Stormdancer

by Jay Kristoff

  “I was the captain sent to quell them.”

  Daichi’s voice was shaking, he took a deep breath before continuing.

  “Have you ever seen Iron Samurai in action against men of flesh and blood, Yukiko-chan? Farmers, with empty bellies and pitchforks for spears?”

  Yukiko said nothing, a look of horror on her face.

  “Kaneda sent his herald when we were done, decreeing that any farmer who sowed lotus would suffer the same fate as the prefect. Then we dragged the man into the street and executed his family in front of him. Wife. Two sons. A baby girl.” Daichi swallowed, looked down at his trembling hands. “Then we forced him to commit seppuku.”

  “Gods,” whispered Yukiko.

  “Daiyakawa province grows rice to this day.” Daichi curled his hands into fists. “But they don’t teach you why. Shima’s people never heard of the riot on the wireless, never heard the sound of that baby screaming.”

  “It was Shōgun Kaneda who commanded you. Perhaps Yoritomo—”

  “Yoritomo is his father’s child,” Daichi growled. “I have seen oceans of blood spilled by his command. Children. Pregnant mothers. Beggars hold out their hands to him and draw back stumps. He rules side by side with a cabal of zealots, turns a blind eye to Purifiers burning people alive for the sake of their ridiculous dogma.” He glared down at Kin, shaking his head. “And all the while, these monsters meld their flesh with machines and fill our lungs with cancer.”

  Daichi looked up at Yukiko, steel-gray irises growing dark with anger.

  “We’ve burned dozens of fields since I arrived in this village, gods know how many more before that, and not one blaze has ever been reported to the people. We burn the refinery, the Communications Ministry says it was a fuel leak. We could cut off the Shōgun’s head and parade it down Palace Way on a spike, and the Guild would say he died of natural causes. And the people would believe them.”

  “The Guild print the history books,” Kaori said. “The Guild control the airwaves. Every report, every word they speak to the common man is like a kick to his head. Cowing him. Making him stupid.”

  “His kind,” growled Daichi, kicking Kin again, “are poison.”

  Buruu purred, eyes fixed on the gathered men and their steel. Yukiko could feel his approval. The arashitora agreed with the philosophy of the Kagé. She was shocked to realize that a part of her did too.

  “Daichi-sama, please, let him go.”

  “Wake up. The lotus must burn. The Guild must burn.”

  “Burn,” murmured the Kagé.

  THEY SPEAK TRUTH. THEY SEE CLEARLY.

  They kill innocent people.

  CHANGE IS SELDOM BLOODLESS. SOME EYES WISH TO REMAIN CLOSED. SOMETIMES THEY MUST BE CUT OPEN.

  I can’t believe that. I won’t.

  “Just let us go, please. We won’t breathe a word about you, I swear it.”

  “Let you go?” Kaori laughed. “So you can take Yoritomo his prize? Hand over this beast to that rapist so his bastard Hunt Master can mutilate it some more?”

  Yukiko felt a flash of anger, tilting her head and glaring at the woman through her lashes.

  “Don’t you call my father a bastard. He is a man of honor.”

  Daichi turned pale, slack-jawed and breathless as if she’d punched him in the stomach. Kaori’s eyes widened, and she glanced back and forth between her father and Yukiko.

  “You are Kitsune Masaru’s daughter?” Daichi’s voice was a whisper. “Then your m—”

  “Oni! Oni!”

  A boy of eight or nine was running across the rope bridge toward them, hissing the word over and over, as loud as he dared. The assembled Kagé turned toward his voice, hands on their weapons. The boy broke through the crowd and knelt before Daichi.

  “Daichi-sama, Kaiji-san reports oni on the western rise. A raiding party from Black Temple. Dozens.”

  “Aiya, so many,” murmured Isao.

  “Angered at their brethren’s deaths.” Kaori stared directly at Yukiko. “They seek vengeance. Skulls for their mother, Lady Izanami.”

  DEMONS. MAGGOTS FROM THE YOMI PITS.

  Do they come for us?

  Buruu blinked at her, pawing at the ground.

  DOES IT MATTER?

  Daichi pulled the boy to his feet, one hand on his katana. His calm had returned as swiftly as it vanished, voice low, hard as steel.

