'Shush!'
Cursing, I rubbed my scalp as the condor started its descent. Falling like a missile, it would strike down on us in less than five seconds.
Four.
The incoming monster wings whistled like dropping bombs during the blitz.
Three.
'We’re dead!' I cried, shutting my eyes tight.
Two.
Preparing to eat, it stretched out those killing talons, opened its yellow beak, and screeched, starving.
One.
Steadfast, the samurai bent his knees and lowered his head. Then, with ferocious force, he kicked himself upward and ravaged the air with his steel.
Zero.
Both bird and man collided. I heard the thudding, ugly break of bone and bodies, and then I opened my eyes to see the feathers trickling down like winter snow.
Unfortunately, the condor wasn't dead, but wounded, unsatisfied, and pissed off. It tucked its wings back and prepared for another dive. With fear surging through me, and with no sign of Kat, I lurched to my feet and started a jog down the path. It squawked and I stumbled, picking myself up only to trip over my own feet. 'Christ!'
I ran, my fists clenched, teeth grinding, and lungs wheezing polluted air in and out. An excruciating cry burst at my ears, causing blood to run down my lobes. It was close now, so close.
Turning my head back, I saw its grips ready to spear my spine. I clenched tight, hoping to preemptively shut out the pain. Instead, and quite inexplicably, the condor exploded into a thousand feathers, throwing me forward through the air and firmly onto my face. Somehow, it was over.
I rose minutes later, nothing broken, but covered head to foot in thick plumage. Staggering, I searched for the lost samurai. 'Kat?…Kat?!' The sky was clear of birds, thank God, and the night was with us. 'Samurai?'
At last, I spotted Kat slunk against trunks like a beaten old car tire. His eyes opened when I arrived, exhaling with selfish relief over him. He had taken one hell of a knock but was alive, and I would not be left alone here. When his pupils sharpened, he appeared stunned, but not by the bash he just received. He was the samurai, after all, the protector, the legend, and yet here he was, drooped against a trunk with the feathered novice offering him assistance.
'Close call, eh?' I said, shaking. 'What the fuck was that thing?'
Kat sprang up without any help and before he was ready. 'An illusion,' he said, concealing both his pain and embarrassment. 'Someone is playing with us…”
***
We spent a surprisingly comfortable night in the woods. I was dead to that world the minute my eyes shut, dreaming over the Earth I had lost. Kat, meanwhile, set his back against a trunk, his eyes never leaving me.
We proceeded at first light, sharing the last and very nervous horse. Kat took the reins and I crammed in behind. We hadn't exchanged words since the condor incident, and by now, I had given up any plan to uncover the pieces of his past. The only important piece was for us to remain one, and to get out of these malignant woods as quickly as possible.
Our horse occasionally would trot over lumpy mounds of moss, and the old Kat would grumble in pain. It must have been a long time since he had asked his body for such a sustained level of physical and mental strength, and on this particular mission, he would need all he ever had.
Dampness lingered over early afternoon, and the path seemed never-ending. It would lead to a left turn, direct us to a right, and then another straight through the same stagnant sights. At times I would drift off, forehead bobbling between Kat’s shoulder blades, my mind in a pleasant place. All the nonsense about angel and samurai, woods and monsters might be forgotten in the stupor.
It didn't last. My weariness was wiped clear when Kat pulled up the horse. I gripped my fingers into his sides, expecting another condor attack or worse, but scrutinizing the coiled branches above, I neither saw nor heard the bird of prey.
'In front,' said the samurai, out of the corner of his mouth.
I leaned past him to see nothing but the tedious landscape I'd been trying to forget.
'Your flask,' said Kat, showing me his open palm. 'Give it to me.'
'That’s the big deal? You're thirsty? You woke me for that?'
'The flask!' he snapped.
I huffed petulantly, removed the flask from my shoulder, and placed it in his ready hand. The samurai bobbled the watery weight in the bottle before lobbing it onto the path ahead of us. It landed comfortably on a bed of soggy leaves, and there it remained.
'I’m not picking that up,' I said, annoyed, but then, I wouldn’t have to. The flask sank, leaving a solitary black hole in the earth. The land around this gap soon fell like dominoes inward, revealing a pit with a bed of spikes.
'Holy shit!' I gasped, unsure whether to admire Kat’s foresight, or to worry over who wanted us in that deadfall.
Pleased with himself, a thin smile curled on the samurai’s lips. That smile was promptly removed, for while the crumbling dirt and leaves settled in the trap, we found ourselves caught in another. At our flanks, the swarthy air between trunks, those shadowy nothings, suddenly sprang into life, leaping outward and at us with a hundred oily hands; it was an ambush.
I went stiff with fright, but Kat remained typically calm to it. The tops of these tar-colored monsters bobbled around my knees, and they were monsters, ghouls with gaping mouths hanging foul over their chests and gills squirting juice at the neck. All of them had hooked blades in their grips, but their yellow teeth looked sharper. They were piggish around the face, simple behind the eye, greedy with their fingers, and we were surrounded. 'What do you want!?' I cried from my horse. 'What are you?!'
A guttural cheer went round the group, and their jagged nails began smearing and groping. One creature pressed its bloated black lips against our horse’s coat and proceeded to lick it up and down like a living lollipop. 'What do we do Kat? Talk to me!'
Kat’s mind was busy now; he was a mathematician, calculating numbers and odds of survival. Usually odds did not matter — the numbers were irrelevant. If Kat had his sword and concentration, then nothing could stop him. Unfortunately, this was not about himself, but about protecting me, and judging by Kat’s grim body language, our odds were not favorable.
The slurry-mouthed thing that ran its lips over the horse stopped suddenly at the stallion’s supple neck. I witnessed this monster turn a sly glint back at his fellows before tearing its teeth into our horse’s throat. The horse squealed and cried until its vocal chords were torn out, until it could moan no more. The dead animal remained in a stupefied stance as the others joined to gorge on its warm gushing blood, all of them fighting for a space to drink. Their hands reached into the horse's wound and yanked out innards, then threw the slimy strands back to eager claws. The horse wobbled from side to side, and as its legs were ready to buckle, I discovered why my companion was called Kat.
The samurai first leapt to his feet, balancing like a tightrope walker on the saddle. Then — too swift for any eye here — he back-flipped over both the collapsing horse and me. I swear I heard the distinct ring of steel in my ear seconds before he landed on the path behind us, gripping his katana in a crouched and smoldering stance. Eighty or more beady-eyed monsters were focused only on the athletic samurai warrior. They watched him stand, raising the katana overhead with a daring, action-hungry smile; that sword was dripping with a congealed, dark blood — their blood.
Towering over me stood four of these mutants, waxwork-like with caught, constipated expressions. There followed an astonished hiss all around as, one by one, each of the four heads dropped from their shoulders, and their decapitated bodies collapsed soon after. I opened my mouth but only a petrified wheeze came out as I caught one deformed head in my lap.
Creatures roared and spat but did not attack. Instead, they parted to reveal another of their kind: a beefy giant, wide and powerful. In his muscle-bound arms, he held a muddy battleaxe, and he chewed a piece of horseflesh like bubble gum between his teeth. The surrounding lot respectfully lowered their heads for this giant, who wasted no time singling out members of his mob. Determined to please, a selected eight of these monsters
