13. The Rise
On a clear day, from any of the taller hills in the wide wilderness known as the Kaga, it was said that the rooftop of the gods could be seen in the far south. Just sixteen days into their expedition, Aiyo Eboshi found out that hearsay was true. Traversing a difficult rise on a particularly sunny day, something caught her eye further south: a majestic snow-capped head of rock forced up through the clouds.
It was the mountain of the gods, the Mountain of Fujiyama.
It was different from those pictures and paintings, she thought. Those artists made it look romantic, visually unreachable; in the large wall paintings in Minami where the mountain was the backdrop for heroic battles set to even more stunning calligraphy, she the great mountain to be merely part of scenery. But here, viewing it with her own eyes for the first time, it was neither romantic or just scenery.
It was rugged; it was wild and – sharp. As sharp as the worn hilt of the Eboshi family's katana. And she could now almost imagine that same hilt, with the face and force of the great Mount Fuji, crashing down on her enemy's face, knocking him off his horse and turning his sallow, ignorant cheeks inside out. Fringed deep with clouds, she traced the sides as if she herself was going to make an ascent up the mountain to the abode of the gods. Would she herself dare, with her ignoble and pathetic blade and the flint of iron pellets challenge and slay the gods who kept staring down at her from the heavens?
Her horse neighed, impatient at her quiet awe at the great mountain. Reluctantly, she followed the column of banner-burdened samurai and retainers down the rise and into the forest again. But she refused to let the mountain out of her sight. Flanked by other lesser columns of rock, she kept her eyes on the lofty peak even as it passed beyond the nearby hills and faded into the lush green of pine leaves and their branches. The mount of the gods was there, a luminous wash of white against a paler, sickly sky. It was difficult to remove the image from her mind. Especially since, all the while, the thought flowing in her mind brooded as crooked and sharp as the katana she carried:
To strike a blow, with the force of the mountain. And to finish off my enemy. And to crush his face beneath my hands.
The next time she opened her eyes, there was no mountain. Instead it was pouring, raining like she had never seen before. Osa stood beside her, a bamboo umbrella keeping both of them dry, or at least just keeping her face from the rain. She was kneeling, her robes soaked in the mud-mixed grass at the peak of another rise.
"My lady?" spoke Osa.
The forest was suffocating: crowded yet empty at the same time; the rain, the mud and the sub-darkness of this rainy day made it worse. She was not sure exactly what was going on – the smoke, the battle cries, the stench of iron dust and flint – wait, yes, now she knew – she stopped thinking of the mountain, and remembered she was carrying a fire-cannon, just like Osa was, and they were clashing with someone.
"My lady, Daizen is giving orders," Osa repeated.
It was much clearer now. The same local villagers who had told her how to see the mountain on a clear day had defied Lord Asano. They had called him a rogue, a traitor of the Emperor and a son of a tayu (and more vulgar words than that). They had fired arrows at the men bearing the Asano banner, refused to supply food and barricaded their village. And so Lord Asano was going to going to destroy them. And who did he choose to lead the attack?
From her vantage point, she could see Daizen at the head of a column of samurai. He was the only one mounted, the only one she had in her sights. The flint burning in her left hand and the right clutching her rain-drenched fire-cannon, she swept her eyes to Lord Asano, perched on a horse, far to her right. Retainers were crowding around him to be the one honourable enough to keep him dry with their umbrellas. It was he who ordered her small band of riflemen to provide what he called "support fire".
Depressed by the rain, the sightless sky and the tense apprehension of battle racing through every inch of this supposedly sacred forest, she stared down the shaft of her cannon. All her men, just over a dozen of them who had mastered the art and talent of handling such ammunition, were poised on the same ridge as her, eager for her signal to release a wave of fiery, metallic death. But she was not going to kill innocent villagers, at least not in person; she tilted her cannon forward, and then let it rise, her lighted flint stubbornly warm in between her fingers.
Daizen was giving signals again: he summoned the samurai line forward, towards the pathetic wooden wall of the village fringed by trees and undergrowth. It would be over in a moment, she knew, for what could farmers resist armoured samurai with? Archers from the samurai line were releasing volley after volley into the village's interior but, blocked by trees, she could not see how effective they were. Smoke, from earlier rounds of volleys lit with fire, billowed from the trees like an ominous storm cloud. There were already plenty in the sky.
