Larry Correia's Blog, page 19

The Drowning Empire, Episode 47: Brush & Ink, Axe & Armor, Part II

The Drowning Empire is a weekly serial based on the events which occured during the  Writer Nerd Game Night monthly Legend of the Five Rings game.  It is a tale of samurai adventure set in the magical world of Rokugan.

If you would like to read all of these in one convenient place, along with a bunch of additional game related stuff, behind the scenes info, and detailed session recaps, I’ve been posting everything to one thread on the L5R forum,  http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=295&t=101206

This is one of my absolute favorites. Pat Tracy wrote this fiction about his character’s estranged fiance. It is a 3 parter. All together it is a novella, and it is awesome. Pat is an extremely good writer.

Continued from: http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/the-drowning-empire-episode-46-brush-ink-axe-armor-part-i/

Brush and Ink, Axe and Armor, Part Two

The ground shook. Namori swung her horse around and looked back at Utaka Hina. The Battle Maiden’s eyes were wide. The sound of underbrush being pushed aside, of limbs being broken from the trees, filled the air. She’d often heard the noise of a cavalry charge, but this was deeper, more profound.

“What is it?” she mouthed.

The Utaka only gestured for her to swing wide and spur to the far bend in the trail, as were the other light horse. At the same time, the Maidens wheeled, moving in the opposite direction. Namori bent low over her horse’s neck and did as Hina directed. When she joined with the others, two to every one of the Maidens, the Shinjo among them brought out Yumi and a few Daikyu. The Moto favored short horn bows. She sat her horse and felt inadequate, as she had on other occasions where archery had been required.

Almost a hundred paces distant, she could see the Utaka preparing for one of their punishing charges, unlimbering swords and heavy spears. Their mighty horses stamped and snorted, crowded across the narrow trail so close that their rider’s knees brushed together.

The noise grew ever closer, ever more insistent. It was as if the Earth Dragon himself strode the jungle that day, walking on a hundred heavy feet. Namori’s mouth was dry, her hands damp, her armor seeming to chafe her suddenly. Some of the horses whickered and tried to shy away from the oncoming noise, but their riders kept them steady.

“Be ready, now. Any moment,” Moto Ta-Ichi, the leader of the light horse ordered. His horn bow was so stiff to pull that he could hold it by the limbs and have a boy of twelve stand upon the string, only to flex it half way. He seated the thumb ring and gripped the string, ready to draw back and let his arrow fly at whatever horror the jungle would spit up at them. Namori wondered if even his bow would avail them against whatever lumbered nearer.

The trees moved as if a wind caught at their fronds, and the booming shake of heavy footsteps seemed to cover the whole valley. Patches of something huge and gray flashed in the foliage. Then, it was upon them.

The head of a creature many times the size of a horse burst onto the path. Then another, and another, until the bony heads of dozens of elephants could be seen. Namori had seen an elephant a few times, their outlandish shape and improbable size, their skin as thick as ten layers of cow hide, but this…

Little boys and thin-boned old men squatted on the elephants’ necks, riding on bright colored boxes and piles of cloth. They seemed to guide the beasts with tiny sticks, though it was a mystery how such insignificant tools would change their course.

Namori blew out a breath. One of the elephant riding Ivendi nearest them looked as shocked to see Rokugani on the trail as they had been to encounter the elephant procession.

The Ivendi shouted something that sounded like, “Mahoot!” several times, as the elephants came to a halt, now completely occluding the roadway. After a few minutes, an old and emaciated Ivendi man appeared, walking toward them with his hands up, palms open to them, gibbering in a tongue that Namori couldn’t understand.

Ta-Ichi cast about him until he saw their Ivendi guide. “Jagdish, go see what the little man has to say,” the Gunso ordered.

Jagdish, whose family had once been royalty of sorts in this area, before the demons had come and annihilated their society, slipped from his horse and walked forward, confident as any samurai. He was a big, tall man, with supple limbs and dark skin. He did not seem to own any clothing that covered him from the waist up, but always appeared in a loose pair of pantaloons held up by a wide silk sash. He rested his hand upon the hilt of a thick, curved sword that the Ivendi called a tulwar.

The elephant rider fell to his knees and groveled on the dirt before Jagdish. The two men conversed in their nonsense tongue, Jagdish’s low grumble answering the frenzied yipping of the old man.

Jagdish returned to Ta-ichi. “The mahoot begs you to not shoot his elephants, for they will become angry and run off into the jungle.” Jagidish spoke Rokugani well enough, but always as if he had rocks in his mouth.

“What are they doing here, and with so many of the tuskers?” Ta-ichi asked.

“They make the great trek to the salt caves. Every fifth year, it has been thus, since the gods created the world in a breath of holy fire.”

“Where are these salt caves?” The gunso had a canny expression on his face. Salt fetched a fine price, everywhere inside the Empire and beyond.

“It is not spoken of. Only the mahoots know it.” Jagdish had agreed to serve the Unicorn, but no amount of talking, or even being beaten, seemed to impress upon him how best to act like a servant. Because the other Ivendi feared him and would act upon his word, and because he could fight like something spit up by Jigoku, this was largely ignored, as frustrating as it sometimes was. This was was not Toshi Ranbo. Rules became flexible here, so far from the seats of power.

“Would one of them tell, under duress?” Ta-Ichi asked.

Jagdish shrugged. “Doubtful. These are faithful men and boys. Those who train the mighty elephant cope with the thought of their own death early. Perhaps only one in three live to be old enough to take a wife. Even if you found the location, it is said that the jungle surrounding the salt caves is so perilous, so filled with poison serpents and other hazards that ones such as yourself would never pass through it.”

“You hint that the mighty Unicorn could not cope with whatever bog or snake might hide in the trees? Jagdish, I’ll have you beaten,” Ta-Ichi growled.

“Act as you must. I say only that you are not a jungle people. You would sicken with disease. Your horses would break their legs. Whatever profit you imagine you would gain, it would be gained at the cost of many lives. There are some places that the only safe passage is atop the elephant’s spine.”

Ta-Ichi pushed his lips together and smoothed his mustache. “Very well. Go and tell them to get their damned beasts out of our way with all possible haste.”

Soon, Jagdish had them moving again. It took the a quarter of an hour before the roadway was clear, and the surface had been seriously degraded in the section where the procession had passed.

“I hate the jungle,” Ta-Ichi. “We should have gone to war with the Lion and retaken Rich Frog. I would have lived or died inside the Empire, rather than sweating my heart out here in the forsaken hinterland.”

Some muttered assent, while others simply sat on their mounts and wiped moisture from their faces. Namori considered how best to make peace between two old opponents who seemed to prefer their own death to most other outcomes.

***

The campfire produced more smoke than light, and regardless of where Namori sat, her eyes stung and nose burned from the fumes of the wet wood fire. She chewed the remnant of a rice ball that had not been positively affected by the humid weather. A few of the light horse samurai sat by her, none of them particularly talkative after a sweltering day in which they’d seen evidence of bandits, but had fruitlessly searched for where their tracks led.

The Ivendi, Jagdish, walked toward her and sat nearby. He had something he’d killed in the jungle on a spit. After skinning it, its shape was indeterminate. He pushed the spit into the wet earth and set his meal to cooking. He had done no obeisance and asked no permission to do so. The nearby samurai bristled, but said nothing.

“They say that you have no bow,” Jagdish said, looking at her.

It took Namori a moment to realize that she was being addressed. Jagdish had never spoken to her. “I do not.”

He looked at her hands and her eyes in frank appraisal. “You are whole. Why not?”

“It is not proper for you to speak to Namori-san, Jagdish,” Shinjo Shou protested. “She is…” he trailed off, not quite knowing how to proceed.

Namori held up a hand. “It is all right, Shou-san. I am not offended.” She turned back to Jagdish. “I am not skilled with the bow.”

“You have tried to learn?”

She nodded. “To no avail. I have not seen you with a bow, either.”

Jagdish’s face quirked. “I have sworn that the next man I kill with a bow will be…someone who wronged me. I practice each day, and hunt for game, but I have an arrow that I have painted with a curse. One day, I will use it, and then your folk will see me no more.”

Namori wasn’t sure what she’d imagined he would say, but that had not been it. She threw away the remnant of her food and waited to see if the Ivendi would say more.

“When someone cannot shoot, it us because their eyes are wrong.” He gazed into the fire.

“My vision is clear,” Namori said, slightly indignant.

“Not like that. Their eyes are…wrong sided. Listen.” He made a triangle with his two hands, holding them out with elbows locked. “You do this.”

Namori saw that he wouldn’t be easily put off, so she imitated what he had done. Her thumbs formed the basis of a triangle, her index fingers forming the top sections.

“Now, frame the firelight and look at it through the gap.”

She did so, the flickering embers bright against the shadows of the twilight jungle.

“Keep looking through, and bring your hand closer, closer, closer.”

Namori brought her hands all the way to her face.

“See? Left eye, right hand. Your eyes are wrong-sided. You must shoot with the other hand, or aim will be no good.”

Namori considered this, and was about to respond when there was an outcry from the other side of the camp “We are attacked!” someone yelled. A thick blade burst from Shou’s neck, and he slumped down, eyes already glazing with death.

Jagdish exploded up from where he’d been squatting, the barbaric tulwar parting the night. The attacker who’d killed Shou was suddenly bereft of hands. Jagdish kicked the masked figure in the chest, and he sailed out of view. Namori remembered something that Vindicator Tanzen had said. “When in doubt, keep moving.”

She rolled from her seat next to the fire just as a spear thudded into the dirt. She reached back and pulled free her axe, placing her back against a tree. Chaotic fighting, shouts, and the screams of people injured or dying filled the darkness. Four masked figures materialized on the other side of the fire, all coming forward.

Namori turned her axe ninety degrees and stepped forward, swinging it low. The blade caught the embers of the firepit and caused them to burst into a stinging shower. The attackers shrank back and covered their eyes. She rushed at the far outside bandit, cutting him deeply on the thigh as she passed.

Utaka Hina opened a man’s neck with her scimitar nearby, and suddenly the camp was marshalled. A few more bandits were killed, but the bulk of them dissipated into the jungle when the full weight of the roused samurai came to bear.

Covered with ash, mud, and blood, Namori’s heart would not quit thundering. Her thighs quivered, and she knelt, the head of her masakari against the ground, its handle keeping her from crumpling all the way.

Utaka Hina squatted next to her. “Are you hurt?”

“N…no.”

Hina was gone in another moment, at the side of a samurai with a serious wound to his lower leg.

***

The eta that accompanied them had much to do at dawn, preparing shrouds for the samurai dead and hauling the enemy corpses to a long trench where they would be burned, then buried. Namori had never seen this level of casualties up close, and it was sobering to witness.

“It seems an unwise move for bandits to attack our camp as they did,” Namori said. Utaka Hina stood listlessly at her side, her eyes hollow with fatigue. No one had gotten any sleep the night before. Only the dead rested.

“This was no group of bandits. It was the Tigers of Kali-ma,” Jagdish said this quietly as he came to Namori’s side. His bare torso was splashed with blood, none of it his own.

“Who are they?”

His face bore a feral expression. He took a flask of some Ivendi spirit and threw down a swallow. “They killed my whole family. They believe that, if they kill enough, their god will tilt the table of the world and sweep it clean, so that only they remain. It is for them that I reserve my arrows.” He walked away, seemingly without direction.

“He is Ivendi. What does he know?” Utaka Hina asked.

“About this haunted place? Enough.” Namori went to pack up her things. It would be a long day’s ride.

***

The twilight of that day seemed a year in coming. Namori did not so much dismount as fall from her horse, and was hard pressed to remove the saddle from its back. Twice during the sullen evening meal, she found that she’d fallen into a fitful sleep and begun to relive the nightmarish battle of the previous night. She crawled into the Utaka tent and fell into sleep such that, when she awoke in the night, she could not immediately tell where she was, or even who she was.

Wiping her face, she exited the tent and used the small latrine that the eta had created for them. She was nearly at the tent again when a hand clamped over her face and wrenched her back. She went for her knife, but the attacker’s other hand trapped her wrist before she could. In a moment, she was catapulting backward through the jungle. Oddly, this event seemed to create no noise at all.

Several frantic seconds later, she was deposited on the ground. The tips of three swords touched her at neck, heart, and kidney. “Don’t scream. It will hardly rise to your throat before you are killed thrice-over,” a voice hissed.

“If you intend rape, you’ll find my corpse far more pliable to your touch,” she told them.

“Brave. Good.” One of her abductors prodded her with his toe, flipping her so that she was on her side. Another, the one she now faced, took a knee, his blade still touching her at the hollow of her neck. Now, she could see him by the light of the waxing moon. He wore a mask, a mempo. Her heart sank. A Spider Clan assassin.

“Ah, excellent. You’ve grasped the situation.” he said. “Don’t think that your life is so important as to merit our intrusion, little Unicorn. If it were, you would have never awakened, nor would any of your snoring Maiden bunkmates.”

“Why carry me off, then, servant of Daigotsu?”

“The will of a Spider cannot be so easily explained. For now, you need only carry this message to your leaders. We know where the Tiger’s lair lies. Here.” The Spider pressed a scroll case into her hands. “It is marked on that map. We give them to you, because it suits us.”

“Probably Spider trickery, an ambush,” Namori spat. She surprised herself with the venom on her words..

The Spider stood, elaborately putting his straight blade away. “Every morning and each night, little Unicorn, you survive on this soil because the Spider don’t wish you dead yet. We need no special, devious plan to leave you cold and broken, with empty eyes. You are swamp toads in our palms. To kill you, we could simply make a fist.”

