Читать книгу Shadow Of The Fox: a must read mythical new Japanese adventure from New York Times bestseller Julie Kagawa - Julie Kagawa - Страница 16

7

An Unexpected Proposal

The path had disappeared.

I hesitated in the shadows of the forest, listening, my hand curled around my sword hilt. Sometime during my dash up the mountain, the trail I’d been following had either vanished or I’d lost it somehow, for uninterrupted woods surrounded me, dark and thick. It wasn’t terribly problematic; I could still hear the roar of a conflagration, and the breeze through the branches carried the scent of smoke and blood. I was going in the right direction.

I feared what I would find when I got there.

There was a rustle in the bushes ahead, and Kamigoroshi gave a warning pulse, just as something exploded from the darkness and lunged at me. My blade cleared its sheath in an instant, whipping up toward my attacker’s face. It—she?—yelped and skidded to a halt, as my brain caught up to my reflexes. Hakaimono roared, goading me to continue the motion, to bathe the steel in blood. I wrenched myself from the howling bloodlust and forced my hands to stop.

The blade froze an inch from her neck. Panting, I looked across the glowing edge of the sword, into the face and wide black eyes of a girl.

She was my age, perhaps a bit younger. Small, petite, wearing a short crimson robe pattered with white swirls. Her black hair hung loose around her shoulders and down her back, and her large dark eyes, peering up at me, were round with shock.

For a moment, we stared at each other, bathed in the faint purple light of Kamigoroshi. Her face was dirty, smudged with ash and grime, and she was breathing hard, as if she had been fleeing the fire with the rest of the wildlife.

Then there was a snap in the trees behind her, and I realized why she’d been running.

“Get back,” I said, and shoved her behind me, as an amanjaku leaped through the bushes with a howl, a sickle raised over its head. I smacked the curved blade aside and slashed Kamigoroshi across its face, making it shriek and reel away. More demons swarmed from the bushes, stabbing and hacking wildly as they rushed forward. They died on my sword as I carved limbs from bodies and heads from torsos, black demon blood arcing into the air. Hakaimono reveled in their deaths, but I kept myself detached from the demon’s rage. I was the hand that wielded Kamigoroshi, nothing more. I felt nothing as I sent the creatures back to Jigoku.

When the last demon fell, I flicked steaming blood from my sword, sheathed Kamigoroshi despite the protests in my mind and looked around for the girl.

She peered from behind a tree trunk, watching me with big dark eyes. Surprised, I turned to face her fully. I had half expected her to be gone, fleeing the forest while the demons were busy attacking me. I caught the glint of metal in her hand and saw the hilt of a tanto clutched in her fist. Whether it was meant for me or the demons, I wasn’t certain.

“Merciful Jinkei,” she whispered, sounding breathless. Her eyes shone as she gazed around, at the fading tendrils of darkness on the wind. “You...that was...” Blinking, she looked up at me, her expression caught between awe and fear. “Who are you?”

Nothing. Nobody. A shadow on the wall, empty and unimportant. I turned away, toward the sound of distant flames. “Run,” I told the girl, not looking back. “Get out of here. Go to the village at the bottom of the mountain. You should be safe there.”

“Wait!” she cried as I started forward. I paused, but did not turn back. “You can’t go that way,” she said, and I heard her emerge from behind the tree. “It’s too dangerous. There are more demons, a whole horde of them. And there’s an oni!”

An oni. My eyes narrowed, even as Hakaimono gave the strongest flare of excitement I had ever felt from it. I had been killing dangerous yokai for the Shadow Clan since I was thirteen, the newest in a long line of Kage demonslayers to wield Kamigoroshi, but I had never faced a real oni. From what my sensei had told me, the greatest demons of Jigoku were nothing like the monsters I’d fought before. Tough, savage and virtually unstoppable, able to regenerate wounds, broken bones, even severed limbs at an astonishing rate. They were difficult to defeat, even with Kamigoroshi. In the past, more than one demonslayer who had gone to fight an oni had not survived the battle.

Fortunately, oni encounters were rare, as summoning one from Jigoku and binding the savage demon to your will required incredible power. Unfortunately, it meant that whomever had sent an oni here, to this forest, was likely after the same thing I was. Lady Hanshou hadn’t told me why she wanted this particular scroll, nor was it my place to ask. My mission was to retrieve the scroll, no matter what obstacles stood in my way.

“This oni,” I asked the girl, whose gaze I could still feel on my back. “Where is it?”

“The temple,” she replied, and her voice came out slightly choked. “At the top of the mountain. It killed everyone there and set the whole place on fire. Nothing is left.”

