The Battle of Cherry Blossom Snow: Ch. Two

Chapter Two

By Robert Denton III

13th Day of the Month of Togashi, 1123, on the shores of Cherry Blossom Snow Lake.

“He just arrived,” Hida Yakamo hissed at full stride. “No announcement, no warning.”

Hida Sukune frowned. How was that possible? The Crab Clan’s missives left only two weeks ago.

Hida O-Ushi and the Phoenix Champion Shiba Tsukune lingered just outside the command tent. Under less-urgent circumstances, Sukune might have contemplated how the two seemed ever more inseparable over the last few days.

“Is it him?” Sukune asked his sister.

O-Ushi nodded. “He looks real to me.”

“You’re acting like children. He’s just a man.” Yakamo threw the tent flap aside.

Within stood a towering figure encased in ancient armor and flowing silks, a sentinel of pine green and gold. Were it not for his rippling bare arms painted in dizzying tattoos, Sukune might have assumed that the armor was empty, for he could not see the eyes beneath the warrior’s intricate mask. He was massive, perhaps equal in height to Sukune’s own father. He gave no acknowledgement, silently regarding the battle map.

The others peeked around Yakamo into the tent. “I take it he’s not expected,” Tsukune whispered.

Sukune tried to keep his voice calm. “That is Togashi Yokuni, Master of the High House of Light and Champion of the Dragon Clan.”

Tsukune’s eyes bulged. “That’s the grand abbot?” She openly regarded his height. “I thought he was a Hida!”

There was a saying in the Empire: “Seeking answers, ask a Kitsuki; seeking questions, ask a Togashi.” Sukune spent his whole life seeking answers in study. Knowledge opened doors, and nothing frightened him once he understood it, not even the monsters of the Shadowlands. But nothing about Togashi Yokuni made sense. He was a puzzle-box without solution, something that could not be studied or understood.

“Did he come alone?” Sukune asked.

“He brought a cadre of monks,” O-Ushi replied. “Some medics, some archers.” A pointed look. “Dragon’s Flame.”

He knew the tattooed monks of the Togashi Order only by reputation. Whether or not the stories were true—stone-sundering punches, flames pouring from their mouths, their bodies unaffected by hunger or cold, feet running lightly across lily pads—Sukune could not say. But they needed medics desperately, and acclaimed archers like the Dragon’s Flame would be more than welcome. Given his scouts’ latest reports regarding Akuma’s numbers, he wasn’t about to turn away any allies, regardless of how much or how little he knew about them.

Perhaps Yokuni’s party would even be enough to turn the tide.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Yakamo said, loudly. “He is a Dragon. He might just be here to watch.”

Not for the first time in his life, Sukune wished he was taller, so he could wring his brother’s neck.

Yokuni turned. Was that a flicker of golden light Sukune saw, deep beneath the shadow cast by the helm?

“Hida Sukune-sama,” Yokuni said. “The reasonable one.”

A chill ran down Sukune’s spine. Yokuni’s voice, deep and resonating, spoke clear and unhindered by the mask on his face. He was not comfortable with how deeply the Dragon Champion bowed to him, and he carefully matched it with a bow of equal depth.

“I offer you our assistance. Would that I could offer more. The outcome of this day will decide the future.” He paused. “Just like every other day.”

Sukune considered his reply. Yokuni had to know how desperate the situation was. He didn’t want to risk offending the Dragon Clan Champion, but his mind would remain distracted if he didn’t ask the question churning in his own head. He had to know. “Forgive me, Champion Togashi, but our message to the High House of Light was sent only days ago.”

Silence.

“Yet here you are now,” Sukune pushed. “How did you get here?”

“How?” The Dragon Champion seemed taken aback. “Why, we walked.”

Walked?! From the High House of Light?! “But that would take months!”

Yokuni nodded. “Yes, it did.”

Sukune grasped for words. Had Yokuni foreseen this? How?

Shiba Tsukune stepped forward and bowed. Her clan dealt with the Dragon often; Sukune gladly yielded this matter to her.

“We accept, Master of Dragons. Thank you.”

Yokuni returned the gesture. “Consider it a favor returned, old friend.”

Tsukune’s brow pinched, but she said nothing.

