by Paul Kidd
“Lord Raiden is one of the great nobles. We cannot simply demand the return of Chōisai. He would deny all knowledge. Nor can we insist on searching his castle.”
Sura seemed curiously happy with the state of affairs. The fox gleefully rubbed her hands.
“Absolutely! You’re right. We cannot be impolite. We cannot risk a breach of etiquette.”
Kuno sat up and favoured the happy fox with a withering glare.
“You’re going to suggest we just sneak into the place and steal Chōisai back, aren’t you?”
The fox opened her arms to welcome Kuno into her heart. “See? The pure, Zen-like simplicity of my thinking is finally rubbing off on you!” Sura pretended to wipe a tear out of her eyes.
“I’m so proud…!”
Tonbo bowed firmly to the carp spirits, armour clanking all about him as he moved.
“Tosakingyo san, Lady Tosakingyo. We shall return with your child as swiftly as we can.”
The carp samurai bowed respectfully in reply.
“Can we not send some men to assist you? You may need swordsmen!” The man reached for his armour. “I must come with you, of course.”
Tonbo sternly shook his head. “You must not. You have your duty to your lord.”
Kuno quite agreed.
“My colleague is correct, Tosakingyo san. In an endeavour such as this, speed and secrecy are our best weapons. Chōisai will be safer if we go alone.”
Kuno produced a sealed, folded letter. He slid it over and into Tosukingyo Chikaaki’s hands.
“You will be of most service to your son if you have your best man deliver this letter. Give it to the recipient’s hands and none other. It is vital.”
The carp samurai took charge of the letter, looked at the official seal and the address, then reverently bowed.
“My brother will take it at once! Thank you, Kuno san.”
“We will depart immediately.” Kuno bowed to the carp spirits. “Please be comforted. We shall use all of our strength to assist you!”
The Spirit Hunters took their leave. They rose and moved through the house and onto the porch, where their travelling gear awaited them. The maids had brought them traveling rations, and even a bottle of plum wine, presenting it solemnly to the fox.
Reiju came out to stand with her four friends. She glanced back at the house, then quietly conferred with the others.
“Are you quite certain that you want to risk this? How can you break into a castle?”
Tonbo shrugged.
“Sura will have a plan. Never fear.”
The fox waved a hand in the air: she was busily stowing wine and food inside her pack.
“Yo! Plan is made!”
“Really?” Chiri looked up in amazement. “So swiftly?”
Sura swung her pack up onto her back. “Sure! It’s a fox thing.”
Tonbo nodded, quite satisfied.
Reiju hesitated. She finally drew in a breath and reached into her sleeve. She drew forth a carefully folded letter, heavy with official seals. She presented the paper to Tonbo.
“My temple gave me this letter to help me on my journey. It states that the bearer is on a special mission for the Sword Temple, and asks for assistance. Perhaps it might help you in some small way.”
The gentle priestess faced her friends and bowed.
“Good luck, my friends.”
Tonbo put his tetsubo beneath his arm, and bowed to her in return.
“Goodbye, Reiju san.”
The four Spirit Hunters shouldered their burdens and turned towards the road. Foot soldiers hastened forward to open the gate and see them on their way.
Sura forged ahead – already deep in discussion with Kuno and Chiri, outlining her ideas. Tonbo brought up the rear. He drew out the travel papers given to him by Reiju and once again looked over the seals.
Reiju had tucked an origami goldfish in amongst the papers. Tonbo took the goldfish and looked at it in fond pleasure. He put it carefully into his belt pouch, slid the travel papers in beside it, then turned to catch up with the others.
There were still three hours until sunset. The Spirit Hunters moved through the village and into the fields, marching onward toward the high green hills beyond.
The Spirit Hunters walked off the beaten track – on and over rolling hills covered in oceans of long, waving grass. They moved into a pass that ran through a long range of ambling, grass-covered mountains. Sura’s tail waved like a flag, flashing amidst the surging stems. She kept the group well hidden behind hill crests, paralleling the far distant road.
