Valley of Shields

by Duncan Lay

  ‘Living a simple life is one thing — living among the humans is something else.’

  ‘You were the only thing that kept me going,’ Sendatsu said simply. ‘You and the children. I swore my life would have you all in it by the time this was over. Think about what we could do to help the humans. You think Dokuzen is corrupt and rotten. Well, leave it and help me make a better world outside, where we can truly make a difference.’

  She looked in his eyes now and he marvelled anew at how beautiful she was and that she somehow loved him.

  ‘Do you know how long I have waited for you to say that?’ she asked.

  ‘Too long. I want to make that up to you,’ he said, moving closer to her on the seat. She had been in his thoughts for so long, actually being so close to her was driving him wild. He did not care that she was married to Gaibun, or that anyone from Huw to Gaibun to Sumiko could walk in on them. All such thoughts were wiped away by his longing for her and he leaned in to kiss her.

  But her eyes were not on him, instead focused on a spot above his shoulder, her mouth slightly open.

  Sendatsu managed to pull his mind away from carnal thoughts and was about to ask what was the matter when she grabbed his arm and shoulder and threw him on the ground. Caught completely by surprise, he landed heavily and rolled over, angry questions flooding into his mouth — to see a dark-clad figure slam a sword into the bench, right where he had been sitting a moment ago.

  Asami sprang to her feet as their attacker tried to rip his sword free from the wooden bench. She was not carrying a weapon — neither was Sendatsu — but did not let this stop her. Moving smoothly into a fighting stance, she stepped forwards and slammed her left fist into their attacker’s neck. He choked in pain and reeled backwards, letting go of the sword still stuck in the bench but she followed up, pivoting on her left foot to deliver a kick to his head with her right. Their attacker spun and crashed to the ground with the impact.

  ‘What is —’

  ‘Get the sword — there’s more of them!’ Asami snapped.

  Sendatsu risked a glance over his shoulder to see figures dropping from the roof to the ground, racing into the stables and storerooms at the very rear of the villa. A couple were advancing on him and Asami, but slowly, seemingly more intent on keeping them away from the main group. But why would they go to the stables when nothing of importance would be there?

  ‘They’re after Huw and Rhiannon!’ he said.

  Even as he said it, he jumped to his feet and ripped the sword out of the bench, handing it to Asami.

  ‘You take it, we’ll get back to the house and —’

  ‘If we go back there, they’ll know where Huw and Rhiannon are,’ Asami hissed.

  ‘When they don’t find them down there, they’re going to realise anyway — we have to warn them.’

  ‘Too late!’

  The group, all clad in black, was pouring out of the searched storerooms now. Sendatsu tried to count and reckoned there was almost a dozen. Even as he thought that, the two closest charged to the attack, swords held back over their shoulders. Sendatsu and Asami sprang to meet them.

  Asami had the sword and blocked a thunder-strike with ease, then used a figure-eight to come over the top of her opponent’s blade and carve a fearsome wound from shoulder to hip, sending blood in a wide spray. As the elf screamed in agony, she swivelled to see if Sendatsu needed her help.

  Sendatsu went under a tiger-claw cut in a forward roll, coming out to smash the elf’s kneecap with a horizontal kick. The black-clad elf howled and staggered; Sendatsu surged to his feet to snatch the sword and take the elf’s head with a vicious stroke of his own.

  He wiped blood from his eyes and spat the coppery tang from his mouth as he saw the rest of them racing forwards.

  ‘Back!’ He waved. ‘We can use the corridors to hold them off — they can get around us out here!’

  ‘No, wait, we’ll —’ Asami began but Sendatsu had already run and she was forced to follow him, racing back into the main house.

  ‘We should have stayed outside — I could have used magic to stop them out there — in here there is less to work with!’ Asami shouted. ‘You need to listen to me!’

  Too late Sendatsu saw his mistake. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. What now?’

  ‘Protect Huw and Rhiannon. Don’t die.’

  Into the main part of the villa came their attackers, swords at the ready.

  ‘Who are they? Who sent them?’ Asami spat. ‘How dare they enter my house —’

  ‘We’ll worry about that afterwards,’ Sendatsu suggested, leaping to meet them.

