by Noah Ward
Ryojin
The Bonded Blade
Noah Ward
Copyright © 2019 by Noah Ward
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contact: [email protected]
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
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Epilogue
1
Blood on the Crossroads
Blood stained the snowy crossroads. It saturated the ice, formed tiny crimson puddles that had begun to frost over, spattered the remnants of wooden boxes and their modest cargo of grains and rotting fruit. The dead numbered close to ten, in various stages of repose: a couple lay face down, a few others were sprawled over splintered wood, blades held limply in frozen hands.
In the distance, a light flickered in between rolling lashes of a blizzard. It would approach them soon.
Kaz drew her voluminous indigo robes tighter; despite the many layers, the chill always had a way of slipping through. She shivered, groaned, then brought the sputtering roll of burning tobacco to her lips, keeping it shielded from the elements by a cupped hand.
“How much longer’ve we gotta wait?” said one of the corpses on the ground, raising his voice to be heard over the howl of the wind. “I’ll have to piss myself to stay warm if it gets any colder.”
“Corpses usually don’t speak, Goro,” said Kaz. She dropped the rollup into the snow and imagined it hissing out. “Though they sometimes piss themselves.”
Goro craned his head up at her, giving her a view of his square head, scruffy hair, and a nose that had been broken too many times. “I should dock you a couple of hans everytime you speak, ryojin. You said this plan--”
“--They’re nearly here,” Kaz spat. Goro’s head spun around as he squinted into the distance. “Keep your head down.”
Goro did as instructed, dutifully burying his face in the snow. They still had some time; Kaz simply couldn’t be bothered with his jabbering. She donned her tengai, a wicker bassinet that completely covered the head, looking every bit a bosan of the Zettai religion. The thin slits cut in the basket partially obscured her vision; she felt her own hot breath warm her lips, the beat of her heart, the patter of snowflakes against the material.
The carriage was close now. The bleary light was joined by several others--iron lanterns held on bamboo poles to ensure they did not veer off course. Difficult, seen as though the snow piling up on either side of the crossroads made it feel as if you forged through an icy tunnel.
Constructed of iron, two soldiers rode at the carriage’s front, the one on the left operating the brass levers that propelled it. Two soldiers riding kevals--shaggy draught beasts native to this land--guarded the carriage’s flanks. Kaz did not have to use her imagination to determine more would be waiting inside the metal box.
Her hand instinctively drifted to her left hip, freezing digits fingering the outline of her hilt.
Breathe. There was no mistake--they could see her now. Breathe. They began to slow; the driver’s arms and hands were a flurry as he attempted to halt the carriage. Breathe. It finally stopped with a hiss and whine. Breathe. The soldiers on kevals broke from the rest and approached. The blades by their sides were high-quality, folded steel. They dismounted, boots plunging into the thick snow.
“What happened here?” shouted one of the soldiers who struggled to be heard over the blizzard. By the smaller stature and lithe figure, despite layers of lamellar armour, Kaz knew she was a woman. The one next to her was male.
“Fated,” replied Kaz, loud enough to be heard through the basket on her head. Combined with the bandanna covering her mouth and hair, her head had started to feel like a hot spring.
The eyes of both soldiers narrowed; hands hovered over weapons. Their heads flitted around, as if expecting fated to spring out of the snowbank.
“They did this?” asked the woman. She wandered towards Goro, crouched by him. Kaz’s hands tensed. She forced herself not to look in the soldier’s direction.
“Yes--” Kaz began. “They--”
“Achoo,” Goro finished for her.
Idiot.
Goro’s sneeze sent the woman on her arse. Her comrade frowned, took one look at Kaz, then reached for his blade. It stuck in the scabbard. The cold had a habit of doing that. He opened his mouth to scream for the others, but Kaz had already torn the basket off her head and slammed it on to his--eye slits facing the other way around.
The carriage drivers leant forward. Squinted. Behind Kaz, bowstrings twanged. Two soldiers pitched off the carriage, facefirst into the snow. The female soldier close to Kaz managed to free her weapon as she rose, feet crunching in ice. Kaz was already squirming out of her robe as she scuttled backwards. Sweaty fabric once used to cover kevals engulfed the woman’s face.
The cold air raced up Kaz’s spine. Much better.
She spun out of the way of the flailing soldier and towards the one who was wrestling the basket from his head. Kaz’s blade flashed out of her scabbard, an arcing upward strike scything through the soldier’s chest, brittle wicker, and scoring the flesh of his face. He collapsed to the snow in a heap.
Kaz whipped around to find a curtain of fabric sailing towards her. Ducking, she tilted her blade upwards slightly to spear the woman as she blindly rushed in. Her wide eyes gawped down at Kaz, then rolled back into her skull as she slid off the blade.
“Thank you for your contribution,” said Kaz as she scooped up the the indigo “robes” to clean the blood off her blade. “I could not have done it without you.”
Goro grumbled as his underlings shoved themselves up from the snow. “Well, we, er, didn’t plan for...complications.” He waved her off and drew his forearm across his dribbling nose. “An act of the shogens.”
