Outlaw: Champions of Kamigawa

CHAPTER 2

Toshi climbed down the side of a rocky mud-hill that separated the Takenuma Swamp from the edge of the old city. The ruined buildings on the higher ground had been slowly leveled by twenty years of the Kami War, but his own home had been a wasteland for far longer. As his feet sank into the swamp, he looked out over acres of oily water and fetid marsh.

"Home sweet home," he muttered. He trudged through the watery mud, keeping a careful eye out for hostile spirit manifestations. They came most often to the ruins directly outside the Daimyo's stronghold, but lately the attacks had been spreading outward, increasing in frequency and scope.

Though now little more than a rotten bamboo forest struggling out of a thick, noisome ooze, the marsh had once been a thriving village. The story of its rapid slide into decrepitude varied depending on the teller. The nezumi said that the fen was a paradise for their kind until the Daimyo's human ancestors came and ruined it. The local cult ofjushi wizards told of a spell cast generations ago by a handful of ogre mages-the intent was to construct a breeding ground and hunting preserve for the terrible demonic oni they worshiped, but the end result was just another cursed cesspit.

Still, Toshi thought, the fen provided a haven for people like him: the fallen and the forgotten. Most of the marsh residents were barred from the Daimyo's society, unwelcome in the wilds, and unwilling to take up the hard, violent, and frequently short life of a bandit. The swamp had its own society with its own rules and castes, but unlike the rest of the world, they were self-enforced and easy to circumvent with impunity provided you had the wit and the power.

The old city vanished into the yellow, sulfurous mist behind him as Toshi marched on. His own shack was in the southeast quarter, on the edge between Boss Uramon's turf and a large nezumi village. If Toshi kept west and circled around, he would minimize the chances of meeting one of Marrow-Gnawer's people. This would take him into jushi territory, but he was on excellent terms with several of the cult's more powerful wizards. It would be relatively easy to negotiate his way past if they stopped him.

Up ahead, the mist parted and Toshi caught sight of a pair of armed sentries standing under a tall torch. The male sentry bore a huge no-dachi battle sword strapped across his back and crude plate armor over his shoulders and chest. He also sported a metallic, wide-brimmed hat and a black scarf over his nose and mouth. The female wore a heavy wrap over a colorful kimono, and a cowl that covered her face and scalp. Her long hair streamed out from under the cowl, reaching down past her elbows. It was a strange purple-black color, and to Toshi, the hair made it seem she was also wearing a cape. The cowled woman had a simple fuetsu axe on her belt and an vivid purple flower embroidered on her shoulder.

"Hey," Toshi called. "I'm coming through the fog. Don't kill me by accident."

The male stiffened and put his hand on his no-dachi. The woman unfolded a black and purple fan and gently waved the fog away from her face. Toshi peered carefully through the yellow haze and spotted metal gleaming on each of the fan's spines. It was a tessen, a disguised weapon that could either block an incoming sword or crack the arm that wielded it.

Toshi stepped out of the fog with his hands held open at his sides. He stared at the woman and the purple flower on her shoulder. He smiled.

"Kiku," he said. "I recognized your camellia. Please don't tell me you've been demoted to border guard. Not even your jushi masters could be stupid enough to waste your talents this badly."

The man stepped forward as he drew his sword, but the woman stopped him with a gentle hand. Her wide, vibrant eyes scanned Toshi. She stepped forward and stared down at his swords.

"Hello, Toshi," Kiku said. Her voice was languid and bored. "It's a bad night to come looking for work."

"Not looking tonight. I just need to get back to my shack without stirring up the rats."

Kiku shrugged. "Go right ahead. But the nezumi-bito are the least of your worries if you cut through our property. The kami are out in force tonight and they're looking for blood."

"Is that why you're dressed like one of Uramon's hatchet men? Where are the purple silks and slit skirts? Where's the glamour and beauty that make Kiku such a famously beautiful nightmare?"

"That is none of your business." She smiled, but her eyes remained wide and fixed.

Toshi repressed a shudder. Kiku was stunning but terrifying. She could kill ten people with her magic in the blink of an eye, but her bored expression rarely changed. She had the distracted, unsettling intensity of a well-fed cat in search of prey to torment. She was not Toshi's enemy, but they regarded each other with caution.

