The Disfavored Hero

by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

  Dawn bloodied the sky. Warlords on armored horses and eight thousand samurai afoot came in orderly formation to the valley they sought to reclaim for Shojiro Shigeno. Shigeno himself led the four united clans. He was fierce to see, angry at his ruin and the slaughter of his peasants, anxious to regain honor and have vengeance. Long hair flowed from beneath his helmet. His armor was lacquered to a shining ebony. He sat high on a stallion bred of the same stock as Tomoe’s lamented Raski.

  To Shigeno’s left and right were two magician-ninja. They were jono and not to be confused with ordinary ninja, who were clever but knew no magic. The mysterious jono were descendants of an elite offshoot of the ancient spy class, an offshoot which had evolved into a less underhanded cult of supremely deadly priests and priestesses proficient in martial sorcery. Even the Shogun dared not challenge them. Their presence indicated the Mikado’s interest in this battle, for only Amaterasu’s godchild commanded jono.

  One of these jono was a man, the other a woman. They were swaddled in grey robes so that even the major portion of their faces was hidden. They sat astride horses too slender for war, but the riders’ prowess was not to be underestimated. The priest and priestess were Shinto warriors, favored by the hundred thousand myriad of Shinto deities. Neither samurai nor common ninja were any match for them.

  What the several warlords, two jono, and numerous samurai confronted in the valley were two mounted samurai—a woman with unnatural eyes, and a man frothing with insanity—who captained an army of slobbering, disorderly monstrosities. The creatures stood awry, naked with rare exceptions, waving mallets, sickles, flails and swords all made of stone. They champed crooked teeth and howled like a haunted wind for blood.

  The two incredible samurai rode forth in slow, stately procession, and the legions of ghouls waited for command to follow. With precise movement, Tomoe Gozen raised one arm, as might a dream-warrior, to signal. The howling beasts began to rush forward with unexpected speed. They came slouching, crawling, hopping, scrabbling, in ungainly strides with bloodlust upon their inhuman visages.

  Ushii and the woman drew their swords, spurred their steeds.

  Their foe were momentarily stunned by the vision, not having been told they would oppose demons.

  The two varied armies clashed, and the red blood of samurai mixed with the green and yellow fluids of the ghouls. The beasts were awkward, but no easy adversaries. They could lose limbs and still come on; they could do battle even without heads, though they could not be sure who they struck blindly. Even their severed parts would fight: a bodiless arm beat the ground with a hammer; lost fingers inched their way up samurai armor. Only the magician-ninja could deal blows of anything like a lasting effect, and even the ghouls felled by those two would spring back to life if touch by another of their ranks.

  The magician-ninja produced darts, apparently from out of nothingness but perhaps from their sleeves, tossing them into the chests and eyes of ghouls. The darts exploded on contact, tearing rib cages and opening skulls. The victims of the magician-ninja hooted furiously and beat on the ground and sometimes appeared to die—but no samurai in service of the warlords fared so well in hurting them.

  At cost of many lives, Ushii was dragged from his mount. His horse fled the field of battle in terror, and Ushii stood alone, making wild sweeping gestures with his sword. They who surrounded him were careful with the placement of feet, balance of hip, field of vision, while the madman thrashed among them. In the hands of a fine warrior, a sword could fell a tree, or carve entirely through a human torso. The ground was therefore littered with halved and quartered men, the victims of Ushii.

  Ghouls began to tear at the back of those samurai Ushii had failed to beat back or carve down on his own. He had lost his helm; his hair had come untied. He looked more like an Ainu wildman than samurai as he snarled and fought and killed.

  Finally there was only one samurai standing before him, and Ushii took careful measure of this imposing opponent. Ushii knew every strength and weakness of Madoka Kawayama, with whom he had trained and shared love since boyhood, at whose side he had fought many times until the last night of service under Lord Shigeno. Madoka knew Ushii’s fighting methods as well, so was able to avoid Ushii’s first rushing attack.

  “Stop, Ushii!” Madoka shouted. “This need not be!”

