He heard the company start up the slope. He saw the confusion in the figures in front of him, heard the guard-chief shouting, "Dammit!" and backing off a step—
He was already moving, a rolling tumble on the leafy ground as arrows hissed; hands on his sword hilt and out with it into a smooth swing as he came up on his feet and launched himself for the only place the archers would not aim—face up against their officers, one, two, and three, a head flying, a man crippled, and the third giving him two, three passes before he made a mistake backing up and stumbled on a tree root.
Shoka wanted a prisoner. No time for this one, with arrows flying and the company coming up under fire. He whipped the sword across an opening in the man's defense and took the man across the arm, across the neck: he was dead before the pieces hit the ground.
Horses broke through, crashing up the trail, through the brush, going every which way, bowstrings thumping, swords meeting steel and men screaming—men and one shrill yell he well knew.
He dived into the brush and laid low, figuring his main danger at the moment was his own side.
"M'lord?" he heard then, plaintively, as the noise died down, a feminine voice; so he gave a whistle back, gathered himself up, and heard a sound by him, someone breaking away to run through the brush.
"Get that one!" he yelled, and heard a rider take out in pursuit, dark body racing right past him in the thicket, to fetch up short. But whoever it was left the saddle and raced after the noise.
"Taizu!" he yelled; and got, "I'm here!" from the vicinity of the horses. Then he remembered she had a horse in lead from her saddle—thank the gods it was not Taizu crashing off through the brush. He came back to the clearing, hearing the sound of someone crashing about out there, but no sound else.
The white-legged mare showed even in that dark. He found Taizu, and Jiro, in her charge. "Are you all right?" Taizu said.
"No problem," he said, taking Jiro's reins from her hand. But he heard a sudden stillness in the brush, where a man of theirs had been, and knew their man had gotten smarter and gotten down and still to listen or they had just lost a man, one or the other.
In either case they had let a man escape them, to run for his superiors and spread alarm.
He whistled, the signal he had instructed Reidi's men to obey for recall—too much risk and too much delay in hunting through the brush for an enemy better than his fellows; and everything to gain by putting distance between themselves and the mercenary camp, wherever it was.
A horse whinnied out of the dark, off beyond the woods. "There they are," someone said.
Hare off into the dark into what could be ambush, where there was already a man loose and unaccounted for.
Hell.
"We've got some kind of courier here," a man said, displaying an ivory chit from the purse on one of the bodies.
"That's one message not going through," Shoka said, and swung up to Jiro's saddle. "But there's one loose that is. Come on. We haven't got time to go through things. Let's get out of here!"
"Pei's not back, m'lord!"
"Pei may not be coming back! It's Pei's problem! We don't know what the hell that man can raise. Let's move! Now!"
"M'lord," Reidi's voice protested sternly.
"This is war, m'lord! —Come on, Taizu!"
"Don't be so sudden!" Reidi said, as horses milled and backed and his men who had dismounted to search the dead scrambled to mount without his orders. "A man of mine is—"
"Dead, m'lord Reidi, or he'll catch us up on his own! Are you with me? Do you take my advice? Or not?"
"Dammit—"
"Are you coming, m'lord?"
"All right," the old man growled. "All right—"
Shoka clapped his heels to Jiro's sides and Jiro surged into motion, full-out down the road; Taizu on the white-legged mare was right with him and the whole company sorted itself out behind.
"Keep low!" he yelled at Taizu as they broke through the screen of trees and out into the open.
But there was nothing in front of them but open land, and the first red seam of dawn on the right.
The man they had left did not overtake them. "Assume the worst," he said to lord Reidi, riding close to the old man when they settled to a saner pace. "My condolences and my apologies, m'lord, for your man back there, but he didn't answer my signal and we're on the gods' thin tolerance as it is—and I'd rather trust something more substantial."
"The gods favor us," Reidi declared thinly.
Ruffled religiosity. He was back in Chiyaden. He swallowed an acid witticism and said: "I trust so, m'lord, but I don't test their good will by haring off sidelong when they give us the road we need, m'lord. . . . They take their sacrifices, and they ask us to go on—"
Pious asininity, old man, you lose men, that's all, and you give an order and you hope to hell the one who goes knows what he's doing, my lord, or you lose him—
No damn time left. No time.
As the sun came up in a cloudy east and the horses labored under the going.
And a band of riders appeared on the hill.
He saw it in the same instant that outcries of alarm broke out from the company, as men reined back and threw the column into confusion. "Come on," he said; and it was Taizu by him before it was anyone.
"You get back," he said. "Take to the bow, rear rank. You haven't the weight."
"That's banners, husband! That's banners up ahead, it's a lord's ensign!"
He saw that, too. He heard what she had said to him. His heart was beating with a heavy rhythm, in time to Jiro's footfalls. Red banners, white device; blue with gold.
Red of Feiyan. Blue of Hainan.
"Up with the banners!" Reidi ordered, and Shoka did not gainsay that. The black and white of Hoishi came up on its pole, unfiirled and snapped in the wind.
"My lord Saukendar," said Maijun of Feiyan as they met afoot, their riders around them, banners fluttering and cracking. "My lord Reidi," with bows and like courtesies from stout Lintai of Hainan, the son of old Jendei. "My father would be here," Lintai said, "if he could ride at all. There are—" Diffidently. "—four hundred men behind us, afoot. Light-armed, traveling at their own speed. We met your messengers on the road. We'd already set out. They're on to Yiungei."
"Gods' speed," Reidi said piously. "Brave lads."
Trust the birds' speed, Shoka thought: it was good news, that the birds had been sufficient to rouse two provinces, as much as anything. That the riders were already headed north was a second bit of hope. But not enough. Five hundred heavy cavalry with Maijun, four with Lintai, maybe three, four hundred peasants back there somewhere, and, Shoka thought, amid the general elation of the three lords and the troops: Not enough to beat the Guard, too many for mobility.
Enough to keep the south off our backs, and stir up the east, if they'll take orders.
Reason had never been Maijun's strong point: Maijun of Feiyan was of that generation he knew, a man who made up his mind and spent all his subsequent thought justifying his opinions.
But it was the moment, emotion was high, he had Maijun's attention, and Shoka said: "My lords, you couldn't have come at a better time. I don't know what's coming at our heels, but we've stirred things up behind us. I'm going with a small force—speed, m'lords, and surprise, to get us across the Hisei before they know where we are—look like one of the mercenary squads and cut right through their defenses, ourselves the edge of the axe and your forces behind us—as if we were one of their own bands falling back from your advance, dust and noise and all."