Chapter Forty-Three Yora
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Yora
Get up.
Yora, on his knees in a bracing tide. Stunned and silent, lost in pain.
The arrow had cut into his lower leg, pulled him down with the force of an anchor.
He fell into the river’s tiny waves. The men around him would not last long.
Another. Another cut down, the life snipped off with the faraway twanging of a bow.
Not here. Not yet.
It had seemed too calm at first. The damp predawn air, the muffled sounds of an army that they knew lay on the other bank but couldn’t see. Then arrows began to fall. The Keishi force had swelled along the western side, spilling out over the temple and the bridge and on the sandy shore.
On the eastern side, Yora’s retainers released a withering rain of arrows from their steep embankment.
Then the Keishi footmen charged headlong across the narrow bridge, and didn’t see the gap.
Screams, cries of pain and terror as men fell into the current far below.
The rest were trapped by the mass of spearmen behind them; barred by the empty framework of the bridge.
Yora was right. The bottleneck had worked.
“Arrows!” Tsuna called. “Arrows!”
Countless shafts cut air. The sound of bowstrings. Bodies piled high on the death-zone on the bridge.
“The river! Father!” She’d seen the Keishi homeguard ride into the current. Yora crossed toward the line of Nioh’s loyalists on the banks. He saw it too.
She ran up beside him. “Who is that?” Staring out at the single rider who crossed, first into the shallows, and then the deeper currents, small waves eddying around her with unsteady speed.
A woman with long hair flung out in a caress of wind over the foam, armor of sea-green and silver inlay, with crossed hawk-feathers, the House Eiga emblem, on a flag.
Yora’s gaze darkened when he saw her. “Side up along the banks. Don’t let them form up!
Don’t give them any time! We cut them at the waterfront!
” A line of archers began loosing at the slow-moving horsemen, neck-deep in water.
“Hold your formation!” Yora craned his neck to see that the Keishi army on the far side had started pulling planks and wooden floorboards from the buildings at the western temple.
Carrying them to the crossing over their heads. Toward the front. Toward the bridge.
They meant to close the gaps.
So he pulled himself up, pushed his hands against the muddy earth, and clawed his way along the embankment as arrows fletched the ground around him and his men raged forward, long spears in a line to stop the riders in the river.
Finally, he climbed to a seated position against a tree, and breathed.
He’d forgotten how loud the fight would be.
The sky, it’s burning, he thought, it’s smeared with snow like ash.
Swathes of cloud, white on bloody ground.
But the temples had not been burned, not yet.
Yora ducked across the embankment, straining to see.
Hurried to the awning beside the bridge.
Snow fell. The mass of his warriors, on the embankment with him.
Spears and polearms, flying arrows. Kijin waiting for their enemy to come.
Yaeko had forded the river.
Her forces would soon rise up sputtering from the wash and meet the longbows and the glinting blades of his kin on the shore.
Pull the arrow out. Strike back. You know you’re dead.
They’re more than halfway across.
He found an arrow of his own. Tugged it from his quiver, his last. He had no time to think about it. Set it to the bow. The great draw with more pull-force than a man’s weight. Loose the shaft and slice a thin line across the air. A horse screams as it is struck; the rider drowns.
Such are we, he thought. All of us. Drowning.
Arrows whistled as they fell. Sand scattered, tainted, dark and slick and red.
Kai was stumbling up the hill.
Dressed in a foot-soldier’s light armor and an anonymous helm for disguise, she ran back to the safety of the temple with her guard. He couldn’t see the prince; Nioh must have already made it through the gates and into the inner temple. Good.
“Kai!” Tsuna scrambled to pull Kai up. The sisters had led their people with the prince across the bridge first, into the defenses of the inner temple.
Yora would stay to hold back the tide. The entire Keishi cavalry now delved into the rushing waters of the Onji, using Yaeko’s hidden ford.
He saw a wave of spears and frightened horses.
He saw chaos on the bridge, but still, he knew, there were too many.
At the top of the slope, Tsuna grabbed Kai by the arms and hauled her over, shouting for the Jibashiri to cover them as they made their way to the temple gate.
While, in the water, Yaeko’s horsemen had arrived.
“Back!” Yora had a signal fan in his left hand, his sword in his right.
He waved to the monks at the top of the embankment; their response could hardly be seen over the press of the infantry coming across.
