Title: The Wizards of Ceres
Rating: T
Warnings: Violence and some gore in some chapters; romance between Kurogane and Fai.
Summary: The countries of Ceres and Nihon are on the brink of war again, but Kurogane Demon-Queller has more important things to think about; like protecting the borders of his country from the dark and hungry beasts that roam the wilderness. At least, he did, until his paths crossed with the King of Ceres' latest gamble to win this war...
Author's Notes: This chapter switches to Kurogane's perspective, and the vocabulary shifts accordingly.
Kurogane woke just as morning was beginning to creep into the sky, the dying deep blue of night just giving way to the grays of daybreak. The sky was still overcast, so the sun wouldn't be seen for hours if it came out at all today, but there was light enough to see by and that was the main thing,
The other main thing was that he could sense an oni -- two -- and close. He took a slow, quiet breath, hand tightening on Souhi's hilt although he did not, yet, draw her from the sheath. They were prowling around the lip of the dell, not yet willing to force themselves through the lingering blessings of the ruined jinja, but they weren't likely to go away any time soon, either. Kurogane was willing to bet that the wizard had left a blood trail, coming here, and cursed the luck -- another bolt-hole compromised.
Unless, of course, neither of these two lived to carry word back to their fellows. Kurogane's lips curled in a smile, almost unwillingly. It was always so nice to be able to kill two birds with one demon.
The fire was dead in ashes; he hadn't bothered to bank it before going to sleep, since he'd not counted on staying here much past dawn anyway. In the chill dampness of the autumn dawn he stood, stretching out the lingering stiffness, and reached for his helm and gauntlets. He pulled some food and water out of his supplies knapsack and chewed dutifully at it, fueling up for the exertion ahead. Running low on water, although that could be refilled at the stream; enough food to last for a week more, although perhaps not if it were split two ways. Reminded, Kurogane turned to walk over to his unlikely charge.
The wizard from yesterday was still asleep, but not -- Kurogane checked his breathing, shallow but steady -- dead. It was impossible to tell his condition by his coloring, as his light hair and fair skin looked shockingly pale to Kurogane's eyes anyway, but he thought the wizard looked somewhat better than last night. With bruising and cuts at least marginally attended to, some of the strain eased out of those delicate features. Were all the men of Ceres as pretty as women, Kurogane had to wonder, or was it just something about using magic that did it to a man?
Stupid to speculate. Kurogane frowned down at him, rubbing his hand over his eyes to chase the last of the night's weariness away.
He still wasn't sure exactly what to do about this stray. Having caught an enemy combatant on what was still technically Nihon soil, he supposed he had an obligation to take him to the nearest gate and turn him in. The prospect didn't fill Kurogane with much enthusiasm; as a spy, he'd almost certainly be crucified, which would sort of negate the purpose of saving his life in the first place.
He wasn't sure why the idea of this man being executed in that manner turned his stomach quite so strongly, but it was enough for him to dismiss the idea out of hand. Ceres and Nihon were not officially at war yet, and he'd caught the man on Suwa land. His land. He still had some say in who came and who went here, even if it was mostly only inhabited by wild animals and the occasional oni, nowadays.
On the other hand, if he wasn't going to take him prisoner, what was he going to do? Turning him loose in the wilderness -- alone, half-blind, on foot, injured and concussed, hardly seemed a preferable fate. It was three days hard ride through the wilds back to the northern border, even assuming that Kurogane was willing to give him his horse, which he wasn't. Kurogane sighed.
Either the noise was enough to disturb him or Kurogane had just been looming for too long, but the wizard suddenly stirred, turning his face upwards and opening his good eye. He still didn't seem to be focussing right, but the color still startled Kurogane -- even more intensely blue in the silver dawn than they had been last night by firelight. "Time to march already, Kuro-chan?" he murmured.
"What did you call me, wizard?" Kurogane only managed to keep his voice down with an effort -- there were still oni out there, after all.
The wizard blinked at him slowly, then pushed himself abruptly into a sitting position, catching himself on his arms as he swayed. He reached up to touch his bandaged eye, wincing, and then shifted his focus back to Kurogane, and smiled far too cheerfully for the time and the setting. "Would you prefer to be called something else? Kuro-pon? Kuro-rin? Kuro-chama?"
