Takeo's Chronicles, page 168
The ronin’s blood chilled in his veins as he cocked his head slowly to the side. Nicholas stood aghast, arms bloodied, but only because he held Kuniko whom he’d caught before she fell. Kuniko mouthed unspoken words on pale lips, hands holding each of the throwing knives that had impaled her—one in the stomach and one in the chest.
The ninja laughed once before Takeo stabbed him through the throat.
For a moment, no one said anything. They all stared wide-eyed, unblinking as Kuniko struggled to breathe, bleeding into Nicholas’ massive hands.
“Surgeon!” Takeo screamed. “Fetch my surgeon, now. Someone!”
He darted over and took the girl from the viking’s hands, pulling her close and wrapping a hand around the wound in her stomach. A muffled cry escaped her lips as she was lowered to the ground.
“Takeo,” Nicholas started, stuttering. “I’m sorry. I should have—”
“Shut up and get help. I said get help!”
Nicholas bolted away. Takeo had no idea if any other servants had been around to hear his plea. He had no attention for anyone else.
“Kuniko, stay with me, look at me,” he commanded. “Breathe, just breathe.”
“My lord,” she struggled to say.
“Don’t talk, just listen to my voice,” he begged. “Listen, you’re not going to die. You’re not! You’re still breathing, okay? That’s a good sign, just stay with me and concentrate. You can do this; you’re tough. You’re strong. You want to be me, huh? Be like me? Then live. Survive. I command you, don’t die! Please, don’t die. Not for everything I’ve done to you, done for you. Don’t let it end like this.”
Takeo could hardly believe the emotion that swept over him so suddenly. For years now, he’d hardly given Kuniko any attention at all compared to the devotion she’d showed him. Somehow, he’d convinced himself that meant he didn’t care for the girl, yet he always knew that was a lie. At every moment when it mattered, he had protected her, and he never quite knew why. Not even now, when it mattered most, and he dug deep to search for the words that would keep her awake.
“Emy,” Gavin spoke up, shifting out of his shock at the scene. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“What, me?” she replied. “I—I thought it was obvious. If Aiguo was supposed to get the oni to kill Takeo, then clearly they weren’t here for him. How am I the only one that realized that? I was getting ready to pull you out of the way. I didn’t know they’d aim for her, though it seems obvious now.”
“Are you two going to stand there and watch her die?” Takeo shouted. “Get water, now. And bandages! Something.”
“My lord,” Kuniko spoke again, looking into Takeo’s eyes. “I, I’m so glad . . . they didn’t hurt you.”
Her eyes fluttered, closing. Takeo pressed on the knife wound until her eyes snapped open and she screamed.
“I gave you an order, damn it,” he said. “Fight, Kuniko. Fight it!”
She moaned her pain, but the flood of adrenaline gave her enough strength to nod and suck in air.
Takeo looked up to see that neither Gavin nor Emy had moved. Emy stood placid, unperturbed in the slightest at Kuniko’s suffering, and Takeo could have struck her down for that alone if he had not been keeping pressure on Kuniko’s wounds. Gavin, however, appeared grave. A pit of fear seemed to well within him and grow.
“Takeo,” he said.
“What?” Takeo snapped back, furious at him, at Emy, at himself—mostly himself—at having failed, at having to hold Kuniko as she died, at having tried so hard for so long to give her a chance, everyone a chance, only to watch the life drain out of them again and again and again.
Like Mako. Like Emily. Like Ping. Like Krunk. Like Lei. And on and on and on, and he just wanted it to stop, yet it couldn’t, he wouldn’t, not until every threat to humanity had been stamped out.
But none of that would save Kuniko. Not now. Only the surgeon could, or Takeo would hang her for incompetence.
“Takeo,” Gavin repeated.
“What, damn it!”
“He knew just where to strike,” Gavin said, eyes wide. “Qadir. He knew exactly where to hit you the hardest, where you were least prepared. And only two ninjas? Takeo, I’ve got a bad feeling about tonight.
“I don’t think Kuniko’s going to die alone.”
