Dororo: Part One
Nakamura Masaru
Part 1: Hyakkimaru
Chapter 1
Tucked away in the corner of a desolate wasteland, there was a bustling town where people still clung to a meager living. The world around them was at war. Everyone assumed that tomorrow would be their last day on earth.
The atmosphere inside the town was lively, almost festive. Desperation bred hedonism. There were gambling stalls, taverns, and places to hire companionship along every hedgerow.
The town hadn’ t always been like this. War had made it that way. With death always close by, people prioritized doing the things that made them want to keep living. Life in town was a sharp contrast to life outside the walls, where battle ceaselessly raged. Everyone lived under constant threat of being blown limb from limb by a bomb, blood spraying everywhere, or being chopped in half by an enemy no one really understood.
The people lucky enough to survive the constant battles were often missing arms and legs, eyes and ears. These survivors could not forget their hurt no matter what pleasures they indulged in. They talked to one another, commiserating.
Even one battle coming close to the walls resulted in great fear and unrest. Fear had a way of encouraging shame. Cowards took up arms to defend themselves on occasion alongside brave men and women. Cowards who were braver than they ’d believed sometimes managed to distinguish themselves. More often than not, the brave died.
The sides of the war were never entirely clear. The enemy was whoever was trying to kill you. No one knew why. It was kill or be killed, and this cycle had continued for as long as anyone could remember. People talked about the war, thought about it, ruminated, and formed theories, but no one truly knew what it was all about.
But even if the truth was known, people would have disagreed about it. People love disagreements. That simple fact could explain the endless war all on its own.
What was true was that the war existed. It seemed like it had always existed. There was no longer any distinction between it and the wars that had come before: it was simply “the war,” and everyone knew what was being referred to.
Two people will stop in this town, traveling through the war-torn world, and leave together.
Tucked away in the corner of a desolate wasteland, there was a bustling town where people still clung to a meager living. The atmosphere inside the town was lively, almost festive. High-pitched laughter echoed along the street.
It was a winter evening, and Dororo and Hyakkimaru were there. At the time, Dororo wasn’t called “Dororo,” because Dororo hadn’t met Hyakkimaru yet. Hyakkimaru wasn’t called “Hyakkimaru” yet, either. “Hyakkimaru” was what Dororo would call him.
The snow shone bright in the storm. Thunder rumbled faintly in the distance. The storm had started well before the snow had fallen, lightning illuminating the world in bright flashes.
Dororo heard the thunder and looked around, eyes flicking over his surroundings as fast as speeding arrows. People passed him in a mad rush, calling out to one another and taking shelter in lit buildings, but no one else seemed to be overly concerned about the lightning flashing overhead.
Dororo was a wanderer who usually preferred to be alone and outside, but no one enjoyed being trapped alone in a snowstorm. The only advantage the storm gave him was that the people p assing by were distracted and in a hurry. Now might be good time to pick a target.
Not everyone was in town for pleasure. Unfortunate refugees poured in from other places, looking for a safe place to stay. Dororo saw some people being carried down the street in cages. Prostitutes, men and women both, ducked into the meager shelter provided by the roofs of some of the buildings. Many of the prostitutes looked awfully young--far too young for this kind of life. Bars and food stalls harvested the corpses of horses and cows and boiled their meat. Dororo caught a whiff of rot on the air, mixed with the tang of salt.
Along one street that led to the main road out of town, recent arrivals had made a sort of camp. Their wagons, carts and belongings were all haphazardly jumbled together. This was where people lived when they had no place else to stay. They made a living selling what they could until they could land a better job--if they ever did. Some people sold their wives, or their children, or themselves into slavery, not usually out of cruelty, but to secure a roof over their heads and regular meals.
Well, war begets disaster. This sort of thing was happening everywhere, in the lands of both the Winding Snake and the Centipede. It didn’ t truly matter which side anyone was on. The suffering caused by the war was strangely just in being equal.
Sides were fluid in this town as well as many others. A city or village might stand up for the Winding Snake one week, find itself crushed in battle and wind up supporting the Centipede the next. Most people kept track of the way the wind was blowing and switched sides constantly so that they would never be working for the losers. It was an exhausting, mercenary sort of game.
