Guardian, Saviors of Kamigawa

CHAPTER 8

Hidetsugu sat glowering upon his throne of bones, thick black smoke rising from the corners of his eyes. He had felt the attack on his oni. He knew only one being audacious enough to attempt such an attack and powerful enough to accomplish it.

“Hunters,” he barked. “Stand ready.” Three yamabushi instantly bounded from the sides of the room to the throne. Once they’d landed, each dropped to one knee and planted a fist on the floor.

Hidetsugu was completely satisfied with his little raiding party. They fought well and obeyed without hesitation. Together they had bested Keiga the Tide Star, guardian spirit of the falls, and visited bloody vengeance on the academy students and staff. It had not been an easy campaign for them-only five of the original eight had survived. One had been slain as they stormed Minamo, one had been accidentally devoured by the All-Consuming, and one had simply dissolved his sky platform and allowed himself to fall five hundred feet onto the rocks below. Hidetsugu considered this last the only failure in the entire group.

The great o-bakemono stood, sending a fresh cascade of skulls and thigh bones rattling to the floor. Rib cages crunched under his feet as he made his way to the floor. Once there, he put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.

The oni dog appeared in a puff of charnel-house smoke. Even the yamabushi cringed as it stalked past them.

“Your playmate has returned,” Hidetsugu told the dog. “Go find him and do as you were summoned to do. Indulge yourself. Make merry with his body and soul.”

The dread creature snorted a jet of ashes from its armored muzzle. It reared up on its spindly hind legs, pivoted, and bounded from the chamber.

With machinelike precision, Hidetsugu attached a pair of armored plates to his shoulders and lashed a third across his chest. He stretched and flexed his powerful muscles, testing his range of movement. After readjusting the shoulder plates, Hidetsugu hoisted his spiked tetsubo club and swung it through the air like a willow switch.

He inspected the tip of the club, then fixed his eyes on one of the three yamabushi. “Come here,” he said. The mountain warrior instantly sprang to his feet and approached his master.

“Stop there,” Hidetsugu said. The priest halted with one foot still in the air.

“Good,” said the ogre, and then he crushed the yamabushi to the floor with his tetsubo. The thin, solid weapon fairly ripped the yamabushi’s body in half lengthwise and blood spattered over his fellows and Hidetsugu alike.

Moving quickly but confidently, Hidetsugu clamped his tetsubo between his teeth and scooped up the crushed yamabushi’s remains. He spit coarse, painful-sounding syllables around the bloody club in his mouth. The victim’s blood hissed and boiled where it touched the ogre’s face. Hidetsugu spat out the club, swallowed some of the crimson drops that had collected in his mouth, and began to chant.

In the old language of the o-bakemono, he converted the blood of a trusted retainer into a barrier against those who might likewise betray and murder him. When the last of the victim’s vital fluid had been squeezed from his corpse, Hidetsugu crammed meat and bone alike into his maw. In seconds, there was nothing left of the murdered yamabushi but a slick of red on the floor and similar droplets on the faces of the others.

Hidetsugu bent to retrieve his club. “Now,” he said to the remaining hunters, “we …” The ogre’s voice trailed off and his eyes locked on a spot somewhere beyond the south-facing exterior wall. His nostrils twitched, and then he tilted his head back and drew a long, deep breath through his nose.

“We have other guests,” he said. “Follow.”

Hidetsugu had days to explore the Academy while his oni feasted, so he led his hunters up one flight to take advantage of the huge windows there. The view here was even better than from the roof of the academy, which was almost perpetually wreathed in thick clouds. From here, one could see the falls, almost all of the lake, and out onto the plains of Towabara far to the south.

The ogre grumbled as he peered down toward Konda’s territory. There was something moving down there, something coming toward the falls. Hidetsugu could scarcely credit what he was seeing, but he had lived in Kamigawa long enough to recognize an army on the march.

Konda’s army, in fact. There were scores of battle-moths and thousands of men and horses all advancing on Minamo. They were moving quickly, too: When Hidetsugu had first seen them, he could barely discern them as men. Now he could see the daimyo’s symbol on their battle standard and the awful, unearthly glow that surrounded the entire force.

Hidetsugu’s eyes narrowed. So Toshi had been telling the truth, at least about this. Konda had raised a spirit army to reclaim the stone disk. And if Konda had traced it here, the great old serpent O-Kagachi could not be long in joining them.

