“A fine performance,” he smiled. “My compliments.”
Yukiko bowed deeply.
“You honor me, great Lord.”
A nearby bushimen unlocked the iron gate leading into the pit. Yoritomo handed the man his breather mask and stepped inside. Golden breastplate, small wings on his back, broad swathes of red silk dragging a trail through the straw. He walked toward Yukiko, one casual hand on the hilt of the oldfashioned daishō swords at his waist. The Elite retinue filed in behind him, the whirr and hiss of ō-yoroi amplified in the vast, circular space. The last Iron Samurai through the door held up his hand to stop Hiro entering, slammed the bolt home with a clang, locking the gate behind him.
“I think perhaps you missed your calling, Yukiko-chan,” Yoritomo said, stepping closer. “Instead of a hunter, perhaps you should have been a playwright?”
“My Lord?”
BEWARE.
“Oh, indeed,” he nodded. “Such pleasant fictions you might have woven.”
Yoritomo moved, viper-fast, seizing Yukiko by her wrist and hyper-extending her elbow into an agonizing armbar lock. Buruu roared, a terrible, booming report cracking across the stone, lunging toward the Shōgun. Two Iron Samurai stepped forward, drawing their weapons and shouting a challenge. Buruu’s talons opened one up across his stomach; soft, feeble meat inside a thin tin can. The body tumbled away, spooling a writhing mess of entrails. Yoritomo twisted Yukiko’s arm behind her back, drew his wakizashi and held it to the girl’s neck. The second samurai swung his growling blade with a fierce cry, only to see his arm bitten off at the elbow, Buruu’s beak shearing through the iron like hot steel through snow. The man’s scream was high-pitched; a long quavering note of disbelief.
“Hold, or she dies!” Yoritomo shouted. “She dies, I swear it!”
YUKIKO.
Buruu!
Buruu stopped short, eyes ablaze with fury, talons sending a shower of sparks across the arena floor. Yoritomo’s face was pale, pupils dilated, dragging air through clenched teeth as he pulled Yukiko backward toward the gate. The arashitora took a few hesitant steps toward them, growl building in his throat, vibrating across the pools of blood beneath his feet. Ripples in the scarlet.
“No closer,” Yoritomo warned. “I’ll cut this whore’s throat.”
The growl spilled over into another roar.
“He does understand me.” Yoritomo twisted Yukiko’s arm, eliciting a gasp of pain. “No smarter than a dog, eh?”
“My Lord, what goes on here?” Hiro cried, fists wrapped around the bars of the gate.
“Betrayal,” Yoritomo spat, eyes never leaving the arashitora. “The vile reek of treason.”
“My Lord?”
Yoritomo nodded to the other samurai and they seized Yukiko’s arms, one apiece, dragging her backward in a grip of smoke and iron. Her hair was a tangled curtain over her face, pitch-black on pale skin. She stared up at Yoritomo with unbridled hatred in her eyes, struggling in those implacable, chipowered grips. He smiled, placed the tip of his wakizashi beneath her jaw and forced her chin up, parting the hair away from her face with the razored point.
“You think yourself a clever fox, eh? Clever enough to outwit the Lord of all Shima?” An empty chuckle. “Pathetic little girl.”
He slapped her, striking downward, the weight of his body behind the blow. Her head snapped to the right, the crack of skin on skin louder than a bullwhip. A grunt, cheek splitting, bright red spraying through the air. Buruu lost his mind, charged forward with a terrible, blood-flecked roar, claws tearing chunks out of the rock. Yoritomo drew the iron-thrower from his belt, pressed the snub-nosed barrel against Yukiko’s temple and forced the girl to her knees.
Buruu reached the edge of his tether, chain snapping taut, links groaning dangerously as two tons of momentum was pulled up short. The iron spike in the floor bent forty-five degrees, making a high-pitched squeal, flakes of metal shedding like old skin. Buruu roared, spittle and tongue and rolling eyes, talons swiping the air five feet from Yoritomo’s face.
“Enough!” Yoritomo pulled the hammer back on the iron-thrower.
Buruu fell still, breath heaving in his lungs, shaking with adrenalin and rage. He whined, feral and grating, trembling haunches and wild eyes. His tail whipped from side to side, claws digging into the stone beneath his paws.
“Swords,” Yoritomo barked.
With their free hands, the surviving Iron Samurai drew their katana and kicked them to life. The serrated growling of the blades drowned out the moans of their dying comrade. The man rolled about in a widening pool of blood, clutching the stump where his arm used to be.
“If the beast even coughs in my direction, take this bitch’s head off.”
“Hai!”