“But I shall not speak, and if your ogre so much as sniffs the air around me wrong, I will put this oath of yours to the test and plant flowers in all three of you.” She turned to include Marrow-Gnawer in her threat, but the nezumi merely grumbled.
“Don’t drag me in to your nightmare. I’m hoping he’s extra hungry and eats you big jobbies first.”
Toshi chuckled. “Hostility and cowardice. Just what I like to see in my reckoners.”
“Never call me that.” Kiku straightened her robe.
“Yeah,” Marrow-Gnawer said. “When I left Numai, my pack was hunting you. If they find I’ve gone to work for you, they’ll tear me apart.”
They hiked on, silent but for Marrow’s increasingly nervous sniffling. Soon they came to a deep, jagged valley with a wide dusty path leading down.
“Almost there,” Toshi said. “Better let me go first. He’s not the most hospitable person in the world.”
At the edge of the descending path stood a row of tall wooden poles that stretched across the path like a fence. There were decapitated heads atop each pole, some human, some animal, and some of indeterminate origin. They were in varying stages of decay—some were freshly bleeding, most were buzzing with flies, and a few had been tanned and mummified by the cold, dry winds.
“See?” Toshi carefully stepped in between two poles, careful not to disturb them. He motioned for Kiku and Marrow to do the same.
As his two new partners navigated the ogre shaman’s welcome to passing strangers, Toshi carefully scanned each of the severed heads.
“Looking for a friend?” Kiku spat. She was brushing invisible bits of debris from her cloak, though she had been the most precise about avoiding the grisly trophies.
“Hardly,” Toshi said, “but he’s not here in any case.” He did not elaborate, and Kiku did not press him.
Farther down the path, Kiku said, “The heads I understand. What is the significance of this pile of gravel?”
Toshi was staring at the mound of pebbles and broken rocks. The wind was steadily diminishing the pile, apparently as it had been for weeks. Toshi remembered the great rock that once stood here and calculated that more than half of its shattered substance was already gone. In a month or so, there would be no evidence that the huge square stone had ever blocked the path to Hidetsugu’s hut.
“No idea,” he said honestly. “Maybe our host will explain it to us.” He waved his arm like a rich man presenting a banquet to his guests. “Let’s keep moving, shall we? Shinka is just ahead.”
From the surface, Hidetsugu’s hut seemed like a small, one-room domicile. Toshi knew that it descended deep into the ground, expanding into a subterranean cavern that stretched for hundreds of yards beneath the valley floor.
Though he kept his feelings to himself, Toshi now felt an icy sense of dread in his stomach. When he had last left the o-bakemono, he had Hidetsugu’s apprentice in tow. The ogre had described this student, Kobo, as exceptional. He had even insisted that Toshi add him to the ranks of the hyozan.
Toshi had not communicated with Hidetsugu since sending word of Kobo’s death. Though he had sent the man responsible for the crime to face Hidetsugu’s justice, Toshi was still reluctant to face his oath-brother. Kobo had died in his care, and ogres were famous for carrying grudges to irrational and violent extremes. Judging from the pile of gravel that used to be a gigantic boulder, Hidetsugu had taken Kobo’s death very hard and was in turn taking it out on anything and everything around him. Indeed, reddish-black smoke now poured from the doorway to the ogre shaman’s hut, fouling the air in the valley. The choking fumes burned Toshi’s throat and drove Marrow-Gnawer to his knees, where he tried to suck clean air from ground level. Even Kiku had covered her mouth and nose with a square of purple silk.
“You look pale, outlaw.” Kiku’s voice was a study in vicious glee. “Having second thoughts?”
“Having trouble breathing,” Toshi said. He cleared his throat and called out, “Hidetsugu. Oath-brother. Toshi Umezawa has returned, bearing news and allies.”
Save for a thick stream of noxious smoke, no reply came from the hut. Toshi waited a few seconds then shrugged at Kiku and cupped his hand alongside his mouth.
“Hoy, ogre!” he yelled. “It’s me, Toshi!”
The river of smoke ebbed, as if something huge were blocking the flow. Toshi heard a deep, full-throated growl that made his spine vibrate. Then a rough, raspy voice that was far more suited to roaring spoke in a gruff but quiet tone.
