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.