But playing the game was unpredictable. Both sides had bombs that could wipe the tiny town off the map in a single hit. That hadn’ t happened yet, but it could happen any day. Many survivors considered themselves fortunate to have lived this long. Maybe they expected the war to end, and that they would be saved. Even if they didn’ t, they had no choice but to sell what they could and cling to life for as long as possible.
And then, there were the people who had been sold...and people more unfortunate still.
Dororo took it all in with an expression of vague indifference. If he felt sorry for any of the people around him, he didn’t show it.
What are they doing, sitting in those cages all quiet and calm? If they broke out and stole something like that hairpin over there, they could sell it and get by for awhile. Or, shit, just run out of town and live on bugs. If they ’re just gonna sit there, why should I feel sorry for them?
Dororo had passed through two or three towns almost identical to this one recently. In each of them, the desperate poor had been driven to sell their own kin for survival. Wealthier people who had lost their villages and homes streamed into places of relative safety like this and gambled, bought women, drank, and ate expensive food. They were no different from yakuza gangs, only they were never prosecuted for illegal activity. There was no one to prosecute crimes. Women were sold for prices fixed by the black market.
Dororo had seen many a woman hurled out on the street after being used. He had observed and felt the terror and grief of the world he lived in, but he displayed none of his feelings on his face.
That shit ’s never gonna happen to me. I won’ t be put in a cage. Ain’t no one gonna use me, ever.
Dororo’s clothing was very old, stained, and ripped in places. He gripped the wooden handle of the knife concealed in his breast pocket for reassurance. A raised wooden mosaic on the scabbard comforted him when he looked at it. The knife inside was what Dororo called his Claw. He kept his hand on it as he decided who he’d go for tonight.
There was a group of four punk kids traveling along the street together. The one out in front was as fat as a porker and dressed in a bearskin. Dororo guessed that he was the leader. Judging by the way his buddies talked to him, he hadn’ t been in charge for very long. The leader was like a slightly larger sea creature in a school of fish. The smaller fish followed him because he provided the illusion of security. Dororo heard the faint clinking of coins and guessed that this group was fairly wealthy by the standards of this town.
Dororo watched the guy in the bearskin and his more timid followers pass by. A catlike smile curled the corners of his mouth upward. He was a skilled and experienced thief; it was just this group ’s bad luck that they’d managed to catch his eye.
Dororo approached the guy in the bearskin and the three men following him from behind, then sprinted at them.
“Shit! Get out of here! Run!” Dororo shouted at the top of his lungs.
The group of young men was briefly distracted. Dororo reached nimbly into the leader’ s clothes, relieved him of his coin purse as fast as blinking, then dashed up the street.
“What is it?” one of the leader’s followers called out.
“Oi, you! Stop! Tell us what’s going on!”
The guy in the bearskin didn’t seem to understand what was happening. He looked at his followers, puzzled.
Dororo glanced behind him. No one was chasing after him so far.
The leader of the punks wiped sweat from his brow, then scratched his side. “What?! My money is gone!”
His followers checked their own wallets and coin purses. “Mine’s gone, too!”
“And mine!”
“Who took it? That panicked kid?”
“That bastard!”
The guy in the bearskin and his followers finally started to give chase. Dororo ducked out of sight and waited for them to pass him by. He hadn’ t noticed before, but this group was slightly drunk. Their tipsiness made them trip over their own feet.
One caught sight of Dororo, so he slipped into the crowd, moving as smoothly and swiftly as a snake. He’ d done this many times before and was assured of his own skill. If he was singing his own praises before he’ d fully secured his stolen money, it was because he knew that the hard part was over.
“Shit! Where did he go? Is he some kind of falcon or deer that can just run off and disappear?”
“Out of the way!”
“Find him! Catch him!” the leader snarled. He used his bulk to actively push people down and out of his way, running at Dororo in a straight line, but Dororo was too fast for him to keep up with. He had a strong arm, but his extra weight tired him out quickly as he ran. The figure of the thief in front of him receded farther and farther into the distance.
The guy in the bearskin shoved his followers ahead of him and stopped running. He caught his breath, then said in a tone of command: “ Catch him! He stole our money! We have to get it back!”
“We’ll get him, boss!”
The man’s followers chased after Dororo. They were faster than their leader had been, but Dororo also had a huge head start.
