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Sonzai (Existence)
Ten: Kaika

He rolled to one side as the shadow leaped, and as it soared over his head he felt the shock like a ripple in the very fabric of the air, curling outward when the thing rammed headlong into the rider atop the frantic steed. The war leader grunted and then toppled from his horse, the sword falling from limp hands, and crashed into a heap on the rock floor and lay very still. Impossible, he thought, and then saw the thin trickle of red running outward through the cracks of the dusty ground from where the big man lay sprawled.

For a second, everything was quiet.

And then the giant shadowy shapes launched themselves out of the fog, tearing at the throats of horses and of men, seemingly oblivious to the desperate sword-strokes whistling around their heads. When he dared to raise his head to look, all he saw were the terrified whites of horse-eyes and the thud of bodies crashing to the ground, a thin hissing sound and then something wet settling onto his face like a fine mist. It was not till he raised one hand to wipe it away that he realized it was blood.

It was time for him to go. He could make a run for it before the men had a chance to regroup, and it was now or never. He scrabbled blindly around him for his flute, his hand closing on the tube of bamboo, and as he rolled out, preparing to get up, he turned his head and saw a pair of luminous yellow eyes staring him in the face.

He thought a sound like a small squeak emitted from his throat, but he was not sure. All that ran through his mind was that his luck had run out and neither Seiryuu nor Byakko could protect him from this. He would die here, alone in a cave, without ever seeing Yui again.

The wolf standing before him was enormous, almost the length of a full-grown horse, gigantically hairy, fur matted and bristling, snarling and salivating and clearly very angry. He cringed, prepared for those gleaming jaws to snatch him up and make quick work of him just as it had the warband leader, but the wolf did not move.

He barely dared to blink. It would not be prudent to try and tuck his flute back in his belt, he thought, as any unexpected move would result in his being torn to shreds. He tried to swallow, tried to say something, but his voice stuck in his throat.

The wolf made a low growling noise and clicked its jaws. Once. Twice. The bushy tail swished against the cave floor, and as another sword clattered to the ground beside them and the din of combat at the mouth of the cave heightened, the animal bent its forelegs and lowered its head to the ground in a grand sweeping motion.

It was almost like a bow, he thought dazedly, a human bow. He waited for the wolf to raise its head, but it did not. Instead, great yellow eyes fixed on his from where the animal's head lay low to the floor, and it seemed to be waiting. Kaika reached behind him to steady himself against the rock wall, and rose to a crouch. The wolf lay motionless.

There was a growl from just beyond his right shoulder, and he saw two shadows fly over his head, and then the stumbling form of a man came into his line of vision, arms windmilling, face white with terror, hands outstretched straight towards him.

If he had time to think, he would probably have been lucid enough to move out of the way, or at least distract the man with a well-aimed kick to the head or chest. But there was no time, and he was too frightened to think, and so he did the only thing he could. Ramming his flute against his mouth, he began to play.

The man stopped in midmotion, white face turning ashen, and then his hands went to his head and he began to scream. The melody coming from the flute buzzed in his own ears and he felt a sensation rising up inside of him like ghosts out of a fog, melding with the shrill notes. The cave narrowed to a pinpoint. It was just him and the flute and the man who he held captive in his power, the power of his music, the power that welled up inside him and the blue light from his right arm-

And then the man fell to the cave floor, gave one last convulsive twitch, and did not move again.

The flute dropped from his nerveless fingers and his raised his hands up to his face, thinking, what have I done?

"Devil!" cried the voices from behind him in terror. "Demon!" He heard the pounding of footsteps, the snarling and thuds of animals launching themselves at human armor, but the footsteps were coming close now, and he had nowhere to run.

He looked wildly around him in a panic, and the yellow eyes were still there, the wolf's entire body tensing like a wound coil. Come with me, it seemed to say as its gaze met his. I can save you.

He hesitated for a split second, and then he made his choice.

The wolf's back, sinewy and powerfully uneven underneath his hands and between his legs, paused for half a heartbeat, and he felt that they were standing on the edge of some precipice, gazing out at the world, frozen like a beautiful statue. And then the animal gathered itself under him and he grabbed at handfuls of its fur, clamping his legs onto the sides of the hard belly, and closed his eyes as it leaped clear over the heads of their assailants and outside into the open air.

