L5r - scroll 05 - The Crab (2 page)

As daimyo of the Crab Clan, Hida Kisada spent most of his time traveling up and down the Great Wall of Kaiu, conferring with his generals, speaking to the samurai who swore fealty to him, and observing which stations were in need of repair. He only rarely was allowed the luxury of actually engaging in a battle these

days, let alone leading one. He had to look at the war against the Shadowlands from a bigger perspective and could not allow himself to be caught up in the finer details of one skirmish or another. His job was to lead the entire army.

Another goblin came over the rampart and launched itself directly at the Great Bear, striking him in the chest. Kisada wore heavy armor known as haramaki-do. He always wore his armor, whether he was going into battle or not. Haramaki-do, with its wraparound body piece and large shoulder guards, was cumbersome and uncomfortable. It was made of lacquered leather and strips of metal woven together by thick strands of tough silk. Most samurai donned it only before battle, but Kisada wished to inspire his troops. The Crab samurai spent all day every day protecting the empire from the Shadowlands. How could they respect a leader who was not always ready for battle?

Kisada took his tetsubo in both hands and forced it across the slathering mouth of the goblin, which chewed on it ravenously. Some of its sharp teeth bit into the wood of his weapon. Others snapped off against forged iron.

Like most goblins, this one had an almost human countenance. Its bald head, long pointed nose, and tapered chin made it look a litde like an old sage, or perhaps a head priest gone mad. But its tall floppy ears and sickly green skin clearly marked it as a creature in the army of Fu Leng.

With a great twist of his mighty arms Hida Kisada turned the tetsubo until the goblin's neck snapped. He stepped forward, swinging the club again, and smashed three goblins that were just cresting the Wall. Their screams echoed as they fell to the ground one hundred feet below.

For a moment there was no one for the Great Bear to fight. He looked around. Although his samurai were not as tall, strong, skilled, or vicious as Kisada, they were more than a match for the goblins. Just by a quick count, Kisada could see nearly two dozen Shadowlands creatures lying dead on the ramparts. No Crab soldiers had fallen to the enemy yet, but one samurai-ko sat slumped against the doorway. The broken shaft of a spear jutted from her thigh, and a diagonal wound crossed her face from the blow that had split her helmet in two. Even in this disadvantageous position the samurai-ko continued to fight. She had abandoned her nagi-nata, a sword-headed polearm, and now fought with her wakiza-shi short sword.

Three goblins, sensing an opponent they actually had a chance to defeat, moved in on the samurai-ko. Her wakizashi might have been enough to stave off one of them, but never three.

Kisada moved quickly through the chaos of battle, howling like a madman. He swung his tetsubo flat across his body, taking the first goblin's head clean off in a single blow. The second one narrowly dived out of the way of both Kisada's follow-through and his next two strikes. Kisada's third attack caught his opponent across the waist, shattering its hip. The goblin fell to the ground shrieking in pain. One more swing of the tetsubo stopped the shrieking for good.

The Great Bear turned to the injured samurai-ko. A goblin had leaped onto her injured leg and thrust its tanto into her chest. Death must have been nearly instantaneous, but the samurai-ko somehow managed to thrust her wakizashi up into the goblin's throat and through its hideous head.

The two corpses stood locked in a deadly embrace. The young samurai-ko might have given her life, but she did not fail in her duty.

Kisada looked around. The Shadowlands forces were withdrawing just as quickly as they'd come. He spared a moment to look toward the east. The battle on the next tower was already done, but one figure continued to fight on against invisible opponents. He dealt blow after blow to foes whose bodies were already cold. The Great Bear recognized his cousin Amoro.

Amoro was nearly Kisada's equal in a battle—in fact, in any given battle, he might kill twice as many Shadowlands assailants as Kisada. The difference was that when the bloodlust gripped him Amoro also became a danger to his own troops. It was impossible for him to lead others in battle.

