by Adam Bennett
Our escape had not gone unnoticed. Every door and window of the inn had been thrown open, and a horde of yōkai boiled out in pursuit.
The tenome came first in an ungainly run, hands outstretched to reveal the eyes in its palms. Behind it, a pair of jinkininki corpse eaters, and a purple-skinned creature with a fox's muzzle and a lolling tongue—a kowai perhaps—then a monstrous red oni with an iron beard, a flying head, a fox spirit in a ball of fire, an animated kimono, a flaming cartwheel.
From the other side of the inn the three tengu card players appeared. They had donned yamabushi robes and katanas, and hooted with glee as they clattered down the street on their lacquered sandals. A little way behind them the innkeeper had abandoned his human disguise and taken up an enormous iron club, which he swung back and forth like a threshing flail. I'd never seen so many yōkai in one place.
Kurai, who'd never even seen one ghost, threw down his pack and grasped his staff in both hands, apparently preparing to fight two dozen demons all on his own. It was incredibly brave and incredibly stupid.
Before he could get himself killed I grabbed him by the back of the neck and hauled him into the nearest alley.
"There is a time to be a hero Kurai, and this is not it!"
The next few minutes were a frantic confusion of running and near misses. The yōkai blundered and crashed through the empty houses and lanes as we ducked and dodged to stay ahead of them.
The tenmue charged from a rice barn, hands first, and nearly sank his sharp teeth into my arm, but I kicked him in the chest—cursing my missing shoes—and slammed the barn door on his hands before he could recover. A moment later a one footed oni with a single horn came roaring around the end of the lane and we were forced to duck through an empty pigsty before he saw us.
A woman's voice rose above the hubbub, shouting instructions to the ghosts from the road. I risked a glance between buildings and caught a glimpse of a white-haired woman who appeared to be directing the hunt—the obāsan from Kagoya.
The obāsan waved her hands in the air, and something rose over the rooftops, a gigantic old woman's head the size of a barn—with shaggy black hair, a pointed tongue, and wild staring eyes. As it cleared the top of the houses the head began to cackle, and its eyes lit up like lanterns, casting twin beams of light over the houses.
"What in the nine hells is that?" Kurai breathed.
"Ōkubi yōkai," I replied in a whisper, "I've only ever seen them on scrolls. I didn't even think they were real!"
"It's like the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, Master. What can it mean?"
I shook my head. "Not now. The ōkubi will find us eventually if we stay here. We need to get further away."
Putting action to the words, we crept our way through the abandoned houses towards the west end of the village, where it butted up against the forest. When the head came near we froze, pressing ourselves against the floor so that the lantern eyes would not see us. Once we were almost trapped, with the gigantic head on one side and a party of tengu on the other, but we slipped past on our stockinged feet and they did not hear us.
At last, we lost them by the edge of town and took shelter in a dilapidated sake works, where the enormous shadows of the mixing barrels and fermenting tubs could hide us from yōkai eyes.
"What does it all mean, Master?" Kurai asked me again when we were settled in our hiding place. His skin was still pale from fear, but he looked to me for answers.
"A trap," I suggested. "Perhaps I have caused offence to Great King Enma, or some other god of the yōkai, by not allowing their minions to do as they please. Perhaps I have killed too many oni and they want rid of me?"
"Perhaps Master," Kurai ventured, "but that does not explain the letter or the woman with the baby, does it?"
"No, it does not. And you are correct, my apprentice, the woman is very strange. I am sure it was the same woman I saw watching me in the inn. I took her for a yūrei, a sad ghost, but now I don't know." If I had mistaken a living woman for a ghost it was a great lapse, and the thought troubled me, but I could not afford to show weakness in front of Kurai, so I said nothing.
"Is there not a story of a woman who gives birth to a baby after she is dead, and continues to care for it as a ghost until the baby is found?"
"There is. Well done. But if a dead woman called us for help why would she run the moment we arrived? Why bring us to a place overrun by oni? What part does the old woman from Kagoya play?" I gritted my teeth in frustration—still too many mysteries!