The Spider took two steps back, and suddenly all three of them were simply gone, as if they had only existed in Namori’s mind. She climbed to her feet, got her bearings, and walked back to camp. She went to the gunso’s tent and called out for him. “Ta-Ichi-sama, something has happened. We must speak.”

***

From the head of the long valley, they could see what had once been a city of impressive size. The tops of ornate stone buildings poked up out of the jungle’s canopy here and there, and stone-cobbled roads could yet be traced, if one looked carefully.

There had been a long argument about coming this way, about going on the word of the duplicitous and vile Spider, but curiosity had won out in the end. After a tense conversation with the Utaka that Namori had not been privy to, Ta-Ichi indicated that they would search the ruins and attempt to root out the scum that had attacked them a few days previous.

“I don’t care if they’re just bandits, or some gajin cult. They will be sent to the lands of the dead either way,” he announced to the group at large.

As he rode by, the Gunso leaned in to give a meaningful look to Utaka Hina. “This one is to be guarded every minute. She is your responsibility.”

“Hai,” Hina said, bowing stiffly. She waited until he was well away and occupied to turn to Namori. “Please don’t make my job any more difficult than it must be, Namori-san.”

Namori felt herself begin to flush. Her hands were as fists upon her horse’s reins. She counted to five before answering. “I will take no unnecessary risks, Hina-san.”

“Good. This patrol…this is far more perilous than most. Going down there, into the city, this will be like war. I have seen you. You have spirit, and you’re clever, but you are not a bushi.”

“I will fight only when I must, Hina-san.” she swore. As a courtier, she knew that such nebulous terms meant nothing. She would fight when she chose. Namori hoped only that her choices would be wise ones.

***

A mist clung to the bottom of the valley, and with it, the lingering stench of rotting vegetation. Some darker aroma seem to hide behind the normal jungle scents, but Namori couldn’t name what it was. The uncanny hoots of jungle animals, as well as the calls of the colorful birds in the canopy filled the air.

Even the most talkative of their group had fallen silent, trying with all their might to pierce through into the dappled shadows at the side of the ancient thoroughfare where they rode. Utaka Hina rode next to her, a tall spear braced in her right stirrup, her eyes keen.

Namori was not a person prone to fear, but the ruins of the ancient Ivendi city had an atmosphere of such pervasive menace that she found herself constantly on guard, constantly swiveling her head back and forth. The fatigue of staying alert soon set in. Though she wanted to be aware of every brush of the jungle foliage upon the stone, every monkey howl, every fluttering of a bird’s wings, her mind wandered, her attention faltered. She began to wish that something would happen, even if that even worked to their detriment. The waiting, wondering when the enemy would strike–this was the most difficult thing.

Jagdish leaned in close, saying something to Ta-Ichi. The Gunso then called a halt. The horses stood listlessly in the sun. Warriors squinted against the sweat in their eyes. A few men slipped from their horses and went out to the front of one of the ruined buildings, looking at something. Namori couldn’t see what they were looking at, but they straightened, and their faces were pale and troubled on the return trip.

Jagdish responded to whatever the scouts reported to Ta-Ichi by reaching into his pack and pulling free a bow, which he strung with a clever trick involving twining one of his legs around the lower limb and pushing against his stirrup.

The company continued onward, the tension even thicker as they passed into the main part of the ancient city. Here, the stone buildings towered above them, now overgrown with jungle vines and tall shrubs. The paving stones were buckled and heaved in all directions from the encroaching jungle, making the way treacherous for the horses. Namori was hungry and tired, saddle weary and in poor humor. She had all but given up on the idea that there was anything here. If there had been, they were now gone. More likely, the Spider had sent them here for their own cryptic reasons.

These were her thoughts just before the jungle exploded with attackers, and the blood spilled, and the madness engulfed everyone.

***

Namori’s horse screamed as a short spear buried into its flank. Savages boiled out of the jungle on all sides. They were painted with colored clay in white, black, and orange stripes like a tiger, and wore fearsome helmets that made them look like creatures of Jigoku.

Her horse spun and wheeled, finally picking a direction and bolting into the foliage. Namori held on hard with her left hand and pulled free her axe with the right. The brush slapped against her face, a branch whipping her so hard that she was nearly unhorsed.

“Namori!” she heard behind her, followed by the heavy hoof beats of Utaka Hina’s horse. Things were too fraught for her to look back, and the jungle too thick to see anyway.

She came upon another of the attackers by surprise, kicking her heel out and knocking him flat with the power of her horse’s rush. She could feel the shock all the way up to her hip as he went down. In another moment, she was in the clear, on one of the shaded and overgrown side streets. A painted Ivendi cultist rushed at her with a huge club. Namori raised her masakari axe high and they came together. The axe plunged into the man’s flesh at the point between neck and shoulder. At the same time, his hammer hit square against her horse’s skull. The horse’s skull shattered audibly, and its legs folded up under it.

Then Namori was airborne, her axe still buried in her attacker, her mouth open in a scream she couldn’t quite vocalize. She flipped over, and the sky flashed by her, then flipped again, and saw the ground coming up far too quickly. She landed, skipped, and thudded to a stop. Everything went dark.

***

She was on her back, her body’s numbness giving way to pain in a dozen places. Her helmet had somehow stayed in place, hiding her face behind its long face shield. Her arms worked. Her legs…she had not yet tried. Namori slowly pulled her long knife from its sheath and hid it at her side, staying still.

Utaka Hina’s battle horse trotted by with no rider, seemingly unharmed. An Ivendi cultist tried to approach the animal, but it reared and flailed its hooves, and the cultist thought better of his course. His eyes fell upon her, and he crept closer. He had two short axes tucked into his sash, his hands resting upon them. On his head, he had a helm fashioned out of hardwood and painted to look like a tiger’s open maw. Streaks of white and black paste across his face and chest caused him to look altogether bestial.

The Ivendi approached her in the manner of a beast, circling slowly, stopping to watch before coming nearer. It was all that Namori could do to stay still.

“Keep your wits, keep your life,” she repeated over and over within her mind. She wouldn’t move, wouldn’t act before the time was right. It was oh so easy to say, and so difficult to accomplish when every fiber of her being wanted to either run or fight, not to lay there and pretend unconsciousness.

Finally, the cultist dropped to a knee beside her, poking at her with his hand, grabbing her in a tender place. He bared his teeth, leaning over her, his rancid breath on her neck.

Namori’s eyes, which had been veiled, opened and met his through the face guard of her helmet.

“Ah?” he managed before she plunged her long dagger upward and into his underarm, all the way to the hilt.

He did not die. Instead, he leaped upon her, his thick hands threading beneath her helm and grasping her neck. He squeezed so hard that the world turned pink, then gray in her vision. With the last bit of breath she had, Namori twisted the blade as hard as she could.

The Ivendi went limp, slumping atop her. A gout of blood came from his mouth, and a series of violent shivers coursed through his body. After a moment, he was still. Namori grunted, barely able to escape from beneath the suffocating freight of the cultist’s corpse.

Her hip twinged, but she was able to gain her feet. She pulled her dagger free and wiped it on the man’s pantaloons before putting it away. She looked around. Her ears told her that the battle had waned or moved further away at this point. No cultists were within sight, but that could change at any moment.

Only the eta were to touch dead flesh. It was unclean and could taint the spirit. Namori looked around. This was as close as she required to war, and she was alone. Rules were bent in war. With the toe of her riding boot, she managed to coax the short axes out of the dead Ivendi’s sash and onto the paving stones. They were hers a moment later.

Namori had no illusions. She had been lucky thus far. If she didn’t rejoin the group, though, she would not live to see another dawn.

***

Utaka Hina’s mount stood at the edge of the overgrown roadway, nipping tender bits of vegetation from the jungle’s verge and chewing thoughtfully. Namori approached the huge mare carefully, coming directly toward her eye with slow, deliberate steps. She could see the small muscles beneath the horse’s skin flex and relax, causing its sweaty hide to shimmer in the sun.

“You can trust me, horse. I’m a courtier.” The fact that she was covered in blood made her words lack credibility. The horse’s nostrils flared, and it stamped the ground as she got closer.

“Easy. Easy, now.” Namori eased her helmet off and held it under one arm. “I’m small, just a young girl who needs your help.”

The horse studied her, now more interested. Namori closed in, touching the horse on the neck gently, allowing it to push its big head against her, though it grated against newly-forming bruises. “There, now. We’ll get through this together. The savages would just roast your meat on a spit, anyway.”

Namori got the battle horse by the reins and walked it back the way she’d come. Her own horse lay there dead, its skull crushed. The sounds of fighting had died away by this time. She had no way of knowing where the enemy was, or how numerous. She pushed her helmet back on, did the grisly work necessary to regain her masakari from the corpse of the cultist nearby, and kept moving.

“We need to find your mistress, Big Lady. I’m going to call you Big Lady, if that’s all right.” The horse had become good natured at this point, and gave a flick of its chin that nearly lifted Namori out of her shoes. They came upon the signs of combat after another minute of walking, just around the corner and close to an alley that was nearly occluded with heavy foliage. One cultist was dead with a sword slash across the face, another bleeding hard and struggling against a wound that had severed his backbone just below the shoulder blades.

The wounded cultist looked back at Namori and the huge horse. His eyes were bright. He opened his mouth, filling his lungs to shout. She brought the masakari’s blade downward and divided his skull. It was a wet, strange sound. It always surprised her how easily bare flesh gave way before hardened steel, how suddenly life departed.

She was forced to put her foot against the dead man’s neck to wrench the axe free. She looked away in disgust as the innards of the cultist’s skull oozed from the wound. Utaka Hina was lying at the verge of the jungle, face down. An arrow protruded from her thigh, and one arm hung slack in a way that indicated that the bone inside was badly broken. Big Lady made a pained little sound when she saw Hina’s form, surging forward to her.

Namori looked around. She didn’t see anyone else. She knelt next to Hina, brushing her hair away from her face and putting a palm next to her mouth. The breath still came, but Hina was unconscious, blood crusted around her nose. Namori knew basic first aid, but this was very serious. She would have to do what she could and then try to get her atop the horse.

The arrow wasn’t deep, only a few inches into the muscle of the thigh. It didn’t look like a hooked head, just a piercing bronze point. Hina groaned, but didn’t rouse as it was pulled free. The bronze tip of the arrow was coated with some tarry substance. Likely poison. Namori snapped the tip of the arrow off and put it in a pocket. Perhaps the healer would know it and be able to prepare an antidote. For now, there wasn’t anything she could do but hurry.

Using Hina’s sash, she tied a few layers of binding around the wound. The blood leaked slow enough that it wasn’t her chief concern. With Hina’s scabbard, she braced the broken arm, doing as well as she could to not grind the broken bones upon one another.

Big Lady was such a massive horse that there was a lot of room behind the saddle. Namori strained, teeth gritted, as she got Hina’s limp form to a standing position. The battle horse somehow knew what she needed, and bowed its front legs down, allowing Namori to fold Hina across the saddle. She managed to push her backward to the horse’s rump after a few minutes of sweaty labor.

“How will I keep you from falling?” Namori whispered. There was no one there to answer. She went back to her own horse and cut free the reins. She was able to fashion a binding that hooked from Hina’s weapon belt to the back of the saddle. That would have to do.

“I hope the Utaka will forgive me,” Namori said to Big Lady. “But I need you now, as does your mistress.”

It was not easy to get up on such a tall horse, but Namori managed it after a few failed attempts. She was not used to having her legs pushed so wide apart, not used to being so high off the ground. She couldn’t think about that. She tightened her legs on Big Lady and the horse immediately broke into a gallop. It was all Namori could do to hang on.

***

“We did not expect to see you again, especially not astride a Utaka horse,” Ta-Ichi said. The group had taken casualties, with many wounded but still able to fight and a few dead. The cultists had been killed in great numbers and lay broken along the road. As befit samurai, all of this had been taken in stride, and there were no undue hysterics.

Namori’s dismount from the horse lacked grace, but it accomplished what it needed to. “I became separated from the group during the melee, but Utaka Hina came and saved my life. She was seriously injured in the action, however. She will need the shugenja’s aid.”

“She’ll have it.” Ta-Ichi squinted at her, but she didn’t believe that he sensed the deception in her words. It was a necessary fiction to preserve Hina-san’s honor, as she had been tasked with Namori’s care, not the other way around. She would have to use her well-learned politics in this case to make sure that everything looked proper to the outward observer.

Namori stood there, the stiffening of her injuries now making her miserable, her soul mute and numb. They led Big Lady away to where the healers were working. Hunger, pain, and fatigue closed around her. She wanted to lie down somewhere. She wanted food. She needed sake, not to mute the fires inside her, but to light them again, as they had guttered under a rain of blood.

While she stared at her own feet, a small group of Battle Maidens gathered. She acknowledged their presence and waited for what they would say. Only the Utaka and their grooms were to ride their steeds. There had been a need. In battle, there is no law. Tanzen-san had told her this, and she could not argue with the sentiment.

She swallowed. “Maidens. I apologize for what I have done. If I have wronged your school by my actions, please know that I will do whatever you deem necessary to atone.” Namori bowed low, though it cost her in pain.

The Maidens looked between themselves. “You rode on Hina-san’s steed with her. As you said, she rescued you. There is nothing unusual. We are pleased that both of you returned, as we thought you lost,” the spokeswoman for the group said, obviously pleased that she had been able to vaguely manipulate the facts to fit their honor. “We are not so foolish as to question the will of the Fortunes when our comrades are won back from the clutches of death.”

“Very well. I hope that the healers can bring her around. She fought with great potency and killed many enemies today. Hina-san is to be honored. I owe her my life.”