In Yokuni’s wake, O-Ushi leaned in to whisper. “‘Old friend?’ I thought you didn’t know him.”

Tsukune shook her head. “I never met him before just now.” She smirked at O-Ushi’s questioning look. “Still, that wasn’t even the oddest thing a Togashi has ever told me.”

14th Day of the Month of Togashi, 1123

When the heated pinpricks against her face finally faded away, replaced by a breeze and the sweet smell of poplar, Matsu Tsuko finally opened her eyes.

Before her, an endless forest reached toward the horizon of the predawn sky. Poplar only bloomed in spring, so at first the scent confused her. But the prideful Shinomen followed its own seasons, didn’t it?

Behind her, the spirit road faded into a dream she had not quite awoken from. How long had she been walking with her eyes shut? How long had she ambled upon what had to be the Emperor’s Road, that mystic pathway sometimes opened by the Seppun shugenja? And now, like no time passed at all, she was here.

She crossed her arms as she surveyed the fires of the armies camped beneath her spot on the hill. “Rag-tag” didn’t even begin to describe it. Everything was scattered, with no war-curtain to hide their numbers and too many tents clustered together. But then, based on what Mirumoto Hitomi had reported, it wasn’t as if the Crab were operating at full force, and they likely didn’t have the time to make a proper camp.

“Poor Kisada—the plight of the Great Bear’s cubs must be dire if they are scrambling like this,” she said. “They need a leader: someone who can rally them into a stronger formation. Why can’t I just—”

A golden voice replied, “Because you have forgotten how to follow.”

From anyone else, she would have struck them down, repudiated them for daring to suggest that the Matsu daimyо̄ and Lion Clan Champion could not follow orders. But from him? She clenched her jaw against the harsh truth.

She’d never really had to follow anyone before. Her own gempuku had been rushed and early, and she was immediately elevated from student to daimyо̄. Only days after being hailed as the Matsu family’s head, she was forced to fight her usurper uncle and his forces—a man her father had forgiven, a man she’d always trusted. Forced to prove that she could lead in spite of her age, all the while questioning the motives of every advisor. And when she’d finally won, no one dared give her orders again.

Well, almost no one.

“You’re right,” she finally admitted. “I…I’ll try to learn.”

It wasn’t going to be easy, putting herself at the discretion of other clans. But if the Lion were to regain the clout Ujiaki had cost them, if they were to continue to stand tall beside the other Great Clans, she had to prove that she could work with them. She had to redeem her clan, as only the Lady of Lions could. Without forfeiting who she was, she had to find her place among them, and earn their trust.

She smirked wryly. Are you laughing at me right now, Toturi? Will I ever have to admit to your face that you were right all along? That I would have to learn patience?

Hesitantly, she unlaced her fingers from the gossamer hand that held hers. Already she missed its warmth.

“I’ll still be here, Tsuko, in every way that matters.”

She nodded, swallowing hard against a sudden swell of tears.

His spirit vanished.

“Goodbye,” she whispered. “For now.”

Just before sunrise, beside a cascade in the Shinomen Marsh.

“Pick up the pace!” Yoritomo’s voice thundered above splintering wood, hammering, and the strikes of hungry axes. “Pile them up! We haven’t much time! I know you can move faster, Aito, I’ve seen you at dinnertime!”

He stood back to inspect their handiwork. Numerous river boats, fishing boats, and a few smaller kobune lay beached and stacked to either side, narrowing the already-tight pinch point formed by the trees, rocks, and cascades between the forest proper and Cherry Blossom Snow Lake. Mantis hacked timber from the moored vessels, while others dragged them into position to reinforce the makeshift barriers.

This would help ensure attackers would be funneled to him. They would be forced to come one at a time. It would maximize his ability to defend the command line. After all, he was effectively the only one protecting them from being flanked.

He didn’t especially like the thought of shrinking his fleet like this. The wind carried the scent of poplar, and he couldn’t help but glance at the fertile, untouched boughs of the Shinomen nearby. All this lumber, right here, within reach…

But then, that suggestion hadn’t been particularly well-received when he raised it, had it? The united protests of every shugenja within earshot—Fox, Phoenix, and Falcon—had led him to reconsider. Now was no time to tempt fate, even if their collective horror did make him want to do it even more.