  He guarded against Ushii’s insistent blows, but launched no counter attack. He tried to reason with the madman, not believing his boyhood friend could kill him. “USHII!” he pleaded, but Ushii’s face only twisted with greater rage. Madoka wept and knew what he must do; he raised his sword to deal Ushii a killing blow. He struck too slowly. Ushii’s sword moved so fast none could have seen how he had delivered the slender wound. There was no blood until after Madoka fell. Only then did the thinnest red line appear along his throat.

  Ushii had no remorse. He turned to fight another.

  Tomoe had ridden near enough to see this brief drama, though it had not fully registered with importance. She had a vague image of Ushii not as the magnificent-though-maddened warrior, but as a hunched and drained monster, not much different than the ghouls he fought beside. She remembered that image also from the moment she opened her eyes after leaving hell’s highway; then, an ugly, hunch-backed Ushii had jerked away from the sight of her darkened eyes.

  There was no time to consider these impressions more fully, for she was kept busy cutting down samurai. Arrows took Tomoe’s steed in the sides and chest, but she urged the poor animal on for a long while before it had lost so much blood that it staggered and was more burden than help. The horse blew in angry pain, and the rider leapt off before it died. She spun her weapons through the encroaching mass of flesh. Samurai died as she walked slowly, deeper into the thickening quarrel.

  She worked her way further from Ushii, who presently fought shoulder to shoulder with a fierce two-headed ghoul more skillful than the rest. One head had been severed halfway through, and hung limp and scowling. Then from the jostling and new blows the head fell away altogether. It went bumping down the hillside biting at shins and ankles as it rolled. The former bearer of that head fought on, unperturbed.

  The samurai Tomoe confronted moved with grace, but could not equal her. They wielded the traditional, single daito; when they met Tomoe, they were dueling two fencers at once. She would let them, one by one, break the guard of her left sword, while her right moved to puncture the spleen. She had become an automaton, leaving a trail of dead.

  A mounted warlord of profound beauty bore down on Tomoe. She whirled. Her right sword completely severed the head of the horse, its blood showering her armor. Her left sword took the life of the warlord. The beheaded stallion ran blindly by, then fell, spilling its load. Only when the warlord lay at her feet did she know she had killed Lord Shigeno. But she could not mourn; she could not feel. She could only slay; and so she trod upon the dead, and went about her task of raising the tally.

  The magician-ninja had throughout the battle fought near Shigeno. Now they rode their ethereal mounts toward Tomoe Gozen. Their supply of exploding darts seemed unending and they dealt hideous random wounds to the ghouls around them. Tomoe’s two blades traced a repeating double-arc through the air, averting a dart intended for her. Its explosion dazzled her vision momentarily. When the sparkles cleared from her dark eyes, she saw the two magician-ninja rear before her on their slender horses.

  She advanced on them unhesitantly. But the jono priest raised a palm, and suddenly Tomoe could advance no further. Her swords moved like straws through syrup when she tried to carve in the direction of the priest and priestess. The jono priest’s other hand moved, it seemed, to a fold in his robe. Tomoe saw the sliver of a dart between his fingers.

  The jono priestess said, “No, my brother. Let this one go.” Her voice was muffled by the wrappings which covered the top of her head and the lower half of her face; but Tomoe heard the words as clearly as though they’d been whispered directly into her ear. The priest bowed slightly, as though the
priestess were the greater authority. Then their steeds spun around, and they vanished in the carnage.

  All around, Tomoe witnessed horrors which drove other samurai mad with fear; but she was unimpressed. The portions of the ghouls which had been severed began to put themselves back together to make still weirder monstrosities. One ghoul’s severed hand ran like a spider along the ground until it found a severed leg. The hand attached itself to the leg’s ankle, then dragged the new burden toward a ghoul who fought from a sitting position, unable to stand on its one remaining leg. The ghoul acquired the new leg, which was too long, causing a posture of whimsical insult as it stood and battled. The hand which served as foot wielded a stone club, with which it pounded samurai toes. Elsewhere, a head walked on two hands, fighting with a hammer in its third. Most terrible of all were the ghouls who fought using parts of fallen samurai, striking terror into the warlords’ forces, who might recognize a friend’s armored hand on a hideously miscellaneous body.

