ruefully at the book in his hand, and put it away. “My father could have been the best Mikado this country’s ever had," he said through clenched teeth. “If only they’d let him.”
“They?”
“The Taikun, I suppose. Or my Regents, which amounts to the same. Who else? They poisoned him, and they tried to poison me.”
He doesn’t know about the Serpent. But …
“What else do you remember from your dreams, heika? Apart from me and the voice …”
He looked at his fingers. “I remember holding a sword. An old blade. It reminded me of how Kusanagi, the Sacred Sword, was supposed to look like. Did you know, the one in Nagoya is just a copy? Don’t tell anyone, it’s a secret.” He chuckled. “It’s all empty symbols, just like my throne.”
“Where’s the real one?”
“Nobody knows. It was last seen with Antoku at Dan-no-ura. It’s likely still there, at the bottom of the sea.”
Dan-no-ura again …!
“What else?”
“A monster. Black. With eight heads on eight long necks. I never understood what that meant, but—”
“Heika …”
Interrupting him was the gravest of treasons, an unspeakable crime, but she sensed her time in the cabin was coming to an end. She spoke quickly. She told him about the Fanged and the Serpent, the Black Wings and the Prophecy. In a hurry she omitted most of the details but it was enough to leave him stunned and speechless when she finished.
“This is what my father feared,” he said at last. “The war of blood. Horrors from the past and enemies from the future united against Yamato.” He hid his head in his arms. “Why have you told me all this?” he wailed at her. “I was happier not knowing! It’s not like I can prevent any of this from happening. I will watch the land fall before the Darkness. I’d be better off dead.”
“Heika … My liege … It’s not true. I have seen you face the monster.” And I saw it destroy you, time and time again. “I don’t understand it all myself, yet, but I know you mustn’t lose hope. Without you, the war will be lost.”
He raised his head. “My father said the same.”
“Then you know it to be true.”
He revealed his robe. “Truth? I’ll show you truth, girl. Here. Have a good look at your sovereign.” He reached for the necklace and unclasped it.
A lightning flashed from the clear sky. In its light, she saw the dragon: a serpentine monster with green leathery wings spread wide, coiled around the Mikado; its long body and neck spreading to the walls and the ceiling. The beast stared at her with a jewel-like eye, and blinked.
“Heika!”
She dropped to the floor again and prostrated herself. Her hands sank into the wood, which turned into the sticky mud. She opened her eyes. Bran was standing over her, his face a shadow backlit by the sun.
“I thought you’d never wake up,” he said. “I hope you’re well-rested. Come on.” He reached out to help her up. “We have to go, while the trail is hot. We’ve dawdled here long enough.”
In the end there were just enough of the kiheitai left to fill up four ships, with the fifth turned into a floating infirmary. The other crews were allowed to do as they pleased, and most of them hurried to set sail, abandoning their cargo and profits to the waves.
A passing soldier, one of the last few to enter the ships, stopped by Takasugi. His head was wrapped in crimson bandages, and his eyes were bloodshot and swollen.
“What do we do with our dead, Commander?” he asked.
“The bakuto will take care of them,” Takasugi replied.
The soldier scowled. “With all due respect, Commander—”
Takasugi silenced him. “We have
neither time nor space to deal with our dead, if we want to spare the living. We can barely handle the injured.”
“But tono, their spirits …!”
“They will be enshrined as heroes, when all this is over. Now move, before we all join them!” He pushed the soldier on and watched him until he boarded the last of the departing ships.
“They’re here,” said Koyata, glancing landwards. “What kept them?”
Two blue flares shot from the summit of a nearby barrow-mound. The enemy had reached the rearguard outposts: the besiegers had become the besieged. Takasugi whispered a quick prayer for the souls of the volunteers. None of them expected to live through the day.
A black, round object whistled through the air and landed in the barrier with a thud and a splash. Mud and ice shards splattered Takasugi’s kimono.
“They brought in cannons from the castle!” Koyata said with wide-open eyes. “Taiko’s old guns! No wonder they were so slow.”
Another cannonball shattered through the earth wall, a foot away from where Takasugi was standing. It dug a long trench in the dirt and rested at its end, rotating quickly with the fuse still burning. Tokojiro leapt at it and smothered the fuse with his bare hand.
