Shallows of night, p.21
Shallows of Night, page 21
“What do you mean?”
“Du-Sing could have had me killed at any time, yet he did not. All right, it is obvious that he wanted information from me. But he is a shrewd man and at some point he realized that I knew nothing of the sakura—”
“Why should he believe that?”
“I do not think that he had a choice and he knew it. I told him the truth and he was aware that I would not break. I told him then about the coming of The Dolman. And he knew, Kiri!” He slapped the pommel of his saddle. “The fox knew! You know better than any save Du-Sing himself how extensive his network is. Every caste in Sha’angh’sei is involved with the Ching Pang. He has ten thousand eyes and ears within the city and without. He knows that the war in the north is no longer against the Reds; he understands the rikkagin’s anxiety. They fight that which is non-human. You have already seen the Makkon and what it can do to human life. The traditional lines of enmity which have guided the fates of the Greens and the Reds, and thus Sha’angh’sei itself, have broken at last. The forces of The Dolman have come to the continent of man.”
They had been traveling along a high plateau and this gave now onto a gorge of red rock and dry dust, their lumas leaving a vapor trail drifting high above them as they descended. On the plateau behind them came the sky-blue luma, carrying its slim passenger.
They were well into the gorge now. Far to the right, atop a low bluff beyond the perimeter of the red defile, a last row of green pine trees swayed in the gathering wind. Above them, a flock of gray and brown birds flying high moved swiftly southward before the oncoming clouds. Ronin thought that he could hear them calling to each other in shrill cries of longing, but perhaps it was merely the wind shivering the lonely pines. The desolation of this land lent their presence the symbolic strength of eternal guards at the outpost of man.
They wended their way through the gorge, around huge boulders and stratified shelves of crimson shale until, at length, they found the way rising again onto another plateau.
They reined in and Ronin dismounted, stroking his steed’s long neck as he went around it to look at the tracks. It danced impatiently as he knelt, fingers moving in the dust. Unmistakable. The hoofprints of any lesser creature would have been at least partially obliterated by the wind-swept dust. But the signs of the Makkon’s passage could not be so easily obscured. At least if it wished to leave a deliberate trail. Thee. An echo in his mind. Thee.
“Are we gaining?”
He shrugged. “If it wants us to, then we will.”
He leaped upon his luma and they took off over the plateau, riding easily, giving their mounts their heads so that they galloped full out. The creatures seemed indefatigable, happiest when they pushed themselves to their limit.
“I would choose the place of battle this time,” he called to her over the rushing of the wind and the hard jangle of their riding gear.
“That may not be possible.”
“I know that better than anyone.”
They were aware that the sun was about to set only when the light abruptly began to fade. It had been diffuse for most of the day, gray and vitiated by the thick tumultuous cloud layers that now enveloped all the sky for as far in every direction as they could see.
The land was colorless and shadowless and they had had for some time the peculiar and disquieting sensation of traveling across an endless dreamscape, that they moved not in kilometers but rather in spirit farther and farther from the familiar world of man into the realm of another kind of life that was both more and less than they.
It was dark in the north already when they reached the far edge of the plateau and so rode downward into a vast valley completely engulfed in shadow. They had descended perhaps halfway when Kiri gasped and strained forward in her saddle. She pointed wordlessly ahead.
Below, rushing toward them as they sped over the rubble-strewn slope, was a field of waving flowers, as white as bleached bones. Then the sweet smell flooded over them like a sticky cataract and they were within the meadow.
“Poppies!” Kiri breathed.
The lumas shook their heads and called to each other and they lifted high their legs, careful now because they could not see the earth.
It was a sea through which they plunged, rustling with an infectious insistence, white crests and blue troughs caused by the rippling of the blossoms as the wind swept across their illimitable faces.
At that moment the sun broke through a rent in the clouds at the edge of the sky to the west and the sea was stained a lurid purple. That same singular light illuminated before them a hulking shape, rising up as if from the floor of the ocean, a fearsome, apparition with lambent orange eyes.