  “Isao, take this filth to the holding cells and lock him down.” He pointed at Kin. “Kaori, fetch the other captains. Make sure they are armed and ready to move. The rest of you, come with me.” He turned to leave, his cadre with him.

  “Daichi-sama,” Yukiko called.

  The man turned to look at her, eyebrow raised.

  “We will help you,” she said. “If Kaori-chan is right and they seek revenge for the blood Buruu and I spilled, honor demands that we help send these things back to the deepest hell.”

  She tossed her head. Defiant. Proud.

  “I am also my father’s child.”

  A long pause. A knowing glance shared with Kaori. A sigh. But finally Daichi licked his lips and nodded to Yukiko, running one hand across his scalp.

  “If the Black Fox’s daughter asks it, then it will be so.” His stare unsettled her. “But when we return, we will speak more. There is something I must ask of you. Something important.”

  He turned to his men and nodded.

  “We move.”

  23

  SURFACING

  They are many.

  Birthed from the stinking cracks of the Iishi hell gate, heeding the call of the Red Bone Warlord. Dragging themselves from beds of flint and pits of rancid blood, thunderous drums echoing across dark places, bidding them up into the light of the night.

  Servants of a deeper darkness. Crouched on her bone mountain in the sunless depths of the Yomi underworld, empty eyes and blackened womb, a tarnished wedding band clutched in the palm of one bloodless hand. She Who Feasts in the Dark, Broodmare of Demons, Queen of the Hungry Dead, whom the Book of Ten Thousand Days calls Endsinger. They, her servants, her faithful, her children. Leaking through rifts of stone into a world she has promised to destroy, a dark and rising tide, swelling drop by drop until it becomes the flood that heralds the Last Day.

  Their feet are as an earthquake upon the ground. Their swords are sharp as razors. Their war clubs thick as tree trunks. Black words crawl along their spines, thrumming in their veins, filling them with blackest rage at the loss of their brethren.

  The bay and howl, the cry for blood.

  The hymn of the Endsinger.

  * * *

  Yukiko crouched in the tree beside Buruu, knife clutched in her hand, nestled inside the arashitora’s mind. Eagle eyes, needle-sharp, piercing the darkest shadow. There was no movement in the forest but the flutter of tiny beasts and birds, mirrored in the flutter of the pulse in her veins. But she knew they were close.

  She reached out with the Kenning, straining to her limits, feeling the terror of small warm things at the oni’s approach: a multitude of giants, belts of skulls, eyes aglow, feet thundering upon the earth and sending tiny, frightened shapes scampering into the dark.

  The Kagé crouched in the trees beside her, mere shadows against the pattern of green and black, swelling and shifting in the chill night wind. Yukiko could see Kaori, wakizashi naked in her hand, folded steel painted with lamp-black to avoid the glint of lightning or stray moonlight. The approaching monsoon growled in the dark skies overhead. The crack of thunder shook her insides and Buruu purred like a kitten in the aftershocks, the boom resonating in his chest as he stared with longing up at the gathering clouds.

  The Kagé were grouped in a tight knot, three, sometimes four to a tree. Isao was wrapped around the branch above Yukiko’s head. She looked up and found him glaring at her, eyes narrowed to knife-cuts. Her voice was a whisper, “How do you know the demons will come this way?”

  The boy lifted his mask to spit down onto the leaves below. He stared at her for a long, pregnant
moment before he answered.

  “The mountain gives them only one approach.” He nodded west. “The pit traps funnel them in this direction. We have been preparing for this night for years. Though, in truth, we thought it would be men of flesh who came for us, not oni. Iron Samurai and bushimen. Servants of your Shōgun.”

  Yukiko felt a grudging admiration in Buruu’s chest.

  You like these Kagé.

  THEY SEE. THEY KNOW.

  What do you mean?

  THEY TURN WEAKNESS TO STRENGTH. THEY USE THE EARTH. NO BARRICADES OF DEAD TREES. NO BULWARKS OF STONE. THEY ARE FEW, FACING MANY. AND THEY ARE NOT AFRAID TO DIE.

  No fanatic ever is.

  THEY WILL WIN. THOUGH IT TAKE A HUNDRED YEARS, THEY WILL TOPPLE YOUR SHŌGUN. BURN HIS FIELDS AND CITIES. FADE AWAY INTO SHADOW. INTO PLACES HIS ARMIES CANNOT REACH. MORE THAN FLESH. THEY ARE AN IDEA.

