Find Me, page 16
Ayame didn’t disagree.
“I’ve seen Hissing Blade fight before.” Sora spoke through gritted teeth. “He lost to Kyuzo-dono, and both Wraith and Lightning were more lethal than Honorable Father. It’s not possible he got the better of them both. That snake cheated.
“Moving forward, understand that there is no honor in this fight. Father’s viciousness has limit, he has boundaries that he will not cross. But we can’t be burdened by the same code of ethics, Ayame, not if we mean to win against Hissing Blade.
“You care for Father, you carry his child. Don’t be like me, left pining after the dead. There are only two sides on this board. If they are not riding under our banner, they are the enemy, and the enemy do not have names, faces, hopes, or dreams, and neither do they have women, children, or civilians.
“I can’t see them, but you will, and you’ll help burn them anyway.”
Ayame didn’t answer. Instead, she stroked her belly because the baby kicked.
Hush, don’t be upset. The world will be a better place before you’re born.
“They’re so quiet,” Sora said.
Ayame realized the music and laughter had stopped. Winter winds that hadn’t gotten the notice the New Year had passed battered against the wooden shutters, howling. Undisturbed, Puff snored.
“Something’s wrong,” Ayame whispered. “Let me go see.”
“Take me with you.” Sora got up.
‘Why? That would take longer,’ Ayame wanted to say, but the silence unnerved her, and she wanted the company.
So they headed out together.
The halls of Enju were empty, but once outside, she saw shadows moving in the towers. There was something happening outside, but the stone walls obstructed her view.
“I can’t see anything. We have to go back inside,” she said.
Sora knew his way, so she sprinted up the stairs to the top tier—the lord’s quarters—and opened the window. There was nothing but the night sky.
She crossed the hallway and opened a window on the opposite side, then knotted her brows, confused about what she was seeing.
“Ayame!” Sora yelled down the hall.
“Here!” she yelled over her shoulder, then returned her gaze to the hills.
“What do you see?” Sora came in behind, tripped on something and fell. He was getting up when she looked back. “Ayame?”
She looked again at the hill. “Do you remember the deer-frightening fountains? The ones with a bamboo tube that fills with water, dips, and taps the rock when it comes up?”
“The sozu? What are you talking about?” He came and stood by the window, out of habit perhaps.
“I see that. But large and on the mountain. It’s on fire and bending and coming up, over and over.”
“Ah, it’s a trebuchet arm, Ayame.”
“But it’s not hurling anything.”
“Right. It’s how the Satsuma send urgent messages over long distances. They have them across their terrain on hills. They light them and the ones who can see echo the message.”
“What does it say?” she asked like a dumbass.
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.” He felt for her hand, and she squeezed it tight.
Nothing good, Ayame knew it, glaring at the waving fire on the horizon.
Kyuzo-dono, where are you?
seventeen
The Siege
Lord Isamu had been careless. The grief and rage he hid behind his laughing mask had dulled his wit. He’d amassed his army in his southern garrisons, on the road to Sunlit City—not an unreasonable thing to do since the ashigaru were slow and he’d wanted to be in location to take the city when the Ishii riders arrived.
He hadn’t cared about his neighbor Hashimoto since they were a small clan, surviving only due to Ono protection. They were the ones that attacked Lord Kyuzo’s entourage on the way to Sunlit City, and recognizing their banner when they showed up with a couple of hundred riders, Ayame had been relieved to see the small number of the enemy. But they weren’t the problem.
The Ono, like the Shimura had been, was a northern clan bordering the Ishii province to the northeast. They would’ve had to pass through Yukiyama to approach Satsuma territory. One, the northern roads were still impassable, and two, the Ishii weren’t in the habit of letting a large army pass through their province, with or without Lord Kyuzo’s letter. On those two things, Lord Isamu had relied on and hadn’t expected the Ono at his door.
