What few attempts Kazuchiyo did make at escape ceased when they came to the battlefield. In the waning light Shimegahara was sickly and gray, its grasses matted down by bodies strewn in all directions, an unceasing drone of dying men seeping between the raindrops. Men in dark armor were walking up and down the plains with swords in hand, putting an end to any enemy breath they came upon. The corpses were piled so high that the figures moving among them may as well have been hellish oni overseeing the torture of the damned. So many of his father’s men, slaughtered and rotting. The stench was enough to choke.

And above it all there rose a voice—a cry, bellowing and piercing at once, roiling like ocean waves across the weary plain. Someone was still fighting, more creature than man by the sound of it. Kazuchiyo could not lift his head to see, could not know whose soldier could wail with such agony and hate, if even it were a human being at all. A mad hope overcame him that it was somehow his father, a dragon transformed, made furious with revenge for his fallen army.

The horse stopped, and Kazuchiyo was yanked roughly from the saddle, into the grabbing hands of yet more soldiers. They dragged him over bodies and broken banners, and one of his sandals came loose, trapped by a man’s armpit. It was all he could do to stay upright, and still he didn’t fight, until passing over an embankment brought him to his father.

It was not the Red Dragon of Suyama who still fought. He was kneeling in the sludge, the tufted shafts of arrows sticking straight out from his chest and back in half a dozen places, his armor hanging off, his helmet shattered nearby. It was not the arrows that had felled him; two Aritaka soldiers stood on either side of him, their spears plunged into his hips keeping him pinned. The earth surrounding him was stained black. Kazuchiyo could only stare, uncomprehending. His father’s silhouette broken among the heaps deadened him, and it wasn’t until he was shoved to the ground himself that he realized the man was staring back at him.

Shigenaga’s eyes were so heavy. He was past the point of feeling pain and was shivering, half slumped against one of the spears buried in him. When he opened his mouth, only blood came out, no strength in him to voice words. Kazuchiyo tried to push to his feet, to run to him, but the surrounding men swept his legs out from under him. They pushed his chest into the dirt.

“There,” said a deep voice, and Kazuchiyo strained to find the source. “He lives, as promised. And he will continue to live, from now until the end of his days, as my son.”

Shigenaga’s mouth twisted in a snarl, and he tried again to speak, only for coughing and gagging to follow. As he struggled, Kazuchiyo managed to raise his head, and at last laid eyes on his enemy: Aritaka Souyuu, the Great Bear of the North. His body was broad and hulking, his dark armor weathered and stained, and atop his head sat the helmet passed to him by his father, crafted from oxen horns. Kazuchiyo had seen him only once before, and at the time found in him no reason to be impressed. Now, he was frozen, and at his mercy.

Lord Aritaka was not alone: In addition to his many surrounding generals and foot soldiers, a figure stood beside him that Kazuchiyo had never seen, nor had any inkling of their origin. In the dark and rain it was impossible to tell even if it was man or woman or something else, their form being draped in the thick robes of a holy emissary, their long hair swept back from a narrow, sloping face. The stranger was entirely unconcerned in Aritaka’s boasting or in Shigenaga’s slow and agonizing death, their attention instead fixed on something in the distance. Perhaps they were listening to the howl that even then continued to ripple across the battlefield.

“You were always a worthy rival,” Lord Aritaka was saying, and Kazuchiyo watched in mounting horror as he motioned two of his generals forward. “And you deserve a worthy death.”

Both unsheathed their swords. The first moved behind the prone Shigenaga, the second squatted before him, offering up his blade. Kazuchiyo shook, helplessly transfixed, as his father accepted and the men took up familiar positions. But then then two spear-bearers stepped back, wrenching their blades from Shigenaga’s torso, and he lurched. Fresh blood spilled out from beneath his armor and his already pale face went white. Though he caught himself on his palms, keeping himself partially upright was the most his strength could bear. He couldn’t angle the sword toward his belly.

“Kazu…” he choked out, and he lifted his head, his eyes pleading. Kazuchiyo pulled against his bindings in futility. “Kazuchiyo, you—”

The first general struck. His katana cleaved through Shigenaga’s vertebrae in one clean stroke, severing his head from his body. Kazuchiyo watched, numb, as it rolled a few meters down the slope to rest at Aritaka’s feet. Though the eyes went swiftly dull, they stared back at Kazuchiyo relentlessly, locked in a final image of anguish.

Lord Aritaka sighed. “Put it with the others,” he said.

“Yes, my lord,” said the figure beside him, in a deep and craigly feminine voice. She removed a silk bag from the inside of her kariginu and collected Shigenaga’s head with as much respect as could be shown given the circumstances. “And the boy?”

“Like I said—he comes with us.”