The Day of Thunder

[Anjing]

The Road Ahead

Anjing keeps a quick pace, stomping along the rocky path with her eyes focused on the horizon. The set of her shoulders and a clenched jaw had done little to invite conversation from the other Crab other than the occasional grunt for scouts or a barked command for rest.

Finally, as the group was making its way up a small hill she turned to her companion and remarked “I read he likes women”.

The shorter woman trots to keep up, though less than an observer might expect as her bare feet find the easiest path along the trail, avoiding stones with the ease of someone well attuned to not disturbing them. She snorts a bit at her companion’s words. “I’d ask who you were talkin’ about, but I’m more wonderin’ where you’d read it. Who writes about that?”

Anjing looks over with a flat expression, her tone slightly defensive as she crunches up the hill. “My niece, it was an official record. I wasn’t reading for pleasure.”A slight shudder “Certainly not for pleasure. She said Shinsei could barely control himself around women and was always riding off in search of one.”

Tai shrugs. “Well, he’s a man. Even these gods come to earth are men and women when it comes to that, hmm?” She grins, baring strong, black teeth. “Or did you get those kids some _other_ way? Oughta have warned folks by now if sharing the same cup with one of them’ll catch you pregnant!”

Anjing raises an eyebrow “Ha! Good luck sharing a cup with my husband, you might as well try to guzzle a river or quaff a waterfall.” Despite herself the daimyo is smiling, which just annoys her more. A good man he was, loyal to his family, too loyal maybe.

“Lot of fool talk these days.” She shrugs a shoulder, moving the strap of her battered tetsubo into a more comfortable position. “Monsters, nightmares. Sort of things any Crab of our age‘s seen plenty of times.” Still, she glances over to the wise woman as Tai selects the stone. “But you feel there’s something to it?”

Tai nods. “Definitely something to it. The nightmares keep gettin’ worse for folks. Takara’s way too big to be crawlin’ to bed between Akihito and I. But I’d rather that than havin’ her run off into the hills or worse with the nightmares. There’s folks who’ve killed family, convinced they’re monsters. Can’t tell dreams apart from this world.”

She slows a moment in thought, falling behind a few steps before catching up. “There’s the twisted places too. Heard of villages gone strange, places nobody will go anymore in the mountains. Like the mountain’s dreamin’. Makes me wonder if this is happenin’ to _our_ mountains, or it’s that these don’t have enough of us poured into them yet?” She doesn’t like the thought of Lao or Whuzhi twisted like that.

Part of being a leader is accepting that you don’t know everything, something that Anjing often reflected on. She wouldn’t be marching to some village on the edge of the nowhere that was her new home to meet a sex crazed holy man if it weren’t for Tai’s council. “Got to be happening everywhere, wouldn’t just be our mountains. Although I suppose the emperor-” She chooses that moment to turn and spit” -might have selected some cursed mountains just for us. Maybe it was the only place the rats didn’t want.”

The Valley

Her brows furrow and she’s quiet for a few long moments as they crest the hill, the small valley below coming into view in the late afternoon sun. “Fortunes. What is that?” Her hand snaps up into a fist bringing the other Crab to a halt. “Down there, by the stream” Slowly, she lowers herself into a crouch motioning the others to do the same. Anjing was suddenly painfully aware how exposed the group was on the hill’s crest.

Tai drops to an easy crouch, before she can take in the scene. There’s no thought of questioning the seasoned warrior’s command after this many years. Biting hard on the inside of her cheek, she spits the blood into her palm and presses it to the ground beside her as she examines the scene below with her eyes first. The rocky path continues down the hillside weaving between scruffy shrubs. A stream runs fast and full, but no longer swollen in its banks, in gentle loops across the valley.

Except for a section off to the side of the track where it seems to have pooled into a stagnant mire. She can smell it from here, stinking of rotten mud and bloating corpses. Sickly green sedges grow in coarse clumps.

Away from the edge, there’s remnants of a rather normal encampment–three hide tents and a dead campfire. Two of the tents look torn apart, and the third has a coating of rain-spattered dust that indicates it’s been there a bit.

Nearby, something is bent, drinking from that fouled water. The shape is almost human, but wrong. On all fours, but neck long enough that it hasn’t crouched lower to drink. Skin a greasy black with a gleam that seems rubbery-wet, like an eel.

