“This is needlessly melodramatic”, murmured Kitsuki Hamesu, under his breath. He paused for a moment, wincing as the cold mountain air seared his lungs. Behind him, the tall form of Mirumoto Irozu clambered over the peak, and stopped, staring at the bloodied and burning mountain. Sleeping Mountain was afire, the High House had fallen.
Irozu fell to his knees and tore off his mempo. “Too late! We have failed…the enemy came… and…” His voice failed him. His eyes screamed, a long anguished scream of betrayal, shame, hatred and horror. Irozu’s hands scrabbled blindly at his chestplate, tearing at the intricate lacings. He laid his hand on the hilt of his wakizashi. Hamesu stifled a laugh. “If you try to kill yourself, Irozu-san, I’ll…cut your head off.” The Kitsuki steadied himself against a rock, and his face twisted into a deaths-head grin of bitter humour.“And then where will you be?”
Irozu shifted his grip from his wakizashi to his katana. “Six months of taunts and lies, Kitsuki, and for nothing! There is nothing left. I should kill you now.”
Hamesu turned and started trudging towards the castle. “You could have let me die long ago, but you didn’t, you saved me life, and now you’re responsible for me and my honour. Who knows what despicable acts and schemes I have on my conscience – and on your honour?If I die shamed, where will you be?”
Irozu tensed for a moment, then his head fell forward, staring at the snow. “Damn you,” he said quietly, “I swear I’ll see you dead one day.”
“Hurry up. Not all of us have the luxury to sit around contemplating our final haiku. The Hitomi might have held out,” said Hamesu. The wind shifted, blowing the smoke down upon them, a thick charnel stench. For a moment, a crosswind cleared Hamesu’s vision of the castle. Kyuden Hitomi still stood. He choked down another mad laugh.
Hundred of pyres burned fiercely, piled mounds of corpses, body upon body. Here the tattered uniform of an imperial guard pierced with a dozen arrows, there the coloured skin of an ise zumi. The thick robes of monks and the green hide of fallen Naga, all stacked and burning. A handful of priests mournfully intoned funeral chants over the crackling sound of burning flesh. Hamesu held a scarf over his face and tried to face the scene with the dignity and stoicism proper to a samurai. He settled with not vomiting. Behind him, Irozu walked like a blind man.
The pair skirted around the thick of the battlefield. In the trails of blood and fallen bodies, Hamesu could track the battles they had missed. Here, at this lake of spilled blood, was where the Hitomi had sold their lives gladly for their Lady.
Here by these ruins was where some vast force had torn the gates of the castle down, ripped the ancient doors of the High House asunder. Back there, where the snow bore the marks of a thousand samurai charging as one, was where the Legions had struck, and there, where the green bodies and black blood were thickest, was where the Naga had made their stand. “And here,” thought Hamesu, standing by the gates and looking at a pile of green-and-gold helmets bearing the Dragon crest, “was where we should have been if we had been faster. Here was where the Dragon samurai fought and died with honour.”
Irozu brushed past Hamesu, his eyes fixed on the dark keep. “There is something strange here, Hamesu,” he said in an odd voice. If Hamesu did not know better, he would swear the stoic and simple samurai was overcome with a mystical fervour.
“The castle…it is…” His voice trembled, and his eyes darted from side to side. “It’s…”
Hamesu laid one hand against the ancient stone of the walls. He did not have the spiritual discipline of a trained bushi, let alone a monk or mystic, but he did have the heritage of the Clan. He focussed his ki, stretching out his awareness. There was something wrong, something.
“You feel it, yes?” said a voice from the shadows. “Then there is yet hope for us all. Follow.”
The shadow detached itself from the wall, and an ise zumi stepped into the waning light.
“Follow.”
“It’s….” said Irozu.
“Heavens,” breathed Hamesu, “the tales the Scorpion tell were true.”
A massive creature coiled before his father’s throne. Hoshi’s bulk filled a third of the chamber. He was like one of the giant statues in the Hall of Ancestors come to terrible and ominous life. He surveyed the room. Although every mortal in the room was ise zumi, they were not the holy and united order, the Dragon’s Claw, that his father had made.
Closest to Hoshi were his own. They stood proudly, happy that the long war was over. He looked for Eisai, but he could not find her. On the far side of the chamber were the Hitomi. Their eyes glowed with the yellow fire of the Vision, and they stared silently at the one who had cost them so much. Between the two groups were the Togashi monks. They had fought alongside Hoshi, but now they stood apart. They shifted uneasily, and seemed uncomfortable in the castle they knew of old. Mitsu stood at their head, and the fires burning in his soul gave his face a yellowish cast.
