Spirit of the Ronin

by Travis Heermann

  As he approached the cave, the smell of decay thickened, mingling with the smell of something he could not identify, almost like a beehive, or a hut that had stood empty for a long time. Only a dozen paces away now, he could see the cave mouth situated beneath a leaning boulder. He would have to crawl on his belly to worm his way inside. The deep shadows within kept their secrets.

  Below, Kazuko shielded her eyes from the sun and watched him.

  He gestured inside.

  From his military experiences, he had acquired enough tactical wisdom to know that entering an unknown area with an unknown enemy was not a wise move, but the kami remained silent. He trusted them to warn him. But their silence could also mean that she was asleep inside or some other nuance of meaning understandable only to spirits of the air and earth and forest. So he stashed his bow near the entrance, drew Silver Crane, and slid between the rocks, the earth moist between his fingers and toes.

  The stench of decay was even stronger within, thick and wet and rancid, and the smell of some creature, too, that was not quite beast. He knew the smell of bears and wolves, and this odor was not in that realm.

  As he slipped into the shadows, he allowed his eyes a few moments to adjust to the darkness. The floor of the cave was littered with dried grass. Stains he could not identify covered the grass. Three paces past the boulder he could raise himself into a crouch. Silver Crane glistened in the sunlight from behind him, casting shards of light against the ceiling and walls.

  With each step, he listened and heard nothing.

  As the darkness deepened, things crunched and dug into the soles of his bare feet, bits of bone and less savory detritus. Perhaps ten paces into the cave, he found a bed of grass nestled against the cave wall. Clumps of earthen roots clung to the grass, but it was a bed much like the one he had used in boyhood. Fox-sized clefts delved deeper into the mountain, but this was the deepest point a human being could reach. And Hatsumi was not here.

  He hurried back through the entrance, wormed his way outside, and reached for his bow. Then he heard voices below and the kami screaming in his mind.

  He dropped low and eased toward the rocks overlooking the path to the cave, then peered down.

  Kazuko sat pressed against a large boulder at the edge of the stream. Two paces away, sitting on another stone, was a woman in once-fine robes now ruined with dirt and rusty-red stains. The other woman’s hair was a wild mane, matted with sticks and pine needles.

  Kazuko’s voice came up the slope, tremulous and halting. “—I am sorry, Hatsumi, but I have not come to bring you home. My husband won’t allow it. But I am happy to see...you are well.”

  Kazuko’s face had gone white as a winter mountaintop. Her right hand crept toward the sleeve where her dagger lay hidden.

  Only Hatsumi’s back was visible, hands resting in her lap. She sighed loudly and with great earnestness and disappointment. “I suppose Lord Tsunetomo is unhappy about me breaking the window shutter, isn’t he?”

  He raised his lips into the song of a nightingale. When no response came, he called again.

  Still no reply.

  “Did you bring any more escorts with you?” Hatsumi said.

  “No,” Kazuko said.

  He nocked an arrow.

  “It was good that you did,” Hatsumi said. “Even with your manlike martial skills, a lady must be wary of bandits. But we have already had such experience, have we not?” Her gaze began to wander around the area, her nose lifted.

  In profile, Ken’ishi could see something wrong with her face. A distortion. A blood-red blotchiness. He drew the bowstring.

  “Are you lying to me about more bodyguards?” Hatsumi said.

  “Don’t be silly, dear Hatsumi. I came to see you.”

  “Then whose shoes are these?” Hatsumi’s arm stretched out to point toward the zori Ken’ishi had left at the foot of the cave path. Her arm glistened with fresh blood up to her elbow.

  He released the arrow, and it flew, hissing and true, into the side of Hatsumi’s head.

  Her head spun on her neck like an owl’s, twisting further than any human head could turn. The red blotches on her face came alive as her eyes found him. Recognition flared in eyes like beads of black hate. The blotches on her face whorled and swelled and tumefied, drawing her lips back from black, razor-like teeth that ringed a circular mouth, like that of a leech. Her torso lifted from her seat, and while her face remained fixed upon Ken’ishi, the rest of her body rotated toward him. Her blood-soaked hands were not hands anymore, but gnarled talons tipped with obsidian claws. A distended belly hung over the remnants of her obi.

