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.
