The Fox's God (10 page)

How long did Akakiba have until he flat ran out of strength? Minutes? Seconds? Any normal living thing would have already died a hundred times over from the bites of the steel snakes in his hands, but the nine-tailed fox spirit was still strong enough to be a menace.

The next paw swipe clipped Akakiba. He went flying, skidding along the ground before coming to a stop mere steps from Yuki’s feet. The swords were still in his hands, as if welded there, but the red had all gone and he wasn’t moving.

Yuki surged forward, hands closing upon Akakiba’s nearest limb to drag him away. It was his foot, but his head was without a doubt hard enough to survive a few bumps.

The creature reared above, still big enough to crush them both. Yuki heaved.

A roar like an earthquake rolled through his body, full of pain and rage. His ears should have been deaf to the world after that noise, but he still heard a booming, triumphant voice say, “Take this, monster!”

While the creature focused on them, Hachiro had somehow found a way onto the creature’s back and stabbed the prime sword into its mass.

Letting go of Akakiba’s foot, Yuki scrambled for the swords. While the creature was busy shaking its back violently, he might be able to score a few hits.

But when he tried to pry Akakiba’s fingers off the handles, they twitched and wouldn’t let go.

“Is that what it takes?” Akakiba rose to his feet and cocked an arm back. Flushing red from head to toe, he threw the sword as one might throw a knife. Flying through the air, it struck the creature’s neck and seemed to sink in to the hilt of its own accord.

“Ah. It can’t shift energy away from the sword as easily when it’s a center-mass strike.” He cocked his arm back again with the other sword, but never had time to throw.

Yuki took a hasty step closer, catching Akakiba as he fainted from exhaustion. He was still breathing regularly—that had to mean he was okay. Yuki searched for wounds with his hands, keeping his touch light, but there didn’t seem to be anything critical—even the broken rib had settled back in place.

“You’re okay,” he told Akakiba’s unconscious form. “We’ll handle the rest.” He wasn’t sure who “we” was. Was he the only person left standing? Hachiro wasn’t anywhere in sight.

The creature had not stopped stomping the ground, shrieking and bucking. The swords were attached like mountain leeches and it couldn’t paw the hilts, small as they were against its bulk. It shrank faster now. The ground wasn’t shaking anymore, either.

The third sword lay on the ground. It felt normal in his hand, not at all like an incredibly dangerous relic thirsting for stolen life-force. Maybe human life-force was beneath its palate now that it had tasted a god’s.

“It’s just you and me, now,” Yuki said to the creature. It wasn’t paying the slightest attention to him, which was good, but it was also bucking wildly, which wasn’t. It might “accidentally” break all his bones. Skill had little to do with this. It was a question of how fast and how lucky he was.

“All right,” he murmured. “My turn.”

He ran straight ahead. The swords hadn’t stuck when Akakiba had been hitting the paws and tails, so he’d best aim for the body. It wouldn’t have been possible when the creature was at its initial size, but now he could hope for a good strike. Paw incoming, dodge! He rolled to find himself under the creature. Jumping to his feet, he thrust upward. He must have connected, because the sword well-near wrenched itself from his hands to crawl deeper into its prey.

The creature bellowed. Yuki slapped his hands over his ears, huddling on the ground.

The spirit was melting like snow over flames. When he’d made his strike, it had been big as a house. Now it was horse-sized. Dog-sized. Cat-sized. A puff and it was gone, three swords clattering to the ground.

The scribe arrived on the scene moments later, panting as he hauled the containment chest along. He put the swords inside and slammed the lid closed.

“Congratulation, godslayer,” the scribe said. His gaze wandered aside. “Is he dead?”

“Who—” Akakiba yet lay on the ground, unmoving. There was a fox sitting with him. “He’s unconscious, not dead.” But what if he’d stopped breathing since? He had to check, he had to—

Wait. A fox? He looked again. Sanae? Please, please let it be so.

The scribe grabbed his sleeve. “Have you seen the other sword-bearers?”

“Sora is dead, over there in the fissure. Hachiro was alive not long ago.” He jerked his sleeve free, hurrying, calling, “Sanae?”

The fox looked his way. It wasn’t a spirit fox but a flesh-and-bones one. He faltered, and then sped up again. It could still be—

The closer he got, the more obvious it was. That was not Sanae. Superficially similar aura, but not hers.

“Who are you? Get away from him. Now.”

The unknown fox didn’t move.
I felt my granddaughter go out. Tell me how she fell.

Granddaughter? Sanae?

The words hit like a blow, so hard he bit his knuckles to keep from screaming. “She…she healed me. Using herself, because there’s nothing else here. Are you sure she’s gone? All gone?”

