The black ground was too hard to leave good prints, but the moss once smashed grew differently than what was around it. There were the marks of normal sandals, and then much larger footfalls, heavy enough to crush the moss flat. The two had fought back and forth for quite some time, covering a lot of distance. He examined a cut on a tree. From the height and angle, it had come from someone extremely tall. Deep cuts. Incredible strength. Twin blades… An odd weapon. There were other cuts in the bark. The oni had fought with a wild and ferocious style. Then he found the dried blood where the oni had finally struck true. He followed the trail. These rocks had been stained green. Paint? He touched it. No… it had the consistency of dried sap… So oni bleed green. Curious. The smell was completely alien. He spied something else lying on the rocks, something out of place. He picked it up.
And then Kaneto’s chest exploded.
There was a whoosh-crack and a flash of light. Motokane’s shouting was suddenly interrupted as the bodyguard’s blood sprayed him in the face. Bits of meat and armor rained out of the sky, making ripples across the stream. Kaneto dropped to his knees, lifeless, and then flopped forward with a splash.
The wound on his chest must have been incredibly hot because it boiled the stream around it. Steam rose through the giant hole in Kaneto’s back.
The samurai’s reaction was near instant. Spears were lifted, arrows were nocked, only they had no target for their wrath.
“Where’d that come from?” Motokane shouted.
Hiroto had dropped his bundles, crouched behind a tangle of roots, and was listening carefully. The lightning strike had made his ears ring, but besides the warrior’s heavy breathing, he caught a rapid series of thumps as the oni danced from tree to tree. It was pulling back to watch from a position of safety… toying with them.
That meant they had some time before the killing would resume. The odd item he had found was still clenched in his fist, so Hiroto opened his hand to study it. The thing was too big, it ended in an obsidian claw, and the exposed meat was bright green instead of decaying red, but from the joints and knuckles, it was clearly a finger.
So Hōjō Murashige must have challenged the oni to a duel, it had accepted, and lost a finger in the process… No wonder it preferred to attack from ambush.
* * *
“Why won’t this damned thing come out and fight us like a proper warrior?” Motokane grumbled as they trudged through the forest.
“Because it isn’t stupid,” Hiroto muttered from the back of the line.
“What was that?” he demanded.
They were going back along the same trail they had come in on. Ostensibly to find better ground to fight on—or so the official declared. Hiroto assumed it was because Motokane had realized he was in over his head, but he didn’t want to lose face by outright calling it a retreat.
Hiroto kept his voice down. It wasn’t a low-born porter’s place to offer tactical advice to samurai, but he did not feel that the demon was near enough to eavesdrop. “A clever hunter pits his strengths against his prey’s weakness. He does not pit his weakness against his prey’s strengths.”
“Nonsense,” Motokane spat. “He’s just dishonest like you! Now shut up and keep moving!”
They continued walking, but a few moments later the nearest samurai whispered to Hiroto, “What did you mean by that, hunter?”
“It knows we are strong in close combat. The Hōjō was a good swordsman. The demon fought him, katana against some odd manner of dual blade. It won, but left behind a finger. A costly mistake. It will not be so foolish to face one of us head on again.”
“Ah… I see…” The samurai was carrying a tetsubo, a heavy war club, a fearsome weapon which wouldn’t do him much good when the invisible oni returned and blasted them with lightning bolts from the tree tops. “Unfortunate.”
Since Hiroto had assumed most of them would die poorly, he had not bothered to learn all their names, but this one did not seem as dense as the others. “What do they call you again?”
“Nobuo.”
His attention had been elsewhere during the attack. “Did you see the fire kami mark your companion? The three sparks?”
“Yes, but I did not react in time. I saw light flickering on his breastplate, but the heat made me slow. At first I thought it was a trick of the eyes. Then it was too late. Kaneto’s death is my fault.”
He was still not sure what purpose the sparks served. “How long did they linger before the lightning struck?”
