《Isha Blackheart》 Chapter 1 Bandits had no respect for people¡¯s schedules. I checked the location of the Mountain Cutter for the tenth time since stripping down and letting the warm spring waters soak over me. Of course I was nude. If I¡¯d left my robe on, my master would have rolled over in his grave. The last thing I needed was his spirit returning from the otherworld to haunt me with his ugly true face. My amulet hung on my chest over the water. It was staying on. I couldn¡¯t remove it if I wanted to and I preferred to keep the protection it offered close at hand. Odgen, my master, wouldn¡¯t have complained about the necklace. He understood why I couldn¡¯t remove it. Bad memories swirled up with the warmth of the spring water. If those bandits didn¡¯t get here soon, I was going to have to go looking for them before the past caught up with me. Or worse, before I slipped off to sleep. Shaking my head out and sitting up straight, I heard the wheels of a cart squealing in the distance and I sighed with relief. No matter how hot the water became, it wouldn¡¯t have bothered me. But waiting made me restless and edgy. With my head turned away from the road, I tuned out the soft burbling of the waters and focused. My master had called this state Tsuki no Kokoro, the Mind of the Moon. I rose above the waters, and though the approaching dusk light drowned out the moon¡¯s radiance, I could feel it in the back of my mind. Footsteps neared the water. Strange, only two pairs of feet approached me from behind. And one of the people sneaking up on me had a limp. None of the bandits had a limp, at least not according to the villagers who¡¯d paid me twenty-five pieces of gold for this job. Caution had earned me a longer life than most humans could comprehend, so I still laid my hand on the hilt of the Mountain Cutter and waited. Soft voices floated over the edge of the spring and caressed my ears with an unfamiliar ring. Were they flirting with each other? There was no way these were the bandits I sought. I turned my head over my shoulder and caught sight of an old man with a head of mossy sparse hair leaning into an equally old woman who¡¯s hair had turned the shade of winter snows. She giggled at something the old man said and he rubbed the back of her hand. A pang struck through my chest as I watched them. My father had patted the back of my mother¡¯s claws the same way, and she¡¯d stared back at him with the same pure expression of adoration. Before I ruined it all. My self-loathing stopped before a rustle in the brush around the old couple and I cursed myself inwardly for my own distraction. I¡¯d posted up in this spring for the express purpose of stopping the bandits who waylaid travelers here. And a group of them had managed to conceal themselves in the bushes without me noticing. If not for the old couple, I might have missed the bandits until they were right on top of me. Only magic could¡¯ve hidden those bandits like that. And the villagers had neglected to warn me the bandits had a magician in their employ. They owed me another fifty gold for the omission. Odgen would have been dismayed at my greed. But he was dead and armies did not feed themselves and no amount of forage would fill the endless pit in the center of my belly. I grabbed the Mountain Cutter in hand and turned toward the two old humans. They¡¯d distracted me, it was true. But they¡¯d also given me the chance to surprise the bandits rather than the other way around. While they couldn¡¯t have known the role they played, I intended to save them before the bandits struck. Their lives would have to satisfy Odgen¡¯s spirit, wherever it might have found its rest. Rising from the water in the nude, the heat from the spring hid the pink cast to my skin. My blade lay along the line of my flank, hidden in the steam and approaching darkness behind me. I cut an imposing figure regardless, I could tell from the way the two people stopped as they heard the droplets of water splash against the stone. The man shoved the woman behind him and faced me with his hands out as if he might challenge me to a boxing match. He hadn¡¯t seen my blade and neither had the bandits, who chose to make their appearance at the same time. ¡°It¡¯s our lucky day boys!¡± A man with a straggly, wild beard stood up from the nearest bush. Until he¡¯d spoken, the bush had not made a sound. He broke the spell silencing him when he spoke. It was usually how such magics worked. ¡°We got us a pair of wrinkled prunes and a fine little duckling for dinner!¡± The man drew a blade from his side, curved and rune etched as half a dozen other figures emerged from the shrubs. ¡°What is happening here?