Those were the last details Blade remembered for a while. Not a very long while-no more than a minute or two. But it didn't take very long for a man in Blade's mood to kill six more men with a Gaikon sword.
When Blade's head cleared, he realized that the room was filled with smoke and that a good part of the floor matting and one wall were on fire. Eight bodies lay around him in a semicircle, all gashed or gutted or missing arms, legs, or heads. His sword was red and slippery with blood from point to hilt, and so was his sword arm.
He backed hastily out into the hall. As he did so, he heard a noise to his left. He whirled and saw someone in a dirty brown robe struggling with the panel at the end of the hall. Whoever it was was obviously trying to get back into the compartment that lay behind the panel.
Blade knew he couldn't cover the distance before the panel closed on the man. But at his feet sprawled the bodies of Lady Musura's victims. Blade bent, grabbed one by an ankle, and swung him hard and high. At exactly the right moment he let go. The body sailed through the air and crashed into the brown-robed man, smashing him against the panel and knocking his legs out from under him. Half-stunned, the man rolled on the floor, trying to fumble a knife out of his sash. Blade charged down the hall, kicked the knife out of the man's hand, then grabbed him by the collar and jerked him to his feet. A thin, dark face, the right side covered with half-healed red scars, stared at Blade. The eyes widened in appalled recognition, and the mouth opened to scream.
It was Lord Geron.
Blade shoved the Hongshu's second chancellor back against the wall as hard as he could. The bare skull smashed into the wood and Lord Geron slumped down, unconscious. With his prisoner immobilized for the time being, Blade turned to Lady Musura.
She was dead-must have been dead for several minutes now. Her contorted, bloodless face and sightless eyes stared upward at Blade. He bent down and gently pressed the eyelids closed.
There was a knife in her hand, and Blade knew what she must have been planning to do with it. When the jinai died, they often tried to slash their faces so that no one would recognize them. But it did not matter now whether or not anyone recognized Lady Musura. She had died with her face intact, and Blade found himself glad of that. She had found very little joy in a life of hard service, with a hard death at the end of it.
The quick footsteps of a number of men sounded on the stairs. Again Blade spun around, to see Doifuzan, Yezjaro, and five or six others trot around the bend in the hall. They stopped as they saw Blade standing over Lady Musura, the bodies around him, and the smoke billowing out of the room. Then Yezjaro's eyes traveled beyond Blade-and widened in delighted astonishment as they fell on Lord Geron. The instructor looked at Doifuzan.
«I concede the honor to you, First Dabuno.»
Doifuzan shook his head. «I think both of us should concede it to Blade. Without his aid, it might have taken us five long years or more to bring our plans to completion. He found a way for us here. And it seems to have been his skill and his sword that in the end took the man we sought. Blade, I doubt if we shall live long enough to do you the honor you deserve. But we can at least do this.»
«Indeed, you speak the truth. Blade, the honor of striking down Lord Geron shall be yours.»
Blade bowed mechanically, turned, and drew his sword. The battle-fury had left him and he felt drained, half-sick, and he wished only to get the business over with. Lord Geron was still unconscious when Blade's sword slashed down through his scrawny neck, and his head rolled across the floor.
«I hope he knew who was in his house, and why,» said Doifuzan as he bent to pick up the head and place it in a linen sack.
Blade smiled grimly. «He recognized me, I know.»
«Good. Then he has enough knowledge to take with him to Kunkoi.» Doifuzan finished tying the neck of the sack and stood up. «I think we would do well to leave here at once. The Hongshu's soldiers may enter the garden at any time, and the house itself seems doomed.» A crash from within the storeroom punctuated his remarks. The crackle and boom of the flames became fiercer, and the yellow brown smoke rolled more thickly out into the hall.
«Come, brothers. Let us be off.» Doifuzan turned and led them away down the hall toward the stairs.
Chapter 21
Nineteen of the twenty-nine uroi got safely out of the burning house, back through the tunnel, away from the Hongshu's palace. By the time they had reached the street, the fire was visible for miles. Flames shot a hundred feet into the air and lit up the base of a cloud of smoke that rose many times higher.
The streets began to come alive with people running out to stare at the fire, loudly wondering what it could mean. No one bothered the nineteen uroi as they tramped along, or failed to give them a clear path. In their black clothes they looked much like a party of the Hongshu's jinai on an urgent mission. No sensible private citizen and few soldiers would ask nineteen jinai their business or try to stop them. By dawn they were well outside the city, heading across country as fast as their legs would carry them, toward the emperor's precinct.
«That's a good three days' march,» Yezjaro told Blade in one of their brief pauses. «But we're going to do it in two. Not on the roads, either. Until we can place ourselves under the emperor's protection, the less anybody sees of us, the better. Once the emperor has rendered his judgment on us, even the Hongshu will stand aside. Until then the Hongshu will do as he sees fit. Need I bore you with details?» The instructor was haggard and filthy, and there were hollow circles under eyes reddened by fatigue and smoke. But he held onto a good deal of his sword-sharp wit.
Blade shook his head. «No, I think not. I doubt that the Hongshu will thank us for this past night's work.»
«Nor, I fear, will the emperor,» said Yezjaro. «At least he will not dare to do so openly. And what that may lead to-I have my doubts. But let us leave my suspicions where they are for the present, and march.»
They marched. They marched as Blade had never done during his military service in borne dimension, nor in any land or among any people in Dimension X. They stopped once for a few hours to sleep, and twice to eat and drink in small inns huddled at the edges of lonely forests. Otherwise they tramped steadily along, up hills, down into valleys, across brief stretches of lowlands and paddy fields, along paths winding through dark insect-ridden forests. Blade lost track of time, almost lost track of night and day and the passing landscape. His legs were white-hot pillars of fire, his throat a mass of dry gravel, his eyes glowing coals. But he kept on going because the others were, although few of them seemed in much better shape than he was.
On the morning of the third day they came to the crest of the last hill. Beyond the forest that spread across the valley below Blade saw castle towers with gold and orange banners streaming from them.
«The emperor's precinct,» said Yezjaro. There was relief in his voice, but also something else. Call it, well, acceptance. Acceptance of whatever might be waiting for them on the other side of the forest. Blade began to suspect that there were problems yet to come that he wasn't being told about. He was tempted to say so bluntly. But before he could speak, a dozen riders burst out of the forest below and began mounting the slope toward the uroi on top.
Blade's hand went to his sword hilt, then he saw that one of the horsemen was carrying the same orange and gold banner that flew over the castle. An imperial welcoming party? In any case, not the Hongshu's men. Blade started to relax, then he saw the tension still written all over Yezjaro's face. So instead he drew himself up as straight as his exhaustion and aching muscles permitted. There was an impressive dignity in the way the other men were standing, ready to accept the emperor's welcome whatever it might be. Blade did his best to match it. He kept his face expressionless and waited.