Strictly speaking,
Inari said, studying him,
there is a great deal of her essence in you. But she no longer exists as her own entity.

“Buddhists say souls are reborn.” His father had been a Shinto priest, but there was no reason not to believe in both religions at once. Most people did.

It is true energy is never lost, only transformed. But I do not know if the same minds can resurface.

“Even gods don’t know everything, then,” Akakiba said. He sat up, not looking at them.

Even gods are subject to the circle of life,
the fox said.

Yuki sat down. “Please tell me this isn’t Inari.”

“Only a small part of her,” Akakiba said. “What we killed…that was the rest of her.”

“Okay.” It didn’t seem important compared to the fact Sanae had died because of him. He wanted to sleep and never wake up.

They staggered over to the temporary camp that had sprouted at the edge of what had been the battlefield. There, Jien was in the process of forcing soup down unconscious Aito’s throat. His lips stretched when he saw them, but it looked more grimace than smile.

“How is he?” Yuki inquired, braced for yet more bad news.

“I don’t know. In shock.” He gestured to Aito’s face—a bird sat on one cheek, a monkey and a tree on the other. “There’s one missing. I think it died.”

“Psychic wound,” Akakiba said. “He’ll recover in time.”

“Maybe. He’d have to wake up first.” Jien made a shooing gesture with the hand not holding the soup bowl. “Go rest. You both look half-dead. I’ll keep an eye on things.” He patted his leg, which was heavily wrapped. “I shouldn’t be moving around.”

It seemed wrong to be idle, not to help in post-battle cleanup, but his body appeared to have tripled in weight and age. He
ached
in ways not limited to the physical. But focusing on small things was still within his ability. Akakiba needed food.

Somebody had clearly gone back to the village to fetch abandoned supplies, because the large cauldron was there, full of simmering soup. With gratitude for whoever had prepared it, Yuki filled two bowls.

He pushed one into Akakiba’s hands and said, “Eat.” Lifting his own bowl to his mouth, he forced the liquid down sip by sip, until there was no more.

Words of comfort crowded on his tongue and died there, unspoken. How could he express regret about Sanae’s death when she’d died because of him? It was a wonder Akakiba hadn’t told him to get out of his sight. Then again, the way Akakiba wasn’t looking at him might be a hint that’s what he wanted.

He rose. He’d find something to do, somewhere.

“Where are you going?” Akakiba said, gaze snapping to him.

“To help,” he said vaguely.

“Sit down. You haven’t cleaned and bandaged that.”

“What? Oh.” He saw to his wound. The middle was healed, but the entry point and exit point of the blade needed to be cleaned, slathered in dragon eggshell cream, and covered to prevent infection. How many people survived being run through?

Akakiba watched him work, though his eyes kept sliding shut. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said. It was neutral enough to be difficult to interpret.

Before Yuki could make up his mind what to reply, Akakiba’s breathing slid into the slow, even pace of slumber. He didn’t even wake when prodded for open wounds. There weren’t any. If there was damage left, it would be inside. It wasn’t a happy thought.

Something small, grey, and furry crept by.

Yuki sat up, heart hammering. “Sanae?”

Momo’s little ears twitched but he didn’t look aside, crawling in Akakiba’s lap and settling there like a tiny furry guard. Not Sanae, just a confused flying squirrel. Inari had confirmed it. Sanae was gone. Permanently, this time.

Chapter Eleven

Jien

G
reat battles only sometimes brought glory and heroics, but they always left bodies to burn. They gathered the handful that were theirs, Sora’s last because they had to climb down to retrieve it. Hachiro laid her down gently, as if she were in any state to appreciate it. He looked around the field, brows low. “What of the little fox girl? I heard—”

“Nothing’s left behind when a spirit dies,” Jien said bluntly. “We burned her body the first time she died.”

For the pyre, they had plenty of help from surviving fighters with light or non-existent injuries. Finding dead wood wasn’t a problem since everything was dead. The problem was trying to start a fire without accidentally burning down the entire forested mountainside—and themselves along with it. They managed this by carefully gathering snow around the bonfire beforehand. The heat would melt the snow, soaking the ground and keeping it unburnable.

On the battlefield, a solitary figure worked, gathering the bodies of the enemy’s fallen. It wasn’t difficult to identify her. There was only one woman left alive on their side. “That’s the spy woman, isn’t it? What is she doing?”

They went to her and asked.

She didn’t look up, continuing her work. Her clothes were filthy with mud, blood, and worse. “I was a poor friend to them, but they were always kind to me. They never meant to do harm.”

