Regret (Lady of Toryn Trilogy) (3 page)

It wasn’t a large army, by any
means- Ashlyn had counted eighty-nine soldiers so far, though she couldn’t be
sure how many were still in the tents and the caves.

The location was fairly secure,
flanked on three sides by jagged, ominous cliffs that jutted up above the
trees. The only way in was to approach from the east, coming out of the forest,
but the bare trees would provide very little cover for an army. Ashlyn was
suddenly glad that she hadn’t attempted an attack on her father’s soldiers. The
inexperienced Toryn army would not have fared well in a situation such as this
one.

Ashlyn herself had approached
from the north, scaling the cliffs with little difficulty and dispatching the
scout she found at the top, along with the one who had just climbed up for a
relief shift a few moments ago.

After spending a short time
observing the encampment, she had to admit that finding her father was going to
be more difficult than she’d expected. Initially she had thought that the chosen
location was pretty stupid. All she needed were a few dozen good archers, and
they could easily take out the army from the high ground. But then she realized
that the cliff itself contained a cave, and although there was no way to be
sure of the size of the cave from this vantage point, she had seen most of the
soldiers disappear into and then reappear from its craggy opening in the last
few minutes. There was just no telling how many more troops were already
inside.

She edged backwards, away from
the cliff’s edge and out of sight of the soldiers below, and sat up, chewing
her lower lip contemplatively. There was no way that one ninja, even a ninja as
utterly bad-ass as she was, could possibly fight past eighty-nine soldiers.

She looked down at her outfit,
the traditional gray wool gi belted with dark green leather and soft-soled
black boots. Her green mask was emblazoned with the mark of Toryn- the same as
the soldiers milling around below her.

What if she could
walk
in? Just stroll right into the cave
like she belonged there? She looked as much like a soldier in her father’s army
as any other person in the encampment.

It seemed like a really stupid
and ridiculously simple plan.

But maybe they wouldn’t be
expecting it.

Still…

Ashlyn looked up, noting the
sun’s position in the sky. It was late morning now, and she had wasted precious
minutes watching the camp. Skye would have discovered her absence shortly after
sunrise, and if she knew anything about the blond swordsman, he was already on
his way, probably on horseback. It wouldn’t take him nearly as long to get here
as it had taken her.

Decision made. Ashlyn crawled to
the backside of the cliff and carefully switched knapsacks with the first scout
she’d slain, transferring her belongings and her shuriken into his far more
distinctive-looking blue knapsack and using her gray bag to fashion a new
harness to strap her sword onto her back.With any luck and with her mask on,
the other soldiers would assume she was the scout who had just been relieved.

Gritting her teeth, she skittered
down the side of the mountain, grabbing hold where she could, and sliding
haphazardly where she couldn’t. She jumped the last fifteen feet, tumbling
indelicately into a pile of dead foliage in an extremely un-ninja-like manner.
Whoops.

Brushing leaves off her clothes,
Ashlyn straightened her mask and tucked several errant strands of hair back
into her hood. Okay. No big deal. Get in, get to her father, get out. The
getting out part would be more difficult if her father didn’t cooperate, but if
it came down to that…well, she just had to remember the old proverb about
cutting off the head of the snake. Without her father, there would be no army,
and she was next in line for leadership.

She felt considerably more
confident than she had a few hours ago, but was still unsure about the prospect
of challenging her dad to a Leadership Duel.

Unfortunately, she was out of
time to deliberate over it. Now or never. Do or die.

Ashlyn jogged along the base of
the cliff, keeping under the overhanging ledge in an attempt to stay as
inconspicuous as possible. When she reached the outcropping of rock at the
entrance, she slowed down, forcing herself to walk casually. She could feel her
heartbeat in her throat, pulsing fiercely against her tongue, as she took her
first step into the encampment.

No one even gave her a second
glance, which was almost hilariously anticlimactic after all the different
scenarios she’d conjured up in her mind. Ashlyn made a beeline for the cave
entrance, then deliberately slowed, trying not to look too eager. A soldier
nodded to her as he walked past, and she returned the gesture. He didn’t seem
to notice anything, and kept walking.

Ashlyn glanced up casually,
surveying the cliff face. It was very steep on the inner walls, unlike the
backside of the mountain, which was slanted enough that she could climb up and
down without too much trouble. Although an attack would have been possible with
archers at the top of the mountain, there would have been no way for them to
get down afterwards without going around the long way. This was an ideal
location for an encampment. The only downside that Ashlyn could see was the
extreme cold that plagued the southern half of the island in the winter- but of
course when the war started, it would have been summertime. Presumably when
they’d set up camp here, they hadn’t expected the war to last this long. Ashlyn
suppressed a smile. It appeared as though Kou and her father had underestimated
Jackson and the rest of FLD, just as her father was underestimating her now.

She was struck by the total
silence around her as she wove her way between the tents. In any ordinary camp,
even a military camp, there would be snippets of conversation, and she’d been hoping
that everyone would be chit-chatting so she could attempt to pick out their
dialects and figure out where most of these soldiers were from. But there was
no chatting. No conversation, no joking or laughing or even crying. Just a
whole lot of nothing, unspoken whispers ringing in her ears with the gentle
pad-pad-pad
of her own footsteps.

It was, in a word, unnerving.

But she reached the cave entrance
without ado, and if they were a bunch of strong, silent types, Ashlyn wasn’t
about to fault them for that, just as long as they stayed strong and silent
long enough to let her get to Lord Li.

Her eyes took a moment to adjust
when she stepped inside, and the first thing she noticed was a torch mounted on
the wall opposite her, burning ambitiously but not quite succeeding in chasing
away the shadows around it.

