Warbound (The Grimnoir Chronicles Book 3)

Dear Doctor Kelser, if you are really a doctor at all. Forgive my impertinence, but it must be said. You are a fool and a fraud. It was with great amusement that I read your recent paper detailing your new theory on the origins of magic amongst the population beginning the mid portion of the last century. Atlantis? Really? You cannot scientifically explain the origin of magic so your first assumption is that the lost continent of Atlantis must somehow be involved? Did your medical degree come from a box of Cracker Jack? Every reasonable man of science understands that magic comes from crystals.

—Orson Flick,

Letter to the editor, Scientific American, 1921

Axel Heiberg Island

Toru knew right where to go.

He had lied to the Grimnoir about having never visited this base before. Toru had passed through once, accompanying a supply drop, mostly as an excuse to get away from the embassy for a time.

Only a washed-up Imperium officer would end up in charge of such a horrible duty station, but at least the last one had some vestige of professionalism, or had at least managed to act convincing in time for Toru’s inspection. This current commander was pathetic in comparison. From the speed of the assault, it appeared the Grimnoir might not even take any casualties. It was shameful that Imperium men would be steamrolled so easily. Regardless of how inept this officer may have been, there was still something that Toru needed from him before the Grimnoir killed everyone.

While the main body of Grimnoir were distracted, Toru took a side passage and made his way down a ladder. Utilizing his Power, moving with lightning quickness, Toru crossed the basement level of the facility in seconds. A powerful enough Brute could run down a gazelle, and Toru was the best of the best. He intercepted an Imperial soldier on the way. It did not please him to do so, but Toru snapped the man’s neck with a single quick strike before the warrior could even begin to react. It is for the best, my brother.

The officer’s quarters were next, and Toru intercepted the young men as they woke up and went toward the sound of the guns. No Actives would be wasted on a post such as this, but all Imperial officers were branded with at least one kanji, so they could prove dangerous enough to thwart his mission. Toru fired his Power and lifted the steel tetsubo.

Toru killed them all.

Blood dripped from the spikes on his club. Toru turned in a slow circle. The walls were painted red. Broken bodies lay in piles.

It is for the best.

The commander’s chambers were locked, so Toru kicked the heavy door from its hinges. An unshaven, bleary-eyed Imperial captain was still trying to get his shirt on. Toru looked in disgust at the garbage strewn about the room and the empty sake jugs, and then broke every bone in the captain’s hand when he reached for his pistol. Toru grabbed him by the neck, lifted him off the ground, and slammed him hard into the wall.

The captain was red-faced and struggling to breathe. He blinked rapidly and begged for mercy like a peasant. “Please don’t kill me! I surrender,” the captain squealed in a manner that offended Toru’s philosophy about what it meant to be a warrior. It was easy to see what caliber of officer would be sent to a dead-end post such as this.

“I am Toru Tokugawa,” he stated. The captain’s tear-filled eyes widened. “My name is known. Good. You will activate your emergency communication spell to the Edo court now.” Toru squeezed just a bit harder, letting the captain know the price for noncompliance, then he dropped the man to the floor. “I need to have a word with them.”

Every Imperium base in the world was equipped with prepared kanji so that a quick message could be sent back to the high command. They bypassed all levels of the military bureaucracy and went straight to the top, to the Chairman’s inner circle. They were to be used only in the gravest emergency, and using one for anything short of an apocalyptic crisis unnecessarily would mean a death sentence for the officer activating it.

Trained as an Iron Guard, Toru knew how to prepare such a spell himself, but when he’d tried it months ago, it had simply not worked. He had hoped to send a message home, warning them about the false Chairman, but his particular spell had been purposefully blocked somehow. The imposter was obviously trying to limit the contagion of the rogue Iron Guard.

Toru understood now that even if he could get a message to high command, it would be pointless. No one would believe him. Who among them would doubt the word of the Chairman? It was for an entirely different reason that Toru had decided to send this message.

The captain hesitated, so Toru used the blankets from the man’s bed to wipe the blood from the tetsubo. That was all it took for the captain to wet himself in fear. The worm crawled away, wincing as his broken hand touched the floor. A screen was moved from the far wall, revealing a large mirror, and the captain went to work activating it. His spellbinding was sloppy, as would be expected just from looking at him, but these mirrors were created by Unit 731 Cogs, masters of the individual kanji. Even an imbecile could make one of their spells work.

