The Disfavored Hero (The Tomoe Gozen Saga Book 1)

by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

  They were nowhere near the shrine.

  In the swamp was a rich lord’s mansion. It was set on a hill surrounded by marshes, high above the water level. An ornate iron gate held miraculously against moisture, devoid of rust. Beyond the gate was a carefully laid path of flat stones and wooden slats, leading through pleasant gardens without a vagrant weed or untame bamboo to be seen. Beautiful lanterns atop posts cast their warm glow throughout the nighted gardens. From the leaves, moisture from the recent rain clung like glistening stars, and dropped like meteors. At the far end of the path stood the mansion. It had a carved, teakwood door and no hint of windows, but in some way it remained no less friendly.

  Tomoe and Tsuki did not question why so beautiful a house should come to be built in the midst of a dismal land. They did not even think to wonder how they came here in the first place. It was a dream, after all, and no one could question a dream.

  The two women stood in water to their knees, gazing as might beggars through the gate to a wealthy estate. The gate was invitingly ajar.

  In the gardens they saw the five warriors who had declined the name of samurai. They were practicing their skills. Tomoe witnessed some of what she had missed by not attending their festival performance, and was impressed. As might be predicted, their two-edged swords were handled quite differently than any modern sword, since they could be swung forward and back with sharp edges in either direction. The style of these warriors was yet, in its way, as conventional as any other, but their footwork and motion was more reminiscent of a dance or a play than the deadly game it truly was.

  When Tomoe waded out of the marsh and went through the gate, Tsuki followed, although she murmured discontent and suspicion about Shinto magic and a dream. Tomoe approached the exercising warriors, and shouted up the path, “You must come with us!”

  The leader was taller and more slender than the others, almost regal, like a prince, but deathly white as she had never noticed previously. He looked at Tomoe and the nun, and asked, “Why must we?”

  “Because,” Tomoe answered, “seven oni guard the home of the bakemono and you must help us kill them. You five and we two will make the number even.”

  “How do you know where they are?” asked the leader of the non-samurai.

  Tomoe was not sure how to answer. She said, “I do not know how I know it, but I do. This is only a dream. Anything is possible in a dream.”

  “It is not a dream,” said the non-samurai leader. “Do not say it is. We dream, my men and I, the whole year long. We wake from dreaming for three nights and two days during the festival of Great Lord Walks. Do not say this is the dream, or we will be sadder than we are. When the sun rises, we must return to dreaming for another year—and perhaps someday the dreams will have no interlude, if the festivals should ever end.”

  The other men had continued their dance-fight until they came to still postures to the right and left of their leader. They had silently sheathed their swords, and stood listening, nodding dour agreement as their leader spoke.

  “You must help us,” Tomoe insisted.

  Tsuki dared not add, though she might have dared to think, “Yes, you must. If there is some curse on you, which makes you sleep so long, a good deed may free you. Buddha is merciful.”

  She had not said these words aloud, but the warriors stepped back from her in alarm, and the leader replied, as though she had spoken, “Buddha is weak! The Great Lord loved Buddha, and still does, yet we are imprisoned in the haunted marsh of angry Shinto gods and monsters!”

  “Then fight the monsters of Shinto!” Tsuki cried angrily.

  Tomoe was confused, and was tempted to say, “No, appease them! Make them love you again!” But she did not say this. Instead, she said, “Nonetheless, you must help us save the sister of a young hero, and the hero himself, who has been delivered to the bakemono by the clever kappa.”

  The non-samurai leader looked away. He said, “Once, I offered friendship. You turned your back on me.”

  In the doorway of the mansion an old man appeared. Old did not describe. He was ancient beyond reckoning. But he was strong for all his evident years, his spine straight and supple, his eyes bright and serene, every wrinkle tracing a visage of wisdom. Tsuki saw him first, and was overcome. She fell to her knees, and cried out, “Venerable! Great Lord!”

  The non-samurai turned around and fell upon their knees before their master. Only Tomoe remained standing.

