Chapter 6
"It was an Oni," Haru muttered. Only Teraku, Kaidan, and Tsubasa could hear him. The other samurai had spread out, moving from the shrine to the other scarred buildings at the edge of Kyuusai, and to the treeline beyond. No one thought to check beneath the ash and rubble where Kaidan concealed himself.
"Quiet," Teraku said. "You’re panicking the horses."
Sure enough, both samurai were having trouble reining their horses in. The mares were skittish and reluctant to obey even simple commands.
"But you saw him. Normal people don’t disappear. It must've been the work of demons. Or ghosts!"
"Stop it, Haru. For the last time, there is no such thing as ghosts or Oni or dragons. He looked more like a monk, anyway."
"A monk?"
"Yes. A Shugenja. They’re common around here. Could even have been a Yamabushi. They like their mountains."
"Old Hideki warned me about the Yamabushi. They’re sorcerers, he says. Too wild to live with civilised folk. Mark my words, Teraku. They’re as bad as the Oni."
Teraku shook his head. "They’re just crazy old hermits. A little soft-headed, nothing more. Now will you shut up and keep your eyes sharp before The Bear returns?"
The other samurai returned to the shrine. Tsubasa looked down on them with unreadable yellow eyes, while Kaidan meditated under the cover of his camouflage, gathering calm around him. He attuned his senses to the whispers from the world beyond.
"Teraku, find anything?" the red-clad leader bellowed.
"No, Captain Karuido."
"Haru?"
"No, sir," Haru kept his head bowed, not meeting the Captain’s eye.
The Bear grunted. "Kanaye? Roichi? Takai?"
All the samurai shook their heads. Karuido’s face raged the same shade as his armour.
"Karuido?" Teraku said.
"What?"
Teraku pointed to the west. The bamboo plating on his arm trembled.
The smoke cloud flared close by, clogging the sky with its fury. The sun was transformed into a tiny orange bead as the world darkened. The cloud spread its reach across the countryside and the village, carrying the stench of brimstone and charcoal. Its source was almost on top of them, obscured only by the hazy air and a crest in the outlying field. The winds had stilled, choked out by the leaden smoke.
Haru coughed.
"Form up," barked Karuido. "Single line."
He lowered the metal bear mask on his helmet.
Kaidan sprang free of his hiding place, shaking the worst of the ash from his once cream-coloured leggings, vest and robes. He took his time, knowing the Shinichi samurai were fixated on their approaching enemy.
Tsubasa took to the air, gliding and cutting through the thick haze as he took in the battlefield from an aerial vantage point.
An indistinct behemoth crested the rise and stepped onto the field. The beast was vast and unlike any dragon Kaidan had ever seen, as big as the temple at Ise, as Akio had suggested. It was squat, possessing an expansive—almost square—body, stubby legs, and a short neck. A near-vestigial tail finished it off, ending with a ball of hazy spikes. The creature’s body was entirely wreathed in living smoke, like the fiery bellows of the Hells given earthly form.
The beast’s head was its fiercest aspect—the most typically dragon part of its anatomy. Fire forked from its eyes, nose, and mouth—all stoked by the same infernal blaze from within. Dagger-sized teeth, each a spike of smoke solidified, contained the geysers of flame spewing from its mouth.
The smoke dragon advanced, lining the samurai in its sights. Every step of its rippling, dwarfish legs should have shook the earth. Instead, the beast stalked in silence, lending it a ghostly, unsettling quality.
Karuido drew his sword and held it high, invoking his ancestry as he screamed his kiai—a warrior’s battle-cry. Karuido’s stallion reared in the face of the dragon, but held its ground. Kaidan admired the samurai for his bravery and zeal.
His fellow Shinichi warriors didn’t share his enthusiasm. Kaidan suppressed a chuckle as the others fled to the four winds. Only the chubby one called Haru remained—cowering behind the fallen Shugendo shrine after losing control of his fleeing horse.
Karuido turned to see his troops desert him just as the dragon spewed forth a huge gout of flame. The attack was clumsy and missed the lone samurai by several horse-lengths. Karuido barely reined his stallion under control before the first wave of warriors rushed him. They appeared from nowhere.
Kaidan darted forward, his staff raised and ready to strike. Like Karuido, he shouted his own kiai—an invocation of the Mikkyo Ka fire spirit to energise his limbs and empower his strikes in battle.
The smoke dragon advanced with methodical care now its black-clad allies raced before it. A dozen warriors, outfitted with disparate weapons—swords, naginata polearms, scythes—and piecemeal armour, cast themselves at the horseback samurai and the streak of white lightning that was Yamabushi Kaidan.
