Chapter 95

“Lord Nagoya, the Zhurkin have failed to report.”

The Yokun who delivered this message said nothing more to his Prince before bowing swiftly and returning to his post, dread hounding his every step.

“Like a den of wolves,” the Prince remarked to himself as he sipped from a flask of carefully brewed Gogi tea. “They have devoured my men and made a mockery of our banner.”

He allowed his fury to bubble over for just a second before steeling himself, looking up at the flags flying proudly above his fortified palisades. The camp was a hotbed of activity—men loading more and more Hakka charges with the zeal of Akira himself—but even the Prince knew that their morale was beginning to suffer in the wake of the Zhurkin regiment’s failure to return with the dawn.

He watched the sun glide over the smoking stalks of what was once a glimmering patch of jungle. He had planned to overwhelm them with sheer force of arms but had refused to commit his vanguard to the fighting. They—his Kherja warriors—belonged at his side, not in the flea-bitten lair of thieves and degenerates.

He glanced over his shoulder to see his honor guard standing by his side, eyes narrowed and ready for him to give them the word. Right here and now, upon the wooden walls of their camp, he looked into the eyes of Yokun who wished nothing more than to give their lives for him.

It was a heavy burden to bear. And he felt it—as keenly as any commander who loved his men, he felt it.

One Kherja, resplendent in the shimmering, flame-embroidered onyx armor that characterized his class, knelt before him now and offered him up his blade.

“My Lord,” the boy said—for he was a boy: honorable Canjung, once of House Naga, who had devoted himself to Nagoya after the boy had witnessed the Prince’s courage on the battlefield.

The boy dared to look up at his Prince with eyes watery with rage; his indigo scales, common amongst his Housekin, were hard and dark, as though he had been berating himself ever since his brethren had been presumed dead.

“My Lord—I beg of you, give me the command and I shall bring you the head of the Pale One. In so doing, I shall avenge our fallen brethren and bring you great honor!”

Prince Nagoya looked down at the supplicant boy and bid him rise, a hearty laugh diminishing the boy’s resolve almost instantly.

“Kherja Canjung,” the Prince said, “how many years do you have upon your scales?”

The boy bristled at the question, but he dared not refuse to answer. “Twenty-one, my Lord.”

“And you shall have many more yet. Let fool notions of vengeance slip from your mind. They shall not serve you.”

“B-but my Prince—”

“Do you mean to assume my station?” Nagoya interrupted the boy. “The blood of my Zhurkin is on my claws, not yours.”

“Their... their blood is on the hands of those Kejai San Pipers, Sire! Do not blame yourself!”

The Prince held up a firm, gauntleted claw. The word the boy had used was a term that every Yokun knew from their youth. Roughly translated, Kejai meant ‘lesser’ or ‘corrupted.’ When combined with the Yokun word for ‘people’ or ‘kinsmen’ (San), the phrase approached something like ‘lesser race.’

“You believe hatred alone shall serve to strike down our enemies?” the Prince challenged, speaking with such high authority that the boy had to drop his gaze abruptly. Four Hakka rockets then sailed over the Prince’s slick head, making him into an avatar of Akira Himself before the boy.

“A warrior that strikes with only hate is no true warrior—he is a barbarian worthy of no more respect than the Tauron of the Ashfall Mountains. I did not enter you into my service because I wished to have a blunt instrument by my side, Canjung.”

The Prince knelt there upon the palisade, in full view of his honor guard and the laboring men in his camp, and placed a firm but gentle hand upon the shoulder of his shaking servant.

“Good lizards are what I need,” he smiled. “Yokun bound by honor and duty, with courage to match the barbarity of our foes. Let these virtues be the light that guides your sword.”

Just then, a general cry was heard thundering from the advance scouts in the trench just outside the hill fort’s vicinity.

“Prince Nagoya! The Zhurkin return!”

The Hakka bombardment stopped abruptly, with every able-bodied lizard running to the palisades and watchtowers, intent on seeing their brothers returning through the ashen treeline beyond their position. When Nagoya called for the lookout’s telescope and saw the sight of five of his men lumbering towards them, he felt even his cold blood run hot with the fires of triumph.

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Because they were not alone.

“‘Let honor and duty be the lights that guide our blades, so that we may cleave through even the darkest despairs...’”

He paused reflexively after quoting this verse from the Mandate of Akira, breathing in the smoke-filled air and then issuing a gruff commandment to his waiting warriors:

“Open the gates!”

The guards at the gatehouse needed no further prompting. With a force that was a pure expression of their relief, they threw open the wooden gate and welcomed their beleaguered brothers home, their armor shredded and tattered—riddled with scrapes and arrows from engagement with the barbarous rebels who dwelled in the dirt. But they were welcomed back as heroes—for the great hulking Tauron they had shackled in chains behind them was a prize worthy of respect.

But more impressive still was the woman they carried with them, who was promptly thrown to the ground in the middle of Nagoya’s war camp to the disbelief of the Yokun soldiers and laborers who remained by their Prince’s side.

