The Way of the Fox (49 page)

Tonbo drove in,
spinning and hammering his tetsubo down at the swordsman. The iron staff crashed again and again against the blade as the pirate parried blows that would have broken a lesser man’s arms with the shock. The sword cut back, slicing for Tonbo’s face, then hissed past in a blow that would have decapitated him in an instant. Tonbo almost idly ducked the blow, stepping in to once again slam the end of his club into his opponent’s chest, this time shattering ribs. He hammered it home again and again, driving the man back and slamming into him with a kick. The enraged pirate roared and lashed out, striking sparks from Tonbo’s helmet and finally ramming him aside.

Wounded
and staggering, the pirate snarled, glaring at Tonbo in hate. The man worked himself into a frenzy, then attacked again, the no-dachi flashing and hacking. The tempo was blinding – and suddenly he was leaping high into the air once more, whipping the huge sword down, throwing all of his massive strength behind the blow.

Tonbo let the blade come, letting the man totally commit to the strike, then flashed backwards just out of range. His huge tetsubo arced and crashed into the flat of his enemy’s blade, driven by
all the raw power of Tonbo’s frame. There was a deafening noise as the no-dachi shattered, smashed clean in two by the surgical blow from the tetsubo. The pirate gaped – but the tetsubo was already swirling in another violent arc. The weapon crashed into the man’s head, driving his helmet down and shattering armour plates and the skull beneath. Tonbo roared as he struck, then wrenched his weapon free.

The huge pirate was dead on his feet. The man swayed and staggered, his broken sword spilling from his hands. He took a single step and crashed down into the mud.

Tonbo left the man for the scavengers. He turned toward the distant sound of the gargantuan crab roaring in the darkness. With his huge iron staff over his shoulder, Tonbo jogged off towards the shrine, armour clashing and clattering as he ran.

At the cliff side shrine, the two animal spirits dodged madly beneath the overhanging cave, narrowly avoiding a cascade of rocks
and bushes started by the gargantuan crab. The huge monster was making a slow, ill-tempered rampage along the side of the cliff, creating hand-holds by punching its claws straight into the rock and dirt. The beast was closing, yard by yard, roaring and tearing boulders from the cliff. Chiri raced scampering to the cave door, her tail twitching behind her and elementals crowding at her side in fright. She saw the crab getting closer and closer, and called back in panic.

“Sura! Is anything happening yet?”

“No! Nothing’s happening yet!” The fox was losing her temper. She stood up on her back feet and shouted to the back shadows of the cave. “Hey! Hello? Oi – we’re talking to you! We need some righteous intervention here?”

The rat called back. “
Maybe you didn’t pray correctly?”

“
Pray correctly? Are you kidding me?” Sura kicked at the altar, hurting her foot. “This sea kami has only one job to do, and the damned thing’s slacking off!”

Sura’s temper finally gave way. She leapt onto the altar and began jumping up and down.

“Hey you! Are you in there? Oi! Come out!” She bounded up and down. “You! Yeah, you! So, what is it? Too important to have to talk to a couple of animal spirits? Think you’re too good for the likes of us?”

Chiri looked back, feeling a little anxious about triggering a kami’s wrath. “Sura san?”

“Right! That’s it! You’re making me shirty!” The fox smacked her tail against the altar top. “You won’t like me when I’m shirty!”

The crab’s claw reached the edge of the cave
, but Sura was too involved with kicking at the altar to notice. Chiri fled back from the cave mouth in alarm.

“
Um – Sura?”

“In a minute!” Sura
still raving at the altar.

“Right! That’s it!
Get your flabby sea-going butt up here and help those people right now! I mean it!” The fox furiously waved her paw. “I’m going to count to ten!
One! - Two! - Three! - Four! - Five…”

The crab hauled itself closer to the cave. The huge claw probed inside, colliding with the ceiling. Chiri backed away.

“Sura!”

“
Six! - Seven! - Eight! - Eight and a half…!”
Sura waved her front paw in fury.
“Eight and three quarters…!”

