9
DaKar soared above the assembled might of the Shogunate. His helmet bore the fearsome steel beak of a tarn and he wore the etched armor of his land. His rifle was slung across a shoulder, his longsword across the other. The sun was just rising, turning the early-autumn sky pink and blue, glinting on the metal of the battalions and battalions that shielded Edo. Spies had determined that the armies of five clans planned to march on the city, overthrow the military government, and restore the Emperor, whom the Shogun confined in Kyoto.
DaKar swooped down to a southern hilltop where large panels of indigo cloth bearing the Shogun's cloud were are hung on frames, forming billowing walls around three sides of a tatami platform. From here the Shogun and a dozen advisers observed the movement of men on the plain below. As usual, Sayoko sat behind the Shogun to his right, her falcon on her left shoulder. All the men were in full armor, and even Sayoko wore a breastplate over her dark-blue riding uniform. Before DaKar reined his tarn sharply upward, he saluted the Shogun and saw that Sayoko, for the first time since he arrived in Edo, bore the cloud crest, on her breastplate and sleeves.
The Shogun nodded to Sayoko and she was soon on her tarn, a rifle across her shoulder and a sword at her side. Her falcon circled her. Her crop whistled sharply and the tarn rose and the wind from its wings flattened the long grass below. She flew to DaKar, surveying the ground, burning the details into her mind for her report to the Shogun. Ants, she thought. Steel-fanged poisonous ants.
Soon, she and DaKar were riding side by side. They inspected the medical tents, the benefits of which DaKar had persuaded the Shogun. They honored the proud rifle-bearing warriors, the perfect formations of swordsmen, the straight rows of archers. Some were veterans of the last terrible battles that united the territory. Some, like Sayoko, had only heard or read of war. But the night before, all of them had written what they expected to be their last poems, and their eyes were pure with the expectation of a noble death.
The air rushed against DaKar's face as he guided his mount as close to Sayoko as he dared. Laughing, he pointed to her rifle and shouted: "Do you suppose you will be able to use that?" Her glance was withering. After months of lessons forced upon her by the Shogun, she had, despite herself, become a fair, if reluctant, marksman.
"Askari Hodari!"? she hissed, using a phrase he had taught her in gentler times when he spoke of his land. She snapped the reins and sped away from him, tossing her ponytail. He raced after her, grinning, his blood warmed by the scent of war, which he missed so much since leaving Gor, and by Sayoko's hauteur, which was the iciest he had seen. They circled the city twice, then saw dust rise in the distance. With small mirrors they sent a glitter of signals to the generals and the Shogun's party.
The red, yellow, and black banners of the insurgents emerged from the forests and blossomed across the open plain. Infantries marched and cavalries galloped toward Edo, doomed even before they saw their enemy. Bullets ripped through the vanguard's armor as if through silk. Men and horses trampled the fallen. The survivors of the second devastating volley of bullets now crossed swords with the Shogun's forces.
DaKar flew beyond the reach of enemy archers but he could hear the shrieks of beast and man, the crash of metal on metal. He saw the blood on the ground and the torn faces and broken bodies. Later, on the fields and in the medical tents, he would find that bushido gave way to a more basic emotion: warriors did not die with the name of their lord on their lips but cried out for their mothers.
Sayoko fought for calm, desperately memorizing the cruel images. She watched numbly as the sparkling codes that she and DaKar sent helped fell rows and rows of advancing rebels. But it was the sound of suffering that made her tremble. The ethereal poems that likened the death of a warrior to the falling of a petal had not prepared her for the horror below and she was sickened.
DaKar flew low and slew two enemy swordsmen with bullets to the neck, saving an Edo general from death. Sayoko saw DaKar's face, flushed and virile. Her falcon sped along beside her, screaming with joy. I am not, she thought miserably, made for war.
DaKar was still flying low, and three enemy archers trained their weapons on him, tracking him carefully. Sayoko gripped her mount with her legs, aimed her rifle, and watched, her heart deadened, as one archer after another fell in torment from her bullets. DaKar turned his hard face to her. "Askari Hodari!" His lips formed the words silently. Her throat filled with bitterness, but she saluted him and, knowing he was safe, raced away to complete her grim task.
The hell on earth painted on the screens in the Castle's Map Room had failed to capture the obscenity of what Sayoko saw. Her jaw ached and she rested her forehead on the tarn's neck as her body heaved with disgust.
By mid-afternoon, the rebel forces had withdrawn, leaving the fallen in the dust and crushed grass. Only the Shogun's artillery had saved Edo. Sayoko knew that the Shogun would order the generals to prepare for a more formidable assault. She guided her tarn high enough for it to be mistaken for an eagle. As she suspected, an even more powerful force was mustering beyond the western forests and behind the northern hills. She flew back to the hilltop.
Kneeling before the Shogun and his advisers, she made her dreadful report—the number of dead and dying and wounded, the enemy's movements, and the probable force with which the rebel armies would attack again. The men sat in silence, their faces like glowing stone as the sun set. The breeze no longer carried the sound of swords and pain or the smell of burning and gunpowder, and she was glad that the evening hid her tears.
