Blade Of The Immortal Fan Fiction ❯ Abstinence Education ❯ Part Forty-Three ( Chapter 43 )

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

Riding for a fall: or two, or three..

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. (Still applies!) Violence and dismemberment are legally required in any BotI fic. Disembowelments on occasion as well...

Glossary

bakufu: The shogun’s military government.
Edo banshu: The garrison of Edo Castle, charged with guarding the shogun.
figure ten: The original medieval version of hara-kiri called for two separate intersecting cuts to the torso that resemble the kanji for the number 10. This obviously tricky procedure had fallen out of style long before the Edo period, but was still occasionally used to make a particularly emphatic impression of the subject’s courage and determination.
Gempei wars, 1180 - 1185: Medieval struggle between two great military clans, the subject of many famous works of literature.
hairpins: Courtesans wore decorative hairpins in greater quantity than ordinary women ever would, and in much more ornate styles.
no: The hiragana character for the syllable ‘no’ is a round loop with a closed end.
shochu: Distilled liquor made from sweet potatoes or grain, usually more than twice as strong as sake.
suribachi: Grinding bowl used with a wooden pestle in preparing food.
tachi: Long cavalry sword.
teppo: Japanese matchlock musket.
tsuba: Guard at the base of a sword hilt, often highly decorated.
wakizashi: Short sword, the smaller of the dai-sho pair that samurai were entitled to wear.



Abstinence Education
by Madame Manga

Part Forty-Three




“Ahh, there’s the little fucker.” Manji parted a clump of rushes, leaned over and grasped the hilt of a short sword.

The weapon canted at a sad angle in the middle of a puddle; he pulled it out and shook the mud from the point. Rin looked over Manji’s shoulder and hugged herself tighter; she felt cold even in the full glare of the sun, and her yojimbo had not offered her his embrace nor even a word to warm her chilled spirits. One of the pair of horses whose reins she held whickered and blew next to her ear; Rin reached over and tentatively stroked its muzzle.

After wiping the sword dry with a handful of rushes, Manji squinted up and down the blade, tilting it to catch the light. “Hnn... good lines... decent polishing job. But damn, that’s some fancy-pants furniture – like a whore’s gold hairpins. Figures.” He twirled the sword around his forefinger, the ornate fittings and gilded tsuba glittering in the sun. “Guess it’ll do – I reckoned on changing out the hilt and guard anyhow.”

“That’s Ryonosuke’s wakizashi. You knocked it out of his hand...” Rin tried not to glance at the spot upriver where the young lovers lay in the blood of their double suicide. If Manji could turn to the mundane business of rounding up horses and preparing to leave this place without dwelling on the shock of witnessing those deaths, then so could she. Rin pressed her forehead against the other horse’s shoulder and patted its rough coat, then took a few deep breaths and straightened up.

“Fair trade.” Manji had already retrieved the sword’s scabbard from its former owner’s obi; he sheathed it and tucked the weapon into his clothing. “The little shit can keep the one he borrowed, ‘cause I don’t want it now.”

“Oh.” Apparently Manji took the taint of a seppuku seriously, though Rin had seen him appropriate blades from dead foes before. A token of respect for an enemy, or just a weapon-collector’s habit? “Wh-what are you going to name it?”

“I’ll hafta think that over.” He patted the front of his chest and took the reins back from her, then led the two horses to a clump of small trees near the water and tethered them. “Say, you got my old clothes with you?”

“Yes...” Following him as he returned to the area where he’d found the sword, Rin peeked into her shoulder bag; the stench of Manji’s blood-crusted black and white kosode made her wrinkle her nose. Everything she carried in that bag was going to reek of blood until she could air it out. “I guess I had better wash it... but it would take a while to dry.”

“You do that. I got a little more clean-up work before we leave.” Manji bent and picked up Ryonosuke’s severed foot as casually as if it had been a stick of wood.

“Uh... why do you need that?” Rin shielded her eyes from the raw meat and bone. She’d seen worse. So much worse... but she wondered if she could ever show indifference to the remnants of a human existence.

“Because I’m going to put the kid in the river, and all his parts ought to go with him.” He grimaced and looked down at himself as if anticipating a messy job. “Then I’m gonna... change my clothes.” Dangling the foot by the sandal cords, Manji headed back towards the spot where Ryonosuke and O-Hama lay.

Rin trailed reluctantly along, keeping behind him to avoid coming too close to the bodies but unwilling to stray far from her bodyguard’s vicinity. “...You’re going to put him in the river?”

“That’s what I said. Uh... head on upstream a ways to do your laundry.” Manji pointed with his chin. “You don’t need to hang out and watch.”

“Why is that?” Rin stopped some distance from the bodies when Manji set down the severed foot on the pile of discarded armor. He knelt by Ryonosuke’s headless body and rolled him on his side, exposing his left hand clamped on the hilt of Manji’s sword and the point still embedded in his belly.

Manji turned his head halfway. “He didn’t finish the job.” He indicated the sword. “So I’m going to do it for him.”

“Finish the...?” Rin put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, eww!”

Manji chuckled with dark humor. “And I ought to strip him stark, in case he’s fished out and identified from his fancy duds.” Rin blushed and took a hasty step backwards. “Well, hell... even the river’s better than getting your corpse put on display with a placard...”

Manji pried Ryonosuke’s fingers off the sword’s hilt, eased the stained blade from the body and laid it aside. Then he leaned over to scoop an arm under the torso, hoisted the body to his shoulder and stood up with a grunt. He glanced at Rin. “I need to take him a ways downriver so I don’t freak out the horses. This is gonna take a couple trips, considering how many bits he’s in. So don’t rush back – I’ll come get you.” Manji strode off with Ryonosuke’s limp arms dangling behind him and the truncated neck dripping blood.

Rin looked at O-Hama’s shorn scalp and her face still pillowed on her lover’s severed head. Serene features, happier in death than at any other time she could recall. Rin swallowed hard and headed upstream as instructed. Hiding behind the walls of Manji’s sarcastic stoicism never seemed to work for her anyway – she might have known better by now. Emotion dogged her heels, pursuing her almost faster than she could walk.

In a rocky, fast-running spot Rin weighted Manji’s kosode with stones to let the water flow through it, sat on the bank nearby while cleaning out her shoulder bag and wept for an infant ghost until her eyes burned. Never even to enter the world... nor encounter any of its random, uncaring cruelties.

Manji was going to open Ryonosuke’s body and set his spirit free, but he couldn’t release a woman’s spirit that way. Probably that didn’t concern him – after all, O-Hama was only a female, not a man or a warrior. And although she hadn’t fully accomplished her revenge, she’d still carried out terrible punishments on her adversary before her freely chosen death. Wouldn’t that let her rest? Manji would only shrug at the idea of a woman’s vengeful spirit in any case; an entire ghostly troop already followed him, with his own clan lord at its head.

