Blade Of The Immortal Fan Fiction ❯ Abstinence Education ❯ Part Forty ( Chapter 40 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

From slings to arrows, and outrageous (mis)fortune...

The characters and universe of Blade of the Immortal/Mugen no Junin are copyright by Hiroaki Samura and do not belong to me. Not one sen will come into my hands in consequence of this story.

Warnings for sex in various forms, including quasi-incestuous themes and a sixteen-year-old female paired with an adult male. (Yeah, this also applies to future chapters!) Violence and dismemberment are legally required in any BotI fic... and you get an additional caution for harm to animals.



Abstinence Education
by Madame Manga

Part Forty



“I think they’re catching up with us.”

Rin turned to face forward again when the two horsemen appeared around a curve in the road. In the sodden gray mist of pre-dawn twilight, the riders were mostly outlines, but recognizably the same outlines that had been shadowing Manji’s horse for the last quarter of an hour. Rin gripped the high cantle of Manji’s saddle with one hand and adjusted her sword in the sling of her shoulder bag.

Manji grunted and thumped his heels into the tired horse’s sides. It picked up its feet for a few moments and gradually fell back into its stubborn walk. She couldn’t blame it for laziness; it had been a long night’s ride. Though rain wasn’t falling, damp filmed the dark ground and the long needles of the single pines that lined the road. As the light slowly gained on the lingering night, a fine clouding of mist droplets drifted over Rin’s clothes and settled on the tendrils of her untidy braids like a beading of cold steam. She felt chilly and stiff from hours on the road; the horse’s hindquarters were warm but bony and its monotonous lurching sway forced her to work to keep her seat.

Manji sat the saddle in an off-center slouch, leaning a little away from his slinged and bandaged right arm. She could hear nothing but the lagging thump of their horse’s hooves on the sandy road and occasionally a squawk from crows stirring in the trees. An angular dark shape launched from a branch and winged across the road ahead with slow flaps, as if weighted by the thickness of the mist.

With surreptitious half-glances over her shoulder, Rin kept watch on the horsemen. The gnarled silhouettes of the scrubby pines faded gradually in and out to vanishing as Manji’s horse approached and passed them in the mist, but as the travelers drew closer their persistent outlines gained solidity and detail. Big horses that they sat with confidence, their tack and equipment creaking and jingling with sturdy, well-worn leather and metal. The sheathed head of a spear stood above one man’s shoulder, darker gray against the shifting gray of the sky; Rin couldn’t tell how the other was armed. She could guess that he didn’t lack for weapons.

“They’re closer now, Manji-san...”

Manji groaned, with a sense of slightly irritated acceptance of the inevitable, but said nothing. She had not heard an intelligible word from him for all the hours since they had left Anotsu Kagehisa and Magatsu Taito behind.

“Who do you think they are?” Rin insisted in a whisper. “Bounty hunters? The notices said the reward for bringing O-Hama back to her master was thirty ryo! They don’t think that WE could possibly be...?”

He slowly shook his head.

“But remember that merchant? Who thought we looked like, um, them? Now we’re even riding a horse double, like the notices – ”

“Early mornin’, traveler.” The riders had suddenly trotted within speaking distance. “Where you folks heading?”

The spearman. A thick, false-jovial voice with a rural accent, not from Edo. Rin longed to put her arms around Manji’s waist for reassurance, but settled for scooting up a little closer behind the saddle. At this sluggish pace she couldn’t pretend to hold on for security, and her yojimbo might resent encumbrance, in a number of senses. She lightly brushed her cheek against his shoulder blade and felt a degree of tension across his back, though he breathed evenly and looked straight ahead.

“Been riding all night? That horse looks knackered, mate.” The other man spoke with an even broader dialect, like someone from the southern islands. “There’s a choice little inn back a ways – yeh just passed it, wouldn’t take five minutes to turn around. Not hard on the purse, neither. Be glad t’ point the way.” Still Manji didn’t reply. “Yer woman looks kinda worn out too. Well... not like that, y’know.” The man winked at Rin, who quickly averted her eyes. “She’s a young ‘un, ain’t she?” The two horsemen nearly flanked them now.

Manji’s body a tight wall against her cheek, his ribcage swelling, then he let out a long forcible breath. “Not stopping.” The sound of his voice startled her.

“Suit yehself, mate.” The southerner shrugged and shot a gob of spit to the left side of the road. “Me an’ my friend here, we might be going the same way. Maybe we’ll come along with yeh.”

“Maybe not.” Manji didn’t even look around.

“Unfriendly, hah?”

Manji made a near-silent snort in his throat.

“Those’re some scars you got there, buddy.” The spearman eyed Manji from his separate vantage point to their right. “Straight down the face – shee-it. Can’t see out’ve that eye at all, I’d reckon.”

Manji turned his head and spoke low and venomously. “I can tell when some asshole’s sneaking up on that side, if he cuts off my light. You want a demonstration?”

“Sheesh, easy. Take it easy.” The spearman made a conciliatory gesture and nodded at his companion. “Good mornin’, folks, sorry to bother you.” Both men urged their mounts and loped on ahead. When they had disappeared into the mist, Manji reined back and stopped the horse in the middle of the road. Rin let out a long sigh of relief. Manji snarled, though not directly at her.

“Shitfire.”

“What’s the matter, Manji-san? He saw that we weren’t them.”

Manji slipped his right hand from his sling. “Untie it.”

She blinked at his back, then reached up to pull out the sling’s knot at his nape. Manji felt in his right sleeve with his good hand and drew out a shido. He placed the hilt in his bandaged palm and frowned in concentration; one or two of the fingers twitched, but he could not grasp the weapon. He held out the wounded arm to Rin, the shido’s hilt still crossing his palm. “Lash it there. Good and tight.”

The horse meandered to the side of the road and nosed the grass. Rin used her knees as a support for Manji’s arm while they still sat mounted; she crossed and re-crossed the sling’s long strip of cloth over the hilt and around his wrist and hand, knotting it several times. “Tighter.”

She pulled hard. “That tight?”

“It’s pretty much numb anyhow.” He made a grimace.

Manji could rotate his wrist now, which heartened Rin a little – at least the joint had fused and some of the damage to his tendons and muscles must have healed. Apparently his immortal body was able to rebuild missing flesh and bone from scratch, though she worried at how slowly the healing progressed. He’d lost so much blood, and perhaps spilled with his vital fluid the greater part of the mysterious creatures that swam within. The bloodworms might have to regenerate their own supply along with their host’s body. But even with what he’d regained, the weapon couldn’t function as much more than an extension of his arm. She watched him swing the shido in experimental arcs over the horse’s head. “Uh... Manji-san? Maybe we should just turn around and go back to that inn?”

He scribed sharp figures in the air to right and left, then paused to massage his biceps.

“Will we really find them going this way? Anotsu thought they’d head straight back for the river...” Rin hadn’t dared to ask for explanations during the night while Manji chose his directions in silence. His voice still sounded clumsy. He didn’t dignify any of her questions with an answer; he kicked the horse until it started walking.