Smoke and the all pervading fog caused by the rain were starting to overwhelm everything; there appeared no sense crouching so uncomfortably in sludge and rain watching Daizen's blunders. What idiot would assemble samurai in straight lines in a forest, in such conditions? And what stupid commander who station his cavalry on the crest of a muddy, slippery hill to prepare to flush the villagers out if his first attack failed? Even Lord Asano, and the reactive Kira, was slightly smarter, choosing to watch from a distance, instead of committing their men to what she thought would be near disaster.
"My lady," Osa roused her. "Look."
Daizen's samurai had stormed the village, smashing through a hole in the puny wooden fence, but were met by a returning volley of arrows. A pile of writhing, muddy armoured samurai was now almost blocking the path to that opening, where Daizen was directing his men towards; by the way he was looking up at the crest of hill, she saw that he seemed desperate.
"Osa, get the riflemen ready," she ordered, getting to her feet, even as stray arrows were whistling dangerously by. "I will give the orders."
Osa waved his signal along the line, who all rose to attention. He flashed the same signal to Lord Asano's commanders, and finally down to Daizen's men. All understood. Except Daizen, who as she predicted, redoubled his efforts to storm the village.
"Riflemen, aim beyond the village walls! Fire at the houses if you can see them!" she commanded. This infernal rain. In the rain, the forest seemed to be alive with weather, sounds and movement; every aspect and dimension was changing with the fog and the rain. She could hardly see her target, but then again, he was making himself laughably obvious.
She rested the weight of the fire-cannon on her shoulder. If only these things weren't so annoyingly heavy. But instead of keeping low, she rose and set her right knee on the edge of the rise, where she had supreme command over the entire graben below. She was in the rain, only kept from being drenched by her hat, but rain was no consequence, when she was now so intimately seeking out her target. Show yourself and move into position, you worm. She lit the flint; she now had to give the order, but she knew she had to delay her shot a little while more, if it was to look accidental.
A muted shout. And Daizen too had charged into the village under the protection of a dozen of his samurai. She had to let loose the cannon fire now or risk messing up the whole plan.
"Steady! FIRE!" she cried. Her soft voice turned shrill in the rain.
The rise shook with a hundred iron pellets igniting and blasting through their shafts. As Osa fired
his shot, it rose like an arc and crashed straight into one of the village houses still visible amongst the trees. Upon impact, it splattered into flames and thick grey smoke, slashing fire and iron powder onto the wooden frame. Another hit by another gunner, and the roof had collapsed in a swirl of flames.
Another kind of fog was sweeping the village; not the pale veil of rainy mist, but a cloud of intoxicating smoke from the iron pellets and their fires. As the riflemen began to reload for a second volley, the samurai forced the barricaded village gate open, and met with little resistance save for burned men and charred villagers. One round at been enough to subdue the village. And one more to finish it off.
Automatically, without her orders, the riflemen reloaded. All she needed now was to say the signal, but where was her target? A flash of action down below, as another building succumbed to the flames and – yes – from her vantage point, she saw Daizen and his samurai flee out from the opening in the village wall.
"Reload and fire!" she yelled.
But she let loose first. And with the cannon firm on her shoulder, supported by her bent knee on the rise, she opened fire.
The recoil shook her, but she was getting used to it. The iron pellet was lost in the air for a moment, before exploding right in front of Daizen and his samurai. All she caught was the blast, a split-second of Daizen's horrified stance to protect himself, before another volley by the riflemen splattered the entire village beneath her into a molten mix of fire and smoke.
"Did you get him?" Osa asked her, coughing through the bandage around his mouth.
"It's too early to tell," she spoke softly, "but it would've looked like an accident."
Calmly, she brought her fire-cannon at ease; the rainwater had traced her bang of hair across her face, and Osa caught the muscular flex of her right arm as she held her weapon aloft. Coupled with the blade at her waist, the rain whipping the forest in a frenzy all around her and the pale, uncertain resolution beaming from her eyes, Osa realized that his leader was not just a woman with a score to settle, but a powerful wild force, sent by the gods, both bewitching and beastly.
"Osa. What are you staring at?" she asked him gently.
He quickly averted his eyes; a hard stare like his did nothing to suggest any intentions of gentlemanly dignity, especially when the focus of his attention was a lady.
"Nothing, my lady."
