The noise and the haze and the smell of the battlefield overwhelmed my senses. Instinctively, I wanted to be nowhere near the body, even if moving away from it… from him… that was once a person, put me in the line of the fire from the archers. Not even bothering to stifle my screams – no one would be able to hear my voice above the cacophony anyway – I scrambled away from the corpse, hoping that would give me enough perspective to figure out what to do next. It wasn't as if I could have battled my way out of this, even if the Kanamori vassals had let me keep my sword.
All I could do was run a few staggering steps, then throw myself onto the ground again as a hail of arrows whizzed overhead. They hadn't been close enough to harm me, but diving out of the way had been an automatic response.
Get out, get out, get out.
I half crawled, half-rolled behind a line of adult-sized wooden arrow shields, with my dark fur cloak pulled over my head for extra protection.
For the moment, I would be temporarily safe, at least until either army moved.
Should I try to use the device that had sent me here? I examined the thing closely, but there was nothing that hinted on how it worked. No. Not a good idea to tempt fate. Until I could learn how to operate it, I was better off not messing with it. For all I knew, the thing would send me to a time with dinosaurs. Instead, I carefully put the strange device in my kimono, securing it with my sash.
More arrows whizzed overhead, these much close than the first wave. This shelter was about to become far less safe. Cautiously, I peeked out. There was a grove of trees about... I don't know… through the haze it was hard to judge… fifty? A hundred meters away?
If I was going to get out of here alive, it would be with my feet, and I would need to have enough luck that neither side clocked me as an enemy and engaged me in their fight. My green kimono wouldn't place me with either army - there were red and black clad warriors on one side and blue, black and whi- I finally recognized those were Uesugi battle flags carried by the opposing force.
More rotten luck. The only Uesugi allies I knew were Sasuke, who was in the future now, and Yoshimoto, who was probably staring down at the untrampled snow below the castle walls of Genba. There was no one I could surrender to and declare myself to be on their side.
Having confirmed that I was going to have to run for it, I tried to make my feet move. But this wasn't like a cave or a box where the danger was in my head. It was everywhere.
In fact, I could only thank a little pocket of dead bodies for my continued survival. Everyone around me was dead, and the dead don't—
Someone groaned-
Rise?
Zombies. It wanted only that.
No, don't be stupid. Just because time travel was possible didn't mean that zombies were too. Clearly I was not the only person hiding behind the dead.
Where was the source of the noise?
The groan came again… there… from somewhere to my left.
A man was slumped to the ground, his hand clutching a bleeding shoulder. How badly was he injured? No identifiable uniform on him. He might be a peasant or farmer who had waited too late to flee. An unlike an injured warrior, whose fellow samurai would come looking for him, a lost peasant would be doomed to lie here until he either died on his own, or was murdered by scavengers.
I couldn't abandon a civilian.
I took one last regretful look at my path to the trees before crawling over to help him up. "Sir, how badly are you- Aki?!"
Aki.
I had found my father after all.
Iekane had indeed been the key. "Aki!" At the last moment, I recalled his injury and stopped myself from throwing my arms around his neck.
At the sound of my voice, Aki turned his face to mine. He squinted as if I were a mirage. "Katsu. I told you to stay in the tree." His eyes fluttered, and I hurried to brace myself under his shoulder … the uninjured one. Even that movement made him groan in pain.
Automatically I pulled aside his clothing to see how bad the wound was. Already, threads of dirty cloth were sticking to –
A bullet wound?
I hadn't heard any gunfire. But if at least one of the armies out here was using muskets, then we needed more cover than the flimsy wooden barrier I had just abandoned.
In that moment, it started to rain.
Oh of course. Rain. Sure. Why not.
"My lord! Oh, my lord!" There was an agonized yell somewhere behind us. "Please my lord, you must wake up!" I glanced over my shoulder to see a column of Uesugi warriors, who had formed a protective circle around a fallen man.
"Uesugi fools! Prepare yourselves!" I ducked down, pulling Aki with me, but the red and black clad warrior went charging past us without a glance. His target was the Uesugi.
"The enemy is here! You will not succeed in killing our lord!" And then with a clang and a thud, he too joined the pile of bodies on the dirt.
The battle smoke was growing thicker, and then a man – a man dressed in modern clothing - staggered out of the battle smoke, looking disoriented and scared. Had Iekane's device pulled someone else into the Sengoku?
He stared at the newly dead warrior. "He's… dead?"
I'd been so distracted by the sight of lab coat and pants, that I recognized the voice before his face. That's …
Sasuke.
Seeming to be in shock, Sasuke turned to the cluster of Uesugi warriors. Had he come back from his trek to modern Japan to discover his friends at war?
One of the Uesugi was frantically shaking a collapsed man. "He lurched over then he just… fell. He wasn't wounded - He's not breathing!"