"So," he said breezily. "You don't mind if I just press on?"

"Not as long as you go quickly," she said. "And quietly."

"Done and done. I just-"

The male sentry suddenly choked and began to tremble. The fog thickened and began to swirl around them, creating a tall cone of wind and sulfurous fumes.

Toshi hastily backed away from the sentry. The ochimusha recognized signs of a kami manifestation. Judging from the way Kiku also withdrew, she did as well. The swirling wall of fog expanded around them, giving them more room to put distance between the stricken sentry and themselves. Toshi tested it with his hand as he kept an eye on the emerging kami. The wall of vapor was dense and resisted his touch like a wool blanket. He did not relish the idea of getting mired in it with a hostile spirit nearby.

Kiku also tested the barrier, then snapped open her fan to cover her face from the bridge of her nose down. Toshi nodded to her and drew his blades to fight. The Kami War had come to the marsh once more.

There were several ways a kami could cross the barrier between their home in the kakuriyo spirit world to the utsushiyo material one. Toshi had seen them shimmer in and out of the air like heat mirages, or grow their misshapen bodies out of moss, wood, rock, and whatever else was nearby.

Priests and monks said there was a kami spirit for everything in the utsushiyo: rivers, battlefields, mountains, swords, graveyards even one's ancestors. There were kami that embodied the spirit of entire cities and kami for the people who dwelled there. There were spirits of song and of sunlight, of death and darkness. Twenty years ago, common spirits from the farmer's field and peasant's well rose up against the people who prayed to them. Then, larger and more powerful entities draped themselves in flesh and began marauding, without regard to whom they killed or how pious the victims were. The kami of storms, fire, and lightning ceased to be random destroyers and began targeting the tribes of Kamigawa with focus and precision.

When these angry spirits came, they did so in shapes unfamiliar, even unrecognizable. It was as if the journey from spirit to flesh was so wrenching that it twisted them into monstrosities. Toshi knew some overly religious types who claimed that a kami's monstrous appearance was inevitable, since they were divine beings who now existed in a realm of gross physical forms. Whatever shape they took, they were always accompanied by a cloud of smaller aspects, floating in the air around the spirit like attendants to a king. These aspects were tenuously tied to whatever shape the kami had assumed-a battlefield kami might come with a flock of daggers, a forest kami with a swarm of leaves. In the Takenuma Swamp, there were soothsayers who would happily relieve you of your cash in exchange for their reading of what a hostile kami's form signified. For an extra charge, they would also tell you how to appease it.

Toshi didn't really know or care what made them so freakish, but he had battled kami as large as buildings and as small as butterflies. All in all, he preferred the butterflies. No one truly knew why natural spirits and household deities had become so vengeful. As far as Toshi was concerned, the only thing that was important was the fact that the kami's physical manifestations made them as vulnerable as anything else in the utsushiyo to blades or magic. The spirits could kill, but they could also be killed, and that put the entire situation into terms Toshi could manage.

He was ten yards away when the doomed sentry opened his mouth to scream. The man stood with his jaw locked and his throat moving, but the only sounds that came out were those of cracking bone. A dull roar rose over the vortex's howling winds, and then the sentry vanished in a cloud of blood and armor as the kami exploded out of his body.

It was a full thirty feet from head to tail, though Toshi would not want to wager on which end was which. A long, grasping arm with multiple elbow joints extended from the center of a squat, grub-like mass. It had a ghastly wound of a mouth at one end, full of sharp teeth that were bent at irregular angles and curved inward. It had a single red eye above its mouth, two yellow ones at the opposite end, and a mold-green one on the knuckles of its only hand. The kami's unwieldy body floated above the sodden ground while a cloud of small, glowing insects buzzed all around it.

It seemed somewhat disoriented by its journey from the spirit world to the fen, and it paused, sniffing the air and shaking bits of meat from its bulging eyes. Toshi circled around the gruesome spirit with both swords drawn. He considered reaching for his jitte, but decided to leave the killing magic to Kiku. It was her specialty, after all.

