Read Online Death at the Crossroads by Dale Furutani - Free Book Online Page A

thinking about something like killing me to make him shake so.” Kaze heard a gasp behind him. Then he heard the person behind him step back. Good.
    “If we have to, we’re not afraid of killing you!” Yellow Teeth said.
    “That’s right, we’ve killed before.”
    “Oh? How many times?”
    The one with yellow teeth puffed out his chest. “I’ve killed three men! All were smart mouths like you, who didn’t give me their money!”
    “And I’ve killed four!” his companion said.
    “Seven men. That’s certainly a life’s work to be proud of. Your mothers did a service when they brought you into this world. And how many has the one behind me killed?”
    “I’ve killed lots,” said a young voice from behind Kaze. It had a quaver to it.
    “You sound too young to have killed many men,” Kaze said without looking behind him.
    The two men in front of him laughed. “Pretty good, samurai,” Yellow Teeth said. “Even this stranger can tell you’re a virgin at killing men, boy. An experienced killer would have run this smart mouth samurai through long ago. Like this!”
    Yellow Teeth lunged forward with his spear. Kaze stepped to the left and grabbed the shaft of the spear with his left hand as it passed to his right. Spinning in a complete circle, Kaze drew his sword with his right hand and had it swinging in a deadly arc when he completed his spin. The blade caught the man with the sword, who was rushing forward to help his companion. The sword bit deep into his neck and thorax, sliding out as the man’s momentum carried him forward.
    Kaze let go of the spear and brought his sword upward into the side of the spearman. The razor-sharp blade cut into the man’s side, slicing deeply just under the rib cage. The man staggered backward, holding onto his side with a surprised look on his face. He lost his footing and fell backward onto the road.
    Kaze quickly turned. He was facing a youth holding a spear in trembling hands. Behind him, Kaze could hear the hiss of air burbling from the sliced neck of one man and the groans of pain from the other. Both were dead, or soon would be, and Kaze just had to be careful that the man cut in the side didn’t have the strength to make a last effort to kill him.
    Kaze’s eyes met the young man’s. “Well?”
    The youth dropped his spear and started running down the road, propelled both by the downhill slope and a jolt of terror. Kaze shook his head and turned to view the two bodies. The entire incident had taken seconds.
    Kaze walked over to the man cut in the side. He was desperately trying to hold the pieces of his belly together while his lifeblood gushed out. Kaze put his sword at the ready, prepared to give the coup de grâce. “Should I?” he asked.
    The man looked terrified and violently shook his head no. Kaze lowered his sword, wiped it clean on the man’s clothes, and put it back into its scabbard. Then he dragged the man to the side of the road, where he could lean back against a tree out of the sun.
    He went to the man with his neck cut but saw that he was already dead. By the time he returned to the man with the cut side, he was dead, too. Kaze looked down at the dead bandit and reflected on the human tendency to sustain a few more miserable seconds of existence in this troubled world. Sometimes it didn’t make sense to him, especially since men would be reincarnated and live again. He sighed. He desired to be free to live or die as he wished, instead of tied up by debts of honor and obligation.
    Before she died, the Lady had said, “Find my daughter.” It saddened Kaze to think of that night and all that led up to it. Instead ofthe serene beauty he associated with her, the Lady’s body was twisted and ravaged by the torture she had endured. Her face was haggard and lined with pain, and Kaze was desperate to find some warm, dry shelter for her. Instead, she was lying in the rain under a crude bower Kaze had constructed from tree limbs. After rescuing her