He’d never give a single thought to the child lost with its mother, if a pregnant woman’s death disturbed him so little in the first place. Probably most people would have agreed with him; Rin was sure Manji would ridicule such an unaccountable grief, so she hoped she could hide its traces before he came back. But of every specter that might haunt her after the tumult and carnage of the last two days, the clearest picture was a face she’d never seen...

Then again, even her skeptical bodyguard felt he had to complete a ritual for the dead before he could leave this place. Rin raised her head; the sun seemed to warm her a little at last. So could she...

Walking up and down the river and wading in the shallow water, she selected flat stones and stacked a knee-high cairn on a raised part of the riverbank. Her underskirt was already torn, so she carefully ripped a length of red silk a few fingers wide and looped it around the top of the cairn, like a scarf to comfort a shivering child. The little ghosts who endlessly piled pebbles in the afterlife were always cold... and thirsty. Rin cradled water in her hands and let it drip over the cairn to give it a drink.

Then she washed her face and soothed her eyes and turned to her own clean-up tasks with fresh determination. Before Manji came to find her, leading the two horses, Rin had scrubbed, sunned and brushed down everything she owned.



“It’s shaping up to be a hot afternoon.” Manji stuffed Anotsu’s unspeakably filthy cast-off borrowed clothes in a soggy wad behind the big horse’s saddle and rooted through the bounty hunter’s saddlebags. He had put on his own kosode, wrinkled and damp as it was; though Rin had slapped and scrubbed it on the stones after soaking it, some brownish stains still blotched the right side. “I hope this guy was carrying something I can use to cover this blasted hole...”

Rin could see most of Manji’s upper back through the wide ragged opening that the bullet had torn in the symbol. She dropped her gaze to her hands and finished loading her shoulder bag with her aired-out possessions. “Er... what about Ryonosuke’s horse? If it wanders off carrying all their things and someone recognizes that tachi...”

“Naw, I stripped him and sank his tack in the river. Just like his master’s. They hadn’t brought along much more than women’s junk... but I bent that goddamn teppo into a no before I slung it in the water.” He laughed; Rin could easily visualize him taking out some of his anger on the valuable gun. “Man, I hate getting shot!”

Above the river, half a dozen carrion crows circled and croaked out hoarse calls. Rin made a face at the greedy timbre of their voices. “I understand about not leaving anything to identify Ryonosuke’s body, but... no one’s ever going to know what happened to them? Their... families?”

Manji shrugged without making a reply, and Rin bit her lips. Probably everyone would assume the fugitives had escaped to another han, and expect no news. So even in secret, there would be no prayers for the dead...

Manji retrieved a stoneware jug from the saddlebag, examined it with interest and set it on the ground, then shook out a coarse, patched vest. “Whew, this thing reeks.” He put on the vest with a grimace, then beckoned to Rin. “C’mon, let’s get you mounted up and move the hell out.”

Rin approached her bodyguard. “If you got Ryonosuke’s horse back, then why didn’t he follow the other horses up here with you?”

“Ahh... he took off.” Manji busied himself with adjusting the near stirrup on Anotsu’s horse. “No accountin’ for animals.”

“But what about his markings? He must have been pedigreed and really expensive, knowing...” Rin trailed off when Manji huffed in annoyance.

“I said don’t worry about it, so don’t freakin’ worry about it.” He checked the saddle cinch and nodded at her, then growled impatiently when she hesitated. “Climb on!”

“Manji-san...” Rin still felt somewhat shaky and tender-minded, as if her tears could renew at any minor excuse. She put her hand on the saddle near Manji’s. “I... um...”

“Hah? If you want a foot up, say so.”

Rin raised her gaze to him, hoping her eyes would speak for her. Couldn’t he tell she needed a little kindness right now? She didn’t mean to embarrass him again; all she longed for was a token of his comfort. An arm around the shoulders, a quiet word or a brotherly ruffle of the hair. Though he seemed so curt and standoffish, Rin searched Manji’s face for any turn of expression, the faintest softening that she could convince herself might be meant for her.

Apparently that was too much to ask. Without even a flicker of recognition, Manji leaned over and held the stirrup steady for her to mount. Rin swallowed her hurt and got on the back of Anotsu’s horse.

Before mounting his own horse, Manji secured the lead rope and picked up the stoneware jug he had found in the saddlebag. He cracked the wax seal on the stopper and put the jug to his nose. His brows went up and he flashed a startling grin, then tasted the contents. “Hey, hey... that’s some good shit!”

“It’s sake?” Rin gripped the mane of Anotsu’s horse when it turned to touch noses with the other; she still felt unstable on a horse by herself, especially since she had chosen to ride sidesaddle.

“Nope, shochu.” Manji tilted his head back and took a long, stiff pull, his throat bobbing. He squinted against the sun, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and let out a heated puff of breath. “Hahh! Just what the doctor ordered.”

Rin gave him an uncertain smile, not looking forward to watching him drink a whole jug of powerful liquor. About to take a second slug, Manji halfway met her eyes and paused. Quick dip of his gaze – probably the same memory that made her own face flush.

“Eh, I’ll save it. I might want it more later... and I’d rather not, ah... fall off the horse.” Manji coughed, stoppered the jug and replaced it in the saddlebag. “Puts some heart into a guy, though.” He tucked a few items around the jug for cushioning, stuck his foot in the stirrup and mounted.

“Where are we going? An inn?”

“Damn straight. I could sleep for a week.” Manji patted the bundle of gold coins in his belt. “No cash problem now, for sure – things are lookin’ up.”

Rin grimaced at him. “I can’t believe you just picked up that money...”

“What, like they needed it? Call it compensation for all my trouble.” Manji grunted and put his heels to his mount. Rin’s followed on the lead line.

He had an unassailable point, of course – if that money was anyone’s, Manji’s blood had earned it. “Is that why you put Ryonosuke’s body in the river, and all that? You didn’t come back for a long time.”

“No, I said I would. Didn’t seem like a day to go back on a promise.” He turned to skirt the base of the bluff. “Nobody’ll know her either, not with that haircut. Even if they surface after a few days, they’ll just look like the rest who drowned in the floods...”

“You put her in with him?” Rin’s eyes grew round; for some reason she had assumed he would leave O-Hama for the crows and the hot sun, despite all his other efforts to sweep away the evidence.

Manji didn’t answer for a few moments, then gave a half-smirk. “He’d have missed her more than he’d have missed his own head.”

“Oh.”

“He didn’t die so well, but I guess he gave it his best. She...” He paused.

“Sh-she?”

“If a woman was supposed to slice her belly instead of her throat, that whore would have pulled it off without quivering a finger. Hell, she’d have made it a grand old-style ‘figure ten’ like she was a general in the Gempei Wars, and then turned down the head chop so she could admire her insides until she keeled over.” Manji wrote the two crossing strokes of the numeral in the air and shook his head. “Kind of a pity...”

