suddenly his gaze was drawn to a dark shape rising high above the top of the wall. “What is that?”
It was a rude but solid structure of black stones that rose three times the height of the town wall, and Omar counted three small towers at the corners of the keep. Slate tiles covered the roof, though they were grimed with frozen filth, and what few windows he could see were all shuttered and sealed. No light escaped from the building, but smoke poured upward from half a dozen of its chimneys to mingle with the smoke of hundreds of other homes high above the town. The sight of so many columns of smoke reminded him of the tales of dragons sleeping in their lairs, their burning bellies spilling dark fumes from the ancient mountains. “Is that a castle?”
“Yes it is, and home to the king of Edinburgh.”
“A king? Here?”
“I admit, it’s not much of an accomplishment.” Morayo laughed. “If you like, I can tie a string around your head and call it crown, and you can be the king of the back of the cabin.”
Omar smiled. “Very funny. Though I’ve seen men rule over less. I was just surprised to hear someone up here in the middle of nowhere style himself as royalty.”
“Well, he’s the master of twenty thousand souls,” the engineer said. “That’s more than I can say for myself.”
With the ship secure, Omar found Riuza and asked, “Can we go see the town now?”
“No, we stay with the ship at all times.”
His smile vanished. “But why?”
She jerked her chin at the stream of people coming up the icy road from the town. Most of them carried sacks or trays or even pulled small carts behind them. “They come to us. Talk. Buy. Sell. Whatever you like. Just don’t fight with them. These are the friendliest people we’ve found this far north. We need to keep them friendly. But we don’t leave the Finch.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t trust them.”
“Because they’re Europan?”
“Because they’re primitive savages.” She gave him a serious look and then walked away.
For the rest of the morning, Omar wandered through the cluster of merchants with their wares spread out on blankets on the snow. He saw crudely carved figures of rock and bone, poorly polished stones of no particular value, bruised fruit, ragged blankets, and rusty tools. The only things that really caught his eye were the fresh fish and the huge cuts of seal steak laid out on the snow. Since Garai’s death, they had only stopped on the ground once more to refill the boiler and have one hot lunch. Every other meal had been cold rations, all salted and dried and tiresome. The allure of a savory seal steak supper quickly had him haggling with the fisherman, and he walked away with several pounds of meat in exchange for all of his spare gloves and hats.
After stowing his precious treasure, Omar found Kosoko engaged in an intense discussion with two elderly locals about the markings on the cartographer’s working map. Through the broken bits of their mismatched Rus dialects, Omar picked out the points of confusion about this island or that mountain and he pulled out his own leather map for comparison. Instantly the two northerners’ faces brightened as they scanned the ancient writings, pointing excitedly at this symbol or that word. As the pair muttered to each other, they confirmed to Omar that his old Rus map was indeed correct, at least for this area.
They were still leaning over the map when a low horn blast echoed across the field from the south where a line of small fir trees obscured the woods beyond. In a heartbeat, every merchant had his wares bundled up and was trudging quickly back to their walled home. The two old men peered at the southern edge of the field with pained looks of worry wrinkling their brows. A moment later the stunted fir trees shivered, shaking loose their coats of frost and shining icicles, and a pack of wolfish hounds darted out into the field. They were shaggy beasts with fur the color of old iron, and they ran with their black tongues lolling from the sides of their mouths. But they slid to a halt in the center of the field and turned to face the bracken behind them. Again the little firs bent apart and now a band of men in brown fur coats came charging out of the wilderness with axes and bows in hand.
Omar took a nervous step back, his gloved hand straying to the hilt of his seireiken.
The men raced across the field and when they passed through the hounds the animals turned to follow their masters. Together the hunters converged on the Frost Finch, and Omar could hear them shouting in their strange Rus accents, “One horn! One horn!”
He frowned at Kosoko, who merely shrugged back. But the two old men beside them snatched up their walking sticks and set off for the town.
The hunters running across the field angled away from the airship, heading for the town, and the dogs stayed close to their masters. But they stopped short of the town gate and turned to stand shoulder to shoulder and form a small shield wall on the icy road. The archers nocked fresh arrows and made ready to fire while the others raised their small hatchets to hurl.
A deep-throated bellow erupted from the trees across the field, and Omar’s first thought was that an elephant had followed him all the way from North Ifrica to this frozen hell. But the beast that came crashing through the firs was no elephant. It charged through the underbrush with its head lowered, smashing aside the brittle trees with its massive legs and shoulders. Of its head, Omar could only see that it was long and broad with tiny black eyes and tiny brown ears set on either side. Its thick coat of brown fur shook and shuddered with every thundering step that the beast took, and Omar wondered if this might be a monstrous sort of bear.
But then the creature shook its head and Omar saw it, for brief a moment, in profile.
One horn. They must be shouting its name. They call it a one-horn.
An enormous curving horn rose from the animal’s snout above the nose and below the eyes, but it was unlike any horn Omar had ever seen before. Long ago he had hunted with a bow, stalking the swift oryx and gazelle in Ifrica and taking their long slender horns as drinking cups and walking sticks. And only a few years ago he had hunted with an Italian rifle to bring down a huge red elk with a massive rack of branching antlers. But the beast charging across the field had armed its skull with an enormous scimitar, a weapon long enough to skewer three men back to back, and Omar suspected that was exactly what the creature had in mind now.
Morayo and Riuza were already running for the Finch, so Omar grabbed Kosoko and propelled the old cartographer into the cabin, but he paused by the open hatch to watch.
The one-horn stampeded over the snow, its pillar-like legs crashing through the snowdrifts as though they were mere snowflakes. And as the seconds ticked down, Omar realized that the beast wasn’t following the tracks of the men and dogs toward the town. It was charging toward the Finch.
“Stay inside!” he shouted as he slammed the hatch shut.
As he strode out across the snow toward the woolly juggernaut, Omar gripped the hilt of his seireiken and said, “Little brother, I’d appreciate your help again. Any suggestions would be appreciated.” He could feel the frozen earth shuddering under his boots with the vibrations of the one-horn’s huge feet.
Slaughtering animals is a task for butchers, not samurai, the dead man answered.
Omar tightened his grip on the sun-steel sword and he reached down into the burning metal with his own soul to grab the ghost of Ito Daisuke and tear a flood of images from his memories. Omar saw strange castles and silken robes, men practicing with wooden swords in a gravel yard, a young woman standing on a bridge with an umbrella on her shoulder. Image after image appeared, too fast for him to comprehend any of them.
I submit! Daisuke cried out.
“That’s better.” Omar blinked to clear his mind as he drew his seireiken, letting its white light dance on the face of the unbroken snow. The one-horn tilted its head back to bellow its final challenge before lowering its snout and leveling its massive horn at Omar’s chest. But already he felt the soul of the samurai guiding his hands and feet, and Omar moved.
At the last moment before contact, he dashed left and forward, slashing swiftly to his right and guiding the edge of his blade along the side of the beast’s head. The behemoth moaned and crashed down into the snow as though its legs had been torn out from under it. Omar whirled away to the side and sheathed his blade, hiding it once again inside his coat. Before him the great beast lay dead and still, an ugly black scar running from its mouth through its small black eye, over the ear, and down the side of its throat in a long snaking line. Omar studied the smoking cut with no memory of having guided his hands around the contours of the animal’s head like that at all. He nodded and exhaled. “Thank you again, little brother. Maybe next time you’ll be a bit more eager to help.”
And the ghost whispered, Yes, Bakhoum-dono.
The airship hatch banged open and footsteps thumped lightly in the snow to his right, followed closely by
