Chapter 10 - Prejudice, Powers, and a Pig
Kagome had been enjoying her visit with her family. She was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a cup of tea and some crackers. Mama was on one side of her fussing about how she was looking peaky, asking pointed questions about what she was eating and trying to remember that sure-fire remedy for morning sickness. Sota was on the others side teasing her about how he was sure the baby was going to come with tickly whiskers and a waggly tail. She hadn't noticed that InuYasha and Grampa had left the kitchen until Mount Fuji erupted in the living room.
"She's my wife, whether you like it or not, and you'd damned well better start getting used to it!"
"So you say! But I never saw any of it! And your kind are notorious for defiling fair maidens and leaving them to deal with the consequences!"
The waves of rage throbbing off of InuYasha were palpable as Kagome sprinted into the living room and, hooking his arm, dragged him quickly out of the house.
"Just let go!" InuYasha snarled, shaking Kagome off as they halted in a corner of the shrine grounds beyond the Sacred Tree. He stood a moment, stiff and shaking, then suddenly spun around and slammed a fist into the rock wall behind him. The concussion shattered the wall in a wide arc; gravel and loose sticks rattled down.
"What the hell are you doing dragging me out like I did something wrong?!" he snapped, still radiating great waves of hurt and outrage.
"I kind of thought Mama might like to keep her house," Kagome observed dryly, looking at the shattered wall. "What happened?"
"Who does that fucking old geezer think he is, talking to me like that?!" InuYasha demanded. Despite what he said, he seemed to have spun down a bit; the angry aura was not blazing as brightly as it had been a moment ago. Kagome risked further enquiry.
"I only caught the very last of it. What got it started?" she asked.
InuYasha took a few deep breaths, willing himself back under some degree of control. Kagome slipped an arm around his waist and he snatched her in close, burying his face in her hair and breathing in her scent. She felt the hammering of his heart slow and calm as he held her. When he spoke again, the rage was gone, but hurt and disgust still saturated his voice.
"You had just told everyone we were expecting and he said to me, 'Didn't waste any time, did you?' I went into the living room and asked him what the hell he meant by that and he went off asking me if I was planning to stick around for more than a week now that I had you knocked up."
Oh dear God. Nothing could have pierced deeper into InuYasha's heart that that.
"He has no idea. He doesn't know how you grew up. He only knows all those hoary old legends he's been telling all these years," Kagome murmured, sick at heart and hoping she was right.
"Yeah, well, maybe he should try being in one of those old legends. Nothing like a bit of sucky reality to get the story straight. I know every fucking detail of what happens when 'the fair maiden is stuck with the consequences'."
Kagome had never heard him sound so bitter. She had had some experience with the great echoing hole in InuYasha's soul where his father was concerned. That void was filled with questions that had scant few answers to match them. But he had never opened up about his childhood. While she knew he had adored his mother, she did not know what had become of her.
InuYasha pulled Kagome in closer, whispering in her ear, "I promise you, I will be there. No matter what, until the end, I will be there."
"I never thought otherwise," she assured him, pulling back to look in his eyes as she ran a hand through his hair. "Can you find it in you to forgive a foolish old man who is only worried about his granddaughter?"
InuYasha growled under his breath, looking resentful.
"I don't blame you for feeling that way," Kagome told him. "I'm going to talk to Grampa before we leave." There was a steely grimness in her voice that spoke volumes of what she intended to say.
Kagome marched back to the house, but InuYasha was not interested in following her. She could deal with the old man herself. The only reason he hadn't returned home already was that he felt he ought to be watching over Kagome.
He loitered beneath the Sacred Tree in the early winter chill, his breath puffing from him in misty clouds as he waited. Mama and Sota each came out separately with a warm drink and a profound apology, while in the background, some snatches of the bitter heated words between Kagome and Grampa escaped the house.
In the end, she prevailed upon the old man to apologize to InuYasha, which he did very stiffly and just within the dictates of correct form. InuYasha coldly accepted the apology, bowing just as stiffly and allowing a truce, for Kagome's sake.
