Girl Takes Up Her Sword (2 page)

Chapter
2

The Roadhouse—Yesterday

“You sure you want to go through with this?” Connie asked. “I mean, it’s not like you owe these guys anything.”

“I’m not so sure. That night by the lake, they had that coming. But they don’t deserve to die for their mistake.”

“I get that. But is it really your problem?”

Emily said nothing. A glimpse into the darkness swirling at the bottom of her eyes was the only answer she had for her friend.

“Fine. You get three minutes. Then Ethan and I are bringing the cavalry. Now get going. We’ll be right behind you.”

Half an hour later, she tapped on a metal door with one knuckle of her left hand. The ride through the West Virginia countryside to get there had been breezy, buggy and exhilarating. Now she stood next to one of those steel frame structures with corrugated siding, probably a warehouse originally, then a machine shop or some sort of mechanic’s lair. The greasy dirt in the yard suggested as much. These days it contained a roadhouse, really an enormous bar, big enough to accommodate dozens of motorcycles out front in one long row, like tilted metal dominos. Her dirt bike held down the end of the line, upright and incongruous in that company.

The office abutted the main building on the far end, little more than a metal shed added on as an afterthought. Some loud grunting presaged the grizzled and quite large, paunchy fellow who eventually opened the door. He squinted at her in the afternoon light.

“Whaddya want?” he snarled. “The front door’s that way.”

“I’m here to see you,” she said, pressing lightly on his chest.

Tiny as she was in comparison, it should have been easy to keep her out. But, for whatever reason, he stepped aside and followed her in.

“Would you turn off the security cameras for me?”

“Get outta here,” he said, and reached out to grab her.

She parried and twisted his wrist until she could enforce compliance with a light thumb pressure applied to the back of his hand. His forehead hit the concrete floor. A slight, further twist brought tears to his eyes.

“I’d rather not have any record of what might happen in there. Shall we smash your equipment?” she asked, tipping her head toward the computer terminal on the desk. “Or just unplug it?”

One more twist and he nodded compliance. She released him and watched as he dusted himself off. As she expected, he lunged at her again, apparently thinking to pin her against the wall. Connie’s words echoed in her head: was it really worth this much trouble to help these guys? Another parry and twist, she controlled his wrist much more aggressively this time, and he found himself tumbling head over heels. After an awkward landing on the edge of the desk, he fell to the floor with a thud. As if through a dense fog, he looked up at her, until she struck him sharply across the nose with the heel of her palm. With blood oozing from his nose and mouth, he subsided into a heap and troubled her no more.

At the desk, she brought up a program to disable the security cameras. Another one sent a short web video, which was the whole reason she had come here in the first place, to the TV screens in the main room, set to repeat. When she entered through the door behind the bar, the video was already playing. All heads were turned to watch it as she made her way through the middle of the room.

On the screen, they saw a young woman fight off about a dozen of their number in a dimly lit parking lot. The violence was intense, even gruesome. Some of them cringed at what they saw. Broken limbs and joints, the girl left a bloody wake behind her as she spun through the crowd. The gang finally capitulated, limping off carrying their maimed, though that was not entirely captured on the video. The final image showed the girl glowering, an unholy fire in her eyes. Whoever held the camera must have flinched at the sight and stopped recording. A caption appeared under her face: “Do you know this bitch?”

She stood directly in front of three men at a table off to one side, a smaller man with a bandaged throat and an arm in a cast, and two large, muscular men. These must be the leaders of the gang, she was pretty sure.

“I got your message,” she said in a loud voice, pointing a thumb at the large screen on the wall behind her. “I’m here. What do you want?”

The room came to a hush as people gradually recognized her. Hard looking men moved toward her from all directions. A female voice cried out from across the room.

“It’s her, that bitch! There she is.”

The crowd in the bar was rather larger than what she faced that night by the lake, perhaps forty or more people. But they seemed perplexed by what they saw on the big screen. Some must have been there, and hung back this time. Others stood staring at the images on the nearest screen. Among the rest, a delicate suspense hung in the air, an inability to act against her. It surely wouldn’t last long.

“Don’t just stand there,” shrieked one of the women who kept company with the gang. “Do something! Grab her!”

Two men stepped forward, one reached for her tentatively.

“Last time you made me fight, it didn’t turn out so well for you,” she snarled at the three men still seated at the table. “And it could have been
much
uglier, if you’d made me fight to the end.” The bandaged man winced as she said this. The large man seated next to him raised his hand to the men gathering around her, as if to forestall any new violence. Not everyone was appeased by this gesture.

“What’s wrong with all of you?” the same woman cried. “You saw what she did.”

She charged at her brandishing a knife. Emily stepped to the side, controlled the wrist and the knife, twisting down and around, sending her sprawling head over heels onto a nearby table. Ordinarily, faced with such an attack, she would have broken the wrist, or the elbow, maybe dislocated the shoulder as well, and forced the hand holding the knife to slash through the hip or stab her attacker in the ass. She let the woman off easy, merely treating her to a hard, awkward landing.

By the time she turned to confront the men crowding toward her, she could feel the heat in her face, as if her eyes were on fire. The men around her shrunk back, as if only now noticing the similarity to the final image of the video that had transfixed them just moments earlier. Experiencing that glare in person could hardly bear any finite relation to watching pixels on a screen. No one moved.

