Watching the fluid elegance of Seiji’s ritual put Takashi at peace. Seiji raised the bow so that the horizontal shaft of the arrow was level with his eyes. He extended his hands, his movement loose and calm. His knuckles were curved, as if he held two tiny teacups in his fingers.
Had Takashi been the one holding Seiji’s bow, he would have found it difficult to fire at a woman. He might have needed Seiji to place a nimble hand on his shoulder and remind him that it was not a woman anymore.
Seiji’s drawing hand opened like the wing of a bird, and with remarkable grace he let the arrow fly.
It was a perfect shot. The arrowhead pierced the woman’s eye, erupted out the back of her skull, and passed through the remaining man’s eye socket as well. The arrow continued on, finally coming to rest in the soggy bark of a lilac tree.
Takashi looked away, feeling the vomit crawl up his throat. He wondered whose grandmother, dead and buried years before, that had been. He wondered whose father, too slow to escape the mouja, had just been defiled.
In this new world, Bushido was just a specter lurking in the dark caves of samurai minds. Takashi knew a curse had fallen over the five islands, that none could die without rising as a perverse rotting thing, mindless and hungry for flesh. To obey the honor laws was to set a place for Death at one’s own table.
Edo, Kyoto—for all Takashi knew all of the major cities had already fallen. This little village would have been defenseless. But the farmers had known that the mouja were on their way, so they had sought out a champion.
They had found Takashi at a trading post and begged him to take up their cause. It was a hopeless task. They needed an army to stand a chance. But hell was coming, and honor dictated it is better to go down fighting, protecting those who could not protect themselves. Bushido or no, doing anything was better than sitting around and drinking sake, awaiting the inevitable. So Takashi had agreed, and recruited a few other ronin to join him in protecting the town.
“Look alive,” Seiji called from his window. The words were a suggestion as much as a greeting. “I am going to retrieve my arrows. You never know when we may need more than we have. Shout if you see anything that needs killing.”
Seiji bounded from the hut and splashed across the rice paddies, the rain beating down on his gray cloak. When he reached the three mouja corpses, Seiji checked to make sure they were truly dead by prodding them with his katana. Takashi marveled. He had not even seen Seiji draw his sword. Other samurai had been recruited to defend the village, but Takashi would have traded any two of them for another Seiji. He was more dangerous with a fish knife than the others were with swords.
Days earlier, Isao, the youngest among the samurai protecting the village, had been watching Seiji’s unmatched accuracy at work. “Your aim is perfect every time,” he had said. “What is the trick?”
“The trick,” Seiji had said, “is not caring if you hit the target.”
The rain stopped. As the sound of roaring water faded, Takashi came out of his reverie. On the edge of the forest, Seiji was examining his arrows. One shaft had broken two inches below the fletching, so Seiji snapped off the arrowhead and kept it. The other arrow—the one that had killed two mouja with one shot—was fine once the gore was stripped off.
After sliding the arrow into his quiver, Seiji started back across the paddy field, but then suddenly froze. His ears pricked up, and he looked like a thirsty buck at a stream. From his expression the cause of his concern was clear: he was being hunted.
With the slightest motion of his head, Seiji turned. Takashi followed his gaze. Through the trees he could see a chubby, bearded man wearing a leather armor breastplate and deerskin chaps, with a brown bandana around his head. His face was ashen, his eyes the color of bird droppings. The man’s left arm and his teeth were missing, and a ropy line of blood and saliva dribbled from his mouth.
If not for the beloved hatchet slung across the man’s back, Takashi never would have believed it was Minoru. Poor Minoru, the first of the samurai to fall, had now vacated the funeral mound where the others had buried him. He stood leaning against a tree, staring at Seiji with a hungry mouth and those swirling eyes. All of his good humor was gone. Only the hunger remained.
Seiji raised his sword into a medium stance and looked at Takashi as if to ask “Should I?” Takashi had to tell himself that this creature was no more Minoru than a palace raided by bandits was still a king’s home. Minoru’s mind had new tenants. Takashi nodded to Seiji, then looked away. He shut his eyes as he heard the heavy thud of Minoru’s severed head hitting the ground.