Koyata grabbed the screaming interpreter from the ground. “Fool! You’ve already lost an eye, you want to lose an arm, too?”
Pursued by the missiles exploding all around them, they ran to the nearest ship and leapt onto the deck. Takasugi kicked away the gangway, and cut through the mooring ropes. “Go, go!” he shouted at the terrified helmsman. “Wizards, put some wind in that sail!”
Two wind-masters planted their feet firmly on the deck and drew a complex, six-rune pattern in the air. A strong gust filled out the red canvas. The ship buckled forward and back like a wild horse, and launched away from the pier. Whizzing cannonballs erupted in its foamy wake. Takasugi ducked behind the bulwark, as far-reaching bullets flew over his head, followed by a cannonball. The projectile shot through some crates and fell harmless into the sea on the other side.
“I can’t believe they brought those guns,” he said. “So primitive.”
“But effective at short range,” replied Koyata. “If they were any faster — if they weren’t held back …”
Takasugi whispered another prayer. If the Aizu were already at the shore, that meant all the volunteers they’d left at the perimeter had perished.
“We’ve lost so many already,” he said. “and we will lose more yet. Was it all really worth it?”
“It won’t be if we don’t make it out of here,” replied Koyata. “Can’t you hurry that wind?” he yelled at the mages.
“If we blow any stronger, we’ll tear the sails, guardsman,” one of the wizards replied indignantly.
“This is a precise science, not onmyōji tricks,” added the other with scorn. “We can’t just pray the ship away.”
“Pity,” said Koyata under his breath.
Takasugi peeked over the rail. Some Aizu soldiers were hauling back the crews of the abandoned ships, ordering them on board. “Do they really want to pursue us?” he asked. “In this, still?”
“Looks like it.” Koyata sniffed and wiped blood from his nose. “Listen, Hiro-sama. Even if we were to die here … There are others — Katsura-sama, Yamagata-sama ... As long as there’s a kernel of the kiheitai left, we aren’t truly defeated.”
Takasugi nodded. “I know. This is why we’re doing this, after all.” He looked to the sky. “We should be out in the open sea soon.”
As if in response, the ship swayed on a sharp breeze. One of the wind-masters staggered back and leaned against the bulwark. His face was paper-pale, and a narrow thread of blood trickled from his left nostril. The other wizard drooped his arms and knelt down, gasping for air.
“Get them some water,” Takasugi ordered. “Helmsman, the boat is yours. Get us out of here.”
“I — I don’t know where to go, tono,” the man stuttered.
“Just follow the others.”
“That’s just it, tono …” The helmsman raised a shaking hand.
Takasugi’s blood ran cold. He turned to see only two of the remaining four vessels still cutting the water under full sail, straight on, westwards. The other two, their ropes slashed, their rudders abandoned, drifted aimlessly away from the pack. Current and wind pushed them slowly back towards the pursuing Aizu fleet.
Takasugi leaned far over the side and stared at the deck of the drifting ship.
“Don’t get too close,” he warned the helmsman. “If it’s some kind of a trap—”
The words froze in his mouth. He shivered and his teeth chattered; a metallic taste tingled on his tongue. He spotted the first bodies on the deck — white and parched, as if all blood had been drawn from them.
“Back! Pull back!” he shouted. “Wind-masters, full force — get us away from here!”
A gust of cold air passed him by. A blur of green shadow moved from the dead ship to Takasugi’s vessel. A blink of an eye later, one of the weather wizards cried out and fell on his back, his stomach slashed open. The other mage spread his hands to form a spell. A ray of sun flashed off an unseen blade and the mage dropped to his knees without making a sound, a fountain of blood spurting from his skull. The green blur moved again and two more kiheitai soldiers fell.
Koyata drew his gun and shot in the direction of the chaos, without aiming. The afterimage of the forked lightning drew a shadow of the enemy on Takasugi’s eyelids — a svelte silhouette in a tight-fitting uniform, holding a chained sickle.
Takasugi reached for his sword, but before he could draw it, Koyata grabbed the folds of his kimono and they leapt overboard.
