The Lotus War - Kinslayer Part 30

She stopped short as her eyes adjusted, spied Kin kneeling by the chessboard.

"Jukai province?" Kin blinked. "You mean the Stain? Is that where Ryusaki was headed? The Guild staging grounds are..."

Kaori glared. Mute. Hand on her wakizashi hilt.

"... I will take my leave, then." Kin stood, covered his fist and bowed.

"I enjoyed our game, Kin-san." Daichi nodded to the board. "Though when next we play, I will expect more commitment in your attack. Perhaps tomorrow?"

"I'd like that."

Kin gave Kaori a short bow, but the woman didn't even blink. Her eyes followed him as he left; a bird of prey watching a field mouse in the shadows of long, yellow gra.s.s.

Stepping out into the light, he looked around the village; the men dragging venison to the slaughterhouse, women repairing thatched roofs, children gathered at sensei's feet, chalk tablets in hand. The trees around him seemed afire; foliage swaying like flame tongues, curling along dry, brittle branches. Leaves tumbled between the trees as if stars from empty red skies.

So much at stake here. So much to lose.

Kin wondered if Daichi really would risk it all for final victory.

Memories of his Awakening came unbidden to his mind. Hundreds of glowing red eyes, staring up at him with more affection in a single featureless face than lay in all of the Kage combined. The memory turned his gut slick with dread.

When the time comes, will you?

An iron bell in the night. A cry ringing amidst the trees. A word.

Kin opened his eyes, c.o.c.ked his head, straining to hear.

"Oni!"

A faint cry, almost lost beneath nightsong and the rumble of Iishi storms.

"Oni!"

Rolling from his bed, Kin scrambled to his feet and stumbled from his door, dashing in the direction of the cries. He could see bobbing lanterns in the distance, hear a rising gaggle of voices. Rope bridges swayed beneath him, bare feet pounding unfinished wood, dead leaves falling in a snarling wind. He came upon a group gathered outside Daichi's dwelling-Kaori, Maro, Isao, Takeshi, Atsushi, two dozen others, men and women, warriors all. Daichi stood in the center of the ring, clad in a banded iron breastplate, a great dachi sword in his hands at least as tall as Kin was. The old man's voice was hoa.r.s.e, tired, but fire burned in his eyes.

"Scouts report an oni war band from Black Temple moving toward the village." Daichi's stare roamed from one warrior to the next. "At least two dozen."

Uneasy murmurs. An exchange of wary glances.

So many ...

"Take heart," he said. "We have faced such numbers before."

"With the Stormdancer at our side." Atsushi echoed Kin's own thoughts. "But where is she now? How can we face such a force without her?"

"We have another equalizer," Daichi said. "Kin's shuriken-throwers will thin the demon's ranks enough for us to deal with the remainder. We will make our stand along the 'thrower line."

Isao shook his head, raising voice in protest.

"Daichi-sama, we cannot be certain the Guildsman's contraptions will not fall to pieces in battle. And we have no maneuverability if we chain ourselves to his perimeter."

"I agree with Isao-san, Father." Kaori nodded. "I suggest we ambush. Wait until the oni are moving among the pit traps, then strike from the trees."

"We did that last time, didn't we?"

All eyes turned on Kin as he spoke. Distrust. Hostility. Anger. The boy ignored the stares, met Kaori's eyes.

"We won't get them the same way a second time," he said. "The survivors of the last attack will have told their brethren we struck from the treetops."

"We?" Isao spat. "I don't recall seeing you there, Guildsman..."

"Because I was locked in your prison," Kin replied. "After you threatened to cut my throat. Don't you remember?"

A hateful stare. Clenched jaw. Isao turned back to Daichi.

"This is madness," the boy said. "We cannot trust the Guildsman's machines."

"With all due respect, I agree, Daichi-sama." Atsushi stood at Isao's back, something close to fear in his stare. Takeshi stood beside him, all nerves and wide eyes, fingernails chewed to the quick.

"Your concern is noted, gentlemen," the old man said.