For a glorious frozen moment of time they were suspended in mid-flight, like birds, he thought wildly, as the rays of the rising sun beat down upon his shoulders. Then his stomach did a little flip and he felt the its contents churn in an unpleasant manner before the shock of the landing hit him, and he almost lost his grip on the wolf's back and fell off.

The animal did not stop, hit the ground at a dead run, and he gasped for breath as he hauled himself up and wound his arms under the wolf's neck, squinting his eyes and finding it hard not to shriek as trees and brush rushed past them at impossible speeds. Air whistled around him, stinging his face with the sheer speed of it, and when he opened his mouth to draw a deep breath he almost choked. The rhythm of the animal's paws thudded in his ears like war drums.

Something crashed down to the ground next to them, and as the wolf swerved, already leaving it behind almost before it had landed, he saw it was a spear. They were tracking him, he realized dazedly. They were following him. He could hear faint cries coming from some distance away, but they were men's voices. If only he had his flute, he thought, but it was too late for that now. His flute was lost.

His mount swerved again and he clung to his tenacious perch as the wolf seemed to leap at random, every time managing to spring out of the way just as a spear or arrow landed in the spot where they had just been. He wanted to squeeze his eyes shut and let the looming veil of fright settled over him, but no, that was something he would not do. He could not do that. The wolf trusted him, had seen something in him that was worth saving, and he would not repay that by being a coward.

"Faster!" he cried, and the animal seemed to quiver from the tip of its nose all the way to its tail, and it obeyed.

He could no longer see, could only feel the ground rushing under them at a tremendous rate and the world flashing by them in a roar. Everything was white, and red, and blue like the sea. This was what it was like to drown, he thought, to fall into roaring river rapids and never to see the daylight again. He felt his head hit the water, and as it did so, he saw something else too, faces rising above the handrail of a stone bridge, voices calling for him, and then a girl, dressed all in white and red, reaching out her hand-

Then space and time gave one enormous revolution around him, and ground to a halt. He gasped, startled to find tears of pain streaming from the corners of his eyes where the wind had whipped them, and the earth seemed to tilt beneath him as he found his balance. He was gripping something - handfuls of it, and the thing between his legs was not a horse, the proportions were wrong, too low to the ground...

A spasm ran through him, and then he realized he was seated on the back of the wolf still, but they were no longer running, that the wolf had stopped.

For a moment, he thought that the animal had betrayed him. The soldiers were still coming, he knew frantically, and any moment now they would burst through the trees and find them standing there. He did not want to die like this. Then he saw that the wolf was standing very still, one front leg slightly bent, tongue hanging dripping from the heavy jaws as its flanks heaved under his thighs, and the muzzle was pointed forward, the eyes fixed on something. He followed the animal's line of sight, up from the edge of the lightly grassed tree-hung clearing where they stood to the foot of the small hill directly ahead.

There was only the sun, he thought for a moment. It dappled in his eyes and he had to blink again, ridding his lashes of the last of the wind-blown tears, and then he realized that it was not just the glare of sunlight, but there was something standing there at the far side of the glen. He blinked again, trying to focus, and it moved.

The white wolf before them was easily twice as big as the one he sat astride, four legs planted on the ground like the solid trunks of trees, layers of hard muscle rippling under shimmering fur, a show of strength barely held in check. The huge jaws were parted slightly, and triangular ears pricked, as if testing the wind. This was power, the creature standing there so poised and elegant, glowing in the sunlight as if carved simply out of the air. He wondered if he was dreaming.

Then it blinked, giving a shake of its head, and he watched the white fur ripple like a living sea of flowers as it pawed at the ground with one foreleg as a stallion would. It blinked again, and then he started, jolted out of the vision of perfection he had imagined this animal to be. Where the wolf's left eye should have been was instead an ugly, jagged red scar.

He would have slipped from his wolf's back if he had had the time, would have been drawn slowly across that field to come face to face with the animal whose scar across its eye was the same as the scars across his own heart. But even as he prepared to dismount, something whistled past his ear. Instinct took over and flattened him against the wolf's back as it growled and twisted aside, leaping sideways to land perfectly on all four feet low and snarling against the ground.