  The venerable spoke more to Tsuki than to the others, “I am the one the villagers call Great Lord Walks.” His voice was very gentle. “But not the great lord you suspect, Tsuki Izutsu, favored of the North Land Buddha. Soon, you will obtain what I cannot; you will blend with the universe; you will achieve sublime oblivion. But before then, you have deeds to perform.”

  He looked harshly at his warriors, though harshness from him was but a loving pat. “Haniwa-san,” he said, using the suffix of respect usually reserved for equals, despite the fact that Great Lord Walks was both the elder and the master. “Haniwa-san, you and your men will help the strolling nun and Tomoe Gozen. Remember, you must return to me by dawn.”

  Obedient as would be true samurai, the five warriors followed after Tsuki and Tomoe who fled back down the path, upon a desperate errand.

  Here the dream parted a little bit in a strange way, so that they did not see how it was they arrived at the awful lodge of the bakemono. Suddenly it was before them. The night’s mists separated so that the moon revealed a house of mud and filth, windows barred with bamboo, one candle shining from a single window.

  In the light of that only candle, Tsuki, Tomoe and the five non-samurai saw Yabushi’s sister. They saw how sad she was. Her sadness made the five warriors seem happy by comparison. Her sadness could drain all the happiness from the world, and not fill the well of her unshed tears. Pretty she was, though not in the way of the supernatural beauty who had led Tomoe and Tsuki madly through the marsh. Hers was a different kind of loveliness, a tragic kind which allures no one, but makes all look on empathetically.

  Two women and five men did look on, did feel empathy, were stricken to the very center of themselves.

  Tomoe led the others, sloshing through the reeds, each trying to make less noise than various things which hopped and croaked around the area. They saw into the lit window better. They saw Yabushi lying fevered on a pallet. His sister doctored him and wept without tears.

  “The vampirish magic of the kappa made him ill,” whispered Tsuki. “If we can get him away from the swamps, he may recover.”

  Tomoe motioned left and right so that Tsuki and the five men began to spread out and surround the bakemono’s lodge. Yabushi’s sister looked up with her sad, sad face, and saw dark shapes moving among the reeds, with even darker visages staring at them through the window. Not knowing them as friends, she cried out and slapped the shutter tight against the bars of the window, against the haunted, horrid night.

  The noise wakened the oni, who slept in trees, despising the wet ground. They lived in the marshland only because their master bid them do so, not because they wished. In the mountains, they were feared monster-warriors, skilled with a variety of weapons. Only the yamahoshi, or warrior-priests in mountain sanctuaries, were capable of besting them regularly. It was to be hoped that the swampy ground would hinder their considerable abilities.

  Seven oni fell straight away from heaven, it seemed, though really from the swamp trees around the bakemono’s lodge. The battle was engaged.

  Two purple-skinned oni landed side by side, each with a kusarigama sickle-and-chain. The weighted ends spun around, whirring like the wings of gigantic insects. The oni stood monstrous against the night. When they let loose of the chains, the ends shot forth into darkness and wrapped around the arms of one of the soldiers said to be of the Haniwa clan.

  The two oni pulled him forth, a fish from the sea. It was a struggle. The warrior fought hard to hold his place. Though both arms were entangled in the chains, he did not drop his two
-edged sword. He showed no fear, but went through the motion of struggle as though it took place on a stage: calmly, precisely, according to script.

  When the oni had drawn their captive in range, they raised the sickles on the other ends of their chains, in opposite hands. But the warrior parried form one side to another, swinging his sword on a horizontal plane between his two purple attackers, then brought the sword around in a vertical circle and plunged the point into the heart of his right-hand captor. It dropped its sickle, clutched its bleeding chest, and stood with life going slowly out.

  Oni died hard.

  The warrior and the uninjured oni were left standing in a tug-of-war at each end of the chain. Sword and sickle were held high, against each other. The second sickle, dropped by the dying oni, dragged in the mud, its chain still wrapped around the warrior’s arm, offering the fierce oni too great an advantage.

  A second warrior was coming across the top of the bakemono’s lodge, preparing to leap at the oni’s back, deciding the battle.