  But the attackers had numbers enough that half went to attack Sendatsu and Asami, while the others began breaking into rooms, swords at the ready.

  Huw was having a very pleasant dream when someone burst into his room. He sat up in bed, heart hammering, trying to blink his eyes open.

  He got them working to see Rhiannon — and wondered if he was still dreaming.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, his heart redoubling its pace at the thought she was going to forgive him, perhaps even seduce him, the way she had done the first time.

  ‘We’re under attack. Get your crossbow!’

  A dozen questions flooded into Huw’s head but he had been through enough fights with Rhiannon now not to waste time on those. He grabbed for his bag, pulling out the elven crossbow and shoving a handful of bolts into the hopper.

  ‘We didn’t bring many — we weren’t planning on doing much fighting,’ he warned.

  ‘Well, we don’t have any choice.’ Rhiannon looked down the corridor and jumped into Huw’s room.

  Huw levelled the crossbow and, a few heartbeats later, a black-clad figure filled the doorway. Instantly he worked the crossbow, pumping three bolts into the chest of the elf and watching him collapse.

  There was a small vase of flowers on a shelf and Rhiannon grabbed a handful and hurled a pair at the door. Huw stopped loosing bolts in surprise, wondering how a few cut flowers could possibly defeat an attacker — then the flowers lengthened, twisted and contorted in the air as they landed on the next elf. One fastened around the attacker’s hands, the other around his neck and then they tightened. The elf desperately tried to pull the tenacious plant from around his throat but another was hauling on his hands and instead he fell backwards, choking.

  A third elf appeared — and this time when flowers flew at him, he held up his hands and they froze in the air.

  Huw watched in anticipation, expecting Rhiannon’s victory to be delayed only by a few heartbeats, but the flowers hung in the air, not moving. He glanced over at Rhiannon and saw her breathing quicken, sweat appearing on her face, and remembered all she had done, as well as Sendatsu’s warnings about trying to do too much. A moment later he brought up his crossbow and put two bolts into the elf’s chest. Their attacker staggered backwards, crying out in pain, then the flowers fastened around his throat and he fell, choking.

  ‘The door!’ Rhiannon sent it slamming shut, then joined Huw in pushing the heavy wooden bed up against it.

  ‘Are you still able to do magic?’ he asked.

  ‘For now. Not sure how much longer,’ she said.

  ‘Who’s attacking us?’ he cried.

  ‘Let’s worry about that after we are safe,’ Rhiannon suggested. ‘Down!’

  She grabbed Huw and pulled him below the solid wooden bedhead, a moment before the door blew inwards in a shower of splinters.

  Sendatsu had become used to fighting Forlish, who used a crude, completely different style based on strength and were easy to defeat. These new attackers were far more skilled and he defended himself for a few moments, feeling a mixture of surprise and almost nostalgia as familiar dragon-tail and tiger-claw strokes came at him.

  Behind him, Asami was taking on another pair of attackers. He had no fears for her. He had sparred with her often enough to know her speed was his equal — and she always had her magic to fall back on.

  As for him, wh
ile the attackers were better than Forlish, they were nowhere near the best he had faced. After a few parries to get a sense of their speed and skill, he went on the attack — and they could not stand with him. He ripped upwards with his sword, tearing through cloth and stomach and ribs, turning black clothes a darker shade and spilling long coils of guts across the tiled floor. The elf staggered backwards, screaming horribly, while his neighbour stepped on the mingled blood and guts and slipped to his knees. Sendatsu’s blade whistled around to strike between neck and shoulder and gouge deep into his chest. This one could not even scream through a torn windpipe, instead choked on the floor, spurting blood across the tiles. A third backed away, holding up his free hand. Sendatsu hesitated, wondering if this one was surrendering — and then he was attacked by magic. Ornaments flew off shelves and at his head and he had to defend himself desperately, fend them off with his sword, his own, crude magic no match for his attacker. Seizing the advantage, his attacker took a pace forwards — and stopped short, as his magical assault dried up.

  From behind Sendatsu came Asami, her sword dripping blood. The ornaments in the air hung between them for a heartbeat longer, then converged on their attacker’s head, arriving with sickening force. He crumpled to the floor, his skull smashed.

