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* The Last One
A grim tale of the fate of Kyuden Hida and the defenders of the Empire.
by Nancy Sauer*
edited by Fred Wan
First Day of the Month of the Serpent, 1172
The war fortress that the Crab were pleased to call Hida Palace sat on an outcropping of granite, part of a range of hills spawned by the Wall Above the Ocean mountains. In normal times one could stand on its high outer walls and see peasants tilling the farmlands below, caravans on the road bringing supplies, messengers coming or going with orders for the vast war machine that was the Crab Clan.
In normal times. Now, Hida Tatsuma looked out over fields that grew only weeds: the peasants had fled months before. The roads were empty of traffic as well; with most of the Crab lands under the sway of the Destroyers supplies, and orders, came from the fringe of Crab land on the other side of the mountains. Kyuden Hida had been bypassed by the invaders in their push into the Empire and now it stood untouched, defiant, alone.
“Useless.”
Tatsuma turned around slightly. “What is useless?” he said.
Hida Shimonai stopped his pacing for a moment and waved his arms around. “This!” he said. “We should be in the north, where the fighting is. Nothing will be accomplished by stuffing this fortress with men.”
“Your insights on warfare are brilliant,” Tatsuma said. “You should go to the general at once and tell him.”
Shimonai gifted him with a glare and resumed his pacing. Tatsuma swung back around to his watching and suddenly leaned forward a bit, his attention caught. “There is someone coming down on the north road,” he said.
“The north road?” Shimonai said. “But that road doesn’t go anywhere now. Well, nowhere but Nishiyama Mura,” he amended. He joined the other man at the wall and looked north. The man on the road was wearing the light armor favored by Crab scouts, and he covered the distance with the steady pace of a Hiruma. “He’ll have new information from Nishiyama,” Shimonai said, and he headed for the stair that led down to the courtyard. Tatsuma stayed where he was, wondering why the sight of the man filled him with prickles of unease.
* * * * *
The calligraphy lacked the elegance of a court-trained hand, but the characters had a force and clarity that Kaiu Kyoka appreciated. It spoke well for the writer, he thought, that even with a Destroyer army approaching the details of clear communication had been observed. He rolled up the report and moved over to the map table that dominated the room. “This is not good news,” he said.
“It changes nothing,” Hida Rokurota said. He was busy adding and rearranging tokens on the map, and he did not look up. “Our orders are to campaign against the flank of the Destroyer forces, and that is what we will do.”
“Two days ago we received word that the Asahina had stopped receiving messages from Razor of Dawn Castle,” Kyoka said. When Rokurota didn’t comment he trailed his finger over the map. “The Destroyers have reached the River of White Gold, giving them a natural defense against the combined armies. What better time for them to consolidate their rear?”
Rokurota’s silence continued for a moment, and then he looked up at his fellow commander. “We have our orders from Reiha-sama,” he said quietly. “This changes nothing that matters.”
* * * * *
Fifth Day of the Month of the Serpent
The walls of Kyuden Hida were filled with samurai. Some were part of the watch, and they scanned the land around them: north, south, east, west. The rest were all looking north. The news about Nishiyama had traveled through the fortress, and now everyone was waiting for some word of what had happened. Five days were plenty of time for messengers, or survivors, to arrive.
Slowly the Jade Sun made its way to its zenith and back down to the western horizon. The road north stayed empty of life.
* * * * *
Eighth Day of the Month of the Serpent
“Finally!” Shimonai said. “Something to do!”
“A lot to do,” Tatsuma said. “Now a fortress stuffed with warriors becomes useful.”
Shimonai laughed but made no other reply. He scanned the hills to the west, where legion after legion of Destroyers were marching towards Kyuden Hida. Slowly they gathered in the plains around the fortress and then arranged themselves around it. “I wonder,” he said, and then paused. “What is that?” he said, pointing.
Tatsuma squinted at the sight, puzzled. “A siege engine?”
* * * * *
“Definitely a catapult,” Kyoka said.
“Wonderful,” Rokurota said, and meant it. “While they are trying to lob pebbles at our gate, we can be planning some surprises.”
Kyoka frowned. “It doesn’t make sense. You read the reports on Shiro Kuni-they have much better ways to crack a fortress wall. So why bring those toys? They are too light to launch anything heavy enough to damage the gate, much less the wall.”
“That Unicorn unit managed to kill the catapult-creature at Shiro Kuni,” Rokurota said. “Maybe they only had one.”
“Maybe,” Kyoka said. It was possible: Over the years Kyoka had seen three different Shadowlands creatures that had never been seen before, or since, and this was by no measure a rare claim. “But it isn’t my habit to assume that things have gone the way I’d like them to.”
“Truth,” Rokurota said. “But we can’t stand around doing nothing because we are afraid worse is coming. We need to work out a plan to deal with what we have now.”
