World's Edge

by Ryan Kirk

  His assailant didn’t turn to follow him. By diving out of the way, Ryuu had left Moriko’s back undefended. His opponent saw the opening and was going for it. Ryuu opened his mouth to scream a warning, but he knew it was too late. She couldn’t react in time, and there was no way he could recover the ground quickly enough to prevent a killing blow. His stomach sank with the knowledge Moriko would die, just like Takako.

  The world snapped, and Ryuu launched himself at his original assailant. Everything was in focus. Moriko was having the same trouble Ryuu had, barely able to deflect her own assailant’s blade away from a killing strike. The thin blade was cutting through her arm the moment Ryuu returned to the fight.

  It didn’t seem possible, but Ryuu made it just in time. He reached his own blade out to flick away the blade of his assailant, whose position in space had become as clear as day. But Ryuu was caught off guard again. His opponent sensed his attack and shifted. Ryuu had over-committed in his desperation, and the thin blade flicked at him as he sailed in front of his attacker. He felt the blade slice cleanly through his thigh, although he felt no pain. He analyzed his wound dispassionately as he came to a stop. The cut had been close to his artery. If his opponent had been a moment faster Ryuu would be bleeding to death.

  This time his assailant paid full attention to him. The thin blade sliced through the air with incredible speed. His attacker’s blade was a little shorter and so thin. It moved faster than Ryuu could bring his blade to bear. But every move was clear to Ryuu. With his reality snapped, he blocked or parried every strike, but he couldn’t find an opening to make a counterattack. His assailant was faster even than Orochi had been.

  There was a slight pause and Ryuu caught a quick breath. His opponent seemed uncertain, deciding upon his next moves. They were fighting to a draw. Ryuu remained calm. If he lost his focus, he knew he wouldn’t be a match for the stranger. His attacker strode forward, and Ryuu swore his attacker grew additional arms and blades. He had never seen attacks come so fast.

  Panicked, Ryuu stepped backwards, desperately blocking each strike. Finally he pushed his attacker back a pace or two, giving him just a moment to think. Ryuu redoubled his focus, and the battle resumed. Ryuu wanted to sense how Moriko was doing, but he didn’t have a moment to spare. He feared the worst. He was fighting at the best of his ability to a draw. Moriko would be in trouble.

  Ryuu lost track of how long their combat lasted. It seemed like forever, but he knew his sense of time when he snapped wasn’t the same. His opponent was too fast and Ryuu couldn’t get inside his defenses. But Ryuu was fast enough not to be killed either. They passed each other over and over again, moving as fast as thought.

  It was just a sliver of a moment, but Ryuu noticed it. His attacker had become more and more violent, striking with increased strength. Ryuu deflected one strike, and it left his attacker off balance. Ryuu seized the moment and drove forward. His attacker blocked the strike, but Ryuu pushed his weight forward, pushing the attacker further off balance. In the moment his assailant tried to regain his balance, Ryuu struck with incredible speed, cutting several of his major blood vessels. His attacker dropped, but Ryuu didn’t even pause.

  Ryuu sprinted towards Moriko. She was on the defensive and Ryuu could tell she had been cut several times. It was only a matter of time before she made a fatal mistake. Ryuu broke in on the fight, and as soon as he arrived Moriko attacked with the last of her strength. It was decided, but still it took time. If it was possible, Moriko’s opponent was even stronger and faster than Ryuu’s had been. But against the two remaining nightblades in the Three Kingdoms, the tide turned. Together they swung, sliced and stabbed until Moriko’s assailant fell bloody to the ground. The moment he did, Ryuu sensed the danger behind him.

  He turned as the throwing knife came flying at his neck. He caught it with the side of his blade and whipped it away. His original attacker collapsed. Ryuu realized he must have used the very last of his strength to make the throw.

  There was a moment of silence as Ryuu and Moriko surveyed the ground around them. Ryuu threw out his senses, but there were no more shadows. They were alone again in the clearing. Ryuu turned to Moriko just as she collapsed to the ground, blood all around her.

