Guardian, Saviors of Kamigawa

CHAPTER 14

Toshi had been in parts of the eastern woods and he had seen vast stretches of Jukai from the saddle of a battle-moth. As the orochi led him through the thick growth and massive trees of their territory, he realized he hadn’t the slightest inkling of how big, vast, and crowded the forest was. From above, the canopy concealed worlds.

It took them the better part of an hour to reach the Kashi-tribe orochi stronghold, though they only traveled a few hundred yards. Toshi tried to pay attention as they walked so that he could find his way back if he had to run, but the trees were too similar and the hills too numerous to keep them all straight. Also, the orochi led him through underground tunnels and through titanic deadfalls that so turned and twisted his sense of direction he was no longer sure which way they were going.

He didn’t know he was among the local snakes until they broke cover-their natural camouflage was perfect so long as they didn’t move. A native of the swamps, Toshi had an innate distrust of creatures who lived in the clean green. The orochi’s suspicious behavior and slender, flexible bodies made him feel especially isolated and vulnerable. There were no forest monks this far east, and Toshi reckoned he was the only human being in the entire region.

Still, his ribs were healing well despite the forced march. The soratami attacks had given the snakes a reason to capture and interrogate strangers instead of killing them on sight, as the orochi farther west were prone to do. If Sosuke was sharp, Toshi might even be able to get some good information from him regarding the soratami. In exchange, he could tell Sosuke a very interesting tale based on his own experience with the moonfolk.

Toshi began to spot more snakes hidden among the brush. It helped to have so many in plain sight where he could determine their usual sizes, shapes, and colors. He saw fierce snake maidens glaring over their weapons and tiny orochi children slithering silently among the cedar leaves and juniper bushes. Each had four long arms and spindly stork legs that made their movements unsettling and comical no matter whether they walked or slithered.

There didn’t seem to be enough orochi to stand against the soratami armada, but the snakes were experts at concealing their true numbers. Could venom and wooden spears stand up against silver blades and soratami magic? Toshi didn’t intend to linger long enough to find out for himself, but he still wondered.

To his mild surprise, the scout party led him through this heavy concentration of orochi and onward into the thick woods on the other side. Another hour’s hard slog took them to the crest of a stony ridge that was covered in bright green moss. Toshi stepped up to the edge and peered over, gauging the fall to be about twenty feet. Not lethal, but also not a drop he’d take voluntarily.

“How much-” Toshi stopped when he realized all his escorts were gone. They had melted into the forest and left him alone on the ridge.

“So this is the hero who wants to save us all.” The voice came from underneath the lip of the crest. Toshi looked closely at the mossy rock and started when a huge green head separated from the larger mass.

“If you are Sosuke and chief of this tribe, then I am the hero you mention. I have come to talk with you.”

Sosuke rose like a long stream of smoke, sliding up the rock until he was standing upright beside Toshi. He was taller and broader than most of the other snakes, which meant he was only half as wide as Toshi. His body was lean and powerful, and his muscles rippled under his green-brown scales. He held weapons in three of his hands-a sword, a dagger, and a staff-while the fourth toyed with a carved green amulet around his neck. Sosuke wore a glittering headband that marked him as a tribal chief, but it was much simpler than the other ceremonial gear Toshi had seen important orochi wear.

“I am Sosuke, war-chief of the Kashi-tribe orochi.” He pointed at Toshi with his free hand. “What are you doing in Jukai?”

“Passing through,” Toshi said. Since he’d had trouble with orochi and their myojin in the past, he decided not to mention his name. “I am no friend to the soratami and I wish you well in your struggle against them. But I carry a terrible cursed totem that has poisoned my homeland and I do not want to see its bad luck take root here. All I ask is to be left alone to rest and feed my steed before I go on my way. One day is all I need.”

Sosuke shook his head. “We are at war, stranger. I will not let random humans wander freely through our land.”

“Not through,” Toshi said. “Over. My steed is a moth, and we have flown all the way from Kamitaki Falls without ever touching the forest floor.”

“Until now.”

“Until now. And by your leave, once I get back in the saddle, we won’t come down again until we’re beyond the eastern border of the forest.”

Sosuke laughed a cruel, hissing snort. “You say that with such certainty, but even I don’t know where the forest ends.”

“Nevertheless, I intend to find it. If you like, I will return someday and tell you what I saw there.”

“You presume too much. You won’t leave this ridge alive, much less reach the eastern edge of the woods.”

“That is your choice, war-chief. I am alone and woefully overmatched. But please believe me: I am the only one who can dispose of that terrible stone disk I carry.”

“This curse,” Sosuke said, “can it be directed?”

“Against the soratami? Perhaps. But it brings danger to anyone nearby. You could direct it, but not precisely enough to harm them without harming yourselves.”

“Then you have nothing of interest to me.” The orochi bared his fangs in a hard smile. “But you have my thanks for attempting to save us all from this terrible curse. Perhaps I will strap your body to the disk before I launch it at the soratami.”

