Chapter Forty-Five Kai
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Kai
I’m not going to make it, Kai thought. I’m not strong enough. I don’t know what I’m doing.
She slipped on a patch of ice and felt a searing pain in her ankle, sharp enough to make her gasp. She tried to stand and instantly buckled again. “Not now,” she muttered. Atsu kept running, the boy – Nioh’s son – gripping her hand. They vanished through the trees by the southern gate.
She cried out. “Atsu!” Tried to get up again, slipped on wet cobblestones.
They couldn’t hear her over the roar. Half the grounds were on fire.
It would be on them soon. It was getting hard to breathe.
“The Keishi have breached the gate,” someone yelled.
“They’re breaking through Nioh’s defenses on the west wall. ”
Nioh had fled: riding hard with his bodyguards toward the hills, caught in the crush of Kaga soldiers coming from the east. With a shout, his bodyguards split off, rushing his son to safety. Keishi foot-soldiers poured in from the east side of the grounds, where the temple wall had failed.
Kai lost sight of him.
They fell back around the temple pond, along the low barrier separating the pavilion from the abbot’s quarters.
The path looked out over the southern side of the grounds, the abbot’s building to their right and the dormitories and libraries to their left.
A group of Myorin’s guards surrounded her, and Yora appeared with a new bundle of arrows in his hand. He shouted.
Get up, Kai, she told herself. Get up.
Tsuna, in a flurry of motion, barked orders to the few who remained. “Myorin, help her!”
Myorin lifted her with arms stronger than Kai expected. She felt so light, so helpless in the warrior’s arms. Tsuna called to them again. They crossed the center courtyard now, by the lake and the main prayer hall, while Yora assembled their troops for the last defense.
Horses, she thought. There were horses waiting for them at the south gate. We have to get out of here. She ducked under a dry, flicking sound as another wave of arrows came raining in. They’re firing over the wall. Hurry. Hurry.
A killing team of Keishi horsemen broke through the low wood fence at the south.
Her shriek of terror came too fast for her to stop, and all at once the world seemed to lurch, her feet failed her, and she fell again.
For she had seen it: a head hung in one Keishi warrior’s hand, dripping as he wheeled about and raised his arm in the air.
She recognized him as one of the Kaga bannermen, Hokosaki Saigen.
“The prince!” he shouted, holding the head aloft. “This is the day of Nioh’s death!”
“Death!” his retainers shouted back.
“Nioh,” she gasped.
Myorin saw it too, and paled. “On your saddle. Hurry! I’m right behind you!”
“Ame’in!” Kaji Getoh ran up to them. He’d found the horses.
“Come with me,” Myorin said, and it took a moment for Kai to realize she was talking to her.
Then she followed. They pulled back to the library, where the gate waited and the horses could be heard snickering in fear.
More arrows; more rain. Tsuna threw her to the dirt with her hands covering her as arrows fletched the ground.
Myorin went the other way, to her father.
Kai twisted – where? Where? Yora was behind them again.
“You have to go!” Tsuna hissed, smothering a curse, as the battle flooded on, and lifted Kai onto her horse. Kai’s arms wouldn’t stop shaking. Somewhere far above, she thought, the ghosts are laughing.
She turned back.
Yora, at the west edge of the courtyard, loosed another arrow. Only this time, an arrow came back, striking him in the arm.
“Yora!”
Myorin and the last of the warrior-monks led a wild charge back into the courtyard on foot, rushing in to pull him from the crowd.
“Just go!” he shouted. “Get her out! Get to Tokuon!”
The abbot’s garden lay ahead; it would bring them to the south road, and the foothills, and escape.
Myorin, bleeding from a cut on her forehead, had been forced back. Blood mixed with tears as she cried out. Yora met Kai’s gaze from across the pavilion. “Strength, Kai,” he boomed.
A spear burst through his shoulder.
He fell just as Tsuna grabbed her horse by the reins and pulled them on, urging them away.
“Yora!” Kai cried. “Yora!”
Myorin waded against the tide of footmen to her right, but she couldn’t get through.
He was still by the pavilion. Her Jibashiri pulled her back forcefully and led her to her horse, screaming.
