“The world Mr Jones has created is more than equal to any of the masters of the genre... and I would include Tolkien in that number.”
A. Marlowe, author Blue Diamonds & other novels
ALSO BY SAMUEL Z JONES
ROMANCING THE SWORD
Book I: Kingdom of The Void
Book II: Far Hrinor
Book III: Sins of The Father
Book IV: Masters of War
Book V: Weapons of The Gods
AKURITE EMPIRE
Book I: The Red Knight
Book II: Golden Firebird
Book III: Beyond The Sunset
THE LORD PROTECTOR
Book I: Gaes of The Red Witch
Book II: Fortress of Knighthood
Book III: Number of The Witch
THE SORCHA STORIES
Book I: Sorcha's Story
Book II: Sorcha's Revenge
Book III: Sorcha's Revolt
OTHER BOOKS
The Flame of Freedom (with Gabriel Murray)
Sifu Dansac's Kung Fu Secrets
They Call Me Anonymous
Perihelion (with Marlo Forrest)
OMNIBUS EDITIONS
The Complete Akurite Empire
Romancing The Sword Epic Edition
The Sorcha Omnibus
Hardback and paperback editions exclusively from Lulu.com
The Last Daishen
by
Samuel Z Jones
The Last Daishen sat on a heap of rubble and sharpened her sword.
The weapon had no need of sharpening; the ancient steel kept a razor edge no matter what punishment it received or administered. But sharpening the sword was a habit of past Daishens stretching almost as far back into antiquity as the blade itself.
The scrape of the whetstone was the only sound. There was no wind to disturb the grey dust of the landscape. In the east, the slightest lightening of the dust-choked sky signalled the onset of the dawn.
Kali Daishen had not seen the sun in over a year, not since the alien Psarrion bombarded the planet from orbit and invoked nuclear winter across half the world. Kali was seventeen years old. Twelve months ago, she had lived a normal life, with her parents and her siblings, enjoyed dreams of the future and worried over upsets from the past. She did not often think of the past now, or of the future; only the present mattered, the indwelling voice of the Old Daishen and the mission the ancient spirit had laid before her.
That mission would have seemed insanity to the girl she had once been. Sometimes that girl still spoke in her mind, questioning the impossible things she had come to believe. She knew her companions questioned them, perhaps even thought her insane. But always, the spirit of the Old Daishen was with her, tangible but invisible.
The scraping of the whetstone paused. Kali tilted her head slightly, listening. Behind her, amid the rubble of what had once been a residential block, her comrades were stirring from sleep.
Geddes was not surprised to find Kali still awake. She rarely slept. Three nights out of four, Kali would call first watch and then sit up all night. Last night had been no exception; Geddes and the other five had slept while Kali kept watch, sharpening her sword.
The sword... it was an anachronism, like the antique plate armour she insisted on wearing night and day.
Geddes knew she had heard him approach; her head tilted, turning her good ear in his direction. It always pained him, seeing her for the first time each morning. Geddes was the only one of their group who had known Kali before the Psarrion invasion, who remembered the girl she had been.
She glanced up at him as he joined her on the rubble, lighting his first cigarette of the day and looking out across the desolate landscape. Dark hair scraped back from her face, thick with the grey dust that coated the land and clogged the air. A livid scar started at her left brow and traced a curve down through her ear, curving around the back of her skull into her hairline.
“You ever gonna tell me how you got that?” Geddes asked.
Kali smiled, but her eyes remained bleak. “You wouldn't believe me.”
“Try me. I'm only gonna ask you every day 'til you 'fess. So come on, I'm sick of asking.”
“Knife fight,” she said, tracing the scar with her fingertip.
“With who?”
“Ask Fethne, she was there.”
Geddes glanced back into the ruined building where they had slept the last two days. “I did, twice. First time she freaked out, second time she told me a pack of lies.”
“You asked her in bed, I suppose?”
“Don't look at me like that.”
Fethne, one of two other women in their group, had slept with all of the men, Geddes included. Kali, conversely, was the only member of their party who had slept with no one. She quirked an eyebrow at Geddes now, then looked back towards the dusty horizon.
