Journey to the East 26

That awful, mocking sky tore apart like rotten cloth as Father’s great wings of flame took him into the sky. Gray and black sand become dun brown and golden grains, and a limitless host of the dead becomes something far more ragged and finite, but deadly yet.

In the sky, metal and glass shrieked under the killing blade, and roaring flames met the rotting bile from the depths of a swamp, releasing an awful scent that made her eyes water. She forced her attention away from the untouchable clash in the sky, where Guo Xinhua and her father alike met the general of the dead.

Refeng’s hooves clattered on the wall.

“You are relieved, soldiers of the Gu!” She called out, her banner snapped and waved in the terrible wind her voice struggled to rise over. “Hold fast but a little longer!”

The men on the walls looked back at her with eyes sunken from exhaustion, too many were missing patches of their armor, wearing filthy bandages, holding chipped swords and spears with quivers with far too few bolts to spare.

Yet a cheer rippled out, spreading down the wall as comprehension spread, as exhausted eyes lit with a renewed fire.

The Gu might gutter, but they were never extinguished.

A resplendent phoenix bearing the ruby of rule upon his brow, spread vermillion wings in rage, and savaged the dust filled corpse shell of a spider, whose web was spread across the dome of the sky. Nightmare ichor flowed from its wounds, spewed from the long empty and rotten holes where eyes should be, and sought to drown vermillion fire.

Blades, one a mirror reflecting the endless sea of slime flecked horror, the other a pitiless sword wrought from killing sunlight and implacable equations clashed. Ink and seawater boiled, and the grasping limbs of nightmare were revealed as no more than shaped black sand, crumbling before the light.

“The Guo have come, we have come. I ride now! Victory is within our grasp!”

She had neither the time nor the head for a longer or better speech. She chose instead a more percussive statement, the corkscrewing spear of lightning in her grasp flew, and blew apart a formation of the dead, whose commander she had seen go down under grasping roots and devouring flowers.

Chips of bone and dust clattered against the walls themselves even ten meters distant, and from glassed sand no more dead rose for the moment at least. Refeng leapt back down into the fray a moment later with a thunderous boom.

“Most effective,” Guo Xinyan, who still held onto her back, chuckled in amusement. “I take my leave now.”

“Good hunting,” Gu Xiulan said tersely, wheeling Refeng about to face the dead who gathered and regrouped, her eyes fixing on the plumes of officers' helmets, gray and rotten.

“Good killing,” Guo Xinyan replied, and she felt the older womans tight bladelike smile with the words.

Her weight left the horse, and bones and metal alike split apart to her right. Gu Xiulan snorted, raising her arm, lashes of fire whipped, coiled and intensified, orange blue white, a new spear of liquid fire began to flare to life as she guided Refeng into a gallop.

She was not wrong.

She could not measure precisely how long the battle raged. Long enough for her guttering qi to ebb the lowest it had been since that day in the mountains when that awful thing from beneath the earth had nearly killed her best friend,

But in the end, victory had never been in doubt.

Ichor rained down on the sands, and a sound like a kilometers long pane of glass shattering echoed like thunder over the battlefield. Finally, finally that oppressive weight, the awful whispering which had clung onto her thoughts even as the rest of the illusions faded were cast off, like the dregs of a bad night's sleep.

That same feeling she could tell swept through all the soldiers. She saw backs straighten, eyes brighten, shaking hands tense as a renewed roar of energy went up

Together with the siblings Zheng, she gathered her outriders again into a wedge, galloping from the faltering ranks of the dead, only to return in thunderous charge, fist and branch and whipping lighting tearing apart the wavering commanders as her soldiers hooves and barbed spears pounded bone to ash and dust.

And overhead a Phoenix screamed in victory and the awful stench, the miasma of lingering death blew away on the wind of his wings.

When phoenix fire and purifying blades turned upon the dregs left struggling to siege the city, the battle ended in an instant.

***

She came to her father at the head of her outriders, flanked by the Zheng’s, riding with her back straight and head held high, despite the exhaustion biting deep in her bones. At the gates, Father stood. He wore no mantle, only the gleaming armor of a warrior, its wide feather edged pauldrons dinged and stained where something vile had splashed and etched even the talisman forged steel. Unlike her there was no sign of fatigue despite enduring longer, indeed he was immaculate save those acid etched marks upon his armor, as expected for the head of the Gu clan.

Ambassador Guo Xinhua stood at his side, the only sign that she herself had done battle the short, hiltless blade she held loosely in one hand, running an oilcloth across its clouded, blackened blade. She shook out her hand, the remains of the oil cloth sizzling and burning into blowing ash as Gu Xiulan approached.

Behind them were some of fathers commanders, and a great many men in parade formation, lined up inside the opened gates of the town.

Gu Xiulan swung herself out of her saddle and landed heavily. She was much more aware of the scorched and battered plates of her armor, the tears in the banner on her back, the way one of the twin plumes on her helm had been torn out and lost.

She swept her helm from her head, and held back a grimace at how sticky and mussed with sweat her hair must look. Marching forward, her clapped a gauntleted fist to her chest and knelt. “My honored father, your daughter returns and presents herself for inspection.”

“I see and acknowledge you, my child,” he said. “Through great hardship you rode, as our guests tell it.”

“No more hardship than any brave soldier of the Gu would endure,” she replied proudly. And she was proud despite how she had failed to be as immaculate as Father, could not yet shatter an army with the sweep of her flames. She had fought, and fought well, and so had the men under her command.

“You are too humble, daughter,” he said, breaking with her expectation, for her deed to simply be acknowledged. “I am proud of what you have accomplished with the command given. Thanks to you the siege is relieved and we may now march out. Raise your head, and be proud.”

Gu Xiulan felt her heart pound, something stung in the corner of her eye and the crackle of lightning in her arm reached a sizzling peak. She stood up, raised her head and clapped her fist once more to her breastplate. The ragged cheer of the siege defenders was sweet in her ears.

“I do not disagree. Lord Gu has a fine daughter indeed,” Gui Xinhua said. The blade in her hand was once again a fluttering fan. “But, if you would. I think it is time we spoke more.”

“You are not wrong,” Father said quietly. Then he gestured to her and her men, his voice risen to be heard from far away. “Daughter! Let your brave soldiers rejoin their fellows. This night men shall make merry and nurse their wounds, and receive their well deserved rest. On the morrow, we will march again, and relieve our fellows!

“Join me, with our honored guests now. There is much that needs to be said.”