The blades brush across her outstretched palm. Pampas grasses nod their fluffy crowns in the breeze. Then they turn to ash in her hand. The clotting sting of smoke fills her nostrils and a pulsing ember floats by her eyes. The village lies smouldering before her. The blackened limbs of houses puncture the grey sky. Charred bodies lie in mangled heaps.
A scream cuts across the slow crackle of burning. Fear jumps up her throat. Her pulse quickens. She grips the sheath tucked in her belt and picks her way down the mound of scorched earth.
In the village centre, by a broken well, an oni sits rummaging through the chest of an old woman. It's muzzle is drenched in fresh blood and tangles of gore dangle from its horns. Its head jerks up, away from its feasting.
'Rōnin,' it says, voice deep as the churning abyss of the sea.
'Samurai,' she corrects. She paces the outskirts of the courtyard, keeping herself sideface to the yōkai, while listening for others.
'All the same,' says the oni, turning on its haunches to keep its coal eyes on her. 'Slaves. To oneself. To a master. Slaves all the same.'
The samurai steps over a burned corpse. 'You did this?'
The oni grins, revealing the full expansion of its maw. 'Your army was here before me.'
The samurai nods at the bloody corpse beneath the oni. 'And her?'
The oni pushes the corpse aside. 'Easy pickings. Your noble warriors burned away the glyphs. Scattered the militia. Tore down the walls.'
The samurai knows it to be true. This is war, after all. This village would not surrender itself and so…
She looks around at the bodies and swallows. Nothing she can do for these people now, and she has a duty to fulfill.
'My lord cannot have yōkai snapping at his heels while he marches forward,' the samurai says. 'Your kind are a plague on the kingdom of men.'
The oni laughs, a sound like knuckle bones being crunched together. 'Who are you trying to convince?'
It stands to its full height, twice as big as her. She comes to a halt, the bleary sun at her back.
'Slaves,' says the oni, taking a step forward. 'To law. To pride. Slaves all. That flesh is a prison, let me release you from it.'
With her thumb, the samurai pushes the hilt of her sword just free of its sheath.
Paddy Dobson
26th October 2020