The Last Dragon King, page 17
part #8 of The Year of the Dragon Series
Has any of this really happened?
More news came, confirming he hadn’t made it all up in a fever dream. By the time he’d returned to Satsuma’s base, the soldiers there hailed him as a hero. Again. He had fought back the Black Lotus. Again. He’d turned the tide of the battle. Again.
He couldn’t remember what he’d done to defeat the demon. Perhaps it was the dragon form? Or maybe he managed to summon the Lance one last time ... Whatever it was, it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d acted on impulse and succeeded. The blood of Warwick the Kingmaker ran hot in his veins. He had no qualms about accepting the role of a hero, despite being fuzzy on the details.
Captain Saigo had welcomed him into the inner compound of the camp — Lord Nariakira, along with most of the army, was absent, dealing with the occupation of Kokura Castle. The Captain presented him with a sealed scroll, marked with the daimyo’s crest, and a cap of red bear fur of the sort worn by the elite Satsuma soldiers. Wulf had at last earned his place among them. He was a true retainer — a lord in his own right, as it should be from the beginning.
And then came the blow. The Captain led him to a small shrine on the forest border. It was surrounded by a freshly dug graveyard. There, among the many wooden tablets carved with names of the warriors fallen in the battle, was one marked with the first word Wulf had learned in Yamato:
Yokō.
At long last, she had succumbed to whatever illness ravaged her mind. She had never woken up, not even stirred before she died. No priest or physician ever found out what really happened to her. And now she was gone.
He knew this was bound to happen; in truth, he had long put the girl out of his mind. He wasn’t sure how to react to the news. The Yamato stared at him, perhaps expecting a reaction of some sort. He let out a deep, long sigh, then pressed his hands together at chest level and bowed. The Captain grunted and patted him on the back, satisfied with the display of grief. They turned back towards the camp. Looking over the plain towards the sea, Wulf spotted a golden glint of a long darting in the sky.
Li!
The hill — which Bran was now certain used to be a castle hill in a distant past — was scarcely recognizable compared to what it had been two days earlier. The dense forest on the western slope was all but gone, the tree trunks scorched into smouldering matchsticks. Every inch of the hill was covered with the slithering blue beasts. From the back of Frigga’s dragon — Emrys was hiding on a small, nameless island out on the lake, for safety — Bran tried to count the beasts, but got lost at fifty, and there was at least double that number on the eastern side.
The blue dragons remained as dumb and purposeless as when they’d first hatched. They snarled and bit at each other, turning the hill into a battlefield. Bran no longer sensed Satō’s stream of thoughts. He hoped that she was still all right, that the Fanged did not punish her too harshly for her failure … For now, though, it appeared, at least, that he was successful in the second part of his endeavour. The blue dragons no longer seemed to pose a threat to anyone but themselves.
“Whatever you did, looks like it worked,” said Frigga. “I’ll have to report this to Shimoda. Our riders will make short work of them in this state.”
“No, wait.” It couldn’t have been as easy as this. The Serpent had to have a backup plan in case something happened to Satō. “Let’s stay and observe one more day.”
Reluctantly, she agreed.
They retreated to the camp on the small island for the night. They had set up their tents on a narrow beach facing west, hemmed in between two rockfalls. In the evening, fishing boats and ferries passed the island in the distance, heading for Heian and other towns around the great lake, far enough out not to notice the insignificant encampment. The dragons were hiding uphill, behind the trees.
After overcoming the initial apprehension, Emrys was getting along with the Black Wing better than the two riders were. Frigga spoke to Bran only when absolutely necessary, and when they weren’t out on patrol, she remained silent, tight-lipped and cold.
I killed a man she cared for.
He never learned whether Thorfinn was her friend, lover or relative but it didn’t matter. Each glance of her steely eyes reminded him of his crime. He wondered how he would feel if he had to spend days with somebody who murdered Satō or Nagomi.
Who am I kidding? I would never agree to this. Obeying orders is just not my style.
