‘A century from now, our descendants can simply repeat the ritual,’ Masanori suggested. ‘That will put them outside the wraith’s reach.’ He grinned at Baron Eiji. ‘It is a brilliant design. You will save all of us.’
‘I will confound the curse,’ Baron Eiji declared. He looked over to the Dowager. ‘The last of our blood will endure,’ he told his mother. The Dowager said nothing, but simply removed the pendant from around her neck and handed it to her son.
The gesture brought dampness to Baron Eiji’s eyes. He gripped the ivory tight in his hand and nodded to the others. ‘The hour draws late and I must begin the ritual. Whatever may happen, keep silent and do not leave the circle. The least disruption of my magic could bring disaster to us all.’
The baron pointed to each of the candles. As he did so, their flames billowed higher even as the light they gave off became subdued. Toshimichi felt a biting cold fill the room, his breath turning to mist as he exhaled. The smell of the incense became heavier, the sweetness fading into a rank, earthy smell. The reek of graveyard dirt and despoiled tombs.
Baron Eiji’s voice rose in the sharp intonations of his ritual. The language was unknown to Toshimichi, but there was a sinister, inhuman cadence to it, evoking images of giant serpents hissing and the scratching of claws against stone. Through it all, there was one name that was distinct in the baron’s invocation. That of the Great Necromancer. The name of Nagash.
Toshimichi felt his pulse quickening as the uncanny atmosphere within the circle intensified. A damp clamminess wrapped itself around him, making it difficult to breathe.
Then, with shocking abruptness, the great hall returned to normal. The glow of the candles was again restored, the eerie chill vanished from the air. Toshimichi had heard a cry, a voice raised in terror. He knew it was not Baron Eiji who had shouted, for his invocation could still be heard.
Who it was that had cried out, Toshimichi never knew. The question itself was forgotten when he looked towards Baron Eiji. A black mass, thicker than the shadows that filled the great hall, was rapidly gathering around the nobleman. There was just the suggestion of a head and shoulders, the dark outline of a raised sword…
Before anyone could move, the baron’s invocation was silenced. Eiji’s head leaped from his shoulders in a welter of gore, spraying blood as it rolled across the arcane circle.
‘He’s called Yorozuya!’ Gunichi shrieked. ‘But the Lord Executioner is inside with us!’
The séance exploded into a chorus of screams and shouts. Toshimichi fled with the others as they rushed from the circle and out across the gloomy great hall. For the rest of them, he supposed they had no more thought than escape, but Toshimichi cast a parting look at Baron Eiji’s decapitated head, smiling up at him from a pool of Nagashiro blood.
Toshimichi ran down the stairs that stretched down to the keep’s main gates. Far from the most robust of physiques, the scholar was well behind the press of panicked humanity that rushed ahead of him. He saw the terrified Masanori and Komatsu push past Otami, flinging the widow aside with callous disregard. He helped her back to her feet. She started to say something, whether of gratitude or protest he never knew, for in that moment her eyes widened with horror.
Otami was gazing at something on the stairway above them, something back in the direction of the great hall. Toshimichi risked a backwards glance and was at once riveted by an awful fascination. The Dowager was descending the steps, not quickly but with the indifference she might have exhibited at a public function. She had a sombre look on her face, almost wistful in its way.
Following after her was a dark mass, but far more distinct in its appearance than the shadow that had fallen upon Baron Eiji. It was the shrouded semblance of a man, its head wrapped in the leather folds of a headsman’s hood. Its dimensions were incomplete, fading away into the tatters of its shroud. It did not stride upon legs, but instead drifted in a vaporous state. As it moved, a litter of grubs and worms fell from its body, squirming away into the dark.
‘Run!’ Toshimichi shouted, but the Dowager only smiled sadly at him. She did not quicken her pace or even turn around. She seemed to know what it was that stalked after her and had resigned herself to her fate.
Toshimichi did not wait to see the wraith make use of the gigantic sword clenched in its skeletal talons. Gripping Otami’s arm, he took his own advice and fled down the stairs, hurrying after the others towards the main gate.
‘It was Yorozuya!’ Otami cried, over and again. ‘He has come for us!’
‘First he has to catch us,’ Toshimichi told her, hating how empty the words sounded even to himself. Perhaps a great wizard could do something to defy the wraith, but the few spells and cantrips he knew would merely be an annoyance to such a monster. No, they couldn’t fight it. Their only hope was to get beyond the Lord Executioner’s reach. If such a thing was even possible.
Toshimichi could see the hulking main gates at the bottom of the steps as he led Otami down the final length of the stairway. The others were there already, but curiously none had made a move to open them or even approach too closely. He soon found the reason why. The brewer Chihaya lay sprawled on the floor, pierced through the breast by an arrow.
‘Baron Eiji’s servants,’ Masanori cursed. ‘They’ve barred the gates and will shoot anyone who tries to get past!’
The restoration of the keep had been haphazard and there were many gaps in the dilapidated gates. Holes through which a person, or an arrow, might pass. Toshimichi looked over at the torches that lined the stairway. The backlight they provided would expose anyone who tried to squirm through the broken panels. They were caught, trapped between the guarded gate and the ghost.
