"I do not think that these creatures are connected with that time."
Tuolin drained his cup and poured himself more wine without offering them more.
He waved the cup. "No matter. These men are not cowards; for most, fighting is all they know. But they are used to foes who bleed when they are cut; give them an enemy that they can see and kill. But this-" The wine sloshed over the cup"s rim and onto the desk. He ignored it. "We are losing this battle."
Ronin leaned forward. "Tuolin, this creature, the Makkon, is an emissary of The Dolman. Do you remember? I told you-" The rikkagin waved his cup at him. There are four Makkon and it is imperative that I kill at least one before they can all gather."
"Why?"
"Because when the four come together they will summon The Dolman and then, I fear, it will be too late for all of us."
"You have already fought one of these-Makkon?"
"Yes, more than once. But this last time I was able to injure it. With this-" Heheld up the scaled gauntlet. Tuolin, it cannot be harmed with ordinary weapons. But this is made of its own hide. I hurt it but it almost killed me."
The rikkagin ran a hand over his eyes and Ronin became aware of the new lines of fatigue etched into his face.
"The Makkon is likely here then."
"I must find it," said Ronin.
"All right." Tuolin pulled at the ivory bar which pierced one ear lobe. "We must cross to the field encampment. There we will be most likely to find news of your Makkon."
"I am pleased that you believe me."
The big man sighed. "I have spent too much time with the dead and dying not to,"
he said wearily.
The dusty streets of Kamado were filled with the din of hoa.r.s.e shouting, the clang of iron against heated iron, the snort and stamp of war horses, the moans of the injured, the tramp of booted feet.
They went out through the southern postern, escorted by soldiers as far as the bridge.
Dark thunderheads were piling up in the northwest, writhing their way rapidly southward. The wind had died and the air was leaden and chill. The moist land steamed whitely.
They moved as swiftly as they could across the wooden planks, hands gripping the rope sides. Ronin peered down into the frothy depths, catching an occasional glimpse of glistening black rocks and sleek leaping fish.
To the south, the land was brown and barren, as if blasted by intense heat. Off to their right, almost due north, lay the encampment with its rows of tents and bright pavilions, lines of tethered horses and bright flickering fires, like silent insects, around which the shadows of the soldiers darted.
The encampment was on the near edge of an undulating meadow of high green gra.s.s perhaps a third of a kilometer wide, beyond which began the first low bushes and wide trees of the forest Ronin had seen as they approached the fortress. Now, as they neared the far sh.o.r.e, he could see that the forest was immensely thick, the tree trunks so tall and the numerous branches so heavily foliaged that it appeared to be a solid wall of green.
Soldiers met them as they stepped off the bridge. Tuolin ordered them to take them to Rikkagin Wo"s pavilion. They went into the high gra.s.s. Fireflies swept the twilight with minute arcs of cool light. The meadow rustled in the wind and cicadas chirruped. Everything was steeped in deep blue except the far-off forest, cloaked inblack shadows, pooling and impenetrable.
The pavilion was striped bright yellow and blue, its canvas walls quiescent now as what little breeze there was died. Lamps were being lit throughout the encampment.
Wood smoke and charcoaled meat were the dominant scents which came to them.
Within, it was warm and bright from a mult.i.tude of lamps. Shadows danced along the insubstantial walls as soldiers went to and fro, preparing for battle. An almost constant stream of runners came and went, depositing and receiving coded messages on slips of rice paper.
Tuolin led them a seemingly circuitous path through the disciplined confusion toward a tall man who broke abruptly into their field of vision. He had dark hair which he wore long and loose and a thin pinched mouth. His chin thrust forward. He turned and gazed at Tuolin as they approached.
"Ah, T"ien, has Hui arrived with his troops?"
"Yes, just before sunset."
"Good. We need every man."
Rikkagin Wo took a slip of paper from a runner, went a few paces away, nearer a light and farther from them. He read the message, went to his desk, and wrote several characters with his quill. He gave the slip back to the runner, who left.
He turned back to Tuolin. "We lost another patrol this afternoon."
"Where?"
"Due north. In the forest."
"How many?"
"Thirteen. Only one came back." Wo looked disgusted. "And he is no good to us. Raving like a lunatic."
"What did he say?"
Wo took another message. He did not look up. "I cannot remember. Ask Le"ehu, if you wish. I would not bother myself."
Tuolin, with Ronin"s urgings, sought out a heavy squat individual with his black hair in a queue, fat cheeks and long glittering eyes.
Le"ehu drew them to the side, against the canvas, where few pa.s.sed close to them.
"He is gone now, the last soldier." He paused, his eyes on Ronin and Kiri.
Tuolin patted his arm. "Go on, these two will not pa.s.s on what you say."
"All right, it is just that"-he rubbed at his upper lip, which had begun to sweat-"I killed him, you know, in the end." The glittery eyes glanced quickly around. "I mean he was dying anyway and he pleaded with me. He could not bear to live another moment, after what he had seen-"
"What attacked the patrol?" asked Ronin.Le"ehu looked startled. "How-how did you know? How did he know, T"ien?"