“So come on. The scar. Tell me how you lost your ear.”
“Cigarette.”
“Scar.”
“Alright.” Kali accepted a cigarette and a light. “When the red knight came to me...”
Geddes rolled his eyes. This story he had heard before, too often, and it sounded insane every time.
“You asked,” Kali said. “I'm telling you.”
“Go on then.”
“After she gave me her armour and sword, she died of her wounds and I buried her. But before she died, she told me that I'd meet a man in the desert, and fight him. She told me his name, described him to me. Three months later, I met him. Until then, I'd thought I was mad. The armour, the sword...” she shrugged, glancing down at herself, the red plate armour dusted grey. “But he recognised me. And we fought. He gave me this.” She touched the scar again. “But I killed him.”
“That's it?” Geddes threw the stub of his cigarette away. “What are you leaving out?”
“Only the details you'll think are completely mad.”
Geddes glanced back over his shoulder. “The others are up. Breakfast time.”
Kali sheathed her sword and shrugged a dusty longcoat over her armoured shoulders, picked up her rifle and followed Geddes back into the ruins. Only one room of the residential block remained intact, buried under the rubble of the rest of the structure. Here the dry wind did not reach and the light of a campfire went safely unseen.
Kersey and Ferneval were already by the fire, boiling a kettle and stirring mess tins above the meagre flames. In the back corner of the ruin, Chadwell was blinking awake in Fethne's embrace. Stoically not looking at the rest of the group, Chadwell dressed and joined them at the fire. Fethne mumbled something and dragged the sleeping bag back over her head.
Their equipment was minimal; backpacks, mess tins, canteens, sleeping bags. Their rations were whatever they scavenged from the ruins left behind by the Psarrion. The alien invader had no need to loot, bringing their own provisions, building their own habitations. The survivors of the Psarrion invasion scratched a living amid the ruins of the cities or in the wastelands.
Kali and her companions had quit the city of Karak over a month ago; between the Psarrion patrols and the increasingly feral gangs prowling the ruins, survival in the wastelands had seemed the better option.
Looking at breakfast, Kali knew her companions were rethinking their decision. The Psarrion orbital bombardment had devastated the continent, every city and settlement hammered into rubble. The survivors now subsisted on whatever supplies could be dug from the ruins. Since leaving the city, Kali and her companions had found several small caches in what had once been homes, but miles separated each ruined settlement. When they found supplies, they camped at the site until only enough remained to carry while they sought out the next cache.
The city of Karak, as violent and dangerous as it had become,
still boasted innumerable buried caches amid the sprawling ruins.
Breakfast today was leftovers from dinner; tinned beans, pasta, garlic and tomato paste, a small amount of cheese all mixed in a pot over the fire. Kali stirred the portion in her mess-tin listlessly.
“Used to call this range stew,” Kersey said. “Whatever you got, cooked up in a pot.”
Everyone knew this; every citizen of the Vesprier Confederate took at least one year's military service in their late teens. Kersey and Geddes had done theirs; Chadwell had been halfway through his national service when the Psarrion attacked; Kali and Ferneval had been waiting to begin. Fethne was a foreigner, caught in Vesprier at the time of the attack. She claimed she had been a soldier in the Silvan Airforce. No one believed her; the girl had been caught out in too many lies.
After breakfast, Geddes buried their campfire in ash while the others effaced any sign of their presence. They packed up their kit and the food that remained, and set out across the trackless dust that had once been fertile land. They did not speak; the daily march through the unchanging dusty wasteland was a nightmare familiar beyond remark or complaint.
At first glance, the landscape seemed a uniform carpet of dust. Surviving in that arid wasteland taught the eye to spot patterns in the dust that marked rubble or old roads. Around noon, Chadwell spotted the remains of a car, half buried in the dust. They picked it over without much hope; vehicles fleeing the cities had been methodically destroyed by the Psarrion bombardment. This particular vehicle, once the dust had been cleared away, proved to be a burnt wreck.
“There's some ruins