InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Once Upon a Time ❯ Attack and Retreat ( Chapter 40 )

Disclaimer: Don’t own ‘em. Rats.

40. Attack and Retreat  

Time passed as it tends to do. Sesshoumaru acknowledged the mating of his brother and the human woman, even going so far as to send them a couple of disputes in his territory involving humans and youkai to settle. Now that they had become an integral part of the community, there was no longer any need to conceal Kagome’s pregnancy.

As the weather grew colder, she took to wearing traditional miko’s clothing, since it was both roomy enough to accommodate her expanding waistline and warm enough so that she didn’t require multiple layers to remain comfortable. Since she still felt perfectly fine, she saw no reason to alter the habits she had established, even though the shallow layer of snow on the ground by mid-December meant that her walks to the village for the lessons in healing took a little longer. Still, she was invariably home by noon, and she was always accompanied by the wolf, so the hanyou had little reason to worry.

On one such trip back from the village, she heard a peculiar yelping sound from the brush off to her left. When she turned to see what the source of the strange noise was, something hit her across the side of the head and she dropped to the ground unconscious.

At first, she was aware only of the pounding in her head. As her awareness grew, she began to feel a cold wetness seeping into her from behind--or was it below?--her. Trying to rise, she discovered that her hands were immobilized above her head, making it impossible for her to move. Opening her eyes, she first saw only the whiteness of the snowy landscape. As her vision began to clear, she saw indistinct figures as dark shapes against the brightness. A mocking voice came to her ears. “Look at this, boys--the monster’s whore.”

A second voice, sounding a little worried, spoke hesitantly from above her head where she couldn’t see the speaker. “I don’t know about this--couldn’t this bring a curse down on us?”

The first speaker didn’t bother to try concealing the disgust in his voice. “No need to worry. This is no miko. Watch.”

She felt something cold against her right ankle and realized that it was the blade of a knife that was cutting away her clothing. “You can stop this right now,” she rasped, surprised at the weakness in her voice. “I have guards--they won’t let you escape with your lives if you continue.”

Another of the figures held up a piece of wood covered with blood and some grey-brown hairs. “That ‘guard’ of yours won’t be giving us any trouble.”

The first speaker, the obvious leader of the group, looked at her with complete loathing. “Here’s what’s going to happen, bitch,” he snarled. “You’re going to service us--all of us--and not fight back. Or,” he said, digging the point of the knife into the slight rounding of her stomach just enough to draw a trickle of blood, “We’ll gut you here and now.”

One of the men looked at the horrified expression on her face and laughed. “I don’t think she likes us.”

The leader responded with a kick to the ribs that caused her to cry out in pain. “You don’t want us?” he asked. “You’re willing to lay down with an animal, but won’t take a man, is that it?”

By now, she was angry. “Man? You’re not men: men ask for what they want--they don’t try to take it by force.”

He kicked her again, feeling the satisfying crunch of breaking ribs. At a gesture from the leader, one of the men stuffed a filthy rag into her mouth to muffle her screams. He dropped to the ground between her knees, pulling at the sash that held his own clothing closed.

The hanyou was growing uneasy, as he always did whenever his mate was out of his sight. From the position of the sun, he knew that she should have returned home some time ago. Still, he was not unduly concerned. After all, she was not unprotected--she had Kouga’s messenger with her.

He paced across the front of the building, anxiously looking down the path that led to the village. She probably just ran into one of her friends and lost track of the time while they were talking.

Suddenly, he dropped to his knees, nearly overcome by a crushing pain in his chest. Something’s not right, he thought. A sudden shift in the light breeze brought him the unmistakable scent of human blood--Kagome’s blood.

Leaping to his feet, he raced down the path toward the village. About five minutes from the house he found the body of the wolf, its skull crushed. This, he decided, wasn’t good. A few leaps further on he found two dead men, a small figure still bent over one of them. Kohaku turned to look at the hanyou, his face a pale mask. “I killed two of them, but the other five got away.” His voice was a ghastly whisper. “Over there, in the brush….”

