The Last Stormdancer Read Online Free PDF Page A

were open, and tears were frozen upon his cheeks, and his smile was bright as the sun.
    You are … beautiful, Koh.
    BEAUTIFUL TO MONKEYS? THINK THIS FLATTERY?
    Not flattery. Just truth.
    A growl deep within my chest, ruffling my feathers and shaking the snow from my wings. The boy wiped salted ice from his cheek, the mask of determination slipping back into place.
    Kigen city is southeast of here. Perhaps a day as the thunder tiger flies.
    THEN CLIMB ABOARD. NO TIME TO WASTE. NEED NOT WARN TO NOT LOOK DOWN.
    The boy walked forward, prodding the snow with his lacquered cane, feeling about my wings for the briefest of moments before he scrabbled atop me, light and only a little graceless. It was a strange sensation, the weight of him up there. I had not flown with anyone on my back before. My muscles tensed, wings flinching as he found his balance, my tail lashing side to side. His arms closed about my neck and I almost balked, blood rushing beneath my skin. But ever I could feel him in my mind, just as frightened as I, trembling just as deep, all his certainty eroded at the heat radiating from my fur, the taste of ozone in back of his tongue, the crackle of infant lightning across the breadth of my feathers.
    Clumsy as first-time lovers we were. And though nothing of love lay between us, I could not recall a time I had felt as close to another as I felt to him in that moment.
    YOU ARE WELL?
    My voice in his mind, killing the uncomfortable silence between us.
    I am well.
    THEN HOLD ONTO ME, MONKEY-CHILD.
    My wings spread, twenty feet, flickering with pale blue-white. His skin prickling with adrenaline, echoing in his thoughts. His arms about my neck, squeezing tight.
    A swift breath before the plunge.
    HOLD TIGHT.
    Then flight.
    *   *   *
    Lord Tatsuya stood in his command tent, bathed in the bloody light of burning chi-lamps, staring at the map before him. He was decked in traditional samurai armor—an elaborately embossed suit of black iron, commissioned for him on his eighteenth naming day by his dear-departed Lord and father. Katana and wakizashi at his waist, a braid of long dark hair slung over one shoulder. Dawn waited two hours distant, but the battle ahead was already playing out in his mind, clear as a portrait hung upon the palace walls. The ring of steel. The smell of blood.
    Soon.
    Four days had passed since his father’s funeral, and already, the war had begun. After a bloody skirmish in the Broken Hills, his brother’s forces had retreated north, refusing to engage Tatsuya’s armies in the open field. Riku’s men were now almost boxed in on the slopes of the Junsei river valley. To the west lay the Four Sisters Mountains. To the north and east, the rushing flow of the Junsei herself. Though Riku had the high ground, there was also nowhere for him to run if the battle went badly (which, Maker and simple mathematics willing, it most certainly would), save for a single bridge spanning the Junsei, perhaps a mile east of their encampment. The Bear seemed caught between the hunter and the trap.
    “What will you do, brother-mine?” Tatsuya wondered aloud.
    One the four generals gathered about the table—a grizzled old wardog called Ukyo—tapped his finger on the map.
    “If he has wisdom, he will remain on the high ground and make us pay dearly before we reach him. We may have numerical advantage, but numbers cannot wield blades.”
    “My brother is no strategist on open ground,” the Bull said. “He will break for his keep in Blackstone province. Turtle there and make overtures to the other clanlords for aid.”
    “There is no path north through the Four Sisters. And if he orders retreat across the Junsei, his forces will be bottlenecked on that bridge. Most will be slaughtered before they can cross.”
    “As I said,” Tatsuya murmured. “No strategist. Riku has a head for duels and drunken diplomacy, not open warfare. He should have killed me when he had the chance.”
    One of Tatsuya’s