The man standing on the other side of the door was someone she had met before—he was the Kisōshi of the golden hakama, the one who had almost caught her a cycle ago when she had been searching for documents about Kiko’s origins. He was the man who had fought her, but hadn’t tried to stop her, a man who had perplexed her entirely.
“I have news,” he said, looking between Taka and Kusuko, and seeming to recognize Taka in some way. “Mitsu-san and Mishi-san haven’t reported in for days, and there has been a new village destroyed in the area they were sent to investigate.”
13th Day, 3rd Moon, Cycle 1 of the New Council
THE SMELL OF damp and rotting earth filled the tent, and Mishi wondered what the children had hoped to accomplish by covering themselves from head to toe in mud once more. She supposed they had been trying to use mud to hide from the sanzoku again when they had been caught. She sighed inwardly, and took another look around the small, sparse tent. There were no decorations, no arms.
Mishi struggled against the bonds on her wrists, hissing at the rub of the coarse rope against her skin.
“Stop that!” shouted the man at the door, who came over and slapped her across the face.
She whimpered and shied back from the strike, as though very much afraid of having it repeated. She wished she had Kusuko’s knack for dissembling, so she could also bring tears to her eyes, but that was beyond her power.
Mizu and Tsuchi did not seem to have any problems bringing tears to their eyes, but she thought that was probably because the guards had talked about not needing to keep them around anymore now that they had successfully lured in the “dangerous female Kisōshi.” The guards had actually laughed when they said “dangerous,” and cuffed Mishi one more time, to make her cower.
Mishi had found it very interesting that they had been trying to lure her in, though. She had just assumed that they wouldn’t kill her immediately if she surrendered, and had hoped that would give her enough time to find Mizu and Tsuchi. Instead, they had taken her directly to Mizu and Tsuchi, and she had learned that they had been trying to capture her. Had that been true a few days before, when they had initially attacked? She didn’t think so. The arrows she had dodged had been meant to be fatal. So what had changed?
Something to contemplate later, she suspected. Right now, she had to focus on other concerns. Like the armed guard at the door, the forty other armed sanzoku who inhabited the camp, and whatever had happened to Mitsu after she’d surrendered herself to a sentry. Of course, knowing that the sanzoku might not plan to kill her after all might be useful knowledge for the immediate future, but she couldn’t count on it without knowing more. Perhaps they had planned to lure her in to find out what she knew, and then kill her. She couldn’t trust that they wouldn’t take her down as soon as she escaped with the children. So she had to stick to the original plan. As long as Mitsu was able to manage his part.
Just then the tent flap rustled, and a guard dragged a bedraggled man into the tent and threw him, trussed like a pig on a feast day, to the floor.
“Found this one sniffing around the commander’s tent. Was told to keep him alive for questioning.”
Mishi glared at Mitsu as he rolled onto his back and his face became visible. The sanzoku who had thrown him on the floor spat on the ground, then walked out. The guard who had been slapping Mishi around since she arrived hit Mitsu across the back of the head as well.
“I suppose this is as good a place as any to spend your final days. And if you’re lucky, the commander will get around to questioning you sooner than that.”
He laughed at his own statement, as if this were the highest form of humor, and Mishi just barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes. She was supposed to seem meek…
The children, mud covered and terrified, were huddling in the corner and seemed truly upset by the words that the guard uttered. No doubt they expected to have to watch Mitsu’s execution. Indeed, if Mishi didn’t get them out of here, they probably weren’t wrong. That seemed precisely the kind of thing these men were capable of, though Mishi couldn’t fathom why. Was it simply that once you started accepting violent orders from someone else, regardless of who the victims were, you stopped caring? Or were these men truly depraved? Did they enjoy hurting people?
Yet another thing she would have to contemplate later.
The guard moved back toward the tent flap. Mishi readied herself.
It was difficult, certainly, to get her legs under herself with her arms tied behind her back, but Mishi managed it while the guard was looking around the flap to check in with the guard on the other side. When he returned, she dove—straight at Mitsu’s prone form, knocking the wind out of him.
The guard was instantly on her, pulling her up from Mitsu and away, holding her arms and then her shoulders.
“Now, stop that,” the guard said, as though scolding a child. “You won’t get a chance to silence him before the commander speaks with him, that’s for certain.”
He held her up by her shoulders as he spoke, and seemed surprised to find that they were eye to eye. He glared at her, refusing to look away, as though the height of her gaze was some form of challenge.
“You’re a tall one,” he said. “Now, don’t make me teach you a lesson. The commander said we weren’t to kill you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t give you a good beat—”
The man was cut off by his own wakizashi slitting his throat. Mishi’s gut turned at having killed a man before he was aware of the threat. It felt cowardly. But he’d been looking right at her the entire time. It wasn’t her fault that he hadn’t noticed that she’d burned through the bonds tying her wrists behind her back, or that he hadn’t been fast enough to see her arm come forward to grab his wakizashi from his belt and raise it to his throat. It wasn’t as though she’d attacked him from behind.