Two other things had slipped his mind. One, the Ono were a merchant clan and had a large fleet of commercial ships. Two, Ishii relations with the Inaba deteriorated since Yohei’s death, and they had no way of controlling their waters. Ono had sailed down the coast, bypassing the Ishii completely, and landed on Satsuma shores, and in Nara one was never more than a hundred miles from the sea.
Drowning in the blue banner with intertwining white rings, the view from Enju towers had become an oceanfront. On the third night under siege, the Satsuma army was half a moon’s distance whilst Lord Isamu sat trapped in his keep with all his lords. There was no sleep on Windswept Peak.
Unlike the Shimura castle built on a cliff, a steep scale but not that high overall—which allowed for the Ishii siege engines to reach the castle—Enju sat on a monstrous peak. Nothing from the ground would reach it, making the Ono resort to ladders as the second wave of assault commenced.
They paid heavily for the attempt, but they could afford the loss. They were a legion. Soon, the corpses would pile high enough for the Ono to step over the walls. The shinigami gathered on the snow were as numerous as the carrion crows picking at the eyes of the dead.
Although instructed to do so, Ayame refused to hide in the storage room with Lord Isamu’s concubines. She and Sora tried to help by setting the Ono camp on fire, but Sora’s range wasn’t great, and he was a liability more than an asset. Without being able to see where to direct the flames, he almost set the fortress on fire when the wind shifted. No trees, much snow, it was hard to burn the Ono, whereas the wooden fortress would go up in flames like a wick. Besides, with so much pent-up anger, should the diviner lose control of the fire spirit as he had in Yukiyama, Lord Kyuzo wasn’t here to rein him in.
The tail end of winter coiling around the mountain, wicked and teeth chattering, on the seventh day of the siege Ayame began to hope that perhaps they could hold out till the Satsuma army arrived. The defenders had run out of arrows and scaled down the wall at night to collect the ones they’d shot from the Ono dead littered around the fortress wall, but other than ammunition they hadn’t suffered a significant loss. Also, the Ono grew disheartened and halted their assault. In a war of attrition, Lord Isamu was confident that he’d outlast the Ono in the cold and with a massive number to feed. Enju’s storages were full, and all they had to do was guard them from fire.
On the twelfth day, the warriors were making plans to break through the Ono encirclement with a sudden cavalry charge and join their forces once the army arrived in a handful of days, or so said Puff who’d gone to spy on the lords’ meeting. Ayame’d wanted to know if they knew where Lord Kyuzo was, but he hadn’t been mentioned. They’d lost all contact with the outside world when Ono seized control of their signal towers.
On the thirteenth day, as Ayame and Sora folded paper cranes together to pass time and distract themselves and subdue the anxiety of waiting, Puff burst into the room, leaving a fox sized hole in the paper panel.
“Ryu, Ayame!”
“Where?” Ayame jerked up. The paper cranes on her lap spilled onto the floor and Puff trampled on them with his furry paws. He’d also tracked mud in.
The cat bell jingled as he circled her. “Outside! Where else? And they brought their horrid weapons! They’re lugging it up the hill as we speak. Please tell the lord to not let them approach.”
Leaving Sora yelling after her, Ayame dashed outside and across the courtyard. She’d grown accustomed to carrying her belly like a basket when she ran, and her steps hadn’t slowed much for it. She drummed up the ladders of the gate tower to see.
The archers were sniping the Ryu with straw armor with or without her input. Not wanting to be a nuisance in their way she couldn’t get a clear view, but from a glimpse through a slat as an archer bent to pick an arrow, she saw the Ryu were pulling ‘cannons’ up the hill on two-wheeled carts.
“What do they do, anyway?” one of the bujin asked his comrade about the Ryu weapon and the other shrugged.
“Should we be wasting arrows?” asked another.
“They shoot projectiles,” Ayame guessed wildly, making the men turn around. She’d seen them on the bridge to Sunlit City and there had been no reason to have them stationed in such a way unless they shot like the arquebus—just larger.
Although the bujin were used to Ayame roaming around where women typically wouldn’t be, they were far from considering any advice from her. They ignored her and continued to speak amongst themselves.
She returned to the keep and informed Sora.
