“Hold him!” The fox’s voice was furious, but it faded like a waking dream as Toshi disappeared.

  He slipped through the kitsune’s grip like a ghost: silent, intangible, invisible. He could not be seen nor heard, but he was there, watching as they stamped their feet and cursed his name in frustration.

  Through it all, the tall, elegant form of Michiko stood impassive. When the foxes had worn themselves out and exhausted their vocabularies, the princess strode to the spot where Toshi had escaped them all.

  “I may yet call upon you, reckoner,” the princess said severely. “Or I may send soldiers for you in the night. Until then, wait. Wait and worry.”

  Without another word, Michiko turned and walked away. She gathered Riko under one arm and Lady Pearl-Ear under the other, and the women supported each other as they went. The three kitsune samurai fell in behind them. The tallest turned, glanced into Toshi’s cave, and spat on the ground.

  “See you soon,” Toshi called, though his words made no sound that anyone else could hear.

  He watched them go, waiting patiently for the opportunity to move. As an intangible phantom, he was not yet fluent in the basic mechanics of moving around. It was harder with no friction and no ground, and it took him almost an hour to complete a single step.

  He sighed, relaxing for the first time in weeks. He could barely move, so he might as well lie back and rest.

  As the tension drained from his body, Toshi slowly faded back into view. His feet settled back onto the bloody ground, and he quickly withdrew back into the shelter of the cave.

  A breeze stirred the leaves on the trees, and a pair of birds exchanged mating calls. Somewhere in the distance, dog howled. Thunder rumbled overhead, and the powerful vibrations echoed across the ground.

  Toshi looked up. He cleared his throat and said, “Shh.”

  The world around him went dead as if his ears had been stuffed with wax. Perfect.

  The Kami War raged on, the soratami were out to get him, and he had made a whole lot of new enemies besides. On the bright side, he had sold his services to a princess and he had honored his debt to Kobo. Toshi pondered for a moment, then decided he would allow Hidetsugu a few days to settle down before returning to the ogre’s hut to plan his next move. Until then, he thought, I need to rest.

  The ochimusha headed for the deepest recesses of his cave where he hoped to find solitude to complement the silence.

  The sun was setting over the hinterlands near the Sokenzan Mountains. The landscape was dull and beige and hard, as always, but a threatening bank of black clouds was gathering overhead. Soon it would rain and the badlands would become a temporary lake, making all travel impossible.

  Hidetsugu the o-bakemono trudged along the path from his hut. He carried a small sack in his great jagged hand.

  It had been days since Toshi’s messenger had arrived with the news of Kobo’s death. He didn’t trust Toshi as such, but he knew that their oath was still in place. The ochimusha could not have caused Kobo’s death by action or inaction while the pact was still valid.

  Toshi had been clever not to send more information than he did. The slightest extra detail, the barest hint telling where Kobo fell would have been enough. Nothing would have stopped Hidetsugu from traveling to his apprentice’s body and killing every living thing he found there. He might have killed every living thing on his way there and his way back, for good measure, and that’s probably why Toshi had kept the message so brief.

  Hidetsugu reached the garden of spikes where he displayed the heads to scare off visitors. He reached into the sack, drew out two akki and one bandit, and arranged them evenly among the empty spikes. The human’s head was still fresh, and the smell of blood and brains brought a growl from his stomach.

  The ogre shaman lumbered back to his hut, sticking to the precise center of the path. Just beyond the garden was a vast pile of dust and gravel. Days ago, it had been the great stone block he had set as a test for his apprentice. When Kobo could split the rock down the center with a single blow, he would be ready to leave Hidetsugu’s service.

  Hidetsugu looked around until he spotted the smashed and ruined hammer. Under his own fury, the testing stone had proven more durable than the testing hammer. Hidetsugu had been forced to create the rest of the gravel pile with his bare hands. The knuckles on his left hand were still bleeding.

  He came closer to his hut, and then Hidetsugu stopped. He lifted his massive snout and sniffed the air. Visitors? he wondered. Better now than tomorrow, he reasoned. The rain would keep even the most suicidally curious away, and he was swiftly growing hungrier.

