"In The Wolves' Den" by Omasu Oniwaban by The Archivist

Chapter Three

Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin characters or plot.

CHAPTER THREE

That evening, Saitoh had a soldier deliver her meal and watched her while she ate. Really, it was almost indecent the pleasure that woman got from such simple fare. The monks’ culinary efforts seemed to revolve around rice, fish and vegetables. Give him a good bowl of soba noodles any day.

When she finished, he told her that he was on patrol that night, but that a guard would be posted outside so she shouldn’t try to escape. Then he walked out and went through his pre-arranged conversation with Suichi, one of his less stupid soldiers.

He left the shoji screen a little ajar so that she’d have no choice but to overhear.

“Suichi. I want you to guard this door tonight. I’ll be gone on patrol.”

“Yes sir.” Suichi put just the right amount of boredom in his voice.

“Don’t go wandering off like you did the last time you had guard duty.”

“No sir.” sighed the warrior glumly with just a hint of impatience.

“See that you don’t.” Saitoh reached behind him, closed the shoji screen and nodded to Suichi, making a mental note to recommend him to Hijikata for intelligence gathering. The man was a natural.

Saitoh walked around the corner of the temple and sat to wait. It was dark already. Shinpachi and the evening patrol had just left. Suichi had orders to stand in front of the shoji screen for exactly one hour before ‘wandering off’ loudly.

“Hi there.” Okita, dressed neatly in his Shinsengumi uniform, rounded the corner and sat down beside Saitoh.

“Okita…” began Saitoh warningly.

“I won’t mess up your plan. I just thought you might like some company.” Okita told him, tilting his head slightly and causing his short bangs to shift against his forehead. Even when they both were sitting, Saitoh towered above the younger captain, forcing Okita to crane his neck to speak to him. It couldn’t be comfortable.

“I prefer silent company.”

Okita nodded and subsided.

The hour passed slowly. When Saitoh’s internal clock marked the end of an hour, he stood and went to the corner’s edge. Okita stood as well, hanging back behind Saitoh.

Saitoh leaned in to look around the corner. Suichi was just leaving.

The soldier stretched ostentatiously, and allowed his knuckles to graze the shoji screen as he raised his arms above his head, then clumped off down the porch.

The other soldiers had been warned to stay away from this side of the temple and avoid the practice ground. Now all that was lacking was the girl.

The minutes stretched on and on. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty, and thirty.

“Perhaps she saw through it.” suggested Okita in a whisper.

Saitoh glared. “Impossible.” Yet the girl didn’t move.

By the time another ten minutes passed, Saitoh was ready to storm into his room, pick the girl up, and throw her over the wall.

o-o-o

When the guard left, she was relieved. Now he wouldn’t hear her. Saitoh had been so angry. What if he decided to torture her tomorrow? She tried biting her tongue again, but couldn’t bring herself to actually draw blood. So much for suicide.

Unless…she searched the room quietly, but Saitoh had taken all the nice pointy swords and sharp objects with him. The one chest in the room contained only clothes. Apart from a wall scroll emblazoned with the Shinsengumi motto of ‘Aku Soku Zan’, the chest and futon were the only furnishings.

She sat back down on the futon, staring absently at the shoji screen. The guard’s shadow was still gone.

Crawling on her hands and knees, she crept up to the shoji screen and opened it an inch. There were no cries of discovery. No guard waited to pounce on her.

She opened it another inch, and then another, then crawled out on the porch and sat half in, half out of the doorway, looking around. There were no guards anywhere near the garden, just like the night when she’d crept inside.

They hadn’t even trimmed the tree back. There it was, its untidy mass of branches spreading out over both sides of the wall. Dreamily, she got to her feet. Could it be? Was she really free to escape?

She walked over to the edge of the porch and dropped off it into the dirt path below. She looked left and right again. The area was empty. The night was still, save for some rowdy late-night party animals roaming the street outside the headquarters. By the sound of it, they were going to pass right by.

Hey! If she got to the tree and over the wall in time, maybe she could join them and use them to cover her escape. Quite pleased with this plan, she began to walk toward the tree. She’d just reached the grass when she realized the noise from the partygoers wasn’t drunken celebration, but screams of hatred.

It was a riot.

Kyoto was beginning to have more and more of them lately. The Ishin Shishi instigated some as political protests, but others happened spontaneously as the peasants objected to the price of rice, or taxes, or whatever was making them anxious that day.

