Before the Dawn

by Shawn Carman

Shiba Tsukimi stood upon the ceiling.

To a different man, such a perspective might be perplexing, but Asako Bushiken had long since learned to adjust his sense to such a thing. “Greetings, Lady Tsukimi,” said calmly.

Tsukimi frowned, but of course it was really a smile. “Greetings, brother Bushiken. I trust the day finds you well.”

“The day finds me at peace,” Bushiken replied. “I can ask for no more.”

“My heart is saddened to hear that,” Tsukimi said, “for it means my purpose here is disruptive. It is not peace of which we must speak.”

“I speak of spiritual peace, of course,” Bushiken said. “I would not presume to speak of martial peace to a legendary warrior such as yourself.”

Tsukimi smiled, but it was a frown. “Do you think you could come down from there? I apologize but I find it very difficult to have a conversation in this manner.”

“Of course,” Bushiken said, flipping down from the handstand he had been maintaining atop a stone column for most of the morning. “How may I serve you, my lady?”

Tsukimi’s smile seemed sad. “It is time,” she said.

Bushiken sighed lightly. “War, then.”

“War,” she confirmed. “The Yobanjin are routed. The Dark Oracle seems to have lost his zest for war with the wounds he suffered. Our lands are safe now.”

“And so at peace we must seek war,” Bushiken said darkly.

“At peace, we must help bring peace to others,” Tsukimi corrected. “Our resources are thin, however. We require your Inquisitors to be marshaled in full. They must travel to the south and aid our meager forces there.”

“If this brings peace, how long will it last?” Bushiken mused. “A month? A year?”

“We cannot know,” Tsukimi said, “but neither can we despair.”

 •

The candle was burned almost to the surface of the table on which it sat. All others had long since returned to their tents for sleep, some at his command, but Akodo Shigetoshi did not join them. His eyes were red and bleary, but they remained sharp as ever. He peered at the endless series of maps, the trays upon trays of stone markers indicating the different units and regiments assembled at the southern front. And he looked at the massive tome that had not left his side in over a year. It was a gaijin tome, but one that had become a part of the Lion’s way of war.

Was it the exhaustion, or something else that made Shigetoshi’s head swim at the thought of the war dragging on longer. He rubbed his hand across his face, then at his eyes. He struggled desperately to calculate a new strategy, a different tactic, anything that would change the tide of the battle.

“You must not despair.”

Shigetoshi looked up quickly to see a young woman standing in the tent. He had not heard her enter. She was familiar to him, of course, but he was still unaccustomed to the jade hand at her wrist. “Benika,” he said.

Matsu Benika, Hand of the Jade Sun, did not seem to respond to her name. “You must persevere,” she cautioned him. “The Destroyers can be stopped.”

“I have done everything I know to do,” Shigetoshi admitted. “Our men claim ten of the beasts for every life we lose, and still their ranks are like the waves on the sea. They are without end. The Lion can defeat any foe on the battlefield, but a foe whose ranks cannot be exhausted? How can such a thing even exist?”

“You must hold un,” Benika said. “There is a blade that has not yet been drawn. When it is, the tide can turn, if only the courage can be had to wield it.”

“What do you mean?” Shigetoshi demanded.

Benika did not speak further.

 •

It was a field of mud. There were sparse bits of grass here and there, some that had not been completely destroyed by the treading feet of thousands upon thousands of ironclad monstrosities, and some that had grown since those creatures had passed on. But they were desperately few and for the most part, the field was nothing but a vast and empty expanse of mud.

A portion of the mud shimmered and moved, then was still. Another section did the same, then another and another. Someone watching from afar might think that the mud was gently lapping as the ocean might against the shore, but the truth was far deadlier.

At the end of the mud field, a man rose and disappeared into the rocks, followed by more than a dozen others. They were barely recognizable as men, covered in mud and bits of plants. They looked as if the earth had risen and walked among the rocks.

“The Destroyers’ rear line is a mile ahead,” one of the men said, his voice a whisper. “Your orders, my lord?”

One of the men wiped a patch of mud from his shoulder, revealing the insignia of the Hiruma House Guard. “First we search the ruins of Kyuden Hida,” he said. “Then we kill every gaijin demon we find.”