L5r - scroll 04 - The Phoenix (6 page)

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Hot, clinging darkness surrounded the Phoenix Master of Fire. The air was dry and suffused with the odors of sulfur and incense, steel and leather. The noise of hammers echoed thro ugh the underground chambers. The rhythmic
whoosh
of huge bellows sounded like a slumbering dragon.

Isawa Tsuke leaned over an ancient scroll, peering closely at the kanji to unlock the silk's secrets. Occasionally, he would raise his head and make some notes on a nearby wooden tablet. The tablet burned where Tsuke touched his finger to it, the characters sparking to mystical life as he wrote on its surface.

The Master of Fire stood and stretched. The pointed shoulders of his orange robes ruffled. Crystal jewelry rattled with each movement of his iron muscles. He licked thin lips and ran one powerful hand over his shaved head. He yawned.

Tsuke took the candle from the table and walked to the other end of the great room. The chamber lay deep beneath Shiro Asako, the Castle of the White Phoenix, and Tsuke could almost feel the weight of the rocks above pressing down on him. He didn't mind.

Discipline required sacrifice, and Tsuke would go to any lengths for his art. He set his candle down near the room's exit and went into the adjoining chamber—the forge.

The room glowed with orange light from great fires. Hiromi, a Shiba steel master, stopped hammering and looked up as Tsuke entered the room. She was a short, well-muscled woman with a serious face. Her brown hair had been cropped close to her scalp for her work; long hair had a tendency to catch fire.

"Are you ready for me yet?" Tsuke asked her.

The steel master put down her hammer and tongs and wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her leather glove. "Not yet, Tsuke-sama. The steel is uncooperative today."

Tsuke grunted his disapproval. He walked to a corner of the room and picked up a half-finished sword. The metal was still hot, but the temperature didn't bother the Master of Fire.

"I'm a busy man," he said, not looking at Hiromi as he spoke.

She bowed. "I know, my lord."

"See that you take no more of my time than is necessary."

She bowed again. "I will not, Tsuke-sama."

He set the sword down and returned to his chamber. He retrieved the candle from the entryway and walked to the other side of the room. There, he placed the candle amid a collection of weapons—swords, scythes, war hammers, iron staves, sai. He picked up a tetsubo, an iron-studded staff, and swung it through the air.

The air sang, and the staff's metal hummed with the energy of the magical fire that forged it. Tsuke executed a few kata, practice swings with the tetsubo, before pausing to study it once more. He ran his finger over the point of one stud and was surprised when it scratched him.

Putting the finger to his mouth, he sucked away the blood. Then he smiled. Fine weapons were being made here. True, many of his clan mates did not see the value of weapons. They were steeped in the ways of pacifism. But what good was strength if it was never used? Why should Phoenix stand idly by while the empire fell into further decay? Yes, the clan had sent the Crane help to defend against invasion. It was hardly enough, though. Shiba Tsukune, for all her martial skills, was merely one woman. And the force they'd sent with her was pathetically small, even if it did boast some find shugenja.

The Master of Fire wondered if his peers would send a larger force once the Crane had fallen to their Shadowlands enemies. He growled discontentedly to himself and set the tetsubo down. As he did so, he knocked over his candle. It fell to the floor and sputtered out.

Tsuke cursed.

He concentrated, and the tip of his right index finger caught fire. He quickly found the candle and set his finger to it, relighting the wick. Turning, he walked back to his worktable.

Sitting on the table was a small golden bird. Its feathers flashed orange and red in the candlelight. The bird chirped a greeting. Tsuke's eyes narrowed as he spotted the tiny scroll attached to its leg.

The Master of Fire set the candle down, took the bird in hand, untied the scroll, and set the bird down once more. He opened the scroll and read.

The bird hopped about Tsuke's table, cocking its head and looking at the Master of Fire's tools and scrolls. It sang happily.

Tsuke looked at it, his eyes glowing orange in the dim light. "Well?" he asked impatiently. "What are you waiting for? You've delivered your message, and I've read it."

The bird chirped and bowed its small head. Then it stood proudly erect and burst into flames.