She hesitated and looked to her left across the practice yard.

An arrow, tipped with flame, shot over the wall and landed dead center in the dirt in front of the temple’s main building. Another joined it, then another.

The shouting outside the wall grew louder and now torches were being thrown over it. One hit a shed with a thatch roof at the far corner across the practice field from her.

Without realizing it, she’d drifted toward the flaming arrows burning into the ground. She had nothing to put the fire out, just like before.

Two blue and white-coated Shinsengumi soldiers, a tall and a short one, rushed past her from the front of the temple, yelling an alarm. They pushed open the front gate and she saw the angry crowd, some with swords but most with tools or farm implements, threatening the two guards at the gate.

When the two newest Shinsengumi joined the gate guards, the peasants attacked. She shuddered away from the sounds of steel against steel and looked over at the shed, which had caught fire.

The flames spread to a smaller shed near it.

Half dressed men began to spill out from around the edge of the temple. Some of them ran for buckets, while others, who’d had the presence of mind to bring their swords, rushed past her to help their colleagues at the gate.

She continued to stare at the burning sheds, the arrows still flaming away at her feet, the heat and smoke rising from them bringing tears to her eyes, but she couldn’t step away.

Suddenly she was back in father’s work shed, her mother’s dead body at her feet.

“Mother.” She whispered.

“Hey!” A soldier dressed in a short sleeping yukata dropped the bucket he was carrying and pulled his katana from the obi tied at his waist.

“There’s one of them.”

Dimly, she realized the soldier was pointing his sword at her, but lost in her memory, she couldn’t move as he ran toward her, sword raised to strike.

Blinking, she saw his sword begin its downward arc when suddenly another sword came in from her right and stopped it.

“She’s mine.” Snarled a familiar voice. “Leave her to me.”

Saitoh, her captor, shoved against the other soldier’s sword, forcing him back a few steps. The man glanced at her one last time, then backed away.

Turning, he ran back to retrieve his bucket and went back to helping fight the fire.

It was too much. She dropped to her knees, hugged herself and began to rock. “Please no, not mother. Please.” She whispered, still caught in the nightmare of memory.

o-o-o

Saitoh was beginning to think she’d never come out of the room. What was the attraction? His room wasn’t exactly palatial.

Okita didn’t complain, didn’t say one word, didn’t smirk or laugh. He just stayed behind Saitoh and waited patiently.

Finally, she appeared at the door on her knees.

Saitoh leaned back sharply as she looked his way, then eased his face back to the corner. She was across the porch now, dropping to the dirt and landing gracefully.

Yes, keep walking, across the path and to the wall.

Saitoh and Okita both tensed the moment they heard it. It was a crowd of rioters, coming closer.

Saitoh bit back a groan. Not now! Why did those stupid peasants have to pick tonight of all nights to riot? He had to protect the people of Kyoto, but he didn’t have to like them.

First flaming arrows then torches came over the wall. The guards at the gate cried out for help. Leaving the temple’s shadow, Saitoh and Okita raced toward them, yelling for reinforcements.

Okita wrenched open the gate and saw the crowd of maddened peasants outside. One of the guards was already bleeding from a head wound, probably from a thrown rock.

‘Cowards.’ thought Saitoh contemptuously, and then he and Okita were leaping forward as the crowd tried to surge in through the gates.

The two guards fanned out on either side, allowing their captains to engage the center. Saitoh sensed Okita duck under a swung hoe, then rise to execute his favorite three-pronged attack. Saitoh used his height to full advantage, slashing downward at his prey. The peasants in front saw their friends cut down and began to scrabble backward, but the men behind them kept yelling and pressing forward.

Saitoh’s lip curled. If the cowards wished a path to escape, he’d gladly grant them one. He crouched into a low gattotsu stance and charged, taking out four men in his way, one after another. As their bodies fell, they created a corridor. Saitoh reversed his route and charged back, slashing side to side, which caused people on both his right and left to back away to avoid being cut.

Meanwhile, Okita’s tennin rishin style attacks were thinning the crowd to Saitoh’s left.

The panicking commoners in the front took advantage of their exit route and trampled over their fallen comrades’ bodies just as reinforcements from the Shinsengumi barracks arrived. Saitoh stepped to the back of the wounded guard, and let them pass.

The rioters weren’t trained swordsmen. There was nothing in the fight to interest him.

He grabbed the guard by the back of his haori coat and jerked.

