I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

Chapter 751: Shigeru

After Nathan and Hanzo had been pulled through the game, the group appeared to silently recalibrate and leave the two of them alone, filling the remainder of the evening with their own noise and their own bottles and their own company. No further invitations, no more pointed suggestions. They played among themselves and let the two travelers sit at the edge of it in peace, which was all Nathan had wanted from the beginning.

It was something, at least.

When the fire burned lower and the sake ran thin, tents went up around the clearing. Hanzo had come prepared for this. The shinobi habit of blending completely into whatever surroundings presented themselves extended apparently to camping gear and civilian travel preparations as well. She seemed to have an instinct for invisibility that went all the way down to the details.

The tent was large enough that they were not pressed against each other, which was a practical consideration and nothing more. Nathan settled onto his side of it without ceremony. Hanzo lay down facing away from him, her back toward him, her shoulders carrying a tension that had nothing to do with physical discomfort.

The silence stretched for a moment.

"I apologize for what happened out there," she said finally. Her voice was quiet and slightly unsteady at the edges, which was not something he had heard from her before.

She had been turning it over since it happened, that much was obvious. She was the one who had made the call to follow Shige’s group, she was the one who had accepted on behalf of both of them, and then when the game had come for her personally she had looked around the circle and chosen Nathan and let herself be pulled into something she had not planned for and could not fully explain. The logic of not wanting to refuse when Nathan himself had already accepted, that part she could defend. The rest of it was harder to look at directly.

There had been a moment, watching Nathan and Sana across the fire, when something she had not examined closely had moved through her. She was not going to examine it closely now either, but she was aware that it had been there, and that awareness was sitting on her with considerable weight.

"You kissed well for a first time," Nathan said.

The heat that moved into her face was immediate and she was grateful she was facing away from him. She said nothing.

Nathan let the quiet sit for a beat before changing direction entirely. "What do you know about them? Shige and his group."

Hanzo welcomed the shift. She took a breath and let her composure reassemble itself around something practical. "Ronin hunters, most likely. Or close enough to it. They operate like mercenaries, taking contracts and running them, but they move as a group rather than alone the way a ronin would. There is a structure to them."

"The way they looked at us was strange," Nathan said.

"It was deliberate," Hanzo replied. "They were assessing us the entire time. From the road. Even with different clothes and nothing obvious marking either of us, it is very difficult to completely conceal a dangerous presence. The kind that comes from having killed many times and lived through worse." She paused. "Someone like you carries that whether they want to or not. So do I, to a lesser extent."

Nathan was quiet for a moment. That tracked. The smiles had been real enough on the surface, the warmth of the campfire and the sake and the games. But underneath all of it had been something watchful and patient, something that was measuring rather than enjoying. He had initially read them as the kind of lowlife scum that gathered around men like Morosuke, drawn to power they didn’t have by proximity to people who did. But that wasn’t quite right either. There was too much discipline in how they had moved, too much coordination in how they had arranged themselves around the camp without making it visible.

"Do you think we managed to put their suspicions to rest?" he asked.

"Perhaps," Hanzo said after a moment, and the honesty in the uncertainty was plain. She genuinely did not know. "Regardless, we should stay awake tonight."

"You don’t need to tell me that," Nathan replied.

His eyes drifted toward the wall of the tent, settling on the silk with a stillness that went beyond simply looking at it. The firelight outside cast moving shadows through the fabric, shapes shifting and merging as people moved around the camp and the flames breathed.

He watched those shadows calmly.

°°°°°

Outside the tent, the camp was not as asleep as it sounded.

Shige stood near the horses with most of his group gathered loosely around him, their voices low and their torches doused. The fire had burned down to embers and the darkness had thickened around the clearing, which suited the conversation they were having just fine. One of the men had his hands buried in the satchels hanging from Nathan and Hanzo’s horses, working through the contents with practiced quiet.

"Anything useful?" Sana asked, watching over his shoulder.

"Water flasks," he said, pulling one out and setting it aside. "A change of clothes. That’s about it."

"So they really are just travelers," Yuwa said, though the way she said it made clear she did not quite believe her own words.

"No," Shige said immediately.

Everyone looked at him.

