Dai-San - 03 Read Free Page B

Emblazoned across the center of each sail was the image of a grinning armored bird. They gleamed and flickered as if they were on fire.
    ‘Look below,’ said Moichi deliberately.
    They saw that the hulls of the ships were completely dry as they ran, keelless, across the sea, above the waves. Nevertheless, the sea furrowed beneath them and white spray flew in their wakes.
    ‘You have sorcerous foes, Captain,’ said Moichi flatly. ‘The crew will not like that.’
    ‘They do not have to like it,’ answered Ronin. ‘They merely have to fight.’ He turned. ‘And what of you, Moichi. Where do you stand?’
    ‘As I have said, Captain, I have beheld many strange sights, even as you have. There is nothing on land nor sea which frightens me.’ He slapped the port rail. ‘I have a good ship under my feet even if it is no match for those sorcerous ships out there.’ He shrugged. ‘There have ever been battles in my life.’
    ‘Then I have no cause for worry. Have the first mate break out the arms and prepare for boarding.’
    ‘Aye, Captain.’ The white teeth shone wolfishly. ‘A pleasure.’
    What of me?
    ‘Get below.’
    But I wish to fight.
    He turned to her and watched her eyes for a moment.
    ‘Have the bosun get you a sword, then.’
    There is no choice but to fight.
    He looked seaward.
    ‘We cannot outrun them. Moichi understood that immediately. They mean to take us.’ His right hand had drifted unconsciously to the hilt of his blade and his left hand clenched inside the Makkon gauntlet. He felt the adrenalin surging through his chest and arms. He breathed deeply, oxygenating his system to help forestall muscle fatigue in the battle to come. He longed for battle now, the warrior within him aching for release. ‘And I—’ he said thickly, ‘I wish to destroy them.’
    They were of obsidian, rough-hewn, sparking in the lowering sun, which peered out from behind jagged rents in the rippling clouds with a heavy light that was painful to the eyes. The high prows, sleek and sharp, still shattering the green water beneath them as they came on, were carved into grotesque faces, horned and beaked, resembling, uncannily, the Makkon.
    The masts seemed to be carved from vast alien rubies, for they were translucent, shedding thin escarpments of bloody shadow across the narrow decks and into the sea before the ships.
    ‘These craft are from another time,’ said Moichi with some professional awe. ‘I’d give an arm to pilot one.’
    Already they could discern movement along the enemy’s decks. Through the crashing, creaming bow waves, they could make out bright flashes of high helms and short-bladed swords like shining, articulated insects within a teeming hive.
    And now they saw that those who sailed the obsidian ships were not men at all. These beings were wide-shouldered, without the characteristic human slant. They were wasp-waisted with legs distinguished by bulging thighs and virtually no calfs. Their heads seemed stuck directly onto their shoulders without benefit of neck or throat. They wore sweeping conical helms of ebon metal and their barrel chests were encased in dark armor.
    Look at their faces.
    Ronin stared. Above the nose they had the skull of man, but below, black nostrils were gouged directly into the flesh, as if plunged by some murderous scalpel, and lower, the massive bone was pushed out into a snout, making them appear as if they had been dropped on the backs of their heads as they had been born. Their eyes were not the ovals of man but were round and beaded, glossily obsidian, like those of birds of prey. Indeed, as the ships drew closer, he saw that the helms were in fact long glistening plumage, which covered the heads of these strange warriors from crown to the centre of the back.
    Ronin looked around the Kioku. All the men were armed and the first mate had fully half the complement along the port sheer-strake, preparing to repel the boarders.
    And now the crash of the sea, as if the