When nothing remained of it but ashes, the Master of Fire smiled.

BATTLEFRONTS

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, J hiba Tsukune struggled from the mud where her horse lay dying. She pushed the beast's carcass off her right leg and scrambled out from under it. The leg twinged with pain as she stood.

The horseman she had been fighting wheeled and came at her again out of the smoke. Tsukune pushed the pain from her mind and raised her sword. She held it high and straight, parallel to her right ear. She felt blood trickling from that ear, staining her long black hair. Her mud-soaked shirt clung to her arms, its yellow fabric stiffening. A lock of sweaty hair fell over her thin, tanned face, tickling her eyelashes. She ignored it and concentrated on her charging foe.

The man riding toward her was a ronin— alive and human, unlike many of his companions in Doji Hoturi's army. His face was brutish and unshaven; his smile showed missing teeth; his eyes held murder. He aimed his long spear at Tsukune's heart.

At the last instant, Tsukune stepped aside, avoiding his blow. The ronin swept the long spear up to parry her counterattack, but Tsukune wasn't aiming at him. Instead, her katana cut deep into the right shoulder of the ronin's horse. The blade traced a long gash down the animal's ribs. She slashed up and freed the blade as it met the horse's haunches.

Gore splashed into the air, and the horse went down. The ronin threw himself free as it fell, but he landed on his back. Before he could get up, Tsukune ran to his side and thrust her sword through his chest. The wound made a hissing sound, and greenish slime oozed out. Khaki blood leaked from the ronin's lips as he died. He muttered a curse.

The Phoenix warrior maid suppressed a shudder. The ronin had not been human after all. Why had Hoturi given up his birthright to captain this army of the damned? Hadn't they long been friends and even occasional lovers? Hadn't she saved Hoturi's life once? Hadn't she fought beside him at Kyuden Kakita? How could the man she knew abandon his honor—his duty? War forced sad choices, like killing a noble horse to defeat its ronin master, but what could have caused Doji Hoturi to make this terrible pact?

Tsukune's reverie lasted only a moment. Battle cries quickly snapped her back to reality. Her forces were in full retreat. Hoturi's undead army had chased her troops south toward the Kabe ue no ho ni sa Umi, the Mountains above the Ocean.

Her people hadn't meant to bring the war into this small village, but Hoturi's creatures had dogged them mercilessly, forced them into the settlement, and set the town aflame. Mud from the previous night's rain slowed the Phoenix's retreat and turned the village into a slaughterhouse. The fighting had separated Tsukune from her elite shugenja unit.

The wind shifted suddenly, and Tsukune found herself engulfed in white smoke. White, the color of death. She heard fighting all around but could no longer see anything. Tsukune coughed, and her eyes began to tear.

Her people were moving away from her position. Perhaps they were even out of the village by now. Stumbling through the smoke, Tsukune tripped over a body: Shiba Miyaki, a young woman she had trained. Miyaki's face had been crushed into the ground by a horse's hoof. Tsukune caught herself before she fell and leaned heavily against a nearby hut.

Her heart pounded in her ears. Her blood-caked hair matted against her face. Life ran slowly in front of her. She saw figures moving through the smoke in the distance, inhuman figures. They looked as though they were dancing between the burning houses. Time often stretched on a battlefield. Sometimes, this aided a samurai—gave her more time to counter an enemy's moves. Other times, though, it made battle a never-ending hell.

This was one of those hellish times.

Above the din of combat, a sound caught her attention. Crying. The crying of a child.

The noise solidified Tsukune's grip on reality. Time moved normally once more. She knew her duty was to escape this battle, to return to her unit and live to fight the enemy another day. She had no time to rescue peasant children. Yet the cry haunted her ears. She could not ignore it.

The sound came from a burning hut only a short distance away. Tsukune dashed across the intervening space. An undead samurai appeared out of the white smoke to oppose her. She swung to cut it in half at the waist. Her sword stuck near the creature's spine. The monster turned to claw her. She grunted and pushed the blade through. The samurai fell in two pieces, spraying black blood. Tsukune kept running.

