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Chapter Twenty-One
Lara was more than happy to let Hana take the lead as the disguised mercenaries revealed their intent. These were yet another group of peasants paid to attack. Sent to die in a coward’s place. Just like her brother. She knew lives would be lost if she didn’t make them see reason. For an instant she considered joining the cause. She didn’t know who was attacking Kojiro’s people or why, but if her brother had thought it was a cause worth dying for, then it must be. Yet something spoke to her heart—Kojiro perhaps—and she knew these ninja did not fight for honor. They fought for coin and that was not something worth dying for.
Hana operated on her
skil as a ninja, cursing her stupid feminine kimono twenty-fold as she attempted to sweep the nearest adversary off his feet. He stumbled but did not fall as her foot connected with his ankle. She could hear Kojiro shouting to his men on the other side of the gate. “Do not fly your arrows. You might hit Hana.” The best thing she could do for Kojiro was get out the line of fire, but if she wanted the opposing side—the side she would have been on not two days ago—to breathe another day, she had to get through to them somehow. They had asked for her by name, so at least someone in the group knew of her.
“You will be slaughtered,” she shouted. “Whoever bought your skil s must know that.” She paused as the words escaped her lips and lifted her gaze to the trees beyond the wide field. She caught a slight movement. A frightening face masked in red and black appeared amongst the brush before disappearing again. Samurai. Obviously under the direction of a different Shogun. Did they intend to take these lands? To annihilate all of Kojiro’s people? Were they using this farcical battle as a distraction for the true onslaught to come? Is this how her brother had died? This senseless reason?
Her fists clenched with rage. These people, her people, were being used as pawns, nothing more than sacrifices, in a battle between warlords. A battle that affected them only because they would be forced to contribute to the wealth of a different man. If they were fighting for freedom that would be one thing, but they weren’t. They were trading one overlord for another. And for what?
A loud battle cry sounded behind her and a strong arm circled her waist before she was drawn back into the fortress and the gate was closed. The mercenaries had been too stunned by Kojiro’s reckless move to prevent him from taking Hana.
Safely behind the castle wall, Hana turned and grabbed Kojiro’s tunic in both hands.
He seemed to want to comfort her, but she didn’t want comfort. She needed to warn him. “In the woods,” she said. “I saw samurai. Beyond the field. The ninja are here only as a distraction. They are my people, Kojiro. Please, spare them if you can.” Kojiro nodded in understanding and made several hand gestures to the men on the wall. They drew their bows up and aimed for the sky, shooting over the heads of the mercenaries in the yard, aiming for the distant trees.
An increasingly loud roar thundered across the field as the warriors in the distance made their move. Kojiro’s samurai were not intimidated, but most of the ninja fled in terror. They were skil ed in stealth and assassination, not frontline battle. Without the distraction the mercenaries offered and under the onslaught of a barrage of arrows, the opposing samurai soon retreated. Sheer force would not penetrate the fortress walls of the stronghold. Hana had realized that from the beginning. She’d used stealth to make her move against Kojiro. Had she attacked outright, she never would have made it through the gate.
When the danger had passed, Hana wrapped both arms around Kojiro and trembled against him. “It was like this when my brother attacked, wasn’t it?”
“Except it was night and the samurai never advanced.” One of the survivors had specifical y told her that Kojiro had been the one to end her brother’s life and she had centered all of her anguish on retaliating against him.
“When my brother left, I wanted to join him. I thought he was fighting for something important.”
“Hana…” Kojiro murmured against her hair.
“But his death meant nothing! I wonder what they told them to get them to fight. He said that he was protecting innocent villagers. Did he know what he was doing?”
“I don’t know, my love. But it cannot be changed. You should not dwell upon it.” He was right. There was nothing she could do about the past, but perhaps she could shape the future. “We have to stop this from happening again.”
“If you have an idea…”
“It’s simple,” she said. “Pay them. They will switch sides for a price. Instead of sending them to attack, put them in the forests to watch for advances by your enemies.
Employ their stealth. They will not let you down.”
“Your mind is sharp, Hana-chan,” he whispered, “your heart pure. I wish you to be at my side always.”
She stared up at him—her chest swelling with pride, her heart with love. “I wish to be samurai.”
He smiled—a warm smile that touched his dark eyes and made her heart thud in her chest. “It would be my greatest honor to teach you the ways.”
“Then I will do so,” she said, “at your side.”
“Always?”
“Always.”
Their lips had just met when the amulet around Reece’s neck began to hum.
Startled, Lara jerked away. “It’s early,” she said, her heart thudding with apprehension. “Is there something wrong with it?”
“No. Some leaps are shorter than others,” Reece said.
“We were supposed to set a trap for Carl this leap.” Reece chuckled. “I think we were a bit distracted. I’m ready to find another adventure. Aren’t you?”
She sank her hands into his hair and said, “I’m always ready for adventure with you, Reece.”
“No matter what?”
She nodded, wrapping a hand around the humming amulet. The sound grew louder by the second. Soon Carl would crackle into existence and they would disappear to find themselves in a new land. A new time.
“Lara, I didn’t tell you the entire truth when I first found you back in the museum and we started this journey together.”
“What are you saying, Reece?”
“When I told you that some religious cult had killed you to try to get the amulet, that wasn’t exactly what happened.”
She’d never seen him look so serious. “What happened then?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
“It wasn’t intentional,” he said. “I didn’t know that you were the sacrifice it required.
When Carl and I activated it, it took your life.” She was too stunned to speak. She just stared up at him while his hand surrounded hers and the amulet. He began to recite the incantation that would send them on their way again.
He was responsible for her death.
Reece was?
How was that possible? She trusted him. She loved him with al of her heart and soul. She had been certain that he loved her in return, but how could he risk her life on a frivolous whimsy?
From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Carl approaching them, currently possessing the body of Kojiro’s mother. “Reece,” he called. “You can’t keep running forever.”
“Yes, I can, Carl,” Reece said before the world slipped from beneath their feet and they were propel ed through space and time once more.
“I trusted you,” she whispered and then struggled out of his grasp. “Without question, I trusted you and you lied to me!”
He didn’t release her until her bare feet came in contact with a hard wooden deck of a large ship. Loud booms rattled her teeth and flashes of ignited gunpowder lit the night sky. Overhead a skull and crossbones banner fluttered in the turbulent wind. She cocked the hammer of her flintlock and pointed at Reece’s chest. “I’l be relieving you of your ship now, captain.”