He stroked his goatee as his boatswain approached. The man didn't bother saluting; such formality was for the benefit of outsiders, not bonded crew—not family. “I can manage two more if needed, Captain, but any more and we’ll be sleeping stacked on the way home.”

Yoritomo nodded. “This should do, Izen. Well done.”

Susano-o no Izen shook his head at the exposed bones of the ruined riverboats. “And this is going to give you some kind of edge?”

Yoritomo pointed to the features that would funnel enemies into this pass. “You can see, if they want to cut through and attack the command line directly and if they want to avoid the torii arches surrounding the wood—as I’m told they do—they must either risk getting lost in the marshes or follow the cascades to this pass. Sukune may be a shrimp, but he’s got good tactical sense.”

Izen looked like he was chewing on his thoughts, unwilling to spit them out.

Yoritomo followed his gaze back to the riverboats. A few were still in one piece. To the untrained, they might even still be seaworthy. But the Mantis here knew better. Kobune were assembled from fitted hand-carved planks, treated cedar and fire-bent pine, and when placed into the water, the wood swelled to form a waterproof seal. They were dependable so long as they remained in water. But once dried, the planks shriveled; these boats would never sail again.

“Always stay in the sea,” Izen murmured. “That is what your father once said.”

But didn’t the sea also eat away at the ship the longer it was away? Didn’t they often abandon vessels, or rebuild them, to replenish them or to make them stronger? Every boat was ultimately disposable. It was the crew that made the vessel, not the other way around.

People, not ships, were the heart of the Mantis.

“We cannot stay at sea forever,” Yoritomo replied. “Eventually, one must put his feet on land. Besides, the Crab have proven true allies.” He slapped Izen on the back with a harsh laugh. “And wouldn’t it be nice to say that the stuck-up Great Clans owe their lives to the Mantis?”

A smirk tugged the corner of Izen’s mouth. “Perhaps. But that would only have worth if the Mantis cared for the affairs of the mainland.”

Yoritomo grinned in the first rays of dawn. “That, my friend, we very well may.”

Later that morning at the war camp.

O-Ushi flagged down the rider as he passed the readied troops, wondering eyes following his limp form. He all but collapsed into her arms. The other scouts, just a handful of survivors, didn’t look much better.

“We delayed them as much as we could,” the Hiruma scout rasped. His eyes were sunken, his flesh pale.

“You bought us much-needed time,” O-Ushi said. “You made your family proud.”

He went limp.

“See to his wounds!” O-Ushi barked. Within moments, medics in green and gold had taken him and the others to the tent in the back of the line.

This meant the Shadowlands forces were nearly at their doorstep. Her hands gripped her twin war fans, and she replayed the plan in her mind. From here, she would coordinate the initial volleys and the resistance against the vanguard. But there was only so much she could do in the first phase. Much would rely on the individual commanders. The plan depended on them maintaining control over their units, and a worrying amount of them were inexperienced ashigaru. If something went wrong…

A break into the command line would disrupt all orders. Instead of acting as one, the army would break into independent units. It was inevitable, but they had to delay that for as long as possible, soften up the enemy before it could manage to reach them.

As she surveyed the others, the Shinomen loomed large to the north. Memories assailed her: samurai vanishing into the mists beyond the narrow trails, monstrous things crashing through their ranks, and her foolish cousin’s broken body sunken into the mud. That place was alive and malicious, hostile to all humankind.

Unless you were a Fox Clan shugenja, apparently. This was the third day since they’d vanished into the woods, attempting to commune with the spirit of the forest itself. Perhaps they would succeed, and the Shinomen would somehow come to their aid. She’d hoped it wouldn’t take this long. But without word or sign, she had to assume they had not yet succeeded.

Wouldn’t it have just been better to give them spears and show them how to use them?

Sukune’s voice replayed in her mind. This plan is not a disregard of our traditions. It is making room for theirs. Let them play to their strengths, sister.

“You’d better be right,” O-Ushi grumbled.

Because they’d just run out of time.

