Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
‘We wish,’ said the fat man silkily, ‘for you to do us a service.’
‘As you request,’ said Po, his head still bowed.
‘Good,’ said the fat man. ‘Tonight you will infiltrate Kamado.’
Po concealed his surprise once again, said: ‘I am, as you are no doubt aware, a prime master of jhindo.’
‘Concealment and assassination,’ said the fat man. ‘Yes, we know well. That is why we chose you, Po.’
The Makkon opened its hooked beak and screamed, its gray tongue flailing at the scaled roof of its mouth. Po shuddered and closed his eyes momentarily, nauseated.
‘There is someone we wish slain,’ said the fat man, seeming to translate the Makkon’s request. ‘We wish it done silently and mysteriously to increase the terror.’ Then he gave Po a description.
‘That could fit many people, sir.’ Still he was sickened by this weak, subservient pose. Yet he knew within its docility lay his ultimate strength to outlast and thus defeat these pompous generals and stinking aliens. ‘What is the name?’
The Makkon howled again and Po felt tears start at the corners of his eyes. His ears hurt.
‘Her name,’ said the fat man quietly, ‘is Moeru.’
They had gone on, leaving him alone in Sha’angh’sei. Behind Tenchō, in the palace of the Empress.
In his high gleaming helm, in his black lacquered armor ribbed in sea-green jade and lapis lazuli, he strode through the cool marble halls, hearing only the echoes of his footsteps.
He stood for a moment peering down a wide gallery, past flecked marble columns. Beaten brass lamps hung from long chains.
The palace was deserted.
The air was still, hanging dusty, like folded sheets, waiting for the occupants to return from some summer sojourn on another continent where the sun shone and it never rained.
For a moment, he thought he detected a presence high up at the other end of the vast gallery: an inquisitive voyeur, perhaps the gyring beat of primitive music. But the air was thick and the light dim and the shimmering was most likely some refraction of flames off his armor.
He shook his head, as if trying to remember a snippet of another’s memory, and failing, strode from the palace, wondering what had led him to return here when events and time pressed for him to make all speed northward to Kamado.
He came out onto the jeweled garden, lush still in the ending of the year. The day was bright and cold, as brittle as porcelain. High cirrus clouds scoured the cerulean sky. The trees were red and orange, as shiny as copper or brass.
With his gauntleted hands on the bridle of his mount, he paused, his head turning back toward the hidden entrance to the Empress’ palace, certain now that he had forgotten something there.
Then he shrugged, leapt upon his steed, and without another backward glance, galloped out of the open gates, through the maze of tumbled streets and black back alleys, of Sha’angh’sei, strange in their emptiness, northward to catch the column of Bujun on the march to Kamado.
Behind him, a great wind came into the palace as if seeking someone or something. It batted at the brass lamps as if in the frustration of finding no one. They fell to the floor. Cold flame ran along the marble and the building shuddered as from a great, angry fist.
It was Bonneduce the Last who saw him first, at the head of the long column, and it was he who gave the order for the great postern gates of Kamado to be opened.
The little man’s face was alight with pleasure as the Sunset Warrior reined in and dismounted. Amid the dust and clatter of the marching Bujun, he grasped Bonneduce the Last and picked him up in the air.
‘Old friend,’ he said over and over. ‘Old friend.’
‘It is good to see you,’ said the little man, giving vent to his joy. ‘At last.’
At their feet, Hynd, the singular mutant who was more than animal, growled in his throat, his round tail whipping the air.
The Sunset Warrior bent to stroke his furred head and Hynd coughed, his thin lips pulled back from his wicked teeth. He nuzzled the Sunset Warrior’s leg.
Moeru reined in her horse and, bending, kissed the little man.
Out of the corner of his eye, the Sunset Warrior saw Kiri running toward him, then abruptly halt and stare as if stricken. He watched her face as she moved backward, away from them, her eyes never leaving his.
‘There have been changes since you embarked on your journey. It is not for you to help Kiri now,’ said Bonneduce the Last.
‘I could not aid her before,’ he said, turning away. ‘Accompany us to the stables, old friend, and then we shall speak of many things.’
‘I will do better than that,’ said the little man, leading the way down Kamado’s narrow streets.