They didn’t see the two riders again for so long that Rin wondered if her yojimbo’s instincts had fired prematurely. The mist began to thin when the sun rose, though the light remained weak and watery. Then one rider loomed before them just as they passed into a stretch of road that fell between small steep hills. His spear point drew a long hard line over his shoulder, still in the sheath. The other man walked his mount across the way behind them. Manji stopped the horse and turned it halfway, his armed right hand laid across his lap.

“I’m flattered all to hell,” he said. “Now buzz off.”

The riders paused in the road before and behind, and the spearman replied. “Naw, sorry. We ain’t passing up that big a reward.”

“What about the whore and the hatamoto?” Manji pointed his chin up the road past the spearman. “Isn’t that why a couple of professionals came this way in the first place?”

“We got a tip, yeah, but they’ll keep. The whore ain’t worth half of you, buddy, even if there’s only half o’ you left anyhow.”

Manji glanced down at his arm. “You recollect what they call me, pro?”

“When yeh had two eyes and two hands, that’s what yeh were called. Now it’s just two on one, Hundred-Man-Murderer.” The southerner laughed. “Brand new call, straight from the Castle, and they want you bad.”

“So I hear.” Manji looked from one man to the other. “So what’s the reward on Anotsu Kagehisa?” Rin gasped. Manji twitched a shoulder back as if to shush her, and she slapped a palm over her mouth. “Hey, pros like you know all about that guy.”

“The Itto-ryu? We ain’t looking to get bisected, buddy.”

“Oh, now I’m easy pickings.” Manji snorted. “Fine, then I don’t have to share info.”

“Anotsu? What the hell would you – ”

“Where he slept. Who he’s with, how he’s disguised, and what shape he’s in.” Manji shifted his seat.

“You’re shittin’ us.”

“Try me.”

The spearman leaned forward in his saddle. “Say there, bitty gal. You see Anotsu Kagehisa-san too, or has One-Eye been drinkin’ and swinging at ghosts all night?”

Rin stared at Manji in horror when he glanced at her with a prompting air. “What? Why... I can’t tell them – ”

His eye flicked up the road and back, keeping both men in his line of sight. “You promised to keep his secrets?”

“Um... not exactly, but he – Manji-san, he loaned us the horse, and...” She put her hand back over her mouth.

“Wouldn’t want you to break your solemn word of honor or anything.” Manji raised a brow. “Not just ‘cause someone asked you a simple question, like yes or no.”

“Yes or no, he says? That’s a woman yer talkin’ to, not a pair of dice.” The hunters chuckled. Rin flushed and hid her face, and the southerner put an inquiring leer into his words. “Ridin’ Anotsu’s horse? This is soundin’ a wee bit complicated, mate. What’s the tale on the pair of yeh, anyhow? Thought I heard yer little sister got killed.”

Manji’s right arm stiffened. “Take it or leave it, you clowns.”

“Yeah? Why didn’t you take him yourself, outlaw?”

Manji pointed ahead with a sharp gesture. “Because right now, it’s the bitch I want. And I don’t need anybody tagging along when I find her. You turn around and go back the way you came, pro. This road is mine.”

“Well, I guess you ain’t just haulin’ that story outta yer ass... but a bird in the hand, y’know.” Both men nodded; the spearman reached back and yanked the sheath from his point. “By the way, ya can poke as many holes in him as ya like. I hear he won’t mind it too much.”

“Gotcha, mate.”

Manji shrugged off Rin’s grasp when she clutched him in panic. “Outta my way.” She slid from the horse, stumbled when she hit the ground and scrambled for the side of the road. Manji looped the reins halfway around his neck and laid his left hand on the hilt of his katana.

The spearman hauled out his weapon, tucked the shaft into the crook of his elbow and spurred his mount. Rin found a pine and hugged the trunk, crouching in the roots. Manji seized the reins in his teeth, yanked his head to the side and managed to pivot his horse. The long-bladed spear aimed straight for Manji’s chest. He caught the point in the fork of the shido lashed to his right hand and deflected it up and over his shoulder. At the same moment, Manji’s katana tore a high arc over his horse’s head and plunged downwards.

The wheeling horses blocked Rin’s view, but Manji apparently missed his left-handed stroke. The spearman pulled at his weapon and freed it from the shido’s lock, then slashed it sideways. Manji ducked against the horse’s neck to avoid it; the spear whizzed over his head and clipped a tuft from the horse’s mane.

The frightened animal side-skipped and turned; Manji brought his katana up again and reared back in the saddle, but he was out of position and overextended on his hasty attack. The spearman swung and stopped him, steel to steel; the sword flew from Manji’s hand. The spear head launched at him. Manji twisted and arched his spine; at the apex of the thrust, the point emerged behind his back.

For an awful moment, Rin was sure he had taken the spear square through the ribcage. She bruised her fingers gripping the pine’s rough bark.

Then Manji stood up in his stirrups, and she realized he wasn’t hurt. He’d let the spear slide under his arm and trapped it against his side. His fist clamped down on the shaft, he yanked the spearman sprawling halfway from the saddle. His right shoulder punched forward. The man screamed and jerked his body, then slithered limp from the horse and hit the ground head first.

Manji’s right arm yanked downwards to follow his opponent’s fall, nearly pulling him from his own horse. Leaning far over, he had to grab the horse’s mane for stability. He heaved and grunted, trying to work the stuck shido’s point out of the spearman’s breastbone.

A hard, thrumming twang. Manji yelled; he sounded both pained and affronted, and took his own header from the saddle.

He landed on the spearman’s body, hung up in the reins and still struggling with the blade lashed to his arm. With a couple of hard kicks to the corpse’s face and chest, he yanked it free. The southerner worked a lever on his strange short bow and nocked another bolt, but the two agitated and riderless horses intervened. Manji was dragged a short distance before he could work the reins from under his arm. He rolled to avoid the trampling hooves, got up on one leg with the shido as an aid and staggered to the pine where Rin crouched.

The gnarled tree wasn’t much shelter, especially not for someone Manji’s size. He dropped prone behind Rin, panting, and crawled into a small hollow in the sandy soil. “Oh! Are you wounded?”

He gritted his teeth at her. “Arrow. Pull it out, goddammit.” She leaned away from the tree trunk and gingerly ran her hand across Manji’s shoulders and sides, searching for the shaft. A dark sweat stain spread down his spine and under his arms, but she couldn’t see blood on his clothing. “Not – there. Farther... down.” He jerked his chin and craned over his shoulder. Rin glanced at the small of his back and touched his belt knot. “Keep going!”

The ends of the bloody fletches hit the side of her hand. They protruded a little way through a hole in the cloth over the fleshy part of Manji’s left buttock; the short bolt had buried nearly all of its length in his backside. Rin couldn’t get a very good grip on the stub, so she tried to work it farther out by rocking it side to side. “Fuckfuckfuckit! Ouch!”

“I’m s-sorry, Manji-san – it’s gone really deep...” Rin wiped slippery blood from her fingers and prepared to pull again.

“Freakin’ crossbow. Maybe I’m lucky it didn’t poke all the way through to – YEOWW!” His face glistened with sweat. The southerner sidled down the road with his loaded bow, his horse apparently unwilling to approach the dead body in the middle of the way. He became an outline in the mist again. The spearman’s mount and Anotsu’s horse untangled themselves; both took off up the road with empty saddles. “Shit. There goes our transportation.”

