The 9th Fortress

Walking a while, the cosmopolitan road was an attack of the senses. To my left was the blacksmith, with an imp beating iron inside it. A little ways further was a barbershop with waiting cue; then the bathhouse, promising costumers a wash with genuine water.

A disgusted Harmony covered her mouth as we passed the local, and extremely seedy whorehouse, where the sign 'no discrimination' was planted outside its very busy door.

'Wait!' wailed one woman. 'Wait for me! Stop you folks! Please stop!'

This female came darting through the marching and deformed. 'Stop! Wait! Wait!'

Despite Kat's reluctance, I waited for her to catch us up. The woman was middle-aged with a very normal and extremely tired face. Her eyes were reddened by a lack of sleep, and the broken lines across her forehead ran deep. Reaching us, she set a heavy hand on my shoulder. 'I overheard…your discussion,' she gasped, recovering. 'You're headed to the fields?'

'Piss off!' scowled Kat.

'Hear me!' she begged. 'You are my only hope!'

'Hope for?' queried Harmony, happy to hear her out. 'Slow down and tell us your story madam?'

'My husband,' she began, 'my poor husband is lost in the fields; in one of those pits of fire and ash!'

'Why is he there?' asked Eddinray. 'And why should his soul be of any consequence to us?'

'He is an important man,' she said, desperate; 'a man with much wisdom and wealth! I promise he is!'

'But why is he in the pit?' I said, unconvinced. 'No one is there by accident, right?”

'He is there,' she returned, 'because he strangled me. He strangled me dead on the kitchen floor.'

'And you still…love him?' pried a very confused Harmony. 'Whatever for?'

'We belong together! He is mine and I am his! He still loves me, my dreams tell me so! Will you return him to my arms? Will you please?'

'Fuck off!' growled Kat, dispassionately manoeuvring us away.

'Please!' she urged, scampering after. 'My heart longs for my husband! I can't go on without him! Can't breathe without him!'

'You couldn't breathe with him!' added Eddinray. 'Away with you! Shoe!'

She did not leave us, and with her volume and desperation increasing, Kat threw his fist back into her face, and I winced upon hearing the teeth break in her mouth.

'Kat? ' cried Harmony, appalled. 'That was absolutely unca — '

'We cannot find any missing persons!' he roared over the woman, who could barely cry for the pain.

Kat left her there, dirty and broken, then glared at any faces who judged him. Guiltily we searched amongst ourselves, knowing our temperamental leader was right — not in his actions, but in his thinking. We could not offer this woman our time or our promises, and so quickly caught up with Kat.

'Samurai!' a furious voice declared over the crowd. 'Samurai!'

Shocked, we four turned to scrutinize strangers for any threat. We had no reason to search however, for the colorful crowd immediately parted to reveal a man lurking over a hitching post: the whale sized, self-appointed lawmaker of Breakneck, with a silver colt revolver in his grip and a belt full of silver knives.

'Oh dear,” sighed Harmony. 'Always trouble.'

'Where you think you're going? ' bawled Deadeye, his voice loud, clear, and spitting.

'We're leaving!' I yelled back. 'We don't want any more trouble!'

'This is none o' your concern mister! My business is with the chink and the chink alone! Now…step aside!'

Kat did not express a jot of concern — he simply cracked his knuckles and prepared himself.

'He's drunk!' exclaimed Harmony, insulted. 'Our friend is Japanese, you ignoramus!'

Bored by all this attention, Kat was keen to set on his challenger, but my clasping hand on his wrist held him at bay. 'Leave it Kat, please. Let's just get out of here, eh? What do you say?'

'He won't leave it,” he whispered back. 'He cannot.'

'Yellow bastard!' cursed Deadeye, loading only one bullet into the colt's chamber. 'Face me Kat, or I'll gun down any near you!'

'Contemptible!' hissed Harmony. 'Outrageous!'

'Step aside!' Deadeye reiterated, aiming his gun at Harmony's head. 'Or I blow pretties brains out!'

'Do what he wants,” Kat said, stoney faced. 'Get away from me. All of you.'

Obstinately, we stood with our defender as an audience appeared from every nook and cranny — the prostitutes, the bootblacks and butchers — all of them coming for a peek at any bloodshed.

'We won't move!' I yelled to Deadeye. 'Our friend doesn't have a gun! It's not a fight you're after, but an execution!'

'Get away from me,” Kat repeated, grinding his teeth.

'Are you faster than a bullet, samurai?' asked Eddinray. 'Are you?'

'Take them away, Fox,” he replied. 'Do as I say.'

Reluctantly I escorted Harmony and Eddinray from the range of Deadeye's pistol and knives. Kat stood alone now, just as he wanted, just as he prefers.

'The infamous Kat!' proclaimed the fat man, crowd reacting with appropriate awe. 'We all heard o' him! Take a good last gander people!'

They did. This was Kat in there nowhere, nothing town — a legend still in flesh, whose name sent more fighting for a better look at him.

'I call his sword!' someone cried. 'Boots too!'

'His boots are mine!' argued another. 'Saw 'em first!'

Worrisomely, Harmony, Eddinray and I where fast surrounded by these vultures, but held together by our link of hands.

'Ladies and gents!' cried Deadeye, gripping all spectators. 'Y'all know me, y'all know my name! When I came here, Breakneck was wilder than all the west — a cesspool of dirty Indians and bad men!' His colt caught the morning light and Kat grimaced down the far away barrel. 'I tamed the lot with five slugs!' he continued.

'Two of ‘em spent running out the James brothers — two more burning down Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill! Light work people! Light work! Small men with big names — men like the Kat over there — and this last bullet is for you…little man!'

He left the hitching post wobbling as he lumbered toward the town's centre. 'I made Breakneck what it is!' he added. 'It's mine! And nobody, no outlaws, no lawmen, and no chink gone disrespect that!'

Unconcerned, Kat also moved to the center of the road, the grey smoke twirling at his heels.

'We must intervene,” whispered Harmony. 'We must do something here.'

'There's no changing Kat's mind,” I answered, our samurai stopping to face the baby faced giant twenty feet away. With a twitching cheek, Kat settled both arms to the side of his hips, while Deadeye holstered his revolver. The excited crowd hushed, and the only thing moving in Breakneck now was the hairy balls of occasional tumble- weed.

'Draw!' ordered an empty-handed samurai. 'Now!'

Teasing onlookers, Deadeye would not draw on Kat's command. Instead, the bulging man took time to tickle the butt of his pistol, time to enjoy his spectacle and time to wise up the grim eyes of Kat. Beads of grease glistened down and over Deadeye's generous neck flesh, and when the moment could be held no longer, when instinct told him too, Deadeye pulled his silver shooter from the holster, aimed straight and flicked back the hammer. SHTUEW!

The shot echoed around town, the gasps followed. It was over now, yet crouched and panting, Kat was still alive. Gripping the katana before his face, there was a glob of spent bullet steaming by his foot.

No one could believe what they had seen, or thought they had seen: Kat had deflected a bullet with his blade, and all mouths hung open for a revered passage of time.

The wronged drinker with a pony for a head let out a hearty chortle at the saloon doors. The flabby cheeks of Deadeye jiggled as he tried making sense of it; and when he did recover his wits, he tossed his revolver at a thrilled Mothershud. 'Shut…'

The saloon window shattered when the gun hurtled threw it, and as bar room bums came to peer out from the lacerated space, Deadeye reached his fast fingers to his belt, and threw every available knife there at Kat.

Those reflectors glittered toward the samurai, and his sword deflected each like troublesome mosquitoes.