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Muchitsujo-rei glared balefully at the new anchor piece. It was situated in an active portion of the flow, breaking the force of a vital current. The piece was still new and not well-rooted. Perhaps it could be dislodged. He slipped into the stream for a closer look.
Once he was in close, he forgot completely about the roots. A much more ominous development was evident; the piece was growing and the stirrings of something new flashed and flared from its depths. His opponents were wasting no time and neither could he if he wanted to nip this threat in the bud.
He followed the spiritual line that attached the piece to the world below and found the earthly creatures that animated it.
The human woman and the hanyou man lay curled together, sleeping, in a small manor. Looking with his god's sight, Muchitsujo-rei could see the stirrings of a new life within the woman, a life that combined the uncanny with the sacred. He could not determine what his opponents were plotting, but it was clear that these were major players.
Muchitsujo-rei reached out to the woman, but was unable to find any hold in her essential serenity. For all that she had seen and done a fair number of things, she was remarkably unscarred. The hanyou, on the other hand, was a seething mass of tortured memories. Many old scars throbbed painfully, terrors writhed through the scars; it was a wonder he was sane. A strong stubborn core held it all together. The man simply refused to let the bastards win. This was a fertile ground from which Muchitsujo-rei could choose his move.
He slid through the hanyou's memories, looking for a weapon. Past the death of his former lover, over his sealing, around the death of his mother... Ah, there, this looked interesting.
The boy was about ten. He had been alone in the forest for a bit over three years and had learned the basic rules, mostly the hard way. The first rule of the forest: never show your fear. It drew things, horrible things that fed on the fear, then on what was left. The second rule of the forest: never let your guard down. If you must sleep, sleep in a place where you know what's coming before it can get you. The third rule of the forest: strike first, look later. It had already saved his life several times.
He was badly battered and needed a place to rest and heal. A broken right leg and left arm and hand prevented him from jumping into a tree, his preferred resting place. He was going to be stuck on the ground tonight. Deep gouges in his legs and back continued to bleed, they would draw predators before long.
He considered seeking refuge in a village, but the charity shown him the last time he had tried had been a barrage of rocks. Looking at the options around him in the open forest, he decided to try a nearby village anyway. He'd just slip in after dark and hide in a barn.
With the use of a stick and a lot of stubborn determination, he dragged himself to the edge of the forest and watched from behind a tree until sunset. Then he quickly slipped in, stole a few eggs from a chicken coop and hid in the corner of a barn on the far side of the village.
He hadn't meant to sleep, but it was too late now. He jolted awake from under the spell as something slithered across his face and around his arm. Third rule: strike first. His good arm flashed out, claws extended.
"SIT!"
Kagome was rolling away from him in alarm as his left hand did battle with his right. Both of their rings were glowing brightly, making an eerie jumbled scene of brightness and stark shadows that writhed about as he fought to control conflicting instincts.
The rosary pinned him to the futon as he woke up the rest of the way, panting with horror and exertion. The light faded from the ring on his left hand as the need to strike vanished from his right and he regained control of himself.
Kagome stared at him with wide frightened eyes from the other side of the room. "What was that all about!?" she asked wildly.
"Something in a dream kicked off a bad memory," he said, shuddering with the horror of what he had nearly done. "A time when I was nearly killed."
Kagome blinked and looked in the darkness around them.
"Something's in here," she said. "I can feel it."
InuYasha got up and started inspecting the room, all senses extending, questing.
Muchitsujo-rei departed, fading out before he could be tracked. Stupid of him to let that flare of temper get away. The woman was far too sensitive for him to be careless around her.
Damn it! Whoever had forged that piece had been thorough. He really hadn't considered the significance of that ring of metal around it before. He wasn't going to be able to thwart this plot in one move.
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Muchitsujo-rei studied the game field for a time, resting on a peak overlooking the land represented on the portion of the field he was examining. One of his pet roving pieces had spun out of control after bouncing off the piece representing his opponent's hanyou. It had wandered into territory that threatened to crumble it before long. Muchitsujo-rei nudged it, sending it on a different trajectory.
