Free Disciple of the Wind by Steve Bein Page B

who, and why.

BOOK TWO

     
     
     
    AZUCHI-MOMOYAMA PERIOD, THE YEAR 21
    (1588 CE )

7
    S hichio sat in the shade of the sedan chair, stroking his iron mask as if it were a cat.
    Sedan chairs were supposed to be cool. That was why the upper classes hired them: to sit at ease, out of the sun. Or out of the rain, if the fickle dragon-god Kura-okami would visit a little rain on this forsaken land. Even a few clouds would be an improvement. Let them be as miserly as an old crone’s teats; at least they would bring some shade.
    But no. This was Izu, and that meant hot and miserable.
    As if it were not bad enough to listen to his bearers’ grunting, he could also smell them. Their sweat mingled with the dust of the road—and there was no shortage of dust, that was sure. Not a month past, a typhoon had lashed the entire eastern coast, from the Kansai all the way up to Totomi and Suruga, but it had stopped just shy of Izu. It was as if the clouds themselves had the good sense to avoid this place. The only water was the ocean, whose relentless droning filled Shichio’s nose with a salty tang—which, sadly, did little to mitigate the stink of the bearers.
    The mask’s call distracted him from all of that. Though he would have thought any distraction would be welcome, in truth the mask frightened him. Its iron brow would never sweat, though hundreds of tiny pits suggested that salt and water had been at work over the years. Its features were so lifelike that sometimes Shichio thought it mightwell close its eyes to sleep. How many times had he wished it would? A little respite from the mask, just one peaceful night, was that so much to ask? Even an hour would bring him greater relief than the coolest monsoon.
    But would it sleep? No. So long as he touched it, it haunted him with visions of bloodshed. As soon as he broke contact, it woke a need in him that was so similar to lust that Shichio sometimes felt himself stiffen inside his robes. More than once he’d slipped his hand in there to bring himself off, hoping to satisfy his need for the mask as well. But the mask would not be sated.
    So there it was, the only other passenger of the sedan chair. It rested heavily on his thigh, cool to the touch. His thumb ran back and forth, back and forth across the tips of its pointed teeth. Usually it made him think of swords, of thrusting and stabbing, of blood oozing in its soupy, sickening way. Now, though, his thoughts ran to one sword in particular, longest and loveliest of them all. Glorious Victory Unsought, forged by Master Inazuma some four hundred years before, sullied of late by a bear cub’s paws. The mask never relented, not even for the space of a breath, but now it tempted him with the respite he so desperately needed. He had only to claim that sword and the demon would release him.
    Never before had it gripped him so firmly. Shichio could not stay in the sedan chair a moment longer. That sword was nearby. It had to be. He had only to get out and claim it. Now.
    Then the mask bit him.
    He cried out. Before he knew it, the mask was on the floorboard and his thumb was in his mouth. That all-consuming need for the sword vanished in the space of a heartbeat.
    He looked at his own blood, which welled up nauseatingly from a long gash across the pad of his thumb. Shichio could not bear the sight of blood. And now his mask was bloody too. A single red pearl clung to the fang cut short by that damnable Bear Cub. The boy’s Inazuma blade had marred the mask, shearing right through solid iron. All theother teeth ended in elegant points, but ironically the pointed ones could not bite. The square-tipped tooth was the sharpest. Not for the first time, it had stolen a taste of Shichio’s flesh.
    The sedan chair lurched as the bearers came to a halt. A voice outside said, “General Shichio?”
    “Keep going! Mind your own affairs.” Who did this lout think he was? Even if his lord cried out, that was for lesser ears to ignore.
    “Sir,