The Wall of Storms, page 76
But today the square was not empty. He was surrounded by colossal statues of the gods of Dara. The statues, each as tall as the Grand Examination Hall, were made with bronze and iron and painted with bright, lifelike colors.
Kuni remembered that Emperor Mapidéré was said to have wanted to confiscate all the weapons of Dara, all the swords and spears, all the knives and arrows, and melt them down into their constituent metals so that they could be turned into statues honoring the gods. Without weapons, there would be eternal peace in the world.
That vision had never been realized, just like Kuni’s dream of a more just Dara, a Dara where a woman had as much power as a man, where a poor peasant’s daughter from Dasu had as much chance to succeed as a wealthy merchant’s son from Wolf’s Paw, where anyone who had talent would be found and given a place to shine.
The emperor examined the statues more closely. There was something strange about them; they weren’t depicting the gods in their traditional form.
Over Kiji’s shoulders sat both a Mingén falcon and a garinafin; above Kana’s head, her black raven hovered inside a golden globe as bright as the rays of the sun; above Rapa’s head, her white raven floated inside a silver halo like the glow of the moon; Tututika’s carp was swimming next to her in a maze of a thousand streams; Rufizo’s white dove watched over a flock of long-haired cattle and sheep.
But the statues of Fithowéo, Lutho, and Tazu were the strangest of all. The left half of Fithowéo was male while the right half was female. The god of war carried a long, obsidian-tipped spear in the left hand and a bone-handled war club in the right. The statues of Lutho and Tazu, on the other hand, were fused together, as though the gods of calculation and of chance were but two aspects of the same deity.
What has happened? Kuni asked himself. Who has committed such sacrilege?
The statues of the gods and goddesses shifted and came to life.
The emperor was too stunned to move or speak.
“You don’t have much time, Ragin,” said Tututika, her voice at once familiar and strange. Kuni thought he could hear echoes of both the gentle streams of her homeland, the Beautiful Island, as well as something wilder and less predictable, like the flash floods of a distant plain full of scrubs and shrubs.
“Am I about to cross over the River-on-Which-Nothing-Floats?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Rapa simply, her voice as cold as the icy moon.
“I still have so much to do. Dara is under threat, Lady Rapa!”
“Everyone pleads for more time,” said Kana, her voice as hot as the blazing sun, as impatient as an exploding volcano. “Mapidéré was the same way.”
“The tasks of great heroes are never done,” said Rufizo, the kind shepherd and healer of wounds. He waved his hand and Kuni felt some of his anxiety soothed away.
Kuni felt both pride and sorrow at this. The gods of Dara had declared him a great hero, but he was never going to complete his dream. This was the way of the world, wasn’t it? No matter how carefully you planned things, fate intruded.
“Have I made the right choices?” asked Kuni Garu. “Have I been a grace of kings?” His heart pounded as he waited for the answer from the gods.
“You have lived an interesting life,” said Kiji, whose voice sounded like the beating of wings, both feathered and leather. “You’ve soared as high as a dandelion seed riding the wind above the clouds; you’ve dived as deep as a cruben cruising the currents far beneath the waves.”
“You betrayed reluctantly; you loved passionately; you sacrificed the affections of your children and wives; you were also a good father and husband; you defeated a tyrant; you brought peace to Dara; thousands died because of you; millions more were saved because of you; you tried to balance and accommodate competing interests; you strove to speak for those without a voice and wield power for those without influence,” said Fithowéo, the blind god of war as well as the club maiden for the All-Father. “You know the world isn’t perfect, but you’ve never ceased to believe that it could be perfected.”
“Yet Dara is changing,” said Lutho-Tazu, the trickster duo, wise and cunning, calculating and uncertain. “For all of us, mortal and immortal, change is the only constant. A new era requires new heroes; new pilots must guide Dara through the Wall of Storms.”
Kuni knelt down before the gods. “I submit myself to the judgment of history.”