Its outline pulsed as it waded heavily toward them, its long arms swinging, the talons cutting dark swaths in the purple sea. The lumas screamed in fear and reared, kicking out their forelegs. Their eyes rolled in their sockets and Kiri yelled to him, “Dismount! Dismount before it throws you!”
Into the waving poppies they dropped, up around their waists, Kiri’s curving sword already out. He waved her back.
“Your blade will hurt it no more than did mine.”
She did not glance at him.
“I must kill it.” Voice like frost as she advanced on the Makkon.
Ronin grabbed her, held her tightly, his face very near hers. She struggled in his embrace.
“Hear me, Kiri. I know how you feel. The Makkon slew my friend. I have fought it before. Mere metal and muscle are useless against it. It is not of this world and therefore not bound by its laws.” Still she stared over his shoulder at the shambling monstrosity coming toward them. “Too many have already lost their lives. G’fand, Sa, then Matsu. You will not be the next.”
Her violet eyes were glowing coals in the dusk as she looked at him at last.
“This is not a time for reason; that has fled for all time.” With an effort she broke away from him but he still stood between her and the Makkon. “I am already half dead,” she cried wildly. “Oblivion will be heaven if I can take that foul thing with me!”
She came at him and he hit her then, swiftly and compactly and without warning, striking her along the jaw. Just a ripple of movement. He caught her as she fell, thinking, At least you will not die, and gently laid her down in the purple poppies. They danced, whispering, above her still form.
“You cannot kill it,” he said sadly. “And you also mean something to me.”
The long sword was a heavy weight around his waist, threatening to pull him to the ocean’s floor, and he turned, watching the stumbling rush of the Makkon as he unbuckled the belt. The sword fell beside Kiri.
The creature screamed as it recognized him and he heard the lumas way behind him calling nervously to each other as he went out to meet it, out from the shallows into the depths of the sighing sea, the strange blossoms caressing his legs, the rich sweet aroma mingled now with the choking stench of the thing.
He came in under the swift sweep of its arms, his gauntleted hand held before him like a shield. He leapt at the last instant so that his balled fist smashed into its cruelly curved beak. The Makkon howled and he thought that his eardrums had burst. They were hot and blood began to leak from them because of the vibrations but he had opened the beak and was fighting now for leverage in order to force the gauntlet down its throat.
The howling increased in intensity and he was forced to close his eyes to the terrible slitted orbs which hung before his face like hateful crescent moons in an inimical alien sky.
But now as he struggled for purchase on the scaly hide, needles of pain shot through him like shards of broken glass and tears welled up in his eyes, coursing down his cheeks. The cold was so profound that his legs were already numb as they attempted to climb the alien musculature. He began to shake with the pain and his resolve weakened. The beak ground down against the gauntlet and unless he kept up the thrusting pressure it would slip out and he would be as good as dead. Slowly and purposefully it had stood there and torn out her throat, ripe flesh that he had kissed and stroked ruptured now and gouting red and bits of it flying in his face, the taste of her blood, salt and sticky with spume like sea water, and what are we anyway but salt and phosphorus and water like the ocean? And the hate burned at his core and its heat glowed and grew as he banked the fire with the images, forcing himself to remember the details, her blood in his mouth in an abrupt spray, and he yelled silently, bringing the killing power together within him, and he reached up with his arm, though the pain still shook him and water was in his eyes, forcing the gauntlet farther inside.
Then the Makkon’s arms came up across his back, the talons seeking his flesh, trying to pry him from its maw. There was no longer air in his lungs and he subsisted from heartbeat to heartbeat, time taken, molded like putty in some monstrous claw, perverted and realigned so that it no longer bore any resemblance to the concept which ruled his world. His heart pounded and he was Outside, his stomach churning in nausea, his back aflame with pain, his legs hanging uselessly, a cripple, and still he persisted, though the numbness now lapped at his brain, an unstoppable crimson tide, and still he strove, long after his last inhalation, his lungs deflating, pulse surging vainly—And he took the last step, all thoughts but one gone, out into the deep.