“What’s crouched on your solid earth and drinkin’ from that nasty mess?” she asks the earth in a low whisper, hoping it’s an illusion and the solid ground will merely be confused at what she’s talking about. Unfortunately…

Voice low to avoid drawing it’s attention, she translates the impressions of the earth spirits.. “The earth calls it a Mad Shaper…probably not what it’ll go in the histories as. But it’s real enough for them to note.”

Anjing nods at the priestess whose warnings of strange occurrences suddenly seemed a lot more immediate. “Real enough to kill those travelers too.”She eyes the creature with a grimace as it slurps and sucks at the befouled water. “Hope it’s real enough to die. Can’t just leave it here. Some Crab might pass through.”

Turning to the rest of the group she winces as one of her knees cracks audibly. “It’s too damn cold and I’m too damn tired for anything fancy. We’ll treat it as an ogre hunt.” She draws a dagger and sketches a crude plan in the rocky soil. “Cai, Liang take your bows. I want you at that copse down there, that way you won’t pincushion us if you miss. Chen, you’re too green for this” The young warrior goes to reply but is abruptly cut off “And far too green to argue with me, boy. We need you to guard the supplies, I’m not gonna tell your mother you got eaten by a Mad Shaper or a whatever it is.”

Turning back to the seasoned warriors. “Tai, I want you behind me. The rest of us, form up and approach it slowly, we don’t know what it can do so we’ll stick together. When it notices us, start firing your bows, if it closes we surround it, the warrior in front distracts, the rest strike fast and then pull back. Understood?” The rest of Crab nod and set about preparing themselves for the fight.

Anjing unstraps her battered club, running her calloused fingers over its length. She wondered if it could even hurt this kind of creature. Still, ogres, trolls, Nezumi -Her grip tightens for a moment before relaxing- it had been able to hurt them, this wasn’t that different.

Rising, Tai steps back, her hand going to the old stone knife at her waist and drawing it as she listens to the tactics being laid out. She settles a few steps behind Anjing, a bit to her right in order to see around the larger woman. “Once we’re up there, fire for you, or stone?” They’d worked together often enough for Anjing to know the benefits of asking fire or earth for their protection.

“One tent’s not torn up. After it’s dealt with, I’d like to know why. If it was protected somehow…” there’s no need to say that’s something they’d want to know about, so Tai saves her breath as the group begins to move. She murmurs to the spirit within the knife, senses open to the strangeness in the air.

Anjing looks back down at the ruins of the small camp. “Fire, give me fire.” The rest of the Crab make themselves ready as bows are strung and the heavier armour is brought out and slowly readied. When their preparations finish they exchange a few quiet words, promises to see one another after the battle, to take care of any children who might lose a parent, to come back in one piece. And then as a group they begin moving slowly down the hill.

The Mad Shaper

Cai and Lian break into a swift jog, concentrating on their footing as they scamper down the hill, a few small stones roll down into the valley but the creature with its now grotesquely swollen belly doesn’t seem to notice. The rest of the Crab are slower, sticking together only two shoulder lengths apart as they advance down the road. As they reach the grass of the valley the archers signal from the copse, their bows trained on the target. “Right.” She looks left and right meeting the gaze of her fellow travelers one by one before raising a fist to the archers and then bringing it down. There’s the near simultaneous ‘twang’ of bowstrings as they loose.

Tai presses her hand on Anjing’s back, dust and blood leaving a palmprint there to focus the spirits’ attention in a few moments. She’s accepted her share of messages to carry home, and offered the expected blessings–trust your stance on the earth beneath you, the flicker of warning at the edge of your eyes.

Then she’s murmuring thanks to the stones for smooth passage as they begin to move, to the breeze for keeping their approach as quiet as a passel of heavily armored folks can be. But the air delights in movement and sound and will only hush for so long. The bows’ creak seems hidden in that of tree branches, but the high TWANG! of their release rings across the little valley, and the arrows have an almost joyful whistle amid the wooosh of feathers cutting the air.

Even the wind spirits want nothing to do with the creature by the water though, and the squelchy thud of impact is short and sharp, barely heard under the clank and rattle of the rest of the band picking up speed to take advantage of the creature’s surprise. Tai’s blade slices clean across her forearm as she jogs, the cutting arc flicking ahead to spatter across Anjing’s armor, leading the fire spirits to roar up in excitement all around their commander, racing along her arms and down the solid tetsubo with a crackle and flare of heat.