Kurogane gritted his teeth. "I'd prefer that you call me by my name. I know I told you last night -- it's Kurogane."
The wizard hummed a little, then shook his head, although not without a slight wince. "No, that's much too long and complicated for me to remember. How about Kuro-tan? That's much cuter, simpler and more elegant. Or perhaps Kuro-black, to go with the armor, and the hair, and the horse --"
Kurogane stared in disbelief. "You know, I'd been assuming it was the hit on the head last night that knocked you silly, but I'm starting to rethink that." He was also beginning to rethink his aversion to seeing Fai executed as a spy.
Fai just smirked at him. Kurogane shook his head and turned away, settling his helmet over his head. The wizard watched his preparations closely, and then said, in a more serious tone, "Is there trouble?"
"Only what I expected. Two --" Kurogane gestured up at the lip of the dell; he couldn't actually see the oni up there, but he could feel their lurking presence. "Waiting for us to come out."
"Just like two cats at a mousehole." The wizard nodded understanding, then shifted around, pulling free of the horse blanket and bracing himself as though to stand. "What should we do?"
"We don't do anything," Kurogane said promptly. "You stay here. I'm going to go take care of them."
"What, and let Kuro-chan go off to fight the monsters all by his lonesome?" His good eye widened in feigned disbelief. "I couldn't possibly allow that!"
"Who said you had any say in the matter?" Kurogane snapped. "I work alone. You can't even walk in a straight line, let alone be any use in a fight."
"I killed one of those things yesterday," Fai wheedled. "I can help --" And he was actually trying to get up and walk, gods, did the man have no sense at all?
"I would prefer not to be flash-fried by your help," Kurogane snapped, and had the mixed satisfaction of seeing the wizard flinch, his smile falter. For this at least, Fai had no response, and Kurogane turned his back on him, going into his pack to pull out what he'd need.
"So you've killed one, great. I've killed hundreds. Let the professionals do their job, and stay here like a good boy. Here." He unstrapped the dagger from its place on his baldric, and tossed it at the man, who grabbed at it in the air, fumbling the catch. "Keep this. If anything gets past me, it'll be up to you."
The wizard looked at the sheathed tantou in his hands -- double-bladed, barely twelve inches, it should be light enough even for him to wield -- and back at him, a bemused smile on his face. "Thank you, Kuro-tan, but I don't know how useful this is going to be."
Given how awkwardly he held it, Kurogane wondered too, but "Any weapon is better than none. Your stupid staff is in pieces somewhere out there, and this is better than fighting them with your hands. Oh -- take these, too." He tossed a couple of wrapped packages after the knife, which were caught -- barely -- with his arms against his body. Somewhat bewildered, the wizard pulled at the straps until he revealed the flask and wrapped hardbread; he stiffened oddly, looking at them, and his smile flattened out. "Eat," Kurogane told him.
Slowly, deliberately, Fai rewrapped the packages and put them aside. "No, thank you," he said calmly.
"That wasn't an offer."
"I don't wish to eat at this time."
"It wasn't a request, either. If you're going to be my backup, then you're going to be under my command for at least the next hour. A soldier has to take care of his body, or he'll be useless, and I have no use for useless things. Eat." He edged the word with a deep snarl of command. The wizard gave him a startled, wary glance which he countered with a warning glare; slowly, reluctantly, Fai pulled the food back towards him, although Kurogane didn't grunt satisfaction and turn away until he saw him take the first bite.
He left the wizard in the place of safety, and began to climb the dew-wet slides of the ravine towards the waiting oni.
It was quiet. Gravel crunched under his boots as he climbed the slope; with no half-conscious wizard dragging along, he was able to take the short route up the gullies, and climbed out onto the tableland within minutes. The sky was brightening overhead, drawing long gray shadows along the ground; the dark wet wood of the trees drew black shadows of their own in the growing light.
Plenty of swinging room, here; he left Souhi in her sheath and unstrapped Ginryuu from his back. Nothing was in sight, yet, but he could feel the foul presence of the oni skulking around. There was no rush to meet them; they would come to him, oh yes. He grinned tightly, and drew a deep breath, centering his ki.