Jien would have argued with the last bit, but not now, not when she was gathering the corpses of people she knew. How many years had she been undercover? How could
shinobi
live that way, making friends with people while knowing they’d have to turn on them?

Without a word, Hachiro bent to grab the next body. Jien grudgingly started to help, too. It was difficult to be friends with someone so noble. These people were directly responsible for two women’s death, several men’s, and so much other damage besides. While it was true his religion promoted the idea of respect for all living things, he’d never claimed to be anywhere in the vicinity of perfection.

Enemy bodies were piled atop the shrine’s ruins, and the whole thing set afire after a suitable snow wall was erected between the ruins and the forest. Jien didn’t stay. He had living friends to check upon.

Aito’s condition was stable. He was breathing, though he wasn’t doing anything else. Akakiba and Yuki were asleep and…guarded by a fox? The odds that it was a normal animal were small.

He approached warily. “Who are you?”

“The part of Inari we didn’t kill, apparently,” Yuki said without opening his eyes. “Don’t tell the others.”

Jien opened his mouth to speak, closed it. What did you say to a deity? “Ah, do you need anything? There’s soup, but no meat.”

Tell me about my granddaughter Sanae.

“Granddaughter, huh?” He folded his body slowly, mindful of his injured leg. He also had a wound on his scalp where the idiot priest had hit him with a rock, but it’d stopped bleeding so he could ignore it. “I didn’t know Sanae well. You should ask her brother.”

Inari gave him a look.
I do remember how humans are about family.

“I’m sorry. That was stupid. Don’t mention her around him. She was…” How did you describe someone like Sanae? “She was fierce, energetic, and downright reckless. She was good with a blade and she liked to fight. She beat me, once, and that was before she’d been in real combat. She even cheated during her final test, in front of everybody.”

He talked until the scribe came around, balancing bowls filled with rice. “I’m not your servant,” the man said pointedly, passing the bowls down to Jien. “Make them eat.” He looked at Inari. “I assume this is the fox who’s been seen around the shrine.” He looked at Momo, too. “I will demand explanations about all this, later.”

“Don’t ask me,” Jien said. “I hardly know what’s going on.”

The scribe looked at him with open disbelief, which was unfair. He truly didn’t know anything.

The scribe walked away, leaving him alone with steaming rice and snoring friends. Plus a flying squirrel and part of a goddess. “Hey, Aki, Yuki. Food!”

The groggy pair didn’t notice the smoke until after they’d inhaled their food. “You should have asked us to help build the pyre,” Yuki said reproachfully.

“We didn’t need the help. The big guy is keeping an eye out, to prevent fire from spreading. Aito’s still unconscious. The scribe brought food and says Akakiba owes him explanations. He probably means about squirrels who aren’t squirrels and foxes who are a little godly.”

Akakiba grunted indifferently.

Inari was studying them, gaze moving from one to the next.
I can provide the explanations he seeks,
she said.
He is an ally, is he not?

“Partly,” Jien answered when Akakiba didn’t. “He works for the emperor. The emperor is usually an ally, but he allowed a madman
shinobi
to go after the Fox clan because he thought they might be working with those people.” He gestured towards the burning shrine to indicate who he meant. “I don’t know how the clan’s going to take it. I do know we still have to find a way to destroy the three swords to free the energy inside. We don’t want the emperor’s men to keep them.”

Will you fight them?

“If they try to keep the swords… Maybe. Can you steal them while they aren’t looking?”

I will speak with the emperor’s man. He seems reasonable.

“Feel free,” he said politely. He wasn’t about to argue with a goddess. He liked being alive and in possession of all his limbs.

With Inari gone, silence reigned.

Yuki fiddled with his bowl, eyes lowered.

“Don’t,” Akakiba said. “You can’t take responsibility for Sanae’s actions.”

“If I hadn’t gotten hurt, she wouldn’t be gone.”

“If I hadn’t said I’d pick you over anybody else, maybe she wouldn’t have done it.”

“What?” Yuki’s head jerked up. “She wasn’t there when you said that.”

“Wasn’t she? We wouldn’t have noticed when she arrived.”

“You don’t know if that had anything to do with what she did.”

“Neither do you.”

“Hey, you two,” Jien drawled. “I’m sure Sanae would be ecstatic to know than instead of building a statue to commemorate her heroism, you’re busy fighting about which of you is more to blame.”

His gambit to lift the mood almost worked, but Yuki’s eyes darkened again within moments. “I’ve never had someone die because of me. Not like this.”

“I have,” Akakiba said. “Sora wasn’t the first; your father was.”

“My father’s death was in no way your fault!”

“It was. I just didn’t tell you.”

“What do you mean? I thought the fire—”

“I give up,” Jien said. “Have fun bickering.”