Yora needed help. Tsuna shoved Kai on, then rode back to her father’s aid.
She called out – a word, a prayer, a shout of defiance – and cut down three Keishi men.
An arrow whistled through the air and struck her in the head.
Kai screamed.
Tsuna, flung sideways in her saddle, veered about on the crazed animal before she could recover her balance.
The arrow had grazed the edge of her helmet and buried itself in the metal at her temple.
Kai caught a flash of her face, grimacing with anger, pain, and fear, as blood wept down across her eyes.
She shouted. Somehow she raced back to her father, to the open courtyard, but as Kai watched with horror, a Keishi horseman struck out and grappled with her, whipping their horses about and trying to send her to the dirt.
Tsuna veered away, horse staggering and stumbling as it tried to escape.
Finally she fell from the saddle; her horse skittered off, neighing in terror.
She hit the raw earth and lay still for a moment, then rolled over, groaning, and tried to rise.
By then the soldiers were swarming around her.
The blows came from all sides. A dozen wounds.
A dozen deaths. She roared, seized the closest man and struck off his head with such desperate force that they both tumbled back to the ground.
Somehow Tsuna rose again, swayed there for a dazed, bloodcurdling moment, before the mounted soldiers were on her once more. She cut out with her sword. She fell.
At the main temple steps, Yora pulled himself up, a pincushion with arrows speared into his back and shoulders. He hacked at the men who were trying to kill his wounded daughter, shouting at her, get away, get away.
Bloodied, her breath short and coming in fast gasps, Kai found herself moving back to save them – to help them – do something, anything she could – when Myorin’s hand closed around her wrist. “No,” Myorin said, dark and terrible. Just, “No.”
She pulled Kai away, and with a cry, Kai let her.
Yora, surrounded now, ducked beneath a spearpoint and cut another down. Tsuna lay in a widening pool of crimson below the temple steps. He called to her. He cried out. He fell to his knees; he cradled his daughter’s head, arrows jutting from his sides.
He rose. He hewed a man down; he gored him through the throat.
He was stuck from behind and never noticed.
He spun, his sword a flaming star. He cut a ring around her body, Tsuna, lying like in peace.
Her hands were open. She was facing the sky.
A cry of victory came from somewhere in the rooftops; Yora struck again, and Kai could hear his bellowing from here.
Myorin gripped her wrist, urging her on from their hiding place.
The horses were terrified; Kai twisted, turned, saw Yora charge again, a screaming mass of spearmen lunging, jabbing at him with their needle points. “We have to go. We have to help him—”
Myorin held her back. “It’s too late!”
“I’ll kill them!” Kai screamed. “I’ll kill them all!”
Myorin pulled her away, their horses side by side. Face set, feeling nothing. Not yet. Not yet.
“Yora!” Kai cried again.
“It’s too late.” Myorin, rough as coal, forced Kai violently on, and said nothing more.
Too late.
His last order had been to get to safety. To save themselves.
Now he stood near the body of his daughter, Tsuna, skin pale, almost white from lack of blood.
He was alone on the steps.
Keishi soldiers surrounded him.
A barrage of arrows rained down.
He tried to run.
The arrows fell.
He was hit. The leg. He buckled.
“No!” Kai cried again. “No.”
She heard a final shout in the insanity. Yora was standing before the temple, with one hand on the arrow-wound at his leg, the other on his sword, as Keishi charged up the steps around him.
“Go,” he’d said. “Live.”
And he turned. A great cry of terror and challenge and sacrifice.
The Keishi came upon him, ten, twenty on the steps.
Myorin grabbed her reins. But Kai had frozen. Arrows glanced about them, invisible barbs in the gray, but she was barely aware. Myorin wheeled around, trying to get them to move.
But Kai was still. She could only watch.
Watch, as Yora raised his sword, the famous Nagareboshi, the Falling Star. It glinted with steel so dark it seemed blue.
Watch, as he cut them down.
As another arrow found him, in the back, below his arm.
