SMOKE AND STEEL

A novella from The Trials of the Lion

THE COLD MONSOONS faded and the new spring unfurled green buds and sunny days. A second sort of flood surged across the Hinoni lowlands. Grim-faced peasants filled the emperor’s roads, fleeing out of the western provinces, leaving their fields unfurrowed and gone to seed. Nameless things had come down from the high valleys of the Old Fathers, and it was said that only Mount Zankada was safe in those uncertain days. Something was moving in the shadows, driving plagues and horrors down on the faithful. The emperor’s peace was dead.

With the peasants came tides of ronijar, servant-swordsmen seeking employment as guards or warriors to the noble families. They were a hard lot, and known by the curved swords they carried on hip or back, always on the lookout for coin to turn by guarding a wall or bridge, or escorting men of means. They even battled the crowds at times, and under the banners of the great houses turned the multitudes aside from borders where they were unwelcome. Thus did that season come to be known as the Summer of Shallow Graves.

But not every border was threatened by the starving peasants. South of the Jhar drylands, where the hills hook east for two hundred miles like a protective arm cradling a lover, lay the dark sea of trees called Zisatsun: the Hangman’s Wood. That was the domain of old Lord Kiratsu, whose reign had weathered fifty years. From that place, the peasants and ronijar alike kept clear, for all knew of the Hangman’s Wood, and feared the old man of Castle Kanashim’s wrath. His hard rule had maintained the peace, ensuring safe roads and full fields. Greater than their fear of the old man was their terror of Zisatsun, for it was there that Lord Kiratsu sent those who crossed him. They did not return.

Every farmer knew someone who had been hanged in those shadowy depths, where ghosts were known to crawl. Those who worked the fields could feel the forest’s eyes on their back, watching, waiting, hungry for more souls. Few outsiders had courage enough to draw even so near as Castle Kanashim and the town that sprawled at its foot.

Horses galloped up the main road that led to the fortress, built high on a crag that looked out over broad fields and little forests of slim green pole trees. The riders came on in a rush, hunched low in thin saddles, lashing their beasts ever faster. They were pale with panic, and dark eyes darted more than once toward the brooding wood that lay not three miles from Kanashim. Would that they had brought better tidings from the neighboring towns… Still, they were the lord’s ronijar and would deliver their findings as befitted men who carried the sword.

Clattering through the twisting streets and dismounted at the messenger’s stable just outside the outermost gate. even before the horses had stopped moving. Above them, the dark stone keep loomed. Layers of curtain walls stood high around it, each bulwark a sign of the emperor’s trust in Lord Kiratsu, for it was said that no man could breach those walls. And yet, someone had. Worse, they had escaped—and carried off the old lord’s young son, Hokon.

Three days the boy had been missing now, and no word had come from the kidnappers. The servants whispered of witches, or angered ghosts come down from the trees, but Lord Kiratsu tolerated none of their nonsense. Those who gossiped too loudly wallowed now in the stockades beside the great wooden gate of the outer walls. Their backs were laid open and bloody from the flogging the old man had ordered.

The riders pushed past the moaning fools in a hurry, bowing low past the outer guards who sat playing some game of cards and laughing. None of them seemed to hear the frail pleas for water coming from the stockades.

Cold relief washed over them when Imitsu-tan, the lord’s First Sword and morijar came striding across the stone garden at the heart of the castle. Imitsu was a tall man, with amber skin tanned deeply by long days of training in the sun. He was lean like a wolf, and his hazel eyes seemed almost yellow. He was wrapped in a black senshimii robe when he met the riders, and his features were set in a hard glare that made them quickly reconsider their relief at his appearance. His left hand rested on the wrapped hilt of his sword, which poked out behind him in a lacquered red sheathe.

“Lord Kiratsu will not see you,” Imitsu said brusquely. “And I cannot tarry here. Go see the Second Sword, and ask what need he has of you. You will report to me later.” Their formal greeting died on their lips. Fear rose up again.

“Is the lord angered?” It was a simple, honest question. Yet the morijar scowled at them as if they’d uttered a blasphemy.

“Did you not hear me?” They became very conscious of that hand upon the sword, eyes straying fearfully to it. “While you sauntered, the men dispatched to the Hangman’s Wood returned! They bore black news indeed.” Imitsu wiped the sweat from his face.

“News?” they asked. “What news?”

“They were met by one of the captors. The ransom is steep indeed, and the lord is furious.”

The riders swallowed at that. Imitsu-tan made a frustrated sound deep in his throat and waved them out of his way. “The servants claim an o-shinikenjar is staying in the town. I am off to see if I can find him. Now, do as I say, and Lord Kiratsu need not be reminded of your failure.”

