Spirit of the Ronin

by Travis Heermann

  Silver Crane rang in his mind. Kill them. Oh, yes.

  Ken’ishi leaped off the tip of the mast and used his downward momentum to add force to his first blow, snapping an upraised sword and cleaving half through a bronze helmet. The man’s eyes crossed as he toppled.

  Silver Crane sang its joy into the threads of time and fortune.

  The face of the first man Ken’ishi had killed in seven years, after five years of ragged effort to expunge the residue of death and evil from his essence, fell away from the edge of his sword with a wet slither.

  His men crowded around him, past him, smashed into the Sung like a savage whirlwind. Men fell on both sides.

  He stared at the pool spreading around the man’s unfamiliar helmet. Was the mark on his chest tingling again, or was it just his fear-fueled imagination?

  Naginata spun and slashed and sheared through the lamellar armor like paper. Severed limbs flew. Blood slicked the deck. Chinese swords darted and thrust. The Sung fought with wide-eyed ferocity, but when the other boats of Ken’ishi’s flotilla disgorged their boarders up the far side, catching the Sung in the rear, their will evaporated. They died to the last man.

  Ken’ishi blinked in the sudden silence, rousing himself from his strange stupor.

  His men raised their bloody weapons and cheered.

  “Quickly!” Kagetora said. He cut the head off the ship’s captain and tossed it over the side, into his boat.

  Sixty-odd Chinese heads left their necks. A few of the men wrangled over ownership of the trophies, but Ken’ishi and Kagetora roared reminders that enemy ships were bearing down upon them.

  Ken’ishi assessed casualties. Two of his men dead, three lightly wounded. Freshly blooded, their will to fight burned hot in their eyes and clenched teeth.

  Then a thunderous explosion, a hundred times greater than any previous, ripped across the water. An enemy ship, perhaps two hundred paces distant, erupted in a boiling cloud of smoke and flame, sending shattered planks and bodies arcing through the air for fifty paces in every direction. A cascade of smaller explosions followed. With five attack boats secured to the sides of the sinking ship, no one was left alive.

  “What could do that?” Ken’ishi said.

  “Perhaps that’s what happens when their stores of thunder-crash bombs explode all at once,” Kagetora said.

  The men stared in awe for several heartbeats until Ken’ishi roused them. They emptied barrels of pitch across the deck and then retreated to their boats. Ken’ishi waited with a lit torch for the last man to go over the side. Then he tossed the torch onto the pitch and jumped down the mast, barely escaping the blast of blistering heat as flames whooshed across the deck.

  * * *

  Kazuko waited with her bow resting across her thighs. Her naginata was sheathed and slung behind her.

  Her Scarlet Dragons lined up around her atop the fortifications near Hakozaki.

  She gazed over the heads of the defenders and the wooden shields, across the water toward the oncoming ships. She stopped counting at eighty ships that had charged past the picket lines of defense boats. These ships were fanning out toward landing points around Hakata Bay. The strategists estimated that each ship carried sixty to eighty foot troops, or thirty to forty Mongol horsemen and their ponies. Would it be eight thousand Chinese infantry hitting the beach, or four thousand Mongol horsemen? The numbers made her head spin. The gates of the afterworld would swing wide today.

  Her chestnut mare waited patiently for her command, unlike the fiery stallions that men demanded as warhorses. Choosing mares instead of stallions for her Scarlet Dragons had sparked yet another round of scoffing and skepticism. Mares lacked the bravery of stallions, the men said, the strength of stallions, the aggressiveness of stallions.

  To all of that, Kazuko had said, “Nonsense. Not all men are brave, or strong, or fierce. The men who are, become warriors. As did these women who are brave, strong, and fierce. And so are the mares we choose to carry us.”

  Today would be their first battle.

  Some of the ships paused between a hundred fifty and two hundred paces from the beach and turned broadsides. The others maintained their course toward the sand. From the paused ships, strange contraptions flung metal balls toward the shore in high, smoke-trailing arcs.

  Then the balls exploded with deafening thunder, blowing shields, wall, and men to bits.

