by Dana Fredsti
A diffused white glow suddenly brightened the clearing.
“There! I see it.” Blake pointed. Above Cam’s head, just out of arm’s reach, a shining haze of distortion rippled in the air like the surface of a pool after a pebble drop.
“What now?” Harcourt asked.
Blake looked up at the aerial display.
“Come here, Cam. Help me with him.”
“What’s that now?” Harcourt asked. Following Blake’s lead, Cam grabbed a leg and lifted him up. “Wait, wait, I’m not r—” he cried out as they fed him headfirst into the light. It drank him in as if it were a swirling drain—one moment he was all flailing gangly limbs, the next instant sucked through and gone.
Blake and Cam looked at each other.
“Think you can jump up there?” Blake asked.
Cam nodded. “You?”
“Give me a hand.” Blake laid a hand on Cam’s shoulder as the Celt bent and made a stirrup of his hands to boost him up. The vortex took him away as swiftly as it had the wailing professor.
“Cam, you did it!” Amber’s voice was urgent. “Come through quick, we don’t know how much longer we can keep the portal open!”
“Here I come.”
A cracking sound suddenly came from further in the woods. They were close. Cam put them out of his mind, focusing on the jump. The rippling in the air seemed higher now. He flexed his hands nervously, crouched down, then took a deep breath and leapt up. His hand swept through empty air and with a grunt of frustration he fell back down again.
He quickly picked himself up for a second try.
“Cam,” a quiet voice said. He turned around slowly to see Kha-Hotep step out from between the tree trunks, firearm raised. “Step away from the portal, my brother. You’re coming back with us.”
“I’m sorry, Kha.”
“Don’t make me do it.” The Egyptian’s gaze was deadly serious. Cam had no words to convince him.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ll shoot.”
Cam lowered his head as if in defeat, and then bent to flex his legs and jumped as high as he could.
“Cam!” Kha-Hotep yelled.
The Celt stretched out his arm as if to touch the sky—and this time the vortex accepted his offering. He felt himself moving ever upward, slowly, and then twisting in the air—no, it was everything else that was twisting, the world and the sky swirling around him until he plunged through a tunnel of air turned into water, into dreams…
49
They kill bears here, Commander Tokushirō Noda had thought to himself a few minutes earlier. His unit, the 7th Hokkaido Infantry of the Imperial Army, had been the Kuma-Heidan, the Bear Division, the strongest unit in the army of Japan. Now let them see what this old bear knows of revenge.
He flashed on memories from a quarter century ago, as a young lieutenant in the winters of 1904 and 1905, when the Russian and Japanese empires clashed on the plains of frozen, desolate Manchuria.
* * *
Grueling marches through blinding snowstorms, days and nights of endless artillery bombardment, chattering of machine guns and screams. Flat battlefields turned into hills of twisted, fallen dead. Bone-white landscape, dyed red and blasted black.
Every day, every attack, for a year and a month, his troops took up the banner of the rising sun and swore by the spirit of Yamato, promising ten thousand years for His Majesty the Emperor. They reflected on the cherry blossom, the warrior’s flower, its beauty, short life, and glorious death. Those ready to die could accomplish anything.
At night, he affixed his bayonet with frozen fingers and they charged in waves of suicidal assaults through minefields and entanglements of barbed wire, silver blades flashing in the dark like reeds in a storm. Blinding Russian searchlights swept across the field, and the star-rockets burned over their heads, making them easy targets. His unit was thrown into the worst meat grinders of the war—203 Meter Hill, Port Arthur, the final battle of Mukden. There, on a front extending more than ninety miles, the Russians dug in at the old Manchu capital, and for ten days the outnumbered Japanese threw themselves at them.
By the end, when the Tsar’s generals knew all was lost and they were closing in to finish them, the Russian troops abandoned their wounded and fled under cover of a massive dust storm. Once again, the Russians were saved by their oldest and most implacable field-general, the weather.
In the moment of victory, tighten your helmet-strings, Iyeyasu the first Shōgun had warned. Even as Noda and his men, too exhausted to give chase, stood watching their defeated foes slink away into the howling oblivion, a still greater battle commenced before their eyes.
