Barako knew the enemy that came for them. Days ago, these creatures had been her friends. Days ago, she had been preparing to march with them to the City of Night’s Hunger. She had been expecting to fight side by side with them. Now the samurai who had left with Haru came charging to destroy her.
The samurai, or what was left of them.
Their armor was broken, hewn apart by the blows that had killed them. None of them had died easily. They must have fought hard. There was no comfort for Barako in that thought in this moment, because the hard deaths had created more hungry ghosts. The samurai were zombies, their skin pale and gray with death, their wounds hanging open, folds of flesh rippling as they ran. There was no blood left in their bodies. Their faces had withered, wrinkling as if aged decades beyond the years allotted to mortals. They were crumbling with decay. If time was meaningless in the City of Night’s Hunger, ruin was not. The warriors who had been dead for a few days at most looked as if they had been in the grip of the city for an eternity.
The worst thing was that Barako could recognize them. She knew every shriveled, rotting face. She knew the names of every monster that rushed the gate, knew the qualities of the men and women they had been, knew the sound of their laughter, knew their skill in war, knew their dedication and their integrity.
All that she knew was gone. All that remained was the mockery of what these mortals had been.
She wished that was all that was left. She wanted to hope their spirits had found a way to pass on to the next life instead of being damned to this place for eternity.
Her hopes were irrelevant, though. What mattered now was her hammer.
The weapon was an old one. It had been passed down to her by her mother, from her grandmother, and from generations before them. It had been sanctified in the solemn rites that marked its passage from mother to daughter. It had kept Barako alive in the Shadowlands. It was the bane of tainted things.
There were fewer than thirty of the zombie samurai who came rushing out of the shadows to charge the gate, less than half the strength of the company that awaited them. The zombies did not come alone, though. Behind them came a horde of skeletons, the monsters who had killed them and turned them into creatures of the Shadowlands. They were what Haru’s troops would eventually become. Almost all their flesh was gone. Leathery strips of skin and strings of muscle hung from bone. Fragments of armor clung to the bodies. Some of the skeletons wore helms. Others had plates hanging from a single strap, swinging wildly as they ran. Others had a single boot, and still others had two. All of them had just enough fragments of armor to signal what they once had been. They were bone, but they had been samurai, and they hated those who still were.
The zombies rushed to the gate. Barako stepped into the gap with a huge swing of her hammer. The zombie in the lead was Hino, a fine warrior, one Barako liked and trusted, whom she had trained, and whom Ochiba had assigned to Haru, so he would have the best and wisest samurai under his command, a bushi who would temper his folly and buttress his strengths. In an eye-blink, Barako saw her friend’s distorted face, and she knew it was no accident that had placed Hino at the front of the charge of the dead. What reigned in the City of Night’s Hunger had made this choice, knowing the effect it would have.
Who the zombie was changed nothing. Barako knew all these monsters. If she could not give them peace, at least she would give them destruction.
She stepped, she swung, and she smashed the hammer into Hino’s skull. The head blew apart in a shower of bone fragments and desiccated brain. Barako used the momentum of the swing to take half a step back, and then go forward again, swinging the hammer the other way. She crushed the flank of another zombie. The force of her blow hurled it into the creature beside it, knocking them into a tangle of bony limbs.
Ochiba had launched herself into the fray at the same moment as Barako. She wove between the zombies, slashing with her katana. Her attack had no pauses. It was a continuous movement, a whirling spiral that cut into the zombies and back out, in and out, always hitting them on their unprotected flanks, her blade slicing through necks, decapitating, and cutting chests in half. Her blade was as precious and holy as Barako’s hammer. Tainted flesh burned at the touch of its sanctified steel. She fought with the same grim purpose as Barako. She too cut down what had been her friends.
Barako was the thunder. Ochiba was the lightning. Together they were the storm. Their assault was as precise as it was brutal. It blunted the rush of the horrors.
But the gate was wide. Other zombies pushed past them, and met the wall of samurai. The sixty fell on the enemy with calm fury. They avenged their comrades by destroying their bodies. Many of them did not have weapons that had become holy legacies, but every blade and hammer had been blessed by Junji, and every warrior called upon their honored ancestors for protection as they threw themselves at the zombies.