They didn’t pay any attention to his words, so he went to look for the scribe, probably the only person currently thinking about how they were going to get home.

Inari and the scribe had their heads put together as if they were talking about something they didn’t want anyone overhearing. They were at the same height because the scribe knelt on the ground and Inari sat on the containment chest.

“This doesn’t look suspicious at all,” he said by way of announcing his presence. “What are you talking about?”

The scribe pulled back, flushing pink. “Nothing. Just, ah, the mysteries of the universe.”

Was it surprising for a scribe to get flustered about knowledge? Maybe not. Still, they had the look of people sharing a secret. If Aito would just wake up, he could spy on them and find out whether there was a reason for concern here. This wasn’t how he’d expected the scribe to react to the whole “the foxes totally lied and kept a god a secret from you” thing.

“I was wondering how we’re going to get home,” Jien said. “I met a mountain monk a few months back who can use the spirit world to travel faster. He was able to bring others along, too. Can we use that method?”

Inari tilted her head.
I didn’t know bodies could go through the other side unscathed. If a human can do this, no doubt I can as well.

Oh, great. She’d never done it before. He shouldn’t have opened his big mouth. “Or we could walk, the old-fashioned way. We wouldn’t want to impose on you.”

We will do this,
she said.
It will be faster.

“I would like to see this,” the scribe said. “Packing will be swift if we can abandon the supplies. What is our destination? The Imperial Palace?”

The clan house,
Inari said firmly.

“Ah, of course.”

“How are you going to find it?” Jien inquired. “Can you read a map?”

I will see to that.

Jien wandered back. The two pyres were still burning, supervised by Hachiro and the
shinobi
lady. Aito wasn’t moving, and Aki and Yuki were talking quietly.

“I’m glad you told me,” Yuki said, “but it doesn’t change anything. I have more reason to blame myself for Sanae’s death than you have for blaming yourself for my father’s.”

Jien plopped down near them. “Still fighting?”

“Nobody’s fighting,” Akakiba said. But he eyed Yuki as if waiting for confirmation.

“It’s not a time for fighting,” Yuki said, busying himself hand-feeding Momo. “We still have to bring Aito home and do something about the swords.”

“I have good news and bad news about getting home. The good news is Inari thinks she can bring us home faster through the spirit realm, the same way Domi does it. The bad news is I don’t think she knows how to keep us alive. I refuse to be the test subject.”

“It’ll keep,” Yuki said. “The pyre is still going. Shall we go?”

Akakiba grunted in assent, rising. “I would leave something.” He didn’t need to say for whom.

“You guys go,” Jien said. “I have an Aito to watch.”

Feeding an unconscious person was boring and nowhere as easy as he might have thought. It took three bowls to get maybe a whole one down Aito’s throat and it was dreadful cleaning up after. Aito’s remaining spirits seemed to be looking at him reproachfully.

“If you lot can do better, you go right ahead,” he told them. He didn’t even know how one of them had died. Had it squeezed out from one of the cuts Aito had taken, for the purpose of defending Aito from an incoming weapon? Had it sacrificed itself to heal a wound? For all their fierce defense of their human, Aito’s spirits were after all small creatures.

Far too little was known about the mechanics of human-spirit bonds. This was probably the kind of injury that fell under the description psychic wound, but that mostly meant it was an injury that wasn’t dealt primarily to the body. It was an unbalancing in the aura that usually fixed itself. And if it didn’t, nobody knew how to help.

Darkness fell. The pyres either burned themselves out or were helped along, the light and smoke vanishing. Everybody staggered off to find a patch of ground to sleep on. Somebody—the
shinibi
guide?—had carried a tent from the village to here to provide shelter for the worst wounded. Everybody else could survive the mild cold.

“Sleep,” Yuki said in passing. “I’m the most rested, so I’ll keep watch. I doubt the surviving priests will come after us, but who knows how they think.”

“I—” Akakiba began.

“—need more sleep,” Yuki cut in.

“True. I was going to suggest you keep an eye on the swords, lest they go mysteriously missing. This is the best time for the emperor’s men to take them away from us.”

“I’ll watch them.”

“I’d like to think Inari wouldn’t let them, but we don’t know her, yet. She claims to be one of ours, but that’s not proof.”

“You’re jealous because she’s taken a liking to the scribe,” Jien said. But he didn’t disagree about the need to be cautious. They hadn’t come so far only to lose the Soul Eater and its copies again.

Akakiba only had one sword at his waist now, his regular
katana
. The shorter blade, the
wakizashi
, was gone. Jien could guess where it was.

They settled down around Aito, their party one fewer than it should have been.