Stormdancer

by Jay Kristoff

  How many days are we going to spend up here, hunting ghosts?

  Rigging lashed against the balloon above Yukiko’s head with the sound of bullwhips. After half a day of the deafening barrage, she had been forced to abandon her haven among the chi barrels and seek shelter inside. Black rain sluiced on the deck, rushing over the rails into the nothingness beyond, reeking of lotus toxin. Cloudwalkers shrugged on protective oilskins and perched trembling in their lookout posts, peering ahead into the darkness. Lightning arced down in blinding, brilliant strokes, hurled from the hands of the Thunder God.

  Below decks in the tropical heat, the sky folk burned offerings to Susano-ō, praying for mercy day after day. Though the Storm God was considered a benevolent force, his firstborn son, Raijin, God of Thunder and Lightning, was renowned for his cruelty, his delight in the terror of men. Prayer and offerings seldom held interest for him, nor did the lives of those who sailed in his skies. It was chaos he loved above all, above the mewling of monkey-children in their fragile little boats, the wooden coins they burned in his father’s name. And so the cloudwalkers knelt, prayer beads rubbed between calloused fingers, begging Susano-ō to stay his son’s hand. Begging for their lives.

  And still, Yamagata urged them onward.

  Yukiko could see the tips of the Iishi Mountains beneath them, peering out through the porthole as the lightning turned night to day. She wondered whether the helmsman could even see in the dark, whether he would drive them into the black crags and end all of them in a bright blossom of super-heated hydrogen. Fear uncoiled inside her gut, and she thought of the boy in her dreams, the boy with the sea-green eyes. She did not want to die.

  For three days the motors whined with the strain, Yamagata tacking back and forth across the face of the wind. The stench of burning chi was overpowering. The hunters’ meals boiled inside their bellies and threatened to pay the air a second visit after every sitting. Masaru and Yamagata spent long hours in his cabin, poring over charts and plotting their course through the treacherous currents of wind howling between the saw-toothed peaks. They had the sense to keep the door closed when their arguments grew fiercest, but the volume was still enough to travel through the walls. The cloudwalkers muttered among themselves, wondering if this would be the last hunt of the great Black Fox. Whether Shōgun Yoritomo’s command was leading all of them to their doom.

  Yukiko lay as she had done for the past three nights: curled up tight, trying to hold in her dinner as her hammock swayed back and forth. Her father hung above her, swathed in a lotus stupor, empty pipe still clutched in one stained hand. She envied him for a moment, envied the peace he could find in that awful little weed. The voices of memory and loss smothered beneath a veil of sticky, blue-black smoke; the howl of the tempest around him nothing but a distant breeze.

  Her stomach churned again, dinner surging against her ribs. Admitting defeat, she lurched up and stumbled for the door as the floor undulated beneath her.

  Snatching up an oilskin, she burst out onto the deck, almost falling as the wood pitched away from her feet. She staggered to the railing and vomited, a rancid stream of yellow and brown splashing out into the blackness. The rain pelted down, plastering her hair to her skin. Tangles clung about her face in thick black fingers, as if they wished to cover her eyes. She gasped for breath, shrugging on the poncho and blinking around the deck.

  She saw him on the prow, a white silhouette against the black, hands outstretched. Clawing her way along the railing, not daring to look down, she swore she could hear him laughing over the sound of the roaring wind. He moved with the pitch and roll of the ship, head thrown back, howling like a sea dragon.

  “Kin-san?” she yelled over the din.

  He turned, surprised, and his face lit up in a wide grin. His clothing clung to him like a second skin, and she could see how thin he was, how frail. And yet he stood like a rock, legs planted among the tightly lashed chi barrels, turning back and screaming at the storm. He wasn’t wearing an oilskin.

  “What the hells are you doing out here?” Yukiko yelled.

  “Being alive!” he shouted over the rolling thunder. “Alive and breathing!”

  “You’re a madman!”

  “And yet, you stand here with me!”

  “What about the rain? It will burn you!”

  She staggered as the deck rolled, a white-knuckle grip on the rails. One slip and she would sail off into the darkness, scream unheard over the thunder’s roar.

  “Come here!” he called. “Stand up here with me!”