The tower sounded its horn, shaking souls and earth.
“Do you hear its anger?” Ochiba shouted. “Do you hear its frustration?”
“The enemy is in our trap!” Barako called to her troops. “Press them and do not let them pass! We have the advantage!” She blocked a sword blow with an upward swing, smashing the zombie’s katana from its hands, and then brought the hammer down over her head, driving the monster’s skull down between its shoulder blades and crumpling its spine. The zombie fell, quivering its last in the snow.
They were holding the dead things at the gate. Night’s Hunger had tried to lure them in, but they had called it out instead. They had the enemy in a position where superior numbers did not matter. They could hold the gate almost indefinitely.
That was not enough.
“Do you see him?” Ochiba called to Barako. She ducked under a zombie’s swing. The dead were clumsy. There was little of the skill that had been theirs in life, and Ochiba would have been too fast for them then. She came up under the zombie’s reach, and with an upward stroke, split it in two.
“He isn’t here,” Barako said. Already they had destroyed most of Haru’s contingent. There was no sign of him. It was the tide of skeletons reaching the gate that would challenge them now. “I haven’t seen Ishiko either.”
Two skeleton samurai rushed her from both sides, jaws hanging open, airless screams ringing in her ears. She grunted in disgust. With two strikes, she smashed the ribcage of one to splinters and pulverized the skull of the second.
“We have to search, then,” said Ochiba, whirling and slashing. She was a lethal blur. Horrors collapsed in pieces in her wake.
“To the tower?” Barako asked.
“To the tower, with speed. Daizu, Goemon, Nahomi!” she called. “Join me and Barako. The rest of you hold the gate.”
The three samurai she had named lunged forward. They were fast. They were from Ochiba’s contingent, warriors in her mold.
“Now!” Ochiba ordered.
Barako barreled forward, shouldering skeletons aside, ramming with her armor and smashing the hammer down. She punched a hole into the horde. Ochiba and the three samurai rushed ahead of her and cut their way forward, slicing through dozens of skeletons. Barako followed, anchoring the rear.
At the same time, the rest of the company charged the gate, as if all would now invade the city. The monsters reacted to the threat and pushed back, concentrating on the greater numbers of their foe. Their error gave the squad the chance to break through and run deeper into the streets. In moments, a wail went up, the dead crying after escaped prey. But they had already lost the race.
The five samurai plunged into the dark. Ochiba ran at a full sprint, and the others matched her. She kept the great tower always in view, the death-green eye of its light staring down at them with baleful anger. Ochiba chose her paths at every intersection without hesitation. Barako trusted her instincts. They did not know the path forwards, but they had to keep moving. If they were fast enough, the forces in the city might not be able to prepare an ambush in time.
They used the secondary towers as landmarks, guideposts on the way to the center of the dark ruin. The winged eruptions of rock that surrounded them leaned over the street. The shadows beneath them were deep as oceans. The rattle of bones came from within, and the accusing wail of the dead, before the skeletons rushed out of the darkness and into the corpse-light of Lord Moon.
Ochiba’s gamble paid off. The dead samurai were few in number, and the squad tore through them without slowing down. Ochiba stayed in the light as much as she could. It was not, Barako thought, the light of comfort or of safety. It was the light of endings and despair. It also leveled the battlefield. There the warriors of Striking Dawn could see what was trying to kill them.
They drew closer to the tower. Its terrible horn thundered again. It was a summons to horror. It was also, Barako decided, a bellow of rage. Each blast shook her to her core, but she kept going. Your roars are a sign of your impotence. You cannot stop us.
The streets wound. They twisted. They writhed. They tangled up, and they looped back on themselves into intersections of illogic. Again and again, the samurai found themselves suddenly going away from their target. But Ochiba never hesitated. They ran, and they ran, and even with the setbacks they drew closer while the tower raged at them.
At last, with the horn sounding one more time, they arrived before it.
The tower gave birth to the snowdrifts of the city. Lord Moon shone on the vast structure. The green light blazed from its peak. The light of dead white and the light of dead green created the shapes of snow, and the drifts hung from the gables like long, ragged curtains, flowing down the height of the tower to spread across the city. From here, the unnatural snow reached every corner of Night’s Hunger.
