Chapter Forty-Four Rui
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Rui
You must kill the demon in your heart, they told her.
You must kill the demon.
You must kill.
The world was madness. Rui didn’t know where the Gensei or the monks had gone – she saw no one but Keishi footmen on the winding path, crashing through courtyards and swarming at the main engagement from the rear.
She clutched her sword, ran fast as she could.
If she stopped, she wouldn’t be able to start again; the fear would take hold, gripping her heart.
She’d never been in a battle before. She was barely trained.
Whatever plans they’d had, everything fell apart the instant that the Keishi came at them from behind.
Now, caught between the Keishi at the river and the Keishi from the fields, they were trapped.
“Get to the prince!”
Her guards were screaming in the din. She had to help them flee the bridge, the rain of arrows, and make it to the town on the southeast side of the river.
“Where is the prince? Where’s Nioh?”
She didn’t know. She didn’t have time to find out. She had to keep moving. No. No. The words pounded themselves through her mind like a prayer as she ran.
The fog had thinned but still lay heavy over the mountainside beyond the village.
Kill the demon in your heart.
The only way to kill it is to die.
So die, she thought, slashing at anyone who came near.
She ducked, smaller than the soldiers, a head shorter and much quicker on her feet.
She didn’t waste time trying to cut down individual foes.
She had no chance against them, one on one; and the moment she stopped, the rest would surround her like water around a rock.
Her only chance was to keep moving.
Her lungs were on fire. She felt like she’d been running for hours.
She had no idea how much time had passed, heard only shouting, clashing metal, fear and anger and the bloodcurdling cries of death.
She felt the heat and the stench of it, the steam rising from human bodies cut open in the freezing air.
Rui searched for her teacher in vain. She followed the warrior-monks.
The first wave of Keishi spearmen had swept upon them, trapping them in the east garden.
The walls were going to be overrun. She lashed out – again – again.
A man tried to charge her; in one motion, the closest warrior-monk drew his sword above his head to protect her, stomped down on the man’s leading knee, smashed it inward and wrenched him to the ground.
Then struck with all his force. Blood sprayed her hands, soaked her feet.
She kept going. She no longer even tried to fight.
Just gripped the weapon as best she could and swung against the press of armored bodies that seemed more numerous than ants on a hill.
Another attack; another; ducking sideways at an angle, she saw her friend the warrior-monk spear a man, pressing in at half-sword and shoving until it sank into the body, to the hilt.
Behind him another Keishi foot-soldier came.
She stabbed him in the back. She kicked off. She kept moving. She was a killer now.
Somewhere behind her, above her, within her, the Hososhi laughed.
“Die!” she yelled. Kill it.
Kill it.
She couldn’t tell if she was shouting the words or just thinking them. Nothing made sense. Past, present and future were gone. There was only chaos, and the razor-sharp edge of the blade.
A flash of memory – the boy, Idachi Honnen, gasping as she killed him at Kitano gate. The spear in her hands. The horror of it. And still she ran. Still, she struck again.
“Teacher!” She couldn’t hear herself over the clamor. “Teacher!”
The awful scrape of metal against metal, against bone, against flesh, the shouts and cries of pain, the pounding of the blood in her ears—
Jobo, where are you?
She turned east: the temple courtyard, an open space where the hall sat like a palace overlooking the grounds, surrounded by its artificial lake like a moat.
The sound of fighting everywhere. River monks on the long sandy path around the low curve of the shore.
The pavilion and the eastern gate were under attack from behind, and there Jobo stood fighting by the mirror prince.
His sacred spear split the air. He called her name.
Rui ducked through a hornets’ nest of blades and fell against him.
“Were you lost?” He joked somehow, even now. But his breath came hard. The prince and his bodyguards were pulling back to the south side of the courtyard, where a smaller gate would bring them to the stables, and the little alleys of the temple village, and escape.
Then Keishi troops came around the side of the main hall, at the bottom of the pond, and toward the dormitories at the southern edge.
The warrior-monks were fighting Keishi foot-soldiers there already.