* * *
By a miracle, and the deft hand of Takeo’s personal surgeon, Kuniko did not die that night. She didn’t die in the morning, either, but neither could anyone say for certain that she would live. Fevers ravaged her body, and assuming she survived those, there was no telling how or when she’d recover.
Unfortunately, that didn’t stop Gavin’s prediction from coming true.
Reports started with a trickle in the morning, carried by winged pixiu sent from throughout the southern region of Juatwa. Weary messengers came next, some astride even wearier mounts, teetering with exhaustion at having run or rode through the night. None carried good news.
Qadir had quite literally emptied the Nguyen vaults and coordinated every willing ninja clan into a massive attack across all of Juatwa.
Lord Virote Yang was dead. Garroted while he relieved himself.
Several members of the Zhao family—distant cousins of Kuniko with closer ties to the late Lady Ki—were captured and being held for ransom. Payment was demanded in either an absurd amount of money or withdrawal of the troops from the war. They weren’t demanding this of Takeo, but of the daimyo that had pledged their troops to him. Considering how the Lady Ki had been treated in her final years, a good half of the Zhao family had already made its decision, and the message that was sent to Takeo’s camp was also a command to return home all those samurai belonging to the Zhao family.
The Choi, Hu, and Sun families had been ransacked of either powerful or precious members, and they were requesting aid from Takeo. Either he would pay the ransom or rescue the hostages, or else they would abandon him. They claimed to have no choice, yet added respectfully that—of course—Takeo would see them through this ordeal.
Then it got worse. Other daimyo had chosen to be the aggressors rather than the victims.
The families of the late Lady Xie and Lord Sing sprung the betrayal Takeo had known was coming. He had spared their lives in exchange for their samurai because, at the time, Takeo needed every able body he could muster, and he had hoped to have the whole of Juatwa conquered before they turned on him. Plus, how could they betray him with no soldiers at the ready? He never thought they’d be so brazen as to help ninjas capture other royalty. The two families had organized a gathering of select Hanu and Katsu parents—older ones with strong ties to their sons and daughters under the command of Takeo—then captured and sold them off to ninjas for ransom.
Either way, the message was clear: abandon the ronin, or the prisoners die. However, for good measure, the ninjas had killed a few already.
Attempts were made on the lives of Lady Zhenzhen and Lord Oiu, but both were unsuccessful. Reports stated that Zhenzhen had been locked away for months in self-imposed isolation. She’d been unwilling to see anyone for any reason, which Takeo took as a sign of her increasing madness, but it proved to be her saving grace. The assassin sent to cut her throat had been caught and killed trying to bypass the many walls and locks the shogun had put up between herself and humanity. As for Lord Oiu, no normal ninja was a match for the protection Qing could provide.
With this news, Takeo feared the worst for Lady Anagarika. Without her skillful political web, his entire Katsu army might fall apart in months. But she came to visit him personally, bearing worse tidings. Takeo had forgotten that as much damage as her death would do, she could wreak far more havoc alive.
“My lord, you must forgive my bluntness, but I have no time for pleasantries,” she began, bowing with eyes red from tears. “They’ve captured my children.”
She did not embellish. There was no need. Takeo knew enough about Lady Anagarika to know that little else mattered to her beyond the lives of her immediate family. That’s why she had become Takeo’s vassal in the first place, in exchange for the lives of her children and her nieces and nephews. Nothing could be done about Botan, but Anagarika cared less about revenge and more about staunching the loss of life—at least when it came to those tied to her by blood. That was why Takeo had been so confident in her loyalty. He’d always held the lives of those children in his hands.
Until now.
“Please, my lord,” she begged, choking back tears. “You must understand. Kill me if you have to, but they made their message clear. If I serve you, they die. I can’t let that happen. I can’t.”
Takeo did not argue. He knew conviction when he saw it.
“How long did they give you?” he asked.
“One week, my lord,” she replied, sighing. “I must dismantle and withdraw the Katsu troops within the week.”
But in reality, she’d have less than that, and they both knew it. The camp would need to be struck, the marching started, and the messages sent. Anagarika didn’t have a week to decide. She had a week to make her choice clear to her children’s captors.