They leaped to obey, leaving the black-swathed warrior alone. He watched them go. Sweat itched again upon his brow and stung his eyes. The spring had come with an unexpected heat, and already it hammered at him.

To the unstudied eye, Kanashim Town looked scattered and disorganized. Wooden houses stood jammed together at odd angles, creating a web of streets that seemed designed to confound the foot. Indeed, they were. Lord Kiratsu’s grandfather had planned the town, and seen it built to his exact specification. The streets were simply more bulwarks wrapping around the castle, forcing any would-be attackers to move in ways that advantaged the defenders. Imitsu had always marveled at that, at the planning and careful thinking the Kiratsu clan put into everything they did. When he had been promoted to Third Sword, and given charge of the town’s defense, he had been awed to learn the reason for the town’s haphazard layout.

Now it confounded him. He knew them like the back of his hand, but the confines of the village streets were tight, and the peasants made it worse. They stopped to bow, but only managed to get in the way. Eyes fixed ahead, he stormed past them, waving his hands and wishing they’d simply go back about their business.

Imitsu-tan could have taken a palanquin, but it would have drawn too much attention. There was fear enough, and suspicion. Too easy to spark a fire, and that was the last thing he wanted. No, it was better to seek the o-shinikenjar himself, if that was what the man truly was.

Imitsu had his doubts. To his knowledge, there were only two such men, and one had left the Hinoni lands years ago.

If nothing else, he could arrest a fraud, he thought with a grim smile. That might work in his favor.

He stepped around a hitching corner and saw the rest house the servants had told him of. A sign hung above it, boards with paint slapped on that approximated cursive. If Lord Kiratsu knew of the poor workmanship of those letters, the owner would have felt the sting of the law.

But it was too far from the center of the town, and the old man seldom left his keep anymore. It showed. Even though they feared the Hangman, the town seemed seedier than when Imitsu himself had patrolled the streets. It was less ordered, closer to the truth of poverty than the illusion.

He would have to speak to the Third Sword. Some things could not be allowed to slip. Especially with the strange news coming out of the west of demons and gray men.

He stopped at the thin door of the rest house and composed himself. The black senshimii was formally wrapped, the white line of his morijar status carefully and purposefully folded down his left shoulder and side, from hung his sword. He heard voices from within, dry laughter, and a dog barking. Imitsu-tan slid the door aside and ducked into the shadowy common room.

Half a dozen men sat around low tables, drinking from wooden cups. Their conversation died when they caught sight of Imitsu-tan, hand on hilt. They scrambled to their feet as his tawny eyes scanned the room, but the proprietor found him first. A cringing little man came bowing out of the corner, hands pressed together and eyes on the floor.

“My lord,” he said. “How may I serve you?”

Imitsu looked over the man’s head. None of these men seemed like the one he was searching for. Still, he spoke up, pitching his voice for the crowd to hear. “They say in the castle that a swordsman is staying here.”

A few men raised brows, but no one spoke up. The proprietor waited, a nervous smile playing at the corners of his mouth. It fluttered into a frown.

“Do you know him?”

“The outlander,” the little man said. “Surely you mean him?”

Imitsu-tan pursed his lips. As the morijar, he should have been informed of an outlander’s coming into Kanashim Town. Another thing to discuss with the Third Sword, he thought grimly. If there was time.

“Where is he?”

“At the shrine, with his companion. They spend much of their time there.”

“I see.”

“Will that be all, my lord?”

“Your sign. It looks as if a pig wrote it. Fix it, before Lord Kiratsu learns of it.”

The innkeeper choked, blanching white. The men at the tables laughed, but when Imitsu-tan turned his eyes to them, they fell silent, staring into their cups.

He swept out without another word, but he allowed himself a private grin. It was always good to know they were still afraid of the Hangman’s wolf.

The shrine was built at the edge of the village. Like the town, its construction belied a deeper intent. Three stories tall, the shrine was a tower of heavy timbers, with windows on the upper floors and stone walls on the first, giving a commanding view of the fields east of the town—and of sinister Zisatsun. A squadron of archers could defend the shrine for a long time, should the huge doors be sealed.

The shrine was largely a hollow space housing a great sculpture of Lord Zankada himself, the peaceful sword, sitting in repose. It was a work of beauty, each feature nearly life-like, though three times the size of a real man. The stone giant held its cupped hands out, holding a small flame the priests kept ever-burning.