  ‘Who are they?’ Sendatsu gasped. ‘They seem better with magic than the sword —’

  ‘Find your humans first!’ Asami shoved him down the corridor as a solid wooden door exploding into splinters shook the whole villa.

  Sendatsu and Asami raced across the courtyard to where a pair of elves was pushing their way into Huw’s bedroom, past the wreckage of the door and over the bodies of the three who had tried earlier.

  ‘We’re too late!’ Asami looked around for something she could use to stop them.

  But she had no need, for the two elves backed out of the room, trying to fight off flowers that were attempting to strangle them, then jerking under the impact of small, thin crossbow bolts.

  Sendatsu reached them and finished them off, looking up as a flower flew towards his own head. He instinctively ducked, then Asami made it shrivel in the air.

  ‘It’s us! You are safe!’ she called, looking inside to see Huw lower his crossbow and Rhiannon drop the two flowers she had left in her hand. They were behind the bed, while the fresco along the back wall had been peppered with fragments of door. Chunks of plaster and paint hung off the wall and littered the floor.

  ‘There’s two more of them — where are they?’ Sendatsu looked around.

  ‘Don’t look in here — there’s just us,’ Rhiannon told him.

  He darted next door, to the room Rhiannon had been given — but could see nothing.

  ‘Where are they? Have they run?’ Huw asked.

  They paused, trying to listen over their hurried breathing and the moans and gurgles of the dying elves.

  ‘Footsteps! That way!’ Asami pointed to the wing of the villa with the reception room.

  Sendatsu and Asami began to run — but before they had gone more than a few paces, there was a scream of pain, long and bubbling, followed by the unmistakeable clash of sword on sword.

  Sendatsu skidded around the corner, to see one attacker bleeding on the floor and Gaibun fighting the last one, who was hampered by something under his arm. This elf had no intention of standing and fighting — but Gaibun was too close for him to break away without receiving a sword in the back.

  ‘Surrender!’ Sendatsu called. ‘You cannot escape!’

  The elf glanced back over his shoulder, eyes wide and desperate from inside the dark mask he wore. He might have opened his mouth — Sendatsu could not be sure — but by looking back over his shoulder he had taken his eyes off Gaibun. A fatal mistake. Gaibun’s sword ripped into his chest and he hung on the blade, impaled, blood spurting hotly, then his bowels opened explosively and he collapsed, the thing he had been carrying under his arm sliding across the tiles almost to Sendatsu’s feet, missing the blood and shit he had poured all over the floor. Even before Sendatsu bent down to pick it up, he had recognised it.

  ‘They were after the book I found,’ he said slowly, looking at Gaibun as his friend cleaned his sword.

  ‘Looks like I came back just at the right time,’ Gaibun said.

  ‘The big question is, who sent them?’ Sendatsu strode over to the dying elf and pulled off his mask. There were only two possibilities: his father or Sumiko. Nobody else even knew they were there.

  Unless Gaibun has told someone else, a little voice said.

  Sendatsu looked at the dead elf’s face. ‘I don’t know him. We should have captured him, forced him to talk.’

  ‘He came into my house, stole from me, drew a sword on me! Did you expect me to offer him a drink and a hot bath?’ Gaibun snorted. ‘Besides, there might have been more of them.’

  ‘There was. They are scattered all over the house,’ Asami said grimly, her face a mask of blood and her fine silk robe stained dark and dripping with more. She raised her sword for a moment at footsteps on the tiles, then relaxed when she saw it was just Huw and Rhiannon.

  ‘We have a problem. Maybe two problems. We thought we were trying to get the best deal from the two sides. But it looks as if they have different ideas,’ Rhiannon said.

  ‘We need to think about this. But we don’t have much time,’ Asami said.

  They went outside, into the fresh air, Sendatsu pulling the masks off their dead attackers, hoping an answer would reveal itself. But none, not even the two in the garden, looked familiar. At least the smell of blood and opened bowels here was not as revolting as inside the villa, where there were no flowering plants to fight the stench. Gaibun got a bucket of water and towels from the bathhouse and the three elves cleaned the crimson off their arms and faces, although their clothes would be forever stained.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Huw asked. ‘Who sent them?’