The world narrowed down to black and white again; no splashes of red blood, no flash of distracting blue. It was just him and hard-edged steel, against the oni, against the world; they could come at him one or two or a hundred at a time, and he'd take them all on.
A movement to his left drew his attention, and he turned to face it, surging out of the morning mist; it wasn't too big, as they went, only the size of a small house. It arched a long, scaled neck and hissed at him, its triangular head crammed with fangs. Kurogane was unimpressed, especially since the posturing was mostly just to draw his attention while its partner attempted to circle around behind him.
"Come on, you bastards," he called out to them, switching Ginryuu to a one handed grip and spreading his arms wide. "Come and get me!"
A blood-curdling hiss, and they dove at him, almost but not quite perfectly coordinated on the spot on which he stood. But his footing was solid and he was ready for it; when they struck he was not there, already jumping to the side and he turned as he went, slicing back along his path with the full force of his swing behind Ginryuu's cutting edge. The demon behind him shrieked as its open mouth ran full on to his blade; he could feel the impact of the serrated teeth grating against the spine of the blade, and he jerked it back, sending black blood and broken teeth flying.
The two oni slammed against each other, scrambling and tangling together for a moment before they sorted themselves out and sprang apart, each moving to circle him from opposite direction. Kurogane watched them warily, turning to keep them in his sights, sizing them up with a long-practiced eye. The big one was a spitter; the other one, unquestionably a host, although it hadn't released the swarm yet. Until it did, it was the less dangerous of the two; Kurogane kept it in his peripheral vision, and turned to face the big one.
He moved an instant before they did, driving forward across the muddy ground; the oni screamed and fell back a step under the ferocity of the attack, and Kurogane turned, moving to flank it and place it between him and the second oni. Ginryuu skidded across the oni's side as he moved, but the armoring was solid, and barely showed a scratch from the full force of the blow.
From there it devolved into a game of lunge and strike, parry and fall back; he took advantage of the open space to try to keep the bigger oni in the way of the smaller one, although that wouldn't work forever. The thing's limbs darted out in lizard-quick movements, huge claws like a crab's pincers clacking towards him as though to cut him in half. Kurogane dodged what he could, blocked what he could not dodge, and absorbed the hits that he could not block. His blood sang in his ears, and a sharp feral grin pulled at the corners of his mouth. This was what he was made for, this was what he lived for, all others be damned.
This one had solid armoring all around the neck and chest, overlapping plates that rippled over its joints which not even Kurogane could punch through easily. But along the spine of the thing, up to where the neck met the back of the head the movements seemed looser, disjointed -- as though it hadn't been put together quite right at the top of it. There, yes. He shifted his stance, switching his grip on Ginryuu's hilt.
The oni must have sensed the change in his posture, sensed something, because it screeched again -- the shrill sound made his bones ache -- and fell back, almost uneasy in its movements. The other oni surged around it, its eager head pushing ahead of its four splayed limbs, but for a moment -- just for one moment -- they were getting in each other's way, each hampering the movement of the other.
Kurogane pushed forward, covering the intervening distance with a lightness that belied the pounding force of his steps; the smaller oni thrust its head towards him, dripping spittle and gore from its torn mouth. Kurogane turned and raised his blade, held level above the height of his own head, and with a downward slash tore out one of the bulbous, glowing-yellow eyes. It screamed, a bubbling sound far worse than the avian screeching of its partner, and orange blood spattered over the arm and side of his armor. He could hear it hiss as it corroded the metal, but would take minutes to eat through the heavy plate, and in minutes it would all be over.
The small oni fell fell back, leaving Kurogane with clear space. He jumped; straight towards his target, the pincer-claws snapped towards him and missed, and then he landed with a heavy jolt, right on the black carapace. He reversed his two-handed grip on Ginryuu, and plunged it straight down, the full length of the blade into the soft, armor-less spot at the back of the oni's head.
The oni's dying convulsion flung him away, and his sword was wrenched from his hands. A bit-off curse forced itself from his lips as he slammed against the ground, but he rolled with the momentum and came back up to his feet, ripping Souhi from her sheath at his side.