  The sky was brilliant blue. The sun had risen to her highest point for the season, and baked the scene without relent. The warclans were weakening, but the battle could last the entire day before a definitive outcome.

  The enemy’s morale was further ruined by the sight of ghouls lingering near the slain, to feast upon the hearts, testicles and brains of samurai. Disciplined samurai were unafraid of death—but this horrendous disfigurement and ill-use of those who had fallen was beyond comprehension. Proven, hardy warriors dropped their swords or fled. Others fought with concern for personal survival, not for victory or honor.

  The magician-ninja had dwindled the ranks of the ghouls somewhat, and a few samurai had learned to hack the ghouls into pieces too small to find one another again; but in large part the ghouls appeared to be as strong and numerous as when the battle had begun.

  Ushii might have become wearied, but madness kept him unfailing. Tomoe felt little or no effect from the long battle, for her emotional aloofness had let her use the energy she had with mechanical precision. Ushii wore himself out in a whirlwind of activity and slaying; Tomoe was more inexorable in her killing—like a plague, like famine, slower but no less effective and therefore more terrible.

  Unexpectedly she came upon Goro and readied herself for a worthwhile opponent. But he backed away, pushing two rag-clad peasant women who had somehow been caught in this horror. He was trying to save them, though it oughtn’t be his business. Tomoe increased her pace lest he slip away. She knew that he was last of his line, that he was loath to die by alien steel. Yet, as Ushii’s miserable state did not touch her, Goro’s fate was no concern. She intended to slash him along the back, but he spun and blocked her blow, though it was so powerful it unbalanced him and he fell sideways.

  Her next blow would finish him unless, as was possible, he surprised her with some maneuver. But one of the peasant women intervened by shouting, “Tomoe! Desist!”

  A peasant could not command a samurai, yet Tomoe turned slowly, her dark eyes settling on the younger of the two women in rags.

  “Tomoe!” she said. “Who is your master!”

  Throughout the past month, Tomoe had operated under the supposition that she was a masterless samurai, without allegiances. But the voice reminded her of a day in a garden, a day which now seemed lives ago, when she was glad to be tricked into making an oath. Tomoe replied, “Whoever else I serve, I also serve Toshima.”

  Toshima said, “Then go from this field now, Tomoe. Go into the hills and meditate on what you have done this day and for many days before this one.”

  Goro Maki regained his feet and, protecting Toshima and her mother, led the disguised women away from the battlefield. It was doubtlessly Lord Shigeno’s last command to his vassals, that his family be removed from the valley if the battle went badly or threatened the mansion.

  Tomoe blinked her eyes, and the blackness of them became a cloudy grey. She was somehow isolated on a knoll amidst the field of combat, able to see that five distinct encounters were spread across the center of the valley. From her vantage point, she could see the inevitable outcome far better than the combatants. She blinked her eyes again, and the whites reappeared around each iris.

  Tomoe Gozen was shaken by what she beheld, and by what she remembered. She scanned the scene, looking for Ushii, but he was not presently where she could see him. Poor Ushii! For love of a comrade he had risked face and sanity, and lost both! And until this moment, she had not cared. What could this say of her own face? Of her own honor? She had behaved as a masterless samurai, an unrestrained ronin, without loyalties; she had slain Lord Shigeno as heartlessly as Ushii killed Madoka—yet, all the while, she had had a master and had forgotten. She had broken faith with her bushido; and if she could not regain it in some other way, there was only the knife strapped to her thigh …

  In the east burned Shojiro Shigeno’s mansion. To the west, an edge in sight, was the unharmed palace of Huan, sorcerer of Ho. On three sides of her, battles raged without grace. North into the hills was the only direction by which a coward, or the disillusioned, might flee. There, a tall, narrow waterfall shone in the afternoon sun, its beauty inviting.

