“Incredible,” I said. “It sounds like we’ve only begun to see the power of the Personas.”
“How is it that you’ve managed to get the tigers on side?” Cara asked. “Was that a new ability you learned from the Personas?”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t the Personas. The tigers were enslaved to the mercenaries. The tigers are the Byakko, not the men. The men bound the Byakko against their will, entrapping them and forcing them to fight when they didn’t want to. This is Yasei, and he has pledged himself and his people to do my bidding if I free them of the hated mercenaries.”
“I’d say we’ve managed to do that,” she said, nodding toward the band of mercenaries. They now stood with a shield wall pointing up the hill to where the mass of dark tree demons pressed thickest. In their midst was the tall figure of the Festering tree which had been the monk. It seemed that every tree in the valley had been taken over by the Festering and had now turned into a demon. They were horrible to look at, twisted, deformed figures, only faintly humanoid, in all shapes and sizes. Evil faces with mad eyes stared out at us from among the branches.
All was still for a long moment. We were surrounded on all sides by the trees. Then, in a sudden rush, a host of armored Tengu poured shrieking from under the shadows of the branches. Like the Tengu we had fought at the shrine, they were somewhere between bird and man. Unlike those previous creatures, these were monstrously large and dressed up in heavy mail and some bits of armor plating. They were armed with long pikes, and they charged straight down the hill at us in a howling wave.
“Brace!” I shouted to the mercenaries, and they lowered their naginata spears ready for impact. “General Koshu,” I shouted, “hold your position there and pin them down!”
Then I shouted to the tigers, “fan out and hit them in the flank!”
I wheeled Yasei’s reins around and moved to the left as the rest of the tigers poured like a boiling river up the slope and crashed into the ranks of the mercenaries. The charging tigers were mired in the mercenaries’ stout spear wall off to the right, and the tigers smashed into the on the left and the center, driving them back toward the trees.
At that moment, the wall of tree demons lumbered forward.
“Time for your fire, Cara,” I called. “Can you fire from the back of a moving tiger?”
“Hey,” she said in my ear. “This is me we’re talking about.”
I laughed. “Hold on tight with your knees, then. This is going to be a bumpy ride.”
As the Tengu were being pushed back by the tigers on my left, the mercenary spear wall was beginning to collapse on the right. There, tree demons had reached the wall and were dealing death, sending men flying with massive limbs like primitive clubs. I wheeled Yasei to the left and charged in that direction, grabbing my axe as Cara loosed a flight of burning arrows at the trees which had still to reach the fight. Bright flames erupted from the trees she hit, illuminating the chaotic scene.
We crashed into the right flank of the mercenaries, and my Byakko’s massive claws tore through the Tengu in front of him. The tree demons were twice my height, but I took them on anyway. Throwing Yasei’s reins to Cara, I leaped from his back with my two-handed axe in my hands and set about the base of the nearest tree demons.
They were more brittle than real living wood, and I found with satisfaction that my axe head smashed through the lower limbs with ease. They were slow as well, much slower than me. All around me, Cara’s arrows set light to more and more of them, until the whole scene was lit up with garish yellow light and black smoke filled the air. The Tengu were afraid of the fire, and the mercenaries, though hard pressed, took heart when I relieved their right flank.
Cara drove a swathe through the Tengu, riding hard on the tiger’s back, and the mercenaries rallied around me as I chopped limbs from the trees and smashed holes in their lower trunks. They crashed at me with their limbs, but the Ironside armor deflected even the heaviest blows with ease.
The battle was shifting. The air was full of black smoke and the stench of burning, and everywhere there was a livid light from the fires. A tree demon shaped like a tall, thin man of enormous height, stooped and swung a massive limb at me. I took it off at the joint with one chop of my axe, and four mercenaries ran up to stick their naginata spears into its chest.
Two mercenaries were pinned down by a group of Tengu, and I switched to shield and one-handed axe to engage them, shield-bashing with one hand and chopping limbs off with the other. General Koshu had his huge samurai sword in his hand, and was surrounded by a mass of bodies of Tengu and smashed tree demons. Yasei and his tigers were pushing a solid wedge of white through the massed tree-demons up toward the top of the ridge, their massive claws and powerful teeth slashing and smashing a path through the monstrous trees.
But it was not over yet. Further up the hill, surrounded by the biggest and fiercest of the tree demons was the huge and terrible form of the central tree which had been the Kitsune priest. I knew we would have to take him out before this could be truly finished.
Cara was on foot again, and she came dashing through the battle to stand beside me. Her black sword ran with the
