擰成一股繩
níngchéng yī gǔ shéng
Twist into a single rope.
Stick together; make joint efforts.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Kageyama kicked the old mare back toward the fortress, trying to catch Zakhar.
"Zakhar wait!" Kageyama called, cupping his hands. "Wait! I have an idea."
Zakhar turned Dunya, ducking as an arrow shot from the fortress whizzed past. He drew the bow from around his shoulder, plucked an arrow from the quiver, knocked it, and a moment later another man toppled from the walls with a scream.
"The rope," panted Kageyama. Sanli caught up, his spindly mare panting from the short canter, leading the stubborn In'yii. "It is light enough to be carried by an arrow. Shoot an arrow into the window and I will try and climb up to the girl."
Zakhar narrowed his eyes. "An arrow won't hold your weight. The rope needs to be tied."
"Well I have only myself to risk. And it is better than trying to fight through a fortress of soldiers."
Zakhar nodded.
They rode toward where Kageyama and Sanli had descended from the fortress only minutes earlier. The pile of rope was still coiled where it had fallen.
Zakhar swiftly dismounted, grabbed the rope, tied it to an arrow from his quiver, and took aim.
The arrow shot up, the rope uncoiling behind it like a vine springing forth from the ground toward the sky.
The arrow lodged into the wood of the broken window frame, and Zakhar gave the rope affixed to it a sharp tug. The arrow jerked free from the wood, and arrow and rope fell to the earth beside them once more.
"Try again!" yelled Kageyama. With Zakhar distracted, more arrows whizzed from above. "Sanli, get down and stand against the wall!"
Kageyama gestured to a portion of wall where a slight bulge of the fortress stone created a natural overhang near the base, wide enough to shield a man and four horses from arrows. Sanli did as Kageyama asked, shakily sliding from the saddle.
"Stay back. Hold the horses tight, the farm horses are not trained for battle, and will try and run. And if they do we will be trapped," Kageyama said.
Sanli nodded, pulling the four horses further back beneath the overhang with his unbroken hand.
Kageyama hurried back to where Zakhar was, dodging an arrow as he went.
Zakhar had succeeded in shooting the arrow through the window and was pulling on the rope. "I think it caught on something. It's not coming loose."
Kageyama took a breath. "Up we go then."
Taking the rope from Zakhar, he started to climb the wall he had just descended from, hand over fist, feet pushing against the fortress walls.
An arrow shot past him, so close he felt the air on his elbow. "Zakhar, a little cover?"
"On it," Zakhar called. A moment latter the same arrow swished by Kageyama, this time from below, lodging in the eye of the archer who was leaning over the battlements to shoot again. But almost as soon as that archer fell, another took his place. And another.
Kageyama kept climbing.
He was almost halfway when the arrows from above stopped. Instead of relief, a heavy weight sank in Kageyama's stomach.
"They are coming around from the outside!" He called back over his shoulder. He hurried his climb. "Dammit girl, you better still be alive."
As if in answer, he heard a crash of wood from the above him. Good, still fighting.
But then another sound came. The rattle of armor and the sound of battle cries.
A full troop of soldiers, near 30 strong, rounded the fortress. Raising their shields and with swords drawn, they made for Zakhar and Sanli below him.
"Shit," Kageyama cursed. He glanced once more above him, then kicked off the wall, sliding back down the rope.
He let go of the rope lengths from the ground, grasped his sword, drew it, and was on the nearest soldier before his feet touched earth. With a gasp the man fell to his knees, throat gushing red.
Beside him Zakhar roared and swung his axe, the catching two soldiers and sending them spinning away into their companions. Behind Zakhar, Sanli ducked and grabbed the sword of a fallen man, and swung it clumsily with his uninsured hand.
Together, the three men were trapped, pinned between the troop of soldiers and the fortress.
The soldiers, realizing they had the three men trapped, pressed harder. Kageyama furiousley cut, ducking and swinging with his blade, but they were too outnumbered; arrows started to fall from the wall above them again, one shuddered into the ground by his foot—
"Argh!" Zakhar cried, as another arrow buried in the top of his shoulder. Zakhar fell to his knees.
"Zakhar!" Kageyama cried. A soldier, taking advantage of Zakhar's lowered axe, darted forward, blade swinging for Zakhar's face-
-a gurgling sound came from the mans throat a moment later, as Sanli's sword swung forward in an arc faster than Kageyama thought possible. Red blossomed across the man's neck. The soldiers swing went wide-
-but still caught Zakhar, cutting a clean line from jaw to cheekbone. The gouge was just a red line one moment, then the next red flooded down the side of Zakhar's face.
Zakhar fell forward, onto all fours. Kageyama dove before him, fending off attacks from soldiers who had been too afraid of Zakahr's wild axe before and were now seeking revenge. Sanli stood beside Zakhar, bravely fending off the blows that Kageyama missed.
The group of soldiers fell back. Nearly the entire original group of thirty had fallen, or had limped to the sidelines to nurse wounds. But double that number had poured out of the fortress and now surrounded them on either side.
Kageyama sent out his knives, Kaizoumaru and Kesshomaru, and two soldiers screamed, one engulfed in flames and the other in a creeping case of crystal. The strange magic caused their companions in arms to hesitate but only momentarily. Then the press came again.
They were too outnumbered, the horses were too far away to reach, and Kageyama could think of no clever trick. This is it. This is-
The sonorous sound of a war horn pierced the air.