  “Not for all the iron in Shima!”

  He beckoned with one hand, the other gripping the rope lashing the barrels together. It was as if the ship was an untamed stallion and he sat astride it, fingers wrapped in its mane. She pushed her fear away, grabbed his hand and hooked her legs among the barrels.

  “Can you taste it?” he cried.

  “Taste what?”

  “The rain!” He opened his mouth to the sky. “No lotus!”

  Yukiko realized that he was right; the water streaming down her face was clean and pure, translucent as glass. She remembered the mountain streams of her youth, she and Satoru lying beside them with Buruu in the long summer grass, drinking deeply from the liquid crystal. She licked her lips, eyes gleaming with joy, then opened her mouth and let the rain wash down her throat.

  “Now close your eyes!” he yelled, rain whipping his face. “Close your eyes and breathe!”

  He threw out his hands again, face upturned to the storm. She watched him for a moment, his expression like a child’s, unburdened by any sense of fear or loss. He was so strange. So unlike anyone she had ever met before.

  But then she tasted the rain on her lips, felt the wind in her hair, heard the roar of the storm around them. And so she closed her eyes, threw her head back and inhaled. She could see the lightning flashing against the bloodwarm blackness behind her eyelids, feel the wind buffeting the ship beneath them. The rain was a balm, washing away the fear. She breathed, cool air filling her lungs, warm blood pumping below her skin. Kin screamed beside her, a whooping holler as the deck rolled like a storm-tossed ocean beneath them.

  “We are alive, Yukiko-chan! We are free!”

  She laughed, calling out shapeless words into the storm. It was as if she were a little girl again, running with her brother through the rippling bamboo, strong and bright, wet earth beneath her feet. She could feel the lives she swam among, the hundred tiny sparks rising like cinders from a bonfire, catching her up and filling her with warmth. No fear. No pain. No loss. Before any and all of it had come in from the dark, when the simple act of being was enough.

  She stretched out her senses into the tempest, mind uncoiling between the raindrops, engulfed by the beauty and ferocity around her.

  A flicker of warmth.

  Wait …

  A heartbeat.

  … What is that?

  “Arashitora!” came the cry, followed by the sharp whine of a siren. “Arashitora!”

  Yukiko opened her eyes, blinking in the blackness. She saw the helmsman leaning over the starboard side, pointing, yelling at the top of his lungs. The navigator was cranking a siren handle up on the pilot’s deck, its shrill, grinding cry piercing the din. She looked to where the helmsman was pointing but could see nothing, a vast expanse of seething blackness beyond the Child’s deck lamps. Lightning flashed, a flare of white-hot magnesium across the clouds, the sun rising for a split second to cast off the blanket of night.

  And then she saw it. A momentary flash, the green flare left behind on your eyelid after you stare too long at the sun. The impression of vast, white wings, feathers as long as her arm, broad as her thigh. Black stripes, rippling muscle, a proud, sleek head tipped with a razor-sharp beak. Eyes like midnight, black and bottomless.

  “Izanagi’s breath,” she whispered, squinting into the black. “There it is.”

  Lightning flashed again, illuminating the beast before her wondering eyes.

  The i
mpossible.

  The unthinkable.

  A thunder tiger.

  11

  ARASHITORA

  The smoke held him down with warm, soft hands, head underwater, the noise of the storm and siren and running feet all a distant murmur beneath the screams of dying beasts. Eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks, bloodshot eyes rolled back in his skull, trying to keep waking at bay. But finally the din became too much, too loud to ignore, a grating sliver of steel caught beneath an eyelid and dragging him up through the greasy chemical dream into waking.

  “Aiya,” Masaru frowned, rubbing at his head. “What the hells is—”

  His cabin door smashed open. Kasumi stood in the doorway, the spring-loaded serpent of a net-thrower clutched in her hands. Her hair was loose, floating in the breeze around her face like black silk, a faint blush of excitement in her cheeks.

  Beautiful.

  “Masaru,” she breathed. “Arashitora.”

  She dashed away without another word. Adrenaline kicked Masaru in the gut, peeling the lotus cobwebs from his eyes. He was alert, awake, veins thrumming with heat that tingled into his fingers and danced in his chest. He leaped down from the hammock and scrambled after her.