Pah. You ’ll never catch me. Even a falcon’ s not fast enough. Do you think I’m a salmon, and that I ’ll be devoured by you, bear-man? If I were a bird, I’ d have time to lay eggs and find more food before you could even lay a hand on me.
But Dororo had run a long way, and he was now in a part of town that he’d never been to. He didn’t know where he was.
Though he called himself a man, Dororo was obviously a woman--and might be a beautiful one, underneath all the filth, grime, and obvious signs of malnutrition and long poverty. Dororo did not care about gender or appearance, and few people were able to tell his biological sex at a glance. Dororo was also not the sort of person who was interested in stealing men ’s hearts, or in sitting quietly in a house as someone’s wife. He’d relied on himself since he was ten years old.
Dororo never talked like a woman, either. His favorite words were “shit” and “whatever. ” Sometimes he sounded so much like a soldier that he surprised himself.
A fortune-teller in a cheap bar flitted from table to table like a tiny mountain sparrow. “Care to have your palm read? ” he asked.
Because people tended to come from all over, a number of pagan and heathen customs had taken root in the town over the years. This town had been built around a temple, and in peacetime people had prayed at it, but the war had all but reduced it to rubble. Besides, people rarely prayed that things would go well anymore, at least not here. Individuals carried their religious sentiments with them, but there was no formal town religion, just like there was no established law. This bar was constructed on the ruins of a pagan temple.
“What do you say? Want to know your future? I’m never wrong...”
The fortune-teller came to this bar every night and followed a set script. The words fell out of his mouth as automatically as breathing.
“Isn’t there anything you want to know?” the fortune-teller asked. “It’ s better to see your enemy coming, eh? You’ll live longer if you know what’s going to happen...”
The fortune-teller didn’t get much business these days. The world was so hellish that it was hard to believe in the mercy of the Buddha or any gods. Even the prospect of prolonging one’s life wasn’t all that appealing with the world as it was.
“Maybe you want to know when the war will end...?”
The fortune-teller bumped into someone at one of the tables. “I’m sorry,” the fortune-teller apologized immediately and extricated himself from the people sitting packed four or six to a table.
There was a young man sitting in a corner of the bar all alone, dressed in black with his eyes cast down.
“What about you, sir?” the fortune-teller called out to the man. “Want to have your palm read?”
A musical performance started on the bar’s stage. The music so loud that it almost drowned out the fortune-teller’s voice.
The stage was an upraised platform in the center of the bar. It was all that remained of the pagan temple where gods had once been worshiped. There were no altars there now, only half-clothed men with strange tattoos and bare-breasted women. They laughed as they danced, darting around one another like a colorful school of fish.
There was nothing they could do but dance. The performers had lost their families, their home villages, and anything that would have made their lives worth living. They had no reason to live, but they also didn’t want to die: not yet. They danced in the awareness that they were survivors standing on a mountain of corpses.
As for why they laughed, I might have done the same thing in their position. There are situations where you can either laugh or cry--but not both.
The music transformed the atmosphere of the bar completely. Only the young man in the corner looked away from the performance with a sour expression.
What ’s wrong with him? the fortune-teller thought. He ’s about as cheerful as a dead crow.
The style of the young man’ s clothing was foreign, but it was impossible to tell exactly where he hailed from just from his clothes. They were filthy and in a bad state of repair, though most of the rips were at the cuffs and hems. His cloak was made of more patches than of the original material used to make it. Though patchwork and crudely sewn, the cloak was largely uniform in color. The fortune-teller got the sense that it was made more for camouflage than to keep the rain out.
Some people get very serious when they ’re drunk, but he smells sober. The stitching on that cloak is so bad that I see holes--more than a dozen of them. Doesn ’t he get cold? Why keep a cloak that badly torn?
The cloak served at least one obvious purpose: it was large enough to completely cover the young man’s body. What the cloak didn’t cover, the rest of his clothes did. His face was mostly obscured by a black hood.
The fortune-teller snorted. A man like that... he probably doesn’t have any money.
“Let’s have a look,” the fortune-teller said. “Give me your hand, sir, and I ’ll tell you the future.”
The young man didn’t offer his hand, but he didn’t resist when the fortune-teller pulled it up to have a look.
The fortune teller looked at the man’s hand, then up at the man himself. “What the hell is this?” The expression on his face showed mostly confusion, but also a twinge of fear.