The tower was as massive as it was tall. Its gables were clawed, grotesque, reptilian. They were almost wide enough to be wings, as if the tower might yet rise up and cast its shadow over new lands. It looked as if, instead of being constructed, it had thrust up from beneath the ground, hurling the crust back like flaps of skin. From a distance, it had appeared dark, but up close it had the pallor of a thing dead but malign, and Barako saw that its substance was the same as the talisman’s. She shuddered to think they had once mistaken it for white jade.
The tower’s entrance had no door, and was wide open. It was edged with spikes, and looked like a lamprey’s maw. Inside, profound shadow wrestled with jagged slashes of diseased emerald light. The interior pulsed like a living thing, a heart that hated and hungered.
A slope of shattered rock led to the entrance. On it, blocking the way, was a large group of skeleton warriors. Unlike those who had rushed the city gates, their armor was largely intact. They were also larger. As the squad closed with them, Barako saw why. They were made from more than one body. They had three arms or four. Some had two heads. Multiple femurs and ribcages had been fused together, creating hulking giants. Each hand clasped a pitted, rusty sword, the kind that had torn Hachi’s flesh so hideously.
Dedication to purpose turned Barako’s horror to anger. I am your bane, monsters.
Ishiko was at the head of the fiends. She was a zombie, and though she had not been turned into a giant, she was different from Haru’s other fallen comrades. The venomous light coiled around her. Her shriveled, mottled features were pulled back in a rictus of anger. She quivered with the rage of betrayal. She had been destroyed on a fool’s errand, and now she meant to bring all others down into her abyss.
Her face struck Barako in the heart even more than the blasting of the horn. In that anger, in that pain, there was still a trace of what the samurai had once been. This horror was more than just a body that was forbidden to rest. It was a ruin of Ishiko. She had been one of the most respectable warriors Barako had ever known. It chilled her to see a blasted reflection of that now. This creature’s hatred was pure. She sought destruction with the same absolute commitment with which she had once followed her duty. This was her new duty. Her jaw dropped open and she wailed, the sound an awful, cracked echo of the beloved comrade’s voice. Everything Ishiko had believed in had been taken from her. Now her anger was not directed at the thing that had robbed her. Instead, as if the evil had shown her the truth of the world, she sought to tear the same beliefs from all before her.
After the last sounding of the horn, a scream came from inside the tower. It was so weak a sound by comparison. It was pitiable. It had no power. Even another hundred yards away, it would be inaudible, its horror and fear and pain lost, swallowed by the city’s hunger. It was small and human. It was mortal.
It was Haru.
The skeletons howled with Ishiko and they charged. They formed a wall between the samurai and the tower. Squad and monsters clashed. There would be no rushing past this foe.
Ishiko ran first at Ochiba. At the last moment, the zombie feinted to the left, the speed and agility too horribly like those of the living warrior. She skittered around the squad and came at Barako’s flank.
One of the giant skeletons reared in front of Ochiba at the moment she had been prepared to fight Ishiko. Four arms and four blades slashed at the captain from both sides.
Barako turned on her heel. She blocked Ishiko’s strike with the shaft of her hammer. The blow was powerful. Green light flared. The zombie burned with the power that infested the corpse. Her eyes blazed with the flame of their terrible truth. She howled again, jumping back out of the way of Barako’s swing, then darting in again with her katana. Barako turned and caught the hit with her shoulder plate and swung again. Ishiko lunged away, but received a glancing blow on the shoulder, hard enough to spin her around.
Ochiba leapt to one side, dropping low, out of the way of the blades. The skeleton used the four blades to stop her counterstrike. The monster was not as fast as Ochiba, but fast enough, and it used its bulk to absorb her blows. It was determined not to let her pass.
Haru screamed.
The other skeletons fought with Daizu, Goemon, and Nahomi. When the monsters screamed, Barako thought she heard a trace of a mimicry of the tower’s horn. They were its guardians. They would defend it as she would Striking Dawn.
