The Whipping Boy || Kokuzan/Michizan Vers. ||

Being full account of happenings in the dark sewers.

Michikatsu headed for the only safe place he knew--- the sewers. He scrambled along the docks.

And Muzan dogged him every step of the way.

Michikatsu turned on him like a cornered rat. "Haven't you done enough? You got a price put on my head! Go home, and go to blazes!"

"But you're my friend," Muzan stated, as if he were issuing a royal decree.

"Don't count on it!" replied Michikatsu.

He started down stone steps to the river, but Muzan stopped him with a sudden, urgent yelp.

"Look!"

Looming up on the cobbled wayside came the hulk of Hold-Your-Nose-Nemi, with Genya following as close as a cow's tail.

Michikatsu didn't wait to be spotted. But it was too late. The outlaw, gave a distant yell and altered course.

Michikatsu and Muzan took the stairs in leaps. The tide was coming in and the mud flat had shrunk to the width of a path.

Michikatsu led the way through a tarred forest of wharf pilings and over a derelict river barge. He leaped off into shallow water. He could already see the great brick mouth of a main sewer.

"Don't leave footprints in the mud!" he warned

They splashed along the water's edge--- and were there.

The arched sewer stood tall enough for a horse and rider. Michikatsu leaped the mud and was in.

But Muzan balked. "It's black as night in there!"

"Jump! Quick!"

Muzan steeled himself and made the leap. Michikatsu advanced into the tunnel, but Muzan held back.

"Follow me! We'll be lucky if they didn't catch sight of us!"

Muzan stood terrified of the darkness ahead. He had turned dead white.

Michikatsu made a grab and yanked the prince after him. "You'll get me caught!"

"I'm---I'm scared, Michi!"

"Don't fret about the dark! There are rats in here. Even grown men are afraid of them! Hang on to me."

Deeper and deeper, darker and darker, they sloshed through the cavernous sewer. The gutters of the city overhead had dried, but old rain seeped and dripped from the glazed brick walls.

Soon the mouth had receded to little more than a pinhole of light, and Michikatsu had stopped to catch his breath. "Blacker than a stack of black cats in here, isn't it? We should come to another passage before long. They'll never find us. Ease off my arm! You'll break it!

"Michi." Hardly above a breath, Muzan's voice was stiff with fear.

Michi? Not Michikatsu? Not "boy"? The wonder of it. Michikatsu thought. Like we we are old knockabout friends of the streets.

"I wish I were like you," muttered Muzan.

Michikatsu was amazed. "Like me?"