She was relieved, as she climbed the narrow stairs that led to the top of the wall, to find that Namura-san was indeed a Kisōshi. A man in his middle cycles, he was stout—a full head shorter than Mishi, but wider by a fair margin—and commanding. Mishi had to push her way through a number of guards who were awaiting his directions in order to reach him.
“Namura-san,” she said, surreptitiously checking the markings on his hakama that indicated his rank. She was slightly disappointed to find that he was fukurō rank. She outranked him, which meant that, by default, she was in charge. That might be useful, but it made her uncomfortable, since the man was at least twice her age. “We are the ones who warned your guards of the coming sanzoku. I’m here to offer any assistance I can in protecting your town.”
Namura-san nodded briefly, even as he gave orders to the men who waited nearby, and then he seemed to finally see her for the first time.
“What are you?” he asked with a sneer.
Mishi’s eyebrows rose together.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re dressed as a Kisōshi, but you’re a girl. That’s an offense punishable by death, you know.”
Mishi narrowed her eyes at the man.
“Not anymore,” she said. “Any woman who is a fully trained Kisōshi may dress as one. Or did you not receive the latest decrees from the New Council in this backwater village?”
Perhaps she didn’t mind that she outranked this man, after all.
“Just because the New Council says that a woman trained as a Kisōshi may dress as one, doesn’t mean any woman can dress so whenever she likes. A katana and wakizashi are dangerous, you know; they’re not toys.”
Mishi wondered if the man’s kisō was so weak that he truly couldn’t sense hers, or if he was simply being obtuse in order to fluster her. She briefly considered demonstrating just how dangerous her katana could be, but reminded herself that, as tempting as it was to lash out at this man, he hadn’t done anything to truly deserve it.
“And who are you?” asked Namura-san, turning to Mitsu, who had been standing by with his eyes narrowed.
“No one of importance,” Mitsu replied coolly.
“Are you her protector, then? The man who keeps her out of trouble, while she runs around pretending to be a Kisōshi?”
Mitsu only snorted at this, and turned to look out over the wall
“As much as I enjoy you wasting our time this way,” Mishi said, “there are more than a hundred armed sanzoku on their way here, and we’ve come to help. How many trained Kisōshi do you have in your ranks?”
“The presiding Kisōshi and I are the only ones available to this town. Our presiding Kisōshi is not here, which leaves me, and perhaps this man you’ve brought with you, if he has as much kisō as he appears to.”
“Then the three of us are the only Kisōshi here?”
The man snorted.
“I count two Kisōshi here.”
“I’m afraid we don’t have time for your persistent ignorance,” Mishi said.
“And I don’t have time for this charade,” the man countered, his voice hardening with anger. “Now get off this wall, before I—”
Mishi didn’t wait for the man to finish.
“Mitsu-san, is there anyone in, or near, that guard shack?” She indicated a small, empty wooden building that sat just beyond the western gate. She was fairly certain that it was empty, but she wished to be quite sure.
Mitsu shook his head.
“No one is near it.”
She turned to look at Namura, and, without dropping his gaze, she called forth the element that sang in her blood. Flames immediately engulfed the little shack.
“Do you need further proof?” she asked.
She watched Namura turn to Mitsu, as though preparing to accuse him of setting the guard shack alight on her behalf.
“Earth and air are my elements,” Mitsu said, before the blustering man could accuse him. “And you’re wasting precious moments that we could be using to plan for the enemy.”
Mitsu glared at the man, and Mishi could sense Namura’s kisō reaching out to Mitsu’s, his eyes widening as he confirmed, finally, that Mitsu was not capable of calling the fire that Mishi had.
The man only inclined his head the slightest angle. He was clearly not happy with this discovery, but she saw that he realized he had little choice but to accept that she was Kisōshi, and that she outranked him.
“What do you propose for our defense?” he asked, his teeth almost grinding as he choked out the words.
“I think I have a plan that will keep them busy. We only have to—”
Mishi was cut off mid sentence, as a shout from the guards along the wall drew their attention.
A guard was pointing to the road that led west from the town, and they looked out to see the horde of one hundred sanzoku that they had been warned of approaching in the distance. Yet even as they were turning back to exchange worried looks at the sight, a runner topped the wall and almost fell before Namura’s feet.
“Namura-san, the enemy is close,” he panted.
Namura glared at the man for a moment.
“I can see that,” he said. “I didn’t need you to come running to tell me something I can see with my own eyes from atop the gate.”
“You can see the eastern gate from here?” the man asked, his eyes wide.
“What?” Namura asked, his own face beginning to imitate that of the runner’s.
“The enemy is within sight of the eastern gate.”
Namura turned to look at the enemy that approached the western gate, and then shook his head.
“How many?” he asked.
“A hundred or more,” the runner replied.
“We’re surrounded, then,” Namura said, to no one in particular.
~~~
They had no choice, in the end, but to listen to the demands of a small group from the main fighting force that approached the western gate.