That meant her decision was effective immediately.
And what was Takeo to do? She’d already stated she’d gladly die to save her children, and he couldn’t well threaten the children anymore either, not when they were in the hands of the enemy. He could threaten to kill other members of her family, but Takeo was aware of the strange devotion parents showed their offspring. He wasn’t about to take that gamble, not yet.
“My lord,” Anagarika continued. “I’ve heard stories that you massacred a ninja clan once. If you could do so again, get my children back—”
She stopped short of promising anything, and Takeo again recognized the logic in that. Could he track down her children? Perhaps. That would require Emy’s unique set of skills, or perhaps some help from Qing, or a thorough scouting effort by a large number of his troops. No option, however, could be accomplished in a week, not with a siege being pressed on three separate cities in the far northern end of Juatwa.
Takeo was spread too thin. He had concentrated every coin he had here, on this battle, and Qadir had won by taking the fight elsewhere.
In the end, Takeo sent Anagarika away without giving her a response. He needed time to think because he still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that Qadir had won without a single sword being raised.
Yet it was true. When all was said and done, and the flood of messages stemmed, Takeo counted that Qadir’s plan had successfully struck at a good half the daimyo that followed him and Lady Zhenzhen. That meant roughly half the daimyo tied to this battle by greed, wealth, or marriage were suddenly facing a form of blackmail that, in Takeo’s experience, rarely failed. If even half of that half decided to give up the lives of their loved ones to stay and help Takeo with his war, that was still a quarter of his army bleeding away. That was an instant reduction in a week upon an army that was already too small to accomplish what it needed to.
And he still hadn’t figured out how to bring down a single fortress.
Takeo sat in his tent in quiet shock, trying over and over to process the magnitude of Qadir’s plot. To set so many ninjas loose upon all of Takeo’s allies so soon, with so much coordination, should have been impossible. The cost alone should have been inconceivable. The only explanation was that Qing had been right; the ninjas did fear Takeo’s rise, so much so that they worked for a minimal fee, maybe even for free. And Qadir would have had little trouble convincing every daimyo under Nguyen rule to empty their coffers for this cause. It would have been a simple choice. It was either do this and maybe win, or don’t and surely die.
The more Takeo thought about it, the worse it got. Qadir’s plan and its ultimate success seemed inevitable. It should have been obvious. Of course, Takeo was the strongest on the battlefield, so it was wise to avoid him there. Takeo’s weakest point was on the political landscape, where his power ties were tenuous at best, or coerced at worst. Why had Takeo so willingly assumed that nothing would change while he was away, fighting this battle? Why had he believed, wholeheartedly, that the crippled, twice-beaten rakshasa would storm out to meet Takeo on the battlefield, head-to-head where the ronin had always prevailed?
Takeo lowered his head into his hands and dug his fingers into his skin, pushing until the pain numbed the shame of his idiocy.
Even then, he still couldn’t believe it. Death by inaction. To think that Takeo might have to turn and flea without winning so much as a single skirmish did more than baffle him. It ate at the fabric of his sanity.
“And if he’d killed me,” Takeo whispered to himself, shaking his head. “If those oni had turned on me and made me a corpse, he’d have taken all of Juatwa in a single stroke. No one would have stayed tied to Zhenzhen after I’d been killed. I made sure of that. Now here I am, about to be defeated, and what will that do? What a fool I am. I’ve dug my own grave. Didn’t I say this exact thing about Qadir once upon a time? That to beat the rakshasa, you can’t play their game. You have to kick the board over. He did that to me. I should have known I wasn’t the only one to figure that out.”
Takeo’s arm brushed the handle of his sword, shooting unwelcome fire upon the pity that welled within him. He ripped the sword free and flung it to the ground in front of him. As it rolled across the rug before coming to a stop, the metal let loose a dull thud, which was quite audible over the grave silence that permeated the camp outside.
One glance at it and he remembered. It seemed ages ago that he’d rejected Tokhta’s offer, between sitting at Kuniko’s side and then hearing message after message that his army would deteriorate before his very eyes. Yet now he remembered. His sword—his soul—for the Nguyen fortress.
