Heretic, Betrayers of Kamigawa

CHAPTER 4

They had been climbing for three days. Toshi’s trail meandered but never strayed far from the path thawing snow had carved into the Heart of Frost. It was a monotonous and exhausting enterprise, made all the more so by the nezumi trackers and the hatchet men.

As a professional Kiku was obliged to retrieve Toshi. The others were merely slaves or prisoners, pathetically trying to cling onto their lives before Uramon took them completely. The jushi swore to make Toshi pay. She had known him for years, had worked with him when he was one of Uramon’s reckoners. They had never come into professional conflict, so they had managed not to make any serious attempts on each other’s lives until now.

A nezumi stopped on the path in front of her to sniff the air. Without slowing or breaking stride, Kiku kicked the rat-man aside and kept trudging through the snow.

He squawked and growled, “Hey! How am I-”

Kiku turned and glared. The craven little vermin suddenly curled himself into a ball and covered his face, mewling piteously. Kiku pulled her heavy hooded cloak tight and cursed the ochimusha once more.

She would kill Toshi for this. She hated the cold, she hated nezumi, and she hated owing Boss Uramon. If Toshi had just knuckled under and agreed to do the job, things would have been perfect. Uramon would have sent them out to ambush the soratami, and they’d have been obliged to deliver. Apart from that, whatever arrangement she and Toshi came to once the job was underway would have been entirely up to them. She did not trust him, but she did like the idea of putting his skills and his devious mind to work for her benefit.

The wind cut through her clothes, and she grimaced. Look at us now, she thought. You’re running to the least hospitable place in the world in the hopes it’ll keep us from following you, and I have to bring you back. There’s no chance of any side deals or limited partnership now, Toshi Umezawa. I’m readying another very special flower just for you.

Soon there wouldn’t be enough light to continue. The nezumi could track at night, but the temperature on the mountain dropped dangerously low in the dark. If they didn’t take shelter they’d be dead in a matter of hours.

Kiku stopped. “Marrow-Gnawer,” she said, “come here.”

Marrow-Gnawer growled something at his fellow rats and skittered back down the path. He was wearing a leather collar that fit tightly around his neck.

“How far ahead is he?”

Marrow-Gnawer grunted. “Half a day or less. Hard to tell in the cold.”

Kiku pulled out her fan and snapped it open. She used it to cover her face from the eyes down and leaned down to Marrow-Gnawer.

“Send two of your friends ahead. Have them go as far as they can. If they catch sight of him, they can come back and tell us.”

Marrow-Gnawer glared, but his voice was calm. “Excuse, ma’am. They’ll die before dawn.”

Kiku leaned closer, the fan undulating slightly. “I don’t care. If he’s close enough to catch, I want to know tonight.”

Marrow-Gnawer nodded, his face grim. “Even if they see him, they’ll die. Why not just kill them here?” He put his hand on the jagged rusty blade on his hip. “Or let me.”

Kiku stood up. “I have a feeling-” she waved her fan more vigorously-“that he’s closer than you think. It’d be like him to double back and spring something on us.”

She snapped the fan shut and smiled at the nezumi leader. “Send two up the path, now. Or I’ll send the whole lot of you, one in every direction.”

Marrow-Gnawer nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Marrow’s scouts came back just before dawn. Kiku was awake and ready when he cleared his throat outside her tent.

“What have they found?”

“A symbol,” Marrow-Gnawer replied. “A kanji painted on the bark of a tree.”

Kiku stepped out into the frigid night. The snow and wind had stopped, and the stars were clear and brittle overhead. Kiku’s breath came in thick white clouds through the scarf covering her face.

“Painted with what?”

Marrow-Gnawer looked pained. “Didn’t say.”

Kiku rolled her eyes. “Too much to suppose you illiterate dungballs recognized the symbol?”

Marrow-Gnawer shook his head. “No, jushi. Not nezumi-tongue.”

Kiku muttered and then turned to the camp behind her. “Get ready to move out.” She stepped forward to Marrow-Gnawer. “Stay close. I want you to show me the symbol as quickly as possible.”

Under her withering gaze, the rest of the party began to break camp. Within a few minutes, one of Uramon’s hatchet men came running.