“Welcome, oath-brother.”
Toshi could almost see a larger, denser shadow crouching among the darkness inside the hut’s doorway.
“Come inside,” Hidetsugu continued, his voice growing more distant and vague. “Bring your friends.”
Toshi smiled unconvincingly at Kiku and Marrow. On the whole, he would have preferred one of Hidetsugu’s roared threats or even a demand to be let alone. He had business to discuss, however, hyozan business, and since the ogre shaman would never come to him …
“Let’s go,” Toshi said. Without waiting, he marched to the doorway and entered the hut.
The smoke and the smell were far worse inside. Toshi gagged, coughed, and struggled to take small sips of air through his mouth only. His eyes quickly adjusted to the interior of the dwelling, but if Hidetsugu had been here, he had also retreated into the recesses of his cavern.
Outside, Kiku was tying the silk kerchief over her face like a marauder’s mask. Marrow-Gnawer plugged his nostrils with dirt. When the nezumi tried to enter the hut before the jushi, Kiku kicked him sharply in the ribs and pushed him down. She walked over his tail as she entered.
“You were right before,” Toshi said. “Don’t say anything to him unless you have to. Stay behind me and let me do the talking.”
Kiku waved Toshi’s concerns away, but she also took a half-step back and fell in behind him. Still grousing quietly to himself about the manners of supposedly cultured jushi, Marrow crept into the hut and waited behind Kiku.
Toshi led them down a steep incline, red smoke streaming across their faces and bodies. There was no way to avoid the stuff on the narrow ramp down. Toshi drew what breath he could and quickly descended into the cavern.
He stepped left at the bottom of the ramp and broke free of the smoke column. The air in the cavern was not sweet, but it was like a spring breeze compared to what he’d been breathing. He stood and waited as Kiku carefully lifted a corner of her mask, sniffed, then untied the kerchief. Marrow-Gnawer blocked one nostril with his finger, blew out the plug of dirt, and sniffed, clearing his nose completely.
Kiku scowled. “I am oath-bound to that?” she said, pointing at the nezumi. “I will absolutely kill you for this, Toshi.”
“Wait until you see what else you’re oath-bound to,” Toshi observed. “Quiet, now. He’s down here somewhere, but we won’t find him until he wants us to.”
The interior of the cavern was lit by a series of torches and braziers spaced randomly against the walls. Between the flickering shadows and the stark echoes it was impossible to gauge the size or shape of the space. Hidetsugu preferred it this way, though Toshi had never figured out if the ogre got around so easily because he knew the cavern’s layout by heart or because he could see in the dark.
In any case, they were in the ogre’s home and at his mercy. He would greet them—or not—at his leisure.
“Here,” came the slow, ragged voice, calling from the far right of the cavern. “Come this way, my friends.”
Kiku and Marrow-Gnawer did not move. Toshi took a tentative step forward. When nothing happened, he took another. Before he stepped outside of the dim circle of light cast by the nearby torch, he turned and gestured impatiently for Kiku and Marrow to follow.
“All three of you, yes.” Hidetsugu’s voice sounded as if he were smiling. “Just a little farther.”
Feeling the ground before him with his toes extended, Toshi carefully picked his way across the stone floor. When his sandals touc
hed the edge of a cavern wall, Toshi placed his hand on it and resumed walking normally, using the wall as a guide. He heard Kiku and Marrow-Gnawer do the same behind him. In near-perfect darkness, he led them along the wall and around a corner.
“That’s far enough.”
Toshi cleared his throat again. “Oath-brother,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”
“Talk.”
“I’d prefer to see you. The smoke on the ramp has made me dizzy, and without light I fear I may swoon.”
“Like a little girl,” Kiku added. Marrow-Gnawer snickered.
“Quiet,” Toshi hissed.
The ogre’s growl silenced them all. “Very well,” he said. Toshi heard the scrape of stone on stone behind Hidetsugu’s voice. “I will give you fire as well as smoke.”
There was a spark, and a flame flared above a burnished copper bowl. The brazier was wide but shallow, and as the fire rose from it the small chamber came into view. Hidetsugu was crouched over the brazier, his arms folded around his knees. There was room for him to stand, barely, but the massive ogre had curled himself into a tight knot of bulging muscles and tough, leathery hide. He was naked but for a black linen wrap that hung from his waist to his knees, and the visible portion of his torso was a mass of crisscrossing scars and burns.
