The Last Stormdancer

“Very pretty.”

  “You have excellent ears, Jun-san. Can you hear what color undergarments I wear?”

  A playful tone in the Lady’s voice, soft laughter as his cheeks flushed at the imposition of thoroughly unbecoming thoughts. He shivered again as she stroked the tomcat’s spine. Despite his upbringing, he felt a novice. Provincial and ignorant in the face of this Lady’s parlor games.

  She has changed so much …

  “I hear the thoughts of beasts, Lady. The cats in your lap. The thunder tiger outside.”

  “… You are yōkai-kin?”

  “Hai.”

  “I have never met one of your ilk before. I though perhaps you were legend.”

  “So it might one day be said of phoenix or henge and tanuki. So might it be said of all the spirit beasts of this land, if the Lotus Guild and their sickness are not stopped.”

  The Lady cleared her throat, attention refocused, the cats in her lap forgotten.

  “The Guild grows in power daily,” she said. “They buy ministers and magistrates with the iron coin their mechanical marvels bring them. They could be dangerous enemies. You have proof of their involvement in this sickness, Jun-san?”

  “I do not, Lady. I am … that is to say, I was a simple artist. But my grandmother is a wise woman, and she is convinced the Guild is to blame. Her village stands at the edge of a murmuring forest, by the banks of a chuckling stream. But the water flows from a Guild factory upriver, and the thicker their smoke grows, the sicker people become. The tanuki I spoke to in the Iishi forests said similar. The phoenix also. And why else do the Guildsmen wear masks? Those suits? Why do they not breathe the same air we do unless they know it is toxic?”

  “You were an artist?”

  Jun frowned, confused as to why that, of all he had said, might catch the Lady’s attention.

  “Hai,” he finally nodded. “My father was a hunter. But when my sight began failing and it became clear I would never follow in his footsteps, my mother thought to teach me of the arts. Poetry. Painting. Until the sun took my eyes completely, at least, and the sickness them besides.”

  “Your tale grows sadder still, Jun-san. It has the seeming of a great ballad. A song for the ages. A painter struck blind by the Sun Goddess. A poet, never to write again. All you need is some unrequited love and perhaps a tragic death…”

  “Please, Lady,” Jun said. “You make jest at my expense. But the spirit beasts are dying in droves. The thunder tigers are planning to leave Shima. We have only days until they decide whether or not to abandon us to our fate. And the prophecy spoke of their importance.”

  Jun could hear the skepticism in the Lady’s voice. “Prophecy?”

  “My grandmother has the Sight, great Lady. She foretold a child of her bloodline—a child Kitsune-born—would save these islands from certain destruction.”

  “And you … believe yourself this child, Jun-san?”

  “I have no living kin, save her and my grandfather. If anyone is to fulfill the prophecy, it must be me. But we have only days. So I beg forgiveness if I seem ill at ease sitting here drinking this lovely tea.”

  “You ride one of the beasts already, Jun-san. Why do you need the Shōgun’s help at all?”

  “In Grandmother’s prophecy, the child would ride with an army of thunder tigers at his back. But the arashitora will not help if we do not help ourselves. If they are to stand against the Guild, the Shōgun must stand beside them. The arashitora will not fight our battles for us.”

  “There is no Shōgun to stand against the chi-mongers, Jun-san.”

  “Will your husband be victorious against his brother, great Lady? Claim the Four Thrones of Shima as his own?”

  “Nothing in this life is certain, Jun-san. Least of all the battle between Bear and Bull.”

  “My grandmother taught me differently, Lady Ami. She taught me to believe I would save this place from itself. And I intend to do just that.”

  “Excuse me, Lady,” the maidservant said. “I must fetch more tea.”

  Jun heard the girl rise, retreat with short, clipped steps across the floorboards. He felt the cats purr in his head, their chests thrumming, the Lady Ami stroking each in turn, watching him in silence. He felt his blindness keenly, longing for the little sparrow on his shoulder. He could look through the cats’ eyes to be certain, but then he would see only himself. Not her face. Not her eyes, no doubt locked on his, those ruby lips pressed thin in thought as she watched and he remembered—

  “I agreed to speak to you out of respect for the beast you rode, young master Jun. My father raised my sister and I on tales of the Stormdancers. But this talk of prophecy and destiny … it will carry no weight with my husband, should he prove victor against his brother. And Lord Riku will care less for it still. Regardless, it is doubtful the war will be decided within days, and days are all you have before the arashitora leave.”

