Chương 13: Book 1: Chapter 6 - The Favor [Part 1]

"A warrior's duty is not to die. It is to live long enough for death to become useful." - An old soldier's saying. Shimon Ayanokouji woke to a face above him. For one magnificent, merciful moment, his mind refused to understand the face. It was only a shape against a sky of grey branches, a human outline blotting out the trees. The face was dirty, scratched, and too close. There was dried blood across one cheek, and leaves tangled in the man's hair. Then the face spoke.

"You alive?" Shimon opened his mouth. Nothing came out except a sound that might have meant yes, no, or please allow me to return to unconsciousness. Kume Tarō stared down at him with one swollen eye and the uncertain expression of a man looking at a pot and trying to decide whether the thing inside was food or poison. His armor was askew. One cord of his shoulder guard had snapped. There was blood at the side of his head where he had struck the tree.

But, he was alive, which was more than could be said for the rest...

"Good," Tarō simply said after a moment.

"This is good." Shimon blinked, but the forest remained where it had been, which was a disappointment. The hollow remained with its dead, old and new. The severed halves of greying bodies lay among the routed like butchered nightmares while crows watched from the trees. The air smelled of blood, smoke, rot, old leaves, and the sour stink of fear that had dried into cloth and skin. Everything was very real. He tried to sit up, but his body protested.

His shoulders burned, his back hurt, and his right hand had locked so tightly around the sword hilt that his fingers resisted opening. Dried black fluid had crusted along the blade and splashed across his sleeves. His armor rattled when he moved, and beneath it his undershirt clung cold and wet to his skin. For half a second, he remembered lines in the air, thin and bright, the sword vanishing and returning, the world sliced into geometry. Yae Ikazuchi, the glorious eightfold lightning draw.

Then he remembered the eye. A single enormous eye, dark at the center and ringed in pale gold. He remembered the voice like a hand closing around his soul. You are ours now. It all came back, and Shimon bent forward and vomited as his stomach decided to disagree with him. Not much came up, only bile, bitterness, and the thin acidic proof at the back of his throat. Tarō gave him a brief look that might almost have been amusement.

Then the expression cracked and fell away as his gaze went past Shimon, toward the body lying near the tree roots. The younger Kume brother, Jirō, lay on his side with one arm folded beneath him and his mouth slightly open. His spear was gone. It remained buried in one of the yōma, the shaft angled absurdly from the monster's ruined torso. Blood had soaked the ground around him and blackened the leaves. Tarō's face emptied, but Shimon did not know what to say.

The lost young man knew there were words for this in every language: condolences, apologies, and other small verbal offerings laid at the altar of grief because human beings could not sometimes stomach the silence of loss. All of it seemed trite, not enough for this moment.

"I'm sorry," he decided at last. Tarō's jaw moved once, but he did not look at Shimon. He looked at a place of memories.

"He was always too quick," he said.

"Quick to laugh. Quick to eat. Quick to speak. Quick to run at things that should have been run from." The older brother swallowed and looked down at his hands. They were shaking now.

"Mother said he would die that way if I did not watch him." Shimon had no answer for that either, but the forest offered one. A crow dropped from a higher branch to a lower one with a black rustle of wings. Its head tilted toward the dead. Tarō's grief hardened in an instant.

"No," he said softly. Then, louder, to the forest, to the birds, to the corpses, to everything that had survived and everything that had not, "No." He stood too quickly, swayed, and caught himself on the tree. Shimon reached out by instinct, but Tarō waved him off.

"We work," Tarō said.

"We grieve after. If there is an after." That was sensible, horribly sensible, and the kind of hard wisdom that had been lost in the modern world. Shimon slowly forced his fingers open and stupidly sheathed his sword. Then he remembered something from his given memories, so he pulled it out again, wiped it as best he could on the rags of a dead Hojo soldier, hated himself for how natural that felt, and this time slid home properly to rest. An intrusive blue panel opened at the edge of his vision.