“You can’t possibly be... no. I thought you were dead.”
The man didn’t react. He was watching the stage now. People in the bar clapped along with the music. Some danced to the same rhythm as the performers.
A woman in a mask emerged from behind the stage’ s curtain to join the other performers. The young man stared at her extravagant clothes and white legs with a fixated expression. She appeared to be some kind of diva. She was the bar’s top performer.
The woman’s movements were mesmerizing. Her beauty was dazzlingly rare in a place like this. The material of her clothing was likewise rare; it must have come from a different place. The men in the bar were stirred to passion--and a sense of ownership.
“She’s mine tonight!”
“She’s looking at me!”
Every night, the diva would point to someone in the crowd and take them to her bed. No one had heard how it was--the men chosen never returned to the bar--but men flocked here every night, hoping to be selected by the diva.
Some of the men sitting in the bar were smarter than that. They realized that none of the men the diva selected had ever come here again and had no desire to be chosen. They were here to look, not touch.
“Me! She picked me!”
“Hmph. Why you and not me?”
But the diva would not claim another victim. Not tonight. The young man dashed out of his place toward the stage. As his cloak fluttered up, the fortune-teller noticed a pattern of gold-colored anchors embroidered on the man’s faded clothing.
What does that mean? I’ve never seen that pattern around here, the fortune-teller thought.
The man in black leaped up on the table nearest the stage, then jumped toward the diva in a graceful arc. He grabbed his left arm with his right hand and twisted. His left arm came off in his hand, revealing a naked blade.
The sword hadn’t come from inside his cloak. It was firmly attached to his arm. He’ d been using his own arm as a scabbard. There was a name inscribed on the blade--Hyakkimaru--but no one present realized it. They were in shock.
The man in black--Hyakkimaru--swiped at the diva with his sword arm. The diva moved, lithe and supple, to avoid the strike, as if she knew exactly where the blade would fall. Hyakkimaru struck again, slicing the mask that covered her face in two.
The diva hissed as her face was revealed. Though the rest of her body looked young and healthy, her face resembled a mummified corpse.
Hyakkimaru threw down his left arm onto the stage and concentrated on the battle. The arm did not bleed. It had separated from Hyakkimaru as cleanly as a lizard shedding its tail, or a snake shedding a layer of skin. Though no longer attached to Hyakkimaru, the arm started spinning violently in circles all on its own, as if it had gone mad. Arms weren ’t supposed to just come off. It was possible that if the arm remained detached for too long, it wouldn’t be able to be replaced.
The music stopped. The dancers who had been performing with the diva screamed when they saw her face, as did many of the men sitting in the bar. The diva took a step back and transformed into something completely different.
The diva was like a cornered beast, showing its fangs when threatened. Her skin scaled over as her torso elongated. Her lovely legs each split in four pieces and enlarged; at the end of each leg, there was a sharpened claw that gleamed like iron. She seemed not to hear the terrified screams of the other dancers as she scuttled across the floor, looking like an enormous crab. She picked Hyakkimaru up in her giant claws and hurled him into the crowd.
The transmogrified diva chased down Hyakkimaru, cutting down all the bar guests and performers in her way. People stampeded toward the exit, crushing one another in their attempt to escape.
Dororo heard the commotion inside the bar as he was walking past. Men, women, bouncers and bodyguards all streamed out of the bar into the street. Dororo thanked whatever gods there were for his good fortune and joined the throng. He guessed that there was a fire or some other disaster inside the bar to make everyone run outside like this, but there was no smoke. Thinking to take advantage of the deserted location for a while, Dororo pushed his way past the crowd and slipped inside.
There was no one in the entrance at all. It was completely quiet. Dororo sat down in the corner and started counting his ill-gotten gains with a supremely self-satisfied smile on his face.
Thump.
Dororo heard muffled sounds of a scuffle coming from further inside the bar. Curious, Dororo crept out of his corner and went to investigate.
The main room of the bar and the stage were both empty, save for a strange object about a foot long that was twitching.
Is that a fish? It didn’t really look like one, but Dororo guessed that it was something like that because of its size. He’ d heard that some restaurants in cities kept live fish in tanks, but he’d never seen anything like that before.
Dororo looked closer at the not-fish and realized that it was...an arm? A human arm? Dororo’ s eyes went wide as he sucked in a breath.