  She watched the thunder tiger in the darkness, acutely aware of how much he had changed since the crash. His animal instinct, the primal aggression inside him, was being gradually tempered with elegant thought, complex concepts, all too human impulses growing through their bond. She realized that the link between them was changing him, her humanity leaking into him like irezumi ink spilled on cotton weave. He was becoming more.

  But what might she become?

  He is not my Shōgun, Buruu.

  He blinked, tossed his head.

  SO. ARE YOU RONIN TOO, THEN?

  I cannot be ronin. I was never samurai.

  YOU SEE. THE RED SKY. THE BLACK RIVERS. YOU KNOW.

  She sighed, running her hand across her eyes.

  I don’t know anything.

  She looked up again, found Isao was still watching her, open hostility in his stare.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “The servant of my enemy,” he growled, averting his gaze. “Do not expect many here to weep if the oni kill you, girl.”

  Buruu’s growl was low and soft. Yukiko reached out a comforting hand to quiet him. The thunder tiger stiffened, rising up into a half-crouch, hackles raised. Yukiko closed her eyes and looked into his distance, saw tall silhouettes moving in the dark, tiny pinpricks of glowing blood-red. She ignored the cold dread seeping into her gut.

  “They’re coming,” she hissed to Isao.

  The boy nodded and cupped his palm to his mouth, making a sound like cricket-song. The signal echoed among the trees, a chorus of insects armed with sharpened steel. A subtle shift among the shadows; weapons being drawn, grips tightened. The world held its breath for a moment, as if preparing for a deep plunge. And then, with a blinding flash of lightning and a deafening crack of thunder, it began to rain.

  It was a chattering hiss on the leaves, a gray veil drawn across the eyes of the oni as they lumbered forward. No order or form to their line, just a tangled mass of tetsubos and ten-span swords hacking the undergrowth, glowing eyes and guttural, croaking voices, a language too black for human ears to comprehend. The rain glistened on their skin, myriad shades from azure to midnight blue, fangs of ivory and rusted iron, eyes like fresh blood. The scrub behind them was flattened, swathes of green cut low, bleeding sap into trampled earth.

  Gods, there are so many.

  The thunder crashed again.

  SOON THERE WILL BE LESS.

  The demons drew closer, slashing their path across the emerald green, wading through the curtain of rain. The Kagé remained motionless as the horde passed below, not a single red eye upturned, black speech coursing under the sound of thunder. As the last oni drew level with their positions, the cricket-song rang out in the dark, drifting among the shadows and giving birth to sudden, savage motion.

  Silhouettes dropped from the trees, sword and spear buried glittering to the hilts in the backs of the oni rearguard. Bubbling screams. Black blood hissing in the rain. Steam rising from awful, mortal wounds. Heads lopped from shoulders, throats opened to the bone, guts spilling and steaming in the dark. The first to fall had no chance at all.

  The horde turned at the wails of their brothers, blinking in the darkness. They saw corpses crumpled on dead leaves, shadows of men in the black. The one who walked in their vanguard, bone armor on his chest and the ancient skull of a sea dragon covering his face, raised a bloody femur into the air and roared; a guttural, reverberating command in a language that none of the Kagé spoke, but every one of them understood.

  And so it began.

  Buruu dug his claws into the branch as Isao dropped past them, black shuriken stars spinning from his outstretched hands. Yukiko felt the bloodlust build inside the arashitora, the hair on her flesh standing up as raw electricity cascaded along his wings. She bared her teeth and growled alongside him, fingernails biting into her palms.

  CLIMB ON MY BACK.

  … What?

  YOU HEARD. FLY WITH ME.

  Yukiko blinked away the amazement and scrabbled up the arashitora’s shoulder, thighs clamping his ribs, one hand wrapped in his feather mane. Buruu unfolded his wings, stretching out in the darkness, and Yukiko had a brief moment to catch her breath before the world was rushing up toward them, leaving her stomach on the branches above.

  They plummeted from the gloom, screaming with one voice, crippled lightning flashing at the edges of their feathers. They were clutching an oni a moment later, shoulders caught in their fists as their claws tore its insides out, spitting a mouthful of throat onto the ground as blood scalded their tongue. The flesh that was Yukiko rolled off into the grass and crouched among the lightning strobe, hacking at the ankles of another oni as the flesh that was Buruu rose up and tore off its arm in one razored talon.