“In an hour’s time,” the oni had promised.
Takeo swallowed down a dry throat.
Immediately he wanted to call for help. This wasn’t a decision he should make alone, yet who was available?
Gavin was gone. After hearing nothing about his family, the knight, fearing the worst, had less requested and more demanded to go home. Takeo had granted him permission, and Gavin had been gone for hours now.
Emy couldn’t be trusted, not by a long shot. Takeo had burned that bridge with ogre blood.
Nicholas was rarely helpful in times like these. He usually wallowed in his own worries and gave little thought to the long-term consequences of one’s actions. That’s how vikings lived and died, and they certainly didn’t take into account how an individual’s actions might affect an entire people.
Though annoying and oddly confused about the line between lust and love, Qing was calculating enough to give good advice, but she was too far away to be consulted in time.
Kuniko was unconscious, or otherwise in a state of fever-induced delirium.
And everyone else was dead.
“I,” Takeo stuttered, digging his nails deeper into his skull, “I can’t be considering this. I can’t.”
Yet he was. The Nguyen fortress for an enchanted sword and a loyal oni army. Qadir’s head, the oldest Nguyen brother’s head, and a crystal-clear message that nothing would stop him. Once Lord Oiu was the oldest living Nguyen, there would be no other leader left to follow. He’d take Zhenzhen’s hand in marriage, gain that lordly title, and then his word would be law. Anyone opposing him would be considered a rebel against their true lord, and Takeo could swiftly isolate and exterminate that person and their entire family. All their lands and wealth would be considered spoils of war, and Takeo would grant them to those who helped him quell the uprising—just as Lord Ichiro had done.
What ninja would dare disobey him then? A few captives might die, sure, but what would the daimyo do then? Oppose Takeo and lose more family? Not a chance, not once this war was over and Takeo could scour the land and cleanse any foolish ninja clans from existence. Then all in Juatwa—no, the world—would know that destiny had arrived.
But the cost. The implication. That had to be weighed.
Takeo would lose his sword, the one item that assured his continued life and tipped the scales in his favor. So long as he was armed and awake, assassination was unlikely and death on the battlefield neigh impossible. He could comfortably sit behind his promise to give command to any who could best him, and thus always attract the strongest warriors to his cause.
Then again, what was the point of having an enchanted sword that couldn’t deliver the victory Takeo needed? Even if Aiguo could sneak Takeo into the fortress, and Takeo did assassinate Qadir and the older Nguyen brother, what difference would that make in a week? At least two fortresses would still stand, and the other brothers would be unreachable.
But working with oni? Submitting to oni? It was submission, Takeo knew. Their insistence that he would be their lord was only binding in this life. What came next, he had no idea or any indication that he should care. However, that did not stop him from understanding that he would be trading infinite servitude for temporary power. Everything in his gut told him only a fool would accept such an arrangement. Yet hadn’t he done so already? Wasn’t his soul bargained to another? And what good was his soul, anyway? So tainted and poisoned and broken. He hated his soul, his whole being, and all the failures that his existence had wrought. His life was nothing but pain, and it would continue to be so, for all eternity. That was the entire point of his goal, so that no one else would have to live the life that had been forced upon him.
So, what was one more contract on such a useless thing in exchange for everything else?
However, Takeo would lose more than his soul. He’d lose Gavin for sure, and Nicholas, too. And they wouldn’t just abandon him like they planned to, no. Gavin would outright oppose him again. No knight with a heart like Gavin’s would stand by while a lord of demons waged war on the world, but what choice did Takeo have?
He could wait, as Aiguo had implied. He could retreat to the south, reassemble what forces he had, and lash out. Another shogun might rear his head. Oiu might reconsider his position. A thousand things could happen, really, and for all Takeo knew, it could be a decade or more before he won—if we won. Because with defeat, so came the loss in reputation, and that was all Takeo had going for him. He’d be forced to marry Zhenzhen then, not to reign victorious, but just to stay in the game. Worse, he wouldn’t be able to kill her as he intended. He’d have to stay with her, bed her, listen to her, and give her more time than Emily had ever gotten from him.
