The nighttime spring air was sweet but the new season couldn't seem to take away the blanket of melancholy that had settled on the large caravan of travelers. Well, of slave drivers and slaves.
The small village Kenshin was born in was unremarkable but something quite miraculous, in a very twisted way had fallen upon the town and the settlements that surrounded it. A plague of cholera was sweeping the countryside. People in the thousands were dying. Villages were shrinking. People were starving. And residents were doing anything they could to fill their empty bellies. Including selling one another. Kenshin was one such unfortunate soul after his parents had passed.
"Shinta-kun..." Kenshin shook himself free from the blankness that had settled over his mind. What was he staring at again?
"Shinta-kun, I know things are dark now but springtime isn't so bad..." Akane, seventeen, smiled warmly, backlit and haloed by the moonlight. "Where are you escaping to, in that mind of yours?"
Kenshin, eight, blushed sheepishly. "I'm so sorry, Akane-san. I should pay more attention, right?"
"Just make sure you're not wandering off to sad places in your mind. It won't do any good. I like it better when you're here. Smiling with me!" Smiles were few and far between but since he'd been sold, Kenshin felt safest, even happiest with Akane and Sakura. They had taken him in and even though every day was another chance for them to be torn apart, he fiercely banded with them. Akane tickled Kenshin's nose playfully with the sleeve of her kimono.
The huge caravan was about 200 or so people, covering a stretch of about a mile and a half. It was late but they'd found a clearing along the beaten forest path to stop for the night. Akane, Sakura, and Kenshin were grouped together but while they were milling about waiting to be led to use the bathroom a horse had galloped past them, full speed back to the lead driver at the flank down the road.
"Alright slaves!" their drivers barked "Heads down! You there! You too!" the two drivers distractedly trotted down a ways towards the commotion, leaving them less attended as they also strained to hear what the commotion was from the stranger on the horse.
"That's strange..." Akane mused. Kenshin reached for her hand timidly.
"Akane... What do you think it is?" he murmured.
"I'm... not sure, Shinta-kun." she squeezed his hand tighter. Something was wrong. Muted talking had escalated at the rear and their drivers and sauntered even further down the way, drawing their weapons. A ripple of trepidation swept among the slaves.
"Sakura-chan... Sakura-chan!" Akane snapped and turned looking wildly left and right. "Shinta-kun! Have you seen Sakura-chan!? I swear that girl..." Kenshin scooted even closer to Akane's side. He was worried too. Wandering off could get her put to death, even if she wasn't trying to escape.
"Dammit!" Akane hissed. She bounced impatiently, urgently straining to see what was going on down the way, trying to gauge if she had the time to take a quick peek around the surrounding wagons for Sakura. A commanding shout echoed. "Shinta-kun, stay here." Kenshin's heart raced. "Akane-san! Stay here, please. I'll go and look for her-" "Shinta-kun. Don't worry too much, okay? I'll do it. I'll be right back." Kenshin grasped her green kimono sleeve in his fists. "Shinta-kun..." Kenshin hugged her arm close.
"Don't worry. I'll be back. I could never leave you. I promise." Kenshin nodded numbly. "Good!" Akane smiled. "I'll be back, give a bird call if they start back, okay? Just like we practiced." "Yes, Akane-san." Akane beamed again. She disappeared around the corner of a supply wagon. Kenshin sighed heavily and looked down the way. The drivers were way off now and they'd seemed to have forgotten all about the group of them still left out in the open.
"It would be a good chance to escape." Kenshin was such a hopeful boy, in spite of the circumstances. "Akane-san, Sakura-chan, and I could run away... Maybe we could go back to a village, or find a hermit's place in the woods..." He let his thoughts trial aimlessly. A life with Akane-san. Once he became a man, she wouldn't have to worry about taking care of him anymore. He could take care of them both! Sakura was older than he was but not too much older. He didn't think she'd be too old to play games. At least until he got old enough to leave and start a farm or something.
The conversation between the head driver and the stranger seemed to be escalating further. Abruptly, a full-fledged roaring match blistered the nighttime silence and the sound of men shouting and weapons drawing was heard.
