Part 7
The ropes tying his wrists behind his back are tightened, and he breathes in sharply as he feels them cut into his skin, releasing warm liquid that begins to drip down his fingers. He imagines the pool of red blood that is forming under them. It helps him focus, helps distract him from what he knows is coming.
A guard walks around from behind him. He has a squished looking chubby face—like someone had stuck his head between two rocks and then stepped on it. Somehow the man's lips find room to sneer between the thick cheeks.
"I'm gonna have fun with you, Criminal."
Mugen spits in the man's face. He knows it will bring on the torture sooner, but it's going to come anyway and he's tired of waiting.
A look of disgust crinkles the man's eyes and lifts his nose. "You little punk!"
Tensing his muscles, Mugen braces himself for the attack. The first kick to his side gives him hope that the beating won't be as bad as he's expecting.
"Do you think throwing a rock at a soldier is gonna make you big and bad?"
The second kick destroys that hope.
"Who's tough now? You worthless son-of-a-whore."
Mugen falls over onto his side as the third kick hits his side in the same spot, announcing its arrival with the crack of broken ribs. After that he loses count. He bites his tongue to keep from moaning, tasting the bitter-sweet of blood. "Only a wuss would beat a man with his hands tied…" he manages, voice rough. "If you want a real fight—"
Another kick stops his words.
"An animal isn't a man."
Mugen can barely see the guard's face through the blurriness of his flooded eyes. He is coughing, the action sending fireworks of pain through is body and rubbing his cheek into the dirt he is lying in.
"Pig. We'll be doing the world a favor by executing you."
No, Mugen thinks, you'll be doing me a favor. He closes his eyes as the kicks keep coming, trying to remember why he is doing this.
Trying to remember that when this is over, he'll have left Ryuukyuu behind forever.
---
This was the second time in less than a day that he had woken this way—woken to Fuu sitting beside him.
The difference was, this time she was asleep. Mugen looked at her through slightly open eyes. Strained lines marred her face, and her body seemed tense in its kneeling position beside him.
"She was exhausted. She put up quite a fight to stay awake though."
Mugen turned to the voice. Jin was sitting back against a nearby tree, legs Indian style under the folds of blue fabric he wore. He had dark shadows under his eyes, accentuated by the eerie casting of light from the campfire. Spots danced before his vision as Mugen stared at the brilliant flames, remembering the white-hot pain—the fire-warmed dagger thrust into his back to cauterize his wound and stop the bleeding.
"Why doesn't it hurt?" His voice felt hoarse, and what he meant to be his normal volume of speech came out as a whisper.
Jin looked at him a moment, then closed his eyes. "The flesh around the wound is dead from the burning. And we covered it with some medicine Fuu went back into town to get. You'll feel it when you—"
Mugen tried to sit up and look at the fresh bandage wrapped around his abdomen and lower back. He yelled out a curse at the sudden pain.
"—move," Jin finished, opening his eyes again at the noise.
"Mugen?" Fuu was awake now, and Mugen was still cursing as he tried to sit up against a tree behind him. It took more effort than it should have and he was panting by the time he was there. Still cursing though.
"You shouldn't try to move," Fuu said, sliding over to the new spot where he was sitting. "How do you feel?"
"Like I just got stabbed in the back."
She rolled her eyes. "Thanks, that was descriptive." A pause. "You had a fever most of the night and you were hallucinating."
Most of the night? He didn't remember anything past Jin thrusting the hot dagger into his back, but as he looked around he noticed that the very beginnings of dawn had come. The sky was just a tad lighter than it should be at night. That meant he had been out for at least five or six hours.
"You were yelling a lot, and talking too. I thought you were going to wake up all of Nagasaki," Fuu was saying. Her small hands fidgeted in her lap.
He could only imagine what he'd been hallucinating and yelling about. "I was?"
"Yes." The look on her face kept him from needing to imagine; he knew. Ryuukyuu.
He tried again to readjust his position, and held his breath against another nauseating wave of pain. "Stupid government loser. I'd have killed him if it weren't for that whore." He closed his eyes and tried to force his lungs to work with some sort of rhythm.
"Whore? Mugen… what were you doing?" Fuu's voice said.
He chuckled, ignoring her question. "She was a dame though, with a great rack." He waited for Fuu to yell at him, and imagined the pink rising to her cheeks. Cracking an eye open, he smirked. Yup, it was there.
"Mugen! Do you always have to think of…" She stopped, sounding frustrated. Then, more quietly, "You almost got yourself killed, you idiot."
"Eh. Oh well." He shrugged. The movement hurt like hell.
Jin's voice floated to him now, "So you tried to sleep with the choice girl of the shogun's chief guard?"
