The Storm of Blood

 

Down from the hills the land was a pattern of green fields and darker gatherings of orchards and forest flowing to the sea, where the city of Jinan hunched like a barnacle clinging to the shore.  It looked ugly to her, and Jaya took pleasure in thinking she would soon wipe if from the face of this sacred island.  The afternoon sun slanted down across the water, setting the clouds on fire, and the whole sea was the color of blood.

The southern horizon, over the water, was all a black frontier of churning cloud and lances of violet lightning.  The monsoon had begun, though it had yet to come ashore.  For days she had watched ships scuttle in from the sea to take shelter in the harbor here, anchoring themsleves securely, ready to hold out through the torrents of rain and wind they knew would come.  Even the outlanders had learned the ways of the great storms that came when the seasons turned.  She would use that to grind them into pieces.

It was good to look on the sea again, to watch the waves roll and swell and fall in on themselves, the crests growing higher and higher as the storm out to sea gained intensity.  The thunder was distant, but that would change.  She felt the winds shifting as she closed her eyes, feeling the breath of the sea on her face, smelling the salt and blood and the seaweed and dead fish rotting on the beaches.  As familiar as her own voice.  The gods were close to her now, and she remembered all they had laid upon her.  The favor shown by Arang who had saved her life, of Ularu who had spared it, of the blessing of Sa-Hantu who lit the deep with his fire, and of Hamau the tigress, who haunted her wake like a promise of vengeance.

Dhatun stood by her, and she was glad of his presence.  He frowned down at the town spread along the shore.  It had not been made for defense, and the walls were low and old, but it was plain measures had been taken since the battle at the Basu, and from here they could see barricades raised to block the streets inside the gate, and logs used to raise the walls higher and reinforce them.  The two cannons she had captured would not breach a hole easily.

“How many do they have inside?” Dhatun said.

“For certain, they have at least three hundred to fight.  On the defensive, their horse will not be much help to them.”  She pointed.  “I am more concerned for the cannons.  There, there, there and there.  The fields of fire will cover too much ground, so there will be no safe approach.”  She smiled.  “So we will not attack openly.”

Dhatun spat on the ground.  “Cannons.  I hate them.  They make nothing of courage, or of skill.  They tear men’s bodies apart and leave them no dignity, and they leave no heads to be taken.”

“I will use any weapon I can lay hands upon to fight this war,” Jaya said.  “They chose it, I did not.  They came and sought me out and shed the blood of my family.  They chose it.”  She pointed to the horizon.  “The rain will come soon, and then we will strike.  Rain will make their guns and cannons useless from wet powder.  Then it will be war as you like it.  War of the sword and the knife.  Are your canoes ready?”

“I have only a dozen.  I will be able to move perhaps a hundred men into the city, and the quality of the fighters is. . .”  He shook his head.  Son of a warrior people, Dhatun had little patience for these farmers in arms.

“It will be enough,” she said.  Looking over the hillside, she saw a few wisps of smoke from cook-fires, but little sign of the almost five hundred she had gathered under her command.  They were not soldiers.  They were farmers and former slaves and people driven from their homes by Mordani savagery.  The giants had done work for her, razing farms and slaughtering people until they rose in revolt and came to follow her.  Given time, she would forge them into an army worth the name.  But now she lacked time.  More strength would come to the enemy with every ship, and the longer she waited, the harder they would be to overcome.

“We will come on them with the storm, we will be the storm.”  She looked to the horizon.  “The gods will answer.”

o0o

She gathered them to a great fire as the night fell, all those who had come to follow her.  Around her were gathered her disciples, the acolytes of the tiger goddess, their skins painted and tattooed until they seemed like something other than human.  They crouched in a ring around her, their eyes reflecting the firelight.

“Now is the time that has come,” she said to the watching faces.  “Now is the hour I promised you.  The Mordani have taken your homes, your wives and sons and fathers and husbands.  They have killed to make you afraid, and you who are here are those who swore to fight, to take revenge.”  She looked up at the sky, the stars beginning to vanish behind a veil of cloud, the wind billowing through the dark.  “They took from me.  They came to my island and slew my younger brother, my father.  They set a blood-debt upon me.  I am not done paying it.  Not yet.”

