SIX
Minami Sakura didn’t ask for this.
To her left, a shadow-clad warrior slices a Phoenix Guardsman in two. The sword digs in at the guardsman’s waist. It takes him a little while to die; it takes the sword a little while to cut all the way through him. Sakura watches it go—like a dull pair of scissors trying to cut through thick cloth. She can smell his death: that acrid blend of guts and blood and refuse spilling out of him.
And yet he does not stop fighting. The guardsman lets out a shout that would make any instructor proud. With what little force remains to him, he pivots his hips and drives his sword into the shadow-warrior’s chest. The warrior dissolves into the air like ink in a water bowl.
Only then does the soldier slump over; only then does he try to take a moment to rest. As his eyes close, Sakura knows that rest will be an eternal one. The crows will come for him, as the Qorin say.
Sakura cannot tear her eyes away from this. Even if she could, where would they land? For on her right this scene is playing out over and over as well: soldiers advancing with shields raised, driving lances into shadows; shadows leaping like fleas onto the soldiers, tearing heads from bodies.
She does not want to look at any of this. She does not want to see it. The horror of it all has her vomiting off the side of Burqila Alshara’s liver mare. Worse, still, as Burqila pushes her way through the melee and the demons start to attack them. Burqila’s sword rings as it parries away those of the enemy.
Sakura’s got to keep herself low if she wants to be useful, got to stay out of the way as much as possible. She wraps one of her arms around Burqila’s waist and presses herself against the warlord. It occurs to her that she’s made herself into a human shield. There are still arrows flying—their whistling is part of the unholy cacophony of war—and surely some will find her. They’ve found Burqila, already. What if she gets hit, too?
It doesn’t matter now, does it? This is the decision she’s made. The two of them on this horse racing toward … racing toward the General? She doesn’t know what Burqila’s plan is, and she isn’t sure she needs to. Her job is to watch Burqila’s blind spots.
She’s doing a shit job of it.
Like flies nibbling at a rat’s body, like wolves on the attack, the demons. A dozen of them surround Burqila’s horse at any given moment. The soldiers are doing their best to clear a path, but there is only so much they can do without harming Burqila’s horse.
A shadow swipes at them from the right as Burqila cuts a demon’s head off on the left. A nasty one, too—it has more weight to it than most of the other shadows; the light does not pierce it all the way through. Patches of its darkness are flesh-solid. Instead of driving Burqila’s boot knife into its shoulder, Sakura …
She is a scholar. Before that, she was a painter. She’s had to fight some men in her life, certainly. This isn’t the first time she’s held a knife, or the second, or the third. She knows perfectly well what to do—catch its outstretched arm and drive the knife in at the elbow. There’s never any armor at the joints.
But it’s one thing to defend yourself from a man who hides his cruelty behind his coins; it’s another to strike at a demon. Its smoldering eyes bore into her and she falters, knife in hand, her mouth hanging open. Its claws come nearer, nearer—
Burqila twists her body. The demon tears through the deel her daughter made for her. She hisses in pain, but the pain does not stop her—she twists back with a heavy downward cut. Her Surian sword chops the shadow’s arm off. Only then—only when Burqila has already hurt herself—does Sakura find the courage to sink the dagger into the demon’s eye.
She doesn’t expect the resistance. She doesn’t expect to feel the length of the knife scrape against bone and muscle, doesn’t expect the sensations that reverberate up her arm. She wants to be sick, she wants to weep, she wants to run from this place and hide—but there is nowhere to go.
The demon dissolves around her dagger. The triumph does nothing to soothe her mind, nothing to soothe her racing heart. She can’t think, can’t breathe, can hardly process what is going on. Two more demons attack, and Burqila makes the first cut in both cases, the heft of her sword cracking open their skulls. The motions tear open her wounds—Sakura feels Alshara’s blood against her back.
Burqila’s bleeding in a place like this. That isn’t good. Any general would recall her, any captain would demand they return to the camps for proper treatment. Infection was no laughing matter. Sakura’s never seen it herself, only the aftermath—and only Shefali, who had survived.
