The Disfavored Hero (The Tomoe Gozen Saga Book 1)

by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

  The girl fell before him, weeping, begging. But the big man was unkind. He placed a foot upon the back of the effaced harlot, and drew his sword, prepared to slay.

  Defying the agony of her skull, Tomoe rolled off the mat and onto her feet, and thrust her sword through the thin wall, into the heart of the man she knew only by his shadow. The shadow lurched backward, fell, and Tomoe brought her sword out of the wall, stained crimson.

  The house erupted with commotion. Tomoe was suddenly surrounded by a dozen prostitutes hysterical with fear and joy, and a few men, half-in or half-out of their clothing. They all bowed to her the slightest bit, in deference and curiosity. One of the girls spoke, and Tomoe felt vaguely that it was the very one whose life she had just saved. “Now you have made enemies!”

  Tomoe moved the pierced panel aside, and saw what lay upon the floor. She had murdered a hairy monster in a priest’s saffron robes.

  “What is he?” said Tomoe.

  “His kind serve Smaller Mountain!” said a harlot. In Tomoe’s continuingly dazed state, they all looked alike to her, their faces blurs; they sounded the same, their voices as elusive as their gaze. It may have been that only one harlot had ever said a word to her, from the moment she was found in the street; or it may have been that they all took turns. In whichever case, one of them said, “They take a single sacrifice each day, so that the mountain will not overflow.”

  Shinto deities accepted no sacrifices, neither human nor beast, but Tomoe had already surmised that crueler gods ruled here. A city of stone would not satisfy kindlier deities. The thought did not give her untoward trepidations, however, for everything still seemed part of a delirium wrought by her concussion. She assumed she would either awake from this daze, or she would not; but meanwhile nothing was quite real enough to bother.

  “Well,” said Tomoe blandly, “you need not fear the mountain’s eruption today. The hairy priest is this morning’s sacrifice.”

  “His order will seek vengeance!” the same harlot said, or perhaps another. “You are not safe here anymore. We are not safe with you among us.”

  “Then I will leave. Can someone show me the way to the saké house of Ya Hanada? I was told to seek him for a boon.”

  “I will take you,” said a blurry, heavy-set figure. It was one of the few men in the room. He finished tying his obi, bowing as he added, “But you must know that Ya Hanada grants only sinister boons.”

  Ya Hanada was a plump, kindly-seeming fellow who saw Tomoe and her escort to a private quarter of the saké house. Like all the buildings, it was of stone, and like the teahouse, it was partitioned with walls of paper. Hanada smiled and bowed and scurried about the partitions, seeing to all his visitors’ needs. He vanished briefly, having much to attend, but returned with his servants who might have been (for all Tomoe could perceive) the same women she had met at the teahouse. The two men—Hanada, and her recent compatriot—were also difficult to distinguish, except that Hanada was more ingratiating.

  The two servants sat on their knees amidst the two men and one woman, and made such pests of themselves with their efforts to please that it was difficult to gain the opportunity to converse with their lingering host.

  “How is it that you come to my house?” asked Hanada, holding a little saké cup between the fingers of both hands.

  Tomoe sipped the warmed drink, then sipped it again, and one of the geishas was quick to keep it full. The sake burned differently than she thought ordinary, but soothed better, and in fact her head ceased throbbing for the first time in too long. But the world’s lack of clarity was not resolved, indeed, was made worse, and Tomoe felt light-headed already.

  “Keiko sent me, with a bump upon the head,” answered Tomoe, and for the first time, she found the humor which waited with quiet reticence all this while. She laughed, considering Keiko’s blow, and sipped more of the incredibly relaxing liquor; and the others laughed too, even though the mention of the madwoman gave them no comfort.

  Hanada replied, “If she sends you, then I must serve you to the best of my capacity. For she is our queen, though she seems to have forgotten, and visits us only to ridicule. How did she say I must serve you?”

  It was difficult to discover what was so funny, but something certainly was. Tomoe spat some of the saké on herself, trying to hold in the laughter, but she doubled over nonetheless and forced out the foolish words thus: “One wish!” she said. “I have one wish!” Tears of mirth squeezed from shut eyes, as she pounded the floor from her collapsed position.