The ogre’s eyes crackled and he barked out, “Hah!” He turned to the pair of dead-eyed yamabushi and said, “Find the others. Go down and meet Konda before he reaches the shores of the lake. Harry him, harass him, do whatever it takes to halt their advance. The oni will be joining you shortly. Keep the fight away from here until I come for you.”

The yamabushi bowed and bounded off. Hidetsugu nodded to himself. They were excellent minions, and he regretted the need to harvest one of them for the ritual.

The ogre drew his club and whipped it through the air again just to hear the sound it made. It would be worth the loss of one hunter, worth it to see the look on Toshi’s face when whatever spell he had planned for Hidetsugu failed, rebounded, and consumed its caster instead.

Hidetsugu smacked his lips. He sank to his knees and began chanting in the old tongue once more, calling out to the oni in Oboro as well as to the All-Consuming busily gorging itself nearby.

Bloodshed and brutality beckoned. If Chaos held sway here, nothing could stop it from devouring all Kamigawa.

His message sent, the o-bakemono sat patiently until he felt his patron spirit’s dire attention shift from its current meal to the approaching army. The All-Consuming started the long process of disengaging its horde of mouths from the academy library, while above, the lesser oni charged over the edge of the soratami capital and fell howling to the waters below, eager for slaughter and hungry for fresh human meat.

When all was in motion, Hidetsugu rose, sheathed his club across his back, and headed down to witness the end of Toshi Umezawa.

Toshi was in too much of a rush to worry about what effect touching the Taken One again would have on him. Once the last of the survivors was gone and Kiku had resumed her close watch on the only doorway, the ochimusha pressed his palms onto the surface of the stone disk and willed it to become insubstantial along with him.

He felt a similar jolt when he made contact, as if he’d grabbed an iron bar with one end in a furnace and the other in a block of ice. The feeling ended as quickly as it had started, and to Toshi’s relief the disk proved as easy to manipulate and carry as it had before.

“Toshi,” Kiku said, “if you’re still here, get ready. Something’s coming.”

Toshi continued to maneuver his phantom burden toward the hall. He hated to leave Kiku alone, but he was almost home free now. All he had to do was reach the roof, and tie a few knots, and they’d all get away clean.

He heard something with claws moving quickly toward them but fought the urge to run. Nothing had been able to affect him in this phantom state; nothing had even been able to perceive him. He had strolled through the most formidable magical defenses as if they didn’t exist, and he had stood unnoticed by some of the keenest kitsune trackers. The yamabushi, the oni, even the ogre himself would not be able to stop him if he just kept his head.

Kiku drew a throwing axe and conjured a purple bloom as she backed away from the door. A second later, the door exploded inward, dissolving into a hail of splinters and broken wood as the oni dog thundered into the room.

Throw the bloom, Toshi thought, unable to spare the energy it took to make himself heard. Forget the ax.

The four-legged brute lowered its armored head and growled at Kiku, its sharp tail scoring the stone wall behind it. The mahotsukai’s face was grim but alert. She made no move to attack, but instead waited, her eyes locked on the oni’s under its savage upturned horns.

The oni dog turned away from Kiku. It faced the spot where Toshi was struggling with the Taken One, roared like a bear, and then launched itself at the ochimusha.

At first, Toshi was too shocked to react. The dog was hurtling toward him with its terrible jaws open wide, and all Toshi could do was think, “But that’s not possible.”

Luckily, his instincts were stronger than his rational mind, and he threw himself away from the Taken One. As soon as his phantom hands left the disk’s surface, the Taken One regained its weight and solidity. It thumped to the floor, rolled a quarter turn, and then fell so that the etched figure of a dragon was facing the floor.

Toshi backpedaled, his eyes darting for a shadow to dive into. The oni paid no attention to the Taken One’s sudden reappearance. It growled and lowered its head almost to the floor. Pointing its muzzle directly at Toshi, the oni dog stalked forward.

It’s tied to me, Toshi realized. Hidetsugu hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said the oni dog would find him anywhere. Somehow summoning the beast had linked him to it like master to hound … or in this case, like hunter to prey.

The oni lunged again. Toshi was able to dodge. He had to assume that if it could tell where he was in phantom form, it could also injure him. He didn’t fancy getting caught by those jaws, so he kept moving, making himself as hard a target as possible.

Kiku, meanwhile, was still standing ready at the other side of the room. She had seen the Taken One reappear and she had watched the dog stalking the empty air, so she must know that Toshi was still here. He decided to gamble his speed against the dog’s-if she struck as swiftly as she usually did, the dog would be dead before it had a chance to get him.