¡± The man turned away from me. He made the correct initial assessment about how dangerous I was, at least based on appearances. In his place I would have ignored a soaking wet woman standing naked on the edge of a pool too. The man cast his gaze back and forth among the ragged men as they closed on him and his¡­ wife? Almost certainly his wife. ¡°I have money, I will pay you if you leave me alone!¡± Straggly-beard, the presumed leader of the group, chuckled and said, ¡°oh, we¡¯ll take your cart too¡­¡± He¡¯d closed with the old man and finally laid a hand on him. I wasn¡¯t waiting for the bandits to make the first move, no I was waiting for them to divert enough of their attention away from me I could act without concern I might have to clean their blood off of me before I killed them all. The old man yelped when Straggly-beard grabbed him and I shifted forward, shuffling my feet over the loose leaves carpeting the area around the spring. Two of the bandit¡¯s companions turned to stare at me, alerted by the unavoidable sounds of my movement. But the leader ignored the naked woman advancing on him until I¡¯d arced the Mountain Cutter overhead and severed his hand from his arm. I kicked him and sent a mental command to my amulet, which began the process of unfolding around me, a chartreuse glow spreading as I slid away from Straggly-beard, who hadn¡¯t even started screaming yet. Blood sprayed over the old couple and high into the air with a soft whistling breath as I closed with the bandit directly behind his fallen leader. This man had a long spear over his shoulder, poorly maintained and relaxed to the point he hadn¡¯t even brought the spear down to defend himself before I lopped the haft in two an instant before I separated the man¡¯s head from his neck. Unlike his boss, the man didn¡¯t move from the the incredible speed of my attack. Like a reed split by a lightning fast cut, the man remained upright, balancing on his out of position spear and utterly dead. A shout came from behind me, which I ignored as I closed with the spellcaster. The Magus would not be able to hurt me, but he could vanish into the forest or use one of his deplorable magics to hurt the old couple behind me. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. The sword in the Magus¡¯s hand quivered as he spat the words of a spell as quickly as his fear allowed. Too slow for the Mountain Cutter or for the circle gait Odgen had taught me. I leapt over bushes and an exposed root and brought the Mountain Cutter down through the man¡¯s shoulder and out the side of his body. Two bandits down and the Magus split in twain, I spun through the fourth kata and turned to find an archer drawing a bead on me while his two companions wrestled with the old man and his wife. An arrow arced toward me, wobbling in the air. Its slow passage posed no threat to me or the green, silver, and black armor which now covered me from scalp to sole. Nonetheless, Odgen had taught me the value of intimidation so I cut the arrow out of the air with the Mountain Cutter and advanced toward the old man and his wife. ¡°Oh shit, it¡¯s the Jade Serpent!¡± The archer shouted and bolted toward his companions seeking shelter behind the two old folks the bandits had taken hostage. Great, they know me. More and more bandits had heard of me by now. And I found the notoriety a burden to my business, even if it added to my terror factor. Worse yet, as the archer closed with his two companions, the one on the left dragged his knife across the old man¡¯s throat and grabbed the old woman. ¡°Stop where you are or we¡¯ll kill her too!¡± I sprinted toward them. Though I wanted neither the old man nor his wife¡¯s blood on my conscience, the bandits had no such inhibitions. And if they killed the old woman they would have no more bargaining chips. The question was, did the bandits know that? The archer bolted rather than take the gamble. I hurled the Mountain Cutter overhand at him as he fled and tracked the blade over its course into his back. He dropped impaled on my blade as I closed with the final two bandits. ¡°Stop stop!