He braced himself. His archers came in, sending a barrage of arrows into the horsemen in the water, a hundred silent hornets from the nest. His men re-formed around him.
Falling back step by step, but holding the line.
Another arrow stitched itself into his armored shoulder. A third clanged off in a ricochet but he stumbled from the force. He bore the traditional red and gold of the Gensei, decorated with a white fern design, his helm adorned with the visage of a flying beast.
“Pull back!” he shouted. “They’re going to cover the gaps!” They were already surging forward, putting heavy planks across the holes in the bridge. “Pull back!”
Once the Keishi reached this side, he would have to hold a fighting defense, and wouldn’t be able to see the full lie of battle anymore. He would have to hope.
At first it worked. His men bled them at the crossing, then fell back in good order to the fortified temple grounds. They’d constructed a series of obstacles at the riverside and were prepared to retreat to the main temple hall for defense, hoping to hold the Keishi until Tokuon arrived.
Above, more arrows fell.
Ahead, his former students crossed the river.
Yaeko at the lead.
To the north, sounds of rage and terror echoed from the bridge.
Keishi foot-soldiers were still trapped in the bottleneck, and the narrow space of the bridge made them easy fodder for his bows.
The last of Nioh’s guards were loosing shafts into them from the edges of the temple wall, like a battlement.
And on their side of the bridge, three river monks stood alone. Gochi-no-Tai stood with legs planted. Hundreds of arrows raining down, yet none seemed to touch him.
“Let’s go!” Aiichi, the youngest of the river monks, held his longblade in one hand, the other raised before him, facing the coming tide of Keishi soldiers.
He swung in an arc, and it was as if a hurricane had hit them, as if a thousand stones lifted off the ground and smashed into the Keishi forces harder than a thousand arrows ever could.
Once a path had been cleared, Aiichi vanished.
No, not vanished; he leaped so high and so fast it almost seemed he had.
He leaped clear over the heads of a dozen Keishi soldiers and landed with one foot along the balustrade fifteen paces away.
Ran across the thin handrail before he leaped again and sailed across the gaps, into the mass of enemy soldiers.
The other two – Gochi-no-Tai and Joji – remained on the bridge, moving inhumanly fast, leaping in the air, cutting arrows as they came down.
“Demons,” someone muttered beside Yora. He urged them on. Back up the hill. Back to the gate.
But there were too many. The two monks were surrounded, fighting off hundreds of Keishi troops who swarmed the bridge. The narrow crossing made it perilous; the Keishi could only stand five or six abreast, and the river monks blocked their way.
Behind them, the young noble girl Atsu held the gate open at the top of the slope. A barrage of arrows from the far side scattered into the dirt around her, needling her armor. Yora himself now had at least six or seven shafts sticking from his pauldrons. Atsu fell, arrows flickering into the dirt.
Yora pulled her up. “Fall back! Into the temples!”
The river monks still held the bridge. But despite the vast numbers of men cut down by their swords and longblades, falling into the water or trampled under wave after wave of Keishi troops who’d come after them, the two monks could not hold strong for ever.
Aiichi had now gone from sight, no doubt already killed.
They’d been pushed back, step by step, and now they were at the very edge, holding the last few paces before it opened onto the wide palisade below the temple, a mere hundred strides from the gate where Yora now held Atsu by the arms. Still the river monks, Gochi-no-Tai and Joji Hideaki, fought on, blocking what remained of the bridge, alone.
Soon the riders who had forded the river would come about, cutting the two monks off from behind.
“Gochi!” Yora shouted, loud as he could over the din. “River monk! Fall back! Fall back to the temple!”
The two monks swung their longblades, arrows sticking from their armor in a dozen places, as the Keishi surged across the bridge like the breaking of a dam.
Yora lost sight of them in the chaos that followed.
The last he saw was the two monks shouting and attacking as though they had the power of the gods, but soon they were overrun by hordes of Keishi soldiers and vanished from his sight.
The sun hung higher now, pale and cold. It cast sharp blades of light through patchy cloud, across the water, the roar of the current, of the battle, of men falling and making little waves.
“Kouzeon protect them,” Yora murmured.
An arrow hit his shoulder, knocking him off his feet and smashing his face into cold earth. Another sliced into him, piercing the armor at his back and throwing him to the earth again.
He struggled to get up, head pounding. He had no arrows left. He drew his sword, the great Falling Star, and prepared to guard the retreat.