  ‘And was it linked to anything we did?’ Rhiannon added, staring right at Gaibun.

  ‘Are you accusing me of something, gaijin?’ Gaibun asked.

  ‘Don’t use that word!’ Sendatsu snapped.

  ‘I will say anything I want when I am being looked on as a traitor!’ Gaibun fired back.

  ‘Well, you said it yourself. You leave to give a message to Sendatsu’s father and then we get attacked,’ Rhiannon said.

  ‘Calm down!’ Sendatsu stepped in front of the angry Gaibun. ‘She has a right to ask the question, just as you have to answer it — or not.’

  ‘I am no traitor. I went to Jaken’s house and delivered the message, as I was asked to. He said he expects you at his villa at dawn to see your children. Make of that what you will.’

  ‘I cannot believe Gaibun would betray us. Can you, Asami?’ Sendatsu said hotly.

  All eyes turned to Asami, who shook her head wordlessly.

  ‘Easy for you to say. It is not just our lives but the lives of my people at risk,’ Huw put in.

  Gaibun turned away. ‘I will not help those who don’t trust me,’ he fumed. ‘To think my honour is being questioned by a pair of gaijin! If you were not guests in my home, my sword would already be in my hand!’

  ‘Enough!’ Sendatsu stepped between them. ‘My children are at risk here! I will do anything to get them back — and we need Gaibun. I trust him and that should be enough for you as well!’

  The expressions on Huw’s and Rhiannon’s faces showed they were not convinced, but they said no more.

  ‘I will not do anything to prove myself. My word alone should be enough for that,’ Gaibun warned.

  ‘We don’t need any more,’ Sendatsu assured him. ‘Now, we need to stop wasting time and think what to do next. I don’t think my father sent those attackers. For one thing, they were looking for the book — and Sumiko was the only one we told about that.’

  ‘They also used magic. And they seemed to have some ability with it,’ Rhiannon pointed out.

  ‘Do you recognise any of the attackers? Were any left alive that we might find
out?’ Huw asked.

  ‘One that Asami downed took the chance to flee while we were inside,’ Sendatsu said. ‘As to the others, I pulled the masks off all of them. I don’t recognise any. Asami, Gaibun, did you know any?’

  Gaibun just shook his head but Asami reluctantly nodded.

  ‘I am sure I have seen a couple of them before. They were students of Sumiko’s. But they were also clan Tadayoshi — poor families from the north, the sort you would call esemono, willing to hire themselves out to anyone and ready to do the bidding of their clan leader without question,’ she explained.

  ‘Well, that clears things up,’ Huw said disgustedly.

  ‘I think it was Sumiko,’ Sendatsu said.

  ‘But why? We were giving her what she wanted!’ Rhiannon could see her chances of learning magic slipping away.

  Sendatsu shrugged. ‘She wanted that book. There was something in there she didn’t read out to us, something that affected her greatly. If she had got it, she wouldn’t have needed the rest of us.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe,’ Asami said.

  ‘Well, someone sent them. Was it Jaken then? Did he send a couple of Magic-weavers to fool us, send us in the wrong direction?’ Huw asked.

  ‘They had little enough skill,’ Gaibun said grudgingly. ‘I cannot see Jaken putting his trust in such as these. He knows how good the three of us are with a blade. He would have sent more warriors, of a better standard.’

  ‘Well, if we cannot agree on who sent them, what do we do now? Do we send a message to Sumiko demanding her answer?’ Huw asked.

  ‘Let her know what happened here and she’ll only try again, except this time send proper warriors and Magic-weavers, not a pack of esemono with a couple of beginners,’ Gaibun said.

  ‘Well, we still have another choice. We can go with my father’s plans. After all, he is willing to give my children back,’ Sendatsu offered.

  ‘Never!’ Huw said. ‘He wants to enslave every human in these lands.’

  ‘He will let the Velsh live in freedom,’ Asami said.

  ‘We already agreed that was a condition we could never support. Besides, will he let me use magic? Will he see other humans use magic, or worship Aroaril? I can’t see that happening,’ Rhiannon said.