“I said, leave this place now - while you’re still alive.”
“I serve one of the Eight Heads. You will stand aside.”
“Your master told you of the Serpent? How reckless of him.” The Swordsman smiled wryly. “I do not care for them, and do not fear them.”
What are they talking about?
“Cut him to pieces,” Shō ordered, and the six warriors leapt into battle.
As soon as the grey-clads launched their attack, Azumi decided discretion was a far better part of valour and vanished from the glade. From a nearby tree, she observed the fight. It was brief.
The Swordsman’s eyes turned from gold to black; his face seemed even paler in contrast. His body became one with his swords, a whirlwind of blades, a flurry of cuts. He undercut the first warrior’s grip with such force that the man’s katana flew high into the air. The swords moved faster than the eye could see, with inhuman speed and unnatural strength, whistling through the air, breaking through mail and bone with ease.
His opponents were highly trained swordsmen and killers in their own right. But before the flying katana dropped to the ground, the fight was over. The demon stood alone in a pool of red; the six swordsmen around him dead or dying, some sprawled on the grass, some still kneeling, clutching their gushing wounds in agony for a few more seconds. The hunters fled into the forest. The Swordsman shook the blood off his swords, in the same move wiped and sheathed them. His kimono was splattered with crimson, but there was not even a scratch on his body. Shō reeled back; he looked to his sides, searching for Azumi, only to discover that he was alone.
You may think me a coward, she thought, but at least I will live to warn the Master.
“Did you not know who I am, Nanseian?” the Swordsman spoke, his voice icy cold. “Did my name not reach the southern islands yet?”
The old man shook his head, speechless.
“I am Niten Dōraku; I am Shinmen Takezō; I am the Immortal Swordsman. I have never been defeated in a fair fight. I gave you the chance to live, but you threw it away. And now, because of you, I hunger even more…”
Shō raised his hands in combat stance; the Swordsman leapt towards him. The sinewy man struck a powerful blow on the demon’s chest, but it made no impression on the samurai, who grabbed Shō’s outstretched arm and snapped it at the elbow like a twig. Glistening fangs plunged into his neck and the demon started lapping up bright blood spewing from the vein. Shō gurgled and flailed his arms desperately.
The Swordsman threw the bloodless body to the ground and wiped his lips. The colour of his eyes returned to gold. He looked at the Nanseian’s corpse.
“Poor fool… were Ganryū’s promises really worth so much?”
He closed his eyes, bowed his head and started praying.
Azumi did not wait to see him finish.
CHAPTER 5
Bran felt as if he had seen all this before. They were climbing down a narrow, forested gully, following their new guide, just as they had been following Dōraku not that long ago.
How come we keep doing this?
The gully had been carved in the slope of the Takachiho Mountain by the same stream that ran through Torishi’s village. By now it had grown into a raging mountain river, foaming and skipping over the boulders on its journey down to the sea. It was nearing the end of the day and the rain started pouring down again.
“There is a village right below that ridge,” the bear-man said. “Good people, if easily frightened.”
“What do we tell them?” asked Nagomi. “We don’t look like normal travellers.”
Their clothes were still tattered, singed and bloodied in places. Satō and Torishi had tried hard to repair them over the previous couple of days, but they could only do so much with bone needle and vine thread and cold stream water. The wizardess had her arm wrapped in bandages, Bran’s broken nose was still bruised and swollen.
“We don’t need to tell them anything,” replied Bran. “They’re just peasants.”
Satō raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
Nobody welcomed them at the entrance to the village; the only road was empty and quickly turning into a quagmire in the rain.
Another desolate hamlet, thought Bran, and his heart sank.
The sharply angled thatched roof of the headman’s house loomed over the centre of the village. As they drew closer, heads started appearing in the doors and windows of the huts, curious faces of children and their mothers.
We must be the most visitors this place has seen in years.
That the two of them wore noblemen’s clothes — albeit torn and tattered — made it even more of an event. By the time they reached the village centre — a wider and less muddy bit of the road in front of the headman’s house — they were followed by a small, silent, curious gathering.
A far larger crowd had gathered on the square, made up of men and women in field clothes. They were not there to welcome the visitors; in fact, Bran saw only their backs. The crowd listened to the headman, who was standing on a tree stump, shouting and waving his arms, trying to calm the agitated villagers down.
“Yes, there will be new taxes,” Bran heard him say, “and we will have to work harder through the harvest season to rebuild our shrine.”
So they know already.
Angry murmurs rippled through the crowd.
“But who knows — there may be work at the rebuilding! Carpenters, porters, all sorts of construction workers… I’ll send a man to Kirishima tomorrow to see if there’s any word of what they may need.”
“There’s never any work in town!” somebody cried. “They have their own craftsmen.”
“All they want is more rice, more barley, more buckwheat, never more workers,” complained another. “At this rate we’ll have no grain left for the sowing season!”
Others hollered in agreement. Bran turned to one of the old women in the group that had followed them through the village.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Oh, terrible news, tono,” she replied, bowing. “The Great Shrine has burned down! Many dead, many wounded. Priests and even… some samurai.”