Rin found a coil of fishing line in her bag and got a secure knot tied under the fletches. She looped the line over a low branch, held her breath and threw her weight into the pull. Manji balled his fists and wedged his forehead against the ground, his toes digging into the sand. When Manji’s gasps turned raw with agony and his whole body quivered, Rin desisted. She dabbed sweat and tears from her own eyes with the end of her sleeve. “It must be stuck in the bone... uh, I guess we could try cutting it out somehow?”

“Man, that sounds like fun.” The startling thrum of the crossbow sounded again and the bolt tore a swatch of bark from the pine just above Rin’s head. “Crap!” Rin retreated behind the trunk and Manji groped for a dagger. He heaved up on one knee, his limbs still trembling a little, and scanned for his target. Just as his arm drew back, the crossbow twanged.

The dagger fell and Manji hit the dirt again, hugging his arm to his body. He curled around it, his chest heaving in short constrained grunts. When he opened his mouth for a deeper gulp of air and relaxed his arm, Rin saw a bolt protruding almost all the way through the base of his thumb and out the back of his hand. She hissed in distress. Manji gripped the shaft in his teeth and pulled it the rest of the way through. After a few moments he picked up the bolt and showed her the eight-barbed head with a sardonic smile. “Reloads fast, don’t he?”

Rin made a face at the hideous thing; how were they ever going to extract that arrow? “The point’s drugged, too.” Manji flung the bloody bolt aside. “My whole side is buzzing like a wasp sting. That’ll pass, but you don’t want to get even nicked by one of these. You’d fold up in a little heap and not twitch for hours.”

“Wh-what should we do?”

“I can’t move my leg with this thing planted in my ass. Not yet, anyhow. You’re the one who’s going to have to do something.” Manji rolled halfway over to lie on his side and stabbed the straight blade of the hooked knife into the sand by her knee. “Cut that string off me.”

Rin tied the fishing line around the knife’s handle as he directed her, then left him and her bag and sword and crawled up the slope on her face. There was cover if she kept down in the undergrowth and beneath the lower branches of the scattered pines, but she was glad of the lingering mist. When she had worked her way a little distance back down the road from Manji’s position, Rin stood up, threw the tethered knife high into one of the larger pines and backed up the slope, paying out the line. She crouched by another tree and yanked the line in an irregular rhythm to shake the branches, as if someone were climbing. All Manji needed was a moment without that crossbow trained on him...

Rin glimpsed the horse and rider still sidling along the road. The mist was rapidly thinning and lifting from the ground; the hunter would be able to tell soon that no one was in the tree and that Manji hadn’t moved. The shaft of the hunter’s crossbow changed angle; he pointed it at the tree she was shaking, but didn’t fire. Then he switched his aim again, tracing a line downwards, and bent low to peer through the trees. Rin froze; he had spotted her red furisode. The hunter paused with his bolt targeted straight at her.

Something streaked through the air from up the road. Rin heard a scream: not a man’s. The horse reared and flung its head into a spraying fountain of blood, crying out in a shrill whinny. The hunter swung around and pressed his trigger, but had to leap from the saddle when the horse’s front legs buckled. His bolt ripped into the trees.

Manji lunged into the road, his right arm and shido braced around his extended folding spear like a crutch. His left arm whipped out as he hurled another blade. The southerner’s crossbow skidded away. He attempted to pull Manji’s dagger from his upper arm, hissing in pain, then gave it up and clumsily drew a short sword. Cursing, he charged at the still-crippled Manji. The horse moaned and quivered in its dying throes.

Manji switched his spear to his left hand, took a long swinging stride with the shaft as a pivot and slammed a foot into the oncoming man’s abdomen. The southerner sprawled on his back. Manji lost his balance and went down with him; the struggle kicked up a cloud of sand and dust.

Rin bit her fingernails through a few moments of uncertainty, then Manji wrestled free and rose to his knees. The southerner lay flat, breathing hard with the shido thrust through his upper chest. Manji used the edge of his broad spear point to free his bandaged arm from the lashings and stood up.

“Sorry about that.”

“Sorry?” The wounded man looked bemused. “Fer what?”

“Didn’t mean to kill him.” He leaned painfully on the spear and cast a look at Rin when she slid down the slope and into the road. “My mistake.”

“Aw, that’s decent of yeh – he were a good bloke, my mate there.”

“What are you babbling about, asshole? Your damn friend? My horse ran off, his horse ran off, and then I had to go and cut the throat of the only one left! Smart move.” Manji braced his stance and raised the spear; Rin hid her eyes before he brought it down again.

She huddled by the side of the road after retrieving her bag, trying to avoid taking another look at the hunters’ bloody corpses, and especially at the dead horse. The animal lay with its eyes open and its tongue lolling into a dark pool, its long mane clotted with blood. A bold pair of carrion crows loitered nearby, calling in raucous voices to others who sat attentive in the trees. Manji propped himself on the horse’s broad hip, favoring his left side. “Oh, God, the poor thing... wh-why did you have to kill it?”

“Sheesh, kid, I said I missed my aim.” Manji rummaged the bounty hunter’s saddle bags and tossed a few items to the ground.

“It... it was in pain. It didn’t have any idea what was happening – just that it hurt...” Her eyes filmed with tears.

Manji bent over a little farther to retrieve the other saddle bag and winced, clapping a hand to his backside. “Next time I’ll make sure I’m the only one who gets nailed.”

“Why don’t we just turn around and go home? Before something worse happens?” Rin sniffled and wiped her nose.

“Yeah... everything’s hunky-dory back at the ol’ shack.” Manji didn’t look at her. “We’ll put all this shit behind us and pick up where we left off on weapons training.” He hurled a bundle of dirty clothes all the way across the road.

“Um...”

“Dammit, don’t these assholes eat?” He dug out and inspected a paper packet, then offered it with a grunt.

“Their food? While they’re lying there d-d-dead?”

Manji rolled his eye and dropped the packet on the dead horse’s belly. “Suit yourself.” He munched on dried rice and reached for another handful. His gaze fell on the crossbow; he hooked it with his spear, pulled it closer and methodically stabbed at it like a cook slicing a fish. When he had reduced the bow to a pile of splinters and bent and broken mechanisms, he looked up. “Let’s get on with it.”

“On with it? How?”

Manji struggled to stand. “Take a crazy guess.”

“But you can’t walk!”

“No problem.” He moved up the road with a heavy, lopsided gait. “Sitting a saddle right now wouldn’t be so freakin’ comfy anyhow...”

“Please, let’s find a place where we can take care of that arrow and you can finish healing your arm, and get some sleep!” Rin rose and extended her arms to Manji. “Even if we don’t want to go back to... it’s not like we have a sign from the gods! We don’t have to do this.”

“Yes. We do.”

“Oh, Manji! I know you’re really angry with them – but you can’t catch them now, not without a horse, and even though I guess it’s an honor thing for a man, especially when she threatened to, uhh... but she didn’t end up doing that to you, not exactly, and – ”

“What the hell difference does that make?”

“Please! I’m asking – I’m begging!”

He looked at her from a distance. “Quit, hah? I guess you might recollect how that always seems to pan out.” Rin bit her lips and dropped her head. “I got no other plans today, anyhow.” Manji sneered to himself and turned away.