  Another pair of legs unfolded from within her robe, legs that Ken’ishi could not fathom, part spider and part squid, covered in spiny black needles like hairs, and then another pair of legs, legs that parted the cloth of her robes and revealed just how much of Hatsumi’s body was still woman and how much was not.

  Ken’ishi drew another arrow and released. It flew toward her face.

  She swatted it away as if it were a mosquito. A long, black tongue extended from that horrid circular hole and licked her puckered lips.

  Like the tiny, charcoal-colored spiders that leaped so quickly they seemed to blink from one spot to the next, Hatsumi leaped upon him, wrenched the bow from his hands, and crumpled it like a twig.

  His hand found Silver Crane’s hilt, and he slashed toward her face. Quicker than sight, she let the gleaming tip whoosh past her strangely bulbous nose, then swatted at him with one of those awful claws, an almost lackadaisical movement that would have peeled his face from his skull. But he ducked and scrambled away, interposing the deadly sheen of Silver Crane between them, seeking an entrance to the Void. Something in her gaze transfixed him, kept him mired in fear, unable to release himself into Nothingness.

  She came on like a darting scorpion, but stopped short of Silver Crane’s point.

  His heart was a smith’s hammer, his breath a painful desperation.

  And then she leaped, but not upon him. Upward, to the wall of rock looming over him, where she clung for a moment like a fly, then thirty paces through the air to the trunk of a thick pine tree. Then down upon him again, those horrid legs foremost. He met her with a slash that severed two of those legs as he danced aside. Noxious ichor spewed over him, and she landed ten paces away. Yellow slaver gathered between her pulsating rows of black teeth. The stench of the ichor brought his gorge into his throat, launching him into a coughing fit, his eyes streaming tears.

  Through the haze of tears, she came at him again. He raised his blade to meet her, but then a sear of pain lanced up his leg. One of her severed legs clamped around his ankle, the black needle-hairs piercing his flesh...and drinking. The pressure would soon splinter his bones. Hatsumi’s claws streaked toward his face and throat. He slashed, but she dodged and then clapped the blade between her palms, arresting its movement and contesting its control. He wrenched and tugged, but her clasped palms held the sword like a stone.

  Her leech’s mouth pulsed and gnashed, hungry.

  Then with a terrific heave, she wrested the sword from his grip and sent it spinning away to clang against the rocks.

  The severed limb worried at his ankle, grinding needles into bone, sucking for marrow.

  One of her claws snatched his extended wrist.

  A shrill kiai pierced his ears. The sound of a solid blow came from behind Hatsumi. A flash of Kazuko’s face over Hatsumi’s shoulder. Kazuko pulled the dagger out of Hatsumi’s back and stabbed again. Hatsumi dropped Ken’ishi’s wrist and swept a claw around toward Kazuko. The claw ripped through cloth and raked across lacquered scales. Kazuko flew backward to tumble painfully down the slope.

  Hideous glee trickled over Hatsumi’s face as she watched Kazuko bounce and crash to a halt against a boulder. Hatsumi stood there in indecision, looking back and forth between Ken’ishi and Kazuko.

  “No!” Ken’ishi snarled. “Look here, you foul sow!” He braced himself to leap.

>   Hatsumi faced him, eyes glittering. She sprang toward him.

  He lunged for Silver Crane. Somehow it lay closer now than he thought it had been. His fingers closed around the hilt, and he swung blindly behind him. The blade bit something hard and heavy, and lodged.

  An ululating howl blasted over him, turning his blood to the frozen slush of a winter river.

  Hatsumi backed herself free, and a handspan of his sword point slid from her belly, smeared with blackness.

  Her eyes blazed with fresh hatred and pain.

  Ken’ishi seized the moment and leaped at her, swinging for her neck.

  The cut was true, and her head tumbled from her shoulders to the ground, where it bobbled around the arrow embedded in it.

  The satisfaction of a perfect cut filled his breast.