One oni down, one to go; and despite its smaller size and lack of armor plating, the more dangerous of the two. Unlike some of others Kurogane had faced, there was no way this abomination could ever be mistaken for any kind of animal; it went on four splayed limbs under an elongated body, but the limbs ended in clawed human hands, and the head as it thrust from the long, flexible neck had a man's shape to it, patches of raggedy dark hair falling down in clumps. One bulbous eye was collapsed and leaking acid, but the other one turned on him as it emitted a bubbling hiss.
The berserker's grin ticked at Kurogane's face again, despite himself, as he faced it. The revulsion, the hatred, the rage all mingled into one and he savored it, letting the heat build and build in him, flowing like smooth honey in his veins. "You want blood?" he snarled, voice rumbling with the long-building fury. "It's blood you want? Well, I'm right here, come on -- eat me, just try -- "
It reared back, raising its head on the too-thin, too-flexible neck; a bulge worked in that throat like some parody of a man's adams apple, before the skin suddenly split open and a mouth opened, spewing forth a cloud of squirming black figures.
It was the moment Kurogane had been waiting for, and his rictus grin stretched wider, even as the swarm poured over him. Countless limbs and fangs battered at him, striking at his armor, seeking an opening to get at him, but it was too late, the monster had made a fatal mistake -- because Kurogane still had seconds left to strike, and while the host was issuing this final attack, it could neither move nor defend.
You thought you could eat me, like you ate the others, he thought, seething, murderous rage, but it's YOU who are MY prey -- he moved, releasing all his pent-up ki in a single sweeping blow, as the voice roared out of him -- "Hama ryu-ou-jin!"
Fire flashed out along the length of Souhi, flared out in a wide sweeping path around and ahead of him. The wave of fire blasted out ahead of the sword's path, vermin withering and dropping in its wake, and overtook the host in fire and steel. It shrieked once more, an almost-human sounding scream of agony and hatred, before the misshapen head and neck exploded apart.
The first thing Kurogane did, once he was sure that neither of the two oni were going to move again, was to wipe the corrosive blood off of his armor and sword with a combination of mud and his already much-abused cloak. Kurogane took a long breath, watching the vermin flopping and writhing on the ground around him; they were harmless once the host was dead, although it might take them hours yet to stop moving. He walked slowly over to the still-twitching hulk of the big one, braced his foot against the back of its skull, and retrieved his father's sword with a grunt of effort.
Two more down, he thought with satisfaction. That's the last of this pack, I think. That should buy us some peace and quiet, at least for a little while...
His concentration was suddenly broken by the sound of clapping. He spun around, nearly losing his footing for the first time since the fight began, and gaped dumbfounded to see the flash of light blond and bright blue. Somehow, without his noticing, the wizard had followed him up the dry gully and was seated on a fallen log with his back to the ravine. Fai was applauding, expression alight, as though he were watching a talent show at a local matsuri.
"Oh, very good, Kuro-chan!" Fai avowed, clasping his hands together. "You were amazing!"
It took a long moment for Kurogane to come down out of his battle-haze, but through the shock he finally found his voice. "What the hell are you doing up here?" he sputtered. "I left you back down at the shrine! Were you trying to get your idiot self killed?!"
"Now, now, I was perfectly safe," Fai said and grinned. "And I just couldn't possibly miss out on the chance to see Kuro-tan in action, could I?"
"Safe?" Kurogane roared. "If either of those oni had seen you, you'd have been easy meat! To say nothing of the vermin --"
"Oh, I wasn't worried," Fai said in a sing-song voice. "Only one of them got past you. They didn't seem to want to come past the barrier here." A wave of his hand described an arc on the ground in front of him.
Kurogane took a deep breath, opening his mouth to ream the other man out, but then abruptly closed it. The boundary of the influence of the jinja was more or less congruous with the rim of the ravine, but there was no way this stranger should have known that. And Fai had spoken of it as observed fact, not conjecture. "If you'd stayed where you were put, there wouldn't have been any."
"But I thought you might need some backup."
"I don't need any backup, and if I did I wouldn't need you."
Fai just smiled, putting his chin in his hands. "Maybe you needed my backup and you didn't even know it," he suggested brightly.