“Fall back! To the temple!” He looked one last time to see if the monks had made it out, but they were overrun. A mass of Keishi troops, a hundred at least, were now crossing the bridge unimpeded.
The monks were nowhere to be seen.
“Fall back!” Yora shouted. “Back!”
They regrouped in the great courtyard. High walls protected them there, though arrows rained in from above.
Inside the gate, Nioh and the others were getting on their horses.
Yora hurried to him, ignoring the calls of concern at his arrow-riddled state, and shouted for the mirror prince to flee to the east gate as planned, where he could escape the temple and reach Tokuon on the fields.
Kai and his daughters were there; Kai had a dozen minor wounds. Myorin pulled an arrow from her armor.
“Lord!” Nioh’s men cried. “The Kaga are coming from the east!”
Fighting in the temple grounds, someone shouted: Onoe Rokuro and Kaga Makoto – Akiyo’s lieutenants – were swarming from the rear.
A trap.
Curse the serpent, he thought, kneeling, sword in hand. I am too old for this. I cannot hold the retreat in good order while my forces are being sealed in from behind.
“The east is closed, lord!” Kaji Getoh ran up, face covered in blood. “We have to find another way.”
“Yora!” Kai’s eyes widened at the sight of his wounds. “They’re—”
“I know. You have to hurry now. Follow Myorin, she’ll lead you to the horses and get you out. Ride, fast as you can, there’s a footpath along the hills. It will take you to the other side of the fields and you’ll find Tokuon there. Go!”
“Uncle,” she said, hesitating.
He tried to put on a brave face. “You can do this,” he said, pushing her helmet into her hands. She had fallen to her knees. “Now get up. Go now, Kai, go with the prince. Tell him it’s time.” He then pulled on his iron facemask, the grimacing features marked there, making him a monster.
He turned to Myorin. “Whatever happens, get her out. Get her to Tokuon in the field.”
His daughter shouted that she heard. At the west side of the compound, by the bridge, he saw the pall of flames. The temples blazed and spewed black smoke.
“Hurry, get her up. Get ready to run.” He shouted to his men, filing them into ranks. “The Keishi have taken the bridge.”
Myorin met his eyes, and he gave her a small nod.
He was suddenly filled with the memory of how impulsively she’d leaped onto the training-horses when she was young.
Tsuna, more calculating, had always taken more time.
“I will see you again.” Tsuna’s hand clenched her blade, the other around Kai’s shoulder.
“Take her through the lower gate,” he said. His voice was raw, caught in his throat. “Don’t stop until you reach Tokuon. I’ll hold them here. Go, Kai. Go now!”
Another rain of arrows. Tsuna grabbed Kai bodily and shoved her to Myorin, who took Kai’s hand in an iron grip and pulled her away. Both sisters had several arrows sticking from their armor, too. The east gate would soon break. House Kaga – tributary branch of the Keishi – had arrived.
“Form a line!” Yora’s few remaining soldiers began to prepare the defense of the inner courtyard.
“Head down!” Tsuna shouted.
A stray arrow caught Kai in the back of the shoulder, and she fell.
His heart tensed; she cried, “I’m all right!
” as they forced her to the middle of the circle of black-clad Jibashiri.
The protective group carved a path through the confusing mass of soldiers trying to get to the south gate.
To the east, Kaga banners – the ring of three – fluttered in the wind.
Kai heard the shouts and called back, “Yora!”
“Go!” he said. “Go!”
Let them make it out, he thought, if only them in this soul-ending world.
Tsuna pulled her on. One of Myorin’s Jibashiri held a young boy in his arms, at the south side by the gate, calling to them to flee. Nioh’s son. Noyori.
Let them be safe.
Another whistle cut the air.
Yora shouldered his way back to the courtyard, urging his soldiers to form a line.
He coughed, out of breath. I have to stop this.
I have to end it now. He thought of the great gates of the palace, that day that he’d returned, how they stood open to him and brought him in; he thought of the friends he’d had, and those he’d lost. How Seikiyo had offered him a hand.
The air felt heavy. The fog was slowly burning off. Pale sun, weak and thin as ice-chips in the river. Yora, wounded on the arm and leg, went back to rally the last of his bannermen from the bloody beach. They would make their stand inside the temple walls.
“Back,” he cried. “Back to the gates!”
Around them, arrows continued to fall.