They continue the charge, despite the creature apparently taking no notice of them, continuing to gulp water. Where the arrows strike the bloated belly, literal fountains of stinking, brackish water sprayed in impossible arcs. That isn’t how arrow wounds are supposed to work. It would be comical if it weren’t so terrifying. They’re close enough now to see the disturbingly long neck pulse with each swallow, flesh glistening in the afternoon sun.

“Don’t trust that water…avoid it where you can, eh?” Tai advises before crouching, and slicing carefully, just beside the last cut, letting the blood drip to the ground as she chants urgently to the stone.

The warriors do their best, their advance slowing to a crawl as they carefully step between the pools of viscous water, the mud sucking hungrily at their boots. The creature turns slowly as another volley of arrows squelch into its side. Its face is disturbingly almost human, but covered in a veil of dark leathery flesh. As the first warrior approaches and jabs a spear at it, the space where its mouth should be opens impossibly wide, emitting a deafening cacophony of gibbering, maddening sounds.

The attacking warrior falls to his knees screaming and clawing at his face while the rest of the Crab fall nearly incapacitated, their skulls echoing with half-formed nightmares. Anjing finds herself sinking down to one knee in the muck, clutching the shaft of her weapon so hard it nearly splinters. The fires of the kami flicker along her body, almost mirroring her pain as the diseased water boils and foams beneath her. Images of her family dead and mutilated flash before her eyes, of the last of the Seidou being swept from the lands, of everything being for naught.

Then another volley strikes, one arrow miraculously striking the Mad Shaper in the gaping void it had for a mouth, the noise dims for a moment. It’s an opening, bless the fortunes. Gasping, the daimyo forces herself to her feet staggering forward through the mud and muck towards the creature. To her horror the arrow in its maw had already started to decay and rot.

“Keep moving, we can’t let it focus again!” With a roar she throws herself forward, slamming her club into its spongy flesh which seems nearly impervious, even with Tai’s magic aiding her. The monster turns quickly, disturbingly fast, its mouth that was not a mouth opening as Anjing dives to the side, only catching half a second of the keening madness.

The sound that’s not a sound cuts through her head, stilling Tai’s chant for long moments. The faces of her children stare up from beneath water she shouldn’t be close enough to see, and yet every detail of their terrified need for just a gasp of air will be engraved in her mind forever. The priestess gasps in a great lungful of air as the next volley cuts the nightmare short. She’s thankful to already be on her knees. Dropping to them would have hurt worse than all the bloodletting.

A corner of her mind notices the closest warrior collapsed in the shallow water, unmoving. She’ll remember his name later, when there’s time; remember the message held for an infant daughter.

The smell of it reminds her of the very worst troll dens, and they fall faster with jade. Tai only spends a moment thinking bitterly of the good mine they’d found not long before having to leave that to the Stag. No time for that now. Laying the incredibly sharp, knapped stone blade flat along the back of her arm, she steels herself and peels a long thin strip of flesh away, blood welling up immediately and running to glove her fingers and pool between them on the pale earth. Her voice deepens and grows louder, asking for the purest stone the valley can offer; asking for it *now.*

The mountain answers with a rumble that’s felt in the bones, and loud crack as it spits a dark stone streaked with pale green and large as an armored warrior high into the air. It drops directly on what would be the creature’s spine if it had one. Its back half flattens like a waterskin, forcing all that water out through arrow holes and gaping mouth in a foul, high-pressured rush. The eel-like flesh smokes and steams. It even smells like cooking eel, which is disturbingly mundane in the midst of all this.

Another mouth opens in its chest. This one clear of the rush of water returned to the nightmare swamp. It stretches impossibly, horribly toward the fallen as the back half begins squirming free of the fallen stone.

With a roar of pure fury Anjing dives forward, putting herself between the creature and the fallen Crab, her face a mask of mud and rage. It would not take the body. Setting herself she begins raining blow after flaming blow onto the outstretched monster attempting to literally pound it into the ground as it writhes and burns. The remaining warriors surround it, adding their own stabs and cuts downwards. It takes far, far too many strikes to stop it moving but eventually with a last scream of roiling chaos it goes still.

Or, at least the part of it reaching for the body does as its back half rips free with a wet tortured squelch and slips back into the fetid waters as the Crab look on in shock. A few black bubbles rise to the surface before it goes still.

“Seven Hells.” Anjing eyes the water warily, her tetsubo still held in weary hands. “Never seen a creature that could do that, like something out of a nightmare.”