¡± The man with the bloody knife in hand pressed it against the old woman¡¯s neck. Spittle flew from his lips as he tried to curb the inevitable tide of my advance. With my right arm, I shoved the woman back into the bandit and, as expected, a gap opened between the knife¡¯s edge and her throat. With my armor-covered left hand I grabbed the bandit¡¯s palm and twisted it. The knife fell and bones cracked under my grip. He squealed and I pushed the old woman on top of the man who bled out even now. I caught the knife before it dropped to the same level as my knee and drove it tip first into the second bandit cowering behind the old woman. The hit cracked as it hit the bandit¡¯s eye socket and he dropped faster than the headless corpse behind me. The bandit burbled as he tried to break the grip on his hand. Like a wild beast caught in a trap, he wrenched his wrist out of socket and for a moment I contemplated letting him tear himself apart under my grip. But the old man on the ground did not have time to spare while I watched his bandit struggle. I crushed his fingers in my fist and jerked the bandit toward me. With a twist, I reversed his mangled fist and shoved it into his own throat. He struck his shattered hand with a crunch. Blood dribbled from his mouth as I shoved him away from the couple. The old woman screamed and huddled over the man. Until I¡¯d dropped the final bandit, I hadn¡¯t heard her cries with my conscious mind. Shaking myself out of my battle trance, I turned to find her fumbling over the man¡¯s throat as he lifted his hands to her face. Blood streaked their clothing and a great mass of blood covered the man as if a warm spring had erupted form his neck. But, critically, the blood did not spurt in time with the man¡¯s heart. When I grabbed the woman to move her away from her partner, she struck me about the head and shoulders. One of her blows smarted as it glanced off of my brow. But I ignored her struggles and set her forcibly off to the side, out of my way. The man¡¯s mouth opened and shut in the throes of death. It was a face I¡¯d grown all too familiar with. Masks of death each had a name, I called this one Fish Plucked from a Hook. He struggled and pulled himself out from under the pressure of my fingers. ¡°Stop struggling, I am trying to save you.¡± The man eyes widened and I saw his spirit cross the river of death to the cave in shadow. One moment he yearned for life, the next my words were the last he would hear. I rocked back on my heels and returned to the present. The old woman struck me and shouted at me so I stood and moved away from her and her dead husband. In the distance a faint rasp of weight against the carpet of leaves told me two of the bandits yet lived. Neither the headless man, the bisected man, nor the man who¡¯s arm had pierced his own throat yet lived. But the leader slinked away with the stump of his arm pumping his lifeblood out and the archer strained against the Mountain Cutter where its weight pinned him to the earth. I stood and turned from the scene of mourning behind in time to hear the wife¡¯s cries change in timbre. Was she laughing now? I shut the two living bandits out of my thoughts and directed the entirety of my focus back to the woman. Blood streaked eyes turned up at me, weeping tears which mingled with the blood of her husband. Her voice came ragged, maddened in its urgency. ¡°One down, two to go huntress.¡± She grabbed my armor and found a gap in the scales of my spirit as she pulled herself up to me. ¡°I can promise you wealth or land. Name your price.¡± Now my face wore the mask of the hooked fish. No words left my lips as I looked down at the wild-eyed woman. And she confessed her crime without the need for me to ask her. ¡°I lured the fool here, you see? I brought him to this spring with promises of a dalliance in the forest!¡± She searched the clearing between the road and the water. ¡°He¡¯d heard the rumors of bandits nearby, but he followed the urges of a nether master.¡± She pawed at her groin as she spoke, as if proud of her blasphemy. ¡°And the bandits killed him, but now you must come back with me to kill his brother or I will have to marry an even younger, more odious fool!¡± At last my reason caught up with me. I pushed the woman away with disgust and growled at her. But before I could warn her to leave me be, she scrambled back on all fours. ¡°Come back with me or I will tell them the Jade Serpent murdered my husband! I will tell them you did this.¡± I scoffed at her, though I appreciated the reminder that I was not the most depraved beast within a hundred miles. She didn¡¯t dare stop me as I strode with purpose toward the fallen archer. The woman shrieked at me from behind as she began ripping through the bushes where her husband fell. At the same time, I pulled the Mountain Cutter and decapitated the archer with a single swift blow. The silence with which he accepted his end juxtaposed itself over the crunching of an avaricious old woman who cut away the pockets of her husband and the bandits who¡¯d killed him. When she reached the one armed bandit, the man rose up against her and grabbed the front of her robe. She screamed at me to help her as she battered uselessly against