“They were already there when I looked over, for how long before that I don’t know. Then only the space of a few heartbeats before I was nearly blinded by the flash.”
“Hmmm…” At first he’d suspected the sparks held some spiritual significance, but now… Nipponese archers trained to see their target then draw and release in one smooth movement, but the archers of the Song dynasty he had trained with always drew, then paused to sight down the shaft before release. “It sounds as if the demon uses the fire kami to aim. This knowledge may prove useful.”
They continued on for a time in silence. Hiroto could not currently hear the demon stalking them. He assumed that was because it had waited for them to leave the stream, and now it was skinning and hanging Kaneto from a tree. He had been tempted to stay and wait in ambush, but Motokane had ordered his men to move out. Faced with the choice, Hiroto had decided that live bait was more valuable than dead.
“Hunter, another question.”
“Please do not call me that. The oni might be listening.”
“Apologies.”
Hiroto sighed, because samurai apologized to low-born laborers so very often. “What is it, Nobuo?”
“We have seen this hunter ’s strengths. What are yours?”
“I am a fast learner.”
* * *
The next attack came at sundown.
Hiroto saw a single leaf fall from a tree fifty paces to their side, then a few moments later a branch vibrated high in a tree thirty paces ahead. The blessing of Hachiman—god of warriors—was upon him, because if they were anywhere other than the unnatural stillness of Aokigahara, he would not have sensed it.
“The oni is here,” he whispered.
Nobuo quietly repeated that to the next samurai in line, who repeated it to Motokane, who immediately ruined any chance of an effective response by shouting, “Halt!”
Spears and arrows were readied. The warriors watched the thick undergrowth, wary. Hiroto acted the frightened porter and ducked behind a tree. Several tense seconds passed.
Three flickering sparks appeared on Zensuke’s helmet.
“Look out!” Nobuo shouted as he hurled himself against his companion. As they collided there was another whip-crack of sound and a brilliant flash. The two samurai fell in a shower of sparks.
Hiroto had seen exactly where that bolt had come from. He quickly dumped the satchels from the bamboo shaft he’d been carrying. His real cargo had been hidden inside all along.
One of the samurai—he had not bothered to remember this one’s name—launched an arrow into the branches. To his credit, he was close, yet not close enough. The oni must have felt rushed, because the three sparks did not linger this time, and the bolt struck the warrior low. The resulting blast still sent him flipping through the air. One of his legs flew in the opposite direction.
Careful not to cut himself on one of the specially prepared arrow heads, Hiroto retrieved his bow. He had it strung and had taken up one of his poisoned arrows before the crippled samurai landed.
The oni was hurling lightning down upon the samurai like he was Raijin the thunder god. Another warrior drew his katana and screamed a challenge, but the oni had learned the hard way what happens when you duel with a samurai, so it blew his arm off instead. As Motokane ran away a tree exploded next to him, and the official was lost from view in a cloud of splinters.
Hiroto had guessed right. The oni concentrated on the warriors and ignored the supposed peasant. Like him, it only enjoyed hunt
ing dangerous game.
That had been a terrible mistake.
Focusing on the source of the lightning, Hiroto raised his bow and brought it down as he drew. The instant his thumb touched his jaw he let fly. The oni was still invisible, but its angry roar told him that he had struck true.
Yet Hiroto did not let up. He had once pierced a great northern bear six times and it had still retained the strength to charge him. Surely a demon would be tougher. In the blink of an eye he launched another arrow, and then another. This time when the oni moved, he saw it. Light seemed to twist and reflect, like staring into a diamond, and for the first time, he saw it was truly shaped as a man.
Another arrow went into its chest. The oni dropped from the tree. Hiroto could not see if it landed on its feet or its back. He would hope for the best and expect the worst.
Zensuke was screaming in pain. Because of Nobuo’s quick reactions his sode had been hit instead of his helmet, but there was a glowing molten hole through the iron shoulder plate and the lacquer had caught on fire. Nobuo had taken out his tanto and was slicing through the cords before his friend cooked to death in his own armor.