Sasuke stepped up to the group, and said something to them that I was too far away to hear.
But it didn't matter. I knew where we were. Or unfortunately, when we were.
"The wormholes don't seem to care what sort of chaos they anchor to. Mai ended up in Honno-ji during the fire. I arrived right in the middle of a battle in 1578. In the middle of a battlefield. And, er, immediately created a temporal paradox by giving CPR to Kenshin."
Fifteen seventy eight.
Iekane's device had sent me back in time, not forward. That wasn't battlefield smoke that Sasuke had just walked through. It was the wormhole. The wormhole which was just about to dissipate. "Aki! Can you run? At all?"
He looked at me, his face a map of pain. "Katsu? I told you to stay in the tree."
Enough with the tree! I pointed to the wormhole. "We need to leave."
He looked, then nodded, and said through gritted teeth. "Which one is it?"
Does it matter? "Honno-ji, maybe?" That's the one Sasuke used. "Or would you rather take your chances on the battlefield?"
In the cluster of Uesugi, Sasuke was performing mouth to mouth on the fallen man - Kenshin. This was his past, and I couldn't interfere. Who knows what that would do to the already snarled timeline? Without waiting for Aki's reply, I yanked him to his feet, hoping the momentum would propel him into action.
He took a few stumbling steps forward, then the adrenaline kicked in, and we ran toward the wormhole, pushing our way into the writhing grey. It was unpleasant, but the air was no longer tainted by the smell of death. For the second time that day, I felt that fog slide though me, but in an instant, it dissolved again, leaving us in a swirl of blinding white.
This is new.
Cold. Wet.
A snowstorm.
Had I gotten Aki to Genba?
I looked around, but there was no sight of the castle wall, or that cloying forest of twisted trees.
Seven years ago, the wormhole had dumped Toshiie and me into a blizzard in the Togakushi mountain range. It had been Aki who had rescued me. Had I come full circle? Had I gone back in time again… was it now 1575? Was this my past?
With two trips through a wormhole in less than two hours, it was possible I was losing my mind. Ponderable for Sasuke, if I ever see him again, does frequent wormhole travel cause psychosis?
Next to me, Aki groaned, a reminder that I had a much bigger physical problem to deal with.
Right. Blizzard now, nervous breakdown later.
Thank God I hadn't taken off the warm cloak that Yoshimoto had given me. But Aki wasn't outfitted as warmly. Was he shivering? He half stood, half crouched, his hand still on his shoulder wound. "Aki?" He didn't look up. "Dad?"
He stilled, turned to face me, his expression one of regret. "I'm sorry you found out that way – I wanted to tell you before."
In spite of my intention to wait until we weren't in danger of being flash frozen, I couldn't stop my snarky response. Too much exposure to Mitsuhide's banter. "Yeah. I mean, if you had time to write a letter, then why not just-"
"Letter?" He squinted at me in confusion. There was a long pause, where, knowing Aki as well as I did, I knew he was making some kind of calculation in his head. "Read my letter you did."
"Sounding more like Yoda than Anakin, you are." The joking was a natural response, but I was relieved that he seemed to be lucid. "Of course I read your letter – what did you think I was talking about?"
Rather than answer me, he used my shoulder as leverage and pushed himself to his feet. For a moment, he only gazed at the horizon.
"When were you shot?" I paused, realizing that 'when' wasn't useful here. "I mean how long ago?"
"Several hours before you arrived." He rubbed his fingers together. I offered him my fur cloak, thinking at least we could trade off but he shook his head, then groaned slightly. "I'm too big." With a grimace carefully poked at his wound. "Finally clotted."
Or froze, more likely. The wind punctuated my thought by slingshotting ice crystals right at me. We needed to find shelter and soon. I spun around, looking for some kind of environmental context as to where we were. Clearly not Kyoto, as no temple was in sight. The ground was sloping, and I could just see a line of cedar trees. There were cedar trees in the modern -"Togakushi Shrine?" And yet that didn't feel correct. It had been seven years sure I've seen modern Japan, but the Togakushi range was Aki's territory and I had been through there dozens of times in my Sengoku life.
Aki looked around. "No, but we're not far from Kawaguchi Shine, I believe."
"Kofu?!" We were in Kofu? Not quite taking his word for it, I oriented myself and spun to look what would be uphill. And while I couldn't see much of it in this weather, Aki was correct. We were near the base of Mount Fuji. Had we come through a third wormhole? Or no, maybe they just manifested where they pleased, with no care where they dumped their passengers.
At the moment, did it really matter which mountain we were on? Contemplating the nature of wormholes in the middle of a blizzard was a one way ticket to extinction. Maybe that was what had happened to the dinosaurs.
