17. The Old Way

Jack didn't even really know why he did it. Something in his bones said it was right. He didn't argue. With a colossal whack he swung the wooden staff into the wall and it snapped in two. Something big and terrible rumbled far away. The floor shook. Black, acrid smoke spilled out of the broken staff. Jack dropped it.

And suddenly there was a deep, raspy, unpleasant noise – like a didgeridoo echoing through a sewer pipe. It started quietly but quickly increased in volume until people were covering their ears in pain, backing into each other to get away and shouting over the deafening racket.

"What did you do?" Xio bellowed in Jack's face. His eyes were tearing, and he was twitching.

"What?" Jack roared back. He'd jammed his fingers in his ears.

And then, just as suddenly as it had started, the noise stopped. People stared around cautiously, some wondering if it was over, others wondering if their eardrums had burst.

There was a brilliant flash of light. And then there was screaming.

It took Jack a second to see why. He looked towards the center of the chamber in alarm. The light had gone and in its place was a misty gray wraith, floating like vapor. Jack recognized the shape and drew his sword before he knew what he was doing. The smoky image of Aku himself glared at the gathered crowd, turned its fierce eyes and flaming eyebrows on Jack, and bared his horrible fangs in disgust.

"You may have succeeded this time, samurai!" the transmission bellowed so loudly that no one could miss it. "But I will live to fight you another day!"

There was a crack like thunder and the wraith was gone.

Relieved it was nothing more than an illusion, Jack sheathed his sword. He turned and beheld an utterly silent group of astonished fighters.

"Samurai?" a soldier said.

The word rippled through the crowd. Soon it was on everyone's lips, and soldiers and resistance fighters alike were moving forward to get a better look at him. Xio just smiled.

Jack nodded solemnly, his shoulders sagging slightly in relief. The Gunzai Empire was finished. There was no longer any need for deception. Ari ran to him and handed him the knife that, not so long ago, she had pressed to his throat in the infirmary. Jack accepted it.

"Under all this, there is a samurai," he explained. "His name is Jack." With a few swift strokes, he cut off his beard. Then he tied up his hair. "And you are all free."

The crowd began to babble in excitement, which turned to whooping and cheering. The joy, the realization that it was truly over, that they had won, that it was due to the samurai, that he was on their side, was uncontainable. It spilled out of the chamber, washed through the crowded hallways of the palace, splashed out the doors and into the courtyard, all the way to the back edge of the enormous group of iron-clad warriors and brave slaves. All was right with the world.

Well, nearly all was right with the world.

To his left, one of the healers, a blue scaly creature, was lying unconscious, one webbed hand over her eyes. Jack raised an eyebrow at this, and his thoughts immediately went to Sankra. Where had she gone? He waded through a few lines of cheering supporters (the noise level was rising in the chamber again as people threw off their armor and began to celebrate) and spotted her on the floor near the settee.

Unt-Ork and Kiki were kneeling by her side. As he shoved his way towards her, he suddenly felt quite sick and a little panicked. He ran to her, skidded into a kneel, and gathered her in his arms.

"Sankra!"

Her eyes were closed. The irises of her eyes danced under the lids and she opened them a crack.

"Ooooh," she said dizzily. "Pretty colors."

She opened her eyes all the way. The amber orbs were back, as though they'd never left. Jack stared. Sankra stared. It took both of them a moment to get their bearings.

"I can see," she whispered, and broke into a smile. "I can see! Jack, you undid the magic! Oh, and you're just as handsome as I remembered you. Maybe a little skinnier," she said, poking his belly gently, "but that's nothing I can't fix."

Jack gave her a grin so wide it was unbecoming a prince, but he didn't care. He held her close and laughed. To his great delight, she did too.

And so it went.

Dizzy healers were getting their bearings. Injured former soldiers were getting treatment. Kiki and Unt-Ork stood by and watched as Ari snarled at the prone form of Yazzi Digger. With a roar, the cat-woman stamped down on the General's chest. There were six loud cracks and Digger didn't respond. Assured the General was good and dead, Ari spat on the corpse for good measure and walked away.

Jack didn't see this grim spectacle. He and Sankra were busy trying to get out of the palace, which was packed with people. The going was slow. As they went, Jack tried to work through his chaotic time in the Empress's chamber. He had acted so much on instinct and relied so much on spirit that, even though he now had the time to think about it, he could make sense of very little. Fortunately, Sankra had teased a story out of Kiki; she filled Jack in as they made their way out, hand in hand.

"So when you broke the staff, um, the first one," she said, stepping over a robot arm, "the soldiers got their minds back. The fighting stopped. A whole mess of us from Tarrenko went in to try and find you. We knew you'd probably met Digger and were fighting her. Ari was really scared."

Jack felt a firm squeeze against his knuckles and took that to mean that Ari wasn't the only one who had been worried.

