Beneath an Opal Moon (30 page)

He backed off but Hellsturm followed. He blocked an eye-strike but only partially deflected the next. Pain like a hot lance shot through his chest and he did the only thing he could do to stave off death. He ran.

He had the face of a weasel, Chiisai thought, set into a head that seemed far too big for the torso, even though that was itself quite massive. He looked like a freak. He had tiny eyes and almost no nose, but the large gaping nostrils gave him the animal-like countenance. His ears, too, were small—but the lobes were distended, possibly by the stones set into them. He was dressed in wolf pelts and he stank.

She allowed the Tülc the first strike.

Its tremendous force shook her down to her ankles and had her blade been forged anywhere other than Ama-no-mori, it would certainly have been shattered.

He allowed her not a moment's letup but swung at her over and over without discernible rhythm so that she found it increasingly difficult to defend herself. Each time he appeared to fall into some pattern of attack, he would shift out of it and she would find herself slightly off-balance and thus vulnerable.

Her arms began to ache, the pain becoming fierce in no time at all, until it became a chore to lift her own sword over her head.

The Tülc came on, a feral grin lighting his face; she had seen that kind of look before, knew what this man would do to her before he killed her.

In that instant of inward-looking, she missed it. The movement had to have been minute but ordinarily she would have picked it up. Too late. The blur shot toward her and she felt as if her right shoulder had been dipped in flame. She cried out as the force reeled her backward. She stumbled and the dai-katana flew from her grasp.

She landed hard, clutching her shoulder where the spike was embedded. It had come from the hilt of the Tülc's sword, some hidden spring releasing it.

Now he stood over her, staring stonily down, and threw his blade from him. He withdrew something from beneath his furs and when Chiisai saw it gleaming in the moonlight, she knew that she was finished.

The lizard had gone but a small sound had taken its place and he tensed, knowing that Hellsturm was on his way.

Still he had no clear plan. He had known only that he had to get away from the machine of death, find some sort of cover. Now he wracked his brain, trying to recall everything Kossori had ever told him or showed him about
koppo
. He did not give way to despair, though he knew that this man who now pursued him had killed Kossori—and he had thought his friend all but invincible.

The sound came again, no more than the scrape of leather against rock, but now he could see the beginnings of an outline, already closer than he had imagined. Not much time left.

He resisted the impulse to move. Right now he was fairly certain that Hellsturm had not spotted him despite the fact that he was moving in the right direction. No sense in giving the Tudescan any more of an advantage than he already had. The trouble was, his own mind was a blank. He still had no idea what—

He lost the silhouette. One moment it was there; the next, gone.

Where was Hellsturm? he thought desperately.

There was total silence now. But a kind of deafening noise pounded against his eardrums and he realized he was listening to the sound of his own pulse. He scanned the darkness before him.

Felt it rather than heard it and was in the process of turning to meet it when the blow hit him, glancing off his forehead, and then he was rolling, half dazed, knowing that if he had been motionless when the blow caught him, it would have split his head open like a ripe melon.

He struggled to his knees but Hellsturm kicked him hard in the side and he went down. Hellsturm was on him, not giving him time to recover, and he was having to block a series of vicious sword-strikes to his sternum without benefit of a clear head or proper leverage. Sweat was in his eyes and he shook his head back and forth very quickly to clear his vision, but this only intensified the pain. Sharp points digging into his back and dust rising, clogging his nostrils, and he was almost pinned now and that would be it—because he knew that once he became immobile for even the briefest time, he was dead meat.

They were at the verge of the shale ledge and, as another sword-strike blurred toward his face, he felt them going over, tumbling, weightless for just an instant as they were hung suspended in midair. Then, abruptly, gravity took hold once more and the earth rushed up toward them with terrifying swiftness.

He willed his body to relax but Hellsturm was still on top of him and Moichi hit with his right shoulder first, the full weight of both bodies combined with the momentum; he felt as if he were caught in a vise. He cried out, feeling something inside tear, and then heard a popping that was, surprisingly, without pain—and he knew that his right arm was dislocated. Knew, too, that there was no hope now. None at all.