The demand that was issued—to hand over all female Kisōshi within the town’s walls, or else be destroyed by the force of sanzoku that now surrounded them—did not surprise Mishi. The reaction of the townspeople did.
The request had barely been made before Mishi’s jaw dropped at the sight of two babes in arms, only a few moons old, being pulled away from their mothers, who were frantic and doing their best to resist.
Even before the horror of it registered in her mind, she saw Mitsu sprinting down the stairs, running from the top of the wall to where the men were wresting the babies from their mothers’ arms. Then her body kicked into motion, and she followed on his heels.
“What are you doing?” Mitsu demanded, as soon as he reached the men who were separating the mothers from their daughters.
The men turned to look at him as though he were crazy. Three of them sneered at him, but none of them replied. Mitsu had no authority here.
But the men’s expressions changed when Mishi appeared at his side, dressed as the Kisōshi she was, including the katana and wakizashi that she had been reluctant to wear for so long. She hoped they would assume, as Namura had initially, that she was a man, and pay more attention to her presence as a Kisōshi than as a woman.
“You’ve been asked a question,” she said calmly.
It seemed that they did assume she was a man, as most of them averted their eyes and began muttering.
“A clear answer, please,” Mishi said, still without raising her voice. She stood tall, hoping her height would further the impression that she was male, and she tried to call forth the calm confidence that Kuma-sensei had always used whenever he needed to get his students to do something they didn’t wish to do.
“You there,” she nodded toward the man holding the smaller of the two babies. “Give us an answer.”
The man cleared his throat, looking at the ground before him.
“We’ve seen what they do to the towns that hold girls like these,” he said. Though he spoke barely above a whisper, it was
still clearly audible to everyone in their immediate circle. “It’s not worth it,” he continued quietly. “Saving them isn’t worth it, if it means everyone else in this town has to die. We knew, when we saw them coming, what they were going to do. We thought that maybe, if we threw the girls out the gate when they got here, they wouldn’t want to kill the rest of us.”
Mishi’s mouth formed a hard line, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Mitsu’s face go rigid with his own ire. Without even hearing the demands of the sanzoku, these men had simply started rounding the girls up, as soon as they’d known the sanzoku were approaching.
Mishi reached to Mitsu with her own kisō, sending him an idea.
When Mishi next spoke, her words were magnified for the whole crowd to hear, and quite a crowd had gathered before the gate by now.
“I understand that none of you wish to die to save these children,” Mishi began, turning to look each of the people arrayed around her in the eye, one by one. “Or, even if you might give your own life to save them, you may not feel that allowing your whole town to be slaughtered on their behalf is a reasonable expenditure of human life.” She paused, letting everyone think about that for a moment. “You might be right. Perhaps that is too great a price to pay to save the lives of two small humans.”
A number of people in the crowd were nodding. Mishi felt her stomach twist, thinking of what would happen to these babies if they were handed over to the sanzoku.
“What would you say, though, if I told you that I can guarantee our victory against these monsters? If I told you that they will never be able to do here what they have done in all the other villages that you’ve heard about? Would you fight? Would you protect the children you are so quick to hand over to those who would kill them?”
A number of the people around her showed patent disbelief at this idea, but some of them seemed intrigued, as though they genuinely wished for some way to protect the children. The babies’ parents in particular seemed to like the idea.
She could feel the mindset of the crowd around her begin to change, and she felt a brief flicker of hope. Then she remembered just what she was promising, and how unlikely it was to be true.
Mishi felt the viselike clamp of a hand on her arm at the same time that she heard the incredulous hiss in her ear.
“What in the name of all the Kami do you think you’re doing?”
She turned to face Namura-san, making a point of standing as tall as she could. She needed to remind everyone that she outranked him, and hope they still believed she was a man, or else this would all come unraveled quickly.
“We should be throwing you to them as well,” Namura hissed. Mishi wondered why he was grabbing her arm and hissing at her in a voice too quiet for others to hear, when he could easily announce her gender to the world and have his guards try to seize her. Then she took a good look at his face and eyes, and realized that he was terrified. She wondered if he was more afraid of her, or the men that surrounded them. Could he sense that she was a monster? Well, a monster she might be, but she wasn’t about to let these babies be slaughtered.
“And what would that accomplish, do you think?” she asked, in a voice that carried, turning away from Namura-san, as she forcibly removed his hand from her arm. “Do you think that the men outside your gates will truly leave you in peace if you hand over the girls that they seek? Do you think that’s what they did with the towns they destroyed? Do you think those people were any more reluctant to hand over their daughters than you were?”
She was speaking to the whole town, not just Namura-san. It was important that they understand that giving in would gain them nothing. Mishi wasn’t so naive as to think that they should sacrifice their entire town for two babies, even if that’s what she would do, given the choice. She didn’t want to see that kind of slaughter again, and she knew it was a real possibility, if they fought. But she knew it would be a certainty if they opened the gates to hand over these children, who had done nothing wrong save be born with a combination of gender and power that the men on the other side of the walls disapproved of.