Toru waited, watching himself in the mirror. His reflection stared back, splattered with the blood of good Imperium men who should not have had to die. It was a waste of precious resources. That was on the imposter’s head, not Toru’s. The captain was jabbering on the whole time, begging, pleading, groveling . . . If Toru had been in a merciful mood before, the pathetic display of cowardice would have removed any lingering doubts. The mirror flashed and a new, familiar scene appeared on the other side. He had seen this view of the Imperial Court many times before.

A functionary appeared in the mirror, obviously confused as to why the most isolated base in the world would be calling for the high command, but then he saw Toru standing there with the captain cowering at his feet, and his mouth fell open in surprise. Sick of the captain’s piteous mewling, Toru raised one boot and stomped on his neck, silencing him forever.

“I demand to see Okubo Tokugawa. Bring me the Chairman.”

The shocked functionary stared on in silence. His mouth moved, but no words came out.

“Tell him that Toru Tokugawa wishes to speak with him.”

The metal globe was six feet across and floating six feet off the ground. Sullivan couldn’t tell what it was made of, but he had to admire the remarkable craftsmanship as it slowly rotated under its own power. The continents didn’t look quite right; they were sort of stylized. He didn’t know if that had been necessary for the kanji spells carved all over it, or if it had been because the Chairman had liked for his gizmos to have a certain artistic flair, but either way, Sullivan had to admit it was kind of pretty.

“This floor is locked up tight. Only a few of us wounded,” Diamond reported. At some point in the fight he’d gotten blood on his glasses, so the Mover took them off and cleaned them on his coat sleeve. “We’ve got a few pockets of resistance left, but they’re pinned down.”

“Keep ‘em that way. Don’t waste any of our boys trying to dig them out. We got what we came for. How about our path out?”

“We control it. Some of the guys got hit, nothing too severe. I sent them all back to the main floor to that funny air lock room. Dianatkhah is seeing to them.”

Sullivan nodded. Healers were so rare that they only had a single, precious one on this expedition. That was probably the safest place in the whole place to put their wounded. At least they had an exit if something went wrong. “Good. Spread the word to watch out for one of them suicide charges.” The Grimnoir knights had done well. For not having worked together much beforehand, they’d performed better than he’d expected. “I hope this won’t take long . . .”

“It’ll be done five seconds after you quit asking me how long it will be,” Schirmer said. Their Fixer was their most talented spellbinder, and he’d been preparing the communication spell. Since they’d been unsure how much glass would be available at the site—and unbroken after they took the place over—they had hauled a bag of salt along on the hike. Schirmer had poured the salt out on the floor and was drawing designs in it. Sullivan had turned out to be pretty darn good at that sort of thing, but he had to admit that the Fixer from Texas was better.

Sullivan checked his watch. Ten minutes from entry to taking over the place. Not a single fatality, just a couple of minor wounds . . . Not too shabby. He turned to Heinrich, who was supervising the looting of the Imperium command center. The knights were grabbing every scrap of paper there, just in case there was some piece of valuable intelligence. That was a lot of paper, and they only had a couple of folks who could actually read Japanese, but it was worth a shot. “Alert the Traveler. Southunder can kill his storm. Have Barns pick us up right outside.”

“You do not wish to walk back?”

“I’d prefer to keep all my toes . . . Schirmer?”

The Fixer cracked his knuckles. “Done.”

This next part, which Sullivan was the best at involved connecting someone’s personal Power to the designs in the salt. And Sullivan had the most Power of any of them. Just lucky that way I guess. The symbols represented the various geometric designs that made up the living thing they called the Power. Sullivan knew more about it than most people, but even he couldn’t wrap his brain around all the abstract concepts of a critter that weird.

However, there was one person they knew who seemed to have no problem understanding all of it.

“Hurry and drag these corpses out of here,” Heinrich ordered some of the knights as he pointed at the dead Imperium. “Our genius does not handle violence well.”

“He gets spun up real easy,” Sullivan explained as the magic connected. There was a flash of light as the pile of salt was fused into a solid mass. It floated off of the ground as a disk and rotated until the flat surface came to face him. No matter how many times he did that, the trick never got old. It was like looking through a window, and on the other side was Fuller’s laboratory on the Traveler.

“Mr. Sullivan! Right on time.” Buckminster Fuller pointed at the four wristwatches he was wearing on one arm. “I was assured you would be prompt in the execution of your duties!”

Cogs . . . Sullivan sighed. “We found it.”

“I am eager to see what you have for me!”

The view was remarkably clear. The strain on his Power wasn’t too bad. Schirmer did damn fine work. “Here you go, Fuller.” Sullivan allowed the communication spell to turn until Fuller had a view of the Chairman’s globe.