“Cannons?” asked Sora. “That’s what they brought?”
“Yes, the iron tubes. They have a bunch and are trying to pull them up the hill. Can they break in this way?”
“I don’t know,” Sora said. “I’ve never seen them used, and I wasn’t educated as a Ryu. I grew up in Yukiyama, if you recall.”
Ayame frowned. Sora had grown agitated with her because she wouldn’t help him burn the Ono. He didn’t seem to understand that he was as likely to harm the Satsuma.
Two hours later, the sun was setting but nothing bad had happened, so Ayame breathed a little. Puff remained neurotic, however, and she thought he was afraid of the Ryu crest and Hissing Blade more than the weapon he knew nothing of. The evil eye opening had traumatized her friend. He was a spirit of this world after all.
Morning glories like tiny parasols of pink, violet, and white brushed by Ayame’s feet as she ran through Reiji’s garden. I’m dreaming, she thought, finding herself in the immortal realm. Birds chirped in the mist, the ball of light arching through the sky like the sun and changing day to night but not turning time. She was little again, she supposed, for a sunflower was taller than her and she lost sight of Reiji running through a field of them—happy yellow petals, round like smiling faces.
“Brother!” she yelled. “Brother!”
She meandered around the endless field, terrified suddenly at how alone she was.
“Brother!”
“Reiko.”
“Brother?”
“Be wary of Immortal Father.”
“Brother, why did you rebel against our father? Why did you leave me?”
“I dreamed once that I could right the world.”
Thunder, Ayame thought. It sounded like a lightning storm. She had to open her eyes in the dimness of the room with a single oil lantern burning by her mat to remember it was winter. Puff was a trembling fur ball.
“I heard a dragon roar in the sky.”
“Dragons aren’t real.” Ayame picked him up.
She’d thought she heard thunder, but it was quiet as she opened the shutters. The cold air blasted her wide awake. The lantern behind her fizzled, then blew out in the draft. Petting Puff, she peered out the window toward the dark sky—no lightning. Was it a dream? But when her gaze swooped to the courtyard, she saw bujin with their heads tilted upward as well.
Torches spiraled up the gate tower, flickering through the open slats, and men shouted in the battlements, their words lost in the wind. Reiji still on her mind, Ayame reached out her window to close the shutter.
A roar tore through the courtyard, blowing a cloud of splinters and shrapnel. In its wake, the men in the courtyard screamed as they’d been blasted with a thousand pieces of rocks from the wall. Their blood was bright on the snow, even in the dark of the night.
The fortress bustled awake, filling with drumming feet and shouts as the thunder clapped continuously and the fortress rattled. The sound and the quake were as if the mountain had become alive and was trying to shake the fortress off its back.
Ayame held Puff and hid in the closet. She closed the door and sat in the dark.
“Do you think the Ryu has a real dragon?” he whimpered.
“Dragons are not real.”
Dragons are not real. Dragons are not real. Dragons are not real.
Ayame’s breathing stuttered and her heartbeat faltered. The child had become restless as well, rolling inside her and trying to kick out.
“Don’t die. She’ll die.” Puff pressed up against her belly, his fur warm and soft. He was being a fox trying to comfort her—not Ayame, the child. He still insisted it was a girl.
“What are we going to do?” she whispered.
“I don’t know.”
Time had stopped, and the night was going to last an eternity. Convinced that the earth was chewing up and swallowing the fortress, and they were descending into the underworld, Ayame lost awareness of herself. All her limbs, face and jaw were numb. She’d left the shutter open, and it grew freezing in the closet, her breath steaming as she violently shivered, not from the cold but mostly from fear.
“Ayame!”
“Sora!”
He opened the closet door, and she screamed bloody murder although she knew it was him.
“Help me go outside,” he said.
“Outside where?” She couldn’t bring her voice down from panic and yelled.
“Outside the walls where the Ryu are. I must help. Enju won’t last the night.”
“I can’t,” she cried.
