Pilgrim 3, p.11
Pilgrim 3, page 11
“Finish it,” the woman said through gritted teeth.
Danzen sheathed his blade after wiping some excess blood on the inner sleeve of his robe. He figured he’d get new robes later.
“What… what do you plan to do with me?” The young woman looked up to him, and even though her mask cast a slight shadow over her eyes, he could still see the fear in her pupils.
Danzen exchanged glances with Kudzu, who still had her sword drawn. He then looked at Jelmay, who nodded his head forward, a gesture encouraging Danzen to finish the job.
“You are going to lead me to them, and tell us everything you know,” he finally said, summoning his Demon Speak ability.
There had to be a way to have mercy in all of this.
****
The female assassin looked at Danzen with bewilderment, an indication that his power had worked. She couldn’t have been older than twenty-one years of age, and there was no way that she had trained hard enough to not be influenced by his unique power, echo knowledge or not.
“What about her wound?” Jelmay asked, uncertainty in his voice. It was clear the bakeneko had expected Danzen to end the woman’s suffering, that whatever Danzen was doing was not part of the plan, at least according to him.
“She won’t die from it,” was all Danzen said in reply.
There was no sense in launching into an explanation of the angle at which he had stabbed her, and the hours upon hours, months upon months, of sword training Danzen underwent to be able to push his blade through someone’s body and not actually kill them, to strike someone without puncturing an internal organ, especially while the person was in motion.
The woman would recover from her wound in due time.
The female assassin slowly sat up and as she did so, she used one hand to support herself, her other hand placed upon her wound. “What have you done to my mind?” she asked carefully.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” said Jelmay as he stepped in front of Danzen. “Let’s start with the basics: what is your name?”
“My name?” she asked. “What does it matter to you?”
“It matters a great deal. What am I supposed to call you?” the bakeneko asked her. “Girl Assassin? Well, you’re not really a girl, but not far off. Names are important. So, what’s yours?”
“I’m… I’m Yato,” she said as she lowered her head some, a couple strands of her dark hair flitting across her white mask.
“Yato, huh? That’s an old name, a good one too. Could be for man or woman, right? Anyway, in case you were wondering, I’m Jelmay. This beautiful white fox—well, she’s a woman right now—is Kudzu, and this strappingly scarred middle-aged assassin behind me is none other than the man, the myth, the killer, and the legend himself, Pilgrim. He has a real name, which I’m guessing you may already know, but you can just call him Pilgrim. Everyone else does. He’s quite popular around here, you know?”
Now that she was able to sit, Yato reached her hand up to her face and secured her mask. Unlike her two companions, her mask only covered down to the bridge of her nose, black paint smeared over the lower half of her face and lips.
“Something’s wrong,” she said carefully. “What have you done to my mind?”
“This isn’t going to work,” Kudzu told Danzen. “Unless… you can’t completely wipe her memories as to why she originally came here, can you?”
They were interrupted by someone coming up the road behind them, Danzen and Kudzu looking back to find Dalan the old hermit, who was walking at a much faster pace now that he encountered his companions huddled around an injured woman.
“What happened here?” he asked. A hint of understanding painted across the hermit’s weatherbeaten face as he looked from Danzen to the wounded woman.
“I’ll catch him up.” Kudzu joined the hermit, the two with their backs to Yato for the time being as they discussed what had happened.
Once he understood, Dalan launched into action. “We have to do something about that wound,” he said as he approached the female assassin. “You are losing too much blood.”
“You did this,” Yato said, her eyes narrowing on Danzen. “You tried to kill me.”
This caused Jelmay to laugh. “First of all, if he had wanted to kill you, you’d be deader than dead. So let’s get that straight. And not to come off as rude here, but what did you expect? Did you really think that a little smoke attack in broad daylight was going to take down the world’s best assassin, retired or not? By the time he was your age, Pilgrim had probably already killed a thousand people. I don’t know. Is that right, Pilgrim? Maybe more. These are the big leagues here, kid.”
Danzen ignored Jelmay. While it was entirely within his wheelhouse to truly disrupt her memory, he hadn’t told Yato to forget what had happened; he had merely told her that she would lead them to her companions, and that she would explain what she knew to Danzen. This, among other things, was one of the reasons Yato continued to be on edge, her bewilderment mixed with a tainted understanding of the events that had just gone down.
“Please allow him to examine your wound,” Danzen finally told her.
Yato glanced quickly from Danzen to Dalan, and back to the former assassin. “What is this? What have you done to my mind?”
“Allow him to examine your wound,” Danzen said, once again falling back on his Demon Speak ability.
Yato, who wore a light armor over her robes, began to remove the portion near the wound. As soon as she did, Dalan got to work, but not before Danzen also instructed the woman to remove her gauntleted blades. He wanted to be sure that she didn’t try anything else.
“Your strike was certainly precise,” Dalan said as he used a clean swath of fabric to blot away the blood. He had Yato put pressure on it, then he applied an ointment. Not much was said as he began stitching it up, Yato still with a troubled grimace on the part of her face that was visible.