He could only hide so many of his own arrows inside the bamboo pole, so he picked up Zensuke’s quiver as he ran past them. “It is wounded. Follow when you can.”
Hiroto leapt through the bushes, arrow nocked, ready to draw the instant he saw light bend. There were insects and lizards which could become the same color as the ground around them; apparently this oni’s magic worked far better, but in a similar manner. Cautiously, he approached the spot where the oni had fallen.
There was more of the green blood splattered across the rocks. It turned out that when it was fresh, the oni’s blood glowed like a smashed firefly. There was a lot of blood, but considering he thought he had struck it with four arrows, not enough. The light was fading quickly, which would make the glowing blood trail easier to follow.
The other samurai caught up a moment later. Nobuo had gotten Zensuke’s burning armor removed in time, but the other samurai’s shoulder was a bloody, charred mess. His right arm hung useless. He had to be in terrible pain, but he hid it behind a mask of grim determination, and carried his katana in his left hand.
“That’s its blood?” Nobuo gestured with his war club. “Then we can track it!”
“Wait,” Hiroto said as he knelt and picked up a broken arrow shaft. It was slick with the green slime. “I coated these arrow heads in a concentrated poison made from the venom of a jellyfish some pearl divers introduced me to. Its sting causes weakness, paralysis, and usually death. I do not know what it will do to a demon, but we will give the poison a moment to work.”
Samurai considered poison a cowardly and dishonorable way to kill, but Nobuo and Zensuke did not protest. At this point they only wanted to survive. Surprisingly, Motokane found them a minute later. Hiroto wasn’t surprised to see he was still alive—officials were more survivable than rats—but rather that he wasn’t in the process of running back to Kamakura.
“Everyone else is dead.”
Hiroto had assumed that by the way it had violently blasted their limbs off. He gave a noncommittal grunt in response to the news. It was time. Hiroto began following the spilled blood.
* * *
The poison did not kill it, but either it or the arrow wounds were having some effect. Earlier the demon had been effortlessly leaping from tree top to tree top. Now it was sticking to the ground, and from the relative strength of the glow, it felt like they were catching up.
The ghostly forest was eerie in the dark. There was a full moon, which was enough to keep them from breaking their necks, but not much beyond that. It made the trail extremely easy to follow… perhaps a little too easy. If he were wounded, and a hunting party was following his blood trail, he would use that to his advantage to set an ambush, or lead them straight into some prepared traps.
“Motokane, you should take the lead.”
“What? Why?”
“From all this blood, the oni appears to be weakening and dying. It should be a man of your status who gets the honor of striking the killing blow on behalf of the shogun.”
Sadly, Motokane wasn’t that gullible. “I don’t feel like catching the first lightning bolt, hunter. Nobuo! Follow that trail.”
Like a good dutiful samurai, Nobuo did as he was told. That was a waste. Hiroto thought the lad had potential.
The trail led them steadily downhill. The footing was treacherous. Nobuo tried to listen for danger over the clumsy crashing and slipping of the exhausted samurai. The demon staying on solid ground rather than shifting branches made it harder to hear. He thought he caught the hissing insect noise a few times, but could not be sure.
Nobuo signaled for them to stop. “Hunter, come look at this.”
He left Zensuke and Motokane and crept forward. Nobuo had followed the blood to a narrow path with stagnant pond water to both sides. Trudging through that mud would make for slow going. It was a splendid place for an ambush. When he reached him, Nobuo was pointing at something ahead. There was quite a bit of glowing firefly splatter on the land bridge, as if the demon had stopped for a bit. Even as keen as Hiroto’s vision was it took him a moment to spot the danger. There was a tiny reflection of blood light against something metallic hidden among the roots.
It had to be some manner of trap. “Good eye.”
But then Hiroto noticed something the less experienced warrior had not. After setting the trap, the blood continued across the land, and then turned sharply to the side as the demon had doubled back through the pond, where its dripping blood would be swallowed from view.
