Chapter 1 – The Body of Youngest Blood

From roads once travelled.

Drawing power from old earth.

Eyes to the mountain.

“Six Element Sword Style: Foundations of Earth.”

Three men faced Ichiro. Three. Just three. Back in the day, the bounty would have attracted five times that and they’d still have expected to lose. But three? Three was an insult, was what it was.

The dusty road cleared of bystanders; merchants and farmers, and one pop-up wine stall vendor not wanting to get involved. Even the clouds high above seemed to pull back from the impending violence, and the blistering sun shone down on them all oppressively.

The three lawmen spread out, looking to surround Ichiro. He let them. The fundamental element to Foundations of Earth was to plant your feet and claim your space. He imagined a circle in the dirt around him, six feet across. That was his space, his territory, his world. And he pitied anyone who tried to invade it.

“Surrender, Blood Ichiro,” said the lawman with a potato-shaped nose. “And no one needs to get hurt here.” He carried a katana and was circling to get behind Ichiro.

Ichiro yawned dramatically. “The sword that rings loudest is the first to break.” That definitely sounded like something a master of the blade would say.

“Huh?” said Potato Nose, now behind Ichiro.

Ichiro sighed. “Peace is the first resort for those unable to make war.”

The lawman in front of him, a broad fellow with a bald head save for a scrappy, drooping fringe stopped his advance and frowned. “That’s backwards.”

“No it’s not,” Ichiro said.

“Is too,” said The Fringe. “The Art of War wrote that War is the first resort of those unwilling to consider peace.”

Ichiro thought about it. It had been a long time since he’d studied philosophy, and that did have more of a ring to it.

“I’m right,” said The Fringe.

“Bugger off!” said Ichiro.

“Last chance to surrender,” said Potato Nose.

Bollocks to all the waiting around. Ichiro never did have the patience for foreplay. He swung his katana in a wide arc, dipping the blade so it trailed in the dirt.

“Bulwark,” Ichiro whispered. His Foundations of Earth technique ripped a wall of crumbling dirt out of the ground in a half circle before him, cutting off The Fringe and his comrade with four chins. Potato Nose charged from behind, a battle cry snarling from his lips. He crossed into Ichiro’s circle.

Ichiro turned on steady feet and met the stab, knocking it aside with a strength that flowed up from the earth and into his core. Potato Nose stumbled past him, unbalanced. Ichiro whipped his katana down and both flesh and bone parted before steel. One of Potato Nose’s arms hit the dirt inside of Ichiro’s circle. A second later, the man dropped to his knees and started screaming. It was a perfectly reasonable response, all things considered, but the wailing was a little distracting and Ichiro still had two men to fight, so he smacked Armless on the back of the head with his katana’s tsuka, then kicked him out of the circle.

The Fringe shouldered through the crumbling bulwark and froze, staring at the dismembered arm. Four Chins rounded the earth wall, roared in anger, and leapt forward, over his fallen comrade and into Ichiro’s circle. A second later, he fell out of it again, missing a leg below the knee.

The Fringe stared in horror at the body parts. Ichiro nudged a bloody hand with his boot. “I’m starting a collection. Care to donate?”

The Fringe shook his fringe. “Very wise,” Ichiro said. He wiped down his blade, then re-sheathed it and walked past the last able-bodied lawman. “Even the tiger bows its head to the dragon.” He was confident he got that quote right, at least.

There was a loud clapping from over by the pop-up wine stall. Ichiro scowled as he made his way over. Daijiro had arrived, and judging by the cart and donkey, he’d brought their charge with him. Daijiro had always been a big man, but in the years since Ichiro had seen him, he appeared to have gotten bigger, or possibly just a bit rounder. He still kept the sides of his head shaved and wore his long hair in a single braid, and his wide grin was as infectious as ever. He was wearing a patchwork of light furs in the Nash style, despite the heat of the day, and had the gall to not even look sweaty.

“I see you still like to make a dramatic show of things, Aniki,” Daijiro said, sipping from a shallow wine cup.

“I see you still like to sit on the side-lines while I do all the work,” Ichiro shot back.

“Well, you and Subaru were always so much quicker to start the fighting thing. I’m more of a negotiator,” he said, placing a hand over his heart as if he hadn’t just told the world’s most blatant lie.

The wine vendor, one Tsin Xao if the sign above was to be believed, glanced at the spear Daijiro had leaned against his stall. There was a thick fur wrapping covering the blade, but the notched haft left no one in any doubt as to the action the weapon had seen.

“Some might say negotiator,” Ichiro said. “I say you’re a lazy freeloader.”

Daijiro spread his hands and grinned. “It’s good to see you, Aniki.”

Ichiro stepped towards his oldest friend and they embraced. Daijiro clutched him tight and Ichiro slapped his back. “You, too, brother. You, too.”

When they parted, Daijiro had a rueful expression on his face. “Shame about the circumstances though, eh?”

Ichiro glanced at the cart and frowned, then he turned his gaze to where the Heaven’s Trail mountain dominated the horizon.

“I swore I’d never come back here,” he said softly, glaring at the mountain range like he could scare it into scarpering off back over the horizon.

“True,” Daijiro said. “But you also once swore you could eat an entire plate of bull testicles, then vomited all over Rock Jaw Jun.”

Ichiro smiled at the memory. “Rock Jaw was so angry I thought he’d bite my nose off.”