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Pickings had been very poor over the winter, and Kiba-maru and his band were lean and hungry as winter gave way to spring. Nothing had gone well since the thrashing he had taken at InuYasha's village. He had drifted west after that encounter into land controlled by the Ikko Ikki and found that the villages there were not the cowed villages of the daimyo but instead armed and militant villages well able to take care of themselves.
Worse than that, his leadership was being challenged. His men were requiring results and soon. It would not be long before the seed rice, which was all that was realistically obtainable at this time of year, was planted in the fields and once more unavailable. Kiba-maru did not have the resources to take on a castle or one of the fortified temples of the Ikko Ikki, which is where the great warehouses of the land were situated. He needed to tackle a fat village, and his mind kept drifting back to InuYasha's village. If he could subjugate InuYasha, the failures of the winter would be nullified.
The only thing extraordinary about that village was InuYasha himself. If Kiba-maru could leash InuYasha, the rest should be easy. If he could get that little miko InuYasha fancied, that should give him the hold he needed. This time, though, he was not going to blunder into an unknown situation. This time, he was going to case it out carefully.
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The battered samurai came down from the hills as the sun was setting and made his way to the shrine. He made an offering of his spurs to the kami, then meditated for a time before the altar.
Kaede went to check on him after a respectful amount of time, offering him lodging for the night and asking his tale.
He said his name was Yada Shigeru, a survivor of the losing side of a battle that had taken place over the hills to the north. His clan had been dispersed and he had been on the run for five days. He asked for asylum for a short measure of days to rest and re-equip himself, then he would go out to find the rest of his clan.
He hungrily ate the simple fare Kaede provided and gratefully wrapped himself in her spare bedding. He slept fitfully that night, starting awake at many noises, and roused at dawn when Kaede began her day. Despite her protests that he need not stir himself, he got up and restlessly prowled the village, watching the hills around it for any signs of activity.
Some time later, he approached her in her herb patch and pointed to InuYasha's modest manor house up on the hill. "Who lives up there, Kaede-sama? Your daimyo?"
"No, no, only InuYasha and his wife. InuYasha protects the village for his keep." Kaede replied.
"So, he is a contract samurai. Surely I should have been presented to him when I arrived." Yada Shigeru looked disturbed that he had been prevented from access to a fellow samurai.
"You may find him uncomfortable company," Kaede warned him. "InuYasha is a hanyou. I thought you would be more at ease with me. Your pardon if I erred." She bowed her apology to the samurai.
"Hanyou!" Shigeru exclaimed. "How does a hanyou come to guard a village?"
"It is mutually beneficial." Kaede answered.
"Huh! What is the cost of a hanyou? What has he required of you for his 'protection'?" Yada Shigeru looked scandalized that a miko would even consider such a thing for her village.
Kaede shook her head. "What he wants is little enough. Those things that you and I take for granted can have great value to such as him."
The samurai looked dubious. "The price of the youkai may seem small, until you find you have sacrificed your soul. It is not safe to deal with the uncanny."
"This can be true," Kaede sighed, "but InuYasha seeks only a place where he can keep his wife. As long as they can live peacefully here, he will protect us."
"I hope for your sake that is all there is to it," Shigeru observed. "But it really is none of my affair. Who would you suggest I talk to about a horse?"
Yada Shigeru was in the town square haggling with Shizuyo, the spice dealer, over Shizuyo's rangy roan horse when InuYasha arrived escorting Kagome through her shopping rounds before he dropped her off with Kaede for her morning folk medicine lessons.
Shigeru stopped haggling long enough to look InuYasha over carefully before bowing to a fellow warrior. InuYasha returned the favor, studying Shigeru with suspiciously narrowed eyes.
"I'm in the market for a horse," Shigeru explained, "Would you know if this is the best one available? He seems a bit light to me."
"I really wouldn't know," InuYasha responded. "I find I'm faster on foot. We only have farm or merchant's horses here, though. Who are you? Where are you from?"