There was no point even trying to apologize. All he could do was to try not to get in her way as she bustled around the camp. He took out a ration bread from his knapsack and chewed it in silence. The Gorllewin baker at Shimoda did what he could with the ingredients at his disposal, but the grain gathered from the villagers was poor, and salt was scarce — the bread was tasteless and undercooked. He longed for some steaming hot rice.
“How long have you been here?”
He almost choked on the bread. It was the first time Frigga had expressed any interest in him besides their mission.
“I …” For a moment he struggled to remember. “I got here in early April, when the flower trees bloomed. It’s late August now, so … almost five months.”
“Are you going back home when this is all finished? To Gwynedd?”
“I — I think so.” Even he was surprised at how little conviction there was in his voice. Am I?
She pondered something, looking into the campfire.
“You know things about this place that you can’t tell anyone, don’t you?”
“I suppose.” What is she getting at?
“Is it true that …” She tangled her fingers. “That they have Necromancers here? People who can raise the dead?”
Thorfinn …?
He put the half-eaten bread away, wiped the crumbs from his hands. “Isn’t it against your religion to consider such things?”
“I can still ask questions. We’re not fanatics.”
What should I say? The truth …? How much did Perai tell her?
His left leg itched. He raised the trouser leg to scratch it, revealing the bandages — and covered them back in haste. The runes were glowing again. Something’s happening. He glanced at Frigga, but she didn’t seem to have noticed.
“It’s not what you think …” He rubbed the base of his nose. “The Necromancers can summon Spirits to do their bidding and animate corpses, but … it’s pretty vile, and lasts only a short while.”
“Do not presume to know what I think,” she scoffed. “I was just curious.”
She stood up, gathered the remains of her meal, and disappeared into the tent.
A tremor woke Bran up — a loud rumble coming from inside the earth and from the heart of the island. It was intense, but brief, lasting less than thirty seconds. Bran made sure that Emrys was fine, all the tent pegs remained firmly in the dirt, then turned to the other side and, in the silence that followed the earthquake, fell asleep.
In the morning he found Frigga sitting by the campfire, clutching a pistol and staring at one of the rockfalls bounding the beach. A couple of the large boulders had rolled down from the rubble and got buried in the sand mere inches from her tent. Her red, sunken eyes told him she hadn’t slept all night.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She grunted in reply and, embarrassed, pretended to busy herself with cleaning the pistol. Several minutes passed before she spoke.
“I’ll never get used to it,” she said.
“Do you get many tremors in Shimoda? I expect this close to Mount Fuji …”
“All the time,” she replied. “Nothing serious so far.”
“It can be unnerving. If it wasn’t for Shigemasa …” He paused. That wasn’t the story he wanted her to know.
A distant shriek tore the air. A flock of sparrows flew from the treetops. They both jumped up. Bran winced, sensing a needle of pain in Emrys’s mind.
“That was a dragon,” said Frigga. “In pain.”
He nodded. She kicked sand on the campfire. By the time she threw on her grey cloak and goggles, the Black Wing had zoomed down from the hilltop with the speed and power of an atmospheric locomotive. Emrys came second, puffing steam in a hurry, but Bran ordered it to stay. I’ll call for you when you’re needed.
The dragon whimpered and stretched its neck on the sand.
They launched on Frigga’s onyx mount and shifted into glamour. The distant shriek repeated, now coming from several throats. Bran’s head ached. The itching in his leg turned to burning. Even Frigga winced as she steered them over the lake and the rice paddies. Something powerful was happening to the blue dragons, a magic that reverberated around them in waves of painful energy. Did the peasants and fishermen in the area feel it too? They certainly heard it now, a thunderous cacophony of howls and roars.
The hillside was a sea of blue and black, pulsating and undulating. He wasn’t sure at first what he was looking at. Frigga spotted it first.
“What are these … black things?” she asked with disgust.
Things? Bran put a spyglass to his eyes. It was the Gorllewin Porro glass, a mechanical, rather than magical device, with two eyepieces. Struggling with the aching in his head, he twisted the brass rings to adjust the vision.
Shadows!
