Chapter Eleven
The fighting was brutal and fast.
Horses for Honda and Jounouchi were waiting just at the gates of the palace, and the pair flung themselves over the broad, matched chestnut backs to race to the verges of the city. Behind them now rode the greater part of the palace's house guard…some had stayed behind as a last effort, but all knew that if Yami's private guard failed to subdue the attacking rogues…
…The only hope left was to pray for mercy.
At this moment, Honda was grateful for the long-ago saddlesores…he could sit a horse with ease, muscle memory from his unremembered past as a nomad replacing what the normally motorcycle-bound teenager knew by reflex. Jounouchi's face was a still mask of rage, and Honda shuddered to see it. In all the time that he'd known his friend, there was no memory – past or future – of ever seeing the boy seethe with so much hatred.
The horses' hooves flung wheals of sand to either side, and their compatriots fanned out behind in a practiced formation. "Stay beside me," Jounouchi commanded, chancing a look to his left at the fellow teenager riding there, "I don't want to lose you."
They plunged to the edge of the battlefield, where the first troops had already intercepted the charging rogues. Five tribes, together? Honda gasped audibly and caught a mouthful of dirt from his mount's heels, what measure of gold and lies did that…that unholy bastard feed them?
Jounouchi's right arm flung upward, and with a ringing, keening cry, he charged downslope, commanding the others to follow. As one body, horsemen poured into the fray.
It was a messy style of fighting, Honda had to admit. Foggy remnants of strategies glossed over in textbooks flashed past, none of which seemed to follow what his comrade had ordered.
"What's the plan?" Honda yelled after the other man's flying hair.
"We charge them!"
"And after that?"
"What more do you need!"
That's the plan?
Thankfully, Jounouchi's brusque reply had only sketched the basics, and as such, Honda was amazed to see at a glance behind him the further stretching of soldiers to either side of them in their wild downward plunge.
The sky overhead was the washed out, heat-exhausted blue of a summer afternoon, and the full sun poured its wrath across the half mile of scorching sand where the combatants met. By sheer luck, Yami's army had overtaken the rogues before they gained high ground, and the band of fallen enemy bespoke the prowess of the King's archers. Now, the kingdom's defenders tackled their foemen in a dish formed by two great, wind-carved dunes, steadily raining arrows down on the nomadic fighters as swordsmen spoiled to take their place in the battle.
Honda squinted in the sunlight, half expecting to see that Kaiba's summoned steel were no less than three-headed dragons or malevolent purple djinns.
Each of the five tribes fought in their own contingent, neither mixing with nor defending the other four.
They seem so…familiar…
Memories and a wave of forgotten pain rushed down on Honda again, and he could name them by the hue of their clothes and the make of their armor, and the bright strings of colored glass beads they wore about their necks.
Children of the Fox, of the Jackal, of the Snake, of the Scorpion…
…Of the Horse…
He couldn't breathe. A hard upward buck of his mount forced the air out of his lungs in a whoosh, and back in again rapidly.
He was one of them…one of the Children of the Horse!
They…are…my…family?
He knew, then, that if he watched closely, he would see the flying raven hair of Mai, the only female warrior of the entire clan.
They were not all destroyed!
"I can't!" He shouted. Jounouchi turned back to look at him, just before they reached within range of the nomads' archers.
"You what?"
"They're my people!"
Jounouchi's glance flashed from the people, to Honda, and back again. "Not now. Oh, Sekhmet's tits…not now!"
He raced ahead, then, digging his knees into his steed to carry him past with a toss of angry sand. The other troops flowed around Honda, leaving him standing, staring.
These are my people. I can't attack them.
But Jou…Yami…they're counting on me to help…
They saved me from spending my life in the quarries as a slave…
His eyes narrowed at that.
A slave to the pharaoh! What do I owe them? All they did was save me from the same fate of my own people at their hands!
Then he remembered the hours of camaraderie with Jounouchi, and the trust that he and the pharaoh gave to him, despite what he was and where he'd come from.