Many of the Utaka departed amicably at this time. One, a jovial and slightly stout Maiden, leaned in close. “What is said in public must be said. I understand this and will never repeat anything but the accepted story. Between us, however, I think that your heart beats to the Utaka rhythm, the beating of great hooves upon the soil. The Ide do not know what they have in you, Namori-san.”

***

The day’s light was beginning to wane. Those who would survive had done so, those who would not had slid into the realm of the dead despite any action by the healers. Hina rested quietly, the poison that had been on the cultist’s arrow having failed to do its work. Her eyes flickered open, and she saw Namori sitting nearby, eating a piece of dried meat. She had not inquired about its origin, nor argued when Jagdish had offered her a small flask of the potent fruit liquor from his saddle pack.

“You live,” Hina said. “How?”

“You rescued me. Heroically, and at the expense of your health. You will surely receive some accolades for your efforts.”

Hina studied her. “This is the story you’ve told?”

Namori nodded. “We both live, as does your horse. Everyone’s honor is preserved. You truly did fight valiantly.”

“You are a courtier, after all. Clever enough to bend the truth to whatever is most expedient.”

Namori took a deep swig of the Ivendi spirit. “I am glad you lived, Hina-san.” She got to her feet and limped away.

***

“Push them into the open, and we will destroy them.” These had been Moto Ta-Ichi’s words in the earliest glimmerings of dawn. It was mid-afternoon now, and Shinjo Namori had never been so exhausted in her life. The image her eyes captured of the world was thready, as if she looked through a mist. Her limbs were leaden, her head filled with wool.

She waited, concealed in a ruined building, just to the side of an archway. Jagdish the Ivendi guide was on the other side of the arch, his eyes hard and flat, consumed with wrath. Every building on the street was laced with Unicorn fighters, no doubt fighting off fatigue and holding their bows in sweating hands. Namori looked down at her own bow. It had been Shinjo Shou’s until a few days before. One of the Tigers of Kali-ma had slain him. He didn’t need it any more. With arrows in short supply, she had tried only one shot while drawing with her weaker left hand. It had felt strange and clumsy, but the arrow had gone more or less where she’d aimed. It could very well have been luck.

Namori blinked. It would be difficult to do anything but fall down in a heap if she had to wait much longer.

“The Tigers will go to meet their god soon,” Jagdish said. He held out a flask of the fruit liquor. Namori took a small drink. It burned like swallowing a live ember. She stretched her shoulders. If she ever got back to Journey’s end keep, she’d sleep for three days if she had to nail the door shut to do so.

Then came the thunder.

With the thunder, screaming.

The sound of the Utaka charge echoed across the silent ruin. The nearer sound of cultists running hard to try and hide amplified in the foreground. Ragged knots of cultists sprinted toward them, heedless of everything but the certain death that rode on the Utaka battle steeds behind them.

Namori looked to Jagdish. He nodded, pivoting from behind the archway and drawing back his bow in a single smooth movement. She did the same, the string digging into the leather thumb ring she wore, the strain of drawing a man’s stiff bow to the hollow of her cheekbone sending lightning flashes of pain across her bruised torso. Everything slowed down. Her hand relaxed, and the horn bow thrummed. She didn’t wait to see what the arrow did, but drew a second, a third, a fourth.

The street was quickly crowded with injured or dying cultists, arrows sticking out at random angles from their flailing bodies as they rolled and tumbled on the ruined paving stones. They were many, and some passed through the storm of arrows unscathed. As a handful of them were about to close, Jagdish screamed something in Ivendi, ripped his tulwar from its sheath, and rushed to meet them. He was quickly lost in the fray.

Ten paces distant, one of the cultists burst from the crowd and met her eye. He had wicked-looking daggers that curved forward in each hand.

“An axe is not a defensive weapon, Namori,” Vindicator Tenzen had said many times in their lessons. “Knives and swords are faster, clubs and spears easier. With an axe, you must strike first, strike hardest, and strike in a surprising manner.”

Namori threw the bow aside. Before she’d made a conscious decision to do so, she threw one of the short axes at the cultist. He managed to get one of his daggers in front of him, and deflected the throw. The axe still hit him with its flat side in the shoulder joint, spinning him sideways and slowing his progress. She threw the other small axe, and it hit him low on the hip, hard enough to deaden the joint and drop him to his knees. Namori felt herself rush forward, pulling free her masakari and holding it high.

The cultist crossed his two daggers in preparation to try to catch her downward strike. Just before she would have launched that very attack, she put her right foot out hard, pivoting on it and spinning a full rotation. As she spun, she sped the axe head into an almost-flat trajectory. When it hit, it was directly into the side of the cultist’s ribcage, and had every bit of energy her body had left behind it.

The axe handle shivered. Namori let out a grunt as all her impetus came to a halt in the enemy’s chest. Bones screamed against the steel as she pulled the weapon backward. The cultist’s eyes went dark and he slumped to the ground.

To her right, Jagdish was surrounded by bodies. A cultist ducked a lateral stroke from his tulwar, but Jagdish kicked upward and caught the man under the chin with such a vicious blow that the cultist’s feet left the ground. When he landed, he didn’t move. A cultist with a bladed club had been pretending death near Jagish’s feet, and surged up behind him.

“Jagdish!” Namori called.

The Ivendi guide turned, his tulwar’s dark metal flashing. The cultist’s head fell to earth and rolled to a stop next to Namori’s feet.

The Utaka rode down the rest. What their weapons missed, the hooves of their steeds found. One of them, a middle aged man with a broken Utaka spear through his gut, lay on the ground, writhing with the nearness of his death. Jagdish saw him and jogged over, stabbing his tulwar into the man’s face again and again. He reached down, pulling something from the man’s neck and tucking it into his sash.

The tall Ivendi, the match for any samurai in prowess, looked to Namori for just a moment. He nodded. She held up a hand in a brief wave. He walked into the underbrush. Namori imagined that it was the last any of them would see of him. The grim purpose that had kept him was now complete.

For the moment, so was hers. Namori went to the ruined archway and put her shoulders against the pitted stone. She let herself sag. When she hit the ground, she let herself fall to the side. All the actions of her comrades seemed strange and pointless when viewed sideways. She tried to laugh, but there was no laughter in her.

***

The streets of Journey’s End were abuzz with something. Something was happening, but Namori couldn’t say just what. People lined the road to watch their passing. She could hear distant whispers, little snippets of conversations. She rode Shinjo Shou’s horse, but she would be without one when she turned it over at the stables. Out of the madness of battle and blood, she would plunge back into the propriety and order of the court. She would put down her weapons and armor and take up the brush and ink once more. Could she do it? She didn’t know.

Namori watched the people, a mix of peasant and samurai, even a few gaijin, watch and gesture at the tattered procession as they rode by.

“Which one is she?” a voice asked.

“Perhaps her?” another said.

“She’s not a Utaka, fool.”

“Do you think she knows that he’s here?”

“How could she?”

This chatter went on. They neared the keep, and she saw an outrider coming hard, nearly trampling a peasant on his way. Their column came to a halt and the rider slid to a clattering stop before Moto Ta-Ichi. They passed quiet words for well over a minute. Ta-Ichi appeared surprised, then heartened by what he heard.

Ta-Ichi looked backward in the column, his eyes finding Namori. He extended his index finger in her direction, then motioned for her to come forward. She pushed through along the edge of the group until she could stand her horse next to his.

“Yes, Ta-Ichi-sama?” A thrill of fear went through her.

“It appears as if you have a visitor, Namori. Your betrothed, Moto Subotai is here, as are a company of his followers.”

Namori felt the blood rush to her face. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. “Ah…oh, my.”

He looked her over. “There’s nothing we can do about your appearance at this point. Hopefully, he won’t meet you by the stables. Rejoin your place in the column. I’m damned anxious to get back to the keep.”

Ta-Ichi stood up on his stirrups and shouted back to the column. “There’s a feast planned! Kohatsu-sama’s son has returned to him!”

There was a moment of confusion, then a ragged cheer. More than feasts, more than anything, they simply wanted rest, shade, food, and a moment without the prospect of death lingering over their heads.

All but Namori. She wanted only a clean kimono and time to wash, time to have Atsuko comb the tangles from her hair. She wanted to be…what she was when Subotai saw her again. “Perhaps this is what you are,” a little voice in her head spoke. There was no good argument against that.

It seemed like only a moment before they were passing into the huge courtyard that stood between the keep and the stables. Not enough time to think of something to say, some courtly method to explain her disheveled appearance, the dried evidence of blood on her armor, the savage axes on her belt, her feet astride a dead man’s horse.

There was only this, the muddy ground, the gaijin helmet on her head, the low ache of bruises at every corner of her. The horse halted, its reins being held now by a groom, ready to take it away to be washed and fed and made to recover its strength.

Namori looked to the side entrance to the keep, to the assembled group that waited there. Amongst the purple garb of the Unicorn, there was a knot of differing color. Several samurai with similar uniforms stood together. Upon a background of gray, clan colors and Mon stood out. Then she saw him. Subotai. He stood at the center of this group of coordinated young samurai, a look of cautious optimism on his face.

With the helm, he didn’t know her. Who would? She took a moment to catch her breath and watch, to try and let the blush that spread across her face subside. It was no good. Her heart beat like the horse drums on the steppes.

He was different. Not so young. More earnest. Still, he stood with his thumbs hooked in his sash, that air of unshakable confidence hanging about him. Why should he not be? He’d made something of himself. He’d done well, and was now back with his people to enjoy their accolades.

Namori eased the helmet from her head. She could see Subotai take a quick breath. A large samurai in Sparrow colors leaned in and said something to him, smiling. Subotai looked to the side, at the one he imagined to be his friend, the son of Akodo Goro. The Lion’s eyes were like chips of rock. He nodded slightly. If he spoke, she couldn’t see it.

She dismounted, using all her will to do it gracefully, not showing how much it hurt. She succeeded. Walking forward, she thought of what she might say, how she could greet this man who had said so much, written so faithfully to a woman who had spurned him and unleashed every monstrous thing she could dredge up against his honor. There was nothing.

In a moment, she was before him, bedraggled and beaten, dressed as a rough bushi after a difficult campaign. Namori took a breath. There was no sense in trying to maintain her face. A smile burst across it. She handed her gaijin helmet to the nearby Sparrow, took Subotai’s face in her hands, and kissed him.

Her betrothed returned the kiss, deepened it. He hoisted her off the ground and into his arms. The fatigue was gone. The pain, for a moment, forgotten. She pushed her fingers into his hair, needing him as close as he could possibly be. It felt right. It felt like coming home at last.

Subotai didn’t put her down. A little cheer went up through the crowd. When the kiss didn’t end, when she found her legs had wrapped around his hips and one of her axes had fallen to the boards of the entryway, people were encouraged to go on about their business.

Subotai carried her inside. She didn’t care where they were going. Namori knew what she wanted now, and it was going to change everything.

Yay! I have internet again! The week in review.

So you may have noticed I haven’t blogged at all this week. That is because my stupid Century Link piece of crap internet died for the last time. I’ve put up with their garbage service and lousy speed for years because it was the only internet available on Yard Moose Mountain.

Luckily when Century Link died AGAIN this weekend I’d already learned that Digis had built a tower on our mountain. I got them to come out to install, but sadly that meant no house internet for a few days, which meant no blogging, even though there was lots of hilarious stuff going on in the world begging to be made fun of.

But last night we got our new internet, and holy moly it is so much faster it is ridiculous. I tested it out on Call of Duty. For the last year I’ve been playing using slow, laggy, jerky internet, plus I normally play while riding an exercise bike for an hour. Last night, actual good internet and a normal heart rate and I went from loser suckwad of losing to an avenging angel dispensing murder death. Yay fast internet!

So long Century Link. May your unspeakable foulness rot in hell.

But what did I not get to blog about? Lots. So let’s do a quick WEEK IN REVIEW!

First off, the greatest video ever made came out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=Z7Z4rGQi2cQ

Yes. Holy shit. That is the actual President of the United States of America running like a girl around the White House with an inebriated Joe Biden (I’m just amazed he can corner that well drunk, and since this is Joe we’re talking about, you know that isn’t water in his cup at the end). Even the Portuguese water dogs weep for America as they go by.

Side note after watching this video several times… How many freaking hand sanitizers do they have in the White House anyway?

If you ever wonder why every tyranical wannabe dictator violent scumbag in the world looks at America as being weak right now, well, there you go. Who the hell on the POTUS’s staff thought that video was a good idea? Probably the same dude who thought this was where the President should stand while making a statement concerning the Russian invasion of the Crimea.

Yep… Can’t really make this stuff up.

Up next, in SAD PUPPIES NEWS, the Typical WorldCon Voter once again showed their ass to the world and demonstrated that they are too PC to live.

So the Hugo awards (you should have your PINs by now so don’t forget to nominate Warbound before the end of the month to combat PRS!) will be held in London this year. Neil Gaiman, who is about as close to a rock superstar as you get in this industry, is friends with Johnathan Ross, who is the British equivelent of Jay Leno or David Letterman. Gaiman asked Ross to host the Hugo ceremony. Ross (who normally gets like a hundred grand to host an event) VOLUNTEERED to do it for FREE. He’s hosted ComicCon and the Eisner awards (events bigger than like five or six WorldCons put together) and is also a sci-fi geek, has written sci-fi comics, and his wife is a Hugo winning sci-fi author so he actually likes this stuff, plus he’s got 3 MILLION Twitter followers, so that’s kind of a no brainer for publicity for our struggling, shrinking genre, right?

Oh hell no.