Kurogane stopped for a moment, flummoxed by that comment; a quick mental review of the fight shed no light on it. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously, as the moment's pause to think brought the other comment home to him. "What do you mean, only one got past me?" he growled, obscurely offended at the implication that he had let anything slip past his guard.
"Oh, it was bolder than the others," Fai shrugged, head still in his hands, and glanced over to one side. "It was a good thing you gave me that dagger after all, wasn't it?" Kurogane saw a glimpse of metal, and with an askance look at the wizard, headed over to it.
It was the war knife, stuck in a tree where Fai must have thrown it; stuck like a beetle on a pin was one of the vermin, now very dead. Kurogane did a double take. "I gave you one weapon to protect yourself and you threw it away?" He glared outrage back in the other man's directions. "Wizard, if you were born yesterday, then how in hell did you survive until today?!"
"Just lucky, I guess," Fai said sunnily. Kurogane scowled, and reached out to take his weapon back. He hesitated a moment, however, as his hand tested the give of the knife. The point of the blade had pierced the loathsome creature straight through the center and entered the wood straight on, and driven in for several inches.
It was actually a pretty good throw, for a man as useless in a fight as the wizard. No -- Kurogane corrected himself. It was an good throw for a man who could barely stand, let alone walk in a straight line, and who could only see out of one eye, and that eye not very well. Despite himself, his eyebrows rose slightly; he was impressed.
"Kuro-chan looked so manly, fighting those demons!" the wizard chirped from behind him, and Kurogane tensed and schooled his expression once more, yanking the knife out of the wood. Not that he would ever, ever admit to being impressed, of course. "He has all sorts of hidden talents that you would never expect."
"You've known me for less than a day," Kurogane pointed out, walking back over to the smaller of the corpses. He nudged at the end of one half-severed leg with a booted foot, then crouched down and began to saw off one of the misshapen claws. "How the hell do you know what talents I do and don't have?"
"Well, for one thing," and there was a subtle change of Fai's tone, enough to make Kurogane still warily and look his way, "I didn't know you were a mage, too."
That won a disparaging snort and a withering glare. "I'm not. Don't be a moron." He turned back to his task.
"No?" Fai tilted his head to one side, smiling brightly. "I'm pretty sure I saw you attack with fire, towards the end."
Kurogane extracted one of the claws and stood, tossing it in his hand for a moment before he tucked it under the edge of the leather strap crossing his hip. It wasn't the carrying place he'd prefer -- he could still smell its charnel stink -- but he only had to carry it until he got back to his horse. As disgusting as it was, a demon hunter had to turn in proof of his spoils, or he wouldn't get paid. "That wasn't magic, that was swordsmanship."
"Kuro-chan," Fai said, amused and admonishing, "I know an awful lot of swordsmen, and none of them can shoot fire out of the end of their swords."
Kurogane glared at him, then snorted again and turned away, moving to the second of the corpses. "Then they aren't as good at it as I am."
He overrode Fai's next sally with a stern, "Drop it, wizard. Don't try to talk about something you know nothing about. I know swordplay, and I'm telling you that what I do isn't magic. I've trained all my life in the use of the sword, and I've never once been interested in any kind of magic. Do I look like a woman?"
He'd actually managed to stump the wizard with that one, he saw with some satisfaction as he turned; Fai sat with his mouth hung open, stopped in the middle of whatever inane reply he was going to make. After a moment he blinked, and cleared his throat, and gave a little shrug. "Well, Kuro-chan knows best, I suppose," he said, in a casual tone.
"Damn right I do," Kurogane asserted, and turned back to the demon hulk. There had to be something easily detachable on this thing that he could carry back as a token.
Six hours later, Kurogane found himself wondering how he'd gotten himself into this.
There was always a feeling of letdown after a kill, he knew that. Not that the oni made good company, but in the release of tension after the stalk and the kill it was a lot easier to hear the quiet that came with no living humans within miles. That must have been why, Kurogane decided. Temporary insanity, adrenaline crash.
They'd slithered back down the gully to Kurogane's camp; the wizard lost his footing badly once along the way, his foot turning under him and leading to a painful scraping slide down several yards of sheer gravel. After a moment's screeching impulse to grab him and save him from a nasty fall, Kurogane had restrained himself, and decided that it was probably good for him. He'd been told to stay in the ravine, after all.