But his first thought was not for himself, but instead for the white wolf as the arrows zinged past his ear again. "Stop! Go back!" he shouted as the wolf leaped across the grass like the wind, but they could not stop, and even as he tried to jerk his mount around by great handfuls of fur, the white wolf was soaring towards them in a single bound. They would collide, he knew, and he opened his mouth to call out a warning.

There was simply the shiver of something cold and slightly frosty, like the feeling of the first snow of the year in the air, and then the wolf passed through him like the wind and was gone.

He thought of Soi, her ghostly form walking before him in the rainstorm, of Tomo emerging from the clam shell as insubstantial as one of his illusions, and then he cried, "Ashitare!"

The white wolf came leaping back toward him then, and as it vanished into the trees, he saw three arrows and a spear pass through it as though it was simply not there. The cries of men echoed in his ears, and then the thunder of hooves. Horses, he thought. They were gaining. The wolf under him settled into a steady running pace, neither pulling ahead nor holding back, and it was as if it were waiting for something. The thought of urging it on to go faster did not feel right, so he gripped the fur tightly to keep his balance and let the animal set its own pace.

It began as a shadow at the edge of his vision. At first he thought he was seeing things, gray flickers that darted in and out and never materialized into anything solid, so he kept his eyes on the space between the wolf's ears and wondered where the road was leading. The drumming of hoofbeats did not slacken behind him, and he heard the shouts of men urging their mounts on. The horses had to be tiring, but they didn't seem to be showing any signs of slowing, and he knew that riders in the Kutou cavalry were trained to make their horses run till they collapsed. He had no doubt this was what would happen here. It was no longer a battle of seishi and soldier, but wolf against horse.

The gray flickers swarmed around the corners of his field of vision now, growing and twisting until they was like strands of non-color through the green and brown of the forest through which they passed at a steady gallop. He heard the hoofbeats coming, heard the panting of horsebreath closing in, and then he heard the very distinctive sound of a horse's terrified scream and looked back.

The gray shadows were wolves. They flowed around the trees, through the grass, in silent, ghostly formation like waves across the sea. Running low and tight, nose to nose and tail to tail in undulating lines, the sunlight glimmering through the leaves in the deep forest through which they loped filled the air with a soft blue-gray sheen. He did not know if the horses had recovered, if the Kutou riders were still coming despite the army of wolves, but it did not matter now. The trees ended just ahead, and as they burst through the wood into another vast clearing, he saw someone standing in the middle of the glen.

"Soi?" he called breathlessly, hoping that this was their destination. But the wolves did not slow, and he saw them sweep down upon her like a giant wave bearing down onto the shore. "Soi! Over here!" he shouted, wanting to tell her to somehow grab hold of one of the wolves. Then he remembered that was impossible, and the look on her face told him that not even she could outrun a pack of horses.

They could not capture her, of course, but where could she go?

There was a snarl and a whisper of air from across the grassy field, and he saw the white wolf flying through the air from the trees on the far side. It twisted peculiarly in mid-leap, as if trying to orient itself to the woman standing below. Soi saw it too, and she broke into a run as the wolf came streaking toward her.

It was a curious dance of wolf and human, and his eyes were not quick enough to follow as the wolf came bounding in like lightning and the woman reached out her hands, caught it around the neck. The white paws grasped at air and the wolf reared like a horse with the woman clinging to its back, its single yellow eye glowing fiercely. And then as the great white tail caught the ground in a powerful stroke, he felt the wolves around him and the one under him gather themselves as one, and the white wolf said, Now, we run.

They ran.

It was a curiously weightless sensation, and again he felt as if he were drowning. The last glimpse of the brown-haired girl dressed in gossamer red and white felt very sad, somehow. Chiriko, she called to him. A name? A plea? He didn't quite remember why she had been there. He had always imagined himself falling into the river alone and unmourned, as the rapids carried him away and he was pulled under to a watery grave.

The wind flowed past him like the river current and the wolf's body under him was the beating of his own heart in his chest, the only sound he could hear through the silently endless water of the great river. Time was running by too, days and nights that he could not remember, time in which he should have breathed in too much water or been too long without air to have survived.

