“Who would shoot a serow and abandon it to rot?” Sen muttered. “Gods bless these animals…”
“A dead serow,” Hakaru swore. “That’s bad luck. The gods will come into this land… they won’t abide the death of one of their own.”
Sen looked to Nihira. “Help me.” He dismounted, got down on his hands and knees and began trying to roll the serow over, gripping beneath its forelegs to drag it up the hill. A loose rock shifted in the soil and spilled out from under him, sending him sideways on the dirt beside it. But after a moment, his brothers came down to join him, and together the three of them began to work their way around the panicked animal, grunting and whining in its pain.
“Who would do such a thing?” Hakaru rose suddenly, face contorted in a scowl. Sen wondered if he was going to heave. “Who would do this…” Then, like a decision, he muttered, “Stop. Just stop. It’s going to die.”
“We can save it,” said Sen. Hakaru shook his head.
“It’s too late. Put it out of its misery.”
Hakaru strode in and made to stab the animal at the base of its skull, but the serow screamed – almost human-like, thought Sen – and buckedaway, squirming out of his grasp. It kicked Hakaru in the gut and flailed about on its back for a terrifying, chaotic moment, before it found its feet again and vanished down the trail.
“Help me!” Sen cried. But the creature had scrambled through the underbrush, and was gone.
“It seeks a quiet place to die,” Nihira said to him, “on the Godspath. Let it go.”
The sun had gone much lower now, turning the sky a brilliant splash of red and purple and near-gold, and the meadows of the valley hissed as they returned to them, rising above the no’in peasant towns and farming villages that lay shining in the sunset light. Green fronds and rice paddies bright as mirrors, bright as flame, glimmering and edged with mud.
They were about to pass the rise again when they heard it.
Someone was shouting, in the hidden dips of the hillside between them and the no’in town. The horses bucked nervously as half a dozen voices, louder, more masculine, rose over the waving grain.
It was the sound of people fighting.
“The other side,” Nihira hissed. “Hurry!”
They crossed over the crest and rode through waves of pampas grass to find a strange sight. At the bottom of the hill, four monks in robes of red and gold were beating a young no’in peasant woman beside the trail. Their hired hands, local ge’in trappers by the looks of them, watched in startled disbelief. Shouts – of anger more than pain, or fear – echoed through the valley. Sen was reminded what violent reputations the monks of the west always had. The woman was crying, cursing them, trying to get to something that was strung up on their horses.
Another serow, Sen realized, black of fur, riddled with arrows and tied up on one of the trappers’ mounts.
But the monks had thrown her back, and were assaulting her with staves and fists and sandaled feet. One grabbed her by her shoulder-length, deep-maple hair, and threw her to the dirt again.
“What is the meaning of this?” Hakaru shouted. The monks turned, foreign in their western garb, and for a moment there was a strange pause, until Nihira, sensing danger, rode before his brother and commanded them, in a surprisingly strong voice:
“Stop this now!”
He brought his mare between the two groups. “This is a wedding day, a holy day! You of all people should know better, monk!”
One of the monks still had the no’in woman by her hair, and she cried at him now: “Let me go! You killers, you—”
As the Kitano brothers drew forward, the monks came up to face them, red-robed and tinged with gold, bald heads shining with perspiration. The woman cried out again, cursing them for killing a sacred animal. Sen couldn’t hear the remainder of her words, because, in that instant, she was attacking again. She rammed the closest of them, trying to get to the carcass. Trying to pull the cord that bound its feet, and shove off the hands of the monks who came to push her away.
The one she had struck, rough, square-built, with flaming, furious eyes and a huge, flat nose, roared at her:
“You dare to strike a priest?”
He moved as if to swing at her with his long oak staff, to crush it into the side of her head.
“The heavenly discord has come to earth,” he said. “How dare you strike one of the Middle Path!”
Sen did not know exactly when he’d dismounted, sometime in the initial scuffle, when the hunters turned and the no’in woman ran toward the corpse of the serow-of-the-woods. But now he was on his feet.
“Did you kill this animal?” he shouted.
The monk stopped, scowling at him. “We are monks of the True Path of Righteousness. Who do you think you are?”
“My name is Kitanohara-no-Sen Hoshiakari,” Sen announced. “Adopted son of Lady Ogami’in, who was married today. You call yourselves followers of the One True Path? You trespass on our land. You kill this creature, sacred to our woods. You leave it there to rot.” He nocked an arrow to his bow. “I am here to tell you, lord, you have chosen a very bad day for this mistake.”