With the barrage of rain still coming, the smoke caused by the burning houses did not clear immediately, and it was not known the outcome of two full volleys of cannon fire on the rebels or the samurai. But her attention was caught by yelling samurai from below; Lord Asano was moving his men down as well, but unlike Daizen, he had stationed all his archers on the hills. His samurai, being three times as numerous as his incompetent commander's, would crowd the village.
"Look there!" one of the riflemen shouted, pointing at the village.
Peeking through the swirling fog, one of Daizen's samurai had raised the Asano banner over the village walls. Lord Asano's samurai were not needed at all; instead of his entire army heading down to combat the hill, Lord Asano gave the order to seize all the necessary food they needed, and to move out. She saw him take an impatient gaze at the sky; he too was getting restless with all this rain.
"My Lord, Daizen-sama is dead."
She had been expecting a field report for quite a while now, but the dramatic effect the ensign's report had on the small company of Lord Asano's trusted circle was obvious. Here, crowded into a semi-huddle under the umbrellas of their various retainers waiting for the Great Lord's instructions, she caught every bitter grimace on these men's faces.
"Curses and tengu!" swore one of the commanders. "Daizen, dead at a time like this!"
"Well, he wasn't really the most effective commander of his men," added someone else with a veiled touch of sarcasm.
"It doesn't matter now. A villager's arrow is as deadly to an animals as it is to a samurai, let us learn that," Kira announced. He turned to the messenger. "Make sure he is properly buried and given all the samurai honours of burial."
Lord Asano, who had hardly twitched at the mention of one of his most loyal retainers perishing in the battle, remained distant, untouched by the conversation. He stared beyond the group of warlike men, past the dense fog and smoke percolating the trees. Just like me, she thought. He was trying to trace the vague outlines of the hills and the great mountains through the smoke. What is on his mind?
"My Lord, Sesuke-sama," only Kira had the supreme privilege of addressing Lord Asano by his first name, being his cousin, "there is the question of Daizen's men. There are close to two hundred of them who now lack a leader."
Lord Asano nodded, eyed his commanders, and his gaze fell on her, the only lady present. Don't look him in the eye. She pretended to glance strongly at something at the great Lord's feet, avoiding his gaze – not out of respect, but she did not want to appear to defiant to arouse his suspicions. After all, everything's going according to plan – so far.
"We will need more riflemen," he said, and made known his orders: "A hundred of them will take orders from Lady Eboshi. The remainder will join your forces, Kira."
The slightest of smiles appeared on her lips, but only the muddy ground could've noticed it.
She knew the commanders did not approve; her influence among the Great Lord's men was already on the rise – either as lady who wielded the ultimate weapon or as one with a savage beauty or as a former girl of the guest houses, they did not know. But with Lord Asano giving the orders, who would dare to protest?
"Done then. Gather your forces. We head northeast in an hour," Kira commanded. Everyone complied.
She strode aside, but waiting till all the commanders cleared before she signaled to her retainer that she was ready to return. But before she left, she made a gesture to the ensign still waiting in the rain. Stepping out from the protection of her retainer's umbrella she looked him square in the eye, her hands rummaging her own robes, producing a single folded piece of paper.
"Osa told me about you," she said, "so this is a note of thanks for omitting the information about Daizen's body. My men will assist in the burial. That way no one but the two of us will know he wasn't killed by a stupid arrow."
Lady Eboshi. She rolled the term off and around her tongue, like a swab of bitter sashimi. Both luxuries she was unused to possessing. Even Osa had begun to address her with the 'lady' prefix. The last time she heard anyone call her Aiyo, by her proper first name, her brother was still alive.
She lifted her hunter's hat. The wet mess of stray hair concealed her forehead. Deftly, knowing she did not have the privilege of so much time as a leader in charge of so many men, she pulled her hair back into a makeshift ponytail; her experiences fighting samurai taught her that short hair was useful. But as she set her hair in place, she peered at herself through the single mirror in the entire camp.
Whether it was the cracked glass that reflected her deep frown, or she was radiating an actual broodiness from her face, she did not like what she saw. Funny how I don't recognise myself anymore. The young, eager girl of nineteen was now of an undetermined age and resolve, whose questionable age was concealed by the armour, dress and demeanour of a warrior. Am I already twenty-one? She asked herself, because even I cannot tell. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, noticing groove in her muscular shoulder, where her fire-cannon had provided an unlikely practice in bearing loads.