She ran with her teacher, the mirror prince, and his last remaining guard, but as they entered the south gates, and crossed to the little paths that cut between a dozen or so smaller temple buildings, she tripped, fell face-first into the rocky dirt.
She screamed in frustration, slipped on a patch of ice before she rose, but by then the soldiers were everywhere and she caught a last glimpse of Jobo and the prince as they were torn away, lost in the surge and press of it, a great screaming, bleeding tide.
Help me, Rui begged the god Hososhi. I need you! Do something, please!
Nothing but the sound of battle all around her. The iron smell of blood. The ache of her arm, the fire in her throat.
“Help me!”
But the Hososhi would not get involved.
I have a use for you, they’d told her. But what? What use was she if she was fated to die here, surrounded by a hundred angry men? With every frenzied blow, every slash, parry and strike of her sword, every numb footstep along the dead earth, she belted out a high, wordless yell.
As if more sound in the temple of the gods would make them hear her.
“Hurry!”
Rui saw Kai, the Gensei heir, with Myorin and Tsuna on either side. They were across the courtyard. Crying, “Go, go!”
Jobo shouted, somewhere close. She heard his voice. Myorin made it to the gate, waving. There. Jobo cried out. Hurry, Rui.
But she stopped.
In the madness, something paused. A girl stepped before her. Pale as a ghost, she ducked toward the buildings as the carnage spread around her. She stopped. She turned. She looked in Rui’s eyes.
Oh, she seemed to say, even though there was no way Rui could hear through the distance. Hello.
The ghostly little girl, the one Prince Noyori had seen in the night.
She’s calling to me.
Suddenly, at the end of the path, she saw Nioh and his Jibashiri bodyguards racing toward the south gate. He’s going to them, Rui thought, strangely clear. He’s going to the demon.
She followed him.
Soon, she heard it. The clash of steel on steel, the heavy shouts of her master, and the wicked sounds of the wind over the trees. She heard a voice: “Stop!” And a second set of movements entered the fray.
The girl had vanished. As the battle raged around the temple and the fields beyond, Rui looked up, into the pale, midmorning sky.
And was shocked by what she saw.
Gods. The earthwalkers. The pilgrims. Giant, skeletal spirits converging, huge and monstrous, in the sky above the burning temple to the west. A ghostly hand, falling down from the height, covering the entire temple, its fingers like vast trees, blocking out the sun, making the sky go dark.
In that instant, Jobo found her. He grabbed her hand.
“What’s happening?” she cried, shaking. He held her, bringing her back to the gate, to safety.
“What do you see?”
“Giants.” She trembled. “Gods… the pilgrims…”
“They’re showing you they’re here.”
He sensed it, too. Rui never knew how he could sense things the gods did. He said, “They’re here because of her.”
“Who?”
Another rain of arrows sliced the air around them, needling into men and dirt in the blink of an eye.
“Rui!” Jobo shouted. “Get up. Keep going. Keep going.”
They made their way through the gate, saw the prince and his last remaining guard had found their horses and were wheeling about, surrounded by men with spears.
Kai and the sisters had gone in the other direction.
Jobo practically carried her across the little horse-yard, and she saw the fear in his eyes.
He shouted to pale young Atsu, who had Nioh’s son in her arms; a burly Jibashiri, whom they called Naoza, spun about, bringing Atsu and the boy with him as he fled.
They raced away, with the river and its temples to their backs, raced down the small path that led to the hillside, and east, to safety. It would bring them to the Onji tributaries and the main highway from Yamano.
But now Nioh cried out, trapped. As his son got away, he found himself surrounded near the stables. He brought his mount around, bodyguards defending him with their spears on horseback as they tried to buy some time.
“Prince,” Jobo shouted. “This way!”
A wooden fence collapsed; a new wave of Keishi spearmen flooded in. Nioh screeched in terror, as one by one, his remaining bodyguards were cut down by arrows and spear-thrusts or both.
“Run!” She found herself shouting. “Prince, flee! Flee!”
He yanked the reins at last, dashed off a side road, back into the temple complex, looking for another way. He went around a building and vanished.
