Wait for the signal.
It was raining again; that bitter rain which had been burying all of Rokugan these last days. The kind that bruised the skin, and burned the leaves of the trees to a dull brown. The churned mud soaked through cloth, and bit at ankles. Standards hung slick and heavy.
No birds, nor animals. Shinomen was a forest only of ghosts.
We are ghosts, too, he thought. His green armour stood out in this forest of brown and black. Fog crept through the trees, hugging the ground. He started - a noise. Raising his tessen, he signaled silently to his men. They bowed slightly in return. As one, a band of ghosts, they advanced through the forest towards the enemy. Wait for the signal.
If they were not victorious this day, all Rokugan would fall, and there would be none to remember their names.
They didn't hear the enemy until they were almost upon them. The silence of the marching dead men was eerie, and what little noise was made in their passing was easily drowned by the constant rain. The rain, he thought, smells of blood. Wait for the signal.
He looked to his samurai. A dozen men followed his banner. A dozen men against all the dead in the world. He knew there were others in the woods as well, others like him, banded into small groups like this one. Still, he felt so very alone. Everything depended upon this moment.
Wait for the signal.
Toritaka Genzo was across that rise, if all was according to plan. Across that rise, and waiting to attack. He stared into the darkness. The clouds made the Shinomen darker than night. Over there, a shugenja waited amongst the trees. He could not see her, but he trusted she would be there. He had to trust. If she were not..
There was no room for doubt in a samurai's heart. Wait for the signal.
His men's thoughts were inscrutable behind the ornate mempo of the mantis samurai. His own features were similarly masked. He would bring honour to his Lord. Only the Alliance could do what the Great Clans could not accomplish. Honour and victory. Wait for the signal.
He would carry the sword of his father, and return the enemy to the grave. Genzo was over the rise. The shugenja were in place. His life was a small price to pay for the salvation of the Empire. This army must be stopped.
He could see the enemy, now. They moved through the fog and rain, moved through the trees and where they passed, death had been. One army uniting all the Clans: Crab, Lion, Unicorn, Crane... an army of the dead. Yoritomo had united an army of the living. Deeds, not words.
Wait for the signal.
A Crab standard led a band of goblins, dark, twisted creatures which mocked the bushi who laid in wait. One fetid, green, little monster passed within sword reach. He did not breathe. It moved on.
Wait for the signal. It was day.
The sky was lit by a hundred arrows of flame, which plunged down into the undead ranks like the wrath of Amaterasu herself. With a yell, Kamoto leapt forward, his bushi hard upon his heels. Thay appeared out of nowhere, bursting from hiding into the enemy's flank. They were upon the shambling horde before the vile sorcerors in their midst had any idea that the attack had begun. They crashed into the Shadowlands army as the Tsunami strikes the ports upon the shore. His father's sword swept out and cleft in twain a dead thing which once had marched upon the Lion fields. A dull thus to his shoulder sent him spinning, but he ignored the pain and pressed toward the center. Another stoke, and the vile standard fell. The rotton thing which had held it flailed at him with the stumps where its arms had been. They had seen him.
"I AM KAMOTO!!" he yelled, hearing his name against the dull pounding of the rain in his ears. "I AM KAMOTO!"
Another volley of arrows hurtled into the dead, narrowly missing Kamoto and his men. "Retreat!" he yelled to those who remained.
Now the game begins.