“Go not gentle into the eternal storm,” all the gods said together.
Kuni opened his eyes.
He had waited for this opportunity since the moment he had scraped that rusty nail into his flesh. He had planned to make himself so ill that the Lyucu would not place him in a cage, so that he would retain the element of surprise. He had wanted to free himself from being used as a bargaining chip by the Lyucu, to be near his loved ones one more time, to deliver a message.
With a sudden surge of power, Kuni pushed away the Lyucu guards holding him up and rolled along the deck until he was right on the edge. He scrambled onto the gunwale and barely stopped himself from tumbling overboard as he swayed on the narrow ledge.
The Lyucu guards shouted but none dared to approach lest Kuni let go and kill himself right in front of their eyes.
The warriors of Dara held their breath, in the air, on the ground, at sea.
It was so quiet. Even the waves seemed to lower their incessant murmur for a moment.
“People of Dara,” Kuni cried out. He was using every ounce of his strength to project, and the speaking tube at the side of the ship, intended to allow the pékyu to issue orders to the rest of the fleet and connected through a system of tubes to the bone trumpet at the top of the main mast, magnified his voice, which the winds carried far and wide.
“I have sinned in my time. I have stood by as innocent men and women died for nonexistent crimes, and I have watched the helpless suffer while I saved my strength for another day. I betrayed a man as dear as my brother in the service of what I believed was a greater good, and I took petty vengeance on those who treated me ill in the past. Too often have I made decisions based on the long view, thinking that immediate sacrifices were acceptable for some ideal on the horizon.”
A wave of vertigo surged through him and he had to pause. He wasn’t sure if he was again standing on top of the wall of Zudi, facing down the Xana army led by Tanno Namen, or perhaps it was later, when he stood against the might of the Hegemon, struggling to see a path to a world beyond slaughter and darkness.
“Though all life is an experiment, there are moments of purity of purpose that demand no justification. Today, Dara is under threat of a dark storm that has no comparison. There is no long view that can justify enslavement and capitulation. When the only alternative is death and servitude, I believe all of us know what must be the right choice.”
It wasn’t possible for fathers to fight all the wars for their children. It was time for the next wave to come to shore, for the next generation to stand up and be counted.
“I name Princess Théra my successor, and Empress Jia shall be her regent until she is ready to take the reins of power. I order all of Dara to resist to the utmost until the invaders have been driven into the sea!”
Kuni was very dizzy now. The exertion had drained the last of his energy. He looked down and seemed to see the figure of Mata Zyndu smiling and waving to him from under the sea, as though he approved of his speech.
“Thank you, brother,” he whispered.
Then he let go; his body plunged into the waves and did not emerge again.
Watching from a hidden observation post located in one of the shoreside caves, Théra, surrounded by a small detachment of palace guards, heard the speech and witnessed the death of her father as the surprised cry of sailors rippled from the pékyu’s flagship.
She stuffed her long sleeves into her mouth and bit down hard to prevent herself from crying out in shock and grief. But she was now the Empress Regnant of Dara, and empresses did not cry.
She wished she had been allowed to ride up in one of the airships. She would wield the new weapons she and Zomi had devised and kill Pékyu Tenryo herself.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
BATTLE OF ZATHIN GULF, PART I
ZATHIN GULF: THE TENTH MONTH IN THE TWELFTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF FOUR PLACID SEAS.
The calm before the storm broke.
The Lyucu warriors on the decks of the city-ships banged their clubs and axes against each other, creating thunderous waves of noise. The garinafins reared and dove at the airships as their riders ululated their war cries.
“Archers, fire at will!” Dafiro gave the order, and it was passed to the other airships by flag signal.
Archers crouching at the openings of the airship gondolas let fly their arrows. Most of them fell far short of the target. A few bounced harmlessly off the tough skin of the garinafins.