Divine beams of light from a hidden sun broke through the crumbling earth to touch the sky, forming sheer mountain ranges of pure lightning and blinding radiance, resplendent and terrifying. This was more than the might of Raijin-sama the thunder god, it was the karmic energy of the entire universe on full display.
And then, as all things do, it vanished.
The old world passed away on that afternoon—the Day of the Battle Between Earth and Heaven—replaced by a wild, strange new land he barely recognized. Like Odysseus, Lt. Noda suffered much, lost many comrades, and saw many strange things during his yearslong voyage home through the monster-ridden anarchy of Asia.
From crisis, opportunity. A survivor, he knew the man who controlled bullets controlled guns controlled the future. Harvesting the spent cartridges at Mukden, millions scattered across the battlefield for the taking, he worked with Chinese alchemists to produce bullets again for his unit’s firearms. He took Castle Matsumae, what the Ezo called Matomai, and gathered new vassals—samurai, stray ronin, and ashigaru footsoldiers.
His army.
* * *
His Kamchatkan and Koryak scouts, bundled up in their reindeer hides and thick fur capes, came running back past the ranks of spearmen and arquebusiers to get to Noda. Had they spotted the village already? Rarely were the taciturn, weathered men so agitated.
“A giant, my lord! A giant!”
“A giant? Indeed?” Noda permitted himself a smile, absently leaning a hand on the Maxim gun. His force was more than a match for any prehistoric beast still roaming the Hokkaido wilderness. “Let us bring it down!”
With a chop of his hand, he waved his troops forward toward their prize.
* * *
Nellie and Hypatia froze as spearmen, archers, and gunners spilled into the glade, fanning out in a wide formation to better encircle them. Kon’iro Kyojin smiled at the newcomers.
“Such delicious morsels…”
Reaching over to the closest fir, he casually broke it in half and stripped off its branches with a single sweep of his hand. Then he raised the trunk high, hefting it like a batter at the plate.
“No!” Nellie cried out. “There’s too many of them!”
“We will take care of these,” the rover said. “You two go.”
“But—”
“He is right,” Hypatia said, grabbing her hand. “Come!”
Nellie looked back at the blue giant, but his attention was on the warriors now. He let loose his roar of demonic laughter—thunderous this close. She turned and ran.
Arrows were already whizzing past them.
* * *
“Uchikata hajime!” Commander Noda shouted. At his signal, bowmen and arquebusiers opened fire, the muskets belching smoke and fire. While the gunners hurried to reload, a second and third flight of arrows struck the ogre until his blue hide bristled with them like a porcupine. Noda nodded in approval… then he realized the oni was still advancing. Bright blue sparks flew off his shoulders and chest, but if the bullets and bow-shots had wounded him, he otherwise showed no sign of it.
“Totsugeki!” Noda shouted to the front line.
The soldiers charged, rushing toward their foe en masse with spears and naginatas to finish the monster. Laughing maniacally, the giant swung his makeshift club in great sweeping arcs, shattering polearms and sending warriors
flying with each swipe. The archers fired at will, while the panicking arquebusiers gave up on the reload, dropping their guns to draw katanas instead.
Noda swore and crouched at the heavy machine gun, quickly and efficiently locking the cartridge belt in place and racking the charging handle with an experienced hand. He raised the barrel and fired on the demon’s horned head.
A flash of blinding light filled the clearing for an instant. He shielded his eyes—and suddenly there were four of the giant blue ogres. Sinister flying shapes swarmed overhead, and dark things came crawling out of the woods.
* * *
No more arrows flew past, but the women still ran as fast as they could in the bulky overboots, their parka hoods falling back from their faces. Terrible sounds, thundering mixed with men’s screams, echoed from the battle above, but worse, strange yipping, whistling hunting calls still dogged them. They wove through the trees, crashing through pockets of snow and scrub, recklessly bounding down the mountain like the fleeing deer.