Were these the same men he had grown to care for with more depth of feeling than before…?
His people had taken a stand against a pharaoh they hated for the enslavement of their own. Doubtless, it hadn't taken much gold or lies to send them out en force against the pharaoh's army…
But he couldn't.
He wouldn't…
And then Jounouchi let out a hoarse scream of pain, and it didn't matter anymore.
Honda kneed his foaming horse into action, drew his crude blade from its sheath, and plunged down to save his friend. No matter what Jounouchi or Yami had done…they were his friends, in this life and the next. He would easily give his life for both, no matter what.
The arrows were exhausted, and now blades slammed into iron blades as the pharaoh's guard ringed what was left of the nomadic rogues. Almost all Of The Horse, Honda noted with a twinge of pride, and fought his way to Jounouchi's side, in time to hack away the arm clenching an opponent's sword as it flashed toward his comrade's ribs. The other man favored him with half a glance and no more, but from the renewed strength in his sword-arm, it was plain to see that Honda's return had awakened his hope once more.
They fought, shoulder to shoulder among their foes – many of the nomads bore wooden pikes instead of blades, and soon enough had been unhorsed and taken captive. The guard closed their ranks in an ever-tightening circle around the rogues, until at last, all but two had given up their arms to be spared.
"No! Don't give up! Fight to the death!"
On a ghost-gray stallion was a warrior in the throes of red-hot rage, tail of raven hair arcing from a taut leather binding at the back of his head. His face and the rest of his form was invisible in voluminous, earthy crimson pants and tunic. Beside him was a woman on a bay mare, long hair as blue-black and shining as her mount's and her companion's, and whipping free.
"Are you going to just give up?"
Lying on his back again. No surprise there. A defiant little girl stood over Honda, magnificent shadowed hair twisting and curling back upon itself in the soft breeze…a living entity all on its own. A patient horse's muzzle nudged his cheek.
"I'll just fall off again."
She snorted.
The voice had belonged to the woman, and as she spoke, her charge reared, the movement echoed by the man's horse as well.
It was just the ponytailed warrior and the woman now in the ring.
"You'll never take us alive!"
Beside Honda, open-mouthed, Jounouchi took in the full curves of her athletic form, revealed in patches as the wind snatched at the pale white tunic she wore.
"A…woman…?"
"Yuugi, Jounouchi, everybody, I appreciate your concern…"
Forced to watch, unable to help…
She'd…killed herself? No…something worse. Someone else had tried to kill her. And when it failed, had locked her away for a long time in her own mind…she'd never been the same…
MAI!
Honda's expression was taut. "She's one of my people. Please…don't kill them…"
"No fear," Jounouchi soothed tightly, "I don't plan to." And at a terse command, Jounouchi's horse stepped forward, carrying him into the ring.
The pair of nomadic warriors stopped. Stared. Two pairs of eyes narrowed in tandem against the glare of the sun, and beneath them, their mounts stirred restlessly.
At the change in their demeanor, Honda reflexively kneed his own mare to guard Jounouchi's flank. He didn't want to raise a blade against any of his people…but there was no way that he could ever allow harm to befall one of his friends.
"Do you understand the words of the gods?" Jounouchi demanded.
The strange man made to answer, but deferred to his companion's hand upon his arm. They exchanged a terse word or two, before the gray stallion turned from the bay mare with a fierce shake of its rider's head, and the man leveled a steely gaze on the pair of them.
Green eyes. Green eyes of such a vibrant emerald shade that nobody could have denied their familiarity. They were large and exotic, and glittered with the promise of a flaming soul, and when the wind lifted the crimson scarf protecting his face, it could be seen that tracing the man's left cheek beneath the well of an eye was the pale white of a scar.
Not you, too…so familiar…
"Yes, we speak that tongue. The better to trick your armies, bring low your guards and free the people you have enslaved!"
"Then lay down your weapons," Jounouchi continued, unflinching, "and do not pursue us further, and we will gladly set you free."