In twenty years of conflict, Toshi had seen only a handful of kami that were capable of speech and he had never heard one talk. Mostly they just showed up and started tearing everything apart. This one aimed most of its eyes on the ochimusha and grabbed for him with its long arm. He was well clear of its reach, but he stepped back and beckoned it in, keeping its attention on him. Clearly, it had determined that the bigger targets were the most dangerous and was saving Kiku for last. It wouldn't be the first entity that died for underestimating her.

The grub-like spirit made another grab, brushing Toshi's blades aside with its clawed fingers. Toshi backpedaled, and the kami pursued.

"Kiku? I've got its attention. Easy pickings, if you strike from the rear." He struck a finger from the kami's hand with his katana. The beast roared.

"Easy pickings? It's looking right at me," Kiku said. She crossed her arms, almost petulant, and snapped her fan shut. "And I don't like the looks of that eye."

"I'm the one it's after," Toshi shouted.

"And this concerns me how?" Kiku was smiling slightly, and Toshi cursed himself. He should have just inscribed a kanji and cast a spell himself. Better still, he should have circled behind Kiku and forced her to defend them both.

"Just kill it," Toshi spat. He dodged another lunge, but now his back was up against the whirling wall of fog. "If I die here, you know I'll come back and haunt you."

"Get in line. I've already got a parade of ghosts who march behind me, single file."

The kami slapped the katana from Toshi's hand. He lopped off another finger with the shorter wakizashi, but he was quickly running out of room to defend himself.

"Don't tell me the great and terrible Kiku is going to pass up a kill," he shouted. "Isn't this what you're out here for?"

"It is. But nobody said anything about saving freelance thieves."

"Or sentries, I take it." Toshi skewered the kami's hand with his short sword and threw his entire weight onto the hilt. He bore the kami's hand to the ground and pinned it there with his body. Positioned as it was, the kami could not maneuver its bulk around its own arm to get close enough to bite. It roared again in frustration, then sank into the muck, gathering strength and leverage to toss Toshi aside.

Toshi locked eyes with Kiku. "Besides," he said. "I'm not technically a freelancer. Remember?"

The powerful limb beneath him creaked, and Toshi rose into the air, riding the kami's hand. If he let go of the sword, the spirit beast would simply snatch him from the air as he fell. If he stayed where he was, the kami could pop him down and consume him whole like a freshly peeled grape.

Instead, a light purple flower blossom arced up over the kami's central mass and gracefully fluttered onto its back. He could see Kiku's lips moving as she chanted, the tessen fan clenched tight between both hands.

The small lavender flower sprouted roots that burrowed into the skin on the kami's back. The brute flailed, casting Toshi into the watery muck of the swamp. The dazed ochimusha felt the sword still in his hands, and he struggled to keep the tip pointing upward to ward off further attacks.

None came. The grasping kami was spinning furiously in place, clawing at its own back where the flower had taken root. The camellia's soothing purple color darkened into a toxic black where it touched the kami's flesh, and the grotesque roots undulated as they dug in.

Toshi got back to his feet and quickly found his katana. The kami was still thrashing and revolving, its bellows of pain and fury echoing across the sodden landscape. Kiku stood clear of the melee, fanning herself.

"Throw the axe!" Toshi yelled. "It's still alive, still dangerous. What's with you, anyway? Are you being paid by the hour?"

Kiku sniffed. "Bladed weapons are so common," she said. "Would you ask a master carpenter to build with sponge instead of wood?"

"I would if he'd kill this big bug-thing faster than you are." Toshi waited, timing the stricken kami's revolutions. When its eye was facing away, he dashed in and chopped off its arm at the first elbow.

Maimed, the kami screamed and hurled its bulk at Toshi. The ochimusha dived clear, rolled, and came up alongside Kiku.

The fog behind them began to fade. Together, from a safe distance, they watched the appalling jets of blood and ichor foul the water. The kami wallowed in the swamp, still attempting to reach them, but soon its struggles slowed and then ceased altogether. One by one, the glowing insects dimmed and fell beside the larger mass. The grub-like spirit monster was still breathing, but the breath was labored and it was already starting to shudder in the final throes of death.

Toshi approached the dying spirit with his katana ready.