The entrance opened into a large
cavern, with stalactites hanging down from the ceiling like an angry threat,
dripping water on the stone floor. Although the outer edges of the room had dry
ground, the floor’s center was swallowed in a large, shallow puddle.

There weren’t many soldiers
inside- just four, clustered off to one side and sharpening their weapons.
Ashlyn noted with some irritation that one of them was holding an oversized bo
shuriken, much like the one she’d lost several years ago. It wasn’t the same
one- his was made of some burnished orange metal- but it irked Ashlyn to see
anyone using a single large bo shuriken when she had been the one to engineer
the technique as a pre-teen. Most ninjas carried several small bo shuriken in
place of the small hira throwing stars, but Ashlyn had come up with the idea to
forge a larger bo shuriken and use it as both a stabbing and throwing weapon.

And now this little creep had
stolen her idea. She frowned, but didn’t move towards him. Her wounded pride
wasn’t worth blowing her cover over. Instead, she quickly moved towards the lit
corridor at the other end of the cavern, keeping her chin down as she walked.

“You! Scout!” one of the soldiers
against the wall called to her in Toryn, and Ashlyn’s next step faltered, but
she didn’t stop, ducking into the corridor in the following instant.

She broke into a run, keeping her
steps soft and silent, and turned with the corridor as it veered sharply to the
left. She collided with another person, coming from the opposite direction, and
spun as she fell, landing hard on her butt.

“My apologies, Elder,” she said
hurriedly in Toryn, wrinkling her nose to make sure that the mask was still in
place. “I trust you bear no…” She trailed off as she looked up, finding herself
face-to-face with a man she never thought she’d see again.

What?!
Impossible!

She’d watched him fall, watched
his body tumble into the ocean below Na Michico.

Kou’s ebony eyes narrowed as he
stared at her, and Ashlyn froze, unable to think of any excuse for her
presence, any way out of this situation. How was it even possible that he was
alive? It wasn’t! Even if he’d survived the fall, even if he’d survived the
gunshot wound, how had he gotten out of the ocean alive?

Maybe he didn’t recognize her.
The entire lower half of her face was hidden. Ashlyn quickly averted her eyes
and murmured another apology in the lowest voice she could manage, inclining
her head as she picked up the knapsack she’d dropped in the collision and
slowly got to her feet.

“Wait,” he said as she moved to continue
down the corridor, and she stopped, heart pounding so loud that she was sure he
could hear it.

There was the scuff of his boot
against the sandy floor, and she felt his breath on her neck through the fabric
of her hood.

“Tomiko Yasu, of the clan Yasu?”
he said, a playful lilt to his tone as he repeated back to her the false name
she had given him the first day they’d met.

Oh, crap.

Oh
, crap.

“Did you really think you’d make
it in here without anyone noticing?” he murmured. His lips were close to her
ear.

Ashlyn shivered with revulsion,
fists clenching at her sides.

“No,” she said through gritted
teeth. “That’s why I came prepared.”

She tore the shuriken out of her
knapsack and whirled, slicing at his throat. He jumped backwards, the blade
missing him by a hairsbreadth, and attempted a punch, which Ashlyn easily
blocked. She threw a jab into his stomach, making him cry out, and she followed
up with an elbow to the gut. He tried for a leg sweep but she jumped over it,
smashing her fist into his face as she came down.

“You
dog,”
she hissed as he crumpled to the floor. “How dare you make
claim to share the blood of the Li clan? How
dare
you?”

He rolled over onto his back,
still gasping for air, and suddenly there was a gun in his hand, one of the old
DEMON antiques from her father’s display case. Ashlyn backpedaled, but not
quickly enough to escape the noise, and as he squeezed the trigger the
BOOM
reverberated through the corridor
deafeningly, bouncing off the walls and shrilling in her ears. The bullet went
wide-
thank you Drago-
and Ashlyn
kicked the gun out of his hand, stomped on his stomach and leapt over him,
intent on reaching her father before it was too late.

There were three- no, four
soldiers coming down the corridor towards her, blocking the route that would
take her deeper into the cave. Ashlyn turned and exasperatedly jumped over Kou
again, who was now tenaciously trying to draw a knife from its sheath at his
hip.

“Points for effort,” Ashlyn
snapped, yanking the knife from his hands and giving him a satisfying kick to
the face. She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. In such cramped
quarters, it would be difficult to defeat the four soldiers coming from the
opposite direction- on the other hand, if she went back to the cavern, there
could be dozens more waiting for her.

Either way, she didn’t want to be
trapped in this corridor.

She took off at a dead sprint for
the cavern.

Her mind was racing. The
ice
stane in her shuriken was powerful
enough to cause some real damage. She could create a wall of ice across the
cave entrance to prevent the army from getting in. If she made it thick, it
might hold long enough for her to take out whatever soldiers were already in
the cave and then use
reveal
to find
her father.

 
A masked ninja came running down the corridor
towards her, brandishing his katana. Ashlyn didn’t bother slowing down. She brought
her shuriken up and wrenched her wrist, catching the blade between the prongs
of the weapon. The katana snapped in half. She twisted her hand, still running,
and the shuriken caught the soldier in the neck, dragging him with her three
paces before he finally fell.

Ashlyn rushed out of the
corridor, wielding both Kou’s knife and the shuriken. Two soldiers met her as
she came out, and she spun, lashing out with both weapons. The first ninja was
caught by surprise and managed a gurgle before collapsing to the floor of the
cave, but the second one was quick enough to duck under the blades. Ashlyn
glanced over her shoulder, seeing a third ninja just behind her, and danced
backwards as the second one advanced, the puddle on the floor soaking her boots
uncomfortably. She spun to the side as the third one charged from behind. She landed
a swift kick to his back that sent him stumbling straight into the second
soldier’s sword.