“Your wound,” she says. “We need to get it cleaned—”
She’s cut off by a demon pulling itself onto Burqila’s liver mare. The mare, knowing full well the corruption it now bears, starts to buck. Sakura’s head thumps against Burqila’s chest. The world spins, and it occurs to her in a distant sort of way that she should probably be stabbing at the enemy.
It’s lunging forward, arm outstretched, just like the one from earlier. Sakura swallows. If she keeps failing, if she keeps hesitating—Burqila is going to get hurt again. And she can’t let that happen when they’ve already lost so much.
You’re a Minami, aren’t you? she thinks to herself.
Sakura pushes the breath out of her lungs. There—grab the arm, pull it forward, get it off balance. The demon tumbles forward, leaving its neck exposed. Sakura plunges the knife in before she can allow herself to think about it. This feeling’s even worse than the last—the knife slips in between two vertebrae, and she must put so much of her weight onto it to keep it digging in. When the demon dissolves, she falls forward herself. Her face slaps against the liver mare’s neck just as she returns to proper footing.
“I did it,” she mumbles. “I did it.”
But it feels hollow.
Especially when the demons keep coming. How does anyone think like this? How can anyone possibly pay attention to what’s going on around them when they’re in the belly of death? It makes sense to her now, why Shizuka was in such a state after the war.
She’s earned them only a moment’s reprieve. Hands and swords and spears and teeth continue to plague them; Burqila’s cuts are getting messier and messier. It’s impossible to see her face given the war mask, but there’s no need when her body is showing such signs of exhaustion.
Where is the General? Where is Rikuto? Burqila wanted to attack it earlier. If they kill it, then all of this will end—won’t it?
Dodging out of the way of a spear thrust, Sakura sees it. It isn’t very far, if they can just—
Far behind them, the cannons ring. She’s never been so grateful for the abominable racket they cause—the demons aren’t fond of noise. The sound alone unseats them; many raise their hands to their shadowy ears in an effort to fend it off. The Phoenix Guard presses their advantage. She can see, in the distance, the flanks of the army closing in around the enemy. Soon, there won’t be anywhere for them to run.
And they will want to run.
Like meteorites, the cannonballs fall, the air itself growing heavier in their wake. One lands not two horselengths away from them; the liver mare recoils a little from the point of impact. Shadows scatter to the winds. Like campfire smoke, she thinks—like campfire smoke.
The Phoenix Guard’s war drums follow. Have they finally gotten ahold of themselves, then? Have they gotten sick and tired of dying like dogs? If these were truly the finest soldiers the Empire had to offer, there was much to fear—for even they struggled against the Traitor’s forces.
But they marshal again all the same. Sakura sees them—their banners flapping in the wind. She feels them, the war drums, in her lungs, and she thinks to herself that she finally understands why the Hokkarans have insisted on taking drummers into battle for the past two thousand years: There’s thunder rumbling in her chest. She feels a little more invincible.
But only a little. An arrow whistles just over her head and she buries her face in Burqila’s shoulder again—only for Burqila to sho
ve her back upright. Is there going to be another slap? She might even deserve it. Useless, useless.
The least Sakura can do is try to remember. O-Itsuki’s lines on Minami Shizuru will live forever—if the story of Shizuka and Barsalai can join them, then Sakura can die happy.
And so she keeps her eyes on Rikuto. To her surprise, as the cannon volley dies down, Rikuto seems to be heading straight for them. Plumes of smoke rise from the corners of its ears. The tip of its nose is a bruised violet.
“There!” says Sakura. “He’s right there. Keep the horse going!”
It isn’t useful—but then she isn’t very useful, either. Keep it together. The only way to shake the disgust coming off Burqila in waves is to prove that it isn’t a mistake to bring her along.
There’s courage deep within her—courage she must have locked away as a child, courage that will flower only twice in her lifetime.
She reaches for it now.
The demons are getting over their momentary shock. Five guardsmen have surrounded Burqila’s liver mare, swords at the ready—but Sakura is ready, too.