  Ryuu was exhausted. He had yet to sleep. Too much was at stake. His first priority had been to care for Moriko. He bandaged all her cuts as well as he could with what they had with them out in the clearing. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to put pressure on her deepest cuts. He hesitated but decided to take a few moments to examine the men they had killed.

  There had been much to learn. The first and most obvious fact was that they weren’t from the Three Kingdoms. They were taller and more muscular than any man he had ever encountered, even taller than Orochi had been, and their skin was darker than his own. Ryuu was surprised they had been so fast and agile. From the sheer size of them he wouldn’t have guessed it would be possible.

  Ryuu stripped their bodies of anything he found interesting. He took one of their blades and samples of their clothing and some of the jewelry they adorned themselves with. Anything that could be used to identify them. Most interesting were their cloaks. Ryuu had never seen cloaks like them, but he understood their purpose. They looked like they had been torn into tatters, but Ryuu realized the strips of cloth, fur and hide had been sewn together in a deliberate pattern. The tatters prevented opponents from seeing where strikes would come from. It was why he had struggled to distinguish their movements by sight. The cloaks had a tendency to billow and move haphazardly. It was almost impossible to guess where a strike would come from. Ryuu took one. It could be useful.

  With loot in hand and Moriko draped carefully over his shoulder, Ryuu walked back to their hut. Combat had been exhausting enough. Every step he took made the cut on his thigh scream in pain. As the sun began to peek over the horizon, Ryuu’s mind was ordering his body to stop, to take a break. His legs and arms and back were screaming at him, and Ryuu cursed the fact they had gone so far on their hike. But fear for Moriko's life kept him going. It wasn't long before he was covered in her blood, and he had to keep repositioning her so she wouldn't slide off his increasingly slick shoulders.

  When they arrived at the hut, Ryuu stripped her of all her clothes. He tightly wrapped fresh bandages around her and made her drink water, almost forcing it down her throat. They had a poultice that he rubbed into her deeper cuts. Then came the waiting, the hardest part of all. He sat, nervous and anxious, by her side, unwilling to move in case he was needed. He considered visiting the bodies once again in the daylight, but he didn't dare leave Moriko.

  It was evening when she finally opened her eyes. Ryuu made her drink more water and kept her from trying to sit up. She was far too weak, and her cuts hadn't closed yet. It was an effort for her to even speak. Ryuu made stew and served her the broth. Then she was asleep again, having said only a few words. Ryuu ate the rest of the stew and struggled against sleep.

  In the middle of the night he gave in to exhaustion. He left his senses open, but nothing disturbed their slumber. Ryuu awoke in the morning refreshed, ready for the day. Moriko awoke as well, and Ryuu was excited to see she seemed to be in better condition than the day before. Together, they changed her bandages, Moriko grimacing as they came off caked in blood. She didn’t complain, though. Ryuu examined each of her cuts and was grateful to see they all looked clean. He had been most worried about infection.

  They spoke about what had happened. Moriko spoke softly, as if the mention of their attackers might bring them back. "Who were they?"

  Ryuu shook his head. "I don't know. They were strong." He paused. "I don't think they were from the Three Kingdoms. They didn't look like anyone I've ever met."

  Moriko's dark eyes were curious. "How can that be? Why would anyone outside of the Three Kingdoms want to kill us?"

  Ryuu wished he knew the answer to that question. "There are many things I would like to know. Here, look at this."

  Ryuu held the sw
ord he had taken in front of Moriko and slowly turned it. He didn't want her trying to sit up and grab it for fear that her wounds might reopen.

  The sword was light, but very strong. The craftsmanship and the techniques used to forge it had to be different than any technique practiced in the Three Kingdoms. Most of the blade had been painted black, another reason Ryuu had a hard time seeing it in battle. It was a straight blade, a hand's width shorter than Ryuu's own sword, not curved at all.

  "Have you ever seen anything like this?" Moriko had been raised at the monasteries, so in some ways her education was better than Ryuu's.

  She tried to shake her head but grimaced in pain. "No. I've never seen a blade quite like it.”

