The Way of the Fox (37 page)

“And what of that fine, loyal young man Id
ē Benten, now that he had taken over his father’s vow? What will you do, Lady Akiko?”

“We shall marry, my lord. He shall be my consort, my protector – the right arm of our land. And we shall lead our people into better day
s.”

“That is a most excellent decision.” The magistrate turned a glance towards Sura, who was looking well pleased.

“Kitsune Sura – you are remarkably quiet.”

“
I am basking in triumph, my lord.” The fox woman flicked a sly glance towards Kuno, who stiffened and looked truculent. “Victory is sweet indeed.”

A day later, the Spirit Hunters said their farewells to one and all, and wandered
back out onto the road. The day was fine and sunny, with the sweet scent of grass and flowers drifting through the air. This time, their fancy took them east, off towards the distant seaside coast. Easy walking once again, ambling and unhurried – just listening to the world. They had full provisions once more, and Kuno’s yearly stipend rested firmly in his pouch. Sura had profited immensely from the new fad for playing liar’s dice, and carried strings of copper coins. Best of all, there was a fine bottle of plum wine strapped into her pack, ready to be enjoyed beside the evening fire.

Chiri strolled along with her
long white hair shining in the sun, a straw hat shading her fair skin. Her air elemental clung in her hair like a shimmering blue ornament, while Daitanishi rode up on the crown of her hat, somewhat sleepy in the sun. The rat girl breathed the glorious scent of blossoms, and gave a happy sigh.

“
I am glad all has ended well for the Usagi and for White-moon Town. And the water elementals are happy. The river will be cared for once again.”

“
We do good work!” Sura seemed wonderfully happy. She caught up with Kuno, sidling closer as he stoically marched along in the lead. “So, Kuno!
Makoto
– Absolute sincerity! The whole samurai thing – apparently you
can
stretch the truth when you have to!”

Kuno sniffed in absolute disapproval. “
I was quite sincere, Sura san.”

“
You and your code…” Sura waved a hand in the air, scaring a passing butterfly. “Take this Idē Yagorō! Proves my point exactly! He acted unselfishly, but still caused harm!”

Kuno was having none of it. “
He saved his clan, and in the long run, this entire fief. So in the long run, he did good.”

The
fox grumbled at this riposte, hunting for flaws but finding none. “All sounds like a pile of old kidneys to me.” She turned and pointed at Kuno. “You still fibbed to that magistrate!”

Asodo Kuno was utterly serene. “
Sincerity is not truth, Sura san. Truth is an exterior and sterile property. But sincerity is from the heart…” He gave a genteel bow. “… as, I believe, is the code of the fox.”

Strolling
along behind Kuno and Sura, Chiri joined step with Tonbo. The huge man’s armour clanked merrily away. Wearing a knotted head scarf, he was idly chewing on a straw. The rat turned to him with a puzzled frown.

“
Tonbo san. You are a samurai. Do you also follow Kuno san’s code?”

The big man gave a warm, uncaring shrug.

“No need.” He ambled along the road, quite content with his place in the world. “It takes a simple thing and makes it sound too difficult.”

Kuno had overheard. He looked back with one brow raised.

“Too difficult? Surely, Tonbo san, the subject of good, of morality and duty is a complex one?”

Tonbo merely hunched one armoured shoulder.

“Good heart – good acts.” He gave a grunt. “Simple.”

They crossed a ris
e and headed off toward the east, walking down amongst a great wide canopy of boughs. In the branches above, tree frogs were croaking, the sound echoing back and forth across the nearby fields. Hearing this, Sura stopped and looked up into the trees in sudden inspiration.

“
Oooh! Tree frogs!” She planted her spear butt-first onto the ground. “Hey! Is it my turn to cook dinner?”

“No!”

Her friends gathered her up and hastened her on, away from the frogs – off along the warm dirt road that felt so soft and smooth beneath their feet.

In a tree nearby, a great black crow sat watching the Spirit Hunters as they passed.
He watched until they had finally gone – croaked once – then flapped up and circled off into the springtime sun.

