Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 37 of 42

Kevintor walked out of the bath house at first light. The two hooded guards watched him to the stream and no farther. He crossed the water and the road ended, as Shiki had said it would. He had the seven words in his mouth and nothing on his hips. The contract was still on him and the killers knew the country better than he did. He needed open ground to speak, and he needed it before they found him. He climbed off the path into a thin pine wood and found a clearing on a low rise. A stone altar stood in the center, weathered and chipped, its face cut with old script in lines he could not read. The base was wide enough to kneel on. The trees thinned around it on all sides. He could see anyone coming up the slope, and anyone coming up the slope could see him. It was the worst ground for hiding and the only ground for being heard. He stepped to the altar and knelt. He set his hands flat on his thighs. He had no swords, no knives, no boxing, no karate, no judo, no kung fu, no jiu-jitsu, no Muay Thai. He had a body that knew none of the things it had won with. His palms felt strange on his own legs, like he was touching a stranger. He fixed the seven words in his mouth and held them there. A flock burst out of the pines on the south slope. Then another out of the east. Then the west. Birds tore up in three angled sprays, screaming, wings wide. Three men, moving in line, pushing the wood from three sides at once. He had counted his time wrong. He had minutes, not an hour. He could hear boots in dead needles now. He could not outrun them with empty hands. He could not fight them with empty hands. He could only speak. He spoke the seven words into the stone. He spoke them clean and low, the way Shiki had said them. His mouth shaped each one and let it go. When the last word left him, his chest folded. A pressure came down through his ribs and pinned him to the altar. His vision narrowed to the carved script under his hands. He heard a man break the tree line behind him and stop. He heard the man say something he did not understand. He heard the man back away. When Kevintor could lift his head, the clearing was empty. The birds were gone. The boots were gone. He was alive and kneeling and still weaponless, and something inside him that had not been there at dawn was there now, quiet, waiting. He did not know its shape. He pushed up off the altar and stood. His hands hung open at his sides. The road was still ahead of him. He took it.