Within the stables, they left their horses to be cared for by the grooms. But before they left, Bonneduce the Last took the Sunset Warrior to the far end of the stalls. There was Ronin’s dark red luma.
The creature snorted as the Sunset Warrior stroked its neck.
‘Ah, thank you, old friend.’
Bonneduce the Last turned away, limped back down the aisle of stalls to where Moeru waited.
For long hours through the remainder of the day and into the brusque twilight, while skirmishes continued unabated without the walls, the rikkagin of man met with the Sunset Warrior, Bonneduce the Last, the taipan of Sha’angh’sei, the Kunshin and his daimyos.
‘Each day,’ said Rikkagin Aerent, ‘the enemy attacks with more men. Each day our forces grow more depleted.’
‘As you know,’ Tuolin said, ‘the deathshead warriors can be destroyed by sword, but their number never seems to diminish. Now they are led by black creatures with the faceted eyes of insects. None of these have ever been killed or wounded. Our men are demoralized.’
‘And the rikkagin?’ said the Sunset Warrior, looking about the smoky room. ‘The men but feel what they see in their leaders and emulate it. A more doom-filled group I cannot imagine. If you are downcast and hopeless, then expect only the same of them.’ His mailed fist struck the table around which they all sat. ‘Now we are all together, the last forces of mankind. The Bujun are come. They are the greatest warriors on the face of the world. We are at the peak of our strength. I will not wait here within these walls only to be beaten down by attrition. This is not the way of the warrior.’ He saw, in the periphery of his vision, Azuki-iro regarding him placidly, smiling. ‘At dawn tomorrow we will go out onto the plain, cross the river, attack the enemy. All of us. And by day’s end, we shall know whether man shall live or die in the time to come.’ He signaled to Rikkagin Aerent, who spread out a detailed topographical map of the district. Upon it had been marked in various colored inks, ‘the deployment of The Dolman’s forces.
After a time, the Kunshin leaned over and stabbed with his forefinger.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘And here.’
Then they got down to it.
‘It is good to have you back,’ said Rikkagin Aerent.
The Sunset Warrior laughed.
‘Am I so unchanged then?’
‘No.’ Rikkagin Aerent looked away for a moment, then his clear eyes returned to the strange visage before him. ‘Not at all. You are like no other I have ever seen before but even so’—he grasped a long arm for a moment—‘even so, I could not mistake you.’ He paused to allow two warriors passage down the cramped, dark hall. They stood between smoking tapers, half-shadowed.
‘What happened?’ he said. ‘Or is that an indelicate question?’
‘Karma,’ said the Sunset Warrior. ‘I went to meet my destiny and found it on Ama-no-mori.’
‘The fabled isle exists, then?’ said Rikkagin Aerent. ‘Then the Bujun really come from there and not another part of the continent of man. There had been rumors—’
‘It exists,’ said the Sunset Warrior. ‘It is my home now.’
‘And the woman warrior who accompanies you?’
‘Moeru? What of her?’
‘Who is she to you?’
‘Why is it important?’
‘For Tuolin perhaps it is essential. He loves Kiri and she—’
‘Still loves me? No, Aerent, she loved Ronin and even then there was nothing he could give her.’
‘Perhaps then—’
‘Yes. All right. I would not hurt Tuolin—’
‘They will survive—’
‘As may we all, Aerent.’
Tattered banners fluttered from the ramparts of Kamado, borne on a tired wind.
He stood in the icy cold, surveying the burned and blackened pine forest, thinking of his first terrifying encounter with himself, knowing that now, within the twisted tangle, pulsed The Dolman, come at last to the world of man.
Dawn would see them face to face, the culmination of his life, the last burning page of the history of this dying age within which they all lived and felt joy and suffered.
Would they see the dawning of the new age?
He did not know but he felt sure that if they did not, no one, no thing, would.
And as he thought of The Dolman and his coming personal struggle, which would decide the outcome of the Kai-feng, a bright shard of Ronin’s memory spun dazzlingly upward, from out of the swirling deep.
The Salamander.
Somewhere on this world, the Senseii of Ronin’s Freehold still lived, the man who had set Ronin’s sister K’reen against him so that Ronin was at last forced to kill her. The master warrior who had chosen Ronin for his Combat Class, who had, in effect, begun Ronin’s long, hard struggle to become, ultimately, the Sunset Warrior.