Third Encounter:

Sea of Troubles
 

“A great person never loses their child’s heart.”

Mencius: The book of Li Lou

Chapter 1

In the salt marshes
, tide waters had crept back slowly from the mud. Short, tangled trees hung low across a maze of creeks. The crescent moon reflected sullenly in oily, stagnant pools.

The wind rustled at dense walls of reeds beside the sluggish waterway.
It was a place of broad, flat mud fields interlaced with rivulets: of restless oceans of reeds and treacherous, sucking pools.

The reeds rippled
– restless, and ever watching. Somewhere hidden in the darkness, a dark presence seemed to
brood
…

Two breathless, frightened fishermen
waded from a creek. One man held a fishing spear, and the other a pole from his boat. Both had tied bands of cloth about their heads in a vague attempt at girding themselves for battle. They struggled fearfully forward until they found solid ground, and then came back, ushering a third person through the shallows and out onto a muddy path.

The third traveller was thin but still tall: an aged woman with long white hair.
Utterly blind, she felt her way forward with a stick. Hanging in her other hand was a cloth that bound a sakē jug, bowls of fruit, tea and rice, incense and a bronze singing bowl – all the items needed to make ritual offerings at a shrine. Dignified and dressed in poor, clean robes, the woman tapped at the ground and felt her way carefully forward, up onto a hummock of solid ground.

The two fishermen crouched, eyes wide – starting at every imagined movement in the marsh. All around them came the slow trickle of
water – horribly loud in the hot, still night. Moving slowly forward, the terrified men hunted shadows in the dark.

One man scuttled forward, feeling his way through the reeds and out onto a broad, flat field of mud. The second hung back, whirling about to stare at the reed
s behind them as they walked. He panted in fright, suddenly racing to catch his companions as he abruptly discovered that he was alone. The man sweated horribly in fear.

The mud flats were covered here and there in hummocks of
trees and dry, crackling brush. The leading fisherman walked a dozen yards out across the mud, skirting the frightening shadows of a bush. A dozen yards further on, and he froze, his fishing spear pointed at the dark.

He moved forward step by step, his spear
quivering. His companion frantically tried to beckon him to come back – but the fisherman edged onwards.

A large bird flapped noisily up out of a tree nearby. The man
screeched in fear, and backed rapidly away. He collided with the old, blind woman, almost knocking her into the mud. She managed to seize the man by the shoulder and make him stand tall.

“Don’t stop! We must reach the shrine before the tide turns!”

The spearman kept his eyes on the shadows, quite beside himself with fright.

“Rokuko san!
I hear something!”

“We must move quickly!”

The man looked at the maze of reeds and mud flats in dismay. “We will never find the path!”

The old woman stood stern, keeping the two fishermen in place. She
scowled and then bowed her head, reaching a hand out towards the thick, dank air.

“Little sisters of the swamp,

Come rise and light our way.
”

The spell took enormous effort. The old woman reached out and struggled, heaving against a barrier that blocked her will. Slowly, slowly something in the dark responded to her call. Swamp gasses swirled, moving around to coalesce into a little set of three interlocking balls of light.

The elemental being was
barely the size of a human hand – glowing slightly and sullenly in the gloom. Part air, part swamp gas, it swirled down close to the old woman. She held out her hand and touched against it, concentrating – communing as best she could. It was difficult – the creature had no wish to be here, no wish to stay. She held it in place only with sheer force of her will.

“She says we are not alone.”

The fishermen looked back towards the creek in fright. Both men crouched low.

“Have the
y followed?”

“I do not know – she will not say.” The old woman was tired – the effort was costly. But the will-o-
the-wisp elemental drifted forward along their path, giving off the slightest, ghostly glow. ‘There. Can you see now? We dare not light a lantern.”

“Yes – yes Rokuko san!” The fisherman wielding the pole bobbed his head, bowing to the elder. “It must suffice.”

They moved onwards, carefully threading their way on across the mud.