“Truth,” Kyoka said with a smile. The two men left the window and turned back to the map table.
* * * * *
The Night of the Tenth Day of the Month of the Serpent
Shimonai damped down his impatience and waited for the signal. A few feet ahead of him Toritaka Okabe leaned up against the corner of the wall and listened intently. Shimonai listened as well, though he doubted he could hear anything the scout couldn’t. Fighting the Shadowlands one learned not to take chances, which was why the two men were in the alley between two storehouses in the first place. Not ten minutes before one of the watchmen had raised the alarm, insisting he had seen something catapulted over Kyuden Hida’s walls. No one knew what to make of the report-putting something over a fortess’s walls was only useful if the something was on fire, which this clearly hadn’t been-but Rokurota-sama had ordered a full search until the thing was found.
Okabe waved a hand and the two of them went around the corner and continued on. They were halfway down the next side of the storehouse when the scout stopped. Shimonai didn’t have to ask why: the smell was obvious to him as well. It reminded him of a few battlefields he had been on, but worse. Okabe sniffed the air, his head turning this way and that, and then he set off. Shimonai followed silently. They didn’t need words.
They found it two storehouses down, in another alley. It had apparently hit the roof of a storehouse, damaging it slightly, before sliding down into an untidy heap on the ground. Okabe crept towards it, tetsubo at the ready, until was within a few feet of it. Shimonai admired Okabe’s strength of will; even at his distance the smell was already stomach-turning. “Rotting offal?” Okabe finally said, turning back towards Shimonai. His voice had the nasal tones of a man trying not to breathe through his nose. “They’ve gone to all this trouble to throw rotting offal at us?”
“Maybe they are confused,” Shimonai said. “Maybe they think we are the Crane and can be killed by making a mess.”
Okabe laughed briefly and then looked like he regretted it. “We’ll need to summon some eta to clean this up,” he said, and started back towards Shimonai.
“That should raise their place in the Order next life,” Shimonai said. “We should tell-WARE CRAB!”
Okabe spun around, too late. The pile had abruptly reorganized itself as half a dozen garbage-covered zombies, and the fastest of them was already inside the range of a tetsubo swing. Okabe swore furiously and tried to push it away with the tetsubo while he drew a heavy-bladed knife. Two more zombies joined the first.
“Hida!” Shimonai yelled as he joined the fight. He destroyed the three slowest zombies, pulping them like over-ripe melons, and then turned to Okabe. The scout had done for one of his attackers and was trying to hack off the second’s head while keeping away the third. Shimonai moved in to help, and the remaining two zombies were quickly taken care of.
Okabe staggered back until he ran up against the wall. “Hida-san,” he gasped out, and it was then that Shimonai noticed the bloody maw that the other man’s abdomen had become. As he watched Okabe’s eyes rolled up in his head and his body started to slump down the wall. Shimonai reacted without thought and swung his tetsubo around, smashing Okabe’s head. Then the full force of the battlefield hit him and he bent over and vomited. When he was done he spat twice to clear his mouth and backed out of the alley, yelling the alarm.
The Night of the Fifteenth Day of the Month of the Serpent
Tatsuma removed the head of the last zombie with a clean axe-stroke, checked around to make sure that it really was the last zombie, and took a deep breath. What did it mean, he wondered, that the stench was ceasing to bother him? He shook his mind free of the triviality and checked the others with him. They were all untouched and alert save Shimonai, who stood with his eyes shut tight, sweating heavily. Tatsuma looked at him closely but to his relief the other man seemed to have his berserker impulses under control. Zombies were bad enough; they didn’t need a second variety of mindless killing machine turned loose.
“How many do you think they will pitch tonight?” one of the other men asked.
“Quartermaster Onegano is giving even odds on seven,” another replied.
“Sucker bet. I put my money down on twelve.”
The warning gongs rang out in a now-familiar pattern. “You are now one closer to winning your bet,” Tatsuma said. “Let’s go find our newest gift.”
Sixteenth Day of the Month of the Serpent
Kyoka walked down the hall, trying to coax forward an idea lurking in the back of his head. Over the years he’d tried many approaches to the problem, and every time he found that nothing worked as well as pacing. At home this drove his wife to distraction, but here at Kyuden Hida there was enough room for him to do it in peace.
He turned the corner and stopped, suddenly alert. At the other end of the hall a Crab samurai-Shimonai, memory said-stood motionless, head slightly down as if listening. Kyoka stood silently for a while, not wanting to alert whatever Shimonai was hunting, but finally the wait overcame him. Slowly and quietly he drew his sword and then crept up until he was almost even with Shimonai. “Hida-san,” he whispered, “what is happening?”