  Then her hands reached down and scooped up her head like a kemari ball. A squelching, blowing, sucking rhythm spurted gobbets of black ichor from the stump of her neck, as if she were screaming her rage at him without the mouth to form the sounds.

  With another tremendous spring, she launched herself higher up the mountainside and fled into the forest.

  He watched her only long enough to be sure she was gone before he turned his attention to the needles grinding into his ankle. With the point of Silver Crane, he stabbed the horrid member and slowly, with excruciating pain, began to pry it loose from his leg. The needles came out one by one, wriggling, grating free of bone, pulsing with silent frustration. Blood poured from the pattern of pinholes encircling his ankle. Finally, the last spines came free, and the member hung like an engorged leech from the point of his weapon. With a snort of revulsion, he slung the thing as far as he could and flung himself down the trail to where Kazuko lay against the rocks.

  Tremendous forces...

  Stone-piled fence all tumbled down

  By two cats in love.

  —Shiki

  The captain had assured Yasutoki that their vessel would dock at Kamakura tomorrow. They had been becalmed for most of the day, but the captain knew in his bones the wind would return tomorrow and take them the rest of the journey.

  The man was just the kind Yasutoki relished—half-legitimate sailor, half-pirate. The kind of man perceptive enough to recognize power and ruthlessness when he encountered it, and wily enough to ingratiate himself with it. Throughout the journey, Yasutoki had noticed a number of clues indicating this captain and crew spent a significant amount of their time preying upon trade to China. The predatory looks kept in check only by the stern ferocity of samurai bodyguards, the areas of the ship forbidden to the passengers—areas suitable for hiding weapons—and the sailors’ general flint-eyed wariness, as if all of them had secrets to hide. Most of them probably had prices on their heads and warrants of execution in various provinces, but these were the kind of men Yasutoki understood best, the kind of tools he often used.

  At the stern, Tiger Lily gazed out over the placid sea and its avenue of moonlight stretching to the eastern horizon. To the northwest lay a faint black strip of peninsula.

  Belowdecks, the sailors drank and ate with boisterous gusto. The smell of roasting fish and boiling millet wafted up through the glow of lanterns shining up from the hold. Yasutoki and his bodyguards had been served first, given rice instead of millet. The land-legged samurai had finally accustomed themselves to the tossing sea and found enough respite from the relentless vomiting to eat. Tiger Lily, however, had been content with a few pickled plums, saying that her belly was still unhappy.

  The night air was pleasant but still calm, and Yasutoki was tired of being aboard ship. He loathed the closeness of so many eyes. The cramped confines of his cabin were hardly enough for him to stretch out when he slept. He was also tired of the sickened cast on Tiger Lily’s face. If he had to watch her vomit one more time, he might slit her throat.

  The sailor on watch puttered around the deck, checking rigging, knots, and anchor, then spotted Tiger Lily. His coarse, unshaven face turned from his annoyance at being stuck with watch duty into a swaggering, predatory smirk.

  Yasutoki stood at the bow and pretended to ignore the man’s approach. The lascivious leers the crew lavished upon her flew in the face of all decorum—when they were not deriding her presence as inviting bad fortune—but she kept her gaze demurely downcast at all times, as she had been taught.

  The sailor’s demeanor bespoke lustful intention to have her right there on the deck while everyone’s back was turned. Yasutoki felt no need to interfere. Watching her be ravished in the most bestial way would amuse him as much as watching her defend herself.

  The sailor leaned in close and spoke in her ear. She remained motionless, gazing out to sea. His hand clasped her buttock and squeezed, and still she did not move. His fingers lifted her robe and slid between her thighs.

  She turned toward him and lifted her face toward his, exposing her smooth, tender throat, parting her moist lips. The sailor’s shoulders stiffened. He leaned closer, growling something in her ear. She reached up and pulled out her two lacquered bamboo hairpins, letting her long, lustrous hair tumble over her shoulders. She shook it loose and smiled up at him. His rough hands came up and clasped her shoulders. He leaned down to kiss her. Her hand came up and seemed to brush his cheek. His body stiffened as a wordless, nasal grunt erupted from him. His knees buckled, his eyes turned away from one another, and she guided his limp, wiry bulk over the gunwale. He splashed into the sea. She wrapped her hair back up into a bun and secured it with only one hairpin.