With a roar, the
titanic crab lunged its claw down at Sura and Chiri. Daitanishi and Bifuuko pushed Sura aside, and the massive pincer missed the fox by a whisker, smashing the altar and gouging into the wall. Sura tumbled through the rubble, surfacing to yell back at the cave.

“
Ten!”

The crab finally
had an eyestalk peering into the cave. Something about the fox and rat seemed to have definitely rubbed it up the wrong way. The monster gave a deafening screech of hatred, and plunged its claw towards the two animals. Sura snatched Chiri up in her jaws and leapt madly, landing on the back of the claw as the pinchers slammed shut just beneath her. She leapt off and ran down the cliff side path, hotly pursued by the crab. Scrabbling up the switchback trail back towards the crest, she dodged aside as the crab smashed at her with its claw. She dropped Chiri, and they fled side by side up a slithering slope of gravel. Bifuuko and Daitanishi boosted Chiri onwards, one before and one behind, shooting her up over the rise and onto the flat crest of the promontory above. Sura raced up over the edge beside her, tail between her legs as she ducked another wild smash from the crab.

“Why the hell is that thing so pissed off? We didn’t even read it Kuno’s poetry!”
She collected Chiri. “Come on!”

Red Kenta and eight foul, armoured pirates hauled themselves up the path and onto the rocky
crest. The men had swords, harpoons and spears. They laughed as they saw the two animal spirits. Sura screeched to a halt – but the giant crab was clambering up the cliff face behind her. The pirates closed in from the front, harpoons hefted. Sura immediately pointed behind the men with a look of alarm upon her face.

“Lookout! It’s an incarnation of the Buddha!
”

None of the men turned.
Faced by an armed mob intent on wearing her as a hat, Sura kept right on pointing. “Right! Time to run off to have a good think about your lives! Times running out!” She waved a paw. “Off we go!”

The pirate chief turned to his men.

“Kill them.”

The men started forward
, when suddenly Kuno came racing up from the path behind them. His sword flashed as he passed the rearmost man, dropping his target to the ground. A second man fell, then Kuno was in the middle of a furious melee, swords clashing as pirates attacked from every side. Kuno whirled, exquisite to behold, blade flashing, cutting down one man in front, then another behind. Pirates reeled back, dead or bleeding, but Kuno was driven relentlessly back towards the cliff – towards the giant crab. Chiri leapt from Sura’s back, eyes wide in alarm. As Kuno’s rear foot slipped at the edge of the cliff, he fell to his knees, and Chiri gave a scream.

“
Kuno san!”

The rat ran forwards with power blasting up about her, swirling in a cyclone up atop the rocks.

“
Brothers, sisters of the earth!

Come to me in time of woe!

I beg you, listen to my call!

Save
my friend from evil foes!”

Chiri’s spell hit the seaside rock-face with a pulse of power. A swarm of heavy rock elementals burst out of the surrounding stone, rising high – poised – and then slammed down into the pirates. A man was smashed off his feet and flung over the cliff, while the others fled into cover, falling as rocks dashed their feet out from under them and dented helmets. The pirate chief ducked behind a boulder, his face bleeding where it had been sliced open by a rock shard.

“Find the rat! Kill the rat to stop the magic!”

Sheltering from the rock storm, his men searched wildly for the rat. They glimpsed a flash of white: the fox and rat were tugging at the fallen samurai, trying to get him away from the cliff edge. The pirates crouched and moved forwards behind a line of boulders. As the rock elementals finally faded and disappeared, the pirates rose. One man hurtled a harpoon straight at Chiri. Sura saw the huge spear flickering in the night. She dove, seizing Chiri in her mouth and rolled wildly away. The spear slammed into the rocks exactly where the rat had stood.