“A pity?”

“That she wasn’t born a man instead.” He twitched his shoulders and gave a deprecatory snort. “But I bet in the next life that bitch is gonna be a hard-ass drill instructor for a castle garrison... and her boy comes back as a fawning geisha. Or a yipping lapdog that snaps at people’s ankles until somebody boots it into the nearest canal.” Manji guffawed, then clucked to his horse and picked a way up the sandy bluff to the pine forest.

As they ascended the bluff and gained a wider view down the river, Rin turned and looked back. The wide flood ground where the duel had been fought spread out below, scarred with many footprints and two dark, human-sized stains a few steps apart. In one place, the pools of blood had followed the same rivulet mark from both sides, where they merged in a narrow channel before they sank into the earth.

For part of an hour Manji and Rin rode through the forest and directly away from the river. Mid-afternoon and high time for a meal, but neither of them could have mentioned food while still in that place of death. After falling into a narrow track and passing a woodcutter’s settlement too small to cater to travelers, they reached a larger road and a fork; Manji paused and looked hard at each possible direction as if to orient himself.

“Uh, sensei...”

“Hnn?”

“Where are we now? We came so far in the dark and I’m a little turned around...”

“I ain’t lost.” He pointed to the left with a scowl. “That way.”

“I didn’t say...”

“Right now’s not the time to stop and draw you a goddamn map of the whole Kanto Plain. Later.” Manji turned his mount into the road and took up a brisk trot. Rin’s horse matched it, neck and neck; the animals seemed to know they were headed for food and rest.

“Later? When we get to the inn, um...” Rin bit her lips; he’d almost certainly snap at her for bringing this up, but leaving the question to chance or impulse seemed far more hazardous. “What, err – what are we going to do?”

Manji said nothing for a long moment. “Wash up. Chow down. Hit the hay.” He cleared his throat. “Then do it all over again the next day.”

“You know what I mean.” She gave him a pleading look and raised her brows. He rubbed his nose and shrugged. “Ohh... please don’t be like this! Can’t you just talk about it?”

He clamped his lips together and stared straight ahead at the road. Rin closed her eyes and counted ten. “Fine, you won’t talk. So don’t get mad at me for saying things that we both know are true.” Manji didn’t reply, but took his horse ahead of hers to the limit of the lead rope. “Yesterday morning, before all this happened... you as good as told me that you wanted me to be your wife.”

She hadn’t expected quite so marked a lack of reaction; Rin stared at the uncommunicative back of Manji’s head until she realized he was going to say nothing at all. “Uh... so, I don’t know if that was an honor thing for you, or maybe mostly because of what I said about Anotsu, or – ”

“No, I didn’t.”

“What? You asked me – okay, not exactly to marry you.” She rolled her eyes. “But you claimed it wasn’t my decision any more, because we had already, err... you know, the thing we, um, did, two nights ago, and...”

“Don’t talk crap.”

“Manji-san...?”

He slowly shook his head. “I never said anything like that.”

“But... I remember... Manji, you really meant to take my, uh – and you said that was the next best thing to official, so – ”

“Aw, knock it off. Yer dreamin’.”

“Haah?” Rin’s mouth dropped wide open. “You – you HAVE to remember!”

“Have to?”

“Yes! B-because of... I – I thought about this so much, and I’ve decided – ”

“Yeah, whatever. Sounds like you think you got it all together in the bag, but I don’t give a shit if you do.” Manji rubbed the back of his neck. “Now shut up, willya? I’m getting pissed.”

Rin’s face burned; anger popped and simmered behind her eyes. Maybe he’d recall that knee to his groin a little better! She felt like giving him an even harder kick, but her horse stayed stubbornly a few strides behind his no matter how she slapped its sides. “Don’t tell me to shut up! You know what you said!”

He rolled his shoulders. “It was a joke, okay? Quit playing it over.”

“No, it was NOT a joke – you – ” She choked and tried to gulp down tears of fury. “You even told me – that you wouldn’t laugh!”

“Ha, ha.”

“You – you! I... I HATE you!”

“Aw, I’m cryin’.”

“Are you going to pretend you didn’t like keeping the pillow warm with me? For DAYS? Kissing – ”

Manji twisted in the saddle so quickly she barely saw him move. “Shut... up.” His face looked as gray as ashes. “I’m warning you.”

Rin’s heart thumped. She felt almost gratified that she had finally poked a hole in his pretenses, even though the result might have frightened her if her blood had been running a little cooler. “Or WHAT, damn you?”

He stared at her, then dropped the reins from his right hand and drew it back as if to threaten a smack to the face. “Don’t – fucking – tempt me.”

“OooOOH!” Goaded beyond words, Rin swung her heavy-loaded shoulder bag by the strap and let it fly.

Manji ducked the missile, but it grazed his horse’s ear; the animal reared. Off balance, Manji grabbed at his reins, lost his seat and slid down the horse’s rump. “Oh, shit – !” Rin burst out laughing at his shocked expression. He tumbled all the way backwards and hit the road in a puff of dust.

Rin’s horse shied and both animals came down running; she hugged her mount’s neck to keep from being thrown herself. Her horse jumped Manji’s sprawling body, caught a hoof and stumbled before continuing its run. Manji yelled and rolled in the dirt, clutching his leg.

“Oww! Fuck!” He awkwardly got up and tried to chase after Rin and the horses, limping badly and cursing. Her laughter acquired a hysterical edge as he rapidly receded into the distance. “Hey!” he yelled. “This ain’t funny! STOP!”

“Like... h-h-how?” Rin held on, panting. A couple of travelers coming the other way yelped and dove for the ditch as the runaways veered around a curve. Rin slipped and slid one way and then the other, but managed to throw her leg across the saddle and sit astride, heedless of modesty in the face of disaster. The horses kept going straight and clear off the road, tried to pass to right and left of a tree and hung themselves up on the lead rope. Both circled the tree in opposite directions and tethered themselves even more tightly. Rin clung to her seat, relieved but trembling. Manji caught up to them in a few minutes, no longer limping much, but with a stormy expression and dirt caked all over his clothes.

“Goddamn brat – you should’ve snapped your fool neck!” He grabbed Rin’s bridle and glared up at her. “Broke my leg when the horse stepped on me.”

“Serves you right, you creep,” Rin mumbled, trying to hide her face in the horse’s mane and unsure whether to giggle or shriek. “I hope that hurt. A lot!”

“Aw, shuddup.” It took him a little while to disentangle the horses, accompanied by more cursing. A peddler on the road blundered into earshot of his imprecations, shouted a couple of choice phrases in reply, then took off at a rapid clip when Manji glanced around with a challenging scowl.