The first skeletons shambled over the distant horizon, broken armor hanging loosely off their rotting frames. Bakemono scattered around them, goblins in line formations with heraldic flags waving from their backs. Here and there, reptilian beasts crawled on all fours, tongue-filled maws dripping with smoking liquid. Spawn of Akuma no Oni, no doubt.

And then, O-Ushi realized with a wave of revulsion that sapped her of warmth, shambling bodies that were far fresher than the others, encased in Crab Clan armor. The Barracks of the Damned, which had laid in Akuma’s path, must have also fallen to his forces. The damned, Tainted samurai that had not quite succumbed to the Shadowlands would not have needed much to be pushed over the brink.

And behind them, the rest. Swarms of hordes. Hundreds upon hundreds. Giants stepping around the smaller beings. Nightmares fresh off the page of ghost stories. She could not count them all.

You’re outnumbered. Twenty or thirty to one. There’s no way you live through this.

“The grounds are consecrated,” Tsukune assured her, or perhaps herself. The Phoenix Champion couldn’t take her horror-filled eyes off the swarming mass. She probably had never seen anything like this before.

O-Ushi glanced across the field. Her brother, Hida Sukune, stood elevated on the command platform, the banners of the Crab, Phoenix, and several Minor Clans fluttering beside his personal unit. He met her gaze.

“It’s okay,” O-Ushi told Tsukune. “My brother knows what he’s doing.”

She nodded.

His lips moved. The first command. The officer by his side, wearing the heraldry of the Otter Clan, made rapid gestures with his fans, which rippled across the other heralds’ fans.

She repeated them with her own war fans.

The line of Sparrow samurai unleashed their first coordinated volley. It was impressive range, perhaps 900 shaku. O-Ushi imagined a hail of fist-sized stones showering down at incredible speed. Someone struck by that would not walk away.

The effect was devastating. The entire goblin advance halted completely. One stone struck the head of a scaled nightmare three times the size of a human being. It fell instantly, and cheers erupted from the Sparrow.

Volley exhausted, the Sparrow pulled back to their stone piles, and the archers took their place. The Falcon and Wasp released an arching volley of arrows that blackened the sky, followed-up by a volley from the Dragon’s Flame. O-Ushi followed the shadow as it fell upon the advancing hordes. Dozens felled by willow-leaf arrows. Anguished cries of dying monsters.

The archers stepped back to reload. Another volley from the slings covered them.

The slingers stepped back. Another archer’s volley. More fell. Again and again.

The horde crushed the bodies of the fallen beneath their march. Undeterred. A wave of nightmares.

“Let’s do it,” O-Ushi said, and made several fan gestures in succession. Tsukune turned and did the same toward the Phoenix forces behind her.

Ashigaru marched at her command, while the heavily armored Crab samurai stayed behind in reserve. At their front, Katsuo, the farmer’s son who had volunteered to join, shouted commands. The volleys of sling and bow continued, but it could only whittle the enemy down. The ashigaru stopped mid-field, clustered together, their spears forward. They waited as the horde closed the gap, scrambling across the flood plain, racing toward them.

And they broke. The unit shattered into rabble, the screams of panicked spearmen raising above the din as they scrambled over each-other, pushing others aside.

O-Ushi felt Tsukune’s glance. Wait for it.

A handful of armored ashigaru bodies lay trampled by their kin. The horde dove upon them, claws breaking through their thin armor, digging deep, showering the field with—

Straw.

The oni spawn paused as one, as if bewildered. These bodies were straw instead of flesh.

Tsukune gave the signal. A chorus of voices rose from the Phoenix, two dozen prayers to the kami offered as one. Even from here, O-Ushi spotted the glow of the offerings hidden within the straw dummies. She couldn’t hold back her grin.

The blast tore through the Shadowlands vanguard with a massive gout of flames. The consecrated grounds, prepared over days by the Phoenix, spread the fires across the horde’s ranks. At once, the “fleeing” ashigaru spun on their heels. The Crab joined them in a charge, voices raised together.

O-Ushi grinned as Katsuo charged with his spear in front, the others rallying behind him. “Not bad.” It took years for some officers to earn that sort of trust from their soldiers, to learn how to maintain control of a unit, to disengage and then reform. He’d learned it in a week. That could have gone very wrong, but he managed it. Perhaps there was more to the boy than she’d originally perceived.