The reason for the sudden shouts became clear as bandits on horses suddenly thundered into view from the cover of the forest, scattering the mass of slaves - panic quickly taking over. Kenshin looked up at the sound of a gargling shreik and the first arc of blood jetted out violently across the face of the moon. It was the lead slave driver. He could hear the muted sound of the blood spatter in the dusty road. The nervous twinge of energy among the former villagers was now transformed into pandemonium and the people around him surged en masse, as realization turned the slaves-to-be into a stampeding herd.
"Akane-san..." Kenshin whirled around wildly searching or her tattered green kimono... she'd only just gone to find Sakura-chan!
"Akane-san! Sakura-chan! Aka-!" a body collided with his, forcing the breath out of his lungs. Kenshin gasped painfully as he cracked the ground, head first, landing on his back. The shoving man turned and gazed for an instant into Kenshin's eyes, remorselessly, then ran. Dazed, the sound of scrambling footfalls filled Kenshin's ears and he winced painfully. The villagers were swarming now, jostling one another and trampling those that fell. A foot connected painfully with his sternum, rushing down stomping on his head, now and again a body tripping and falling over him, only to jump up, see what was tripped over and then frantically sprint away once more. The cacophany of screams had turned into an indistinguishable din: names, curses, prayers, shrieks, and everything just rolled together harmonized with the approaching thunder of equine hooves and armored marching from the flank of the expansive group of slaves and drivers. All he could do was curl his small arms about his bleeding head, dragging them through the sticky cooling blood in the dust.
Kenshin felt, rather than heard a body fall next to him on the road. It was an elderly man, barely skin and bones and he feebly tried to curll up like a baby to avoid the inevitable trampling around them. Kenshin sat up, fighting the tide and crash of the throng and threw out his arm like a life line, his eight year old body fighting to pull the old man closer.
"Granpa!" Kenshin hollered. "Take my hand, Granpa!" Images flashed wildly in his brain. He recalled the way his Father looked... curled and feeble as the plague of cholera took its toll. He saw his eyes and jaundiced, wrinkled skin. The way he went from being strong to weak, a period of twenty years, stolen in a day. He's held his Father's hand then too.
The old man clasped his hand around his small arm. Kenshin was shocked to feel the heave of muscle in his body and the distance close by dragging the old man to him. He had no idea he had the strength to actually do it. His heart quickened and his blood pressure soared as he closed the remaining space between them.
The sound of bone cracking and piercing flesh made Kenshin's head reel.
The old man recoiled in horror. His arm was splintered completely and sharp needles of bone jutted from his skin. His arm, from mid-forearm down, swung helplessly as if on a hinge. The old man opened his toothless mouth to scream but was silenced abruptly as someone's heel crashed into his temple. He hit the ground and then lay motionless. Kenshin scrambled back in terror.
The stampede of people had thinned at least and Keshin still unbelieving of what he'd just witnessed, stood up, and whirled wildly to gain his bearings. It was utter chaos. Even though the crowd had scattered, villagers were still running over one another. Raiders chased groups on foot or herded them on horseback torturing them much like a cat does when it plays with an insect. Swords and javelins flashed in the vivid moonlight and an occasional sluicing sound echoed in the clearing and the sound of a body... or parts of a body, hitting the grass could be heard. The forest crashed as traumatized women and children fled through the thicket and some of the men stayed behind unarmed to face to the attackers. Odors of blood, urine, and body hung on the breeze. Shouts, roars, and wails echoed.
"AKANE-SAN! SAKURA-CHAN! Kenshin called with all his might. His breath caught as once again he was thrown forcefully to the ground and flipped onto his back by someone's foot. Kenshin gazed up at his assailant. He was a wiry, hunched over man wearing rag-tag samurai armor over a dirty shift. He kicked Kenshin flat-footed and sent him sliding backwards again in the dust.
"Who're you looking for, boy? Mommy?" Kenshin sputtered breathless in response. It was hard to hurl a final insult without any air to expel it on.