Without warning, something fast and deadly came slinging through the air, catching Nellie from behind—in a sudden flurry of movement, it whipped around her neck, choking her and striking her in the head. She pitched forward, arms splayed wide, momentum sending her tumbling, first onto the frost-slicked ground, and then over the side of the nearest cliff. Hypatia screamed her name.
Heart pounding, Hypatia rushed to the edge and carefully crouched down to peer over. It made her reel with vertigo, and then the pit of her stomach dropped as she looked down upon Nellie’s body. The young woman had plummeted down a snowy embankment and slid to a precarious halt, halfway to a sheer drop-off of hundreds of feet. She lay unmoving, eyes closed, her body threatening to slide headfirst even further toward that final edge.
It took all her concentration not to slip and fall herself, but Hypatia hurried down the slope, half-sliding, half-walking until she reached Nellie’s side. There, she saw that nothing more than a simple trio of leather-bound stones connected by lengths of sinew had brought Nellie down. She knelt and threw off her mittens, working her fingers quickly to unwind the strands wrapped tight around Nellie’s throat, praying she still lived.
Engaged as she was, Hypatia still heard the sudden whipping of the air and ducked, just as another leathery snare went whirling just over her head. She looked up to see a trio of men dressed in ragged suits of patchwork leather hide and bushy fur capes. Beneath their thick black fur caps, they looked wizened, with beardless wind-carved faces the color of camelskin, their eyes like knots in a tree.
They were coming for her, knives out.
* * *
Will-o’-the-wisps and malevolent spirits filled the air—pale gaunt specters floated overhead in trailing burial robes, repulsive night hags cackled and swooped like predatory birds, a tall black shade with no face but an austere kabuki mask moaned and stretched out grasping arms as it drew closer. Gray-skinned, hollow-eyed dead girls, their limbs impossibly contorted, crab-crawled down tree trunks, alongside staggering fire-blackened corpses with melting eyes and red flames in the sockets.
A menagerie of hungry demonkind descended upon them. Cyclops oni whose heads were little more than a massive evil eye, and gelatinous oni with a hundred eyes. Headless oni whose torsos bore a malicious face, and humanlike oni with necks that stretched like serpents. Crow-tengu, and river-kappa. Seductive spider demonesses beckoned to the soldiers from their web-shrouded bowers in the trees.
The identical quartet of giants still roared and brandished their clubs with perfect synchronicity, but the terrified foot soldiers—those still alive—scrambled back. The bravest among the surviving samurai still wielded their katanas against the howling demons, but the insubstantial evil spirits were immune to steel or arrow. The rest of his men dropped their spears or swords and fled for their lives.
* * *
Howling like wolves, the three Shamo scouts came tearing down the embankment toward Hypatia, heedless of its steepness or the nearness of the cliff’s edge. She still struggled to loosen the snare from Nellie’s neck. But the fastest two were on her before she could even rise to defend herself.
“Melagetashlen!” one barked as he bounded down to grab for her. She drew her arm back and swung with all her strength, flailing him with his own corded weapon. Its three stone weights hit him full in the face with a crack, breaking teeth. He careened to the side, unable to stop himself from toppling off the cliff. A long, agonized cry trailed after him. The other scout grimaced and leapt to tackle her, sending them both sliding further down dangerously close to the edge.
They struggled in the snow, but the rugged tribesman was stronger. Seizing Hypatia by the throat with one hand, he slammed her body down, once, twice, and then raised his blade with the other, aimed at her heart. But she had already drawn her own knife, and now slipped it under his thick hide shirt into his unprotected belly. He gasped, and she plunged it in deeper. His blade tumbled out of his trembling fingers over the cliff, and then, with a push from her, he followed it.
Her head spinning, breath heaving, and blood pounding through her chest and arms, Hypatia forced herself to get to her feet again, raising her knife to face the third attacker. But he was up the slope. His beefy hand held Nellie by the back of her hair, her limp body dangling from his grasp. Pointing his knife toward Hypatia, he gestured with it angrily for her to drop hers. She refused and took a step closer, shaking drops of blood off her blade.