  Hidetsugu was patient for an ogre. He simply stood, staring, until the visitor came hurtling down from the clouds. From the screams, Hidetsugu took him for a female, but as the figure drew closer, he saw that it was a human male.

  The white-haired wizard in student’s robes sailed in like some unruly bird, slamming hard into the dusty ground at Hidetsugu’s feet. Even in his hunger and his lingering rage, Hidetsugu could barely muster the interest to deal with this intruder. He was clearly not in control of his own flight. Maybe the bandits had sent the o-bakemono a gift.

  The mark on Hidetsugu’s shoulder throbbed, and the ogre became instantly more alert. It occurred to him that someone else may have sent him this gift.

  Hidetsugu reached out to where the exhausted, coughing youth lay. He pinched the back of the young man’s robe between his fingers and lifted him to eye level.

  The student’s eyes cleared, and he screamed. He flailed and thrashed in Hidetsugu’s hand, clawing and hammering at the ogre’s fingers. Hidetsugu stared at the wizard without seeing him, staring only at the mark burned into the flesh below his white shock of hair.

  “I see you know Toshi,” Hidetsugu growled. The wizard’s wet face froze and his throat hitched. He opened his mouth, but only a wet squeak came out.

  “I also see you are a student. I recently lost my student. But you already know that.”

  “Please,” the wizard croaked. “In the name of the holiest kami—”

  “You can pray to kami here if you like,” Hidetsugu said. “But I know that my oni has eaten them all.” He lifted the wizard high over his own head, and the youth screamed. His robe started to tear, and Hidetsugu opened his gaping mouth wide, jagged teeth the size of swords glistening in the dusk.

  The wizard stopped struggling, fearful of tearing loose and falling.

  “No. Please, no.”

  “From this point forward, you may call me ‘master,’ and I will call you ‘excrement.’ Most of my apprentices don’t survive the first week. But you will be more than my apprentice. You will be my hobby.”

  The wizard screamed again as Hidetsugu tossed him into the air like a shelled nut. He spun end over end until he came down lengthwise across Hidetsugu’s open jaw.

  The ogre chomped down, hard enough to bruise bones but not to break them. Not yet. The wizard shouted, vomited, and went limp, moaning as Hidetsugu’s jaws held him fast.

  “Lesson one.” Hidetsugu’s voice was muffled as he spoke around the human in his mouth. “You will call me ‘master.’”

  “Master,” the wizard moaned.

  “Good.” With the semi-conscious wizard in his teeth, Hidetsugu stomped toward the doorway to his hut. With each new step, the wizard winced and wept.

  Hidetsugu ducked his head and disappeared inside his hut. A short time later, the screams began.

  Long, long before they stopped, it began to rain.

  About the Author

  Scott McGough was born and raised in New Jersey. He learned to tell stories at an early age, when it became clear that he needed an alternative to getting caught and punished for all the stuff he did. He was further encouraged by family and friends who practiced a kind of conversational Darwinism, where the weak and the slow were gleefully torn to bits by the sharp and the strong.

  He is currently a freelance author and editor who lives with his wife Elena, two beautiful cats, and two psychotic herding dogs. He longs for the days when authors were paid by the word…or at least, he wishes he had a dime for every time his wife has asked, “Are you still talking?”

  MAGIC: THE GATHERING, MAGIC, WIZARDS OF THE COAST, and their respective logos are registered trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc., in the U.S.A. and other countries. ©2004 Wizards.

  OUTLAW: CHAMPIONS OF KAMIGAWA

  ©2004 Wizards of the Coast, LLC

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  MAGIC: THE GATHERING, WIZARDS OF THE COAST, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC, in the U.S.A. and other countries.

  All Wizards of the Coast characters and the distinctive likenesses thereof are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004106767

  eISBN: 978-0-7869-5711-8

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  Scott McGough, Outlaw, Champions of Kamigawa: Kamigawa Cycle, Book I

 

 

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