[PASSIVE MONITORING ACTIVE] Cognitive Load: Severe Stress Response: Extreme Hydration: Low Muscular Strain: Elevated Minor Contusions: Multiple Unknown Carrier Signal: Background / Irregular Recommendation: Rest, hydration, and medical attention. Shimon almost laughed.

"Medical attention," he whispered to himself.

"Brilliant. I'll just call an ambulance." Tarō glanced at him curiously.

"What?"

"Nothing," he replied, realizing that it was becoming his most useful answer. The pair of them took stock of the living first, because that was quick. There were only two of them now, Tarō and Shimon, for everyone else from the hired party was very dead. The veteran Kuroda Genzō had died on his side with one hand still near the charm tied inside his armor. The old samurai's wounded arm had bled itself empty into the soil. His face, even in death, looked disappointed in the performance of everyone around him.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. Mizuno Sōbei was worse. The man who had smiled too much had died without a smile, one hand pressed uselessly to the ruin of his belly. His ruined eye was crusted shut. His sword lay nearby, point sunk into mud. Shimon remembered the way he had fought half-blind, reduced to survival and steel.

He had disliked the man, guiltily suspecting that the rogue would have robbed him eventually if a good opportunity had arrived. But that did not make looking at his body easier. Sakurai Iori lay apart from them. Or rather, the thing that had been Sakurai Iori lay there. His elegant face had not fully held its shape. In death, the skin had slackened strangely around the jaw and cheeks, and the mouth had remained too wide. His tongue, long and dark and inhuman, lolled partly between his teeth.

The cut across his neck had nearly taken the head, leaving it attached by strips of flesh. Shimon stared at him and felt cold enter his stomach again. You are not meant to be here. You are not human. You are not yōma. You will suffice. Tarō followed his gaze.

"That one," he fumed, and there was hatred in the words as he drew his short blade.

"We take his head. We have to." The work that followed was butchery performed by exhausted men with poor tools and trembling hands. They took Sakurai's head. Tarō did most of it. Shimon helped because not helping would have been worse, pulling at it by the hair while the blade sawed through what remained of the neck. When the thing's head finally came free, Shimon expected something born from horror to happen, but instead it was just heavy. That was all. Simply, heavy, wet, and obscenely real.

Tarō wrapped it in torn cloth taken from the thing's own garments and tied it with cord.

"The castle will want to see him," Tarō said.

"A man-shaped yōma wearing a samurai's face. A man who entered a paid party under the witness of the Adventurer's Za. A thing like that is more than just teeth and claws. And the other yōma. Proof." He moved to one of the grey bodies. The creature had been split apart by the impossible draw, its upper half lying twisted among wet leaves. Even dead, its edges seemed wrong. Shimon's eyes slid away from it unless he forced them to stay. The mouth, however, remained clear.

Three rows of triangular teeth, wet and serrated. Tarō crouched, swallowed once, then used his short blade to hook back the lip.

"Teeth from the second row, if you can take them. Claws if the teeth break. The priests say flesh may rot to nothing, and some yōma leave only ash by moonrise. But the teeth last. They keep the stain."

"Stain," Shimon repeated, unsure.

"Spiritual stain. Curse. Proof. Whatever word keeps officials paying coin." Tarō's mouth twisted.

"A big jaw like this? They use the teeth for something in the temples. Maybe medicine… I don't know. And three yōma? Gods." He stopped, and for a moment, his face became that of the young man from the road again, the elder brother of a cheerful idiot. Then, he continued, "This would have made us rich," Tarō said quietly.

"Me and Jirō. Not lord-rich. Not fine silk-rich. But enough, perhaps. Debts paid, the roof fixed, and Mother with enough rice to last many winters. Maybe even enough for Jirō to marry that girl he kept pretending not to like." The forest was silent around them. Tarō pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes, hard enough to leave a smear of blood across his brow.

"He would have laughed," he rambled.

"He would have said we should hunt another three." Then he lowered his hand and began cutting teeth from the yōma's jaw. Again, Shimon helped. The first tooth came free with a wet crack that made his skin tighten. It was longer than his thumb, triangular, slightly curved, and not smooth. Its edge looked as if it had grown with tiny saw points. Dark fluid clung to the root. When Shimon held it, the chip pulsed.