It was circling behind them.
When the trap was sprung—probably a snare or a spring noose—against the lead man, the sound would draw their attention forward, and then it would assault the rear. There were only four of them left. It could take half of them in one move. Hiroto grabbed Nobuo by one of the horns on his helmet, dragged him close, and whispered, “Count to thirty. Then set off the trap.” He picked up a rock and shoved it toward him. “Throw this at it.”
Then he began creeping back toward Zensuke and Motokane. With luck, he would be in position to put an arrow into the demon as soon as it moved. As soon as he could make out the other two in the dark, he hunkered down, wiped the sweat from his eyes, and waited for Nobuo to finish his count.
There was a thunk as the rock was tossed… The whole forest erupted with yellow light.
That was most unexpected.
The demon hadn’t set a normal trap. He had summoned the fires of Jigoku. Nobuo had been hurled through the air. Sparks were falling from the sky like rain. It was like being beneath an erupting volcano. Rocks big enough to split a skull crashed through the branches. Hiroto covered his head as fiery debris fell all around him.
Rather than fear, he felt a pang of jealousy. If I had weapons such as this, there is nothing I could not hunt!
Hiroto could barely see, but the three red dots climbing up his arm were clear as day, but he lost them as they crawled onto his chest. Instinctively, he flung his body to the side.
The tree he’d been leaning against came apart. Splinters pierced his skin.
He was the one who had hurt the oni so now he was its greatest threat. Somehow it had picked him out… The oni could see in the dark!
Hiroto rolled to his feet and ran, trying to put more trees between his body and the oni’s fury. Lightning struck. Branches came crashing down. Rocks shattered into a million stinging pieces. Bushes burst into flame. Hiroto dove behind a boulder. When the boulder wasn’t immediately cleaved in two, Hiroto risked a peek over the top.
The oni’s trap had set some of the tree tops ablaze. It was still using its magical trickery, somehow forcing the air to obscure its form, but that did not work so well near a flickering fire. It looked like pieces of broken glass, piled in the shape of a tall man, each bit reflecting the fire in slightly the wrong direction.
Zensuke had seen it, t
oo. He lifted his katana in one hand and charged, screaming a battle cry. The light twisted around where the oni’s head must be, facing the new threat. A refracting glow that could only be an arm rose, and two gleaming blades leapt from the end of it.
Hiroto rose, drew back the bow string, and let fly.
The arrow sped across the forest and disappeared into the demon’s unnatural form. He heard it sink deep into flesh.
Dead center. A man would perish in seconds, but not this damnable oni. The pile of broken glass and flames remained standing. But everything had a weak spot. Like his father had taught him, the arrow knows the way. As it prepared to meet Zensuke, Hiroto nocked another arrow. The long bow creaked, power gathering in his hands. Find the way. Hiroto set the arrow free.
This time he had been focused on the arm. If it had no heart, then he would cripple its limbs.
The arrow sailed across the forest. It struck in a flash of blue.
Yet the arm still came down, slicing Zensuke in half.
As the samurai went sailing past both sides of the demon, Hiroto truly saw it for the first time. His last arrow had broken the evil spell! Gray beneath the fire and moon, it was truly a giant, easily two feet taller than the biggest samurai, with a too-large head made of shining metal, hair like a sadhu monk, and a body covered in a fisherman’s net.
When it realized Hiroto was staring right at it, the oni reached for its wrist, clawed fingers dancing—probably casting a spell—only there was an arrow shaft blocking the way.
“Enough of your tricks, demon!” Hiroto shouted as he sent another arrow across the forest. That one punctured the demon’s stomach. The next struck it in the leg.
The boulder in front of him disintegrated and Hiroto found himself hurled through the air. It turned out the demon didn’t need to use the three sparks to aim its lightning after all, though it did help the accuracy.
PREDATOR IF IT BLEEDS Page 24