“Go get your wound fixed.” He growled in the man’s ear, then released him so suddenly that the soldier nearly fell over.

“Hey, there’s one of them!”

Saitoh turned at the shout. No one had gotten past him or Okita. He glared at the fool who suggested it, a yukata clad idiot with a bucket in his hand. Saitoh’s eyes racked the area in front of the temple, but the only one there was the girl, staring mesmerized at the flaming arrows.

The idiot dropped his bucket, drew his sword and began running with it directly at the girl.

Being tall had its advantages. His length of stride more than made up for the head start the soldier had on him.

He lunged, blocking the idiot’s blade easily. “She’s mine, leave her to me.” He snarled at the moron, whose stance was so bad that the mere flick of Saitoh’s blade caused the fool to stumble back, and retreat hurriedly.

Saitoh recognized him. It was one of Shinpachi’s squad members. He made a mental note to remind Shinpachi to drill his men on their footwork more stringently.

He looked around, not seeing the girl at first and had the insane notion that she’d somehow slipped past him through the gate. Then he saw her, on her knees rocking and crying, staring at the burning sheds.

Saitoh cursed. One of the sheds served as the monks’ bathhouse was burning merrily away. Yet another complaint would be lodged with Kondo against the Shinsengumi lodgers. At least this one wouldn’t be his fault or responsibility. The bathhouse was a complete loss. The roof had already caved in and flames were licking the outer shell.

Okita and the other Shinsengumi members were wrapping up the pursuit beyond the front gate, so Saito wiped his sword and sheathed it. He walked over to the girl. She was muttering something about fire and her mother. He sighed. She was in no shape to make a break for it tonight.

He leaned over and picked her up, one arm going around her back and the other under her knees. Carrying her back to his room was getting to be a habit with him. Only this time she was conscious and clinging to his haori jacket like a limpet. She didn’t let go even when he tried to drop her on the futon.

Bowing to the inevitable, and telling himself that he simply didn’t want to have to mend his ripped haori jacket if he tried to dislodge her deathgrip on it, he turned his back to the wall and sat on the futon, leaving her in his lap.

In the quiet of his room he could finally make out the words she kept repeating. “Like before. It’s just like before.”

He glanced down at her profile. She had that same shocked look on her face that he’d often seen on the new recruits’ faces when they first encountered a violent death.

“What is like before?” asked Saitoh calmly.

“The fire.” She sobbed. Her words came out disjointedly, interspersed by hiccoughing sobs. “Came home. Grandpa was knocked out. I thought he was dead. I smelled smoke. Father’s workshop. Fire. I screamed for help, but no one would come. Too scared. Couldn’t find mother. Saw her obi on the ground by father’s workshop. Fire was everywhere. Knew she was inside. Heard grandfather yell at me to stop, but I had to try to save her. She was there. On the floor. He’d…She was….He had….”

The sobs were getting stronger.

Saitoh kept his voice low, pacifying. “Who? Who did this?”

“Serizawa.”

Even through her tears, he heard the abject horror in her voice.

“Grandfather wouldn’t talk about it. But he dreams. He calls out for Serizawa to get out. It was Serizawa who stole our money and set the workshop on fire after he…my mother….”

She buried her head against his chest and cried some more.

Saitoh tightened his arms around her. He could imagine exactly what Serizawa had done to the mother, especially if she’d been pretty like her daughter. Serizawa had done it before.

Aku Soku Zan. For the millionth time Saitoh reminded himself why he didn’t regret in the least having purged that madman from their ranks.

“What did you do next?” he asked softly.

“I tried to pull her out of the fire, but she wasn’t moving. So much blood. She was dead, but I couldn’t leave her! They had to pull me out.”

“They who?”

“Grandfather and the oldest neighbor boy. He was too young to be afraid of the Shinsengumi.”

Saitoh felt his face tighten. With dogs like Serizawa, no wonder the girl’s neighbors had been afraid to help. Serizawa used to use his office to frighten anyone who dared to stand against him. Not that Saitoh minded a little fear if it bred respect for the law, but fear to enable the breaking of the law? That was true evil.

The girl definitely seemed to be over her fear of Saitoh, he reflected as he felt her tears dampen his newly laundered haori jacket, and her fingers crumple the front into a mass of wrinkles.

It was going to be a long night, he reflected as he settled his back more comfortably against the wall and prepared to wait her out as she cried herself to sleep.

END CHAPTER THREE

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