Pride.
chug!chug!chug!chug!chug!
Chest-swelling, heart-warming pride.
chug!chug!chug!chug!chug!
And then the ’throwers began to fail.
Number three blew first, the seals on the firing chambers bursting like overfilled balloons, gas shrieking in the dark. Kin’s ’thrower went next, a bright burst of light and a rush of vapor, the bucking metal beast he rode falling still, sagging like a puppet with broken strings. All down the line, almost simultaneously, the machines coughed and went silent, shivering in their rivets like men dying of blacklung. Murderous percussion replaced with feeble thunder and whispering rain, so dim after the deafening chorus Kin could barely hear them at all.
Dread stole his breath, gripped his heart tight and squeezed. He lurched from his seat, eyes roaming the ruptured seals, fingers pressed to the damage as if with will alone he could mend it. But no time. No time at all …
“Oh, no…” he breathed.
A roar, black and harrowing, reverberating through the trees. Looking up, Kin saw a tall shape unfold itself from the cover of an ancient maple, its head adorned with the skull of some colossal eagle, armor of bone arrayed on its chest. Taller than its brethren, skin so dark it was almost ebony, all muscle and sinew and fangs. And raising a war club studded with rusted iron rivets, twice as long as Kin was tall, it pointed at the ’thrower line, lips drawing back from broken fangs.
Bellowing hatred.
Daichi tossed his head, wiped the rain from his eyes. His stare was fixed on the demons as the other Kagé emerged from cover, gathered around their leader. Their blades gleamed as the lightning flickered, the scouts dashing across the clearing and rejoining the line. The oni formed up around their dread captain, only half a dozen now, bloodied and grim. But still more than a match for a handful of men and women half their size, armed with tiny, sharpened toothpicks.
Rusted grins gleamed in the light of bloody eyes.
Daichi spared Kin a solemn glance. Cold and empty. And the pride that had swelled his chest a moment before fled on broken wings, shoulders slumping as cold fear seeped in to take its place. Hands shaking. Lips parting as if to speak, and finding no words at all.
Daichi turned to his warriors. Each one in turn. Steel in his gaze. And raising his blade, he pointed to the demon pack.
“Banzai!” he cried.
“Banzaiiii!” came the reply, two dozen Kagé roaring in answer. Thunder crashed, the warriors dashing across the clearing with blades held high. Kin dragged himself from the ’thrower, stumbled down to the soaking earth, watching the foes plunge toward each other through the swirling rain. Tiny figures and giant hellspawn, moving amidst the lightning strobe. His chest thumping, mouth bitter, panic and guilt and rage filling him to blinding, looking up and down the line of useless ’throwers as the Thunder God laughed in the sky above.
How could this be?
The battle was joined out in the dark, Kin stumbling toward it, a heavy wrench dragged from his tool belt to serve as a weapon. He had no warrior’s training, but still, he couldn’t sit back and do nothing. Figures swayed and danced in the rain, cries of pain and awful roars filling the empty spaces between one peal of thunder and the next. Kaori fighting on the left flank, just a blur in the darkness. Daichi in the thick of it, blade slick with dark blood. Moving as if to music, flowing without pause, step to feint to strike to thrust, cleaving broad swathes of sticky black, swinging his mighty two-handed blade as if an extension of his own arm. A flick of his wrist and an oni’s leg toppled to the ground in a spray of dark gore, followed swiftly by its howling owner. A step to the left and a casual wave, cleaving throat to the bone, swaying amidst the blows, a poet writing his masterpiece in warmest, blackest ink.
A rolling seething mob, oni and Kagé falling in equal measure, Kaori scaling one demon’s back and plunging her blade into the base of its skull. Maro’s arm hanging limp, battling side by side with Isao and Takeshi over a fallen comrade, the three of them slicing their foe’s gut open, wading ankle deep in rolling coils of intestine. The tide was turning, the Kagé gaining ground. But the oni lord had cleared a swathe through his foes, eyes set on Daichi, looming through the mob as Kin shouted warning.
The old man turned, steel flashing, stepping to one side as the demon brought his war club crashing down. Mud spattering, dead leaves flying, Daichi’s eyes narrowed in contempt as he stepped forward, sliced the oni across its belly. Kin running through the muck, an oni looming out of the gloom in front of him. The boy dodged past its blade, almost slipping on the dead leaf carpet as three Kagé stepped up to meet the demon’s challenge. Panic in his chest, knowledge that he had no place here—no business on a battlefield with a wrench in his hand and fear in his heart—but still he turned and fought, bashing at the oni’s shins as it whirled to face him, the blow jarring his arms, the stench of funeral pyres assailing his nose, the demon roaring as if all the hells lived inside its mouth. He rolled aside as its blade swept over his head, the Kagé striking from behind, steel and rain and blood and thunder, black spots blooming in his eyes as he lurched to his feet, sparing a glance for Daichi through the now blinding downpour.
The old man’s chest heaved, lips pressed thin, blade slicked with gore as the oni lord swung with reckless abandon. The demon was bloodied in a dozen places; arms, legs, gut, face, and had yet to land a single blow on the old Iron Samurai. Rage turned its eyes incandescent, burning with the fury of Lady Sun as it lunged forward and received yet another wound for its troubles. The old man was fighting as if whittling wood, carving off one chunk at a time, dancing back out of striking range and allowing bloodloss and fatigue to do most of his heavy lifting. The power of Yomi versus a lifetime of steel’s tutelage. The fury of all the hells versus a tranquility born of the love of the blade, the way of war, the heart of a tiger true.
Until the old man started coughing.
A sputter at first, widening his eyes just a fraction. A wet intake of breath, muscles clenched tight. Stepping aside from another blow, Daichi coughed again, damp and sputtering, pressing one hand to his chest as if pained. Kin yelled warning, roaring to Kaori, turning from the snarling demon facing him and dashing through the rain. Daichi staggered, mouth pressed to sleeve, and as he lifted his blade to ward off a savage blow, Kin swore he could see a dark stain on the old man’s lips. A blacklung spasm, gripping him now of all times, the disease slowly reaching into the old man’s chest and turning all to ruin.
Daichi fell back, coughing still, Kaori rising from the steaming ruin of a pit demon’s corpse and yelling above the storm. Maro answered with a cry—“To Daichi! Daichi!”, the Kagé charging toward their failing captain, blades raised high. And the oni lord lifted its war club, lips split in a jagged grin, spit hissing through its teeth as it swung in a whistling arc, smashing Daichi’s sword into glittering fragments. The old man staggered, crying out amidst sodden gasps, the demon lord following up with a savage kick directly into the old man’s chest.
Kaori screamed, Kin along with her, Daichi sailing half a dozen feet to land crumpled and bleeding in the muck. The demon lord stepped forward, intent only on the old man’s murder, raising its war club high. With a desperate cry, Kin hurled his wrench—just a tiny, gleaming sliver of greasy metal against this towering monstrosity. The throw struck true, cracking into the back of the oni lord’s skull, just a fleabite onto hardened leather. But it was enough to give the demon pause, a second to snarl and flinch, and in that moment, Kaori closed in, a black shark through bloodied water, stepping up onto a broken tree stump and leaping through the air, her blade sinking into the oni lord’s back. Maro struck a moment later, carving a gouge through the demon’s Achilles tendon, the monster roaring in pain, falling to one knee. Others struck now, Isao, Atsushi, Takeshi, blades rising and falling like abattoir knives and beneath the flood, the rain, the flashing steel, the demon lord fell roaring and flailing, silenced at the last by a scything blow from Kaori’s blade, ear to pointed ear, bathing the woman in a black, hissing spray.