“What is it?”

The man was large and gruff, but his bluster had been dulled by living wild. “You’d better come see this, ma’am.”

He led her off the path and onto a patch of frozen scrub. He worked his way around the largest clump of brambles then stepped back,

Kiku came around the bush. She stared silently at the base of the brambles, her frosty breath flowing in a single thin stream.

Two of the hatchet men lay dead, flat on their backs, wearing expressions of wide-eyed horror. Their mouths were open. Their faces were blue. Their hair and beards were thick with ice crystals.

Each was fully dressed but disheveled, as if they had thrown their clothes on in a hurry. Kiku stretched forward and tapped her closed fan on the nearest dead man’s eye. The metal spine clinked against the frozen orb.

Kiku tapped her fan along the man’s brow, down his nose, across his lips, and under his chin. She nodded.

“Solid as a rock,” she said. She turned to where the ashen-faced thug stood, nervously thumbing the hatchet on his belt. “If you hit him with a rock, he’ll shatter.

“Come on,” she said. “I need to see this symbol the rats found.”

The party packed up the camp and strapped their heavy loads to their backs. In silence they hiked behind the nezumi scouts and Marrow-Gnawer. To the rear, the rest of the nezumi pack and Uramon’s thugs scanned both sides of the path, fearful as children.

Kiku herself kept her eyes on the path ahead. The fact that something had lured the dead men out of their tents bothered her. She’d have been more comfortable if Toshi had just murdered them in their sleep.

The sun was clear of the horizon by the time they reached the symbol. Marrow-Gnawer’s brethren chittered and gestured excitedly, skittering around the base of the trunk. He grabbed them each by the shoulder and hauled them aside as Kiku marched up to the tree.

She stared at the symbol, shaking her head in disbelief. Toshi truly was mad. The Heart of Frost was already cursed, and he decides to make this symbol, in his own blood, no less, on one of the only living things hearty enough to survive this killing cold.

“Ma’am,” one of the hatchet men called. “What’s it mean?”

She looked from one face to another, from Uramon’s grizzled and scarred disasters to the hairy, cunning animals in Marrow-Gnawer’s group. Was it worth telling them what Toshi had unleashed? Was it important for them to know that they were all a half-breath away from doom, Toshi included?

They might run. Not that it would do them any good, but they might run.

She could run. She could go back and tell Uramon that her incompetent servants all got themselves killed by one of Toshi’s traps. The boss would believe that. She would have a lower opinion of Kiku, and her jushi clan would have to make good on the failure, but Kiku would be alive.

“Where’s Uchida?” another thug said. Kiku cocked her head at the hatchet man who spoke.

“Who?” she said.

“Uchida. The one who found the bodies this morning. He was bringing up the rear, but he’s not there anymore.”

Kiku snarled. To Marrow-Gnawer, she said, “Backtrack the way we came. You’ll probably find him just off the path. When you do, get back here as fast as you can.”

Marrow nodded and made a barking noise in his throat. Two more nezumi barked back, and the three scrabbled back down the mountain, disappearing over a ridge.

The hatchet man who had asked about the kanji stepped up. “Ma’am,” he said. “What’s going on?”

Kiku ignored him.

Marrow-Gnawer and his partners soon returned. They were panting and raised huge clouds of white mist in the air around them. The others fell to their knees in the snow, but Marrow-Gnawer simply rested his hands on his knees.

“Dead,” he husked. “Hundred yards or so back.”

Kiku nodded. “Frozen, like the others.”

“Yeh.”

“How’s that possible?” one of the hatchet men called.

“Yeh, the sun’s up,” echoed a nezumi.

Kiku eyes flared. With a curse, she drew her fan and knocked Marrow-Gnawer off his feet with a wide backhand stroke.

“You feeble, pox-ridden vermin,” she growled. “This can’t be the first kanji Toshi has made like this. He’s probably been bleeding on rocks and patches of ice all the way up the mountain. This is just the first one you worthless blobs have seen.”

Marrow-Gnawer bared his horrible, jagged teeth and spat blood from his mouth. He scrabbled up on all fours and said, “What, then? What did we miss? What is it?”