Kaz raised an eyebrow. “Which one? Is there a shogen of inopportune sneezes we should build a shrine to?”
His face creased and he turned away. “Get the carriage!” he barked at his thugs. “We need the krystallis.”
Three of his men brushed the snow off their raggedy clothes and rushed towards the carriage.
“I would--” Kaz began, but the men were already scuttling off.
The carriage door burst open as they passed. Blood fountained out of the back of one man’s skull; another fell to the snow clutching two small craters in his stomach.
Goro scrambled for cover while shouting, “Kill ‘em!”
Two more guards stumbled out of the carriage. The kevals whinnied and cantered off to a safe distance. Kaz sprinted towards the other side of the carriage, glimpsing the familiar glow from the shard-lock pistols--weapons infused with krystallis. Goro’s right-hand man, Sho, well-built and quick, scooped up his boss and deposited him behind the safety of the rubble.
One of the archers who popped up from behind the wreckage earned a bullet in the throat, while the other was wise enough to stay out of sight. One of the men playing dead attempted to rush the soldiers, but ate dirt before he’d even taken two steps.
Kaz considered biding her time a little longer, if only to garner more of a payout, but the soldiers had begun to advance on Goro’s and Sho’s bulwark. She bolted through the snow; her sandaled foot hopped off the carriage’s front wheel as she nimbly vaulted on its freezing and snowy roof. The soldiers whipped around, pistols raising.
In a heartbeat, she leapt from the roof of the carriage. Kaz’s blade sheared through the shoulder and chest of the left soldier. Falling into a crouch, she then drew her sword across the second soldier’s stomach in a clean horizontal slash.
Silence. The howl of wind. The stench of blood in the air.
Breathe.
Kaz rubbed her chest, stopped when she saw Goro poking his craggy face above the wreckage like an inquisitive mole.
“They’re all dead,” she shouted. “You’re welcome.”
The man whispered something to Sho. Two other brave warriors extracted themselves from behind the wall of shattered wood and foodstuffs to probe the gruesome scene.
Kaz did not sheathe her blade just yet. She rushed to the rear of the carriage to where the krystallis was affixed. Only Goro and three of his people survived, an easy number to deal with…
“What are you doin’?” Goro shouted.
Her unoccupied left hand shakily reached out to the cylindrical cover on the rear panel of the carriage and opened the krystallis’s housing chamber. Kaz held her breath. Cursed. Slammed her fist against the metal.
“Watch the krystallis!” Goro barked. Sho and another man, an oremancer who would extract the krystallis, a leather pouch clutched in his bony hands, rushed to the rear of the carriage.
Muttering under her breath, Kaz wandered towards the vehicle’s open door. Might as well salvage something from this disaster. The billowing wind caused it to rock back and forth on squeaky hinges. Plastered on its side was the sigil of Emperor Retsudan--a three-petalled white flower, surrounded by eight krystallis shards to represent each of the shogen.
The glint of metal caught Kaz’s eye. Her hand tightened around her blade once again.
“What--” Goro began, but her extended hand shut him up.
The carriage door attempted to shut but caught on its lock. Kaz wedged her blade between the door. Breathe. Flicked the door open.
Kaz raised an eyebrow. Goro poked his head out from behind her.
“I thought you said we were only here for the Krystallis?” said Kaz.
2
Meeting at the Forest Shrine
It was a girl. It was a sedated girl. It was a girl whose hands and feet had been bound, who had a piece of black fabric secured around her eyes, whose mouth had been gagged. In short, the girl they had found in the soldiers’ carriage was a problem. A big problem? A small one? Kaz had no intention of finding out.
She hoped.
Goro’s man Sho and the oremancer had removed the chunk of krystallis from the rear of the carriage, cradled it like a newborn swaddled in leather and presented it to their leader. Pleased, Goro entrusted it to the oremancer. Something like that would sell for a tidy some of gold aians. A girl, however…
“We should kill ‘er,” the fourth and final survivor of the assault had said. Unlike the oremancer and Kaz, she was in the direct employ of Goro. “Retsudan’s scum don’t tie a girl up tighter than a gnat’s arsehole because it’s fun.”
“Not fun for you, at least,” Kaz had replied, staring at the girl’s prone form lying in the snow.
She had wagged a finger at her. “You joke, but she’s fated, mark my words.”
That had raised a few eyebrows.
“Quit yappin’,” Goro had said, putting himself between Kaz and his woman. “Talk like that is ripe to rile the shogens and they’ll strike you down. We take the girl.”
“I want no part o’ that,” said the oremancer.
Sho placed a hand on his shoulder. “Then you’ll get no part of the fee.”
He grumbled and walked away, mounting one of the kevals they had hidden in the forest bordering the crossroads.
“You got any objections?” Sho had asked Kaz.
She retrieved a flintlock lighter from her robes, sparked it a couple of times before it finally lit the rollup pinched between her index finger and thumb. “I like money, so I suppose not.” Money was the only thing she could salvage from this disaster.