At night, they camped down in a hollow with their cooking fire well hidden. The carp spirits had provided them with fresh vegetables, cooked wild boar and preserved meat. They ate a feast under the stars with the open sky as their ceiling and tall trees as the pillars of their hall.
They re-joined the road next day, wandering in from a side path that led to a pair of rustic farms. Chiri and Sura kept their identities somewhat concealed, wearing broad hats to hide their faces and ears, and keeping their tails well out of view. Kuno and Tonbo left off their armour and carried it bundled up in packs between them on a bundle of poles – a bundle that included Tonbo’s tetsubo and Sura’s spear.
There was traffic on the summer road. Peddlers and merchants, farmers and wandering entertainers. There were also a surprising number of pilgrims, all heading on towards the mountain: merry monks, far travelled, all dressed with knotted head scarves or natty little round hats. The monks were bright, loud and all armed to the teeth with naginata, spears and nagemaki. They also carried a great deal of sakē, and cheerfully shared it with Sura and her companions.
The pilgrims were a merry band, many of them carrying little drums. At rest stops along the road they drummed and danced – sometimes with weapons and sometimes with sakē bottles in hand. Much to Kuno’s surprise, they clapped him upon the shoulders and presented him with a strip of dried spiced meat. The samurai moved aside to sit upon a log beside Sura and Chiri, watching the pilgrims in uncertain disapproval.
“They are extraordinary dancers.” Kuno was a tad confused. “Surely monks upon a sacred path should show more decorum in their behaviour?”
Sura was thoroughly enjoying a strip of dried meat. It was oddly tender, and beautifully marinated. “Oh these are yamabushi! Not Buddhists. They’re kind of shamans. Pre-Shinto. Real old school. They drop in on Fox Mountain all the time. We’re one of their pilgrim stops.”
The copper coin dropped. Kuno turned and looked at the monks with new respect.
“Aaah! These are the yamabushi?” The sect was famous but reclusive, keeping to their mountain fortresses. Their skills with sword and spear were legendary. “I am told they are masterful fighters.”
Sura waved her dried meat idly at the monks. “Well – they got their spear skills from the Kitsune, and their sword stuff from the crows. Dunno where the naginata stuff all came from – but they transmitted most of that to the old heroes back in the way-back-when. That’s how everyone had the skills to face the Oni demons!” The fox knocked upon Kuno’s skull. “Do they not teach history where you guys come from?”
Chiri had kept her elementals carefully out of view. She quietly leaned in to Kuno and nodded towards the monks.
“Much of the magical discipline of the Shugenja descends from the ancient mountain hermits, Kuno san – men guarded by the yamabushi. They are warriors, but they are also holy men.”
A monk danced up and pressed his sakē bottle into Sura’s hands, bidding her match him drink for drink. Kuno could only blink.
“Holy?”
Sura drained the bottle and gave a dazed sigh.
“Aaah – there’s nothing like that old-time religion!”
It was time to move on: Sura was already blushing pink with drink: song and dance would surely follow. Tonbo urged his companions to their feet. They walked onwards, leaving the pilgrims to their slower progress, and made their way up the steepening road.
The bo
rder into the Raiden lands was closed off with a tax gate set across the road. A group of armed retainers levied a road toll upon goods and travellers. Out in the hills far beyond, a group of four splendidly armoured horsemen galloped to the crest of a hill, scanning the lands beyond: the Raiden were patrolling their borders with great aggression.
The tax barrier was manned by four foot soldiers and a very bored samurai. The samurai sat in a hut drinking sakē, while two of his men collected copper coins at the barrier. The other two were sitting at a fireplace cooking rice and boiling tea. Their long spears had been stacked against the nearby wall beside the samurai’s horse – a great glossy black creature with a nervous twitch to its hide.
The traffic came in fits and starts – two roads joined just near the tax barrier, and one of these was popular with merchants. The Spirit Hunters fell in between a gaggle of yamabushi and a procession of pack horses laden with boxes, rolls and bales.
