Pilgrim, p.9
Pilgrim, page 9
He had been an assassin for twenty years, and killing had no real effect on him. However, returning to a posh hotel, or stepping into a carriage with a private driver, his robes covered in blood, always threw Danzen off guard.
The divide between those two realities—one of merciless slaughter for hire, the other of the finer things of life—was always unsettling for him.
And as he had done more times than he could count, Danzen tried not to think about these things.
Instead, he focused on the path before him, the enormous trees to his left, some of their branches adding pockets of shade to the soil, the crisp air cool enough to keep him comfortable.
As he had done before, and as he would always do, Danzen continued onward.
After another thirty minutes, his eyes fell upon the prayer rock that Sarnai had mentioned, the large stone structure draped in flags, prayers scratched out on the stone’s surface.
A sense of urgency came to him.
Danzen quickly went for Astra, and as he did, a bolt of lightning struck him down.
****
Danzen awoke with a gasp, his vision blotted out, his head screaming. His hands were bound behind his back. There was also something around his neck, keeping what he quickly realized was a black cloth tied over his face.
He started to move back and forth, a voice below him sending a sense of dread through Danzen as soon as he heard it.
“You’re awake,” said the voice, one that Danzen recognized as belonging to an assassin named Shunta.
It was then that he realized he was gagged as well, Danzen upside down, strung up.
“You never did have much to say,” said Shunta. “And I’m glad for that. I would prefer not to listen to you beg. You know, they thought I was crazy for coming all the way out here in search of you. They called this place the ‘middle of nowhere,’ claiming you would never make it this far out. Can you believe that? No one suspected that you, of all people, would make your way to the edge of the known world. The idiots. Last I heard, Norwin was in the north, and I believe Soko may have joined him, not that this matters to you.”
Danzen bit down onto the gag in his mouth, his anger quickly subsiding as he tried to come up with a way to free himself.
Shunta was a younger assassin, a clever one, who had ingested a remnant of Sunyata which had given him the ability to fire bolts of lightning from his palms.
He came up years after Danzen had gone through the Brotherhood’s training, but Biren Yeshe, Danzen’s former teacher and the man who had betrayed him, had always spoken highly of him. And as he had learned countless times before, it turned out that Biren wasn’t far off in his assessment of the young assassin’s ability.
Danzen began to slowly swing back and forth.
“I have to be honest with you,” Shunta continued, “I didn’t think it would be this easy to capture you. No, stop moving. That’s not going to work. If you try that again, I will strike you with enough lightning to leave you passed out for a day. Stop. Now, as I was saying, I didn’t think it would be this easy to capture you. I arrived in Suja Village a couple days ago, and I heard rumors about a man known only as Pilgrim. My first thought was that someone in town would want to put a bounty out on this man’s head. I thought, hey, maybe I can pick up a little kip while I continue my search for the true prize. But then I came to the conclusion that it had to be you. It just had to be. Wasn’t it just like you to want to disappear to the edge of the known world? Master Yeshe will be so happy to see you again.”
Danzen continued to rock back and forth ever-so-slightly, a plan coming to him. If it didn’t work, he would have to try something later, once he woke up again from the next lightning strike.
“I thought I told you…”
Even though he was blindfolded, Danzen shut his eyes, hoping to feel the change in air pressure, to sense when Shunta used his power so he could shift himself forward.
Suddenly, Danzen was falling, the crack of lightning behind him telling him the assassin had missed. And just as he had hoped, the lightning had struck the branch instead.
Danzen hit the ground with an oomph, the world whooshing around him.
“You… you!” Shunta bellowed, Danzen doing the best he could to throw his body in the direction of the assassin’s voice.
He managed to take Shunta’s legs out, the two rolling around for a moment until they smacked into a tree, Shunta letting out a grunt.
Knowing that he didn’t have long, Danzen scrambled on top of him, his legs and arms still bound as he slammed his head down, aiming toward the sound of Shunta’s shortened breaths.
His masked forehead connected with the assassin’s face, Danzen up in a matter of seconds slamming it down again, again, putting all his strength into his headbutts, a supernatural amount of power, Shunta making one final, garbled sound with his throat before his body relaxed.
The black cloth covering Danzen’s face had moved up some, his mouth and chin now exposed.
Needing his vision, Danzen bent forward again and used the bloody ridges of Shunta’s face to shift the black cloth up to his forehead.
To do this, he had to get seriously close to the man, almost as if he were kissing him, Danzen rubbing his face against the assassin’s broken nose repeatedly, against his bloodied lips, always cautious of the man’s teeth, knowing what would happen if he drew blood.
Eventually, he managed to get the black fabric over his head pressed past his brow, Danzen sweating by this point as the light came to him, blinding at first. Things began to unblur into focus in a matter of moments; he saw that Shunta’s face was a bloody mess.
Summoning his strength, Danzen tried to tear the ropes from his wrists, which was something he should have been able to do had Shunta not tied him up in a way that crisscrossed the ropes all the way up to his armpits. His ankles, shins, and even his knees were tied as well, which would make it hard to stand.
