Season One • Chapter 33
They came through the western gate in a broken stream --- the party, what remained of Kibou's defenders, civilians who had not evacuated in time, people carrying things and people carrying nothing, all of them moving west under a sky that was beginning to lighten toward dawn and was lit orange in the east by things that were not the sunrise.
Lyra ran the count without being asked. It was something Haruki would have done.
Rask came down from above and fell into step beside Freyja. He looked at the gate behind them and then looked forward and said nothing.
Izel was bleeding from a cut above his ear. He had not mentioned it.
Freyja's shield arm was shaking with the effort of holding the shield up. She had not lowered it.
They moved.
1.5 kilometres from the gate, Hayate stopped.
The others went a few steps further before they noticed, then stopped too. Lyra turned first.
He was facing east. Behind them Kibou burned --- not all of it, not yet, but enough, the smoke rising thick and dark against the early sky. The watchtowers were still standing. One of them was on fire. The gate they had come through was still visible, small with distance.
Gallu would not pursue them immediately. Hayate knew that. Gallu had what he wanted. The town, the supplies, the weapons market that had been feeding the frontline, the strategic position at the centre of the defensive line. He would consolidate. He would not hurry after a handful of survivors when he had just taken a city.
They were safe, in the immediate sense of the word.
Hayate looked at the smoke for a long time.
He thought about Kasumi. The way smoke looks when a place that meant something is burning. The way it smells. The way the sky takes on a specific quality that you do not forget and do not want to remember and cannot stop remembering.
He had been ten years old the first time.
He thought about a rapier chosen from a barrel for five silver because it was cheap and they had thirty-five coins between them and the world was enormous and frightening and they had nothing but each other.
He thought about Haruki at seventeen, becoming steady overnight because someone had to be.
He thought --- what would father do?
And for the first time in his life, standing in front of the smoke, he thought --- what would Haruki do?
He turned back to face the others. They were watching him. Freyja with her shield arm still shaking. Rask on the ground for once, wings folded. Izel bleeding quietly. Lyra with her hand near the raven pendant at her throat, not quite touching it.
He looked at all of them.
"We keep moving" he said.
His voice was steady. He was not sure how. He held onto it anyway, the way you hold onto something that belongs to someone important.
He started walking west.
After a moment, one by one, they followed.
The smoke rose behind them into a sky that was almost morning. Kibou burned. The road west was long and the world was large and eighty-three percent of it belonged to the demons and the seven races held what remained not because they were winning but because they had refused to stop.
They walked.
END OF SEASON 1