Dai san, p.25
Dai-San, page 25
Now Kay-Iro De rose from the top of the spout, the great scaled serpent’s body surmounted by the female head with dead-white skin and dripping seaweed hair.
Now the head of the Lamiae turned and her eyes locked with the Sunset Warrior and even though he was prepared, still he felt a shock travel through him.
What he saw was Kiri’s face, fierce and serene. A languid smile spread across the lips as the graceful head turned back and, with a writhing of her coils, Kay-Iro De twined herself about the muscular, pulsing form of the Makkon.
Tighter and tighter the slick body wrapped about the creature, squeezing while the thing screamed and flailed at the water. Its powerful arms were pinioned to its side by the spiraling coils and it used its cruel beak to bite into the enwrapping serpent. Water creamed upward and outward, in a frantic froth.
The Makkon screamed again, calling, calling, and at last out from the fog-bound shadows of the far shore another hulking shape loomed.
The Sunset Warrior clove through the ranks of the enemy like a deadly whirlwind, preceded by the sounds of crunching bones, in his wake the moans of the dying.
Out in the writhing river, the Lamiae’s coils slid upward, wrapping about the Makkon’s sturdy thick neck. Its eyes bulged and the beak ripped at the scaled hide. But Kay-Iro De’s eyes blazed like living lightning and her lips drew back, half-snarl, half-laugh. The Makkon began to choke.
The Sunset Warrior cut through the last of the enemy line foaming in the shallows of the river-bank as he saw the bulk of the second Makkon wading out into the water almost directly across the river from him. Between them, the struggle.
The Makkon, entwined, gave a great heave but the Lamiae’s coil wound ever tighter. There came a sharp snap, as distinct as a crack of thunder on a wind-swept day, and the Makkon’s head lurched to one side.
A great cry of triumph trumpeted from the Lamiae as she shot upward, bleeding profusely. Then she sank beneath the gray waves of the river.
The dim, close skies cracked with lightning and the sleet became tinged with silver, so that it had the appearance of metal. The day grew dark and oppressive, dense with cold and pressure.
The strange, plumed warriors poured across the river crossing, directed by the immense rikkagin under the billowing lizard banner, sprinting upriver where the defenses of the army of man seemed weakest.
Okami, at the head of one of the Bujun divisions, met with three other daimyos in order to revise their co-ordinated strategy.
Slowly, they began to work their divisions down the plain in a pincer movement, in order to destroy the vanguard of the deathshead warriors who were threatening to breach the first line of the army’s defense.
The far shore still teemed with soldiers waiting to ford the river, for in all other places it was far too deep for them to cross.
Moeru and Bonneduce the Last galloped along the near bank into the conflagration upriver, rallying the forces of man. She ducked the thrust of pike and, off balance, slid from the horse. She waved for the little man to go on without her and he raced off as she began to lead a group of foot soldiers out into the water.
The Sunset Warrior stalked the second Makkon, moving with the current to his left, away from Kamado. Downriver, the creature had not yet seen him and he intended that it should remain that way until he was ready.
The thing’s outline pulsed darkly through the fog and the pink sleet and even at mid-river he could smell the stench. He swam effortlessly, hindered neither by the swift current nor the weight of his armor and weapons.
He moved cautiously into the shallows, using a stand of high reeds to cover his movements until he had gained the far shore.
The plain stretched away from him, littered with the detritus of half a million soldiers.
The camp of the enemy.
And but a half kilometer further back he could make out the hazy outline of the great pine forest, black, charred beyond restoration, where lurked The Dolman.
Up the far bank he ran, slipping in the mud that the sleet had washed into the churning brown and gray waters of the river.
Coming up on it in a rush.
Visions of Ronin’s battle in the City of Ten Thousand Paths, or G’fand’s screaming face, his dead, bulging eyes. The were-dawn at Tenchō when Ronin had burst into Matsu’s room, the thing’s baleful, uncurious eyes staring into Ronin’s as it deliberately tore out her throat, shredding it in a spray of blood and viscera.