“What are you doing?” Takasugi cried, spluttering and coughing out seawater.
“Be quiet!” Koyata put his hand on Takasugi’s mouth. “Dive and follow me.”
They swam underneath the drifting dead hulk and emerged on the other side. Takasugi grabbed a thick rope hanging from the deck. A few muffled cries of pain came from the ship they’d left behind, followed by an uneasy silence — the sort that followed an earthquake.
“What—” started Takasugi. The loudness of his own voice scared him. “What was that?” he finished in a whisper.
“Can’t you tell? That must have been a Fanged,” replied Koyata.
“My men are dying! I have to get back—”
“They are already dead.” Koyata held him back. “You wouldn’t stand a chance! That thing there … that’s something worse than just a Fanged. An assassin.”
Tokojiro paddled towards them. He was a poor swimmer, and struggled to hold out on the surface.
“Katsura is turning back. He must have noticed us drifting.” He waved in the direction of Sakai. Red and white rectangles of cloth appeared over the horizon. “And the Aizu are closing in.”
Takasugi shook the rope in helpless fury. “Kuso! It’s all lost. They got us exactly where they wanted.”
“As long as at least one ship reaches Chōfu …” said Koyata. “If only we could — Hiro-sama!” He grabbed Takasugi, struck by a sudden thought. “Your flares!”
“What about them?”
“We need to draw that Fanged down here, to us. The water will slow down its movements. We may stand a chance.”
Takasugi raised his sword and shot a barrage of flares from its blade. Their colour signified danger, stay away. He hoped the remaining commanders spotted it in time.
“Now we wait,” said Koyata.
“How do you know so much about the Fanged?”
“I held a scholar from Kumamoto in my prison … Miyabe-dono. He studied the Serpent all his life. And Tokojiro here—”
There was a quiet splash, as if a carp jumped in a garden pond. The three of them fell silent, each holding a sword in one hand, and clutching to any rope, piece of debris or protruding board they could find with the other.
Takasugi’s breath quickened. The cold was getting to him through the thickly-woven black uniform. It may h
ave been the height of the summer, but he was in the middle of the sea, submerged to his chest. The tip of his sword danced a shivering jig in the air.
This is stupid. I can barely hold the sword in my hand. All that creature has to do is wait for us to lose our strength.
Tokojiro howled and waved his arms, whacking the sea with his sword. The water around him turned pink. In a split of a second he went under.
Koyata dived after him. Takasugi pulled himself higher out of the water, with his back to the ship’s side. The sea was a mess of red froth. He couldn’t see anything below the surface. After a few excruciating seconds, Koyata appeared again, spluttering and coughing. He thrust the unconscious interpreter at Takasugi.
“It’s just a girl!” was all he said before diving in again.
Blood poured in a steady stream from a wound in Tokojiro’s stomach. Takasugi could do nothing but watch, too weak to climb up to the ship’s deck. Soon, he knew, the blood would attract the real sharks. Not that any of them would live to see it.
Tokojiro opened his eyes and moaned. He raised his fingers to the sky. He sees the Gods taking him into the Heavens, Takasugi thought. He too looked up. He wanted to feel the sun on his face one last time. Instead, he saw a long, thin, serpentine shape, glinting gold in the sky: a great golden snake.
Is it one of the Gods? Or am I just seeing things …
A dark object launched from the flying serpent and, like a shooting star, fell towards them at great speed. It struck the water, launching a fountain of spray. The splash hit Takasugi. He hit his head on the side of the ship. His hand slid from the rope. He felt Tokojiro’s body slip from his grip as he sank into the cold, dark depths.
CHAPTER XII
She was still dizzy and stunned from the effects of the teleportation hex when Yodo threw her into a cell. Her stomach churned and twisted. As she retched onto the stone floor, she felt all the wounds inside her open up again.
They were in a system of caves and tunnels dug into bedrock: the natural habitat of the Fanged, it seemed. Satō longed to see the sun — apart from the brief glimpses in the castle windows, she had not seen the outside world in days. The skin on her hands turned thin and sickly pale.
The Shattering Waves (The Year of the Dragon, Book 7) Page 13