Danzen was glad no one had passed during the time it took Dalan to see to Yato’s wound, not a patrol, nor a group of merchants. The road between Suja Village and Chutham was surprisingly quiet. He was also glad to have a moment to think about how this would play out, what he was going to do with Yato going forward.
One thing was for certain—he had to rewire her brain just a little more.
Dalan stepped away, and as he did Danzen offered Yato his hand. “You will not kill me; you will not attack me or my companions.”
“I understand,” Yato said obediently, even if there was a hint of agitation and rise. She had no control over what Danzen was able to do, but he still wanted to give her some semblance of free will, which was why he didn’t reconstruct her thoughts completely, or attempt to do something to how she felt emotionally. “You have worked my mind in some way, haven’t you?” she asked. “Master Thane said you were able to do this.”
“I have,” he told her.
Yato took a step forward, wincing at her recently stitched-up wound. Her two weapons were on the ground and Jelmay stood before them, the bakeneko still with a skeptical look on his face. Danzen didn’t turn to see how Kudzu was taking this, but he assumed it was with skepticism as well.
“You’ve told me not to kill you,” Yato said as she began putting the pieces together, “and I don’t believe I would be able to even if I tried at this point. That was my original intention, you knew that. I came here to avenge Master Thane.”
“Which is understandable.”
“Because you killed him,” she said, her eyes flaring with anger. “You did so before my training was complete.”
“It had to be done. It’s not what I wanted, nor do I want you or your companions to die. This is why you will lead me to them. I will spare their lives and reset their intentions as well. From that point forward, I don’t care what you decide to do. If you continue along the path you’ve chosen, or you select another—it’s up to you. Maybe by then you will see why it is important to really think about what you would like to become.”
“Master Thane saved my life…”
“I’m sure he did. He was a good instructor, and I was a student as well so I can attest to that. But he came for me, be it for the challenge or the monetary reward, and the same power used to stop you would not work on him. His echo was too strong.”
“You killed him. I don’t need…” She took another step forward, now just inches away from Danzen, glaring up at him. “I don’t need you dictating my life with your demonic powers.”
“No, you really don’t. Lead me to your companions, I will prevent them from dying as well, and then as I said, the three of you can do whatever you would like with their lives. You have my word. But I can’t have people stalking me and trying to kill me.”
She shook her head. “We… we have a new teacher now, one that will not accept defeat.”
“And who is that?”
“Master Soko.”
Danzen felt his heart sink.
Of course Soko was somehow involved in this. His power didn’t work against her, and the only way to prevent her from trying to kill him, or injuring the people he cared for, or training new assassins to seek Danzen’s head, was to end Soko’s life. He also realized something he would examine in more detail later: Soko had sent them to their death.
“Well, that little tidbit of information certainly complicates things,” Jelmay said, Kudzu nodding in agreement.
“Where is Soko?” Danzen asked after a long pause.
Yato looked like she wanted to withhold information; she even squinted some, as if this would stop her from answering, but she was unable to prevent the words coming out of her mouth. “Arsi.”
“She has stayed in the city even with what happened at the Paper Lantern Festival?” Kudzu asked. “Insanity.”
Yato nodded. “That’s where we first met her, Arsi. Master Thane had us briefly train with her months ago, and he told us that if he died trying to kill you, that we should regroup with her. We traveled to Arsi, and waited until night came. It wasn’t hard to find her after that.”
“So the two men that were with you would likely be going back to her? Is that what you are suggesting?” Jelmay asked. “Because that would make the most sense to me.”
“Tensei and Sonin, yes, we were instructed to return to her if any of us lived through our encounter.”
“She sent you to die,” Kudzu said, barely hiding the disdain in her voice. “You do realize that, right?”
“There were three of us.”
This statement caused Jelmay to laugh out loud. “Three of you against him? There might as well have been sixteen. The number doesn’t matter. And I’m sure that Master Thane, and if not him, Soko, told you what happens when Pilgrim here bleeds. How were you going to contend with that? Do you even understand what that looks like? Say it with me: ‘Soko sent me to die.’ She doesn’t want to deal with the three of you. That seems like her, right, Pilgrim? She didn’t seem like the type that plays nice with others. Use your power on her so she says it. ‘Soko sent me to die.’ I want her to understand the truth here.”
Danzen didn’t reply. While Jelmay was right, Soko wasn’t the type to take in a student, a very small part of him carried with it a glimmer of hope that she had changed over the years, even though he knew this part of him was completely at odds with reality.
“See, he agrees with me,” Jelmay said, continuing onward as always. “When he’s quiet, it means he agrees with me. She sent the three of you here to die, and your two assassin mates got away. If you ask me, it is pretty disloyal of them to simply leave you here. Unless they’re watching us somehow,” he said, looking off into the distance. “But I don’t smell them. Fox?”
Kudzu shook her head.
“Which means they have gone back to Arsi. Or do you think they would regroup in Chutham?” Jelmay asked.
“Arsi,” Yato finally said.
“Ahem, maybe it is best if I don’t get involved with this,” Dalan the hermit said, interrupting the conversation. “I believe I will continue on to Chutham, and I will leave this ointment with you,” he told Yato as he handed her a small wooden container. “Continue to apply it to the outside of the wound. It will help with the scar. You will need to remove the stitches at some point…”
She nodded. “I can do that myself.”
