The Lord of the Sands of Time (19 page)

As she passed in and out of sleep, a train of worries rumbled through her mind. Would Orville come? No, he would never leave the soldiers. They were frightened enough as it was, even with his leadership. But Kan would be looking for her. He would mount his horse and brave any weather, scouring the country for word of her.

Kan had matured tremendously under the pressure of events, but this made her fear all the more for his safety. What if he slipped into the palace in search of vengeance and was struck down himself? And would Takahaya stay with the fort? Would the soldiers stand against the enemy without his leadership? Or Miyo’s leadership?

Would the fort hold?

Through months of fighting and defeat, Miyo had never allowed herself to imagine what might happen if Yamatai itself were to fall. Now, worn out and caught in a trap, the fear washed over her. If Yamatai fell, they would have no choice but to withdraw to the west. There would be nothing left to fight for, not for her men without a land, not for herself without a country. Yamatai was all she had ever known. What if those hideous monsters laid waste to everything, the way they had burned Iga and Mount Miminashi? But perhaps it did not matter. By then, Miyo would almost certainly be dead.

And the Messenger of the Laws? On his own he could escape to some place of safety. There he could wait for the best moment to return to the attack. But would he really abandon her? The thought crushed her with grief. Yet, would it not be better that he fled than be killed in a vain attempt to save her? Yes, he should escape, Miyo decided, to take revenge for those who fell in Musashino, by Lake Hamana, and in a dozen other battles.

Suddenly a terrible thought occurred to her, and she sat up. What if she were left alone in the world? It was possible, if the fort fell and Orville was killed in the fighting. Would she follow him in death? It was a Yamatai tradition. The death of a chief or an important man was always followed by the suicide of the wife. Miyo had pledged herself to him, and she was prepared for anything. But would she even be allowed to die?

She curled into a ball, surrounded by fears and regrets. Sleep refused to come.

“Himiko. I’ve come to take you away from here. To the west. We must pass over the Chinu Sea.” He held out his hand. Miyo drew back reflexively.

“Where are the soldiers? Where is the Messenger? Are we defeated?”

“Our ruin is complete, my lady. The armies are annihilated, our palace burned to the ground.”

Miyo felt the blood draining from her head. This was everything she feared. Had it happened because she had imagined it? Then this disaster was her fault! No, she must be losing her mind.

“The Messenger would never be defeated,” she said finally.

“He is dead. Come, there’s no time to lose.” Takahikoné held out his hand again. Miyo shook her head. “Don’t lie to me. The Messenger is no normal man. He cannot be killed. You must be wrong. Did you hear it from one of the soldiers?”

“I saw him die.”

Her knees buckled. A strong arm kept her from falling, but in her swoon the world had left her. Orville was dead. He was gone. There was no more reason to live. For three days she had tried to prepare herself for this moment. Now it was here, and the utter senselessness of life overwhelmed her. Her mind was paralyzed. She walked outside the hut, leaning on someone for support. Suddenly the hand holding her closed like a vise. With his free arm Takahikoné grabbed Miyo in a harsh embrace.

“We will be together—at last!”

A blue object fell from his tunic and clattered to the ground. She looked down. It was the
magatama
. At once, it spoke.

“Miyo! Where are you?” O’s voice. She felt a spark of joy. It was him, alive!

“It’s the Messenger!” she cried. She lifted her eyes from the ground and froze. Takahikoné’s face was inches from hers, mottled crimson and purple, twisted with hate. He crushed the
magatama
like a snail with his wooden sandal, grasped her waist and held her tightly. A terrible fear began crawling upward from the base of her spine.

“No! I am Himiko, sh-shaman queen…”

Takahikoné’s mouth opened. His yellow teeth glistened with spittle. “That is why I must have you!” He sank his teeth into the side of her neck and ground his lips against her skin. She could feel his tongue moving, licking her blood. She reached instinctively for his one vulnerable point: his earring.

“Traitor!” She tore the ring away and blood spurted from the lobe. Takahikoné gave an unearthly shriek and threw her to the ground. She began to back away, but then he was on top of her, straddling her. She clawed at his face. He struck her with merciless force, and for an instant she lost consciousness.

“Do you know how much I’ve suffered?” he screamed. He grasped the neck of her tunic with both hands and tore it open. The biting wind on her skin brought her to consciousness. She threw both arms out, desperately searching the ground for a stone. Her hand closed on a small spike of wood. Quickly she brought it before her with both hands, pointed at Takahikoné’s chest.

