Seemingly furious and dumbfounded in equal measure, Skav looked like he was struggling to work out a suitable response. Eventually he opted for the obvious.
“Enough of this!” he roared to his followers. “Come eat.” He sneered at Ojojum. “You’re going to eat his face, eyes, and pizzle, and afterward, I’ll fix it so you never run off again.”
Some of the trolls, the hungrier or less befuddled ones, started toward me. I drew my broadsword. The blade glowed white in the gathering gloom.
“Another miracle!” I cried. “Rendeth charged the sword with holy power.”
I wished. The humbler truth was that Elkinda, loath to send me back among the trolls without some semblance of a magical defense, had muttered over the weapon and then set it outside for the better part of a day, during which time it had soaked up sunlight like a sponge holds water.
The trolls balked. The radiance stung and dazzled them, and maybe they feared the Bright Angel truly was watching over me.
But then Skav decided she wasn’t. Or else the infernal spirit inhabiting him was game to try its luck against an agent of the divine.
The troll chieftain advanced on me. I came on guard, my sword held high to shine as much light in his eyes as possible.
This was pretty much the situation all my trickery and lies were supposed to avert. The sole difference between it and my grimmest imaginings was that I was only fighting Skav. For the moment, his followers were holding back, but it was far from certain that would change the outcome in my favor, especially when I couldn’t even try for the kill. I still hoped that, given enough time, Elkinda would cast the demon out.
Squinting against the glow, Skav came closer still, then, with a quicker, lunging step, snatched for the broadsword. Though I didn’t want to kill him, I was willing to wound him if that would slow him down, and I spun the blade to avoid the grab and slice his hand as I’d previously cut the watcher on the trail.
Skav spun his hand, too, and swept the sword out of line. He sprang and raked at my chest with his claws. The other trolls roared in anticipation of the killing stroke.
I leaped backward, and the attack fell short by a finger-length. He kept charging and slashing, and I continued my scrambling retreat. I tried to open up the distance so I could interpose my blade between us again, but he was pressing too hard.
Then I attempted a shift to the side that would cause him to blunder past me. He compensated.
In desperation, I suddenly reversed direction, advancing instead of retreating. That spoiled his aim, and his talons slashed harmlessly behind me. I bashed the broadsword’s pommel into his jaw. If the impact stunned him, it would win me the instant I needed to separate myself from him and come back on guard. If not, I’d positioned myself perfectly for him to gather me into a flensing, bone-breaking bear hug.
The attack did stun him. Even so, simply by stumbling on forward, he nearly knocked me to the ground. But I wrenched myself out of the way and even managed to cut the back of his thigh as I did.
Unfortunately, though, when Skav shook off the daze produced by the clout on the jaw and whirled in my direction, he moved as fast as before. The leg wound didn’t hinder him.
The thing that was hampering him was the sunlight stored in the sword. That became apparent when it dimmed and disappeared.
The trolls bellowed and howled to see the enchantment exhaust its power, and Skav came at me even harder. He could now see me better.
Whereas I was seeing him worse. With the glow in the blade extinguished, I discovered that if the sun hadn’t quite set yet, it might as well have with the trees obscuring it.
Curse you, Elkinda, I thought, and curse my stupidity, too. Why had I staked my life on a second exorcism succeeding when the first one had been an abject failure?
I belatedly decided I should try to kill the Hearteater. If I succeeded, the trolls wouldn’t have a demon for a leader anymore and presumably wouldn’t go on a rampage. That would be victory of a sort even if I doubted the creatures would let me survive to celebrate it.
Since I’d been fighting defensively, when I came on the attack, it surprised Skav. A stop cut met a clawing hand and left the little finger dangling. He hesitated. I stepped in, feinted high, then low, then spun my blade high again to deliver the true attack at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. The cut landed where I’d aimed it.
But Skav drove at me once more. Leathery hide and dense muscle had kept the sword stroke from shearing deep enough to kill.