  The Dragons’ horses squealed and reared, but the women held in the saddle. With firm grip on the reins and some soothing words, Kazuko comforted her mount.

  Captain Ishii no Soun, her husband’s master of horse and archery, rode up. “My lady, we must withdraw for now until the enemy has spent their infernal devices.”

  Up and down the line, mounted warriors were struggling with their mounts. The hail of explosions kept coming.

  “Understood, Captain,” she said and withdrew across a road that paralleled the shore.

  Storms of arrows shot back and forth, most of the defenders’ arrows falling short of the Mongols’ superior range.

  The bombardment continued. At first the noise and explosions drove the ashigaru defenders, trained peasants, back from the wall, but when the ships opened their holds to disgorge their assault forces, the samurai commanders shouted courage back into the frightened peasants. The explosions began to evoke less fear.

  Kazuko looked around at her Dragons. Their faces were fierce and determined. The scarlet ribbons around their light helmets fluttered in the breeze. Their desire to get into the fight, to prove themselves, simmered around her, but she knew enough of strategy and tactics to hold here.

  Then the ships hit the beach. The enemy poured out onto the sand and charged the wall. The defenders sleeted them with arrows, and still they came. More arrows arced from the ships over the heads of the assault troops, driving the defenders behind their wooden shields. Bodies littered the beach like seaweed washed ashore. The defenders sent hissing clouds of flaming arrows into the ships. Crews scurried to extinguish the flames.

  War cries and the screams of the dying echoed from all directions, along with the smell of blood and the acrid stench of the brimstone smoke on the sea breeze. Wave after wave of the enemy spewed onto the blood-drenched sand, crossing over their fallen comrades. Defense reinforcements came from the rear to fill holes in the lines. A few brazen samurai, hungry for battle and glory, shouted challenges from atop the wall toward enemy commanders or taunted the enemy troops. She even saw one leap down onto the beach to meet the charging enemy head on. She never saw him again.

  How much time passed while she held her Scarlet Dragons in check, she could not remember. But then a hue and cry sounded, a horn from the east.

  Something told her it was finally time to act.

  She raised her signal fan and called out to her troops. Four abreast, they galloped toward the noise and, in the chaos, spotted a mass of Mongol horsemen on the road, their swords bloodied. They had broken through one of the gates to the beach.

  Reinforcements were coming, but the defenders needed time to seal the gap, and a force of Mongol horsemen on the road would disrupt the reinforcements sufficiently to grant the enemy a foothold on the beach.

  Kazuko had never seen the barbarians before. Their ponies were small and shaggy, much like the men on their backs. They wore pointed iron helmets fringed with studded leather. Their armor comprised a coat of studded steel plates sewn together and trimmed in fur, reaching just above the knee. Each of them looked like a knot of hardwood, wrapped in hair and steel and leather.

  But an arrow through the eye socket would kill them. And she had defeated the two most fearsome oni that Kyushu had ever seen.

  Her Scarlet Dragons, however, had not. It was time to see how ready they were.

  She shouted, “Shoot!”

  The Scarlet Dragons formed around her and loosed arrows into the throng of Mongols. Horses screamed and two men fell. Spotting the new threat, the Mongols spun and gathered themselves to charge, at least thirty in
number.

  “We will lead a fox chase!” she shouted to her troops. “Break when I command!”

  The annals of ancient Chinese generals had taught her that cavalry was most effective when it charged, not when it was the target of a charge. She would try to maneuver the enemy into the path of oncoming reinforcements. Already units of ashigaru spearmen were gathering to stem the tide of the Mongol breakthrough.

  The Mongols charged.

  Kazuko ordered, “Shoot!” one last time before wheeling her horse and spurring it away.

  The Mongol ponies were nimble, but more heavy-laden, and lacked the stride of the Dragons’ taller horses. Kazuko and the Dragons were able to pull away. Passing an intersection, Kazuko spotted Captain Soun leading his unit of heavy lancers, a new type of unit developed and practiced over the last couple of years. They had been waiting in the rear, just like the Scarlet Dragons, for a purpose such as this.