Even though the Spirit Hunters were in disguise, it seemed best to slip past the border unremembered and unremarked. Sura whispered to Chiri, and Chiri whispered to Daitanishi and Bifuuko. The two little elementals snuck off subtly into the weeds, and by a circuitous route, they slid into hiding near the far side of the tax collector’s shed. Bifuuko pottered thoughtfully about, then carefully untied the rope that kept the samurai’s horse hitched to its rail.
As Sura and her friends approached the guards to each pay their copper coin, Daitanishi banged himself into the neat stack of spears. The weapons clashed and clattered to the ground with a great unholy noise. Spears crashed down onto the horse. The horse reared, flailed its hooves and began bucking and leaping about in panic. The samurai leapt to his feet, shouting to his men. The two cooks leapt up in panic, waving their hands and trying to seize the horse. The creature backed away, crashing its backside into the shed and almost collapsing one wall.
In mere seconds, the little tax barrier had become absolute pandemonium. The pack horses shied – yamabushi crowed and cheered as the Raiden retainers ran about trying to seize the horse. The samurai was on his backside, while beside him the rice boiled over.
The two toll collectors at the gate wavered, trying to help shoo the horse away from the crumbling shed. Tonbo held back one of the toll collectors and firmly pushed four coins into the man’s hand. The man nodded and waved them hastily through, his attention entirely centered on the antics of the horse. The Spirit Hunters walked past the barrier and onwards down the road, going quite casually on their way.
Daitanishi and Bifuuko zoomed low through the roadside grass, then slipped up into Chiri’s sleeves. The little elementals wriggled and emerged from her cleavage, settling themselves beneath the shelter of Chiri’s big straw hat.
Sura leaned in to nod congratulations to the elementals.
“You guys do good work!”
Daitanishi and Bifuuko settled into place, basking in the praise. Bifuuko buzzed her wings – looking decidedly smug.
The Spirit Hunters walked onwards, moving steadily up the road.
The wide, flat pass led between great grass-covered mountains to the east and west. It drove past samurai estates filled with energetic horsemen and stern foot soldiers – past little villages each with their ring of fields. Lord Raiden’s castle lay three hours’ walk beyond, sitting atop a great, square-sculpted hill.
They walked through the last long hours of the day. Finally they threaded upwards through quiet fields and woods, pushing through a tangle of hawthorn maple. The evening sun hung low and brooding red behind the western mountains. The Spirit Hunters moved up through the shadows of a hill crest half a ri from the castle, and looked the place over from afar.
The castle was formidable.
The fortress was designed to control the mountain pass. Hill slopes had been sculpted into sheer, steep gradients and topped with palisades. An outer bailey surrounded an inner fortress upon higher sections of the hill – and inside these higher sections were actual stone-faced walls. There were elaborate residential buildings just beyond. There was even a platform used as a ‘moon viewing’ tower.
The broad lower bailey was filled with flowering trees, and extensive gardens. The castle was clearly used as a luxurious residence. Water flowed out under the walls in a considerable gush from a narrow culvert, splashing down to join an overgrown stream three hundred paces from the lower walls.
A large village clustered at the crossroads by the castle. But of far more interest to Sura was a little Shinto shrine set back amongst the woods. There was a red-painted torii gate and a solemn little hall. But behind the hall were humbler buildings: a house for the priests, a house for the acolytes, sheds laden with sacred sakē barrels, garden sheds and laundry hanging from wooden poles. The fox looked the place over from afar, and rubbed her hands together in satisfaction.
“Excellent! We’re in business!”
Kuno kept carefully behind cover, examining the castle walls. The garrison must have numbered in its thousands. “We have a plan?”
“Always! The fox is svelte – the fox is wise!” Sura tugged on her breastplate, and began moving sideways through the weeds. “Right! Shrine – then dinner and a nap! Come on!”
Kuno flicked a glance at Chiri and Tonbo, then hastened after Sura. He viewed the fox with great suspicion. “
“What do we need with a shrine?”
“Stuff! You’ll love it!” The fox took charge of her spear. “Keep an eye open for samurai. We don’t want to tangle with a patrol.”
