It’s too late.
Finally Yora stirred. “Go. Everyone! Go!” He reached his horse; they followed him. She heard him cry out again, a great shout of rage and pain.They were leaving Hayo behind.This was wrong. This was so wrong.
“Kai, hurry!” His face, a mask of fury.It’s up to us now.
She closed her eyes. She held her reins. She heard Noyori’s cries, a prince’s son who’d never even held a sword, let alone seen death.
And now he had.Now we all have.
They fled along the tiger-paths their horses knew so well, through the mountains and down toward the riverlands beyond. Hayo’s voice still rang in her ears.I’ll be all right.
They passed the remainder of the day on horseback. Hours blurred. Kai felt tense as wire, fragile as glass. She heard Hayo’s voice again in her mind. Saw her fall. Saw them carry her away. Ahead, Yora rode, quiet, numb. They headed toward the river temples. Kai began to shake, clutching her reins as though clutching life itself. The sky, above, under the veil of the roiling clouds, spread into a multitude of colors, a mosaic-burst of light that, once, she would have loved. Once, she would have seen it and thought:So beautiful.Now she didn’t. Now she couldn’t. Now the sun went down, fading altogether, and left them with nothing. Only twilight. Dim. Angry. Gray.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-FIVE
Sen
The fields whipped past. Arrows sliced through woods.
Another body fell.
Sen urged his horse over the ridge.
He wouldn’t hesitate. He wouldn’t back down. Wouldn’t give them the proof they all expected: that he was no good, that he would never lead the Gensei in their war.
You want to be a Kijin?they’d asked, leering.
A ghost of the devil-gods?
No, he told himself. I already am.
I can do it.
I’ll show them all.
Rain spat against him, cold, hard with ice.
The night drew on.
They had been ambushed on the road to Oda. An hour before, when the town came into view and Tokuon brought his retainers around, assailants in black loosed fire-arrows from the darkness, into the cavalcade, setting some of the supply carts alight. Sowing chaos, the night-wolves unleashed another volley, then fled into the woods. “After them!” Ohori screamed. But the Oda fields were a waste of reeds and purple-tinted grasses that grew taller than a man, so tall that those in front disappeared if they went past a few paces. Sen couldn’t even see the tips of their bows.
He’d rallied his blood-guard, blades bristling in the air.
Run, he thought.Run and hide.
I’ll hunt you down. Every one of you who hurt my friends.
The whistle of arrows cut through the night like rain. Another body fell and he continued past it. They were deep in the woods, hunting down the remnants of the scouts that had attacked them. Dressed all in black, they were almost impossible to see. Most had already disappeared into the underbrush. He saw nightmarish images of two killers on a wall, of arrows in the night, blood on his hands; the horror of his stewardmother as she fell.It’s happening again, he thought.
In the end, they came back empty-handed. Tired and on edge, Sen found that in his absence a messenger had arrived from the capital, to speak to the Gisan lord with desperate news. He hurried to the tents to find his cousin perched over his maps, beside a small, balding rider who had come in robes dark as dusk.
“Nioh has fled.”
That was what the messenger had said, wheezing for breath after racing through a day and a night on his dying horse. He hadn’t stopped, hadn’t even eaten, since he left the capital. “Seikiyo has started a coup.”
And now there was no more time. Ohori’s brother Daijin Kanesuke saw the apprehension on Sen’s face and gave a bleating laugh. “What?” Sen said, but felt the blood rush to his cheeks, and Daijin just stalked away.
No more time.No more moments to sit back and learn, no more opportunities to see how things were done, to practice. Now it must be done for real. Now, everything was real. Now, within days, or weeks at most, people would begin to die.
