He sadly shook his head. “No, Marrow. The oath is intact. You spilled Hidetsugu’s blood, and now the reckoning is upon you.”
Toshi couldn’t tell if Marrow could hear through the throes of his seizure. Several feet away, Kiku lay on her side, coughing and struggling to roll away from the ogre. Something brittle crackled under her hip as she moved.
Hidetsugu had stopped roaring and knocking chunks of wood and stone from the walls. Blood and his ruined eye still oozed down his face as he gingerly tested Marrow’s sword to see how firmly it was planted. The yamabushi stood nearby, unsure if they should assist their master or exact vengeance on the one who struck him.
Toshi spotted his sword belt. For Marrow, for Kiku, and for himself, he dived for his weapons and rolled, drawing his long sword in one hand and his jitte in the other.
He charged toward Marrow, his mind working feverishly. There was a chance they could still pull this off and stay alive. He could fix this and still capture the Taken One for his myojin. All he had to do was survive the next few minutes.
Toshi reached Marrow and sheathed his jitte. Keeping his eye on the yamabushi, Toshi brusquely pulled Marrow’s arm out straight. He turned the rat’s hand over to make sure the hyozan mark was still there, and then Toshi raised his sword.
“Sorry, oath-brother,” he said. He swung the blade down at Marrow’s wrist. As the edge touched the first hair on the nezumi’s arm, a bolt of white light struck Toshi’s sword in the center, shattering it into three equal pieces. Marrow’s arm was barely even scratched.
“Don’t do that, Toshi.” Hidetsugu had regained control of himself and stood smiling, Marrow’s sword still jutting from his eye socket. Next to him the female yamabushi held her stringless bow ready, a new bolt of magical force drawn and ready to fire.
“I’ve heard that the hyozan curse has only been invoked twice,” the ogre leered. “And I didn’t get to see the other one.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Toshi said. “You’ll only see half of this one even if I do let you watch.”
The o-bakemono chuckled. He seemed remarkably placid for someone who’d just been maimed. As Toshi watched and waited, Hidetsugu scrunched up the wounded side of his face and plucked the blade from his eye like a loose lash.
“Much better.” He tossed the stained and rusty sword aside. “Now then. I was just about to kill you-”
A thick column of dusty black slammed into Hidetsugu’s chest like a battering ram, cutting him off in mid-threat and hurling him back through the stone wall behind him. The entire room, the entire floor of the building shook, raining dust and bits of plaster down on the stunned yamabushi. Toshi was as shocked as they were by this surprising turn of events, and he followed their wide-eyed awe across the room to its source.
Kiku was in the same place Hidetsugu had dropped her, floating three feet off the floor and surrounded by a nimbus of shadow. Pieces of a brown ceramic disk lay broken at her feet. Toshi’s stomach went cold as he recognized the kanji he’d crafted back in the swamp to contain the mahotsukai masters’ curse.
“Kiku?” he called. She did not reply. From the shadows crawling over her perfect cheekbones to the dull black void in her eyes, Toshi guessed that she couldn’t … and that the masters’ spell had reclaimed its original vessel.
More thick columns of shadow sprouted from Kiku’s body and bent down to the floor, lifting her up like a spider’s legs. Suspended from this network of shadow limbs, Kiku’s entranced body skittered over the yamabushi and through the hole in the wall after Hidetsugu.
Toshi turned his attention back to Marrow. One crisis at a time, he told himself. In swift, practiced motions, Toshi stretched out Marrow’s arm and crisply lopped of the nezumi’s hand at the wrist. It popped off of the rat’s arm and landed with the hyozan mark facing the ceiling.
Marrow was too far gone to cry out, but Toshi felt the heat coming off him dwindle. Marrow’s convulsions also eased. The ochimusha wrapped Marrow’s bleeding stump in a strip of the rat’s own shirt.
“I don’t know if that will work,” Toshi told Marrow’s rigid body. “But I think one less hand is better than slow, agonizing death.” He tilted Marrow’s head so he could look into his eyes. There was no sign of conscious thought.
“I’ll ask you again when you’re able to answer,” Toshi said. “If you disagree, I can always kill you then to make it up to you.”
The yamabushi had recovered while Toshi had tended to Marrow, and the female was taking aim with her bow. For the first time since the oni dog had bitten him, Toshi had the strength and the focus to call upon the power of his myojin. “Hoy, skullcaps,” he called. “You’ve done enough for now. Rest.”
Toshi spread his fingers wide and then slowly clenched them back into a fist. Across the room, the yamabushi staggered as the air around them grew cold, then frigid, then arctic. A thin patina of powdered ice formed on their hair and eyebrows as the color drained from their faces.
The female shuddered and then sat right where she’d been standing. The bow clattered from her numb fingers, and her chin slowly drifted down to her chest. Her partner managed to stagger a few extra steps before he also dropped his weapon and crumpled to the floor.
Beside him, Marrow toppled onto his side. The rat and the yamabushi were out of the picture for now. That only left Kiku and Hidetsugu.
Toshi drew his jitte and sprinted through the hole in the wall. To his surprise, the next wall had a similar hole, and the wall beyond that. Whatever Kiku had hit the ogre with had not been a lover’s tap.
In the room past the third hole, Toshi found his former oath-mates. Kiku was still entranced, black-eyed and unresponsive, but her shadow limbs had Hidetsugu pinned against the floor. With a separate column of shadow restraining each arm and leg, the ogre was slowly crushing the floor beneath him into powder and he heaved and strained against the ponderous black force.
Though it seemed Kiku had the upper hand, Toshi knew it could not last. Ten years of uneasy partnership had not helped him develop a kanji spell to defeat Hidetsugu, and he’d worked very hard to do so. The ogre was too strong, too tough, and too magically adept for Toshi’s best efforts, even if he had the element of surprise. There was no reliable way to kill Hidetsugu or render him helpless with a single stroke, and the ogre’s return blow was almost guaranteed to be lethal. Frankly, he was amazed Kiku had lasted this long.
Toshi racked his brain to come up with some way to help or call her off before Hidetsugu gathered his wits. Too late, he thought, as fire sparked in Hidetsugu’s eye and he opened his mouth wide in a voracious grin.
“Magnificent,” he cried, just before a plume of white-hot flame blasted into Kiku at the center of her shadow-cloud. Toshi registered that Hidetsugu was referring to Kiku’s attack and not his own fire spell-it must have been decades since someone had knocked the o-bakemono off his feet.
The blast forced Kiku and her shadow limbs up through the ceiling, but the recoil also drove Hidetsugu the rest of the way through the floor. Masonry and planks rained down around Toshi, and he wondered how much more abuse this wing of the academy could take. Cracks had already formed along the exterior walls, and as Toshi watched, one huge slab of stone slid out of alignment, threatening to fall and crush anyone beneath it.
Four spidery shadow legs folded themselves around the hole in the ceiling and then dragged Kiku back into the chamber. Her blank eyes had narrowed and her mouth was closed, as if the ogre’s attack had reminded her of the need for caution and considered action.
Before Kiku could pull the rest of her shadow limbs in behind her, Hidetsugu’s muscular form rocketed up from the crater in the floor. The ogre slammed into the mahotsukai and wrapped his powerful arms around her waist. She was protected within her field of shadow, but Hidetsugu was far too strong to simply be ignored. Kiku’s real and conjured limbs flailed as the ogre compressed her midsection, but she was unable to grab him or toss him clear.