Shigeru bowed again, saying "I am Yada Shigeru. My clan lost a battle to the north and we were scattered. I lost my horse and my companions and have been hiding from our enemies for many days. I came here the refit myself, so I can go find my clan again."
InuYasha looked to the hills sharply, scanning the countryside for movement or other signs of pursuers. "What kind of pursuit do you have?"
Shigeru shook his head wearily. "I think I lost them two days ago. That was when I decided I could risk coming down."
"How long are you planning to stay?" InuYasha continued. He still did not look comfortable with the visitor.
"Perhaps another day," Shigeru responded. "After I've had another good night's sleep."
"I will check the trail for you to the border of our land," InuYasha offered.
"A most gracious offer," Shigeru said, bowing as InuYasha and Kagome continued on their way. He watched them for a while, considering.
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Kiba-maru and his lieutenants clustered around a sketch of the village scratched in the dirt.
"The access points are here, here and here. The watch tower can see all this to here." Yada Shigeru drew a perimeter in his map around the tower. "According to the villagers, InuYasha's sword is most effective fighting youkai. InuYasha himself is very strong and tough; he can take quite a beating and still survive. He told me himself he can outrun a horse. He's married now and the woman is pregnant. The trick is going to be separating them long enough to snatch her; he's sticking to her side like a burr."
"Is it that little miko?" Kiba-maru asked.
"I don't know, I never saw the mikos last time." Shigeru responded. "She's little, pretty, wears strange clothing. In any case, if she's pregnant, she's not a miko any more, is she?"
Kiba-maru gloated in anticipation; no, she was not a miko any more.
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Faint screams from the farthest fields, followed by shouts from the watch tower alerted InuYasha to trouble. He sprinted out of the house to the top of the stairs to look out over the village, Kagome and Shippo on his heels. Down on the flats by the river, where the women were planting young rice in the flooded paddies, there was a loud commotion; women were scattering in all directions, running from a band of horsemen on the dykes that contained the paddies. The horsemen had managed to capture five of the women and now they were fleeing with their prizes.
Several of the village men had gathered farm implements and their own horses and were starting the pursuit, while a few fleet boys bolted across the village to fetch InuYasha.
"Trouble, Kagome," InuYasha said, settling his sword in his sash. "You and Shippo stay with Kaede at the shrine. Wait for me there. They may need help binding wounds when this is over."
Kagome nodded and turned to gather her med kit before heading to the shrine. InuYasha bounded down the stairs and across the village lands to catch up with the pursuers.
Kagome and Shippo trotted down the stairs to the village then turned up the lane that led to the shrine. As she passed a cluster of huts near the shrine, a group of brigands burst out of one of them and snatched her. She was hauled into the hut, kicking and thrashing and securely bound. Shippo was subdued with a blow to the head. The brigands then threw Kagome onto a horse in front of its rider who held a knife to her throat then galloped off into the hills.
A messenger stayed behind with Shippo held hostage to deal with InuYasha when he returned.
The decoys did their job well; it was two days before InuYasha and the farmers returned from rounding up the women. A silent, tense village greeted them as they returned. Fathers and husbands quickly took back their women, then directed InuYasha to the shrine, where the messenger held court.
Ears back, temper barely in check, InuYasha snarled, "If she is harmed in any way,..." as he advanced into the shrine.
"Nothing has happened to her," the messenger responded. "Yet," he added significantly. "How long that holds depends on you."
"No more talking until I see her," InuYasha said fiercely, eyes locked on the brigand.
"I'm sorry, but that won't be possible," the brigand replied, returning InuYasha's gaze coolly. "Your reputation is such that she will remain hidden until our deal is concluded. In the meantime, let us amuse ourselves with this." He pulled Shippo, bound and senseless, from a sack at his feet and held him up. Ofuda wound into his bindings rendered him helpless.
InuYasha sucking in a hissing breath as the brigand dangled Shippo by the tail.
"A fox kit from the looks of things," the brigand said. "He's been quite the little handful. I'm afraid we had to get a bit rough. I'll trade you the kit for your sword."
