Blade's Edge, page 27
part #1 of Chronicles of Gensokai Series
Finally, after watching the moon travel from one tree to the next, Mishi admitted to herself that sleep would not come. She rose to find whoever had the current watch.
As she walked to the far end of the camp, careful to make as little noise as possible and let those who were able to fall asleep remain so, she saw that it was Katagi who held the watch.
“Good evening, Katagi-san,” she said, in little more than a whisper, as she approached him. He didn’t turn around to greet her, but nodded when she stood beside him.
“Good evening, Mishi-san.”
“I can’t sleep, so I thought I’d relieve you of your watch,” she said, even as Katagi kept his eyes glued to the surrounding forest.
One corner of his mouth turned up as he replied, “It’s kind of you to offer, but I’m afraid I can’t sleep either, so it does me no good to accept.”
Mishi nodded. She certainly sympathized with the problem.
“What’s keeping you awake tonight?” Katagi asked. “Or is that a stupid question?”
Mishi took a deep breath and let it out. For a long time, she said nothing.
“I’m sorry, Mishi-san,” Katagi said, after a while. “It should be obvious what is keeping you awake and… it’s none of my business. For—”
“No,” Mishi interrupted. “No, it’s alright. It might do me good to speak of it… it’s just… hard.”
Katagi kept his silence this time, and eventually Mishi felt she could speak again.
“Every time I close my eyes… I see them. All the men and women that I’ve killed over the past tenday. And when I see them, I feel a horrible sense of… wrongness. Like what I’ve done is… I don’t know how to describe it. Like there’s a weight in my stomach that I’ll never be rid of. And then… then I think of Sachi, of how she was killed by cowards, with poison. And suddenly, the weight is replaced with heat, and I feel as if I didn’t kill enough of them. As if I could never kill enough of them to make up for… for losing her.”
She leaned against the tree that Katagi had his back to, and closed her eyes for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a while. “I’m sorry I don’t make any sense, I just… I don’t even know how I feel. It changes so many times a day, a breath, a heartbeat.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Katagi said, still watching the trees and the snow covered ground for any sign of hishi. “I’m honored that you would share your troubles with me. I only wish there were more I could do to comfort you.”
“Talking with me is an excellent start,” Mishi said, surprising herself. She wondered where the annoyance she had felt at Katagi’s company had gone since their journey to Rōjū City. Hadn’t his mere presence once made her wish him physical harm? What had changed, that she now found him a comfort? Before she could examine the thought too closely, Katagi chuckled, and the sound brought her back to herself.
“It wasn’t long ago that you would have preferred to carry your horse rather than ride next to me,” he said, finally glancing at her for just a moment.
“That’s not—” Mishi cut herself off, before she could complete the lie. “That might have been true, but… well, I’m confused about everything else these days, why not you as well?”
She had meant it as a joke, but Katagi turned to look at her then, briefly, and the look in his eyes made her desperately wish to change the topic. She turned her own eyes to scanning the woods. One of them should remain on guard, after all, and if she didn’t have to see that look in Katagi’s eyes, well, so much the better.
“Why can’t you sleep?” she asked, wishing to distract him.
“I was thinking about you,” he said quietly, and she hoped that she only imagined that he sounded closer than he had a moment before.
“Mishi, I—” Katagi was cut off by the sound of a twig snapping a few arm spans away, and Mishi turned just in time to see a change in the moon shadow that indicated something moving in the darkness. Without thinking, she grabbed Katagi and thew them both flat on the ground. The faint sound of air splitting above them was the only confirmation Mishi had that she had saved their lives.
“HISHI!!!” She and Katagi shouted in unison, doing their best to wake the whole camp, and hoping it wasn’t already too late.
The world around Mishi descended into chaos. Between one breath and the next she was dodging and parrying multiple katana, rolling from one opponent to the next with no time to think, barely enough time to breathe, and no way to use her fire kisō without possibly burning her companions.
She couldn’t tell where anyone else was. Moments after having dragged Katagi to the ground with her in order to protect him, she had lost all cognizance of where he was. They had been pushed to fight in different directions. She couldn’t tell where her sisters were, or Kuma-sensei… she couldn’t see or hear well enough, beyond the scope of her own fierce battle with the hishi, to know where her companions were, and she didn’t have the time or focus to spare on using her powers to locate them. Each moment was a battle just to stay ahead of her attackers.
After what felt like an age of fighting, with every hishi she defeated replaced with another, and Mishi unsure of where they were even coming from, her arms began to tire. She could no longer hear the sounds of combat outside of her own small circle of death, and she didn’t know if that was because her sisters had succumbed to their attackers, or because she’d been driven so far away from the rest of the group that she was no longer be in reach of them. It made little difference; if she didn’t cease fighting soon, she would soon fall to her attackers.