She had seen this weapon before. It had a long wooden haft ending in a sickle-shaped metal blade. From the end of the haft swung a long link chain with a studded metal ball. The sight of it terrified her. With good reason.

Chiisai was a shujin; that is, a grand master in martial arts. Only shujin were allowed to wear the dai-katana. And she was one of only a very few women in Bujun history to be so skilled.

Yet Chiisai had known defeat in Ama-no-mori. Once.

Her opponent had wielded this weapon.

She was paralyzed with fear; she had never beaten this weapon and would not do so now.

The chain whirled in the air, circling, and, as it lashed out with blinding speed, the Tülc grinned. She screamed as the chain whipped about her neck, driven by the force of his throw and the weight of the ball. The sound was not unlike the snapping of a hungry wolf.

Her breath cut off and she began to strangle, her continued screams but a soft susurrant rattle deep in her throat, as in a nightmare when one opens one's mouth to call out and no sound is heard. Panic welled up inside her, clutching at her stomach. She gagged, watching the grinning gap-toothed face looming sweatily over her as his thick filthy hands drew tighter by small degrees the chain around her throat.

He threw the weapon casually into the air, caught it by its haft, chopped downward in a tight arc, the sickle blade carving a swath closer and closer to her heaving breasts.

She struggled feebly with her legs and he hauled back on the chain as if she were a fish on a line. Her lungs felt as if at any moment they would burst.

A pearly blackness invaded her, mistily seeping into the edges of consciousness, and she knew that death was near. She was hypnotized into immobility, staring up at him, impaled, certain that this was indeed happening but to someone else, not her, not her.

Then she saw him do a curious thing. Keeping one hand wrapped around the chain, he let go of the haft with the other hand, dropped it to his belt of polished teeth. Carefully, not taking his eyes off her, he unwound it. Then the blade came down, sliding through the leather ties holding her breastplate together. He used the blade again to turn it over, away from her. Now she had only a thin layer of clothing and he stared, mouth half open, at what lay beneath the silk. He unbuttoned his pants and they slid down the hairy trunks of his legs.

Her gaze slid down to the juncture, and the outrage of what he was going to do somehow galvanized her out of her immobility. She no longer thought about her one defeat or this strange weapon which had caused it.

It was life now, and life only.

She went back to basics. For all she had left was the iai, a movement she had had to learn before the cut, the parry or the strike. She heard again her instructor, Hanjō, saying to her,
If you cannot get your sword out in time, there will be no need of any of the rest. Do you understand?
She hadn't, really, then. But she had learned it anyway, learned it well, for Hanjō was the finest iaijutsu master of all the Bujun. Now she understood and blessed him.

Thus it seemed to the Tülc that there was no movement at all. One moment she was exposed, at his mercy, and he straddled her, rampant; the next, he felt a sharp spearing pain lancing through his groin and lower abdomen.

His eyes bulged and spittle drooled from one corner of his hanging mouth. He dropped the weapon. All sensation was gone from his legs and they would not support him. He tumbled to his knees, straddling her outstretched legs. His trembling hands clasped his oozing vitals, holding them inside his rent flesh. In front of him, awesomely close, was the juncture of her thighs and he stared longingly there as a chill swept through him, colder than any he had ever experienced before, and he thought of the huge snow-wolves of his frost-rimed steppes and the intense joy of the hunt as an orgasm: the hot red blood spilling upon the virgin-white earth, so stark and, in its way, holy. And now with every pump of his laboring heart, his own blood was pouring through his impotent fingers into the dust before him. The last thing he saw was another part of him lying on the ground near him. He reached for it as if, with it, he could hold on to the life that was fast slipping away from him. He toppled over, dead before he hit the earth.

Chiisai was clawing desperately at the chain strangling her. The weapon itself was caught beneath the Tülc's heavy corpse and she had to roll him over in order to extricate it and thus ease the pressure. Her nails were gone and her fingers bloody as she, at last, freed herself from the chain.