The arm was quite long and the hand was large, so Dororo guessed that the limb had come off a man. The bend of the elbow and the direction of the thumb indicated that it was a left arm. It was writhing on the floor as if it was in pain.
What the hell is that? A severed human arm wouldn ’t do that if it was cut off...
Dororo had seen plenty of severed limbs before, but none of them had been able to move on their own. The arm must be as strange as its owner. He looked around the room again.
That ’s not an ordinary arm. It doesn’ t belong to a normal person. Maybe it’s not actually an arm?
Dororo stared hard at the appendage wriggling on the floor.
Nope. Definitely an arm.
Dororo heard footsteps. He stood up straight, feeling a chill go down his spine. He heard something, but he couldn’t quite place the sound.
A monster scuttled along the ceiling of the room, partially concealing itself behind the wooden supports that held up the roof. A young man was also hiding behind a support beam, waiting for his chance to strike. The tables and chairs in the room were all in disarray. A fierce battle was underway.
Dororo took in the state of the room, frozen to the spot. He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, and yet it all looked so real.
Is that a giant crab on the ceiling? Wait--there’ s a man. Why are a man and a giant crab on the ceiling?
Dororo noticed that the crab had a human torso. He’d gone drinking in this bar before and recognized the diva’ s clothes. He frowned. Had the diva transformed into a giant crab monster somehow?
This was the strangest night of Dororo’s life. He looked back and forth between the man and the crab monster as they attacked one another. He couldn ’t tell which one was winning. He didn’t care who won. Both of them seemed monstrous to him.
Despite the crab monster’ s size, it moved quickly and easily, maintaining its grip on the ceiling even when it was completely upside-down. It could also scale walls. The monster’s hard shell repelled the man ’s sword, but he didn’t seem discouraged. He kept chasing the crab monster down, expression blank and unchanging as he pressed the attack.
Then Dororo noticed that the man wasn’t carrying a sword. His sword was his arm.
Dororo’s eyes flicked to the dismembered left arm twitching on the floor. That must be his...
Dororo had no proof for this assumption beyond the bizarre circumstances, but he’d be proven right soon enough.
The crab monster dressed like the diva enfolded the man in its claws and started to squeeze. One of its claws gored the man’ s chest open, cutting all the way through him.
The man bit into his right arm and cast it off, revealing another sword arm, blade gleaming in the half-darkness.
The man sliced at the crab monster’s human throat with the blade in his right arm just as the monster’ s claws tightened around him. While the crab monster leaned back, he sunk his left sword arm deeply into the monster’s chest.
The crab monster howled in agony, then exploded.
The monster’s blood splattered everywhere, then started rising into the air like mist.
Silence.
The crab monster’ s blood rose all the way to the ceiling, filling the room like a thick fog. Then--slowly--it dissolved into the air in a swirl. The crab monster itself was nowhere to be seen. In mere moments, it was like the monster and its blood had never existed.
The man collapsed to his knees near his discarded right arm. His breathing was shallow and quiet. He picked up his arm with his mouth and slid it neatly back into place, aligning the limb with his elbow with exaggerated care. His hand twitched a little.
Dororo was surprised that there was no blood. None of the man’s wounds were bleeding, not even the hole that the crab monster had carved through his chest.
After the arm was in place, white bubbles formed around the broken skin separating the man’ s lower arm from his elbow. The bubbles popped, revealing new, healed skin. There wasn’t even a scar left behind.
Dororo’s eyes widened in amazement. Again, he found himself unable to look away.
The man put on his left arm in the same way as his right, covering the sword called Hyakkimaru.
Dororo guessed that the man’s wounds had all been taken care of by those mysterious white bubbles. He’d never met a man who couldn ’t bleed before.
The man faced the stage, flexing his fingers as if they’ d gone numb. He stepped into a patch of moonlight that revealed his face. He was younger than Dororo had thought--not much older than a boy. With the monster defeated, the strangest thing left in the room was this man. Dororo stared openly, avidly, wondering what the hell he was.
Is this a dream, or a hallucination? Why would I come up with something so bizarre?
Dororo’ s legs shook. Part of him was fully convinced that all of this was real. He considered the idea that only a monster could kill a monster. The man in front of him must not be human. His shoulders locked and he looked for a place to hide.