She was surrounded by at least three hishi. She wasn’t sure how many were actually there, jumping between shadows, but she was beset by three at a time. It was only now, as her arms and legs began to protest her continued movement, that it occurred to her that she was being herded away from the group; that her attackers hadn’t truly been trying to kill her, else they would have already succeeded.
She didn’t have time to follow that thought. She had little time to do anything at all, save dodge and deflect, occasionally earning the chance to strike down one of her opponents, as if that made any difference with the seemingly inexhaustible supply of hishi she faced. Steel ringing on steel became the soundscape of her world; a world reduced to the rhythm and dance of three grey clad opponents circling a woman in brown and green. Rather than question where they had come from, how they had found her and her companions, or why they weren’t trying to kill her, she focused her energy on generating a gap in the circle that surrounded her.
Finally, after a well timed feint on her part, one of her opponents stumbled and she switched to the offensive, pushing the hishi away from her instead of allowing them to keep her on the defensive. Fighting this way took more energy, and she wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long, but she didn’t need to. With one last, frenzied push, she forced two of her opponents back into a giant pine tree. One stumbled on a root, the other backed against the tree itself, and the third, perhaps thinking that he could compensate for his comrades distraction, lunged forward, as if to shear off Mishi’s legs. But the one man’s lunge and the other two’s stumble was the final opening Mishi needed.
She didn’t have the energy to fight much longer, and soon she would make a mistake that would lead to her death or capture. She couldn’t afford capture. Not yet, not when she didn’t know what had become of her companions, or the final stage of the plan. Finally, finding enough space to call forth fire without burning herself, and knowing that her companions—wherever they might be—were well outside of her range, she called a wall of fire between herself and her would be captors. Then, with no options left, and a deep wrenching in her gut as she thought of Ami and Kuma-sensei, of Katagi, and what leaving them all behind might mean, she ran.
TAKA TRIED NOT to look at the blood on the ground. It wasn’t that she was squeamish; she was a healer. She was as used to blood as she was to sun on her skin, but every time she looked at this blood, the image of a tall young woman with bright grey eyes flashed through her mind, and her stomach twisted at the possibility that the blood was hers.
Taka crouched on the edge of a very small clearing and watched Mitsu follow the maze of footprints and blood that crossed and wound through each other, like the choreography of some hellish dance.
Despite the obvious signs of a nightmare come to life, the air still smelled of the crispness of new fallen snow, and the sky was heavy with clouds waiting to dispense their burdens. Eventually, Mitsu returned to her at the edge of the clearing.
“They were split into multiple groups,” he said, as he crouched beside her.
“Can you tell where they went?” Taka asked.
“Yes, for a little ways, but I can’t track them all at the same time.”
“Can you tell which way Kuma-sensei went?” Taka hated herself a little bit for asking that question. Part of her cried out wildly to ask if he could tell where the tall girl with grey eyes had gone, but how on earth could he distinguish that from the maze of tracks left behind?
“I’m not sure, not knowing the size of all the hishi involved, but the prints I believe most likely to be his headed that way,” he said, nodding to the east.
Taka thought for a moment. Kuma-sensei needed to be their top priority. He was the one who could give them the most information, the one who could best help them plan, no matter what had happened here. Yet her conscience refused to give her any peace until she addressed that blood.
“Mitsu…” she hesitated, unsure how to find the information she needed, wondering if her motives were as clear as she hoped they were. He simply looked at her until she spoke once more. “The blood in the clearing, that larger patch,” she said, indicating a large circle of dark red near a tall pine tree. “Can you tell me which direction the person who left that went?”
“Why would you want to know that?” Mitsu asked.
“That person will need a healer,” Taka replied.
Mitsu thought for a moment, his eyes never wavering from the patch of blood.
“As it happens, that person went in the same direction.”
~~~
The sun was well past its zenith when a faint moan stopped Taka where she stood and made her hold her breath. She heard it once more: someone expressing the soft noises of agonizing pain. She searched around her, wondering how far ahead Mitsu was scouting, and if he could hear the same sounds she could. Finally, a slight movement drew her eyes to a brown and green lump in the snow that they had earlier perceived from a distance as a shrub or a rock, until they happened to catch it moving. She heard another soft moan and ran forward.
Part of her mind screamed at her to be cautious, to approach slowly, that the whole thing could be a trap. But the image of the blood in the clearing that morning mixed with the image of the brown and green clad figure with grey eyes, and nothing could stop her from running as fast as her legs and the snow would allow.
When she was right next to the figure, she collapsed and folded herself onto her legs. This person didn’t have grey eyes, and wasn’t even a woman. Part of her brain scolded her for having gotten her hopes so high in the first place. Hadn’t all of the people in that image Riyōshi had shown her been wearing the same brown uwagi and green hakama? She shook herself. This man, eyes staring unblinking into the trees, needed her help, and badly.