Kiku paused, glaring back down the path. It was behind them now as well as in front. There was no point in running now. Alone, she’d be just another easy target. Among the rabble Uramon had saddled her with … she was the only wolf in a herd of sheep. As such, she might be able to surprise the other wolf who’d come to make a kill.

Kiku offered her closed fan to Marrow-Gnawer. The nezumi hesitated then grabbed the end. Kiku pulled forward, lifting Marrow to his feet.

“We need to stick together now,” she said. “We’re in her territory. I don’t know if Toshi summoned her here or if she was already here and he just stirred her up-but this is her mountain, and we can’t get off it without facing her.”

“Her,” Marrow-Gnawer echoed. “Who-what-is ‘her’?”

Kiku shook her head. “Not now. We’ve got to save our breath and keep moving. If we can catch Toshi before nightfall, we have a much better chance of seeing another sunrise.”

Kiku marched up the path toward the summit of the mountain without waiting for the trackers to pick up Toshi’s trail. There was only one way to go anymore, and she meant to go as quickly as she could.

She wrapped her cloak around herself and lowered her hood to shield her eyes from the rising sun. Behind Kiku, the others murmured and wondered and prayed as they struggled to pick up their packs and keep pace with her. Marrow-Gnawer was the first to fall in step just behind her, but the others were quick to join the line.

No one wanted to be left alone on the path, not even in broad daylight.

“The creature is called yuki-onna,” Kiku said. “The Snow Woman.”

Marrow-Gnawer and several of the hatchet men groaned. They had come a long distance in the short hours daylight allotted them. There had been no sign of Toshi at all. His trail and his scent had vanished completely just as the sun began to dip over the Sokenzan Range.

They all sat round the biggest campfire they could build, crouching in a rocky hollow that protected them from the rising wind. They had given up asking Kiku questions early in the hike, so they were surprised when she suddenly began to talk.

The jushi stared at the fire as she spoke. Her voice had a practiced quality to it, as if she were reciting facts learned long ago. Kiku had learned much from her clan elders, but none of them had faced what she was now facing. All she had to go on were second-hand accounts and ancient folktales, and none of them were encouraging.

“There are stories about woodcutters and lonely ferrymen who die in the bitter cold among the ice and snow. These are not city folk who are unaccustomed to bad weather but men who have lived through score of winters, outdoorsmen who respect the power of the cold. They know how to survive, and better, they know when it’s not safe to go outside.

“These same men are found outdoors, nonetheless, frozen stiff a short walk from their homes and their beds. Sometimes they die in bed with a roaring fire not five feet away, frosted white and cold as if they had been left naked on a field of ice.”

“How is that possible?”

Kiku did not look away from the flame. “It is not the weather that kills them. It is the yuki-onna. She comes to them in the form of a beautiful woman or a loved one. She lures them out of their homes, away from their stew pots and wool blankets, out into the night. She calls them, and they answer, following her until they can walk no more. If they are safely asleep indoors, she enters, appearing as a dream. She enters in the guise of someone they love or someone they could have loved. She approaches them, though her feet never touch the ground.

“Indoors or out, she goes to them. She caresses their faces or kisses their lips, but her touch is cold … no, more than just cold. Much more. She is a primordial force of nature, a consumer of warmth and devourer of life. One embrace and the victim’s body becomes a solid block of ice.”

Kiku continued to stare at the fire as her words soaked in. The wind rose, blowing smoke and embers past her face.

Marrow-Gnawer coughed. “What do we do?” he said. “How do we not die?”

“I don’t know. But none of us can ever be alone from now on. It’s much harder for her to snare more than one at a time.”

A hatchet man grunted anxiously. “We’re still not safe. She got the first two, and they were together.”

Kiku flicked her eyes at the speaker. “I didn’t say safe. I said safer.”

“For how long?” The man was starting to panic. “If we’re doomed anyway, what’s the point in waiting? Let’s go find this thing and hack it up.”

A few of the others muttered in support. Kiku was silent.

After a few moments, the hatchet man said, “I mean, we can fight her, can’t we?”

