Chương 16: The Huntress

The Black Hounds were hardly difficult to track, but then again it seemed they weren't making much of an effort to cover their tracks. And, well, Yomi was willing to bet they weren't a particularly bright group to start with. She had seen the smoke rising from the ruins of the trading post well in advance, and had reined her cassowary to a halt on a hill so she could get a better look from afar through her spyglass. She knelt there, shaded by the trees and the shrubs, and chewed a pellet of mint as she did so.

There was nobody out that way but corpses, carrion birds, and loping bonehounds.

"Shit," she huffed, catching the pellet between her incisors.

"Too damn late. Again." She rose to her feet, one hand resting on the grip of the billhook sheathed on her belt. She made her way back over to Hagure, the black bird lazily pecking at a few interesting specks on the road, and mounted up again. A chilly and damp breeze rose up her way, fanning the fur trim of the cloak she wore. She pulled it closer with one hand, the other giving Hagure's reins a swift flick. The bird cawed and hurried downhill, taloned feet kicking up plumes of dust on every speedy step.

The carrion crows took off as she drew near, taking with them whatever chunks of blackened meat they could shove in their beaks. The bonehounds were more stubborn, baleful red eyes glowering at her from behind the helmets of sculpted bone that sprouted from their flesh. But a quick flash of the billhook, and a rustle of pressure in the air from Yomi's qi, was enough to get them yelping and scattering. The scavengers didn't have much in the way of bravery, particularly when they faced the Intent of someone like her.

It was much the same with humans too. Yomi scanned the corpses on the roadside, and then inspected the burned out interior of the post. To her complete lack of surprise, just about everything of value had been stolen from the place. The cargo left strewn about from the smashed boxes was the kind of junk that couldn't be eaten, smoked, drank, or sold off for a big profit. The Black Dogs were nothing if not consistent in their thieving ways.

"Fucking vermin," she said, turning and spitting her pellet of mint into the ashen soil. She turned to Hagure, the scar-faced bird watching her with his head cocked to the side.

"I know, I know. We shouldn't waste much time here, but... well, I'm probably not getting into the Hereafter if I don't put more good deeds under my belt, and the Great Goddess responds well to folks burying the untended dead." She pulled a shovel from the side of the saddle, because it was just common sense to travel with a shovel, and set about her work. And while she tried to rationalize it aloud, telling herself she was doing this to get a foot in the door of the afterlife...

the plain truth was it simply wouldn't have sat right with her to leave those corpses to rot. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. It was a long process, even with qi burning in her meridians, but she was well experienced when it came to digging ditches at this point at least. Her quarry had made it easy to learn, leaving a bloody trail of corpses for her to follow and tend to.

The sun was dipping into the horizon as she packed the last piece of soil into place, leaving a great tract of tilled earth by the side of the burned out wreckage.

"Think I've lost track of how many they've killed by now," she muttered, reaching up and wiping streaks of sweat and soot from her brow. Nobody who knew Yomi would have considered her a feminine woman, same way most of the mountain women got looked down upon by the 'civilized' lowlanders... but, here and now, she really wouldn't blame anyone for thinking her a filthy thug, caked in ash as she was. Hagure pulled his head back and squawked, kicking and scratching the road with one foot.

"I know, I know, keep your feathers on you big bitch," she huffed, hooking her shovel back into place.

"Way I figure? They can't go much further south. We're damn near the souther tip of Tsukio at this point, only a few other settlements of note to fine. So either we catch them before they reach the end of the whole damn island, or they run into us when they loop back northward. Either way, their days are fucking numbered." She pulled a map from her saddlebag and unrolled it.

It hadn't been a cheap one, the man she'd robbed it from had paid a pretty pile of gin for it, and it outlined the southern half of Tsukio in fine detail, listing even the smaller, insignificant villages that tended to get overlooked by the cheaper maps.

"Tiode," she murmured, shifting the mint from one side of her mouth to the other.

"Never heard of it." The place was so small it could have passed for a smudge of ink on the map were it not for the name written beside it. Yomi set the map in her bag, turned southward, and let qi swell into her muscles again. Way of Shadows: Raven Wings. Darkness swirled about her in inky black tendrils, the air distorting in their presence, which rapidly coalesced and sculpted into the shape of a bird with great unfurling wings.

It perched upon Yomi's shoulder, break opened wide to great the world with an echoing caw.

"Yeah yeah, I hear you Feathers. Quit cawing and head south. I need to see how much further those bastards have gotten." The raven, the edges of his body smoking like used coals, cawed again and took to the air with beats of his broad wings. He could fly far faster than a normal bird, and could cover a distance of many kilometers without the risk of the connection breaking. And, if she focused upon it, she could see through Feathers' eyes as if they were her own.

The assassin arts of her old sect, even though she had walked away from it years ago, always came in handy. It was just a shame the masters of the sect had been such insufferable old bastards... Then again, sect life really hadn't been for her. All that meditation, contemplating the sky and the mountains, bowing and scraping to punks who would have been worthless if they didn't have a family name to prop them up... Boring, so boundlessly boring.

Being a bounty hunter may not have been a glamorous life, but it at least gave Yomi some measure of entertainment. Sighing, she pulled herself into the saddle. Hagura grumbled, a growling and clucking sound in the back of his long neck, and she placated him with a handful of grain.

"Quit your griping, would you?" she said.

"You're lucky you're cute, otherwise I'd hoof the countryside on foot." She gave the reins a quick flick, and then they were off. Those bastards were close, she could feel it. One more day of chasing, by her reckoning, and then... then she could give those bastards what they were owed.