  Elsewhere, Tsuki Izutsu met a scarlet oni, redder than her own kimono, and it bore a barbed yari spear. She parried its thrust, held the yari by its barb, then slid her bo loose, swung it around—hard into the oni’s stomach. It began to double forward with pain, but she caught it in the chin, making it throw its head backward. The barb of the yari had caught hold of the yellow prayer-tabard Tsuki had rolled up. The end of her pole thrust fast against the underside of the oni’s jaw, and it stumbled back with such force that the packed tabard was torn from her back.

  A human neck would have been snapped from the blow that Tsuki delivered, but the oni shook its ugly scarlet face and came again. Tsuki said through gnashing teeth,

  “It is wrong to kill even you!” Her pole slapped it in the ear, sending it off balance before its own spear point was delivered. She added, “But I will do it unless you run away!”

  She shook her pole in a specific fashion, turning a triggering mechanism with one hand. A long spike protruded automatically from the end of the pole which was aimed toward the oni.

  The oni understood her meaning entirely, though some people claimed oni were stupid. It believed her, too. It gazed at her a moment, disbelieving human kindness of any sort for oni, maybe worshipping the moment. Then it turned around and fled through reeds and darkness.

  On another side of the lodge, two soldiers worried at a single violet oni. They could not break through the guard of its kama scythe, with which the oni hooked, blocked, or captured every slash of the two swords. It grunted and snarled and slobbered, green eyes glowering hatefully from its violet visage.

  In a muddy area away from the lodge, the leader of the warriors, who had been called Haniwa-san by Great Lord Walks, was similarly worried by two blue-tinged oni. He was pitted against an ono axe and another of the grim kusari-gama sickle-and-chain. He dodged the whirling chain as it was released in his direction; he dodged in the direction of the other oni, and with a quick swipe of his sword severed the oni’s hand so that axe, with hand, fell into the mud.

  A third oni, bright red, came running through the night with a nun’s promise fresh in its mind. It hurtled the barbed spear through the air and caught Haniwa-san in the leg. Haniwa-san fell, as the scarlet oni kept on running.

  The oni with the sickle-and-chain was still gathering in its chain, to start it whirling again. The second blue oni who had lost its hand went howling into the night, chasing after its red cousin who had thrown the spear so effectively. Haniwa-san sat in the mud, and wrenched the barbed spear loose from his leg, tossed it from his sitting position after the two craven oni. He never knew whether he made his mark, having to turn his attention elsewhere.

  Haniwa-san rolled out from under the downward slash of the remaining oni’s sickle, regained his feet, and though poorly balanced on his hurt leg, fought on.

  His two men with the violet oni held against the tree were finally succeeding in breaking the guard of the kama bearer. Its neck was already cut deeply on the right side. One warrior let the wounded oni catch his sword with the scythe. Sword and scythe held each other immobile. The other warrior took advantage, and hacked deep into the left side of the oni’s neck, a score deeper than the previous cut.

  The oni’s head started to topple off. It dropped its kama scythe and attempted, with a little success, to hold its mostly-severed head in place. The warriors left the violet oni to die its slow death, and hurried toward the place where their leader limped and battled against the sickle-and-chain. Surrounded, the blue oni knew it would lose.

  Unlike bakemono, mountain oni could not speak. This one dropped its kusari-gama and fell upon its knees, silently pleading mercy with clenched palms.

  “Run away then,” said the leader. The oni stood and fled. The two men hurried to hold their tottering leader, lest he fall from the leg.

  Tomoe Gozen was meanwhile entertaining the seventh oni, a head taller than herself, albino, broad-shouldered, and lacking nose. It bore a sword of spear-length, and its guard was good though the sword itself was rusty and ill-cared for.

  The white oni’s weight pushed its feet deep into the muddy ground, giving Tomoe her best advantage against a sword so big only a devil could wield it. Due to the samurai’s smaller size and greater swiftness, the oni had already taken several minor wounds from Tomoe, and offered none which she accepted. It had lost a lot of its thick, black blood from the dozen scores; but oni were indeed hard to kill. It fought on, never lessening in ferocity, red eyes glowering.