There was a moment of silence, and then the Hida’s head came up and turned. Kyoka had an instant to look into the eyes of a dead man and then the zombie’s hands were around his neck, squeezing. Kyoka managed not to drop his sword, and desperately he tried jamming it into his assailant. The sword went into Shimonai’s chest and came out his back, but had no other effect. Kyoka was fumbling for his wakizashi when there came the sound of crunching bones.
Eighteenth Day of the Month of the Serpent
Rokurota finished reading the report, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it across the room as hard as he could. The thing that once had been Hida Shimonai had been found and destroyed, and the healers had systematically gone through the garrison looking for anyone else showing signs of the plague. Nearly a score of samurai had been given permission to seppuku, and fifteen of the castle servants had been mercifully put to death. His forces were being bled away without so much as putting a scratch on a Destroyer’s armor.
He contemplated going down to one of the dojo and finding someone to spar with and regretfully put the idea away. He had work to do, and his frustration was just going to have to live with itself. Standing up he poured himself a cup of tea and was about to pick it up and go to the map table when something caught his eye. The surface of the tea was rippling slightly, as if in response to a great drum. Rokurota stared at it for a minute, watching the ripples grew larger, and then he turned around and headed for the room’s window. The signal gong started booming before he got there, but he already knew what was coming.
“It’s even uglier than they said it was,” Rokurota said, and then remembered that Kyoka was no longer there. He grimaced and then focussed his attention on the catapult-creature. It was a graceless construction of huge legs, absurd baby arms, and a massive yet skeletal torso. It could be set on fire, he knew, but Rokurota was hard pressed to think of what else they could do to it. As it reached the Destroyer camp it left the road and moved to the north, coming to a stop at the edge of their formation. Rokurota was about to turn away from the window when a flash of motion caught his eye. He looked up and discovered that there was a second catapult-creature coming down the road. “Two,” Rokurota said, staring blindly at his death. “Bishamon strengthen us, they’ve brought two of them.”
Twentieth Day of the Month of the Serpent
The gates of Kyuden Hida boomed and creaked at the impact. Rokurota waited a moment for the noise to die down and then continued. “After the next hit the gates open. Any last questions?”
Tatsuma smiled. “The gates open, we run out, north creature, kill as many Destroyers as possible. I think it’s a good plan.” He turned to the men ranged behind him. “Hida!” he yelled, waving his tetsubo over his head for emphasis. “HIDA!” they shouted back at him. Tatsuma turned back to Rokurota. “No, no questions.”
Rokurota nodded and turned away. There was a stairway nearby that led from the courtyard to the top of the wall and he took it two steps at a time. The Destroyer commander clearly had learned something from Shiro Kuni: instead of sending his forces against the fortress while the gate was being smashed, he had completely ringed his catapult-creatures in a defensive arrangement. Rokurota found this maddeningly reasonable. There was another boom of protest from the gate and he put on a last burst of speed, reaching the top of the wall just as Tatsuma’s force was running out.
The men charged the Destroyer camp, screaming battle cries and insults against their enemies’ parentage as they went. Rokurota watched with heart pounding as the Destroyers reacted, some of them running out to meet the assault and some of the warriors guarding the south creature shifting over to reinforce the north. “Now!” he yelled, and the great signal gong rang out wildly. To the south of the Destroyer camp a second Crab force-made up of every Hiruma in Kyuden Hida-suddenly broke cover and silently charged towards the south creature.
Rokurota leaned forward, trying to watch both fights at once. The Hiruma had to succeed. Even Kyuden Hida’s massive gates couldn’t survive two catapult-creatures working in concert; already they were starting to buckle slightly, and the demon skulls that had decorated them were now a thing of the past. If they could kill even one of the creatures they would have more time, more time to plan, more time to fight, more time to save Kyuden Hida.
The Hiruma had fought their way almost to the target before coming to an abrupt stop. Squinting slightly Rokurota saw that they had encountered a unit of the rare animal-headed Destroyers. He pounded his fists on the wall with helpless frustration as the Crabs were overwhelmed. Rokurota shifted his attention to the north and saw that there was still one Crab fighting. Tatsuma, he thought, but it was hard to tell. For a few stunning moments he held off the steel circle of his enemies, and then the catapult creature made a great, slobbering yawn, whipped its massive tail around, and crushed them all.
Twenty-sixth Day of the Month of the Serpent
Rokurota put all of his frustration into the tetsubo swing, and the Destroyer’s head crumpled with a satisfying crunch. Casting about for a new opponent he took in the madness the courtyard had become.
From the ruined gates a steady stream of Destroyers flowed in. There were still Crab samurai on the walls, and they rained arrows and rocks down on the invaders, but they could not keep them out. To his left a line of Crabs fought to defend the castle itself, but it was already burning wildly. Rokurota blinked water out of his eyes-sweat, it had to be sweat-and charged the nearest Destroyer.
When he finally died, he was trying to shove the end of a broken katana into the eyehole of his enemy’s armor.