"Only little bastards whine after their mothers!" he sneered and pulled his arm back, readying himself to jab at Kenshin's chest but suddenly shrieked and fell to his knees. Kenshin watched, wide-eyed and fascinated. Akane had rushed the man from behind and gored him with a broken handled javeline raised over her head. The blade traveled straight down from his shoulder, close to his neck and skewered him gruesomely. The end of the blade glittered through the exit wound left just under the lower peak of his ribcage and he fell on his back heavily.
"SHINTA!" Akane cried and threw herself towards him, gathering the boy frantically in her arms. Kenshin grappled with her, tangling his hands in the cloth of her tattered kimono. Her beautiful, green, tattered kimono. He whimpered softly and clung to her even tighter. They didn't have time to even feel relief at seeing each other unharmed. Akane wrenched him away, holding him at arm's length and snapped back to business. "GET UP. We have to run!"
She fled forward ahead of him and yanked him along, sometimes sprinting and sometimes stumbling to the far southeast end of the clearing, down a shallow sloped hill away from the massacre. The sounds of destruction faded behind them, only a shrill cry reaching them clearly from time to time. Not nearly far enough to feel safe, however. Akane skid to a halt abruptly and called out barely above a whisper, "Sakura-chan! Come out! Everyone..." Kenshin collapsed against Akane's side, the two of them heaving as quietly as they could manage from their escape. The brush crackled loudly and huddled group of two young women, a grandmother, and Sakura emerged shaking and terrified but otherwise unharmed.
"Shinta-chan!" Sakura whined quietly and fled to him. She engulfed him in a hug and began to sob loudly. Kenshin felt the lump in his throat ready to betray him.
"SHHH, shut up Sakura-chan!" Akane hissed and wrapped her arms protectively around the two of them; her own makeshift brood. "Is everyone here?" one of the other young women spoke. "Yes, we're all here."
"Is anyone hurt?"
"No, we're all fine. I don't think we were seen running away either..." the other young woman quivered silently and nodded in assent.
"Grandmother, are you alright?" Akane crossed and knelt to look into her eyes. The old woman prattled lowly, speaking nonsense and shaking her head violently back and forth.
"Well, at least she's alive..." Akane straightened up and glanced around them, trying to plot an escape route.
"Shinta-chan..." Kenshin looked up to meet Sakura's eyes. She still held him tightly and though she'd managed to muffle her sobs, tears still poured from her eyes. "Oh, Shinta-chan... I was so scared. I... I thought... you... and Akane-san..." Sakura dipped her face down once more and continued to cry. Kenshin patted her bowed head awkwardly. It took all the control he could muster just to force his mind to remain locked in a state of surreal bewilderment. His arms didn't feel like his own. He motions didn't feel like his own. Even the texture of Sakura's hair seemed foreign. He turned to look at Akane. She huddled close by with the two other young women speaking in rushed tones with the more articulate of the two. Her dark brow furrowed and though the pale green tinge in her cheeks betrayed a little of the horror she must have felt inside, she spoke deliberately, calmly, even if a bit hastily.
Akane looked up suddenly, her eyes meeting Kenshin's. He felt like he was drenched in cold water. Mother...? Akane...? Mother was beautiful like her too. Or was it the other way around? Before the gods took her away, at least.
Although he'd been led away like a stray, bound in rope from his village only a few weeks ago, Kenshin felt, even as young as he was, that it had been a lifetime since then. Rife with the smell of vomit, flies had swamped the bloated corpses left out to be incinerated. He had woken a few weeks prior to capture, horrified with the sightless and rolled eyes of his Father. Within days, devastated, Mother was unable to move. The sickness progressed aggressively. Sweating, stinking, and raving from fever, little Kenshin tried to make his beloved Mother as comfortable as he could but when he laid her to an uneasy rest that final night, he somehow knew it would be her last.
And how he'd sobbed over her at dawn.
Her face had been beautiful and kind. Wavy auburn hair (he'd inherited from her, of course) and lightly tanned skin - now rotten and bloated green. She had voided all of what was left in her sometime in the night and passed clutching her son's sleeve.
"Shinta..." Akane was in front of Kenshin now. She knelt, took his face in her hands, and ran her thumb through tears that somehow had managed to escape. Akane pulled his forehead to hers, and kissed his nose. Kenshin shook numbly. Even at eight years old he felt a grown sense of frustration bubble up from his belly. Why? Why did the tears have to fall? Why was everything like this, now? He swallowed thickly.
