The Lord of the Sands of Time
Page 17
“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.
For Miyo there was no time for grief. She jumped from her perch and ran to join the fighting inside the stockade. Suddenly she heard droning wing beats overhead and looked up in terror, expecting to see Snipes, but instead she saw a formation of twelve Wasps. Orville had saved the last of them to watch over her. They flew on ahead and tenaciously attacked the closest Reapers, sinking their teeth into their necks and crushing their fragile eyes. The men in the stockade cheered, but their cheers soon faded. The fallen RET were replaced by another wave, and then another, and the Wasps were soon destroyed.
Soldiers began streaming back through the gate. The front line crumbled. Miyo stood in the center of a semicircle of soldiers with their backs to the sea, all fighting desperately as the enemy poured in from every direction. “Miyo!” she heard above the din. She looked up to see the Messenger running toward her, pursued by a pack of Leapers.
Just then Cutty’s voice came from the magatama. “I send final greetings to all Messengers, and to all mankind. Our last line of defense has been breached. Victoria Base will soon be overrun and I will be destroyed. But the enemy has miscalculated; they are too intent on victory. Eighty percent of the ET on this continent are within fifty kilometers of my position. I will therefore use my remaining antimatter to self-destruct. The total energy released will be 37.709 gigatons of TNT equivalent. All friendly forces must immediately move away from Victoria Base with all possible speed. All nearby stations should immediately activate protection measures for seismic and electromagnetic flux damage. Naval elements in the Indian Ocean must immediately move away from coastal zones and into deep water.”
“Lady Miyo!” It was Kan. He stood with sword drawn, his back to hers. The number of soldiers was rapidly dwindling. The circle shrank. They began to crowd in around her. Death shadowed every face.
Miyo called out above the noise of battle. “Don’t despair! Break out and withdraw to the beach!” The soldiers fought their way through and ran wildly for the beach a few hundred paces to their rear. Orville retreated with his back to the sea, holding off the foe as best he could. The tattered army reached the sand. “Don’t stop! Into the water!” Miyo shouted. She began wading into the icy surf.
Again the voice of Cutty. “Orville and Miyo. I have your situation as of four minutes ago. I am very concerned. Your front is the weakest of all. If you fail, victory in other sectors will be in jeopardy. I regret I cannot offer you any support. With greater resources I might have been able to help you.”
“What nonsense!” Miyo laughed derisively. The soldiers sacrificing their lives before her eyes seemed far more noble than this distant schemer. “All you offer are words. Is that how you fight? Don’t flatter yourself. This is our battle. We will live and die without leave from you. To hell with you, you bitch of a sorceress!”
For a few moments Cutty seemed to ponder. Buffeted by the savage winter swells, Miyo ran into the freezing surf, shielded by her archers’ volleys. Then Cutty spoke.
“So you think you don’t need me?”
“Never!” snapped Miyo.
“I see…well, your determination is quite moving. In fact, this may even be the answer I was seeking. I failed to consider the possibility that a secure timestream might not include me.”
Miyo was dumbfounded. Had that stiff-necked sorceress just thanked her? She felt a sense of happiness that quickly turned to rage. How dare Cutty choose death alone!
Miyo had never seen her true form. Now she was gone, and for the first time, Miyo understood how much she had meant. This was not the end Miyo would have wanted for her. If she could only talk to Cutty once more…yes, she’d give her such a tongue lashing, the witch would be struck speechless!
The roar of continuous detonations quickly woke Miyo from her reverie. A shell whistled past her head and exploded in the water behind her. A few Reapers were firing into the soldiers milling in the surf. They had some ammunition left after all. Geysers of water mixed with smoke shot into the air. Miyo crouched lower and shouted to her men: “How do you stand?” A shout went up from the soldiers. “We stand fast!” It looked as if most of them had made it into the water and were safe. Miyo felt a small measure of relief. But by now there were no more arrows left to cover their retreat.
Miyo looked toward shore and gasped. Orville alone had not entered the water. Only twenty paces from the ocean’s edge, he was surrounded by seven or eight Leapers. Their long blades struck him again and again, bringing the Messenger to his knees.
“Orville!” she screamed. The soldiers rushed onto the beach and drove off the Leapers. They carried Orville into the surf and brought him to Miyo. His body half-floated in the dark, cold water. The wavelets around him were stained crimson as they lapped at his limbs. Miyo threw herself on him, sobbing. His chest and abdomen were crossed with deep gashes. How deep, she dared not guess. He turned toward her and opened his eyes.