  Hanada bowed most courteously. “And what wish is that?”

  Tomoe’s nameless friend, who had shown her the way to Ya Hanada’s establishment, was sharing her humor. They struck each others’ backs, and laughed uproariously. But Tomoe had the problem the worse and ended up with her arm over her face, lying on her back as though defeated in a terrible battle, chortling ridiculously, barely able to catch a breath.

  “I forget!” she said, and sat up sharply, her shoulders quivering while she screamed laughter and appeared the perfect idiot. She took her refilled cup from a grinning geisha.

  “Then dwell upon the question carefully,” suggested Ya Hanada, “for you have but one wish.”

  “I wish … I wish …” She hooted laughter, gasped for air, and finally said, “I wish I could hold my liquor better!”

  And then she was able to catch her breath and control her laughter. Ya Hanada stood up and, bowing many times, backed out of the room to attend others, while the servants remained to give Tomoe more to drink. Tomoe’s friend had stopped laughing also, and he leaned close, and said, “You wasted your wish, my friend. You should have wished to return to the world from which you came.”

  “But I like this one better!” said Tomoe, emptying her cup, and holding it forth for more. There was only one bottle for saké, but it spilled an endless supply for the guests. “But you are right! I wasted the wish! I should have wished for wealth! For position! Oh, but shall I complain? Is it not good to hold one’s liquor?” She belched. “A useful skill!”

  And Tomoe Gozen laughed some more, with the distinction of being able to control it.

  And as it was her wish, Tomoe held her liquor well, and continuously. She was a sort of town drunk, but not like the sick and ruined beggars who clung to the edges of the city as if in fear of being shoved further out, back into reality. She was a merry, dignified drunk, and liked by all, indeed, she invigorated their lackluster dream-lives so that they sought her company.

  There was no need to drink from little cups, she early decided. Carried with her, everywhere she went, was the magic saké bottle, which was never dry. She took it with her even to the public bathhouse, where men and women shed clothing and waded into a pool kept warm with heated rocks. Slaves (they looked like Shirakians, although Tomoe’s continual daze—of drunkenness perhaps—made her uncertain) would remove the cooled rocks and replace them with hot ones, then hurry off to reheat the rocks again. Young girls moved about the waist-deep bath with sponges, cleansing and massaging the men and women who waded forth and played.

  Certain of the bathers coupled, but Tomoe hardly noticed, at least was not appalled. She approved of communal joy! She stood off to herself, then found a submerged rock to sit upon, the water coming up to her shoulders when she did. She continued to pour saké into her willing mouth, now and then gazing about her with a broad grin even more foolish than that of Keiko. The bath was an event! She had many friends here, though she could not tell them apart and knew very few with names. Soon she was surrounded by these friends, and she gazed lovingly at their indistinguishable faces as they shared conversations which were always the same.

  “And what is your goal in life, my dearest friend?” asked Tomoe, looking earnestly at the man who stood nearby.

  “I have told you many times!” he said, but of course she did not remember. She said, “But I never tire of hearing it! Such a noble intent!”

  This pleased him, and he began to tell her, becoming
more dreamy than usual, “Someday I will breed horses. I will breed them for fierceness and intelligence. They will be impossible to ride, unless they love their master, and their master must be strong. Then and only then! Horse and rider will be as one, horse responding to every slight wish. The greatest warriors of Naipon would kill to own such horses, and bring me riches in order to ride them into battle.”

  Tomoe dropped her bottle and it sank, but she fetched it up again, and the drink had not been diluted at all. She said, “Noble, indeed! If my own beloved Raski had not been slain in a battle, I would give him to you as a present to start your supreme line, for he was of the finest stock, and used all his legs at once to kill. You have been such a good friend to me! Would that I could repay you. I regret the loss of my stallion the more, for he might have helped you found a dynasty of unequaled breed.”