  Jun heard the serving girl reach the doors.

  Close them softly.

  Slide a bolt into place.

  He frowned, head tilted. Rising slowly to his feet.

  “I ask forgiveness if this displeases,” Lady Ami continued. “But if the only proof—”

  Jun grasped his walking stick in both hands. With a click and a flourish, he drew his fists apart, revealing the three feet of gleaming folded steel hidden inside the haft.

  “Master Jun—” the Lady warned, a tremor in her voice.

  Jun leaped across the tea service, sending the pot and cups crashing to the floor. Lady Ami rose to her feet and shrank back in sudden fright, clutching the small tantō blade hidden in the drum bow at her waist. The guards about the room cried out in alarm at the sight of Jun’s hidden blade, raising their tasseled spears and charging toward the blind boy, intent on protecting their mistress.

  As such, they missed the assassins crawling in the rafters above.

  A shuddering pop! pop! pop! pop! rang out overhead, the air filled with dozens upon dozens of gleaming shuriken stars. The guards fell, bloody and screaming, the whistling blades shearing through skin and leather, puncturing iron breastplates. Lady Ami cursed as Jun pushed her back against a pillar, swiping at the air with his thin sword. Sparks flew, blinding bursts of light, the boy moving as a field of long grass in a rolling winter wind. His blade struck the shuriken from the air, one, two, three, head tilted, eyes closed, brow furrowed, pain twisting his features as one of the stars struck his arm, another grazed his cheek. Blood flowing now, bright and red, and still he moved amidst the hail, sweeping his blade as if a conductor’s baton, and the gleaming death sprayed toward him, his orchestra.

  A series of hollow clicks and the room fell silent, save for the Lady’s shuddering breath, the moans of dying guards. And from the ceiling, long, thin-limbed shapes unfurled—men, clad in shadows, strange weapons with flat barrels in their hands. Loose black cloth swathing their forms, a strip of flesh showing through their cowls, eyes covered in goggles of dark red glass.

  They sheathed their hollow weapons at their waists, drew long katana from their backs, the blades studded with spinning, growling teeth. Jun frowned, the engines’ growls filling his ears, clouding the assassins’ footsteps as they crept closer. He felt the Lady Ami at his back, heard her draw her own blade, ragged breath, steel in her voice.

  “There are eight of them,” she whispered.

  “I know.” A slow nod. “Can you use that tantō you carry?”

  “I am no master like you, Jun-san,” Ami breathed. “Should we live through this, I would hear the telling of how a blind painter became a sword-saint…”

  “Stay behind me, then. I will protect you with my life.”

  Soft footsteps as the figures gathered about them. The Lady’s voice, softer still.

  “My thanks, Jun-san.”

  “No thanks necessary,” the boy smiled. “I am in no danger.”

  “There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance, young master.”

  “Not arrogance, Lady. I simply cann
ot die today.”

  He flashed her a winning grin.

  “I have not saved the world yet.”

  The assassins closed, growling swords raised high in their hands. Were this some pantomime or puppet show on the streets of your scabs, monkey-child, the assailants would have come one at a time, neat and orderly, to be impaled in proper fashion upon the young and dashing hero’s blade to the hymn of the cheering crowd. And it is true that, for some astonishing reason, the first two murderers did approach in a rather conventional array, one slightly behind the other, perhaps lulled into false confidence by the milk-white orbs behind the boy’s lashes.

  Jun side-stepped a scything, downward blow, the same hummingbird speed he had used to shame me before my kin serving him now in an arena just as deadly. He leaned in close, below another sweeping strike, and with a bright note of razored steel and the sharp clipped intake of his assailant’s breath, he pushed his blade in and out of the assassin’s chest, one, twice, spinning on the spot and planting his boot square in his foe’s belly.

