by Rob J. Hayes
Cho pulled frantically at robes to bare her skin. She didn't trust her fingers to tell her the truth, she needed to see it with her own eyes. But her fingers hadn't lied. The boy hadn't lied. Her chest was riddled with poorly sutured wounds, red marks, and skin fused by fire.
"How did I survive this?"
"You didn't. You were quite dead." There was an apology in the boy's voice.
Cho pulled her yukata tight. It was stiff with dried blood, most of it hers. For a moment she just hugged herself, trying desperately to forget the feeling of swords sliding into her, separating skin. "Then how am I alive? Am I… alive?"
"You are mostly alive. I brought you back. I can do that apparently. Only once though." He nodded, more to himself than to Cho. "Yes. I think only once. There are rules."
"You think?" Cho took a deep breath and placed her fingers to her neck to feel her pulse. It was strong and rhythmic, definitely the pulse of the living.
"You are the first person I've tried it with. You're bound to me now." The boy still hadn't moved, he knelt on the cobbles, fiddling with his scarf. Ash smudged his cheek, but he didn't wipe it away.
"Bound to you?" Cho shook her head. "I thank you for saving my life…"
"I brought you back. I cannot save what is lost, only bring it back for a time. It binds you to me."
Cho struggled to make sense of the boy's words. "The only thing that binds me to a person is my oath as a Shintei."
A frown creased the boy's face. He was young. Cho wasn't the best judge of age, but she doubted he was more than eight years old. Truth be told she was worried he might start bawling there in the street. She decided to look around for his parents, the mystery of how she was still alive could wait, but there was nobody. The courtyard outside the sanctuary was deserted save for corpses and the boy.
The morning light painted the gory scene in its full horror. She wondered how many of the bodies were her doing. Her last moments were a blur of fighting and blood. And pain. Cold steel thrusting into her, a scream that tore from her throat and scattered living and corpses alike. She shook her head and concentrated on the present.
Cho picked Peace from the ground and wiped the blade on her own yukata, there was little that could be done for it now, she would need to find something else to wear and quickly. She slid the sword back into its saya, next to its partner and rose to her feet, feeling her back crack from the stretch.
"You are bound to me," the boy said again, his voice almost pleading. "You have to help me. Those are the rules. Please."
"Help you do what?" Cho's hair had come free from its braid and stirred in the wind, thick brown strands whipping her in the face. She set about tying it back with a strip of her robe while she scavenged the dead for a body roughly her size.
"I have to kill someone." The boy got to his feet and followed after Cho like a puppy as she searched the dead. "I'm not strong enough to do it myself, so I was given the power to bring people back. I brought you back to help me."
"Hmmm." Cho found a corpse with only a savage neck wound by way of injury. She set about stripping the corpse down to its under-wrappings. She preferred the robes of her homeland to the blouse and britches the people of Hosa wore, but she found a pressing need be clothed in something not caked blood. "How long was I unconscious?"
"You were dead since last night. I had to wait for all the bandits to leave and then sew your wounds shut. You were cold by the time I was done"
"Half a day." Cho pushed the mostly naked corpse away and retreated to the steps of the sanctuary. There was less blood there. The boy followed her. "The battle will be long over. I should go after the survivors."
"They're all dead," the boy said. "Why did you sacrifice yourself here?"
Cho turned a frustrated look on the boy, yet he continued to stare at her. "Turn around."
"Why?"
"Because I need to change, and would rather you weren't looking at me."
"Oh. But I've already seen all of you when I sewed your wounds." The boy lowered his head and shuffled around to face the corpse strewn cobbles. "You must have known you couldn't win, but you stayed here anyway. You sacrificed yourself. Why?"
Cho unwrapped her yukata, folding it carefully despite its being ruined, and placed it on the second step. She pulled new under-wrappings out of a nearby backpack and bound her chest tight. She started pulling on the britches, blouse, and faded lamellar, but decided against the last. She was unused to fighting in heavy armour and doubted it would serve her well. She decided to keep her sandals, crisp with dried blood as they were. She had never liked the boots the people of Hosa pulled wore, preferring wraps and sandals.