The creatures of darkness, the monsters from the Otherworld, slithered among the blue dragons in the physical world. He scanned the hillside searching for a gateway which allowed them outside, but it must have been somewhere deep within the mountain’s bowels. Was the earthquake caused by them?
“We have to warn the Komtur,” he said. “These creatures can be more dangerous than dragons.”
“Where are they coming from? Our reports mentioned nothing like them.”
“It’s … It’ll sound weird, but — they came from the Otherworld.”
He expected to have to explain it in detail, but Frigga asked no more questions. She drew her lips tight and turned a closer circle around the castle hill. Bran chose one of the Shadows and focused the spyglass on it, trying to figure out what it was they were doing among the blue dragons. The creature halted and reached out its tendrils towards him. He sensed a penetrating, slippery gaze enter his mind.
“Higher,” he urged Frigga.
“Nobody can see us.”
“They can. Go higher.”
With the Black Wing out of range, the Shadow turned its attention to the nearest blue dragon. The tentacles extended to the beast’s head and neck. Bran expected a flash of light, a shower of sparks or a plume of smoke to appear when the Shadow touched the beasts, but no such thing happened. Instead, the oozing tendrils attached to the blue scales, like an octopus’s suckers. The Shadow crept closer and, as it did, it began to disappear. It melted into the dragons.
“They’re merging,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Look for yourself.” He handed her the spyglass.
“What are they doing? Is this — is this Necromancy?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
She put down the spyglass and bit her lower lip. “It’s happening to all of them.”
The dragons shrieked, howled and roared as the undulating mass of black tentacles enveloped them in a landslide of dark mud. Bran and Frigga observed this spectacle with horrified fascination for several long minutes. When it finished, all the Shadows disappeared. The blue dragons moved sluggishly at first, but soon, one by one, began to launch into the air. Frigga pulled up, but there was no need to fear the attack. They were all gathering around the scorched stone platform at the top of the hill in a rough wedge-shaped formation — a swarm of hornets, a spear tip, ready to strike together as one. The tip of the spear aimed west.
Bran scanned for Satō’s controlling mind, but he could not find it. Whatever power commanded the dragons now, it was beyond even his enhanced senses. He struggled to grasp what he had witnessed. Frigga was right to suspect Necromancy.
If I could only contact Nagomi …
Nagomi! The priestess was supposed to venture beyond the Gates of the Otherworld. Had she met the Shadows there? Was she safe? All this time he assumed it was his mission that was the more dangerous one and the Otherworld, in its silent stillness, seemed like a place where little harm would befall anyone. Apart from the Shadows.
“There’s somebody there,” said Frigga.
He followed her pointing arm with the spyglass. One beast hovered at the tip of the dragon swarm some distance in front of the others. It was the largest of all the Blue Wings, a Firstborn of the brood, and the only one with a rider on its back. Bran adjusted the Porro prism to zoom in on the small silhouette in a silver robe. He swallowed.
“It’s your friend,” guessed Frigga.
“Yes.”
Frigga pulled on the reins. The Black Wing swooped down towards Satō. The speed of descent made the edges of its wings appear out of glamour. A stir rippled through the dragon swarm.
“What are you doing?” Bran protested.
“If we take her out, those dragons will be out of control again.”
“No, you’re wrong! She’s not commanding them anymore!”
“She’s at the front, riding the Firstborn. She’s the leader.”
The black dragon’s maw began to heat up from the flames gathering inside. Bran had only seconds to stop it. He leaned back in the saddle, closing his eyes, and placed his hands on the dragon’s scales. He sensed Frigga’s Farlink — up close, it was a powerful force, a field of light pulsating all around them. But now that he was able to feel it, it was magic like any other — and there were cracks in it that he could exploit. Frigga was too focused on her target to notice his meddling.
“Chwalu.”
In one swift spell, he pulled her Farlink apart and pushed his own in its place. The Black Wing’s mind was a vast cavern compared to Emrys — but the beast was still young and inexperienced. It took Bran another couple of seconds to gain control of it — just for a brief moment — but it was enough. By the time Frigga wrestled back the command of her mount, it was back high in the air, confused, and out of range of Satō’s blue dragons.