  Two sets of eyes watched the enemy, moving in symbiosis between the scything arcs of sword and war club. Fluid as water, flowing beneath iron and steel, crashing with sudden ferocity, liquid between the spittle and death screams. Flesh parted before their fingers, steel and talon slicing midnight blue and giving birth to great floods of steaming black.

  There was no time. There was no gravity. There was no Yukiko. There was no Buruu. There was only motion, bloody, brutal motion as their father screamed his joy overhead, thunder rumbling across the clouds, lightning painting the butchery as bright as the day. The shapes of men fell about them, red blood washing away in the rain, screams of pain lost beneath the roaring sky. But they were unstoppable, untouchable, eyes in the backs of their heads, transcending thought and laying all before them to rest.

  Their flesh was together again, one astride the other without knowing who was which, feathers wrapped in fingers and pounding at the air, longing to fly again. The need swelled inside them, denial of an impulse so primal that it filled them with rage, spreading across their severed quills and screaming at the sky, spattered in warm black blood.

  The red warlord answered, holding the bleeding bone into the air and bellowing, a cruel iron sword twisted in the other fist. It charged toward them, lips curled back from jagged tusks, knocking aside its fellows in its haste to taste them. They turned to face it, roaring again. Two mouths, one voice, echoed by the raging storm.

  The curved sword fell in a ten-ton arc, slicing raindrops in two. They bounded into the air, wings tearing at the space where flight was born, finding only momentary lift and the awful clutch of gravity. But it was enough to carry them over the blade and onto the oni’s torso, claws tearing its chest, piercing bone armor, knuckle-deep in steaming black. With a bellow, it brought the bleeding bone across their brow. A blinding white light arrived with it and knocked them senseless. They rolled apart, shaking their heads, blinking the blood away from their eyes. The flesh that had been Buruu staggered, eye swelling closed, sharing the pain with the flesh that had been Yukiko and feeling it fall away by half. She loaned him her eyes and slipped into the shadows beneath a cedar, his fingers running across the fox tattoo on their shoulder. They began to climb.

  The warlord lunged, Buruu’s flesh lashing out at the thing’s face with one razored fist, bringing it back, sticky with blood. The oni roared and t
hey answered, laughter rolling across the clouds. Rain turned the blood-soaked earth to mud, the sounds of battle around them dropping away to whispers. There was only this. There was only them.

  Me.

  Lightning cracked the sky, burning away the black.

  WE.

  The flesh that was Buruu danced backward, bringing the oni with it, eyes aglow with hatred. The flesh that was Yukiko sprang from the tree, twelve feet high, tantō clutched in both hands. The knife plunged to the hilt in the oni’s back, gravity and momentum pulling them earthward, flesh parting down to the spine and peeling away like the rind of swollen fruit. The blood was blinding, the scream of deafening white pain filling their ears, drowning the storm. They leaped toward the wounded oni, claws outstretched, smashing the sea dragon skull to splinters and tearing away the demon’s face in their hands. Beak to throat, savaging until there was nothing left but broken bones and empty, twitching meat.

  The storm howled in triumph.

  They screamed, faces to the sky, knife clutched in their bloody claws. What was left of the oni band turned and fled into the night, pounding back through the broken green, spears and shuriken whistling about their ears. Broken and defeated.

  And then there was only the sound of the falling rain. The Kagé didn’t cheer, didn’t goad or gloat. They simply watched the giants disappear into the shadows, nodding to each other, heads bowed in silent prayer for their dead.

  Kaori was looking at Yukiko and Buruu with awe, swallowing great gobs of hot, wet air, drenched to the elbows in steaming black gore. Daichi wiped a sluice of oni blood off on his sleeve and slid his katana back into its scabbard. He watched them as their blood calmed, the Kenning receding as the heat of the battle died in their veins, leaving them sundered in its wake. Yukiko felt lessened somehow, reaching out toward Buruu as if to reassure herself he was still there. He purred, satisfaction rumbling across the ground, tectonic and primal.

  GOOD. IT IS GOOD.

  “You are one,” Daichi said, wiping the sweat from his eyes. “You and the arashitora are one in the same. You are yōkai-kin.”