Sky-ships cresting a swell of black snow, exhaust trails misting the skies above a city all but reduced to a catacomb. Sigils of the Lotus Guild, of Fox and Tiger, joined now by the remnants of the Phoenix fleet—the three remaining zaibatsu of the Shima Imperium united in a final desperate throw of the bones. One Dragon ship among them all, her captain striding her decks with ink-stained hands, a promise to a dead girl fresh on his lips.
Lines of troops, the light of a choking dawn refracting on enameled iron and folded steel. Clanking shreddermen towering above the infantry, battle-scarred and smoking, legs pounding with a wardrum rhythm as the Shiman army marched from Yama’s gates.
The skies around the fleet were filled with talons and feathers and rolling thunder, the arashitora pack weaving amongst ironclads and corvettes. Black and white, male and female, sleek and beautiful. Three stormdancers riding at their head: Yukiko upon Buruu, katana in hand, clad in freezing iron and black cloth; Hana astride Kaiah, unruly blond locks tousled about her eye, a chainkatana at her waist and a prayer in her heart; Yoshi last of all, clinging to Shai like a waterlogged rat to a piece of driftwood. Refusing to look down.
And behind them all, lumbering with all the grace of a headless drunkard, the Earthcrusher marched. Shaking the ground with every step, splitting flagstones to the core, shells of fire-gutted houses collapsing to rubble around it. The behemoth was dented and scorched, its engines skipping and clunking. But still it came, held together by will and belief, its innards crawling with men and women who now called each by true names. A young man sat in its pilot’s harness, inside a metal skin that felt nothing like his own, mind smudged with pain and painlessness, staring out through the cracked portals of the Earthcrusher’s eyes.
South.
To the swelling black.
To the vicious horizon.
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM
Across the river, an army awaited. Twelve standards raised in the bitter-black wind, swathed in frost. Twelve houses assembled on the Kitsune plains, grim and proud. Goddess-sworn, children of a war decades long, a mandate of bloody vengeance clad in skins of wolf and bear. Ghost-pale skin and cobalt-blue eyes, stained and scarred by black rains.
Facing south.
The Stormdancer called a halt at the newly-repaired Amatsu bridge, her army poised before the gaijin’s backs. She did not dare hope.
Yet still she prayed.
*
Yoshi felt Yukiko’s voice echoing in his head, felt her strength reverberating in the Kenning, the heat behind her eyes and swelling at her belly. The girl reached out into the minds of the others: Hana and Kaiah and Sukaa and Shai and Buruu, forming a bridge between them all—a hub through which each could speak and feel and know. Yoshi winced as he felt the thoughts of the other thunder tigers, Yukiko’s own blazing psyche, a headache digging in at the base of his skull. He wiped one hand across his nose, blood smeared on his knuckles.
“Be ready for anything. We’ve suffered dearly for trusting gaijin in the past.”
Buruu growled across the latticework of their thoughts.
IF THEIR PLAN IS TREACHERY, THEY WILL COME TO RUE IT.
I can see Uncle Aleksandar, Hana nodded. But not Sister Katya.
Kaiah growled, her eyes narrowed.
- WOULD THEY BETRAY? AFTER WE RETURNED THEIR WOUNDED? -
“I don’t know,” Yukiko replied. “But expect no less.”
Yoshi sniffed hard, hawked phlegm and blood past Shai’s wing.
Seems sensible keeping Yukiko and Buruu up here, out of harm’s way. Hana and I can go make with the talking. I’ve a notion to meet this uncle of mine.
“No Yoshi, we go tog—”
I AGREE.
Shai growled over the fading echo of Buruu’s interruption.
*AS DO I.*
Yoshi smiled across the snow-filled skies at Yukiko, tipped the brim of an imaginary hat.
No sense risking all of us, Stormgirl. On the chance it does throw down, best if our ace in the Endsinger’s hole stays out of bowshot. We’ll return presently.
Yukiko bit down on her reply as Hana and Yoshi swooped away, circling down in a gentle spiral toward the assembled horde. The Morchebans had cleared a wide space around their commander, standing tall in his black wolfskin, staring south. He glanced back only as Kaiah and Shai came in to land. Yoshi jumped off the thunder tiger, desperate to get his feet back on solid ground. Hana slid down beside him, standing close, their hands touching.
The Kapitán looked at the pair wistfully. “You must be my nephew. Yoshi.”
The boy ran a hand across the pale fuzz on his chin, looked the big gaijin up and down. “You must be the fellow I’ve never laid eyes on before.”
“You have the look of your mother.” He smiled. “Some of her fire too.”
“What are you doing here, Uncle?” Hana asked. “Do you plan to stand against us? Or attack Yama once we’ve marched south?”
“Morcheban and Shiman strategy may differ in many ways, but in one respect we are very similar: we seldom begin our attacks facing the wrong way.”
“You’re facing south,” Yoshi nodded.