She didn’t want to die and couldn’t help it. Her lord had either died or abandoned her. All she had was the child, and she didn’t want it dying because of her. She couldn’t, just couldn’t step out of the closet, never mind outside the walls. What if there was a dragon there? What if there were more demons?
“I’ll guide you. Can you hear the bell?” Puff squirmed out of her grip.
“No, don’t go!” Ayame crawled after him.
“He’s right, Ayame. If they get inside, we all die.”
“I can barely hear you over the noise. I won’t be able to follow the bell,” Sora said. He still waited for Ayame, but she just could not.
“Fine then, I shall sing for you. Follow my voice.”
“Puff, no!” Ayame protested, but the fox bolted out the door, singing cheerfully over the dying cries of men, about a fox who combed his hair and put on a robe because he wanted to be pretty like the young maiden in spring.
Sora followed him and disappeared out the door.
Ayame crawled back into the closet, sat on her heels, and cried. In darkness and alone, she realized one thing though: she would rather that Kyuzo-dono married Lady Teishi and stay where he might be safe than die trying to get back to her. With that revelation, she stopped being so upset and fell asleep sitting up amidst the chaos. The terror of the night faded to a gentle noise as she dreamed about the field of sunflowers.
Servants covered in dust plume removed debris from the courtyard, shuffling their feet to the ring of the gong. They hardly blinked and didn’t speak as Ayame passed through them on her way to the gate tower. She’d woken up to the groans of injured bujin in the gilded grand hall, now turned into an infirmary—rows of men on straw mats as the physicians distributed poppy milk and the shinigami watched over as if they were on guard shift.
The top of the gate tower was blown off and stood as a roofless thing, like a tree chopped in half, but the stairs were intact as Ayame climbed them. The fortress had survived, but she wanted to know if her friends had returned.
Amongst the jagged edges of what once were walls and pillars, a group of men and one red fox were gathered on a layer of rubble. Ayame sagged with relief as the tension that propped her up drained at once. Lord Isamu and a handful of his lords, their armor caked in dust, were speaking to Sora as Puff stuck his head out through a collapsed slat. His tail swooshing, he was looking at something beyond the wall.
“What happened?” Ayame asked Sora as the Satsuma lords moved to another corner, pointing to the south and murmuring, nodding, stroking their beards.
“Snow evaporates, flesh chars, and iron melts,” Puff said, turning to Ayame. “Look!” He stuck his head out through the hole again.
“I sent some Ryu to the underworld,” said Sora. His hands clasped behind the back and the sash over his eyes was covered in soot, but his smile was bright and new. “What did Goodnight used to say? Jolly good times?”
Ayame leaned over the edge and saw the hill was a mangled black mess. Charred bones sticking out of ash, weapons melted like droopy paper, the whole sight appeared as if someone had tossed random objects on the charcoal brazier and smelted them together.
“Demon’s whore,” she heard Lord Isamu curse and turned. “Hell just keeps spitting them out, doesn’t it?” he grumbled.
Ayame swung her gaze in the direction the lords were looking in and saw endless lines of Ryu coming over the southern hills and marching down into the valley where the Ono were still large in numbers. Exhausted from the emotional seesaw, Ayame sighed but wasn’t disheartened. Her spirit couldn’t have sunk any lower anyway.
Lord Isamu came over to slap Sora’s shoulder. “One more day, son. Hold these fatherless sons of whores one more night, and mine and ours should be here tomorrow morning. Then we’ll have ourselves a proper battle, nee?”
“I’ll do what I can, my lord,” Sora said.
“Ah, I best enjoy you calling me that. Soon, you’ll be emperor and I’ll be some clown to you.”
“Never, my lord.”
“You say that now, but we shall see.” Although Lord Isamu continued to not think much of Ayame, his demeanor toward Sora had warmed much. Sora had earned his respect, she guessed.
The lords left, and Ayame waited to escort Sora down. Typically, he’d find his way through the courtyard fine, but the debris and the collapsed walls had changed the landscape some.
“Ayame, do you think the dead can see us?” Sora asked.