There was a moment of silence as the Cog took in the sight. Fuller’s Power was an odd one, even by the standards of the Grimnoir. He was the only man they knew of who could actually see the geometries of the Power, and even see how it connected to individual Actives. Others of their kind could only feel their own, and then they sort of messed around until they maybe figured out how to draw little bits of magic to bind onto things. For most of them, spellbinding was like blundering your way through a room full of sharp edges and pointy bits in the dark. Fuller was in the same room, but he had the lights on.

“Remarkable. Astounding. Phenomenal! Brilliant! It is spherical. You know how I feel about spheres!”

Fuller did have a thing for domes. “I guess that means you like it?”

All of the knights in the room had stopped their looting to come and see Fuller do his thing. It took a lot to get jaded Grimnoir riled up, but hell, Fuller could actually see magic. Who could blame them? Since Francis Stuyvesant had found the man last year, the Society had made huge strides in improving their spells. Fuller’s weird, super-magical brain had become a bit of a legend in Grimnoir circles.

“Like it? I love it. They may be ruthless in the extreme, but the Chairman’s Cogs create items of such mastery, such flawless elegance. One must wonder how individuals capable of such savage mutilations can, on the other hand, create such a work of art. It would seem that such diametrically opposed features would be mutually exclusive. I can see why they needed to place this near the poles. The omnimultiple directionality of the Power manipulations alone are— ”

Sullivan had already learned to stop Fuller before he could get on a roll with the big made-up words. Long rambling dissertations on magic could wait for a time when they weren’t holed up in an Imperium base with a bunch of fanatics who were sure to try and banzai charge their way out any minute. “Sorta on a deadline, Fuller.”

“My apologies, Mr. Sullivan, but I do occasionally succumb to my enthusiasm. The map is obviously a measurement device displaying the natural life-cycle processes of the symbiotic parasite, in other words, the relationship between the Power and the host, i.e., mankind.”

Most of the knights seemed bewildered by this, but Sullivan understood what Fuller was saying. The globe was producing its own light, which was far brighter in the areas of the world that had the most population. That made sense, because that was where the most Actives would be dying. He wondered idly just how bright France had burned on this thing during Second Somme.

“When an Active passes away, their now grown and developed magic returns to the Power. That is how it feeds and expands. This device is simply displaying a macroview of that process. It is rather brilliant in its simplicity. It would detect and then provide the location of any subversion . . . I will call it a detectlocator.”

Sullivan rubbed his face in his hands. At least it was only two words this time. Captain Southunder had vetoed Fuller installing anything with more than ten syllables in its name onto the Traveler.

“The detectlocator is monitoring this flow of energy, watching for anomalies. Gaps. Blank spots, a place where the natural order appears to have been suborned. Places where magic is no longer flowing as it should. It would be like watching a water system and discovering that a river was suddenly flowing uphill.” Fuller scowled. “However, this particular design is flawed. It is broken.”

Sullivan looked over the complex kanji. It was truly the most advanced magical device he had ever seen. It was far over his head, and he’d even managed to engrave spells onto his own body successfully. How would it be to be able to see the world like Fuller? “Can you make it work?”

“I believe so. You will need to follow my instructions exactly, but we should be able to manipulate it to perform as designed.” Fuller’s brow furrowed as he looked over the kanji. “I can tell what they were attempting to do . . . This symbolical representation is a real-time display of the flow of magic from its hosts back to the Power and vice versa. It lacks refinement. It lacks true accuracy, but would at least point you to the correct region, which is enough for your intent. It should work, but this is flawed. This makes no sense. I do not understand what has been done here. The initial design would have worked, but there are more recent modifications that have subverted the parameters.”

Sullivan scowled. “Recent?”

“These clever kanji were changed within the last year. I believe that this detectlocator of the Chairman’s has been sabotaged.”

Toru did not have to wait long. He’d held no doubt that such a brazen move would attract the ire of the imposter. The man that next appeared in the mirror looked like the Chairman, moved like the Chairman, even sounded like the real Chairman, but he was certainly not the Chairman. “Traitor! What is the meaning of this?”

“Who are you?” Toru demanded.

“You dare to question me?”

“I do. The real Chairman is dead.”

“Silence, treasonous dog! I am Baron Okubo Tokugawa, Chairman of the Imperial Council and chief advisor to the Emperor. I am—”

“Spare me your lies. You are not my father, Okubo Tokugawa. You are an imposter.” Toru pointed two fingers at his temple. “The memories of Ambassador Hattori belong to me now. He realized the truth before he died, and now that truth is mine.”

“Hattori was a fool,” the imposter spat. “You are the even bigger fool to have believed him. You were always naïve, Toru. Your cowardice was an embarrassment to my name in Manchuria and your continued existence is an insult to the Iron Guard.”