Rin dragged after her bodyguard, blotting his footprints with her own. When they’d ridden through a sleeping village during the night she had scavenged a pair of old straw sandals to wear, but her feet still ached. She couldn’t understand this grim, dogged vengefulness. It didn’t seem like Manji to hunt an enemy so far. At least, he wouldn’t have tracked someone like an Itto-ryu fighter while still suffering from such wounds, not even Anotsu himself. Even when Manji repeatedly urged Rin not to give up her quest, he also counseled patience and a practical approach. He wasn’t the kind to take personal offense at an adversary, especially not when his body could heal nearly any insult. What made him so eager to punish this one?

This woman. Rin didn’t want to think too far along those lines. But what else could he do, really?

Drop the chase now, and another adversary still waited for them. Like a hunter watching for an ambush, sooner or later to close the trap. In any unguarded moment, any almost-innocent remark or meeting of the eyes. He couldn’t bribe it into retreat or throw it off the trail, because it was part of him. Cut deep or wait for it to work itself through and scar over: only pain awaited. No wonder Manji would rather put off the confrontation as long as possible. She wasn’t in any state to deal with it herself, to be honest.

Rin raised her eyes and watched Manji’s back while he took his awkward gait in the lead. Anotsu’s borrowed kosode was tailored a little too narrow for him, and the close-woven hemp pulled tight across the muscles of his shoulders. Plain dark indigo, giving his well-known body a different surface. “Manji...”

“Hnn?”

“Err... nothing.”

He slanted a brow at her, then gestured at the trampled road. “Looks like the horses might’ve finally slowed down about here.”

“They’re a long way away by now, I guess.” She hoped for any neutral topic, just so he would keep speaking to her.

“If they know what’s good for ‘em.” Manji stepped over a fresh deposit of green droppings. “Spooky goddamn nags...”

“You don’t much like horses, do you?”

“Eh. They’ve got their uses.”

“But tell me why?” Rin gave him a tentative smile, longing for a hint of answering warmth. “I don’t know – I like to hear you complain about that sort of thing...”

“Hnnh...” Manji gave a hard, contemptuous sniff. “I swear, they start plotting their tricks the moment you plant your ass in the saddle. Can’t let your guard down for a frickin’ heartbeat. Or you’ll end up with a colossal whack in the nuts right when you thought you had it all figured out.” He limped up a hill ahead of her.

Rin flushed, but swallowed the ache in her breast. Manji plodded in silence for some time, then halted at the crest of another hill. She saw his head snap up and his shoulders straighten in surprise, but he seemed gratified too. “Well – screw me.”

“What is it?” Rin climbed up beside him and peered down the road into a muddy lowland. At first she saw nothing out of the way, but she followed Manji’s pointing finger up the valley. “Oh!” Reins dangling, the runaways drank side by side from a stream. “Gosh... it could almost be a sign...”

Manji grinned with all his teeth showing.

–

“You never told me why we went this way. Instead of what Anotsu suggested...?”

Manji twitched the lead rope that tethered her mount to his and stepped up the pace downhill. The bounty hunter’s big horse moved with a long easy stride under his direction, towing along Anotsu’s horse with Rin clinging to its back. She held the saddle bow and made no attempt to guide the animal, letting Manji determine their route and speed. “Anotsu don’t know everything.”

“Well, of course not, but...”

“You recollect the money that bitch claimed she had? Saved it up from spreading her legs?” Manji seemed much more willing to talk now that they had separate mounts and were moving quickly, though he sounded less cheerful than simply determined. Rin creased her brow, and Manji glanced briefly over his shoulder. “Fifteen ryo in gold.”

That gold. Gold that O-Hama had offered to the bandits if they would assault Rin where her yojimbo had to watch. Rin’s face flashed hot. If Manji had only said it straight out, she might have felt a little less shame at the memory. Nothing but an unfulfilled threat, but somehow a taint lingered around her. Body and spirit smirched by such a close brush with a woman's worst possible dishonor, though she remained untouched... sort of. She remembered Manji’s queer look when she had admitted stripping to distract the bandit’s boy and take back her sword. Rin hugged a forearm over her breasts and hunched her shoulders.

“See, I figure she’s too sharp to leave that much cash behind. No way she wouldn’t tell her boy-toy they had to go pick it up before they blew the han.” Rin tightened her grip on the saddle, growing queasy from the rapid trot. “She’d stashed it a few hours’ journey from that clearing, she said, and you might also recollect that she had it with her when the little creep grabbed her from her owner.”

“That gossipy merchant? Didn’t he say so?”

“Bingo.” Manji raised himself a little in his saddle and re-adjusted the bloodstained pad of old clothes he sat on. “Which means she hid it somewhere along their route before they got to the same damn town we did. Good reason not to carry it with them, if they were planning to cut deals with scumbags like those. They’d have got their throats cut instead.”

“Okay, I guess that makes sense... but then they were going to take you back to Edo afterwards?”

“Yeah, I guess the little twerp actually meant to turn me in... maybe in a barrel, if he’d finished hacking me up like his lady wanted.” Manji’s quick meal off the hunter’s supplies seemed to have done his body some good; his right arm had full play now and he could use his hand to help control the reins, though his grip was still too weak to allow him to wield a weapon. “So they had to figure they were going to pass that way again soon, but she hadn’t picked up the money on the journey out that morning. That narrows it way down.”

“Oh, my goodness – that’s right!” Rin put a hand to her stomach. So Manji hadn’t let his thoughts fall into a muddle like hers, or dwelt all this time on irrelevancies. Even through the pain he still suffered, he’d kept his mind in focus and trained on their real goal. “You f-figured out where it was?”

“I don’t need to know where it was, though I’d wager it was a temple. All I need to know is that they had to strike back east a ways before they could head northwest to the border.” Manji pointed to his right, then ahead. “So I draw the third side of the triangle north, and then follow the riverbank. Naturally most of the best fords have at least a few teahouses nearby, if not a whole village. The river’s gone down some. Even so, it’s still running high enough that they’ll be skulking the banks for a good while before they find a spot to cross unobserved. Fifty-fifty at least, we’ll get there first.” His air of cool analysis gave way. “Just wait... till I observe ‘em.”

Rin gave him a smile tinged both with anticipation and a touch of fear.

They left the road for the forest as the sun rose higher. The sky remained hazy, filtering the sunlight as if through a thin cloth, but Rin could see no individual clouds. The forest was sandy-floored and a little sparse, dotted with more scrawny pines in between thicker clumps of maples and chestnuts that still retained their turning leaves. The air felt quiet yet oddly itchy, with autumn cicadas droning and the smells of smoke and pine pitch saturating the faint breeze. This far from Edo the villages were scarce, and the mushroom-gatherers and charcoal-burners gave Manji and Rin wary looks as they rode by. The river glinted through the trees a bowshot’s distance to the left and a little below them. Every so often they had to skirt around stream heads recently flooded and still deep in muck and debris.

“Shh.” Manji turned in the saddle and held up a hand. Rin’s horse followed his towards the edge of a small forested bluff; Manji took in an arm’s length of the lead rope and leaned closer to her. A horse was moving along the riverbank below. Someone spoke in a high-pitched voice, just discernible over the sound of water. Another voice replied, and Rin suppressed a gasp. Manji twitched his mouth. “Was I right or was I right?” She nodded with fingers over her lips. “Stay here. I’ll be back.” Manji untied the rope and handed her the end.