Rin dismounted when she could and walked back for her bag, which had spilled a few items. She almost lobbed the harigata into the bushes when she picked up its box, but instead shoved it all the way to the bottom of the bag. Curious looks from passersby forced her to get up and dust herself off rather than sulk on the roadside for long; she returned to her yojimbo with her head held high.

Somewhat to her chagrin, Manji wasn’t impatiently awaiting her; he was holding to his horse’s saddle and hunching to the side with an inward frown, as if he’d cracked a few ribs in his fall. Without a word, Rin mounted by herself, sat primly sidesaddle again and looked the other way. Manji pressed a hand to his abdomen for a moment, then straightened up with an apparent effort and mounted as well.

They rode in fraught silence until they reached the outskirts of another small village. Rin spotted a roofed signboard posted by the road, with a couple of laborers peering at the printed notice. The men turned and bowed low at the sound of the approaching horses.

“Say there, danna – might you oblige us by readin’ that notice out loud? We missed the official who announced it this mornin’, and there’s too dang many kanji fer a simple fella like – ” The man broke off as Manji and Rin came nearer. “Lookit, Sano!”

“H-h-holy shit!” whimpered the other man, his hands quivering in the air.

“What’s your problem?” snapped Manji. “This craphole got an inn?” The laborers took to their heels towards the village, shouting. Manji reined up next to the printed notice and glanced at it. “Oh... screw me.”

Rin couldn’t read much of the notice from her vantage point, but she spotted the brush-drawn mug shot in the center and gasped. Three scars across the face, one eye, a spiky topknot – close enough. “Manji!”

He turned the horses with a snarl and abandoned the road for the forest.



“Why now? Why does the bakufu want you so badly? Hunters and notices everywhere, after so long? And the Edo banshu, like Ryonosuke was blabbing about – this doesn’t make sense!”

“Fuck only knows.” To keep off the steady drizzle he had tied a scarf over his head, which concealed part of his face as well. “Two years they left me alone... fuck only knows... why they did that either.” Manji spoke in an odd, constrained way; he kept his hand almost constantly pressed to his abdomen now as he rode. “Ahh, they can kiss my hairy ass...”

Rin frowned at the back of the shabby vest that he wore over his clothes; dressed like that, he barely resembled himself. “It’s not about that mess that Shira left on the road out of Naito Shinjuku and tried to pin on us, either. Both of us were on the notices then... not just you.”

“...Whatever.”

“And Ryonosuke was right – the notices say they want you alive. You did kill a lot of Edo officers... such as, er, O-Hama’s father... but this is straight from the Castle, like the bounty hunters told us. Like someone really high up is behind it...”

“I’m flattered all to hell. Now quit flappin’ your trap so I can hear myself think!”

Rin briefly wondered about the embedded arrow in his pelvis, then shrugged off mentioning it. His mood was so foul that it probably hurt, but she didn’t care. Not at all. She ran over Manji’s various sins in her mind, indulging her resentments.

So he was going to play it this way? Sneer at her and bury their misadventure as deep as possible until he had convinced himself it meant nothing? How like him – how like a man, rejecting any reminder that he owned an inconvenient heart. He and Anotsu would probably agree on that score, if in some unimaginable future they met again to drink and scoff at women’s fancies.

Strangely, Rin’s memories of Manji’s passion began to change. Though so recent, those images were so bound up in her mind with their author that his blunt denials seemed to stop their breath. Exactly his intention, she was sure. Damn him... she’d wanted so much to give him remembrances to cherish, and she wasn’t even sure now that she could cling to her own. He’d forced the air from her bittersweet pleasure as if he’d stamped his foot on a paper balloon.

“I hate you,” Rin muttered again without conviction. She huddled under an old piece of matting for a rain cloak and thought about Manji’s last kisses. He’d coaxed her to open her lips, and her legs, and her all in all to him... just so Anotsu couldn’t take them first? Jealousy, possessiveness, rivalry. Far less romantic urges than love. Whatever that was. Rin sank deeper into her angry funk the further they rode. Could a man like Manji ever want to couple his male urges with regard and yearning for their object? Not his whole life long, he hadn’t. He’d never looked for a wife, nor for a skinny inexperienced girl to share his futon. According to him, he preferred enthusiastic prostitutes with some womanly padding on their well-lusted bodies, who praised his technique and enjoyed themselves, but didn’t exact too high a price for an hour’s services.

They retreated into the forested hills again, away from the flat settled areas in the rivers’ wide floodplains. Manji kept well clear of the roads, following ridge lines so that he could scry behind them for pursuers. The horses’ hooves left deep scrapes and gouges in the soft grass and untrodden earth under the trees. Rin glanced down with a worried frown.

“Aren’t we leaving an awfully plain trail? Maybe on foot...”

“Maybe on foot, you’d give out in half an hour going uphill?” Manji snarled. “Or maybe we could sit by the road instead and wait to be arrested – it’s a lot less work.”

Rin flinched; he might have a point, but he didn’t need to jab her with it like that. “I know I’m tired, but I kept up with Anotsu just fine in Kaga!”

“That skinny little bastard, stumblin’ around with a freakin’ case of lockjaw? Gimme a fucking break. You've got no idea how much ground I can cover in a day... when there's nothing on my back.”

Her face went cold. “Then why don’t you set the horses loose and go on all by yourself? You’d probably like that best anyway – and I guess nobody cares about me!” Rin’s voice cracked.

“You damn IDIOT – ” Manji abruptly dropped his voice, but kept its edge. “Don’t tell me how to do my freakin’ job, woman. Horses’ll head right back down and straight for the nearest farmhouse – just like leaving a signpost to point the way!”

“Sorry I’m not the big horse expert around here, Master Manji...!”

“As for getting shot of you, kid – I’d’ve had to do it... a helluva long time ago.” He took a couple of tight breaths, obviously trying to control his temper. “You think you know what I’d like best...? Way too late for that too.”

Soon afterwards they spotted a party of soldiers on a road below them, accompanied by a couple of mounted officers with spears. But the searchers were heading in the wrong direction, towards Edo, so Manji relaxed a little and began to look for a secluded place to camp while they still had light. He implied that they might have to spend some time in hiding, a prospect which obviously didn’t please him.

Manji dismounted to lead the horses up a high, rocky wall with a rude switchbacking trail, probably used only by mountain-herb gatherers and the occasional bandit. Rin clung to her saddle and tried very hard not to look down. The afternoon’s small rain had stopped some time before, but the height of the climb and the slippery look of the damp stones disturbed her; Rin struggled to hide her nervousness at some of the most dubious spots in the narrow and crumbling path. Manji seemed entirely unconcerned with any danger of falling, which somehow didn’t reassure her.

In reasonably short order after reaching the top, they came on a small, steep-sided ravine that split the slope, with a rushing stream at the bottom and a few plots of fresh grass above. Rin dismounted with relief when Manji halted; her legs trembled from fatigue when her feet finally found solid ground again, and it took a few moments before she was able to walk around and rub out her saddle sores. Manji unsaddled and picketed the horses to let them graze; here and there the rocks held pools of rain water where they could drink.