I jumped back. His claws still grazed my chest, though, and that was enough to dump me on the ground.
Skav threw himself on top of me. The hand I’d maimed retained sufficient strength to pin my sword arm, and the Hearteater raised his other hand to rip me to pieces.
Then Ojojum rushed in behind him, grabbed his wrist, and strained to keep him from clawing me. Her intervention roused the rest of the trolls from their passivity, and they charged forward, too. I had no doubt it was to pull her off Skav and enable him to get on with butchering me.
But that was when the incubus finally came swirling up out of the troll chieftain’s head like steam from a kettle.
The spirit’s long, rippling face seemed even ghastlier than before, because now it was full of rage and the rage was directed at me. Its cloudy arms stretching, it reached down and plunged its fingers into my head.
Its touch felt like what it was, filth slithering into me, but there was even more to the unpleasantness than that. Every nasty thing in my mind—emotions it had shamed me to feel, perverse impulses I didn’t even realize I had—welled up to join with the intruder.
Given time, that dual onslaught would surely have crushed my will. But when Elkinda dragged the spirit out of him, Skav had gone limp. His grip on my sword arm had relaxed, and I was able to jerk it free.
I thrust the blade through the demon’s torso and felt nothing. It was like stabbing fog.
Still, perhaps because Elkinda’s magic rendered it susceptible, the incubus screeched, a shriek heard not with the ears but with the mind, and disappeared. To my relief, the vile sensations in my head vanished along with it.
Afterward, the trolls stood flummoxed by astonishment and, conceivably, even horror, for it seemed to me that the incubus’s appearance had appalled them, as well.
In that moment of quiet, Elkinda emerged from her thicket. “There,” she declared, “all better.”
Still heedless of his various wounds, Skav got up off me and embraced Ojojum. “I couldn’t help it,” he growled. “The spirit had me in its grip.”
“I know.” She ran her talons through his greasy black hair, dislodging a nit or two. “I know.”
Skav rounded on Elkinda. “I should have said,” he growled, “the spirit had me in its grip thanks to you.”
I clambered to my feet. “You’re right,” I panted. “The wise woman’s magic didn’t work precisely as intended. But she and I risked our lives to save you, and at the end of it all, you and Ojojum have the child you wanted. That being so, I ask you to let us go in peace.”
Scowling, the troll mulled it over. Then he asked, “All the things you said before. About being an envoy, the relic, and loving Ojojum. Was any of it true?”
“Not a bit,” I said.
He laughed a grating laugh. “The demon believed, but I didn’t. All right. Go.”
I took a long breath and strode toward Elkinda.
Then Skav said, “Wait.”
Heart thumping, I turned.
“We have gold,” said the troll. “Some our fathers took fighting your fathers. Some, we took from city fools who hunt too deep inside the forest. Do you want some?”
I did. I knew just what to do with it.
With gold, I could rent a more fashionable space for my school, buy elegant clothes, and cut a stylish figure to attract the notice of Balathex’s gentry. I could stage fencing exhibitions and demonstrate my skills. Gold was a second chance to achieve the life I wanted.
I smiled
at Skav. “Well, if you’re offering,” I said.
HIS KIKUTA HANDS
Lian Hearn
IN THE EAST they call him The Dog,” the older brother said. “He lived with the Kikuta family in Matsue for months and was trained by Akio. The Kikuta master requested it. Apparently he is his nephew and has all the Kikuta skills and more.”
The Kuroda boy, who was a great scoffer, scoffed now. “You all go on about his talents but I don’t believe he has any. Why would he leave the Tribe if he had? My guess is he wasn’t good enough, he couldn’t take Akio’s training and he ran away.”