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/03/jonathan-ross-and-hugo-awards-why-was-he-forced-out-science-fictions-self-appointed

Those of you who want to end Puppy Related Sadness won’t be surprised to know that instead of saying “Yay! Publicity! Increased Book Sales for the nominees!” one of the authors got upset that Ross, being a comedian, might make fat jokes. And that made her feel unsafe. What’s the matter LonCon? You promised to make me feel safe. No. I shit you not.

Putting aside the whole thing where words make you unsafe bullshit, and how a con doesn’t just need to protect you from sexual harrassement but also the potential that somebody somewhere may actually utter words that hurt your self esteem, surely the Typical WorldCon Voter would be grown up enough to say put your big girl panties on and move on with life.

Of coure not. So then SMOF, being SMOF, immediately got their outrage on, lit up their torches and pulled out their pitchforks and began mercilessly attacking Ross. Not for anything he’d actually done mind you, but because of what he MIGHT do, never mind all of the evidence to the contrary of him being a professional in hosting award shows that dwarf the Hugos.

And Ross isn’t exactly a right winger. He’s British.

So the brigade of yippy attack dogs began nipping at him, flinging poo, and all of the usual character assassination stuff outspoken authors like me have been putting up with for years. “Why do you want all the fat people to die you hafeful 1%er?” When Ross defended himself and (being a comedian) tried to mock those mocking him, then it turning into “You sound angry.” “Yes, so angry.” “More examples of why you shouldn’t host, you hateful rage monster.” so on and so forth.

Of course, those of us who spend our lives yanking these people’s chains already have a checklist and bingo card ready for these sorts of predictable things, http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/the-internet-arguing-checklist/ we are used to their tantrums and immunized by being actual grown ups with lives, but since this was mostly lefties eating lefties, all of the hate and character assassination came as a surprise to them.

So Ross dropped out. His daughter tried to defend her father by pointing out that she was overweight and so Ross was sensitive to that sort of thing, but NOOOOOOOOOoooo, this is our designated outrage of the week and facts will not stand in our way! His sci-fi author wife and daughter had to quit Twitter because they got so hounded by caring liberals.

(on a side note, before the No Labels crowd throws their predictable fit, when I say Caring Liberals, that is the special subclass that cares so hard they like to threaten to kill people like me. One of us conservative bloggers’ favorite things to do on Twitter is see how many posts it takes to have a caring liberal go from accusing us of misogyny before they threaten to murder or rape our wives or daughters. My record is 5, though I’ve seen it done in 3)

Neil Gaiman was shocked by this outpouring of stupidity, and I for one love the comment about how he was stunned they attacked Ross for imaginary offenses and hateful things he’d never done or would do. No shit? Really? Welcome to the party, Mr. Gaiman. This is how the other half lives. Neil was apparently unaware of the Make Shit Up section of the checklist. If one half of what they said about somebody like me was true I’d be the vilest scum the world has ever seen, but I’m usually just a guy who disagrees with them and who will never back down, which obviously means I’m a white man who grew up with white privilege who hates gays, minorities, women, old people, young people, sunshine, and kittens.

LonCon issued a statement which reads sort of like the thing Maoist prisoners had to read right before going in front of the firing squad. They’re super sorry that their hateful hatemongery knows no boundry of hate, and how dare they put actual skill, celebrity, and promotional value above the off chance that one of you might pull some imagined offense out of your ass. We’re super sorry, commisar.

Anybody want to bet that if they’d gotten John Stewart or Stephen Colbert to host SMOF would have been giddy with excitement? And if somebody like me had said I feel unsafe because he may make jokes about the Tea Party, I’d have been the one to get laughed at? Not that that would have happened, because my side isn’t the one made up of easily offended glittery hoohaws.

So there you go, the latest SFWA/SMOF/Typical WorldCon Voter outrage of the week. Personally I think London should get Jeremy Clarkson to host. Then I’d actually bother to go, but mostly in the hopes that I’d get to hang out with him, drive around in a badass super car, and go to Piers Morgan’s house to punch him in the face again.

Oh, and by the way, we named our new fast internet router Privilege Whale.

The Drowning Empire, Episode 46: Brush & Ink, Axe & Armor, Part I

The Drowning Empire is a weekly serial based on the events which occured during the  Writer Nerd Game Night monthly Legend of the Five Rings game.  It is a tale of samurai adventure set in the magical world of Rokugan.

If you would like to read all of these in one convenient place, along with a bunch of additional game related stuff, behind the scenes info, and detailed session recaps, I’ve been posting everything to one thread on the L5R forum,  http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=295&t=101206

This is one of my absolute favorites. Pat Tracy wrote this fiction about his character’s estranged fiance. It is a 3 parter. All together it is a novella, and it is awesome. Pat is an extremely good writer.

continued from: http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/the-drowning-empire-episode-45-the-duel/

Brush & Ink, Axe & Armor

Part One:

“Mistress Namori-san, please awaken.” Atsuko knelt with her hands upon her thighs in the predawn hours, no more than a darker blot in the gloom. Journey’s End Keep was nearly silent, what few guards who paced the dog watches and servants who began at the tasks of the day doing so without comment.

Shinjo Namori forced herself up from the sleeping mat. She had been awake, her mind too consumed with the duty that Ide Zhao-sama had given her the day before to sleep more than fitfully. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of one quick, perfect phrase that would sum up the reasons that the Lion and Unicorn should leave off their fighting.

“I wish this phrase to be like a duelist’s strike, Namori-san. It must be swift and unlooked for. It must land with staggering force. It must feel like both a revelation and an obvious truth that even a child could grasp” Those had been Zhao-sama’s words. It was a trouble with brilliant men. They tended to ask for the impossible. They tended to require brilliance in their colleagues.

“I do not feel brilliant this morning, Atsuko.”

Atsuko waited a moment. “The moon’s beauty can, for a time, be obscured by clouds.”

“I read you too much poetry, I fear,” Namori said. She stretched her neck and rose, going to the washing table where a bowl of warm water steamed. Namori could hear Atsuko stowing the sleeping mat and gathering the linen as she patted the water from her eyes and set aside her sleeping kimono. Atsuko was soon there with her outfit for the coming day, helping her into the many layers that the court still required, even at the absolute end of the Empire. Even on days when the heat caused placid courtiers to sweat through their garments and fall insensate, the proprieties were upheld.

“I ache to see him, Atsuko,” Namori said as the servant brushed her hair. It was too familiar, saying too much, but she had no one here to confide in, no one to share such thoughts with.

“Kohatsu-sama’s son?”

“Yes.”

“You will be reunited when the Fortunes see fit, Mistress,” she offered as consolation.

Namori made a dismissive noise in her throat. She was picking up lamentable habits from the Moto all around her. She was becoming more like a Unicorn all the time. She was both proud and ashamed about this at the same time. Why could nothing be simple? “Light the lamps above my writing board and bring me my brush and ink.”

“Hai,” Atsuko bowed and went to her tasks without delay. There were two hours left before the dawn. There had to be some combination of kanji that she could summon that would help her esteemed senior negotiator. She would stare at the rice paper until she came up with something. All the fathers, all the sons, all the lovers and warriors on both sides of the conflict deserved a resolution. The answer didn’t lie in bloody combat. That had already been tried, and had led only to more dead, more taken hostage, more acrimonious dispute. Families displaced, thousands of koku spent to no purpose, unending piles of horses and men upon the field, dead and dying. It often seemed that the only great winner in war was the eta, who always gathered at the edges of the fray and made themselves busy with the raven’s work.

Atsuko came with her writing implements, and Namori made the kanji for the city of Rich Frog, where the Unicorn had been defeated soundly by Lion troops under the command of Akodo Goro. Rich Frog. That was the crux of it all.

“Rich?” she said quietly. “Not half so rich as it once was, with so many of its businesses and artisans killed or displaced.”

Namori put a finger to her lips. She made another kanji. “Destitute Frog.” A small smile appeared on her lips. It was too early to know if her idea was brilliant, but it was an idea. She dipped her writing brush into the inkwell and began hastily forming kanji on the page. There would be time for precision and beauty later. That would only be important if she really had something worthwhile. A stupid idea could not be improved upon with fine calligraphy.

***

Ide Zhao read through what Shinjo Namori had written. Only a tiny squint of one eye altered his face. He tapped his finger upon the scroll after rolling it up once more. Namori waited, finding it difficult not to fidget or ask him a question.

“It is an interesting idea, Namori. Bold. Confrontational, even. I will keep it and consider it more fully. I’d like you to make another attempt with a different tactic and have it back to me by the end of the week.”

Namori bowed before the great negotiator, using all her willpower to keep her face impassive. The prospect of starting again, starting anew, made her heart quail. “I will try again, Zhao-sama.”

“Go and rest, Namori. You look fatigued. Good thoughts come from minds at peace.”

Namori walked stiffly from the room, down the long hallway, and up the stairs to her lodgings near the north wall. When safely within her quarters, she gritted her teeth, slid from her sandals, and threw one with all her strength. It pierced a paper wall and clattered against the boards in her study. She slumped to a low couch and repeated her favorite curses that the Ujik-Hai had taught her when during the journey south. She wasn’t entirely certain what they meant, but like all Ujik-Hai, they sounded dire. It was her understanding that the longest curse involved goats.

“Mistress, you seem to have misplaced this,” Atsuko said. She approached, holding the sandal. The servant saw the look on her face and chose to put the sandals away without further comment.

Namori lamented once more at her temper. She had learned to hide it well, but that didn’t keep her from seething inside an outward aura of calm. It could be exhausting. On one hand, the anger fueled her, kept her from quitting or settling for something less than success, but it was also a liability. A courtier could not afford it to be known that, inside, she was a wrathful as a Crab Clan berserker.

She lay back on the couch, centering herself, breathing willfully. In a moment, she was asleep. She found herself in her frequent dream, where she yelled every insult she could dredge up while hurling various elements of a tea set at Subotai. In the dream, she could never stop herself from the unseemly display. His young face would always quirk, first to puzzlement, then to sadness, and finally to anger.

As was so often the case, the supply of tea cups never diminished, and with each throw, she grew more horrifying to look upon, until she was a shrieking Oni with hair that writhed like worms and claws for hands. As it always seemed to, the dream came to its inevitable conclusion, the door slammed so hard that objects jumped from the shelves along the wall, and a titanic, shamed silence. At last, the dream faded into darkness, and she was, at least for a moment, tranquil.

***

She awoke to a shrill squeal and the sound of Atsuko’s slippered feet fleeing. Namori reached into her layered kimono and pulled free a knife from where it nestled on the outside of her thigh. She hid the knife in her left hand sleeve and pretended sleep. Light footsteps came closer. With eyes closed, Namori could feel and almost envision the flexing of the floorboards. When they came close enough, she rolled from the couch, knife forward, and opened her eyes.

The painted face of Vindicator Tanzen flashed before her eyes. He slapped the knife out of her grasp and put two fingers against the pulse point in her neck. He pushed with his fingers, and his opposing foot hooked her at the ankle. Namori fell to the boards hard enough to send air whooshing from her lungs.

The Vindicator sat down and crossed one leg over the other, grinning. He watched her as she fought with the folds of her intricate court kimono and finally got to her feet.

“That was a valiant attempt. What did you learn?”

“I would have been better served to have fled, as Atsuko did.”

“If you suspected a man as dangerous as I am was coming to harm you, of course. That said, you had a good strategy, especially coming from sleep as you did. You acted too soon, though. Once you leaped off the couch, it was a fair fight. Let the attacker lean over you or try to grab at you before producing the blade. That way, the first he knows of it is when the pain starts.”

Namori smoothed her clothes and took a seat on the opposite couch. “It is good of you to take a personal interest, Vindicator Tanzen. I appreciate your tutelage.”

“The Old Man wouldn’t like it if you died. Something about his son, I recall.”

Namori nodded. The Vindicator was remarkably informal with almost everyone. The sole exception to this was Moto Byung-Chuul, the death priest. She supposed that, being a Vindicator, Tanzen was simply so dangerous that he felt that no one would take issue. Of course, none would be so foolish as to exhibit a lack of respect for a death priest.

“Would you like tea, Tanzen-san? Some other refreshment?”

The Vindicator, with his painted face and malleable expression, took on a canny expression. “They say that you have some of the really good sake left.”

Namori nodded. “I have some Friendly Traveler from Yasuki Dokansuto’s last visit, yes. Would you like some?”

“Only if you drink with me,” Tanzen said.

“It has been a trying morning. Your disarming me and knocking me down is the least of my difficulties. Very well,” Namori agreed. “Atsuko! Please bring Tanzen-san and I a cup of warmed sake.”

Atsuko delivered the tray of warmed sake and cups, quickly departing. Namori shook her head as she witnessed the actual quivering of the woman’s lip. When the servant retired, Namori put the cup to her lips and sipped, the warm heat easing down her throat and into her chest. She sighed.

“It helps,” Tanzen said, taking a more-than-modest drink of his own.

“You’ll have to clarify, Tanzen-san.”

The Vindicator held up the sake glass. “There is a lot of fire in you, Namori. More than can be expended upon courtly pursuits. The sake can calm the spirit, if used wisely.”

“You know?” She put her hand to her heart, surprised that the Vindicator had seen so deeply.

He nodded. “You learn to watch people, when you seek out the tainted. Most hide things poorly, or give themselves away with some unconscious twitch. For you, it was not so hard to see. You came here, out of the comfort and safety of Outsider Keep, because you saw the challenge in it, the things you might learn. When I come to train you, handle you roughly, treat you with too little respect or decorum, you don’t protest, but throw that fuel onto the fire and try harder. The fact that there is a hole in the paper wall there, poorly patched but clear, tells me that you lost your temper this morning.”

“Correct on all counts.”