A call for her came from outside. Sighing, she slipped on her hat, and hoisted her fire-cannon above her shoulder; the weight was familiar. A final glance in that mirror. What was bothering her now was that – concealed by a man's hat and bearing a weapon of destruction – the reflection in the mirror seemed to be ten times more comforting. More comforting, at least, than the vision of the girl looking so lost with her messy hair.
"My lady," one of the sentries greeted her.
Osa stood beside him. As with all other times, his invisible expressions under his mask of bandages were just barely flickering in his eyes. Humble and devoted to her as he was, she sometimes felt unworthy of his doting on her; she felt wrong to keep him in her thrall just because she had done one single, unthinking act of compassion. She managed a weak smile to him, but the fierceness of his eyes told her that today was all business.
"What is it now?" she asked.
"One of Daizen's former lieutenants is here to see you," he briefed her. "He wants you to ensure you'll take good care of him and his men."
Samurai ego, she swore, was the most troublesome kind of formality. She knew it was the sole reason why none of the commanders accepted her as their equal.
Osa moved aside – no, he was nearly forced aside by a massive bulk of a man. She saw his samurai garb, the trademark katana sheathed at his waist. The muscles on his arms could be seen through the slits in his armour; even from his short stride to her, she could tell a lot of muscles were involved. Standing before her, he towered over her and Osa, his expression as flat as his features. He might have tried to use his size to intimidate her, but she wished that his head – and by natural extension his thought and actions – would be proportionally equal to his size.
Neither Osa or her was too well-versed in samurai etiquette, but she could roughly know that this man was acting defiant by not submitting to a bow. So you're a traditionalist, I see. She was not going to give him the satisfaction of his defiance.
The man hid his disappointment at not being able to display his bold insubordination.
"You are Daizen's lieutenant? You do know you and your men will be serving under me," she informed him, although he probably already knew.
"I know, Eboshi-sama," he said, more a drone than acknowledgement.
"Then you'll also know that you will be fighting alongside me and carrying the Eboshi banner from now on," she said, and then she added as an afterthought: "I won't treat you or your men as ronin. I will accord you all the rights of a samurai serving under me, including training you how to use the fire-cannons."
He raised an eyebrow, but beyond that, he seemed incapable of any more reasonable emotion.
"We don't want to learn to use those things," he muttered in a single breath.
A traditionalist indeed. Looks like I will have to either accommodate or convince him. She stared at him hard and the lieutenant, in what he knew was blatant rebellion, did not lower his eyes. If not then, there's the sword.
But let that be the last resort.
"What do you mean?" Osa interrupted them.
"My men and I do not think highly of a lady who fights like a man, battles using fire and smoke instead of the honourable way of the sword and who keeps in her company filthy, cursed men."
He let it all out. Osa cocked his head to one side. The sentries raised her weapons. But she, drawing her familiarity with being insulted from her not so distant past, maintained her stare, unflinching, embellishing it with a slight twitch of a smile.
"And I don't care how you treat us. We are men of the Way," he ended with a flourish.
Osa and the sentries did not react. They knew her too well; they eyed her waiting for her to make her move.
"But I do care," she replied, audible enough to let all those watching the standoff hear. "What's your name, lieutenant? And which flank of attack did Daizen –sama assign you with taking charge of?"
The question appeared to have completely taken the man by surprise. But he tried to hide it, as much as she held her ground. She knew her philosophy was steady and a final, intangible weapon – match hostility with goodwill, for it heals and cuts the deepest wounds.
"Gonza. I am Gonza, the lieutenant," he mumbled in reply. "I took charge of the men on the –"
"No matter, Gonza-san," she waved her hand at his impending statement. "We will get a chance to prove our loyalties towards each other when Lord Asano calls us to battle our next foe."
Osa looked to her. Gonza appeared confused.
"And to prove that my intentions are good and have no reason to deprive such veterans like you of their swords, you and your men will lead my next charge," she stated clearly. She knew she had won when she saw Gonza's face drop and her sentries stare at her in blank disbelief. But Osa gave her a small nod. It helped her to continue. "You will be the first to engage the enemy head on, and you will flight as you have always fought. But I would like you to watch my signals because you have to be careful of my cannons."
"My lady, I –"
"Take the men you think deserve this honour and form two flanks in front of my fire-cannons if we run into hostile forces. Understood?"
"But, my Lady –"
She needed to end it now, for the effect; it would make her gracious, understanding and efficiently in control of the rogues. "Our conversation here is finished. Is there any other thing you want, Gonza-san?"