“Sosuke,” Toshi said sternly, “I do not take my duty lightly. Kill me if you must, but do so with respect.” He thought that might appeal to the pragmatic warrior without overtly fawning. Anything that turned the discussion away from Toshi’s dead body was a good thing.

The war-chief measured Toshi with his hypnotic red eyes. Unmoved by Toshi’s false righteous anger, he simply said, “Done.” Sosuke turned his long neck and hissed over the edge of the crest. In response, a half-dozen orochi warriors crawled over the lip of rock and moved to surround Toshi.

The ochimusha smiled confidently. “Well done, war-chief. I would have been disappointed if your favor could be had for the asking.”

Sosuke held up his free hand, stopping the orochi closing in on Toshi. “You have something else to offer?”

“I do. The soratami have invaded your territory by now, have they not? If you name the spot, I can help you destroy them in large numbers. Your warriors won’t even have to fight.”

“But we want to fight. I was born to lead my brothers into battle, and we all want to feel their pale skin pop under our fangs and taste their blood.”

“Who doesn’t? But you have not seen the full strength of the invading armada. I have. Unless you want soratami warriors on your doorstep for the next ten years, you need to do something drastic. Something that will wipe out a large portion of their army and discourage the rest from ever coming this far east again.”

Sosuke thumped his staff into the mossy rock and spread all four of his arms wide. “You make sense, stranger. But if I have not seen the full might of the soratami, you have not seen the full might of the Kashi-tribe orochi. We have the power of Life’s Web behind us, the most powerful myojin of all. Even now my sister gathers and focuses the power of the forest against the invaders.”

Toshi could have mentioned that he himself had bested Life’s Web with the help of his own myojin, so the forest spirit wasn’t as powerful as Sosuke claimed. Instead, he decided it was time for him to leave. He cleared his mind and prepared to fade away, but a signal cry from the north caused him to pause.

More precisely, Sosuke’s reaction to the signal cry caused Toshi to pause. The war-chief’s color changed from mottled green to bold, almost angry emerald. His red eyes widened and his flickering tongue tripled its pace. “You will see now, stranger, one way or the other. The soratami have come.” He stretched his neck as high as it would go and tasted the air to the north. “Bring him,” he said to the snakes surrounding Toshi. “Let him see how we fight. If he tries to run or warn the enemy, kill him where he stands.”

Strong, sinewy hands clamped around Toshi’s arms and hands. They propelled him along the ridge past Sosuke. Toshi did not resist, but he twisted his neck and called, “Listen to me, war-chief of the Kashi-tribe orochi. In a matter of days, a new threat will come from the sky. If you want to cripple the moonfolk armada, launch the stone disk as you said you would. Drop it into the heart of the soratami command. Then run for your life and don’t look back.”

Sosuke did not reply, but he nodded grimly as Toshi was manhandled away. Apparently he had meant it when he agreed to treat Toshi with respect. Then the war-chief turned and slithered over the edge of the crest.

The orochi half-shoved, half-carried Toshi along the ridge, their twisting path confusing him and disorienting him once more. The ache in his chest was almost completely gone now, so he could fade away or travel by shadow whenever he took the notion. He let them carry him because they were going farther from the Taken One, and while he could return to the glen in a matter of seconds, they would have to spend an hour or more retracing their steps. He knew he needed time to subdue the sentries they had left behind before taking to the air again.

Without resistance or complaint, Toshi let the orochi lead him to another tall ridge overlooking a wide green valley. Bright sunlight shone through an opening in the canopy to illuminate the valley. Through this opening Toshi saw the first soratami cloud vessels. They descended with clear purpose, aiming right for the space and the valley below.

The orochi struck as the first cloud broke through the canopy. There must have been something solid beneath all that thick white mist, because half a dozen snakes sprang from the cedars and latched on. The cloud vessel tilted crazily as it came to the ground and landed with an ear-bruising crash.

Scores of orochi swarmed from their hiding places and covered the cloud chariot. The dozen or so soratami struggled to get their swords clear of their scabbards and grappled with the long-armed snakes, but the sheer weight of their numbers crushed them beneath a squirming mass of scaled bodies.

Two more cloud chariots burst through the canopy, widening the hole. The soratami in these vessels were ready for the snakes, and as the orochi once more attempted to board and upset the cloud in flight, blue-steel swords flashed in the dazzling sun. The orochi boarders fell in pieces to the forest floor. The second wave of soratami landed safely and streamed out across the valley.