“Then there is the fact that you are not afraid of me.”

“Am I not?” she asked. “Or do I simply have a better grasp on my outward visage than poor Atsuko?”

The Vindicator grinned. “Both things are true, the first more surprising.”

“I know you are a pious man, Vindicator Tanzen. You have little time for over-formality, but you respect those who earn it, and your faithfulness as a protector of the Empire is not to be questioned. You won’t harm me unless there is good cause.”

Tanzen sat still, considering. “I like you, Namori. Finish your sake, and we will speak of fighting and battles.”

***

“I find it rather unseemly that Kohatsu-sama chooses to send one of my junior courtiers out on these…patrols. Don’t you find it all a bit irregular?” Ide Zhao steepled his thin, adroit fingers on his lap. His hands had surely never held a weapon with serious intent. He was a true courtier, his passions rooted solely in words and policies, in the cultivation of relationships and making of grand deals.

“It was my understanding when I requested to come to the Ivory Kingdoms that I would be, in Kohatsu-sama’s words, ‘put to work like anyone.’”

“I will not go against his judgment, of course. He is the ultimate authority here, and we are all duty bound to accept his will. That said, I think that, if you had chosen to make complaint, you would quickly have been spared these duties. There will come a time, Namori, that you will need to decide what is most important to you. One can’t ride two horses at the same time.”

Namori bowed her head. “Yes, Zhao-sama.”

He wrinkled his brow good naturedly. “A good answer. A political answer. Agree without agreeing with anything. Namori, you have the skills to rise high. You have your share of shortcomings, of course, but most do. Most carry the baggage of all their secondary and tertiary concerns into the arena of politics. To become truly remarkable at anything requires sacrifice. In giving up other aspirations, in settling for less than our hearts desire, we hone ourselves to particular purpose. I understand the truth and weight of your betrothal. You will have to grapple within your soul for what it means. Does it require you to become the match he would want, or can you maintain your own course, while benefiting from the union?”

Namori opened her mouth, then closed it, surprised at the forthright nature of Zhao-sama’s words. He was often so gentle and subtle in his appraisals that she would be hours discovering that she’d been the subject of a rebuke.

“You needn’t answer, Namori. I would not press you. Perhaps what you do now is what must be, the lesson that the Fortunes must impart. I cannot know that. It is possible that, in knowing something of fighting and struggle, you will come back to the court with a new insight that will be vital. Then again, I find myself filled with worry that I will not see this bright young woman again, but for in the funeral white shroud.”

“It is said that we are only fully alive at the moment that death holds its axe above our necks,” Namori said, looking down and away.

“Poetical enough words. Who says such things?”

“My betrothed, Moto Subotai.”

“And he has written such things often enough to be believed, it seems. Go on, Namori. I will see you when you return, if you ever do.”

Namori walked from Ide Zhao-sama’s offices as if she carried a heavy burden. She was blind to everything as she returned to her quarters, her eyes in the far-away nowhere, her spirit pulled between two warring versions of what she had always wanted.

***

“Do you ever grow angry, Atsuko?” Namori asked.

The servant stopped, looking around her as if she might spy some avenue of escape.

“Mistress?”

“I’m not trying to trick you, Atsuko. Please, come and sit.”

With some reticence, she did so, careful to sit on the ground and thus be lower than Namori at all times. She watched her mistress every moment to make sure what she was doing was right, that she was in no danger. It occurred to Namori that she had never conceived of how much fear some people felt, how everything within them was a war, simply to act in some way or another despite the overwhelming terror that filled them.

“Surely, you must sometimes grow angry about something, when things have not gone well, and you are disappointed in people around you, events, yourself?”

“Mistress, I have never, not for a single moment, held anything but respect and love for you. If someone said otherwise, they were…” Atsuko stopped. “If they were nobles, of course, they were perfectly right to say so. I will submit to whatever punishment you deem appropriate.”

Namori shook her head. “No one said anything, Atsuko. We are not talking about you and I, and the strictures of society. I’m merely asking what you do when you grow frustrated at the course of events.”

“I…I sing to myself, Mistress. There are songs that I learned when I was small. I sing them to myself when I grow sad or the day has not been good.”

Namori could see the pleading in Atsuko’s eyes, the almost forlorn hope that her words were the right ones, and that she’d be left unscathed. She had never beaten Atsuko, and rarely enough even spoken harshly to her, but her temper was not always hidden.

“Thank you, Atsuko. You may go.”

She would ask someone else, someone who wouldn’t be afraid to answer the question. She’d have to take care. It couldn’t be anyone with the slightest political pretension, or even acumen. If the news of her temper became too public, it would doom her. Known flaws of that sort would be exploited within the day.

***

“Are you lost, young woman?” An older, hard faced woman stood near her giant Utaka battle horse, adjusting the girth strap on the saddle. Shinjo Namori stood in the mud of the open courtyard where the Utaka barracks was located, her sandals and the bottom of her court Kimono having been besmirched by the mess.

“I know my course, thank you.”

“Allow me to help you, Shinjo–” the woman began.

“Namori. I am here as part of the Ide contingent of courtiers.” Namori bowed.

“I am Utaka Chuoko. If I can be of service, please let me know, Namori-san.” The Battle Maiden returned her bow, though slightly less deep. Namori could tell that the woman made an attempt to look friendly, though it did not come naturally to her weather-beaten face.

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Chuoko-san. I am looking for Utaka Yanai.”

Chuoko’s eyes widened slightly. “May I ask why? She is very busy, and we do not get visitors from the diplomatic corps very often.”

“I need to ask her advice on something.”

Chuoko took a breath, straightened, and nodded. “I will see if she is available for a meeting.”

Namori was ushered into the barracks after being squinted at by a woman so impressive in build and size that she could have easily passed for a Crab. Chuoko escorted her to a set of stairs upward.

“Take the stairs, and go all the way to the end of the hall. Yanai-sama’s attendant, Kaede-san, will be there to meet you.” Chuoko gave her a look that Namori could not interpret. “Kaede-san will likely require you to undergo a search of your person. Please do not take offense. She is…thorough.”

Namori bowed to Chuoko. “Thank you for your assistance.” She began to ascend the stairs.

“Wait,” Chuoko said in a whisper.

Namori turned, surprised at the furtive look on Chuoko’s face.

“Namori-san, you should be aware that Kaede-san…she will like you.”

Namori kept her face still. “That is good to know. One always hopes to end the day with more friends, and fewer enemies. I believe one of the military writers said that.”

Chuoko wanted to say more, clearly, but did not, only waving Namori onward. She continued up to the top of the stairs, and passed a barracks room that was obviously a common sleeping area for the Battle Maidens. Two maidens were apparently finishing their ablutions after a ride, and were in a surprising state of undress. Namori, as was proper, pretended to be oblivious. She came to feel that the atmosphere in the Utaka barracks was strange and perhaps alien, that she would likely leave the place in a greater state of confusion than when she entered. She could not very well flee without having her audience with Yanai-sama at this point. She dawdled, wondering what Chuoko’s words meant, and why someone liking her would be framed so much like a warning.

Namori put those things from her, took a cleansing breath, and reached up to ring the small bell that would announce her to Yanai’s chambers. The door opened just as she reached out, surprising her.

A young Battle Maiden pulled the door open quickly, her eyes bright, her hair just so. She was rather small, but had an air of intense energy about her. Her perfect features were prominently marked by a scar across her neck and the lower part of her left ear was missing.

“You are Namori-san?” the attendant asked.

“Hai.”

“I am Utaka Kaede. Apologies, but I must search you before you enter. I ask you now to declare any weapons on your person.”

Utaka Kaede stood a little too close for Namori to feel comfortable, but the woman’s eyes touched hers, and she saw no threat there. Something else, something she couldn’t quantify, but she had no time to puzzle it out. “I have a dagger on my right thigh, on the outside. There is a hidden pocket in my kimono, here.”

Kaede reached into the pocket, her hand brushing against Namori. An inhalation of surprise came to her lips at the sudden and unlooked-for touch. Kaede came out with the blade, holding it in front of her.

“It is well made. I will hold onto it for you.” The Battle Maiden tucked it into her sash and proceeded to make a tracery of all the places where blades and weapons might be hidden. For a person who was used to only her servant ever touching her, it was a deeply strange experience, and Namori was glad that Chuoko had warned her. Kaede’s touch was light, though, and her expression was such that it was not too unpleasant.

“There. Again, I apologize for the intrusion, but I am sworn to keep Yanai-sama safe. Please, join her in the next room. I will be here if there are any needs that can be seen to.” As if she had not quite touched Namori’s person enough, Kaede’s hand just brushed against her shoulder as she came through the door. A moment later, and hopelessly distracted, she found herself in front of the most formidable woman in the whole castle.

Utaka Yanai had been studying a cloth map that hung upon the wall. It appeared to be the most thorough map of the Ivory Kingdoms anyone had yet created. Yanai turned from it, dusting her hands together. She was tall and impressive, with excellent muscle and long limbs. While not quite beautiful, she had the resilient and handsome bone structure that would see her attractiveness into her middle years before any hint of decline. She also had shrewd eyes, vision that took in the whole room in a single sweep and missed little.

“Ah, Namori-san. I am honored by your visit. Please, sit. Can I have Kaede bring you refreshment?”

Namori bowed. “Thank you for your hospitality. I have neither hunger nor thirst at this time.” She sat down, using all her study of controlled movement to do so. She focused on the moment, the physical gesture, to clear all extraneous thoughts from her mind. Seeing the nature of Yanai up close, this was far more difficult than she had anticipated.

Yanai sat, though she appeared as if, at ease, she were an elastic sapling pulled far over, waiting to snap straight in an eyeblink and with great power. “I have heard stories of you, Namori-san. You are the Rare Bridge.”

This took Namori aback. “Pardon me, Yanai-sama, but I have not heard anyone refer to me as such, and I don’t understand the meaning.” She felt her cheeks flush, and knew that this woman had already put her at a disadvantage with her first passage of words.

Yanai, Namori suddenly understood, was a woman who loved to hold forth, loved to argue and lecture. Unlike so many laconic samurai, she enjoyed speaking, enjoyed the process of teaching and knowing. It was no wonder that her detachment of Battle Maidens was so well ordered, or that she was so well loved.

“You see, you are a Shinjo, trained by the Ide. Someday, you will be married to a Moto of great repute, if the tales are true. You make a bridge across many waters within the Unicorn. Now, you come to my door, to ask counsel. In you, Namori-san, many things align that are traditionally off axis with one another.”

Namori remained silent for a moment. “That is a fascinating insight, Yanai-sama. I am honored to be thought of in this way.”

Yanai shrugged slightly. “I can’t take credit for it. I heard it first from one of the Vindicators, I think. Please, let us get on to what you would ask my counsel upon. While I can talk of battles and tactics until all the tapers burn low, my ability to make sense of the metaphysical implications of our lives’ journey is quickly exhausted.”

“Very well. I came to you because you are a most successful, influential, and respected woman. I have found myself in need of female council.”

Yanai raised an eyebrow. “I am a maiden, literally speaking.”

“Not in matters of the heart, but in matters of…finding ways to achieve greatly in one’s chosen field of endeavor. You are young, but your accomplishments are already noteworthy. I am a woman of some ambition, and hoped you could show me wisdom.”

Yanai nodded, smiling broadly. “I like this!” She leaped from her seat. “Come, let me show you something.”

Namori followed her to a table strewn with scrolls, texts, even a clay tablet scratched with some Gaijin script she’d never seen. She stood at Yanai’s shoulder, not sure what she was looking at. Yanai picked through the stacks until she found a small scroll of something that was not rice paper, but a pliable, tough material she couldn’t pin down. The dark brown writing looked somewhat like Ivendi, but she couldn’t be sure.

“This is something one of the Maidens brought me. I’ve had a local scholar translate some of it, and it is fascinating. Listen to this:

The one who sets the conditions of victory will always be victorious. If the game does not favor you, change the game.
If your opponent is strong, make weakness a virtue. If your opponent is fast, choose a route at which speed is irrelevant.
The person who can bear the greatest discomfort will always prevail in long battles.
More can be learned from failure than success. It is in our ability to learn that we show our true worth.

“These are good words, Namori-san. I have read all the books of strategy I could find, and they each have wisdom in them, but I have been intrigued by this old scroll,” Yanai looked to her, then back to the scroll again, beginning to be engrossed in the words of the old Gaijin strategist.

“Yes, clearly. Intriguing. That said, I was hoping for your personal insights. For instance, how do you balance your love of strategy, your study of all the things that make a Battle Maiden what she is, and your other interests?”

Yanai looked genuinely puzzled. “I’m not sure what you are asking. Being a Utaka is everything to me. I make no choice. My attention is never divided.”

“Ah. I see.” Namori inwardly quailed. She would find no help here, either. Nevertheless, she would continue, for at least a few minutes, if only to make a good showing of it. “What of setbacks? How do you cope with times when events do not go as you hope?”

“When I am angry?” Yanai gave a grin that was more than a little frightening. “I savor it. I keep it like a memento of a childhood friend. I wait until the time is right, and then I use that anger, until the blood bursts from my enemy’s body and splashes on the legs of my steed.”

Namori unconsciously moved backward a few inches. She could see the dreams of battle in Yanai’s eyes. She was not frightened of Vindicator Tanzen, because though he was a killing implement to the roots of his being, he was in perfect control. Utaka Yanai, like Namori herself, was made up of barely restrained fires. She was no more efficiently coping with the forge within her belly than Namori did.

They talked for a few minutes more, but Namori had already learned as much as she would from this woman. She prayed only that there would be some man, some samurai equally consumed with the art of war, who would come into her life one day. Otherwise, she would be lonely, a Maiden who would grow old in the service of her Clan and never know a gentle touch.