My spirits sank. If the demons had attacked and destroyed the temple, then the scroll was already gone. Destroyed, or in the hands of the oni. Setting my jaw, I headed into the trees. I had to see if the scroll was still there, if I could save it. And if the oni did indeed possess the scroll, I would challenge the demon and take it back, or die trying.

“Baka!” Something grabbed the hem of my jacket, tugging me to a halt. I spun, barely stopping myself from drawing Kamigoroshi and slicing my assailant in half. “Didn’t you hear me?” the girl asked, her dark gaze now wide with fear. “There’s an army of demons and an oni that way. If you go to the temple, they’ll kill you, like they did everyone else.”

Her eyes watered, moisture spilling down one cheek. I suddenly understood. “You came from the temple,” I stated quietly. “You saw everything.”

She nodded, swiping a dirty sleeve across her face. “Everyone died,” she whispered. “I barely got away. My master sacrificed himself so that I could escape. He fought the oni himself, though he knew it was going to kill him.”

“What were the demons after?” I asked, watching her closely. Perhaps, if she had come from the temple, she knew about the scroll, or where it was located. “Why did they attack?” I pressed. “Did they take anything?”

For just a moment, she hesitated. Her cheeks paled and she looked up at me with those dark eyes. For some reason, my skin prickled, and I fought the urge to look away. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know why they came, or what they wanted. I just know my temple is gone and demons killed everyone I’ve ever cared for. And if you go up there now, you’ll die, too.” She paused again, then held out her hand as if coming to a decision. “Come with me,” she said, to my surprise. “Before the demons find us. I can’t... I don’t want to be alone right now. We can head to the village and figure out what to do from there.”

“No.” I stepped back, away from her. “You can keep running. Get out of the forest. But I have business at the temple, something I must confirm.”

“What?” She stared at me in disbelief, as I turned and began walking away. “You can’t be serious. What is so important that you would risk your head getting crushed by an oni? Wait!”

Footsteps shuffled after mine. I turned once more and raised Kamigoroshi, making her stumble to a halt. “Don’t follow me,” I warned, as her gaze fell to the blade. “Go to the village. Warn them about the attack. Forget what you saw here.” Sheathing the sword, I headed into the darkness, toward the temple and the battle that awaited me at the top. “What happens now isn’t your concern.”

“The scroll isn’t there anymore.”

I stopped. Slowly, I turned around. The girl stood in the same place, watching me with a wary, almost defiant expression, her jaw set. “The scroll,” she repeated, so there would be no doubt. “You won’t find it. It’s no longer at the temple.”

“Where is it?”

She hesitated. Drawing my sword, I walked toward her. Her face paled and she backed away, but hit a tree after a few steps. “I don’t know,” she began, and froze as I placed the edge of Kamigoroshi against her neck. “Wait, please! You don’t understand.”

“Where is the scroll?” I asked again, stepping close. “Tell me or I’ll kill you.”

“It’s gone!” the girl burst out. “It’s not here anymore. Master Isao...he sensed the demons coming. He knew they wanted the scroll, so he sent it away. A...a few days ago.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

I tilted the blade up so it pressed lightly under her chin, and she gasped. “I don’t know!” she insisted, raising her head to escape the sword. “Master Isao didn’t tell me where it’s located. But...I know who does.”

“Who?”

She paused, her dark eyes flicking to mine over the blade. Again, I felt that odd flutter beneath my skin, reacting to her presence. “How do I know you won’t kill me if I tell you?”

“I give you my word,” I told her. “On my honor, if you tell me what I want, I won’t kill you.”

Carefully, she shook her head. “I need more than that, samurai,” she said, making me frown. A warrior’s vow was absolute, his honor preventing any hint of betrayal, and it was an insult to imply otherwise. To a samurai who broke his promise, the shame would be so great that seppuku—ritually killing himself—was the only answer.

Of course, I was shinobi, a shadow warrior, and followed a different code than the samurai. We operated in darkness, performing tasks that would make an honorable samurai cringe in horror and revulsion. But the girl didn’t know that.

She continued to watch me, her head and back pressed to the trunk, chin raised to escape the lethal blade against her throat. I kept a tight hold on the sword, both in my hand and in my mind, for Hakaimono was goading me to kill this insubordinate peasant nobody. “You can kill me now,” she said, “but then you’ll never find what you’re looking for.” I narrowed my eyes, and she shivered under my gaze, seeming to lose courage, before taking a deep breath and staring at me again. “I have...a proposal for you,” she announced. “So please listen before you decide to cut off my head. The demons will come after me. Once they figure out the scroll isn’t here, they’ll hunt me down. Right now, the scroll is on its way to another temple, a hidden temple, far away. I need to get to that temple, to warn the monks of the demon attack. I promised my mentor I would.”