The garinafin riders laughed. Flamethrowers might have posed a real challenge—though Tanvanaki had taught them some tricks for how to guide the garinafins to deal with them—but it appeared that the only weapons these ships carried were puny arrows. The massive, saucer-shaped airships, gently flexing in the wind, were in reality just soft jellyfish without the ability to sting.
As he watched the arrogant faces on the approaching garinafin riders, Dafiro Miro smiled bitterly. Just as Pékyu Tenryo had repeatedly accomplished his objectives by disguising his true strength, the marshal was now doing the same thing.
On each of the airships, behind the obscuring silk screens, soldiers charged with targeting guided their secret weapons to point at the closing beasts, but none of the captains gave the order to fire. Breaths held, everyone waited for the flag signal to come from Silkmotic Arrow.
“Hold it . . . ,” Gin Mazoti muttered. “Hold it. . . .”
Abruptly, Tanvanaki tapped hard at the back of Korva’s neck, and the great garinafin swept her wings forward and hovered in place. Pékyu Tenryo had suggested that, given her pregnancy, perhaps she could direct the battle from the safety of the deck of one of the city-ships, but Tanvanaki had scoffed at the notion. Her pregnancy wasn’t nearly so advanced as to hinder her freedom of movement, and she did not trust anyone else to lead the garinafins to victory against these wily opponents.
The other garinafins also pulled up and hovered a few body lengths away from the airships. The Imperial airships appeared to be so underarmed that she sensed a trap.
Better test them first.
She waved her hand, and one of the other garinafins approached the formation of Imperial airships cautiously.
“Hold it . . . ,” Gin Mazoti muttered. “Hold it. . . .”
Dafiro Miro’s fists were squeezed so tight that his fingernails cut into the skin of his palms.
The garinafin was within a body length of Silkmotic Arrow now and opened its jaws. The crew behind the silk screens tensed, ready to fire.
But no order came from the marshal.
The crew watched as the open maw of the beast loomed larger, filling the entirety of the view from the opening of the gondola. Death-dealing fire breath would issue forth at any moment.
Still, Gin Mazoti said nothing and made no gesture.
In the secret observation post, Théra pressed her hands against her mouth to prevent herself from screaming as the garinafin almost kissed the airship before swerving away at the last minute without unleashing a tongue of flames.
A volley of arrows shot out as the garinafin raced away.
Tanvanaki let out a held breath. Evidently, the Imperial airships’ anemic armament could be explained by a plan to target the riders rather than the beasts with nigh-impenetrable skin.
However, having observed the Dara proficiency with projectile weapons, the riders were ready for this tactic. All of them now wore armor made from thick layers of hide. Most of the arrows flew wide of the mark due to the powerful swirling currents of air generated by the beast’s massive wings. The few that did strike the riders fell off harmlessly.
The Lyucu riders watching from the other garinafins hovering at a safe distance cheered, and their celebration was joined by the warriors massed below them on the decks of the city-ships. Though the vaunted Marshal of Dara had somehow managed to find another source of lift gas, she still couldn’t come up with an effective tactic against the garinafins. A Lyucu victory was assured.
“What is the marshal thinking?” muttered an anxious Théra.
Above her, in Moji’s Vengeance, the anxious crew whispered to each other.
“Why aren’t we firing?”
“What is the marshal doing?”
Zomi Kidosu, the captain, stayed calm and assured them, “The element of surprise will be with the Imperial airships but briefly. The marshal has to make sure that as many of the garinafins are within range as possible before she reveals her weapon. She’s willing to sacrifice her ship if that’s what it takes to maintain that fleeting advantage.
“We must wait for her orders.”
In truth, Zomi Kidosu was only half right. As she looked into the open jaws of the garinafin, Gin Mazoti gambled.
After Dafiro Miro returned from Tan Adü and showed Zomi Kidosu and the other scholars the fire rod of the Adüans, they finally understood a mysterious anatomical feature of the garinafin.
