Ayane and Sou walked through the carnage of the battlefield. They had won, but it was hard to call it a win. It was a surprise attack meant to dishearten and confuse the Yashiro forces, and it had certainly done that. Scores of Sou’s men lay dead amongst the Wada. The northern part of the camp lay in ruins. Tents had been knocked down, destroyed and set on fire, and hundreds of men were dead.

“What I want to know is where did they come from?” Ayane asked. “How did so many men manage to get this close before anyone saw them?”

Sou grunted. He wiped his forehead, smearing more blood. “That witch.”

The witch? What did they call her, Izue? Could she really have done this?

“I think you’re giving her a little too much credit.”

“Perhaps.” Sou said nothing more. Men began the task of recovering what they could of the camp remains, moving further south with the rest of the men.

“Hey, this one’s still alive!”

One of Sou’s men pulled up a soldier from beneath a pile of dead bodies. He was bloody and weak but still breathing. Sou stormed over to him. He grabbed the soldier by the front of his shirt and pulled him up in the air as though he were a child.

“How did you find us without anyone seeing you?” he growled. “How did you get into the camp?!”

The man laughed, a strangled laugh, blood running down his chin. He flopped in Sou’s grip like a rag doll as he shook him.

“How?!”

He continued laughing. The sound was off-putting, to say the least. His hand moved towards his waist, grabbing for something tucked inside.

“Sou, look out!” Ayane screamed.

The man pulled out a small dagger, but instead of stabbing Sou his hand swiftly moved upwards as he stabbed himself in the neck. Blood slowly ran down over Sou’s hand and the body went limp.

“What the…?”

Sou dropped the body. He turned to look at Ayane, confusion written across his face. The man would rather kill himself than give up his secrets. What kind of people were they fighting against here?

“She said the fun’s just beginning,” Sou began, flicking the dead man’s blood off his hand. “I suppose this is what she meant.”

“What are you going to do?” Ayane asked.

“If she thinks her tricks and attempts to confuse and scatter my army are going to send me running home with my tail between my legs, well she’s got another thing coming. If I have to pull down every single rock of that castle wall by hand, by the gods I will.”

Ayane nodded. It seemed unlikely that Sou would leave the area in defeat. He would rather die first.

“Thank you, by the way.”

Ayane looked up, confused. “Hmm? For what?”

“For still being here. For not running off like you could have. I know Toshio and the others are hard on you, and really you have no reason to stick by me…”

“I doubt I would have gotten very far before you followed to cut my head off anyway.” Ayane laughed, trying to lighten the situation. It was silly of her to think he hadn’t expected her to run. He no doubt had contingency plans in place in-case she did. Maybe he’d just been testing her, to see if she would try to escape.

“When we get back home… once we’ve dealt with this situation… I’m going to talk to father. I’m going to petition to have you returned home.”

“… oh.”

Ayane was unsure of what to say. After thinking about it so much it was the last thing she expected to hear from Sou. She was confused. Of course she wanted to return home, very little else had filled her thoughts for the last year now. The urge to run had been strong. She had very nearly done it. Now here she was, in the aftermath of her first battle - fighting for her enemy, no less - being told that she may soon be allowed to return home.

But she had also grown fond of Sou. He was like the big brother she never had. Ayane’s father was already quite old by regular standards when she was born. He was a great father and she loved him with all her heart, but there was always some kind of gap between them, and she often wished she had an elder brother or sister, someone closer in age that she could talk to.

Then Sou came along. He had taught her a lot over the last year and treated her as family. They trained together. They ate together. He taught her swordsmanship and she taught him calligraphy. Sou alone had celebrated Ayane’s birthday with her last month, and he even gave her a hand carved wooden statue; a blue robin. The gesture had touched Ayane more than words could say. Putting aside the strange situation in which they had met, she had become attached to Sou, she realised. She would be sad to leave him.

“I… I don’t know what to say.”

“Until then,” Sou continued with a cough, as though nothing had happened, “we need to figure out our next move. We can’t just keep reacting to what they throw at us.”

Ayane smiled. He never was the best with feelings.

Toshio came walking towards them, stepping carefully through the dead bodies. He cast a cursory glance at Ayane before looking up at Sou.

“I don’t like this, Sou. It’s one thing for a single person to appear and disappear, but for this many men to just magically appear out of nowhere, without warning… I don’t like it. Not to mention the yokai that was working for them. It’s unheard of! We don’t know what else they might be capable of.”

“You’re saying you want to run?” Sou asked.

“No,” Toshio retorted. “I’m saying whether the rumours are true or not, that woman is dangerous, and they know these lands far better than we do. We can’t even get close enough to the castle to figure out a way in yet, every man that’s approached it has been killed on sight.”

“I’m aware of this.”

“We need to find out how to deal with that woman, and we need a way to get into that castle, or they’re just going to continue picking us off one by one. They can afford to take their time. We cannot.”

Sou nodded, scratching his chin. Stubble had begun to grow, giving him a more weary look. “I know. I’m working on it.”

Toshio nodded, cast Ayane another glance and walked away.

“You have a plan?” she asked.

Sou looked over at Kazu, piling dead bodies in a heap.

“I’m working on it,” he repeated. “Anyway, I’m going to get cleaned up. You should do the same. Blood doesn’t suit you.”

As he began to head back to camp his words continued to weigh heavily on her mind. Return to her family. Freedom. So why did she feel so bad about it?