The singing. If only the singing would stop. Within hours, it would be Yoritomo Benke's turn at watch. With the burning air in his lungs, and the singing in his ears, he could not sleep. The singing did not belong here.

Here, the soil was charred and blasted where it was not flooded and ravenous. They had lost two men yesterday, to a swamp which had swallowed them whole. They had returned last night, and he was nearly killed. This singing, however, was the most beautiful thing that Benke had ever heard. He wanted to stand up, to charge off into the darkness in search of the maiden who could sing such beauty into life.

He knew that if he did so, he would be dead.

He wished that the singing would stop.

There was silence.

It was palpable. He could taste the silence in the air. The burning in his lungs was gone, and he could instead smell ... nothing. This was worse. Opening his eyes, he flung himself to his feet.

The jade in his hand glowed a bright green. The eyes at the edge of the fire-light glowed a green to match.

"Masame?" He took a faltering step backward toward his only surviving companions.

"Masame?" His voice sounded hollow in the vast silence. There was something unreal about it. It was someone else's voice. Someone else, speaking from behind a thick curtain, or perhaps from within a cavern. Someone not--quite-right.

Masame did not answer.

* * *

"Yukue-sama." The skirmisher bowed, the mon of the Emerald Champion gleaming brightly upon his shoulder in the fire-light. There was a new Emerald Champion, Yukue had heard. Kakita Toshimoko had been replaced.

"Hai. What news?" The fortress about them seemed cold, deserted. No torches lit its walls, no banners flew. A hidden fortress, a secret power.

The Crane had moved on, following the Daimyo northward. The walls here were solid. The samurai were veterans of a dozen wars. This was no Kaiu Kabe, but if the enemy should come, it would hold.

"Only one of the scouting teams returned. There were but two survivors. They are badly injured. They may not live out the night, but they have seen Shiro Hiruma." The archer's breath steamed in the cold air of encroaching winter. War in winter was the more deadly for it. The Crane Daimyo was a fool, if he could not see that.

"Have them brought to me. Our Lord must know what they have seen."

* * *

The brackish river flowed sluggishly, as though fighting against the will of the elements. Or perhaps, it was the sea which did not want this water, and held it off so long as it could.

Benke looked at his two companions. Mist rose from the river's surface, a dark fog which burned the eyes just to look at it. Benke glanced at the finger of jade clutched tight in his hand. The green was darkened, fading to a dull grey. What had the Yasuki said? It would not be long now.

Hai. The river was deep. Deep enough for a caravan of kobune to sail up its length. Deep enough to conceal horrors best left unimagined.

Benke shuddered. Something moved at the surface of the water.

They ran.

* * *

"Take this message north. Any who try to stop you, you are Wasp Clan. You serve the Emerald Champion. There is no time."

The archer bowed politely. He took the small scroll which she offered, slipped it into his obi, and was gone. The roads were full of bandits and soldiers. The early winter cold would slow travel. They had no horses to spare him.

She prayed to the Fortunes that he would arrive in time.

* * *

Lord Moon peered down with his one good eye upon Hiruma Castle. The black and twisted ruin would not hold out much longer against this siege. Fu-Leng was dead, but his servants were still strong. This was their land.

The Crab would die.

A dozen banners snapped feebly from the battlements, proclaiming victory for Yakamo's men.

Yakamo.

Every day there were fewer alive within the castle to defend its walls. Now, their leader was amongst the lost. Gone into the depths of the horror. Gone.

* * *

Benke stared at the gathered host. A vast tide of dead men stood silently atop a stony outcrop. They did not move as men moved. They did not speak. They stood, as though some strange hand had come upon a battlefield, lost and forgotten, and stood the lost in rank and file, like dolls found after the spring thaw.

Then the hill stood.

A massive, tortured Thing, eyes of flame and hands of stone, stood with an army upon its back. It towered against the sky. Benke could no longer see the Moon. It was small comfort.

With a heave and a groan, the Thing threw itself at the walls of Hiruma Castle. With a rattling shudder like that of a dying man, the tower where it had struck collapsed, burying both the Thing and the army of dead men. A cloud of dust and wreckage seeped into the sky, trying to escape this land of pain. It failed, and drifted slowly back to earth. Rubble filled the place where the Thing had been. The rubble moved. One of the dead men stood, slowly, and walked toward the hole.

Then a second. A third.

A dozen or more of the dead pulled themselves in pieces from under the stones of the tower, and marched against the living.

"Benke?" Harani's voice. She was the youngest of the three. She had never seen war before this year, and they sent her here.

"Benke, they are coming ..."

He turned, to look where she was pointing.

Green.

A boiling soup of green poured up the hill. The first sounds began to reach his ears, fighting past the dull pain from the roar of the tower's collapse. A cackling, maddening noise. More pain. Pain given a small body to play in.

Goblins.

Benke looked at his too-small slip of jade.

Black. It was black.

"I will hold them here.

"Run!!!"