The rumble of several large vehicles was audible in the quiet. A moment later, the double doors burst open and a team of heavily armed men in body armor rushed in, as if on cue, followed by Ethan and Connie. They stood silently at one end of the bar, gun barrels leveled against the crowd. Everyone in the room backed away, anxious to appear less than usually threatening. The girl addressed the main table again.

“I’m not here to fight,” she said darkly. “I’m here to give you some friendly advice. Take that video down before it brings you real trouble.” No one said anything. After a moment, she continued. “There are people looking for me, nasty people, much nastier than you, who will trace that website back here. And when they come, they will rain destruction down upon you.”

Still silence. She turned to the large man who had forestalled any fighting with his hand. After a long, cool stare she asked his name.

“Luther,” he replied in a little voice.

She leaned over to touch his hand and surreptitiously slipped him a card.

“Here’s how you can get a message to me,” she said in a much softer tone just for him. His face relaxed noticeably as he looked into her eyes.

“What’s your name?”

“Emily,” she whispered. “Emily Kane. My friends call me Em.”

She turned and walked directly to her companions by the front door. The crowd parted, apparently eager to avoid touching her or impeding her progress. She smiled at Connie. A finger snap, a sharp gesture from Ethan and the armed men followed her outside. A moment later they were gone.

The mood in the roadhouse could not easily find a suitable register after she left. No one quite knew what to say. Most eyes looked to Luther for some sort of guidance. Prior to this moment he had not been the leader of the gang. But Emily’s attentions practically anointed him, against his will and much to the consternation of his bandaged chief. Later, in private, he burned the card after committing the information to memory.

~~~~~~~

Just past Covington, Emily parted company with Ethan’s convoy of security vehicles. She turned off the interstate, headed north towards Warm Springs and pulled into a strip mall on the edge of town. The dojo occupied a storefront on the end, with south facing windows and vertical blinds to ward off the sun.

“Why go see them?” asked Sensei Oda. “To finish the fight?”

“No,” she replied. “To settle with them. They don’t understand the danger they’re in.”

“How did it go?”

“As well as could be expected.”

“What’s your next move?”

“I don’t have one,” she admitted.

Sensei looked her in the eye for a long moment, then smiled.

“Wendy tells me you’re going to visit the Naval Academy. What’s that about? You haven’t changed your mind have you?”

“No. It wouldn’t be safe there. Don’t worry. I’m still enrolling at Charlottesville in the fall. This is just a favor for Coach Parker, you know, to help his team get ready for the tournament.”

Sensei grunted.

“What do you want to do today?” he asked.

“How about you show me that new sword
kata
you’ve been bragging about?”

“The sword is your new preoccupation, isn’t it?”

“How could I resist, a double sword technique.”

“Aren’t you worried two
katanas
will be too heavy?”

“What about a
katana
and a
wakizashi
? I think I can handle that.”

“Let’s find out.”

Holding the
katana
in one hand felt just about right. Even though it was about six inches shorter, the weight of the
wakizashi
in her off-hand left her feeling a little unbalanced. Practicing the kata would have to strengthen that side.

Sensei gave her a special belt to practice drawing the sword and walked through the
kata
with her. It only took a couple of times through with
bokkens
before she knew the basic outline. A few more repetitions and Sensei handed her the swords.

Starting from a kneeling position, with a subtle shift of the hips she was on her feet slashing across her body with the big blade. A pivoting step back, an upward stroke, thrust, and a spinning side stroke as she drew the short blade with an upward slashing motion. The blades crossed as she slashed sideways to clear the space in front, followed by a front thrust with the
katana
and, shifting her grip, a back thrust with the
wakizashi
.

It was hard work swinging the
katana
, a heavy steel blade almost a yard long. Balance and speed were key. But most important, Sensei always said, is not to stop the blade. Let it follow its course, always active, always moving. A sword has a spirit of its own, the spirit of the warrior who wields it, and of the ones who died by it. To stop the blade is to stop the mind of the warrior.

“You don’t have a
wakizashi
to practice with, do you?” he asked.

“No. But I have a short oak
bokken
. It’ll do for now.”

“Have you had any more dreams?”

“Yes, almost every night, always variations of the same one. I’m in the meadow facing a bright light and a shadow. As I stand there, they grow to fill the sky, and the light starts speaking to me. She says what you’re always saying, you know, that thing Takuan Soho says: ‘the true master uses the sword to give life. When he must kill, he kills. When he should give life, he gives life.’ It’s like she’s giving me a command or something. And when I ask her if I’ll ever be able to have friends, she goes silent. Then I’m weeping and where my tears hit the ground, people spring up and start chanting my name. It’s beautiful in a way, but it’s also kinda scary. I mean, the sun is speaking to me in my dreams, and I can’t understand what she wants from me.”

“It’s always the same, just like that?”

“Yeah, except last night, instead of the tears and the chanting people, I see a huge snake in the grass, and I’m holding a flaming sword. I can’t tell if I’m supposed to kill the snake, or what. But, the thing is, the snake isn’t at all menacing. It’s even beautiful. It’s like I don’t even want to hurt the snake. But what am I supposed to do, then?”

“I think the sun is trying to tell you that you
will
have friends, as many as the tears you let fall.”

“That sounds a little creepy. What are the tears
for
, all the other people I’ll have to kill? Because I don’t kill people, not unless they’re trying to kill me.”

“Maybe she’s trying to show you how to use the sword to give life.”

“If that’s the point, I don’t understand what she’s trying to tell me.”