“I guess it’s sheltered, anyhow...” Holding to a branch at the edge of the ravine, Rin peered into the tree-choked cleft below. Pebbly banks and tangles of driftwood punctuated the boulder-strewn stream, with a little room to set up camp and sleep. “But if it rains any more tonight, the water will rise again, and we might have to move.”

“Then we’ll move.” Manji slung the saddle bags over his shoulders.

“Oh, um, just a sec...” Rin sidled away as he strode towards her with his load. She checked for a concealing spot in the underbrush. “Go ahead – I’ll be right along.”

“Hah? Where you running off to now?”

“Gee! We haven’t stopped for hours!” She flushed and ducked into the bushes. Manji gave no audible reply. When Rin had finished and rearranged her clothes, she emerged into the grassy area, assuming that her yojimbo had scouted the best path down into the ravine and would point it out for her from the bottom as she descended to meet him.

To her surprise, Manji still lingered with the saddlebags where she had left him, again holding his middle. He’d pulled his scarf down around his throat and revealed his face; a peculiar resentful look haunted his expression along with his more obvious physical discomfort. He wasn’t watching the bushes where she had disrobed, but she had a sense that he had deliberately fixed his gaze in any direction other than that. His face changed color as he stared down into the ravine and up at the evening sky, shifting from pale to flushed as if his mind traveled restlessly between disturbing thoughts. Manji briefly glanced at her with a glassy eye and turned away.

Rin was reminded of the cloaked, covetous hostility her bodyguard had shown her for days after he’d first glimpsed her naked body, and felt an apprehensive prickle in her belly that had nothing to do with her hunger pangs. She approached him a little hesitantly and halted so she could follow the path he took down to the stream. When she didn’t move, Manji took her shoulder and shoved her towards the ravine’s edge. “C’mon, get it going!”

“Uwaa!” Rin grabbed a branch to avoid a stumble. “Are you trying to break my neck? That’s steep!”

“Sorry.” He pushed past her, jumped down a waist-high rock ledge, took a couple of sliding steps through loose talus and fallen leaves and looked back. “Ya coming or what?”

“Yes! What’s the great big hurry?” She crouched on the ledge and gingerly felt for a foothold. “Ooh... I bet I’m going to slip...”

“Oh, for crap’s sake.” Manji planted his feet and tossed the saddle bags halfway down the slope. He grabbed the front of her clothes and yanked. Rin overbalanced and fell, her arms flinging wide in panic. Manji caught her and lifted her from her feet. He tossed her over his shoulder and carried her down the slope like a parcel, her head dangling down and her face smothered in the grubby, horsey-smelling vest.

“Yeek!” Rin gasped and kicked a little, but he seized her ankle and clamped his other hand over her upturned bottom. She went rigid, hands braced on his back. “M-Manji?”

He gained the pebbly bank in a few more strides, bent his knees and put her down to sit on a wide weathered log, but he didn’t stand up immediately. Instead he planted his hands on each side of her and leaned over. His face hovered very near hers. Rin looked around to see Manji staring intently at her right ear and cheek. Wondering what he saw there, she put a hand to her face just as he moved; his nose bumped her knuckles.

For a moment he stopped dead, his hot breath penetrating the spaces between her fingers. Then Manji put a knee up on the log; his arms wrapped around her and he bent her backwards. He didn’t look her in the eyes, but kept his face pressed to hers. Too astonished to protest, Rin clutched his shoulders; her spine hit the log, then the back of her head. Manji straddled her with his other leg. He wasn’t exactly pinning her, but if she had wanted to escape it wouldn’t have been easy.

Rin’s mouth opened. Did she want...?

Manji wedged his face between her jaw and shoulder and groaned. His whole body quaked, though not as if he had surrendered to emotion. Hard and jerky, a powerful impulse restrained. In response, Rin went limp; she’d lost all desire to push him away. Had it kidnapped clean out of her...

“Ah, shitfire...” Manji mumbled under her ear, sounding close to delirious. “Get hold of yerself, ya asshole...” He made an effort and pried one arm from under her. Then that hand wandered down Rin’s flank as if of its own volition and he hugged her closer with the other arm. No more than holding her, half lying on her torso, but he seemed overcome by the feel of her body. Manji rubbed his nose along her scalp with a deep, helpless inhalation. “J-just a sec... I got it...”

Rin ran her fingers into his hair and clutched his head, then kissed his temple and eyebrow, all she could reach. Manji stiffened. She heard her name spoken into her throat with a questioning lift, and in answer she stroked his hair back and touched her lips to the outer corner of his blind eye.

Manji raised his head, looked at her mouth, moistened his lips as if about to devour a hot meal and descended on her. Rin’s whole world pitched and rotated; she might as well have slipped from the heights of the mountain paths for all the sense of equilibrium she had left. He paused on the brink for an instant, breathing hard; she closed her eyes and let her lips part just before he sank all the way down.

Manji’s mouth pressed inexorably into hers and she could neither hear nor see, only feel, and all she could feel was him. His heat and his weight and his heavy, penetrating kiss, and his hips pushing in spasms at her thighs.

Rin parted her legs as far as her narrow skirts would allow, lapped her arms around his neck and pushed back, tongue to tongue and pelvis to pelvis. Manji shuddered, now liberating an impulse rather than restraining it. His arms shifted and tightened and his hands suddenly had a purpose. He grabbed her bottom again, anchored her head with the other hand and kept kissing her, with far more appetite than finesse. Messy, slippery. Their front teeth accidentally grated together; Rin whimpered and put a hand to her mouth. Manji butted the hand away with his nose and licked her face like an animal to soothe the smart. Then he plunged his tongue deep and crushed his lips over hers with his mouth wide open. Rin’s neck ached from his vigor and Manji began to thrust his hips in a hardening rhythm. Roll back, curve his spine for leverage, ram forward and grind in a circle before pulling back again, like a pestle working in a suribachi bowl. If his intentions hadn’t already been nearly unmistakable –

Manji rose up on one hand and fumbled at his clothes with the other. He looked both tense and wild, an unbearable pressure battling its way loose from confinement. Rin raised her knees to cradle his body and wriggled from side to side to coax her wrapped skirts open to her thighs. She tilted up her chin and dropped her arms back and over her head, lifting her breasts to him.

This was going to hurt.

She knew Manji would be much too rough with her. No more preparation than if she’d been as experienced as a back-alley streetwalker. She felt hardly any tenderness in him, only ravening hunger. By the time he had finished with her virginity, she’d be sore and bleeding between her legs and trying not to cry, and then her yojimbo’s mind would focus as he came back to himself, and she’d have to watch the realization cross his face, like a cloud of smoke from a suddenly doused fire.