“We have seen what these men do to the towns and villages they come across. They are not honorable men. They will not simply take these two babies, then be on their way. They didn’t come here in these numbers just to steal away two tiny souls, leaving the rest of you in peace.”
Mitsu was once more aiding her, magnifying her voice, and she turned to make sure that everyone heard her.
“They came here today for a slaughter. They serve the Rōjū. It aids their purpose to leave destruction and terror in their wake, because that is the only way that the men they serve have any chance of regaining power. They hope to make people too frightened to support the New Council, so frightened that they will accept the Rōjū once more, even if it means abandoning their daughters to be killed. The truth of the Rōjū Council is now known, and men trying to cling to the power that they once held are using these soldiers, and your fear, to regain what was lost to them. The soldiers outside these walls have come here to raze your town, whether you open your gates to them or not. But I promise you this: if you open those gates and allow them to take your daughters, they will overwhelm us instantly, and there will be no hope of defense.”
She took in the faces of all those around her, and saw the fear of that truth echoed in all of their eyes.
“You would kill innocent people, just to protect these abominations?” Namura-san asked, this time loud enough for everyone to hear.
Ahh…now Mishi thought they were getting somewhere. Abominations, were they?
“Anyone who attempts to hand these children over to those monsters is far from innocent,” she said simply.
“Even though they’re only acting in the interests of the town? Trying to save the greater number of lives? Do you think so highly of your own kind that you would sacrifice all of these townspeople, just to save them?”
“I’ve already told you—I’m not asking anyone to sacrifice themselves, only to defend their own.”
As she spoke, she saw the Kisōshi flinch closer to his katana, and she wondered what would finally make him draw against her.
“You must be delusional, if you think your skills are sufficient to fight off the army that’s waiting outside of these gates.”
“Hardly.”
Mishi almost jumped at the new voice that cut across the crowd to join them.
“Far from delusional, Namura-san. If you’d ever seen her fight, you’d only wonder what extra trick she was hiding up her sleeve, not whether or not she’d lost her mind.”
Surprise, quickly followed by deference, registered on Namura’s face. And Mishi couldn’t help allowing her own eyebrows to rise when she turned to see none other than Inari-san, making his way through a crowd that parted quickly before him. He was no longer dressed as a hishi, but rather resplendent in a pair of golden hakama and a white uwagi, both the swords of a Kisōshi riding openly in his obi, the rank of kuma plainly embroidered in the hem of his hakama.
“Ryūko-san, it is good to see you again,” he said, his eyes alight with mischief as he addressed Mishi by her birth name. “I see you’ve met Namura-san. You’ll have to forgive him for mistrusting you. He was not present at Rōjū City to see you wage battle against more trained eihei than could be easily counted in the time it took you to defeated them.”
“Inari-sama,” Namura said, quickly dropping to his knees. “I didn’t know you had returned. I await your orders.”
“My orders are simple enough,” Inari said, turning and inclining his head to Mishi. “Do whatever this young woman tells you to do to try to save our town.”
~~~
Mishi was nearing exhaustion. There had been no time to question Inari’s presence in this town, or the fact that it seemed to be his Kisōshi holding. No time to wonder at what that meant, or why it should matter. There had been no time for anything but taking up her place on the top of the wall, with Mitsu at her side, and doing all that she c
ould to help protect this town, which had finally decided to fight for its own survival rather than hand itself over to the sanzoku who had come to destroy it.
She was oddly grateful for her encounter with the camp full of sanzoku a few days before, as she realized that it had made her push her fuchi and body to the brink. She thought it likely that she would need every drop of power in her to get through this battle, but as she pulled at her kisō, she thought the well might be just a little bit deeper, thanks to that previous fight. She only hoped that it would be enough.
Standing side by side with Mitsu, on the wall above the eastern gate, she prepared herself to throw another fire storm at the men approaching the wall.
She had taken the example of Kusuko and Inari to heart, and decided that using that tactic was the best chance they would have of defending this walled town. They were outnumbered by no small margin, and there was only so much that a small group of two dozen soldiers could do to defend the wall from over two hundred sanzoku. The four Kisōshi they counted among them were hardly a match for those kinds of numbers, especially when the sanzoku boasted at least three times that many Kisōshi of their own.
Mishi knew that their only hope lay in keeping the sanzoku away from the wall, and keeping them guessing. She had been grateful to discover that Namura was also a fire kisō, and thus was able to work with Inari in a similar way as she would work with Mitsu. Of course, the results were less impressive, but they were still enough to keep the sanzoku back from the western gate.
What Mishi and Mitsu had achieved, however, had surprised even Mishi. She knew that her kisō was strong, and she knew that Mitsu’s was as well, but she hadn’t anticipated the magnitude of what that strength could render when they wove their elements together.
The firestorm that Mishi and Mitsu were releasing on the sanzoku was terrifying, and Mishi found herself slightly frightened of what they could do together. More than the wall of flame that Kusuko and Inari had used against the sanzoku in the woodland camp, this was a typhoon of fire; great whorls of flame that could have encompassed half the town, if Mishi and Mitsu had been bent on destruction, rather than defense.
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