It took all of Toru’s restraint to not smash the mirror. “I did not summon you to trade barbs, imposter. It does not matter who you really are, for the Enemy has returned,” he said through gritted teeth. “A Pathfinder is coming. The ghost of the real Okubo Tokugawa has confirmed this. The dishonor you bring upon my family pales in comparison to this danger. Continue your charade and I will not expose your lies, but you must alert the Iron Guard to its presence.”

The imposter glanced about the court. “Leave me,” he ordered some unseen functionary.

“You may rule the Imperium. Only I know the truth, but my father’s final command was not to see to the Imperium’s fate or to overthrow you. It was to stop the Pathfinder.” Toru struggled to keep the emotion from his words as he continued his plea. “Anything else is irrelevant. Keep your stolen throne, but for the love of the Imperium and all it stands for, you must warn the Iron Guard. Let them fulfill their destiny. Send them to hunt the beast. I implore you. Do not destroy the dream of Dark Ocean.”

The imposter’s handsome face was an unreadable mask. “You are in the northern monitoring station.”

“I am beyond your reach for now. If it makes any difference to your decision, on my honor as an Iron Guard—”

“You are no Iron Guard.”

“I am Iron Guard!” Toru bellowed, finally losing control of his temper and unconsciously reclaiming something which he had forsaken. “I am the only one fulfilling our real mission! I only care about the destruction of the Pathfinder. Once that is done, you need not worry about me being a threat to you. Awake the Imperium. Tell them the Pathfinder is coming. Once that is done, I will take my own life and trouble you no more.”

The false Chairman chuckled, and then it turned into full-blown laughter. “The memories of Hattori have changed you, Toru. You are no longer the selfish boy that I knew. Such a futile yet noble gesture. Killing yourself to protect the Imperium . . . I was not aware you had it in you.” The imposter’s voice had not changed, but his manner of speaking had. “Certainly, I could see you killing yourself out of pride, or in some misguided protest, but on behalf of others? Impressive. However, it is far too late for that now. The Imperium’s course is set. The end is inevitable.”

He sounded familiar . . . Toru had listened for hours in the academy as the proud history of the Iron Guard had been drilled into their impressionable young minds by one of its original members. “Master Saito? It is you?”

The imposter gave him a malicious leer. The expression seemed completely alien on the Chairman’s normally composed face. “You were always a quick study, Toru. One of my better students. You could have been promoted to First, but you lacked resolve. I can see that has changed.”

Dosan Saito had been one of the senior members of their order, one of the Chairman’s trusted inner circle of advisors, and a master sensei of the Iron Guard Academy. Toru knew this from his own memories and Hattori’s before that. “But you were Dark Ocean!” Toru was stunned. “How could you betray him?”

“You know so little . . .” the imposter shook his head with exaggerated sadness. “I have been preparing for this for a very long time. When Okubo died, events were set in motion.”

Saito had seen the last Pathfinder with his own eyes. He had been there during the final battle in China. The memories of Hattori confirmed that. “Then you know I tell the truth. You know how serious this is. You must unleash the Iron Guard!”

“There is much you will never understand. There was much that Okubo failed to understand as well. You have a few things in common with your father after all.”

“It is coming!” Toru shouted.

Saito chuckled as he made a subtle motion with his fingertips. “Foolish Toru . . . It is already here.”

There was a flash of red. The mirror exploded.

The Grimnoir knights were clustered around the floating sphere. None of them could believe their eyes. They’d done as Buckminster Fuller had instructed, carving corrections onto the magical sphere until Fuller was satisfied that every mistake had been corrected. At first Sullivan thought they’d accidentally broken the gizmo worse, but Fuller assured them that this was the right setting. They were seeing the truth.

There were tiny red dots spread across much of Asia.

Ian Wright reached out one hand toward the sphere, but then snatched it back, almost as if the stains burned. “I know some of these places. I know this one for sure.”

“Imperium schools,” Heinrich muttered. “These are all the places where Unit 731 conducts its experiments on Actives.”

There were dozens of them, spreading like the lung cancers that Jane kept warning him about because of his smoking. The Healer would surely call this advanced. “The Pathfinder’s already inside the Imperium . . .”

“Sullivan!” The shout tore his attention away from the floating globe. Toru was limping down the hall, his heavy coat shredded, leaving a trail of blood behind him. “There is danger.”

“What happened to you?”

Toru stopped, surveying the globe. He took in the red splotches without comment. “There is something here with us. Gather your men.” There were shiny bits embedded in his face. Glass. It took a moment for Sullivan to realize that the hand pressed to Toru’s side was actually holding his guts in. The former Iron Guard grimaced. “There is little time.”