“Stop right there, thief!”
Dororo turned and saw one of the men he’d stolen from running up. It wasn’t the man in the bearskin, but one of his followers.
“I should have known I’d find you in a place like this!” the man shouted, indignant. “ Give me back my money, you little rat!”
Dororo guessed that this dunce had heard sounds of fighting from inside and come to investigate. He searched Dororo’ s bag and sleeves, then started pawing at him, searching for his stolen coin purse.
Dororo’s heart went black with rage. Typical man, putting his hands all over what didn’ t belong to him. He understood the contradiction of thinking such a thing when he was a thief--just--but he didn’t tend to see people as property. He reached out and grabbed the man ’s arms, hard.
“Ow!” the man gasped.
Dororo meant to shove the man away and run, but his legs didn’t move.
The swordsman who’d fought the crab monster was still standing on the stage. There was a strange sound like bone snapping as the man’ s leg went out from under him. The man crumpled to the ground, clutching desperately at his right leg. The leg popped off at the knee and shot across the room.
What the...
More sounds of snapping, crackling bone, along with the sound of tearing flesh. The man gasped in pain, causing the punk kid that Dororo had robbed to notice that he was there.
The swordsman had removed his own arms without batting an eyelash, but now, his face twisted in an agonized grimace. He gripped the stump of his right leg and held on, rolling back and forth across the floor. He made barely any sound.
He hadn’t screamed at all that Dororo remembered, even when the crab monster had cut right through him.
Can he even talk? Is he okay? That looks like it hurts...
Dororo remembered that he’d heard the swordsman gasp. He had a voice. He just wasn’t using it.
The man Dororo had robbed took a step back. “Wait a minute...you’re the one from Rust Mountain.”
Dororo looked away from the swordsman on the stage. The man he’d robbed looked at the swordsman’s missing leg. “It’s like they said, the arms and legs are fake…”
The swordsman’s prosthetic leg collapsed into nothing but white ash. His leg didn’t bleed from the knee. Instead, more white bubbles gushed from the place where his leg should have been.
After a few moments, there was another sound like breaking bone, and a new leg started forming from the swordsman’s knee joint : the calf, the shin, the heel, toes, toenails. The man grunted in pain when the toenails grew in suddenly all at once. The leg twitched and vibrated violently as it took shape, as if it had been struck by lightning.
The swordsman groaned again, but this time, it was obvious that he was trying to keep quiet. This leg was born out of his pain. The two seemed to be directly related.
A voice. It ’s like I thought, he has one--but why isn’ t he screaming? He’s regrowing an entire leg!
Dororo wanted to come closer to the swordsman, but his writhing and twisting about forbade an easy approach. His leg stopped growing, then stopped twitching. He collapsed, exhausted, onto his back, like a woman who ’d just given birth.
His right leg...
Dororo frowned. Maybe the monster blood in the air had gone into the new limb? Where else could it have gone? What was happening here? Maybe Dororo’ s initial assumption was correct, and the swordsman was a monster--a monster who only looked human.
The man Dororo had robbed went pale and started chanting an invocation against curses in a strange language, over and over again. Dororo ignored him in favor of the swordsman.
Who the hell is this guy?
The swordsman took a painful breath, stumbled a little, then got slowly to his feet. Dororo fell into his old cautious habits and drew his Claw from its wooden scabbard. He pointed the tip of the dagger at the swordsman as he came closer.
“Who are you?” Dororo spat. “What are you?”
The swordsman’s long hair was disheveled from the battle and half-covered his face. He smiled an unsettling kind of smile, as if he were laughing at himself.
“What do I look like?”
Well, he can talk, at least.
The man brought his right hand up to cover one of his eyes. Then he plucked out his eye and held it out to Dororo and the man he’ d robbed in a gesture of supplication. The socket where his eye had been was as dark as a void, as if he were completely empty on the inside.
“What do you think I look like?” the swordsman asked bitterly.
Dororo sucked in a breath, then screamed as he ran out of the bar.
“Hey, you! Wait!”
Dororo yanked back the collar of the man he’d robbed earlier hard. They were standing in an alleyway just outside the back of the bar.
“What was all that about Rust Mountain?” Dororo asked.