Kaidan took to a clump of three warriors in a blur of motion, whirling his staff in a bludgeoning arc, catching all three across the face and torso. They fell where they stood, destined to remain unconscious in slumped heaps for many hours.
Likewise, Karuido cut a brutal swath through the bandits with his katana. He slashed as he galloped, his warhorse's battle instincts suppressing its fear. Where Kaidan was a mesmerising dance of white in the sun-drowned haze, Karuido the Bear was a crimson streak of death.
Their paths crossed beneath the flaming breath of the smoke dragon. With their immediate opponents defeated or dying, Kaidan’s dervish-spinning and The Bear's rampant charge met head on. Karuido continued to bear down on Kaidan, even as Kaidan paused and lowered his staff.
The samurai’s katana sliced down but met the defence of Kaidan’s upraised staff. The Bear slashed twice more—both blocked—before he wheeled his stallion around to run the Yamabushi down.
As the horse’s iron-shod hooves rammed into the earth, Kaidan leapt into the air, twisting and somersaulting until he passed over The Bear's head and landed, seated behind him on the horse.
The pair duelled back to back in the saddle—Karuido whipping out his short-bladed tanto and stabbing at the Yamabushi, while Kaidan parried and bludgeoned with the middle of his staff. The close-quarter combat was awkward but brutal. One mistake and Kaidan would be gutted.
The dragon ended the contest prematurely. A torrent of fire ripped across the field, terrifying The Bear's stallion. It reared, dumping both riders. Kaidan rolled fluidly, regaining his feet within a heartbeat. The Bear wasn’t as lucky, crashing to the ground at a dire angle, absorbing the force of the blow across his left shoulder. The horse’s flight took it toward the village and safety. Its rider groaned in agony, abandoned on the shredded field.
The smoke dragon loomed over the fallen samurai, bellowing a strange, echoing roar—one that swept the village with its ferocity—and unleashed another vortex of flame.
The attack missed its mark; Kaidan swept the samurai to safety. More warriors appeared from the smoke trailing the beast, another dozen at least.
Mustering a Mikkyo Chi incantation, Kaidan snatched up a leaf and pressed it to his lips. The effect was instant; it expanded to man-size proportions. Throwing the giant leaf to the earth, he then bundled The Bear atop it and pushed him toward the village with the sum of his strength. The leaf carried the samurai as a toboggan, skittering along grass and dirt at extraordinary speed to disappear somewhere in the charred outskirts of Kyuusai.
Kaidan turned to face the oncoming bandit warriors, tipped his hat to them, then sprang forward like a grasshopper. He somersaulted once, landing with one foot on the apex of the closest warrior’s head. His sandals imprinted a mark on the man’s scalp and forehead.
Before the warrior could cry out in surprise, Kaidan flew through the air, springing onto a second man, then a third. The bandits waved their weapons, catching only air and smoke in Kaidan's wake. His final leap, his greatest with the mome
ntum, took him soaring up to the smoke dragon’s head.
Bringing his staff down with a thunder-crack, he caught the beast across the snout. The Mikkyo-enhanced attack sent shockwaves cascading through the creatures head and down its neck. Its smoky exterior rippled from the force, threatening to dim and snuff out.
On his descending arc, Kaidan pulled acorns from his jacket and hurled them at the creature’s head, calling again upon Mikkyo Chi—the power of elemental earth. The handful of acorns exploded on contact, erupting in blue-white clouds that singed the air with electricity and obscured the creature behind fizzing azure gas.
The warriors stood awed by the offensive. Only when Kaidan renewed his attack on them did they regain the sense to fight.
Kaidan spiral-kicked his way through their ranks, calling upon Mikkyo Fu to lend him a whirlwind’s fury. Smoke, loose leaves and blades of grass swirled with his assault. With a few decisive combinations, the Yamabushi laid out his opponents in a sprawled tangle of limbs.
Soon enough, Kaidan stood victorious at the centre of a field of crumpled warriors.
He turned, expecting to find the smoke dragon levelled by his onslaught when the blue fog cleared. He backed away toward the village when the flaming eyes of the dragon pulsed with the same intensity, seemingly unaffected by his efforts. The beast roared its hollow roar.
"What?" Kaidan muttered as he withdrew.
The smoke dragon advanced, moving within range of the village outbuildings ruined in its first rampage. A half dozen more bandits appeared from the dense smoke. They approached ahead of the dragon and fanned out toward the village, wary of the Yamabushi.