“Do not fear them.  They shall fear us, and they do.  See them barricaded inside their boil of a city.  See them hiding behind walls, afraid of the night.  Their god will not save them.  Not here.  This is a land of other gods, of those who shaped us and guide us.  Tonight we will take back what was taken!”

She held up her sword and they all heard the tolling roar of the tigress from beyond the fire, out in the night.  The sacred tigress of Hamau that had followed her from the uplands, grown large and terrible.  A sign of divine favor.  A sign of war.

Her army roared in answer, and then they were up and moving, carrying torches in the dark, gathering spears and swords and the ladders she had caused them to fashion over the past five days.  She wanted to get them over the walls as quickly as she could, knowing the Mordani were trained for war in masses, front to front, army against army, while her fighters were better in the dark, close places of jungle or alleyway where they could drag down their larger foes.

They came forward out of the orchards in a wave, carrying fire and chanting their battle-songs – the songs of the Tau’ta, as she had taught them.  Let the war-chants of her people cause terror on the battlefield as they once had.  They piled wood for bonfires and lit them, sending forth the blazing light into the dark.

They were seen, and she heard the shouts from the wall.  A few shots rang, but she did not fear them at this range.  They would want to loose the cannons on her, but they would be loaded with small shot or iron scraps for killing men, and such fire would not reach this far.

They lit a half-circle of fire around the town, out of reach of guns, and then they gathered in a long line and brandished their weapons, beat their spear-hafts upon their shields and chanted, all their voices rising as one.  They chanted and shouted and stamped their feet and the sound rose up, immense.  Shouts and jeers and insults came from the walls of Jinan, but she knew they were afraid, she knew they were waiting for the charge.  Soon enough, they would have it.

The tigress roared in the darkness, and she knew they heard it as well.  The voices of her people rose, crying out, and she looked back to see the sacred tigress stride forth from the forest, her hide glowing like gold in the firelight.  She was the size of a pony, heavy-footed and molten-eyed.  She roared again, and it shook the ground beneath their feet, echoing out to crack against the walls and roll out to sea.

A terrible detonation rent the dark on the far side of the wall, in the harbor, and a column of fire as bright as day reared up.  Jaya laughed – it was Dhatun’s work, with his eighty volunteers and his hide canoes.  As commanded, he had slipped around the headland, up into the harbor, and set fire to the powder magazine of one of the many ships fixed at anchor.  Now the Mordani knew they were assailed on two sides, and they could not know how many were at their backs.

Jaya lifted up her sword to the heavens and pointed out to sea.  “Hamau!  Tigress of the night!  Lift up your voice!  Nagai!  Dragon-guardian of the dead, make ready your kingdom!  Sa-Hantu!  Sea-boiler, raise yourself from the deep and whip the waves to seething!  Ularu!  Serpent-speaker, path of the forest!  Spit your poison at my enemies!  Arang!  Wave-cutter!  Keeper of oaths!  Let the sky strike with vengeance!  Let the storm come to shore!”

The wind turned as though at her command, and suddenly it swept inland from the sea.  She smelled the breath of the monsoon, and then rain began to slash in, driven on the rising gale.  Lightning flashed like fire, illuminating every spearpoint and sword with racing green flame, and then the thunder roared like Hamau herself, full-throated and furious.  The rain paused, as if gathering itself, and then it fell at once like a thousand knives, and Jaya screamed as she led her army forward into the tempest.

o0o

They charged through the blinding rain, and no cannonfire greeted them, the powder soaked through.  Ladders went up along the wall, and Jaya was among the first to climb, spitting out the rain, able to see only in the flare of lightning.  At the top she faced a white-faced enemy trying to see through the water that sluiced from his steel helm, and she drove her sword into his throat, pulling it back in a gush of blood that was black in the white lightning blaze.

