Outlaw: Champions of Kamigawa

CHAPTER 22

General Takeno addressed the tower courtyard, where over a thousand retainers waited on horseback. They were an inspiring sight, arranged in perfect lines under the Daimyo's flowing moon-and-sun standard. Their lacquered armor was dazzling in the morning light and the sun glinted off their helms. This was Konda's army, the strongest fighting force in the entire world. Other lords used magicians and giant creatures to dominate the battlefield, but Konda had done it through sheer force of personality and discipline. No tribe or nation had ever bested Towabara in battle: not armies, not mages, and not the false kami who plagued his land like a pack of spirit wolves.

Nourished by his pride, Takeno raised his sword. The old soldier's war cry rolled over the courtyard, and the retainers picked it up. The first division mounted, Takeno slashed down with his sword, and they streamed from the courtyard at full gallop.

Takeno slashed again, and the second division surged out like a great armored tide. He slashed once more, and the final division rode out through the gates.

Above, Takeno could see the Daimyo's tower window, where the great ruler watched. Together, the three divisions created a single mass of men and horses that rode ten to a row, side by side, filling the road from the gate to the hills in the distance.

Let the bandits quail, Takeno thought. Let the akki hide in their holes. The full force of a father's love for his daughter would mow them down like wheat.

Takeno watched wistfully as they last of the horsemen vanished over the hill. If his lord could have spared him, he would have been right there at the head of the charge, leading his yabusame on perhaps the most personal mission the Daimyo had ever assigned. But Takeno was a general, and Towabara was at war.

Sadly, slowly, the general turned and shuffled back into the tower to await the news of the cavalry's success.

In the ritual clearing of the orochi-bito, countless snakes intertwined as they danced and writhed by torchlight. With the sun struggling to clear the tops of the trees, a score of human kannushi priests kneeled together in the center of the writhing snakes, chanting and hissing in the orochi's native language.

A large pile of soil and mulch stood at the center of the clearing. When the first ray of sunlight stabbed through the leaves and struck the pile, a shoot poked out. The shoot sprouted a leaf as it stretched upward, then another. It grew taller and broader, maturing from a sapling into an ancient cedar giant in a matter of moments.

A woman's face formed in the center of the new tree's trunk, a woman with smooth, brown skin and wild, leafy hair. More shoots sprouted around the face, and these also grew until there was a series of gracefully curving boughs encircling the central trunk. These boughs in turn sprouted more growth, until it seemed as if the entire forest had been compressed into this single clearing, but continued to grow in and over and around itself. Huge circular grains floated among the tangle of branches and vines, glowing a soft yellowish-green.

The frenzied chanting grew louder and more intense. The birds nearby took flight, and some of the dead and dying trees simply fell, their roots jarred loose by the rhythmic pounding of the worshippers' feet.

She was taken from us.

The priests howled and screeched, the snakes growled and hissed.

We had the means to end this nightmare once and for all. But it was taken from us.

The noise grew agonized, painful, the outraged screams of a tortured innocent.

Take it back. I am the forest, and it is me. There is no hiding. I will show you the way.

A green mist seeped through the manifested kami's limbs, flowing out and filling the ritual space. The kannushi ceased their noise to breathe deep the blessing from their patron spirit. The snakes continued to hiss as they drew in and blew out, and the sound from their throats sent the birds flying once more.

You will find her here. Go. We have the power to end this. By your love, by your devotion, we can end it today.

The clearing exploded into wild noise as the rampant worshippers overflowed the confines of the clearing and spilled out into the denser forest. Fully half of the assembled snakes melted away into the woods. All but a handful of the priests stayed to chant, preserving the manifestation of their patron spirit. When they had reclaimed the princess, their kami would grow even larger, and reward them all with the bounty of her love.

Go, my children. Go and take back what was stolen.

High above the Minamo Academy, floating on a cloud over the falls, the soratami reigned. Their capital city was the grandest city in the world, but no human had ever set foot there. It took powerful magic or one of the moonfolk's own cloud chariots to come and go from the city's majestic spires. Hisoka the headmaster once rode such a chariot to the gates of the city, but he was not invited in. He counted himself lucky to have seen it at all.

Among the gleaming towers of steel and glass was a huge central structure bigger than most of the human cities on the ground. This edifice was the seat of the soratami power structure, the home to its leaders and the most accomplished of their kind.

In an ornate chamber in the upper reaches of this palace in the sky, the samurai Eitoku and his shinobi partner were arguing.

"This has already gone too far, Chiyo," Eitoku said heatedly. His partner nodded.

The woman Chiyo smiled at them. "That is not for you to decide."

"You've heard our agent's report. The orochi-bito have been roused and the princess has been taken."

"Yes. Yes they have. Is this the same agent who lost her on the road to the academy?"

Eitoku looked down. "Yes. That was the headmaster's idea. We would not have approved it."

