The Fox's Quest

by Anna Frost

  The horses welcomed him in the stable, nudging him with their muzzles. The smart beasts had unlatched their stall’s door and were wandering freely through the modest building. There was a hole in the roof at one end, which explained why there was snow on the floor and no warmth other than what the horses generated for themselves. At least the walls were solid wood and blocked the wind.

  This wasn’t a stable meant for a domestic animal or two but rather one meant to accommodate the mounts of rich guests. Chiyako must have spoken plain truth when she said the place had once seen visitors in quantity.

  What appeared to be the girls’ entire supply of hay had been piled in the stall where the horses had originally been. It smelled dry, not musty, so it must have been safe for the horses to eat.

  He located their equipment and saddled his beast, the darker one. He had to stop Yuki’s mount from following him out, closing the door in its face.

  “You’re staying for now. Don’t eat all the hay.”

  The grey horse whinnied, possibly confused at being left behind. It likely had a name, as did the one he rode, but he’d forgotten to ask before stealing the beasts from his clan. Saying “the paler one” and “the darker one” was adequate when there was a need to differentiate them.

  The path into the forest was easy to find, even if it were covered in an ankle-deep blanket of whiteness. Thousands of feet must have packed the earth smooth and free of vegetation over the years. Given time, the path would vanish under new greenery. But for now, it pointed the way.

  Lazy snowflakes drifted down from the sky, either the last of the night’s snowfall or the first of a new wave. He hunched on his mount and grumbled. It took a fool to climb up a mountain in the bad season—or someone on an urgent mission that couldn’t wait until spring.

  The-spirit-who-was-probably-Sanae didn’t appear. Was there trouble on Jien’s end? Perhaps it had gone to speak with Toshishiro to see what the old man might have learned in their absence. Or perhaps it was sleeping—assuming spirits required sleep. Surely they must require rest of some sort.

  Odd that he, a demon slayer who was half-spirit, did not know such things. Shouldn’t his clan possess better information about their inhuman roots? He wished he could ask Grandmother Naoko, the clan’s matriarch, if she knew of any suppressed knowledge regarding the nature and habits of spirits. The Great Temples had many such secrets, bits of dangerous knowledge they had chosen to suppress and keep from their younger members.

  The sun had reached its zenith when he began to notice sick trees. Before long he and his horse were both restless and unhappy to be there. They kept going regardless.

  Daylight was on its way out when he reached what he hoped was his destination, a shrine dedicated to the mountain it stood upon. It was not a fancy shrine with a priest to tend to the premises but rather a tiny one composed of a single red gate and a stone monument surrounded with bottles of sake left as offering.

  What better place to hide an object that ate spiritual energy? He searched the area but found nothing suspicious.

  He did find suspicious persons, however.

  His first clue was a sound in a place bereft of life, a scraping against bark. His second was a pair of throwing stars whistling through the air. He ducked and rolled, taking shelter behind the stone monument to draw his sword.

  “Who’s there?”

  He’d already located three figures before he received an answer. They couldn’t have snuck up on him without his noticing, so they must have been laying in ambush since before he arrived. Not bandits then, but people who knew what object was here—or had been here. He was too late.

  “It’s rude not to introduce yourself first,” a cool voice replied.

  Two of the men came closer. The speaker was the older of the two and had the face of a warrior. His nose was flattened, his skin burned near the ear and scarred on the cheek. The other, barely of adult age, sported recent burns and hair so ragged it looked like burned bits had been snipped off.

  The both of them were darkness-touched, likely possessed if it were them who had planted the swords. Interestingly, the younger man looked fearful, his attitude at odds with the confidence the taller man projected. That, if nothing else, told him they must know what he was. Why fear a lone samurai otherwise?

  Akakiba’s eye was drawn to the sword held by the taller man. Perhaps it was not too late to complete his task.

  “As I thought,” the man said. “You were looking for this sword. I’m afraid I can’t part with it. I would like to know what you did with the one you stole.”

