Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(18)

At least we were back among the trees.

Just as the sun began to come up over the mountain behind us, Toumi stopped, staring down.

“What are you looking at?”

The Little Brothers rumbled by us; we were now the last in line.

“Why go back and forth?” Toumi muttered.

“Huh?”

She looked up at me as if she had forgotten I was there. “Going back and forth, it’s stupid.”

“The horses can’t go straight down the hill.”

“Well, I’m not a damned horse,” Toumi snarled. “I’m just going to go straight down and meet up with the rest of them at the next switchback down.” She started to step off the road.

“We’re not supposed to!”

She turned around, one foot in the mulchy soil of the slope, the other still on the road. She grinned at me. “Scared?”

“No, but...!”

Not waiting any more, Toumi walked down off the road and into the bank of thick juniper.

“Come back!” I looked down at her, then the retreating backs of our party. Well, I thought, Mieko said to stay together. And so I plunged down the hill after Toumi.

In retrospect, what I should have done was to go and alert Mieko, Masugu, or the Little Brothers. But I didn’t want to look like a coward or a telltale, and of course, the prospect of getting to climb won me over, even if it were just climbing down a rocky, scrub-clogged hillside.

I went barreling down after Toumi, sure that I would catch up with her before she reached the trees. But Toumi had longer legs than I, and she had been raised on the streets of the capital city, so that she could move very quickly.

The juniper there were much bigger than any I’d seen near home, easily three times a man’s height, but they were still juniper, thick and tangled. As soon as we entered the trees, I lost sight of Toumi. I had to listen for the sound of her feet slipping down the slope, of breaking branches, and of her occasional swearing. “Hold up!” I called. “Wait for me! We’ll get lost!”

“How can we get lost, Mouse? Just go downhill, or are you too frightened even to do that?”

That got me seeing red. Scared? I’d show her. I decided that from that point it was a race to the bottom—and I was going to win.

I could barely hear Toumi rustling through the trees over my own heavy breathing, but I knew that I was gaining on her, more comfortable in the grove’s close quarters. I angled toward what looked like a clearing, hoping to get past her without her knowing. In my mind, I imagined sitting on the road, cleaning my nails as she stumbled out onto the switchback.

Caught up in my own exhilaration and my rage, I burst out into the clearing without looking at what I was running into—another mistake.

The clearing had been created by the fall of a large cedar. At one end, another cedar grew up from the old tree’s rotted trunk, smaller than its parent but much taller than the tangled juniper that surrounded it. In its lower branches stood a man in a brown cloak peering down toward where the road was. At the cedar’s base stood two other men, also in brown, with bows. Alerted by my noisy arrival, they were both staring at me. One of them raised his bow to shoot at me, and I tried to turn back up the hill, only to slip on the mulch of the fallen tree and tumble right at his feet.

At the same moment, a loud shout above me announced that Toumi had fallen into the clearing as well. With a thud and a grunt, she too fell to the ground, just where the other man could step over, grab her by the neck of her jacket, pull her up, and shove her against the cedar.

Trying to reach my feet, I stumbled against the man above me, sending his arrow flitting off harmlessly into the trees. Without a sound, the man clamped his hand over my mouth and pushed me against the rough bark of the cedar. I heard the hiss of a blade being drawn and screamed into the man’s hand.

“Don’t kill ‘em yet,” came a loud whisper from the man above. “Even if we can’t get anything off of this bunch, we can still sell these two.”

“You sure, boss?” The man’s face was masked with a strip of cloth, so that I could only see his eyes squinting at me. “This one’s awful scrawny.”

“Shut up,” hissed the man above. “They’re probably reaching the switchback soon. I need to get down to the look-out. Tie these two up. Gag ‘em. Me and Sanjiro are going down by the road to signal the others. Shirogawa, you guard these runts and get the horses ready.” With that, he leapt from the branch he was standing on down into the juniper behind us.

I heard a smack and a grunt, and felt a weight slam against my shoulder.

The man raised his knife, and I screamed again into his hand, but he was lifting it to Toumi’s throat. She started to snarl at him, but stopped suddenly with a gulp as the blade bit into her flesh. “‘Tie ‘em up,’ the man says,” he muttered, followed by a string of words that I had never heard, not even after nearly seven days of traveling with soldiers. He leaned his body heavily against me, so that I couldn’t move—I could barely breathe—yanked the cloth mask from his face, balled it up and shoved it in my mouth. Pushing back his leather helmet, he pulled off the greasy cap beneath and did the same to Toumi. When she tried to fight, he growled, “I’d be just as happy to kill you both, girl. We ain’t here for no slaves. But if Tanaka says to keep you, I’ll keep you. Now shut up and stay still.”