The ogre shaman’s head was broad and flat, wedge-shaped with a crest of bone running from his forehead to the back of his skull. Gnarled, slashing teeth jutted from his grinning lips, and his eyes reflected the firelight with a hellish red glow.
Pinned to the wall behind Hidetsugu were the headless corpses of four human beings, three male and one female. They were dressed in red and yellow breeches, and each wore either a circular medallion with a glyph inscribed across its center, or a tattoo of the same glyph across the breastbone. Their arms, legs, and hips were adorned with small red fetishes that reminded Toshi of the tassels on ceremonial swords.
Hidetsugu did not react as he let his eyes pass over Kiku and Marrow-Gnawer. Instead, he tilted his head back and opened his wide nostrils.
“You smell of Uramon,” he told Toshi, “and something much more dangerous.” The o-bakemono lowered his head and bowed.
“Welcome, fellow reckoners. I see Toshi has connived, cajoled, or convinced you to join our little enterprise.” He shifted his weight and lowered one knee, revealing the hyozan mark branded into his shoulder. “He has a gift for persuasion.”
Marrow-Gnawer silently bowed in return, lowering his eyes under the leather straps of his headdress. Kiku maintained her cool demeanor, but she kept glancing up at the bodies on the wall. Toshi saw shock in those cold black eyes.
“Yamabushi,” Kiku hissed. “You’ve been collecting the kami-killers like butterflies.”
Hidetsugu chuckled, a deep, rumbling laugh without joy. “I sought to enlist their aid. The first four elders refused. I had better luck recruiting their students. Would you like to meet them?”
“By all means,” Toshi said. “After the introductions, though, we need to hold council. The hyozan still has work to do.”
Hidetsugu shrugged. “Of course. First, come and meet my new apprentices.”
They backed out of the alcove as the ogre lumbered forward, still crouching. Toshi was growing increasingly uncomfortable. Hidetsugu seemed lethargic, dazed, as if he’d been woken from a sound sleep, but a palpable air of menace came off him like a strong scent. Kiku and her fellow jushi regarded all o-bakemono as mad, and Toshi was inclined to agree, but this was the first time he’d seen Hidetsugu so listless, so disinterested. Toshi feared the inevitable storm that would follow this calm.
The ogre lit a torch from the wall and carried it with him straight across the center of the cavern. Toshi stayed as close as he dared, trying to keep within the small sphere of torchlight. Kiku and Marrow-Gnawer stayed well behind him, side-by-side, ready to bolt at the first sign of aggression.
The choking smell of smoke grew stronger than ever as they crossed the sea of darkness inside the cavern. Toshi could see hot ash and fumes overhead, and he reasoned they were approaching the source of whatever was producing the thick stream that flowed up the ramp.
“I imagine,” Hidetsugu said casually, “that you’ve come about Kobo.”
The ogre hadn’t turned to address Toshi, and the ochimusha was grateful. He hesitated for a few paces, then said, “Yes, oath-brother. Among other things.”
“Thank you, by the way, for sending that unexpected guest.” Hidetsugu’s voice sharpened, but he still maintained his maddening calm. He called back to the others, “You would do well to follow Toshi’s example. He always honors his oath to his hyozan brothers.”
“Is he—” Toshi began, but his words hitched in his burning throat. He started again, “Is the one who drowned Kobo outside?”
“On a pole? No, oath-brother. I extended my finest hospitality to him, made him feel as if he were at home. We’ve had pleasant dinner conversations for weeks now, and oh! the things he’s told me.”
Toshi gulped. He heard Kiku draw breath behind him, but before she could speak, Toshi said, “Don’t ask.”
Hidetsugu slotted the torch into a bracket on the cavern wall. They were outside another naturally occurring doorway, similar to the one in which they had found the ogre.
“Here we are,” Hidetsugu said. He waved his massive arm toward the darkness and cocked his head. “After you.”
Now at his full height, the ogre’s lackadaisical attitude seemed far more paternal. Far more sinister. Toshi’s well-developed sense of self-preservation was pounding in his ears like an extra pulse.
