The Initiate Brother Duology (98 page)

I feel as though we follow on the heels of war, not precede it, Brother Sotura thought. He stood at the aft rail watching the following-wave pull a ribbon of moonlight along their wake. Just at dusk he had heard the sound of a flight of cranes passing over and it had saddened him in a way he could not control.

It was a night of great beauty. The Plum Blossom Wind pushed the river craft along the waterway like a gentle, guiding hand, and the scent of budding trees and opening flowers perfumed the air. In so steady a wind and a section of canal free of hidden bars, the sailors on watch had little to do. A charcoal fire smoldered amidships and the sailors cooked and brewed cha and lounged about the deck talking quietly, awaiting their turn as lookout or at the steering oar.

A sailor approached Sotura, offering the senior Brother a bowl of cha which he accepted with a nod. He sipped cha and watched the night landscape slip by. The constellation of the Two-Headed Dragon appeared above
the calypta trees lining the bank, and the breeze murmured in the branches. It was night rich in beauty.

Steps approached, not the barefoot slap of a sailor, but a studied gait. Sotura turned and saw a woman walking toward him. She seemed at first bent and tired, but the Botahist Master could see that this was not a statement of truth: she was neither. The moonlight outlined the familiar shape of a square jaw.

“Sister Morima,” Sotura said quietly. He bowed. “I am honored to find myself traveling in your company.”

She was dressed in the yellow robe and purple sash of her Order though over that she wore shapeless robes of gray and brown, her head wrapped in a shawl. She nodded in return and leaned against the rail as though she had just expended great effort.

Sotura thought she was thinner than when he had last seen her—at Jinjoh Monastery where she had come for the opening of the scrolls. To an untrained eye, her clothing would have hidden this change.

“You keep close watch on your protégé, Brother Sotura, one would think his judgment was in question.”

It was an insulting statement and doubly so, for the nun had shown the worst manners, refusing to respond to his polite greeting.

“Shuyun-sum seems to be watched by many, Sister, which is the true question.”

“Huh,” Sister Morima blew the syllable out like a sharp exhalation. “True questions,” she mused. “Tell me, Brother, do you not have true questions now that the Teacher has arrived and is not among your senior Brethren?”

Sotura turned and looked back at the boat’s wake. “You listen to rumors, Sister. I am surprised.”

“The blossoms were seen, Brother,” Morima hissed in a low whisper, “touched by my own Sisters. Touched! Do not play the fool with me, Senior Brother Sotura.”

He shrugged. “Believe as you will, Sister.”

“That is the conclusion I’m coming to, Brother.” She fell silent then, and only the wash of boat slipping through water was heard.

Sotura looked over at the steersman, but the man was too far off to hear and too well mannered to notice.

“Do you wonder, Brother, who Shuyun-sum was in his past incarnation?
A child of such accomplishment was not a merchant or a lord. It is not possible.”

Sotura shrugged. “As you are aware, we cannot always know.”

“With the unaccomplished, perhaps,” Morima answered but carried the thought no further. She turned also, leaning over the rail and joining her hands. “It must be difficult for you, Sotura-sum; the blossoming of the Udumbara, Sacred Scrolls that are missing or worse, the coming of the Teacher you cannot find, and a young protégé with an ear for the truth.” She paused looking down into the dark water. “Lies cannot come easily, even to the seniors of your Order. What will you say when Shuyun-sum asks of these things?”

Sotura stood away from the rail so that he looked down at the woman. “It is rumored, Sister,” he said icily, “that you have had a crisis of faith. I will pray to Botahara to guide you.” A stiff bow and he was gone, leaving Morima at the rail.

The monk made his way to the bow where he sat in the lee of the gunnel. It was as far forward as he could go and yet he still felt the lies that pursued him close behind.

T
HE ENTIRE LINE had come to a halt for perhaps the hundredth time that day. Lord Shonto Shokan looked down the draw at the horsemen strung out behind him. Like their lord, they had long since dismounted to lead their horses. Shokan stepped to the right for a better view and plunged through the softening crust up to mid-thigh. He cursed.

They were completely surrounded by mountains now, above the snow line and into an area that, each afternoon, became truly frightening. The guides had signaled a stop and gone ahead to assess the danger. They had lost thirty men to avalanches already and Shokan wanted to lose no more. Of course, this was quickly becoming a moot point. Could they go ahead at all? That was the question they asked now.

Willing himself lighter, Shokan tried to pull his leg free and step back onto the crust. His other leg broke through and he sat down, sinking to his waist. He cursed again and then laughed.

The night before they had debated leaving the horses, hoping men could win through where horses couldn’t. With care, men could travel in the mornings when the surface of the snow was still frozen from the bitter cold of the mountain nights.

A boy ran lightly up the line of men, earning Shokan’s envy. When we have no more food, perhaps we will all run as lightly as this one, Shokan thought. The child dropped to his knees on the crust before his lord and bowed. Shokan nodded for him to speak.

“Sire, Lord Jima’s men have reached the end of our line, but the snows caught seven and swept them into the gorge.”

Shokan made a sign to Botahara. “Can they go on?”

The boy hesitated. “Lord Jima says they are prepared to proceed, Sire.”