She grabbed the man as he fell, gently guiding his body to the floor as the life drained from him. She studiously avoided looking at either of the children. She hadn’t heard either of them scream, thankfully.
She moved to untie Mitsu.
“You look ill,” Mitsu commented, as she helped him stand.
“I’ve never killed a man who wasn’t trying to kill me first before.”
Mitsu nodded, paling slightly himself.
“Just remember what these men did to those villagers, and that they would kill any of us without question if they were told to do so.”
Mishi nodded. She understood that what Mitsu said was true, but that didn’t quell the queasiness in her gut.
Once Mitsu had stripped the guard of his uwagi and hakama and donned them himself, Mishi positioned herself just inside the tent flap, readied herself, and then nodded to Mitsu.
Mitsu then called to the guard outside.
“A little help,” he called, loudly enough that the guard outside would hear him, but not so loud as to draw anyone else’s attention.
The outside guard stuck just his head into the tent, and Mishi struck the underside of his chin as quickly and forcefully as she could. He began to collapse toward Mitsu, who grabbed the man’s shoulders and dragged him inside before laying him down.
Mitsu glanced at Mishi.
“He could wake up at any time and raise the alarm,” he said softly, perhaps to avoid the children hearing him.
Mishi shook her head.
“I know, but he should be out long enough for our needs and…I couldn’t do it again. I can’t kill men that way. It feels…wrong to me.”
When they had first made this plan, she had thought that killing the guards would be the same as killing any of the other men she had fought. She was already a monster, after all, how difficult could it be? Not difficult at all, as it turned out, but completely different from anything she’d done before, and not an experience she wished to repeat. She knew the man wasn’t innocent, but somehow killing someone unprepared for battle…it didn’t sit right with her. It made her feel too much like a hishi. She would take her chances that this man wo
uld wake up. Hopefully, they would be far enough away by then for it not to matter. Besides, she had hit him quite hard in the one spot that Kuma-sensei had assured her would always render a person unconscious for a good length of time.
Mitsu looked worried, but nodded.
“You could kill him now, if you like,” she said, with a sharper tone than she’d intended. If he was so worried about making sure that they had infinite time to get away, he could bloody his own hands.
Mitsu locked eyes with her then, and where she expected to see anger, or disgust, she saw sadness.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. They’re just as likely to discover the bodies after we leave as this man is to wake up. Either way, we’d best hurry.”
Mitsu helped her disrobe the sanzoku guard, and she reluctantly exchanged her own uwagi and hakama for his. Where hers were the green and brown of Kuma-sensei’s line, all the sanzoku wore the crimson and black of the Rōjū.
Not for the first time, she was jealous of Mitsu’s leather leggings and tunic. He had been able to keep his clothing on beneath the guard’s. She would have to abandon her clothes here, and hope the man she’d taken them from bathed regularly. She supposed she still got the better end of the deal though, as the uwagi she had taken from the door guard wasn’t soaked in blood. They were lucky that the uwagi were crimson anyway, so the blood would likely go unnoticed unless closely scrutinized.
When she’d first raised the idea that they dress as guards from inside the camp, Mitsu had raised an eyebrow.
“And how are you going to disguise yourself as a man?” he had asked.
Mishi had actually laughed at that.
“Most men think I’m a man already,” she said. “Especially when I’m wearing uwagi and hakama, complete with wakizashi and katana. It doesn’t matter that the rules have changed; no one expects a female Kisōshi. Since I’m tall and slender, I blend in particularly well, but I imagine if you put Kusuko in my clothes everyone would assume she was a man as well.”
It had been Mitsu’s turn to laugh then, but he acknowledged that it was probably true and that had ended the discussion.
It was only after they were both clad and armed with the guards’ kit that she finally looked at the children. They both looked pale beneath the mud that coated them, and their eyes were wide, but they were no longer crying.
Mishi cleared her throat, still ashamed of the man that she’d killed, before speaking to them.
“We’re going to lead you out of here,” she explained, “so we’ll leave you tied and need you to act like prisoners. Do you understand?”
They nodded mutely.
Not wishing to waste any more time, Mishi grabbed Mizu, while Mitsu grabbed Tsuchi, and they left the tent with the children dragging along. She wasn’t sure if they were excellent actors or if they were terrified right now anyway, but the children were as rigid and wide-eyed as any true prisoner being transferred.
Every now and again, the children would fidget and Mishi or Mitsu would shake them and tell them to step lively.
They made it to within sight of the edge of camp, and Mishi was just beginning to think they might make it to safety before someone stopped them. Her stomach tightened and her hopes dropped when she heard someone shout.
“Where are you taking those children?” a man called out behind them, without preamble.
Mishi cursed silently, and tried to think of a suitable lie. They had planned to say that they were taking the children to the commander, but they were too far toward the outside of camp for that to be plausible. She wasn’t sure exactly where the commander’s tent was, but she was fairly certain they must be walking away from it at this point.
“We were on our way to the commander’s tent when this scamp insisted that he had to piss,” Mitsu turned around and improvised, before she could say anything.
It was a decent attempt, she thought, but as she turned to see if the man had bought it, she saw him reaching for his katana.
