Vladimir was a fisherman’s son, and he supposed if he were to serve in the Imperatritsa’s forces, a ship would be the sensible place to do it. He just hadn’t realized it would be so accursedly boring.
The muster had been magnificent to be sure. The assault on Kawa city glorious. But now the landing was done, there was precious little for seamen to do. They were moored in the smoking ruins of the slaver harbor, awaiting the return of Marshal Sergei’s forces. Vladimir’s days were spent on games of chance, listening to battlefield reports, or, as he found himself now, standing on a watchtower, smoke in one hand, spyglass in the other.
The skies were black and the sea iron-gray, the wind as cold as ice devil’s breath. Someone had told him the slavers called this place the “Bay of Dragons.” Staring down into the water, Vladimir exhaled a plume of smoke and shook his head at their folly.
Something silver moved in the depths, long and whiplike. A flash and it was gone.
Vladimir blinked, frowned at the swell, smashing against the hull in crests ten feet high. Another flash of silver passed beneath the bow, quick as Old Man Frost, twenty feet long if it was an inch. Vladimir dragged the smoke off his freezing lips and drew breath to shout, glancing up at the horizon. The words died in his throat, panic hitting him like a pail of ice water. Reaching down, he began grinding the warning siren, yelling at the top of his lungs.
“Stations! All hands to stations! Tidal wave!”
Cries of alarm running the ship’s length, the siren’s wail echoing in his head. Vladimir felt the engines start, the drumbeat of hundreds of boots as the crew scrambled. The Grigori began shifting, propellers churning waves to froth as the bow swung slowly about, the entire fleet following suit, helmsmen leaning hard on their wheels and gunning the engines to set the ships facing the threat cresting the horizon. Vladimir could see it with his naked eye: a vast, churning wall of water, black and cold as night. He peered through his spyglass, breath catching in his lungs. He wiped away the frost on the lens and peered through it again, a wondering curse on his lips.
“Living Goddess, save us.”
A wave bigger than any he’d ever seen, made not only of water, but of teeth. A thousand serpentine shapes swirling in its depths, cresting and crashing through its face—shapes the battery farm crews spoke of with fear and awe.
Sea dragons.
But deeper within the wave, he saw two vast shadows, longer than the entire fleet end to end. Creatures so huge and terrifying they beggared belief; teeth as tall as houses, eyes like great glowing suns. Something primal awoke at the sight, something born in long winter nights of his childhood; a fear so bottomless his heart almost failed in his chest. And as they crested the wave, one serpent of gleaming silver, the other so black that light seemed to die inside it, Vladimir found himself screaming at the top of his lungs.
“Abandon ship! Goddess help us, abandon ship!”
Dragons.
Dragons such as the world had not seen for a thousand years.
And they were coming.
*
She could feel them, reaching out across the island between her and the eastern seas. To the things she’d awakened, the slumbering giants curled in Everstorm’s warmth, held still by Susano-ō’s lullaby. But she’d been loud enough. Strong enough. The fires in her belly giving her the power to hear it all, every pulse, every heartbeat; the Lifesong of the World. And she’d reached into their minds and shouted, echoing in the black, until eyes as big as sky-ships had cracked open, until hearts as big as castles began to pulse faster, until that which had slept for as long as any had lived roused in the depths and demanded to know her name.
She had told them.
And they told her they had been waiting.
She saw them now in her mind’s eye, rising from the deeps.
In their wakes, whirlpools.
Their heralds, tsunami.
The Bay of Dragons, men called it?
Time it lived up to its name.
*
Yukiko and Buruu swooped down through the snowstorm, Hana and Kaiah beside them, hovering above the troop bridge crossing the Amatsu. The arashitora seized hold of the railings, trying to drag it sideways off the riverbanks. The structure was impossibly heavy, Buruu and Kaiah straining for all they were worth.
- YOU ARE WEAK, KINSLAYER. NOT EVEN TRYING. -
THAT IS NOT MY NAME.
- IT IS YOUR TRUTH. -
I AM KHAN OF EVERSTORM NOW.
- AND THIS IS NOT EVERSTORM. SO LIFT, CURSE YOU. -
Even their combined might wasn’t enough to shift the structure, so Yukiko called to the rest of the Everstorm pack. The arashitora responded, black and white, peeling away from the airborne melee and speeding toward them. But the gaijin troops were almost on them, archers setting up on the hills above, hammermen and blood-drinkers howling as they charged. Every one of them knew if the structure was dragged away, they’d have to call in their own engineers to forge a crossing. The battle for Yama would be over before they arrived. And so they threw themselves down the hill, intent on cutting the stormdancers to pieces.