It some ways, this battle was the opposite of the one Toshi had seen in Oboro. Here, the snakes outnumbered the soratami, but it was the moonfolk who quickly gained the upper hand. The two sides seemed evenly matched in terms of strength and fighting spirit, but the soratami were far more lethal with their exquisite weapons than the snakes were with fang and claw. For every soratami that fell to caustic venom or a crushing embrace, an orochi lost an arm, a leg, or even a head. In these close quarters, the soratami worked more effectively as a unit instead of a collection of individuals-Toshi counted over a dozen pairs of moonfolk fighting back-to-back, as they cut orochi to pieces with weapons in both hands. All the while, more soratami kept coming down into the valley to further tilt the odds in their favor.

If this was what Sosuke had dragged him to see, Toshi would have to reconsider his good opinion of the Kashi war-chief. His warriors fought bravely, but they were up against a foe that was as strong, determined, and fierce as they were, but much better trained and equipped for this sort of conflict.

Then Toshi saw Sosuke halfway up the trunk of a massive cedar tree. The war-chief was accompanied by a smaller female orochi who had the similar features and coloring. Was this the sister he’d mentioned?

The female orochi folded two of her arms in meditative prayer, clinging to the tree with the rest of her limbs. Other snakes perched in the trees echoed her rasping hiss, and a swirling tendril of green fog formed between them, linking the trees fifty feet up.

The bark on the tree occupied by Sosuke and his sister shifted and rolled, reforming into a smooth brown mask of a human face. Toshi recognized the Myojin of Life’s Web before the powerful spirit completely manifested, and he faded away before she could in turn spot him. The last time he’d seen that wooden mask he had laughed merrily as he drove the myojin back to the spirit world. She was sure to remember something like that and still probably held a grudge.

The orochi guards hissed angrily as their charge slipped through their grasp. They shouted at each other, each demanding to know what the others had seen. Still standing in the same spot, Toshi watched unnoticed as they spread out and began searching the surrounding woods with their heads stretched low and their tongues flicking the ground.

There were plenty of shadows for Toshi to use on the ridge, but he stayed just to see the orochi’s gambit play out. He expected a wall of brambles or poisonous thorns to erupt beneath the soratami’s feet, or for Sosuke and other key warriors to acquire the strength of giants.

Instead, the line of green fog thickened and became solid. It glowed faintly as it twisted itself into a burly braid of thick, green, woodlike material. A ripple of energy traveled along the braid’s surface and it tightened, drawing the giant cedars closer together. As the green, swirling band solidified, it took on the appearance of a huge, burly green dragon. The snakes all hissed the same name, “Jugan,” and Toshi dimly recalled it as the name of Jukai’s other powerful guardian spirit.

Sosuke lunged, plucking his sister from the tree trunk and folding her up in two powerful arms. He slithered headfirst down the tree, traveling far faster than if he’d simply jumped. When his tongue touched the soil he sprang off the tree and cut through the underbrush, away from the valley.

The dragon Jugan continued to swirl around the trees, encircling them in a green ring of energy and force. The linked cedars groaned again as the magical bond tightened. Trapped in the ring of trees, soratami and orochi both stopped fighting and cast worried eyes upward. On the largest and thickest trunk, the face of Life’s Web mouthed a series of silent words. In response, Jugan roared and began to move faster. The massive ring of cedars shuddered, and Toshi heard a deafening crack.

Bending at the center as if jointed, the trees all seemed to bow toward the center of the ring. Together, they formed an organic enclosure, a huge drum-shaped cell with dirt floors, cedar-trunk walls, and a solid ceiling of leafy green boughs. Muted hissing and screams came from within the closed drum, but nothing else escaped from the unbroken wall of living lumber.

All the bark on the exterior of the drum shifted and reshaped itself, forming a gargantuan mask for Life’s Web. The myojin’s face did not move, but her hollow eyes and mouth were wide open as she stared through the canopy into the sunlit sky. Then, the great enclosure contracted, sending shock waves rippling across the valley floor and almost shaking Toshi’s ridge to pieces. Safe in his phantom form, Toshi stepped back from the edge but still kept his eyes locked on the spectacle below.

With Jugan circling ever faster around it, the enclosure collapsed in on itself like some great clenching fist. The noise of breaking wood drowned out any sounds from within the drum, which Toshi took as something of a blessing. His dreams had been troubling enough without more dying wails to haunt them. When it was half its original size, the cedar cell started to sink into the hard-packed forest floor. The ground broke and tumbled into an ever-deepening pit forming beneath the cell. Trees on the edge of the valley toppled into the pit as well, their roots robbed of their foundations.

Toshi watched the incredible display until the top of the cell was only a few feet higher than the rim of the pit. He didn’t know if anyone was still alive inside, or how far down they’d burrow, but it was safe to say that these soratami would not make war on Jukai again.

Toshi shook his head. He was no soldier and he had never gone to war, but even he knew you didn’t defeat an army by killing half your own in the process. If the snakes could harness the power of Jukai and make the land itself fight for them, they had a chance. Otherwise, the soratami would surely scour them away in a matter of weeks.

Without looking back, Toshi stepped forward into the shadow of a cedar sapling as the green dragon roared and the valley continued to swallow itself.