The man yelped. “There was a m-man-eating monster on Rust Mountain. Apparently, that guy killed it. It’ s just something I heard from a bodyguard! I don’t know if it’s true!”
“A bodyguard? What else did they say?”
“He didn’t tell me any details, but there are a lot of rumors about that guy flying around. I’m pretty sure he ’s the one that the bodyguard told me about.”
“When did he kill the monster on Rust Mountain?” Dororo asked.
“I don’t know. Four, five days ago?”
“That was around the same time I came to town,” Dororo muttered thoughtfully.
“I don’t know nothin’ else,” the man said. “Let me go! ”
Dororo ignored him. “But what the hell is that guy? Another monster?”
“How would I know?”
“He must be a monster...how else would his arms be able to be just come off like that?”
“Huh? His arms came off?”
Dororo frowned. “You don’t know much, huh?” He shoved the man down face-first into the street, letting go of his collar. He punched him in the back, then flipped him over and kneed him hard in the solar plexus. The man passed out.
“If that’s all you know, go to sleep for a while, fool.”
Dororo rifled through the man’s pockets, then faced the bar again. As far as he knew, the swordsman was still inside.
Hyakkimaru rummaged around the floor of the bar, searching for food. Many of the people who had fled during his battle with the crab monster had left their dinners behind. Hyakkimaru lived as a scavenger, taking things that had been left behind by others. It wasn ’t the kind of existence he would have chosen for himself, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Hyakkimaru couldn’ t see: his eyes were artificial and served only as decoration. He understood the world he lived in by touch. As he crawled across the floor, his fingers came into something round and cold: a coin. He picked it up and pocketed it.
When he was done foraging, Hyakkimaru left the bar through the rear exit, entering an alleyway. There was an old woman sitting there, near the corpse of a wild dog. The dog had been dead for several days, judging by the smell. Other dogs had gnawed at him before he’d started to rot, but the old woman’s hand rested gently on the dog’s head. Her hands were as wasted and thin as the withered branches of a tree in winter.
Hyakkimaru stood over the woman and the dog’s corpse with a blank expression. He placed the coin he’ d picked up in the bar into the woman’s hands without saying a word.
It ’s him again, Dororo thought. He was standing in the alleyway, watching Hyakkimaru from a slight distance away.
The old woman looked confused, even troubled. Had someone given her something? Money? Why? Sh e rolled the coin over in her hand over and over again. When she finally realized what it was, s he called out to Hyakkimaru in thanks, but Hyakkimaru was already lost in the crowd. Her voice was too weak to carry far. She clutched the coin to h er chest and thanked Hyakkimaru for his generosity repeatedly. She began to weep.
“Hey, you.” Dororo crouched down in front of the old woman. “What is that? Let me see.”
The old woman hurriedly shoved the coin into her clothes.
“Idiot. I wasn’t planning to take it. I just want a look. Let me see, and I’ll pay you, too.” He passed a handful of coins into the old wo man’s hands. This was money he’d stolen from the man in the bearskin.
“Now will you show me?” Dororo muttered, clicking his tongue. “Can’t believe I’ve gotta be so soft on you…”
Dororo had been in the old wo man’s shoes before more often than he could count: starving and filthy and without friends. But he didn’t show his pity openly. This was the way of the world, and there were many people just like him and this old woman.
“Buy a blanket and wash up,” Dororo said harshly. “You’ ll freeze to death out here. Oi! Are you listening to me? You need something to eat, too.”
The old woman didn’t show Dororo the coin that Hyakkimaru had given her. She seemed dazed at her sudden good fortune.
Dororo snorted. “I got business to take care of.” He straightened up, then started walking down the alleyway in the direction that Hyakkimaru had gone. The old woman clasped her hands together in an attitude of reverence or prayer.
“Can’t believe she wouldn’t show me even after all that money I gave her,” Dororo muttered as he dashed off. “Ingrate.”
The sound of a lute echoed in the darkness: one lonely note plucked and allowed to fade. Hyakkimaru heard it just as he was coming off a side-street crowded with people. He stood stock still in surprise. An aged monk sat on the side of the street, clutching his lute closely to himself as he strummed the strings.
“Hyakkimaru?” the monk asked. He was looking at where the blade was hidden inside Hyakkimaru's left arm. “ Your aura remains unchanged. How’s life been treating you?”