him. The knife she¡¯d taken from the bandit, the very same which killed her husband, darted out and ended in the other bandit¡¯s chest. I stopped in the process of wiping down my master¡¯s sword. For a moment the woman stood as still as an oak in a sheltered valley, one hand on the handle of a dagger she¡¯d shoved into the lead bandit¡¯s chest. Then she screamed with a vulgar ferocity and jabbed him over and over, tiny punctures sufficient to kill the man in time. But not swift enough. As a last act of desperation, the bandit struck out with the stump of his arm and buried the jagged bone in the woman¡¯s neck. Like the bandit who¡¯d almost taken her life, the woman fell impaled by a sharpened bone. The Mountain Cutter fit into its place on my back once I cleaned it and approached the sight of the woman and bandit leader¡¯s end. She lay gasping in a mirror image to her husband next to the man who¡¯d killed her with his last act of will. When the old woman went still, I listened for the sound of breath and found the bandit still somehow clinging to life. I crouched down next to him and listened to him wheeze through a clenched jaw, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. When I neared him, he tensed and tried to raise his stump. I pressed my hand to his arm and shook my head. ¡°You¡¯ve killed your last, brigand.¡± ¡°P¡­please.¡± He implored me with the expression of a man who faced the gates of hell and knew what lay beyond. ¡°Please, I have a family.¡± I nodded at him and lifted the dagger which had ended one innocent old man¡¯s life. ¡°Don¡¯t we all.¡± Without waiting for his reply I drove the dagger into his neck and stood. The man shook his last before my knees had uncurled. Around me lay a field of death of my own making. ¡°It must be spring.¡± Chapter 2 From the smell, I knew none of the bandit¡¯s blood had stained my hands. Nor had the old woman¡¯s. No, the only blood which had found me this night belonged to the only innocent in the newly christened graveyard around me. And though my armor turned magic and steel away, it did nothing for the lifeblood of a harmless old man. The scales retracted from my body, leaving behind my pink skin and fresh crimson the consistency of honey. When the armor had returned to its necklace, I let out the breath which had stuck to my lungs since the old man died. At least I would make my gold and I could continue my journey away from this village. Would this grow my legend? The idea occurred once again to cover myself with a cloak or buy a bulky suit of human-forged armor to cover myself. But it wouldn¡¯t keep the blood from my skin either. The second time I immersed myself in the spring the water felt cold, as if the fire of the earth held no heat compared to one old man¡¯s life. But at least the water rinsed the stains away from my skin if not from my conscience. Once clean enough, I retrieved my small pack where I stowed it. Odgen had wandered in monk¡¯s ochre robes and never taught me to tailor anything else. And a dragon princess had no call to stitch her own human-sized clothing. Indeed, I had no call to stitch any clothing whatsoever. Such dour thoughts burned me as I pulled the robe over my head and stepped into the sandals. I¡¯d hoped to escape them with the killing of the bandits. But the greed of a woman had brought the memories of my former life down upon my shoulders as heavy as the debt to family. I snorted at the ironic turn to my thoughts and slipped my vagabond¡¯s pack over my shoulder. The Mountain Cutter I wrapped in cloth and used as a staff to brush my way across the forest. Like the old woman in the depths of her greed, I slit the pockets from the bandits, the woman, and even the old man. Odgen would have chided me, greed had ruined my life. But armies did not pay for themselves. Monks chanted the sutras. I chanted my own seven-word affirmation as I collected a small handful of coins. The couple left a small cart at the road not far from the spring. I supposed the woman intended to retrieve it when her bloody assassination finished. It contained two meals, blankets, and a pouch of coin large enough to bribe a troupe of bandits. Did the foolish old woman really believe the bandits would let her go with coin? I did not linger over the thought. If the stupidity of all humans, beasts, and spirits gathered in one place, it would form a peak higher than all the mountains of the world. As I had added more than my shoulders could bear to that mountain, I had no place in mocking the foolishness of others. The food I ate on the way back to Hakkaim village. The blankets went into my pack, someone had woven them tight enough to keep out the