Rui ran after him, turning in time to see an arrow catch the prince on the armpit, and she could do nothing but watch as he hung limp in his saddle, while his horse panicked and disappeared behind the prayer hall.
“No!” Her scream was lost amid the clamor of the fighting. Jobo shouted, “Hurry!” but she fell again – somehow, she managed to fall flat on her face for the second time and when she hauled herself up from the muck, her teacher was gone. He had dashed around the corner where Prince Nioh fell.
Another whistle cut the air. The battle was getting louder now. She went forward. Faster now. Faster. Worried it was too late, that the prince was dead.
At the far side of the avenue, the path where Nioh’s horse had gone, she found them. Jobo ran past a gap in the buildings, to a large open courtyard where festivals might have been held.
She saw him stop.
She stumbled through the gate, and froze.
There, by two dead bodies and a dying horse, stood the demon in white. She was smiling, motionless as the moon.
It was as if she had been waiting.
At her feet, the wounded prince was struggling to escape. He had fallen to his knees. His horse lay dead beside them. As he tried to rise, the arrow still jutting from his side, the slim, smooth steps of the woman in white came closer, and he looked up. He looked into her eyes.
“Mae,” Jobo whispered. But the woman didn’t seem to hear.
As Rui watched, breath in her throat, she simply kneeled down, kneeled by Nioh on the stones.
And she smiled at him once again. The prince was making thin, gasping noises, either from the wound or from some power of the demon, or both.
Quietly the woman in white reached out to him, saying something that Rui couldn’t hear.
She cupped her hands around his face, and for a moment it seemed that she might kiss him.
Nioh shook, and moved to stab her with his small knife, but it was too late, and he was too weak, and of course the woman didn’t notice.
Instead she brought her forehead down to his, strangely tender, strangely gentle, and remained like that, staring into his eyes, in the wet, cold air and the snow and the growing scent of blood.
Deep pools of red spread around them, staining his robes and the earth, but she was untouched; she cupped Prince Nioh’s face in her hands even now, softly, carefully, as he died, and it was as if she were cradling a child.
Finally, she lowered his head, and his body, to the earth.
When she rose, Rui saw Nioh’s dark blood on the woman’s hands and face, from where she’d held him. She turned, tipping back and showing the deep gleaming red across her face when it was done.
“Mae, listen to me,” Jobo called out.
She looked at them then, face stained, eyes blank, yet shining like a cat’s in twilight. Prince Nioh lay dead at her feet, the arrow rising from his body, dark blood pooling across the earth.
Her teacher took a step forward.
“Mae,” he said again.
Mae, was that her name? The woman just stood there, motionless. Behind them, toward the river, the sounds of battle were getting worse. Sounds of breaking swords and crushed armor. Sounds of broken bones. Sounds of fear. Of crying, wailing, loud and shrill like children.
Rui felt a chill. She moved behind her master, gripping her bloodied sword. “They’re coming.”
A cheer went up in the battle behind them, and the sounds of men fighting grew close.
As if in response, the demon leaped, impossibly high, onto the roof.
As if to flee.
“Halt!” Jobo cried.
The demon ignored him, landing lightly on the temple rooftop, but Jobo leaped like she did, landing on opposing eaves: “Mae, stop this now!”
Rui cursed and climbed the railing with her sword in one hand and the wooden framewood in the other.
She scrambled, gripping tiles and almost slipping to the ground before she made it up, and found the two of them, her teacher and the demon, standing face to face, with the angle of the roof between them.
“Stop this,” Jobo commanded. His voice was unlike anything Rui had ever heard. There was no emotion in it. There was power – a power he rarely let her know he had. “Demon. Stop now.”
The demon ignored him. Instead, she looked at Rui. “You,” she said. “I remember you.”
Jobo stepped before her, spear in hand. “She is not for you.”
The demon muttered, “Maybe.”
She drew her sword. And came at them.
In one motion, Jobo flung an arm out sideways, knocking Rui back so hard that she skidded on the snowy shingles, slipped, and fell headlong off the roof.
She heard his shout, and the sound of metal striking metal, before she hit the ground.