  Tsuki Izutsu appeared beside Tomoe. Her bo, its spike withdrawn once more so that Tomoe yet knew nothing of its additional value, out-reached the oni’s overlong sword. She cracked its ribs, smashed its fingers so that it dropped the sword, then bashed it in the temple. It wailed the inhuman cry peculiar to oni. Tomoe Gozen leapt forward and thrust her sword into its throat, cutting off the cry in a gurgle and rush of blood, cutting through the neck bone so that the oni’s head flopped sideways. It fell down, still gurgling, death slowly enveloping it.

  “It was already defeated!” stormed Tsuki. “You did not have to kill it! It would have run away!”

  Tomoe panted and glowered, her eyes angry like an oni. She answered, “You let one go?”

  “I did. So did our warrior friends. Three in all.”

  “Three alive,” Tomoe said, pondering. “That is bad. They are held to the bakemono by magic. They may return.”

  The five warriors were gathered together. With the help of one of his men, Haniwa-san came forward to Tomoe on his hurt leg. The clangor of weapons had ceased to echo through the nighted marsh. Frogs and other creatures made no sound, having themselves fled or hidden, so the silence was quick and eerie. Four corpses of the bakemono’s oni-samurai were adrift in the rank water, or face-buried on muddy ground, already decomposing. The reason no one ever brought an oni’s body home to stuff was because they rotted almost as soon as they finally died.

  The seven victors had suffered no casualties, and only one injury. The injured leader asked, his voice quavering more from hope than pride,

  “Are you impressed?”

  There was a little anger left inside Tomoe, because the warriors, like Tsuki, had let some oni go. But she was indeed impressed, for the victory was undeniably a good one, without loss of friends. She bowed low from the waist and replied, “I am amazed.”

  Haniwa-san bowed in turn, standing on his own. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.” Then his men braced him again. He said, “We must hurry, so I bid you farewell for myself and these men. Amaterasu comes soon, and it is our last day without dreams for a while. Perhaps you will come again to the Festival of Great Lord Walks, and join us in our exhibition.”

  “Perhaps,” said Tomoe, thinking not. Her road was too vast.

  Without further formality, they went away to rejoin their lord in his mansion. They left behind the two women and four smelling corpses. For the five warriors, the play was over. For Tsuki, Tomoe and the captives in the lodge, it was not.
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  The bakemono had stepped out of his mud lodge, appearing not too upset that his oni-samurai were defeated or slaughtered. He bore a forked sword, a sword with two separate blades sprouting from the hilt. In the candlelight behind him, Yabushi’s sister sat on her knees, bowing and praying over her dying brother.

  The bakemono-with-no-tail scanned the bloodied mud and water, then laughed horrible deep laughter.

  “So we meet again!” he said. “You do remember me, samurai?” He turned his naked butt to her, and slapped his own behind, both to insult her and to remind her of her deed.

  Tomoe Gozen answered from afar, “I had forgotten you before, but now I remember.” The veil cast on her memory began to dissolve like mist. “You cursed me more than a year ago, and thereby bound our fates together. Yabushi lies in your lodge dying of kappa-fever, for you said I must lose a friend as you had lost a dinner. And when you and I engage in battle, you will probably leave a scar upon my face, using your two-pronged sword. For that too was in your curse. I might have been afraid one time, but no more. Samurai are aware that our friends, and ourselves, will be killed and scarred. It is part of the Way of the Warrior. That being so, your curse was foolish after all. In the end, you have only guaranteed that I kill you.”

  Bakemono are instinctively cowardly, which was partly why this one never came out to join the battle. But he did have the sword, rumored to be magical, and apparently the rumor was true if it helped him contain seven oni from the mountains. He cried almost hysterically that, “The gods who heed curses did not figure this!” he shook his magic sword, its two blades humming as he did. “With this, I cannot be defeated!” His crooked mouth approximated a smile.

  Tomoe was about to say that, perhaps, the gods figured the sword quite well. But the first ray of sun seeped into the marsh, and Tomoe Gozen awoke with her head in Tsuki Izutsu’s lap. She opened her eyes. Tsuki was already awake, smiling down at Tomoe, stroking the samurai’s face and hair.

  “You had a dream?” asked Tsuki.