'Cut the grappling ropes!' Gundar called and two axes swung and thudded in quick succession, severing the two ropes. No longer fastened together, the ships began to slowly drift apart. Gundar looked down at the last four ranks of rowers on either side – the men who had remained aboard Wolfwill through the brief, one-sided battle.
'Out oars! Give way!' he ordered. As the men reacted instantly, Will realised that the Skandians had done this sort of thing many, many times before. Wolfwill slowly gathered sternway under the thrust of the eight oars, and the gap to the pirate ship widened.
'Hoist the sail!' Gundar ordered and the boom and sail ran smoothly up the mast.
'Sheet home! In oars!' he called and the sail handlers hauled in on the sheets and hardened the flapping sail to the wind. Wolfwill's bow swung downwind and as the skirl leaned on his tiller, she began to gather way.
Behind them, the pirate galley was bow down in the water and her men were swarming forward to repair the massive holes smashed in her planks before she went under.
Gundar nodded in satisfaction. His men had performed well. He jerked a thumb at the half-submerged pirate ship.
'I doubt we'll be hearing from them again,' he said.
Selethen was watching the wallowing ship as her crew worked to stop her sinking.
'You know,' he said to Halt, without any trace of a smile, 'it might have been simpler to have the two girls board her with their practice swords.'
They exchanged a long look, then Halt shook his head. 'I needed to leave some of them alive,' he said.
With each passing day, their numbers grew. As the Emperor's party clawed and stumbled up the steep, muddy mountain tracks, climbing one ridge, descending the other side, then climbing the next, which always seemed to be steeper and higher than the one before it, more and more Kikori quietly joined their group. They would emerge silently from the trees, having travelled secret and dangerous paths known only to the mountain people, make a simple obeisance to Shigeru, then attach themselves to the column.
The leaders of the column learned, without too much surprise, that the Senshi patrol they had defeated at Riverside Village was not the only advance party sent out by Arisaka. There were more than half a dozen other small groups combing the mountains, brutalising the Kikori, burning their villages and torturing their leaders in an attempt to learn Shigeru's whereabouts.
This barbaric behaviour, intended to cow the Kikori into submission, was actually self-defeating. The Kikori were a profoundly law-abiding people and they placed great value on the concept of legal and rightful succession to the throne – even if they had never seen the Emperor himself. Shigeru was the rightful Emperor and their deeply felt sense of morality told them that he must not be deposed by force. Arisaka's depredations only served to convince them that he was a would-be usurper, whose attempts to gain power bordered on sacrilege and must be resisted. And, as a corollary to that, Shigeru must be supported.
So, as villages were plundered and burned, the Kikori joined Shigeru's party, in dribs and drabs, until there were several hundred of them – men, women and children – toiling up the precipitous tracks over the mountains, helping carry the wounded in their litters and bringing much-needed supplies of food with them. It was hard going, even for the mountain-bred Kikori, and the need to carry the wounded slowed them down. Shukin, Shigeru and Horace were constantly aware that Arisaka's main force was somewhere behind them, closing the gap between them each day.
'If only we knew where he was,' Shukin said. He had called a brief halt at noon and the bearers had gratefully set down the litters and sprawled beside the track. Some took the opportunity to eat a little of the food they carried. Others simply lay back, resting and regaining their strength, trying to let a few minutes' respite ease the ache of strained muscles.
Without anything being said, Horace had become one of the small group leading the trek. Shigeru had recognised his worth as an expert warrior and an experienced campaigner and was grateful to have someone share the burden that his cousin Shukin had assumed. Looking at his two main supporters now, the Emperor smiled ruefully. They were far from the idealised picture of a royal party, he thought. Exhausted, mud stained, grimy and soaking wet, their robes and tunics torn in a dozen places by thorns and sharp branches along the track, laden with rough packs of food and blankets, they looked more like a group of wandering vagabonds than the Emperor and his two principal advisers. Then he glanced at the swords the two men wore – Horace's long and straight in the Araluan style, and Shukin's katana, shorter, double hilted and slightly curved. There was no mud there, he knew. Both blades, inside their scabbards, were scrupulously clean and razor-edged – a result of their owners cleaning and sharpening them each evening.
'When do you expect the scouts to come back in?' Horace asked. Two days before, Shukin had asked for volunteers among the Kikori to go back along their trail to look for some sign of Arisaka's position. There had been no lack of numbers willing to take on the task and he had sent four of the fittest younger men back down the mountain.
'It'll depend how long it takes them to find Arisaka,' Shukin said. 'I'm hoping we hear from them later rather than sooner.'
Horace nodded. If the scouts returned this evening, he thought, they would have good cause to worry. Allowing for the fact that the lightly laden Kikori, expert in traversing this country, would travel much faster than Arisaka's men, they would still have to travel double the distance – there and back. If they returned in the next twelve hours, Arisaka couldn't be more than two days behind them.
'How far now to Ran-Koshi?' Shigeru asked.
Shukin shrugged in reply. 'Toru says about five leagues, as the crow flies.'
Horace grimaced. 'We're not crows,' he said and Shigeru smiled tiredly.
'More's the pity.'
Five leagues was over twenty kilometres, Horace estimated. But travelling up and down ridges as they were, and traversing around rearing mountainsides, the distance they covered on the ground could be five or six times as much as that and it would be hard going, all the way.
'We should be there in four days, if all goes well,' Shukin said hopefully. Neither Horace nor Shigeru replied, although Horace couldn't help asking himself the question, why should things start doing that now?
They heard voices raised further back down the column and they all rose and turned to see what was causing the disturbance. Horace saw two young men trotting tiredly up the track, past the rows of resting Kikori, who called questions to them as they came. The two arrivals shook their heads in answer to the questions. Unlike most of the travellers, they were lightly dressed, without heavy robes or cloaks to protect them from the chill air of the mountains. They wore breeches and shirts and stout leather boots, and carried small packs that could have held only the barest minimum of food and water. They were dressed and equipped to travel quickly and Horace felt a cold hand close over his heart as he recognised them as two of the scouts Shukin had sent back.
'This doesn't look good,' he said, noting the serious expressions on the arrivals' faces. Shukin grunted in reply and the three of them moved down the track to meet the scouts.
The young men saw them and redoubled their pace, dropping to one knee and bowing their heads before the Emperor. Gently, Shigeru put them at their ease.
'Please stand, my friends. This muddy track is no place for ceremony.' He looked around and saw several interested bystanders watching them, curious to know what the scouts had discovered. 'Can someone bring food and a hot drink for these men? And warm clothing.'
Several of the bystanders hurried away to do his bidding. The remainder crowded a little closer, eager to hear the report. Shukin glared at them and waved them back.
'Give us room,' he said. 'You'll hear the news soon enough.'