Chapter Forty-Two Yaeko
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Yaeko
Yaeko loosed another signal arrow. It whistled off and vanished; the predawn air was dark.
She waited. They all waited. Somewhere on the far side of the blanketed field, the Musha’in, Akiyo, was setting her trap.
They had only to coordinate and the traitors would be caught.
Now, the sun still lingered at the edges of a far horizon; the incessant gloom cast shadows across the banks.
She glanced up, at the sky; it was as if day was afraid to rise to meet them.
The far side of the river lay before them as it had all night, still as death, silent, and shrouded in the mist.
A reply. Akiyo’s signal arrow screaming its return.
Good, she thought. It’s started.
It was after dawn. Behind her, birds were flitting about.
Mist still clung onto the valley, blanketing the river and soaking her to the bone.
Her armor gripped and stuck in places. The ties were dripping.
Soon, it began to snow. A thin sheen, layered on the stone-hard mud and trampled grass outside the temple.
Yaeko wore the armor Seikiyo had given her upon her acceptance to his homeguard, black-laced silver inlays over red brocade, trimmed with the pale sea-light green of the Keishi clan.
She drew another signal arrow, hawk feathers light under her touch – a short glance, a call, and, behind her, they began to beat the drums.
Soon the sun would come. Soon, the air would warm under the sharper cut of day. The river flowed steadily before them. On its banks, they faced through the haze a wall of warrior-monks – who, soon, she thought, would know what it meant to fear.
Seikiyo’s son, Seichi, sidled closer with his guard.
Dressed in the regalia of his line, the firebrand embraced his armor with the appearance of a hero from times long past, lamellar plate and bright tassels flickering with turquoise and gold.
She shared his look; he shared her distaste.
Across the river, still invisible to the eye, Akiyo had begun her war.
And so they waited, Yaeko and Seichi, on their horses, overlooking the river.
She read suspicion in his eyes. Where is your head?
he seemed to ask. We fight here, and we fight for Yora’s death.
He who was your teacher. What will you do?
“We should’ve killed him long ago,” he said abruptly. “A minute too late would have been long enough.”
Yaeko frowned. “Assassination is fools’ work, Seichi. It’s not who we are.”
The young man laughed, a bellow, loud and jarring. “Too late now. But we could’ve saved a lot of death if we’d just slit his fucking throat. The man will fall. I’ll do it if I have to.”
The implication – and the threat – was clear: he didn’t think she’d be able to take her master’s head. She gripped her reins. She didn’t know, herself.
“I’ll do what I have to do.”
He waited, watching. “We’ll need to move fast.”
“He was your teacher too, Seichi,” she said.
The young Keishi spat, with force, onto the dirt. “And I’ll be happy to bring him to the next life.”
Damn him. Seichi had been watching her ever since the incident at Deer Valley. He doubted her resolve. He doubted her intentions.
“I bet you would’ve loved to get some vengeance against my family, wouldn’t you,” he’d leered, the night before.
“For what happened to your parents.” The world lay half-frozen as they made their way across the ragged hills.
The army had taken time to gather, but once formed, they marched at speed.
His man, Onoe Genichi, led the ranks, feathers marked on his armor.
“I serve your father,” she’d said.
“I wonder,” he’d said. “I do wonder.”
It took two days to gather the troops. When Seikiyo learned that the traitors had arrived at the Three Wells, he threw the messenger tumbling down the steps into the fragile orange tree, locked himself in his quarters for a night before emerging to send orders to attack.
By then Seichi and Shosei had begun assembling their armies, and the mobilization finished the following day.
They reached the river under cover of darkness and found the township emptied: at the riverbank, the temples had been fortified, ready for a siege.
Yora’s force had withdrawn across the bridge.
Now a sheen of frost still covered the shingles and the tips of the trees. Across the water, a heavy blanket of thick fog. She could not see the other side.
Already the archery exchange had begun. A hundred little shafts, flit-winged, scattered across the river like black birds. Men cried out in pain. A body fell; the rest dug themselves onto the sand. Shosei’s bowmen loosed another rain. Let fly, let fly. Screams – from the other end, this time.
“That’s it, men,” Shosei shouted. He meant to sound like a general, but his wide, round face was taut with fear.
This is no tiger cub, no firebrand like his brother.
He’d be happier tallying the house accounts.
The firebrand himself, brother Seichi, roiled in his saddle.