“Run!” she said, as she shoved Mizu-chan to Mitsu, drew her own katana, and charged the man who had stopped them.
Taka ran as quickly as she dared, focused on keeping sight of the dark spot in the sky above her without tripping over the roots, branches, and brush that littered the forest floor. Her lungs took in deep, even breaths of pine-scented air, and her legs pushed her farther and farther along the small game trail that followed more or less along the same path that the red-tailed hawk above her pursued. Trees flashed by in her peripheral vision, and she hoped that she was fast enough. She had to be fast enough.
Kusuko moved as quickly as her body was capable of over the uneven forest floor, and was grateful that she had decided to change into the flowing charcoal leggings and tunic of her hishi garb rather than remain in her kimono. It wasn’t that she couldn’t move swiftly in her kimono, she’d taken great pains to be sure that she could, it was just that keeping up this pace for so long would have been nearly impossible in the more constricting outfit, and she was unable to keep pace with Taka anyway. As it was, she had to follow the hawk ahead of her and hope that she arrived in time to prevent Taka from getting killed.
She had been surprised enough when Inari-san had arrived and informed them that Mishi and Mitsu were in trouble, but she had been almost shocked enough to react visibly when Inari had informed them that he would join them in heading to the last known location of Taka’s friends. Even now, the older hishi kept pace just behind her—she had been gratified to note that he couldn’t match Taka’s pace either.
She didn’t know what Inari had planned. In all likelihood, he hoped to get Taka in the same place as Mishi and Mitsu, which would make it easier to apprehend all three of them and present them to the Rōjū, or at least the Rōjū zantō that had been stirring up trouble in this area, but she thought that whatever he had planned had been turned upside down when the red-tailed hawk that Taka and Mitsu could both communicate with had arrived at their camp this morning and informed Taka…
Well, she wasn’t sure what the hawk had communicated to the young healer, she only knew that Taka’s face had grown more and more concerned as the hawk delivered its message. At the end she had turned to Kusuko and Inari, said, “I know where they are. Follow me!” and then taken off running.
It was starting to seem that knowing where they were was a very general claim, as Taka appeared to be following the flight of the red-tailed hawk rather than leading them to a concrete destination that she could have found on her own. Consequently, they had to ford the occasional stream, jump over small gullies, and move around the odd set of small cliffs. She supposed that the hawk didn’t recognize any of these things as obstacles, and it had made for a tiring day. She didn’t know how Taka still had the energy to run at all, let alone at the seemingly inhuman pace she was keeping. Kusuko had lost sight of Taka’s form long ago, and were it not for the sight of the circling hawk high above she would have had no idea where to find her.
She would have sighed, if she’d had the breath for it, but she had nothing more than the air she needed to keep running.
Mishi glanced longingly over her shoulder at the tantalizingly close edge of the sanzoku camp, even as her katana met the blade of the man who had stopped them. Her hopes surged for a moment as she saw Mitsu and the children draw near the perimeter.
Then her attention was consumed with the battle before her.
She had already drawn a second opponent, and she didn’t know how many more would come to investigate the sounds of steel on steel before she was able to make any progress toward the edge of the camp.
She had known, when she started her charge, that she might be overwhelmed before she could rejoin her companions. She had to hope that she could at least give them enough time to make their escape. She doubted that the sanzoku would still be willing to let her live after this escape attempt, but perhaps whatever orders they had would take precedence.
In the end it probably didn’t really matter, since she doubted she would get t
hrough this battle alive. She wasn’t going to stop until they cut her down, anyway. That was the only way she could buy enough time for Mitsu and the children.
In the time it had taken to contemplate all of that, she had already slain the man who had first stopped them. His death weighed on her, just like those of all the other soldiers she’d killed, but she didn’t feel soiled the way she had when she’d killed the guard inside the tent.
How strange my mind is! she thought. To be so concerned with how and when a life is taken, instead of being simply horrified that it had to be taken at all.
She shook her head and refocused on the task at hand, as another three men surged forward to join the fray. She smirked as she noticed that, even as they added men to the fight, they were pushing her farther toward the edges of the camp. She wondered briefly if Mitsu and the children had made it past the perimeter yet, but she didn’t chance looking.
Her world was narrowed to every block and parry, every stroke of the enemies’ swords. She had to keep her opponents shifting constantly. If she led the dance correctly, they couldn’t attack her at the same time without the risk of killing their fellow sanzoku. She couldn’t let them flank her, or they would cut her down before she could recover. All the while she worked to pull them with her to the edge of the camp—it would be her only chance at escape.
As a fourth and fifth sanzoku joined the fight, she decided that it was time to start using her kisō. She had been putting it off, hoping to avoid the attention that smoke would draw from the rest of the camp.
Unfortunately, now she had little choice, if she still hoped to make her own escape. She threw a fan of fire behind the melee that she was part of, just to discourage anyone else from joining them, and then she started throwing flames at nearby tents to create enough smoke to blind her opponents. Then she started flicking flame at the ground right in front of her while exchanging blows with the men who attacked her, trying to deter some of her attackers long enough to put the others down.
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