And the power of the Hart, at his core, white-hot, atavistic, inexhaustible, crying its rage, swept through him and he screamed, a holocaust, and the Makkon turned its cold orange eyes like beacons probing his. And he wondered if this was the one, for while he knew now that they were all linked in some unfathomable way still he hoped for the body which had caused the suffering and death.
His great sword whispered in the air and the head snapped back, the beak opening soundlessly. It batted at the sword, then howled in pain and rage. It had never before been afraid of metal. But this was Aka-i-tsuchi and immediately it grew wary, dodging the swift strikes, attempting to move in for the deadly blows of its talon-tipped claws. Its thick tail whipped back and forth.
It lunged at him abruptly in an effort to get within his defense but the Sunset Warrior reversed the sword in his two-handed grip, using Aka-i-tsuchi as if it were an enormous dagger. With explosive force, the blue-green blade penetrated the Makkon’s chest and he drove it swiftly downward into the creature’s bowels.
Then he was spun off his feet by a tremendous blow. He saw the Makkon staggering, its heavy legs trembling, its claws scrabbling to pull the sword from its innards, howling as its hide burned from the contact. It sank to its knees, began to topple over and for the first time he saw a Makkon bleed, a sticky black viscous fluid flowing over the ragged wound.
Darkness fell over him.
A third Makkon.
The creature smiled a secret smile as it bent over him. It reached down, its talons outstretched. He rolled but the straddle of its legs prevented his escape.
Then he became aware that he did not feel the numbing cold which Ronin had struggled against in his two battles with the Makkon. He recalled Bonneduce the Last’s words to Ronin in Khiyan just before he set sail in the Kioku in search of Ama-no-mori: You cannot yet defeat the Makkon. But Ronin was no more. His Hart cried out again, bellowing, and with this came the knowledge that at last he was on equal terms with the Makkon.
He yelled, batting away the reaching talons, stiffening his fingers inside his Makkon-hide gauntlets, and slammed them into the creature’s unprotected throat.
The Makkon howled, an ululation, and he ducked a powerful strike from its talons.
With an enormous blow, he smashed the Makkon to the earth beside him.
He pounded at its face, the memory of Matsu filling him like a perfume, a mist in his eyes. He paid not the slightest attention to the snaking of its arms as the powerful claws reached up and closed about his throat.
He continued to pummel the Makkon, staring into the wicked eyes with their slit pupils of ebon and with great satisfaction heard the sharp crack as its beak split.
He smashed his gauntleted fists down again and the beak shattered, splintering fragments of keratin into his face. Matsu’s hot blood and flesh in a nauseating spatter across Ronin’s eyes. The hideous head whipped from side to side.
But now the thing’s talons had gripped his throat, gaining control, squeezing all at once. His lungs were filled with air and he lifted his fists again, smashing them into the pulpy wound. He ripped off the last remaining shard of beak, the black blood flying, cold and wet, and drew the jagged edge across the Makkon’s eyes. The serrations ripped into the eyeballs.
Briefly, he felt the sting of the points of the talons as they sank into his flesh, trying to rip out his throat, but he bent his body lower, bringing pressure to bear, maintaining his leverage.
He dug in deeper with the beak, slashing through hide and viscera. Flesh came away in long, raw strips. The talons were digging deeper and the Makkon began a series of jerking motions with its arms.
With one last titanic effort, even as he felt the fierce pull at the flesh of his throat, he rammed the jagged shard deep behind the Makkon’s right eye up into the brain, pounding it home as if it were a spike.
The huge body jerked under him and blood and bits of pink and dusky yellow spurted upward. He choked and wiped at his face with his corded arms, leaning the weight of his whole frame behind the strike.
Beneath him, the Makkon shuddered, a brown liquid gurgled from the thing’s mouth and the talons fell away from him.
On his knees, straddling the Makkon’s corpse, he slammed his fist one more time into the ruined face of the Makkon. Then he stood, strode to where his sword rose like a grave marker above the body of the second Makkon. He ripped it from its flesh, sheathed it, turned away, loping to the river, feeling the chill water cleansing him of the caked filth which covered him. He ducked his head, came up snorting.