  Another man interrupted, and Tomoe turned her attention to him with equal admiration and intense interest as he said, “Someday I will own a saké house which will make the house of Ya Hanada look like the sore thing it is. His is small and dingy. Mine will be vast! It will be of wood, not stone, and intricately carved inside and out, with tile-inlaid floors and cotton mats, not straw, and screens of silk instead of paper partitions, all painted by the finest artists. Only the most beautiful geishas may serve my customers, and the clients themselves will be of the highest nobility.”

  “Oh, my friend,” said Tomoe, in the voice of someone overawed. “When you open your saloon, I pray you invite me in.”

  “Indeed I will! Indeed! It would honor my establishment to serve you!”

  “And make you wealthy as well!” she said, laughing. “Unless you give out magic bottles like this one!” She took a huge swallow. For a split second she held back, and looked at the bottle closely, and her expression became horrified as she thought: magic. Magic! She nearly threw the bottle away, to run screaming from the hot pool and these friends she could not even recognize; for she loathed magic, feared it, knew it only as an unchallengeable foe. But these thoughts were instantly displaced by the haze that had begun well before her drunkenness. She continued to listen to the dreams of her compatriots, the geishas who would be authors and painters, the flabby gentlemen who would be warriors. Someday they would all do this. Tomorrow they would do that. Eventually they would discover. Soon they would invest. She encouraged them in all things, while a young girl sponged her back and the fresh, hot stones kept wraith-like steam between her and the faces she could never fully witness.

  “What of you samurai? What do you dream? What goal will you never seek but always promise?”

  Who asked this in so rude a manner, she did not know, for voices were mostly alike, and lips hidden by the vapors of the bath. But she took the cue in kind spirit, and replied in a tone which implied utter commitment.

  “I will be pleased to tell you,” she said. “You see, I have a nemesis, whose name is Ugo Mohri, whom I will fight and kill. He is like a rainbow! He is beautiful! He fights so well, I cannot describe. But I will fight better, I promise that; and then I will have regained the right to dwell in Naipon again.”

  “Better you should invite him here,” said someone who was sincere.

  “Perhaps I shall!” said Tomoe. “But I must practice my skills, or I will grow rusty. Yes, that is my most immediate intention. To improve further my already considerable abilities! I will do that tomorrow. I will do it very soon.”

  She took a deep swallow from the bottle, and shared smiles all around.

  But their joyous sharings were interrupted by the sound of a harsh, gravel voice which said, “Practice now, samurai!”

  At the pool’s edge stood two hairy priests in yellow, each with longswords drawn. The pool immediately erupted, naked bodies flinging themselves to the opposite side, everyone vanishing in the mist until even the sounds of their footfalls had faded away. Tomoe alone had stayed behind, and she was without weapon, without clothes. She stood up, the water falling to her waist. She said,

  “I will fight you with my bottle!”

  And this she did. She rushed out of the pool in a headstrong manner with a great splash and commotion which took the unusual priests by surprise. She swiped through the air with her saké bottle so that it spilled its fluids in a shining arc and caught the nearer priest in the eyes. Then she flipped the bottle over in her hands to use as a little club, taking advantage of his temporary blindness to smash the bottle against the hairy man’s temple. If he saw the world in a daze like her own, surely she had made it worse!

  The stricken priest swung blindly and the other leapt to join. To avoid the two slashes, Tomoe fell backward, vanishing momentarily below the water her landing had made turbulent.

  The second priest waded forth, and slashed into the froth where the samurai had vanished. But she came up behind with a still-warm rock in her hand. Using a trick of mad Keiko, she caved in the priest’s skull, and he fell forward like a tree into a river. Tomoe took up the fallen priest’s sword and turned to face the other, who had used his yellow robe to cleanse his eyes of the burning fluid. He backed away from Tomoe’s armed approach, and said, “My brother is today’s sacrifice, but we will meet again tomorrow.”

  Tomoe laughed, one leg out of the pool. “So! You will sacrifice yourselves against me, to keep the volcano quiet! But when I have slain you all? Then what will the mountain do?”