Willing himself solid, Toshi caught Kiku’s eye just as the dog pounced.

“Plant the bloom!” Toshi said. Kiku reacted like the professional she was, casting her arm in a wide arc that sent the purple flower spinning toward the oni’s broad rib cage.

Toshi commanded himself to fade once more, vanishing from sight just as the oni dog’s teeth were about to tear into the flesh on his arm. The jagged fangs passed through Toshi without resistance, but blinding agony shot up his arm all the same. He cried out, more from the shock than the pain, but the pain lingered far longer.

Kiku’s throw had missed. The camellia wriggled where it landed, thorny tendrils grasping for somewhere to take root. Well clear of the danger, the oni dog gathered its strength as it prepared for another leap.

Toshi’s head began to spin and he fell to the floor. The bite seemed to be poison. He became solid just before he landed so that a resounding thump echoed across the room. Groggily, he looked across at his nemesis, their eyes exactly level.

He tried to summon the cold, but his mind was already too far removed from his body. He willed himself to fade again, but he had neither the strength nor the focus.

The oni snarled. It opened its mouth wide. Toshi could see multiple rows of slashing teeth, could smell the stink of blood and slaughter on its breath.

Kiku’s throwing axe shot across the room into the dog’s open mouth. It slammed into the brute’s upper palate, sending a jet of blackish-crimson blood across the scroll case nearby. The axe handle wedged behind the oni’s innermost row of teeth so that its killing jaw was propped open. The oni coughed and sputtered as it furiously tried to dislodge the weapon.

Without thinking, Toshi lunged to his feet and staggered toward the stricken dog. He heard Kiku’s voice calling to him, yelling something urgent, but she was so far away he couldn’t understand her words.

Toshi slammed into the scroll rack, knocking several ancient parchments to the floor. Clinging to the shelf for support, he drew his jitte and dragged the tip through a smear of the oni dog’s blood.

A sharp wooden crack came from behind him. Toshi threw himself back, swinging from the scroll rack, until his back thumped into the wall. The oni dog had succeeded in bringing its jaws together, snapping Kiku’s axe in half. The sharp head was still embedded in the roof of its mouth, and blood-flecked foam drooled from the corners of its lips, but it was far from mortally wounded. The oni shook its armored head, inhaled, and let out a huge, ragged roar.

Toshi held the jitte out in front of him. “Come on, then,” he said. “I’m not going to be the only one who dies today.”

The dog sniffed, growled again, and then turned toward Kiku. The mahotsukai already had another purple flower in hand, but she froze as the monster fixed its terrible gaze on her.

Toshi’s vision went gray. He had to save himself, and do it quickly. Kiku might defeat the dog, but she couldn’t stop the poison. He clumsily pulled a scroll from the rack and popped the seal with his jitte. He hastily scrawled a kanji on the back of the scroll (which seemed to contain a spell for sculpting crystals from sea water), clamped the parchment between his teeth, and then shoved off from the wall with all the strength he had left.

Incorrectly choosing Kiku as the more serious threat, the dog pounced at the mahotsukai before Toshi reached it. Kiku drew back to throw her flower, but the oni’s powerful legs had ensured that it would land on her no matter what she hit it with on the way. Even if her flower killed the dog quickly, it would still have a chance to tear the mahotsukai’s throat out.

Toshi fumbled for a handhold on the dog’s spiky back as it went past him. Instead, he latched on to the demon’s tail, and though his fingers were growing number by the second, Toshi clamped tight and held on.

The ochimusha’s weight spoiled the dog’s aim and momentum, dragging it to the floor well shy of Kiku. Toshi’s tackle also pulled the dog clear of Kiku’s bloom, which spun all the way across the room and bounced off of the far wall.

The oni’s lower jaw smacked painfully into the floor. Enraged, it bent its powerful body at the waist and lunged for Toshi’s face.

Toshi slapped the parchment with the paralysis kanji onto the base of the oni dog’s spine. In an instant, with its savage teeth mere inches from Toshi’s eyes, the brute went as rigid as a statue. Three malevolent eyes continued to dart in their sockets, and ghastly, choking breath still wheezed from its throat, but the oni was frozen fast.

“Wait,” Toshi said. Kiku lowered her arm, which held another camellia, and looked at Toshi questioningly.

Toshi’s legs worked, so he pulled himself up on the oni’s body, using its spiked carapace for handholds. Without explaining, Toshi wiped the dog’s blood off of his jitte and then slid the hooked truncheon across the oni’s dripping teeth. With the same venom that was killing him, Toshi cut a healing kanji over the festering bite mark on his arm.