"Long ago I swore an oath to protect the innocent. Part of my Shintei training." Cho paused and shrugged away the thought that it was an oath she had rarely kept. "I didn't really expect to die." She glanced to where the Red Bull and Hundred Cuts lay, almost lost among the other bodies. Flaming Fist and his men cared little for their own dead further than taking what was in their pockets. "Can you bring them back as well?"
The boy was still gazing away from her. He shook his head. "They are not strong enough. I need heroes to help me." He turned and again fixed her with his pale eyes, a hopeful smile on his lips. "Like you, Itami Cho. You are Whispering Blade."
Cho felt a pang of guilt at that. "I am no hero."
"You are. All of the stories say it, I've read them. You slew a thousand wolves at the Shrine of Saicomb…"
Cho set about tying her swords back around her waist. "It was more like a hundred."
"Including the great wolf, Aeva, the mother of the horde, cursed with human form in the light of the sun. You rescued Prince Ying Sung from the Burning Mines…"
"The stories definitely exaggerated that one."
"But you did rescue him before the cultists could use his skin to summon their demon god." The boy seemed more animated each time he listed one of her deeds.
Cho sighed and nodded once. "Yes. But I wasn't alone. I had help."
"Your duel with the Brothers Venom atop Quiet Eye Mountain…"
Cho raised a hand to quiet the boy. "My death at the hands of Flaming Fist and his bandits."
The boy's smile faded. "You are alive again now."
"Mostly."
"Mostly."
Cho glanced back towards the sanctuary. She needed to see if the people of Kaishi had survived. She needed to find the Century Blade. "What's your name?"
The boy shuffled closer a step, a smile tugging at his lips. "Ein."
Cho knelt in front of him. Meeting his pale stare was unnerving, but she held it. "Ein. I need you to tell me the truth. I truly died here? You truly brought me back?"
"Yes. The shinigami gave me the power to bring back heroes to help me."
"Why?"
Ein fell silent, his stare so pale and unnatural Cho struggled to hold it. She turned from him and knelt beside Hundred Cuts. Hosan prayers were foreign to Cho, so she uttered an Ipian prayer instead. Different language, same stars. Afterwards, she offered the same prayer to the Red Bull, in the hopes their souls would find peace in the darkness between the stars.
"One man?" Cho asked as she stood from the Red Bull's corpse and glanced at the boy.
Ein nodded enthusiastically.
"Is he a bad man?"
Again that enthusiastic nod. "He'll destroy all of Hosa unless I stop him."
"Fine. In light of the debt I owe you, I swear I will do this for you, Ein." Cho drew Peace into her right hand and used the blade to cut off a lock of her hair. Then she slid the sword back into its saya and repeated the oath to the boy, tying the lock of hair into a knot and handing it to him. "Proof of my oath to you. When it is done, you burn that to tell the stars I have kept my word."
Ein slipped the lock of hair into a pocket.
Cho dipped her head in a slight bow. Little did the boy know how meaningless her oaths truly were. "But first…"
The boy brushed past her and Cho felt a chill shiver. He s
tarted up the sanctuary steps. "You need to see with your own eyes, that they are all dead."
Chapter 3
They moved quickly through the sanctuary, ignoring the corpses of the townsfolk at their feet. The doorway to the secret tunnels hung open, the painting that had once hidden it slashed and defaced. Cho rushed along the tunnels, desperate to find what had become of the townsfolk. One more oath she had sworn. She had to know whether it was one more oath she had failed to keep.
The rushing waterfall blocked both the sight and sound of the horror that awaited them. Cho edged around it, her back against cold stone, feeling the spray on her face and enjoying the coolness. She set a furious pace, unwilling to slow at all, and yet Ein kept up. He made no complaint, nor stumbled even once despite the jagged rocks below carving bloody wounds into his bare feet. Cho decided she would need to find shoes for the boy and soon. No sooner were they past the waterfall, than the full scene of Flaming Fist's fury spread out before them. Cho stopped, a strangled gasp coming unbidden from her throat.
