Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 17 of 42

By midafternoon the trees thinned and Kevintor stood at the edge of open country. The road ran straight across grass for half a day before it climbed again. He could see three farms from where he stood. He could see a woman beating a rug, a boy driving goats, and two riders on the far track. Any one of them might know his face. He stepped back into the trees and crouched. He pulled the old man's map and laid it on his knee. The path crossed a wide bowl of farmland, then climbed to a saddle marked with three skulls drawn in faded ink. Past the saddle, the dragon mountain rose in a single ridge with an arched bridge carved across the gap below its peak, the bridge's stone shaped like a coiled serpent. He could see the bridge from here, small and bright on the gray rock. It told him where to go. It also told every watcher in this valley the same thing. A voice behind him said, "You should not stand where the goats can see you." Kevintor turned with his hand near his knife. A boy in a white practice jacket and glasses stood holding a bundle of firewood. He did not look surprised. "My sensei keeps a hut past the next rise," the boy said. "He is not there this week. I sweep it on Fifthday." He looked at Kevintor's face without reaction. "You are the one on the bills in town. There is a price." Kevintor said nothing. Shinzo Thornstep shifted the wood to his other arm. "I do not want the price. I want to ask one thing later. Come." The hut sat low against a slope, half dug into the hill, roof grown over with moss. Inside the walls were packed earth two hands thick. Shinzo pointed at a trapdoor in the floor. "Root cellar. It goes under the road. My sensei used it in the war. The far end opens in a goat shed past the bowl." Kevintor knelt and lifted the door. Cold air rose. The passage was stone, narrow, and long enough that he could not see the end by lantern. A second voice came from the doorway. "He told me you would come through here." A young samurai stood with a hand on his sword, eyes wide and earnest. "I am Albert Shydoo. He said if I sat by this hut a day I would meet a champion. I sat two." He paused. "I will not ask you to fight me. Not today. I only ask—" He stopped. "Later. When you come down." Kevintor looked at the boy, then the samurai. Neither moved for a coin or a knife. He went down into the cellar with the lantern. The passage ran straight under the open ground he could not have crossed alive. When he climbed out at the far end, the goat shed was empty, the bowl was behind him, and the bridge on the mountain was close enough to count its scales.