Tai moves to the fallen, rolling him over to get his face out of the water, and confirming that it’s too late to matter. She closes his eyes, to let the spirit focus on its journey, quietly chanting the first guideposts to remind him what to look for.

It’s only the squelch and splash as half the thing escapes that brings her attention back to the fight. “Oh, that’s nasty. Away from the water, it could pop up anywhere.” She looks up sharply at Anjing, before crouching to heave the body up–awkwardly, as he’d a foot of height on her. “Nightmare for sure. Don’t know if this’ll burn, but at least we can set warnings around.” There will be a pyre later since they can’t bring the boy (Dae-Jung, she remembers now) back to bury on his mountain like this. But ashes they can carry.

After the Battle

Anjing motions to the water as she squelches over to Tai and bends down to help the smaller woman lift the body, grunting slightly at the weight as they start dragging him out of the muck. “We can divert the road around the valley, we’re almost out of our lands as it is. Not many people were taking this path anyway.” With another effort they manage to drag Dae-Jung further, propping the young man against a tree. The Daimyo winces at the expression of pure horror on his face. “Not right for him to die like this. He was barely a babe on the march. Tssk, and what to say to his mother now?”

She takes a few moments to collect herself before sighing. Right, let’s see about that tent. She turns back to the rest of the group with a grunt before doing a double take, her eyes scanning up and down the valley. “I know I’m not that old.” She rubs at some of the muck on her face with a knuckle as if it could somehow explain what she was seeing.

“The tents, the filth, they’re gone.” She glances around sharply, they were definitely in the same valley.

Tai whirls around to look. She can see her blood on the trail, the muck all over those who fought at the edge of the marsh…that isn’t there anymore. They can hear the gentle roil of the stream over stones and see it running the length of the valley. Looking from one end to the other, then frantically back at their retinue, she looks from face to face gripped by a sudden fear for those out of sight. “Cai? Liang?”

Anjing stares at her blankly before looking over at the copse in alarm “Cai? Get over here you two, now!” The only response is the quiet sounds of the stream. “ They can’t be gone, those two saved our damn lives.”

“Tell me we’re losing our minds Tai, that we’re not seeing straight. There’s no way they just…disappeared. Means there’s nothing to bury or burn, nothing to remember them by. Like they were never here.

There’s no sign of the archers as the group looks around, wild-eyed and shaken. Tai scouts along their path, which fades away well before the little stand of trees. No blood or dropped equipment…or bodies.

“Mark the place cursed, route around,” she says, eyes haunted and voice gone shaky. We’ll…we’ll set them a separate fire and see if at least we can draw their souls on the path.”

The knowledge that those arrows had saved them all from the beast’s madness would be a small comfort to their families, eventually. “Add their stories to Xia’s store.” So the clan would remember them as long as there was a clan.

“They did their duty and more besides, their stories will be told.” Anjing clasps her hands together quietly for a moment before shrugging the moment away. “Let’s move, put some distance between this blasted place and ourselves.”

The valley remains quiet and serene as the greatly diminished band makes its way across the stream and up the other bank. Once the wind picks up and the daimyo swears she can still hear the chittering madness of the creature, but then it’s swept away.

Remembering

If the march before was quiet the following hours are deathly silent with most of the Crab clutching their weapons tightly and eyeing every shadow and strange shape with suspicion. Finally they reach a small hillock and Anjing gives the order to halt.

“Fetch wood and use the last of the oil. Two pyres.” She turns to the rest, her face stony. “Who will tell their stories?”

Wounds wrapped, Tai aids with the wood gathering, then directs the laying of it to get the hottest flame for the actual body. “Save the oil. I’ve plenty to offer the spirits to get a fire going. And it’s right that they receive offering for their part, oil or no.”

Anjing looks like she wants to argue but accepts the offer with a grunt.

It would only need a few drops of blood to encourage the wood to a regular fire, it’s not much more to set an entire pyre ablaze. And the pain feels appropriate after losing three of their number like that. It isn’t as if she has much to ease their families’ anguish.

A young woman steps forward, the lacquer on her armor so fresh Tai could smell it. “Cai is…” there’s a pause, but she doesn’t correct herself, but her voice is tighter after. “...is my mother’s sister’s son. We grew up together, and I can speak for him.” After a deep breath, she adds, “Liang accepted his courting gift last winter so..I don’t know him as well, but I can share all Cai’s stories.”

Tai nods. “If there’s not another, you’ll be Cai’s voice for Liang as he would have been.” It’s the pronouncement of a priestess, easing worry that it would be correct.