"Yup."
"Hmm."
Mugen opened his eyes to look at Jin. "Hmm?" he questioned, challenging the samurai.
"You are stupider than I thought."
"And you're a jerk."
Jin didn't respond, but he heard Fuu muttering beside him, something like "'five-year-olds in the bodies of men." Her features looked diffuse in the darkness, but the sky was just beginning to lighten and it was enough to see her roll her large eyes.
No one said anything else for a while. He began rubbing at some dried blood on his arm. He was covered in it, and it felt like mud clinging to his skin.
Fuu interrupted the quiet, saying: "Well, I guess we're back where we started. Wandering around with no money and no place to stay."
Mugen scowled at her phrasing. Back where we started. The reminder that he didn't have as much control over his life as he wanted tainted his next words with sarcasm. "Oh come on. Didn't you make anything 'throwing dice'? Mugen questioned.
She glared at him in answer to what he was implying. "Yes, but I used what I had to buy you medicine and the rest I left at the Lusty Diamond."
He gave her a nonchalant shrug, and let his gaze wander back to the fire. "Well, we have to go back anyway."
"What?"
"Our swords are back there." He turned to look at Jin and saw the other man nod. "We aren't going to leave our swords."
"A sword is a samurai's life," Jin added.
Fuu was shaking her head. "Are you two crazy? They'll—"
Swish-crack.
Mugen's hand flew up to cover her mouth instinctively, cutting her off. There had been a sound… a rustling in the woods that didn't belong. He looked at Jin. "Did you hear that?" he whispered. But he saw Jin stand very slowly and knew that he had.
For a moment there was silence aside from the normal forest sounds of insects harmonizing and the campfire crackling.
And then…
The rustling again. A very diffuse rustling. It took Mugen a moment to realize it was actually several rustlings.
Swish-crack-swish-crack-swish-crack.
The sound came again and he became aware that "several" was a bit of an understatement.
And then the rustlings erupted into bodies—many, many bodies—bodies that were clad in battle armor and came toward them swinging swords.
Fuu jumped up beside him, eyes wide and kimono swinging about her and brushing his face. He tried to do the same, growling at the resistance his body gave him, protesting every move with sparks of pain that danced before his eyes. He let the momentum of getting to his feet continue to drag him forward, as he slung an arm around Fuu's waist and pulled her away, crumbling her frozen imitation of a statue.
She looked at him.
"Gotta go," he answered her expression, focusing his eyes on the ground in front of him as he stumbled forward—away from the roaring army of men behind them.
He knew without looking that Jin was back there, buying them time to get away. A Jin that was without his sword and was facing trained, armed men.
Fuu had pulled his arm over her slim shoulders now, and they limped on a little faster, but he knew instinctively that it wouldn't be enough. He could barely move and she was too weak to really support him, and Jin... no way in hell was he going to let that pansy samuai get away with dying the hero today while he ran away...
"Stop," he grumbled.
Her face turned towards his, looking blurry this close to his own, but she kept moving.
"I said STOP!" he repeated, this time digging the heals of his geta into the ground to keep her from pulling him any further.
His eyes met hers for the slightest of moments, his intensity stretching that moment into eternity. "Trust me."
He twisted suddenly, breaking her grip on him. Leaning forward, he let the falling momentum of his body drive his legs onward, back toward the swords and the yelling and the action that made his heart pulse a hidden song in his veins. Jin was standing in the center of the clearing, the fire between him and the men, who were closing in on him, slowed by the time they were taking to throw a preliminary attack of taunts.
It took no more than seconds for him to reach the other samurai's side, holding a stick he had picked up from the ground on his way. He thrust the end of it into the fire, looking back at Jin as he did.
"Take Fuu and get out of here."
The slightest look of confusion crinkled Jin's smooth face.
"You think I'm gonna let you have all your fun? It's your turn to take care of the brat." He smiled cynically. "They'll get her if you don't."
He turned then, leaving Jin's shocked expression behind. This was the only way—the only way to save them. To them it would seem like reckless blood-lust. And he would never tell them differently.
"You want a piece of me!" he screamed then, charging toward the soldiers with the blazing branch.
He took five of them down before he crumpled to the ground himself. He could have taken more he knew, but the crucial moment came and he took it, letting a sword sink into his stomach where he knew no vital organs would be touched.
Hechose the moment he was struck. He chose the moment he was defeated.
He chose to take the gamble instead of forfeit his cards.
And as his vision began to fade and he felt his attackers drag his limp body away, he knew his gamble had paid off.
The keys to survival were in his hands.
He smirked and let his eyes close.
And the world turned to black.