"Know what?" asked Tuolin.
"He knew a "what" attacked the patrol."
"Did the man describe it?" asked the blond man patiently.
"Yes, curse him. I will not sleep this night. It was huge with great claws and a nightmare face. It ripped out their throats, he said."
"The Makkon," Ronin said and Tuolin nodded.
"In the forest?"
"Yes." The man tried to swallow. "Over the meadow"s ridge, perhaps a kilometer into that cursed place-"
They were silent, waiting for him to continue. Le"ehu stared over their shoulders at the fluttering shadows along the far side of the pavilion.
"What else?" Tuolin said very gently.
"It was not of that creature that he talked before he died." The words came out of him reluctantly now, as if by saying this aloud he might conjure up terrifying creatures. "Something came in that thing"s wake."
"Another one?" asked Ronin.
Le"ehu"s head snapped around. "Another-? Oh no. No, it was, I do not know, something else. There was whirling fog, he said, and blood raining in the melee. He caught a glimpse only-"
"And," prompted Tuolin.
Le"ehu swallowed again.
"Rikkagin-he said it was the Hart-"
"Oh, come on," Tuolin snorted.
"Rikkagin, he bade me kill him," the squat man said miserably. "I do not think that otherwise-"
"The Hart is but legend, Le"ehu, a foul-"
"What legend?" asked Ronin.
"The tale is told," said Tuolin, "of the Hart. He is half man and half beast."
"That is all?"
Tuolin stared at Le"ehu, who winced at his words. "Some say that he is evil incarnate. And others suggest that he was once a whole man, transmogrified, forced now to serve a sorcerous liege, fighting those who are really his kin."
"Whatever is truth," said the squat man, "that soldier believed that he saw it"-he turned his head-"out there. In the forest"
Ronin turned to Tuolin."I care not for legends. The Makkon is my only concern. At first light I must go into the wood and destroy it-"
Le"ehu"s eyes bulged. "Surely you must be mad. The Hart-"
"Be silent," snapped Tuolin. "We are confronted with enough real monstrosities without you fabricating nightmares." He swung his gaze toward Ronin and his tone softened. "You cannot mean to go alone. I will accompany you."
Ronin shook his head.
"You will not be able to help. I require but two men who know this area. When I find it I will send them away."
The big man put a hand on his shoulder.
"My friend, I have done many things for you. Fished you out of the sea when you were half dead, introduced you to Tencho. It is time now to repay me. I want to see this Makkon for myself." His grip tightened. "I must know the enemy, can you understand that?"
Ronin searched the cerulean eyes and nodded. "Yes, that is something that I can accept."
Le"ehu stared from one to the other, backing off.
"You are both mad! You-"
A stifled yell. The clash of metal against metal.
They all turned at the sounds. Boots pounded outside and there came now confused shouts.
"Quickly," Tuolin said. "Outside."
The heavy darkness of the ma.s.sive forest seemed to have pervaded the meadow.
The fireflies were gone. Above the waving gra.s.s now rolled an oncoming tide of black shadows.
They came swiftly and silently, without the telltale gleam of metal. Somehow they had pierced the perimeter of the encampment without an alarm being sounded.
They were like tree trunks, dark, with wide shoulders and thick legs. Their long beards and wiry hair were greased and plaited. Their faces were moon-shaped and perfectly flat as if evolution had decreed to their ancestors that the protrusions of nose and cheeks and forehead were superfluous. They seemed more animated creatures from the wall paintings in Kira"s palace than true men. Yet they were real enough, brandishing wide scimitars of an unreflective metal that was almost black with bell-shaped fist guards.
Behind them loomed other shadows, coalescing slowly in the dark, impossibly tall and bony, their skin pallid gray, their faces desiccated and fleshless, their skulls gleaming in their nakedness. These creatures strode behind their fellow warriors, swinging heavy short chains ending in fanged iron spheres. Ronin caught the sound of their brief hissing arcs in the close air.Tuolin unsheathed his sword as did Ronin and Kiri. All about them were confusion and disarray as soldiers scrambled for their weapons. Fires guttered and flickered out as if by a strong wind, although the air was calm.
Mist rolled in, sweeping through the meadow and into the encampment, and there was a choking stench as the enemy advanced, the first wave already past the hapless outer patrols. The scimitars swung darkly in whooshing arcs, cleaving a hideous harvest in this sorcerous high summer.
Still within the long gra.s.s, the gaunt warriors whirled their chains, the deadly globes hissing in the night like locusts, crushing flesh and bone indiscriminately, and the groans of the dying mingled with the wet slap and crunch of the reaving.
Ronin leapt forward with a cry and his blade swept to and fro in mighty two-handed slashes, ripping into the torsos of those wide men closest to him. They squealed and backed into each other, bewildered, and he stepped into their midst, using oblique blows now, slicing into the juncture of neck and collarbone of one warrior, withdrawing his sword and, in the same motion, decapitating another.