“Is that a sword?” he shouted again. Still straddling her, he pressed the point of his blade against her neck. Miyo could see her face reflected in the steel. It was smeared with someone’s blood.

“You’re mine now! You’re mine and you always will be!” Miyo turned the point of the wood against her own throat. Her voice was a thin rasp of loathing.

“I’ll die before you pollute me. I belong to the Messenger!”

Takahikoné gave a howl of anguish and rage that was almost inhuman. He tore the spike from her hands and threw himself on top of her. Miyo closed her eyes and tensed every muscle in her body.

She dimly felt a tremendous blow and heard the crunch of steel cutting through bone. Terrible pain was always preceded by momentary numbness—this she had learned from her year of war. She opened her eyes in panic. Takahikoné was staring at her in wonder, face slack, lips slightly parted. Miyo knew he could not see her. Slowly, his eyes glazed over like those of a doll. Someone stood over him, a shadow falling across Miyo’s face.

Kan pulled Takahikoné’s ruined body off Miyo and helped her stand. His face was haggard. She touched his cheek. “You came in time, Kan.”

“Miyo!” He clasped her to his chest and buried his face in her hair. She melted in his arms. For a moment it felt completely natural. She was stunned and surprised. Finally they stepped apart. He led her back into the hut and began dressing her neck.

“The soldiers went searching for you. Lord Ikima…no, Takahikoné, shut himself up in the palace. He said you were with him, but after two days you did not appear and we forced our way in. Yes, the palace burned during the fighting. The soldiers went wild when they discovered you weren’t there. They beheaded Mimaso and slaughtered the ministers to the last man. Joh is safe. I brought her out myself. Takahikoné fled. The Messenger said to follow him and we would find you.”

“Then he is alive after all.”

After a pause, Kan nodded. He dressed Miyo’s wound gently, as if he thought she might break. “Yes. But the fort was overrun. Without you there…”

“That is grim news,” said Miyo. She began examining herself for other injuries. She felt Kan’s gaze. Normally she was not at all uncomfortable in his presence, even like this. But things had changed in some indefinable way. She smiled to hide her awkwardness. “I don’t know how I’d manage without you.”

“Serving you is my life, Lady Miyo.” Kan bowed formally. She was startled; only now did she notice the simple braids at his temple, the first mark of manhood. Her strange feeling of awkwardness increased.

They left the area around the hut and walked onto the plateau. Thick columns of smoke rose in the east. Miyo saw she was on the lower slopes of Mount Nijo, on the western edge of Yamatai. “The Messenger will be here soon with the last of our men,” said Kan. “Let us descend and join them.” He leaped onto his horse, leaned toward Miyo and held out his hand. She climbed up behind him.

A road wound through the fields below, and sure enough a column of soldiers, their families, and crowds of people fleeing the fighting were just coming into sight. The column moved slowly but the soldiers marched in good order. In spite of their travails and weariness, spirits seemed high. They would follow the Messenger to the ends of the earth. Miyo’s heart went out to them.

The two rode down the slope, stopping at the edge of the road. The passing soldiers sent up a cheer that traveled down the column. She waved and the cheers rose higher, their joy washing over her. They let the column pass and found the Messenger bringing up the rear, as she had expected.

“Miyo!” he called out cheerfully, as if being reunited with her now were the most natural thing in the world. She jumped down and ran to embrace him. “Are you all right?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she answered. She wanted to say more, to tell him that she was still his wife. But with one look, he told her it was not necessary. After a moment she said, “Takahikoné is dead.”

“Yes, I knew Kan would find you,” said Orville. Miyo smiled and nodded, but when she turned to Kan he was almost out of sight, riding up the column. She felt a pang of remorse. Orville reached into an inside pocket, drew out a
magatama
on a chain, and placed it around her neck. “Here’s another. Try not to lose this one.”

The soldiers kept turning to look at her and the Messenger as they walked side by side. “Eyes front!” she called out with forced severity. Then she said quietly, “Is there somewhere we can find safety?”

“We have to keep going,” he said. “First we make for Suminoé Harbor. If boats are still there, we send the women and children west by sea and rest for the night. Otherwise we keep moving.”

“And then what?”

“Don’t ask.”

“What do you mean?” said Miyo. “Help will come, will it not? This is what your Laws teach us.” Orville was silent a long time. Then he nodded almost imperceptibly. “You’re right.”