  For the first time in her career, at the command of her master, Tomoe Gozen left a battle not yet done.

  Behind the waterfall was a small cavern. In the darkness of this place Tomoe Gozen sat with legs crossed, meditating on her late behavior. The sheet of water plunged before her like a supernatural deluge, the roar of its descent drowning the sound of distant battle, lending to her sense of oblivion. The fall was a living, diamond window distorting her view of trees and smooth boulders, so that it seemed she looked out onto an alien landscape, looked out from a hellish dark place into a lit paradise.

  She ached to leap through that window, which would part for her passage—to find herself truly in another world, a world where Tomoe Gozen had never lived, had never dishonored herself, had neither slain the great man Shojiro Shigeno, nor helped Ushii Yakushiji become a hunched and haggard spirit within a samurai’s strong body.

  Had she never lived, perhaps the sorcerer Huan would not have seen to the destruction of Naipon’s mightiest warlords. Without Tomoe Gozen, a ghoulish army might not have been victorious and prepared to march further, as Huan had promised, unto the Imperial City itself.

  Her mind’s eye envisioned thousands of samurai in the valley, strewn about the land with heads and teeth and faces bashed in by crude stone weapons. The eerie victors feasted. They picked amidst the dead for clothing. They replaced their own severed parts with pieces from samurai. Perhaps Lord Shigeno’s own head had been torn from the shoulders of his corpse, and now kept the company of the two-headed monster. Perhaps the beast had eventually lost both heads, and found not only the head of Shigeno to place upon its shoulders, but also the head of the warlord’s horse.

  Tomoe shook with horror, shook the vision from her brain. All that she had failed to experience this past month flooded over her in waves more torrential than the plunging falls, and she quaked beneath the weight of those memories.

  The warrior rose from her seated, meditative position, then lowered herself ceremoniously to the floor of the little cavern on her knees. She seized the knife strapped to her thigh, removed the sheath and placed it behind herself, and used the strap to bind her legs lest her corpse be found in a compromised position. Carefully, expression firm, she placed the sharp point of the weapon to the vein in her neck.

  She did not regret this act, only the acts that had led to this last. It was the prerogative of samurai to regain honor through suicide. Her spirit would be pure again, ready for another and possibly better life.

  The rustle of heavy robes stayed her hand a moment. There was someone else in the darkness of the fall’s cavern. Tomoe looked around, to find who invaded her sanctuary, who intruded upon the private ceremony of self-inflicted death.

  In the shadow stood one of the magician-ninja, though Tomoe could not fathom how the jono priestess had come without a sound.

>   The eyes of the priestess glinted in the dark, burned Tomoe’s agonized spirit. She moved from the shadow, making herself into a silhouette against the wall of glistening water. She spoke to Tomoe, and in spite of the roaring of the falls, her voice echoed through the chamber with clarity, sounding somehow as from another place in time:

  “Jigai is not your destiny, Tomoe Gozen.” The jono raised her hand; the blade flew from Tomoe’s grip and broke against the inner wall of the cave although the steel was tempered. Another pass of the slender hand, and the strap around Tomoe’s legs burst like ragged yarn. The magician-ninja said, “Do not think that your honor can be restored by fleeing from this life, your tasks left half undone. It may be the way of the samurai, but not of Tomoe Gozen.”

  The warrior remained on her knees, anger rushing to blooden her features. She said to this intruder, “Tomoe Gozen is samurai.” She did not like jono any more than she did a common, skulking ninja. Priest or otherwise, they had the same origin—children of dainty, flying ogres some believed. The original cult had arisen centuries before, and was not originally comprised of sorcerers. It had begun as a formalized society of spies—wily, but having no genuinely magic powers. Their group gained status through extortion and terrorism. When their family of spies made occult discoveries and added actual magic to their trade, there was a revolution among all the ninja clans; although revolution among spies was not visible to the world at large. Afterward, the ordinary agents maintained their furtive ways, and the jono elite raised shrines to their ambiguous faith. The honor of jono was said to be as sacrosanct as that of samurai. Still, they were sly.