  Up on deck, the cloudwalkers were gathered by the rails, pointing and babbling. Akihito was already on the starboard floodlight, kicking it into life as the wind whipped in his braids. The globe flickered and came alive, a curling spiral of brilliance in a cradle of gleaming mirrors. The light reached out into the clouds, turning bottomless black to rolling gray. The big man swung the spotlight in long smooth arcs, blinding rain frozen for split seconds in the beam, cutting through the darkness like a razor. The generator behind him growled, spitting chi fumes and mainlining power into the halogen bulb, reaching almost a hundred feet into the gloom; a finger of lightning, bright as the sun.

  “Have you seen it?” Masaru roared over the wind.

  “Hai!” The big man was elated. “Huge bastard. White as snow. Magnificent!”

  The ship lurched beneath their feet; Masaru grabbed the rail to avoid a fall.

  “Hold it steady, Yamagata!”

  The captain stood at the helm, swinging the great wheel hard to compensate for the wind. He blinked the rain from his eyes, clad in a blood-red oilskin. “Raijin wants our asses!” he cried. “We’re lucky to still be flying, let alone flying straight!”

  There was a loud cry as a great white shape flashed by the starboard side. Masaru caught the impression of jagged black stripes on white fur, wings broader than a man was tall, thrashing louder than thunder. Akihito swung the spotlight to follow its path.

  Masaru stumbled to the gear cache and snatched up the Kobiashi needle-thrower, a black tube with a telescoping sight fixed to the top of the barrel. The base of the tube was connected to an iron bottle of pressurized gas that served as a shoulder stock. He slammed a magazine of hypodermics into the receiver, locked it in place and released the pressure valve. Slinging the other magazines over his shoulder, he climbed up to join Kasumi. She lay coiled in the rigging, feet twisted in the rope ladders leading up to the Child’s balloon. Net-thrower loaded, a second on standby across her back, thick coils of lotus hemp leading down to the winches bolted to the Child’s railing. Her eyes were fixed over the ’thrower’s sights, following the spotlight arcing through the clouds. Rain ran in rivulets down her face, gathering in her long lashes and falling like tears.

  “Are you ready?” Masaru shouted, twisting his feet among the rigging.

  She nodded once, eyes never leaving the spotlight.

  “Give the blacksleep a few seconds to kick in, or it could break its wings in the net.”

  The wind wailed; a screeching oni, all the fury of the Nine Hells breaking loose from its throat. The Child swung like a pendulum in the howling storm, thunder echoing down her spine. The cloudwalkers watched the dark, eyes and faces alight with anticipation.

  “There!” cried one, pointing into the black. Akihito’s spotlight cut through the rain, fell across a blur of white. They heard a tremendous cry, an animal roar akin to grating thunder, the beating of mighty wings. The ship was knocked hard to port by the storm, nose dipping toward the ground as lightning flashed nearby, and suddenly they had it; picked out neatly in blinding halogen, easily the most magnificent sight Masaru had seen in his life.

  It was power personified. The storm made flesh, carved from the clouds by Raijin’s hands, his children let loose to rollick in ozone-flecked chaos. The old tales said their wings made the sound of the thunder. The lightning was the sparks from their claws as they did battle across the heavens. The rain was Susano-ō’s tears, the Storm God overcome with the beauty and ferocity of his grandchildren. Thunder tiger. Arashitora.

  “Beautiful,” Kasumi breathed.

  The hindquarters of a white tiger, rippling muscle bound tight beneath snow-white fur, slashed with thick bands of ebony. The broad wings, forelegs and head of a white eagle, proud and fierce; lightning reflected in amber irises and pupils of darkest black. It roared again, shaking the ship, cutting through the air like a katana in a swordsaint’s hands. Masaru shook his head, blinked hard. The rain whipping his face, the wind chilling his blood; it all told him he wasn’t dreaming. And still, he doubted.

  The beast was immense, a wingspan of nearly twenty-five feet, claws like sabers, eyes as big as Akihito’s fist. Iron hard, sleek and growling, an engine of muscle and beak and claw. He wondered how much blacksleep it would take to bring it down.

  “Where the hells did it come from?” yelled Kasumi.