Demons meet guardsmen; claws rake armor. The awful scraping of metal only makes her headache worse. She wants to close her eyes and pinch her nose, but that won’t help, and there’s the very real possibility she may die if she tries it.
Shit.
She hates war.
But at least the guardsmen have finally regained control. Together, they advance, the horse by necessity going slower than usual. Swords meet flesh on both sides. Burqila grunts. In this brief moment of reprieve, Sakura looks over her shoulder at her savior.
“My cousin isn’t going to let us fucking die here,” Sakura says. “And neither is your daughter.”
Obvious, obvious—but sometimes you need to hear the obvious things. Sometimes it lends you strength to hear things you already know. Burqila seems like the sort of woman who doesn’t get comforted often.
Her eyes soften, and for a moment her posture is stiff and uncertain. But is that because of Sakura’s words, or is it because of the demon flying toward them?
Sakura sees it too late to help. Following Burqila’s line of sight, she turns, knife clutched in a white-knuckle grip, and there it is: arms spread wide, mouth hanging open to the waist, a shadowy tongue tasting the air. It’s high up enough that it won’t be landing on the horse, oh no—it’s aiming straight for the two of them.
Be brave, she tells herself. Be fearless.
But in that instant, the flower of her courage withers. What is she to do? Kill it? She couldn’t possibly, couldn’t possibly—its teeth will find her no matter what she does. Throw it out of the way? Sakura isn’t strong enough. She isn’t … She isn’t meant to be here.
Her limbs go tense.
She promised Baozhai that she would keep Shizuka safe, and instead she’s going to die here beyond the Wall. She’s going to die here, far from the seas of Nishikomi, far from her library, far from her home, far from her family.
Minami Sakura buries her face against Burqila’s shoulder a third time.
But Burqila does not falter. A wordless warrior’s shout thunders against Sakura’s ears as she thrusts her blade into the demon’s gut. The weight of her body carries through into the blow—she twists her hips and pushes the already-fading corpse off her weapon.
How many times has Burqila saved her already?
How many times has Sakura died this day?
She keeps waiting for the pain, keeps waiting to feel her flesh torn asunder, but it never comes. This can’t be real. None of this can be real—
“Burqila Alshara.”
Rikuto. Sakura’s sure of it. Has Burqila’s infamy spread even beyond the Wall? For its voice is deep with fury, deep with rage. It is only two horselengths away now, towering and powerful.
“We never should have let Ryoma deal with you,” it says.
Burqila is still standing in the saddle behind her. Breathing’s getting tougher for her—Sakura can hear her swallowing air.
“If we’d just killed you, like I asked back then, then none of us would be here today,” it continues. “Ah, but the Eternal King—he wanted to be able to speak with your daughter. Yours and the Minami woman’s.”
It lifts its flute to its lips. Two notes. Sakura flinches, but the paralysis she fears never comes. Instead, when she manages to work up the courage to open her eyes again, she sees that it has conjured itself a massive sword. How can it hope to use a thing like that? It’s nearly as long as she is and just as wide. The heft of it alone—how can it lift it? The muscles of its neck strain.
Rikuto lets out a warrior’s shout. Slowly, at first, it twirls the massive sword at its side. Weight builds momentum—by the time it is right in front of them its sword is a whirling wall of steel.
“Got any tricks up your sleeve?” Sakura asks.
Burqila’s been watching the display without a word. Sakura isn’t sure what else she expected from a woman so famously mute.
Well—that isn’t quite the case. She didn’t expect Burqila to dismount, and that’s exactly what she’s doing, jumping fearless from her saddle. Before she has even landed she has drawn her sword: a thick, curved scimitar more akin to a jungle chopper than to a Hokkaran blade.
“H-hey! Where are you going?” Sakura calls, but Burqila does not turn to look at her, does not acknowledge her at all. “You can’t just go fight it. It’s a General! You’re going to get yourself killed!”
Nothing.