Even if she instantly forgave him. Even though she was more than willing to endure the pain. Rin began to breathe in jerks, fighting not to listen to herself. Nothing could make a difference now, anyway... she’d made the decision, and could not take it back. She stared over Manji’s head, up at the narrow slice of sky visible between the trees at the ravine’s edges, so bright by contrast with the deep shadows by the stream bank that it stung her eyes.

One small blessing: this probably wasn’t going to last very long either...

Manji paused with his hand dug inside the overlap of his kosode, below the belt. Looked her up and down, his body trembling, then his lips parted as though he meant to speak. Rin heard nothing intelligible, as if words had already fled far beyond his reach.

He let out a slight grunt, then a louder one. His attention turned inward; his eye dilated and his brow creased. Thrusting his hand further under his clothing, he seemed to search around in the area of his groin – surely he hadn’t lost track of that? Rin’s whirling brain suffered a check and she giggled nervously, wondering what was wrong.

Wildness gradually drained from Manji’s expression. At the same time he seemed to grope for awareness, as if it were a rope dangled over a cliff in the dark. He groaned and squeezed his features tight. “Oh... shit.”

“M-Manji?”

His eye snapped open. “Rin... why’d you let me...? I almost had it under – ” He fought an ever more obvious pain for a few moments. “S-sorry. Guess it ain’t exactly your fault...”

“Hah?”

“Felt it coming on again... tried to ignore it.” He jerked his head, gritted his teeth and gasped out a harsh laugh. “Maybe I should have drunk up that shochu after all...”

“Coming on?” She looked at his hand, still in the opening of his clothing. It was pressed flat to the right side of his belly.

“Fucking... hurts...” He eased partly off her. “I... I kinda lost hold of... of... sorry.” He moaned. “Gotta... lie down.”

Rin sat up under him and put a hand on his back. Damp with sweat, though he shivered. “Manji-san? I thought that arrow was finished moving around!”

“Nope. This... this is gonna be worse than the last time...”

“How do you know?”

“Because a little worm... whispered it in my ear.” He tried to grin and fell sideways, clear off the log.

Rin stared at him. With a horrifying howl and contortion, Manji arched his hips high, then folded himself around his clutching arms. As if an invisible blade had stabbed him.

“Oh, Manji!”

Rin slid down to crouch by him. Blood – his clothes soaking rivulet-red once more – could an old wound have opened? Had hunters shot him? Rin looked frantically around, scanning for lurking attackers. Nothing stirred but the evening wind. Manji howled again.

“Let me see! Where’s the blood coming from? Oh, let go!” She pushed on his elbows and yanked at his clothing. When she got his kosode open, a streaming wound showed in his lower belly, just to the side of his loincloth. Manji made a circle of his hands and covered himself again. He seemed to be trying to shield her from touching him – not his genitals, but the wound itself. He moaned and his sweating forehead struck her shoulder when he half-sat up. “Please, tell me what’s happening!”

Manji seemed unable to speak at all in his paroxysms. He doubled up in her arms, then went limp. His body rolled over, his face wedging in the roots of a drift stump.

Rin struggled to turn him over again; small pebbles stuck to the bared front of his body. One hand still clamped over the broad smear of blood. She took his wrist and pulled his hand aside to expose the strange wound. It looked like a sharp hill of flesh with a deep diagonal tear along one side. The cut didn’t seem made from the surface but from underneath, like a knife grooving a screen from behind. Veined intestines peeped through the widening rent.

“Oh, God!” Rin shivered with nauseated fear and confusion; she reached out to try to cover the hole and Manji again stopped her.

“Arrow!” he gasped. “Freakin’... crossbow...”

“It’s coming out? Like that?”

“Pushed all the way... through me... shitfire. No wonder it feels like a hot poker up my ass...” The sharp protrusion sank partway back; the rent closed and began to seal over. Gradually Manji relaxed, still breathing fast; he half-draped himself with his loosed clothing. “Hah... I guess it’s stopped for now.”

“For now? You think it’s going to start up again sometime?”

“Yep. Soon.” He coughed and wiped his sweaty face. “Gimme... that freakin’ jug.”

“What?”

“Until the little buggers make up their tiny minds to spit it all the way out... it’s probably gonna keep ripping itself open and closing up. So before that happens... I intend to get as lubricated as I can.” He gave a one-sided smirk with pale lips.

“Eww... that’s so weird!”

“Tell me about it, woman! Now get me that shochu!”

Rin clambered up the slippery slope to retrieve the saddlebags, dragged them down to where Manji lay and got out the jug. He looked a little heartier at the mere sight of it, so Rin uncorked it for him. After three long pulls at the liquor, he smiled and set it down.

“Is that better?”

“You betcha. Whole world looks better through a few good drinks.” He examined the loose, dirty bandaging on his right arm and took out a knife. “Think it’s time to unpackage this.” Manji ripped the wrappings away and held up his right hand, then rotated his arm to examine both sides. It still looked a little uneven in color and shape, a few shallow divots denting his arm muscles and some reddish lines and patches concentrating on his hand, but generally whole and sound.

“Oh, my goodness...” Rin particularly noted the second finger, whose last joint had gone completely missing. The truncated tip had skinned over, as she might have expected, but to her surprise a small crescent of fingernail was forming near the end. “Is that growing back?” Manji peered at it and shrugged. “Wow... when I saw what the animals had done to your hand, I wasn’t sure that arm was ever going to be the same again!”

Manji grinned without much humor and picked up the jug. “I could’ve left that knife stuck in it. Might have come in handy.” He sucked down a large gulp of alcohol, took a breath and did the same again.

“Ugh!” Rin threw him a reproving glare and adjusted her disheveled clothing. “Why’d you tell me that awful story about Shira’s arm and... and how you cut the ropes? That was even worse than what she was trying to...”

“Yeah.” Manji’s jaw clenched. “She was making up fairy tales. Mine was for real.”

“For real?”

He turned his head and gave her a cold look. “That’s what it’s like – it’s my flesh. Ain’t human. You’re looking at a guy who’s not human flesh, Rin.”

“No!”

He sneered and pointed at his groin. “You can watch what just happened to me and say that, you little idiot? Even when I could still get scars – ” he indicated his right arm – ”I was usin’ this to kill people, one after another. Now death won’t even come for me if I beg – all I can do is deal it out.”

“What? But that isn’t – ”

“That’s what this body is for, see? It’s not for... you.” Manji’s cold expression twitched.

“That’s not how I think – ”

“That’s the problem, girl. You don’t see the truth. This carcass of mine – for some goddamn reason, you want it. A sweet little woman like you... wanting my bloody hands on your flesh. You’re crazy.” He poured another generous round of shochu down his throat; from the sound it made sloshing back and forth, he must have emptied close to half the jug already.

“B-but you... you want it too...”

