John Flanagan: The Emperor of Nihon-Ja

Evanlyn placed her third shot carefully, sending it crashing into the animal's rear left hip. Again, bone crunched and the tiger's left rear leg suddenly went limp, so that its intended leap towards the figure it could now see beneath a tree across the clearing came to nothing. It flopped awkwardly, without thrust on one side.

The agony in its rear leg flared and, mad with pain, it snapped at the injury with its massive fangs.

As it twisted to do this, Evanlyn's fourth lead shot hit its head with shocking force.

And at the same instant, Alyss reached round the edge of the shield and drove the razor-sharp saxe deep into the creature's underbelly, cutting upwards to create a wound almost half a metre long.

The monster roared, a shrill note of baffled terror overriding the heart-chilling savagery of its normal challenge. Crippled, gutted and dying, it collapsed sideways on the snow, now running red with its blood.

Desperately scrabbling with her feet, Alyss forced her way backwards from under the shield, sliding on her back to escape the reach of the horrible creature. Evanlyn ran to her, grabbed her arm and dragged her clear, bringing her to her feet. The two girls clung to each other. Then the Kyofu gave one last shuddering screech and lay still.

'It's dead,' Evanlyn said numbly.

Alyss said nothing. Overcome by shock at her ordeal, reacting to the terror of those minutes crouched under the shield, she felt her stomach heave and was violently sick.

When daylight came, they dragged the monster's dead body back to Nimatsu's castle, hitched behind a pair of horses borrowed from the Hasanu village.

It was, as Evanlyn had guessed when she first saw it, a snow tiger. But it was an immense one, measuring nearly five metres from nose to tail. As the small cavalcade made its way through the main street of the village, the Hasanu came out in awe to watch them pass. There were cries of amazement as they saw the size of the dead cat, its white and grey striped body smeared with blood and dirt. The signs left by Evanlyn's shot were also clearly visible – the left foreleg was smashed and twisted at an oblique angle. The shattered lower jaw was nearly separated from the creature's skull, held in place only by a network of sinew, and the jaw and neck were covered in dried, frozen blood.

Most remarkable was the half-metre-long gash in the beast's belly, with the fur around it saturated in blood as well.

The beast's head bumped over the uneven ground as the two horses drew it slowly through the village. The eyes were half closed, glazed over. But even in death, the animal still earned its title – Kyofu. The Terror.

The word flew from mouth to mouth as the Hasanu gaped at the beast that had terrorised the countryside. Then they looked from its enormous corpse to the two girls who had conquered it. Both were drawn and pale, battling shock and the after-effects of fear as much as weariness. Seen beside the limp body, they looked tiny, almost insignificant. Alyss's jacket and breeches were torn and stained from the rough ground she had fallen onto. She had discarded the protective leather from her face and arms. The shield was slung over the left-hand horse's yoke and daylight revealed the extent of the battering it had taken from the Kyofu's claws and teeth. The top edge was splintered and split and there were massive gouges in the curved wood that formed the major part of the shield. The iron reinforcing strips showed bright scars where the creature's massive claws had scored deep into the metal.

As the two slender figures, dwarfed by the Kyofu and by the massively built Hasanu people themselves, progressed down the main street of the village, the villagers began to bow, the bending bodies and lowered heads moving in succession, resembling wheat yielding before a sudden breeze that sweeps across a field.

'Should we wave or something?' Evanlyn said out of the corner of her mouth. Trained as she was in protocol, this was a situation that her tutors had never envisaged.

'You can. I'm too tired,' Alyss responded. She looked up to the end of the central street of the village, which ran uphill towards the castle. The tall figure of Lord Nimatsu stood waiting for them. As they came closer, he stooped into the lowest possible bow before them.

Alyss and Evanlyn exchanged a glance, then made vague hand gestures and stiff little bobs of the head in response.

'Ariss-san, Ev-an-in-san,' the nobleman said as he straightened once more, 'you have done my people a great service.'

Evanlyn nodded, looked around and gestured at the huge body on the ground.

'Lord Nimatsu, here is your Kyofu. Dead.'

'I can see. I can see,' Nimatsu replied softly. He stepped forward to examine the Kyofu more closely, taking in the terrible injuries that these two slightly built foreigners had inflicted on it.

'You are unharmed?' he asked.

Alyss shrugged. 'I'm sore and battered, and my backside has bruises all over it.'

Evanlyn gave a tired grin. 'And I've had the bejabbers scared out of me. But apart from that, we're fine. You should see the other fellow.' She paused, then added in mock surprise, 'Oh…you can.'

'It's a snow tiger,' Nimatsu said softly. He went down on one knee beside the limp body, reaching out to touch the white fur. 'I've never seen one so big. I thought they had been driven out of these parts years ago.'

'Well, this one decided to hang around,' Alyss told him.

Nimatsu looked up from the dead tiger and met the eyes of the two gaijin girls. In his life, he had seen many brave deeds in battle. Never before had he seen courage to equal that shown by these two. He turned to the gathered Hasanu, now watching silently.

'Hasanu people!' he said, raising his voice so that it carried down the street, where hundreds of faces were upturned to watch. 'The Kyofu is dead!'

It was as if they had been awaiting official confirmation of the fact. There was a giant, wordless roar of triumph from the assembled villagers. Alyss and Evanlyn stood awkwardly, not sure how to respond to the moment. Truth be told, they were both eager to escape from public view and recover from the terrifying night they had spent.

Nimatsu raised his hands and the roar of the crowd slowly died away.

'The Kyofu killed seventeen of our friends and neighbours. Now these girls, these young girls from another country, have ended the Terror!' Alyss raised an eyebrow. He didn't use the word gaijin, she noticed. Literally, it meant foreigner. But the term had developed slightly pejorative overtones in the way it was sometimes used. Obviously, Lord Nimatsu intended that nobody might infer any kind of slur from his words.

'Hasanu people, give thanks to Ev-an-in-san and Ariss-san!'

Now the roar that rose from their throats was deafening. Alyss glanced at Evanlyn, standing beside her. The princess smiled.

'I think we could wave now,' she said.

They acknowledged the cheers of the villagers, then Lord Nimatsu stepped forward to join them.

'Today, you should rest and recover,' he said. 'I'll send out messengers to gather the Hasanu army. By the end of the week, we should be ready to march to the aid of Emperor Shigeru.'

Alyss lay back in the scalding hot bath, feeling the water ease the bruises and aches of her battle with the Kyofu. She could still recall the mind-numbing terror she had felt when the massive beast had stormed out of the night towards her, the mouth-drying fear as she lay curled under the wooden shield, hearing its claws and teeth rip and tear at the wood, feeling it breaking up and knowing that it couldn't withstand the onslaught much longer, then the overwhelming relief as she heard Evanlyn's lead shot begin to pound into the animal's body.

'She's as good as they say,' she muttered to herself.

Reluctantly, she stepped out of the steaming hot water, wrapping herself in a giant, warm robe and groaning slightly as pain twinged in her back muscles. Yet the pain was much less than it had been before the bath, she knew. There was a light tap at the door frame.