He had truly done it. He had managed to headbutt the assassin to death.
At least he thought he was dead…
Scooting back, his body still on top of Shunta’s, Danzen placed his ear against the man’s chest.
No heartbeat.
He looked at the assassin’s mangled face again, his dark hair swept across his matted forehead.
Shunta almost reminded Danzen of himself when he was younger, aside from the fact that the front of his face was now caved in, his nose broken, one of his eyes bulging, the other one closed, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, his teeth streaked with blood.
Danzen pressed himself up so he was now sitting on his knees, equilibrium hard to maintain.
He looked to the knife resting against the exposed root. He quickly concluded that it was going to be impossible for him to somehow sink the hilt of the blade into the ground and cut his bindings away.
No, he needed to tear the rope away with something else.
He looked to his right, noticing that he wasn’t very far from the prayer rock, that perhaps…
Letting out a sigh, mostly of disappointment for what he was about to attempt, Danzen laid down on his side. Astra wasn’t at his belt as it normally was, but his blade wasn’t very far, sitting next to his bag beneath the tree that he had been strung up on.
He could always come back for it.
Using his weight, Danzen flipped himself over and then started to roll, commanding his elbows as best he could to guide himself forward.
He started to roll in the wrong direction for a moment, Danzen using his legs to correct his position and send him in the direction of the large prayer rock.
What would have been a five-minute walk turned out to be a twenty-minute roll, Danzen breathing heavily by the time he reached his destination, his actions having a dizzying effect.
He lay on his back for a moment, looking up at the sky, noticing that it was late afternoon, that the sun would come down sooner rather than later and he needed to find shelter.
Stamina returned to him after a deep breath, Danzen once again continuing his roll to one of the corners of the prayer rock. It wasn’t fully chiseled, but it seemed that there were a few sharp edges to it, and if this didn’t work, he could circle around to another edge and try again.
He managed to sit up and moved to his knees, relying entirely on his core strength to do so.
Danzen began moving up and down, the muscles in his thighs starting to ache after doing this for five minutes, the rope binding his arms holding strong.
Danzen kept at it.
No matter how much his muscles ached from the strange position he was in, or the fact that now his abdomen had started to burn a little, he needed to free his arms.
He fell into an almost meditative state as he did so, his eyes on Shunta, remembering the last time he had seen the young assassin.
Sometimes the Diyu Brotherhood sent assassins out in pairs, especially when they wanted a newer one to learn from a veteran. Danzen hadn’t exactly trained Shunta, but he had gone out with the man twice, Danzen at once impressed with the young assassin’s lightning power, which had given Shunta the ability to anonymously kill a target long-range.
A man could be stepping out onto his balcony and be struck by a bolt of lightning, dead to the world, Shunta several rooftops away and able to disappear without anyone knowing any better.
It was likely how he got Danzen; had the younger assassin been smarter, he would have struck him with all he had and then sealed Danzen up in a casket, immediately leaving the area.
That would have been hard to get out of.
As he continued to rub the rope against the sharp rock, Danzen played this scenario out in his head. At some point, Shunta would have had to remove the lid of the casket, and by that time, Danzen would have understood that he had been kidnapped.
Perhaps he would have attacked him in the same way, leaping forward with a headbutt, covering the younger assassin’s body so it made it harder to use his power without striking himself.
That was one thing that Shunta had told Danzen in the times they had been together—if it struck someone while he was touching them, Shunta would feel the jolt as well.
Aside from not having any other options, this was one reason Danzen had gotten on top of him: it had prevented Shunta from striking him again with electricity.
Feeling the rope start to tense, Danzen kept up the pressure.
Shunta could have killed him. This was one thing he hadn’t thought about in a while, Danzen assuming that the Diyu Brotherhood wanted him dead. Perhaps the reward was higher if someone brought him in alive…
Danzen let out a sigh of relief as the rope cut, giving way.
From that point he was able to pull his arms wide, the rest of the rope tearing.
He shook out his hands, looking down at the rope that was wrapped around his legs. Now that he was able to use his hands, Danzen turned to the rock and pulled himself up.
He then looked back to Shunta’s dead body, Astra and his satchel resting on the ground beyond the assassin.
Danzen hopped forward, small jumps at first, just to get the hang of it. With his arms free, he was able to stabilize himself some, the former assassin eventually picking up his pace as he made his way back to his sword.
It beat rolling on the ground.
****
Danzen thought about burying Shunta’s body. While the man had tried to kill him, he knew that he was also family-less, that like Danzen, he had been abandoned at birth. And Shunta was the first to discover Danzen’s location, which he respected. While the assassin clearly hadn’t taken the journey to the east on foot as he had, Danzen knew that the carriage ride would be arduous, the assassin traveling long days solely on a hunch.
But burying him would take time, and night was coming.
So Danzen did the next best thing.
After taking Shunta’s dagger and the rope he had used to string Danzen up, he began undressing the man.
He would honor the younger assassin with what was known as the sky burial, his flesh presented to the animals, or whatever lived in the known vicinity.