Once they'd gotten back to the camp, he'd set about breaking camp and packing everything back onto the horse, while the mage sat and watched him curiously. "What now?" he asked with great interest. "More demons to kill?"
"Not within a hundred miles of here, for sure," Kurogane said firmly. "Those two made seven, and that's all the tracks I counted."
"Where are you going next, then?"
Kurogane frowned as he tightened the strap on the heavy, double-leather sack containing his grisly trophies. Didn't want those to fall off the horse, even if he didn't want to carry them on his person. "I was going north along the wall when I picked up their trail; I suppose I should turn back to report these."
"And what about me?"
"Hell if I know," Kurogane growled, tightening the girth with a jerk. The horse blew a breath of protest at him. "Go wherever you like." The problem of what to do with the wizard -- turn him in, leave him, let him go? -- still had offered no clear solution.
But that had been a mistake, because the wizard's clear blue eye had welled up with alligator tears. "Kuro-chan is so cruel -- here I am in the middle of a strange country and he wants to leave me here to starve to death and be eaten by demons and die -- I knew that you were mean, but I never could have imagined you could be so heartless --"
Kurogane had never heard a grown man whine before, and he'd been willing to do pretty much anything to make him shut up. "All right! All right, you can come with me. At least to the border!" he added the contingent, if only to make him feel like he was the one in charge here.
That had stopped the fake tears in an instant, and Fai was back to his normal sunny smile. "Yay! Thank you, Kuro-chan!"
With some ill grace, he'd allowed Fai to ride double on the horse behind him, even allowing his unexpected passenger to hang on to him to keep to his precarious perch. After all, he figured, if swarms of vermin and oni claws couldn't reach him through his armor, one weakened wizard wasn't likely to succeed where they'd failed.
But he'd miscalculated somehow, he was beginning to increasingly think. His armor, worn so comfortably now as to be a second skin, was a hard, cold shell. But hours of the man pressing against his back to stay on was pooling an accumulated warmth against his back, creeping in through his clothes and skin despite him. And while he couldn't feel Fai's hands, clinging determinedly to the edges of the armor plates, he couldn't ignore the subtle pressure pulling him back into that warmth. It wasn't precisely uncomfortable, not in the way Kurogane was used to thinking of the term, but it was unfamiliar and pervasive enough to put him on edge, and he kept fighting against a flustered blush as they rose.
Fai rode behind him in silence; Kurogane had determinedly ignored his chatter until he had wound down, either discouraged or just exhausted. At first Kurogane had enjoyed the peace and quiet. But an itching feeling was beginning to build in his bones, almost like a buzzing in his armor. Was that damn wizard doing something weird? His horse snorted uneasily, although Kurogane couldn't be sure whether he was feeling it too, or if Kurogane's own tension was transmitting to the horse.
Eventually the annoyance won out. "Whatever you're doing, stop," he said, breaking his own self-imposed gag rule.
The buzzing feeling abruptly stopped, which only reinforced Kurogane's conviction that he'd been up to something. "Oh, could you hear it too?" Fai said with some surprise -- and a tinge of satisfaction.
No doubt he was about to get started on Kurogane's supposed magic abilities again. "I didn't hear anything. That's the problem. You're being too damn quiet back there," Kurogane said truthfully. Then, after a pause, "What were you doing?"
"Oh... calling," Fai said, vaguely.
"Calling what?" he asked. He didn't care, he really didn't, but the evasiveness of the answer made him want to pin it down anyway.
"Whatever answers," Fai said even less informatively, but then changed the subject. "Kuro-sama says he isn't a mage."
"Because I'm not," Kurogane retorted.
Fai ignored his interruption, and continued in a slow and thoughtful tone, "But if he isn't one, he must know someone who is. Someone who cares about him very much."
"How do you figure that?" Kurogane said, somewhat unnerved.