"It's already dead," Kiku called. "I killed it. Its brain just needs a moment to catch up."

Toshi stood over the quaking mass. "This thing gets nothing from me," he said, and then he plunged his sword deep into the kami's largest eye.

Black blood spattered, and the kami keened one last time. The vortex of wind dropped away and yellow fog dispersed. Then the kami slowly began to fade.

Toshi flicked the blood from his katana and then wiped the blade on a patch of swamp grass. Kiku's flower was still blooming on the thing's back, a gorgeous and fragrant corsage atop a monstrous heap of blood and meat. As the dead kami vanished into the fog, the bright lavender flower lingered to mark its passing.

Without a word, Kiku turned and headed back into the sulfur mist, toward her cult's headquarters.

"So," Toshi yelled. "You don't mind if I cut across your land?"

Kiku waved her hand dismissively, not even turning as she walked.

"Good," Toshi said. "That's really all I wanted."

Toshi reached his shack just before dawn. This was the dullest section of the fen, known as Numai because so many humans had constructed their houses upon great stilts of bamboo. Where rich and powerful people like Boss Uramon lived in restored manor houses from years gone by, common folk had to make do with far less. Toshi had even spent some time among the piecemeal cottages and community nests of the nezumi, and if not for the ratfolk themselves, he would have vastly preferred their homes to his.

Still, the southwest quarter provided all the privacy and anonymity he needed. Prying into others' affairs was dangerous, even suicidal in the main marsh, but it was unheard of in Numai. There was hardly anyone worth knowing and definitely nothing worth stealing, so Toshi could largely do as he pleased.

Now, it pleased him to collect the few belongings he treasured and to take a small vacation, far from moonfolk and nezumi and kami attacks. Perhaps he would head to the shoreline and feast on mussels and eel for a few weeks. Get some sun and enjoy the sensation of not being hunted.

There was no real entrance to Toshi's house; it was a feature that he had purposelly omitted. No door means no visitors. His one-room ramshackle domain stood about twenty feet over the surface of the swamp, lashed and enchanted to some sturdy bamboo poles. The walls were a confused tangle of planks and joists salvaged from other homes, and the roof was a disaster of crude thatch and carelessly laid beams.

Toshi quickly glanced around to make sure he was unobserved and then shimmied up one of the bamboo supports. From the corner, he climbed hand-over-hand along one of the floorboards until he came to a trap door. He shoved on the hinged panel from below, then pulled himself up into the unlit room.

He moved quickly through the darkness until he found an old oil lamp. He lit the lamp with a stone and a piece of flint, careful to keep the flame low so as not to dazzle-blind himself. The small lamp threw out the barest hint of light, but it was enough for Toshi to see the room and everything in it.

Four soratami were lounging casually in the corners of his home. He recognized Eitoku and his shinobi partner from the alley. The other two were also moonfolk bushi, dressed like Eitoku with stiffened cloth armor and the traditional pair of samurai swords.

A fifth soratami sat smiling on the floor in front of him. All the moonfolk were slender and androgynous, but this one was the most feminine he had seen. She wore her long ears gathered at the base of her skull. Her legs were crossed and she was leaning back on her hands with a contemplative smirk on her face.

"Hello," Toshi said. "Have you seen Toshi Umezawa? He owes me money."

"Take him down," the woman said. There was a blur of motion, and Toshi found himself pinned, disarmed, and restrained, face down on the rough wooden floor.

Someone, probably Eitoku, kicked him solidly in the ribs. Someone else grabbed a handful of hair and forced Toshi's face up.

"You embarrassed the soratami," the woman said. She did not sound angry, but rather distracted. "And worse, you spoiled our endeavor for the evening. These are remarkable feats for a lowlife such as yourself. Truly, the benevolent rabbit in the moon has smiled upon you this night."

Toshi blinked. "Who where did what when?"

The woman laughed, her hollow voice surprisingly warm and gay. "You've never heard of the rabbit in the moon? Shocking. To which kami do you pray?"

"He does not pray," said the moonfolk who had tried to spike Toshi's head. "He 'takes care of himself."'