cold and I would not mind a place to lay my head when the trials of my journey forced me to sleep. Not that I possessed any illusion a comforting place to rest my brow would ward off the dreams which pursued me. As with many mid-sized villages in the hills, stout log walls encircled Hakkaim. Bandits would not have attacked the town for no other reason than those walls made such an enterprise more difficult than profitable. But the walls did nothing to stop those same bandits from robbing and killing travelers to and from the village. Which was why they enlisted my services and now owed me seventy-five pieces of gold. Dark had come and brought with it the smell of lilacs on the wind and the sharp chirp of crickets in the grasses. A few twilight birds gave their final cries of the day before the nocturnal hunters took their places. And a torch shifted in the watchtower over Hakkaim. My approach had been seen by the lookouts. Among the coin I¡¯d collected from the bandits, I¡¯d also collected the key exchange of my itinerant profession: the ears of the offending bandits. Six dead men, six right ears, in return for twenty-five pieces of gold. Fifty more for dealing with a Magus the village had neglected to warn me about. They would learn of the shift in prices soon enough. Only one of the wooden gates swung open as I reached the wall. A headman, the same who¡¯d paid me half the bounty up front eyed me from the crack between the gate and its mooring. ¡°You¡¯ve returned so soon?¡± I dangled the line of ears before him. ¡°Did you know the bandits had a Mage?¡± The headman sucked in breath at my question and his eyes darted behind him as if to find a shred of courage standing at his back. ¡°N..no.¡± Shaking my head I stepped closer to the gate and shoved my sandaled foot in as a stop. ¡°I told you the price was double for a Mage. I even told you why.¡± ¡°We didn¡¯t know there was a Magus, how would we know?¡± His voice rose to a high pitch, recovering his composure as he settled into his lies. I tapped my ¡°staff¡± against the walls and stuck the end of my scabbard in where my foot had been. The headman¡¯s eyes widened and he sucked in a gasp at my move. He knew what the staff was in truth. ¡°Seventy-five more gold pieces. Or I collect what I¡¯m owed from the town myself starting with your house.¡± Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. ¡°How do we know you didn¡¯t grab those ears from corpses?¡± Someone behind the headman moved in the shadows and the sense of bolstering I gathered from the headman grew. For some reason he thought he had an advantage over me. ¡°What did you do?¡± The headman leaned back and spat his words through the gap in the gate. ¡°We don¡¯t owe you anything, Jade Serpent! We hired a real protector and he will keep our village safe from bandits and from some woman who swings a sword as if she were a man.¡± I took a deep breath and let it out as slowly as I could. The headman slipped back and a large bull of a man took his place. Hair curled over the man¡¯s head and around the sides of his neck and over his shoulders. Muscles rippled and bunched through the man¡¯s frame in a display of supposed strength, which I expected was supposed to intimidate me. His stench was more concerning than anything else about the village¡¯s new defender. ¡°Get lost, bitch.¡± The man¡¯s breath should have rotted the wood where it passed by the gate. It struck me head on and threatened to make me retch and toss up the meal I¡¯d eaten. I shifted my foot over my blade and made as if to retreat before the man. He scoffed at me and the breastplate covering his chest jiggled in response to his movement. Using my own legs as a fulcrum, I twisted in place and drove the gate open with the base of my scabbard. The man grabbed the side of the gate with his hand, but he¡¯d chosen a poor angle with his hands. At once the gate popped open, I stepped back over my scabbard and let the tip pop up and land at the base of the odious¡¯s man¡¯s chin. Not only had I broken his stance by forcing the gate open, but he moved like an untrained amateur. A skilled warrior would have seen my elaborate move coming and could have taken a small step out of the path of my scabbard. But this oaf took the full brunt of my attack on the bottom of his chin. In one strike his eyes rolled up into his head, he stumbled back into the headman and laid him out, and fell on the same. I¡¯d knocked him unconscious with a move which had meant to unsettle and possibly frighten him. The headman moaned under his hired sword and tried to roll away from the man¡¯s filthy body. A crowd gathered while I bent down and checked the mercenary¡¯s pockets. As expected, he had a small pouch of gold stuffed into one of those pockets. I regretted touching his clothing as much as I did and longed to return to the spring to clean my hands again. But I counted out ten gold coins and tossed the pouch back over the sleeping pile of body odor. ¡°You should have charged them twice.