I have done all I could. And now there are a hundred people dead. The temples burn. Seikiyo controls the courts. Night has fallen. He has stripped me of my titles, and the fires rage beyond the royal steps.
Everything I have tried has failed, he thought.
All that’s left is the truth.
CHAPTERTWENTY-EIGHT
Sen
They crossed the Oiriguchi, the gates of the barrier, on the tenth day. The Kanden plains lay before them, the largest fertile lowland in the realm: in spring, it would be a country of grass and sprouting buds, rice paddies carved into lines on flat portions of the earth, and to the east, small towns built for fishing and sail. Now the paddies lay fallow, harvest done.
It would take up to eighteen days to reach the Gensei-Bodai temple at the southern border of the mountains. Sen rode with Tokuon’s blood-guard, the red-armored Akazonae, as they went south and the Kanden barrier plains opened before them, moving slowly westward with the mountains to the north. They trailed the feet of the great Gisan range, heading into Tokuon’s lands.
Six hundred riders meant well over a thousand horses, hundreds of pack mounts, and other animals to pull the wagons. They met the majority of Tokuon’s host south of the border, and when they approached the rocky pass, Sen remarked he’d never seen an army so big.
Ohori laughed. “Army? These are our retainers. We haven’t seen the army yet. That’s what Kiseda-town is for.”
“For what?”
“The muster.”
Tokuon’s bannermen had been gathering in the mountain strongholds of Yamakaji, and now Sen felt a tingle along his spine –real mountainlords. All the realm knew of Tokuon’s fighters, even in the east, where his stewardfamily ruled apart.
Now they would gather at the Gensei-Bodai temple, from which they would travel south and west again, not to Tokuon’s home of Yamakaji, but to Kiseda, in the middle of the farmland, and meet the barrier clans.
Mercenary killers, Jobo had said in distaste, and the fear and sadness that filled his voice lingered in Sen now, but so did pride. This was the high army of Gisan, and as Tokuon’s famed Akazonae rode toward them, the vassals shouted in reverence. Tokuon called to each of the commanders in turn, commending them, giving recognition to the men of lower houses who led their retinues in his host.
On the twelfth day, they cut southwest toward the lower alps and through the foothills at the base of the Gisan mountains. The Jibashiri – led by the sisters Myorin and Tsuna – had not gone with them. They were the outriders, leading the edge, and went directly south, bringing scouting parties to the farmlands in the Kanden; or as Tokuon put it, “carving their path”.
And Rui, too, Sen learned, from a messenger who came back to report. Somehow, she’d gone with them. Jobo rode with her.
Sen hoped he’d keep them safe.
One midmorning, his uncle Kiie introduced him to Tokuon’s son, Takayoshi, a bright-eyed boy of thirteen. The mountains loomed to their right; soon they would turn onto the pass. Sen did not know what to expect here, in this foreign land. He felt a stranger to it, yet, at the same time, it was Gensei territory, and had been since his ancestor killed the ogre Hiradoji long ago.These are your people, he told himself; and remembered Tokuon’s first words:I am here to bring you home.
Home. What place is that for me now?He had no answer. The road curved slowly upward, mountains above and a vast meadow to one side, harsh and beautiful.
But what was home?
What of Amayari-by-the-sea, which he’d heard of, and never seen?
What of the capital?
Kitano was the only home he’d known, and only now that it was gone did Sen truly understand. The hills and rivers and streams, the brilliant flames of autumn, the white winter, the first flowers in spring.
I’ll see it again, he told himself.I have to.
By evening they were forced to slow in the face of a storm. Snowfall, not cold but terribly heavy, lay waste to the road ahead. Wind shrieked, mist fell across the peaks, and the world swirled about in shades of whiteand gray. Sen found himself riding alongside Tokuon’s son as they waded through the murk, feeling the bite of the air and the sting of ice in a flurry.
“Hear that?” the boy, Takayoshi, called. “The gods are coming back to life!” His cheeks shone bright with cold. “Want to know a secret? I never liked it here. In summer. It was too wet. Too dirty; just fields of mud.”
Sen joked with him. “Well now you have a snowstorm, lord. Anyway, rice grows in water.”
“I know that. The sisters came, they trained me down here. Every day, at the temple, then winters in my father’s keep in Yamakaji. Father says the sisters, they’re the best teachers in the realm, and best warriors, after my mother.”
“The sisters, lord?”
“The Poet’s daughters,” said Taka. “Tsuna, Myorin. They grew up in Satsuki but had to live in the capital for a while, I don’t know how they could stand it. All those rules, those painted-faces. I woulda died!”