"I take care of my friends, too," Toshi added. Sweat ran down into his eyes, and he could feel his heart booming. "If you'd care to be my friend, I would-"

Eitoku silenced him with another kick. "Keep his hands pinned," the samurai said. "He uses kanji magic."

The female leaned forward, her face close to Toshi's. "Tell me about your friends," she said. "Do any of them know where you were tonight?"

"I lied," Toshi said instantly. "I don't actually have any friends."

"Hmmm," the woman said. Her eyes seemed to bore straight through Toshi's skull. "Is that loyalty, or candor?"

"Neither," he said. "Check the back of my left hand and you'll see."

"Don't touch him!" Eitoku snapped. "He's full of tricks, this one."

"Yes, I can see that." The woman stretched and then stood. She nodded to Eitoku's partner. "Check his hand, shinobi. He intrigues me, this arrogant ochimusha who does not pray. The rest of you, keep him still."

The shinobi from the alley took Toshi's hand and twisted the palm down. He motioned for the lamp, and one of the samurai brought it forward. The lamp-bearer, the shinobi, and the woman all leaned in to look.

"A triangle," she said. "Most impressive. Though the lines are a bit jagged. You might want to engage a tattoo artist who isn't shaking from narcotic withdrawal."

"It's not just a triangle," Toshi said. "It's a hyozan, an iceberg. See? There's a kanji and everything." He pressed his wrist forward, revealing more of the mark.

"It's a gangster tattoo," Eitoku spat. "He's one of Boss Uramon's reckoners. Muscle for hire."

"Ahh," the woman said. "So you are protected after all. But Boss Uramon isn't here, little thug, and we wouldn't care if she was."

"I don't work for Uramon," Toshi said. "Or any other boss. Haven't you heard of the hyozan reckoners? We work for ourselves."

"How formidable. And I imagine the iceberg is symbolic of your hidden strength? Attack the tip, and the rest of your gang surfaces to take revenge? That is what reckoners do, isn't it? Take revenge for money?"

"Sometimes. We also throw dice."

The female moonfolk laughed again. Then, her smile disappeared like a wisp of steam and her eyes flashed with cold blue light.

"I think we've wasted enough time on you, hyozan reckoner. I think the iceberg is a clever ploy to make people think you've got hidden depths. It's the perception of danger that keeps people away. You like to keep people away, don't you? Else why would you live in the most drab and awful place in the world? Seriously, even nezumi won't come here without a good reason."

The pinned ochimusha held her eyes. "I gave your stooges fair warning before, and now I'm giving it to you. Turn me loose and go away, or things will get ugly."

"Ignore him," Eitoku said. "There are no more kanji on his body, and he's incapable of drawing with his hands pinned."

The female soratami returned to her casual sitting position. "I think we'll hang your body somewhere prominent. To make a good impression on the locals." She nodded, and Toshi heard the sound of a sword being drawn.

Overhead, the moon slipped out from behind a cloud. Its light shone through a gap in Toshi's roof, casting a jagged shadow on the floor.

"You're right, big ears," he said loudly. "I can't draw any more kanji. But I can use the one I built into the roof."

As one, the moonfolk looked up. With the moonlight streaming through, the shadows from the rafters formed a clear symbol.

"Stay," Toshi read silently.

In response, a glittering purple breeze descended and crossed the room like a wave. The moonlight flickered as a cloud passed overhead. When it came back, the roomful of soratami were in the exact same positions. Their eyes darted back and forth, and some of them made low, moaning sounds, but they were otherwise frozen in place.

Toshi quickly began working his hands free. The soratami fingers holding him had enough give for him to twist himself loose, and he wriggled out from under their weight, kicking his ankles free as he went. Two of the moonfolk holding him toppled over as Toshi rose, and they remained where they landed, as still as stones.

The ochimusha quickly went to a loose floorboard and retrieved a bag of coins, his good jitte, and a small parcel wrapped in cloth and twine. He was very careful not to come into contact with the soratami. Incidental contact could disrupt the paralysis spell, and he didn't want to have to fight his way clear. He straightened his clothes and approached the female soratami where she sat on the floor.

"Here's where we all just walk away," he said, hoisting his pack over his shoulder. "I fouled up your score tonight and bloodied your noses, but I didn't kill you. Let's leave it at that. Do us all a favor and don't come looking for me again."

