I need to act, she thought. Fuck it. We made our choices.
I’m making one now.
She rode before them and raised her voice. “Kijin-tai! You’ll have the taste of blood today! We cross the river!” She rode back and forth along the pebbled beach. “Cross in a line. Help your horses! Keep your swords above the water!”
Yaeko handed off her bow to the attendant they had given her.I don’t even know his name. But I will.She removed her quiver; once on the other side, it would be too close for arrows. She drew her sword. Holding it high above her head, to keep clear of the freezing water.
You doubt my loyalty? Well, I’ll prove it.
She commanded her group: “Line up your horses! We cross the river here!” And she drove her horse into the current. Instant shock. Freezing cold. The flag on her back, the hawk-feather crest of her family, white-on-indigo, fluttered like it fought the air. Not everyone wore such a banner, but she’d made sure to bear hers. The spirits of her people would see victory again.
“Bannermen!” she cried. “Stick to your lords!”
“Yaeko, damn it!” Seichi shouted. “You’ll drown! Stay in your formation!”
“Shit on that!” She moved deep into the river. “You’re wasting time!”
“The group stays together!” Shosei called.
Finally Seichi cursed. “To hell with her. Riders! With me!” He brought his horse into the water behind her. The far shore lay ahead, steep sandy banks and a low wall crumbling with age, clay-tiled roofs of the temple visible within. The rain of arrows continued. The sun had yet to come. Everything was gray: the water, the clouds; the dead, winter-bitten slopes of the eastern shore. Beyond those crumbling walls, hundreds of Gensei loyalists were prepared to fight to the death: Yaeko would be the one to bring it to them. Beyond that lay the little temple village, peasants and merchants no doubt hidden in their homes, or perhaps fled, into the hills. Perhaps the smart ones had.
To the right: the smooth current of the river at its southwesterly bend. Overrun with trees, bamboo and pine and a giant camphor, sticking out into the edge of the water like a beacon; a swathe of wild camellias in winter bloom lay at its feet. The ridge, steep hillsides visible above, slopes and footpaths leading to the mountains. The kind of slopes that she had grown up in, the kind that hid meadows. The kind that would yield roses in the summer.
She shouted, “Stay in a line! There’s a shallow ford here. Keep south of the camphor!” Pointing toward the guardian-tree that marked the westernmost tip of the temple wall.
Freezing in the swift, wide current, Seichi’s words haunted her.If she found herself facing Yora on the field, would she be able to kill him?
Fuck him, she thought.We chose our sides.
Burn the past. Take what you can. Glory waits.
Yora, her teacher. He put a sword in her hands and taught her it was something she could have. Taught her how to use it. To build a future. To kill the past.
He taught her to be ready for the harm this life of slaughter wouldbeget. The damage it would do, to her, to the ones she loved. He taught her this life could not be for the faint of heart. But she was never faint of heart. He taught her that to kill meant to exile oneself from the hope of a better world: in exchange, you gave that hope to someone else. It meant life in the world of hell. A life of the dirt, for ever barred from heaven: it meant you were a ghost of the gods. A kijin. But she knew; she had it in her blood. She was already a ghost of the gods.
He taught her she could never be ready, not truly, for all that it would take. From her, her life, her spirit, her heart. He taught her all he knew; he did what he could. He’d made his choice.
And now the sword shone in her hand.
She plunged through the river, her horse neighing with a fury, a rage that matched her own. She gasped at the shock of cold that washed over her legs and lower body.Forward. Forward.
Kill the past.
Eat it.
Burn what’s left.
“Keishi!” she shouted. “Follow me!”
CHAPTERFORTY-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.