  Ryuu turned the blade over in his hands. “It's an interesting design. Its reach is inferior, but it’s so fast that it's almost impossible to get past if it's being used for defense."

  Moriko closed her eyes. "I know. If you hadn't come along, there’s no way I could have lasted much longer. I couldn’t break their defense.”

  Ryuu brushed some hair away from her face and kissed her gently on the lips. "You fought well. I was barely able to defeat them myself. I snapped again, and if I hadn't, I would have also lost."

  Moriko's mouth turned up just slightly. "You're going to have to teach me how to do that."

  Ryuu wished he could. For the first time since he had first met Orochi, he worried that he wasn’t strong enough to face what was coming.

  When the sun rose the next day, Ryuu still hadn't left Moriko's side. He hadn’t gone more than a few paces from the hut the entire day. When she awoke, her voice was stronger, but she still wasn't able to sit up. When Ryuu changed her bandages, he saw most of her wounds had closed up, but just barely. She'd be on bed rest for a couple more days yet, at least. But all her cuts were clean and there was no reason she wouldn’t make a full recovery. He was thankful. Moriko surviving the battle had been closer than he cared to admit. He had noticed when cleaning her wounds that some of the cuts had come very close to major blood vessels. It frightened him to know how close to death she’d come.

  All morning Ryuu sat by her side, attending to her every need, which were few and far between. Moriko spent most of her time meditating, healing, and resting. In many ways she was handling her injuries better than Ryuu was. By early afternoon it was obvious she was tired of the attention. "I'll be fine. Go do something else. Get out of the hut."

  "It's not just your health I'm worried about. I'm worried that if I leave they'll strike here, and there isn't anything you or I will be able to do about it.”

  Moriko groaned, and Ryuu was certain that if she’d been physically capable of throwing something at him she would have.

  "Get out of here. Go check their bodies, see if you can find anything more useful on them. Then leave them for the wolves."

  It took some coaxing on her part, but he went.

  The path to the clearing was easy to follow, and the ground flew underneath Ryuu’s feet. He maintained a steady trot, his senses out and aware, dedicated to not being hunted again. He was ready for the shadows, but there were none to be found. Ryuu came to the clearing, his natural curiosity overwhelming his reluctance to leave Moriko’s side. The signs of the battle were all around, present even to an untrained eye. Grass was trampled and stained brown from blood. So much blood. Ryuu knew much of it was his and Moriko’s. There was more blood than he would have imagined. The two of them had been lucky.

  But the obvious signs of battle were not what drew his attention. His heart raced, and he drew his sword, battle instincts kicking in. He threw out his sense, overwhelmed by the stimulus he brought in. He focused but found nothing. He pushed his sense out even further, dangerous in the old woods, teeming with life as it was. It would be easy to lose his mind. Despite the flood of information coming in, Ryuu couldn’t find what he was looking for. There were no shadows. But there weren’t any bodies in the clearing either.

  Ryuu double-checked his surroundings, but he held no doubts he was in the right clearing. All the signs of battle surrounded him. But there were no bodies, and dead people didn’t move on their own. Ryuu knew they were dead. He had checked them himself.

  Ryuu closed his eyes and searched his memory. He located the place where the bodies should have been. There was plenty of evidence. Impressions in the grass, pools of coagulated blood, the bodies had definitely fallen there. But they were gone.

  He knelt down next to each impression, trying to create a picture of what had happened. Unfortunately, he wasn’t an expert tracker, and the signs around the battlefield were too chaotic for him to decipher. Either they had walked off or they had been carried off, but Ryuu couldn’t prove either guess. He supposed their bodies could have just vanished, but that was getting too far out into the realm of magic, and magic was something he didn’t believe in. The battle had almost taken his and Moriko’s lives, and it wasn’t over.

  At the thought of Moriko, Ryuu froze. If the bodies had been taken, the most logical explanation was that there were other shadows present, and she was alone and in no condition to fight them. He sheathed his sword as he took off at a dead sprint towards the hut.