Shokan nodded. This might be as far as they went this day though it was barely midday. With some effort he stood and looked up the draw. There were perhaps twenty men above him and then the track of the guides disappearing over the curve of the endless snows. Movement caught his eye and he turned quickly. Yes! he was certain this time.

“I saw it, also, Sire,” the boy said, his tone tentative. He had just spoken to the great lord without being requested to do so.

Shokan did not seem to notice. He pointed up at a ridge line above them to the south. “There?”

“Yes, Lord Shonto.”

“Huh.” They had started appearing on and off two days before. It was considered good luck to see one of the Mountain People, so men had begun keeping a lookout. Down the line he saw others pointing.

Turning back, he looked up the slope. Certainly it is not possible, he thought, we will have to leave armor and all the horses behind. He looked at his stallion, the horse he had brought from Seh, and shook his head sadly. They would butcher the horses for all the meat they could carry; there was no other choice. He smiled at the child.

“Tell Lord Jima that I await word from the guides. We will not move until then.”

The boy bowed low, rose, and jogged off. Thirty paces away, he plunged through the snows up to his chest and had to be rescued by a wallowing rider.

L
ORD RANAN AND Lord Akima stood at the wall on the city’s eastern extremity and watched the building of a floating bridge. The barbarian army had spent a day skidding logs from the western end of the lake, where they had been blown after the first failed attack. The arrival of the Plum Blossom Winds had precipitated this tactic, and the men of Rhojo-ma looked on with something approaching approval: it is what they would have done in the barbarians’ place. With the breeze at the barbarian army’s back, it would be impossible for the men of Seh to position fire rafts upwind.

The floating bridge grew by the hour, reaching out toward the walls of Rhojo-ma. The last sections of the bridge were being readied near shore. When done, these final sections would be easily floated into place, connecting the shore to the wall of Rhojo-ma with a causeway wide enough to allow fifty men abreast. It was only a question of when this would be done.

“There are too many sections, look.” Lord Akima pointed to the north
and south of the floating bridge where work was going on at an astonishing pace.

Lord Ranan watched the activity briefly and then nodded. Teams of horses kept arriving with planks torn, no doubt, from nearby barns and houses. These were being used to tie the bridge together and provide a relatively even footing for the attackers. “They must plan to make the bridge wider at this end. I would do the same.” It was the ultimate approval of anything the barbarians did:
I would do the same.

Akima looked over his shoulder at the position of the sun. “They might finish while there is still light.”

“But they will not attack until dawn—when we will have the sun in our eyes. That would be my choice.”

Akima nodded.

Most of the men who remained in Rhojo-ma were concentrated on the defense of the city’s eastern end now, drawing them away from the more easily defended Governor’s Palace and inner city. Lines of retreat to the western end had been prepared through the city—bridges destroyed, streets blocked. Only a man who knew the route could move quickly from east to west and that route was the most easily defended. Even so, the men of Seh were preparing to hold the city’s eastern end for as long as possible.

Lord Ranan bowed suddenly. “Please excuse me, Lord Akima, I have matters that must be attended to.”

Akima bowed and watched the man go. “How the great have fallen,” Akima said to himself. Ten years earlier the Ranan had been the virtual rulers of Seh—Imperial Governors generation after generation. And now here was the senior lord of that House—a general at the fall of Seh’s capital.

How we pay for our mistakes, the old man thought and turned back to the eastern shore for a final look before attending to his own duties.

*   *   *

The sound of the barbarian flute-pipes echoed across the water in the night. It was a melancholy air played in the strange scale of the desert tribes and it did nothing to raise the spirits of the men in the city. A night attack was unlikely but not impossible, so large numbers of men stood watch and others stayed in the recently abandoned buildings nearby.

Boats had been sent out from the city to patrol the lake to be sure the barbarians did not move their bridge in the dark. An attack at first light on
some other quarter of the city would be a disaster. The men of Seh were too few to be spread around Rhojo-ma.

Other boats were readied after the moon set, but they had their own purpose. Men, armed and armored, went aboard these boats in number. In complete silence they pushed off, setting course by stars and the barbarian fires on the shore. The light evening breeze bore them along, barely rippling the sails as they tacked. It was a difficult exercise, for the boats could risk no lamps, so there was a very real danger of being separated or colliding.

Fires set in sand burned at intervals along the floating bridge, and they illuminated the span from one end to the other.

A torch on the wall of the city was extinguished, and the boats turned toward the agreed upon fire on the bridge. There was not enough wind to give them speed, so the helmsmen aimed the boats directly at the floating span and ran their bows up on it, snapping anchor lines in the process.

A shout went up immediately from the barbarian guards, and the sound of swords shattered the peaceful evening and stilled the playing of flutes. Torches came to life among the attackers in an attempt to fire the bridge planking.

Lord Ranan reached the top of the wall and found Akima and Toshaki there ahead of him.

“It does not burn,” Ranan said.

The noise was fierce now and men appeared at all the stairways, believing the siege had begun. In the light of the fires, barbarians could be seen pouring out along the floating causeway. Torches were kicked into the water though here and there the planking burned feebly.