  The bleeding, punctured lump of carrion flew back into his comrades, scattering them long enough for Jun to swipe his blade across the second assassin’s throat. Bright arterial spray painted the boy’s face crimson, the Lady Ami gritting her teeth to stifle her gasp of horror. And then all became chaos, no form or order to it, just six snarling blades filling the air. Jun pushing Lady Ami back, ducking below one strike, leaping up onto the pillar and springing away to dodge the next four. Hurling his scabbard into one assassin’s face, divesting another of his hamstrings. The sting of burning exhaust in his nostrils, choking his lungs. The chainkatana growl utterly stifling his sense of hearing, leaving him secretly thanking the gods for the two cats who even now lingered at the room’s periphery, bubbling with vague concern over the fate of their mistress.

  It was through their eyes he saw.

  But it was to my mind he called.

  I had become bored, and more than a little disgruntled, I will confess. Sitting beneath the thin shade of a struggling sugi tree and snarling whenever one of the terrified serving staff looked my way. I had been seriously considering taking to the skies to escape the gut-churning stink when I heard the boy’s cry of alarm in my mind, raising the hackles on my back, the threat he felt somehow spilling over into me and setting my skin to bristling.

  Friend Koh! Help us!

  I cannot explain the sensation. Your tongue is crude and shapeless, monkey-child, and your words have brittle meaning. I can only say that, though I knew the voice to be his, somehow I felt the threat to be mine. That I stood there, in the room with him, the vague weight of his blade in my hands. Perhaps it was the time he had spent in my eyes? Perhaps the soft kinship we shared, both orphans, both outcasts, both alone? I could not say then, and now, it fills me to sadness to dwell in those thoughts. So instead of the why, I will speak of the what.

  The doors of the monkey-nest burst apart like glass beneath my weight, and I pounded down the corridors, shredding the floorboards to splinters as I came. There was no sky over my head, no sun or moon on my back, and the wrongness of this place struck me to my heart. Stone and clay and twigs, vast boxes filled with stink and pretty, pointless trinkets. But on I ran, great loping strides, wings crackling with fresh lightning. Through another set of doors, smashing a wall to dust and ruin, closing in on his thoughts like moth approaches candleflame. Through another wall and at last to him—the little blind boy and the painted monkey-girl, their backs to a pillar of stone, surrounded on all sides by men in thin and gleaming black, slivers of growling steel in their hands.

  I roared, bellowed, thundered, pounding the boards with my feet and the air with my wings. A great sonic boom birthed at my feathertips, splitting the floor asunder, blasting three of the assassins to mush and guts as they turned to face me. And herein lies the strangest thing—the sensation in which your words most dismally fail. For as we fought, the boy and I, as I stepped up beside him and cleaved the black-clad men to ribbons, just as he furnished them with a bevy of new and weeping holes, I lost all sense of myself. Not to say I was stricken with some red rage blinding me to the battle’s flow, no. Simply to say I somehow lost track of where I concluded and where we commenced. I could feel him in my mind. Behind my eyes. Flowing with me and through me. And as we moved, I thought perhaps I knew why the old tales called those who rode the backs of my kin Stormdancers. For that, it seemed, was the closest word you have to describe what we did in the midst of that song of screams and blades and blood.

  Dancing.

  And when we were done, standing with burning lungs and trembling fists, him behind my eyes as I looked him over, pale and bloodied and breathless, that oneness faded. That sensation of being lost in another, of being more … it evaporated like early morning mist with the rising of the sun. And it surprised me, how much I longed to feel it again.

  Thank you, friend Koh.

  YOU BLEED. YOU HURT?

  A scratch or two. No matter.

  MONKEY-KHAN’S MATE?

  “You are well, Lady?” the boy asked.

  “I…” Lady Ami looked herself over, eyes wide. “I believe so…”

  “Who are these men?” The boy gestured to the assassins.

  “I know not.” The Lady stooped, picking up one of their growling swords. “I have never seen a blade such as this. But my husband must be informed immediately…”

  “I can take a message to him when I—”

  “And have me wait here patiently to be attacked again? I think not, master Jun.” She glanced at the locked door the serving girl had left by, the iron bolt trapping them inside. “It seems those closest to me have been bought and sold, and Lord Riku is not content to fight this battle on the field alone.” Here she looked at the slaughtered men about her, dead in puddles of cooling blood. “If my own bodyguard can be slaughtered to a man by these assailants, who will protect me when next they strike?”