“How awful!” he said avoiding her gaze.
The men in the square finally took notice of the strangers, as did the headman. He raised his hands again.
“Be quiet, all of you!” he cried, “let me welcome our noble guests.”
This had the effect opposite to what he intended. The villagers became even more aggravated, their anger now turned toward the mysterious visitors.
“Noble guests?” said one, a burly, strong-looking fellow with a few teeth missing and a bruise under his eye. “They don’t look noble to me! Look at the girl’s hair - only demons have hair like that! And that bearded giant, isn’t he one of the mountain goblins?” He spat.
Bran’s hand wandered to the sword at his side.
How dare you...
“What noblemen have no horse, no bags, no servants?” added another peasant, a woman in dirty-brown monpe and red headscarf.
“First a burned shrine, and now they are coming down from the mountains?” shouted someone else. “Funny that!”
“Silence, serf!”
Bran stepped forward, with the sword drawn by a few inches. The crowd pulled back and quietened, but then the woman in the red headscarf cried again.
“Look at his eyes! Bright green! It’s a goblin! A goblin!”
She grabbed his kimono and shook him, as if to see if he was real. A handful of gravel flew towards his face. Sudden outrage turned his vision red. In one swift move, Bran drew the sword and slashed her across the chest.
“Aiyeeee!” She fell down with a brief, shrieking yell. Red splattered over the mud.
Everything fell silent for a brief moment; and then the crowd charged. They fell on Bran with fists, clubs and stones. He slipped in the mud, letting go of his sword. Instinctively, he summoned a weak tarian, but the sight of magic only roused the peasants into further frenzy.
The barra
ge stopped as abruptly as it had started. A villager was thrown aside with great force, then another, and the crowd scattered in fright. Torishi’s bulking frame loomed over Bran and a muscular, hairy arm reached out to help him up. Satō was standing in the middle of the road, waving her blade threateningly at any peasant who dared to get near. A man was lying at her feet, screaming and clutching a stump of an arm.
The bear-man handed Bran his bloodied and muddy weapon. He stared at it, as if seeing it for the first time, then at the peasant woman at his feet, and the wide gash across her chest still spurting blood in a weakening rhythm, its edges bright red and glistening in the rain. He felt nauseous. He looked around. Only the headman remained on the road, prostrated, not daring to look up.
He felt somebody grabbing him by the arm.
“We’d better go,” Nagomi said quietly. “Looks like we won’t be staying here for the night, after all.”
It was too late to look for another village, so they decided to break camp off the road, an hour’s walk down the mountain. The forest here was not as wild as higher up, with young trees planted in place of the old ones by the woodsmen, and all the fern and bracken cleared regularly.
“We’ll find a bed and bath tomorrow,” said Satō, smiling. She bumped Bran in a friendly way, trying to cheer him up. The boy had been gloomy and silent since leaving the village. He nodded, absentmindedly.
“What’s wrong with him?” Torishi asked.
“It’s complicated,” she replied, herself unsure.
Bran looked up, overhearing their exchange.
“It was me this time,” he said in a blank voice. “Not Emrys, not Shigemasa. I slew her because I was angry. Because she touched me.”
“You did nothing wrong,” said Satō. “They were about to attack you, right? She showed no respect for a samurai. She got what she deserved. You should rest now.”
“I’m fine,” Bran replied and stood up. “I need to be alone for a while.”
He followed a path deeper into the woods and a clearing freshly cut by the lumberjacks. He sat down on a stump of cedar tree and closed his eyes.
He was trying to recede from consciousness the way he had all those days ago in Mogi. At last it worked; when he opened his eyes, he found himself looking down from the top of the red-eye tower, out onto the measureless red dust plain.
“Taishō!” he cried at the top of his lungs. The shout echoed throughout the flatland, the only sound in this vast emptiness.
He waited. Eventually, a lonely dot appeared on the horizon, moving slowly. When Shigemasa neared the tower, Bran shouted again.
“That’s enough! Don’t come closer.”
The old General looked up to him with a wry, mocking smile.
“What are you doing to me?” the boy asked.
“I haven’t done anything,” Shigemasa replied. “That’s just the way things are, boy. You didn’t think there wouldn’t be a price? You’re becoming one of us.”
“No!” Bran cried and the power of his protest raised a gust of wind so strong it slid Shigemasa away by a few feet.
“It’s your whispers, your… mind tricks!”
Shigemasa chuckled.
“I told you, didn’t I? The old hag from Suwa had no idea what she was unleashing. To bind the spirit of a Barbarian with that of a samurai... Nobody ever tried anything like it.”
“I don’t care. I want you to stop.”
“I can’t - ! As long as I’m here, you will keep changing. You should be happy, Barbarian.”
Bran gnashed his teeth.
“Why are you so upset anyway?” the General asked. “It was just some peasant scum. They should all have been put to death.”
“No. You wouldn’t understand. It’s not how things are done in my country. We are not killing innocent people.”
A smile vanished from General’s face.