“Good. In that case, I will let the four of you do whatever it is you need to do. Pilgrim, please stop by Eva’s place if you need anything. Perhaps after you have come to an acceptable conclusion regarding this, um, small infraction. I would prefer not to bring more assassins to her doorstep, not in Eva’s condition.”
“Thank you,” Danzen told him. “And we will stop by at a later date.”
The hermit bid farewell to the group and continued on, leaving Danzen with his two yokai companions and Yato.
“If they went to Arsi, then they have quite a head start on us now, especially if they had horses nearby.”
“They did,” Yato told Jelmay. “We did.”
The bakeneko bobbed his head left and right for a moment. “Maybe it’s best if we move a bit slower than them, so we can ambush the two when they finally meet with Soko.”
“Ambush?” Yato glanced back to Danzen.
“I told you that I would prefer not to kill them, but I will have to deal with Soko,” he told her. “An ambush may be the only logical way forward.”
“What he’s trying to say is that you are coming with us to Arsi, that you’re going to behave yourself, and hopefully, you and your two friends will survive this in the end,” Jelmay said. “Now, you need to make yourself presentable. Take off that mask, wash away the black paint, and try to smile for once. You’re about to be traveling in luxury. Isn’t that right, Pilgrim?” As usual, Danzen didn’t respond. “See what I mean? You can take a silence as a ‘yes.’”
.Chapter Two.
It was important to be on high alert as Danzen and his companions, including the clearly disturbed Yato, made their way through the large village of Chutham. They passed Selden’s Emporium, the shops, and the brewery. It wasn’t long before they reached the outer rim of the city, and onto the road that led to the outpost known as Tudan.
They traveled behind a wagon for a spell, the man walking beside it occasionally whipping the hindquarters of a pair of oxen and whistling as he did so, the day increasingly warm, no cloud coverage for the time being.
“I guess this is as good of a time as any to announce that we’re going to need some money,” Jelmay told the group once they passed the wagon, the sun at a point in the sky in which Danzen had to use the hood of his robes to shield his eyes. “True, I probably should have mentioned that earlier.”
“Money? I thought you had kip,” Kudzu told him. “You always have a wad in your vest.”
“Well, theoretically, I do have kip in a bank somewhere, that ‘somewhere’ being Arsi and a couple other places across the kingdom, including Sainshand. And to be fair, I did have a little back at my house, but I buried it, because I figured I would need it later.”
“You can’t be serious. You were the one bragging about how we were going to be traveling in luxury, and you didn’t even bring any money?”
“We are, but I’m going to need an hour or so in Tudan to make that happen. Just trust me here.”
Kudzu stopped and turned to Jelmay, waiting for him to catch up to her. Danzen, who was at the back of the group with Yato, stopped as well. The female assassin hadn’t said anything since they passed through the city, and as Jelmay had suggested, Yato had done what she could to clean the black paint she used as part of her disguise.
Danzen noticed right away that Yato’s face carried the exuberance of youth until he reached her eyes, which held a dullness, or perhaps an apathy stemming from what she had experienced in her life thus far. Yato was beautiful in her own way, but it was a troubled beauty, one that did little to match her killer instincts.
As they waited for Kudzu and Jelmay to finish their heated discussion, Danzen shifted his burlap bag to his other shoulder, Yato’s gauntleted blades inside. While she wasn’t going to be able to kill him, he still had taken precautions, and would be keeping her weapons for the time being.
“It’s just so irresponsible. You were the one who was hyping up how we were going to be traveling, and now you’re telling us that you don’t have any money. Really, Jelmay?”
“Just because we don’t have any kip at this very moment, doesn’t mean that we won’t have some soon. I can get kip, easy; you know that; Pilgrim certainly knows it and he trusts my instincts. Besides, we’re going to Tudan. I practically run that place when it comes to gambling.”
“Do you now? If I recall, last time we went to Tudan, we had to drag you out of a gambler’s den.”
“Drag me? I was up a fairly substantial amount when you showed up, but you probably don’t even remember that part. Safe to say, you cost me even more by coming to ‘rescue’ me than if you had just left me alone.”
“Then what happened to all of that kip? Surely you weren’t able to squander it away so quickly. Where did it go?”
“First, that’s not really any of your business. But if you must know, I buried it. Look, I don’t know if I’m going to make it through all of this, what we will inevitably do, but if I do, that money will be my retirement plan. Or, I will just spend it when we get back to Genshin Valley on frivolous things, maybe some meat, and possibly a few renovations. It would be nice to have a study at my home, maybe even a little fox shed for when you want to escape Mother Pilgrim. And aside from all that, I wanted to challenge myself, to see what I could scrounge up along the way.”
Kudzu sighed miserably. “Why do you always have to complicate things?”
“I’m not complicating things. It’s not like we have a set schedule or anything. We’re simply going to get revenge for ol’ Pilgrim here, and then head north past Odval where we will relax at a nunnery until I get bored of that and need city life again. Simple, right? Beat the heat, have a good time. Who wouldn’t want a summer like that?”