"My Shinta..."
She buried his face in the crook of her neck. "Mother..." His arms felt so heavy, but he wrapped them around her more urgently than before, burying his face further into her black hair, breathing deep and trying to ride out the tsunami of grief that threatened to drown him. She smelled so nice, like the earth. Her hair was so soft and straight. "Akane..."
"Shhhh, Shinta. Don't be afraid. I will take care of you, I promise." Akane clung to him tighter than before. "We must not cry..." She whispered into his hair.
"Akane-san." the talking young woman cleared her throat nervously. Akane pushed Kenshin away, gentler this time, stood tall, and turned to address the group.
"Everyone, we must go now. Be as quiet as you can. Stay close together and whatever you do don't-"
Akane was cut off. The Grandmother was screeching like a demon. She'd been gored through the eye with an arrow and was rolling about on the ground, clawing at the grass wildly and her limbs thrown into grotesque proportions as she desperately tried to flee. The talkative girl rushed to kneel by her side, trying to still her, while the silent girl looked on frozen with terror.
Before they even had a chance to scatter, more arrows screamed past their position and the sound of barking men and a galloping horse could be heard approaching down the hill fast. "AKANE-SAN!" Sakura wailed and ran to close the space between her and the improvised family. The bandit on the horse reached them first and he reared sharply short, just mere meters from the group. Akane snatched Kenshin and Sakura closer.
"RUNNING WILL DO YOU NO GOOD!" the bandit roared and behind them, the sound of cruel laughter herded the tiny group closer forward. They were surrounded. The Grandmother continued to screech and flail on the ground. One of the ronin behind them began to laugh quietly, then spoke, "Shut up, you ancient whore!" He unsheathed a crude, broad sword and crudely hacked the old woman's head off, spraying blood all over, then he grabbed the talkative girl by the arm, yanked her forward, cut her halfway through and let her drop next to him, still twitching as her guts bled out.
"That's better," the brute on horseback sneered.
"Who's this!?" another bandit joined the fray, emerging loudly from some bushes nearby the silent girl. Before she could even turn to scream, he boxed her hard, square in the head, and she dropped like a boulder. "Woman! Where are your manners, you filthy bitch?" He dragged her up by her hair and forced her to look up. Blood ran down her face and her eye was already swelling shut. "If you're going to behave like a bitch, I'll have to show you some manners!" He and the rest of the men guffawed heartlessly. He hauled her up painfully and yanking her by the upper arm and her hair, he began to drag her, crying and struggling, away.
Kenshin felt hot bile fill his mouth. Akane whipped around to directly face the bandit on the horse who had begun to advance slowly. Her eyes were blazing and furious. The bandit by the two other dead women had closed in as well, pressuring the trio forward from behind.
"I don't think this little fox really appreciates what we've done... We should teach her to be a more humble woman!"
"I'm inclined to agree!" the bandit from the rear lurched forward suddenly, sword drawn and raised.
"AKANE-SAN!" Kenshin roared and rushed with all his might. Blood splashed in a forceful jet across his chest and he felt the breath get knocked out of him as his back met the earth for the third time. All hell and chaos broke loose.
Akane had thrown Kenshin and Sakura away from her at the last moment and turned to confront the bandit attacking from behind. Ungracefully, she'd cut open the man's throat with a dagger and though he still struggled forward, he'd dropped his sword, and was now gargling on his last breath, staggering unevenly as he bled out quickly, the liquid filling his throat and eyes and running heavily from his nose. He fell hard, still struggling in the tall grass.
Sakura, in the meantime, screamed hysterically and the bandit's horse spooked and reared, throwing the lead brute off. Kenshin regained his posture quickly. Though his movement was swift Kenshin felt suspended in time as he turned to look up and see the rearing horse slowly coming back down to stamp the spot of earth he was occupying. Like toiling with a heavy load, Kenshin couldn't seem to get his body to move. This was it. He winced slightly and cried out in pain. He felt the flesh of his side squish and a vague cracking sound from his ribs and he cried out violently this time when he landed on his side and his face met with a broad rock half concealed in the earth. He had just enough time to look up and see...