“He probably would have, but Subaru bought him a drink, then serenaded him like his long-lost love. How did those lyrics go?”

“I forget, thankfully.”

Daijiro grinned. “My darling, my love, my bulging Hitotsume. I yearn to swell your girth and swallow your magnitude.”

Ichiro couldn’t help but laugh. “I’d never seen Rock Jaw so embarrassed.”

“I think the old bastard was a little aroused, to be honest.”

“Still,” Ichiro said, frowning at the cart again. “I don’t want to be here, brother.”

Daijiro draped a thick arm over his shoulders and turned him towards the wine stall. “We’ll get to that, Aniki. First things first. A drink. To the Brothers Blood, reunited one last time.”

There was only one rickety stool in front of the wine stall, so Daijiro pushed it towards Ichiro, then sat on nothing, holding perfectly still as though the show off wasn’t holding himself up by nothing but a ridiculous display of core strength.

“Welcome to Tsin Xao’s House of Refreshment,” said the oily wine vendor as he poured them each a cup of wine. “We serve only the finest Hosan wines.”

“Hear that, brother,” Ichiro said. “Only the finest Hosan swill. This is Ipia, don’t you have anything with a bite to it?”

“Leave him be, Aniki,” said Daijiro, smiling. “Let the poor fellow do his job.”

Ichiro whisked up his cup, not caring that he spilled a few drops. “To brotherhood,” he said a bit more bitterly than intended. Daijiro repeated the words, then they tapped their cups together and drank.

“Gah!” Ichiro almost spat the wine out. “Horse piss tastes better than this!”

“How would you know?” the vendor mumbled as he refilled their cups.

Daijiro barked out a laugh. “Actually, he does. There was this time—”

“No!” Ichiro snapped. Some memories he did not want to relive.

“To Subaru,” Daijiro said, holding up his cup.

Ichiro knocked back his wine without repeating the toast.

“What’s with the furs?” Ichiro asked as the cups were refilled.

Daijiro shrugged. “We have a mountain to climb. I have to look the part.” He reached over and pinched Ichiro’s sleeve. “I see you’re still wearing this old thing.”

Ichiro’s haori had once been a deep black, but had long since faded to dark grey, the vibrant overlapping yellow triangles of the pattern now misshapen, fraying blobs of brown. The white crane emblem on the back was pristine though, mostly because he paid to have it re-sewn. He’d long since done away with the hakama, preferring a good sturdy pair of trousers instead. “It’s my house haori,” he said.

“Oh, I know,” Daijiro said. “But your house disowned you two decades ago for… well, for all the banditry.”

“Why do you think I still wear it?” he said with a grin.

“I’ll drink to that. To family.”

Ichiro tapped his cup. “To family.” He drank and then turned his cup over to signal he wanted no more.

“Let’s get on with it,” he said as he slipped off the stool and strode to the cart.

It was a rickety old thing, little more than two wheels slapped to a few planks of wood, with a harness for the old donkey lethargically rooting in the dust for weeds. Ichiro edged past the donkey, which eyed him but said nothing, which he was thankful for because they weren’t supposed to talk, but sometimes they did and then shit always went badly. There was a body lying in the cart, wrapped head to toe in white bandages, so not a bit of skin was showing. It smelled of herbs to stave off the stench of death and looked too small to contain an entire life. Especially one as big as Subaru’s.

Ichiro heard footsteps as Daijiro stepped up beside him, head bowed. For a few seconds, they both stared down at their brother.

“You sure he’s in there?” Ichiro said.

Daijiro huffed. “Pretty sure. I didn’t exactly lift the bandages to take a peek. Wouldn’t be respectful, you know?”

“It could be a trick. Knowing that arsehole, he’s probably waiting up at the summit with a—”

“It’s him, Aniki,” said Daijiro mournfully. “That would be a step too far even for Subaru. He’s gone.”

Ichiro grunted but said nothing.

Daijiro put a hand on Ichiro’s shoulder. “He arrived at my dojo two days ago, just like he is. The priest said they’d preserved him, as was his orders, and they gave me a letter he wrote. His last request.” He reached into his furs and pulled out a wrinkled parchment. Ichiro took it and read.

Get me into Heaven, brother. I’m counting on you. And tell Aniki he has to help.

Ichiro growled and scrunched up the note. It was just like Subaru. Always getting himself into trouble, then begging Ichiro and Daijiro to get him out of it. He’d been doing it all his life and now he was doing it one last time even in death. Ichiro tossed the screwed-up letter in the dirt and stalked to the front of the cart.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said and tugged the donkey into motion.

Daijiro paused and retrieved the note, taking a moment to smooth it out before pocketing it and hurrying to catch up.

The Oka mountain range stretched before them like a sullen boil on the horizon; oppressive, obnoxious, and foreboding. It was said, if a body was burned in the temple up on the summit of Koma mountain, at the height of the Heaven’s Trail, their soul would go to heaven, no matter the things they had done in life. So, of course, Subaru wanted them to do it because there was certainly no other way he was getting in. No other way any of them were going to heaven. But there was a problem, something Subaru’s note conveniently glossed over. The Heaven’s Trail was guarded by vicious bandits, voracious heroes, and all manner of terrible yokai. They couldn’t just climb their way to the top, they were going to have to fight their way up.