Kuroba Asashin's Arc

Chapter 5 of 44

Kuroba came off the platform with the blonde woman a step behind him. His ribs ground when he breathed. He kept one hand on his side and the odachi low in the other. Tish moved in her heeled shoes without complaint, setting each step careful on the broken stone. The trail out of the station was easy. Boots in dust. Blood every ten paces where he had cut Kazrik's thigh. Kuroba followed the blood. It led to a low building at the end of a dry wash. Mud brick. One door. Two men outside with knives. Kuroba stopped behind a wall of stacked crates and pressed his forearm across his ribs. "Stay here," he told Tish. "If I don't come back, walk east along the tracks." "You're bleeding through your shirt," she said. "I know." "Then don't miss." He crossed the open ground slower than he wanted. The two guards saw him late. He took the first one at the knee and the second across the throat before the first hit the dirt. He pushed the door with his shoulder. The room was long and dim. Six men. Ona was on the floor against the far wall, wrists tied, a cut over her eye. Kazrik stood between them, helmet on, the greatsword in both hands. Molten seams glowed along the blade and lit the floor red. Kazrik's leg was bandaged. His weight was on the other side. "You should have stayed down," Kazrik said. Kuroba took one step and his ribs locked. He staggered. Two of Kazrik's men came in fast from the sides. He turned to meet them and knew he was too slow. Ona saw it. She braced her boots against the wall and shoved upright. Something moved through Kuroba then. It came up from the floor into his heels and climbed his spine. His arm went white along the odachi. The room slowed. He crossed to the first man and cut him open before the man's knife cleared its sheath. He was at the second before the body fell. He took that one at the shoulder and down through the ribs. The other three came at him together and he went under them, low across the floor, and cut their legs out one after another. Kazrik swung the greatsword down where Kuroba had been. The blade split the packed floor and threw sparks. Kuroba came up inside the swing and drove the odachi through the gap under Kazrik's arm, deep. Kazrik roared. He tore free, staggered back through a curtained doorway, and was gone into the dark behind it. Kuroba dropped to one knee beside Ona and cut her wrists loose. She stood without a word and picked a knife off one of the dead. Tish came in through the front door with the shard of glass still in her hand. Kuroba looked at the curtain where Kazrik had gone and did not follow. His ribs would not let him. He wiped the odachi on a dead man's coat and stood up. "We’re safe for the night," he said. "He's too afraid to come back. I saw it in him. But just for tonight. Tomorrow… we move."