Sakura's head pulled taut and snapped straight back like a bow-string when the horse's hoof connected. Though the beast hadn't trampled her skull like a melon before it'd run off, Sakura's neck was broken in a zig zag position. Her body faced away unnaturally and when Kenshin sat up to reach her, the sky spinning, all he saw clearly was blood trickling and dripping off her nose. Her eyes were blank, glassy, and knocked crooked.
"sa-sa-SAKURA-CHAN!" Kenshin bellowed, seeing red, and every other shade of scarlet you could imagine. She had told him when they met she'd just turned twelve. Why that detail upset him so much at this juncture, Kenshin couldn't begin to fathom. He was only eight, after all.
Kenshin whipped around furiously, searching for Akane. He had to save her!
"SHINTA!"
"AKANE!"
Akana rushed towards him, yanked him by the arm, and shoved him before her.
"RUN SHINTA! WE MUST RUN!"
The pair took off like hawks, sailing over the meadow grass. The brute that had been throw off the horse had taken less time than what had transpired to reclaim control of the situation. As fast as Akane and Kenshin flew, it seemed that the booming strides of the bandit were going to overtake them, and fast. Akane was beginning to flag behind. Kenshin grabbed her hand, interlocking his fingers with hers and dragged her beside him, unrelenting in his pace.
"Akane... you are my mother. My sister. My everything. I won't let anything happen to you, I swear it!"
Akane yelped and Kenshin tripped and fell face first, fingers still intertwined with hers.
Akane dragged herself along the ground, her ankle twisted and useless. She'd tripped in a rabbit hole. Kenshin rushed to her side and threw her arm around his shoulders, trying to haul her up with every bit of his might.
"Shinta..." the bandit's roar echoed closer.
"Shinta!"
"Akane!" honorifics, long gone. "Akane! I won't leave you!"
"SHINTA!" Akane snapped and pulled him to his knees before her prostrate body. She propped herself up on her elbows.
"Shinta, I... love you so much. As if you were my very own son..." her voice broke but she faltered on, weakly. They could make out the bandit's cursing.
"We... will die now, I think."
"Akane!" Kenshin's tears spilled heavily now, all care gone, desperation filling him, adrenaline thundering through his veins. He just wanted to whisk her away, far away. He wanted to be with her in paradise.
"Akane, don't cry. We must not cry!"
Akane allowed her face to drop and even though Kenshin couldn't see, he could feel a single tender sob wrack her shoulders and the hot back splash as her tears hit the blades of grass. She pulled his hand close, squaring it with her chest, just over her heart. Kenshin's eyes widened.
"My Shinta, do whatever you must to get away..." The bandit's words were clear now.
"I love you, Akane!"
Akane didn't have the internal power to push Kenshin away anymore. She didn't have to power to be brave, so instead, she pulled him close and kissed his eyes one last time then clasped her hand gently, holding them closed. The bandit's senseless ranting and raving was almost next to the pair now. Akane whispered shakily.
"Don't look, don't look... Oh, Shinta... don't look. Don't cry..."
"YOU FILTHY SLAVES! YOU PIECES OF SHIT! I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU, BITCH. BURN IN HELL!"
"Don't... LOOK... SHI-"
Keshin felt the force of the blade thrust Akane's body forward and the tip of the short blade dug shallow in his flesh from his belly up to his lower sternum. He was washed in blood. Akane's grip on him tightened painfully and he could feel her last heartbeats spasm through her body and her last gurgling choke.
"...shin-ta" and in an instant her hand slipped from his eyes.
"GUESS. WHO."
The bandit towered above him, heaving in rage.
Soundlessly, Kenshin lauched Akane's body away from him using his legs. In the same motion, he released the sword from the sheath that Akane's now rigid hand, had clasped close over her heart.
"Die." Kenshin whispered.
Another gurgled roar tangled towards the heavens and the sound of the last bandit's head rolling on the ground somehow managed to echo in the air. Even though his head hit the grass in a meadow.