泣く槍 | Nakuyari

9 章

Arrows screamed from above, a dozen barbed tongues promising death all at once as they buried themselves around Hessael and Takemune. She pulled him behind her and pushed him away from the lethal rain, as she raised her magitek gauntlets to deflect the incoming fire. One managed to sink deep into her shoulder, throwing her back from the impact as she instinctively broke the arrow at the shaft and squeezed it head-first out of her flesh. Unhooking the clasp to her cloak, it billowed in the breeze as she whipped it in wide circles in front of her, scattering the incoming arrows.


"Flee, Takemune!" Hessael turned her head to bark at the noble. Takemune nodded dumbly, scrambling to his feet as he soon slammed against the walls of a shuttered shop. He turned on his heel to sprint down the alleyway.

Hessael had only barely noticed the bright flash of angry steel out the corner of her vision before she dove onto the street, rolling out of the way of Kiyokatsu's sword. Undaunted, the Roegadyn roared as he recovered his momentum and swung at her mercilessly in a whirlwind of bladed fury. It was all Hessael could do to stay just apace of his onslaught as she spotted a row of thick, wooden columns, slipping behind them. Kiyokatsu's katana made short work of the hefty pillars, cleaving them in half with precise, furious strokes. The heavy awning they held above collapsed into a heaping pile of clay tiles and broken wood. Wasting little time, Hessael delved into the billowing clouds of dust, launching herself from the rubble to scale the shop's ruined edifice. Her magitek gauntlets whirred to life as they propelled upwards upon each ledge with inhuman agility. The archers could only sink their arrows where she once was a mere moment ago, as Hessael came upon the astonished face of one of them up on the rooftop. Leaning quickly to one side, the archer's last arrow sped past her face and into the night as her palm slammed into his jaw, knocking him senseless. She ripped the bow from his grip with her other hand. With her other hand, she slipped the archer's quiver from the samurai and around her back, sending the unconscious man plummeting to the ground below with a firm kick. Hessael vaulted over the ridge of the roof to the other side as arrows thudded against the tiles behind her. She peered at their numbers from behind her cover.

Eleven pairs of glowering eyes stared back at her from behind their longbows. She retreated back under the ridge of the roof.


 Drawing an arrow, Hessael scanned the winding streets beneath her position, frantically searching for–and finding–Takemune fearfully scrambling from the Niyo retainers hot on his trail. Standing upright, she loosed her bow as her shot found its mark, striking an assailant in the back as his comrades ground their heels to a halt. Two more arrows followed quickly after–felling one through the neck and dispatching the other screaming to the dirt, clutching at the fletching and shaft jutting through her thigh. Hessael wove and shuffled along the tiles as arrows whistled angrily past her ears, slicing her Garlean ballistic weave when they screamed just past her torso. Seizing a gap in their fire, she quickly unleashed a hail of bolts upon the samurai in pursuit from above. She peered past the grip of her bow as three more Niyo samurai fell to the ground, writhing and bleeding. Their comrades behind them paused their chase, hesitant to join their brothers and sisters-in-arms dying in the bloodbath. Kiyokatsu tore past them, sword raised to meet her arrows as he cut each one down with a wall of steel. Hessael eyed the massive Roegadyn down, examining his katana as she ducked another arrow from behind.


"Apprehend Takemune! I shall deal with the murderer myself!" she heard him roar, cutting down more of her arrows as his sword began to glow and hum.


 The hairs on her neck stood upright as she instinctively rolled away from her position, just as Kiyokatsu sent a thunderous stroke of pummeling wind smashing into the roof tiles where she once stood and blasting a hole. She witnessed Kiyokatsu rapidly closing in towards her, even as the arrows from the other side of the street continued their unceasing assault. Hessael threw herself against the siding of a lookout tower, slowing her breathing as she drew back her bowstring. Counting to herself, she waited as the staccato of the projectiles thumping against the tower on the opposite end began to slow. Spinning on her heel, she launched her arrow at her target. It punched through the breast of one of the archers, throwing her off the roof from the force of the impact. The Niyo archers responded with arrows flying in furious fervor ten times over at Hessael as she knocked them aside with her bow.