The man they were discussing was the new lord of Maruyama, by name Otori Takeo, though to them he would always be known as The Dog. Maruyama was the only great domain in all the Eight Islands to be inherited by the female line, an anomaly which infuriated many in the warrior class. When the last lady, Naomi, died in Inuyama, several of the clan’s elders wanted to change the system quietly and install as lord someone from the Iida family, whose wife had a slight connection with Maruyama through marriage but not by blood, thereby saving themselves the trouble of finding the next female heir, for Lady Maruyama’s daughter had drowned with her.
Illustration by ORION ZANGARA
Now Otori Takeo had turned up in the city with a Shirakawa wife, Kaede, claiming she was the heir to the domain, in which he was supported by the Sugita family, senior retainers to the Maruyama.
“I told you to kill the Sugita boy,” the older brother said.
“His father and the other guard took us longer than we expected,” the Kuroda boy replied. “When we’d finished with them the son had vanished. We could hear Otori’s horses; we had to get out of there.”
There had subsequently been a huge and bloody battle in which most of the warrior class had been killed, including the Iida pretender, resulting in the Tribe not receiving payment for dispatching the two guards, an omission which annoyed Jiro’s father immensely. Soon it would be the least of his worries.
The young men were chatting before training. If people thought about the Tribe at all, for very few even knew they existed, they probably imagined their skills came to them magically at birth. It was true that talents were innate but they were nothing without training. Hours were spent every day in gruelling routines to build up muscles needed for leaping, bare hand fighting, and garrotting; even the less common talents like invisibility and the second self, though they seemed effortless when they first appeared, usually just before puberty, withered away without constant practice.
Jiro’s elder brother usually led the sessions. There were not many pupils – Jiro himself, three Muto boys, and two Kuroda: the scoffing boy and a girl who someone thought might have some talent, though so far there had not been much evidence of it. Mostly she was used to run errands and make tea. Jiro was interested in her as she was the same age as him, and he’d heard whispers in the kitchen where the women gossiped that she would be married either to one of the Muto boys or to himself. His older brother was already married to the only Muto girl in their generation.
They did not use names much, just the common ones: Taro, Jiro, Saburo. When they became elders they would be given names that meant something to the Tribe. Jiro hoped he might be called Shintaro after the famous assassin who had died in the failed assassination that had brought The Dog to the attention of the Tribe. He was thinking about this as he began to limber up. It was already very hot. The training room had a wooden floor but the walls were plastered and painted white—if you could maintain invisibility against a stark white background, you could do it anywhere.
It had been believed that it was impossible for Shintaro to fail. He had murdered hundreds flawlessly throughout the Three Countries, yet The Dog had heard him and he had been apprehended. He had immediately bitten into the poison capsule, aconite encased in wax, which they all kept at the back of the jaw where the molar tooth had been extracted to make space for it. His death had sent shock waves through the Tribe, even as far away as Maruyama.
There were few families in the West. Their father feared they were dying out and wondered if they should not move east to Inuyama, but the years went past and he never made that decision. In Maruyama at least he was the sole ruler of his empire, even if it was a meager one. There was not a lot of work: the Seishuu clans of the West were an easy-going lot who settled their differences with marriage alliances, ceremonies, hunts, and feasts. The attack on the guards had been an exciting event—it was too bad they weren’t going to get paid for it.
His brother cuffed him round the head, hard enough to make his eyes sting.
“Concentrate! Get to work! You’re always dreaming about something or other. One day you’ll wake up with a knife in your throat.”
He faced up to his older brother, the Kuroda girl to hers. By the end of the session they both had bruised knuckles and ringing ears. He had been knocked down three times, the girl twice. He was seething inwardly.
The older brother said, “Hate me as much as you like. Hate your opponent, have no pity, and no hesitation.” Then he went to the targets and loosed a few shafts. He was far and away the best marksman among them and loved his wisteria-bound bow and his eagle-fletched arrows.
Jiro spent a lot of time hating him but at the same time would die to save his life—in the Tribe that went without question. No one liked or had much affection for anyone else, but their loyalty was complete.
