Thousand Shrine Warrior (42 page)

Authors: Jessica Amanda Salmonson

BOOK: Thousand Shrine Warrior

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For a long time they did not move. When Shi-u finally lunged, Tomoe leapt back, giving up ground, coming nearer the beach and leaving the jetty and its lanterns.

The nun leapt high into the air so that Shi-u's horizontal cut missed its mark; and she kicked Shi-u in the face before coming down upon her back, hurt by a rock at her spine. Shi-u staggered backward, her nose nearly broken and swelling quickly, blood spewing horridly. Tomoe started to her feet, but was forced by Shi-u's onslaught to fall sideways over a boulder and straight into a shoal.

The shoal was thick with colorless jellyfish. Long, blue, dangerous filaments stung her as she was standing. Shi-u pursued right into the midst of the boneless fiends, causing Tomoe to give more ground, stumbling backward through shallows; and both of them plunged from the sea's shelf. Neither could touch bottom with her feet; neither could swim very well while dashing swords at one another. They sank as one beneath the waves, locked arm to arm, each holding off the other's sword. Shi-u's nose was still bleeding, a red cloud between them in the water. Tomoe pushed away, avoiding a cut only because the sea slowed Shi-u's quickness.

Tomoe gave up fighting and concentrated on getting onto Namida Beach, treading through water and jellyfish, scrabbling at stone, coughing, looking like a wet rag or an unwholesome mass of stringy seaweed. The seaweed lurched, stood; behind it, from shallows, stalked Shi-u. Tomoe spat water. Her straw sandals, soaked, fell to pieces, and she scraped her foot against barnacles. She complained loudly, “A bad choice, Shi-u! Poor ground for dueling!” She scrabbled on, not looking back, avoiding the cut behind her, trying to get above the tideline where there was a narrow margin of sand between the rocky shore and the stark, dry grasses rustling in the warm sea breeze.

Clothing hung wet and heavy. The women took up new postures in a sandy area. Driftwood, looking like the bones of monsters, impinged on three sides. Both strove for a certain dignity, despite looking like half-drowned dogs. Shi-u's white-streaked hair sported one green streak of seaweed. Her swollen nose did not bleed as much, but was horrible to look at. Shi-u bared her teeth and rushed forward, causing Tomoe to roll away through dry sand, which adhered to her costume. She came up in a defensive posture and brushed grit from one cheek, looking annoyed.

“I quit, Shi-u,” she said; but Shi-u pressed harder. Tomoe blocked, spun halfway around, thrust quickly, was blocked, and had to block again. Yet Shi-u's arm had been cut, how badly was difficult to tell; it didn't bleed a lot.

They backed away from each otherâTomoe weary; Shi-u monstrous and menacing, even in momentary retreat. Shi-u put her sword's tip against a bit of wood and leaned on it, panting, watching Tomoe. Tomoe turned her back, as though bored, or simply unable to look at Shi-u's face. She heard Shi-u coming, but did not turn to face her. She heard the angle of the descending blade and moved, at the last possible moment, to Shi-u's left, and landed a cut. Shi-u's sheath saved her. Tomoe had cut through it, ruining it, and Shi-u pulled the remaining section out of her belt and threw it aside.

Tomoe crouched to one knee and held her sword, edge upward, pointed at Shi-u's belly. Shi-u held back, judging the strange posture. There was no answer to it, for it was wholly defensive, like a hermit crab drawn into its shell. “That won't do!” said Shi-u.

“If it works,” retorted Tomoe.

The defensive posture could be exceedingly dangerous to anyone who attacked from above; yet the nun was crouched so low that Shi-u could not possibly get underneath the sword. Where science fails, stubborn insistence often suffices. Shi-u rushed forward in a deliberately suicidal attack. Tomoe fell sideways, for both of them would have died in the same moment if she had insisted on her tactic.

Only when Tomoe tried to stand did she realize her ankle had been cut. It was a deep cut, probably crippling. Shi-u had been too clever. The suicidal attack had been more carefully planned than Tomoe had thought.

Moving swiftly toward the nun, who crawled backward between two bleached logs, Shi-u's downward slice missed when Tomoe rolled up and over one log. Shi-u's sword imbedded itself deep into the wood. Tomoe slammed her own sword atop the other, embedding it less deeply and insuring the difficulty of Shi-u's getting her steel loose.

Shi-u gazed at her stuck sword and began keening and pulling like a beast with its leg in a trap. To Tomoe's amazement, it came out! Shi-u stumbled backward several paces on the momentum of her terrific yank.

Tomoe slid weaponless to a seated position, her back to the log; and she waited. She said quietly, “This is the end,” and at that moment, the boy Hayo appeared from above the grassy margin. He leapt, screaming, tears streaming, straight at Tomoe Gozen, and laminated himself to the front of her. Shi-u, too crazed and swift to break the attack, plunged her sword into the boy's back. Hayo ceased bellowing.

Tomoe wrapped her arms around the boy. He gritted his teeth and raised his face to look at her. He said softly, with gentleness, “I found something for you.” In his dirty hand was a haircomb made of tortoise shell. It was a foolish gift for a nun with hair cropped to shoulders, but a costly treasure, beautiful, and well-intended. “Hayo,” said Tomoe. “Did you steal it?” She closed her hand around the comb and Hayo's fingers. He replied, “I bought it. With the big coin you left me.” He grinned, dirty-faced; then his head fell upon her breasts; and he was dead.

Tomoe Gozen pushed the small, limp corpse from herself, then clawed her way to a standing position in spite of the muscle cut near her ankle. She grabbed hold of her sword's handle and wrenched it up and down until it came loose from the log. She could not step forward, for the ankle would make her fall. She caressed the haircomb, noting its delicate carving of the hototogisu bird.

Shi-u stood in a woeful posture, staring at the child she had slain through awkward insistence. Then she looked toward the object proffered by the bikuni. “Shi-u, it has a cuckoo signifying lost love. Come see it, if you only will.” Tomoe Gozen held the comb in her left hand; she held it toward Shi-u. In her right, she held her sword, raised high. Shi-u stumbled dumbly forward, dragging her sword left-handed. Her face was a horrifying mask of torment and self-torture. She reached out, clung to the comb in Tomoe's hand; and in the next instant, Tomoe's sword had cleaved her from left shoulder to heart. Tomoe waited three heartbeats before letting go of the comb and drawing her sword out from between Shi-u's breasts. Only then did Shi-u's rent body fall. Her hand, holding the comb, slowly relaxed.

Sheathing her sword, then pulling the sheathed weapon from her belt to use for a cane, the esoteric nun limped away from the Beach of Tears.

About the Author

Jessica Amanda Salmonson lives in the Pacific Northwest. She loves rats and Chihuahuas and has a big collection of gray-market samurai movies. Salmonson is a recipient of the World Fantasy Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the ReaderCon Certificate. She is a biblical scholar, atheist, vegetarian, progressive, and often annoyed.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Andy Ross

ISBN: 978-1-4532-9383-6

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com