"Anyway, Kiki was part of the group, but she can't walk so well, and everybody was excited and running like fools, and she fell behind. She took a wrong turn. It was a total accident that she found you two first. Yazzi didn't see her, and when you lost your sword, she kicked it back to you."

That explained the minor miracle.

"Why did she strike?" Jack wondered aloud. "Digger was dead anyway."

Sankra shrugged. "She said she did it for Kaola."

Jack narrowed his eyes. "Kaola?"

Sankra's smile was grim. "Kaola was the name of a monkey woman she worked next to in the barracks."

Jack swallowed. He remembered vividly what had happened to that creature.

"But Kiki speaks two ways," Sankra continued, "the common tongue, and this weird dialect from her village. In that dialect … 'kaola' means 'everybody.'"

For a moment, Jack was just numb. Then he nodded.

The aftermath of the battle was unsurprisingly chaotic, grimy, and bittersweet. By the time the crowd had thinned reasonably and started to organize itself, it was nearly dawn. Most of the soldiers left standing had begun to round up troops for a very important mission: returning to the bases and opening the doors. Most of the resistance fighters left standing were coordinating efforts to reunite people with their families or friends or fellow villagers. It was very much a word-of-mouth or scream-your-head-off-and-hope-someone-answered-you sort of affair.

And it soon became apparent that a great number of people were not answering the call. Despite the best efforts of the resistance and the healers, many on either side had been gravely injured or killed. Those who could be saved were being treated by the healers of all the bases or given first aid by anyone who was capable. Sankra had treated Jack's wounds before they'd even left the castle. When they reached the castle courtyard, she was pulled off somewhere to work and Jack happened upon Unt-Ork.

The sun was just coming up as he wandered out of the castle, holding the alien by the hand as she trotted along beside him. The battlefield was still smoky and grey from the hand-bombs. Figures lay scattered about like rag dolls. The ground was caked with blood. Small packs of "finders" were running in every direction, calling out for the living, hailing healers for the wounded, and counting the dead.

Unt-Ork stared around at the devastation and blinked. She had a large smudge of grime across her cheeks. It soon developed a few clear tracks in it, and she sniffed.

"We won, but we lost."

Jack privately agreed with that wry assessment, but he tried to console her anyway. "Do not cry," he said. "Think of better things. Think of your freedom. You do not have to wash clothes or carry water or be afraid. You can go anywhere you like, now."

"That's the problem," Unt-Ork said bitterly. "I can't. The Empire invaded our little settlement and came after me because I was so precious to my people. The troops were merciless. They…" She wiped her eyes and started again. "I have nowhere to go. No one is looking for me. I'm all alone, samurai."

Jack, who knew something about being alone, nodded. He understood her pain and loss all to well. But to say this was to cheapen it. So he picked her up, let her damp grey face fall against his shoulder, and very quietly said the next best thing.

"You must not talk this way, small one. Surely there is a place for you. I will find it."

Balancing her on his hip, he walked off into the mist and the smoke.

Sankra was kneeling in a mud puddle, healing a soldier's badly wounded leg. The bone was broken and jutting out through the skin. As her hands glowed blue and she shoved it back into place, the soldier cried out weakly through cracked lips. He'd already lost a lot of blood.

"I'm sorry!" she snapped, frustrated that she couldn't give him anything for the pain. "Hang on, this is it!"

With one final push, the bone knitted, and she turned to mending the muscle above it and closing the wound. By the time she was done, the soldier had fainted. She wiped her forearm across her sweaty brow and nodded at her dusty assistant, who called for two able-bodied men to take the wounded man away.

She was exhausted. She had been repairing injuries for two hours now. The sun was up fully, warm on her back, but it did nothing to dull the ache in it. She was only giving her charges the bare minimum of treatment, but she was getting dizzy and her vision was starting to blur – signs she should stop, or at least take a break.

This was, of course, not an option.

"Next!" Sankra yelled.

Someone with a broken arm was approaching her (somewhat warily) when Ari ran up to her. She was frantic; her green eyes were wide with horror.

"Sankra, you have to come with me right now!"

"What's going on?"

"Just hurry! I found him under two corpses! He's nearly dead! He's got this massive side wound! You have to save him! PLEASE!"

"All right, all right, I'm coming!"

She rolled up her sleeves, ran off after Ari, and wondered what dying soldier could merit such hysterics from the normally resilient cat-woman.

By the time she reached the soldier in question, Ari was standing off a pace, hugging herself around the middle. Two bodies were piled on each other and one lay still on the ground, wearing a helmet and leg guards but no chest plate. Whatever the soldier was, it wasn't human; it was covered in bright orange fur, and it had a tail. Sankra fell to her knees, waited for her vision to stop tunneling, and pressed down with her palms on the soldier's side, putting all of her skill to work. Her hands glowed blue around a gaping, gushing wound and slowly, achingly, it closed.