  The great splash brought a swarm of sailors boiling out of the hold.

  Yasutoki called out to them. “Your man slipped and fell over the bow!” He pointed over the gunwale beside him.

  A dozen men rushed to Yasutoki’s side, peering over the side, shouting questions.

  “Where is he?”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t see him!”

  Yasutoki said, “He was checking the rigging. He fell and hit his head, then went into the water.”

  Two men leaped over the side and dove under the water. Soon they re-emerged, gasping and sputtering.

  “It’s too dark!”

  “I can’t see him!”

  Then Tiger Lily’s shrill scream from the stern grabbed their attention. “Sharks!” She pointed out over the moon-dappled water. “I saw fins!”

  The men in the water began to thrash with panic. “Help! Help!”

  The captain roared. “Ropes over the side! Get them up!”

  Two ropes went over the side, and moments later, two dripping sailors were hauled onto the deck.

  Other men ran to the stern, peering out into the water.

  “There!” A sailor pointed. “I think I saw one!”

  “I saw two fins, sirs!” Tiger Lily said. “They went under the ship.”

  Sailors lined the gunwales, snatching up poles and hooks, searching the swirling darkness around the ship. One readied a harpoon.

  “We can’t risk anyone else,” the captain said with a grunt. “If Katsuura was knocked senseless when he went in, he’s drowned by now.”

  “Food for sharks,” said the first mate.

  The captain barked out to his crew, “Keep your eyes open, but nobody else goes in the water!”

  Yasutoki said, “I am sorry about the loss of your crewman, Captain. Is there any aid I can offer?”

  The captain shook his head and bowed. “No, Lord. Thank you, Lord.”

  “Then I will take my servant and retire.” Yasutoki approached the door to his cabin, and snapped his fingers toward Tiger Lily.

  She joined him, and they ducked into their chamber.

  With the door shut behind him, he lit a match for the oil lamp and said, “That was brilliantly done, my dear.”

  “Thank you for the distraction, Master. It gave his body time to sink.” Her face gleamed like alabaster in the burgeoning glow.

  “The ‘sharks’ were an especially adept touch. Where did you insert the hairpin?”
/>   “His nose, Master.”

  “You made punching through the bone into the brain look effortless.”

  “You are...an excellent teacher, Master.”

  Pride swelled his chest. “Perhaps I have taught you too well. Nevertheless, do not kill anyone else until we reach Kamakura. Avoid the sailors. They already call you a harbinger of ill fortune. Stay in the cabin.”

  “Yes, Master. Might I entreat to ask a question?”

  “What is it?”

  “Where did you learn such great skills? Who was your teacher?”

  “There is a shadow clan of my family that still exists, a mere splinter after the purging. They have roots now in Koga province, where it was easy to hide. Alas, my teacher, as great a man as he was, is long since dead.”

  She was trembling now, her face turning paler than usual, yet still a blank mask.

  “Sea sickness again?”

  “Something else.”

  “Explain.”

  She took a deep breath of pondering thought, then let it out. “Rage, Master. For what he said to me, the way he touched me.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You hide it well.”

  “I...have learned well, Master. As I said, you are an excellent teacher.”

  “If we put this in terms of your own martial art, the mind is not detained by the hand that brandishes the sword. Completely oblivious to the hand that wields the sword, one strikes and cuts his opponent down. He does not put his mind in his adversary. The opponent is Emptiness. I am Emptiness. The hand that holds the sword, the sword itself, is Emptiness. Understand this, but do not let your mind be taken by Emptiness.”

  —Takuan Soho, “The Mysterious Record of Immovable Wisdom”

  Relief drove away Ken’ishi’s panic as Kazuko’s dagger came up to greet him. Her arm trembled, and she fought to right herself, to catch her breath, groaning and gasping. Blood covered her face, plastered with dirt and leaves. Her robe had been shredded open, and a great rent in her armor exposed her soft, silken under-robe.