¡± The headman remained trapped by the fat hill of mercenary, so I used the sole of my foot to roll the man over. At once the headman scrambled away from me, panting and dancing on all fours. His eyes were as wide as the one-armed bandit as he shrank against the logs of his village walls. ¡°He said he would protect us!¡± In a way, I despised the man more than I did the bandits. At least those six men earned their keep, dishonest and violent as it was. The man groveling and soiling himself in the lee of the fine wooden walls of his village had abused my trust as well as that of the villagers he was supposed to represent. ¡°Pay me what you owe me, no more, no less, and my shadow won¡¯t darken the soil of your little town one night.¡± The man burbled in fear at me, but didn¡¯t respond with words. The crowd around us had circled in and someone closed the gate behind me. My mind rose up to the moon right as a rock sailed toward my head. No time to curse or do much more than deflect the missile, so I shifted the Mountain Cutter in my hand and the rock sailed off in a different direction. When I turned to face the semicircle of villagers, they all took half steps away from me, all save a little boy wearing a nicer robe than even the headman. He stormed forward with his head down and his topknot bobbing in time with his treads. ¡°You leave my papa alone!¡± Too many spirits from my past had gathered around me in too short a time. Not that I would kill a child, even for five times what I normally charged arrogant villagers like this. But they didn¡¯t know that. I grabbed the boy and pulled him toward me, he screamed and flailed his arms. He showed more bravado than most of the bandits I¡¯d slain that night as he hit and kicked me at the same time as I hefted him up. The headman¡¯s wail shook the walls of his village and brought the line of adults nearly to their knees. The boy continued his struggles as I turned toward the headman. ¡°What will it be? My fee or¡­¡± I didn¡¯t have to finish my question. With his hands waving toward me, the headman produced a pouch much fatter than the mercenary had carried and pushed it toward me with his head bowed. At the very end the man had discovered both his humility and his honor. I set the boy down and snatched the pouch from the man, irritated to find it contained the balance of my fee minus what he¡¯d paid to the fat guard on the ground. The boy spared one step to turn and kick me before he fled to the shelter of his father¡¯s shadow. I weighed the pouch in one hand and considered my future course. In all likelihood, these people could not afford to pay me for the Magus, even if the headman had known. They must have been desperate to hire another wandering mercenary to protect them from me. And I suspected they would regret that choice sooner rather than later. ¡°Fine. I suppose this will do.¡± I cinched the pouch to my own belt and turned from the townspeople. A stout man armed with nothing more than a plain staff stood between me and the gate to the city. Odgen had taught me to extend my will, the killing urge which dwelt in the base of my soul out like a whip. The staff-wielding guard all but voided his bowels as I turned the full edge of my will upon him. He stepped out of my way without the need of a single word from me. I put a hand on the gate and the headman recovered a measure of his composure. ¡°Wait! What about Toban the Ox!? If you leave us with nothing how will we pay him?¡± The mercenary called himself the Ox? What little sympathy I felt for him fled. ¡°You mean if he wakes up he may pillage your city and ravage your people.¡± I pushed the gate open with the tip of my cloth-covered scabbard. ¡°It does not sound like you have enough gold to pay me to deal with a second problem. Goodnight Hakkaim.¡± I walked from the village gates unopposed. No more rocks flew at me from the assembled villagers. Before morning came or the Ox woke up, one of those men or women would realize how easily a dagger across the throat solved the problem of the mercenary they could no longer afford. It was one reason I rarely slept in the villages where I chose to work. The gate slammed behind me and I turned on the dusty stone road toward the East. It led away from the hot springs, away from Hakkaim, and most important, away from the West and the remnants of my family.