“If you’ve killed her…” she said, her voice deep and guttural. Locking eyes with him, she took another deliberate step. Rattled, the man swiftly brought his knife to Nellie’s throat. Hypatia froze. They continued their stare-down for a few tense heartbeats, before she slowly lowered her knife, and then lightly let it fall to the snow.
The tribesman smiled, not a pretty sight. With a nod of his head, he beckoned her closer, then pointed to the ground with his knife. It seemed he wanted her to kneel down, so she did, never taking her gaze off his. Pleased, he grunted in reply, dropping his catch. He stepped toward her, reversing the grip on his knife.
He grunted again, louder this time. Then, with a fixed look of surprise, he stiffened and dropped like a fallen tree. Nellie stood behind him, her knife buried deep in the small of his back.
Hypatia gave a choked laugh that was swallowed by tears. Rushing to her side, Nellie dropped to her knees and the two held each other.
“I thought they’d killed you,” Hypatia said, her voice muffled against Nellie’s shoulder.
“No, just made me see stars for a minute,” Nellie said, soothing her. “So sorry to scare you just now—I was only playing possum for his sake. Are you alright to keep moving?”
“Oh, yes.”
* * *
The commander was not a superstitious man.
“It’s a trick!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Stand your ground and fight the giant!”
None followed his orders, if any could even hear them over the din. He swore again. Ignoring the phantasms, he took aim at the closest of the giants and opened fire with the Maxim gun.
Nothing. The blaze of bullets passed through the horned blue colossus as if he were a ghost. Another trick. Damn all the smoke and mirrors! Noda roared his own war cry as he swiveled the barrel, sweeping the entire clearing to catch all four in his arc of fire.
All of them went down in concert.
Even so, the rest of the creatures continued to terrorize his forces. He wanted to fire another burst to be certain he had finished off the giant, but there was so much panic he couldn’t get a clear shot without gunning down his own men. He considered the option, his finger flexing on the trigger… then he spotted the mysterious floating sphere. It hovered at the very center of the commotion. What technological marvel allowed it to defy gravity, he had no idea—but he understood the concept of a cinematograph projector well enough.
Time to exorcize these ghosts.
He raised the angle of the gun and trained it on the hovering little orb.
Before he could pull the trigger again, the blue giant—just one this time—was back on his feet again, his chest smoking. Men’s screams and flying bodies marked another swing of the blue giant’s club, and then the horned brute turned his eyes on Commander Noda himself.
“Be amazed at my agility!” the oni roared as he leapt into the air with club raised, bounding over the fleeing samurai. The rhinos bucked in fear, and Noda struggled to hang on to the platform.
“Thrill to my feats of strength!” the giant bellowed as he came crashing down upon Noda and the gun.
* * *
Even after they could no longer hear the terrible echoes of battle rolling down the forested slopes, Nellie and Hypatia continued to run, not daring to stop even as their lungs and limbs burned. As the mountains swallowed up the wan winter sun, they finally staggered their way down to the little beach and its sea cave.
The seals were agitated. Light shone from somewhere in the depths of the cavern, suffusing its inky depths with a welcome glow. The mammals barked and wiggled away as the two women entered and approached its source, a shimmering spot of gauzy brightness on the cave wall, thrumming with unearthly life. Nellie put a hand to her forehead and concentrated, trying to reopen the psychic link.
“Amber? Are you there? Amber?”
The connection returned.
“—can’t tell how much longer I can hold the portal open. Keep an eye out for the rover, it should reach you soon!”
“Amber, you already sent it. That was this morning. We’re here!”
“What? Okay then, come through!”
Hypatia took Nellie’s hand, and the two stepped into the vortex.
50
Earlier…
Her head hurt. Even so, the first thing she noticed when she woke up was how warm she was. Not just warm, but impossibly cozy, as if she were wrapped in luxurious fur blankets. Blankets that rose and fell as if…
As if they were breathing.
Amber opened her eyes. It took all of her self-preservation instincts not to scream and run. She was nestled against something large and furry.