"If only we had not lost her. Now we will never know."
"Since the woman was also running from the yōkai, they must be chasing her too?" I sensed that Kurai did not quite believe this, but he ploughed on loyally, trying to see my point of view. "Perhaps they want to kill her baby, or worse, to turn it into a yōkai, such things are known. If that is so, must she not also be in hiding? In which case we must find her first."
If that is so, I wondered, why was she apparently safe in the inn till we arrived? I wanted to tell Kurai that his ideas were foolish, that it must be a yōkai trap, that we should leave now; but his words had stirred a memory—the single torii arch high up on the hill that must mark the entrance to a shrine. Where else would she go to hide from demons?
What I said out loud was, "Yes, we must. Now listen. The woman is nowhere near. She was not caught by the demons, and we did not hear the baby cry after we lost track of her.
"On the hills above the village there is a shrine or a temple. I think the baby is there. If we can reach this shrine we can rescue the child, just as the letter suggested."
Beyond the sake works the forest was dark and tangled, full of heavy branches that creaked and groaned in the wind coming down off the mountain. Overhead the moon was yellow, adrift in a sea of racing clouds, and I whispered a prayer to Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto, that he might light our way and confuse our enemies.
It seemed my prayer must have worked because the forest appeared to be empty of ghosts and demons alike. Soon we were well above the distant village, where it seemed the search for us still continued.
Then we saw a blue light, glimmering through the trees.
"The shrine?" Kurai asked, but I knew it was not.
"Foxfire! Beware!"
At once the blue light surged closer, and we saw a figure moving through the trees. It resembled a woman—a woman with blue skin and black hair, blackened teeth, horns, claws. She glowed with an eerie blue light, and a blue lantern, as large as she was, slid along in front of her, passing straight through the trees as if they were not there.
"Amida Buddha save us!"
Kurai took a grip of his staff, preparing to fight, and I drew my sword also, hoping that the sutras engraved on the blade would harm this creature.
"Quickly! There! The steps!"
I had spotted a steep flight of stone steps that must surely lead to the shrine. They were old and worn, blanketed in moss, and flanked at intervals by pairs of unlit stone lanterns. We ran to the stairs side by side, while the ghost emerged from the forest about twenty steps below. At once it began to move up towards us, with the floating lantern before it.
I went on the attack. I charged down, wakizashi first, hoping to cut the creature with the blessed blade, but it was faster than me. Each time I swung the sword, the lantern was there first. Where it touched the blade, the metal smoked.
I backed off, but she was fast. Behind me, Kurai was yelling for me to run, but I didn't dare turn my back on her. I was dodging the lantern desperately. Dodging claws too.
Then, a moment of less pressure. We had come in line with one of the pairs of stone lamps and she hesitated, just for a moment. It gave me an idea.
"Light the lamps!"
Kurai began to come down the stairs towards me, but I waved him off. "The next pair!" If I was right, all I had to do was hold the creature off until we reached the next pair of lamp, but I had to give Kurai time.
I threw myself into the rhythm of it: cut, duck, dod
ge, step back, cut again. It was furious swordsmanship. My blade didn't have the reach to get by the lantern, but I held her off, even though my heart was pounding with exhaustion. I couldn't even look round to see if Kurai had lit the lamps, I just had to trust him.
Then, abruptly, the fight stopped. Two stone lanterns, the fireboxes glimmering with flames, stood on either side of me, and the yōkai could not pass them. For a moment she hovered on the other side, and then fled, wailing, into the forest.
Everything was still. We stood in a little pool of firelight, listening to the wind hissing through the trees.
And then, faintly, from behind us, the grizzle of a baby.
The shrine was a simple place, with wooden walls and a thatched roof. A single torii gate, its red paint peeling and faded, marked the entrance. Beyond the gate a courtyard of pebbles, hemmed in by trees, and then a small porch, raised up on poles, surrounding the shrine proper. A short flight of wooden steps led from the yard to the shrine door. On either side of the steps were pedestals that should have held Komainu dogs, but the guardian statues were missing. If it were not for the sound of the baby crying, you would think no one had been here in decades.
