Chương 17: Violence

I was still wary when it came to sleeping, well aware that another unpleasant dream could ambush me whenever I tried to slumber. But, usually once or twice a week, I'd fall asleep with Smoke pressed up beside me. The cat made it a lot more comfortable, after all. Even so, some things did not leave me.

I had been away from the war for months at this point, largely living in peace (despite that incident with the Snake Flower) and yet I remained a light sleeper, and on that night I snapped awake at the first sense that something was off. I sat up on the thin bed and listened. All was silent, save for the sighs of the wind and the hoots of nocturnal birds. Smoke looked up, blearily, a thick strand of drool linking his gob to his paws.

Part of me wanted to say it was nothing, that I was simply overly sensitive from my time at war, but I knew better than to doubt by instincts by now. I rose from the bed, adjusting my tunic in the dark, and made for the open window. From there I could see a large stretch of my acres, all the way to the fence on the northern edge of my land. And I stared unblinking into that darkness, the landscape only barely illuminated by the stray moonbeams that poked through the bank of clouds. Again, all was silent.

And then I heard it. Soft, distant, but unmistakable. The muffled laughter of men, joined by soft footsteps and the clinking of steel. I narrowed my eyes, recalling what Ryuga had said to me. If bandits were to raid, even against a small village like this, no doubt they would prefer to come from the cover of night. And to reach Tiode, most routes involved crossing my land. Smoke padded silently toward me, but he remained in place when I motioned toward him.

"Stay," I said, the word barely even a whisper. And the cat obeyed, with some reluctance. I vaulted from the window, landing quietly on the grass outside, and pressed on toward the source of the sound. A grove of shrubbery was only a modest distance beyond the end of my fence, a good enough place for any aspiring bandits to come from. I advanced, all the way to the fence, my face set in stone. If anyone was to come here, I wanted to stop them before they could do any damage to my property.

Hells, the wheat was looking good by now. I didn't want to lose it. They emerged from the trees, one by one, their steel glinting in the moonlight. Grinning, chuckling men in ragged leather armour and black wolf fur cloaks. One man stood apart from the rest, clutching a weighty halberd in his right hand. His face was concealed by a mask of painted black wood, shaped like the face of a leering hound. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"Didn't think anyone would hear us before the fun got properly started. Those are some good ears you have," the masked man said, his voice low and rasping. I stared at him silently, slowly clenching my right fist. I had to fight every impulse in my mind, the ones that told me to blast these bastards away in one explosive sweep. No, I was a different man now. Even against obvious bandits, I had to try and be a different man. A better man.

And throwing the first punch, while pragmatic, was the kind of violence I'd crossed an ocean to avoid.

"I'll ask you once, and only once, to turn around and leave," I said, watching them intently.

"Heh. He's a westerner," one of the bandits said, ignoring my words entirely as he aimed his sickle my way.

"Speaks our language like some kind of ape," said another. In his hands I noticed a strange sort of weapon. It looked like a crossbow, but on the underside there was a string of bolts held together in a wooden frame, a mechanism above the trigger linked to it.

"We can't leave, friend. We're here on righteous business." The masked man chuckled, the sound muffled by his mask.

"Well, I am. My boys here just want whatever valuables they can get their hands on. Doubt you have much to speak of, in a dingy and wet armpit of a village such as this, but... we're not fussy. Gen, kill him." The crossbowman raised his queer weapon and pressed the trigger, and there came a rattling as the strange mechanism on the rear loaded bolt after bolt, firing them one by one as it also pulled the bowstring back into place on each motion.

He'd fired three bolts in the time it would take a normal marksman to fire one, the three of them whistling through the air. I was a little surprised, never thought such a weapon could exist, but the surprise didn't hinder me much. I whipped my hand up, striking the three bolts away in a blur of motion. The broken shafts fell around my feet, littering the crushed grass. The marksman stared at me, his jaw dropping a bit.

"Cultivator!" he exclaimed.

"Last warning," I said.

"I can guarantee you that if you attack me again, you will die. Simple as that."

"Ooooh." The masked man leaned forward.

"Apologies, stranger. You must have had your qi suppressed if I didn't sniff you out. Never met a foreign cultivator before. First time for everything, huh." He cocked his head to the side, lazily aiming the tip of his halberd at me.

"I'm Inumi. Charmed to meet you." And in that moment I felt the magicka slowly rise around him, an aura of flickering blackness rising around him. The grass around his feet blackened and withered in a slowly expanding radius, a ring of pestilent death.

"And... you just made yourself a bigger target, in my eyes. Rush him." Four of the bandits came my way, their weapons raised high. I narrowed my eyes, my fists clenching as they vaulted my fence. My fence, on my land.

"I'll speak to you all in a language you understand, and one I'm unfortunately very familiar with." I was on them before they even knew what was happening. The back of my fist met the ribs of one man, a burly fellow with a bald head and untamed beard, and half his torso caved in like rotting driftwood. He fell wheezing to the earth, his scimitar falling from his hands. A cudgel struck my face but I only barely registered it, the reinforced handle snapping and exploding into splinters.

The man swinging it had only half a second to register what had happened before my knuckles shattered the top of his skull. The third man, in that same instant, had his sword arm twisted with my free hand while my left foot drove a hole straight through his gut. The last of the four men could only watch as his three cohorts dropped at once, his strange sickle and chain trembling in his grasp. On some level maybe I should have left him, he had looked as if he was about to turn and run.

But I was in the heat of things now, a familiar and sickening thrill igniting my blood like oil set ablaze. And so I stepped toward him, closing the distance before another thought could cross the bandit's mind, the bodies of his allies still in the process of falling. My right hook caught him in the jaw and took his feet from under him, and I drove his head into the ground with such force that the soil split open and his shattering skull became buried in the shuddering earth. I looked up, my gaze meeting Inumi.

He looked almost pleased, his slitted snake-like eyes alight with mirth behind his mask.

"Violence," I growled.