Shelter was the first order of business. "There's a village near the shrine, yes?"
He was quiet a very long moment then said, "There is in modern Japan. I am very much afraid we're still in the Sengoku."
"How can you tell?" We were getting close to whiteout conditions.
"When you've travel through as many times as I have, it becomes easier." There was something about the statement that felt sad, and plaintive, or maybe he was just in pain, so I didn't question him, I simply ducked under his shoulder again and started moving.
Even knowing there was no village near the shrine, my instinct was to go downhill, not up. Maybe we'd at least find a farmer eventually. Even in the warm clothes and cloak I had on, I was beginning to feel the chill. Keeping moving was better. Aki, with his blood loss and unseasonal clothing, had to be even colder. I put my arm around him, and nudged him onward. "Come on, Old Man."
"You are highly lacking in filial piety," he muttered.
"Keep moving; I want a father, not a Popsicle." I pulled him along another step, as he acknowledged my pun with a bark of laughter.
We were moving, at least... but if this storm didn't let up, I doubted we could continue at this pace.
"Found you in a blizzard," he said a little while later. He'd been quiet for a bit, so I was relieved he was still lucid.
"Did you know I would be there? Did you pull us back in time?" No response. Whether he was back to conserving energy, or just refusing to answer, I didn't know. Instead, I concentrated on moving forward, face down from the wind, as pellets of icy snow hit my face.
Sho would be pissed that I just ruined a month of skin treatment. Thinking of her led to thoughts of Mitsuhide. What had he thought when he saw me vanish over the side of the castle? Did he regret letting me go, not once but twice? No, I could not think that way. Had he not allowed me to leave, I would not have found. Aki. No matter what happened, I at least had this. I put my arm around my father's waist and helped him press forward.
Though it was less effort to go downhill, the trek was hazardous, as the snow hid and slicked over all manner of stones and debris. Even though were were proceeding with caution, Aki slipped on something, stumbled, then fell to his knees.
He stayed there for a moment, clothes soaking up the snow, head bowed, breath rapid.
"Come on." I tugged on the non-injured arm.
He scowled at me. "You know this would better for you... if you left me."
"Like you left her?" Whoops. Did not mean for that to come out.
Like I left Mitsuhide?
I slapped that nasty voice away. No. That was different. Mitsuhide hadn't needed me. Not the way Mayumi had needed my father. When I left him, I didn't leave something broken behind me.
"Katsu, I need you to leave me here. You have to find and protect Hiko. And make sure the others..." he trailed off, squinted at me. "I don't know which one you are."
Shit. Was he delirious? "I'm Katsu. Katsuko. You know the only one who's a girl." At the very least he ought to be able to tell the difference between me and Takauji. My ears didn't stick out. "And Hiko is fine. Yoshimoto sent him to Kasugayama with an escort of Takeda mitsumono."
"That's not what I-." He coughed, but at least this time he climbed to his feet. He leaned on my shoulder. "Lay on MacDuff."
"I thought it was lead on, MacDuff?"
"It is not. Apparently I neglected your Shakespearean education."
"Well, it would have been anachronistic anyway." I think.
Step, Step, Step. It was almost a march.
Step.
Step.
Step.
I felt like I was taking on more of Aki's weight with every passing moment. How much ground had we covered?
Time blurred into whiteness that was only interrupted by the pain of the ice when the wind struck at a certain angle.
I had only the knowledge that we were still going downhill as confirmation that we were still heading toward some form of civilization, although in this weather, we could have passed within a meter of a house or shrine and not seen it.
It was becoming harder to feel my feet under me.
Could be worse. Could be dinosaurs.
As I thought that, something dark and shaggy burst out of one wall of white barking wildly.
Not a dinosaur.
Wolf.
I'm definitely going to stop thinking how things could be worse.
With Aki draped over me, I couldn't reach the one dagger Iekane's vassals hadn't taken from me. "Nice wolf. Just a big shaggy cousin of a dog." I had no actual hope that speaking in a soothing tone would help. I did hope that it wasn't hungry. Or territorial. Or-
Slurp!
I certainly had not expected that the wolf would jump on me and lick my face and knock us all over. "Good wolf." I hesitantly patted it. Aki was semi-conscious at this point. The wolf sniffed the air, yipped three times then howled. The sound split the atmosphere, cutting sharply through the snow.
Maybe the licking was his way of tenderizing my skin for a big old group dinner.
I winced as the wolf howled again.
Then, faintly, I heard someone yell, "Muramasa!"
The wolf yipped in response, then a large shape emerged before us. A man on a horse. "Muramasa stop that." He turned to address us. "I'm sorry. He's friendly, but he doesn't normally bother strange-" He broke off with a sharp exclamation. "Katsuko? What the hell are you doing out here?"
Who are you?