Death Before Dishonor Read online

  Yuri and his opponent were fairly matched now that fatigue was starting to catch up. They slashed, parried, thrust, and dodged, circled, and then slashed again. The Momochi danced and spun, catching and entangling Yuri’s weapon. Yuri tried to keep hold, but the Momochi wrenched it free, slinging it to the ground.

  Terry saw Yuri’s sword tumble. Terry lined up the final Momochi and pulled the trigger, but the weapon was empty. Terry tossed it aside and staggered to another weapon that was lying on the floor.

  The Momochi raised his ninjatō parallel to the floor, the tip pointing at Yuri’s left eye. “Death is your punishment, Fujibayashi. The Shogun wills it.”

  Yuri grimaced.

  “The ancestor spirits have decreed the Momochi victorious,” said the Momochi before thrusting his blade into Yuri’s chest.

  Yuri had timed it. He slid beneath the blade and whipped around, drawing an arc on the floor with his back foot. His leg caught the Momochi’s heels and swept him off of his feet. The Momochi came down hard onto his shoulder blades. Yuri rushed in for the kill, but the Momochi slinked back up to his feet as if going over a wave. This offered the Momochi the initiative, and he snuck a punch into Yuri’s ribs and a hook to his face. Yuri fell back two steps, and the Momochi came with lightning-fast kicks to the head and body, one after the other. Yuri blocked high and low, giving ground and letting the Momochi close.

  Yuri unleashed a torrent of blows, spinning to build momentum in between combinations. The Momochi was a profound fighter, but he didn’t measure up to Yuri’s raw talent. And Yuri’s power alone was beginning to wear down the Momochi’s guard. He’d need an ace up his sleeve if he were to beat the Fujibayashi warrior and kill the one that was hobbling in their direction.

  Yuri lashed out with a roundhouse that whizzed by the Momochi’s chin—the Momochi felt the wind as it passed. Then the Momochi rushed in behind Yuri’s kick, trying to snatch him off his feet. Yuri hopped clear, pushing aside the Momochi’s attempt at grappling. The Momochi found his feet as Yuri stepped wide to the left and launched another roundhouse from the right as cover for a sharp left-right-left with his fists. The kick smashed the Momochi’s guard, and all three punches landed, drawing blood.

  The Momochi retaliated, but Yuri parried and redirected, refusing to give ground this time. They exchanged back and forth and danced. The Momochi bounded backward with a backhand spring to put distance between them and to put himself in the range of his ninjatō. Yuri, in the heat of it, didn’t realize it until the Shinobi had the sword in his hand.

  The Momochi didn’t make a show of it; he returned Yuri’s aggression with the blade. He slashed at angles, repeatedly trying to etch lines into Yuri’s torso that would connect his shoulders with the opposite hip. Yuri bounced backward, angling his body and arms away from the Momochi’s strikes. He felt the sword graze his armor, shaving the top layer off. Yuri did a backhand spring too, trying to open some distance. The Momochi rushed in, swinging aggressively, trying to catch Yuri off balance. Yuri kept moving, feet-to-hands-to-feet-to-hands, as the sword slashed for any part of his body it could catch. Finally, the blade landed, cutting deep into the meat of Yuri’s arm. He howled and collapsed onto his head, the wound vomiting blood onto the floor.

  The Momochi took up a position at Yuri’s head to gloat. “The Shogun has made his decision. The Momochi are in favor. I am the new Momochi kōchō, and our former kōchō is now Hattori Hanzo. The Fujibayashi are defeated, and you…are dead, gaijin.” He raised the sword above his head, point down.

  Yuri’s arm throbbed and squirted blood, but his combat wits were still about him. He wasn’t going down so easily. Yuri snatched his tanto from its sheath and slammed it through the Momochi’s knee; the point exploded through the inside. The Momochi screamed and dropped the sword. Yuri coiled himself around his opponent’s impaled leg and wrenched it in an unnatural direction; the Momochi toppled. Yuri rolled over him, wrapped around him like a constrictor coiling its prey, and squeezed. The Momochi wrestled and bucked, trying to break Yuri’s grip.