"Tsubasa!" Kaidan called to the sky.
The sparrowhawk spiralled through the blue-grey smoke, and then disappeared again.
Kaidan worked his incantation, communicating with the bird from a distance.
The thought-images flooded through his mind. The dragon. The warriors. Where they were coming from. Within the blink of an eye, it all made sense.
Kaidan laughed—a roaring, uncontrolled outburst that froze everyone on the battlefield. "Thank you, Tsubasa. Get well behind the dragon. This will be entertaining."
Leaping backwards, Kaidan took a position atop the wobbling, shattered shrine once more. He raised his seashell horn to his lips and blew three long calls. The eerie sound echoed through the valley, penetrating the smoke and the villagers’ fear.
"There is no deception in the Spirit World. Let the nature of things be revealed!"
The sky beyond the smoke swirled from blue to rainbow-pearl. The colours of the earth faded to shades of bone. Trees fell away, the mountains receded. Even the smoke from the dragon cleared.
Winged and feathered unicorns—Kirin—floated through the sky, along with other less hospitable creatures. Wisps of unhoused spirits formed along the horizon of his vision. Hungry ghosts yearning for blood and ki.
Through this temporary passage to the Spirit World, Kaidan’s eyes were open to the fraud of the smoke dragon. It was little more than a wooden frame cobbled together atop wide, padded wheels. In the centre of its skeleton, a further group of the black-clad warriors pushed the artificial beast forward. Three more men worked an exotic bellows and metal piping system that fed from a tank in the beast’s innards up to the head.
Kaidan examined each of the men inside, laughing when they sensed his stare. Only one man appeared unconcerned. At the Yamabushi’s lingering scrutiny, he withdrew something from a belt pouch and inked his forehead in the design of an incantation. He abruptly vanished from the Spirit World.
A rustle of movement at the base of the shrine snagged Kaidan’s attention. Haru, the Shinichi retainer, cowered below him. The samurai’s face was ashen. He gaped at the surreal landscape and the inhuman shapes soaring overhead.
With the approach of unsavoury spirits and malignant creatures, curious at the human intrusion, Kaidan sounded his horn in the same extended three blasts. In moments, the world rearranged itself from the blandness of ivory, pearl, and bone to bright swaths of natural colour. The smoke returned, as had the impressive illusion of its originator.
"Hey, samurai," Kaidan called down to Haru. "Run for home and tell everyone of the evil that befalls the enemies of Kyuusai and the Yamabushi."
At first the samurai shook his head fervently, refusing to budge from his soot and filth sanctuary. A glower from Kaidan, and another hollow roar from the smoke dragon did the trick, empowering his legs with energy born of terror. Haru scuttled toward the northern road.
Kaidan jumped to the ground and strode forward, removing another acorn from his vest. Chanting another mantra, he hurled this one at the centre of the smoke dragon’s torso—aiming directly for its creator. The acorn slipped through the outer layer of smoke.
Nothing happened at first, but then traces of blue smoke wafted from the dragon’s belly. Soon enough, the dragon billowed competing blue and black smoke. The illusion soon faltered altogether, revealing the flimsy exoskeleton he’d witnessed from the Spirit World.
The bandits took a long time to understand their ruse was up. Kaidan stood steadfast in the false dragon's path, his battle staff at the ready. The bandits eventually faltered under Kaidan's scrutiny, looking to one another for direction. Their leader disappeared with the illusion.
Only the reckless charge of Karuido the Bear, recovered a little from his fall and having found his horse, spurred them into action. The remaining dozen warriors abandoned the dragon shell, choosing more traditional weapons of wood and steel to finish the battle.
Karuido swept forward, his sword held awkwardly in one hand. His top-knot swung in the breeze now his helmet had been lost.
A smear of soot flickered before the dragon shell. Kaidan spotted the incantation the tattooed bandit wove, almost too late. A maelstrom of iron darts hurtled towards the reckless Bear.
Kaidan leapt in front of The Bear, twirling his staff in a cyclone of motion. Within heartbeats, he stilled. Darts were scored along the length of his staff. With a shake of his wrist, Kaidan twisted the staff and flung the darts into the ground.
The Bear raged behind the Yamabushi, frustrated that his heroic charged was stalled.
"Monk, you have stolen my honour for the last time!"
Kaidan barely managed to turn before the katana whistled through the air. The blade sliced through a cloud of yellow mist and flower petals, nothing more.
"Damn you!" Karuido scanned the area, oblivious to the bandits who stood around equally confused. The fog of battle had descended upon everyone’s minds.
