Winter
Bare branches, gray skies
Fallen leaves rustle, frost-tinged
The wind that stirs them
Bears me no good will
-- poems of Takenoshita Yabu
The road to Ohama wound around wooded hills, skeletal branches limned against the gray sky. The samurai made good time, their hoofbeats echoing in the stillness.
Yabu smiled faintly in the crisp air. It was a fine day. He glanced behind him. Master Tai was talking with the new samurai, Benesato, as they rode. Behind them came Saburo, Junzo, and finally the slight youth, Hotaru-no-suke.
Up ahead by the road was a mill, standing a little ways off from the road in a small dell. A creek ran beside it, and the road crossed it with a small arched bridge.
A cart nearly blocked the road at the bridge -- a pair of woodcutters were pushing and shoving it, trying to get it over the hump of the bridge as the samurai approached.
Yabu glanced around, a little suspicious, but nothing seemed out of place. As he rode up to the bridge the woodcutters finally managed to get their heavily-loaded cart over the hump and onto the side close to the samurai, where they pushed it to the side of the road and bowed obsequiously, obviously hoping to avoid punishment for interfering in the travel of the samurai.
Yabu glanced once more at the woodcutters as he rode past, something nagging at his mind. His horse's hooves drummed on the small bridge.
Hotaru was at the end of the line. As he came up to the woodcutter the peasant pulled an axe out of the cart and threw it at him with murderous intent!
The lithe young samurai barely dodged out of the path of the flying axe. Simultaneously the woodpile of the cart convulsed, revealing another pair of assailants, and the fake woodcutters attacked. Saburo's horse reared, throwing him down with a thump.
Just on the far side of the bridge, Yabu spun his horse with a curse. His experienced eyes caught movement in the leaf-piles strewn on the hillside above them.
"Ambush! Ware above, there are more in the woods," Yabu yelled. "Fall back! Fall back across the bridge!" Ignoring his own orders, he reared his horse and charged back across the bridge into the fighting.
Benesato dismounted and pulled his weapon, parrying a blow of his peasant opponent with his sword while maintaining a grip on the reins of his horse. Saburo rolled to his feet cursing his horse -- he had fallen on the same shoulder in Hikone, in the confused fighting when they had freed Prince Heihachiro just a month before. He drew his katana awkwardly with his bruised arm, preparing to defend himself, snarling in frustration.
A peasant opponent matched Saburo's expression briefly, then his face disintegrated in a spray of blood as Yabu split his skull riding by, then turned his horse beside the cart and stabbed Benesato's enemy deep in the armpit.
"Fall back," Yabu shouted, "fall back! Across the bridge!"
As Yabu pulled his spear free from the bubbling chest wound and let the enemy fall, he noticed that the `peasant' had red tattoos on both arms, hidden until now by his clothing. He had seen the like before, once. Dragons.
Master Tai galloped by, but the drumming of hooves on the bridge turned to a shout from the young priest and a deep thump, followed by the scream of his wounded horse. Yabu glanced over across the bridge and cursed -- there was a pit there, hidden, and the horse and master Tai were down.
Benesato still held tightly on his horse's reins, and quickly led the animal across the bridge.
In the rear of the ambush, Junzo and Hotaru sparred briefly with the other pair of woodcutters. Hotaru had dismounted, and his kamayari quickly ended the life of one of them. Junzo slashed at his enemy twice, parrying return blows but without result, then turned and drove his horse towards the bridge. He rode across the bridge.
Saburo glanced around, still cursing his horse, but no better options presented themselves than retreating, so he followed Junzo on foot.
The one remaining foeman leaped up on top of the woodcart, swinging his heavy club. Yabu's attention had been occupied with the men in the wooded hillside above and the pit on the other side of the bridge, and he was caught entirely off-guard. The club crashed into his chest, throwing him off his horse and smashing a rail of the bridge with his ribcage.
The enemy crowed his success, then gurgled in agony as Hotaru's kamayari spiked through his back.
A whispering sound was all the warning the samurai had. Saburo shouted in surprise and pain, a foot-long metal spike appearing deep in his shoulder. Similar missiles stuck in the wooden parts of the bridge railing and the woodcart.
Benesato dropped his horse's reins and ran back across the bridge, grabbing Yabu's stunned form and hefting him up. Hotaru-no-suke dropped off the woodcart, evading another handful of bo shuriken, and grabbed Yabu's yari and horse, retreating across the bridge and leaving the battlefield to the dead ambushers.
Moments later they were off down the road, riding double. Saburo and Hotaru had lost their mounts; Tai's horse was badly hurt and unrideable. But with three horses for six men they could still escape, and there was no pursuit.
Saburo's wound was quite deep, but it responded well to the priest's healing.
Master Tai's face blanched as Yabu described the tattoos he had seen.
"Are you certain? Red, and a dragon, on each arm?"
Yabu nodded. "I have seen it before, also. The band of ruffians who slew Muyo Kazuo in the guise of a mist dragon, north of Ariki, they all had this mark."
"Kura's henchmen have the same tattoo," Hotaru-no-suke interjected quietly.
Tai seemed very distressed at the news. "That mark is worn only by the cultists of the Red Banner. When you encountered them in the North, I had thought it an isolated incident. If they are involved with this plot to overthrow your shogun, the consequences could be grave -- on both sides of the Narrow Sea. Tell me -- what do you know of the activities of these men?
"Hmmm," Yabu muttered. "I am not sure why they were in the north. But I now recall seeing them once more -- three of them were part of a company of pirates, digging up graves on an island where we were shipwrecked last winter. Junzo, do you remember? Where the archer, what was his name, Shinbei? Where he died?"
"Aye," replied Junzo. "It was there. They had remarkable fighting styles as I recall."
"I have seen Kura's guards digging in the Arai graveyard," Hotaru said softly, "looking for funeral urns. More urns have been coming to Kura from overseas... from Korea, I think."
Tai shook his head. "We know now what he was looking for, and perhaps why he came to Ariki in the first place. I dread to think who - or what - else he may have raised. But it disturbs me more that we do not know why the Red Banner has supported him in this. I must tell my masters the news, and perhaps they can pierce this riddle for us." He leant back, clearly ill at ease. "I feel that we should hurry, that things are building to a head."
In a few moments they were up and riding on, moving as quickly as six men could with only three horses.