"Father-"

Daichi placed a gentle hand on his daughter's arm, eyes still on Kin.

"You truly believe your 'throwers will hold, Kin-san? These are not stones and trees we fire at. These are demons fresh from the pits of Yomi. Twelve feet tall. Claws that rend steel. The strength of the Endsinger herself flows in their veins."

Kin tore his gaze from Isao's, looked at the old man. Teeth gritted, balled fists, fear in his gut. But the tests had run perfectly, no pressure loss, no chamber failure. He knew it. He would stake his life on it.

"They will hold," he replied.

Daichi glanced at his captains. Maro was silent, arms folded across his armored chest, but his eyes spoke no. Kaori met her father's gaze, shook her head. Thunder rocked the skies above, lightning clawing at the clouds, every pa.s.sing second bringing the demons closer.

Daichi looked at Kin again. Drew one rasping breath.

Closer.

"We will have a small force ambush the demons, and draw them on to the 'thrower line."

"Daichi-sama-" Is...o...b..gan.

A cold glare choked the boy's protest. The old man nodded as Isao fell silent, turned to his captain. "Maro-san, take half a dozen Shadows and bring the oni to us. The rest of you, come with me."

Maro glanced at Kaori, grim-faced, but still covered his fist and bowed.

"Hai."

Kin saw dark looks exchanged between Isao, Takeshi and Atsushi. Something else pa.s.sing between the trio. Desperation? Fear? Takeshi opened his mouth to speak, but Isao shook his head, motioning for silence. A cold dread seeped into Kin's belly. Thunder shook the treetops, shaking his insides.

"Daichi-sama," he said. "With your permission, I will come with you. I can operate one of the 'throwers. Free up another blade for those demons who make it through to the line." He stared at Isao as he spoke, the younger boy's face pale as bleached bones. "And I'll be there in case anything goes wrong..."

The old man nodded, stifled a dry cough with the back of one hand.

"I would have it no other way, Kin-san."

He looked amongst his warriors, lightning gleaming across steel-gray irises.

"Come. Let us send these abominations back into the h.e.l.ls."

Steady rain falling on the leaves above his head, a thousand drumbeats per minute, shushing all in the world beneath. Sweating still, despite the storm, the boy crouched in the 'throwers' operator's seat, damp palms pressed to targeting controls. He blinked the burn from his eyes, squinting into the dark, blind, deaf and mute.

Kin grit his teeth, tightened his grip on the feeder crank. All around him, Kage warriors were gathered, hidden in scrub and dead leaf drifts, all eyes on the approach. Daichi was crouched in a thick copse of mountain fern beside Kin's emplacement, so utterly still the boy couldn't tell him from the leaves around him. The storm was growing worse, thunder jolting him in his seat every time Raijin struck his drums. And there, amidst the fear and tempest and rising doubt, it was all Kin could do to stop himself falling back to the familiar mantras-the words he knew by rote, explaining all about life he had ever needed to know.

Skin is strong.

Flesh is weak.

He felt naked. Tiny. The metal beneath his hands the only comfort, the only certainty. These machines of death he'd a.s.sembled, dragged from scorched wreckage and filled with new life-these he knew. But demons? Children of the Endsinger? He'd been raised to scoff at such superst.i.tions. Tales of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses were crutches for the skinless. Those who had never breathed warm blue-black in the Chamber of Smoke. Never been shown their Truth.

Call me First Bloom.

A distant cry, a rumbling, croaking roar. Faint sounds through the storm, not unlike music. Bright steel, ringing crisp beneath the cloud's percussion, running feet amidst the hissing deluge. The signal floated down the line-a series of short nightbird whistles. And eyes narrowed, peering into the gloom, Kin saw tiny figures swathed in dark, dappled cloth, dashing back toward the 'throwers fast as swift feet might carry them. And behind them ...

Behind them ...

