Chapter 15: The Empty Throne
The silence that followed the Khan's death was heavier than the scream that preceded it.
Uktai Khan lay in the mud, his yellow eyes once symbols of terror now nothing more than hollow sockets filled with dirt and blood.
Wasabi stood over himHe didn't drop the sword. He didn't move. He simply stared at his hands, watching the thick, warm Mongol blood seep into the cracks of his skin. He felt a strange numbness, as if his soul had been cauterized.
Suddenly, a ragged, wet sound broke the stillness.
Ulfat had collapsed. He wasn't standing as a victor. He was on his knees, his forehead pressed into the blood-soaked earth, and he was crying. It wasn't the fake cry of a strategist; it was the howl of a boy who had built his entire identity on a revenge that had just been stolen from him.
"No" Ulfat whispered. "No, no, no!"
He lunged forward, grabbing the jagged slave-stone. He didn't aim for a vital organ. He didn't aim for a killing blow. He began to beat the Khan's dead chest with the rock.
Thud. Crack. Thud.
"BE ALIVE!" Ulfat screamed, his voice cracking into a shrill, desperate plea. "I want you to live! I didn't give you permission to die! You were right, Khan! I am a monster! I am your monster! STAND UP SO I CAN KILL YOU MYSELF!"
But the "Mountain" did not move. The Khan was truly, finally, a non-living thing.
In his madness, Ulfat turned his fury toward the only living thing left in the clearing. He swung the stone at Wasabi, hitting him across the shoulder, then the chest. Wasabi didn't defend himself. He didn't even flinch. He stood there with his head bowed, his eyes vacant, as if he were begging for the stone to end him, too. He wanted to drown in the water.
He wanted to vanish.
Ulfat stopped. He realized that if he kept hitting Wasabi, he would be truly alone. He turned back to the earth, slamming the stone into the ground with such violence that he began to dig a hole in the dirt.
"NOTHING CHANGED!" Ulfat shrieked at the sky. "You haven't changed a bit, Ulfat! You are still useless! You are no scholar! You are no genius! You are just the same pathetic slave in the same pathetic chains!"
He let out a final, soul-tearing scream
"AAAHHHHHHHHH!" that echoed through the valley, reaching the cliffs where the observers waited.
The Watchers in the High Rocks
High above the slaughter, Emperor Harasaki Wayano stood at the edge of the precipice. His face was pale.
He had seen Ulfat as a manipulator, a killer, and a shadow but he had never seen him as a shattered child.
"I have seen many forms of that boy," Harasaki whispered to the wind.
"But I have never seen him break.
This this is a different kind of terror."
Nearby, a lone Mongol soldier a scout who had survived the initial Samurai ambush gasped. He had seen everything.
He had seen Wasabi kill the Khan. He turned to run, his boots sliding on the gravel, desperate to reach the main camp and scream the word.
He didn't make it five steps.
THWIP.
An arrow, small but perfectly aimed, hissed through the air and pierced the scout's throat. He fell silently into the brush.
Nakamura stepped out from behind a jagged rock, a small, ornate bow in his hand. He looked like a child playing a game of hunters. Behind him, Makanara drifted forward.
"Brother, I wanted to shoot that one!" Makanara complained.
Nakamura giggled, adjusting his kimono. "There are plenty more, Makanara. Look at them down there. They look like dolls whose strings have been cut."
The Kingmaker's Sacrifice
Below, Wasabi watched the childmonsters on the cliff.
He felt a chill, but he didn't care anymore. He looked at Ulfat, who was now beating his own chest, his knuckles raw and bleeding, his eyes rolling back in his head. Ulfat was going to kill himself in this fit of rage.
Wasabi knew what he had to do. He picked up a large, heavy stone from the ground.
With a heavy heart, he swung it, striking Ulfat precisely at the base of the skull.
Ulfat slumped forward into the mud, unconscious.
"I have to save you," Wasabi whispered to the sleeping boy.
"Because if I don't, you'll never see the world you wanted to build."
The sound of horses approached. The remaining Mongol Keshiks, confused and bloody from the Ottoman skirmish, rode into the clearing.
They saw the dead Khan. They saw the blood-soaked Wasabi standing over the unconscious Ulfat.
"What happened?!" the Lead Keshik roared, his sword drawn. "Why is your hand covered in the Khan's blood, Wasabi?"
Wasabi looked the soldier in the eye. He didn't hesitate. He used the exact lie Ulfat would have used, and he hated himself for every word of it.
"I was protecting him," Wasabi said,
"The Ottomans they sent Japanese mercenaries to finish what they started. I tried to pull the sword out I tried to save him. But the Khan is dead."
Wasabi felt a wave of disgust
"I am copying him", he thought.
"I am becoming his shadow. I should be drowning in the river, not standing here lying to an army."
But then, he looked at Ulfat's peaceful, sleeping face. "I will give him one last favor.
I will make him a King. Even if it costs me my soul."
As the Mongols began to wail in grief, Nakamura's voice drifted down from the cliff, sharp and playful.
"Hey, Wasabi!" the child-Shogun shouted. "Don't forget to tell Ulfat! We want our money for this little performance! I want to buy more toys!
Better ones than these dead Mongols!"
Wasabi didn't look up. He just nodded once. "I will tell him."
The army began the slow, funeral march back to the camp. They carried the Khan's body on a stretcher, and they carried Ulfat like a fallen prince.
Wasabi walked at the rear, the weight of the crown already beginning to crush him.
The Scholar had wanted a revolution.
The Slave had wanted revenge.
But it was the Samurai's shadow and the Kingmaker's lie that had finally given them the Empire.