“Stay? Why?”

He threw her a sideways glance. “Thought you were feeling squeamish today.”

Rin pulled in her lips and felt her nostrils flare. “...No.”

Manji tied the lead rope to his saddle again and urged his horse. Rin’s horse trotted obediently behind. Manji shaded his vision with one hand as they approached the edge of the bluff. The sun was at their backs, still hovering midway in the eastern sky short of noon, but the contrast of open sky with forest shade was enough to make them blink. Rin shaded her eyes as well and followed Manji’s gaze. Below, she saw two people mounted on one horse, apparently testing the depth at the river’s brink. The rider in the saddle, not tall and oddly square in outline, pointed over the water. Sitting sidesaddle behind him, an even smaller figure in loose men’s clothing.

At the closer bank the water looked quiet and dark past a shallow shelving. A stretch of rapids reached from midstream to the opposite shore, the river running fast over cobbles. Rin took it all in at a glance and stared only at the riders, her heart beating like a war drum. Sunlight danced on the flashing ripples with incongruous gaiety.

Below Manji’s horse’s front hooves, the loose sandy slope of the bluff descended by three times a man’s height. Clumps of rushes grew on the soggy and ponded flats between the bluff and the river, straggled with water weed. Distinct lines of flood deposit between the clumps marked the water’s gradual retreat. Rin smelled damp earth and rotting vegetation steaming in the sun.

“Well, it ain’t exactly Ichi-no-Tani,” muttered Manji. “But I’m gonna head straight down, so hang on.”

Manji began to pull out a shido with his left hand, then seemed to reconsider. He replaced the weapon and drew his katana instead. That was his longest blade, and the one he kept in best polish. The hazy sun struck the flat at an angle and reflected into Rin’s eyes, tracing blurring spots across her vision. Manji slapped the reins on his horse’s neck and spurred its sides with his heels. The big horse willingly started down, but Rin’s horse pulled at the lead rope and locked its legs. Without looking behind him, Manji spun the sword and slashed the rope. His mount gave a great bound and charged down the slope towards the river.

Rin tried to urge her horse to follow, but it shied and backed away from the edge. Obviously it knew perfectly well that she had no idea how to control it. She lost sight of Manji and bounced up and down the saddle with frustration. She was going to miss everything!

Out by the river, a woman screamed. Just once. Gibbering and whimpering: a boy’s pathetic cries rose and continued. Ryonosuke sounded nearly unhinged with terror. Nothing else over the water’s noise except for the muffled smack of galloping hooves.

Rin slid from her recalcitrant horse, yanked it over to a tree to tether it and ran out to the edge of the bluff again. A big splash in the shallows beyond the flats– Ryonosuke had fallen off the horse and taken O-Hama with him. They floundered in the river, making smaller splashes. Manji’s mount tore into the water, flinging high brownish waves to each side. O-Hama got up first, her long loose hair streaming wet, and tried to catch Ryonosuke’s horse. Manji headed straight for her, his katana spiraling high.

Was he just going to behead her on the run? Rin gasped – he’d said nothing about what happened after they caught the fugitives. Instant death the only penalty he had ever considered? O-Hama let go of the horse’s bridle and darted around the animal’s body to avoid Manji’s charge. She struggled upstream, the muddy river bottom and her clinging wet clothes hampering her. Although Manji’s weapon couldn’t have touched her yet, she went down again, perhaps tripped or bumped by the horse. The katana flashed; Ryonosuke’s horse reared with a loud neigh and plunged into the deep water. It swam for midstream taking the musket and long tachi with it, both sheathed behind its saddle.

Manji turned his mount towards O-Hama. Before he completed the move, Ryonosuke heaved partway out of the water, coughing and spluttering. He still had on his old-fashioned silk-laced armor; with its cords soaked, it must have weighed nearly as much as the wearer. He half-swam to O-Hama’s side on all fours and flung out his arms in a meager shield. Manji laughed out loud, clearly audible through the river's low roar.

Rin scurried back to her own horse to retrieve her sword. She worked her way backwards down the crumbling bluff and looked for the combatants again. Could you describe a hunter taking his prey as a combat?

O-Hama thrashed her way to dry land while Ryonosuke headed off Manji’s horse. She paused with her back to Rin and drew a small dagger from her sash. Manji dismounted, left his horse standing in the river and splashed towards Ryonosuke in the calf-deep water, sword held low. O-Hama’s shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. She braced the dagger against her chest and ran at Manji from behind.

Rin shouted in warning. Swinging her sword, she galloped through the rushes. Manji looked around and brought up the katana’s point at O-Hama. At the same moment, Ryonosuke somehow mastered the burdened armor he wore and heaved all the way to his feet. Again he flung himself between Manji and his lover. Probably mostly by accident, he grazed Manji’s sword with his chest and pushed it aside. It wasn’t likely that he’d been hurt, not while wearing full armor, but he yelped and backed up towards O-Hama, yanking out his short wakizashi.

Manji stalked limping towards both of them while Rin ran across the flats from the opposite direction, jumping puddles and dodging stands of rushes. She would reach their quarry a little after he did, and by then, it might all be over. Ryonosuke screamed and struck out at Manji; Rin could barely follow the swift upward flick of Manji’s sword, but the wakizashi flew over Ryonosuke’s head. It arced towards Rin and landed in a puddle, point first and quivering. Ryonosuke turned and grabbed O-Hama in both his arms, either to shield her again or to prevent her from attacking Manji directly. Rin was very close to them now, too close to see the endpoint of Manji’s lunge. A dull, grating impact of steel cleaving flesh and bone; her bodyguard pulled out his backswing with his blade flinging a red streak into the sunlight. Ryonosuke screamed again, and the young couple collapsed almost at Rin’s feet.

For a moment she thought that Manji had run them both through as they stood embraced. A fitting end to this?

Rin skidded to a halt, holding her sword out in front of her in balked disappointment. Nothing for her to do? At least she had wanted to tell them off! Show them what it was like to be in someone else’s power, to be hunted and attacked and captive and maybe a little bit abused – she wasn’t sure what would have come next. At least they had suffered a good shock when Manji so unexpectedly attacked. What a nightmare vision her yojimbo must have looked to the guilty fugitives: mounted and dark-clad with the sun at his back, an immortal avenger in unfailing pursuit!

Then she realized that both of the lovers were still breathing. Blood spurted and stained the damp earth. Trying to single out its source, Rin spotted a foot in tabi and a sandal. It was still attached to a length of shin, but it lay at a peculiar angle and too far away. Rin stared at the leg. Slim, small footed – but a man’s, not a woman’s. Had Manji missed his aim again?

O-Hama struggled out from under Ryonosuke, who lay retching and gray-faced. She still had her dagger in hand, and tried to lunge at Manji from her knees. He held his weapon out to the side and kicked her in the jaw. She fell into the mud and dropped her dagger. Manji hooked it with the point of his katana and flung it away.

O-Hama clutched her throat and rolled over, her eyes staring wide and filled with tears of pain. Manji stood over her, Ryonosuke’s blood staining her wet clothes, and tapped her under the chin with the flat of his blade.