Garlands of bright flowers hung from the sloping eaves of the tower, and paper lanterns dyed with bright colors. Bunches of corded amaranth so red they defied the eye hung above the door, filling the air with their heady scent. Within, low prayer chants drifted out, at odds with the routine clamor of the villagers.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to Imitsu, save one detail: a man sitting on the temple’s shallow steps, sharpening a heavy-looking sword. There was no mistaking him for anything but an outlander. He was a giant of a man, half again as tall as Imitsu-tan, who was tall amongst the Hinoni. He wore his mane of coarse black hair tied back at his temples with a violet headband, and his long, square face was unlike any Imitsu had ever seen before. He was rugged of feature and heavily scarred. The stranger’s nose had been broken many times, and he had a cruel cast about his face, ready for violence. His thickly muscled arms deftly drew a stone along the blade, drawing out the bright sound of well-honed bronze.

“Outlander,” Imitsu-tan said by way of greeting. The man looked up with hooded gray eyes.

He ought to have leaped to his feet in the morijar’s presence, yet he sat perfectly still. Imitsu-tan had the strange feeling of having intruded on some predator’s grounds, as if he were the stranger here. He tried not to let it show. “Who are you? What is your business?”

The man was slow to respond. Haltingly, he said, “I am Ulrem, of the Oron. My business is my own.” His words were clumsy, as if his mouth was poorly formed for the hinoni speech. He went back to sharpening his sword, dismissing the morijar as if he was a peasant.

Angered now, Imitsu-tan narrowed his eyes. “Any man who comes to Kanashim makes his business my own. Why are you here?”

The big man touched his thumb to the blade and grunted. Then he stood, looming up like a mountain above Imitsu-tan. Yet, there was no threat in it. The outlander moved with the easy grace of a panther. He slid the big blade into the sheathe on his back. Then he ducked his head under the dangling flowers and vanished into the shrine.

The chanting died down, and a moment later the outlander appeared with another man in tow: a Hinoni, like Imitsu-tan, with familiar features. Green eyes glittered in the man’s face, and his dark hair was pulled back behind his head in a simple knot. He wore a faded blue and ragged senshimii that hung to his knees and battered greaves over simple sandals. A sword hung at the man’s left hip. A ronijar, but hardly the picture of the man Imistu-tan sought.

The small man bowed at the waist. In formal o-hinoni that belied his simple appearance, the swordsman said, “May the sun shine on you, my lord.” A polite greeting, but one that said nothing.

“Are you the man claiming to be the o-shinikenjar?”

The outlander crossed his arms. His eyes flashed dangerously.

But the small swordsman merely inclined his head. “My name is Kinro-zhi. I see by the white stripe that you are Lord Kiratsu’s morijar. Lord Imitsu-tan?”

“Indeed,” Imitsu said coolly. He did not betray what he thought of this ragged scrap of a man. And he did not look at the giant, whose eyes seemed to see too much. “You will come with me, Kinro-zhi. Now.”

“No.” It was the big one, Ulrem, who spoke up.

Imitsu faltered. Sweat was running into his eyes, and frustration boiled out all at once. His

hand went to his hilt, a snarl on his throat.

“You do not command—”

“Draw an inch of that steel, and I’ll break your hand.” Ulrem spit on the temple steps. There was no fear in him, no fear of the Hangman, or his black-clothed wolf. Imitsu hesitated, wondering not whether he should make an example of this boor, but whether he could. Inwardly, he cursed. Why had that dolt not warned him of the outlander’s presence?

Kinro-zhi held up a placating hand. “We go where the wind wills, my lord,” the swordsman said.

“Lord Kiratsu wills you attend him in the castle,” said Imitsu-tan.

“Why?” The outlander seemed to use as few words as possible.

“Have you not heard?” the morijar said to the men. He shouldn’t have had to explain himself, but there he was. Now was not the place to test them. If he angered them, they might be of no use to him at all. More carefully, he said, “The lord’s son, Hokon. He was taken three nights past.”

The big man rolled his shoulders. “That doesn’t tell me what your lord wants with us.”

“Peace, Lion,” said Kinro-zhi, holding up a hand to placate his companion. “The morijar has made himself known. I hear no lie in his words. We will come with you, Lord Imitsu-tan.”

There was something about the swordsman’s easy tone that brought some relief to the First Sword. Perhaps—no. He dared not hope. Not yet.

Rather, he bowed and led them back into the warren of streets. He tried to ignore the bowing peasants, and their awed looks at the striding giant behind him.

A foul wind swept down out of Zisatsun, and Imitsu-tan wondered for the thousandth time whether he would see young, bright-eyed Hokon again.