But the soldier did not move or groan, or even cry out. Ari's breath hitched up. She looked at Sankra for an answer. The healer felt his neck for a pulse, and his chest for a heartbeat. She found neither. She pushed down on the limp fighter several times, willing his heart to beat. After a few minutes of trying, she quit. It was over.

She sat back, palms in the dirt, sweat beading on her forehead, and shook her head. Ari had eyes for nothing but the body.

"I'm sorry," Sankra said quietly. "I did my best."

Ari sniffed and nodded. A tear rolled down her gritty cheek. "I know."

Sankra asked her question, almost afraid of the word. "Anook?"

Ari nodded again. Another tear slipped out. Among all the grime and blood on the battlefield, her nose was failing her, but her eyes had never lied.

"It has to be. I've had so many nightmares," she said, and crept towards the fallen soldier. "I just never thought it would end th-this way." With quiet grace she sank down next to the body and put her hand on the fighter's shoulder. "I lost myself out there, swinging like a wild thing. For all I know, I did this to him." She gulped back a sob. "And if I did, I might as well take my own life."

Sankra was bewildered. Ari crying was one thing. Ari threatening suicide was quite another. The healer crawled over.

"You aren't serious. Please tell me you're not serious."

Ari did not answer. A cold gust came up, ruffling her fur and playing with Sankra's matted hair. Between the smoke and the steam and the month of March, everything had briefly gone grey and dark.

Sankra put a hand on her friend's shoulder. "We should go. Come on. They'll want to bury him or something."

Ari blinked and a few more tears dotted her armor. "In a minute. I just … I just need to say goodbye. In the Old Way."

She knelt in a stilted, formal style next to the body, and delicately laid one clawed hand on the dead soldier's still chest.

"Anook," she addressed him. Her voice broke. "Husband mine, may we meet again where the Great Mountain touches the sky. May we laugh and dance in that place where the rivers are full of fish, and there is no sorrow, and there is no pain." Two tears landed on his fur. "I am yours until the end of all. Goodbye, star-over-me."

By the end of it, she was shaking so badly she could hardly get the words out. But they came, every one of them, and when she done she at last gave herself over to grief. She pulled the dead cat-man up into an embrace, kissed his ice-cold cheek, and wailed.

And Sankra, who knew something about loss, let her be.

That was how Jack found them. He broke through the mist, still holding Unt-Ork, and stopped dead at the sight. Unt-Ork gasped. Jack set her down and she ran to Ari, who was still clinging to the body like a lifeline.

Sankra looked at him blankly and waved him over. Cautiously, he moved and sat down next to her. Sankra took his hand and squeezed. He squeezed back. Neither said anything.

All was still and quiet save Ari's rocking and tears. She was lost inside herself, intent on the being in her arms, intent on finishing the little ritual.

"ANOOOOOOK!" she shouted.

She meant it as a final goodbye. She was sending his name, his spirit, out into the great beyond. She was not listening for an answer.

So naturally she, Jack, Sankra, and Unt-Ork were stunned to hear one.

"Ari?"

A hoarse, scratchy baritone voice was calling her name, not four feet from them. Four heads swiveled in the same direction. A clawed hand waved through the mist, rending it, and a rather bewildered former soldier staggered over to their little group. He wore no helmet, so Jack could see that he was a cat-creature like Ari. He had brilliant orange fur the same shade as the dead soldier, wide golden eyes that blinked out from filthy wire-rimmed spectacles, and a heavily bandaged left arm.

Ari stared. She looked at the soldier with that empty, shocked look reserved for catastrophes and the unbelievable.

The new arrival stumbled over and fell to his knees before her. He was looking at her with the same frightened, dazed expression she was giving him. They held each other's eyes for a long time. Then finally, gently, he reached out and ran his fingers through the fur on her face.

"Ari," he murmured.

"Anook?" she asked tentatively, her mind still a bit elsewhere. Her voice crackled like dead leaves.

Anook smiled. He gently pried the dead soldier from his wife's grip, lowered the body back to the ground, and moved closer to her. He embraced her with his good arm and quickly pressed his lips to hers.

"Ari," he breathed in her ear.

Ari breathed, too. Her husband's scent was so overwhelmingly him that it finally broke through all the smells and horror of the battlefield, the familiar smell tickling some warm corner of her brain. And suddenly, she saw reality for what it was: a giant yes. She was here, in the midst of death and destruction. But yes, Anook was alive. Yes, it was all over. Yes, everything would be okay.

Ari began to weep again, this time for a completely different reason.

"Anook." The word was a growl of need in the back of her throat.

Their lips met; their teeth clacked. They held each other tight and began to kiss quite passionately. Ari's fur got mussed. Anook's glasses were quickly knocked askew. They both fell over on the muddy ground and kept going, heedless of the far-off footsteps and the shouting … and their immediate audience.

Unt-Ork smiled. Sankra softly said, "Wow." Jack stared at the ground and turned beet red.

It seemed an eternity before the couple came up for air.

It was enough, for the moment, to be alive.

TBC