Kaede met her at the door, returning her knife. She seemed shy now, looking out from under her bangs with veiled eyes. “I hope your meeting with Yanai-sama went well, Namori-san. If you ever wish to speak with me, about anything and at any hour, I am at your service. I would like very much to be your friend.”

Namori bowed to Kaede and took her leave. She had missed the mark when she had planned her visit here, and she was not certain that she had accomplished anything more than putting herself in a series of uncomfortable positions. Why did Kaede want to be her friend? Was there anyone she could talk to about all this? There was only one person she really needed to have words with, and he was across the sea, unreachable. She didn’t think he’d ever received a single letter she’d sent. They got lost, or the monstrous Akodo kept them from him, so that he would not be tempted to leave their bondage and come to her.

“Perhaps all the better,” she said to herself as she walked back to the castle proper. She would never wish to spur him to dishonor. After accidently serving as an inspiration to his deeds with her wicked temper and sharp tongue, she did not want to harm him with her now-loving attentions.

Namori made a fist, but there was nothing to strike. She would have to change her kimono, and her trip seemed to have been a a total waste of time. Dejected, she entered her quarters and turned herself over to Atsuko’s ministrations.

***

It was late, the sun having set, and Namori had consumed far more sake than was prudent. She would leave on another week-long scouting mission the next day. She looked forward to it, to the air around her face as her horse swept down jungle corridors, knowing the next moment might bring an ambush or a rampaging wild beast. It also filled her with a sense that her life was no longer understandable or moving in the direction she hoped. What was she? Was it to be the courtly life for her, or did the siren’s song of the danger and the dust have her ear now?

Namori burst up from the couch and clumsily tore the fine upper layers of her kimono away, throwing them in a heap. From an overhead beam, Vindicator Tanzen had installed two wooden pegs. She leaped up and grasped them, hanging there, feeling the ache begin in her hands and shoulders. She held on until sweat burst from her brow, until there was nothing but the compounding sense that she could not, the relentless stretching of her frame as the Earth Kami pulled her back down where all humans were bound.

Her hands slipped, and she landed with bent knees, taking the impact as she’d been taught. The booming of her heart sent the sake coursing through her, and she swayed on her feet. She thought that it was possible that she would be overcome with tears, and considered sending Atsuko away. No, she had already done so. She was alone. She could do anything she wished without the dishonor of another witnessing her lack of control. She went to her lacquered chest and opened it, picking up the masakari axe that Kohatsu-sama had given her. Its wide, deadly edge had taken a man’s life the week before, burying into his flesh and creating a hole where his spirit departed. It had been her hands holding the weapon. It had felt right and good, and that very fact made everything more complicated. She put the cool metal against her cheek for a long time. With oil and a soft cloth, she then washed the smudge from the steel. The chest’s lid closed, and she found herself half-dressed, standing forlorn in her rooms. She was at the very center of her life, and two paths diverged. She would have to choose one. She could not tarry here for long.

This was the moment when a knock came upon her door.

Namori looked at the pile of clothing on the floor. She looked down at herself. She was far from naked, and it was her room. She said something rude, took a swing of sake from the bottle, and went to the door. Her head was swimming. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve, a lamentable gesture if she had ever conceived of one.

“Yes,” she said to the door, or perhaps the person on the other side. It had become unclear. She heard a voice that she did not recognize, and opened the door anyway. Vindicator Tanzen stood there. Namori laughed. Her own mortification at her drunken foolishness caused the laughter to grow to the point that she had to put her hands on her knees and lean against the wall.

“Ah, I see. You will excuse me for the presumption, Namori-san, but I am all for the most expedient path.” With that, he bent and scooped her up, carrying her to the couch and gently placing her there.

“Everyone has been touching me today. I wonder why?”

Tanzen shook his head, went back to close the door, and busied himself with the process of making strong tea. When it was finished, he took a seat in the chair opposite the couch, as was his frequent habit. “So, you’ve been examining your own soul.”

Namori managed to sit up, grasping a tea cup with numb hands and burning her lip with the scalding liquid. “I am…in the road. It goes…it goes in two directions.”

Tanzen gave her a permissive look. “They often do. What path will you choose, Namori?”

“I am a fool. I shame myself.” She only just managed not to begin crying.

“This is true. Then again, knowing your own foolishness is the beginning of wisdom, just as knowing your own shame is the first step on the road to great honor.”

“You must, Tanzen-san, think little of me, to allow you in when I am in such a state,” she slurred.

He raised his teacup to her in a small salute. “Quite the opposite. You show, if not decorum, courage. Many choose not to look the difficult choices in the face. Many allow themselves to abide in a comfortable in-between place, not knowing. You, instead, rattle the bars of your cage and demand an answer. I respect that. I also appreciate your trust in me.” The Vindicator gave a small, meaningful look at her attire.

Namori looked as well. She sighed. “I have gone to many seeking council, but I am constantly more con…confused. I want to be what I dreamed of, but I want to be what he needs, too. And then there is this fire that can’t be quelled.”

“I think Moto Subotai is a lucky man. Luckier than he yet knows.”

She rose on unsteady legs and stood, looking down at the Vindicator. “Did you call me ‘Rare Bridge?’”

“You talked to Yanai? She said this?” Tanzen nodded. “This is most surprising. I would not have imagined that you’d go to her. I may have made the analogy you speak of.”

“I…” Namori held her hand over her heart. “Yanai always knew what road she would take, I think. It makes her hard to talk to.”

Tanzen rose and gently escorted Namori back to the couch. “She is single minded. This is true. It makes her great at her chosen task, and that is what the Empire needs, often as not.”

“Her attendent, Kaede, wants to be my friend.”

Tanzen laughed. “I would suppose she does.”

“But why?”

“If she were a man, and looked at you as she does, would it make sense then?”

“Wait…she…oh.” Namori covered her mouth with her palm. “Really?”

He nodded. “Kaede could be a good friend to you. No questions would be asked.”

“You’re suggesting this?”

He shrugged. “While we’re being honest. It would have to be kept quiet, of course, but it is not a rare thing in the Empire. Your betrothed is far away, and I’m sure that he has not been altogether chaste.”

“I cannot think of that now.”

“You’ll have time, and you will figure out what you want out of life along the way. For now, we need to accomplish a few things before your next patrol. The first is to get you sober enough to get some rest, the second is to quiz you on what we spoke of last time.”

“I am drunk, and don’t wish to take a quiz.”

“Being your sensei in these matters, I make these choices. Now, what is battle?”

Namori pushed her mussed hair back from her face. “A game of keeping.”

“And what is kept?”

Namori bolted the last of her tea down and winced. It was strong. Tanzen must have put something into it. “Keep your wits. Keep your feet. Keep your weapon. Keep your breath. Keep your distance.”

“What, above all else, can never be lost?”

“You mustn’t lose your wits. Lose that, and your life is forfeit.”

“That is the good thing about teaching courtiers, I suppose. They remember. Good luck on your patrol. I would advise you to drink as much water as you can stomach, then to get some sleep. Riding out with a hangover is unpleasant.”

With that, he departed. Namori washed her face and had a cup of water, then scrubbed at her teeth and stumbled to the bed chamber. Atsuko had put out her futon and blankets, which she burrowed into.

“Kaede?” she muttered. “Huh.”

***

“Mistress Namori, please awaken,” Atsuko said.

Namori was slack jawed and numb. Atsuko helped her bathe and dress in her light riding kimono and armor. The previous day seemed like a fever dream, but she was quite sure that it had all happened. It weighed upon her, but she could take none of it back. She would put all her quandaries aside for now, but when she returned, things would have to be decided. Many things. She sent up a prayer to the Fortunes to guide her, and to put her where she must be.

With her axe strapped across her back and a long dagger at her waist, Namori stood before the dressing mirror. She looked nothing like an Ide courtier now. “Keep your wits,” she told her reflection. “Atsuko?”

The servant came to her and gave a low bow. “Mistress?”

“I will be gone for several days. There are bu in the strongbox, should the need arise. Be sure that you eat well and rest. If I am killed, please send the letter that I have written to my betrothed, and also present my formal apology to Kohatsu-sama. Both letters are written and sealed, near my writing board. Finally, I have indicated to my family that you are to be treated well, and given choice whether to stay here or travel back to the Empire, as you see fit.”

Atsuko’s breath caught audibly in her throat. “Namori-sama, you are very kind. I beg you not to be hurt or killed. I…wish to serve you for many years.”

Leaving her rooms, there was a package outside the door, something wrapped up in silk and tied with a purple ribbon. A small scroll leaned against the package. Namori bent and picked up the scroll, reading it. The calligraphy was not a hand she recognized. It was neat and small, with a certain female flare.

I would not wish to see the perfect lines of your face marred by the wounds of combat. Please, wear this and know that a friend thinks tender thoughts of you as you ride.

There was no signature, though Namori had an idea who had sent it. Unwrapping the package, she found a helmet of gaijin design, with bronze cheek pieces that covered her face. The interior was padded with shearling. It did not appear to be new, but had been polished to a luster and carefully prepared.

Namori sighed. Yet another complication. Yet another issue she would need to contend with.

“But not until I return. Until then, there’ll just be the road.” She upended the helmet and pushed it down over her face. The eye slits reduced her vision. She could hear her heartbeat stronger. There was the lightest pressure against her face and neck. In here, it was different. She was different. She was awake and knew her course, at least for a while.

##

To be continued next week:

Preparing for this weekend’s charity game

Non gamer nerds can probably safely skip this entry, but I found the process amusing.

So this weekend I volunteered to run a couple sessions of IKRPG for charity.  https://www.tdadental.com/JA/ Hey, gaming for a worthy cause. Sign me up.

Since I don’t know who I’m playing with, we’ve got limited time, I want them to get their charity dollars worth of entertainment, and since it is capped at a whopping 10 players(!) I figured that meant I needed to come up with some pregenerated characters for people to use.

However, I’ve always struggled with jumping into a one off game and using a pregenerated character. Most of the time they’re pretty boring. And how are you really supposed to get to know what your character’s personality is like and how to play them? You’ve got limited time, so why waste it being all like, how should I play this dude?

Then I thought of my friend Steven Diamond and his desire to channel the spirit of Raylan Givens through all aspects of his life…

So I decided to use the power of Pop Culture! TV shows to the rescue! So now I’ve got ten pregenerated characters for everybody to choose from with a diverse set of skills, and you can take one look at who they are based on and know exactly how to play them!

IKRPG divides characters up into four basic archetypes, smart, magical, fast, and strong, and then they’ve got jobs. This will be gibberish to most of my regular readers (I suppose some of it will make sense to those of you who read Into the Storm or Instruments of War)

Intellectual

Sir Thomas Mangum P.I.  – Intellectual Ordic Human Military Officer/Investigator – Retired from the Ordic navy, he now solves crimes for a living, rides around on the nicest horse in town, and everybody thinks he is awesome. Women want to be with him and men want to be him. Plus he has an amazing mustache. Motto: Damn it, Higgins!

Burt Hynedwarf & Buster – Intellectual Rhulic Field Mechanic/Explorer and his trusty laborjack. Burt too has awesome facial hair, but he is a stoic, scientifically minded individual who is driven to explore the myths of Western Immoren. Buster crashes a lot and Burt patiently puts him back together. Motto: Myth busted.

Gifted

Fyona Glynyn– Gifted Nyss Arcane Mechanik/Alchemist. A refugee from the Nyss lands turned to a life of crime and gun running. If there is a deadly mechanical device or explosive, she can build it.  Motto: Should we shoot them?

Barnabus Stimson – Gifted Cygnaran Human Aristocrat/Arcanist A powerful wizard who lives his life by a strict code based upon picking up hot chicks and looking awesome doing it. An eternal optimist, nobody really knows what he does for a living, but he always seems to have money. Motto: Challenge accepted!

Mighty

Bone Ax Barrakus – Mighty Trollkin Man-at-Arms/Fell Caller. BA was once a Cygnaran commando but was framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Now he uses his muscles and powerful Trollkin fell calling to right wrongs. If you can find him, perhaps you can hire him. Motto: I pity the fool!

Sir Charles “Chuck” Finley – Mighty Cygnaran Knight/Man at Arms – A larger than life hero of the people who doesn’t take his knightly duties too seriously. He is often known as “the one with the chin”. Motto: You know knights, bunch of bitchy little girls.

Loph Dundgren – Mighty Human Khadoran Ranger/Bounty Hunter – A surprisingly educated man for somebody who makes his living beating people senseless, it is said that Loph punches bears for fun. All of the bears were unavailable for comment.  Motto: I will break you.

Skilled

“Old Spice” Haleceaserterrycrews – Gobber Pistoleer/Highwayman – He is the biggest damned Gobber you will ever see, Old Spice is four feet of badassitude cloaked in awesome sufficient to melt your face off. Welcome to the gun show! Are you gobber enough to play to Old Spice? Motto: Boom-lay, boom-lay, boom!

Zyva Dyvyd – Iosan Mage Hunter/Spy – A crafy angry elf who secretly wants to murder all human magic users, for now she bides her time, pretending to just be a mercenary, playing it cool. But darn if these worthless human round ears are slightly likable in their strange customs. Motto: Never say you’re sorry. That’s a sign of weakness.

Wolowitz – Khadoran Human Rifleman/Soldier – Not nearly as awesome as he thinks he is, okay, he’s basically weird, annoying, and gross but he does grow on you. His rifle is a mechanical wonder and he secretly worships the Cyriss, the Maiden of Gears, first because she digs on engineers, and second, she might be a hot chick, or maybe a planet, but at least she’s a girl planet. Motto: Well, when you say it like that you make it sound creepy.