Toshi stepped into the darkened alcove. Kiku and Marrow-Gnawer came in behind him, as close as they could get without touching him.
He felt the ogre moving past him. Hidetsugu’s footsteps faded as he crossed the alcove, and once more Toshi heard the sound of flint on stone. As another brazier flared to life, Hidetsugu said, “Oath-brothers, oath-sister. Behold the instruments of our reckoning.”
Eight men and women kneeled in the flickering firelight, chained to one another at the neck with their hands and feet manacled. They were dressed in the red and white outfits of the yamabushi elders, but these mages were all physically intact. Some wore face paint, others wore carefully shaped beards, but all had black peaked phylacteries tied to their bald heads and long, flowing topknots hanging down past their shoulders.
Toshi had never seen such a collection of terrified faces. They were wide-eyed and slack jawed, and tear streaks cut through their war paint. Some had the vacant stare of combat veterans who have fought one battle too many, while others had the cold, glassy stares of trauma victims who would one day pass along their pain to someone new.
By Toshi’s estimation, the oldest of Hidetsugu’s captives was no more than thirty. The youngest was barely nineteen. They had been broken, humbled, abused into acquiescence. They were dead but still conscious. They were damned but fully aware that their worst sins still lay ahead.
The yamabushi did not react to the torch, the visitors, or even Hidetsugu himself. They simply kneeled, their eyes fixed on yet another body pinned to the wall.
Toshi stifled a gag reflex. Here was the source of the red charnel smoke. The mutilated form on the wall had a rough-hewn crystal embedded in its chest that glowed with a dull orange sheen. Its flesh was blackened and brittle, and heat radiated from it like an over-stoked oven. The toxic flow of red gas and black ash billowed up from the body’s surface like the smoke from a charcoal-burner’s mound. Both arms and both legs ended in stumps, roughly severed below the elbow and knee joints.
Toshi stared at the figure’s head. Though its face had been almost completely obliterated by repeated blows and the intense heat from the gem, its hair remained intact. Toshi lowered his gaze from that close-cropped white-blond mane, unsure if he should admit that he now recognized the figure or if he should let Hidetsugu have the pleasure of revealing it.
The ogre was standing midway between the yamabushi and the
figure on the wall. He was watching Toshi closely. The o-bakemono’s voice was that of a genial host, but his words were steeped in malice.
“This is Choryu, a prodigy from Minamo Academy. He is also the agent of the academy elders and their soratami handlers. It was at their suggestion that he drowned Kobo while my most excellent apprentice was unconscious and bound. For this I have rewarded him with a taste of what awaits him in the afterlife, when my oni claims his soul.” Hidetsugu turned to Toshi. “You did well in sending him to me, oath-brother. You will always have my thanks for that.”
Toshi nodded, his expression as blank as those of the yamabushi.
“The hyozan demands satisfaction. Has Toshi taught you the words?”
Before Marrow-Gnawer or Kiku could answer, Toshi said, “I have not, but I will, in time.”
Hidetsugu shrugged. “No matter. It’s a lovely little verse about the extent of our vengeance, the scope of your suffering once you cross the hyozan. Suffice to say—” Hidetsugu’s eyes flared, spitting fire into the brazier—“it’s extensive.”
A low, fearful sound rose up from the captive yamabushi.
Toshi stepped forward. “I won’t deny your right to invoke our oath, but you’ll forgive me if I notice that you’ve already got the man who did it.” He gestured at the horror pinned to the wall. “I don’t see how Kobo’s reckoning could be more complete.”
Hidetsugu’s eyes grew dreamy. “Day and night,” he said, “he burns without being consumed. He is cooked, but his flesh never falls from the bone. He blackens, but he does not crumble into ash.
“He starves. When he is on the point of passing, I feed him a snack from his own body. Day by day, inch by inch, he consumes himself. Toes and fingers first, then palms and soles. Eventually, he will taste his own vitals. What he consumes is not replenished, and still he does not die.
“His flesh is corrupt, suffuse with a poison that is far beyond the most toxic forest serpent. Each mouthful sears his insides, liquefies him from the inside out. His guts heave and twist, his stomach and bowels cramp and spasm to the point of bursting.”
Heretic, Betrayers of Kamigawa: Kamigawa Cycle, Book II Page 6