"So you failed to stop your agent from his folly. And he failed to deliver the princess to the school. You two have failed remarkably often lately."

Eitoku glared down at the woman. "You may be Uyo's right hand," he said, "but you go too far."

"I think that you do not go far enough. Like that ochimusha in the alley. Like when he trapped us all in his hovel." Her cold smile stayed fixed as her voice continued in Eitoku's head.

If not for my training, we might still be there.

Then Chiyo spoke aloud once more. "Setbacks are part of the game, Eitoku. If you panic every time things don't go exactly as planned, you won't recognize victory when it's staring you in the face."

"We should intervene directly. We should kill them all and-"

"You are too impetuous, Eitoku, too direct. You should learn to move slowly, with your eyes open. There are subtleties within subtleties to be considered. The kami are as inscrutable to us as we are to the academics at Minamo, but they make themselves plain to your superiors."

"Subtleties? The entire endeavor is unraveling as we speak."

"Hardly. We still have access and we still have control."

"But we do not have the princess. She is with that lowlife thug who-"

Chiyo cleared her throat. "Perhaps you didn't hear. We still have access. We still have control." She fluttered her eyes. "At least, some of us do. Perhaps you should stick to organizing the rats."

Eitoku's face went slack. "I am not used to being spoken to this way."

"That's because you're my junior. This is the most important endeavor the soratami have ever attempted, one that is being managed and overseen by the highest levels of our culture. You don't move in those circles. I do.

"I have better information than you. I am older, wiser, and crueler than you. You will stop harboring this fantasy that you have the power to affect our leaders' decisions. They know everything you know already and have rejected any half-baked notion you might suggest."

Eitoku turned away, cowed. "Yes, ma'am."

"Indeed. Now. Send word to your agent. We need to be ready in case the orochi-bito rabble try something unforeseen."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And listen well, Eitoku. The stakes we are gambling for are beyond your feeble comprehension. This has been in motion for decades, and you are but one small part of the process."

Chiyo smiled at the tall samurai, daring him to comment on her glib inspirational speech.

But Eitoku just nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

Chiyo gazed out the window while the warriors shuffled off. They really were such children. She had concerns of her own about the handling of this situation, but she kept them to herself. Unlike Eitoku, she did not need to be reminded to trust the soratami leadership. She was part of it, after all.

Chiyo paused, sending her thoughts to her master, who dwelled in the most secret recesses of the city. Uyo the prophet replied, and Chiyo smiled at her master's confidence.

Things were growing more complicated, more dangerous. But they were far from out of control.

In any other circumstances, Pearl-Ear would have been pleased with their progress. The kitsune were moving as quickly as they could and Choryu kept himself and Riko reasonably close behind, but they were all still too far away to do Michiko any good.

She had lost sight of the wizards hours ago, but she kept track of their progress as best she could. Pearl-Ear herself was the slowest of the kitsune-Sharp-Ear and the brothers did not wait, pulling a little further ahead with each acre they covered. The party was in danger of spreading out too much, but Pearl-Ear could not bring herself to slow down the group's fastest members.

The hours blurred together as they crossed meadow, thicket, and stream with the same driving, inexorable pace. They slowed only to get their bearings, check the trail, and hunt.

Without their rations, they were forced to live on whatever they could find or catch. The brothers were especially good at running prey to ground, so there was no shortage of meat-wild pigs, game birds, and weasels were numerous. The rough lifestyle left them all looking lean and wild, robes in tatters, fur tangled and muddy, muzzles smeared with blood.

Pearl-Ear's own senses had become sharper, and these more vivid sights and smells raised almost irresistible passions in her. She helped corral the game they caught, but she longed to take it down herself. A freshwater spring five hundred yards away called to her, fairly demanding that she come and drink. She had been so long among the cities of Towabara, and here was the chance to run free once more.

But Pearl-Ear was not enslaved to her instincts. Michiko was always central to her thoughts. She was the reason for this taxing survival run, and as wild as Pearl-Ear was, she focused the bulk of her energy on finding the ochimusha's trail. Whenever the brothers grew too fervid during the hunt, Pearl-Ear and Sharp-Ear brought them back to their real quarry: the princess and the man who took her.

The trail had recently grown much warmer. They had seen a great moth flying away to the north, and the creatures were so rare and concentrated in Towabara that there couldn't be two flying loose in this area. They backtracked in the direction the moth had come, and within hours Sharp-Ear had caught a familiar trace. Michiko and the ochimusha had been through here recently.

The brothers began to pant like hungry dogs when Sharp-Ear shared his find. Pearl-Ear felt the same anticipation but kept her mouth closed. Toshi was close. And with him, Michiko.

Choryu and Riko were still bringing up the rear, out of sight but well within earshot for a kitsune. The brothers carved another trail marker into the bark of a tree for the wizards, and all five kitsune spread out to form a skirmish line. Pearl-Ear nodded, and they began to run, spreading out as they went with their backs bent and their muzzles near the ground.