  Yuri snaked his good arm around his opponent’s neck and clasped his legs around the damaged leg. The Momochi pulled on Yuri’s good arm, trying to relieve the pressure. Both men gritted and strained, trying to overpower the other.

  Yuri released the Momochi’s neck for a split second and drilled him twice in the side of the head before resuming the lock. The Momochi’s resistance was beginning to weaken as his endurance was diminished with his airflow being restricted, and he became desperate. He reached out to Yuri’s injured arm and dug his fingers into the laceration, spurring more blood flow. Yuri roared in pain and then bit down on the Momochi’s ear. The Momochi writhed as Yuri tore his ear free with his teeth, spitting gore onto the floor.

  Yuri was like an animal now—all fury. He clamped down like a vice and yanked at the Momochi’s head. Yuri exhaled, inhaled, and yanked again. Then he did it again. He yanked and yanked, like an angry predator mauling its prey. The Momochi’s eyes bulged. Yuri yanked harder each time, trying to pull his opponent’s head off his shoulders. Finally, there was a wet pop, and Yuri heard the Momochi give a limp exhale. Yuri gritted his teeth and yanked has hard as he could, getting his whole body into it. There was a loud pop as the Momochi’s spine disconnected from his skull. The Momochi slumped and didn’t move again.

  Yuri rolled off the dead fighter and flopped to the ground, gasping. The adrenaline was draining from his body, and he suddenly could feel the wound on his arm. He looked for his brother and found him hunched over Saki.

  Yuri climbed to his feet and rushed over to them. “Saki! Talk to me, buddy.” That’s when he noticed the twisted pain on his brother’s face and the blood. “Terry, are you hurt bad?”

  “I—I’m not sure.”

  “Yuri,” Saki whispered, his voice trembling.

  “I’m here, brother. You’re going to be okay.”

  “I—I can’t feel my legs.”

  “We’re going to get you back home. I just need you to sit tight for a moment.”

  Yuri looked about the shrine at all the corpses floating in a thin layer of blood. He couldn’t believe they were still alive—he really could not. It was a miracle. They hadn’t just been outnumbered; they had also been outgunned, and they’d survived it. They’d won.

  Just then, the room shifted. He was dizzy from the blood loss. Yuri had to take care of himself before he could take care of Saki.

  He pulled Saki’s tanto free of its sheath, climbed to his feet, walked over to the nearest body, and cut enough fabric from its clothes to fasten a dressing on his laceration. He dabbed the wound with the fabric first, looking the wound over. It was deep—so deep, in fact, that Yuri could see bone; he’d need stitches. He’d have to worry about that once he got back to the village, though. In the meantime, he had to get his brother and Saki out of here. He tied the piece of material tightly over the wound.

  He hurried back to Saki, who was having his wounds inspected by Terry. “It’s not looking good.” Terry looked up and shook his head. “He’s losing a lot of blood.”

  “That’s not a problem we can worry about right now, Terry. We got to get him out of here.”

  Saki inhaled sharply. “Just leave me.”

  “Saki,” Yuri said flatly, tugging at Saki’s clothes to sit him up, “shut up while grown folks talk. Terry, help me carry him.”

  “I don’t know if I can. I think I’ve been shot.”

  “What? Where?”

  Terry’s eyes were glossy. “In my side.”

  “Fuck. Let me see.” Yuri leaned across Saki, holding him up by his harness with his good hand, and used the hand of his injured arm to inspect Terry’s right flank.

  “Ow, goddammit.”

  “Shut up,” Yuri said, pulling on the tunic and feeling around his brother’s torso. “You’ve definitely been shot, but I don’t see exit wounds, and the two bullet holes don’t look that deep—looks mostly like shrapnel. I think I could dig it out. It’
s going to have to wait, though.”

  “Yeah. I’m in enough pain as it is. Are you okay?”

  “I’ll live if that’s what you mean. The cut is pretty deep. I’m lucky that asshole didn’t cut my arm off.”

  Doubt was breeding with the pain in Terry’s side. They still had a long walk back to the Togakure Ryu over unforgiving terrain in the snow. He was always prepared to die, but he didn’t know how to feel. “Yuri, I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

  “Don’t you start.” Yuri’s survival instinct didn’t have time for defeatism. “If you can’t help me carry Saki, then at least help me get him on my back. I’ll carry him back to the village; I just need you to walk. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah—I think so.”