  “What do you suggest, Lady Ami?” Jun frowned. “I cannot remain here to protect you.”

  The woman looked me over, from the tuft of my tail to the tip of my beak. Her hands were shaking from the fright, face paling at the stink of blood and excrement daubed in the air. And yet there was iron in her voice. Steel in her gaze.

  “As I said, my father raised me on tales of the Stormdancers, young master Jun.”

  Her smile, the curve of a newly sharpened blade.

  “And there looks to be room on your friend’s back for two…”

  * * *

  The sun was a burning eye in the heavens, and the Bull’s armies were arrayed for the kill. Orderly rows of bushimen in iron breastplates, long naginata spears clutched in gauntleted hands. A legion of horse-borne archers on the flanks, short hankyū bows upon their backs, quivers of arrows at their waists. And in the vanguard, the warriors to lead the charge. Fully one hundred samurai, long tabards and tassels of bloody Tiger red. Guild-crafted suits of hissing, clanking, whirring iron, spitting chi fumes into the air. Growling chainkatana and wakizashi in their fists, the hum of a hundred motors murdering the prebattle hush. Their eyes narrowed—against the fumes or the glare or the rush of the oncoming slaughter, who could say?

  Lord Tatsuya sat astride a white stallion at the rear of his forces, blue-black air rattling about the poor beast’s lungs. A tall banner pole rose from his back, set with the sigil of the Tiger clan and the scrolling kanji of the Kazumitsu line. He had declined the Guildsmen’s offer of a suit of chi-powered armor, preferring instead to wear the traditional ō-yoroi his father had commissioned for him. It seemed fitting; to claim the rule of the Shōgunate in gear that had been gifted him by the former Shōgun himself. Lips curling with contempt, he glanced up at the sky-ships hovering overhead, their propellers a muted drone, great bladders creaking with the press of the hydrogen inside. The Guild loitered above the battlefield like carrion birds, poised to swoop down and feast on his brother’s fresh-killed corpse.

  The Bull turned his gaze from the Guild
vessels, took one deep, rasping breath in the suffocating air. And raising his hand, as a puppeteer on the marionette’s strings, he gave the order for the slaughter to begin.

  A cry rang down his lines, the samurai vanguard surging up the hill with great, leaping strides. Already, the sight of Tatsuya’s fiercest would have been enough to make an ordinary soldier quail. He could not imagine what the men on Riku’s front lines thought as they saw those metal-clad engines of death charging up the hill toward them. Iron masks shaped in the likeness of oni demons. Arrows falling among them like spring showers, turned aside by the Guild suits or simply shattered on the embossed iron. A roar building amongst the charging samurai, underscored by the growling snarl of their chainblades raised high. Farther up the hill beneath the wooden rain they charged, close enough now to see the terror on their enemies’ faces.

  Tatsuya noted Riku had pulled back his own samurai from the front lines, meeting the charge with a legion of peasant soldiers; a bristling thicket of long spears outthrust against the oncoming tide. It was a sensible enough stratagem—to see what havoc these new technological terrors could wreak among his chaff before he committed his best forces to the fray. Their commander’s wisdom, however, proved little solace for Riku’s spearmen. Tatsuya’s samurai began the grisly task of hacking them to pieces, leather and thin iron plates melting like snow under those awful, growling swords, the spears no more use against the Guild suits than toothpicks against an iron cliff.

  Tatsuya raised his hand to his signalman, preparing to send in his infantry as soon as Riku’s archers were neutralized. It would only be moments before his vanguard smashed the lines—then his bushimen could proceed uphill without being riddled with arrow fire. He could hear screams and agonized wails now rising above the rumble of gunning motors and snarling swords. The Guild engines wreaking slaughter among the—

  Wait …

  A hush falling over the carnage up the hill, the bass and bottom end falling away from the bloody symphony. Tatsuya frowned, squinting in the burning glare, clawing goggles of polarized glass down over his eyes to dim the burning light. He could see figures falling—armored figures—chainblades tumbling from nerveless fingers amidst cries of rage and despair.