“What the hell does it matter what I want? Does it matter if a bandit wants you? You gonna open those pretty legs just because he thinks you’re a tasty dish?” Almost shouting, his face flushed and sweating. Drunk or in pain, or both – Rin shrank from him. “Fuck me ragged, woman! What the hell have I been sayin’ to you all this time?”

No point in arguing with him right now, she could see. A few moments later he groaned and doubled over again.

The strange process of expulsion resumed, the hill peaking high with a pulsing movement and the skin tearing open. Rin could only hover in sympathetic agony while Manji bit down on a peeled stick and dug his fingers into the gravel. Again the emergence stopped and the rent began to heal, though the protrusion didn’t retreat. Drenched with sweat, Manji pulled out his knife again and looked at the blade. “Dammit... maybe it’s time to just cut th’ sucker out. I think it’s gotta be right under the last layer of muscle now...”

“Oh, God!” Rin covered her eyes, then peeked out between her fingers. She couldn’t watch Manji stab himself! Then she realized that he was holding the knife handle out to her. “Wha-at?”

“I’m hammered on shochu, kid – you think I should be playin’ surgeon? You can take one good deep stroke – ” His lips quirked; she wasn’t sure if he meant to tease her or not. “Well, on second thought, that’s gonna be the dangerous part. The bolt might jump pretty high, because there’s a hell of a lot of pressure building up behind it... so you’d better stand back.”

“Pressure?”

“Yeah... the next push feels like the biggest yet.” He shifted his seat with a grunt.

“Gosh, that almost sounds like you’re having labor pains!” Rin giggled at the disgusted look on Manji’s face.

“You just had to say that, didn’t’cha?” Manji flipped the knife back into his own grip and tried to take a look at his target, but seemed to have trouble bending forward at the waist. Gingerly he felt the protrusion, which seemed very tender. “Ow!”

“Are you really going to try cutting it out?” Rin covered her eyes again. “Warn me first, please!”

“Eyehh... my hands ain’t real steady.” He let his fingertips pass over his loincloth. “One slip of th’ blade, and I dunno, serious consequences... so maybe I’d better let nature take its course. So to speak.” He laughed, and then grimaced with the next wave of pain. Rin cringed when the rent re-opened and bled yet again, but hoped that the ordeal would soon be over when the bolt freed itself from his flesh. She stayed back a pace when he waved her away.

Some of Manji’s blades had fallen from his opened clothing and lay scattered, and watching him with nervous distraction, Rin retrieved and stacked the weapons. A small item sunk in the gravel where Manji had rolled on it– she dug it out and picked it up.

Despite the deep shadows of the ravine, it glittered in her hand. A woman’s gold-encrusted hairpin, too showy for anyone but a courtesan. Rin had never seen O-Hama dressed in her professional regalia, hair swept up and bristling with expensive ornaments, but instantly she realized that this had been hers. Rin’s hand closed down on the hairpin to hide her discovery, though she felt as if she had accidentally grasped a writhing snake.

A faint impression of gardenia-scented hair oil. Only her imagination, or a trace of the owner’s spirit clinging to her intimate possessions though she had departed the world? Why on earth, and how, Manji had obtained this –

Rin’s breast heaved; she squeezed her eyes shut. She dropped the hairpin next to the pile of blades and put a hand to her cramping stomach. Manji had gone through the saddlebags on Ryonosuke’s horse before dumping them, and he must have taken the hairpin as a token, or a trophy. He’d never told her why he collected those objects from the dead. And then, after making sure she wouldn’t witness the poor beast’s death, he had killed the horse to prevent it from betraying its master. If he hadn’t needed to provide for his exhausted charge, he might well have cut the other horses’ throats soon after he had seen the notices, for the same reason.

So much lurked in the shadows of her yojimbo’s mind that she didn’t realize, and that he had never meant to let her know... even when he acted in her defense.

Manji made a sound she’d never heard before, a closed-mouthed moan deep in the back of his throat. Rin immediately looked at him. Manji’s skin split much further, more than doubling the length of the rent in his belly, and blood bubbled out in an alarming rush. His eye rolled back; he slumped and passed out. A large handful of his torn guts followed the rush of blood, swelling instantly as they escaped confinement. Then more gory coils pulsed free, and yet more – his body seemed to be trying to empty itself by force.

She had to stop it! Rin scrambled forward and cupped her hands underneath the slimy mass to keep it out of the gravel, then tried to push it back where it had come from. Could she hold his insides in place until the opening began to heal... if it was even going to heal this time? She couldn’t get a grip – the coils squirmed and slipped between her fingers. Rin clapped both palms to the gruesome hole, shuddering at the stench of mixed blood and foulness that coated her hands to the wrists.

Manji groaned with returning consciousness and rolled his head from side to side. He opened his eye and stared at her through a haze of pain, as if he barely recognized her.

“Don’t... don’t...” His hips arched in agony, so violently that he almost dislodged her. “Ngaahh!”

“Ohh! It’s all coming out and leaking and – ”

“Get... hands off...” He tried to shove her away.

“No, Manji! Stop that!” With all her strength Rin pressed down on the wound and tried to hold him to the ground as he thrashed and moaned. “You’re tearing apart! I have to keep you from losing everything!”

“Watch it... ngaah!” With a sound like shredding paper, the head of the bolt ripped through muscle and skin and stabbed upwards.

“Oh!” Rin flinched back. The arrowhead emerged at the very end of the long rent and aimed to the side, as if the bolt had taken a sharply angled path through Manji’s body. The forward surge had just missed her hand. “Ooh, that would have hurt!” Manji had been forced to push another of those barbed bolts all the way through his palm to release it.

With a deep groan of relief, Manji relaxed, panting. But the bolt still wasn’t completely out yet; it moved a little way backwards and stopped with the tails of the arrowhead’s barbs dug into Manji’s flesh. Blood ran down and beaded on the fanned edges, eight of them arranged around the axis of the shaft and flaring out in narrow diverging angles from the wicked point. Under the fresh blood, a thick yellowish stain marred the razorlike steel.

That hunter had not scrupled to use some downright evil weapons. Rin hissed in distress and hastily tucked Manji’s tangled insides approximately back where they belonged, doing her best to work around the sharp edges but afraid of twisting the coils or mismatching something important. Manji moaned and bumped the back of his skull against the ground while she worked. If that bolt had struck any ordinary man in the same spot, he probably wouldn’t have lasted a week. Long enough to turn him in and collect a bounty, she supposed – why would those callous professionals have cared whether their quarry survived to stand trial? Plenty of prisoners died in the Edo jails awaiting their hearings. Rin breathed through her mouth while she pulled the edges of the gap together. To her great relief it sealed fairly quickly and diminished to a line across his flesh, still punctuated at the terminus by the wicked arrowhead.