Kin had never seen the like. Not in his bleakest imaginings. Loping and croaking and growling deep, long sinewed arms dragging knuckles on the earth, black, wicked talons at the end of every finger's tip. A dozen shades of blue among their skins, midnight to azure, all muddied and smothered in the cold and the dark, lit only by frantic lightning and the b.l.o.o.d.y light of their own glowing eyes. Faces wrought of nightmare, adorned with rusted metal rings, tusks curling cruel and sharp from jagged underbites. Their blades and war clubs tall and sharp enough to fell the stoutest tree. A language dark as sin, roared amidst the trees by black maggot tongues.

"They come," Daichi said.

Oni.

Maro and his scouts were swift, weaving between the Kage pits with the demons close on their tails. One oni crashed through the scrim of branches and dead leaves covering a trap, tumbled headfirst, twenty feet down into a tomb of sharpened bamboo spikes. Maro's blade was black with blood, the oni enraged, rushing on heedless, another of the demons crashing into a Kage trap and plummeting to its end. But the monsters numbered in the dozens, twelve feet tall and seething, the death of their fellows seeming only to stoke their fury. Warbling screams and guttural roars, blood-red eyes aglow as pierced lips pulled back from crooked teeth, long loping strides bringing them ever closer to the fleeing scouts.

Kin's fingers tightened on the firing stud. Breath coming fast. Fear rising.

"Come on," he breathed. "Faster..."

One scout stumbled on an upthrust tree root, slipped in the muck. The oni behind was on him in a moment, tetsubo raised high, bringing it down with a delighted howl and smashing the unfortunate man into mush. The remaining scouts kept running, no time for grief, on through the brambles and ferns and grasping branches.

Kin set his sights on a pit demon, crosshairs centered on its chest.

"Faster..."

Lightning struck the skies, splashing all with grisly white. Thunder shook his bones, gut to water, pupils dilated. And as they finally closed within range of the line, Maro gave his signal, and as one, each scout dropped behind stones or fallen trunks, out of sight and out of harm.

"That's it," Kin hissed.

Daichi rose up from his fern, held his dachi aloft.

"Fire!"

Kin squeezed the firing stud, felt his 'thrower lurch, and chug!chug!chug!chug!chug! came the song all the way down the line, brilliant and bright and bellowing, filling the air with death. His 'thrower shook like an infant in a tantrum, squealing and shuddering as Kin cranked the feeder belts, short bursts of pressurized gas bursting from its flanks with every shuriken it spat. Spinning, razored death flew from each 'thrower barrel, glittering in the rain as lightning struck again, and as elation surged in his gut, Kin saw the oni begin to fall, one by one, clutching throats and chests and guts, black blood spraying between the raindrops, blood-red eyes wide with shock and surprise as the air about them turned to carnage.

The reverb shook Kin to his core, metal beneath him groaning, shuddering, bucking as his creations tore through the oni lines like a hot blade through fresh snow. A dozen demons fell in the first few seconds, riddled with fresh holes, elation filling him to bursting. He glanced to Daichi, a tiny moment amidst the butchery, a lunatic grin on his face. The old man was looking back at him, gifting him a small nod that for a brief and beautiful moment wrapped Kin up tight, filled him with a sensation he'd almost forgotten.

Pride.

chug!chug!chug!chug!chug!

Chest-swelling, heart-warming pride.

chug!chug!chug!chug!chug!

And then the 'throwers began to fail.

Number three blew first, the seals on the firing chambers bursting like overfilled balloons, gas shrieking in the dark. Kin's 'thrower went next, a bright burst of light and a rush of vapor, the bucking metal beast he rode falling still, sagging like a puppet with broken strings. All down the line, almost simultaneously, the machines coughed and went silent, shivering in their rivets like men dying of blacklung. Murderous percussion replaced with feeble thunder and whispering rain, so dim after the deafening chorus Kin could barely hear them at all.

Dread stole his breath, gripped his heart tight and squeezed. He lurched from his seat, eyes roaming the ruptured seals, fingers pressed to the damage as if with will alone he could mend it. But no time. No time at all ...

"Oh, no..." he breathed.

