Read Emperor of the Eight Islands: Book 1 in the Tale of Shikanoko (The Tale of Shikanoko series) for Free Online Page B

obeyed. The arrow slammed into the unprotected neck. The blood sprayed in an arc of scarlet glistening in the first rays of sunlight. Dust rose in golden motes as the horse reared and the man fell.
    The other riders halted and fell back as the bandits surged forward, Akuzenji in the lead. He had slid from his horse, seized the topknot of the fallen man with a yell of triumph, and was in the act of severing the head when there came a pounding of hooves, the shouting of men, and a host of armed warriors appeared. At their head was Lord Kiyoyori.

 
    5
    KIYOYORI
    Kiyoyori was possessed by both rage and exhilaration as he surveyed the kneeling prisoners. All that day they had been held in the riding ground between the stables and the residence, under a chill wind, for the weather had changed suddenly, bringing the first intimation of winter.
    The rage was against the disloyalty of his retainer, Enryo, who had taken his horse and died in his place. The exhilaration was for his survival, for the stallion’s survival, for the painful deaths already suffered by some of those who had wanted his, and for the imminent execution of the rest.
    Enryo’s wife had revealed everything before she died: Akuzenji’s scheme to take Kiyoyori’s head, letters between his brother, Masachika, and Enryo, their desire to see Akuzenji’s plan succeed and to seize the opportunity to regain the estate. His rage extended to his own wife, whom he had not yet questioned though she had been waiting for him, pale but dry-eyed, when he returned from the skirmish. She had expressed appropriate amazement at the audacity of the attack and equally suitable relief at her husband’s survival, yet he felt she was lying. Of course it was not her fault that two old men had agreed to trade her between two brothers, but since she obviously had no deep feelings for him it was not unreasonable to suspect she might still harbor some for Masachika. She stood to benefit as much as anyone from Kiyoyori’s death.
    He thought for the thousandth time of his dead wife. If only Tsuki had lived!
    If I had, you would not own Matsutani—would you really be willing to pay such a price?
    He heard her teasing laugh and, looking across the riding ground, saw her standing in the front row among the prisoners. Surely it was her? The long black hair reaching to the ground, the slender form … he would recognize them anywhere even after eight years.
    “I am sorry, lord,” one of his men, Hachii Sadaike, said at his side. “She refuses to kneel; she has stood like that all day.”
    Oh, my beloved! You must be cold. One day in the frost and eight years in the grave.
    “Lord Kiyoyori?” Sadaike said.
    He came back to his senses. “Who is she?”
    “A woman who rode with the bandits.”
    He looked at her and saw she was not Tsuki, though there was a resemblance. While he wondered at it, their eyes met. Once he had been close to a lightning strike and had felt all his hair stand on end. He experienced the same jolt now.
    The woman bowed her head and fell to her knees before him. She would kneel for no one else but she would for him. An almost uncontrollable passion seized him, a desire stronger than he had ever known. He would have the whole band executed at once and then he would have her brought to him.
    He had thought to devise some special punishment for Akuzenji, boiling him alive or sawing his head off slowly, to dissuade anyone else from daring to attack the Kuromori lord, but now his impatience would brook no delay. He was about to order Sadaike to take the woman aside and remove the heads of the rest, when the sky darkened and a shadow loomed over the riding ground. It swooped low over Kiyoyori’s head and then rose to sit on the gable of the roof behind him. As he spun around to look at it, it began to call in a voice so ugly that everyone whose hands were not tied behind their backs immediately covered their ears.
    Kiyoyori called for archers to shoot it down and his