On the point of returning to the far bank, he heard, over the din of the battle, screaming from upriver. The sleet had lessened momentarily and the sounds came to him clearly, funneled along the acoustic channel of the river.
Across the water, the enemy had broken through the lines of defense. He squinted into the afternoon gloom, saw the whipping banners as the forefront of the enormous wedge of warriors breaking out from their foothold on the bank, sweeping upward onto the field before Kamado’s towering walls.
Crimson lizard on an ebon field and, his heart pounding, he struck out across the river with long, powerful strokes.
Whatever is happening downriver where the Bujun fight, we are losing the battle here, thought Rikkagin Aerent. He wheeled his horse about. The glistening hide was flecked with foam, blood, and gore. It trampled several wounded men as he drove it up a short rise.
He surveyed the scene, sickened by the monumental devastation. So many deaths and the day is but half done.
The plain was a vast noisome sea of flailing flesh and ground bone, gouting gray dust and spurting blood. The field itself seemed to have undergone basic geological changes since the morning. Where once it had been a softly undulating expanse, it had now metamorphosed into a series of humpbacked hillocks by the carnage of the day’s fighting. Immense mounds of the dead and wounded rolled away from him for as far as he could see. The constant sleet, pouring down from the angry skies, melting in the bloodheat, turned the whole into a grisly morass as it mingled with the spilled fluids of the fallen combatants.
He hacked at a squat warrior who ran at him, taking off the weapon arm at its socket. He pulled on the reins of his mount and it stamped on the falling body, its hard hoofs cracking the skull above the eyes.
Not for the first time, he thought about sending one of his men back up the field for the Bujun. He had witnessed their brilliant, fierce pincer attack, saw how it had wiped out the attacking deathshead warriors. Now they fought downriver and he turned to take in the extent of his remaining forces. They were so depleted that he could not afford to send a courier. Besides, the chances of one man surviving the long passage across the field were quite slim. He would just have to hold on here until help arrived.
Curse that rikkagin, whoever he was! thought Rikkagin Aerent. The lizard banners had haunted his cavalry all the day, matching him strategy for strategy, and all the while the sheer force of the enemy’s numbers was slowly overpowering his line of defense.
He felt angry and helpless, as if caught in an immense and unmoving vise from which he seemed unable to extricate himself and his men.
Rikkagin Aerent knew his duty and now he felt that he was failing to perform it. He had had but one thought as he rode out onto the plain at the dawning of this unnatural day: to win. Now he felt that goal slipping away from him as the unseen sun dragged itself like a wounded dragon across the unquiet heavens.
Abruptly the tide of the battle brought Moeru close to him. She was mounted on some dead soldier’s horse. Through the slime and muck of the jammed field she came toward him.
‘I have been pinned for too long by that bastard lizard rikkagin!’ he shouted to her. ‘Moeru, can you take command of the cavalry? I must penetrate to the rikkagin’s standards and destroy him before his forces totally overrun this position.’
Moeru nodded and spurred her blood-soaked steed toward the last beleaguered remnants of Rikkagin Aerent’s cavalry. No officers were left alive.
She called to the riders and peeled off with ten of them, wheeling them in a tight arc, spinning them into a flank attack on the squat pikemen. They used their mounts’ hoofs as battering rams.
Satisfied that he had made the correct decision, Rikkagin Aerent jerked on his reins. His horse’s head came about, snorting, and it reared into the air.
Now we go, he said to himself.
With a leap he rushed across the field of battle, up steep ridges of cracked armor and pink, flecked bones, toward a high picket line of pikes formed by fallen warriors. Onward, avoiding forests of pikes, hacking at marauding bands of plumed warriors, ducking the hissing, deadly globes of the deathshead warriors.
He plunged forward in a furious burst of killing, breaking through the enemy guard line, the way black with their beetling bodies. Ahead lay the pike line and beyond the billowing banners of the rampant ebon lizard. Down a tunnel bristling with pikes and brandished swords he galloped, over rise after rise of mounded bodies, squirming and dank, splashing through puddles of blood, bogs of entrails, crunching skulls and spines, always the black banners flapping in the wind like expectant vultures, above him, just over the next rise of bodies, and he plunged onward with iron determination as the squat warriors screamed and seized at him with torn and bloody fingers, long nails twisted and peeling painfully away as they scraped along his mount’s flanks and withers, grasping greasily at his boots, flailing their short swords, slipping in the mire that was the remnants of their fallen comrades.
