Kaguta - Or, Ankūro - The Warrior, The Thief and The Killer

2

It's not at all cold,
Yet, a frigid shiver haunts.
Shadows gather here.
- Nuriaki.

Kōshitō, no, Kō walked away from the ailing Itioru without looking back. At first he moaned and pleaded for her to stay. Then he bargained once again, telling of his stash of osū and inū coins, gathered through his many years. She had no need for money. Not any more. At last, he started to scream at her, begging for a good death, an honourable death. Mercy.

She had no appetite for mercy. Her days of frivolity, of nobility, had become torn from her as she watched Akāi burn. When she saw her people slaughtered in the streets, her brother treated like an animal, dragged through the blood and faeces and urine that had spilled upon the cobbled highways of her home, mercy became a joke.

The mercy that Itioru begged for did not exist. If it had ever existed upon this island, where war had become an art. Where a good death had become an ideal, something to anticipate and aspire to. That way of the warrior, that code, was nothing but a fancy. When war came to Kaguta, only warriors were supposed to suffer. That had melted away along with the waters of the last rain season.

Rain had always come to Kaguta. Seasons of storms lasted weeks. The following seasons of dry, hot weather lasted as long. Three seasons of rain, three seasons of dryness. It had always happened this way, for many centuries. Yet, now, the rains had not come. Two rain seasons had passed with only the lightest of rainfalls to give life to parched lands. As though the island itself rebelled against the cruelty meted out upon the fields of battle, the city streets, the towns and villages.

Kō had never seen the like. Not the war and not the drought. Only a child the last time the island and its regional rulers, the Haūdo, had gone to war, she had not seen much of the fighting. Her father had ruled Jaā then. Then her brother took on the mantle after their father died in a duel with another Haūdo. An honourable duel. They had honour, in those days.

Her black staff kicked up dust, along with her wooden shētu clogs. Dust that should, at this time of the year, have become mud. She paused, glancing back towards the black cloud of crows that gathered above the battlefield. Then, she removed the lacquered end of the staff, revealing its sharp blade. It still had Itioru's blood upon it.

Not wanting to remain near the man any longer, she had walked away without cleaning the spear head. Her old masters would have beaten her for that, though now she found little within her to care. She did much, had done much, that her masters would not have approved of since leaving Akāi. Cleaning her weapon would fall far down that list.

Still, a blade not maintained could fail her, at some point. In the middle of the dust ridden road, she crouched, laying the spear across her knees as she reached into her priest's jacket, removing a cloth. The blood had already started to dry and she had to spit upon the blade a number of times before she felt satisfied she had removed all the blood.

For a long while, after cleaning the blade, she stared at the shining metal, the rays of the sun reflecting off the smooth surface. A fine weapon, forged by the greatest sword-smith in Akāi. A novelty, she had thought. Now a necessity. Anyone carrying a sword, these days, had become a target. Questions about loyalty, whose side they fought on, would follow a warrior everywhere. Kō had no loyalty. Not to anyone living.

She curled a hand around the blade, her fingers, wrapped in dirty cloth, gripped the spear tip tight. So tight, that the blade cut into her palm, into skin at the joints of her fingers. Still she tightened her grip, praying to the Divines that she could feel the pain. Feel something other than hate. She could not.

With a sigh, she released the blade, using the cloth to wipe her own blood from it. That cloth fell to the dusty ground as she replaced the cover upon the spear head. Then, she reached into her priest's jacket once more, pulling out a long, thin strip of cloth, wrapping it around her palm and bloodied fingers, tying it off with the help of her teeth.