For his part, Nagoya savored the looks of satisfaction on his men’s faces. Finally, their year of toil seemed to come to a sudden end.

But as he marched down to meet the five kneeling troops who had returned, a glimmer of sorrow clutched at his heart.

“Hail to you, Zhurkin of Hitogi,” he addressed the fully helmeted warrior who stood at their head, the clan banner fluttering from his shoulders. “I see that you have not returned to us empty-handed.”

The Prince’s honor guard snickered at the statement, a few of them wishing nothing more than to break ranks and spit on the pathetic human’s bone-white skull as she shriveled in the dirt. The Tauron, meanwhile, accepted all the abuse the men hurled at it with silent rage—the kind of rage the unruly slaves who needed some discipline all shared. They would break her again, soon.

“We come to you with the bitch-leader,” the banner-bearer told the Prince. “Though the capture of her and her monster cost us dearly, my Lord.”

The Prince’s chest tightened. “How many did you lose?”

“Sire, we are all that remain.”

Murmurs. Murmurs that started to rise to low growls, and hurls of Kejai San and other insults at the base creatures who had cost the clan so much this day. But the reactions, when compared to those of other Clans, were still relatively muted. Many soldiers simply stared with unconcealed, raw hate at the human bound in ropes at the Prince’s feet, and waited for their Lord’s reaction.

“Their army?” the Prince asked.

“Decimated,” the leader replied.

To the surprise of his men, the Prince did not strike the female, nor did he snarl abuse in her face. He simply bent down, grabbed her by her neck, and forced her to meet his steely, amber gaze.

“You have bled my clan this day,” he told her defiant eyes. “You have bled your own people dry. How many perfectly good people did you see driven into the dirt before they died around you?”

His voice was thick and hard as gravel, and a series of hisses from his legion followed the Pale Lady’s reply:

“They died as free men and women.”

The Prince shook his head sadly in the face of the Pale One’s words, sighing as though he were speaking to a disgruntled child who had thrown a long-winded tantrum.

“An entire year of conflict,” he said. “And for what? If you wished for death, I would have granted it to you as a gift to the Patriarch that you and your predecessor so callously slew. You speak of freedom, and yet all you have accomplished is the consignment of your flock into the earth—naught but inert, barren ash. The soil of the Arasaka shall flower and bloom upon the site of their graves, fertilized by their blood and bile. And they, and your little rebellion, shall fade away as a footnote in history. Tell me truthfully, human: is this truly the legacy you thought you would leave behind on our world?”

To this, the Yokun watching the spectacle cheered with such fervor that many did not even hear the Pale Lady’s retort:

“You and your kind will never understand.”

“No, Lady Maria,” Nagoya replied with a scoff. “I understand a dreaming infant when I see one. You thought to make yourself a champion to the downtrodden, but now you lie before me in chains—before me, and the Clan that shall deliver you to the Patriarch of the House of Blades himself: Clan Hitogi!”

The Yokun followed their Prince’s lead, pumping their mailed fists in the air as the banners of their Clan fluttered in the rising winds of midday. Only this time, their cheers were silenced by the sudden and terrific roar of the Tauron prisoner.

“Lady Maria is never a slave!” the creature howled. “Just as Hialjia is not a slave—never will be a slave again!”

Bouts of laughter echoed from the palisades—a few warriors tossing scraps and rocks at the bound she-devil.

“My, my,” the Prince replied as he looked her up and down. “How you have trained this one. It even thinks it has a name. How quaint.”

The Tauron leveled its gaze at the smirking Prince of Hitogi, her bearers barely able to keep her in check despite the bloody wounds that littered her body.

“Face me, coward!” she roared so that all could hear her from the jungles of Arasaka to her home in the Ashfalls. “Fight Hialjia here and now, and let us see who is slave and who is master! Let it be a duel! A duel to the death!”

“Hialjia!” Maria screamed. “Don’t—don’t throw your life awa—”

She was interrupted by a terse beating from the leader of the Zhurkin who held her. The warrior then bowed low as the Prince turned to him in anger. It did not do to rough up good produce.

But it also did not do to let the Tauron’s words just pass him by like the wind. In fact, to those incredulous warriors looking on at the whole spectacle, the Prince seemed rather entertained by the creature’s challenge.

“Clever beast,” he said. “You know that, by the Divine Mandate of Akira, any Prince who denies an honorable duel upon ground that belongs to him shall suffer disrespect and humiliation. And any Yokun who denies mortal combat on the battlefield as a way to avoid further losses is not a Yokun worthy of retaining his command.”

More murmurs passed through the crowded center of the fort, with soldiers coming forward to volunteer themselves to take on the big bitch in their Prince’s name.

“My Lord!” young Canjung snapped. “Let me be your champion. I shall take the head of this demon and mount it upon the walls of your palace myself!”

But the Prince did not pay such promises any heed. The older Yokun among the Clan knew the Prince of Hitogi better than that. So, when he smiled a dark, vicious smile back up at the growling Tauron, they were not shocked at all by his reply:

“Very well, beast who calls itself ‘Hialjia.’ You long to be free? Let my blade grant you your wish.”

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