Down they went, heading for the shrine. All about them, the countryside lit its lamps and stoked its kitchen fires, making ready for the warm summer evening to come.
The still night was horribly humid. Close, thick air held onto the heat. Crickets in the undergrowth raised a constant trill of sound. Up on the battlements, foot soldiers walked slowly back and forth, keeping guard through the long hour before midnight. Up in the higher castle, lights still burned bright: distant music showed that Lord Raiden and his hatamoto were still being entertained.
Out in the cleared land beyond the walls, a team of mounted Raiden samurai splashed across a stream. They moved towards the dark edges of the wood beyond, quietly patrolling, eyes scanning the shadows by the empty roads. Hooves thumped on dry ground, and then the mounted samurai vanished into the gloom.
A sleek little white rat and a green-eyed fox poked their heads up and out of the grass. Chiri and Sura, both in animal form, glanced swiftly about the open ground and saw that the coast was clear. With Bifuuko and Daitanishi wafting along beside them, they made their way off through tussocks of grass, tails swishing, feeling full of cunning. They flitted over to the edge of the first steep hill slope and hid themselves carefully in the weeds.
There was at least a hundred paces of steep slope ahead, leading to white-plastered palisades. The castle towers each held a pair of archers who looked off towards the distant fields. But there was plenty of grass and weed patches growing all over the hill slopes: cover a-plenty for an industrious pair of animal spirits. Sura and Chiri moved carefully up the slope, stealthily slipping from shadow to shadow, rising higher and higher above the fields.
It was a stiff climb. The two animals flattened themselves against the palisades at the crest and caught their breaths. Sura checked the position of the guards. Beside her, Chiri looked up, scanning the open skies. Sura frowned at her and hissed.
“What are you looking for?”
“Owls.” The rat craned about, resuming her search. “There might be owls…”
“Owls?” The fox turned to eagerly look at the nearby airspace. “Oooh – I could do with a nice owl! Bet you could eat it like duck! I could try my special recipe – with that wild honey glaze.”
“I am begging you – please attempt no more special recipes.” Chiri scanned the far-off moat for any sign of patrols. “Kuno quite damaged his mouth.”
“What – on the berry garnish?”
“They were not berries. They were bees!” The rat glow
ered. “All you did was mush a bee hive over the whole thing, once it was done.”
“Hmm Well, I’m still working on the fine details of the whole thing…” Sura watched distant sentries march away to another section of wall. “We’re clear. Right! Daitanishi – do your thing!”
The little rock rose up into the air beneath one of the arrow slits that pierced the palisade. Sura made a spring up the wall, standing on the little earth elemental as she clawed her way in through the slit. The inner wall was clear and empty – but Sura’s backside was stuck. The fox flailed her back legs, trying to get purchase, but was awkwardly caught hanging half way through.
Chiri had simply climbed the outer wall and scuttled daintily through another arrow slit. She landed on the walkway and came twittering over towards Sura, her pink tail curling and Bifuuko whirring along beside her. They both stopped and regarded Sura’s front end with amusement. The fox glared and irritably thrashed her paws.
“Little help?”
Daitanishi came to the rescue. The rock elemental backed off, then shot forwards and banged hard into Sura’s rear. The fox fell through the other side of the arrow slit, right onto her face – a most undignified position. The rock flitted down to look at her, and Sura gave a sigh.
“Thanks, man. Appreciate it.”
The enemy were far off in the midnight gloom. Behind the wall, a broad, flat strip of land was dotted here and there with tall archery towers. There were a few archers walking the wall a hundred paces away, and a group of foot soldiers were sitting about a camp fire, playing dice.
Faint music drifted from the castle’s upper bailey. Lord Raiden and his hatamoto were still awake and being entertained. Sounds of distant laughter echoed in the breeze.
A line of tall trees had been planted twenty paces behind the walls to screen the barracks beyond from arrow fire. Sura, Chiri and the two elementals moved across the open ground with fluid stealth. They reached the dark shadows of the trees and sank down amongst the roots, watching carefully – listening to movements out in the gloom.