Manji opened his eye, looking pale and sweaty but a little less pained. “How are you feeling?” Rin quickly wiped her hands on dry leaves. This had to be the most disgusting wound she’d ever aided him with – holding a severed limb in place until it re-attached seemed simple by comparison. If the human spirit really resided in the vitals, she wondered what that might imply about its nature. The last thing she had thought to do while Manji suffered was contemplate the state of his insides. “Are you okay?”

“Feels like I got... a goddamn crossbow bolt sticking out’ve my belly, that’s how I am.” He tried to raise himself to look at it, then set his teeth and fell back. “But that was the worst of it... I think.”

“Oh, Manji-san!” She leaned over him; he blinked at her. “What can I do?”

Manji grimaced. “Kind of burned up all the alcohol on that one. Gimme the rest of the jug.”

Not at all reluctantly, she handed over the shochu. Manji nearly finished it; some color returned to his face. “What’s it going to do next, do you think?”

“More of the same? I guess I’ll have to wait... ‘til the little buggers line up and push again. Can’t pull it out by that head... rrgh... hey, where are you going?”

Rin jumped to her feet and climbed a little way up the slope to look at the branch-strewn ground under the trees. “Just a moment! I think we can help it out the rest of the way.”

“Haah?”

She needed a couple of sound sticks, neither too thick nor too flimsy. After a few minutes’ search, she had gathered up several candidates. Rin tapped and brushed the dirt from them and came back to show Manji. “A handle, see?”

He grinned a little oddly when she demonstrated on her forefinger. “Fine. ‘Long as they don’t break.”

Rin carefully fitted two sticks under the arrowhead, pressing them down and sliding them in from the sides and under the tails of the barbs. One stick clamped to each side of the shaft like a pair of tongs. Manji reached down with one hand and gripped the upper ends of the two sticks. Rin kept hold of the lower ends and looked at him for her cue. He clamped his jaw and nodded. One strong coordinated push and pull – the shaft moved out to the base of the fletchings, and one more effort yanked it all the way from Manji’s flesh. He kept his lips shut, only grunting low in his throat as the shaft slipped free. Rin lifted the bolt away by the bloodied sticks and pounded it into the ground with a rock.

Manji stirred himself to drink from his bamboo canteen. He gave his befouled thigh and belly a rinse and firmly wrapped and tied his clothing again, though a big damp mark remained on the front. The blood didn’t show much on the black side of his kosode, but Rin sighed. “Oh, yuck, and I just washed that!”

“I ain’t putting that other one back on.” Manji still looked drained and didn’t sit up, but his voice was sharp.

“I didn’t say you should!” Rin flushed and looked away. Her right hand felt as if it had fallen asleep. She flexed the fingers and shook it, then winced at an unpleasant buzz in her flesh and mused under her breath. “I guess I leaned on it pretty hard... ow.”

“Hah?”

“Oh, nothing – oh, I need to wash! Ick.” Rin held up her hands and made a face. “I’ll be right back.” She swished the stains and stink away in the running stream and scrubbed well with clean sand and under her fingernails until her skin turned pink. Her right hand seemed a little weak, the buzz and tingle increasing rather than going away. On the same side, her neck and the joint of her jaw grew numb.

She rinsed out her mouth and took a deep drink with the aid of her cupped palms, then massaged her tingling cheek. What was the matter with her? She needed some food and sleep, that was what was the matter. Rin stood up to return to Manji; her leg wobbled under her and she stumbled. “Oh!”

She limped back to where he lay, feeling worse with every passing moment but determined to conceal it from her companion. When he looked at her with bleary, bloodshot eyes, she smiled brightly at him. “Are you hungry? I’m going to check the saddlebags.”

“Whatever. Try the one with the red thongs... it’s ol’ Anotsu’s.”

Rin managed to open the flaps with her left hand, and to her delight she located a bamboo-bark package of filled rice balls. The outsides were a little hard and dry after two days, but the food seemed perfectly edible. Manji took one when she offered, and she sat on a rock and gulped down half of another, hardly stopping to chew. “Mmm... finally! It never tastes so good as when you haven’t had any for a while... though I’d actually rather just have regular meals...” Her voice slurred and she choked slightly on her next bite. “Oh, I’m SO tired... will it be safe to go to sleep? What if someone notices the horses, or it starts pouring rain? I can’t build a nice tight shelter like you can – well, I guess I could try if you tell me how...”

Manji sat up with his back against the big log. “Sheesh, I’m okay. Just gimme a few minutes and I’ll cut some stuff for a roof. Take it easy.”

“Oh, no, that’s all r-right... I can help you with...” Rin dropped her rice ball into her lap; her tongue felt thick and it was hard to swallow. “Oogh...” She put her hand to her forehead.

“Ahhn?”

“I hhink I’ll go... rie drown...” A sick wave of dizziness overcame her. When she opened her eyes, she was sprawled in the pebbles, staring at the dimming slice of sky above. “Ow.”

“What the hell are you playing at, kid? You’re tired, I get it. So finish your goddamn dinner. You want to lie down, I’ll make us a nice warm – ” Manji stopped with a low growl. In spite of her awkward situation, Rin’s pulse throbbed under her jaw. “Aw, crap...”

For a moment he remained silent, then spoke with a crack in his voice. “Rin... s-see here. I know we got to figure some things out... just not now.” He sounded like he was muffling his face in his hands, but her head felt too heavy to let her turn it and look. “I got to think first, and I can’t d-do it yet. Y-you start talking about... about that – and I – hell, you got the clue when I carried you down here! Don’t push it.” Rin tried to speak, but her tongue seemed to have swollen to fill her entire mouth. “Understand me?”

When she didn’t reply, he sighed. “Sorry, woman. It’s been a rough couple of days. At least the worst crap’s over with, hnn? There’s the bakufu, yeah, but that only means I gotta lay low for a while. Uh... might be a good idea... if you want to stay at the hut, I’ll make myself a camp in the woods for now. Heh – kill two birds with one stone?” Manji gave a half-hearted laugh. “Not like I haven’t already spent a few winters out in the cold...”

He paused for a few moments, then forced a long scraping breath and slapped a hand on his flank, like a door sliding shut. “So. We got an agreement?”

Manji’s voice echoed in her head; she barely understood what he said, but that didn’t seem to matter very much at the moment. Her right side buzzed horribly and her face felt slack; only her left arm twitched when she made her best effort to sit up.

“Hey! What’s with you?”

Rin blinked at Manji in dawning terror when he stood and bent over her. He frowned and picked up her out-flung right hand, which seemed entirely paralyzed. Then he looked at it more closely, and went as pale as ashes again.

Rin whimpered; she could not even feel his grasp, but when he turned her arm and held it in front of her eyes, she saw exactly what he had seen. Along the outer side of her wrist were marked two thin cuts. They were straight and clean, had probably stopped bleeding not long after they had been inflicted, and they diverged from each other at just the angle of an evil eight-barbed arrowhead.



Continued...