The bodies of a man and a woman lay before the ratty stick-and-thatch structure. Tsukune stepped over them. The wooden door to the hut was jammed shut, so Tsukune kicked it open. As she did, black smoke billowed forth—burning her eyes. She threw the sleeve of her yellow shirt across her face and charged into the burning home.

The smoke made it impossible to see, so she let her ears guide her. The hut contained two small rooms, which the fire had turned into a tiny inferno. Tsukune cursed silently and hoped her garments and hair wouldn't catch fire. It would be stupid to burn to death on this fool's errand. "Tell me where you are!" she called through the smoke. "I want to help!"

The child didn't reply; he only kept crying.

Shiba Tsukune groped with her hands in the hot, smoke-filled darkness. Twice she burned her fingers on blazing wooden walls, hidden in the gloom. Finally, her fingers found the hair of a child.

"It's all right," Tsukune gasped through the smoke. "I'll get you out. Are there any other people in here?"

"N-no," came the small reply. The child coughed.

Reaching down Tsukune seized him under the arms. She knew she couldn't find the door again in the smoke. Fortunately, the home's walls weren't very sturdy. Nearby, a small ray of light peeked through. Carrying the child, Tsukune ran as hard as she could toward the light.

She hit the wall with her shoulder. Something splintered. Pain shot through Tsukune's body, but the wall didn't break. She charged it again. This time it gave way with a resounding crunch. Tsukune and her small package fell headlong into a broad mud puddle. The landing knocked the breath from the samurai-ko and covered her with mud once more.

Tsukune and the child lay there for a moment, coughing and gasping for breath. Amaterasu protected fools and small children, Tsukune remembered.

A nearby footfall brought Tsukune to her senses. She pushed up on her knees and saw a dead man walking toward her. Behind him came a dead woman. They were the two people who had lain in the door of the burning hut.

Tsukune rose. "Stay behind me," she said to the child.

The tot gasped, "Mama! Papa!"

"Stay back," Tsukune whispered harshly. "They're not your parents anymore." Despite the warning, the boy tried to push past. The samurai-ko stepped to the left, interposing her body between the child and the undead.

The creatures shambled forward. Their recent resurrection made them slow and awkward. Seizing the child's hand, Tsukune turned to flee. Her samurai nature rebelled at the thought of running from the fight, but dying at the hands of the undead would help no one.

Three more undead shambled out of the smoke to block her retreat. These three weren't clumsy zombies, like the child's parents. They were undead samurai, clad in armor and brandishing swords. Their eyes blazed with green hellfire. Boils covered their livid flesh.

Spotting Tsukune, the creatures howled a hideous war cry and charged.

Tsukune turned back to the undead parents. They had reached the quagmire and shambled in. The child, crying, clung to the waistband of Tsukune's red silk pants.

Tsukune jumped to the edge of the mud, dragging the child with her. The boy let go of Tsukune's belt and fell facedown in the mud. Tsukune didn't have time to tend to him. Besides, with his face in the mud, the boy wouldn't see her slaughter his undead parents.

The samurai-ko's katana flashed and split the undead woman from collar to hip. The pieces fell to the ground but kept twitching.

The dead man tried to grab Tsukune's arm, but she whirled and elbowed him in the face. His nose broke, and his skull caved in, but still he clawed at her.

The other undead slogged through the wide puddle. Using her free hand, Tsukune grabbed the dead man's shirt and used a hip-throw to toss him in front of the advancing samurai. The undead father tripped his fellows. All four of them went down, thrashing.

Tsukune grabbed the boy and pulled him out of the mud. He bawled, tears washing the dirt from his eyes. The drying mud on her clothes slowed Tsukune's movements. She cursed silently and dashed into an alley between two burning huts.

Between the flaming buildings, an undead horseman reared up. Tsukune saw his blazing green eyes, the rotting flesh on his face, the obscene leer on his mouth. He held a barbed spear in one arm and the reins of his steed in the other. The bottom half of the horse's face was missing, and two white ribs poked through where the animal's black skin had ripped away.