A man tried to shoot her, but the match of his gun was extinguished, and she cut through the side of his knee and toppled him off the wall into the dark behind it.  A spearpoint came for her and she caught the haft, wrestled it aside and drove in to cut at the man who wielded it.  Others came in on her sides, and then more of her warriors were cresting the wall, and the parapet became a deadly, bloody struggle there in the torrent.  Water washed over their feet, warm as blood, and the Mordani in their boots lost their footing and went down, some of them washed down the stone steps, screaming.

The battle became a series of moments trapped in the flickers of lightning, like scenes painted on a cave wall or etched in stone.  Warriors with spears and swords and axes raised, driving the giants back from the parapet, blood flowing over the stones, mixing with the rain.  They hacked through the vine ropes that held the logs atop the wall and sent them crashing down, crushing the reinforcements struggling to reach the wall.

The tigress appeared on the wall as if she had been formed from the storm itself.  She struck with claw and fang, and then she roared with blood coursing from her jaws, the sound deafening even in the hollows of the thunder, driving men back from her in terror that made them avert their eyes and grovel on the stone, begging for their lives to be spared.

The assault forced the defenders back from the wall, hurling giants down into the darkness behind it.  Jaya and others leaped down, and swords and knives assaulted the ropes that bound the logs blocking the gate.  Soaked with rain, the vines parted easily and the logs tumbled down.  The gate was wrenched open, and the rest of her army poured through the gap.  In a wave they crushed into the city, flooding the streets, and the killing began.

The Mordani had raised barricades of logs and crates and water-filled barrels to block the streets, and now they fell back on those as bastions to defend.  Great braziers were lit and struggled to cast light in the downpour.  The Utani swarmed to the tops of the barriers and battle flared along the crests.  The Mordani were huge, towering over their opponents, cutting around them with their long swords and heavy-bladed axes, each of them leaving a ring of dead, but they could not stem the tide, for there were too few of them.

Already their courage had begun to shatter, and Jaya saw many of them abandon the barricades and flee into the dark.  She did not concern herself with them, for they would not be able to make an escape by sea.  Even if they slipped past Dhatun’s throat-cutters, they could not sail away into the teeth of the monsoon – they would be torn to pieces.

She led the charge up against another makeshift barrier, and the tigress was with her and set her claws  to tearing it apart.  Giants screamed in terror at the sight of her, and then the barricade was split in half and Jaya pushed through, cutting down those few who remained to try and stop her.  The tigress howled and leaped into the dark, seeking blood to drink.

The rush came to the center of the town, where there was a pillar of carved stone etched with words in the language of the giants, and here she found the last knot of resistance gathered in a ring around the obelisk, a circle of perhaps thirty men with swords and spears held in a forest of steel points, and at their head, facing her, was the paladin with his blazing white sword in hand.  The helm hid his face, but she knew he had only one eye remaining to see her with.  She drew her poisoned dagger in her left hand and advanced on him, unafraid.

There was no circle of single combat this time, no drawing back.  Jaya and her men rushed forward, and the Mordani met them there on the hard stones of the plaza, rain sheeting down on them, the flashes of lightning revealing the ships surging and rocking in the grip of the terrible waves rushing in to pound against the shore.  Buildings all around were blazing too fiercely to be extinguished, and the air smelled of blood and smoke and the breath of thunder.  The forces crashed together in a storm of steel.

Jaya met the paladin in a rush, and there was no feint or artistry this time, only murderous rage.  He hacked at her with great sweeps of his blade, and she evaded his blows and tried to slip past his guard and stab into his flesh.  He buffeted her with his shoulder and knocked her to the ground, and she had to roll aside in the ankle-deep flood to avoid the downward flash of his steel.

She kicked his knee and it folded, sent him staggering aside, and she was up and on him like a beast.  She hammered sword-blows against his helmet to keep him blinded, and she stabbed in from the sides, seeking a way past his armor.  Twice her point glanced off steel, but the third time it bit flesh and sank in deep.