The dentition of the garinafin was generally in line with what one would expect of an herbivore. The six incisors were long and shaped like cleavers to break and chop tough grass and shrubs, and the thirty-two premolars and molars were ridged, flat, and clearly designed for grinding down the fibrous diet.
Even the ferocious upper canines were not too surprising to the anatomists. Many herbivores, such as the sludge-horse of Crescent Island, which grazed on aquatic plants, had fearsome, oversized canines for defense and territorial combat. It was conceivable the garinafin canines served similar purposes, given that the garinafins could not always summon fire breath, especially when they didn’t have enough fermented gas stored up in internal sacs.
But it was the lower canines that truly baffled Zomi, Çami, Mécodé, and other scholars. If the upper canines of the garinafin reminded observers of giant daggers, then the lower canines most closely resembled scabbards. Shaped as hollow tubes, each was perfectly fitted to its upper mate, and a slit at the bottom of the tooth, near where it emerged from the gum, allowed liquid accumulated within the tooth to drain. This seemed a design destined to trap food particles and lead to tooth decay.
Indeed, the problem seemed evident to everyone who noticed that each of the upper canines showed small holes near the tip. If the beasts slept with their upper canines sheathed within the lower teeth, and bits of food and saliva were trapped at the bottom, decay would naturally start at the tips of the canines and create the pattern of honeycombed holes the scholars observed.
But with the model provided by the Tan Adü fire rods, the scholars finally realized that the unique garinafin canine teeth were actually fire starters.
Bits of dried grass became stuck in the holes in the upper canines and acted as kindling. When a garinafin wished to breathe fire, it pushed its tongue forward to plug up the drainage slit in the bottom canines, forming an airtight seal. As the garinafin snapped its jaws shut, the force and speed of the upper canines plunging into the lower canines compressed the air trapped inside the hollowed teeth, just as the fire rods of the Adüans crushed the air trapped inside their bamboo tubes.
The result was extreme heat that set fire to the tinder in the tips of the canines. When the garinafin opened its mouth and expelled a mixture of exhalation from its lungs and the flammable fermented gas from its internal sacs, the stream was lit, and that was the secret of the garinafin’s fire breath. This explained why, as Zomi Kidosu and the others had often noted, the garinafins always snapped their jaws shut right before breathing fire.
Onboard Silkmotic Arrow, as the probing garinafin dove at the airship, Gin Mazoti had noticed that the nostrils of the approaching garinafin weren’t flared, indicating that it wasn’t taking a deep breath in preparation for fire breathing. What’s more, while the garinafin had its jaws open, they weren’t opened as wide as they’d be if it was planning to snap them shut with maximum force to generate a big spark.
In other words, all signs indicated that it was only bluffing. A test.
The marshal had certainly been gambling, but it was a calculated risk, the kind that Luan Zya and Kuni Garu both would have approved of. After all, as she wrote in her strategy book, knowing the enemy was more than half the battle.
Having ascertained that the Imperial airships really were as inept as they appeared, the garinafins moved in for the kill, confident that they could dispatch these impressive-looking but useless giants with ease. The Lyucu warriors whipped the Dara peasants who manned the city-ships’ oars to urge them to work harder so that they could get to the shore faster for the storming of Ginpen.
The Dara navy that had emerged from the port of Ginpen moved to intercept. The marshal’s plan was to hold the garinafins back with her airships and to prevent the Lyucu fleet from landing, giving the nimble Dara navy a chance to do as much damage to the massive city-ships as possible. The success of the plan, of course, depended entirely on the air battle overhead.
Twenty jaws opened wide as the garinafins approached the airships, their wings beating slowly and deliberately to conserve strength.
“Hold it. . . .”
Gin Mazoti’s eyes were cold and steady. She put her hands on the handle of Na-aroénna, which was so heavy that it had to be held in a dedicated harness in the gondola. She missed her old sword, with which Kuni Garu had once slain a giant white python.
Could I repeat the feat of the emperor today and slay the great beasts?