“Should we reinforce?” Tsukune asked.

Good question. Letting the Shiba join now would give more offensive power, but the plan was to hold them in reserve in case enemies broke through to the north. O-Ushi looked upward in the direction of their exposed flank. No kites, no sound of whistling bulb arrows. That meant the Son of Storms still held the pass. She could picture him now, knee-deep in river water, kama whirling in a blade-storm as he cut goblins down. No one had enough stamina to keep that up forever. If Yoritomo fell, then these reserves were all that stood between the horde and the command unit. Could she trust that he would hold out?

A conch-shell horn resounded across the fields. Surprised cries to her right. Tsukune gasped. O-Ushi spun in place, her gaze raking down the line, past the units commanded by her elder brother, past the ashigaru there clashing with undead, finally settling on what was breaking through the western pass.

Armored figures on horses. Spear infantry. Archers. Armor glittering in blues, indigos, and bright silver. The heraldry of the Daidoji family fluttering proudly on their backs. The Doji’s Fan cavalry. The Iron Cranes. And predominantly before them, the personal banner of the Daidoji family daimyо̄.

Daidoji Uji. It could be no one else.

From across the field, their herald flashed a series of signals. They were offering to replace the reserves and announcing that a unit of Iron Cranes were engaged on the west-most flank. Already her brother replied. Offer accepted. They would form a pincer to separate and crush.

O-Ushi shook her head. She didn’t understand. “We didn't ask for them,” she uttered. “We didn’t ask for help. Yet here they are.”

“Of course!” Tsukune said. She gripped her sword and prepared to join a new charge. “This is their home too! We’d all give our lives to protect it.”

O-Ushi sighed and readied her warhammer. “Good,” she said with a smile. “But let’s try to keep it from coming to that.”

Bayushi Yojiro slowly came to with a spear tip inches from his face, and a woman’s voice shouting for him to identify himself. He grunted and brushed the spear tip away, rubbing his sore eyes as he sat up. Others surrounded him, and he was sure implements of death were being jabbed toward him. But he couldn’t think about that now. His head throbbed icily, the sunlight was like daggers, and each tiny movement stuck him with a thousand pins.

Where was he? Outside? There was a breeze on his cheek. Somewhere, in the distance, came shouting. Lots of shouting.

A marketplace, perhaps? Was he in an alley, or…?

No. Soft ground. Leaves. He was in a forest, somewhere.

“Is that… the Honest Scorpion?”

Yorijo fought the disorientation, willing himself to focus on the woman before him. He didn’t know her, or at least he didn’t recognize her face above the sash that covered her nose and mouth, but her kimono’s crest identified her as belonging to the Yogo family.

“Where am I?” he asked.

The woman ignored him, instead pushing forward and grabbing for what he held. He followed her gaze to his hands. There, a jitte glinted darkly, the wrapped handle shaped like a scorpion’s tail, jade ribbons in the metal of the shaft. A spiderweb of shadow in the steel. Loss and pain.

Examining the jitte from the safehouse’s secret cache was the last thing he’d done. Now, here he was.

“My apologies, Bayushi-sama, but you really ought not to go picking up belongings that are not yours.” The speaker was accompanied by several others in nondescript outfits. Their faces were also covered, but not according to Scorpion custom. No, these were to prevent identification.

What was going on, here? Who were they? Had this woman summoned the jitte, and in so doing, dragged him along with it? He shook his head. He couldn’t string his thoughts together, but there was some feeling that he knew who these people were, what they were doing here. If only the fog could break for a moment, if only…

It was the call of a conch-shell horn that sharpened his mind, followed by the furious thunder of war drums. These were army sounds. Sounds of battle. For the first time, he actually turned and looked at what unfolded beyond the trees.

Before him was a macabre mural or nightmare scroll brought to life, a cacophony of creatures that should not exist, claws and fangs and scales and exposed bones. The dead were walking beneath them, heedless to the brutal strikes of the living, desperate to hold them back. Blood soaked into the soil and made red mud.

Akuma no Oni’s army.