Tears welled in her eyes as her lungs heaved involuntarily. Vertigo set in and she knew she dared not get up. She lay on the wet earth, gasping, feeling that she would never get enough oxygen, felt the pins and needles, the numbness beginning along her nose and cheeks and lips, knew that the carbon dioxide was building too rapidly and deliberately slowed her breathing. Slow and deep. Deep and slow.

For what seemed to her an endless time, she was content to just breathe, such a simple, ordinary function, staring sightlessly up at the slow wheel of the sparkling icy stars and the blood-red moon, crying, crying but knowing now that it would be all right.

It came in on his blind side and he lost all hearing there. He was moving away but it was not enough and the
koppo
blow caught him just above the right ear. My God, he thought, this is no man but a monster.

He reeled drunkenly away, bouncing off a boulder, but Hellsturm followed relentlessly. Once he felt the granite at his back, he knew what he must do and, gritting his teeth against the pain and the shock, he slammed his right arm against the curved rock face at what he estimated to be the proper angle.

Light flashed behind his eyes and he groaned, his stomach heaving. Felt the pop, though, as the bone returned to its socket. Pain flared as shock dissipated its effect on the nerves; thunder following on the heels of lightning. Sweat broke out all over his body and he shivered, taking a deep breath. He wiped his eyes with his good arm as he lurched away from the rock.

Felt Hellsturm close behind him and he ran into the night, climbing as if this alone could save him.

God is my savior, he found himself thinking. He watches over me always. It was what his father used to say to him as a child just before he went to bed. He found, too, that he no longer found it a saying to scoff at. It had its own meaning for him now. It was a kind of inner strength that stopped him from giving in to despair.

Sounds close behind him told him that Hellsturm was gaining. The blocks, the constant movement would be useless now as he felt the energy draining from him with each step he took. But, he knew now, it had been useless from the beginning, nothing more than a holding action that had only prolonged the inevitable. What had made him think that he would be any match for this devil? He had fought beside the world's greatest hero, but what made him think that he was one himself?

Still, he sped upward, his soul unable to admit defeat even as he was haunted by its specter. He ascended toward the stars and the bloody Demoneye which hung over him like the gloating, greedy face of Sardonyx.

The ledge upon which he ran described a sharp turn to the left and he followed it up, the stone crumbling under his boot soles, using his hands along the inner face to guide him, help propel him along, running, stumbling, catching himself, breathless, running once more. His lungs were straining and his throat felt as if it were covered with dust. Excessive sweat pouring from his body by the exertion only further depleted his fast-fading strength.

Water. He needed water. Suddenly this seemed an even more powerful imperative than outrunning Hellsturm.

Abruptly, he quit the ledge, swinging up onto the true face of the rocky hillside. Tore two fingernails in the process, but now he was heading inward, still climbing, away from the plain below, scrambling over rocks and scrub brush, hunting, buying time, the only thing left that was of any use to him.

He crested the hill, panting, willing his breathing to slow, moving downward now, on the far side; and he found himself amidst lush foliage. He felt the first faint surge of distant hope because he could scent it now. Water.

His toe struck a projection, a rock or a root, he could not tell which, and he tumbled down the last bit of the incline and then was on his knees on the narrow bank, scooping the cold water of the stream into his mouth in great gulps until he remembered and stopped, though his body cried out for more and his mouth was still dry. He took a last mouthful but, instead of swallowing, let it stay in his mouth. Then he ducked his head and splashed his head and shoulders. It soothed the ache somewhat. He spat out the last of the water, knowing that if he took too much he would vomit it all up at the first hard sprint.

He picked himself up and carefully forded the stream, which was wide but quite shallow, the gurgling water not even cresting his boot tops. But the stones at its bottom were sharp-angled and slippery and he did not want to risk a fall.

He gained the far bank without incident and moved into a thick copse of pine. He climbed a ridge, turned and followed it until he found a spot that suited his needs. Here, he had an excellent view of the stream without himself being exposed. He crouched and waited. And with each moment, he grew stronger. Yet he knew full well that mere physical strength would not be enough.