Burqila takes three steps forward. It occurs to Sakura then, as an arrow whistles over her shoulder and leaves her ear ringing, that Burqila does not move the way her daughters do. Shizuka, say what you will about her and her habits, is graceful and light—she’s practically gliding whenever she’s fighting. Shefali doesn’t have the same delicacy, but there’s a quiet confidence to her, too. To those watching her stride through the streets of Xian-Lai, it was clear that she knew she could kill anyone around her if she wanted to—and clear that she had no great want to do so.
But Burqila is different.
Burqila Alshara stalks through the melee like a hunter. Her shoulders hunch a little, as if ready to strike a blow; she holds her sword at a slight angle away from the rest of her body. Every one of her steps is slow and steady and inevitable. There is no grace here, there is no arrogance: only the knowledge that you are her enemy, and Burqila does not suffer the existence of her enemies.
There are no flourishes here, no tricks—only a mother and her sword. Only an uncrowned sovereign. Only a woman who has seen the worst the world had to offer and come back for second helpings.
“The Eternal King made a mistake granting your daughter her strength so early. She could not handle it. She broke. You shall break, too.”
It raises its sword to eye level and holds it out with one hand. Sakura realizes with a sickening twist: it is saluting Burqila. As if this were a duel they are fighting, as if they were meeting in the confines of the arena and not in the middle of a melee. It cannot be serious. The battle would be won easily if Burqila and Munenori were to die. Munenori’s banners are safe at the very back of the army. Why not strike Burqila down here?
Ah, but it is too honorable for that. Yes, that makes sense to her; her stress-addled mind can put together these pieces at least. Long-nosed demons are not inherently evil—but they are inherently proud. Dorbentei’s deception had enraged it, and yet it had kept its word.
Burqila Alshara escaped once before. Rikuto wants to kill her itself now, and it wants to afford her the respect a worthy opponent is entitled to.
But it is a shame that Burqila has never cared about honor.
Instead of returning its salute, she charges forward. Sakura’s surprised at how much force she’s got to her—like a bull rampaging through its pastures, Burqila through the melee. The bodies of the fallen don’t trouble her at all; she tramples them underfoot as she brings her sword down in a heavy slash. The blow lands—but on the flat of Rikuto’s blade, whic
h it has turned to use as a makeshift shield. Sparks fly in her wake; Rikuto’s body shifts from the weight of the blow. If it were human, it’d be laid out on the ground by now.
And Burqila means to get it there. A forward kick lands on the sword flat. It takes a step back to better handle the force, and she meets it with another slash.
Sakura has always liked watching Shizuka go through her sword forms. In the early hours of the morning, with that glow around her and the rosy-fingered dawn above, it was better than any dancer’s show. Shizuka’s morning sword forms were a frequent painting study for the sheer fluidity of her movements.
This is different.
Burqila’s slashes are more like a butcher chopping at a corpse. Heavy, brutal, quick—there is no time to recover in between them. The low growls that leave her only add to the impression. One, two, three more cuts—each heavier than the last, each with the entire weight of her body behind it. If it pushes back at her, she might be in trouble—but how can it push back when she has offered it no respite?
Further and further they go, Burqila’s relentless assault propelling them along. The shadow army fill in the gaps they leave; the Phoenix Guard are quick to engage them. As the curtain of black falls before her, Sakura knows she can’t stay where she is. The demons aren’t attacking Burqila, but they might attack her.
“Come on,” she says to the liver mare. She’s learned only a bit of Qorin. Command words, mostly. Qorin are very vocal with their horses. “Forward.”
The horse whickers. To her right, a demon leaps toward her, only to be caught on the spear of a guardsman.
“We have to catch up to your mother,” she says to the liver mare. This time she slaps her a little, hoping that will serve as incentive enough. Perhaps something about the gesture is reminiscent of Burqila, for the horse finally starts moving.
And Sakura clings for dear life. Leaning forward, her torso pressed against the horse’s neck, her feet barely in the stirrups—she does not want to take any chances. Thankfully the horse is moving at a canter, at best, and the guardsmen can keep up. Plumes of blood paint golden armor red; the smell threatens to empty Sakura’s stomach once more. She does not allow herself to look to her sides. If she does, she might see her countrymen dying.
The Warrior Moon Page 35