From his hip, up through his massive shoulders and along his arm, as unyielding now as a forged metal blade, pushing solely by instinct, reasoning at an end, berserk at last, reduced to pure matter, elevated to pure matter. Survival! It bellowed through his brain like a firestorm, battering behind his blind eyes, and a warm rain now washing the lining of his body, emanating from his core, the central vortex of which he mercifully had no understanding, and blue lightning ringing the sky above him, gyring across the opening heavens, something feeding him now and, though he was past knowing it, the shaking fist enclosed within the sanctity of the Makkon gauntlet, scales bright with alien saliva, finally slipped past the spasmodically working tongue, breaching the roof of the creature’s mouth, driving with inhuman power upward into its eye cavity.
The vibrations became intolerable and he burst apart then into ten thousand fragments, his hot red flesh drifting upon a cool wind which gusted upward in a tenacious spiral, the serpentine breaching the roiling lavender clouds, away, away…
First it was the sweetness and then the darkness.
Night had fallen.
He attempted to rise but he seemed incapable of any movement. All about him the susurrations of the poppies. Above him the nodding bell petals.
He rested, concentrating on his breathing, his mind turning over with curiosity each of his senses. Sight, sound, taste, smell, touch: life.
At length able to move his fingers, then his hand, finally his arm. He attempted to sit up. No movement. He explored, found that he could not feel his feet. It was his back then, where the Makkon had enwrapped him.
He called Kiri but his voice was a quiet croak in the restless meadow. His throat was dry. He heard movement, above and behind him, and he called out again as loudly as he was able and there was a snort, hesitant, questioning. The sounds of the poppies parting, stalks whooshing, and he longed to look but could not.
A long head and wet muzzle were abruptly over him. His luma. Its blue eyes looked at him with intelligence and he whispered to it softly, wordlessly, a crooning singsong as he had heard its attendant talking to it in Kiri’s jeweled garden. The luma moved closer, extending its muzzle. He heard its hoofs very close and felt the columns of its strong forelegs almost touching his head. It opened its wide mouth and licked at his face and then lower so that he could drink its saliva. Then it rested its head against his while he spoke to it again, stroking the side of its head, reassuring it.
After a while he slept and the luma stood over him, watchful in the night, its wide nostrils flared for first scent, its triangular ears twitching to pick up any movement. Several times it called to the mare who stood some meters away, over Kiri’s sleeping form.
The luma guarded them through the night. But no one came.
And only Ronin heard, deep within his being, below the dreams that played across his mind, the confused jumble of echoing voices, calling, calling in some desperation now, Have you found him? You must find him. Yes, I will. But if he does not have it? We are truly lost then. Even if I find him, the Kai-feng still comes. There is little time then, even for us—
Abruptly, borne on some desolate wind, the voices drop away from him.
The blue morning light woke him. Above him stood the roan luma, its coat a glowing red in the sun’s first oblique rays. It shook its head and stamped the poppies beside him. The exhalations from its nostrils were white clouds in the chill air.
Ronin reached up, grabbing for the swinging stirrup, pulled himself hand over hand until he stood on his feet, testing his legs and back. The numbness was gone but his co-ordination was off and he leaned on the luma for a moment, gathering his strength. He walked with its help across the white and blue field to where the golden luma stood over Kiri.
She was still asleep deep within the rustling sea. A large purple bruise swelled along the left side of her forehead.
She awoke as he bent over her and he stepped quickly back, half expecting her to unsheathe her blade and cross swords with him. She was, after all, the Empress of Sha’angh’sei and he had struck her. But she was quite calm.
She broke out food from her saddlebags, feeding the luma before she would eat herself. She offered some to Ronin.