  “Let me get two volleys into it!” he cried. “It’s too big!”

  Kasumi nodded, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. The cloudwalkers pointed in slack-jawed wonder as the beast wheeled overhead. It was obviously as fascinated with them as they were with it, screaming a piercing note of challenge, wondering who these interlopers were that dared to brave its sky.

  Masaru pressed the trigger on the needle-thrower, the device spitting out a chattering, angry hiss as he emptied the entire magazine in a single burst. Two-dozen hypo shafts sailed through the dark, at least four sinking into the beast’s hindquarters. The arashitora snapped left and swooped under the keel, shaking the Child with its bellow of rage. The sky folk ran across to the port side, saw the silhouette rise up over the railings and tear a great gouge through the hull. The impact was explosive, wood spraying in foot-long spears, the ship rocking on its haunches amidst the groan of breaking rope. One of the cloudwalkers lost his footing and plummeted over the side with a wavering scream. Another almost followed, saved only by the hands of his comrades.

  “You pissed it off, Masaru!” Akihito’s face split in a wide grin. He swung the floodlight around, listening for the sound of pinions over the tempest’s din.

  “Strap in!” roared Yamagata to his men. “Or get below deck!”

  The crew lashed lengths of hemp around their obi and scattered to their posts, several climbing up into the rigging to secure broken cables. A scream split the air, the smell of ozone, rumbling thunder. A white shape plummeted from above and crashed into the portside engine, tearing it away with the shriek of tortured metal. The Child dropped thirty feet out of the sky, spitting a bright trail of flame.

  Cloudwalkers cried out in terror as the inferno reached up toward the inflatable, burning tongues licking at the balloon’s flank. Fire and water kissed, giving birth to great clouds of choking, black smoke, a haze that flooded over the deck and cut visibility down to a handful of feet. One sailor fell screaming from the rigging, landing on the timbers with a sodden crunch, his clothes and hair ablaze. Smothering sheets of rain beat the flames back from the balloon, leaving a trail of long black scorch-marks on the canvas.

  Masaru gritted his teeth and emptied his second magazine as the fleeting shape disappeared underneath them again, needle-thrower hissing, bolts sailing harmlessly into the black. He cursed the smoke beneath his breath, blinking the blinding rain from his eyes.

  The crunch of
tortured gears spilled from the flaming tear in the Child’s flank, and the entire vessel was rocked with another explosion as a secondary fuel tank ignited. Flames vomited from the torn and smoking hull. The ship bucked beneath them and listed sideways, the thrust of the remaining engine threatening to tilt the entire vessel onto its wounded side. Yamagata bellowed at his men, demanding that someone find Old Kioshi and get the Guildsman below deck to shut off the port fuel lines. He clung to the wheel with a white-knuckle grip, breath heaving in his lungs, teeth drawn back from his lips as he roared at Masaru.

  “The bastard’s tearing us to pieces!”

  A crag of rock loomed out of the darkness dead ahead and Yamagata cried a warning, leaning into the wheel with all his weight. The Thunder Child swung hard to port as the captain poured on the burn, the single propeller shrieking in dissent and spewing exhaust into the rain. Rivets popped along the engine housing as the ship rolled almost ninety degrees, showing her belly to the tempest. Cloudwalkers fell screaming from the rigging, those who’d had time to strap themselves in were jerked to a bone-jarring halt at the ends of their lines, watching their less-fortunate comrades plummet off into the mouth of the storm.

  Masaru clung to the rigging and scanned the darkness, looking for a flash of white, listening for the sound of rushing wings over the crackling flames and rolling thunder and screams of dying sailors.

  “Four darts’ worth of blacksleep,” he growled. “Hasn’t even slowed him down.”

  * * *

  Yukiko was crouched up near the bow, her arms wrapped around the chi barrels, Kin beside her. The boy looked frantic, almost petrified, his eyes fixed on the cloudwalkers gathered on deck. He hunched down below the level of the barrels, jaw clenched, face drawn and bloodless. He winced as the fuel tank exploded, the light of the roaring flames reflected in terrified eyes. Yukiko meantime was transfixed by the sight of the thunder tiger, mouth slack with awe, eyes shining and bright.