The overpowering blood scent was nauseating, but he followed it to the motionless form stretched out on the soaked remains of a miko’s clothing. It was worse than the wildest imaginings of his worried mind. Her wrists were cut and bleeding from the rough ropes that held them to the two small trees above her head. Her skin was cold, her lips tinged with blue from exposure. She had a bloody scalp cut, and was bruised over much of her perfect body. Her breathing was labored and raspy, and she was bleeding from what could only be bite marks all over her pale skin. There was a shallow puncture wound on her stomach, and it was obvious that seven--no, he corrected, six--men had taken her by force. The seventh, though present, had never touched her.

In that instant, something snapped. Acting on pure instinct, he threw back his head and howled his rage, anguish, and despair to the uncaring universe. Leaping to his feet, he prepared to set out after the monsters who had done this. But there was something in his way….

Kohaku reached up and hit him as hard as he could, hoping to bring the hanyou back to himself. “Listen to me! She’s still alive, but she’ll freeze to death out here before I can bring help. You have to take her to help. Do you understand me?”

Slowly, the fire in the hanyou’s eyes died, and he nodded his understanding. “Run ahead to the village and get the mikos--I’m taking her home.”

With a single swipe of his claws, he cut the bonds holding her and removed the ropes that were embedded in the flesh of her wrists. Removing his haori, he wrapped it around her and lifted her from the snow. At his touch, he received an unexpected reaction: her eyes snapped open, unseeing, and she began to scream, a long, breathless shriek of pure horror that sent searing pain through his sensitive ears into his brain.

The screaming never stopped until she was deposited in her own bed.

By the time the three mikos arrived, word that something was wrong had started to spread through the household. In no mood for questions, Inuyasha summoned Kagura. He told her where to find the wolf’s body, and instructed her to return it to Kouga, telling him that it had been killed trying to protect Kagome.

After a time, Kaede emerged from the bedchamber. “First of all,” she said, “The child lives.” When the hanyou showed no reaction to this news, she continued, “You know her injuries. She was badly beaten, and left for dead in the snow. I don’t know how many men--”

“Six,” he grated out, interrupting the old woman.

She looked at him in concern. She had never seen the hanyou so close to losing control, not even when she and Miroku had once had to seal him into a warded shed to prevent him from fighting with some partly-healed wounds that would surely have killed him. “The point I’m trying to make here is that her body can--and will--recover from these injuries. It is her mind that worries me most right now.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

The old miko shook her head. “Right now she is refusing all contact with the world outside of her mind. When you brought her here, how did she react to you? Did she recognize you?”

He shook his head, staring at the floor. “No,” he whispered. “She didn’t know me. She screamed when I touched her.”

The old woman nodded. “I have heard of this before. Right now, she can do nothing for herself--she would starve with food right before her. She must be cared for like an infant--if a cup is placed to her lips, she will drink. If food is placed in her mouth, she will swallow.”

His earlier rage had passed, and he slumped against the wall. “What can I do?”

“All you can do right now is care for her body and hope that her mind will return to it. Place things that she loved near her so that she might recognize them if she wakes. Aside from that, all you can do is wait.”

With the same single-mindedness with which he had once hunted Naraku, he cared for his stricken mate. After the first day, she no longer screamed at his touch, but to him that only meant that she was retreating further and further inside of herself. As word leaked out of the household that the woman was ill, expressions of concern came flooding in from human villages and youkai alike. All went unnoticed except for the message from Sesshoumaru stating that he had caught five human men running from the region and was holding them until he received word regarding their disposition.

Sazuni was sent immediately with a message asking the youkai lord to return the men to the human village for judgment. While the hanyou would have dearly loved to punish the men responsible for his mate’s condition with his own claws, he was afraid that if he touched them he might be unable to stop himself from going further in his rage.

Settling himself once again on the cushions next to his mate, he placed his haori over her motionless form, hoping that somehow his scent on the garment would help to bring her back to herself.