  “C’mon, we’re going home.”

  Chapter Seventeen: The Code Less Followed

  Suzuka Mountains. Mie Prefecture, Japan. Today.

  The trek to Togakure Ryu was grueling. The snow and the topography conspired against the Fujibayashi as they painted three red dashed lines in the snow, trying to outpace frostbite and hypothermia. Their lungs burned. Their faces stung. Their fingers and toes ached. But they were galvanized. They hadn’t given up yet.

  Yuri plodded along with Saki tied into Yuri’s harness, back to back. Terry carried Saki’s legs, helping with the weight. Saki sagged like an overflowing rucksack, his arms at his side.

  They often stopped when the pain became overwhelming. They would take a moment for Terry to pause and breathe and relieve a fraction of the burning misery in his side. Then Yuri would encourage him to keep moving. Terry listened.

  Yuri’s arm was throbbing too; he could feel his heartbeat in his forearm, and the dressing he had tied over the wound was soaking through. The cold, the pain, and the stress whispered conspiratorially in his ear to give up. And when he considered it, the thought of Veronica’s alabaster smile reenergized him. For the first time in life, he felt that he had something to live for. That’s what he had been missing all these years. That’s why he’d never been able to dismiss Ninpo: because he’d had nothing else beyond it. Ninpo only gave him something to die for; love gave him a reason to live.

  Yuri would feel Terry starting to lag and would say, “Come on, Terenzio. Stay with me.” And Terry would.

  They offered each other encouragement to push through the pain and the bitter, unforgiving cold.

  After four hours of inching through the mountains, stopping for rest, negotiating the best route, hoisting Saki again, and inching some more, the three injured Fujibayashi came down the final slope that constrained Togakure Ryu.

  A villager gathering firewood before sunrise in the rear of a cottage spotted them. He was at first surprised to see them—alive. His surprise evaporated, and he tossed the firewood to the ground and rushed to help them, imploring for assistance from anyone who could hear him. A handful of Fujibayashi burst from their cottages and ran to the three warriors.

  Amidst praise and pious glee, the Fujibayashi relieved Terry and Yuri of Saki’s weight and carried Saki into a cluster of cottages. Several assisted Terry to a nearby cottage; another coterie of Shinobi implored Yuri to follow them down the muddy walkway towards another. Two Shinobi tried to aid Yuri in walking, but he shrugged their help away. He followed them through a snow-covered pen of a border cottage across another muddy pathway and onto the porch of another. He looked over his shoulder towards the village center, noticing that it had come to life once the Fujibayashi warriors had returned.

  Once inside, several villagers removed Yuri’s dressing and stripped his cold, soaked clothing. While they’d been training for the ritual, the warriors hadn’t been allowed to do anything by themselves, except perhaps to use the bathroom. The Fujibayashi had cooked for them, fed them, woken them, put them to bed, tended to their wounds, and dressed them. In the beginning, it had irritated Yuri, but now he was used to it; it had become routine. He just stood in the middle of the room and allowed the Shinobi to do their duty.

  A Shinobi emptied a bucket over Yuri’s head; a mountain range of goosebumps erupted all over his skin. The villagers began scrubbing his body with rough sponges and tending to his myriad scrapes and injuries—the spot where the arrowhead had dug in as well as bruises and scratches he hadn’t even registered.

  The Shinobi poured several pots of water onto his arm to ensure that the wound was sufficiently irrigated. One picked at the flesh, digging out particles and debris and dabbing it with a rag. Yuri squeezed his face and fists. Then the Shinobi began stitching without anesthetic.

  Yuri tried to set his mind to other things, thinking first about Terry, then the fight, the arrows, the chain-whip’s howl, Kawaguchi’s face, the sound and feeling of the Momochi’s head separating from his spine, and Saki collapsing after he’d been stabbed in the back.

  Then a wicked feeling bubbled in Yuri’s gut.

  He looked at the Kunoichi cleaning the scrape on his knee. “Where’s Saki?” Yuri asked.

  “Being tended to in another household,” she replied.

  “Which one?”