Rin looked into Manji’s face while he looked into O-Hama’s. His expression was almost neutral, but a sickening association rose to distort her vision, like steam wavering from dark earth. The assassin Shira, mutilating a prostitute on the road outside Naito Shinjuku. The memory was almost too awful to call up; Rin had lived through even worse sights, but only just. The woman’s foot slashed off, her hands pinned with a knife, her breast sawed deep – and Shira had meant to keep going. Rin had realized in magnifying horror that he had indulged this hideous taste many times before. His greatest pleasures lay in someone else’s pain. Manji had stopped him that time – but what did Manji mean to do now?

‘I know what most kenshi would have done to a girl like you...’

Even farther into the past, as Manji’s expression hardened. A young outlaw with a cruel and desperate look, a murderer who hesitated at nothing. Who wore a web of scars that flaunted his ferocity, a garment he would never cast off as long as he lived. Frozen in time and in aspect, detached from humanity itself. Would anyone ever believe that he could long to redeem so many deaths? Why should they?

Manji pulled a slow, triumphant grin that could have been prelude to almost anything. “Thought you’d shake me, bitch?” His captive met his gaze, lying flat with her breast heaving. “Heh, heh. Bet you didn’t realize you’d as good as drawn me a map.”

“Killer... of a hundred.” O-Hama stared at him, looming over her like a temple carving depicting the horrors of damnation. Her voice broke. “Demon... in a m-man’s shape...”

“Works for me.” He stepped back a pace and looked up. “Okay, Rin. Got her for ya.”

“Eh?”

Manji gave O-Hama a sour glance, whirled his katana to reverse the point and sheathed the sword on his left hip. “I wish every crazy whore could use a blade like that other crazy whore of my acquaintance, because then we might be able to keep this nice and simple. No such luck.”

“Manji-san...?”

“Bandits, hunters, little twerps who think they’re samurai; big deal.” He vented a disgusted sigh and kicked Ryonosuke’s severed leg out of his way. “What am I going to do with a damn broad? Don’t think it’d be a real hot idea to try to collect on the reward!” Ryonosuke moaned; O-Hama slowly sat up and looked at him, then at Manji. “G’wan, slut, fix up your boyfriend if you want. Makes no difference to me.” Her eyes dilated.

“B-b-but I thought you wanted revenge on her! Because she tortured you! Cut out your tongue!”

“Revenge?” Manji looked at his bandaged arm. “I had that coming.”

“You had it... coming?”

“Weren’t you paying attention? Who did I leave behind that tavern three years ago?”

“Uh... well, yes...”

“That’s family business. Family duty. It don’t come any more serious than a father and an elder brother. So even if she’d sliced off my parts and made me swallow ‘em raw...” Manji gave Rin a dark smirk and flicked a thumb along the long hilt of his sword. “Well, shit. Could have done me a sort of favor, hey?”

Rin bent over with a hand to her mouth, the other clutching her roiling stomach. O-Hama finished tying a sash around the stump of Ryonosuke’s severed leg. She laid a slender hand on his forehead and smoothed the hair back from his temples while he shivered and moaned. His topknot had come undone; with his hair loose across her lap, he looked very young even though his pate was fully shaved. Probably he’d had his boyhood forelock cut only a year or so ago.

“Shee-it. Thought you knew better than that. I did the crime and I said I’d take my punishment. As long as she was the one to dish it out, I didn’t have any reason to call it unfair.” He grinned at Ryonosuke and held up his right hand again. “Quit crying, you little shit-drip. I took your leg a hell of a lot quicker than I should have... but I’m kinda soft-hearted that way.”

Rin struggled for breath. “Sh-she planned the whole attack! You suffered so m-much – and you don’t hold it against her? I don’t believe it!”

“Come on, it’s the principle of the thing. She’s got her just rights, but using an innocent to punish the guilty party crossed the line. Even if she had still believed you were my little sister.” He gave a satiric chuckle. “The whole family pays for the crimes of one, but she ain’t the bakufu.”

Rin put a hand to her breast. “You kept going – you rode all night, you swore you’d never quit – and now you’ve been wounded again! Just to get revenge for me?”

“Hell, woman, it’s my job.” Manji curled his lip. “Yojimbo.”

She met his level gaze; he meant this just how it sounded. Duty, personal honor, a limb for a limb – but who would carry out this revenge he had pursued so hard? “I've done what I came for. Now, she’s got it coming to her.” Manji drew a thumb across the base of his throat.

“You aren’t telling me – that I ought to k-ki-kill – ” Rin pointed a shaking finger.

Manji’s face darkened further. “She told five dirty bastards to strip you in front of me, and it wasn’t any fault of hers that they didn’t go through with it.” He folded his arms; she recognized the hard glitter in his eye. “I seem to recall the bitch working her assets pretty hard to persuade Anotsu’s guys, and they almost fell for it. You’re samurai, and she knew damn well what that meant when she pulled her shit. You tell me – what the fuck do you think you should do?”

Sharp prickles weakened her thighs. If O-Hama had succeeded? Rin’s imagination could barely encompass the scene, or its aftermath. Indelible images of her mother’s violation supplied more genuine horror than she could have invented. Would she just have begged Manji to kill her when those men had finally thrown her ruined body aside? Would he have been glad to oblige?

“My lady...” Ryonosuke’s voice was barely audible, high and thin. “Give him... the money! The gold – beg for our – for your life!” O-Hama didn’t reply.

“C’mon, woman.” Manji flipped the hook-bladed knife into his hand. “There ain’t no point in thinkin’ it over too much.” He offered the knife to Rin; they looked at each other for a long moment. “It’s your deal all the way, but I’m still your bodyguard. I can back you up any way you like.” He nodded at Ryonosuke. “He won’t interfere.”

“No... no!” shrieked Ryonosuke in a whisper. He tried to embrace O-Hama around the waist. “How can you be so cruel – even you! To strip my lady of all remaining honor... you’re a monster! Even if she were still a courtesan – ”

“Haah?” Manji glared down at Ryonosuke, first in annoyance, then with a sudden rictus of fury. “You little fuckhole!” Rin jumped and squeaked; Ryonosuke shrank into his oversized armor. “Shut your motherfucking face! I wouldn’t ream that bitch’s reeking cunt with a – ” Manji glanced at Rin and stopped, his face pale. Then he flushed red and thrust the knife at her, handle foremost. Her fingers closed on it in automatic obedience. “Goddammit, get this shit over with!”

She wanted to run. Let them escape punishment, cross the border, get away completely free – as long as she escaped this herself. Manji would never let her go. He’d make her face her duty to cleanse her own honor, just as he had never let her falter in her duty to her parents. This was family duty, for the injury of one was the injury of all.

The knife’s plain wooden hilt was warm in her hand and still darkly stained with Manji’s own blood. So much blood on this weapon, and on so many others. She tried to control her ragged breathing and closed her eyes to gather her thoughts. She wasn’t up to this. She was going to cry and argue and fall apart, and then Manji would take back his weapon and do what he saw as his own duty. His job, which he could never quit.