“Against your strong advice, I rushed the Makkon,” she said ruefully. “You did not hit me that hard. When I looked it already had you and I struck at it with my sword.” She gave him a small smile then. “I did not believe you, I suppose. I thought, well, you are a warrior and—the rikkagin do not approve of women warriors; they are frightened, I think.”
Coming against him in the metaled ellipse just below the crust of the surface, his equal perhaps as warrior, who knows, no one ever will now.
“Now you know I told you the truth.”
“Oh, but yes!” She reached up and gingerly touched the bruise. “It slapped me, just a backhand swipe of its claw. I have never felt such power. I was flung a good distance away. That is all I remember.”
Ronin chewed on his food. “I wounded it.” he said.
“But how?”
He lifted the gauntlet so that the strange scales caught the light of dawn.
“With this! Its own hide.” He laughed then. “Thank you, Bonneduce the Last, wherever you may now be. A better gift you could not have left me.”
He went to pick up his sword and as he buckled the belt around his waist she said, “What now? Where has it gone?”
“Impossible to say. Too much time has already passed for us to attempt to continue to pursue it. Do you know of Kamado?”
“Of course.”
“Can you guide us there?”
“It lies north, along the river. I do not think that we shall have a problem finding it.”
They rode hard due north, keeping the snaking river on their left, and it was not long before they encountered soldiers streaming northward in long lines, columns bristling with weaponry and machines of war.
They joined this caravan for the last part of their journey, riding swiftly by the soldiers’ sides.
Flags fluttered in the wind, the men in leather jerkins and metal helms, armed with long curving swords and bright, finely tipped lances. There were archers, their immense longbows strung vertically on their backs, and cavalry, acting as outriders and scouts, protecting the column’s flanks. Metal clanged and jangled and the wooden carts, laden with food and spare arms, creaked under their heavy loads.
They moved up gradually until they reached the horsemen of the rikkagin’s retinue who directed them to their commander. He was a sharp-faced man with a long queue and many scars along his desiccated cheeks.
“Are you bound for Kamado?” asked Ronin.
“All are bound for Kamado these days,” said the rikkagin darkly. “Or away from it.”
“Do you know the Rikkagin T’ien?”
“By name only. There are many rikkagin.”
“I have heard that he is at Kamado.”
The rikkagin nodded. “Yes. That is my understanding also. You may ride along with my men, if you wish.”
“Thank you.”
They rode in silence for a time, listening to the wind and the creaking of leather, the clop-clop of hooves in the dust, the clash of metal.
“You have been to Kamado before?” asked Kiri.
The rikkagin turned his bleak gaze upon her.
“Too often, lady. We were not due back there for another fortnight but the enemy grows stronger each day and we must return now. From whence they come, I cannot say. Nor can anyone else, though we have made strenuous, efforts to find out.”
“You have learned nothing?” said Kiri.
“Nothing at all,” answered the rikkagin. “For none of our scouts have returned.”
They caught sight of Kamado just past midday, its dun-colored walls, thick and high and crenellated, dominating the huge hill on which it had been built long ago. The wide river crashed along the left of the fortress and, to the north, it was possible to make out the verdant splash of a forest.
It was truly cold now and the sky had been lowering as they moved farther north. A fine rain had sprung up a short time before but it was freezing, turned to sleet by the unnatural weather, and it hammered now against the soldier’s helms, caked the mounts’ hides.
They had broken the crest of a rise and, across the last gentle valley the yellow outline of the great fort had come into sight, rising like a spectral city in the wilderness of the bleak landscape.
The stone walls rose upward, an extension of the dusty hill, wider at the bottom. It was roughly circular, with newer extensions to the east and west, rectangular bulges which gave it a peculiar look.
Massive metal-bound doors faced them, guarded by wide outcroppings of the walls along which soldiers constantly patrolled. To the west, the hill dropped away, sweeping down to the water. A wooden bridge with two stone pillars spanned the river at that point. On the far shore, a multitude of tents and pavilions could be seen among which strode many soldiers, some leading horses. Cooking fires were already being started in several places.