He opened his eyes and saw a barrel of the gunpowder pistol aimed at his face.
She seethed. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“You should have listened to me.”
“You said you didn’t know what’s going on.”
“I know there’s another power at play. If you’d only let me—”
“It’s too late now anyway.” She pointed down with her pistol.
The swarm shifted. With Satō still in front, the wedge moved like a single organism, a dart speeding forward. There was no trace of the sluggishness or chaos anymore. The dragon army — and it was an army, the formation as tight and disciplined as any Bran had seen from the Royal Marines — headed at a steady pace over the lake in the direction of Heian and the West.
“Where are they going?”
There’s nothing left to destroy in Heian … or Chōfu … So what’s the next good target?
“Chinzei,” he answered. “They’re going to strike at the rebel army.”
“I need to report this.”
“And I need to get to Chinzei before them.”
They looked at each other. Frigga holstered the pistol. “I’ll drop you off at the camp. And no more tricks.”
CHAPTER XVI
What am I doing here?
Koyata’s scalp itched. He knew it was the nerves — but he didn’t dare scratch himself in the esteemed company gathered to listen to his story. Even as the former chief of Heian’s secret police, he was the lowest ranking person sitting in the circle of wind breakers. No doubt the lowest-born. Two daimyos waited for him to open his, rapidly drying, mouth.
Young Takasugi Hirobumi, now the commander-in-chief of Chōfu’s armies, was speaking for Lord Mori, who was officially too “unwell” to come to the island on his doorstep. The fourth of the rebel daimyos, Lord Yamauchi of Tosa, was represented by two people — their number making up for their relatively lower rank. One was Nakaoka Shintaro, the Captain — and proprietor — of the six warships that had brought the Kiheitai back home.
The other was a more curious fellow: a grim Qin man in a yellow jacket and blue cap, Li Hung-Chang. The Qinese had just returned from a mission to Tosa with orders from Lord Yamauchi. Koyata knew nothing about him other than he rode a magnificent golden Qin dragon. Li’s face bore fresh scars and burn marks from some recent battle. Before him lay two flat, white envelopes, sealed with Tosa crests. He sat in silence. As far as Koyata could tell, the Qin didn’t speak any Yamato, and his presence at the meeting was an enigma. Apart from him, there were no other foreigners present. A dozen other courtiers, advisors and Councillors in rich aristocratic robes were sitting in an outer circle behind their respective lords.
But the most imposing guest was one that remained unseen. At the far end of the enclosure stood a podium, surrounded by an impenetrable maze of silk curtains and veils. Somewhere beyond it all, little more than a hazy silhouette, sat the Mikado himself: His Divine Majesty Mutsuhito. It was under his auspices that the meeting was organized. Never in his wildest dreams did Koyata imagine to ever find himself in the same room as the Living God.
The world had truly gone mad.
He cleared his throat, for the third time. He glanced at Takasugi. The Kiheitai commander nodded, encouragingly.
“Please, Koyata-sama. As we’ve discussed.”
He still wasn’t sure why Takasugi himself could not tell of the battle and destruction of Heian. The boy had explained this was because his testimony, not representing any of the daimyos involved in the rebellion, was the only unbiased one, but Koyata remained unconvinced. Still, he’d accepted the invitation to the conference as a witness, and it was too late to withdraw now.
He started the tale from his encounter with Gensai Kawakami and his samurai at the Heian hot spring. He noticed Lord Nariakira tense at the mention of the Kumamoto fugitives — to him, they were still wanted men. The daimyo stirred again when Koyata proceeded to recount his conversation with Lords Miyabe and Izumi. He wasn’t sure how much of what he was saying was new to the gathered warlords, and he dared not guess at what knowledge of the events the Mikado possessed. Judging by the attention paid to his story, Lord Nabeshima was the most intrigued. Lord Nariakira knew some, and he guessed at more. But the others seemed to have heard the tale of the Fall of Heian for the first time, at least from a reliable eyewitness.