His sword arm lifted and fell, over and over, endlessly, replicating death and destruction as he plowed through the quicksand of the battle, the sleet in his eyes, riming his beard and eyebrows with pink frost. Blood and spittle flew at him. Limbs and heads were sheared away, fingers split, weapons spinning slowly in the thick, frosted air, the grim meatgrinder of his passage. And still the ebon and crimson banners flew triumphantly before him, seeming to mock his efforts, just ahead now, past another ten score warriors. Almost there.
And at length a rent opened up in the line and Rikkagin Aerent galloped madly through.
Bonneduce the Last, fighting quite near the lizard banners, saw the rikkagin hit the enemy position and squirt through. He spurred his luma forward, leaning low in the saddle and striking along his left flank, making considerable headway toward the black banners.
Now he saw Rikkagin Aerent nearing the huge figure riding atop the strange black beast and, as Bonneduce too broke through the line in a ferocious attack, his gaze swung toward the Salamander.
He gasped, uttering a name borne away on the tidal noise of the battle.
Now he whispered to his luma, urging it forward, through the twisting bodies, and as he topped a rise he found himself quite close to the lizard banners and he stared at the proud face, the cold, obsidian eyes, the wing-swept hair, the layers of fat added to disguise the characteristic shape of the high cheekbones and thought, So this is what has happened. Oh, I am happy that he is not here to witness this ultimate shame.
Now Bonneduce the Last turned once again to the mundane, numbing business of killing, using his luma to do some of the work, guiding it so that it plunged ahead, kicking out with its forelegs, battering helm and breastplate, cracking pike haft, as he slashed to left and right.
Over the slimy ridge and into the last dell.
Above his head the twin lizards crawled in their beds of flame.
He saw the Salamander’s head come up and swing around as shouts from his guard presaged Rikkagin Aerent’s swift approach. Staying the pike of one of his guards, he drew forth from the folds of his ebon robes two stubby sticks made of polished wood linked by a short length of black metal chain. Almost casually he gripped the sticks.
Rikkagin Aerent thrust his sword high in the air, screaming his battle cry, decapitating a squat warrior.
Bonneduce the Last spurred his luma forward, calling out a warning to the charging rikkagin. But even if his words had not been lost in the din of the conflagration, it would have been too late.
The Salamander had wheeled his mount, and with a deceptive flick of his left wrist, he tossed the weapon.
Rikkagin Aerent saw only a whirling blur. He tried to duck but he was too close and the thing was upon him almost before reflexive action could occur. The heavy, weighted wood slammed into his collar-bone, the doubled iron chain whipping at him an instant later. The force of the dual blow threw him from his saddle. He was knocked sideways, twisting, and as he fell one boot was trapped in his stirrup.
Panicked, his mount leapt forward, dragging the rikkagin across the lumped ground. His body fetched up against the line of pikes over which the lizard banners flew and a bone splintered in his leg. His boot flew from the stirrup and he lay as if dead atop a mass of bleeding corpses over which clouds of flies had begun to settle.
The Salamander had already turned away from him, directing his foot soldiers into a small breach in the defenses of the army of man. The squat warriors leapt to do his bidding.
Bonneduce the Last urged his luma across the shallow valley, passing the twisted form of Rikkagin Aerent.
He made directly for the Salamander.
The thunder of his steed’s hoofs echoed in his ears. He thought of Hynd, pacing restlessly, safe behind the walls of Kamado, reluctant to leave his side but knowing his duty nonetheless. Too, he thought of the Rhyalann ticking within the folds of his worn leather bags in the barracks house in Kamado. He had left it there on purpose, knowing full well the consequences of his action. At last he understood completely the meaning of his long miserable quest over the eons, beyond Time itself.