“I am Yogo Kikuyo,” the woman said. “You do not know me, but you assisted an associate of mine in the City of Lies. Would that you were not summoned here, but, well.” She gestured to the jitte’s handle, where light shaped like a complex ward slowly faded. “Bad timing, perhaps.”

The screams of the dying beyond the copse. “Is this Hell?” he murmured.

“No.” She narrowed her eyes at the slaughter. “But soon it will be.”

The Temple of the Ninth Kami, the Shadowlands.

“Stay close, Spike,” Asako Tsuki murmured.

A faceless monk turned toward her voice, head tilted, as if intrigued. But then the creature resumed shelving moldy books. The ratling pressed herself into Tsuki’s back. Tadaka couldn’t read Spike’s expression, but the hesitance in her body language was universal. There was no way either of them would fall far behind his steady pace.

A centipede the size of a fishing boat clattered across the ceiling. Tsuki and Spike shrank as they passed beneath it. An ancient pair of zori sandals, which had sprouted spider’s legs and a human eye, scuttled under their feet; Tadaka readjusted the porcelain mask and carefully stepped around them. He recognized these nightmares from Kuni lore: “transformed beings,” changed by their time in the Shadowlands. Yet none moved to stop them, or even to acknowledge them at all.

 It had to be the mask. As long as he wore it, these beings would disregard him. And this seemed to extend to the others, so long as they stayed close. But then, Tsuki and Spike hadn’t been able to see the temple until they crossed the threshold. Bombarded with these horrors the instant they stepped inside, they’d clung to him ever since.

Where had Yori secured such a prize? What exactly was this thing?

“We’re almost there,” Tadaka reassured them, but he couldn’t hide the wavering in his voice.

“How do you know?” Tsuki whispered. She took in the rows of bound codices and scroll cases along the seemingly infinite shelves. “This is not at all like any library I’ve ever seen.”

They strode past a horned giant that gave them no notice. The cobwebbed library stretched in all directions, yet Tadaka already knew where to go. He’d walked this path many times in dreams already.

The hall opened up into a grand passage. Before them, two rolling screens formed a silk door, painted in a nightmare battlescape ripped from Hell. Behind it would be the shrine’s inner sanctum, the court of a god.

He rolled them aside.

The chamber hummed with the somber quiet of a tomb. The shimenawa ropes swung gently from a breeze Tadaka could not feel. Black motes hung thick in the sweltering musty air. Even Spike gagged after a sniff. Yet it was not unlike the inner sanctum of the shrines back home. In fact, the eerie familiarity was like stumbling into a childhood memory, every minute of difference a violation.

Tsuki paled in the phosphorescent glow of the chamber. “If this is the Temple of the Ninth,” she uttered, “then this must be where the… the offerings…”

She didn’t finish.

In each of the six corners sat a white urn. Behind the closest, a broken suit of scaled armor of ancient make, a design that predated the Empire. Behind another, a tattered silk robe, white cranes spotted with black mold, folded neatly on a stand. And so on. An artifact behind each urn, but no offering bowl among them.

The rest of the room appeared like a general’s tent. Scrolls decorated the walls, taken from centuries of intercepted Hiruma scouts. There were maps hastily scrawled on brittle leather. A keep in surrounding marshlands. A village nestled in mountains. Other such places. They looked like fragments of Rokugan…

There. At the center of the room, on a thin podium, a scroll sat on its stand. The case was wrapped in black silk.

Tadaka approached, Tsuki shadowing him behind. This had to be what Yori spoke of. A scroll containing the account. A scroll his ancestor had stolen.

With a shaking hand, he reached…

And pulled it away. What was he doing? Did he have any reason to trust Yori? The man was Tainted. Obsessed. This could be one of the Cursed Scrolls of Isawa. It could be—

Tsuki tore off the scroll case’s cap and flung it aside.

Tadaka blinked at her determined expression. “What are you—”

 “I am afraid too, Master Tadaka. I just want to go home. But how could I show my face to our champion if we left our future on this slab?” She pressed the scroll case into his hands. “While we shouldn’t commit evil in pursuit of it, knowledge is what will save the Empire. Not doubt, not fear, not comforting stories, but the unadorned truth.”

Tadaka swallowed his shame. She was right. How could he even consider stopping now?

He removed the scroll and unfurled it.