A roar, black and harrowing, reverberating through the trees. Looking up, Kin saw a tall shape unfold itself from the cover of an ancient maple, its head adorned with the skull of some colossal eagle, armor of bone arrayed on its chest. Taller than its brethren, skin so dark it was almost ebony, all muscle and sinew and fangs. And raising a war club studded with rusted iron rivets, twice as long as Kin was tall, it pointed at the 'thrower line, lips drawing back from broken fangs.

Bellowing hatred.

Daichi tossed his head, wiped the rain from his eyes. His stare was fixed on the demons as the other Kage emerged from cover, gathered around their leader. Their blades gleamed as the lightning flickered, the scouts dashing across the clearing and rejoining the line. The oni formed up around their dread captain, only half a dozen now, bloodied and grim. But still more than a match for a handful of men and women half their size, armed with tiny, sharpened toothpicks.

Rusted grins gleamed in the light of b.l.o.o.d.y eyes.

Daichi spared Kin a solemn glance. Cold and empty. And the pride that had swelled his chest a moment before fled on broken wings, shoulders slumping as cold fear seeped in to take its place. Hands shaking. Lips parting as if to speak, and finding no words at all.

Daichi turned to his warriors. Each one in turn. Steel in his gaze. And raising his blade, he pointed to the demon pack.

"Banzai!" he cried.

"Banzaiiii!" came the reply, two dozen Kage roaring in answer. Thunder crashed, the warriors dashing across the clearing with blades held high. Kin dragged himself from the 'thrower, stumbled down to the soaking earth, watching the foes plunge toward each other through the swirling rain. Tiny figures and giant h.e.l.lsp.a.w.n, moving amidst the lightning strobe. His chest thumping, mouth bitter, panic and guilt and rage filling him to blinding, looking up and down the line of useless 'throwers as the Thunder G.o.d laughed in the sky above.

How could this be?

The battle was joined out in the dark, Kin stumbling toward it, a heavy wrench dragged from his tool belt to serve as a weapon. He had no warrior's training, but still, he couldn't sit back and do nothing. Figures swayed and danced in the rain, cries of pain and awful roars filling the empty s.p.a.ces between one peal of thunder and the next. Kaori fighting on the left flank, just a blur in the darkness. Daichi in the thick of it, blade slick with dark blood. Moving as if to music, flowing without pause, step to feint to strike to thrust, cleaving broad swathes of sticky black, swinging his mighty two-handed blade as if an extension of his own arm. A flick of his wrist and an oni's leg toppled to the ground in a spray of dark gore, followed swiftly by its howling owner. A step to the left and a casual wave, cleaving throat to the bone, swaying amidst the blows, a poet writing his masterpiece in warmest, blackest ink.

A rolling seething mob, oni and Kage falling in equal measure, Kaori scaling one demon's back and plunging her blade into the base of its skull. Maro's arm hanging limp, battling side by side with Isao and Takeshi over a fallen comrade, the three of them slicing their foe's gut open, wading ankle deep in rolling coils of intestine. The tide was turning, the Kage gaining ground. But the oni lord had cleared a swathe through his foes, eyes set on Daichi, looming through the mob as Kin shouted warning.

The old man turned, steel flashing, stepping to one side as the demon brought his war club crashing down. Mud spattering, dead leaves flying, Daichi's eyes narrowed in contempt as he stepped forward, sliced the oni across its belly. Kin running through the muck, an oni looming out of the gloom in front of him. The boy dodged past its blade, almost slipping on the dead leaf carpet as three Kage stepped up to meet the demon's challenge. Panic in his chest, knowledge that he had no place here-no business on a battlefield with a wrench in his hand and fear in his heart-but still he turned and fought, bashing at the oni's shins as it whirled to face him, the blow jarring his arms, the stench of funeral pyres a.s.sailing his nose, the demon roaring as if all the h.e.l.ls lived inside its mouth. He rolled aside as its blade swept over his head, the Kage striking from behind, steel and rain and blood and thunder, black spots blooming in his eyes as he lurched to his feet, sparing a glance for Daichi through the now blinding downpour.