As they moved in. But she realized the Keishi soldiers were afraid. Seikiyo’s son, Shosei, yelling hoarsely for them to strike. A woman with broad shoulders and beautiful sea-green-and-silver armor lanced toward him.
For a moment, no one moved at all. Yora was surrounded, but they seemed unable to get any closer.
“Kill him!” Shosei screamed.
But the kijin woman paused. Removed her mask.
Yaeko Eiga hesitated, sword in hand.
“Kill him!” Shosei shouted. “What’re you waiting for?”
Yaeko turned to him, as though to speak. But before she could, the surge of the Keishi soldiers broke, and swept around her. Yora, against fifteen men. The fighting began. The screams.
Kai watched as long as she could. Until she knew it was over. Until he kicked his way through the ranks and tried to run. Until another arrow found him, and another.
Until he stumbled.
Until Myorin pulled her away.
Gripped her reins and forced Kai back. “Ride!” she shouted.
Ride. So you can live.
“Kai, now!”
Get out, he’d shouted. Get out.
“Now!”
But Kai kept looking back. She didn’t feel her wounds anymore. She didn’t feel her tears. She felt nothing, nothing but a cavernous, hollow void. She had no thoughts. She watched until the flames grew hot and stung her eyes with smoke. Until she saw his blood in the air.
Until she saw his body fall.
Until Seichi appeared, at the top of the steps. Stood over him, red-faced and shaking, to deliver the final blow.
And Yora was dead.
Seichi lifted his arms. The bannermen cheered.
He kneeled by the body, to take Yora’s sword from where it fell.
Myorin shouted one last time, striking her horse with a palm, and pushed them faster into the darkness. Tears streamed down her face. Her mother taken. Her sister felled. Now her father. Gone. All at the hands of the Keishi.
So, it’s done, Kai thought. We are done.
The last thing she saw was the look on Seichi’s face, when he glanced down, disgust threatening to overwhelm him. Disgust, and also fear: at the carnage, at what he’d done. He had the sword. He took it with him when he left.
Kai’s head swam. A wave of nausea hit her. “Oh,” she said. “Oh…”
“Don’t you fall,” Myorin hissed.
She’s just seen her father die. Kai’s mind turned in slow motion.
She couldn’t process what had happened. They were on a small street in the village.
Myorin. She just saw her father die and she’s leaving the body to be desecrated by her enemies, she’s fleeing so that we might live and fight again. She’s doing it for me.
“Hurry.” Myorin’s voice was thick with tears. “Hurry.”
They rode from the burning temple, over the low fences and gates and an open meadow beyond, at the base of the hillside.
The horses whinnied and panted, as though they were crying, too.
Three figures joined them in the shade of the hills above the barley plain.
Kai tensed; the fear came back. Myorin gave a cry, half-greeting, half-sob: her father’s retainer, Kaji Getoh, appeared swift as a wraith in the half-light, his horse black as pitch.
He’d lost his mask, his armor cut in many places: he looked like he’d been punched in the face.
Beside him, young Atsu helped the boy-prince, Nioh’s son, hold the reins of a second horse, pale, wide-eyed and full of fear.
Myorin didn’t need to tell them what had happened. Getoh sent one glance toward the temples and said, simply, “There are Keishi in these hills. We go.”
Kai looked back as they rode along the hillside; at the red and orange flames, the heat licking up into a cold morning sky thick with clouds.
We’re alive, she thought. We’re alive. She saw him fall again, arrows in his legs and back. She saw the look on Seichi’s face as he lifted the sword.
We’re alive.
Bloodied, battered, tired and soaked to the bones. Spattered with mud and gore. We’re alive, she thought, and they will pay for this.
They will pay.
They rode across the foothills, going east. They rode beside the field. The sun reached a peak. The clouds thinned. But Kai saw none of it. She saw only the flash of the blades, heard the sounds of screaming again.
She saw Shosei the Spear, and his brother Seichi, standing high and terrified, on the steps of the great hall.
She saw Seichi kneel, to take the sword from where it fell, by Yora’s bloodied hand.
It was too late.
Myorin gripped the reins of her horse, and they raced faster into the weak light, leaving the smoke and death and water rushing on behind them, and were gone.