"Mm, because he has spells on him. One here --" Fai released his grip on Kurogane's shoulder, and brought his hand down to hover over the sheathed hilt of Souhi. Thankfully for his own health, he made no attempt to touch her. " -- one here --" and his hand moved up along Kurogane's side and down his arm to touch the back of his hand, easily holding the reins. He couldn't feel that touch, through the gauntlet, but it raised the hairs on the back of his neck anyway. The silver ring he always wore under his armor seemed suddenly, almost itchingly warm.
"And one here." The hand rose once more, reaching up to brush over the front of Kurogane's helmet. "Spells of protections... blessings," Fai mused. Kurogane decided that the safest course was to refrain from comment, and hope the wizard took the cue as well. He was not about to tell this spying Ceres wizard anything about Tsukuyomi.
That lasted for all of five minutes. "So, who is it that cares so very much about Kuro-chan to give them to him?" Fai's voice was suddenly mischievous, and much too close to Kurogane's ear: "Is it his sweetheart?"
Kurogane was a years experienced rider, but despite all his training his horse balked and snorted as his hands jerked convulsively on the reins. It would have served the wizard right if he fell off, but unfortunately he had a grip like a monkey. "What the hell? No!"
"No? No sweetheart yet? How very unusual," Fai laughed. "I guess the girls of Nihon are not very lucky. Or maybe they all have very poor taste."
"None of your damn business!" Kurogane growled, although despite himself he could feel his face heating up, and was just glad that the stupid nosy wizard couldn't see.
"Not a sweetheart, then." Fai said, amused, although the manic humor faded from his voice slightly. "Then perhaps -- are all the magic users in Nihon women?"
"Of course," Kurogane answered the perfectly obvious fact. Of course. The man's role was to go out and do battle, and the woman's duty was to defend and protect the home, drawing on magic to bolster her defenses. Mixing up those two roles was somehow just... weird.
"Then perhaps... a sister, waiting eagerly for your safe return?" Fai guessed. Kurogane snorted, and shook his head. "And your mother..."
"No," Kurogane said shortly, unencouragingly. He stared forward unseeingly, letting the horse pick his own trail through the overgrown ruins. They were almost to the outer edge of those ruins, now -- some of the rubble from the fallen wall had landed even here.
"How about a grandmother then?" Fai kept on pestering him. "Oh! I know. A kindly aunt? A cousin?"
Kurogane ground his teeth together. "I have no family waiting," he snarled.
"Oh, Kuro-pon, that's just too sad! You mean you're estranged from all your family? Do they not approve of what you do for a living?"
"No!" Kurogane roared, stung into an unexpected honesty despite himself. "My mother was a miko. She maintained the wards of Suwa, kept the darkness at bay." Once he'd started talking about them, it was easier to go on. "And my father -- my father was their strongest warrior. He taught me all I knew -- there was no one better, or stronger." He didn't add They're both dead now although the phrase rang in his head like a bell. It was obvious.
Fai digested this for a moment, but even Kurogane couldn't have predicted the next question to come out of his mouth. "Did you love your parents, then?"
"What the hell kind of a question is that? Of course I did!" His first urge, to punch Fai in the face or at least throw him off the back of the horse, was held in check largely by the disbelieving conviction that he must have heard wrong, surely nobody would just come out and ask something like that -- but also by the entirely sincere puzzlement in Fai's tone, as though the very concept of loving your parents was baffling to him. He actually reined the horse to a stop, just so he could stand in the stirrups and twist around to stare at Fai in astonishment. "Are you saying you don't?"
"How very interesting," Fai said, but vaguely, as though he weren't really attending. His head was turned to the side, staring hard off into the woods south of them. It occurred to Kurogane that Fai almost never answered the same questions as he asked, and that realization annoyed the hell out of him.
"Oh -- we've stopped. Good." Abruptly, the wizard braced himself on Kurogane's shoulder, swung one leg over the saddlebow, and slid down the side of the horse. "Good timing, Kuro-chan! She's almost here."
" 'She' who?" Kurogane demanded suspiciously, looking from Fai to the woods and back again. He opened his senses, but detected no hint of demonic taint within months of here, and no human presences within a mile. "Some friend of yours?"
"Oh, I hope so," Fai said. He settled on the ground, but after a few moments of trying to stand, winced and grabbed onto the stirrup for support. "You don't mind waiting just a few minutes, do you?"