After The Dolman—
‘How different you appear,’ she said softly from behind him.
He did not have to turn around to recognize Kiri’s voice.
‘Yet I could not mistake you if ten thousand centuries had grown over us both.’
He turned at last, staring down at her with his strange lavender eyes, and she gasped. She drew her hand from her mouth and reached slowly, hesitantly, out to touch him.
‘He is gone, Kiri. His body is buried on Ama-no-mori.’
‘No,’ she said, her heart already broken, crushed to white ash. ‘How can it possibly be? You must—’ Her warm hand stroked the odd planes of his cheek. Then: ‘How you must miss Matsu!’ But he knew exactly what she meant.
She sobbed against his chest and, feeling the soft whisper of her unbound hair against his face, visions played, unbidden, across his mind: the stirrings of a fierce, sexual woman whose warm lips kissed his as he slashed her breast to ribbons; a gentle, pale oval face half obscured by long night-black hair as it fell over one eye, her red blood and hot gore spattering his face and hands as the Makkon calmly, deliberately, tore out her throat, a last impotent breath bubbling liquidly from between her already blue lips.
The Dolman and then certainly the Salamander.
They were all that existed for him now. Kiri was as the stone of the ramparts to him and, as an understanding of that filled her, she pushed away from him and, turning, left to him the view of the dark, smoking forest and the high frozen wastes of Kamado.
They had already secured the rope and he slipped into the chill, rushing water. He felt the steep bank drop away from his feet almost immediately.
Despite the depth of the river and the white water bubbling about his body, he felt quite safe as, hand over hand, he pulled himself across. A thin reed tube extended upward from between his closed lips, breaching the turbulent surface of the river.
He was garbed entirely in black. Even his face, where the flesh was exposed, away from the tight hood, had been blackened by charcoal, then greased to keep the water from washing it away. Gaining the far shore, he knelt unmoving, breathing silently, surveying the darkness of the night.
Racing clouds obscured the moon and a wind from the east rustled the leaves of the poplars, the needles of the pines. Behind him, the rushing of the water.
He scuttled into the underbrush and settled himself to dry. While he waited, he carefully wiped away the grease on his face and reapplied the charcoal powder until he was content that the flat matte finish would reflect no torchlight.
Stealthily, keeping to the deep shadows of the trees and the low foliage, he moved in an erratic, zigzag route toward the towering walls of Kamado.
He heard low voices and he froze, the hilt of his black dagger already in his right fist, point lifted slightly.
The voices swept nearer, borne on the wind, and as they came up on his position, he struck in two swift, silent cuts, ramming the dark blade through the soft skin under their chins, across their palates, into the base of their brains. The two warriors did not even have time to cry out.
Now he could have donned the clothes of either of the slain men and thus gained entrance to Kamado but this was not the way of the jhindo master.
He pulled them into a tangled clump of brush and continued on his stealthy way until, at length, he was at the foot of the stone walls of the citadel. He pulled several small black metal objects from within his tight ebon clothing and silently he began to climb the wall, hacking efficiently at the mortar used to join the great stones together.
Swiftly now, as he gained the rhythm, soaring into the dense, starless night.
He stroked Hynd’s long, plaited back. The horny scales rippled in pleasure.
‘It is wonderful to see the Bujun again,’ said Bonneduce the Last.
‘You never told Ronin—’
The little man shrugged.
‘There are many things which you may now be told. Before—’ His shoulders lifted again.
‘Can you tell me who you are?’
‘Yes.’ He rubbed his short leg, stretched out before him.
‘It has been told before, you know.’
‘Indeed. To whom?’
‘G’fand.’
‘What? But why?’
‘He wished to know.’ Bonneduce the Last reached over and touched him with one finger. ‘Listen, my friend, the Bones told me that he would die shortly in the City of Ten Thousand Paths. There was nothing I could do about it. Karma. It was but another death I had to suffer knowing. It was a gift. He asked me and I told him.’
‘Do you think that he believed you?’
‘I cannot say. Does it matter very much?’
There was silence for a time, while the fire crackled cheerily in the stone hearth. He strained, hearing again the sonorous ticking which accompanied the little man wherever he went. He was on the point of asking about the sound when Bonneduce the Last continued: