He glanced up at the high, barred windows of the yashiki, from which helmeted heads were peering down upon us. I looked back at the gate. Keiki and his men were withdrawing into the yashiki. There was something ominous in their quick retreat and in the silence of the out-peering retainers at the windows. I called upon the men to hasten. They swung into a half trot.
A barbed arrow whistled past my cheek and across Yuki’s shoulder. Another struck my breast and fell blunted from my mail. Yuki sprang to my right side with upraised sword.
“Run!” he shouted. “The long hawks swoop!”
He clipped a whirring shaft in mid-air with a dexterous stroke, and dragged me forward into the midst of the men. A storm of arrows burst upon us, streaming down through the barred windows. We broke into headlong flight. Beyond the farther corner of the yashiki was safety, and the distance was not great. But the barbed shafts flew thick and fast. Had it not been for our armor I doubt if a single one of us would have won through.
A man beside me plunged backward, struck through the throat. I would have paused, but Yuki dragged me onward. The man was dead. We, too, would be slain if we lingered. More than once Yuki clipped in the air arrows that might have pierced between my steel collar and helmet. Other arrows bruised my flesh through steel and padding. I was the central object of the cowardly attack. The tempered steel of my daimio armor alone saved me from death. Another of my men fell dead, and several were wounded by shafts, many of which were intended for myself. We rushed on up the road, each wounded man between two of his fellows.
We passed the corner of the yashiki. The deadly shower was slackening. A bolt-headed arrow pierced my upper left arm from the rear. Yuki sprang behind to shield me with his body. But it was the last shot.
As, a little farther on, we checked our flight, Yuki said with grim humor: “My lord now knows what hawks were meant by Kohana. They have made us pay two men for one. It was well the Mito men did not think sooner of the armor-piercing arrows, else my lord would have been riddled.”
Without pausing in his stride, he snapped the arrow that had passed half through my arm, and drew the end from the wound, and a minute later it was tightly bandaged. The other wounded men received the same rough, efficient surgery, but one died in the very gateway of Owari Yashiki.