Kuroba Asashin's Arc

Chapter 20 of 44

The next morning the ground shook. Kuroba was on the porch with Kenji when the first tremor rolled up from the north scrub. Tish came out with wet hands. Jackie stepped from the hall in a clean shirt, one blade at his hip. Ona was already at the gate with her bow strung. The dust rose past the far ridge in a wall. Kuroba stood and counted the shapes at the front of the herd. Forty. Then sixty. Then more than he cared to count. The bull at the point was bigger than the one they had killed. Plate armor ran from its skull to its ribs. It had smelled the blood on Jackie's shirt from the day before, and it had brought the whole herd. Jackie looked at Kuroba. Kuroba sat down on the porch boards and set the odachi across his knees. "Not mine," he said. Ona turned from the gate. "You can end this." "I can. I will not." Kenji folded his hands in his lap and closed his eyes. Tish went back inside and bolted the door. Jackie stared at the dust wall for a long second. Then he spat in the dirt and drew the blade. "Alright, bro," he said. "Alright." Ona climbed the gatepost and read the ground. The bowl sloped down toward the dojo from the north. To the east ran a dry wash with a hard lip. To the west, thorn. She dropped back down. "Push them east," she said. "The wash will fold the front line. The rest will pile on their own." Jackie nodded once. He did not ask how. He ran wide along the west flank, low through the thorn, and cut across the front of the herd close enough for the bull to see him. He waved the blade and shouted. The bull turned its head. The herd turned with it. Ona put three arrows into the near flank of the lead cows on the west side, fast, one after another. The wounded animals shied east into the mass. The bull followed the movement. Jackie kept running east, staying just ahead of the horns, cutting the angle tighter. He hit the lip of the wash and rolled off it flat. The bull did not see the drop. It went over the edge at full run and broke its neck on the far wall. The herd behind it piled in. The ones that did not fall stumbled and turned. Ona kept shooting. Jackie climbed the far side and cut the throat of a cow that had come up on its knees. By noon the wash was full and the rest of the herd had scattered north. Jackie walked back through the dust with blood to his elbows. Ona met him at the gate and took the blade from his hand. Kuroba stood up from the porch. "Well done." he said. Kenji opened his eyes and nodded once.