Nahomi lured a two-headed monster forward. It stumbled into an awkward lunge, and she smashed her hammer against its elbow, shattering the arm. Goemon took advantage of the moment. He had just forced back one of the other giants, and he made a vicious turn to plunge his katana at the staggering monster’s neck. The creature jerked at the same instant, spoiling his aim. The blade went between the heads. One of the skulls whipped around and snapped its jaws closed on his blade. He jerked it free, but the extra second it took him to do so was enough for the opponent he had forced into retreat to storm back. Its three arms wielded a massive, two-handed zanbatō sword. It slashed the enormous, curving blade into Goemon’s back, severing his spine. Nahomi hurled herself at the twin-headed creature, and with a shout of vengeance, shattered both of its necks with two swift, punishing blows of her hammer.
Ishiko hissed. The zombie sprinted around Barako and made a swift run at Nahomi. Barako leapt after it. She was slower, in her armor, than Ochiba. But she had speed of her own when she called upon it. Her hammer strike was awkward as she ran, but hit the zombie in the shins. Ishiko rolled, screaming a rage that was worse than the death cry of an animal, and came back at Barako while Nahomi jumped from the fallen giant and clashed weapons with another.
Barako blocked Ishiko’s flurry of strikes. She retreated, buying time, looking for an opening. As she did, she glanced toward Ochiba.
The captain feinted, sidestepped as the monster skeleton tried to counter, and thrust her katana through a seam in the monster’s armor, into the joint of its knee. She twisted the katana, pulled it out in a slashing move, and cut the leg out from under the monster. It fell at her, screaming. She avoided it easily.
She was on the uphill side of the enemy. There was nothing blocking her access to the tower.
Haru screamed again.
Ochiba’s eyes met Barako’s.
The moment was the briefest. It was sliced so finely from the measure of time that it had no dimensions at all. Next to it, a single heartbeat was the passing of an age. Barako looked across the battle into Ochiba’s eyes without distraction, without a twitch in the smooth movement of her defense against Ishiko. The tiniest fragment of time. Not even a spark against the dark of night.
Yet it had the weight of a glacier. It pressed down on Barako. It was so massive, it wore down mountains, so how could she shoulder it? Its weight came from absences, of words, of gestures, of confessions, of touch. Of hopes, and of laughter and of the dreams of what might be. All that had been left undone was gathered together, and the other side of the moment was too late to think of them.
The look and its weight were beyond bearing. Barako should have gasped. She should have shouted. But the instant was too short. There was no time for anything that was not happening already.
No time for anything except a decision.
Ochiba was going into the tower alone.
No, Barako would have shouted, had the moment been long enough. You must not. Do not divide the forces. Do not go in alone. Please. Please. Do not go in alone.
Except in truth, she would not have shouted. So many times, in so many battles, Ochiba’s battle joy had balanced with Barako’s caution. This time, though, there was no balance to seek.
Time in the moment to make a decision? No, that was not so. Because there was no decision to make. Fate had decreed what must be done. Haru was in the tower. Ochiba was the only one with the opportunity. It was nothing like recklessness that commanded her to turn from Barako and run for the entrance. It was only duty that called. It was honor that commanded.
And in that fragment of time, before Ochiba turned, while Barako still looked across in horror to see her eyes and know what was about to happen, Barako cursed the tyranny of her duty.
In time yet to come, in the uneasy dark of sleeplessness, Barako would think about that curse, and realize that she understood the rage that burned in the thing that had been, and in a terrible way still was, Ishiko.
The hobbled skeleton tried to drag itself after Ochiba. There was a new pain in its scream without breath, as if in its failure it too knew the meaning of duty and felt its loss. Ochiba sprinted up the slope and vanished into the green and black storm beyond the threshold. The doorway quivered, its spiked circumference twitching inward briefly, then stilling. It did not close.
Barako snarled. She turned her wrath on Ishiko. Barako was here when she should be at Ochiba’s side. She could not know what was happening in the tower. The fear that she had seen Ochiba for the last time fueled her speed and the power of her blows. Now the zombie was on the defensive. Barako struck and struck and struck with the hammer. The horror and grief that came with seeing what Ishiko had become were forgotten. Ochiba’s absence was the worst of all absences, the reason why everything else became an absence. Barako had no other will now than to smash these creatures of the Shadowlands to dust, and to fulfill a duty, her duty, the one whose precise shape was hers and hers alone, and that was to be at Ochiba’s side.
The Ishiko horror was in the way, and so it must be destroyed.
Haru screamed.
And Ochiba yelled.