Ch 11: Prelude To The Grim’s Calculus

The time leading up to the new year festivities felt like hardening ice on my skin.

This was their major holiday, as Christmas or Yule were not big in Japan for obvious reasons. The students had been busy clearing space for the many stalls and billets for the villagers to host their businesses in, the week leading up to new year’s day being one of eating favorite magical foods, games, mock-duels with wands, catching well-trained and broken ghosts, and general holiday air.

A large part of me hoped that the villagers would come en masse, but they instead started by trickling in business owners and workers to get the stalls set up, as well as massive cauldrons that would be heated over open fires to cook whatever manner of food or drink they had on their minds.

They were all slow, and it was driving me crazy.

Tano had been slowly growing with nervous energy, becoming rather clingy during the days leading up to the new year. While we had been rather arms-length when it came to the daytime, she was always near my side now.

She had even escalated to either asking me to sleep over in her room, or sleeping over in our shared room that Brody, Deckard, and I had been given.

There were strict rules in that room of course, as Brody had been rather icy about there being “no canoodling” while Tano was sleeping over.

I was never aware that she thought that low of me, but I suppose there is always time to learn new things.

With Tano putting a halt to her own classes to be with me every moment of the day, and the rest of the teachers being busy with managing everything coming for the celebrations, there was very little to do except sit and wait for the fires to start.

Days passed on, and two days from the new year, I got my wish.

I should have felt guilt for it, or horror, when the smoke tendrils began to crawl into the late dusk sky, but all I could feel was relief. Tano and I had been sitting at the top of the tallest tower, drinking tea and watching the snow flutter down from dark gray clouds, when I saw the first trail of smoke.

“Finally.” I said, standing up from our little chairs she had magicked up the stairs, and walking towards the parapet. “It’s finally here.”

Tano said nothing as she got up and stood next to me, the steam from our cups of tea flicking past our faces as one by one, the fires began to grow.

In a matter of minutes, the darkening horizon was glowing red and orange with the fires of the villages, along with the booms and clatter of gunpowder weapons carrying themselves across the wind from time to time.

That prospect caught me off guard, as the wizards couldn’t use the things for whatever magical reason they would prattle off, which meant that the enemies of the castle had somehow gotten their hands on them.

They sounded large, which to me said they were perhaps old.

Tano looked up at me, her face set despite her eyes being filled with worry. “What do we do now?”

“We kill.” I said matter of factly, draining my cup and handing it to her. “We survive.”

—

Refugees came pouring into the castle in a steady stream, a chaos of screams and panic amongst the jaunty lights and colors of the festival decorations. Men, women, and children arrived either on foot, in wagons, on horses, flying brooms, carpets, anything that could get them away from the Oni onslaught on the villages.

To my annoyance, not many of them were warriors; They had instead chosen to engage in a fighting retreat, which to me meant they were going to arrive depleted and exhausted.

The villages were fully ablaze now, centuries of history being reduced to ashes as snow fell from the night sky. Bodies were left dead in the street, temples desecrated, sacred artifacts looted, but I didn’t care.

I only had to keep this castle safe.

While the castle staff and faculty dealt with the civilians on the lower walls, I stood on the upper ones with Brody, Deckard, and Tano, watching into the growing night. The fight finally came within eyesight as the waning conjoined forces of the village’s warriors broke out of the woodline, or came sprinting down the road.

They were in a full route, and the Oni were out to take out their debt of blood and flesh.

I pulled up my binoculars to see just who I was dealing with, and I felt my stomach curl with worry; There were Trolls of course, the big, lumbering, stupid bastards loping along like giant toddlers. The Oni were far ahead of them, wearing armor of iron and steel that looked like it had been looted from museums, or handmade from signs stolen from the roadways. Then there were the odder things that I could not name, imps, spiders, skeletons with glowing eyes, and a manner of unearthly creatures that spoke purely of malice, and hunger.

Worst was that some of them were holding a mishmash of antique and modern weapons, a mix of ancient muzzle loaders, modern shotguns, or airguns. This surprised me the most, and I began to wonder if they actually did loot a museum or two on their way here. If I squinted hard enough, I could make out a few figures pushing eclectic cannons, and that made my heart pang.

“Let’s cover their retreat.” I murmured over the cries of the civilians down below. “Weapons out.”

Tano pulled her M110 around with shaky hands, while Brody unslung her M249.

Deckard unslung his ancient M82A2, an over-shoulder version of the Barret, and pointed at the sky. “I’ll take care of those.”

I glanced up to where he was pointing, and saw a bunch of floating heads looming over the trees. They were absurdly huge, floating through the air with their great mouths stained red with their victims. Others had gore covered chins, as if they had smashed down onto those down below that were too slow to get away. Dangling from their massive heads were grotesque looking spiders that hung via strands of black silk, leaning down and snatching up any militiamen that fell behind.

“Take them.” I replied, pulling my Socom to my eye and placing the reticle on the chest of an Oni that was attempting to chase down a pair of spell slingers and a yari-wielding militiaman.

I put a round in his chest, rather amusingly covered by armor made from a stop sign, and he tumbled to the ground in a heap. Tano began firing next to me as well, tracing her barrel atop a sandbag and pulling the trigger at regular intervals. Sometimes I saw her target fall down a few yards away from the one I was tracking, male and female Oni falling face first into the snow as their legs were cut out by 7.62 lead slicing through their spines.

As I fired, Brody would let out long streaks of fire from her M249, ripping up plumes of snow and blood from bodies as she caught Trolls or Oni packed together, the brass and linkages falling to the cold stone of the walls with the sound of metal rain.

A huge “boom!” from Deckard’s M82A2 announced the arrival of another flying head plummeting towards the ground, as not even the supernatural could contend with a .50 caliber round ripping through their eye sockets.

I found the smaller little creatures rather annoying, as they were fast, vicious little bastards, but I caught my fair share with my rounds, sending them rolling along the snow or sliding to a stop behind their intended targets.

Deckard ran out of heads to kill, and instead brought his sights down to the trolls, blowing fist sized holes out of their backs where their hearts used to be. Brody found more and more of her quarry bunching together out of panic, and cut them down swiftly with long pulls of the trigger.

Tano was crying next to me, sniffling as she pulled the trigger… but she was accurate, and she never stopped reloading a fresh magazine into her rifle when it ran dry.

I myself began to pull back on the trigger faster, my sights loping across targets like a little red firefly of death and putting more bodies into the snow-wetted mud.

A loud impact next to me caught my attention and I flicked my eyes to it, wet sand falling from the bag and down along the castle wall below.

“Incoming fire.” I said calmly, my voice coming in through everyone’s electronic earpro as I scanned my sights. “Find them and kill them.”

A few more rounds impacted around our sandbags, intermittent, slow, and inaccurate, then Tano called out, pulling on my sleeve.

“I see them!” Tano yelled, pointing to a clump of ruined wagons that had been tilted onto their sides. “Oni with guns!”

“Deckard.” I said, but he had already swung his over-shoulder weapon around, planting his high powered scope on his new victims.

“Inbound.” Deckard growled, then began pulling back on the trigger.

Despite what the Oni may have thought about their wooden cover, not much could stand between a M82A2 and its quarry.

The heavy .50 caliber rounds ripped through the wood like it was paper, spraying wooden shards and pieces of the copper jacket across those who weren’t catching the slug in their chest. Oni and Tengu were hauled backwards into the snow by the force of the rounds tearing through their bodies, dead before they could manage to try and lift their heads up from the snow.

“Launcher.” I said, slinging my Socom over onto my back with a swing of my arms and taking the 40mm grenade launcher from Brody. “Tano, feed me shells.”

I aimed, fired, ejected the empty 40mm shell, reloaded, aimed, and fired again, a constant cycle of “chick, chack, ‘thoomp!’” that echoed out across the screams and howls.

There were thousands of them, and I needed to thin the herd as much as I could.

A far larger boom made us all snap our heads up, and to my absolute dismay I saw smoke curling away from a fucking bombard, an ancient cannon that could have also served as a battering ram.

Its payload, likely a scalding hot roundball, thrummed overhead and landed in the castle courtyard, bouncing along cartoonishly until it tore a hole through the wall on the other side. Brick and wood clattered and rained down along the opposite caste wall, and I let out a sharp whistle.

“Spread out!” I screamed, shoving Tano towards Brody. “Get high and take out those weapon teams!”

Tano looked back at me, her eyes wide, but I nodded to her.

“It’s gonna be alright.” I said, quickly stepping forward and giving her a kiss on the forehead before giving her another push towards where Brody was running. “Remember what we discussed, and it’s gonna be alright. Go!”

Tano took off after Brody, Deckard jogging along the wall with his massive M82A2 to his next ammo dump.

I ran along to a murder hole we had packed with sandbags, stepped up onto the incline, and slid my Socom into the rifle slot. I flicked my magnifier over and squinted into it, spying the now growing number of old cannons, and spotting a few that looked like they were pulled out of the swamps after World War II.

“Son of a bitch.” I growled as a part of the lower wall got torn away by a modern-ish high explosive shell, the cries of terrified civilians and militia growing into the air. I ran over to another edge of the wall and looked around for a teacher, and thankfully spotted Otani Noritada. “Noritada!”

He looked up at me from near a cluster of militiamen, their swords bloody and armor barely holding on after the beating they had taken.

“Get the fuck out of there!” I screamed, pointing to the castle. “Get to the fucking Alamo!”

He nodded to me and turned to the militiamen, but I had more pressing issues than to watch.

I ran back to my murderhole, then turned on my mic. “Deckard.”

“Yeah?” Deckard replied, the sound of brass rattling around in the background.

“Gonna need that bird chopper to hit those cannons, we have nothing else that can reach it. Aim for the shit that’s important.”

“Can do.” Deckard said, and a moment later an entire cannon detonated.

Not exploded, not fell apart, it was removed from the Earth via pure violence.

Somehow Deckard had quickly spotted multiple high explosive shells getting set up near the ancient Type 94 mountain gun, and hit them with an explosive round, turning the crew and cannon into shards of shrapnel as the rest of the ammunition was cooked off.

The bright flash illuminated the amount of creatures moving towards the castle, and I was suddenly wondering if we had any odds at all.

I saw more cannons being brought up, and put my reticle on the crew of a Type 41 artillery gun. I kept that crew pinned, or killed them, until Deckard was able to get a line on the flank of the weapon, sending four rounds through the mechanisms until the breech itself shattered.

Brody had found a spot she liked and started opening up with her M249 again, and I could hear Tano firing near her, their rounds cracking overhead and finding flesh down below.

Due to their confidence, the Oni had pushed their artillery weapons to point blank ranges, and were now being systematically destroyed one by one. Deckard kept the fire up until his barrel started to overheat, in which he switched to a more conventional Barret he had stashed along the wall.

This however didn’t stop the Oni or their little compatriots from blowing several large holes in the lower walls, rendering the first ring of walls useless in keeping out the enemy. We managed to destroy their ancient, looted artillery pieces before they blew holes in any of the secondary wall, but I had not been resting any of my hopes on that ring as well.

“Gun Master Shy!”

I jerked my head around, flicking the empty magazine from my Socom and spotting Arihada. “What?!”

“We are ready to deploy-” She started to say, but I spun around with a wild eye.

“No!” I screamed, pointing to where we stood on the castle’s third layer of walls. “Keep them up here in case anything gets through, but they do not go down there! Not yet! No one goes down there until it is packed and we blow the cans!”

She blinked at me, but nodded, bowing forward. “We shall gather them here!”

I turned away from her with a growl, then jerked my head away from my murderhole as a shard of rock was blown away from it by a Troll carrying a blunderbus.

“Un-fucking-real.” I said indignantly as I brushed rock dust from my hair, then poked my rifle back through the slot.

He didn’t get a chance to reload that fucking relic, as I put a round through his forehead and sent him toppling into the snow. A few more Trolls all scrambled for it, and I kept my fire up, hitting them in the arms, legs, body, anything I could get my sights on.

To my annoyance I only managed to kill two, the others scuttling off with the blunderbus to reload it in safety.

Surviving militia and students were now pouring out of the castle or up from the secondary walls, those unable to fight instead heading into the castle to hide in its depths.

To ease my anxiety, the Oni and their allies appeared to be rather high on their incoming victory rush, and were sprinting towards the holes in the walls with war cries that shook and vibrated the air around the castle.

“Deckard, clappers.” I said into my mic, then took off at a sprint to my designated position. Deckard went running by me as I came to a sliding stop along the gate of the secondary wall, setting my clappers in order to the little numbers marked on them.

“Brody, Deckard and I are gonna blow these in sequence, let me know if you see anything weird going on.” I said into the mic, then looked around in confusion as Noritada and multiple swordsmen ran up next to me, all armed with bows. “The fuck are you guys doing?!”

Taking in their number, around fifty dudes were now lining along the wall, firing arrows at Oni and other Yokai storming through the gaps in the walls.

“We have to fight from here!” Noritada called out over the roar of combat and Brody’s M249 ripping lines of tracers into the gaps. “If we don’t, the enchantment will break!”

“That’s a stupid fucking requirement to have in an enchantment!” I shouted back at him, then shoved a bowman away from my clappers. “Get the fuck away from those!”

The bowman startled, then turned with aggro at me and raised his hand. I wasn’t having any of that from some wand-wielding dork and ripped my Sig P229 from my leg holster, pointing it at his nose with a click of the hammer coming back.

“Get the fuck away from my clappers! Move it!” I screamed, then kicked him in the chest when he didn't move. “Stay the fuck away from me! Noritada, get your men in fucking order or I will shoot them!”

Noritada spoke so rapidly in Japanese that my earring could only pick up every third word, and the bowmen gave me a wide berth.

Brody was still firing down from the window, Tano lacing rounds into anyone trying to cast spells from outside the walls, and it was only then that I realized a magical duel was happening along the walls as well.

Wizards with their wands or staves were sending spells out across the mass of Oni, Trolls, and other yokai. Bolts of frost, orbs of fire, cracks of lightning, or eerie green streaks of light were bouncing back and forth across the air like a hellish game of airhockey. I had to duck to avoid a few bolts of eerie blue light that burned my skin like open flame a few times, hissing and returning fire with my pistol down into the gaps.

The lower courtyard was filled with the bastards now, tearing down the stalls and colorful decorations like jubilant conquerors, with some now starting in on the gate.

“Whats the word boss?” Deckard said into my ear, and I poked my head over a wall parapet to look down.

Hundreds of them were swarming down below, about five hundred if I had to reckon, and those massive trolls were hammering on the gates like madmen.

“On three.” I said, holstering my Sig P229 and pulling up two of the clackers. “Pop the number ones and move to twos, click click click.”

“Clickity clickity.” Deckard replied dryly.

Brody was still hammering away with her M249 after doing a barrel change, the rounds cracking and snapping overhead as she laid lazy lines of lead into the charging bodies that sought the gaps in the walls.

“One” I started, then turned to Noritada.

“Two.” I continued, holding up my clackers so Noritada saw them.

Noritada’s eyes went wide, and he began to scream at his men. “Get down! Get down now!”

“Three!” I yelled, and squeezed the clackers in my hands.

The world went hazy for a moment as the ground shook under my feet, dozens of daisy chained explosive IEDs ripping through the air. Ball bearings, arrow heads, shards of metal, and nails ripped through meat and bone like paper getting caught in a diesel powered shredding machine, and the gate was suddenly clear of anything able to stand. Or at least anything that had enough of their legs to stand.

I dropped the clackers and grabbed up the next to, squeezing them without delay.

The next bank of claymores and IEDs ripped open the air again, Deckard’s coming in right after mine as I threw down the used clackers and pulled up the next in the chain, squeezing them and grabbing a fuse that was adorned with a M81 igniter.

“Hitting my igniter!” I shouted into my mic, pulling the ring and starting the timer with a “pop!” of the fuse as I grabbed Noritada from where he was crouching. “Get the fuck out of here! Fall back to the third gatehouse!”

Noritada nodded, standing up as blood soaked mud and body parts began raining down from the sky. “Fall back to the third wall! Fall back!”

After seeing what we had just done to those down below, the wizards had no delay this time in following the order.

Bowmen, swordsmen, militia, and combat magicians were running with all haste towards the third gate house as I brought up the rear with Deckard, the two of us admiring our handywork.

“Yemen ain’t got shit on this.” I said with a smile as I saw just how thickly the lower walls were painted with blood and the pieces of bodies, but the ones still alive were pouring through the gaps in the lower walls, flooding in to take revenge for their fallen. “Those pricks have no idea what we got waiting for them, do they?”

“They’re about to find out.” Deckard laughed out as he hefted his Barret, then slapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s go, this secondary wall section isn’t going to last long.”

“Let’s hope they don’t hang us for what we are about to do to their castle.” I said darkly, loping after him as the battering came back to the secondary wall’s gate house.

Brody stopped firing, and her voice entered my ear.

“It’s filling up again, more this time. I would wager that I’m looking at maybe four thousand enemy elements out there.” Brody said, breathless. “I sent Tano off to find someone to cool down these barrels faster.”

“Noritada!” I called out as I went through the third gatehouse with Deckard, cutting around the corner and heading up the stairs. “Noritada!”

The man appeared, still shaken from the explosion and his eyes wide. “What was that?!”

“A ‘plan B’ that turned into a ‘plan A’ when they showed up with artillery and took down the first wall.” I said, grabbing him by the shoulder and dragging him along beside me. “We’re about to blow a secondary trap down there that is going to demolish that secondary gatehouse and sections of the wall.”

“What are you-?!” Noritada howled in outrage, but I shook him.

“Shut up, man!” I shouted at him, pointing to the swarm beyond the walls. “If we make holes here, they’ll funnel here because it’s easier, right in front of our lines of fire. Tano had the students put barbed wire all over the lower walls to keep them from trying to climb, we focus them here. Arihada!”

Arihada snapped into view as if she had been invisible, both Noritada and I jumping as she appeared.

“Jeezus woman.” I said with some appreciative shock, then pointed at her. “Send students to keep an eye on the walls around this third layer, if anything starts trying to climb or fly over, we need to know. Both of you need to get bowmen around this area to lay fire into anything that comes up. I think they didn’t just come here with some old ass field guns.”

As if on que, the doors to the second gatehouse were blown open as a sapper team set off their entry charge, the heavy wooden doors being turned into splinters and clattering along the ground towards the third gatehouse.

“Oh… shit.” I murmured, then ducked as the walls of the second ring exploded out with the abrupt arrival of Deckard and I’s fuses, turning the proud stone fortifications to shrapnel bombs.