But no, a woman's voice spoke low and soft in his ears, and he felt hands pulling at him, hauling him up and out, to a place where it was dry and very cold. "Kaika," the woman said. "Can you hear me?"

"Shun?" he questioned anxiously, and he heard his brother answer, "Yes, aniki?"

The world turned upside down and he was slipping, his arms and legs striking something soft and then his whole body landed with an oomph, as he opened his eyes and realized he was staring at the dripping underbelly of a wolf.

"Amiboshi, are you hurt?"

He winced as he scooted out from where the wolf's sweat was dripping from its fur into his eyes and saw Soi bending over him. "I've been better," he said, "but I'm not injured. Though I lost my flute." And my pack, he thought belatedly, but the flute was more important.

She glanced over him critically, as if to make sure he was not lying just to make her feel better, and then he saw her gaze flit to the space around him. He struggled to a sitting position and saw that they had stopped at the base of a giant tree trunk, ancient and gnarled and rising into the sky as far as he could see through the enormous leafy canopy that covered them. There were wolves everywhere. They stood, sat, paced back and forth as if standing sentry, glancing unconcernedly at him with those unblinking yellow eyes. Curiously, he was not frightened.

"We need to look for Yui," he said finally, and Soi nodded.

"I've managed to locate her, and she's not far. We did pass her location while we were...running, so we'll have to backtrack." She looked uncertain. "Honestly, I was worried back there when the men came into the cave that you weren't going to make it."

"I killed one of them," he admitted. "That was when I lost my flute."

She almost smiled. He could see the crinkle in her eyes but not her mouth. "It was my fault," she said. "If I'd been paying closer attention instead of trying to find Yui while you were still lying there sleeping, I would have spotted those men."

"And then what?" he challenged. She raised one eyebrow. "Would you have taken me somewhere to escape? Those men knew I was there, and merely changing position wasn't going to stop them. They could feel me somehow, I think." It had to be Nakago, he added silently, but he wasn't going to tell her what she already knew. No need to make the wound any deeper than it already was.

"You're right," she replied quietly, "we couldn't have outrun them or escaped them. But that doesn't make me feel any better still. I came back to protect you, and I almost got you killed."

He smiled. "No," he said, shaking his head. "You didn't come back to protect me. You came back to protect Yui. I simply got lumped into the bargain somehow when I started tagging along." She did smile at that, and he smiled back at her wanly. "We're in this together, right? A team, all of us to protect Yui-sama until the end." He emphasized the title, and saw the understanding in Soi's eyes.

"Yes," she replied. "We are." He saw her look past him and turned his head, already knowing he would see the white wolf standing there. "Until the end, whatever that may be."

The wolf was just as majestic at close proximity than it was from far away. There was no sunlight dazzling off its fur coat now, but it moved with ease through the sea of other wolves towards them, and they parted for it, though there was no need to. When it had come close enough to touch, it stopped and lifted its head a bit. He saw the curious mix and match of legendary perfection and scarred eye, but even that seemed somehow right.

"You saved my life," he said to it gravely. "Thank you."

The yellow eye swiveled to Soi, then to him, and then back to the woman. Without knowing exactly why, he held out one hand at the level of the wolf's muzzle, and the eye came back to him, and then it very slowly and carefully laid its nose into his palm. He felt a delicious shiver pass through him at the faint cool sensation in his hand, as if the wind had changed and had brought with it a heady scent of flowers.

"We should go," Soi said from behind him, "before Yui decides that we've abandoned her and starts off on her own."

That would be bad, his mind agreed, and reluctantly he wrenched his hand away, saw the big white animal sit down slowly on its haunches with the grace of a cat, and continue to watch. "How long will it take for us to reach her?"

"It depends," Soi said cryptically. He frowned at her.

"Depends on what?"

She gestured around her, and he realized that the wolves had stopped what they were doing and were instead all standing, heads facing in towards him and eyes fixed on him unblinking. He looked back, startled, at the white wolf, but it too sat very still, head cocked a little bit. It looked almost amused.

"After noon if we walk," Soi said. "But..."

He did not need to ask her to finish the sentence. As he took a deep breath and nodded, the sea of gray bodies parted, and the wolf that emerged in front of him felt like an old friend as he grasped the handful of fur at the nape of its neck and swung himself up onto the broad back.

"We ride," he said.