She was certain Osa was smirking from ear to ear. But the enormous hulk of a man before her continued to stare at her as if she was a new species of animal.
"You forget yourself, Gonza-san." She put enough command in her tone to startle him.
"Yes, my Lady. We will face anyone who dares to challenge the Great Lord Asano." He clenched his sword and with a movement of armour, he turned and walked away.
She took a great sigh. The sentries took it as their signal to resume their duties, and Osa came with an obvious scowl on his visible features.
"You notice he said he will kill people, but he didn't say he was grateful or gracious to you," he pointed out. "But, still, it was a good idea. You have a way with words."
She was quick to deflect the praise: "I think I just put ourselves at a huge risk."
No true samurai could resist being in the front line to prove his courage and loyalty. They view it as the ultimate opportunity to prove themselves against other skilled men. According to several traditions, they recite their ancestors' names as they charge into battle because they are proud to be the first to fight the enemy, her brother had once said to her. It's a predictable fault of these blunt men. And she had used it to completely deceive and defuse a potential problem.
"No matter, my Lady," the bandaged man reassured her. "It's no problem my riflemen can't handle."
She turned from him to follow the movements of her sentries. Behind them and her cloth tent, the evening sky was growing unrealistically dark. It looked like more rain was coming.
Again, as with every sizeable settlement they encountered, a short consensus needed to be held if they were to take the town by force.
"My scouts have established that a sizeable town exists over the next pass," one of the commanders briefed them. "It is spread out over the foot of several mountains, and cornered by a large lake. The people living there are loosely grouped by their industry – wood-cutting, ore mining… several farms could also be seen."
She continued to observe Lord Asano's reaction to this news.
"They have no defences. If we came down from the pass, we could sweep the entire town away within a couple of hours. Beyond ploughshares, I doubt they will possess any other weapons," She scowled; the tone the man used was clearly derogatory. She did not like the idea of firing iron pellets on innocent, unassuming farmers.
The badly sketched map simply showed two large shades of mountain and lake, and in between them, the scouts had marked out the location of a town – no, it appeared to be nothing more than a cluster of villagers around a central building. To her, even if she could set out all her men on those mountains, she thought it a waste to spend so much effort on so little.
"My Lord, your orders?" the commander addressed Lord Asano directly for instructions.
In his sweeping black robe with the obvious scabbard of his katana trailing behind him, he stepped up to map, took one look and traced his finger to a point on the map.
"Rushou, what is this?" he asked, finger on the focal point of the settlement.
The commander Rushou looked to his scouts, standing at the far edge of the gathering.
"The scouts say it is a pagoda, a sort of shrine that the townsfolk have built their houses around, My Lord."
He's hesitating. I won't hesitate if I had that many men and the power to destroy just some villagers. Why? She saw him linger on the sketch of the settlement's geography a little while longer. Before he turned and locked his gaze with Kira's. It was only a second, but she knew some kind of communication took place between the leader and his second – a subtle understanding, an almost invisible word.
But she was not fooled: I saw that.
Her heart was beating fast. And now, if I guess correctly, I know exactly what Sesuke is going to say –
"We will not engage. I want all your troops to remain on the slopes here and here," he pointed to the map. "Kira-san and myself will see this place personally with a guard of a hundred men."
It was just as she predicted. The objective of this entire expedition might have been lost in the smoke and blood of their last fight, but right now it was clear again.
"No one from this town will be harmed. I want to see if this is where we can build a fort."
Well said. She grinned. Now she needed to observe what was so special about this village in the middle of nowhere.
NOTES: Sorry it took such a long time to upload this chapter – and even more apologies for it being nothing more than a kind of bridging story between what will come next (Irontown) and what has happened earlier. I had written up to Daizen's death, then I got carried away with a Naruto short story, before realizing what I had left undone. So I came back & finished the remainder. The story, more or less, has reached the setting where Mononoke-Hime took place, but I will embellish it a bit here & there – you'll see.
Still, writing short stories has taught me that the Naruto genre is super flexible & a good place for practice. I've only just started watching the anime, but I will re-adapt a short story I was planning for Mononoke-Hime to the Naruto universe. But this will be my focus – and I hope I have enough motivation to continue.
School has begun. I'm reading some humanities modules at the Nat'l University of Singapore. Don't know what I want to do yet, still shopping around. Studying is good – it gives me free time to idly write. And now that I've got myself a laptop, I should really catch up on where I left off…