"In your dreams!" InuYasha snarled, leaping at the brigand, who threw Shippo into his face; the ofuda binding Shippo dropped InuYasha as they made contact.
"That was the general idea," the brigand murmured as he slipped the sword out of InuYasha's hand.
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Kagome was dragged from the back of the cave, where she had waited in total darkness on a rough mat with only a light blanket to warm her, to the central cavity near a large fire. The pig-man was waiting for her.
Kiba-maru chuckled viciously, balancing the sheathed Tetsusaiga in his hand before Kagome. "Well my beauty, I don't think I have to worry about your puppy any more. A little runt like him isn't much without the sword, is he?"
He grabbed Kagome's neck and forced a kiss on her mouth. Kagome shoved back, jerking her face to the side and spitting.
Kiba-maru stroked her cheek and said, "You'd better start playing nice. Your little doggie isn't going to save you and we both know he solved that little problem of your miko powers."
"If anything happens to me, InuYasha will have your head," Kagome hissed defiantly.
"He'll have a hard time doing it. He'll have to come through the youki of his own sword," Kiba-maru said, drawing it. The sword's barrier flared, forcing Kiba-maru to drop it.
"You can't use it," Kagome said. "Tetsusaiga will never serve you."
"We'll just see about that. If that hanyou pup can use it, so can I."
"You'd better figure it out before he gets here," Kagome said. "Your life depends on it."
"He just got lucky last time, "Kiba-maru sneered, but he was starting to look worried that he did not have full control of the situation once again.
"Take her away," he snapped at the nearby guard. He didn't want her witnessing his struggle with the sword until he had it mastered.
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InuYasha came to with a gentle finger laid across his lips and two solemn black eyes staring into his. He nodded understanding as the girl silently stripped off the ofuda and cut his bonds. He sat up, rotating his wrists and ankles and stretching carefully to restore circulation to his limbs as she repeated the operation on Shippo.
The girl was Sumire, Saito-san's fifth born. At about ten years old, she had never struck InuYasha as being particularly bold. In fact, she had never struck him as being particularly anything. She had always been just a bit of the background. He twitched an ear, thinking. Perhaps that was what she was good at, being unnoticed. There was definite value in the talent.
Sumire slid into the doorway, positioned herself carefully and quickly waved a signal cloth to unseen watchers outside, then gestured for InuYasha and Shippo to come closer.
Outside, in the square, three of Sumire's more boisterous brothers staged a noisy squabble, the bigger two boys dangling their little brother's pet snake over his head as he yowled and jumped. The brigands guarding the hut nudged each other, pointing and laughing at the spectacle.
Sumire led InuYasha and Shippo quickly out of the hut, then they vanished into the undergrowth and hastened to the forest. Saito-san met them there and quickly passed on all the villagers knew of the brigands and their plans. He led them to the trail the messenger had taken when he left with the Tetsusaiga, then returned to the village to continue the resistance campaign.
InuYasha sniffed the area over carefully. Yes, there was the messenger's trail. He and Shippo plunged into the forest, then up into the hills.
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Kiba-maru's men could handle the Tetsusaiga, but it remained nothing but a battered old relic on its last legs in their grasp. Any time Kiba-maru approached it, however, the protective barrier flared to life, burning his hand and forcing the hilt from his grasp. Even a cloth over his hand failed to shield him from its aura. Frustrated, he had Kagome dragged before him again.
"Tell me what you know about the sword," he demanded. "And don't give me any crap, or you'll feel it."
"You don't have what it takes to use the sword," she answered. "It weighs your heart and rejects you if it finds you lacking."
"Lacking!" he roared. "I lack nothing!"
"The sword decided otherwise," Kagome retorted coldly.
"So what does it want?" Kiba-maru sneered. "I'm big. I'm strong. I lead many men. I can take it to the top of the world."
She looked at him with pity (pity?) for his lack of understanding. "It looks for a kind heart," she replied, knowing he would never be able to muster it.
He stared at her, dumbfounded, then laughed. "A kind heart." The he roared, "What kind of sword wants a kind heart!?"