  Chapter 5

  The sun rose on Akira as he completed his morning ritual of staring off into the south, waiting for something, anything to happen. He had been at the head of the pass for almost a half moon, expecting any news at all. Spring was already turning into summer this far south, and the green grass was slowly retreating against the steady onslaught of dry heat. In another moon the prairie in front of him would be brown. He supposed it was still a better color than red.

  Akira didn’t know what he was looking for, what he was waiting for. But he kept coming back, morning after morning. Something was happening in the south. A storm was building, and he feared its intensity. The scout’s story had been unbelievable. Even once he had fully recovered, he told the story of an entire clan being decimated by a handful of warriors. The story had circulated. Akira had considered trying to halt it, but stories had a way of spreading. Like a wildfire, they would find the one gap in your defenses and blow out of proportion. Best to let it spread. Better than maintaining the appearance of secrecy.

  Maybe he was searching too hard for an enemy. Like all nobility, he had been brought up in the arts of war. He thirsted for an enemy in front of him. Despite the tradition fading into legend, he still believed the purest combat was one person testing their steel against another. He despised an unknown enemy, an enemy that hid in shadows. Better the army in front of you than the assassin behind you.

  His thoughts turned to Ryuu. He had been thinking about the young nightblade more often, particularly since the report of the scout. Of course the idea of nightblades was being discussed throughout the camp. It was a legend, one many considered an overblown myth. But deep down, everyone believed. It was the way they were raised, in fear of those almost too strong to die. Soldiers would scoff when the sun was up, but they’d all be silent at night, in the darkness rumored to be the domain of the nightblades. The scout’s story ignited the kindling that lay dormant in the hearts of all Akira’s warriors.

  But Akira was one of the few people in the world who knew nightblades still existed. He had known for many cycles. First it had been Orochi, a man who kept his own secrets. Although he never said, Akira suspected Orochi had come from a haven for nightblades. The man had come well trained. Somewhere in the world the path of the nightblade was still being taught. Akira didn’t know how large a haven it was, but he guessed there were at least a few dozen. After Orochi, there had been Shigeru and Ryuu, two nightblades who called the Southern Kingdom their home. If there were three, there were probably more.

  He was troubled by the possibility of nightblades down in Azaria. Was that where Orochi had come from? Akira had seen Azarians, and they were physically different than his own subjects. Orochi had been large, like an Azarian, but he undoubtedly traced his ancestry back to the Kingdom. Perhaps the nightblades a
nd the Azarians had a relationship? He shook his head. The possibilities were limitless, and he had no way of knowing what was happening. He stretched in the morning sun. There were too many problems and not enough information. He thought about trying to send a scout to find Ryuu, but dismissed the idea out of hand. Akira had given his word, and Ryuu had given his. Ryuu hadn’t surfaced for over two cycles, and Akira hadn’t gone looking for him.

  The sun was beginning to burn brightly, and it was almost time for Akira to head back to another round of frustrating conferences with his generals. Nothing had changed. Construction on the defenses of the pass was in full swing, but it was almost time for him to head back to the Southern Kingdom. Akira had sent in another scouting party to follow the directions of the first scout. He needed more information. The scouts should be back any day, another reason Akira spent so much time on the overlook tower.

  Unfortunately, it looked like the scouts would not be returning this morning. In front of him the world might as well have been empty. There wasn’t even the hint of a dust trail. As he turned to head back to camp he heard the beginnings of a commotion in camp. In the few moments he was paying attention, the disturbance turned into a clamor. There was yelling and shouting and anger throughout the camp.

  He didn’t even have to come down from his tower to hear. When Akira heard the news, shouted from person to person as it spread through the camp like a river breaking through a dam, his stomach fell and he almost doubled over. There was no way it could be possible, but the word echoed throughout the camp, ringing in his ears like a death bell.

  Invasion.

  Akira strode into the command tent, trying to give off an air of command he didn’t feel. He felt like he was losing his grasp on reality. The treaty had held for hundreds of cycles, and he hadn’t provoked an invasion. His contact with Sen and Tanak was minimal at best. They met once a cycle, and sometimes even that gathering was canceled. Most cycles there was little for them to discuss.