He wanted to cross the bridge and he wanted to cross it now.
“Hold back,” she told him. His men were getting too close to the river. The arrows pricked pale sand at their feet. “Seichi, you’re opening a flank.”
“Waste time with arrows if you want! We must cross!”
She directed her efforts to the older brother, safely out of arrow-range upon the hill. “Wait until everyone’s in place. Our bowmen spread the target and we’ll need cover if you want to cross the bridge.”
“If?” Seichi spat the word. “If? I’ll take them now!”
“Shosei!” Her horse clawed earth to get to the general’s height. “Everyone who crosses on that bridge will be exposed until they reach the other side. They need cover.”
“Right.” Shosei nodded, like a question.
Seichi hissed. “My men are ready – get yourself in position and we’ll cross.”
He went back to his horses, wanting glory for himself.
Yaeko and Shosei spread their ranks along the shore, watching the far side, which lay steep with a wide sandbank and a natural ridge taller than an oak.
From here, the monks of the river temple showed their teeth, loosing hundreds of small black-feathered shafts their way.
Where do they get them all? she wondered.
You’d think they were preparing for this war for years.
She retaliated with a steady rain of arrows from the southwest shore below the bridge, with a view of the far bank and the temple beyond. Archers, stiff-armed in the fog; the bank and the high wall on the other side were all they could see. But the monks would see them no better.
Shosei’s captains were loosing arrows from the northwest edge. “Now! Yae!”
She loosed another signal arrow. “Concentrate on the bridgehead. There’s a gap at the gate!”
The fog sluiced off. Snow fell across the eastern field, white and blinding. Yaeko knew there would be no warmth. Not today.
“If these clouds don’t leave, all the archers in Saikyo wouldn’t help,” Shosei called.
Come on, Seichi, she thought. Do what you’re good at. Charge them. Mow them down. The drums continued. Then Seichi’s reply arrow screamed a song and hit the far shore with a jarring cutoff.
“Loose!” she cried. “Let fly! They’re on the bridge!”
Seichi’s spearmen had begun their charge.
She released a shaft, pulled back, straining to see the action on the bridge. Her runner appeared beside her, a bundle of arrows in his hand. She turned, letting him reset her quiver – and stopped.
She heard screams.
“What!” Shosei pulled back, over-gripping his reins. “Yaeko!”
She saw it. Chaos on the bridge. Cries of fear.
Men falling from great gaping holes in the center of the deck.
She realized the planks had been struck, and as they charged across, Seichi’s men were plunging through gaps and loosened planks that collapsed the moment they stepped on them.
They couldn’t have known. They couldn’t have seen from the shore, not until too late.
Already Seichi’s first wave of horsemen had fallen into the river, and the Onji swallowed them. Horses screamed.
The rest were caught in a deadlock on the bridge. Unable to go forward from the missing planks, yet pressed in from the footmen coming from behind. Nowhere to go until the rearmost spears were pulled back, physically, by the men still on the bank.
And still the monks’ black feathers flew. A hundred men caught in the bottleneck. A hundred men who could do nothing but crouch and hope the arrows found another head.
Damn it, Yora, she thought. This was you.
“Lord!”
“Shosei!” The lord’s brother came back, breathless from his fight on the bridge, shouting what they already knew. It’s a death trap.
“We know!” Shosei shouted. “Get them back, Seichi!”
Yaeko brought her horse past him, pulling to the shore to see dozens of Keishi soldiers trapped on the narrow bridge, prevented from moving by the missing planks and walled in by the mass of soldiers from behind.
The rain of Gensei arrows grew even worse and they could do nothing to protect themselves; the bridge stretched wide enough for five or six to stand abreast, but now there were too many people caught in the trap.
They were being slaughtered. She heard the cries from here.
“Come about!” she called. “We’ll find another way to cross!”
Shosei stirred. “We should go around. Cross at Kawaoka.”
“We don’t have time,” Seichi shouted. “That’s half a day away, it’s too far!”
“The water’s passable,” she said.
Seichi scowled. “I told you, it’s too deep!”
Do something. Act. Even now, she heard her teacher’s voice in her ears. Pushing her, urging her to be decisive. He’d taught her well. Never hesitate. Strike with all your might.
Now he waited, somewhere on the shore. Her mentor. Her enemy. He had chosen his side. He’d betrayed her trust as much as he had betrayed the realm.
You’re the one who caused this, she thought, not me. Not me.