The stranger spat a retort passionately in his own tongue, incomprehensible to Jounouchi and the ring of guard.
"I understand. I will gladly lay down my weapon…across your cowardly neck!"
The red-clad warrior's hand clenched around the drawn blade he still bore, and before he knew what he was doing, Honda's mare leaped into action, landing forefeet first and spitting a spray of sand from her hooves as she slid to a stop.
Directly between Jounouchi and the stranger.
"Try it, and die," Honda threatened in the tongue of the Children of the Horse. The blade he grasped hissed against the wind. The stranger snarled.
"How is it that you understand our tongue? Tell me!" He demanded. Honda's chin raised defiantly. He didn't have time for this. They needed to be back at Yami's side…now!
"Because, once" Honda replied, cooly, "before my people became the lapdogs of a corrupted sorceror-priest, I was one of you."
It was the best reason he'd come up with for fighting against them thus far…and to be honest, Honda was rather proud of it.
The stranger's fist clenched around the grip of his own blade.
"You lie!"
"Tell me how it is that the Blessed of the Southern Wind have become little more than tools of a power-hungering madman. Are you no better than the yapping Children of the Jackal, begging for scraps?"
All that could be heard before the other struck was an incomprehensible growl.
Jounouchi tried to block the stranger's path.
But in eyeblinks, Mai was there between the more experienced swordsman and his protégée, a pair of curving shortswords in her grip.
She locked his sword between her own and threw him off balance as her darkhaired sibling raced behind her.
Jounouchi staggered backwards with a hiss.
Meanwhile, Honda found himself face to face with a daunting adversary. He was of a height with his opponent…just as leggy, just as athletically honed. And he wielded a sword of craftsmanship very like Honda's own.
The wind of his passing grabbed the carmine scarf about his jaw, swept the loose ends from side to side in violent, threatening arcs. He may well have been a desert cobra, for his speed and skill.
The body of a young god, an elfin face, lively green eyes, and a wild mane of blue-black hair tamed into a severe ponytail. The specter grinned, and struck.
The scar flashed across Honda's line of sight, and at last, he understood.
Other eyes had borne that scar. But a scar of black…a tribal mark? He'd always wondered…and always, always just barely resisted the urge to brush his thumb against the slashing mark along that pale cheek; find out whether the downward needle-point of kohl-dark color was makeup or tattoo…
Otogi!
He fended off the first blow, and the second, and at the third, a lunging riposte threw his adversary off-balance long enough to grab a fistful of ponytail and yank Otogi to the ground.
Honda knelt, a knee on the other's chest and a blade threatening his throat, and darted a glance up to see how his comrade fared.
God…no…not Jou…
Mai had the other down, flat on his back, one blade risen in a backspin to lunge down and ram the ugly hammered point through his chest.
But she hadn't…not yet…
Instead, her eyes were wide, fearful as she at last caught sight of Honda and the stricken Otogi and stood frozen in her arrested downward arc.
He meant something to her?
In the back of his mind, the Honda that recognized Otogi for what he was…
…What he meant…
…He was appalled, and terrified to the point of sobbing. It wasn't fair. None of this was any damn fair!
In another few months, if things hadn't calmed down, he would be absolutely, gibbering-insane.
But much later he would allow himself the luxury of tears. Right now, he pressed the blade of his sword harder against the pale arc of Otogi's throat, and leveled a defiant stare on Mai. "Kill him," He shouted hoarsely, in the nomads' tongue, "and he dies as well." A nod of his head down to the choking youth underneath him, the harsh metal edge cuddled into the flesh just to the point of breaking skin.
With a curse, Mai dropped her swords, and Jounouchi took the respite to flip her to the ground. Honda sighed heavily with relief, and turned fearful eyes on Otogi, who glared up at him around the sword.
"Kill me." Otogi's pretty, exotic features were twisted into defiant rage.
I'm sorry…
And with that, Honda cold-cocked him.