“I’ve never heard of anyone who has,” Kiku said. “Before you go rushing out into the dark to die, think on this. Toshi made this happen. The kanji he made are somehow influencing her, steering her toward us. She can be affected by magic.” Kiku stood, tossing open her cloak to reveal the purple flower pinned to her shoulder. “And I’ve got lots of that.

“Besides, it’s also possible that killing Toshi will undo what he’s done. All we have to do is catch him and put his head in a bag. If the yuki-onna comes for us after that, we can throw it at her.”

“Will that help?”

Kiku grinned, her sharp eyes glittering in the firelight. “It can’t hurt.”

Kiku took the first watch, but she didn’t trust the others to keep her alive, so she stayed awake as long as she could. Their plan was as solid as it could be, considering the circumstances. It had to be simple enough for the nezumi to follow, and it had to keep them clustered together as closely and for as long as possible during the night.

They ringed their tents in a tight circle with the entrances facing inward. The sentries were tied together at the leg and tied again to the individual tents. If they saw anyone or heard anything, they were to make as much noise as possible so the others could prevent them from wandering off in the dark. If the sentries wandered off anyway, they would drag one of the tents with them and thus raise the alarm. If a black-eyed woman in flowing white robes appeared on the edge of camp, they were to attack her with whatever weapons they had, as loudly as possible.

Kiku kept her tent flap half-open. She closed her eyes for what seemed like the briefest of moments, but when she woke the sun was rising.

Three of the nezumi had frozen to death in their tents. Their hairy black bodies were covered in a thick dusting of ice and their frozen whiskers broke off when their brethren tried to rouse them. The survivors silently buried the dead in a mound of snow.

As the others packed up for the day’s hike, Kiku calculated. Three hatchet men and three nezumi left, plus her. For the first time in her life, Kiku wished there were more rats around.

The real flaw in Toshi’s gambit struck her. He had set the yuki-onna on them, but he himself was still atop the Heart of Frost. Unless he was practicing some epic magic, there was no way to prevent the yuki-onna from coming after him once the others were gone. This was not a myojin to be appeased with prayers but a primordial spirit with the cruel instincts of a predator. As far as the jushi knew, a yuki-onna could not be stopped, only distracted by easier prey. What would Toshi do when there were no more distractions? The snow woman would come for him before he had descended the mountain even halfway.

Hope flared in Kiku’s mind, the savage realization that she was not doomed if she could just puzzle out the problem before her. Toshi had called something unstoppably lethal down upon them all, something he would not have done if he didn’t have a trick in store that would allow him to survive. She doubted his disappearing act would save him-the snow woman fed on the spirit as much as the body, and as long as Toshi was alive he was vulnerable. What was his angle? What did he know that she didn’t?

“Ma’am!” Marrow-Gnawer’s gruff voice fairly squeaked with excitement as he bustled up.

Kiku straightened her cloak. “What is it?”

“We’ve found Toshi. His scent. He’s less than a few hundred yards up the path.” Marrow-Gnawer gestured. “We should go now, catch him quick.”

“For once, little vermin, we agree. Drop your pack and tell your brothers to do the same. Find Toshi and keep him in sight, but do not let him see you. Follow him wherever he goes, and make sure you leave a trail we can follow. When he stops-and he will-wait for us. I want to personally make him tell us the way out of this.” Kiku opened her cloak and sniffed her camellia. “I’m looking forward to that.”

Marrow-Gnawer shuddered. “Yes, ma’am.” He shucked his pack and scurried off to collect the other nezumi. Within moments, the three were moving up the path at top speed.

Kiku waited until they were out of sight. She waved to the last three hatchet men, beckoning them closer.

When they were at arm’s length, she said, “Drop your packs. We need to stay close behind the nezumi. Toshi wouldn’t have let us pick up his trail if he didn’t have something waiting for us.”

The hatchet men chuckled. One said, “So we let them spring the trap, then we charge in and grab him.”

Kiku nodded. “That’s the plan. Besides, I’d rather let them die for the cause. Boss Uramon won’t even miss them. She’s indifferent to the fate of her cheapest slaves.”

The hatchet men smiled at her. Kiku also smiled, but not for the same reason.