Before they rounded the base of the mountain, Miyo looked back along the road. In the distance she could see the ruins of the palace on the plain of Makimuku. Thousands of tiny figures swarmed around it like iron filings around a lodestone.

Suminoé Harbor was deserted. The ships had sailed when news of the danger reached them. An old man who was left behind spoke of rumors that a large force from the west was approaching. But for now the port and its surrounding villages were silent and empty.

There were too many refugees, not enough soldiers. Miyo decided it would be best to send the women and children west on foot, in small groups to avoid the attention of the enemy, while the men built fortifications and dug a semicircular moat around the port. The armies would have to make a stand sooner or later, and Suminoé was as good a position as any—the ground was easy to work and the fields outside the moat could be flooded with seawater. During the retreat from Musashino they had learned a bitter lesson: to keep moving only made it easier for the enemy to bleed them white. And Miyo was reluctant to move farther west, away from the land of her birth. If she was going to die, it would be here.

The soldiers seemed to be feeling the same thing. Gradually their faces became set in expressions of resignation as well as resolution. The families said their farewells, and the sorrow of parting echoed across the barren winter fields.

Three days later, a semicircular stockade had been completed, its ends projecting into the surf four hundred paces apart. The moat and the fields were flooded. That night they heard the call of approaching Snipes, and soon the air above them was filled with flying mononoké. None of Cutty’s Wasps could be seen.

Just as the sky lightened and the Snipes began to fill the air like dragonflies, one of the lookouts shouted.

“They come!”

The enemy poured over Mount Ikoma and made straight for the harbor, a solid wave that carpeted the ground. Miyo climbed to the top of the stockade gate. She was adorned for a divination, her body decorated with crimson rope patterns. The stockade was lined with the remnants of the Yamatai armies, the last eight thousand men.

For over an hour, they watched as the enemy streamed in and surrounded the camp in a vast unbroken arc beyond the flooded fields. Then all at once, the enemy raised and fired their handheld cannons.

“Stand fast!” shouted the Messenger. “They have at most two volleys!”

The crash of the incoming shells drowned out his last words. Scores of soldiers were cut down. The remaining men swallowed their fear and steeled themselves for the next volley. But none came, and after a few minutes cheers went up along the stockade. The enemy’s source of nitrate was two thousand
ri
to the east, in Kamaishi. Orville’s guess had proven correct. They had already used up most of their ammunition during the pursuit from Musashino.

The soldiers poured out of the stockade to engage the foe on the far side of the flooded fields. They toppled the Reapers with battering rams, surrounded them and cut them down, leaped atop them and crushed their multifaceted eyes. The Jumpers were held off with swinging pikes until archers could shoot them down. The club arms of the Reapers crushed skulls and bodies. Their scythes slashed men to pieces. But the Yamatai forces pressed forward with cold fury. Atop the gate, Miyo raised her staff high and called out a war chant in a ringing voice. The winter wind carried her voice across the field and drove the men to a frenzy.

But the mononoké numbered in the thousands, and slowly they pressed the Yamatai forces back into the flooded fields. Now the men fought as they splashed through knee-deep seawater. Mononoké stumbled and fell. But instead of rising again, they shuddered convulsively and were still. Takahaya immediately began shouting, “Knock them down! Cut their tendons! The salt water is poison to them!”

Now the soldiers had a tremendous tactical advantage. Even the weakest and smallest were emboldened to fight for their share of glory. Before midday, the flooded fields were heaped with the bodies of immobilized mononoké. Saved by this fatal weakness of the enemy, it looked as if victory were finally in Yamatai’s grasp. But the tides of battle turned against them.

“They’re crossing the moat!” screamed the soldiers on the north side of the stockade. The moat was wide and deep, and the enemy should never have been able to breach it. But scores of mononoké had thrown themselves to certain destruction in the water so that their comrades could cross over their bodies. Suddenly the soldiers found themselves fighting inside the compound, their backs to the sea.

Then, from another part of the field a wail of despair rose from hundreds of throats. “Takahaya has fallen!”

Miyo saw him die. He had just shot down four Leapers but had run out of arrows. He picked up a huge war hammer and was in single combat with a gigantic Reaper when a Leaper came from behind and lashed out with its ribbon blade. Takahaya’s last glimpse of the battlefield was from high in the air. His headless body pitched forward into the mud.

His death was the turning point. Every soldier within fifty paces froze, thunderstruck. An instant later they were all dead. Their enemy did not stop fighting.