He was staring at the tent with his arms folded, his expression carrying the particular weight of someone who has been reading people long enough to trust what they see. "The way they carry themselves. Shoulders straight, eyes never stopping, watching everything around them the whole night while pretending to watch nothing. They were reading us just as carefully as we were reading them." He paused. "And look at what they’re traveling with. Almost nothing. No supplies worth mentioning, nothing that suggests a real journey. People who travel light like that aren’t traveling light because they forgot to pack."

Nobody argued with him. They trusted Shige’s instincts the way people trust something that has been proven right enough times to stop being questioned.

"So what do we do with that?" Yuwa asked.

"They don’t seem like bad people," Sana said quietly.

Yuwa turned to look at her with a flat expression. "You are saying that because you enjoyed the kiss."

"I am saying it because it’s true," Sana replied, lifting her chin slightly. "He held me carefully and he was gentle. You’re just jealous, Yuwa."

"I am absolutely not—"

"Let’s stay focused," Shige said, cutting across both of them. He drew a breath and turned back toward the tent. "For now we should—"

He stopped.

His head snapped around toward the darkness at the edge of the clearing, fast and instinctive, the way a fighter’s head moves when something that was not there a moment ago suddenly is. The rest of the group followed his gaze in the same instant, hands dropping to weapons before the conscious thought to do so had fully formed.

Nathan stood at the far edge of the firelight. Still, completely silent, watching them with dark eyes that had taken in the entire scene in the half second since he had appeared. Nobody had heard him coming. Nobody had felt so much as a shift in the air.

Weapons came out around the group, the sound of steel quiet but present in the dark.

Nathan looked at them without urgency and then took one step forward and was simply gone from where he had been standing. The speed of it left no room for reaction. He crossed the distance to Shige in an instant that did not feel like movement so much as a change in where things were, and his hand shot forward and caught a fistful of Shige’s kimono before the man’s legs had finished the first inch of the jump backward he had already started.

Nathan lifted him without apparent effort.

Around them every weapon came up at once. Shige hung in Nathan’s grip and raised both hands toward his group immediately, palm out.

"Stop! Don’t move!" Shige shouted.

They froze.

Shige exhaled slowly, one hand wrapped around Nathan’s forearm to steady himself, looking up at him with an expression that had moved past alarm and into something more resigned and practical.

"I apologize for the unfriendly behavior," he said.

"Who are you," Nathan asked.

"My name is Shigeru. This is my group. We finished a job and were heading toward Minami-Kyoto for the festival when we crossed your path. That part was the truth." He held Nathan’s gaze steadily. "We are mercenaries. We work for coin and nothing else."

"Then what were you planning to do with us," Nathan said.

"Nothing hostile. I wanted to confirm who you were. With the festival drawing people from everywhere, it pays to know who you’re sleeping next to. You and the woman don’t move or watch like ordinary travelers and the disguise made it more suspicious, not less. I wanted to be sure you weren’t a danger to anyone in that city." He paused. "That is all."

"Dangerous," Nathan said, his eyes narrowing slightly. "And what have you decided?"

Shigeru looked at him carefully for a moment. "Are you a ronin?"

"No."

"Why are you heading to Minami-Kyoto?"

"That doesn’t concern you," Nathan said.

Shigeru was quiet for a beat, and then his voice dropped into something more direct. "Are you going there to harm innocent people?"

The question landed differently than the ones before it. There was a weight behind it, a genuine seriousness that had nothing theatrical about it. Nathan looked at the man hanging in his grip and found something almost worth smiling at in the directness of it.

He was not just a mercenary with a good nose for danger. There was something else underneath it.

"No," Nathan said. "I don’t harm innocent people. I have my own reasons for going there, but they have nothing to do with the innocent."

He released his grip and Shigeru dropped back onto his feet, rolling his shoulder once and reaching up to rub the back of his neck. Around the clearing the tension that had been pulled tight began to loosen, weapons lowering, breath returning to normal.

Shigeru looked at Nathan for a moment and then smiled, slow and genuine. "You seem like a man who means what he says."

Nathan did not respond to that and simply turned and walked back toward the tent.

"I hope we can still travel together to Minami-Kyoto," Shigeru called after him.

"Do whatever you want," Nathan replied without turning around.

He kept walking, already thinking through the practical logic of it. A group of recognized mercenaries traveling the road to a festival was about as unremarkable as it got. Whatever questions their disguise might invite on its own, it invited considerably fewer when attached to a group that belonged there naturally. Shigeru and his people were not a threat. He had confirmed that and it was enough.

The rest could sort itself out on the road.