The man behind Red Kenta was smashed down by an blow from an immense tetsubo. Tonbo slammed the butt of his weapon into one man, parried a spear strike from another,
then tore the spear clean out of his opponent’s hands. As Red Kenta hacked at him with his blade hand, Tonbo parried the blow. A butt stroke from the iron staff sent Red Kenta flying back to crash against a rock. Pieces of armour went flying. The man staggered back, ribs broken, weaving in the dark.

Suddenly a massive claw crashed down into the middle of the fight. The monster crab had
reached the cliff crest at last. The beast hauled its immense bulk half up onto the summit and gave a deafening roar. Sura looked up at the crab, and simply swore.

“Oh for... That does it!”

Sura lunged in and bit the tip of one of the crab’s immense feet, snapping and gnawing in a frenzy
, kicking with her feet – slightly scuffing the monster’s armoured shell. “Oh yeah? You wanna play tough? You want more of the fox! Take that! And take some of this!”

T
he entire whole rock summit suddenly shook to the great, sonorous booming of a gong. The note staggered everyone to their knees. Sura fell to the ground. The giant crab tried to turn, staggered, then unexpectedly exploded as some unseen force simply blew the beast apart.

A huge glowing shape rose out of the sea – a vast
phantasmal form shaped like a mighty whale. As shards of giant crab showered down all around, the sea kami arose to float high in the air, trails of power flashing and thundering all around it.

The sea kami looked down at the crest of the promontory
– and glared.

The pirates staggered backwards, then turned, fleeing down the path. A
flash of power scorched down after them, incinerating the rearmost man. Red Kenta was long gone, racing out of sight into the marsh below. Power scorched and sizzled all across the rocks, lighting the boulders with a brilliant haze.

Kuno, Chiri and Tonbo all bowed reverently to the sea kami, and the creature slightly narrowed its eyes.

Sura had managed to saunter idly out of view behind Tonbo. The immense whale kami moved slowly about the promontory, drifting to where it could fix her in its gaze. The huge spirit gave a scowl, focussing upon the fox. Sura held up a paw and wiggled her toes in a wave, giving the creature a great, false, happy grin.

“Hi there! So you got our message then?”
She managed somehow to look contrite and innocent, both at once. “Aaaah… Sorry about the whole ‘flabby sea-going butt’ thing! Term of endearment. Really – it’s a fox thing!”

Tonbo leaned in, passing the fox her folded whale eating hat from inside his robe. Sura scooted it away with her foot, hissing
at him in alarm – still grinning innocently up at the whale.

“
Hsst!
Not now!” Sura pointed towards the village and spoke happily up to the whale. “So… the villagers really need you! Just passing that on. You’ve clearly got a busy night ahead – don’t let us keep you.”

Day, night, wind, wave – and foxes. Unavoidable forces of a chaotic universe. The immense sea kami loo
ked at Sura – seemed to give a grudging nod – then suddenly turned about. It whipped away with astonishing agility and plunged into the sea far below. The ocean took on an eerie azure glow.

Sura ran eagerly over to the bay edge of the summit, clambering atop a chunk of blasted crab to get some extra height. She was utterly alive with wicked glee
once more.

“Guys!
Get up here! Hoo yeah! Oh, you won’t want to miss this!”

Down in the bay, a great glowing wave arose – shimmering and shining. Festival crowds had been in the inns and at the beach, all eating by the light of countless coloured lanterns.
As the glowing wave rose slowly up out of the ocean, people turned to stare, then backed away – and then fled in panic back out through the village to the high ground just beyond. Prince Horigawa’s mansion was suddenly alight with servants racing back and forth, lights threading madly through the trees.

The wave towered high – glowing with
eerie light. It suddenly came surging and crashing in towards the shore. It pounded down upon the two huge whaling ships, the whaling boats and their stocks of harpoons, oars and weapons, smashing everything to pieces. Drunken whatlers were dragged screaming out to sea. Somehow the destruction left humble fishing boats utterly unscathed.

Slowly, the wave subsided.
The beach was scattered with timbers from shattered boats, broken oars and huts. Festival goers came out from the inns and streets, watching in amazement as the surviving whalers fled for their lives.