"Whispering Blade," he said in a voice like cracked leather. "Can you hold here while I escort those inside to safety?"
Cho nodded. "Why not help me fight Flaming Fist?"
The Century Blade bowed again and turned toward the sanctuary. "The truer test is to do nothing when called to action. Though the reward is often thankless. I will protect those in need of it, and leave the glory to those more suited to it. Good luck, Itami." He stopped at the foot of the first step and turned back for a moment. "He favours his left side. An old injury given by an older opponent."
There was a still a trickling stream of citizens flowing towards the sanctuary, and Cho let them through. Hundred Cuts even half carried an old man up the steps. As the fires grew higher and hotter, the sounds of battle receded, eventually vanishing all together. Cho waited upon the second step, sitting with her saya pulled across her lap, her hand on the hilt of her first sword, Peace.
The first few Flaming Fist soldiers dashed into the courtyard and made a poor attempt to gain the first step. The Red Bull threw them back with his staff, breaking bones and silencing cries of pain. Still Cho waited. Only when Flaming Fist himself appeared, did she rise from the second step.
He was a large man with not a single hair on his head. He rode into the square astride a horse that seemed ill-equipped to carry his weight. Each of his hands was a mess of puckered scars, and weeping wounds. Such is the price a man pays when they regularly light their own fists on fire.
Bandits emerged from dark streets and alleys, following Fist toward the sanctuary and surrounding the three defenders. So many flowed into the clearing that Cho was certain her eyes were playing tricks on her. Hundred Cuts cursed and backed up to the fourth step. Cho smiled and walked down to meet them head on. Even the Red Bull seemed unusually quiet.
"Where is my daughter?" Flaming Fist's voice was a booming thunderclap. Despite the city burning around him, and all the death carried out in his name, he seemed bored.
"I don't know." Cho refused to raise her voice.
Flaming Fist drew in a deep breath, his face curdling as though he smelled something unpleasant. "Kill them."
The soldiers came forward in a wave, some with spears, some with swords, closing in from all directions. There were no tactics to give, no special orders that could turn the tide of the battle, so Cho gave none. She drew Peace into both hands and charged into the oncoming wave, crashing against them, and weaving into their ranks. She dodged, ducked, twirled, and even jumped. Each stroke of Peace was a death, each counterstroke just as deadly. A circle of bodies quickly formed around her, and others rushed in to take their place. She couldn't allow the spears to stab at her from range, so she kept advancing, always closing in on her enemies. Steel fell towards her, clumsy and hacking; she stepped away from some, and brushed others aside. The cobbled streets ran crimson, soaking her sandals and staining her yukata.
The Red Bull of Fades held just beyond the first step, his staff a whirling bludgeon that made corpses almost as easily as Peace. Hundred Cuts danced around the edges of the attacking swarm using her steel fans to injure rather than kill. Injured enemies were often even more useful than dead ones, but not in Flaming Fist's warband. They were not so much soldiers, as bandits drawn together by a strong will and murderous purpose. They didn't stop to give their injured comrades aid, but stepped over the wounded to join the fight.
Cho knew the Red Bull had gone down when the first cheer went up. There was no fighting to his aid, and between sword strokes and bodies dropped, she glimpsed Hundred Cuts die in the attempt. One moment the woman was dancing around steel, flipping over her enemies and leaving slashed faces in her wake, the next she had a spear erupt from her throat. Cho saw the look of horror on Hundred Cuts' face. It was a vision that would stay with her for the rest of her life.
There seemed no end to the bandits crowding in to kill her, and no relent to the crazed blood lust, no matter how many she killed. Through it all Flaming Fist sat atop his horse and watched, his face a picture of scarred boredom.
Cho brought Peace close to her face and spoke to it, a whispered word none other could hear. The blade hummed in response. Her next strikes cut through swords and armour both, sheering them apart as though they were rice paper. Men died grasping at gushing wounds, falling beneath a shimmering, whispering sword they couldn't block, wielded by a master whose skill they couldn't match. But numbers, Cho knew, counted for much, and she was hopelessly outnumbered. As each man fell to her hissing blade, another rushed in to take his place, clambering over the dead bodies to get to her.
It seemed an inevitability when Cho took a glancing sword thrust to the leg. She slashed out at the swordsman, rending his face in two, but the damage was done. Cho could feel herself slowing down. Peace no longer cut through flesh so easily, the edge dull with so much killing. She backed away, parrying and thrusting, as she cut a path towards the sanctuary. Another strike took Cho in the side, the blade tangling in her yukata, but scoring her ribs and pulling a shout of pain from her. Then she was free of the crowd and staggering towards the steps of the sanctuary. Her foot hit that first step and she turned to find the soldiers weren't following. They waited, a bristling thicket of sharped steel pointed her way. There were bodies littering the clearing, flames rising high from the city behind them into the night, ash falling all around like black snow.
Flaming Fist slipped from his horse and pushed aside his warriors as he made his way toward Cho until there was nothing but charged air between them. Each of his fists was wrapped in an oily chain, but he had yet to set fire to them. "Is this the way you wish to die, Whispering Blade?"
Cho drew herself up, standing straighter again despite the pain. Her breathing was laboured and her leg was wet with blood. She glanced down at her second sword, bound into its saya, but she wouldn't draw it. Not even with death staring her in the face. She had sworn an oath never to draw that sword, and it was one oath she intended to keep. Perhaps the only one she had ever kept. She tightened her grip on Peace, and set her stance, ready to repel a stronger attacker.
Flaming Fist snorted and threw his chained hands up. "Kill her."
His men flowed around him like a wave and crashed upon Cho. She took down two of them before the first sword slid between her ribs. The wielder hit the ground before she did, Peace lodged in his neck. The second cut took the fight from her, the pain as it pierced something vital inside beyond maddening. Two more swords thrust into her chest and Whispering Blade died with a scream.
Chapter 2
Itami Cho - Whispering Blade
Some swords strike with a growl, some with a roar.
Some shake the battle like a rock slide, some bring ruin like a wild flame.
But there is one sword that passes with but a whisper, and you shall know it for it says:
Death has been here.
When she woke, Cho couldn't tell if she was still screaming, or just remembering her last moments. The pain of having so much steel pierce her seemed a nightmare, but it was over now. The sun beat down upon her, a new day even though she had been certain she wouldn't see another one. She breathed in fresh morning air and coughed it out stale. It took her a moment to realise she was lying on the ground, outside the sanctuary of Kaishi, one living body amongst so many dead. There were corpses everywhere, and the smell of burning tasted rank in the back of her mouth. A light breeze whisked through the courtyard, carrying with it the stench of so many dead.