  Ah. The man wanted to gloat. What a very human thing to do. Why should he not indulge? It might give him time to think of something.

  “You’re the thief,” Akakiba said. “You have no right to that sword.”

  “I have it, therefore it is mine.”

  “We have the copy, therefore it is ours,” Akakiba shot back.

  The man seemed amused. “A fair point. Now, since it is rather cold out today, I would prefer if we cut to the heart of the matter at once.”

  Akakiba hadn’t waited for the man to finish speaking. He bled red halfway down his hair for a burst of speed and hurtled backward, away from the man with the dangerous sword. He could not allow himself to be wounded by that weapon; even being in near proximity while bleeding out was inadvisable.

  The dark horse came up to him snorting and tossing its head. War-trained like every one of the clan’s horses, it knew to stick by its human when swords came out. But being near Akakiba put it in harm’s way, as throwing stars and throwing knives sliced the air toward them. He intercepted those he could with the flat of his blade, his enhanced reflexes capable of such a feat.

  “Get out of here!” he shouted at his mount, trying to recall how one signaled to a clan horse to return home alone. “Go back! Back!”

  The horse wheeled and charged in the opposite direction. Akakiba hoped it would make its way back to Yuki’s location instead of trying to reach the clan house. Either way, best it not stick around where shinobi could shoot at it.

  He had no need for a horse; bleeding red, he could run as fast as one.

  It was unfortunate speed and caution didn’t mesh well. The weapons thrown at him had been but a distraction, keeping him looking up instead of down. He realized that the second the ground vanished from under his feet.

  He threw an arm back, his scrambling fingers closing upon a hard root. It jolted his shoulder hard but gave him a handhold to haul himself out of the hole. Curse it, he liked it better when his opponents were straightforward brawlers instead of schemers and trap-layers. He was a samurai, good at things involving swords. Trap detection wasn’t part of his training, especially when they were made invisible by a thick layer of snow.

  Maybe he relied on swords too much. If the enemy was cheating, then why couldn’t he do the same? The clan would disapprove, but he no longer cared to follow their rules.

  He put his sword away and shifted.

  In his human form, bleeding red made him run as fast as a horse. In his fox form, bleeding red made him run like the wind.

  He ran past a shinobi who stared at him slack-jawed, forgetting to use the weapons in his hands, and over another drop-trap, which rattled but did not fall in under his light weight. How many traps had they laid, exactly?

  He swerved to avoid a pair of objects hurtling through the air. When they hit the ground, they exploded. The shockwave tossed him off his paws and into a tree. More fell and exploded, stunning him, burning him. One projectile was filled with blinding powder; it exploded into intense light that seared his sight away. He yelped and growled and kept running despite being burned and blind, and half-deaf from the noise, too.

  Without sight and hearing, avoiding further projectiles was impossible. Darts buried in his flesh, injecting poison into h
is blood. His enhanced metabolism couldn’t counter so much of it. His limbs stopped responding, paralysis spreading. Defeated, he came to rest in a heap in the white, white snow.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sanae

  Sanae wasn’t yet certain what she thought of Domi the hermit and Marin the shinobi. The man was suspiciously bright on the spiritual plane. He was filled with energy in a way mere humans weren’t supposed to be. Aito must have seen it too, through his familiars’ eyes, but he’d yet to mention it.

  Too curious to hold back, she asked, What are you? I can’t explain what I see. I’d think you were a possessed man, but it’s not a cohesive unit you’ve got in you, it’s loose energy.

  “I was wondering if you could see it,” Domi replied. “But I might return the question.”

  Domi had taken her arrival in stride and that reinforced Sanae’s suspicions there were secrets to uncover here. What kind of weird person would be unsurprised by the appearance of a fox spirit? It wasn’t like this man had familiars like Aito and Toshishiro did.

  Marin hadn’t reacted anywhere as kindly. Even though Domi had told her to stand down, she kept fingering a small dagger inscribed with demon-slaying glyphs. Sanae had taken to sitting close to Jien, using his body as a shield. If Jien were injured, she could heal him. The other way round was impossible.

  She remained behind Jien even after the woman left the cave that served as her and Domi’s home, in case she suddenly returned. Shinobi had scarily fast reflexes.

  I don’t play stalling games, she told Domi. I will tell you about myself, and you will tell us about yourself. Then we’ll go and get that weapon before someone who means to do evil with it shows up.

  She began, You must have guessed I’m a daughter of the Fox clan. My body died on the battlefield, but my mind did not. While exploring the spirit world, I discovered a strange object that was sucking in energy. I sent my brother to investigate and he found a strange sword there. When we consulted the monks, we learned it was a copy of a stolen sword. We wish to find the original and all the copies to destroy them. Is that enough information for you?

  Domi’s smile was weak and strained. Sanae hadn’t failed to notice the pain lines around his eyes, or the fact Marin had slipped medicine in his teacup.

  “I’m unfortunately prone to headaches,” he said, rubbing at his temples with his fingertips. “They’re caused by this thing you see in me. So far as I know, I am the sole human able to—”

  Marin appeared at the mouth of the cave. “Domi. There’s a party of four men coming up the trail. They have the look of bandits.”

  “Visitors twice in one day? Interesting coincidence, isn’t it, my love?”

  “I’d wager they were sent to retrieve the sword,” Jien said. “The thief must have noticed we got hold of the other.”

  Domi climbed to his feet as carefully as an old man might, using his spear as support. “There’s no helping it, then. Shall we greet them?”

  “Will you be all right?” Marin asked as she took Domi’s face in her hands and searched his eyes. “If you use it now…”

  Sanae’s ears perked at this mysterious “it” but no details were forthcoming. Domi only replied, “I’ll do what I must. Do keep that cushion handy.”

  Marin waved a hand at Aito and Jien. “Stay back. This is our territory and you’ll just get in the way.”

  “Very well,” Aito said. “We will stay here and wait.”

  Jien hissed at him. “Easy for you to say, mister I-have-spies-that-go-everywhere. I want to see what happens too!”

  I’ll tell you if we need help, Sanae said gleefully, prancing after the hermit monk and pretending not to hear Jien’s irritated curses.

  She dispersed into mist to spy without being noticed and hung about the tree in which the shinobi settled, up and out of sight. Unlike the silly boys who kept goggling at Marin’s exposed legs, Sanae wasn’t surprised by her furisode’s high cut; a woman couldn’t go about climbing trees and fighting enemies while she was tripping on the hem of her clothes! The cut was sensible, freeing her legs for any sort of maneuver she might need to perform. Anyone would, however, have to concede Marin’s clothing was unsuited to the season. Maybe she needed to be introduced to the idea of leg wraps.

  The quiet noises of the forest were overtaken by the clomping of horse hoofs. The men who came into sight did have an edge to them that might lead one to call them bandit; they were none too clean, scruffy, and heavily armed. But they could also have been simple mercenaries or masterless samurai, either of which might accept paid work, whether honorable or not.

  The man in the lead was alone in not wearing a straw hat to fend off the snowflakes lazily drifting down and so his topknot was visible. But while the topknot was the preferred hairstyle of samurai, it was also popular among the general population.

  She peered at the men’s weapons and found single swords hanging at their waists. Not samurai then. By imperial decree, only samurai were permitted—even required—to wear the two-sword combo, the long one called the katana and the short one called the wakizashi. That hadn’t stopped Akakiba from offering Yuki the traditional combo, but it’d take a special person to argue with him about it.

  Leaning on his spear in the middle of the road, Domi called out, “Hello, friends. What brings you to my mountain?”

  The man at the rear pulled out a bow, the others their swords. “Out of the way. We’re about our own business.”

  “In that case, kindly conduct it elsewhere than on my mountain.”

  The leader kicked his horse forward, meaning to run Domi down.

  An object hurtled through the air and tangled in the horse’s legs, sending rider and mount to the ground in a screaming and cursing heap. Marin dropped from the tree, her hands holding further throwing weapons. This sudden move made the bowman aim at her instead of Domi.

  The bow sang but the arrow didn’t find its mark. Neither did the next, or the next. Ducking and swirling around tree trunks, Marin proved to be an elusive target. Her mocking laughter kept the bowman’s attention on her.

  Pulling her existence tight together, Sanae bounded onto the battlefield and in the face of the fallen leader, who was now trying to rise. She sank her sharp teeth into his shoulder and he howled. Her mouth filled with blood and while she knew it should taste coppery, it didn’t. Taste was truly lost to her. It was such a little thing, such an insignificant thing… But it made her want to wail.

  She snarled at herself, Focus, idiot! This is a battleground!

  Sanae sensed an energy disturbance coming from right where Domi stood. What was he doing? His right arm was raised, aimed at the mounted swordsmen who were trying to ride around their fallen comrade to get at him.

  Spheres of white energy shot from his fingers and went right through the men’s heads and upper bodies, taking flesh with them and setting the men to screaming. More and more appeared, a barrage of tiny spheres hurtling through anything that was in the way, be it flesh, bone, or wood.

  Sanae flattened herself down, unwilling to risk taking a stray hit.

  When Domi stopped, the sword-wielding men were dead and their horses danced frantically, none too happy to have slumped corpses on their backs. Not far, the bowman lay on the ground with a throwing knife embedded deep in his eye.

  Do we want this one alive? Sanae asked about the leader, whose throat she now had in her jaws. She could easily talk with her mouth full.

  “We need to know who sent them,” Aito said as he arrived on the scene, breathing heavily as if he’d dashed over.

  Jien arrived on Aito’s heels. “What happened? What was is that made Aito take off like a rabbit? It must have been the most amazing sight, and I missed it!”

  Those were solid spheres of spiritual energy you threw at them, Sanae said to the hermit. How?

&nbs
p; “As I had begun to say before, I appear to be the sole human who can—”

  That was when Domi collapsed to the cold, wet ground. Marin jumped forward, pulling the cushion free from its position against her body and the rope with it. She ignored Jien’s alarmed “what’s wrong?” in favor of wrapping the cushion against the back and sides of Domi’s head and securing it in place with the rope.

  Domi was shaking, hard. His open eyes were unseeing and his muscles were tense and strained; his fists drummed the earth and his feet kicked out at the air.

  Marin alone did not gasp at this alarming development, her face sad but by no means surprised. She held Domi’s head in her lap, keeping him from banging it against rock or tree. The cushion’s role suddenly became clear.

  This isn’t the first time, is it?

  “No. This is the cost of his ability. He’ll be fine.”

  Kneeling to grab Domi’s wrists, Jien held his arms high so they did not slam against the ground. It was a good idea; the force with which Domi twitched might well have broken bones.

  At last the convulsions began to ease and Marin stroked Domi’s face, murmuring to him. “That’s it, love. Relax.”

  Moments later, Domi blinked up at them. “Oh, I hurt. I had an attack again, didn’t I?”

  “You mean you don’t know?” Jien said with raised eyebrows.

  “I know I hurt as if a great dragon had sat on me repeatedly, but no, I don’t recall the event. Give me a moment.”

  They stood shuffling about, unsure what to say.

  “Wasn’t I telling you about my abilities?” Domi said. “I’m human, but I can manipulate spiritual energy. Unfortunately, the side effects are quite severe. Attacks like these take me now and then.”

  Are they triggered by the use of your abilities?

  “Yes and no. They occur even if I don’t use my abilities at all but they’re more likely to occur immediately after I use them.”