  Speeding past the intersection, she raised her war fan to him, and he raised his to her.

  Captain Soun’s heavy cavalry timed their charge perfectly. The lancers plowed into the Mongol flank amidst the screams of horses and men. The Mongols held firm, however, facing the new threat with blades and war cries and dogged resilience.

  With her pursuers tied up, Kazuko reined and spun her mount again, shouting, “Naginata!”

  The Scarlet Dragons slung their bows, drew their polearms from special holsters along the saddle, unsheathed the blades, and lined up to charge.

  They had drilled this dozens of times. The weapons switch went smoothly, and they lined up like veterans. This naginata had a longer haft and a longer blade than the one she had first practiced with, the better to fight with from horseback, but she had learned its advantages and disadvantages as well.

  Kazuko raised her war fan. “Forward!”

  The horses jumped forward into a trot, then a canter, then a barreling gallop. Kazuko couched her naginata with both hands, clutching the reins in her teeth, pounding toward the enemy.

  A few of the Mongol horsemen saw them coming, but there was nothing they could do except curse in their coarse barbarian tongue.

  The massive impact almost drove her out of the saddle, numbed her hands and arms, knocked the breath out of her. Her mare slammed a Mongol pony onto its side. She lost her grip on her weapon, but was able to snatch it again as it hung impaled through the torso of an enemy horseman. She gasped for breath and let the falling body pull free of the weapon.

  The Scarlet Dragons shrieked their kiai. They were the hammer, and Soun’s heavy lancers became the anvil, and the Mongol horsemen were ground into bloody meat between them.

  Kazuko brought her weapon down on the neck of a pony with all her might. With the added leverage of height and the length of the haft, her blow severed the pony’s head in a frightening gout of blood. Its rider tumbled off, and one of her sisters impaled him against the ground.

  He was the last.

  In this first experience with a mass melee, the sight of so much blood—great awful deluges of it—the stench of punctured guts and loosed bowels, the screams of dying ponies, twisted her belly into a watery knot. Tears hazed her vision. She would not throw up before her sisters. She would not show weakness. She was a warrior, just as they were.

  The women’s voices rose into a cheer, and then came the men’s howl of victory.

  Kazuko and Captain Soun nodded to each other.

  Captain Soun spun his unit and galloped back toward the gate where the Mongols had broken through. A block of quick-legged spearmen seemed to have plugged the breach.

  There was no time to congratulate themselves any further, however, as the ships that paused to launch their thunder-crash bombs now rowed toward shore with contingents of fresh warriors lined up on the decks.

  “It’s hard to hold back and not move. That is why the ability to hold back is important. You shouldn’t act impulsively. If you make moves at random without perceiving an advantage, you’re likely to lose. A noble man controls the frivolity with gravity, awaits action in the state of calm. It is important for the spirit to be whole, the mood steady, and the mind unmoving.”

  —Kaibara Ekken

  With the bombardment abated, Kazuko led the Scarlet Dragons back to the wall. They rode back and forth behind the defenders, launching volley after volley of arrows into the relentless hordes of the enemy. When their quivers were empty, they refilled them from the barrels and then returned to the front.

  The Scarlet Dragons never paused to shoot. They had trained in yabusame, just as the men had. They galloped pass after pass, raining arrows into the crowds of stymied foot soldiers on the beach, and their aim was true. The fighting at the lip of the wall was ferocious and bloody. Someday perhaps she might forget what swords and spears and naginata did to human flesh. The peasant spearmen, armored only with breastplates and thigh guards, fought as bravely as born warriors. Their homes and families were at stake, too, and they knew it.

  By late afternoon, the wall’s height had been effectively reduced by mounds of corpses at its base. The invaders charged over the bodies of their brethren, only to join them. At least, thus far.

  Kazuko lost count of the number of times she had emptied her quiver, but she kept telling herself, “One more run, just one.”

  And then horns and gongs blared from the decks of the ships. The men on the beach pulled back toward their ships. The defenders chased them with arrows. The gangplanks retracted, oars extended, and the landing ships clawed back toward deeper water.

  Cries of weary triumph echoed up and down the lines.

