Yoritomo Kanbe pulled the no-dachi from the bushi's crumpled form, and saw blood suddenly leap free from the wound, as if glad to escape the prison of the man's body. The sword would not let go, so he took up the man's tetsubo in its stead. Around him, he knew, lives were ending. Samurai were dying. Horses screamed under a cloud of arrows so thick that one could not see beyond them. When the cloud settled, where there had been men, was now only a wet mockery of reeds and bushes. At his feet, a horse flailed its neck, eyes rolled back, lips snarling in pain. Its rider was nowhere to be seen, perhaps buried under the tatami of black and bloodied shafts. Thick ropes of flesh snarled its legs, tangling them against its own body. The iron stave rose, fell, fell again. The screaming stopped.
He twirled the tetsubo in his hand. It was a motion seen often upon the Kaiu battlemants, but rarely this far north. Death seemed to be everywhere, but in truth he knew that this skirmish was a small one. A score of men to a side, perhaps. The Unicorn scouts must not be allowed to escape.
Kanbe's Daimyo wished to march to the Capital. The Unicorn forbade it. "This is how the Unicorn keep the Emperor's laws," they said. Hai. By stealing Ryoko Owari. By ignoring the Naga. By ignoring the Lion. It was as though the Clan Wars had never ended. The Old Clans had nearly destroyed the Empire, once. They must not be allowed to do so again. They would not learn, perhaps they could not. Iie. The Old Clans would have to fall.
Suddenly, the battle was over. Only a half-dozen Unicorn remained, on foot and surrounded by his too-few budoka. Kanbe raised his tessen. A silence decended over the field. One of the Unicorn held up a small scroll. Magistrate. Kanbe signalled to the budoka around them. The magistrate could leave. On foot. The others would stay.
When the magistrate was out of sight over the rise, the budoka stepped behind their exhausted leader. Kanbe signalled to the archers upon the hill.
A figure moved in the tall grass, watching the magistrate walk slowly
across the field. A quiver of arrows stood proudly over his shoulder,
beside the mon of the Emerald Champion. With no Champion, Mukami
thought, one magistrate is much like another: merely a man. The
Unicorn had not learned their lesson. First they attempt to regent the
Wasp lands, now the Scorpion. They care nothing for the laws except
that those laws give them power.
He considered the range. He could kill the Unicorn from here, with one shot.
But he would not.
Lord Yoritomo continued in his attempts to advance through the Lion Provinces without engaging the Unicorn or the Crane. Mukami did not know what the Mantis Daimyo's plan was, but it was evident that one existed. It did not seem to include the deaths of all the bushi who crossed their path.
It was strange. Three years ago, hardly a day passed without the Daimyo of the Mantis speaking with his troops, conjuring images of duty, of the Great Clans' failure, of the need to save the Empire. Since the defeat at the Crane borderlands, he had been silent. Few entered his tent, only the other Daimyos. He could be seen at the heart of the largest battles, but he fought silently, speaking only through the deaths of those who faced him.
The mood of the army had hardened from righteous force, to an iron resolve. There was an urgency to this march, but an urgency without a goal or focus. Mukami questioned how long the bushi could keep this intensity. Those few who spoke with the Mantis would not speak of what passed within his tent. Even the Crane. Doji Chomei stood with Yoritomo's armies now, his eyes steeled to bitter anger, but Mukami did not know the answers that the Crane had found. The Alliance's army was like a building storm, waiting only to strike at the tallest tower, whoever might reside within.
The archer almost pitied the Unicorn.
Almost.
He sent a prayer to the spirit of Toshimoko-sama, the Emerald Champion. A prayer and a whisper, and he was gone.
The Unicorn magistrate walked slowly across the far distance toward his Daimyo, through lands that were not his home.