With the old woman feeling her way forwards, they walked past the islets of reeds and scrub – under low trees with their decaying birds’ nests and spider webs.
They walked out through tidal pools and on into an empty field of mud. But then a soft clatter of noise came from somewhere just behind. The three pilgrims froze.

It came again – a soft
tap-tap-tapping
sound. Muffled – almost unheard. The fishermen levelled their weapons. The spearman tried to make sense out of the shadows.

“Something is behind us.”

The second man gripped his pole in fright. “They followed! Did they follow?”

“
Impossible! They can’t have seen us leave!”

The air seemed thick and stagnant. A terrible sense of dread hung over the marsh
– coalescing in the shadows and creeping slowly closer. The moonlight slowly vanished behind dark, turgid clouds.

A slight tremor
shivered through the reeds nearby. The spearman set his weapon, moving one pace closer to the reeds. The old woman reached out to touch him with her stick.

“
Something is there.” She turned her head, listening to something hidden in the dark. “Stay perfectly still.”

The reeds
suddenly shivered. The spearman leapt forward, stabbing wildly at the weeds. He almost lost his fish spear in the bushes. Frantically trying to retrieve his weapon, he ducked wildly aside as something lunged at him out of the dark.

A frog h
ad leapt in panic from the weeds. It landed on the spearman’s chest and then sprang away, escaping madly off into the shadows. The two fisherman stared at it in shock, goggle-eyed. Then the spearman put a hand upon his racing heart and turned to his friend.

Something flashed. The spearman vanished – whipped out of sight
into the dark. The man screamed horribly, then the sound abruptly cut off, leaving the night still ringing with shock. The
click-click-clicking
sound came subtly from the dark, now horribly moving closer all around. It echoed in the trees, coming closer and closer through the reeds.

The second fisherman scr
eamed in panic. He thrust with his pole at the shadows, turning wildly about as shapes swam in the dark. The old woman froze in place, utterly still, not daring to move. She hissed a command out across the mud.

“Still!
Fool! Don’t move!”

The fisherman stumbled away from the old woman.
He retreated, falling and scrabbling in the mud, desperate to escape. The man turned to run, then suddenly screamed. A shadow rose up and engulfed him, dragging him screaming off across the mud.

The mud flats were suddenly still. There was no sound but the distant drip and trickle of muddy creeks, and the faint
click-click-clicking
somewhere in the dark.

The old woman
remained still, not daring to shift even a finger. The
clicking
sound moved slowly in the darkness all around her. Blind and helpless, she stood alone in the marsh, while the sounds crept slowly, stealthily closer, hungering for flesh.

An outcrop of stones jutted from the reeds far back towards the creek. Squatting
atop the rocks, a huge brute of a man in ragged finery watched the bloodbath on the mud. His left hand was long gone; a wicked blade had been strapped to the stump. The man scratched himself with his other hand, rattling his silver-fitted sword.

A
nother man wearing a loincloth and embroidered robe pushed forward through the reeds, carrying a bow. With him came a massive titan of a man – one eyed, and carrying a huge
no-dachi
sword seven feet long. The blade looked as though it could shear clean through an oak tree. The massive swordsman strode to the rocks and coldly watched the old woman from afar.

His voice was a cold, predatory growl.

“Good.” One huge hand flicked idly towards the woman. “Shoot the old bitch.”

The archer nocked an arrow – but the blade-handed man waved him down. He gave a curling sneer.

“No.”

The swordsman growled – his eyes fixed on the old woman. “Hunt-leader!

We can kill her!”

“Leave her there.” The blade-handed man arose, jerking his chin towards the shadows down below.
“The red ones will do it for us.”

Down on the mud flats, the small elemental faded away and vanished
, and the old woman was left standing helpless in the dark. The three armed men no longer spared her a glance. They went back down along the muddy paths – back towards the creek, and vanished in the reeds.

In the darkness behind them, the old woman
remained  unmoving, listening to the sinister clicking in the mud…