“P-please, Manji-san – I... I just can’t – ”

“I would have done you a favor, killer of a hundred?” Rin looked at O-Hama in startlement when she spoke. She laid Ryonosuke’s head on a pad of rushes, smiling in an abstracted way. When she knelt and pushed her damp hair out of her face, the length of it nearly brushed the ground. “A strange favor, to cut out the root of a man’s desire... but I think I grasp your meaning.”

Manji remained silent for a moment. Then he cracked a grimace without turning his head. “Clever girl.”

“I wonder... if my fate might also be an ultimate favor.”

“Hah?”

“What great punishment can a woman inflict on another of her sex, if she is unwilling to kill? Or to use a man as proxy? I realize this girl would never order you to do what I threatened to have done to her. Even if she did give such an order, I know that you would never obey.” O-Hama’s great dark eyes veiled over; she smiled like a fox’s mask. “But she will realize her alternative... without a doubt. What else does a woman set beside life and honor?”

To her own horror, Rin could not keep the suggestion from taking form. Her gaze fell on Ryonosuke’s bandaged nose, then slowly, reluctantly, on O-Hama’s cherry-blossom cheeks. Such a beautiful girl...

“You see?” O-Hama sounded almost triumphant. “A woman knows a woman's instincts.” In consternation, Rin let the knife drop at her feet.

“What’s the matter, kid?” Manji’s brows twitched in a faint smile as he watched her. “Straight from the horse’s mouth... as you might say.”

Her own mouth fell open. He thought that would be justice? Could he be right?

“To steal my beauty with that blade... before time would have destroyed it anyway.” O-Hama dabbed light touches on the skin of her bruised jaw, fingertip by fingertip. “I already curse my mirror daily.... and my lord wears his wounds with courage. A strange, hard favor... perhaps.”

“What?” Rin boggled at her. Wouldn’t any woman dream of a face like that?

“You’ve seen the notices, I am sure. Didn’t you wonder why my former master is willing to pay so much to have me back?”

“I thought because you made him lots of money?”

O-Hama floated a light, contemptuous laugh. “Perhaps you are as innocent as you look...”

When Rin appealed to him in confusion, Manji abruptly bent to retrieve the knife and scratched the back of his neck. Ryonosuke hid his face and sobbed. “Ehrr... your master...? Oh.” Rin flushed; she could hardly claim such ignorance now. “Is that why you ran away?”

Ryonosuke struggled to raise himself on one elbow. “That vile panderer... he meant to part us forever! He forbade me to cross his threshold again! I could not go on living without the heavenly embraces of my lady...” Rin felt a sudden pang.

“Didn’t like you screwing with his property, hah?” Manji laughed harshly, then almost snarled. “But he sure didn’t mind making a packet off guys like me. You really must have pissed him all to shit, hatamoto!”

“My master is a foolish, jealous man.” O-Hama faintly wrinkled her nose, as if smelling something unpleasant. “He could not stomach it when my lord declared his love.”

“Jealous of a whore?” Manji sneered. “Come on – a guy who owned your contract could’ve nailed you any day of the week. Don’t fucking flatter yourself.”

“Don’t display your ignorance, outlaw!” O-Hama narrowed her eyes at Manji. He snickered at her vehemence, but she raised her voice. “From the moment he saw my face, this man could not conceal his lust for me. He nearly bankrupted himself to outdo all offers from the best establishments. He failed to put my maidenhead up for bid, though he could have named his price. He shamelessly took me long before my official apprenticeship ended, and made no secret of his transgressions. And so he threw away all prospect of fees and gifts that I would have received on the occasion of my mizuage, and deprived me of a great opportunity to gain fame and rise in the courtesan’s ranks. I could have been the toast of the Yoshiwara – but this besotted man ruined me! If his wife had allowed it, he would even have shut me up as his private concubine. He calls it love – he begs me to reward his worship with the smallest of tokens. I despise such flattery!” O-Hama hid her lips with her sleeve and breathed hard.

Manji had no immediate reply to this tirade. He didn’t look away, but he chewed his jaw and frowned.

O-Hama lowered her hand to her throat. “The good sense of my master’s honored wife is the only reason he can stay ahead of his creditors. She insisted that I take paying clients like the other girls and strictly limited his visits, for which I will always be grateful. I know she resented his attentions to me... but she never blamed me for her husband’s lack of wisdom.”

“Her kindness is without bounds, my lady! She brought us together... she urged me to speak my heart to you. I repaid her poorly by stealing you!”

“My lord, you cannot blame yourself for a desperate act. The fault lies entirely at another’s feet.” Both of them looked at Manji.

“Gimme a break!” He seemed taken aback, practically defensive. “How the hell is THAT my doing?”

O-Hama no longer betrayed any fear of her captor; she flung her bitterness at him like arrows. “You gave him a cruel wound he couldn’t conceal! You spitefully broke his sword! Everyone knew he had fought a duel for my honor – his father Tsukue-sama withdrew his allowance and reprimanded him for creating a scandal. My master was furious at such proof of my lord’s devotion. He seized the excuse and banned him from the house. We could not meet at all except by the good graces of my master’s honored wife. We were forced to speak through the screens under cover of night, weeping for each other like the rain that soaked us in its merciless torrents! And now for his love’s sake, my lord is an outlaw. Like you!”

“Aw, ya poor kids.” Manji spat on the ground. “Breaks my fucking heart.”

“Oh, why didn’t you let me die with you, my lady? When we still owned our fates?” Ryonosuke dissolved in sobs again. O-Hama looked away.

Manji snorted. “Love suicide? Now if there ever were two ideas that go together like maggots on a dead horse...”

“He asked her to carry out a shinju?” Rin gasped. “Oh, my goodness!”

“Heh – I bet he planned to drown himself in the well and poison the water. Like some pissy girl getting back at her slave-driving mother-in-law.” Manji guffawed. “Priceless! Couldn’t even go through with a coward’s death?”

“My lord is no – coward!” O-Hama paled. She seemed to struggle with herself, as if true dignity resided in silence now that she had poured out her heart. “I... I persuaded him that he should not give up all idea of revenge so quickly. There would be another opportunity...” She lowered her face, her shoulders heaving.

“You told him who Manji really was.” Rin bit her lips as her mind churned. What was she going to do now? Cry for someone who had done them so much harm? Destroy a woman whose right to a just revenge was as good as her own? How could she satisfy her grievances, and Manji’s too, without crossing the line? Even an enemy could show a captive honorable restraint... like Anotsu had.

“I told him only... that my foul-mouthed client was the killer of a hundred.” O-Hama showed her face, but closed her eyes. “I thought my lord might challenge him again immediately if he learned my whole story, and then...” O-Hama reached down and touched Ryonosuke’s hand. “He is so young...”

“So you waited your time, and you got your chance. Hope it was worth it, samurai’s daughter.” Manji tossed the hooked knife high and caught it again. “C’mon, Rin. Make yer call.”

A glimpse of clarity. The mud settling at last in such troubled waters? “All right,” said Rin. “I will.”

O-Hama knelt with her palms on her thighs, staring straight ahead. Rin took a deep breath. “You... you were samurai. Before you, uh, sold yourself.” O-Hama’s smooth brow tightened. “You told us your feminine accomplishments brought a good price – I guess you mean tea ceremony and playing the koto, and writing tanka in nice calligraphy, and stuff like that. But how about samurai accomplishments?” O-Hama didn’t reply, and Rin prompted her. “My father headed a sword school. Yours was an Edo officer. I learned how to use a sword. I bet you did too.”