Sure enough, within a few minutes, hoofbeats sounded from the copse of woods -- unshod hoofbeats, from what Kurogane could tell. A few moments later the horse itself came into sight; a dappled gray mare, unsaddled, unbridled, and with no rider in sight. She trotted up to to Fai, shied her head and sidling around Kurogane and his horse, and whickered in greeting, pushing her nose against Fai's outstretched hand. Fai smiled, a smile oddly gentler than his normal smirk.
"Is she your horse?" Kurogane demanded. But there had been no sign of mounts, or their corpses, when he'd found him. "Your party didn't have any horses with you!"
"Of course not," Fai answered, patting the strange mare gently on the head, on the neck. "Too conspicuous, too much gear. Too hard to hide. We came on foot."
"Then where did she come from?"
"Oh, she's from around here originally -- she ran wild after her people died, but she stayed close, for memory of them. Didn't you, lady?" he addressed the horse, who huffed at him.
Kurogane was beginning to hate magic, at least the way the wizard did it. "So you can talk to horses, too?"
"Anyone can talk to horses. The question is only if you can listen to them, too. And anyway," Fai addressed Kurogane directly, "you said yourself that the demons only ate human blood. I thought there must still be some beasts around, to answer my call."
"That's what you were doing, before? You were calling for a horse?" Kurogane demanded incredulously.
"A horse, or any other living thing that could carry me. I'm glad I got a horse and not a bear, though. A bear could have been awkward." Fai released Kurogane's stirrup at last, and with some awkward scrambling and pulling managed to get himself astride his new mount; fortunately the mare was not as tall as his horse. He steadied himself quickly even without the presence of a saddle or reins --Kurogane's practiced eye summed up the skill it took to do so, clearly Fai was a much better rider than he had thought -- and smiled cheerfully across at Kurogane. "Well, I guess this is where we say goodbye, Kuro-pyon!"
"What?" Kurogane demanded.
"Goodbye. Farewell. It's a usual custom for people, when they are parting ways." Fai turned to study him. "You have to continue your patrol, and I need to get home. You said you were only taking me to the border, right?"
"Are you insane? It's four days ride through the wilderness back to the northern border!" Kurogane exclaimed. "There could be any number of oni in the way!"
"I'll try to avoid them," Fai said, and smiled at him. "Now that I've learned to do so, and all thanks to you."
"All you've got are the clothes on your back," Kurogane objected, beginning to wonder why he was even doing so. Hadn't he been trying to figure out what to do with the man aside from taking him back to a Nihon prison? But this was just ridiculous. "You have no weapons, or food --"
"Oh, that won't be a problem!" Fai beamed brightly at him, and Kurogane responded with a suspicious glare. Did he mean that he expected to catch his own food, or what? Somehow Kurogane had trouble seeing the flighty man as being that woodsworthy. "It's only four days, after all."
"Yes, but --"
"Is there some reason Kuro-pon doesn't want me to go?" Fai tilted his head to the side slightly, still smiling. "Or perhaps he means that I am supposed to be a prisoner? You should say something, if that's the case."
"No!" Kurogane growled. "No! That's not what I -- Fine. You go, ride off into the woods and get eaten by oni if you want, fall off your horse and break your neck. It's got nothing to do with me."
Fai laughed. "Thank you, Kuro-pon." The mare turned herself, at no signal from Fai apparent to him, and Fai threaded his fingers lightly through her shaggy mane. "For yesterday and last night, too."
Kurogane just grunted, too off-balance and annoyed to respond in kind, and held his horse back as Fai started off; the gelding was regarding the other horse with interest, and seemed to want to follow her. "Wait," he called, before the other man quite got out of earshot.
Fai stopped, again without any apparent signal to his mount, and looked over his shoulder inquiringly. "Yes?" he said.
Kurogane nudged his horse up until he was level with Fai. "Here. At the very least take this." He pulled out the tantou, back in its sheath, and reached it across the distance between them. "It makes my stomach hurt just thinking about someone riding around out there without at least some weapon, all right?"
Fai looked surprised, and touched. Before he could say something, Kurogane kicked his mount into motion, turning away and towards the south, and feeling somewhat better for having gotten the last word.
~to be continued...