Once Amoro struck his first blow, his eyes clouded over, and he was swept up in the fury of killing until there was no one left to kill. If the foes retreated before Amoro's fury was spent, as they had today, his comrades had to withdraw while he sliced his tetsubo again and again into the bodies of the fallen—friend and foe alike. His friends called him a berserker. Others in his regiment called him a lunatic.

Kisada pitied his cousin. It was a shame that one of the most powerful and talented samurai under the Great Bear's banner could not be promoted any higher through the ranks. There was only so much honor a daimyo could heap on an officer who killed half as many of his own men as the enemy.

Of course, he also envied Amoro.

In his youth Kisada had been a wild man. He led assault after assault into the Shadowlands, often against standing orders. His face was a crisscross of scars earned through his various exploits. Many a poem and several Crab drinking songs celebrated the brilliance of the young Kisada's military career. He missed those days of carefree danger and excitement. Amoro certainly was more uncontrollable than Kisada ever was. In fact he might well be insane, but at least he would never have to make that soul-searching choice between the call of battle and the good of the clan.

At fifty, Kisada was ten years past the age when most samurai were urged to leave active service, and ten years short of when they were forced to. As daimyo, of course, he could go on as long as he pleased, but he could never again have the free rein to charge off into battle whenever and wherever he liked. He was the symbol of his clan. Everything the Great Bear did reflected directly on all the samurai under his control.

Hida Kisada was a man of few words, even for a Crab. The other clans said that if you could get a Crab samurai to say three meaningful sentences, you'd hear every word in his vocabulary— well, every word that could be repeated in polite company. The Great Bear was an intelligent, well-spoken man, but he preferred to exercise that skill only when absolutely necessary. "Life is so much simpler," he would say, "when all anyone expects you to do is grunt and nod your head. You would be amazed at how many people act as though you cannot hear simply because you do not speak."

The Great Bear knelt beside the fallen samurai-ko. "I only hope I die as good a death as yours," he whispered.

Three more goblins landed heavily on his back.

"Curse me for a fool!" Kisada barked.

While he was lost in reverie, the goblins, who had only moments before been running away as quickly as their spindly legs would carry them, were now climbing back over the Wall. They attacked the Crab samurai with a fury born of desperation—or fear. The sniveling creatures kept looking over their shoulders as if fleeing something even more frightening than death by Rokugani steel.

The Wall shook.

At first Kisada thought it was an earthquake. They were fairly common in this part of the empire. But earthquakes rarely came in single sharp jolts.

The Wall shook again. Something was climbing. Something very big.

The next violent shake came when a monstrous hand reached up to grasp the lip of the parapet. It was vaguely human-shaped but was made entirely of fleshy, ropelike tendrils wound tightly over a skeleton. It was the color of mud mixed with blood. As the hand strained to pull the rest of the creature up the Wall the cords pulled taut, making high-pitched stretching and snapping noises.

A second hand grasped the top of the Wall. In a deceptively quick motion, the creature pulled itself up onto the tower. Its body was a fifteen-foot tall crimson, ropy tangle of cords. Its muscles gleamed moistly. It looked as though someone had peeled the creature's natural skin off, leaving only the innards to walk around in a mockery of life. Its eyes were bald yellow patches in its sinewy face, but they focused immediately on the Crab daimyo.

"Hida Kisada," the creature said. Its voice was strained and unnatural, filled with resonant pops and crackles as its sinewy throat mimicked human speech.

The goblins on the Great Bear's back released their grips and fled.

"Oni," Kisada answered, raising himself to his full height. He seemed tiny and insignificant next to the hideous beast.

"I have come for your soul," the oni said.

The Great Bear nodded, almost bowed, to the oni. Then he launched himself through the air, his tetsubo raised overhead. He brought it down with a mighty swing, lodging it in the oni's forehead.

The creature laughed.

Flinging its neck back, the oni snapped the war club out of Kisada's hand. It shook its head wildly, trying to dislodge the weapon, but the tetsubo was too firmly planted in the ropy mass. The oni raised both its hands to its head. The air suddenly fled from its lungs.