“Good!” said Goro as he slapped her on the back. “You get to carry her back to camp.”
And that was why Kaz had dragged the girl onto the back of one of the kevals they had liberated from the dead soldiers. The girl did not stir on their journey back to camp. Along the way, the oremancer had shot wary glances at the body flopped over the saddle. He had every right to. She was “fated” as they put it. But she looked every part the normal girl who had seen around fifteen winters, if Kaz had to guess. Raven hair had been shorn to shoulder length, probably by herself. Defiance, a statement, perhaps. Her skin was pale--marked with cuts and bruises--marking her as a native of the south--Kaizen--but she dressed as if she had wandered a little too far from the south--a white and blue hakama, long and billowing along the legs and arms. Impractical for this land. Dirtied and torn, it appeared the journey here had taken its toll.
It would not end well for the girl. Her only hope was that their blind fear of fated was a big enough deterrent.
Kaz scoffed, shaking her head. It never was.
Goro’s camp was a glade in the middle of a densely packed forest. There was a river not too far away and a couple of the (now dead) recruits had complained hacking through the ice for water had been too much of a chore. A small cave, no more than a hollowed hillock, was where they had made their beds and stored what meagre supplies they had brought for the job.
“Secure the girl next to one of the trapper cages,” Sho had instructed upon their arrival.
Kaz had hitched her keval and then carried the girl to the cave, where she roped her to one of the several cages for trapping animals. While it wouldn’t stop her moving, the noise would surely alert anyone to thoughts of escape.
She tapped her fingers against the side of her scabbard and peered down at the unconscious girl. Not a peep from her all this time. She wasn’t dead; Kaz had checked. And she wasn’t faking; Kaz had pinched the exposed flesh of her arm.
It wasn’t her problem. Maybe she was fated, then it would be the others who had to worry. If she wasn’t...
“A gift!” she heard Goro bellow from outside.
Kaz shook her head and returned outside. Since leaving the crossroads, the blizzard had abated. It had dusted the fire and logs they had perched over the past few nights in light powder. Off to her left, close to the circumference of tall, evergreen trees that seemed to reach for the dark horizon, Sho held a lantern over Goro. The squat man had a bottle of rice-wine sloshing in his grasp. There was a case at his feet and he began handing them out to his gathered muscle.
As Kaz approached, an opened bottle was thrust into her hand.
“For all your hard work,” said Goro with a gap-toothed grin, raising his bottle.
“And the money?” Kaz asked as she dusted off a log before sitting down. Shogens that was cold on her arse. She drove the bottle into the snow.
Several of the remaining bandits--the four that had been instructed to guard the camp and prep if an expeditious getaway was required--also turned to Goro.
“Soon,” said Sho, the lantern light
making him look like a ghoul.
“The people who say that usually disappear--”
Goro waved her off as he dug into his robes and withdrew a pipe that was longer than his forearm. “How about this, ryojin: we go gather some firewood, check the traps--”
“That sounds a lot like what someone else said--except they went to take a piss--”
“--check the traps--maybe I’ll take a piss--then return with some food to go with that wine, eh?”
The remaining men, both in and out of Goro’s gang glared at her. Never come between a person and their food.
“I’ll look forward to it,” Kaz relented, electing to fish the tobacco pouch out her pocket.
“My thanks,” said Goro as he stuck the pipe between his teeth and sparked a flint to light it.
Sho lit another lantern before both he and Goro disappeared into the forest. The men around Kaz chatted and drank. One of Goro’s men glanced at her, then at the bottle by her feet. She pretended to ignore him. There was an eagerness in his eyes, the weight of expectancy. The light from the lantern had vanished from the forest. Dawn was still several hours away.
Kaz stuck the rollup in her dry mouth. She stood, which was met with several sidelong glances.
“All Goro’s talk of piss has made me need one myself,” she said and scooped up the bottle. Kaz wandered off to the cave, the girl still sedated. The cages next to her--five in all--were empty. She had not seen them bring any more with them.
A snake slithered within her gut. Something was not right. Kaz dropped the bottle and stealthed towards the mouth of the cave; dead light and several stacked boxes obscured her as she slipped into the forest. Picking up Goro’s trail was not difficult. Her eyes adjusted to the night. Two sets of footsteps--one wide and the other long--weaved between trees, thankfully unobscured by the recent snowfall.
Kaz sprinted silently through the forest, hopping over fallen branches and uprooted trees until the flickering amber ball of lantern light materialised. Upon slowing, the cold bit at her sweaty cheeks and forehead. She kept her hand by her blade and circled towards the swaying will-o’-the-wisp. As she neared, the bodies of Goro and Sho turned from flickering shadow puppets into campfire monsters. They sat on upturned logs in a small clearing. No, not a clearing. A shrine to the shogen of the bountiful harvest, fertile grounds, and rebirth: Minori. A slant-roofed hokora--a miniature storehouse-like building--marked the area. There was a human figure perched on top of it, carved from stone, that must have been a strange representation of the shogen.