‘We have to get through!’ Otami shouted. ‘Yorozuya is coming! We saw him murder the Dowager!’
Komatsu rushed towards the gate, hurling abuse at the men outside. ‘You hear that, you curs! Let us out!’ His only reply was the arrow that hissed past his head, nearly taking off his ear. The swordsman hurriedly drew back.
‘They are afraid they will let the wraith out,’ Gunichi said. ‘You cannot reason with frightened men.’
Toshimichi glowered at the sealed portals and at the unseen archers beyond. He wondered if it was merely fear. ‘Maybe the baron ordered them to keep us inside,’ he suggested.
‘Why?’ Masanori demanded. ‘To what purpose? Besides, he is dead.’ The merchant turned towards the gate and shouted to the retainers outside. ‘Do you hear? Your master is dead!’
Masanori’s entreaties only brought more arrows hissing through the gaps in the gate. ‘I can pay you,’ he shouted, his hands fumbling to free the purse strapped to his belt.
Toshimichi felt the intense cold that suddenly swept through the air, a chill of soul rather than flesh. He turned and lifted his eyes to the top of the stairway. A dark apparition took shape there, manifesting as a rapidly forming shadow. The hooded Lord Executioner hefted its massive sword. The blaze of its eyes could be seen glowing behind its black mask as it stared down at the Nagashiro.
‘It is too late,’ Toshimichi said and pointed up at the wraith.
Masanori intensified his efforts at bribery while the others looked on. Toshimichi knew they were debating which death to prefer – Yorozuya’s sword or the arrows. It was the same hideous decision he was trying to decide.
Gunichi chose to confront the wraith. Turning from the gate, he ascended the stairs, his steps slow and measured. A religious mantra droned from his lips as he moved upwards and his hands were folded across his chest in the symbol of Dracothion. Toshimichi did not know the priestly language, but he recognised some of the gestures Gunichi used. He was trying to invoke divine protection against evil forces.
Yorozuya remained at the top of the stairs, seemingly paralysed by Gunichi’s prayers. That was, at least, until the priest was midway between the gate and the wraith. ‘Stop!’ Toshimichi called. ‘Go no farther!’ In his occult studies, his efforts to understand and break the curse on the Nagashiro, he had learned something of the black arts. Among the arcane principles that empowered profane magics was that of the crossroads, the midpoint between one thing and another. Dusk and dawn, the moments between day and night. Doorways and gates, neither within nor without. There was peril here as Gunichi closed the distance and put himself both equally near and far from the Lord Executioner.
The priest either did not hear or did not heed Toshimichi’s warning. He took that final step, resting himself on the stair that was exactly between the gate and Yorozuya. Whatever power his prayers had to hold back the wraith was undone. In a flash of shifting darkness the ghost vanished from the top of the stair and reappeared before Gunichi. The shadowy form was enveloped in a fiery light, whatever sacred energy was yet gathered around the priest. By that light, the dark shroud was burned away, exposing a ragged skeleton, its bones pitted with the bore-holes of worms and beetles.
A moment only, Yorozuya stood thus exposed. Then the spectral shroud and hood flowed back into being, cloaking it in darkness once again. Silently, the apparition raised its executioner’s blade. Gunichi’s mantra faltered. He raised his voice in a scream of protest and threw up his hands to defend against the downward sweep of the razor-edged blade.
Toshimichi heard Otami scream and felt her clutch his arm in a terrified grip. They saw Yorozuya’s sword shear through Gunichi’s arms, sending them tumbling down the steps. With the same stroke, the priest’s head was severed at the neck. In uncanny silence, his body slopped to the floor and rolled downwards until it crashed against the wall.
‘No!’ The cry rose from Komatsu. ‘I am not a Nagashiro!’ The swordsman spun around and seized Masanori. Before the merchant could react, Komatsu’s blade stabbed into his side. The wounded man collapsed to his knees, his face gripped by shock. ‘Listen to me, ghost! I will help you! I will give you the head of Masanori!’
Toshimichi recoiled away from the crazed swordsman, dragging Otami with him. They looked on as Komatsu hacked away at Masanori’s neck. Blood spurted from the merchant’s veins, spattering the walls and the onlookers as the blade slashed into him again and again. It took four blows before Komatsu decapitated his victim. Stooping, he snatched up the head by its hair and held it aloft.
‘My gift to you!’ Komatsu shrieked at Yorozuya. ‘The head of a Nagashiro!’
While Komatsu murdered his father-in-law, the wraith had been slowly descending the stairs. Now it came hurtling downwards in a blur of darkness. In a heartbeat, Yorozuya hovered before the red-handed swordsman. He cringed back and waved the head back and forth, as though the ghost had simply failed to see what he had done.
The wraith merely raised its executioner’s blade. Komatsu had time enough to react. He threw the severed head at the apparition. It passed harmlessly through the spirit and landed at the foot of the stairs. Yorozuya brought its heavy blade sweeping down. Komatsu met it with his own blood-drenched weapon. There was a crash of steel as the two blades met.