Hoshi narrowed his eyes, then turned to the Hitomi. “I claim the throne. I defeated the usurper.” Usurper. Usurper. Usurper echoed the walls.
“I am daimyo now, as my father Togashi willed it. The foul thing who wore the hand of darkness is gone. Hitomi has fled my wrath.”
Hitomi Hitomi Hitomi said the walls, wrath wrath wrath.
The ise zumi stared back at him, the fire of the Vision undiminished. The Vision was being tested, but it would endure and triumph. They stared at Hoshi and weighed him, and found him wanting.
Hoshi raised his hand, and the chamber blazed with the sheer force of his anger.
“I am lord of the High House of Light!”
“It’s empty,” said Mirumoto Irozu.
The eyes of two-thirds of the assembled throng looked at him. Irozu didn’t notice them, consumed by his revelation. “That’s what’s wrong. It’s empty.”
Hoshi advanced towards them. “Who are you? How dare you profane this place!”
Irozu looked up at the towering man-beast. “I am Mirumoto Irozu of the Clan Dragon.You…I do not know.”
Hamesu stepped forward. “Hai. Irozu-sama has spoken wisely.This place is dead stone and corpse-ash. There is no…soul here. The fire is gonefrom the mountain…”
In a rush, he saw the pattern here, just as he had been taught to see the pattern in all actions and motions. “This is not the High House of Light. The Dragon is gone from this place. You have failed, son of Togashi. The spirit of the Clan is elsewhere. You thought to retake the Dragon Clan, but the Dragon Clan is not land or castles or men. The Dragon Clan is the spirit and honour of every samurai and heimin who seeks the Riddle. I am a Dragon samurai, and I do not know you.”
Hoshi roared in fury, and swung his massive fist at Hamesu. Irozu drew his sword with one smooth motion and sliced at Hoshi’s wrist, splattering blood all over himself. Hamesu leaped back and drew his swords, falling into the first stance. Suddenly an ise zumi leaped, landing on Hoshi’s rippling back, and springing from there, flipping in the air and landing between the man-beast and the two samurai. Mitsu’s fiery breath drove a wedge between them, and Hoshi recoiled.
“Leave, now,” hissed Togashi Mitsu.
“What in the name of the Emperor happened back in that place?” wondered Irozu. The two were sitting by a small campfire, in a stand of wretched and stunted trees on the slopes of Sleeping Mountain. The snow was falling heavily now, and the shadows were gathering around them. “I think the ancestors spoke through us.”
“I do not know. Truly, I do not know,” replied Kitsuki Hamesu. “It was needlessly melodramatic and cryptic, and confirms suspicions of mine aboutthe ancestors and ise zumi – to be precise, the nature of void is needless melodrama and cryptic mysticism that says nothing.” He shuddered, and his humour fell faster than the snow. “What are you going to do now?” asked Irozu.
“This war is not over. I promised to avenge my family using whatever skills and strengths I possess, and as I said to Hoshi, the High House of Light has not fallen. Hoshi was one of those who led the Naga to my home, and their lives are forfeit. I may be a deceitful, scheming, honourless dog, but I am a Dragon samurai and some few things are important to me.” Hamesu kicked the fire,sending burning sticks into the snow. They hissed and the light died. “What am I going to do? I don’t know – yet.”Hamesu stood. Far far below, he could see the lights of the Imperial Legion’s camp.
It would be a hard march to catch them. He started to walk. Irozu scrambled to his feet and followed. Hamesu glanced over his shoulder. “I thought you were going to look for the Mirumoto who survived the Naga assault. There are a few left, I think.” “Of course. They are Mirumoto. We do not die so easily. The Dragon is eternal, yes? But I am going with you. You are a deceitful, scheming honourless dog, and I am a Dragon samurai who is responsible for the actions of a dog.”
Hamesu laughed. “Hurry up then. I have no desire to be caught by Hoshi in case he looks for the spirit of the Dragon in our hearts.”
The two samurai left the campfire behind them, and walked into the night.
The embers of the campfire hissed in the falling snow. Then a flame burst from the ashes, a dancing yellow flame, driving the shadows back. It illuminated the face of an ise zumi. The vision traced kanji in the flames.
“The Dragon is eternal. Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost.”