  “You need not fear it,” said the priest. “For there is an endless supply of us, though only one of you. You may best us for a long time, though we will borrow the swordskills of time’s most mighty warriors to come against you, for we know few have ever had your skill. But eventually, life in this city will weary you, and you will become bored, for you are less dead than these others and less liable to be satisfied by empty intentions. Then, we shall defeat you. You will wish it on yourself.”

  When the hairy priest was gone, Tomoe waded about the crimsoned bath, questing for her dropped bottle. She grumbled and complained, having been several moments without a swig, and needing it to ease the priest’s prognosis. Her bleary eyes could not see to the bottom of the shallows, yet it was not much more distorting than the air around. For a moment, she stood motionless in a bent posture, blinking her eyes and trying to clear them, a look of serious consternation upon her face. When she looked up, there in the endlessly misty atmosphere stood a figure clear to her vision.

  “I am angry at you, Tada,” said Keiko, standing where the hairy priest had been. The priest Tomoe had killed still drifted in the water, and Tomoe pushed him aside, to see if her bottle was under him. It was not.

  She looked up again, and replied, “It is I who should be angry. My vision has been very bad since you hit me on the head, although I see you clearly.”

  “Your lover weeps, Tada. I know what it is to pine! I am very sorry for her, and disappointed in you.”

  Guilt tugged at Tomoe, but not very hard. She asked, “Is Toshima well?”

  “Do you care? You who play games with ghosts?” Keiko did not sport her usual foolish grin, but looked entirely severe.

  “They are not ghosts! They are my friends!”

  “And good friends they are, to someone afraid of losing real friends. You said you feared magic, but you have taken shelter in it.”

  Tomoe looked away, felt around the bottom of the pool some more, seeking her bottle of forgetfulness. “It is your fault, Keiko! Are you so mad you do not know you sent me here?”

  “You asked to come! I saw to it that you would have a way of freeing yourself if you changed your mind. But you wasted your only wish, preferring to be a drunk. Now you will dwell in Fool City throughout eternity! Now I will despise you as all these fools! I will ridicule you as I have always ridiculed them. City of Death! It is ever yours.”

  The samurai shook her shoulders all around, found her bottle suddenly (by her toes). She fetched it up, took a large swallow, felt better. It helped her regain her humor, and she smiled at threatening Keiko. She came plodding out of the wate
r toward a towel with which to dry her skin and hair, but halted before Keiko and looked hard into the old woman’s face.

  “You were blind in the right eye,” said Tomoe, sounding upset. “Now it is your left!”

  “I am not blind at all!” said Keiko. “You are blind!”

  She turned and went away, vanishing into the sea-like haze of distortion. Tomoe shrugged exaggeratedly, drank some more, found her clothing, and staggered from the bathhouse in search of friends.

  Each day, Tomoe Gozen killed another hairy priest, and it was true, there was no end to them. They sacrificed themselves to her sword, and Smaller Mountain surely burbled its delight, though she could not hear if it did, and the city’s haze did not allow her to look and see. (There might be no world outside the city at all, for most of what she could tell.)

  Where the suicidal fellows came from and went to, she could not surmise. She never saw them except when they came to offer themselves to death (and death angered more than frightened them, for in the ghostly city, death was more profound than final). They never ventured to the places other inhabitants used, unless in search of her, and nobody she asked could say where the furry cultists stayed.

  Curiosity rose like a shining bubble to the surface of her hazy awareness, and she decided she must discover the lair of the priesthood.

  Through the city Tomoe quested. They would need a large dwelling if their numbers were so vast. But the city’s largest structure—she guessed it was a temple, though it contained no idol or artifact—was one of the few places unused. At length she decided they must be the only folk capable of coming and going from the city at will, for the city housed them nowhere.

  Therefore she sat herself to guard the only gate, and catch them as they entered. But when it came time for a new sacrifice, three of the hairy priests snuck up behind, suggesting some secret entrance elsewhere, or else a hiding place inside the city after all—underground perhaps. Or there was another possibility, which notion she slowly came to prefer: there were fewer of them than they pretended, and she killed the same ones time and again.