  She shrugged.

  Yuri looked at a man who was drying Yuri’s shoulders with a blanket. “Where is my brother?”

  “He was guided to another household, but I am not sure which one.”

  “Get off me,” Yuri demanded, yanking his nearly-stitched arm from the older Shinobi doing the sutures. Yuri snatched the clean tunic and trousers that the Fujibayashi had prepared for him and pulled them on. He grabbed his harness with his ninjatō and threw them over his shoulder as he ran out into the snow barefoot.

  “Terry!” Yuri yelled as he weaved through the squat buildings. He snagged a Shinobi by his tunic. “Where’s my brother?”

  The man pointed at a nearby cottage.

  Yuri rushed for the building and barged through the rice-paper door, practically taking it off the rail.

  Terry was lying on the floor, groaning as two kneeling Shinobi extracted the slugs and fragments from Terry’s abdomen with nothing to kill the pain; several other Shinobi brought clean rags, removed the bloody ones, and assisted when needed.

  Yuri pushed through the huddle. “Terry, get up,” he demanded. “We have to find Saki. Quickly.”

  “Yuri—” Terry started to ask, but Yuri cut him off.

  “Don’t ask questions. We don’t have time. Get up.”

  Terry raised a hand. “Help me up.”

  Yuri got a firm grasp and heaved. Terry grunted when his injured abdominals engaged as he found his feet. He exhaled audibly.

  “C’mon,” Yuri said, snatching clean clothes from a Shinobi and tossing them at Terry. “Get dressed. We have got to find Saki.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “He can’t walk.” Yuri’s face had never been so serious.

  ***

  Saki lay on a feathered mattress, staring at the grain in the wood of the ceiling, contemplating.

  Now that this generation’s ritual combat was complete, what would Togakure Ryu be like? What would it be like on the other side? How long would the journey be? Would he still be able to speak to those he was closest to? Would he have to earn his place in the ancestral heavens as he did on earth? What would the ancestral realm look like?

  Akiko’s face appeared in his view, and she reached down and rubbed his face. Saki spoke, but his voice was so weak that Akiko had to bend and get her face close to his.

  “Hello, old friend,” she said tenderly, wearing burgundy robes and a messy bun.

  “Hello, old friend.”

  “You have returned and raised the clan up.”

  Saki smiled weakly. “It was not me alone, Akiko. Terry and Yuri are equally responsible. They, after all, carried me when I could not walk.”

  “Yes, surely we must not forget them. But you, Saki, are our most honorable. It was you that took the field undisputed. It will be you that goes with honor. Would it have only been Terry and Yuri that fell on the battlefield and not you. They—”
<
br />   Saki grabbed her hand. “No, Akiko. The Momochi were not three,” he said weakly. “They brought others.”

  “What?”

  “There were more than three Momochi on the battlefield. They brought reinforcements. A man calling himself the Shogun sent fighters to ambush us, and we defeated them. Terry and Yuri fought valiantly for the Fujibayashi when the odds were against us.”

  “Saki,” she said, a disappointed smile materializing, “you were delirious from your injury. There were no others. It is okay, my old friend. All will be well soon.”

  “No, Akiko, you must listen. There are things Omiyoshu Sensei is not telling us. Something is afoot; Terry and Yuri must uncover it.”

  “Maintaining secrets is the prerogative of the kōchō.”

  “You must believe me. Terry, Yuri, and I uncovered information that has shaken my trust and left me confused.”

  “Saki, they have turned their backs on Ninpo. They—”

  “Akiko, you must help them, since I will not be here to do so.”

  “I cannot do it, Saki. They are too far removed.”

  “Then help them return, Akiko. Help them be Fujibayashi again in peace as they have been in battle.”

  “Saki, you must not forget the Fourth Mandate. You have a duty to trust the clan and its leaders.”

  “What if the clan or its leaders have done something to violate our trust? What then, Akiko? I do not know who else has the answers to the questions we posed to Omiyoshu Sensei. But I need you to help them find those answers.”

  Her expression was a mixture of doubt and discomfort.

  “I regret to say that somehow I think the secrets that Terry, Yuri, and I have come to witness are somehow connected to the events with the Momochi.”