Jay Kristoff: The Last Stormdancer

I watched my grandfather’s end. Many turned away, but I forced myself to see. The end of an era. The death of an age. Trying to flap with broken wings, deny gravity’s grim embrace, refusing to cry out, admit defeat, shriek his fear. Crashing into the rocks, jagged and unforgiving, crushing and tearing and pulping to nothing, the grand old beast reduced to blood and feathers and fur. Thunder split the skies, echoing the roars of triumph below, the answer above. Rahh circling above us, bloodied but unbroken, bellowing his victory for the Thunder God to hear. Jun beside me, fist raised high, grinning and cheering, hugging me, telling me he told me so. That all this had been said and done. That all this was as it should be.

Rahh came in to land, the Skymeet gathered about him, singing his name.

The first new Khan of Shima in twenty years.

What would his first command be?

Tatsuya cursed beneath his breath, retreating to the caves, his soldiers and his bride beside him. Riku’s forces were marching up the hill, row by orderly row. No heedless charge for the Bear’s men, no. Not with those Guild vessels overhead. They tromped over the broken ground, up the steep incline in the shadow of the sky-ships, knowing full well if Tatsuya charged out to meet him, the Guild’s bombardment would blow them to bloody pulp. A grim advance, hemming the Bull’s forces in against walls of stone. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

“Form up on me!” Tatsuya bellowed.

“Form up!” The cry echoing down the line. “To the Bull! For the Imperium!”

Tatsuya turned to Ami, drawing his katana.

“Go back to the caves, Ami-chan. You will be safe there. If Riku breaks through, throw yourself upon his mercy. You are his sister-in-law. He will not harm you.”

“No kiss farewell, husband-mine?” Ami said. “No last tearful embrace?”

Tatsuya glanced at the soldiers gathering about him. The blades drawn. The flags unfurled.

“It would be unseemly. Go wait in the cave, Ami-chan. I will return presently.”

Ami licked her lips. Bit her tongue. Bowed.

“As my Lord commands.”

Riku’s forces closing in. Tatsuya’s gaze fixed on his brother, spotted now amidst the swell of bright steel and black iron and rolling, rippling red. The same banner at his back. The same armor on his skin. So much alike, they were. To think it had come to this …

“Make your peace with the Maker, my brothers!” Tatsuya called, raising his sword high. “And take these bastards with you to the hells!”

“Banzai!” his men roared. “Banzai!”

“Charge!”

A great shout rolling down the line, the thousandfold trample of running feet. A thunder, tumultuous, the katana raised high in Tatsuya’s hand as he stormed down the incline, the crush and press of bodies all about him, cold dread in his belly as the Guild vessels accelerated and Riku’s army came to a full halt. The shadows of the advancing sky-ships fell over the Bull, his muscles tensing as he waited for the bombardment to begin.

A blast fell amongst his men, then another, blinding, deafening, tearing through his soldiers as if they were paper dolls. Men blown to cinders and pieces, the blast as loud as thunder, rattling the teeth in his skull. But as quickly as it began, the explosions stilled, the ringing silence in the aftermath setting Tatsuya’s teeth on edge. What was happening? Those ships should be ripping them to shreds …

More thunder overhead, rolling across the skies above the drone of propellers, the cries of terror. And Tatsuya looked up at the screams above, the cries of wonder from the men about him, and saw the sky was filled with thunder tigers.

Awe and amazement. Openmouthed shock. Dozens of the beasts filling the air above him, falling on the Guild ships with claws sharp as swords, hard as steel. The flank-mounted cannons opening fire, not with black powder, but with a burst of silvered death, shuriken shredding the skies and the arashitora unlucky enough to be in their sights. Beasts fell tumbling and torn, blood pattering on his helm and spaulders as four bodies crashed among his lines in quick succession, roars of pain and bellows of despair. But by then, Tatsuya’s charge had cleared the shadow of the sky-ships, thundering down into Riku’s lines, smashing through the rows of spearmen with momentum and gravity behind them. The screams of the wounded, the cries uncurling behind vicious deathblows, the ring of steel on steel.

Tatsuya cut some poor spearman from neck to privates, took another’s throat out, ear to ear. Cleaving and hacking through the chaos, intent only on his brother, on that banner waving above the mob, on the voice shouting above the discord. Smashing a blow aside, divesting his attacker of his hands, then his life. Knocked down to his knees by the press and crush around him, helped up by some loyal soul who died for his trouble, cut to bubbling pieces by an enemy’s growling chainkatana. Riku’s elite were amongst them now—the samurai who had cut his own to shreds, wearing the very armor of the men they’d slaughtered. No fuel shortage for Riku’s troops though, no. No failing of the growling steel in their hands. And fury took Tatsuya—fury at his betrayal, at his own stupidity for trusting those serpents, at his brother for taking their hand. He became a dervish, death itself, roaring, breath burning in his lungs, spittle flying from his teeth, gore caked thick upon his blade, his hands, his face. Chaos all about him, the copper perfume of blood entwined with the sharp stink of shit, screams and roars layered upon the off-key notes of armor and katana and tetsubo and naginata. Thunder tigers amidst the samurai now, bellowing, shrieking, falling on the only soldiers they knew were foes—the ones clad in the Guild’s hissing suits, carrying the Guild’s growling steel. Tearing them limb from limb, all the power of the chi-mongers laid to ruin in the face of Raijin’s children, their fury terrifying to behold.

A rain of arrows fell, Riku ordering his archers to fire into his own troops and Tatsuya’s beside. Men falling about him like flies, clutching broomstick-thick shafts protruding from throats or chests or eye sockets. Blood everywhere. On his face. In his mouth. Slicked over the stones at his feet. Stepping over broken ground and soft, broken bodies, a slush of intestines and mud. But finally Tatsuya saw him—his brother, surrounded by his men. The face he saw every time he looked into the mirror. Death all about him, inside him, the lives of innocent and loyal men—men of both sides—spilled onto this hungry ground in the name of an empty chair. His brother’s words on the day of his father’s death ringing in Tatsuya’s ears. A truth so far denying it filled him to sickening.

“Better it be just you and I, brother. Just the two of us, without the nation beside us.”

Tatsuya would have lost. He knew it then. He knew it now. His brother was ever the better swordsman.

But still, he should have listened …

“Riku!” he roared. “ Riku! ”

His brother turned to face him, eyes wide and red-rimmed. The echo of crashing sky-ships somewhere behind him. The roar of thunder tigers all about him. The Stormdancer’s voice, high above it all, his blade whistling in the air. And Tatsuya raised his katana and bellowed, charging across the broken stone, eyes narrowed to knife-cuts, intent on only one goal.

Murder.

Black and bloody murder.

A hailstorm of arrows about us. Jun swiping them from the air with his tiny sliver of polished steel. A shaft protruding from his shoulder, pain flowing into me. A deep gouge at my throat, just a few inches to the left of my death, my agony seeded inside him. And still we moved like a blade through water, cutting a swathe through the men and their growling swords, the stink of sickness spilling from their crumpling suits. The wingless slugs had already been ripped from the skies by my brethren. Our Khan circling above, still torn and bleeding from my grandfather’s claws, yet unwilling to let us fight without him. My thoughts drifting to him along with my eyes, my heart swelling at the sight of him. So fierce. So brave. So—