Anything that could tear up a Brute like Toru was not to be trifled with. “You heard the man,” he snapped. “Prepare to move out.” The knights were efficient and smart enough not to argue. The Grimnoir were a loose organization, yet they had the functional equivalent to NCOs. These men, like Diamond and Heinrich, began shouting orders. The gathered Imperium papers were hastily shoved into backpacks, and weapons were readied. Schirmer moved to the ring of salt. Sullivan took one last look through it. “We’ve got to go, Fuller. Tell the Captain about what we just saw and have him contact Browning.”

“I shall. Good luck, Mr. Sull—” but then Schirmer smashed the salt with a rifle butt and it crumbled into glowing bits. Sullivan felt the Power shift inside his chest as he regained that small bit back.

Toru coughed blood, but when somebody had as many Healing spells on them as Sullivan or Toru did, you either killed them outright or not at all. “I do not know what it is. It came through a mirror.”

“You gonna make it?” Sullivan asked. Toru removed his hand and displayed his wounded side. The claw marks made it look like he’d been mangled by a piece of farm equipment. Any other man there would’ve been dead on the spot, but his Healing kanji were burning so hard that standing next to Toru felt like standing next to a radiator. “Damn . . .”

“I will live.”

The Mouth, Genesse, came running up. “The Traveler is on the way. Southunder’s ended the storm. It looks clear.”

Sullivan looked at Toru. Anything that could overwhelm a Brute like that wasn’t to be underestimated. “We better off fighting this thing in here, or out there?”

“It was faster than me.”

Sullivan gave the order to move out.

The knights were quick on their feet. It only took a minute to get everyone off the lower floor. As they passed the men holding the choke points against the remaining Imperium, they’d gather those silently and move away, leaving the soldiers holed up against nothing. If they played this right, they’d be long gone by the time the Japanese mounted a counterattack.

Sullivan led the way up the stairs, Browning’s bullpup automatic rifle in his big hands. He already knew that he’d get them to the entrance, and then hold it until everyone else had made it out and been accounted for. Once a leader of men, always a leader of men, and the habits he’d formed during the Great War had come back fast. Or maybe they’d never really left at all.

Whatever had attacked Toru hadn’t made a move against the rest of them yet. Sullivan’s eyes darted back and forth, checking every corner for threats. It kept his mind occupied enough to not dwell on the thought that not only was the Pathfinder already here, but also it was somehow already spread throughout the entire Imperium with nobody knowing. Survive first, deal with that later.

He froze when he saw the footprint made of blood. “What the hell?” It might not have gotten his attention if it had been shaped like a human’s, but this one was all twisted up and wrong. Sullivan held up one hand to stop the line of knights. He glanced back and spotted Ian Wright, and signaled for the Summoner to come forward. Pointing at the blood, Sullivan asked, “One of yours?”

The Summoner shook his head. “I don’t know what that is.”

Sullivan lifted his rife. That meant the thing had gotten ahead of them. “It’s here—”

There was a long scream, which echoed down the halls. It came from the direction of the entrance and it certainly didn’t sound like it had come from a human being. Then there was another scream, this one entirely too human and filled with unmistakable pain. There was a gunshot, and another, and then a rattling barrage of automatic weapons fire.

He set off at a run. Sullivan was fast for a Heavy, especially when driven by the thought that his men were counting on him. Several knights were right behind him.

But they were too late.

Diamond had called the entrance an airlock. Whatever it was, the room had been built tight, with solid doors to keep the cold out and the feeble warmth in. Now, that heavy door had been ripped from its hinges and was lying on the floor in pieces. The room had been painted red, floor to dripping ceiling. The crumpled lumps of winter clothing were all that were left of their wounded knights and their Healer. A haze made of particulate blood and bits of shredded goose down hung in the air. And in the center of the room, a thing made out of nightmares turned and hissed at them.

In the dim light, it could be mistaken for a person. Briefly. As it turned, wet muscles rolled beneath a thin, translucent covering. There were bullet holes puckered across its torso, weeping black, but it didn’t seem to notice. It dropped the severed leg it had been gnawing on when it heard Sullivan’s heavy footfalls, and when it turned and opened its jagged face to scream at them again with that horrific banshee wail, Sullivan let the thing have it.

Gravity shifted, magnified a dozen times, hurling the creature back and crushing it into the wall. It screeched and tried to push away, struggling to reach for him with long, pointed fingers. Sullivan aimed the BAR at its heart and squeezed the trigger.