Manji’s expression changed. “Now wait a second – ”

“Manji-san! You just said it was up to me.”

“Well... yeah, but – ”

“It’s MY honor we’re talking about, right? So I’m going to settle it the way it should be settled – between samurai.” Rin gestured at O-Hama. “Give her a weapon.”

Obviously he understood this not at all. “A... weapon?” He lowered the knife.

“I will not cut a helpless person’s throat. I will not do what she did to you, even if she deserves it, and I don’t think anyone deserves what you went through.”

He rolled his eye. “Don’t be so goddamn sure about that – ”

“Look, Manji! Maybe you didn’t know – you’d fainted already – but when she cut out your tongue, she fell apart crying. It was too horrible even for her.” O-Hama’s expression remained frozen. “Maybe yesterday, right when it was happening, I might have tried to do the same to her. I’m glad this isn’t then. She hasn’t got a weapon, so loan her one of yours. Please.”

Manji stared at her for so long she almost repeated the request. “...You think she’s gonna go for it, do you?”

“I can’t challenge her until we both have swords in hand.”

“Naked blades? You realize somebody could get hurt. Like, permanently.”

“Of course! Otherwise it wouldn’t mean anything!” Rin stopped at the ironic quirk of Manji’s lips. “Um... that is...” He dismissed it with a gesture, but gave a strange mocking look to O-Hama. “Okay, maybe that’s stupid! Maybe it’s samurai idiocy! But M-Manji-san... you made me fight once before. You said I had to learn to face a real blade before I could call myself a kenshi. That was only a little while ago – what could be so different now?”

Manji took his pipe from his sleeve and put it between his lips unlit, biting on the bamboo stem. Ryonosuke’s horse had made it across to the opposite bank of the river and stopped to nose the dry grass. The horse Manji had been riding stood in the shallow water by the near bank, drinking in deep gulps. It tossed its head and snorted water out of its nose. After some moments in silence, Manji took the pipe from his lips again and let the mouthpiece rest on his chin. “I got a bad feeling about this, Rin.” His voice sounded tense and clear, as if he shaped each word with care before it left his mouth. “It won’t end well.”

“I want to do my duty, Manji-san. What you’ve always told me I have to do, no matter about anything else. How it ends... or how it may hurt me... isn’t the point.” Manji looked back at her. “It hasn’t ever been the point, has it? I’ve made some pretty stupid decisions, but that’s the price you pay for making decisions at all. If I only thought about my own safety, I never would have left my family’s dojo. I never would have had the courage to look for you... or to risk asking for an outlaw’s help.” She lowered her gaze for a moment, then returned to him with an almost detached feeling of calm. Because she’d found the right path, or because she shared his presentiment and accepted it? “When you told me to prove that I meant to avenge my parents – really prove it... I would just have run away bawling... and left you to fish in peace.”

Manji’s body jolted slightly, as if from an internal blow. The immobile lid of his blind eye stayed half open while his other eye clenched shut. She had a sense of a sleepless sight in that blank orb, distinguishing only shadows in its eternal watch. How much pain such awareness must cost him...

“Manji?”

“Okay, okay... you got it.” Manji took a deep breath and searched under his clothing. Slowly he extracted a sheathed short sword. “Here, this one’s lightweight enough for a broad.” He gave the sword a careless toss; it landed in front of O-Hama, exactly perpendicular to her bent knees. O-Hama didn’t stir a hair. “What’s the matter, bitch? Smells of me?”

“Manji-san, please...”

Manji held up a hand and shut his mouth on his pipe.

Rin held up her own sword. “I... I challenge you, Hama-san. For threatening me – for hurting Manji-san. He might not say so himself, but you had no right to do that to... to MY yojimbo.” She glanced at Manji, whose gaze had returned to the far side of the river. Her hands were sweating, so she shifted her grip on the hilt and stiffened her voice. “I am Asano Rin no Takayoshi, heir to the Mutenichi-ryu! You’ve insulted me, my household and my family’s honor beyond bearing. Pick up that sword and face me!”

“I refuse.” O-Hama’s hands clenched on her thighs.

“...What?”

“A female of good family should not wield a sword in anger, except in the final defense of her household. It’s improper, unwomanly and disgraces her father’s name. I will not take up such a challenge.”

“You can’t refuse! If you don’t fight me, I’ll... uh...”

“What will you do, girl?” O-Hama’s pretty mouth stretched over her teeth. “You haven’t the stomach to exact a real revenge. Order your bodyguard to behead your prisoners and have done. I defy you, samurai’s daughter.”

“My lady! My beautiful darling! Beg her forgiveness – knock your forehead! Please – think of your – of our – ”

“My lord! Would you have me grovel before them?” O-Hama snapped her attention back to Rin. “There’s no shame for me in death. Why should I make such an exhibition?”

“Why? Because if you don’t, I’ll cut off your... your hair!” Rin stamped her foot.

O-Hama’s mouth opened; she barely stopped herself from protectively grasping at a lock. Ryonosuke let out a plaintive wail. “No! Oh, no!”

Rin brandished her sword. “Yeah, I’ll chop it all off right down to the scalp so you’re totally bald! That would be just a little bit humiliating for a girl as proud as you, wouldn’t it? I could cut off your clothes, too, and then make you walk along the road all naked with people watching, and – ” Manji was laughing with his teeth firmly clamped on his pipe stem, making a strangled sound. “How’s that for shame, samurai’s daughter?”

O-Hama made a gesture at Manji’s short sword before her, but stopped again. Her hand trembled in the air and her cheeks blotched pink.

“Oh yeah – I meant to tell you something! Manji-san cut your boyfriend’s nose for acting like a jerk. But he didn’t break his sword, or even duel him in the first place. That was ME!”

O-Hama’s eyes blazed. She swept up the sword and clapped it to her left side, gripping the scabbard just below the tsuba guard. “I accept your challenge!”

“An honor duel. With girls.” Manji spread his hands and reproached the heavens.

“And if I’m victorious?” O-Hama rose and drew in one motion. She whipped the blade over her head, then performed a fast, smooth short-sword kata. Head, torso, knee, throat. Rin’s eyes followed her, wide open. O-Hama thrust and cut from side to side in precise, showy flourishes. She spun on the ball of her foot and lowered the point to aim it at Manji. He pursed his lips, but showed no other sign of reaction. “What then, killer of a hundred? If I draw first blood? If she surrenders and begs for her life? Do my lord and I go free?”

She flicked her wrists and switched to a guard position, the bright blade laid across her body. “Or... do we continue this to the death?”

“You want promises? See if you can even lay a mark on her, bitch.” Manji hawked and spat on the ground once more. “I trained her, see, and she might’ve learned one or two of her lessons.” He looked at Rin narrow-eyed. Unsmiling now, though his nose twitched. He could not quite hide a deep simmer of emotion under the cool nonchalance of a sensei’s pride. Rin wondered how far he could bear to stand back from such a sharp test of her irregular education. Her own heart beat high, as if she already labored to block the strokes of a swiftly wielded sword. “But I can tell... I’m gonna have to let her give you all the proof you can take.”



Continued...