The woman's eyes were furious. Run fast, her voice rang in Toshi's ears, though her lips did not move. Run far. It won't save you.

He raised an eyebrow. "That was your voice in the alley, wasn't it?" He leaned down into her face. "This is twice now. See how well bothering me works out? If you want us to try to kill each other on sight from now on, that's your choice. But I can guarantee that you'll never see me coming."

Perhaps.

Toshi shrugged. "You keep saying that. It means nothing." He stood and strolled over to the trap door in the floor. He opened the trap, sat on the edge of the hole, and looked back at the two moonfolk who had fallen, each now staring helplessly up at the ceiling.

"You got off light," he called. "You should have seen the position I was going to leave you in."

Then dropped down into the fen and landed with a splash. As he took his first few steps, the moon slipped behind another cloud. When it emerged, it lit the entire area in an eerie silver light.

Toshi looked down. The shadows from the bamboo and part of his house formed a symbol in the muck that he hadn't intended. In fact, if he took a step back and included the floating bamboo leaves and swamp grass, he could clearly make out several symbols, a small group of naturally occurring kanji that his eyes had isolated from the surroundings.

Toshi sighed, then swore softly. Seeing symbols everywhere was a side-effect of mastering kanji magic, like an overly imaginative child looking up at the clouds. Toshi stared at the ground around him, not wanting to interpret the shapes but unable to prevent himself from doing so.

The shadows formed the kanji for "moon."

The leaves and grass combined to make the symbol for "unstoppable."

The oily mud kicked up by his feet spelled "disaster," or, if he squinted and cocked his head, "cataclysm."

Last, a fallen shoot of broken bamboo approximated a crude triangle, similar to the mark on his hand. As Toshi watched, the faint current caused the bamboo shoot to drift a few feet until it was partially overlapping the shadow symbol for "moon." The combined hyozan/moon symbol then burst into flame, charring the sodden ground and raising a fetid waft of gray steam.

Toshi swore again. He did not pray to any kami, but neither did he dismiss the power of the spirit world. These four symbols gave him considerable pause, because he believed that such serendipitous kanji were meant to be interpreted by those who found them. The meaning of "moon" seemed clear to him-he had a handful of angry soratami stewing on his hovel floor. The hyozan symbol pointed to his own involvement in the evening's festivities.

It was the symbols for "unstoppable" and "disaster" that were really troubling him. On their own, they didn't bode well. In taking them together with the other symbols, Toshi found a more pointed and pressing interpretation than a simple general cataclysm. Either he personally was headed for disaster, or the moonfolk were. Either the disaster was unstoppable, or the moonfolk were. He turned the potential readings over in his mind, trying to come up with something that didn't point to a conjunction of the hyozan and the moonfolk which would in turn lead to an unavoidable catastrophe for all involved.

Then, as he often did when magic showed him something he didn't want to see, Toshi became angry. It was no good going to the sea to dine on mussels if the moonfolk were going to press their complaint, if they were going to pursue him relentlessly until tragedy claimed them all.

Toshi was currently alive and healthy in large part thanks to his ability to recognize potential threats and react to them before they became dangerous. He grunted as he settled on the only sure meaning he could take from the odd collection of signs. The hyozan had come into contact with the soratami, and they were locked together until something vast and destructive happened to them all. He wouldn't be free of them without first paying a tithe of blood and fire and pain.

He felt the pressure around him change and a towering silence rose. Under his shack, the vile swamp water began to swirl, and a shapeless form began to rise. By coincidence or by the soratami's design, a kami was breaking through. Here, even in Numai, the spirits came to make war and kill a humble ochimusha in the bargain.

"Swell," Toshi said. His sense of self-preservation was one great boon that had kept him alive so long in Numai. Another was his habit of striking first. If the signs pointed to a mutually destructive event between him and the moonfolk, he would make sure that it happened on his terms and his timetable. The hyozan reckoners were in the business of revenge for hire, but sometimes they threw dice. Sometimes, like when his neck was in the noose, they were obliged to take preemptive revenge.

He tightened his pack on his shoulder, turned his back on the manifesting spirit, and disappeared into the gloom.