Dai-San - 03 Read Online Free PDF Page A

Bright and unbidden, the Hart, stately, black, fearsomely atavistic, shook his antlers within a deep pine glade.
    Something coalesced within him, with the motion. The rushing of the white blade, his forked fingers rising upward, Freidal’s cruel gloating hideous face, confident of victory, upward and downward, the weapons crossed in an ‘x’ pattern, the Saardin’s incipient surprise as the fingers plunged into his eyes. Black and white; white and black. Whistle of the impotent sword blade, a dying insect beside his ear.
    Freidal was screaming, a loathsome, shivering sound filled with pain and fear. His head drew back, instinctively seeking release. But the terrible weapon lanced forward, inexorable as metal, the alien hide inimical to human flesh. Impaling him. Then the fingers curled, ripping at the soft viscera, digging with enormous strength, and with a herculean jerking motion, they broke through the cheekbones, stripped the flesh from the Saardin’s face.
    The sounds came again, ceaseless, like waves of fire, an envelope of agony, a hot tomb closed by the final smash of the gauntleted fist into the center of the broken face, shattering the skull. Teeth sprayed like cracked nuts and the body collapsed, the stench overpowering as the sphincter muscle relaxed.
    Never had death been so satisfying.
    The din of the battle surrounding him came back gradually and at length he became aware that Moichi was calling his name. He turned his head, saw the navigator beset by plumed warriors who sought to stop him from severing the snaking lines from the other obsidian ships. He plucked his stolen sword from the nerveless fingers of the bloody Saardin lying at his feet and turned, grinning. Slammed his blade through the corselet of an oncoming warrior with such force that the armor flew from the creature’s body. He swiftly decapitated it and, swinging his sword in great arcs, forced his way further aft, towards the navigator.
    Hurling the plumed warriors from him, Ronin at last made Moichi’s side and, together, back to back, they fought the oncoming tide. Clearing away the warriors momentarily, they began to work feverishly on the grappling lines which sang with tension as the sailors aboard the obsidian vessels heaved mightily and the black hulls, crystalline, repulsing the sea water, dancing above the waves, looming near to starboard.
    They hacked at the ropes as Moeru, having cleared the poop of the enemy, worked her way down the aft companionway to the main deck, leading a complement of sailors across the port sheer-strake and onto the decks of the first obsidian ship.
    Onward the plumed warriors came and Ronin left the cutting of the ropes to Moichi while he turned and met the attack, his sword a bright, bloody arc, reaping a red, hot harvest of flesh and bone.
    Abruptly, he felt the trembling of the deck. The Kioku heaved in the water. More lines hissed over the starboard sheer-strake. He looked up as the deck rolled violently but the sky was filled with harmless, puffy clouds racing before the unsteady following wind. Mauve and gold, the world readied itself for sunset. Yet the ocean below them swelled and sucked as if a storm were raging.
    Higher and higher the swells tossed them until, with a great rending, the lines binding the Kioku to the surrounding obsidian ships split and broke asunder. Like a great wild stallion, the Kioku raised her bow high above the troughs of the waves.
    Free.
    Ronin, clinging to the starboard sheer-strake, risked a glance overboard. All about them the seas were black and glossy, humped and agitated, as if in reaction to the ascension of a creature of incalculable size. The deep was alive with motion and potency.
    The Kioku bucked forward on the inexorable tide of another enormous wave, which, cresting violently and unpredictably, capsized one of the obsidian ships. With a great roar, it disappeared beneath the heavy sea. Onward the Kioku was hurled by the churning swells and at last Ronin