“Oh but I do understand. I understand you Barbarians very well. I fought alongside the Red Heads at Shimabara, remember? You like to think yourselves all high and moral. You don’t kill like us, facing your enemies. You’d rather stab us in the back…”
“Shut up,” said Bran.
“Insolent brat! You think I came here just to listen to your childish whinging?”
There was a short pause. Brain sighed.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “You had something to tell me. That very important thing a few days ago. Before you tried to steal my body.”
Shigemasa shrugged.
“You were about to be killed. I had no choice. I saved you.”
“Your help is much appreciated,” said Bran with an angry sneer.
Shigemasa looked at him with amusement, and Bran expected another outburst. But the General started laughing, patting himself on the belly with glee.
“You even talk like an old samurai now!”
He’s right. I sound just like him.
He shook his head and stood straight.
“All right. I’m listening now.”
The General stopped laughing and scratched his beard in a slow, deliberate manner before speaking.
“It’s about the man who was your guide. The one who called himself Dōraku. What you must know is that he’s —”
“The Immortal Swordsman?” interrupted Bran. Shigemasa opened his eyes and mouth wide, in genuine surprise.
“You knew?”
“It was obvious. There were too many clues. All I needed was some time to gather my thoughts and remember all the facts. But why bring it now? He’s long dead.”
“It’s not that easy to kill one like him, boy. ‘Immortal’ is not just a name.”
This did intrigue Bran.
“How do you know him?”
“He was at Shimabara, too, as one of the Taikun’s assassins. Back when all the Abominations like him were yet under our control… or that of the Rebels.”
Our control…
“The Rebels used the Fanged?”
The General nodded gravely. “They were the first to do so. No trick was beneath them.”
“So you did recognise Dōraku at once. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I had my reasons then. I have my reasons now.”
You were scared of him.
“You think he’s still alive, then? That he will come after us?”
“That the wolves did not kill him, I’m certain. I’ve seen him come out of worse in the war. But who knows what his plans are now…”
Bran closed his eyes.
We have enough trouble as it is.
“I...thank you for letting me know,” he said with a sincerity which surprised even him. The General opened his mouth to speak, but Bran warped himself back to the real world before Shigemasa could add anything else.
He opened his eyes to see Nagomi appearing from among the trees. Her face beamed with relief.
“There you are! You’ve been gone for hours.”
“I was… meditating.”
The priestess sat down beside him on the tree stump.
“Sacchan said you shouldn’t be so upset about what happened.”
“That’s just the thing. I’m not upset. No shame, no remorse. And I should be.”
It was clear from her expression that she did not understand.
“Weren’t you just defending yourself?”
“What I did stands against everything I was ever taught. It’s one thing to kill in a battle, but to slay an innocent…”
“Sacchan said —”
“Yes, but what do you think?” he interrupted her. “You are a healer, from a family of physicians. Isn’t it your duty to save lives?”
“I…” she pulled back at first, but then composed herself.
“Look — we are all tired and strained. With everything that’s been happening to us lately… all the fighting and running away, and — you just made a mistake, that’s all.”
“A mistake.”
He laughed, bitterly.
“When this is all over, if you’re still worried a
bout that woman, we can come back here and pray for her.”
“And that will… help?”
“Of course! This will placate her soul and restore the peace in yours. Everything will be fine.”
He stifled a bitter laugh, not wanting to hurt her feelings.
Is killing really that simple here?
Despite their doctrinal differences, most wizards shared with the Sun Priests the ideal of the sanctity of life. As the ancient Roman philosophers had taught, it was a spark of the Divine Essence, identical in its nature to the Creator, and intended to return to its holy origin in its own time. Any other fate destined it to roam the vastness of the Otherworld, diminishing the Creation forever.
In a more down-to-earth version, slaying was believed to decrease the magic potential in the vicinity of the killer, as well as his own. The theory, though never fully scientifically proven, was popular among the Dracalish and Prydain scholars. That the magic academies like Llambed ostensibly trained future soldiers did not contradict the belief and wars were acceptable as long as they were fought far from Dracaland’s vulnerable shores.
Bran wasn’t sure if the weakness he had been feeling after the incident was just the power of suggestion, or a true loss of energy.
Placate her soul and restore the peace in yours.
The Yamato, living in a world crowded by the Gods and Spirits, had developed more practical ways of dealing with death. He wondered if these were just meaningless gestures, or was there something in the priestly rituals which helped restore the balance of nature.
A nighthawk began its long, loud call, and they both sat for a while listening to the haunting shrill.
“There’s something else bothering you, isn’t there,” said Nagomi, observing his face.
He shrugged with resignation.
“It’s all just too much. My dorako … the battle… and you almost died…”
He looked up at her and smiled.
“Back then in the shrine you said we wouldn’t fail — so there is still some hope I guess.”
“I lied,” she said.
“What?”
“I have dreamed of the battle at the shrine, the night before it happened. I saw your dorako burning the place down. I saw myself die.”
“Then why didn’t you tell us?”
The Year of the Dragon Omnibus Page 76
