Chapter 2.6

Katashi looked up and saw bamboo leaves shading him and blue sky peaking through.  A gentle breeze stirred across his face bringing the scent of jasmine with it.  Interesting, he thought to himself.  Jasmine did grow here, but not within the city as a rule.  He remembered seeing it north of the city where it grew wild.  How did he get out of the city?  The last thing he remembered was what?  Tea with Riku.  He moved his head.

Pain, and with it memories from the evening before.  The tea must have been drugged with something.  He calmly turned his head looking around him, ignoring the pain for the moment.  Riku was laying beside him, still unconscious.  He tried to wake him and in so doing noticed his hands and feet were bound.  None of this made sense.  He felt that the greater danger though lay not in trying to escape, but in letting himself be taken away.  

The wagon began to move almost on cue.  Yes, he was in a wagon.  The bamboo moved and grew thicker, as the scent of Jasmine began to fade.  Katashi made one more try to roust Riku and was unsuccessful.  Leaving his friend was not something he would do lightly, but if he had to?  Yes.  He watched the bamboo moving overhead even as he struggled unsuccessfully to roust Riku.  When it was brushing close to the wagon he gathered all his strength and rolled off the wagon, it was just a cart really with no sides to it, onto the road landing with a soft thud.  He kept on rolling until he was off to the side trying to move himself into the bamboo thicket as best he could.  

He listened intently for the wagon, waiting to see if it would stop, all the while trying to free himself.  The wagon wasn’t stopping.  Good.  His hands were freed and he  moved to his feet.  

He began running silently through the grove.  As he broke into the open he saw the walls of the city.  He nodded his head in understanding, yes the North gate to the city was just ahead.  He began a slow jog to his right deciding he would go towards the West gate where the guards would not have seen him being carried out on a cart just moments before.  

Amazing, he thought to himself, that his captors would be so brazen as to toss him on a cart and take him out of the city in plain sight of anyone who happened to glance at the cart.  Questions flooded his mind all centering around what was going on here, who was behind this.  That this was disturbing went without saying.  His first thought was that he should get word to his Master, and then he needed to embark on the mission that he had been tasked with.  First though he one other thing that was more immediate.

~ by ridgewalker on February 13, 2008.