Scott McGough: Outlaw:Champions of Kamigawa

"You're right, big ears," he said loudly. "I can't draw any more kanji. But I can use the one I built into the roof."

As one, the moonfolk looked up. With the moonlight streaming through, the shadows from the rafters formed a clear symbol.

"Stay," Toshi read silently.

In response, a glittering purple breeze descended and crossed the room like a wave. The moonlight flickered as a cloud passed overhead. When it came back, the roomful of soratami were in the exact same positions. Their eyes darted back and forth, and some of them made low, moaning sounds, but they were otherwise frozen in place.

Toshi quickly began working his hands free. The soratami fingers holding him had enough give for him to twist himself loose, and he wriggled out from under their weight, kicking his ankles free as he went. Two of the moonfolk holding him toppled over as Toshi rose, and they remained where they landed, as still as stones.

The ochimusha quickly went to a loose floorboard and retrieved a bag of coins, his good jitte, and a small parcel wrapped in cloth and twine. He was very careful not to come into contact with the soratami. Incidental contact could disrupt the paralysis spell, and he didn't want to have to fight his way clear. He straightened his clothes and approached the female soratami where she sat on the floor.

"Here's where we all just walk away," he said, hoisting his pack over his shoulder. "I fouled up your score tonight and bloodied your noses, but I didn't kill you. Let's leave it at that. Do us all a favor and don't come looking for me again."

The woman's eyes were furious. Run fast, her voice rang in Toshi's ears, though her lips did not move. Run far. It won't save you.

He raised an eyebrow. "That was your voice in the alley, wasn't it?" He leaned down into her face. "This is twice now. See how well bothering me works out? If you want us to try to kill each other on sight from now on, that's your choice. But I can guarantee that you'll never see me coming."

Perhaps.

Toshi shrugged. "You keep saying that. It means nothing." He stood and strolled over to the trap door in the floor. He opened the trap, sat on the edge of the hole, and looked back at the two moonfolk who had fallen, each now staring helplessly up at the ceiling.

"You got off light," he called. "You should have seen the position I was going to leave you in."

Then dropped down into the fen and landed with a splash. As he took his first few steps, the moon slipped behind another cloud. When it emerged, it lit the entire area in an eerie silver light.

Toshi looked down. The shadows from the bamboo and part of his house formed a symbol in the muck that he hadn't intended. In fact, if he took a step back and included the floating bamboo leaves and swamp grass, he could clearly make out several symbols, a small group of naturally occurring kanji that his eyes had isolated from the surroundings.

Toshi sighed, then swore softly. Seeing symbols everywhere was a side-effect of mastering kanji magic, like an overly imaginative child looking up at the clouds. Toshi stared at the ground around him, not wanting to interpret the shapes but unable to prevent himself from doing so.

The shadows formed the kanji for "moon."

The leaves and grass combined to make the symbol for "unstoppable."

The oily mud kicked up by his feet spelled "disaster," or, if he squinted and cocked his head, "cataclysm."

Last, a fallen shoot of broken bamboo approximated a crude triangle, similar to the mark on his hand. As Toshi watched, the faint current caused the bamboo shoot to drift a few feet until it was partially overlapping the shadow symbol for "moon." The combined hyozan/moon symbol then burst into flame, charring the sodden ground and raising a fetid waft of gray steam.

Toshi swore again. He did not pray to any kami, but neither did he dismiss the power of the spirit world. These four symbols gave him considerable pause, because he believed that such serendipitous kanji were meant to be interpreted by those who found them. The meaning of "moon" seemed clear to him-he had a handful of angry soratami stewing on his hovel floor. The hyozan symbol pointed to his own involvement in the evening's festivities.

It was the symbols for "unstoppable" and "disaster" that were really troubling him. On their own, they didn't bode well. In taking them together with the other symbols, Toshi found a more pointed and pressing interpretation than a simple general cataclysm. Either he personally was headed for disaster, or the moonfolk were. Either the disaster was unstoppable, or the moonfolk were. He turned the potential readings over in his mind, trying to come up with something that didn't point to a conjunction of the hyozan and the moonfolk which would in turn lead to an unavoidable catastrophe for all involved.

Then, as he often did when magic showed him something he didn't want to see, Toshi became angry. It was no good going to the sea to dine on mussels if the moonfolk were going to press their complaint, if they were going to pursue him relentlessly until tragedy claimed them all.

Toshi was currently alive and healthy in large part thanks to his ability to recognize potential threats and react to them before they became dangerous. He grunted as he settled on the only sure meaning he could take from the odd collection of signs. The hyozan had come into contact with the soratami, and they were locked together until something vast and destructive happened to them all. He wouldn't be free of them without first paying a tithe of blood and fire and pain.

He felt the pressure around him change and a towering silence rose. Under his shack, the vile swamp water began to swirl, and a shapeless form began to rise. By coincidence or by the soratami's design, a kami was breaking through. Here, even in Numai, the spirits came to make war and kill a humble ochimusha in the bargain.

"Swell," Toshi said. His sense of self-preservation was one great boon that had kept him alive so long in Numai. Another was his habit of striking first. If the signs pointed to a mutually destructive event between him and the moonfolk, he would make sure that it happened on his terms and his timetable. The hyozan reckoners were in the business of revenge for hire, but sometimes they threw dice. Sometimes, like when his neck was in the noose, they were obliged to take preemptive revenge.

He tightened his pack on his shoulder, turned his back on the manifesting spirit, and disappeared into the gloom.

By sunset on the following day, Toshi was well into the rocky foothills to the east, far away from Numai. The rugged terrain was surrounded by a series of naturally occurring stone needles that had once been broad mountains. Centuries of the cold, cutting wind had eroded them down to thin, towering mounds, their peaks invisible among the high clouds. The rest of these badlands were dotted with squat, rolling ridges and craggy bluffs, devoid of vegetation. The air was frigid here, biting and bitter, with most of the moisture concentrated above the snow line. Down here, at ground level, it was all dust and dry stone, the landscape a uniformly monotonous beige.

Normally, such a journey would have taken days even with the fastest steed and on the Daimyo's best roads. Toshi allowed himself to relax slightly. The soratami would never expect him to have come this far this quickly, even if they knew where he was headed.

Toshi patted his pack, which was lighter than it had been when he left his shack. So far, dealing with the moonfolk had forced him to reveal some of his strongest hidden assets simply to stay alive. He was thankful to keep the secret of his rapid travel for a little while longer.

Now that he was one step ahead of the soratami, Toshi concentrated on the challenges before him. He was on the fringes of Godo's realm, and the sanzoku bandit king guarded his borders zealously. As the last holdout against the Daimyo's army, Godo had been leading a guerrilla campaign against Konda for almost ten years, and it was only the vastness of his inhospitable region and the Kami War's drain on the Daimyo's resources that kept the bandits alive and free.