  Kazuko sobbed once with relief. Tears flowed. She started to wipe them away, until she saw the blood caked thick around her fingers. Fortunately none of it was hers, although she had pulled two arrows from her shoulder guards and one from her saddle over the course of the day. The gods had seen fit for her to live one more day.

  Her lathered mare, gasping for breath, trembled with exhaustion.

  One of her Dragons had fallen from an arrow, Kyoko, a beautiful woman of twenty-two whose warrior husband had died of a fever after stepping on a sea urchin. She had sworn to uphold the family name. Three others had been wounded and would be out of action for a while. That left the Scarlet Dragons with twenty-seven, including her.

  Kazuko wanted to fall out of the saddle from exhaustion and sleep where she lay. Never had she imagined such weariness was possible—weariness of limb, weariness of mind, weariness of the heart.

  So much death. How many men had she alone killed today? War turned men into monsters, ground down their spirits until naught was left but a hollow shell that must either be unfeeling or tortured.

  Captain Soun rode up beside her, looking just as weary, spattered with blood. “You fought well today, but we are not finished.”

  The sun sank toward the distant mountains beyond Hakata. The ships had withdrawn to perhaps three hundred paces from the shore and dropped anchor. The ashigaru and camp servants were hauling carts full of corpses to a mass grave dug behind the lines.

  Captain Soun pointed toward Shiga Island. Smoke rose from dozens of fires across the island and the sandbar leading to the mainland. Ships were landing there even now.

  Shiga Island was small, less than one ri north-to-south, slightly narrower east-to-west. The sandbar formed the perfect beachhead for the invaders to unload their troops. With little room to maneuver or build deep ranks, the spit was too narrow to mount an effective defense. The wall did not reach all the way to the sandbar. The Mongol horsemen would simply be able to ride around behind it and strike deep into Kyushu.

  “I see you understand,” Captain Soun said. “We are to take positions and block the Shiga spit. There are some Shoni men holding the spit for now, but if they’re flanked or broken tomorrow, we will lose the northern end of the wall, and the enemy will have roads south.”

  “Understood, Captain,” she said.

  “Follow us. We’re leaving now.”

  As he rode away
, she petted her mare’s neck. “Just a bit farther tonight, my stout-hearted friend.”

  * * *

  Drunk with victory, Ken’ishi and the rest of his flotilla charged yet another ship. This time, he let his worries disappear under the waves. He plunged himself to the neck into bloody battle, and with Silver Crane’s power, spun a cyclone of blood and entrails.

  Michizane’s naginata lay a fearsome swath of death about him.

  The Chinese armor was thick, however, perhaps more effective than that of the samurai. Two of his men had broken their swords against the thick steel lamellar. When this melee finally ended, one of Ken’ishi’s shoulder guards had been hacked away by a double-bitted axe with a haft as long as a naginata’s.

  Four more of his men lay dead.

  They had stormed up the mast-bridge ahead of him this time and met a hissing storm of lethal darts fired from strange, horizontal bows. The darts were shorter than arrows, but the bow mechanisms were made of spring steel. The darts pierced the samurai breastplates as if they were paper. The strange bows took longer to prepare and fire, however, and the samurai soon overwhelmed them. Nevertheless, yet another unfamiliar weapon gave them pause.

  While the men collected more heads, Ken’ishi climbed the ship’s tallest mast and surveyed the progress of the battle.

  Dozens of enemy ships burned. Dozens more drifted uncontrolled, tied up by little boats that attacked like swarms of ants around an invading wasp.

  Scores more invading ships, however, perhaps more than a hundred, had pushed past the picket of defense boats into the bay and reached the shore. Fire and smoke bespoke hard fighting up and down the wall around Hakata and Hakozaki.

  The barbarian fleet just kept coming. Out here, on the verge of the open sea, Ken’ishi could see as if to the edge of the world itself. Shielding his eyes against the glare of the hot afternoon sun, he clung to the mast and rigging with one arm and both legs. Still more ships filled the waves between him and the horizon, trailing white foam, their decks thronged with men and war machines.

  They had changed course.