He tried to rise. His knees buckled, and he had to catch himself with a palm on the wet dirt.
“Can… you help me?” he asked.
“That’s why we’re here.”
He did his best, Saito’s hands pulling him up as he forced his legs to obey. He stood. Hesitant at first, then taller, and at last he found he could walk, one step, then two, with the help of Saito’s arm.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
And he realized:This was all for nothing.
With a jolt, he saw, so clearly, it was all a trap.They wanted us to fight here.The bright yellow flag of the Kyohara Musha’in, fluttering in the cold:She engaged us here to prevent us from helping the Poet at the temples.
This was a diversion. “That’s why they retreated,” he muttered softly. Part of him marveled at Akiyo’s skill. Not only had she engaged an enemy on two fronts – the field and the river, trapping Yora in a pincer – but she’d known that Sen would be drawn into the trap. Into the open.
The Keishi had gotten to the temples. Yora hadn’t made it out.
Akiyo’s feint had worked.
Smoke streaked the midday sky east of the Onji River. Gensei riders moved over the frozen, blood-strewn earth, picking off stragglers and finding trophies.
“Tokuon has got his war,” Saito muttered. “We move for the hills. Hurry! Someone bring my lord a horse!”
An hour later, they were at the Gisan camp.
A weariness overtook him, instant, all-consuming: he almost fell asleepin his saddle. Saito placed a guiding hand on the back of his elbow, and he sat up straight again.
“The lords are ahead.”
The warriors parted, allowed them to dismount. Sen’s arm, abdomen, and hip were so painful that Saito had to help him off the horse. He made it to the ground and winced in pain.
“Sen Hoshiakari,” Saito announced. Within the enclosure, Tokuon stood stiff and silent. By his side, his son Taka, and another young boy Sen didn’t know. Myorin sat on a folding stool behind them, with the other temple survivors, mud and tears on her face. A slim woman, in nondescript black armor, turned and stood when Sen limped into the ring.
“Hoshiakari,” she said, in a quiet voice. A knife with the Gensei crest lay in her hands.
Sen approached her, cautious. “Who are you?”
The woman’s eyes met his own.
“I’m your sister.”
CHAPTERFORTY-EIGHT
Yaeko
We are servants, the old ones always said. We fight, we use violence, we sin, so that others may be left in peace. A sword will never find salvation; an arrow finds only its target. But now?
Now, Yaeko followed the Keishi generals into the hall, still wearing her armor and the river water and the blood.
Now her teacher was dead. Now she had been promoted to a higher level than she ever dreamed. First Commander of the Army of the Right, directly below Seichi, the chancellor’s son.
To get there, all she’d had to do was kill.
“Not a word.” Seichi stopped long enough to peer down on her with his height and greater bulk before striding toward the far end where the council, and his father, had convened. He looked at her once more, and he went ahead, and the coldness came back.
Yaeko was with Seichi when Yora died. As his homeguard, she remained beside him, soaked to the bone and dripping through her armor, as the battle ensued. She was there when they saw Kai escape. When Yora, alone, stood before them on the steps of the great hall.
When Seichi killed him.