Anjing’s expression is like stone as she looks at the young woman before nodding slowly. “It is right. I pray they will hear you as we do.” She clears her voice and takes a sour swig from her waterskin. “Dae-Jung’s mother is a friend of mine. She was at my side on the march, carrying him in her arms.” Her throat feels tight and she takes a moment to center herself before continuing.

“He cried a lot when he was young. His days were long and full of uncertainty as all of ours were. But his family did not mind, he was the first of the next generation, and they bore him without complaint. Besides, we had other problems”, a few of the other Crab nod grimly.

“I think he cried away all his tears then, because as a boy he was without fear. He explored the hills and forests of our new home with a smile, seasoned hunters would seek his council on the best tracks and the where to find running water. But he never forgot his family, he always returned with food for his mother and for his sisters. He once told me he didn’t want to be a burden anymore.”

She clenches her right hand into a fist, steadying herself with the pain. “He grew tall and strong and I was there to celebrate with his mother on the day he finally became a man. Ah, we had little but celebrated like we had everything. Dae-Jung even managed to fall out of a tree, of course he found a nice soft bush. He had his pick of duties, but he chose to serve with me, and he did bravely and without complaint…until the day he died.”

Anjing meets the gaze of each Crab around the circle before turning to stare into his crackling pyre, burning bright enough that it seemed to sear her eyes. “Please, share your stories of him that we might know a good man one last time.”

“Served you and always ran first, not for glory, but to get between you and the raiders…or the boar when it came to that,” Tai said quietly. “He listened. Treated the spirits right though he couldn’t hear them and they opened the ways for him. The earth of the village will miss his footsteps, and their memory is long.”

“I remember him as a babe on the march as I carried my own Kenshiro and would rest with his mother.” When not speaking, her rough, quiet humming followed the cadence of the chant she’d use to draw spirits to the pyres. But it faltered for a time as she thought of bearing the news to his mother and young wife. She coughed instead, and said, “fill the smoke with tales to wrap him on the way to the Halls. Let those who judge see how fine he’s clothed so he may return again with all his soul has learned.” The clan needed that strength.

The youngest of the group shared how a nearly-adult Dae-Jung snuck treats to the younger kids–a basket of berries or chunk of comb when foragers found a beehive. The tales piled up of kindnesses offered, and resources shared, even when scarce. Grudges could be buried now. You didn’t send anyone with ill words to weigh them down.

When the time came to gather around the pyre that burned only wood, there was an edge to the tales. Nobody quite believed they were dead…just vanished. Tai hoped the words and ritual might reach them wherever they were and lead them home…or to the Halls. But she just didn’t know.

Cai’s cousin started them off there. “We were born three days apart, so I’ve never known a day without him.” It was a moment before she could speak again, the realization sinking in that tonight was the beginning of days and years without him. “We argued a lot, but he always let me win, even when I was wrong. The river really was too high, and I’d have washed downstream if he hadn’t kept hold of a tree as we crossed. Or when that branch really wasn’t going to hold either of us…but he went first and slow so I could hear the cracking and admit I was wrong and call him back. I wish…” she trails off softly, blinking back tears before continuing.

“He’s a great shot, we all know that. Helped keep many of us fed once he was big enough to hold a bow. But I don’t think as many folks realized just how good he was at knowing when you needed someone to talk to, or how to smooth over a fight brewing. His words hit the mark as sure as his arrows. He’d sweet talk the grownups better than any of us, and we’d get to sit and listen to stories till we couldn’t stay awake, or when he talked our moms into keeping the kittens from that bobtail mountain lion Daisuke killed.” Tai remembered those kittens. They still came back to the village from time to time to leave bits of some dead thing or other on their families’ doorsteps, though they’d long since chosen to return to the hills.

“He and Liang had a bet running…who’d bring down the most game and bandits on this journey.” She chokes a moment. “I’m not sure whose arrow was the last. I hope they’re still arguing about who’s ahead, wherever they are.”

“Well spoken. I am sure they heard you.” The tales continue, most ending with a plea for Cai and Liang to find their way back home. By the time everyone finished the pyres had burnt down to cooling ashes that were carefully collected and prepared to be returned to their families. By time they finish there’s only a few hours of daylight remaining, but Anjing pushes the group on, judging it best for them not to linger too long surrounded by memories of those they’d lost.

The smaller, quieter company continues down the rocky trail towards the next valley as the sun begins to set. There was no way ahead but forward.