They had the mercenaries' few horses for remounts—a good chestnut gelding to give Jiro relief and a bay to change off with Taizu's white-legged mare.
It was the ferry on the Chisei that Shoka figured for trouble. So it was more than the horses they borrowed: it was the armor and gear off the dead mercenaries, and when they got as far up the road as the Chisei it was not lord Reidi's men in view, it was himself and five of lord Reidi's best on the mercenaries' horses, in the mercenaries' gear—fifteen more on foot. "You're not going," he told Taizu flatly when she stuck her lip out at him and glared. "You're too damn short, girl, you don't look like anybody they know, so shut up and take orders like anybody else in this company."
She mended her manner then.
And he led the chestnut gelding down to the river where lord Reidi's men were hauling the rope-drawn ferry back across the river.
Small guess why there were no ferrymen. If they had had sense they had run; if they had had no luck they were dead; and if there was not a band of mercenaries on that other shore the enemy were fools.
Slow going: the men playing infantry hauled on the rope, Shoka and the two with horses in charge had the horses to keep steady.
Easy to figure why the ferry was lodged on the far side of the river, and what might have been the fate of the farmers who had tried to flee to Taiyi.
It was a low shore, a dirt road going up from the ferry-landing; bushes beyond, a little stand of saplings—yellow earth, pale grasses, the haze that was not autumn.
Beyond the Chisei, the heartland, of which Hoishi and Hoisan and Mendang were only the outliers. Pan'yei. The lap of Heaven. And the air stank of burning.
Hell of a homecoming, Shoka thought, and swung up to mount as the bow of the ferry bumped the shore. The gelding had no notion of going. Shoka kicked him hard in the flanks and the horse shied up and scrambled off in a scrape and thump of hooves on board and mud. Up the slope, no more than an energetic man might do. He saw the mercenaries break cover of the thicket and bar his path with bent bows and arrows they hesitated to fire.
That was their mistake.
It took some little time to ferry a hundred men and as many horses across the river. Shoka shed his borrowed armor and sat in the shade of a more substantial tree well up on shore while Jiro and the mare rested with eyes shut, not even interested to graze. Neither was he interested in the food Taizu pressed on him; but he swallowed it down, muttered, "I'm done, girl," and stretched himself out to rest on the cool ground, that was all he wanted.
Mostly his head was throbbing, his leg ached, and he saw blood when he shut his eyes, he saw terrible things. But he could trust where he was. She was there, she told him she would not sleep, and as long as she was awake in the daylight, then he was safe and he knew his way back to the world.
Taizu, nodding away with her sword between her knees, Taizu, in her strange leather armor, with the ribbons in her hair. As long as he saw that he did not see the blood, and the dark would stay away.
"Get away," she had screamed at some man of Reidi's, who had come up asking questions. "He hasn't slept since yesterday, let him alone!"
Whoever it was and whatever it was, waited, and would wait, he reckoned, wandering that dark place.
There were shadows there. He fought with them.
The old Emperor was there. My son is a fool, the old man said.
Everyone told you so, he said, out of patience and disrespectful of the old man.
He stalked out of the imperial hall without courtesies. The guards for some reason did not stand in his way.
It was his father he was looking for, it seemed it had been a long search, and fraught with more and more anxiety.
I have someone to show you, he would say.
But when he thought he had found his father, sitting in the courtyard at home, his father vanished, and there was a shadowy army on the field in front of him, and the sun in his eyes.
And Taizu squatting in front of him and saying: "M'lord. M'lord, you've got to wake up now. Please. Lord Reidi says."
He squinted at her and shaded his eyes with his arm, not sure for the moment whether he was awake or not, with a feeling of anxiety for the men—how many of them?—waiting for him—where? how long ago? or when? His heart hammered while he tried to sort then from now and recollect if there was something he had promised, something he was urgently supposed to recall.
But it was only Taizu moving between him and the sun, and holding out a steaming cup of tea.
He struggled up to put his back against the tree and took the cup in a shaking hand and drank. The shade had passed from where he had slept. He blinked and tried to take account of where he was, saw lord Reidi walking up on them, the men gathered a little distance away, seated, the horses at tether.
"M'lord Saukendar," Reidi said, standing at the edge of the sun, shadow against the blaze of light. "Forgive me, but we're in a precarious position here—a hundred men—here against the river—The mercenaries—"
His head ached. He squinted, trying to do Reidi the courtesy of looking at him. An anxious old man. An old man who risked everything being here, in the kind of situation Reidi had spent his whole life avoiding. Shoka felt no fear at all. He remotely wished he felt something, except exhaustion, or that something was as important to him as the wish for another hour to lie down and the wish Reidi would move a handspan over and block the sun from his eyes. He motioned with his hand. Reidi moved, flustered at the mundane request, and Shoka let his arm fall and leaned his head against the tree.
"We're all right," he said. "Rest here a while, go up to Choedri, hope lord Kegi's stayed at home—"
"We don't know where the mercenaries are," Reidi said. "M'lord Shoka, we haven't crossed the river to sit here with our backs to the water. ..."
Textbook soldiery. "Men and horses can do only so much, m'lord." His voice was hoarse, and it cracked, point proved, he thought, if the old man listened to anything but his own growing panic. "We have cover, they don't know we're here—we're just the guard they set here. Let them come. We'll move at dark."
It was not what Reidi wanted to hear. Reidi stood there and gnawed his lip and finally said: "We're a hundred men, m'lord Saukendar."
"You say we'll be more after Choedri."
"I don't know. If we'd gone back to Keido, if we'd occupied Ygotai—"
—my lands and my family would be safer, I'd be on familiar ground—
"—the others would rally to us—"
"Making the Chisei a battleline." His voice cracked again. "I'd rather one closer to Cheng'di. Or will the other lords join us? Will the officers of the army? Or will the levies fight for us—or for the Regent? If you have any doubts of that, m'lord Reidi, best we all go south and keep going."
"To the ruin of our lands."
Shoka closed his eyes. "We'll move, m'lord, but with our numbers, dark is better. If anyone wants the ferry, a few of your men can help them, and get among them. No need for a lot of noise. If someone's due to report, they may come to investigate. Put a man up that tree over there. Wrap him up in a cloak, let him look like a lump, and let him watch the road. I'm going to sleep a while. So's my wife. I'd advise you and your men do the same, by turns. Pick the scared ones for sentries. They won't sleep anyway."
Lord Reidi was one of the latter, Shoka reckoned by the look Reidi gave him.
"Dark," Shoka said, and Reidi gave him a curt bow and went away.
"You'd better sleep," Shoka said to Taizu then; and Taizu came and sat down by him and snuggled down without a word.