Beside him came Tuolin and Kiri, hacking at the warriors as if they were wild foliage. He concentrated, moving slowly forward, his blade singing its fiery song of death, gleaming, running with blood. He hammered at them without letup, his heart thudding in his chest, his arms electric with the power of the destruction he was reaping, no longer conscious of the peripheral sights and sounds of the night; he was intent, content as he hammered at them, severing bodies which convulsed and spurted their liquids hotly about his swaying form. His muscles rippled and glistened with a fine film of sweat, beaded with sprays of his enemies" blood and entrails, and he grinned in savage delight. He clove a warrior from shoulder to ribcage on a forward swing, slashed into the mid-section of another on his backward arc.
Near him, Kiri was nearly disemboweled as she watched, horrified and fascinated.
She parried at the last instant and turned her face away from him, working at her own task.
At their backs, they heard Rikkagin Wo"s voice lifted in sharp command. Men ran everywhere, attempting to form themselves into defense lines, but it seemed useless; the warriors moved inexorably forward. The mist rolled past them and over the soldiers, burning their calves with cold. And more of the gaunt warriors appeared as their shorter compatriots fell beneath the swords of the soldiers. These were destroying the rikkagin"s men with terrifying expertise. They carried round iron shields, in addition to their weapons, which seemed much too heavy for any man to wield effectively yet these warded off most of the soldiers" blows while, with their other hands, the fanged spheres described their tight orbits, exploding with terrible impact.
Ronin felt himself engulfed in a dark tide, no longer an individual, another piece of floating flotsam carried along by the undertow. He fought and the warriors fell before his blurred blade like wheat before a scythe but always there were others to take the place of the fallen, as if in each individual"s death two more were created.Onward he waded, the footing unsure and gluey with the innards of the fallen as he made his laborious way out into the meadow to meet the gaunt deathhead warriors. Tuolin and Kiri were just behind him. The rikkagin"s great blade lifted and fell and in his left hand was the emerald-hilted dirk with which he slashed and parried. For her part, the Empress was using her sword with consummate skill. Her breastplate was shiny, sodden with blood and splattered gore, her black hair had slipped its bonds and now whirled about her, a dark mantle.
With an enormous swipe that ripped apart a barrel chest, Ronin went through the outer fringes of the wide warriors and for the first time in many moments there was s.p.a.ce around him. The still air was alive with the harsh whisper of the globes. The last of the soldiers went down, his head smashed open like a ripe fruit, and he peered into the roiling night at the grinning faces, as white now in the guttering firelight as the pallid poppies. Their sunken eyes were featureless holes with no discernible trace of iris or pupil; their heads turned on their spindly spines as they looked about them.
Ronin lifted his blade and went in quickly, driving it down in a blur, through the collarbone of one of the warriors. The neck was severed and the head flew from the bony shoulders. There was no blood but a shower of gray dust which plumed momentarily, spitting shards of vertebrae from its periphery. The decapitated torso came at him, its arm still lifted, the fanged globe whirring, and he was obliged to duck the blow that came. A hissing pa.s.sed over him as he crouched and the creature, shuddering now, stumbled on its nerveless legs and collapsed.
At that moment he felt a t.i.tanic wrench and his blade went spinning to the sodden ground. He lurched forward and almost fell on top of the gaunt corpse. He turned, saw another deathhead warrior whipping back the globe that had slammed into his sword. It advanced upon him, the deadly sphere a menacing blur.
The creature leaned back and the globe came at him with such speed that its fangs grazed his cheek even as he jerked away. He risked a glance downward, saw that he was too far from his sword to risk lunging for it and the gaunt warrior was circling so that he was now between Ronin and the weapon.
Ronin turned his body sideways, waited for the next swing, counting to himself so that the timing would be perfect. The globe glistened as it came at him and he was away, counting again to be certain of the rhythm. He timed his dive to coincide with the peak of its arc away from him to give himself the maximum amount of time.
He hit the ground and rolled onto the warrior he had just slain, his fingers scrabbling along the moist earth for the chain and globe. The long gra.s.s made it difficult to locate but his peripheral vision had picked up where it had fallen when the warrior fell and now he had it and he was rolling. He regained his feet and went down immediately to avoid the globe.
Whir. The other"s weapon was circling again and he swung his own globe, gaining momentum, but the fangs loomed at him without warning and he had time but to throw up his globe reflexively. The chains dashed, momentum taking the globes and whipping them around as the chain entwined.The gaunt warrior pulled viciously and Ronin, caught off balance, was jerked forward, slamming into his adversary. The skeletal figure bent and the head darted toward him, the mouth opening impossibly wide: Filed yellow teeth, long and ragged, snapped hideously at his face and he writhed away just in time. The clashing jaws pursued him as he attempted to disengage himself. But to break free now was to lose his only weapon. Snap, snap. The neck, long and willowy, brought the fangs at him again and again.