The river before them was choked with the bodies of the townsfolk of Kaishi, and there were hundreds of them, clogging up the river. Occasionally a body broke free from the others and joined the current, tumbling away from Kaishi into the churning pink rapids below. Tears blurred Cho's vision and she wiped at her eyes. Carrion birds flitted amongst the corpses, both those in the river and those on the banks, pecking at bloated flesh. A few mangy dogs stalked through the dead, worrying at the choicest bits with sharp teeth. She wasn't certain whether the people of Kaishi had anything to do with the disappearance of Flaming Fist's daughter, but they had certainly paid the price either way. An entire town reduced to rotting meat and ghosts in a single day. There were monsters in the world, Cho knew that well enough, but none were nearly so monstrous as man.
Ein tugged at her blouse. He pointed towards the riverbank where it looked as though the people of Kaishi had put up some resistance. She counted dozens of dead bandits down there, left along with the people they had killed.
"I need to go down there," Ein said, tugging on her blouse again.
Cho saw no movement from the bodies, just a few birds digging into dead flesh. "They're dead," she said slowly. The full scope of the massacre had her in shock. She couldn't imagine how anyone could do such a thing; these were innocent civilians not warriors. And Cho had been unable to stop it. She had failed the people of Kaishi. Failed another oath.
"So were you." Ein tugged at her blouse again and Cho relented, allowing him to drag her down the last few feet of rock onto the soft mud below. She walked in a daze. Their feet squelched with every step, bloody mud sucking at her sandals. The shock of the scene finally started to wear off and Cho stepped in front of Ein, one hand resting on the hilt of Peace in case any of Flaming Fist's bandits still lived.
"There was a battle here," Cho said as she passed the first of the bandits, cut almost in two with a single sword stroke.
"The Century Blade tried to buy enough time for the people to escape," Ein said, plodding along behind Cho, struggling through the mud. "But there were too many even for him."
"You saw it?"
"I watched from the top of the waterfall. I had to make sure they were all gone before bringing you back."
Cho almost choked on the question she needed to ask. "Did he survive?"
Ein paused for a moment too long and Cho turned to him, pressing down the weight of grief struggling to rise within. There was both respect and friendship between Whispering Blade and the Century Blade; it went deeper than the time they had spent together. She viewed him as a mentor and a true hero. She liked to think he viewed her as a peer, someone worthy of standing beside him in battle.
"He was still alive when they dragged him away," Ein said eventually. "All of this was his doing." Dozens of bandits lay dead at their feet. Cho would expect nothing less from the only man in the past hundred years to have slain a dragon.
"In his prime he would have killed them all," Cho said. "Flaming Fist included." They walked between the bodies. Ein appeared to be searching for something, though he gave no indication what, so Cho continued. "I came to Hosa after hearing the story of his battle against the Ungan hordes. I had met him once before but I needed to see him again, the one man worth a thousand. And I did. He was always so humble, despite his accomplishments and fame." She felt tears in her eyes again and wiped them away. If the Century Blade was still alive, she would find him.
"That one!" Ein rushed past Cho towards one of the bodies lying in the mud. He was a young man, tall and handsome in life, with a thin dangling moustache and long dark hair matted now with mud. In death his features looked sallow and waxy, his stare vacant and clouded. He wore stained leathers and a faded green, scale hauberk. The scales were split and dented close to his heart, a true strike that would have killed him before he even realised his armour failed him. Ein began fumbling at the armour, pulling at the straps. "Please help me."
Cho swept her gaze across the river of corpses once more, but none save the birds and dogs moved among them. Then she knelt next to Ein, muddying her stolen britches, and helped him remove the front section of scale from the dead man's chest. "Why are we doing this?"
"To bring him back."
Cho was back on her feet in an instant. "You said you needed heroes for this quest of yours. This is one of Flaming Fist's men. One of his captains. He is no hero."
"He can be." Ein pulled away the scale and tossed it into the mud, then tore at the man's shirt, exposing a thin stab wound. "Oh, this will be much easier than you. See, he has only one wound."
Cho reached down and pulled the boy to his feet, wincing at the numb twinge that flowed up her arm. "He is dangerous. If you bring him back I will just have to kill him again."