Taka settled herself beside him and put her fingers against his neck. His pulse was mostly sluggish, with occasional surges to a pace that was disturbing. She spread more of her hand against his throat, then breathed deeply in order to focus her ki. Once centered in herself, she sent her kisō outward a little at a time, tracing the pulse that was so irregular, in order to find the cause. When she finally withdrew her hand and her power, she sensed someone standing behind her.
“Mitsu, I am going to need your assistance,” she said, as calmly as she could. The man didn’t have much time left for her to save him.
Mitsu simply loomed behind her. Finally, he asked, “Do you know who he is?”
“No, but he needs my aid or he will die.”
Mitsu said nothing.
“Please build a fire. Collect snow to melt in our water skeins. What I’m about to do will leave this man very thirsty. Also, if you could catch a hare and make a broth from it, that would be excellent. He’ll need food, but will find digestion difficult. This will take me some time, and he won’t be able to move much when I’m done, so we should make camp here.”
Mitsu took a breath that Taka could tell was going to be used to say something contrary.
“Mitsu-kun,” she said, hoping the diminutive term of affection would remind him of their possible family connections and make him more willing to do as she asked, “I don’t have time to argue. Please help me.”
The tracker said nothing, but walked away. Taka had to hope that he would do as he was asked. She didn’t have the time to argue, or the excess kisō to reach out to him and see if he planned to assist. She had to reserve everything she had for the task at hand. Poisons were hard work at the best of times, in fact most healers couldn’t do anything thing for them, but Yanagi had taught Taka many things that most healers would never learn. However, to make matters more complicated, this man was also bleeding to death.
She focused her ki again, brought herself and her kisō to her center, and then, gently placing a hand on the man’s wrist, careful to avoid the long acrid smelling cut that crossed his forearm, she forced her kisō to follow the tainted blood and renew it. The advantage that Taka had over most healers, when it came to poisons, was that she had learned about the properties of plants from a tree kami. As such, she had learned to identify plants in all their forms, even when they had been turned into poison. As a water kisō she could use her connection with the fluid element to cause the blood of a person to reject the plant matter that shouldn’t be there. It took time, and it was one of the most difficult and draining things she had ever learned to do.
As her work took effect, the man’s breath grew more and more eased. The moans of pain stopped, and eventually his eyes fluttered closed. Little by little, she was able to pull the poison from his body. After that, she began to work on the gashes themselves. After stemming the worst of the bleeding with what was left of her kisō, she looked through her pack and found the silk bandages she had gotten from Tsuku-san. She was in the middle of wrapping the last of the man’s flesh wounds when he began to shift, as though in discomfort.
She was just about to pull back from him, worried about how he would react if he woke to find a stranger touching him, when the man lifted a hand and placed it on her face. It was a gentle motion, not a violent one, so she let it stay there.
“Mishi?” the man mumbled.
She looked at him then, looked into his face and his eyes, wondering if she had imagined the word she had just heard. His eyes met hers, clouded with fever and the remnants of pain, and confusion crossed them briefly before he closed them once more. His hand dropped from her face.
“Mishi…” he whispered, before returning to his slumber.
~~~
Mitsu had been a better assistant than Taka could have hoped. He had built a large fire, not far from where she knelt with the man in the snow, and he had found not one hare, but three. He made a broth from one, and the other two he had spitted and roasted over the fire while Taka had worked. He had melted enough snow to hydrate all three of them and go into the broth, and Taka had marveled at the two leather pots the man had assembled with sticks braced above the fire.
“It seems your winter training was more thorough than mine,” she said, as she tore greedily into the rabbit haunch that Mitsu had offered her, once her patient was sleeping soundly. The healing had left her exhausted and famished.
Mitsu smirked across the fire, “I can’t save the life of a man who has been poisoned and slashed to ribbons.” He shrugged. “I need to have some useful skills.”
That almost made Taka laugh. Then she thought of what she had to say next, and the laughter died in her throat.
“Mitsu, do you remember the friend I told you of?”
“The one from the orphanage?” he asked.
“Yes. Mishi-san.” Taka’s stomach flipped as she said the name aloud. It had been so long since she’d permitted herself to say that name.
“Yes. You said she was your closest friend. The only one you knew who shared your abilities.”
Taka nodded. “I used to think we shared the same abilities… the more I’ve learned of what I can do, and the more I think about what she can do, the more I think we didn’t actually share all that much. I think… I think she’s Kisōshi. I mean a senkisō, not a yukisō like me.”
Mitsu raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing to either argue or agree.
“And…” Taka continued, “and I think that man knows her.” She nodded to the sleeping figure on the far side of the fire.
Now both of Mitsu’s eyebrows raised to meet his hairline, and Taka had to swallow the strange lump of hope that was forming in her throat.
“Earlier, when I was treating him…” she continued, “he said her name. I think he thought I was her for a moment and… he said her name. I think she was with them. With Kuma-sensei and the rest.”