The girl gave him a quick glance. He thought he saw contempt in it, though maybe it was pity, which was no better. Her brother’s back was tattooed in the Kuroda fashion. He wondered if hers was too. The thought obsessed him and he began to daydream about slipping the jacket from her shoulders and exploring the inked skin. He was at that age.
Maybe since she was the same age her glance showed interest.
Their skins were slick with sweat in the heat. The cicadas from the grove around the shrine were deafening. The thick woods cast dense shade on the rear of the house. It was on the edge of the city and, from the front, seemed a typical merchant’s store where rice was fermented into wine, stored in casks and sold. The Tribe had the monopoly on its production in Maruyama, just as they had for the soybean paste that flavored everything they ate. Both had lately become more profitable than their other traditional trades of spying and assassination.
Behind the storefront were the living quarters, including several secret rooms and closets, and at the back were the indoor and outdoor training areas and the well.
Jiro lowered the bucket into the well, drew it up, and poured cold water over his head. He did the same for the Kuroda boy, admiring how the wet tattoos gleamed. Then he turned to the girl.
“Take off your jacket. I’ll cool your skin.”
She ignored him.
Inside the house the midday meal was waiting, trays and bowls set around the room. Their father was already taking up the wooden eating sticks. The men sat down. The girl went to the kitchen to eat with the other women. One of them said something to her that made her laugh.
Their father selected a morsel of grilled eel and ate deliberately and slowly, then he said quietly, “I’ve received a message from the Dog, and so have my colleagues in the Muto family, summoning us to consult with him tomorrow. I am a little surprised he knows about us and where to find us.”
“What is there to consult about?” the Kuroda boy said cheekily. “Does he want us to tell him how we plan to kill him?”
“Will you go, Father?” Jiro asked.
Before he could answer the girl came from the kitchen and said, “Master, someone is here to speak with you. He says it is urgent.”
Their father laid down the eating sticks and made a beckoning gesture. The man entered and fell to his knees. Jiro knew him by sight. He was of solid build with a plump face that looked dull apart from his glinting, deep-set eyes. He was from the Imai family and worked at Maruyama castle as a groom.
“What do you have to tell me that can’t wait till I’ve finished eating?” the
Master said.
Imai whispered, “There is a box containing records, made over the years by Otori Shigeru.”
“Everyone knows Shigeru made records of everything, all his farming experiments and his crop yields.” The Master drank his soup. “And all his failures. That would make a long list.”
“These are different. They are of the Five Families, of the Tribe.”
“It is not possible,” the Master said. “Nothing has ever been written down. The structure of the Tribe means no one knows more than they need to, at any time, not even myself and the other Kikuta masters.”
“Yet the records exist. They are in the current Otori lord’s possession. His wife carries them hidden among her clothes, and she has begun making copies.”
Jiro sensed his father’s unease. The Tribe’s power depended on secrecy, on the ability to strike without warning and disappear without trace. As he said, no one, even within the Tribe, knew everything. How could an outsider?
The Kuroda boy said, “It would not be difficult to steal the records or get rid of The Dog or, better still, both. Shigeru was a failure: this Otori is a weakling, we know that much.”
Jiro’s father smiled. Maybe he was a little uneasy but he was not yet truly concerned.
“May I?” said the Kuroda boy.
The Master nodded. “It will have to be tonight.”
The girl spoke from the doorway. “He will hear you, as he heard Shintaro.”
“He will not hear me or see me,” boasted her brother.
No one slept that night at they awaited his return. At dawn there was a clattering in the street outside, men pounding on the gate. The two brothers and the girl fled over the roofs on the father’s orders while he took refuge in one of the secret rooms. They went to a Muto house nearby. The girl and Jiro were quickly hidden away in a cavity in the wall while the elder brother donned merchant’s clothes and went out into the town to gather news.
Brigands (Blackguards) Page 9