Ein tugged free of Cho and stared at her, pale eyes showing something she couldn't quite grasp. It was an ancient stare, the sort she'd seen in old soldiers who had witnessed too much, and accepted too little.
"All of this will be gone soon," Ein said, pleading. "I can only see it for so long. I have to bring him back before I lose him."
Cho could see the conviction in his eyes and knew Ein would not be swayed. After a few moments the boy crawled back to the dead man. He pulled out a needle and some thread, and set about closing the wound. Cho retreated a few steps, picking her way through the bodies, and waited with her hand on Peace, ready to send the man back to his muddy grave the moment he woke.
Chapter 4
Zhihao Cheng - The Emerald Wind
Whither it blows, east to west or north to south, The Emerald Wind carries the stench of death.
Such is the way of those who prey on the living, and steal from the dead.
The last thing Zhihao saw before the end was the wrinkled face of a swordsman many times his better. It was quite an insult that a man so old could beat him so soundly. He woke now to a much younger face, wide eyed and smudged with mud and ash. Zhihao shot upright, swung a fist at the boy, missed, and began scrambling away through the squelching mud, his lungs burning with new breath. He crawled no more than a few feet then collapsed again, gasping and wondering when it gotten so dark. He could swear it had been day only a moment ago, but the black sky and stars made a mockery of his memory.
"W—What happ…" Zhihao paused his interrogation to lurch forwards and empty his stomach.
"You really were telling the truth about bringing people back," said a woman, standing behind the boy. "I didn't do that." Her right hand was resting on one of the two swords at her side.
"You weren't dead for so long," the boy said. "And some people just have a stronger constitution."
Zhihao wanted to argue that he had the best constitution any man could hope for, but he was finding it difficult to talk, what with all the retching and all. He was still on the riverbank where the old man had run him through, surrounded by the bodies of those he had once called comrades, though certainly never friends. He looked around quickly for his swords, a dual pair
of thin blades, hooked at the end, with crescent shaped hand guards as sharp and deadly as the blade itself. They were lying in the mud just a short crawl away. Zhihao rushed forwards, grabbed one, and stood. He swayed on his feet, dizzy from the retching and his brush with death.
"Where is he?" Zhihao tried to crouch into a ready stance and fought off the urge to collapse. He felt more than a little drunk.
"Where's who?" The woman's voice was barely a whisper, he had to concentrate to hear her over the sound of rushing water.
"The old bastard who stabbed me?" Zhihao pulled at his shirt to find a small, poorly stitched wound very close to his heart.
"Flaming Fist's men overwhelmed the Century Blade after he killed you," the boy said, still kneeling in the mud. His hands were idly rubbing his crimson scarf between little fingers. His eyes were far too pale, piercing in such a way Zhihao found them uncomfortable to meet, so he looked anywhere else and found a river clogged with bodies. "They dragged him away, and left your body here."
"Bastards couldn't even be bothered to wake me up." Zhihao laughed. "Never trust the friendship of rogues… Fuck me, I've been robbed." His hands were bare, his rings missing. He touched at his right ear, finding it painful and bloody, his earring missing.
The woman sighed. "Actually, you were dead, so technically you've been looted."
Zhihao snatched his second sword from the ground and pointed one at the boy and the other at the woman. She had yet to draw either of her swords. "One of you best tell me what is going on before I kill you both."
"Please try. It's all the excuse I need." She stood easily in a warrior's stance.
The boy stood and pulled his scarf a little tighter. His stare was so uncomfortable Zhihao took a step backwards, almost tripping over the body of another of Flaming Fist's men. "Zhihao Cheng, The Emerald Wind, what is the last thing you remember?"
"We came out of the waterfall." Zhihao frowned, his memories were blurry, more evidence of a bit too much to drink. "Hundreds of people all huddling around the river. That old bastard standing in front of them all. Flaming Fist ordered the attack and… He killed dozens." Zhihao glanced around at the bodies of Flaming Fist's men; easily fifty of them sprawled along the riverbanks. "We duelled. I put up one hell of a fight, almost killed him twice."