[UNKNOWN MATERIAL DETECTED] Biological origin: Unclassified Density: Abnormal Trace energy residue: Present Unknown Carrier Signal Interaction: Weak Recommended: Avoid prolonged dermal contact.

"Now you tell me," Shimon muttered in complaint. They wrapped the teeth in paper and cloth. Tarō had a small pouch for charms and coins. He emptied it of everything except one old wooden amulet, then used it for the proof. Shimon tore strips from a dead soldier's sleeve and made smaller bundles. They took heads from the human enemies too. Several corpses still wore identifiable marks. Tarō explained that the castle had offered coin for routed enemies, but that enemy heads mattered less than the yōma proof now.

They wrapped Sakurai's head separately. The work transformed the hollow into something even worse than a massacre site. It became a harvest for death, and Shimon's modern mind recoiled. However, another part of him watched and learned. That was the part that frightened him the most, how easily he was adapting to all of this nonsense. When they were finished, Tarō stood and looked at the armor.

"Weapons too," he grunted absently.

"You want to carry all this back?"

"The best we carry. Some we leave for retrieval. But we do not leave blades scattered for bandits, dead men, or things that wear dead men." Shimon did not ask whether that last part was metaphorical. He suspected the answer would not comfort him. First, they made three piles. The first was weapons: spears, swords, bows, knives, arrowheads worth the trouble, and anything not too broken.. Mizuno's sword went there after Tarō bowed once to the body.

Kuroda's spear went there too, though Tarō hesitated before laying it down.

"The old man should keep something," Shimon supposed, causing the other man to look at him. The young man wished immediately that he had not spoken. He did not know the custom. He did not know whether this was sentimental nonsense, an insult, or a costly mistake. However, Tarō only nodded, taking Kuroda Genzō's short blade and placed it across the old samurai's chest.

"He can explain the rest to Emma-Ō if the judge asks," he explained with a grunt. That was either religious confidence or dark humor. Shimon was too tired to know. The second pile was armor, such as it was. Plates, helmets, bits of kote, torn cuirasses, anything that could be repaired or sold. For himself, Shimon found pieces closer to his size and a good helmet. Still, much of it had been stripped from dead Hojo men before the yōma had arrived, and some had been chewed or bent in ways that made it useless.

The third pile was for burning, and that pile was the largest. Dead Hojo soldiers, dead bandits, if there were bandits among them. The yōma pieces went among them too, though Tarō salted them first from a small packet he had somehow kept tied inside his armor.

"Salt stops them?" Shimon asked, genuinely curious. Tarō shrugged.

"People say it helps."

"Does it?" The other survivor looked down at the grey pieces of flesh.

"Then again, people also said three yōma would not come this close to a village." They then dragged the rest of the bodies. There was no dignity in it because there was no strength left for dignity. Feet slipped in mud, and hands lost their grip in the name of speed. Once, Shimon dropped a severed arm and had to pick it up again. The scattered yōma pieces were the worst. They were heavier than they looked and strangely cold. When Shimon touched one, the blue interface fluttered.

[UNKNOWN CARRIER SIGNAL REACTION] Signal Strength: Brief Increase Connection Status: None … Shuddering, he let go quickly and decided to leave this to Tarō. They made a separate place for their comrades: Kuroda Genzō, Mizuno Sōbei, and Kume Jirō. Tarō insisted on it with a flatness that invited no discussion. They cleared a smaller patch near the edge of the hollow, away from the yōma and the routed dead. They laid the three men side by side, comrades now in death.

Tarō knelt beside Jirō for a long time while the lost young man pretended to busy himself by gathering branches. Still, there was not enough wood for proper pyres. Not for all of them, and most certainly not with two exhausted men and no tools beyond blades. But, they built what they could with deadfall, broken lean-tos, ruined banners, and scraps of the routed camp. The wood was damp, smoking angrily as it burned and stinging Shimon's eyes. Soon enough, the unwelcome smell of cooking pork added to the fragrance.

Shimon turned away and breathed through his sleeve, but it did not help much.