Kiku watched him silently. When he pushed back from the paralyzed oni and the color began to return to his face, she said, “Now?”

Toshi nodded. “Now.”

Kiku tossed the delicate-seeming blossom onto the top of the dog’s bony skull. Unable to move a muscle, the brute snarled, slavered, and growled as the lush purple flower punched thorny roots through the top of its skull. The oni dog shuddered and its three eyes rolled back in its head while the camellia grew larger, more vivid, and more fragrant. By the time the oni’s skull was empty, the camellia’s petals had completely covered its head and shoulders.

Toshi coughed up something nasty and spat it alongside the dead oni. “Feeling better now,” he said, rising to his feet. “My thanks, oath-sister. I don’t think we’ll have any more problems.”

Kiku sneered and started to speak, but an arrow suddenly sprouted from her collarbone. Kiku winced but did not cry out as she staggered and fell to her knees.

Toshi turned just as a yamabushi tackled him to the ground. It was the female sentry who had stopped Toshi at the gates, and he was still too weak to resist her as she quickly relieved him of his jitte and swords. Nearby, Toshi saw her male counterpart kicking the axe from Kiku’s hand and twisting the mahotsukai’s arms behind her, not even bothering to remove the arrow first.

In the hallway outside, Toshi saw Hidetsugu kneeling to peer through the door. The ogre was too large to easily enter the room, but he was already taking hold of the doorway to widen it for his use.

“Greetings, fellow reckoners,” he said. With an ear-splitting crack, Hidetsugu tore a double handful of wall away. “Oath-sister … Toshi. Congratulations, you’ve bested a formidable foe.”

The ogre shuffled through the hole he’d made. The room’s ceiling was high enough for him to stand, and he did so. “But now,” he said, “it’s time to separate the loyal reckoners from the soon-to-be-stains on the bottom of my feet.”

Toshi tested the yamabushi’s grip, but her strength was still too much for him. He looked up into Hidetsugu’s mad, glowing eyes, as awed and helpless as he’d been years before when One-Eye had sent him out as bait.

“You talk too much,” Kiku called through her pain. “We aren’t afraid, oath-brother. You cannot harm us while the hyozan is still intact.”

Hidetsugu paused. He nodded at Kiku then turned to Toshi. “She doesn’t know?”

Toshi gritted his teeth. He was about to lose the only ally he had, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“What?” Kiku flared. “What don’t I know?”

Hidetsugu smiled patronizingly. “You’re quite right, my dear. You are completely safe from me, as are all who bear the true hyozan mark.

“But Toshi here,” he waved his arm in a grandiose arc, “quit our little brotherhood some time ago. He is no longer oath-bound to me, or you, or the nezumi. He serves the Myojin of Night’s Reach … and himself, of course … but he has no more connection to the hyozan than you did before he tricked you into joining.”

Kiku forgot her wound and stared at Toshi in open shock. “You utterly contemptible bastard.”

Toshi merely stared back at Kiku, holding her eyes as if he had nothing to hide, nothing to regret.

“Turn her loose,” Hidetsugu said. “We will discuss things, she and I. And the hyozan will decide this traitor’s fate together.”

The yamabushi holding Kiku let go. He placed a hand on her collarbone, circling his thumb and forefinger around the arrow, and it popped out in a flash of orange light and a few droplets of blood.

Kiku inspected the site of the wound, but her skin had already healed and scarred over beneath the torn purple satin. With her angry eyes fixed on Toshi, Kiku very deliberately crossed the room and stood beside Hidetsugu.

“Kiku,” Toshi husked, “don’t listen to him. He’s going to kill us all.”

The beautiful mahotsukai glared at Toshi with pitiless eyes. She snapped her fan open and covered her face, fanning herself as she turned her back. The ogre began to laugh. Toshi endured the sound easily, but only because he could not have felt more desolate and bitter.

He had failed. He had been one short step away from achieving his goal without sacrificing Kiku or Marrow, but now everything had fallen apart. As if to confirm his bleak position, the second yamabushi also took hold of Toshi as Hidetsugu and Kiku advanced. Being held fast was bad enough, but the combination of gleeful grins and hateful stares on the faces of his former oath-mates did not speak well for his immediate future. Still, there was time for one quick prayer, one last observance to his patron spirit.

O Night, he thought, help me just one more time.

Toshi licked his lips and struggled against the yamabushi’s grip while he waited for an answer.