The body did not move, but it was not dead. Nonono. Almost, perhaps. Blood fed the grass. Not dead. No pretties, neither. Except the sword. Sword and dead ogre. Ogre was dead. Yes. Smelled dead. This one smelled not dead. Monk might want him. Yesyes. Might give. Make body heal. Yesyes.
----
Night came sooner to this side of the mountain. As darkness settled through the trees, crickets began to softly sing. Chokei stopped his gardening and walked toward the shrine. He had a visitor. The man kneeling at the simple torii wore a kimono the colour of the sky before morning, and his hair was the colour of crow feathers. "Shinsei's crow," Chokei thought idly. He waited until the stranger stood, then he approached.
"Welcome, visitor. I am Heichi Chokei, and I tend this humble shrine. I welcome you in the name of the Brotherhood. All are welcome here." The visitor turned. A ghost! No, 'though his face was painted kabuki-style.
A shugenja, then.
"I am Kuni Utagu. I have come seeking your guest."
"I do not understand."
"Chiratchirrik said to me that he brought a man to you. An injured man. If he is whom I believe, then I must speak with him." The Crab's manner was abrupt, bordering on rude. Chokei noticed a teardrop of jade, hanging from his neck by a chain of iron. Tsukai-sagasu. Witch hunter.
"Hai. The nezumi did bring an injured bushi here, two days gone. He is resting now, and should not be disturbed. What is your concern with him?" Chokei stepped slowly to the left, toward his _bo_ resting against the wall of the shrine. He did not trust this shugenja. Few people visited this shrine, high in the mountains beyond Shinomen Forest. This swift arrival seemed too convenient. Contrived. It was too soon for someone to be seeking the injured Falcon.
The Kuni glanced to the wooden staff, and back to Chokei. He smiled softly, an un-natural seeming expression in that starkly white face. "I mean no harm to your guest. If anything my Clan owes him a debt, if he is whom I believe him to be. Still, injured or no, I must speak with him. More stands to be lost here than a single man's life. "Whether you permit it or no, I _will_ speak with him."
The sagasu's eyes were hardened steel. His fingers touched the hilt of his wakizashi. Chokei returned his stare, unflinching.
Genzo opened his one good eye. The leg still pained him greatly, but
it would heal. The monk kneeled nearby. Genzo touched the broken leg. He
was still alive. Again.
He coughed. His chest still hurt as well.
Another figure stepped onto the warm, wooden floor of the shrine, and stood beside the tatami. A Kuni. Genzo grimaced.
"Genzo-san. I am Kuni Utagu, tsukai-sagasu of the Crab Clan. I regret your injuries. I hear that the Tainted regret that they were not greater. Were there more of your number, perhaps we would not have needed the Naga's aid, nor suffered from their treachery. "I need you to be my eyes. You saw the Tainted as they surged around Hiruma's walls, and survived. I know this. You saw the Fallen lead his army against my Daimyo. I know this also. In one hand, the Fallen carried a rotted skull. I know this. The nezumi saw these things.
"One thing, however, they could not tell me. What did he hold in his other hand?" The tsukai-sagasu leaned down, his eyes like fire.
Genzo was pulled into those eyes. His pain was overwhelmed by that flame, burned away, and gone.
He crouched behind brown stone, peering through smoke, past the charred remains of what passed here for trees, to the fortress. Gouts of black flame crawled up the walls. On the plain surrounding the walls, insanity feasted on the dead. A horde of braying, cackling madness.
In the midst of the beseigers, a spit of stone thrust itself toward the mottled sky, like a single rib from a worm-eaten corpse. Atop that horrid spire, a clutch of tattered robes and putrid flesh made a mockery of man. The Fallen. Arms thrust high toward Lord Moon. In one hand, the Dark God's skull. A last, venerated shell of evil, palpable even at this distance. He could taste it in the fouled air.
In the other hand, a long blade of dark obsidian, blacker than the night around it. The blade was soaked in gore.
Genzo turned to the nezumi who followed him. One of them vanished in a haze of blood. The world slowed. That was when his leg was torn from under him. That was not now. He had survived. He was still alive. Again.
His chest hurt.
The tsukai-sagasu looked grim. "Then it is not there. I had hoped.... but no. It is not to be so easy, then." Abruptly, he turned and stepped outside. There would be no explanation, it seemed.
Dissatisfied, Chokei followed the dark figure into the night. The witch hunter had already donned his sandles, and taken up his walking-stick.
As Chokei stepped out of the shrine, the sagasu whirled to face him. The jade talisman depended from the iron chain held firmly in the fingers of his left hand. Tiny, etched writing covered its whole surface. The jade glowed a brilliant green, lending an eerie cast to the whitened features of the Crab. His eyes bored into Chokei's soul, peering into shadows illuminated by a jade light. Chokei's world reduced to a pair of jade-litten spheres, and those eyes consumed him.
Years passed.
The tsukai-sagasu blinked, nodded, turned away. Behind him now, Chokei could no longer see those eyes.
The hunter's voice drifted through the darkness beneath Lord Moon. "I have heard disturbing rumours in the North, rumours that there are those amongst the Brotherhood who have fallen to maho, who seek power in blood. "What know you of this thing?"
"Iie." Chokei was puzzled by the question, but then suddenly he understood. "Iie. The ise zumi are no evil to concern you, witch hunter. They merely seek enlightenment in their tie to Togashi-kami."
Kuni Utagu, staff in hand, started carefully down the mountainside in the dark. "Blood is blood, Heichi Chokei of the Brotherhood.
"Stay clean."