This was not the first time the monk and Hyakkimaru--the blade and the man--had crossed paths. The monk had a strange quality of sight that made him appear at least partially blind, but he could see in every way that mattered. His shaven crown shone white in the low light of the evening. He had a calming, soothing air even in this bustling alleyway, but he was too cynical to consider himself anything like a holy man. He did not go by any name aside from Biwab ōshi, which meant “lute-playing monk.”
Hyakkimaru knew Biwabōshi, but he did not seem happy to see him. He held up his left arm a little and nodded slightly. “ I need to borrow this for a little while longer,” he said.
Biwabōshi snorted through his nose. “Borrow, pah. It’ s yours, and has been for a long time. Do with it what you will. You can use it to clean the dirt from under your fingernails, for all I care.”
“Maybe I will.” Hyakkimaru smiled, but there was no joy in it.
“Oh? And how many pieces have you gotten back, young man?”
Hyakkimaru said nothing in reply.
Biwabōshi snorted again, then played plucked out another note on his lute. “Must’ ve caused you some trouble.”
“Don’t talk to me like you understand.”
“I’m the only one left who understands, aside from you. You’re headed to that temple next, aren’ t you?”
Dororo stopped on the side of the road, within earshot of Hyakkimaru and the monk, and stared openly. So he ’s friends with that monk or somethin’ ? He’s not attacking or anything...
Dororo managed to pick out bits and pieces of what they said to one another, but he didn’ t really understand what they were talking about. He watched Hyakkimaru walk off with set shoulders, as if he were angry about something, then waited a few seconds before approaching the monk.
“Oi, baldy!” Dororo said.
The monk pursed his lips in clear disapproval. “ There are many bald men around here. I’m afraid you must clarify who you mean. ”
“Shut up. You know who I mean.” Dororo folded his arms.
“What do you want? To introduce me to some rich folk I could entertain?” his tone was teasing, but there was a certain wistfulness to it.
“Your ‘entertainment ’ would turn sake to vinegar,” Dororo scoffed. He ’d first seen the monk a few nights before, wandering around town. He assumed that they were both wanderers on a journey that would never end.
But the monk was no thief. He sang songs and told stories in exchange for money and food.
Dororo had always loved stories. He liked to remember and retell himself stories when he was bored or alone. He could sit and listen to them for hours. The stranger the story, the more it captivated him.
“You can entertain me,” Dororo said, plopping down beside the monk. “Tell me a story. Weirdest one you ’ve got.” This was a gamble, since the monk might not tell him about the mysterious swordsman, but he was willing to take a risk.
The monk looked up at Dororo with a dubious expression. Dororo was completely sincere in his wish for a story, especially one in particular, but it was rare for him to be this pushy toward someone who wasn ’t a mark.
“What’s the matter? ” Dororo asked, pouting. “ No good stories to share after all?”
Dororo wasn’ t about to give up so easily, though. He was like a dog with a bone whenever he wanted something, and eventually, after he asked over and over again, the monk indulged him. He had told many tales in this town over the past few days, but he was usually paid a little something for them. Dororo hadn ’t paid him at all, at least not yet.
“Fine, fine, I’ ll tell you a story.”
“Yeesh. Why’ d you make me work so hard for it, huh?”
“You don’ t seem to know how to thank people,” the old monk muttered.
“You haven’ t told me a story yet, so why should I thank you?”
“You haven’ t told me what kind of story you want,” the monk said. “ Most stories that I know are strange ones.”
It was an opening. Dororo leaned forward a little and said, “ Okay, fine. Tell me about that guy you were just talking to. He was strange.”
“What do you want to know about him?”
“I dunno. What was he?”
The monk smiled a little. “What did he look like to you? ”
“If I knew what he was I wouldn’ t ask. Anyway, how do you know him?”
“I don’t know him well. We ’ve met twice before this, under highly unusual circumstances.”
“Where did you meet him before?” Dororo asked.
“Hm...” Biwab ōshi started strumming his lute.
“Well?” Dororo asked. “Are you finally gonna tell me?”
“This story is not just for you, but for all who will listen,” Biwabōshi said patiently.
Dororo frowned and waited.
“Long, long ago,” Biwabōshi began, “ not far from here, there was a shaman who was practiced in the healing arts....”
Dororo sat with his chin on his knees as if he were a child and listened.
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