The paladin went to one knee, and she hooked her sword under the bottom edge of his helm and ripped it across, severing the straps and cutting into his throat.  She pulled her dagger free and then dug her fingers into the eyes of his helm, pulled it off and cast it ringing into the floodwaters.  Blood pulsed from his neck, and he put a hand up, trying to stem it.  She saw the twisted scar where she had taken his eye, wrath boiling in the one that remained.

Incredibly, he tried to rise, his throat cut, venom in his blood, white fire hissing in the rain where it fell on his sword.  Jaya caught his hair with her left hand and pulled back, exposing the wound and making blood gush out and pour down his front.  She gave a hideous cry of fury and cut with her father’s sword, shearing through his neck and sending his headless body to the flooded ground.

Lightning flared, and Jaya saw the white flame that limned his sword scatter and fade as his sword fell from his hand and was quenched in the waters of the storm.  Around her the fight was over, the Mordani dragged down and their heads taken.  Jaya held her sword and the head of her enemy up to the sky and gave voice to a great cry that echoed up into the storm like the roar of the tigress.  Fire and blood had come to Jinan, and fire and blood had cleansed it.

o0o

It was days before the rains stopped, and the storm wandered out to sea and left the island green and flowing with floodwaters, the rivers and streams swollen beside drowned fields.  The city of Jinan was silent now, the buildings emptied, the ships at anchor unmanned.  Heads of the slain hung from every roof-corner and swung from poles mounted beside the roads.  Several of the buildings had been burned out and were no more than blackened ruins, open to the blue sky.

There were prisoners.  Jaya stood before the house where the giants had worshiped their god and waited while the few hundred taken alive were herded before her.  Bedraggled and afraid, they looked miserable, and she almost pitied them, though she knew that in this war she had chosen, she could not allow herself that weakness.

They separated the men who knew seacraft, the ones with skills in forging and carpentry and gunnery.  She would need them, and they would be compelled to work in her cause.  The rest would killed, or enslaved for hard labor.  What remained were the women, and she had them given out to the men who agreed to serve her, and to her warriors who wanted them.  Many had no desire for such tall women as mates, but would take them as servants.

The last were children, and she commanded that they be given over to her disciples, who would take them into the uplands and put them in the care of Vadir, who would train them in the mysteries of Hamau.  There must be more children to learn the path of the huntress, and these would do as well as any.  Taken from their people, they would learn other ways.

Dhatun came and faced her, and he looked as if he had swallowed something bitter.  “There is one here who would speak to you, though I would have killed him, given my choice.”  He gestured, and they brought forth a tall man with a long beard.  Filthy and bedraggled, it took her a moment to recognize Bastar.

He bowed his head.  “Princess you were, now queen.  I am glad to find you alive.”

Jaya looked at him, bemused.  “And how are you here?  Did you raise steel in defense of this place?”

“I did not,” he said.  “I was imprisoned.  There was a dispute with another man over a woman, and I was due to be hanged.  Your attack saved my life a second time.”

“Imprisoned again,” she said.  “You seem to find little brotherhood with your fellows.”

“That is true,” he said.  “So I am glad to re-enter your service.  If you are taking your war to sea, then I will be pleased to be of use.”

Jaya hesitated, considering.  She did not ever quite trust him, yet she had missed him, in a strange way.  She could give a command and they would cut off his head and that would be the end, but he could be useful, and she liked him in spite of herself.

She sighed.  “Set him free.  See he is washed and dressed.”  She shook her head.  “You are not an easy man to be rid of, it seems.  You are right, my war must go to sea now, and I will have need of men like you.  I will need Mordani to teach my people the ways of your ships and your weapons, and you will be among them.”  She looked out over the bay, the dozen ships at anchor, and she smiled a cold smile.  “I am returning to the sea.  I am returning home, and I will wipe it all clean with steel, and with fire.”  She looked to where the storms walked on the far horizon, and there was a rising tide in the salt rush of her blood.