Back to front, left to right, BA, Zyva, Chuck Finley, Buster. Middle, Fyona, Loph, Tom, Barnabus. Front, Old Spice, Wolowitz, Burt.

So yes, if you are around Utah this weekend and you want to come and game for charity I can promise this exciting level of constructive effort!

This weekend’s Gaming for a Cause schedule

Here is the schedule. I’m running two games on Saturday. Join up and play for charity!

https://www.tdadental.com/JA/

Fisking the HuffPo because JK Rowling is nice and I’m not

So a Huffington Post writer wants JK Rowling to stop writing books, apparently like most people who don’t understand how math or economics work, they think that if somebody else made a dollar, they lost one. Or if somebody else got pie, then there is no pie for them. Apparently this stupidity isn’t limited to just whining about economics anymore.

Read this first. Read it and gawk at the lameness.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/lynn-shepherd/jk-rowling-should-stop-writing_b_4829648.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

Somebody posted this to my Facebook page, wanting my honest opinion as a relatively successful author who is more into the nuts and bolts of business rather than mystical muses and other assorted writerly bullshit. I can’t take every request that comes along because I’m kind of busy writing stuff that gets me paid, but this one needs to get clubbed before any other aspiring writers buy into this line of defeatist thinking. Some ideas just deserve to be mocked.

The sorting hat said I sounded angry.

As usual, the person being fisked is in italics. My comments are in bold.

If JK Rowling Cares About Writing, She Should Stop Doing It

When I told a friend the title of this piece she looked at me in horror and said, “You can’t say that, everyone will just put it down to sour grapes!”

After reading this, I just put it down to willful ignorance.  

And she does, of course, have a point. No struggling but relatively ambitious writer can possibly be anything other than envious. You’d be scarcely human otherwise.

Not really. I’m willing to bet that most of us who went from aspiring nobody to successful author aren’t human then. Back then when I looked at the writers at the top of the heap, I wasn’t jealous or angry at their selling more books, instead I tried to figure out why they were successful so that I could learn from them.

But this particular piece isn’t about that.

Oh, thank goodness. I was really looking forward to having a liberal lecture me on the value of envy and wanting to drag the more successful down to their level (of course, I don’t know if Lynn Shepherd is a prog, but she writes for HuffPo and is whining about somebody having more money than her, and wrote Occupy Rowling Street, so I’m going to go out on a limb and make an educated guess she leans that way).    

I didn’t much mind Rowling when she was Pottering about. I’ve never read a word (or seen a minute) so I can’t comment on whether the books were good, bad or indifferent. I did think it a shame that adults were reading them (rather than just reading them to their children, which is another thing altogether), mainly because there’s so many other books out there that are surely more stimulating for grown-up minds.

Wait… So Lynn never read Rowling’s work, but she had already decided that Rowling wasn’t a *real* writer. Now where have we heard that before? (hint, all my regular readers just groaned at Lynn’s pretentious judgmental bullshit)

First off, who the hell are you to decide that somebody else is enjoying themselves wrong? Get off your high horse, lady. You’ve got your opinion, and apparently a hundred million people disagree with you and threw large piles of money at JK Rowling. To paraphrase Dr. Henry Jones Senior perhaps you goose stepping morons should spend more time writing books than judging them.

Second, despite the criticisms from the self-righteous literati, Rowling has a very solid skill set. She wrote books that appealed to one demographic which then spread from there because they appealed to eternal human notions like friendship, heroism, sacrifice, and courage. They aren’t dreary pretentious award winning twaddle, so shockingly enough, lots and lots of people liked them.

But, then again, any reading is better than no reading, right?

Not if the literati get their way. They won’t be happy as long as anybody reads “unapproved” books for fun, or genre fiction dies entirely.

Let’s put it this way, JK Rowling did more to get millions of young people to become readers than every English professor in the world. The only reason you have a market to sell to at all is because of writers like her.

But The Casual Vacancy changed all that.

It wasn’t just that the hype was drearily excessive, or that (by all accounts) the novel was no masterpiece and yet sold by the hundredweight, it was the way it crowded out everything else, however good, however worthwhile.

This is such bullshit, and I can explain why on a very, extremely personal level.

I do better in audiobook than I do in print. It is because I write in a very cinematic style that translates really well to narration. My Grimnoir Chronicles trilogy had been doing amazing. The first two books had won the Audie two years running. I’d done really well, but I’ve never reached #1. As a writer, we love big milestones like that. I really wanted that #1 spot, because hey, bragging rights.

Then when I was on book tour last year for Warbound, the 3rd Grimnoir novel, I found out that I’d reached the #2 bestseller spot, but I’d been beaten by some dude I’d never heard of. So when I got to that day’s signing I asked the clerk where I could find this “Robert Galbraith” person. “Oh! You mean the new JK Rowling!” and she took me to this GIGANTIC display of books. (my display of books disappeared into its shadow, and Barnes and Noble likes me!)

Well, that certainly explained my coming in second. JK Rowling’s pen name had gotten revealed right when both of our books came out. My reaction? GOOD FOR HER. Because I’m not a whiny little statist, I patted myself on the back for even coming close to beating the MVP with all the Superbowl rings and then got on with writing my next book. And then I spent the rest of the book tour having fun and telling fans in my best melodramatic Voldemort “Next time victory will be mine. CURSE YOU, HARRY POTTER! CURSE YOU!”   

But here’s the kicker. I didn’t start out at that level. Warbound was my 9th novel and came out after six long, hard years of self-promotion, effort, and continual improvement. A few years before I was ecstatic when I even got on any list at all. I geeked out last year when my latest came out and I got as high as the #3 fantasy author on all of Amazon, losing only to Martin and Gaiman, but it was a far happier and more memorable moment years before when my name actually showed up for the first time in mid-nineties of the top 100, simply for the realization that I can do this!

News flash aspiring authors, writing is a job, and it is a challenging one. It is like any other career field, and just like them there are some overnight success stories, but most people who get to the top have only done so after a long hard slog of continually getting better at what they do. Depending on your genre, it isn’t Steven King, or George Martin, or John Grisham, or Laurel Hamilton, or Stephanie Myers holding you back, IT IS YOU.

That book sucked the oxygen from the entire publishing and reading atmosphere. And I chose that analogy quite deliberately,

Then you chose your analogy quite deliberately in a manner that makes you sound like a total loser. What complete and utter defeatist garbage. If you are that thin skinned you will have an extremely difficult time.  

because I think that sort of monopoly can make it next to impossible for anything else to survive, let alone thrive.

That is simply a lie, just on the fact that there are a whole bunch of us thriving right now. Blaming JK Rowling for your lack of success if foolish. In fact, because Rowling did so much to bring new, younger readers into genre fiction you should THANK HER for giving you a bigger potential customer base.

I write NOTHING like JK Rowling, but many of my fans who are in their twenties now became readers because Harry Potter was their gateway drug. I have friends and acquaintances who write for the Harry Potter demographic, ranging in success from relative newbie to total badass, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of them bitch like this.  

There are plenty of authors who are thriving right now. I’m not making Tom Clancy lotto by any means, but I’m making a damn good living writing books. Only the top 1% of pro published authors make over 100k a year, but pretty much every one of us I know in that category has a few things in common, as in they write their asses off, they understand their target market, and they treat writing like it is a real proper professional job.

Publishing a book is hard enough at the best of times, especially in an industry already far too fixated with Big Names and Sure Things, but what can an ordinary author do, up against such a Golgomath?

You know, I really wanted to play in the NFL, but there were all of these Big Names and Sure Things who were better at things like running, tackling, throwing, catching, or just the game of football in general. If only all of the good athletes would have recused themselves, then us fat, slow, uncoordinated types would have a chance to play in the big time! (sure, nobody would ever watch football again, but that’s besides the point!)

And then there was the whole Cuckoo’s Calling saga. I know she used a pseudonym, and no doubt strenuous efforts were indeed made to conceal her identity, but there is no spell strong enough to keep that concealed for long. Her boy hero may be able to resort to an invisibility cloak, but in the real world, they just don’t exist.

Hey, if anybody should be bitching, it is me. If only they would have kept that secret for one more week, I could put #1 Best Seller on my resume and then rest on my laurels for the rest of my life.

With a secret as sensational as that, it was only a matter of time until the inevitable happened, and then, of course, this apparently well-written and well-received crime novel which seems to have sold no more than 1,500 copies under its own steam, suddenly went stratospheric.

Duh… Think about it. Robert Galbraith had yet to distinguish himself from the pack of 100,000 other writers just like him. JK Rowling was already an international brand name. She has literally tens of millions of faithful readers just waiting to throw money at her. So when Galbraith turns out to be Rowling, and those fans show up with cash in hand, the results shouldn’t be a shocker.

So maybe instead of getting mad at the superstar who tried to go incognito, specifically to protect your delicate feelings, what you should do is write some really good books and build up a super loyal fan base. That way when you write something they will all purchase it. Crazy, I know.

And as with The Casual Vacancy , so with this. The book dominated crime lists, and crime reviews in newspapers, and crime sections in bookshops, making it even more difficult than it already was for other books – just as well-written, and just as well-received – to get a look in.

Damn you capitalism! The system that allows us to actually get paid for telling imaginary stories is flawed! WHAAAAAA!

Cry me a river. I’ve had two major releases in a row where I got to go head to head against a new season of Game of Thrones on HBO, and one year it was new GoT AND a new season of True Blood. That’s loads of fun when you are a fantasy novelist and you look at the Nielsen Bookscan numbers, and your new book is the bestselling book you’ve ever had, but 18 of the top 20 spots are being taken up by various Game of Thrones and True Blood tie ins. That can be frustrating, and if I was a HuffPo contributor I’d probably go water my crying pillow (it smells of lilacs and shame) but as a devout capitalist I look at those stats and think to myself “man, I really need a TV show!”

Rowling has no need of either the shelf space or the column inches, but other writers desperately do.

What crap.  I bet you think she also doesn’t NEED a car that goes fast, a business that makes a profit, a soda over 16 ounces, or a gun that holds more than seven rounds. What is it with you people and the NEED to tell everybody else what they NEED.

First off, Rowling doesn’t decide how much shelf space she gets, bookstores do, and the reason she gets her own shelf and you don’t is because customers actually come in and want to purchase her books. Even if Rowling’s books were to be discontinued tomorrow, you still wouldn’t get her shelf space, because the stores would switch it to something else that actually sells.

And what about the internet? What about Amazon and eBooks? There isn’t even any shelf space there for Rowling to be kicking you out of, so what the hell is your excuse now? Electrons that touched her books won’t touch yours?

And now there’s going to be a sequel, and you can bet the same thing is going to happen all over again.

And I say good for Rowling and better for her hardcore fans.

So this is my plea to JK Rowling. Remember what it was like when The Cuckoo’s Calling had only sold a few boxes and think about those of us who are stuck there,

Oh, I’m sure she does. Once poor, never rich. If I recall correctly this woman went from living off of Ramen noodle to being a billionaire, and believe me, us folks that grew up dirt poor never forget.

because we can’t wave a wand and turn our books into overnight bestsellers merely by saying the magic word.

I hate to break this to you, Lynn, but her “overnight” bestsellers took a lot of time and books worth of growing a dedicated fan base. I’ve had oblivious people ask me about my “overnight” success, which is ironic since overnight sure felt a lot more like 2 years of trying to get published followed by 5 years of effort while still working my day job, to me.

By all means keep writing for kids, or for your personal pleasure – I would never deny anyone that – but when it comes to the adult market you’ve had your turn.

Oh fuck off.

That’s mighty white of you, Lynn, to ALLOW one of the most successful writers in all of recorded human history to keep writing on the side. You’d like totally never DENY somebody that, except after reading your petty screed we’re all pretty sure if you had the power to do so you would.

Enjoy your vast fortune and the good you’re doing with it, luxuriate in the love of your legions of fans, and good luck to you on both counts. But it’s time to give other writers, and other writing, room to breathe.

You want success, Lynn? THEN EARN IT.

If Rowling did what you wanted (which she won’t, because she doesn’t have to give a shit what some nobody from the HuffPo wants) it wouldn’t make a lick of difference to your career, because somebody else better than you would step into the void first. Your demand reads suspiciously like the South Park Underwear Gnomes plan for world domination.

      Room to breathe.
      ?
      Profit!

Now it is time for a rant.

Okay, aspiring and new writers, nobody owes you shit. Deal with it. You are an entertainer. Nothing more. If you get really good at entertaining people they will pay you money for your work, so then you need to go find the people who will give you money for your work. If you want more fans, you better keep on improving. As the number of fans grows, you will make more money and sell more books. How you accomplish this is irrelevant, because no matter what, the burden of success is on you and you alone.

JK Rowling making a dollar does not take a dollar out of your pocket. That is loser talk. Quite the contrary, she has grown our market, and brought more readers into genre fiction, so she’s actually put dollars IN your pocket.  

Lynn here is bitching about somebody who is more successful than she is while wishing they’d step aside to make room for her, but there is some little self-published nobody out there right now crying because “if only I had a blog on the Huffington Post then I’d be successful too, so Lynn should step aside to make room for ME!” And for the self-published nobodies, that isn’t an insult, that is where I started too.

Apparently blogging on HuffPo, even though that puts your name in front of thousands of potential new readers, can’t save you (yeah, sorry self-published nobody, but we learned from last week’s Book Bomb of an author who’d been reviewed by the HuffPo that my blog sells more books than they do).

That’s not how business works, and I hate to break it to you artistic special snowflakes, writing is a business. You need to create your brand, expand your brand, and continually improve your brand.

