Page 8 of Night of the Dragon

I looked at the others. “Forward,” the shrine maiden said after a moment. “We’ll still need a ship if we want to reach the Moon Clan islands. We certainly can’t swim there. Let’s head for the docks. Maybe there will be someone left who will be willing to let us sail with them.”

“Um, Reika-san?” Yumeko’s voice, wary and suddenly tense, drew our attention. “Chu is... I think he is trying to tell us something.”

We glanced down at the shrine maiden’s guardian, and my instincts bristled. The dog had gone rigid as he glared behind us, eyes hard and curly tail up. His hackles stood on end, his lips were curled back to reveal teeth, and harsh growling sounds emerged from his throat.

I looked up the street. A body, blurry and indistinct, was shuffling toward us through the rain. It moved with an awkward, staggering gait, weaving unsteadily on its feet, as if it was drunk. As it drew closer and the growling from Chu grew louder, it resolved itself into a woman dressed in a ragged shopkeeper’s robe, a pair of scissors clutched in one hand. A smiling white mask covered her face, the kind used in Noh plays, and she stumbled barefoot through the mud, swaying erratically but still coming right for us.

It was then I noticed the broken haft of a spear shoved completely through her middle, staining one side of her robes dark red. An absolutely fatal wound, but it didn’t appear to hurt or slow her down in the slightest.

Because she’s not alive, I thought, just as the dead woman lifted her masked face...and suddenly put on a burst of speed, rushing us like a possessed marionette, scissors raised high.

Chu’s growls erupted into snarls. The ronin let out a curse and released his arrow; it flew unerringly forward and struck the woman in the chest. She staggered a bit, slipped in the mud and kept moving, letting out an unearthly scream as she came.

The noble’s sword rasped free, but I was already moving, Kamigoroshi in hand as the corpse lunged at me with a wail. I lashed out, dodging the scissors as they stabbed down, cutting through the woman’s pale white neck. Her head toppled backward as her body kept moving forward several paces, driven by momentum, then collapsed into the mud.

A nose-burning stench rose from the twitching corpse, the smell of blood magic, rot and decay, but no fluids pumped from the hole where the woman’s head used to sit. All the blood in her body had already been drained.

Yumeko put both hands to her mouth and nose, as if fighting the instinct to retch. Even the shrine maiden and the ronin looked a bit ill as they stared at the still-quivering body. Silence fell, but through the rain I could sense movement all around us, countless eyes turning in our direction.

“Don’t stand there,” I snapped, whirling on the group. “We have to keep moving! A blood mage wouldn’t raise just one corpse. The whole town is probably—”

A clatter from the teahouse across the street interrupted me. Pale, smiling figures were emerging from the darkened interior, staggering through the doors and crawling from the holes in the walls. Even more stumbled out of the buildings we’d passed, or staggered from the alleys between structures, lurching into the road. The smell of death and blood magic rose into the damp air, as the horde of the smiling dead turned hollow, sightless eyes on us and began swarming into the street.

We fled, heading deeper into Umi Sabishi, the shrieks and wailing of the undead ringing all around us. Smiling, masked corpses shambled into the road, reaching for us with grasping fingers, or swinging at us with crude weapons. The noble and I led the way, the Taiyo slashing at the dead that got too close, severing arms and heads with deadly precision. Chu, transformed into his enormous guardian form, rampaged around us in a blur of red and gold, crushing the bodies in his path or flinging them aside. The ronin’s arrows didn’t help much; unless beheaded or their legs were taken off, the undead ignored normally fatal wounds and kept coming. But he kept shooting, knocking them back or making them stagger, giving the Taiyo and me more time to cut them down.

Yumeko’s fox magic filled the air around us. She never attacked the corpses directly, but multiple copies of the four of us joined the fray, distracting and bewildering the undead, who didn’t seem to know the difference. The illusions erupted with small pops of smoke when they were torn apart, but more would always appear, and their presence greatly kept the swarm at bay as we fought our way through the streets.

“Samurai! Over here!”

Through the chaos of battle and the groans of the dead, I thought I heard a voice. Glancing up, I caught a glimpse of a sake house on the corner of the street, wooden walls and barred windows seemingly untouched by the dead. A sugidama, a large ball made of cryptomeria needles, hung over the entrance, its withering brown color an indicator that the sake brewed within was ready to be consumed. A figure peered out of that doorway, one arm beckoning to us frantically. If we could get there, it might be a haven from the corpses swarming the town.

“Everyone!” The noble spared a quick glance at the rest of our party. “This way!” he called. “Head for the sake house!”

More dead crawled from empty doorways and windows, and behind us, a large swarm of smiling, masked corpses staggered into the street.

“Kuso!” swore the ronin, fitting another arrow to the string. “There’s no end to these bastards.” He started to raise his bow, but the shrine maiden snatched the arrow from the string, making him curse in surprise.

“What—?”

“Yumeko.” The miko pointed back the way we’d come. “Block our path. Okame...” She pulled an ofuda from her sleeve, shoved the talisman halfway down the arrow shaft and handed the arrow back to the ronin. “Here. Aim for one in the center. Everyone else, look away.”

Yumeko turned, sending a wall of blue-white foxfire roaring up to block the end of the street. At the same time, the ronin raised his bow, the ofuda fluttering along the length of the arrow. I saw the kanji forlightwritten on the paper talisman, just as Okame released the string. It flew unerringly down the road and struck the chest of a corpse shambling toward us, a torn parasol clutched in one bloodless hand.

Brilliant light erupted from where the arrow hit the body, sending it and the ones around it stumbling back. “Go!” Reika cried, and we sprinted forward, dodging the reeling undead, until we reached the sake house on the corner. The human I had seen, a smaller man with a soft, rounded face and the finer clothes of a merchant, gaped at us as we came through the door.

“Samurai!” he gasped as I pushed the heavy wooden door shut and the ronin shoved a beam through the handles. “You...you are not of the Mizu family! Have you come from Yamasura? Are there more of you on the...?”

His gaze suddenly fell on me, and he let out a little shriek, stumbling back a few steps. “Demon!”

“Quiet, fool!” The shrine maiden’s voice cut like a whip. “Unless you want the dead outside to beat down the door.”

He immediately fell silent, though his face was white as he backed away, clearly torn between fear of the dead outside and the demon in the room with him. I didn’t have to look at myself to know the fight had brought out the claws, fangs and glowing red eyes, and that fiery runes were crawling up my arms and neck. And if that pathetic human kept staring at me, I was going to show him he had every right to be afraid.

I caught myself with a shiver. Savagery still pumped through my veins, the desire to rip apart everything that stood against me. Taking a furtive breath, I tried calming the rage inside, forcing it back below the surface. I felt the claws and fangs disappear, the glowing tattoos fade away, but the bloodlust remained, needing only a tiny push to erupt into violence again.

Yumeko stepped forward, hands raised in a soothing manner as the man’s frightened gaze flicked to her. “It’s all right,” she told him. “We’re not going to hurt you. We want to help.”

“Who...who are you?” the merchant whispered. His gaze darted over all of us, wide and terrified. Chu had shrunk back into a normal dog, and Yumeko’s kitsune features were invisible to most, but between the explosions of light from the shrine maiden’s ofuda, Yumeko’s foxfire and a mythical komainu rampaging around us, we hadn’t been subtle. “Have you come to save us?” the man went on, a bewildered look crossing his face for a moment. “I thought...there were more of you.”

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