The Bear didn’t notice the camouflaged Yamabushi clinging to his stallion’s belly.
Kaidan whispered to the horse as its owner roared another kiai at the warriors, and flourished his sword for good measure.
The Yamabushi slipped from the horse to crouch beside its neck.
"Goodbye and good luck. Keep your Shinichi master out of this valley." He slapped its flank, propelling both horse and rider off into the countryside—headed north towards the Kita Pass and Shinichi holdings. The samurai's screams of indignation faded into the distance.
A crash followed by the clang of steel snatched Kaidan's attention away from The Bear's ignoble exit. Yumi fought a desperate battle against two bandits beside the ruins of the old shrine. A third waved a spear at Akio, who defended himself with a charred club. Yumi weaved between her opponents, hacking and deflecting their blades, while edging closer to Akio's assailant.
Kaidan brandished his staff in wild arcs to throw his remaining opponents into disarray. With a sudden snap, he turned and swiped the ground. He connected with a stone and sent it hurtling across the battlefield. Akio's opponent's head snapped back an instant later. He collapsed in a heap.
Yumi took advantage of the moment, batting the scythe from one of the bandit's hands. She followed up with a kick that caught the disarmed warrior in the side. He doubled over in pain.
As Kaidan moved on the bandits still in the field, tendrils of blac
k ink snaked through the air, catching him by surprise. They tore through his vestments, slamming against his body, throwing him to the ground.
Distracted by the Yamabushi's fall, Yumi awkwardly blocked a savage sword blow. Her blade snapped under the attack. It skittered along the dirt.
Kaidan’s head rang from the sorcerous blow. A whine pervaded his ears. Shaking the effects off, he struggled to his feet.
He opened his garments to inspect his torso. Sigils of prayer and protection were painted in silver and blue on Kaidan’s chest. They absorbed the savagery of the blow.
"Give me the real scroll, Yamabushi!" snarled the bandit with the forehead sigil. He had reappeared on the battlefield surrounded by smoke and soot.
Kaidan loosened his shoulders and mentally prepared his mantras.
"Yamabushi," called Akio. Two bandits had their weapons levelled at the Shugenja. A third had disarmed Yumi and pressed a blade against her throat.
Kaidan forced himself to calm, swallowing saliva mixed with traces of blood. The battle, and the bandit’s sorcery, had taken their toll.
"Yamabushi. Take this worthless trinket and give me the real scroll." The bandit leader tossed the decoy scroll at Kaidan’s feet.
He bent slowly and retrieved it, slipping it into his vest.
"Let those two go free, and you'll have the scroll you seek."
"I am a man of my word, Yamabushi. Perhaps you've heard rumours of me? I’m known as Ryuji the dragon sorcerer."
Kaidan shook his head.
"It’s of little consequence." Ryuji stepped forward but was unable to keep the scowl from his face. His stringy black hair was of similar length to Kaidan’s, although his nails were coal black and talon-length. A pattern of dots had been tattooed in black ink in a semi-circle around his right eye, which gave Ryuji's face the impression of a lop-sided droop.
The hastily painted sigil on his forehead pulsed and rippled, puckering into wrinkles where ink met skin. "Give me the scroll, and those two will be released. On my honour."
"Honour follows you to the grave, Ryuji. There are an infinite number of lifetimes lived after death. Be careful with such promises. Particularly to those who have the means to hunt your spirit down and bind it in torment for eternity."
Ryuji flinched, but the moment passed quickly.
"Do you still hold to your honour, sorcerer?" said Kaidan.
"I swear it."
"Akio. The scroll."
"But, Yamabushi..."
"Now." Kaidan slowly nodded his head.
Akio pulled the scroll from his underclothes, tossing it over to Ryuji.
Tsubasa streaked through the sky, swooping down with claws outstretched, but Ryuji was quicker, snatching the scroll up with a snake-like stretched arm. The sparrowhawk reeled away with empty talons.
The sorcerer weaved lines of soot in the air around him, vanishing from view as the cloud enveloped him. He disappeared, trailing a cackle and the stench of rotting vegetables on the breeze.
The other bandits glanced around in confusion. Aside from the four guarding Akio and Yumi, a small grouped milled about the defunct smoke dragon. Now leaderless, and abandoned to face the Yamabushi, they chose wisdom and fled—leaving Akio and Yumi stunned but unharmed.
Kaidan allowed them to scatter, but his gaze lingered on their backs until they'd cleared the furthest perimeter of Kyuusai.
#
The Smoke Dragon Page 6