Once in a great while somebody comes along and blows up huge and their first book makes a zillion dollars and gets a blockbuster movie franchise. Those writers are anomalies. Most of us who make a living at this just plug along, turning out another book or two a year, and after a few years we’ve got enough fans and work under contract to safely quit our day jobs, and then we just do the same thing, but more. We can throw a temper tantrum and demand they step aside, but the odds of you being the Next Big Thing are jack and shit, and jack just left town.

Your garage band can whine about Justin Bieber being a no talent hack and how it isn’t fair, but just because he goes away (hopefully soon because I have teenage daughters) doesn’t mean your little garage band is now going to be playing to sold out stadiums.

No matter where you are, there will always be somebody out there doing better than you, unless of course they are JK Rowling.

 

Tom Kratman has a new novella out

Tom Kratman has a new novella out. He sent me a copy this weekend but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but it is Tom Kratman! Writing about a giant sentient super tank! How could you not want this?

Big Boys Don’t Cry is a novella from military science fiction author Tom

Kratman, known for A Desert Called Peace and his Carrera series. The novella follows the life cycle of a Ratha, a sentient future supertank that dutifully fights Man’s battles on dozens of alien worlds. But will the massive creature still be grateful to its creators when it discovers it has a conscience? And how long will an intelligent war machine with enough firepower to flatten a city be content to remain Man’s obedient slave?

http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&Operation=GetScript&ID=OneJS&WS=1&l=as4&source=ss&ref=ss_til“>

The MHI STI 10mm longslide

A friend put up a pic of his new 10mm on Facebook, and I couldn’t find the pics I’d taken before of my custom 10mm, so I snapped these just now.

It started as an STI Perfect 10. Then the guys at STI went crazy on it. The trigger is amazing. The slide to frame fit is literally the smoothest I’ve ever felt on any pistol in my life. Where bull barrel touches the slide, it is so well fitted that you can rub your finger on the crown and not feel the line. It also has a fitted .40 barrel and recoil spring.

Accuracy? Capable of way better than I can shoot, and I’m pretty darn good.

Gaming for a Cause, next Friday

So the guys from Dungeon Crawlers Radio asked me to help out with a charity event. It is a 24 hour gaming session, and I’m one of the guest GMs. The proceeds are for charity, and are going to Junior Achievement, an organization that teaches kids business skills. As a gamer and a capitalist, I had to say yes to that.

So a bunch of us are going to be running different games, and then people can donate to the charity to jump in and play.

The other guest GMs include Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, Paul Genesse, Craig Nybo, and Dave Butler. It is at Epic Puzzles and Games in West Valley, starting Feb 28th at 7pm and running for the next 24 hours.

Gaming For A Cause

I can’t personally run MHIRPG because I’ve found that is just too weird. A. Since I write MHI all day game preparation feels suspiciously like I’m at work. B. All the players are all hesitant and keep looking at me like, “am I doing this right or am I messing up your world?”  :)  So instead I figured I’d run a couple sessions of one of the other game systems I know well, which would be L5R or IKRPG. Of the two, IKRPG is a lot easier to learn on the fly, so I volunteered to run a couple of those.

Then the DCR guys asked me if I wanted to play in a Firefly game. I said yes, but only if I get to be a gun runner.

So come out and have fun, donate to charity, and play games.

EDIT: I was just told that there will be a website, live probably Monday, where people can donate in advance and secure themselves a seat at various games. I’ll post the link when I have it.

And please tell your friends!

The Drowning Empire, Episode 45: The Duel

The Drowning Empire is a weekly serial based on the events which occured during the  Writer Nerd Game Night monthly Legend of the Five Rings game.  It is a tale of samurai adventure set in the magical world of Rokugan.

If you would like to read all of these in one convenient place, along with a bunch of additional game related stuff, behind the scenes info, and detailed session recaps, I’ve been posting everything to one thread on the L5R forum,  http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=295&t=101206

I have missed a few Friday’s of WNGN serial, but that was because I was travelling or at a convention on those Fridays, so now I’m way behind. Tonight is actually the finale of this campaign, and I’ve only posted half the fiction. :) 

This week’s episode is 2 parts, first Steve Diamond’s narration of the events of our murder frame up and ensuing duel, and Pat Tracy’s poem about it.

Continued from: http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/5670/

“I require a duel to the death!”

Toranaka’s voice rang out in the silence. I could hear the gasps of alarm in the room. Within my mind, Satsujin howled in delight. It was a sound not unlike that of mountain wolves come upon a lame deer.

I could already smell the blood.

The fear.

My heart did not pound any faster. My breathing did not quicken. No. Calm settled over me like the comfort gained by holding a familiar katana. I had prayed for this moment the prior evening. It brought to mind words from my father, Ikoma Katsu’s journal:

Pray for your prey. Pray that that they see their death in your eyes. Pray that their bowels are loosened, and their muscles weakened in terror. Pray that their own prayers are those of hopeless desperation knowing that their life ends this day…

My father was such an interesting man. Everyone thought he was just a mild-mannered, boastful bard. How he kept it together all those years is still a mystery to me. I wish I had known him better. I wondered what he would think of my wickedly gleeful anticipation of this duel.

I looked pointedly at the woman who would likely be my opponent. She looked weak. Frail. Scared.

Fortunes help me, I thought, this will be a public assassination.

In a way my anger was equally kindled over Xiong’s ineptitude at assassination—and her pathetic and false indignation now that she was caught and accused—as it was over her thinking that her yojimbo could hope to stand against any person from our group…myself especially.

The yojimbo, Shinjo Baeshuko, must have felt my eyes on her. She turned her head slightly and returned the glance. For just an instant I let all the control slip from my face, and showed her exactly who she would be dealing with. I let my zeal for death wash over my countenance, and felt something other behind my eyes, looking at the poor, poor yojimbo. At my prey. It seemed one of the Lords of Death truly was with me.

Baeshuko paled. The result was immediate and obvious to every person in the room except the woman she guarded. She began trembling like a dead leaf in a breeze.

I let my…mask…return and found I, in turn, was being studied by the Death Priest, Byung-Chul. He nodded his approval to me, and I returned the compliment with a slight nod of my own.

“So be it,” Moto Kohatsu said in resignation. “It will be this evening. Retire to your rooms to prepare.”

***

We returned to the same room that evening. I was announced as Toranaka’s champion—a wise move politically, with the added bonus of my being allowed to indulge in what amounted to a more subtle torture and execution.

I suddenly found I was speaking, addressing Kohatsu, before I was even aware of the fact. When are you going to learn to keep your stupid mouth shut, descendant! Satsujin screamed at me. “Moto Kohatsu-san. May I address those gathered before this duel begins?”

“Please.”

“I want it known that this duel is not between the Lion Clan and the Unicorn Clan,” I said. I’d been taught in Honor’s Sacrifice Dojo to turn every situation to my—and to my Clan’s—advantage. It was time for a bit of politicking. “Yes the Lion have been insulted, but it was not by the Unicorn. The Unicorn I know, and those I grew up hearing about from the mouth of my father Ikoma Katsu, would never have let this level of insult continue. No, this is not even about the family of this impulsive wretch. They did not insult the Lion.

“Xiong did, and Xiong alone.”

I purposely omitted her family name. A calculated insult to her while simultaneously—hopefully—keeping the Unicorn and Lion from going to war over a stupid duel. My only acknowledgement was a brief nod from Kohatsu and a slight softening about the eyes.

I turned and faced Shinjo Baeshuko.

I took one, deep, calming breath, and the duel began.

Every detail, the very minutiae of the surrounding scene, filtered into my consciousness. The ground was perfectly flat other than a slight rough patch to Baeshuko’s left. It would slow her just a fraction if she moved. The yojimbo’s cloth-wrapped hands shook and were covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Her grip wouldn’t be solid. Another delay. Her expression was tight, and terror registered behind her eyes. She wasn’t looking at my stance, my bearing, or how I seemed to be preparing. She was looking at my eyes, and she was surely becoming lost in the inevitability of her coming death.

Another advantage.

In less than heartbeat, I knew everything about her. The way she stood, and her inability to focus showed me her flaws…and they were many for one of such inexperience. I pitied her. She had been thrown to a predator maimed and bleeding.

Defenseless.

Yet another advantage.

I took in the crowd surrounding us. Xiong wore a self-confident sneer. I had witnessed that look on many a face in my young years. Always it was followed by blood and surprise…neither of which were my own. She had no idea who she was dealing with here. No one here did, not even my own companions.

Baeshuko was helpless, and she would die for her master’s idiocy.

I pictured a dozen ways the duel could go. They flashed by in a Fortunes’’ given moment. In one I drew and decapitated the girl, then sheathed my katana before she even understood she had been killed. No, too fast. Not punishing enough.

I envisioned driving my blade through her middle, then shoving her back until my blade also shoved through Xiong’s sneering throat. No. I probably couldn’t talk my way out of that one.

That was when my visions became creative.

Slashing her throat.

Disembowelment.

Cutting off her hand as she drew.

Hmm…there is something to that last one.

All the while I absorbed the look in her eyes that had turned from terror to resignation. She had accepted her death. She knew she was already done. At this point it was just going through with the motions as best she could.

And behind her, Xiong continued to sneer in ignorance to the coming end of her own life.

I made no move, even as Baeshuko drew. It was a slow move, almost clumsy by the standards I was used to. Had I ever been that terrible? I’d have to ask Bayushi Sakai the next time we met. Baeshuko’s blade cleared her scabbard, and just for an instant she seemed to think she was going to pull this off.

Within my mind, Satsujin laughed.

I drew my katana, a steel blur with no wasted effort or movement. I’d learned under one of the best, after all, whether anyone here realized it or not. Baeshuko had yet to even start her swing, and already my blade was streaking towards her own. I struck the tsuba, the impact ripping the blade from her hands and sending it arcing into the air. I counter-cut smoothly, nicking her cheek, then sheathed in one motion.

Baeshuko’s blade landed after my own blade had been put away, her katana burying itself, point first, into the floor a finger’s width in front of Xiong. At the same time a thin line of blood from the cut I had given her appeared on Baeshuko’s face. A simple cut. The lightest I could give while still drawing blood. My Bayushi teacher would have been proud of my control.

The yojimbo slowly fell to her knees, knowing just how thoroughly beaten she was. Her life was forfeit. Behind her, Xiong stared in disbelief at the quivering blade in front of her. I swear I could almost hear my Sparrow friend Shintaro thinking of how to make this an actual dramatic telling for our future sake house visits.

The gather crowd remained motionless and silent, stunned at the development. Xiong had been found guilty. There was only one thing left to do.

Instead, I spoke up again.

“Moto Kohatsu-san. Moto Subotai-san,” I said, bowing to the both of them. I gestured to Baeshuko. “This Shinjo has done her duty with honor. Indeed she is the kind of Unicorn I would be proud to fight beside. Surely, with all the death we have already seen these last few days—and in the history between our two clans—we have had enough. Shinjo Baeshuko has done her part admirably. Must we require he life as well, or is not one so honorable worth more alive to your Clan, and to the Empire.” I bowed again.

For once, Satsujin didn’t berate me.

Subotai stood. “The needs of this duel are fulfilled. Shinjo Baeshuko has done her part with honor, and as our guest has said, there will be great need for samurai such as her in the future. Her life is not required.

“For Xiong,” he continued, “death is required. She will be taken from our presence and will be allowed to demonstrate her devotion via seppuku tomorrow.”

I strained to contain myself. Subotai was a friend, but this was demonstrative of an overly kind soul. Xiong deserved nothing. I would not allow her an honorable end. I would poison her, cut off her hands and feet, remove her tongue and pull her intestines up through a hole I would cut in her miserable deceitful throat.

Utaku Yanai moved to remove Xiong from the room, and mercy of all mercies to my mind, Xiong slapped away Yanai’s hand. Yanai drew her scimitar and hammered down on the disgraced shugenja’s neck, decapitating her.

The Fortunes had a sense of justice after all.

The crowd began to leave, and at their rear stood master duelist Doji Shunya. He looked surprised, and gave me a respectful nod.

Both Satsujin and I had the exact same, simultaneous thought.

                Shit.

###

With Blade In Hand

By Moto Subotai

Poem written for the occasion of the duel between Ikoma Uso and Shinjo Baeshuko, acting as champions for Toranaka and Xiong. Poem takes the form of a free verse allegory, as seen in historical Ivendi writing.

There is truth in a blade

in the edge, the way it glows

in the light of the torches

within the darkened swamp,

In the calloused hand

who wields it, in the

drumming heart, shaking

the confines of a

warrior’s breast.

In the beginning of

our journeys, we wear

boots new-made, our

tunics clean, our

hands free of blood

But the road is long

and the dust of our

horses hides the

sun

Only our honor and

the vestiges of our

hope remain, these

small scraps we cling to

as the angry waves of the

ocean shake and crash

about us, our ships

foundered and our

comrades lost;

presumed dead

The best of us, the

finest always hold steady

in their belief, those hard

convictions we learned

in the far-flung journey tent

and upon the polished floor

of the dojo

Those convictions, like

unconscious movements

within the body, are so

indelibly written upon our

souls that we could no more

hide them than we could

fail to recognize the blaze

upon our horses’ brow.

And then there are

all the others, those

who cannot hold close

upon their honor,

who burn unchecked

and ultimately fall

like fragile, dying stars

before the dawn…

Let us always hearken

to the echoing voices of

our ancestors,

Their wisdom and

sacrifice our model,

their honor our judge,

their deeds our far-off

target as we take aim

at the long fields of

our future.

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To be continued next week: