Chapter 34 #2
The man directly in front of me pitched sideways, three arrows in his back, their feathers still vibrating.
His horse veered into mine, and for a terrifying moment, we tangled—legs and reins and screaming animals fumbling together.
I felt us going over, saw the ground rushing up, then my mount found her footing and leaped over the falling guard.
The crunch of hooves on armor and bone would haunt me forever.
The road curved sharply ahead, diving between massive pines. We took it at dangerous speed, horses sliding on loose stone, dirt flying from their shoes.
Another volley arced above—one grazed my shoulder, the pain sharp and clean, tearing silk and skin.
My horse was failing. I could feel it in her labored breathing, see it in the foam at her mouth turning pink with blood from her lungs. She was running herself to death for me.
“The bridge!” someone shouted.
Ahead, a narrow stone bridge rose over a gorge—but half of it was gone, collapsed into the ravine below. There was no way around.
“JUMP!” Haru commanded.
His horse gathered itself and leaped. For a moment, prince and mount hung in the air, suspended over certain death, before crashing down on the far side.
Esumi followed.
Then me.
The gap yawned beneath us, then my horse’s hooves scraped stone as we landed, her back legs sliding, scrambling for purchase. For one endless heartbeat, we teetered on the edge. Then she found her footing and we were across, but I felt her shudder, felt something break inside her.
Behind us, not everyone made it.
Screams echoed up from the gorge.
“Make for the temple!” Esumi shouted, blood streaming from a gash on his forehead. “Get to Suwa!”
Ahead, rising from the valley floor like a promise of salvation, the temple’s walls came into view, but it seemed impossibly far, and my horse was dying a little more beneath me with every stride. Then Haru’s mount screamed and went down, two arrows protruding from its side.
I didn’t think, just turned my horse and grabbed Haru’s outstretched hand, hauling him up behind me. The additional weight made my mount stagger.
“She can’t—” Haru started.
“She will,” I said fiercely.
The temple walls grew closer.
Something moved atop them.
Guards. Watchers.
A gong rang out, deep and urgent, vibrating through my bones. Then another. Then horns, their brass voices carrying across the valley like the promise of salvation.
The temple’s gates burst open.
Samurai poured out—not in parade formation to greet the arriving prince, but in the controlled chaos of warriors responding to a threat. They flowed toward us like a river of steel, their battle cries echoing off the mountains.
Our pursuers saw them, too. Their attack faltered, arrows becoming sporadic. Within moments, they were fleeing back into the forest, vanishing like smoke.
We crashed through the temple’s gates. My horse made it three more strides before her legs buckled. Haru and I tumbled off as she collapsed, her sides heaving once, twice, then going still. Pink foam covered her muzzle. She’d run her heart to bursting for us.
I tried to stand but couldn’t. My legs were water. Blood—mine, others’, my horse’s—soaked my clothes. The copper taste coated my throat.
My hands shook as I pressed them to the ground, trying to stop the world from spinning.
Around us, the final count of those who’d made it: three guards, maybe five. Out of fifty.
The captain was nowhere to be seen.
Bodies littered the road behind us, and the silence that followed violence was somehow louder than the battle—broken only by the rasping of the dying and the soft patter of blood on stones.
Then, as if the heavens themselves marked this moment, cherry blossoms began to fall. They rained down like pink snow or tears of a goddess, beautiful and terrible, landing on blood-soaked ground, on still bodies, on my trembling hands.
Life and death intertwined.
The temple bell tolled.
“Your Highness.” An ancient monk appeared at the top of the temple steps, his presence commanding despite his simple robes.
“We were attacked,” Haru said unnecessarily, blood trickling from multiple cuts.
“So I see,” the monk replied calmly. “The temple’s healers will tend your wounds.”
Esumi’s hand was under my arm, helping me rise. My legs barely held my weight. Each step was agony. The temple grounds seemed to stretch forever—ancient stones worn smooth by centuries of sandals and boots, buildings rising like mountains around a vast courtyard.
And the courtyard was packed—with monks in brown robes and guards in armor.
And students—young men in simple clothes, some still holding practice weapons, all turning toward the commotion of our arrival. They stood in loose clusters near what had to be the training grounds, their faces a mix of curiosity and fear at the bloody chaos we’d brought to their sanctuary.
My mind was focused only on staying upright, on following Esumi’s guiding arm, on not collapsing in front of all these strangers.
But then—
Movement at the edge of the training yard.
Someone pushing through the crowd of students.
Someone thinner than the others, moving with a strange, desperate urgency.
My feet stopped working. My heart stilled.
A singular sound somehow filled the courtyard, rose above the shouts and orders and throes of death. A practice sword clattered against stone, the echo that bounded off the temple walls seemed impossibly loud.
Cherry blossoms continued to fall, catching in dark hair that was shorter than I remembered but still fell the same way across his forehead, the same way it had that last morning before our world burned.
The crowd of students parted, confused, calling questions to the one who’d dropped his weapon, the one who now stood at the edge of the training ground ashen and still, as though he now watched a spirit rise from the earth.
Esumi was saying something. His hand tugged at my arm.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t move.
Because across that courtyard, through falling petals and shocked faces and the impossible distance of years—
Was Yoshi.
Our eyes locked.
And the world narrowed to a single moment in time.