I looked up at the shrine door and thought I saw a flash of a white dress.
"Master, the woman! We must go up."
"No, Kurai it is another trap, it must be."
"I do not think it is a trap, Master. They want us to find the baby, don't you feel it? That is why they let us go. They herded us here."
Let us go? They had come out in their hundreds to find us, and yet I felt it too—for all the noise and commotion they had not caught us. Was that because of our skill? Or had they not wanted to succeed? Surely not!
"I won't believe it."
I entered the shrine with my sword still drawn. It seemed bigger on the inside, filled with lengthening shadows and old wood. The scent of pine was everywhere.
The baby lay on the middle of the floor, wrapped in a swaddling blanket, but my eyes were everywhere else: on the flaking pillars, on the line of stone foxes at the back of the shrine, on the gloomy rafters—I was certain it must be a trap.
There! Something moved in the darkness above the fox statues, and I ran forward.
"Master, the baby!" I ignored Kurai, all my attention on the attack. My sword rose, I struck … just as the yōkai did.
A massive white paw swiped down from the rafters, aimed at my head. I turned my strike into a parry, but the force of the blow still flung me sideways. Out of the roof came a huge white nekomata — a two-tailed cat spirit — with bright yellow eyes and a lone fang in its mouth.
"Obāsan!" I turned the word into a curse, rolling back to my feet. To my side Kurai made an attempt, I think, to grab the baby, but the nekomata and I were in the way.
The yōkai arched its back and lashed its twin tails, each of which was tipped with a ball of green fire. It hissed, but I cut at it. Sword and claws met in a shower of sparks. For a moment I managed to grab hold of it, trying to force it down for a killing blow, but it writhed out from under me.
"Master!"
I ignored him, all my attention on the demon. I didn't care why it had brought me here. Whatever it intended, it would fail. I made a stabbing cut, drawing blood, and received a raking blow down my side in return. Demon blood and human blood mingled in the moonlight, so be it.
"Sadamasa–sama!"
The use of my real name brought me up short, and suddenly Kurai was between me and the demon cat. I saw that he had managed to snatch the baby from the floor; he had the baby in one hand and his staff in the other.
"Stand aside, Kurai!"
He shook his head obstinately, though he kept his eyes down. "No Master, you must stop fighting."
"Stop fighting? What do you mean? I will quell this demon, as is my calling, and all the other creatures who have conspired to trap us here."
"Conspired, Master? No. These demons wish us to take this baby to safety, that is why we are here."
It could not be. It was in the nature of demons to do evil, just as it was in my nature, as a demon queller, to stop them. Anything else was unthinkable, and yet…
"Think, Master." Kurai's voice was pleading, and I listened, despite myself. "The letter, it was designed to bring us here, of course; but that also means they knew who we were from the moment we entered the inn. They didn't have to let us go. They chased us, but they didn't want to catch us, they just wanted us to come here. You said it yourself, they already had the baby and the mother.
"And where is she, if she's an innocent needing to be saved?" He gestured around the moonlit shrine, still making sure to keep between me and the prowling nekomata.
I kept my eyes on the yōkai, and it kept its eyes on me. Kurai's words made sense, even if I didn't want them to, but that wasn't enough to end the ancient enmity between demon and demon queller. All I needed was an opening.
"Very well, I believe you, but it does not change my duty. You have the child, good, now stand aside."
"No, Master." His voice was full of regret at defying me, but he still didn't move.
"Stand aside!" I made it an order.
"No. They have saved this child, and we owe them for it." He raised his staff, but only to give himself more room to address his next words to the demon. "And you, Nekomata–sama, you must also stand down! This is what you wanted!"
He was right, curse him, and I knew it, but I wouldn’t be the first to back down.
The nekomata saved me the trouble, with a yowl that might also be a moan of frustration, it backed away, withdrawing into the shadows at the back of the shrine. The door was behind me, the way out was clear. I could have left right then, I'm sure Kurai would have thanked me for it, but those unanswered questions still nagged at me.
I lowered my sword but didn't sheath it.
"Is my student right?" I shouted into the shadows. "Did a baby get born here after its mother's death? Did you trick us here with a letter so that we would take it away? Did you chase us into coming here because you knew I'd never willingly help a yōkai? If so, why bring us at all?"
The nekomata made no reply—I'm not even sure it was still in the shrine — but another voice did. It was a young woman's voice, sorrowful, but full of love. A mother's voice.
"His name is Moirhako."
Forest grave child. The picture was as clear in my head as if I could see it. A woman with a baby dies in the forest—a ghost woman carries on.
I sheathed my sword at last. "Come, Kurai," I said sadly. "Nothing more for us here."
By the time we returned to the ridge above the village, the clouds had blown away and the moon was high in the sky. The wind was sighing through the pines once more, and the night was full of stars. Kurai had rigged a sling for the baby from his haori, and carried him on his back, while I took charge of the staff and pack.
"Look, Master!"
I turned in time to see a wonderful vision. All the lights had gone out in Shiroyama village, but a glow filled the forest as a hundred yōkai rose up into the sky like a column of brightly coloured smoke. Even as we watched, the demon spirits were caught by the wind and scattered in all directions. Trouble for another day.
"Now, that is what you call the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons."
"And what about the boy, Master?"
I considered the sleeping infant strapped to Kurai's back. "We will take him to the priests at Sosha–ji. He was found in a shrine, and touched by spirits, it is only right that he is raised in a temple."
"And perhaps he will be a demon queller one day, Master?"
"Give me strength! One apprentice at a time! One apprentice at a time."
Kurai bowed his head, but I think he was smiling. "Yes, Master."
The Apprentice
Adam Bennett
The gleaming blade slashed down at Isaac’s head. Firelight played along its razor sharp edge and he barely managed to raise his own weapon in time to catch it. The swords sang their horrible alluring
melody as they met only inches from his face. A brief moment of respite, then the longsword swept down at him again and again, driving him backwards with every brutal blow. He was giving up ground, sure to lose his footing at any moment, the encroaching darkness obscuring roots and fallen branches in the shifting shadows thrown by the flames.
He turned aside another blow and circled, looking for an opening, but his opponent kept up his steady onslaught. The firelight illuminated Isaac’s attacker for a moment, bringing his bearded, rugged features into sharp relief, a long scar down the right side of this face, and steel in his eyes. The man wanted Isaac’s blood.
Blow after ringing blow rained down. Isaac’s arms ached with the effort of keeping the blurring blade at bay. Soon he was retreating once more, giving up feet and yards with every desperate block. The ground he’d just regained was dwindling fast behind him again as he headed towards unsure footing.
Each mighty blow he countered sent a shiver running up his arms. The skin on his palms was red and inflamed, the leather of the hilt tearing at the tender flesh with every hasty block. His muscles burned. Sweat ran down his brow, stinging his eyes. He shook his head between blows, clearing some of the perspiration before the next ringing, shuddering clash and subsequent step rearwards. He couldn’t keep this up indefinitely.
The thick steel chain hanging about his shoulders dug into his neck painfully, the fat links rubbing the skin raw. The distraction was enough that he almost lost his head to a brutal sideways swipe, barely pulling away from the vicious attack in time. He refocused, and saw a sudden chance, his attacker overbalancing momentarily as his wild swing hit nothing but air.
Isaac stepped forward, towards the hasty follow up attack. He managed to catch the swipe on his crossguard and twist the weapon to the side, freeing himself from the press long enough to dance around his stumbling attacker, the pair switching places once more. He raised his sword and swung down hard at the momentarily exposed back of his foe.
Thud.
An arrow slammed into Isaac’s side, staggering him and forcing his swing wide. It gave the swordsman time to turn and face him, longsword already rising. Grinning at his good fortune, the bearded man resumed his relentless assault. A gasp of pain escaped Isaac’s clenched teeth and he pressed a hand hard to his side where the arrow had struck. He fought to bring his sword up one handed to meet the incoming enemy blade, but too late he realised the attack was a feint. He tried to slide clear but was far too slow.