But he didn’t want someone else coming upon the body, so he moved the corpse away from the main walking trail, so that only someone who decided to step a few feet into the forest would see it.
They would smell it, sure, but hopefully the animals would take care of it sooner rather than later.
It was an old assassin joke, saying that nature always found a way, but it did, and it applied to innumerable situations.
Once he was finished, Shunta’s body pressed against a tree deep in the Asura Forest, Danzen took out the map that Sarnai had given him. He already had a general idea of the direction: head to the right of the prayer rock, and continue along until he found a mountain stream.
The sky turning orange and pink, the temperature slowly dropping, Danzen did just that, walking quickly, his hood down so he could keep an eye on the periphery.
This hadn’t worked last time, but he couldn’t beat himself up for this; Shunta’s power gave him a long-range capability that would have made him hard to spot. Had he spotted him, then Astra would have done the trick.
He could hear the stream before he saw it, Danzen eventually coming to the mountain source of water, and dropping before it, where he washed his hands and face. From there he went back to his satchel and retrieved a meat pie that Sarnai had made him, the woman wrapping it in a dry leaf and tying it off with a string.
Danzen ate this as he walked, his focus now on finding shelter for the night.
The foothills gave way to the start of a mountain pass, the water in the stream rushing even faster, Danzen able to see the glint of a fish beneath the surface.
The sun dipped behind the mountain, shadows elongating, everything painted in various shades of blue that were slowly darkening. Danzen picked up his pace, keeping his eyes on the rock formations that ran to his left and continued onward.
It was just about the point where he wished he’d had a torch when he noticed a darkened spot on a ledge about four feet above his current position.
He climbed up the rocks, and crouched before the spot, seeing that it was just large enough for him to crawl inside. With a deep breath in, Danzen shuffled into the cave, which was damp and smelled of stone.
He was silent as he waited for the sound of movement.
When nothing came, Danzen set his satchel down and got out his spare robes. He draped them over his shoulders, and pulled his hood over his head.
The temperature would continue to drop, but he didn’t want to start a fire, not now, especially in such an unknown territory.
His belt and scabbard removed, he placed Astra next to his hand so he could draw it when the time came, if the time came.
And from there, after getting comfortable enough, his knees pressed to his chest, his back against the cave wall, Danzen slept.
Birdsong woke him in the morning, his eyes quickly falling onto a shadow that seemed to be reaching into his cave.
He rolled out and withdrew his sword to find an older man standing before him, hunched over yet spry, the man bald with a long gray beard, lines in his cheeks, eyes that were almost orange, his robes a bit soiled.
“Are you here to kill me?” the man asked, absolutely no terror in his voice.
“Are you Dalan?” came Danzen’s reply.
“I am.”
“No, I’m not here to kill you. I’m here on behalf of someone from Suja Village.”
“Someone from the village sent you?”
“Yes,” said Danzen, just about to go into his inner pocket for the sketch.
“In that case, let’s go to where I am staying. I’m sure you would prefer a proper breakfast, and seeing as how you slept in here last night, a warm fire may do you well.”
The two were silent as they made their way up the mountain stream, Dalan the hermit expertly navigating the rocks as if he had done this a million times before.
Because he had.
They came to a spot where a pair of peaks caused the sun to cast its light between them. This feat of nature created an arc of light that hit the stream below, giving a glittery effect to the rocks beneath the cool water.
“Just this way,” said Dalan, the hermit turning to a couple footholds Danzen had yet to notice.
He followed the hermit to the next ledge up, and from there they took to yet another ledge, where they came to a quaint, well-lit cave, supplies in the back, a fire already going in the corner, holes in the rock allowing the smoke to escape. There were a pair of padded sleeping mats before the fire, and a barrel of water on the opposite side of the entrance.
Dalan motioned for the former assassin to sit on one of the mats, and as he did, Danzen noticed a cupboard of sorts pressed against the rock wall, myriad jars of herbs and other substances stacked on top of the cupboard.
Humming a song that Danzen had never heard before, the hermit brought a pot of water to boil. He added some dried meat and root vegetables to it, stirring the ingredients together before throwing in a dash of spice.
“It’s going to be a little while before it’s ready if you want it to be a real stew, which I certainly do,” said the hermit as he took a seat across from Danzen. He licked his lips, his eyes taking in the former assassin and from there the hilt of his famed blade. “That’s quite a weapon you have there.”
Danzen nodded.
“And I am guessing you are new to the village? I can’t say that we have met before.”
“We haven’t.”
“Do you have a name?”
“The people in the Third District call me Pilgrim. That works for me.”
“Pilgrim, huh?” The hermit smiled, his orange eyes twinkling. “That is quite the name. I suppose then that you are new to the region, unless you perhaps come from Chutham.”
“I’m new.”
“And how are the yokai treating you?”
“I didn’t believe they existed at first, but then I killed some.”
“You killed them?”
Danzen reached into his bag and took out the field diary he had found in the abandoned monastery, flashing it at the hermit.