"It was forged to defend the weak from powerful bullies," Kagome stated quietly. "You cannot use it."
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Pig. There was no mistaking that pungent odor. So the damned pig-man had come back for another round, had he? InuYasha and Shippo lay on the top of a cliff looking down a narrow ravine. Three quarters of the way down they could see guards in front of a narrow cleft in the opposing cliff. Horses were tied farther down the ravine under some trees. So, he was holed up in that cave, was he?
How to get in? They needed a diversion, something innocuous that wouldn't raise an alarm.
"Shippo," InuYasha whispered, "I want you to go down and untie the horses. Get them moving around, but don't spook them. Let's see if we can get the guards away from the cave. Stay hidden!"
Shippo nodded and started working his way down the cliff. InuYasha watched him for a moment, then ran upstream, vaulted the ravine at a narrow point and started down toward the cave, also taking care to stay out of sight.
It worked like a charm. The brigands were all convinced they had not been found out; they only thought the horses had slipped their traces and had no worries about leaving their post for a few minutes to catch and retie them. By then, InuYasha was in the cave.
He hugged the cave wall, moving from hollow to bend, dispatching two men he encountered on the way with sharp blows to the head.
A fire and some lamps lit a wide spot in the interior. Several of the brigands were clustered around the fire roasting some meat and watching a pot of rice steam.
On the other side of the fire, the pig-man was confronting Kagome, apparently trying to force her to tell him how the Tetsusaiga worked. InuYasha arrived just in time to see him slap her sharply across the face.
"You're lying! Now tell me the truth!"
An angry growl burst unbidden from InuYasha's throat. No one treated his wife like that.
Kiba-maru heard the growl and jumped for the sword, then dropped it quickly as it once more seared his hand.
"We have company!" he shouted, grabbing Kagome in the sword's place. "The dog is here! Show yourself if you don't want anything to happen to your woman!" By now, he had a knife drawn and held to her throat.
InuYasha launched himself over the fire and its ring of scrambling men to land in front of Kiba-maru and his wife. Kiba-maru backed up two steps, out of range of InuYasha's claws, kicking the sword along with him.
"Heh! I may let her go if you tell me how to use the sword. A simple enough exchange. If you don't, well, hmmm," the knife drifted from Kagome's throat to her belly, "I'll make my first cut here."
It happened in a flash; Kagome transformed from a threatened woman to an enraged mother protecting her child. She grabbed Kiba-maru's wrist and instinctively summoning all her spiritual powers, she blasted him with an immense surge. The only thing that prevented him from blowing to pieces was his human heritage. As it was, Kiba-maru was slammed hard against the cave wall thirty feet back, where he slumped in a heap.
The flaring of her blast had blinded everyone for a moment. InuYasha, with his slit pupilled eyes, recovered first. He snatched up his sword, got Kagome onto his back and, dodging through the blundering brigands, fought his way out of the cave.
A couple of quick slashes dealt with the guards at the mouth, then he bolted a safe distance from the cave to meet with Shippo.
"Let's blow this joint," he said, spinning around, then blasting a wind-scar at the cave mouth. The cliff face collapsed before them as Shippo transformed into his flying pink ball and carried them up to the top of the cliff face beyond the range of archers.
The sight of an angry InuYasha striding into the village with his lady at his side and his sword in his hand was sufficient incentive to send the rest of the brigands packing.
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InuYasha lay curled protectively beside Kagome with an arm around her as she slept. He could feel the baby pushing back against the weight of his hand and shifting around inside her to get a better angle.
It was the night of the new moon and he was alone with his thoughts skittering around in his mind like frightened mice. Normally, Kagome sat up with him through his spell of mortality, but tonight she was understandably exhausted and had collapsed against his shoulder before midnight.
He had carried her to bed, and unable to bear any separation between them, had joined her there. But he wouldn't sleep.
That had been far too close. This child wasn't even born yet and he had nearly lost it all. A sick panicky feeling surged up in his belly. How was he going to keep all of them safe?