The soldiers from the fortress and those they besieged turned. At top a hillock out on the plains, twenty men on horseback stood. All were dressed in black. Their different shapes and sizes, outlined by the fading light seeping across the plains, suggested a mixture of humans and mu'ren alike.
Is that... Zhangyu's guard...?
The warhorn sounded again, and as one the riders charged.
A few of Changsha's soldiers turned to face the oncoming horses. But most looked around uncertainly. Killing three men did not require direction, but marshaling to defeat a mountated unit? That required coordination.
"Gahh!"
Kageyama, taking advantage of the soldiers' distraction, felled two nearest to him with slashes to the back of the neck where helmet met armor.
The beat of horse hooves became thunder and then the riders were upon them.
A great clanging and cry of men rose up as the two sides met. In seconds the foot soldiers from Changsha had scattered and where running back around the side of the fortress toward the gates.
"After them, do not let them close the gates!" said a familiar voice.
Atop Banli, Prince Zhangyu directed his men in pursuit, and then turned toward Kageyama.
"Where is Lady Yunyou?!"' he yelled over the shouts and hoof falls.
"Still in the fortress!" Kageyama gestured to the broken window above.
Zhangyu took in the window, calculating. He gestured to two of his men, of the handful that had stayed beside him. One was a man so large Zakhar looked small in comparison, with skin dark as mahogany. The other was a small owlish eyed figure who Kageyama quickly realized was a woman beneath her armor.
"Guard my uncle, and see to the northerner's injuries," Zhangyu said with a snap of his fingers. The owlish woman moved toward Zakhar, who was still on all fours on the ground.
"Wait here. I'll go after Lady Yunyou," Zhangyu yelled, then kicked his horse after his men.
"Wait!" yelled Sanli. Cursing and cradling his broken hand, he turned to follow.
Kageyama grabbed him by the shoulder. "Where are you going!? Stay here with Zakhar. I'll go after them."
Sanli stubbornly shook his head. "No. I will come with you."
Zakhar, a bundle of cotton gauze now held to his bleeding face, pushed shakily to his feet, causing the little owl eyed medic to totter back. "I will come as well."
"You are both injured and you are slowing me down! Wait here! You, soldier." Here Kageyama gestured to the giant ox sized man who Zhangyu had assigned to guard Sanli. The man stood at attention, hands at his back. "Keep these idiots from following me if you have to tie them together with their own belts. That's an order."
The huge soldier saluted and bowed respectfully. "Understood, my lord."
Obedience, what a wonderful thing, Kageyama contemplated.
He turned and sprinted the way Zhangyu and his men had gone, before more arguments could come from his stubborn charge or Zakhar.
*~*~*~*~*~*
When Kageyama reached the huge doors of the fortress they were open. A man was pinned to one of them, a crossbow bolt in his neck affixing him to the wood like a needle fixes a butterfly to silk.
Inside the courtyard a rather one sided battle raged, closer to a slaughter.
Zhangyu's troops were better trained, equipped, and organized than the the Changsha soldiers. Ten men in black held off thirty with moss green cloaks, while a mini archery unit of five fired crossbows bolts in rapid succession into their midst, the bolts flying with such speed Kageyama was sure the technology was new. The bolts whittled the thirty away to twenty, the twenty to ten, and then-
"Surrender your weapons now, and your lives will be spared!" Zhangyu cried out, from Banli's back.
Then he saw Kageyama and swiftly dismounted, summoning three of his soldiers to him. "You three, with me. Captain Shaheen, you have the command!"
A narrow eyed man with sharp lines of a mustache on his upper lip saluted, and turned back to supervising the surrender of the fortress's troops.
"Lead the way Kageyama Sensei," said Zhangyu. Kageyama sprinted toward the fortress entrance.
Inside he swiftly headed for the spiral staircase and up it, Zhangyu hurrying by his side.
"How did you know to come, Zhangyu?" Kageyama asked.
"Prince Zhangyu," the second prince corrected. "When it was reported that you all 'disappeared without a trace after a mysterious attack' I told my man to be on high alert for any unusual activity. So when a small troop rode off into the northern wilderness a fortnight ago I knew it was to search for my uncle. Or that they had already found you."
"Your man?"
"I have a spy in the fortress of course," said Zhangyu with a smug smile. "A loyal pair of eyes and ears are better than ten strong swords. You taught me that, Kageyama Sensei."
"I did, didn't I," said Kageyama smiling. A sudden image of Zhangyu, young and deadly serious beside Sanli's joking face, flashed before his eyes as the two boys sparred in his courtyard.
"How did you all get seperated from Lady Yunyou?"
Kageyama's smile vanished. As he explained what had happened, Captain Duan's strange obsession with Ao, his violence, Kageyama's chest tightened.
They had reached the top floor. Kageyama's steps felt flew along the hall toward the door to the commander's rooms, Zhangyu and the three soldeirs clattering after him.
Beyond the door the room was quiet.
Shit, we are too late.
The door was still bolted, though the wood had started to buckle. "Break it down," Zhangyu ordered. "How long has she been in there with him?"
Kageyama shook his head. "Too long."
The biggest of hte three soldiers threw their shoulder against the door, again, again, and—
—it splintered and collapsed inwards, and Kageyama and Zhangyu leapt through, blades already drawn.
*~*~*~*~*~*