Kisada, howling like a wounded bear, had kicked the creature in the gut. It doubled over. He grabbed hold of a tendril in its chest and began climbing toward his tetsubo.

Wheezing in deep, popping breaths, the oni couldn't put up much of a fight, but it did manage to wrap both of its arms around itself, crushing the Great Bear to its chest. It leaned back against the ledge of the tower and squeezed as hard as it could while it gasped.

Kisada could not move and had no weapon.

The oni sputtered, trying to regain its breath while robbing the Crab daimyo of his.

All around the tower, the goblins fled back down the Wall. Many of them merely traded honorable death in combat for an ignominious death on the rocks below. A good half dozen Limped back into the gray fog of the Shadowlands.

Freed from assailants, the Crab samurai saw the titanic struggle between Kisada and the oni. What's more, they saw that the Great Bear's eyes were beginning to glass over as he struggled to escape. Without any order, or even a word of discussion, they raised their weapons and charged. They screamed curses that even
they
had not thought of before.

The oni saw the odds arrayed against it. It still couldn't breathe—or even stand—properly. The oni rocked forward, then flung itself back, meaning to launch itself and its captive over the Wall.

The Crab samurai were too fast. They reached the oni and held firmly to the arm pinning Hida Kisada.

The creature had no other choice. It released the Great Bear over the Wall. The samurai let go to catch their leader and pull him to safety. The oni dropped to the ground with a thunderous crash and made off into the mists.

"That was the bravest thing I've ever seen anyone do," one samurai said to Kisada as his eyes began to find their focus again.

"Hai!" they all agreed.

The Great Bear seemed not to hear them at all.

"No!" he screamed and leaped for the Wall as if he meant to spring over it and follow the oni.

"Kisada-sama!" screamed one bushi as he grabbed the obi around his daimyo's waist.

"It's one hundred feet down," another said wrapping his arms around Kisada. "You'll never make it!"

"I don't care!" growled the Great Bear. "Don't you see? That creature—that
thing
has my tetsubo!"

All Crab samurai considered their weapons to be symbols of themselves—of their souls, forged and tempered into living weapons. Parents passed their weapons to their children, who in turn passed them on to the next generation. They became more than instruments of death. They were symbols of a family's history and value.

Hida Kisada stared out into the Shadowlands.

"My tetsubo."

DEFENDING THE CODE

Hida Kisada is an uncouth, arrogant bully, and he has no right to embarrass the emperor the way he has!"

Hida Sukune bristled at the accusation being leveled against his father, but more importantly he worried about his elder brother's reaction. Hida Yakamo knelt stock-still next to Sukune, his arms and shoulders twitching slightly. The younger brother was certain that he heard a long, low, animalistic growl escape Yakamo's clenched teeth.

They sat before a council of representatives from the major Rokugani clans—all except the Crab. As was tradition, the council sat on a slightly raised tatami dais, while the Hidas knelt on small mats laid on a hardwood floor. Sukune and Yakamo had come to Otosan Uchi with the belief that they were supposed to fill the Crab seats on this particular council meeting. Upon arriving at the Imperial Palace, they learned that they were actually there to stand in defense of their father and their clan.

"What offense has our daimyo caused, Mirumoto-san?" Sukune asked with as much deference as he could muster. More than any other Crab, Sukune was welcomed in the court of the emperor-—indeed, in any court in Rokugan—but there was only so much slander even he would suffer at the hands of these bureaucratic imbeciles. He was smaller, weaker, and more socially adept than most Crab, but he still held the deep-seated belief that samurai from any other clan were merely playacting the roles of bushi—of warriors—and that politicians and courtiers had no right to lay claim to that title at all.

Mirumoto Hitomi, the representative of the Dragon Clan, seemed barely to acknowledge Sukune's presence. She stared un-blinkingly at Yakamo as she spoke.