Sengoku - Chapter 12 (Raw) (Patreon)

Chapter 12 - Things Unseen

Having been born into the house of a warrior, one’s intentions should be to grasp the long and the short swords and to die.

- Kato Kiyomasa.

Nagai summoned the hunters the following morning. All ten gathered in the concealed council chamber alongside the scholars, priests, and several officers Shimon did not recognize. The maps had multiplied since the hunt, and small wooden markers showed Satomi positions in black while red pieces identified Hōjō fortifications and known concentrations of men.

The powerful senior retainer stood over the arrangement. “You did well.”

The chamber remained quiet at his words.

Nagai looked faintly irritated. “That was praise. You may appear pleased.”

Several men immediately adjusted their expressions. Seki, it must be noted, did not.

The commanding man chose to ignore him. “Three yōma were located and three were killed. No hunters died, which means the method worked well enough to justify repeating it. Certain men also discovered opportunities to improve upon orders while obeying none of them.”

Kagawa bowed, and Shimon could not decide whether the one-eyed warrior understood the criticism or had merely heard himself implied and assumed praise.

“The important thing,” Nagai continued, “is that we learned. The next hunt should therefore be cleaner. Unfortunately for your comfort, there are other matters.”

He moved one black marker across the map. “Hōjō men crossed into Satomi lands before your arrival, Ayanokouji. You saw the remains of one part of that fighting.”

Shimon remembered the battlefield where he had first appeared, the bodies scattered beneath fading evening light, and the broad river beyond them.

The senior retainer tapped the map with one finger. “My lord has tolerated enough. The army moves tomorrow. We will punish the Hōjō dogs for their incursion, break the fortification they have raised beyond the crossing, and take the position for ourselves.”

A murmur of disquiet passed through the hunters.

The veteran commander allowed it before continuing. “We have another reason to march. Reports of yōma have increased wherever Hōjō forces have passed. Graves have been opened behind their columns, villages emptied, and guardian shrine ropes cut. The thing that called itself Sakurai Iori joined a commission hunting creatures whose attacks, it seems at least, benefited Hōjō interests.”

The narrow-faced scholar Abe leaned over the map. “We still possess no proof that the Hōjō summon them deliberately.”

“No,” Nagai agreed, his tone controlled. “We possess suspicion, and suspicion is not enough to condemn a man. It is, however, enough to keep one's sword ready.”

A thin smile touched Kagawa's scarred face.

“The army will create dead,” the senior warrior plowed on. “Many dead. Whether the Hōjō deliberately call the yōma or whether such things merely follow battle as crows follow a harvest of death, we expect them to appear.”

His finger moved toward the enemy position. “That is why you are going.”

Tarō frowned. “With the main army?”

“With it, behind it, and where necessary beside it. You are not line infantry, and you will not waste yourselves fighting men merely because men are available to kill. You are hunters. Your purpose is to destroy what ordinary soldiers cannot. But before that, you are still soldiers.”

Nagai's gaze settled squarely upon Kagawa. “Do you understand?”

The one-eyed mounted warrior grinned before bowing. “Perfectly.”

Shimon had learned enough about him to consider that answer ominous.

The commanding man straightened. “The Hōjō brought sorrow into Satomi lands. They left bodies for yōma and widows for our villages. This time for suffering is over, the time for vengeance is now. We take the crossing, we take their castle, and if their monsters follow them, we hunt those as well.”

Tarō's hand tightened against his knee.

Nagai noticed with a raise of his eyebrow. “For the living and the dead,” the senior retainer concluded, “we repay what is owed.”

***

The Satomi army marched shortly after sunrise.

Shimon had seen enormous armies before, if digital formations controlled by pathfinding could be counted, but real warfare possessed layers of logistics that no strategy game had ever managed to make interesting.

Men filled the road from ditch to ditch. Spearmen marched beneath bundles of yari, archers carried bows protected against the weather, and mounted retainers traveled along the sides of the column upon dinosaurs of several varieties. Some rode lean predatory animals bred for speed and maneuverability, while others used heavier beasts capable of carrying armored men for long distances without complaint.

Banners rose above every formation, the Satomi futatsu-hikiryō, the double line, appearing repeatedly among the devices of subordinate households and allied lords.

Kagawa rode the deadly Kurobane near the head of the yōma hunters.

Surprisingly, Nagai had appointed the one-eyed samurai deputy commander of their small unit while the senior retainer attended Lord Satomi and the other officers. Kagawa had interpreted the appointment as recognition of his natural military genius and informed everyone of this several times before they cleared the castle town.

“Keep formation,” the mounted warrior ordered from the saddle, an edge of snide superiority in his voice.

The broad-shouldered Seki glanced toward Tarō. “We have been walking along a straight road for half an hour.”

Kagawa's remaining eye narrowed. “Silence in the ranks.”

Tarō looked away to conceal his amusement.

The hunters marched behind Kurobane in two loose files, while porters and coolies moved alongside the baggage train carrying rice, cooking vessels, spare weapons, cordage, tents, arrows, salt, and the countless other things required to keep several thousand hungry men functioning.

Dinosaurs carried the heavier burdens.

Broad-backed herbivores trudged beneath wooden pack frames stacked with rice bales and bundles of spear shafts. Two armored animals hauled a cart loaded with coils of rope and timber fittings, while farther back an enormous long-necked beast moved above the column with the patient sway of a walking building. A wooden platform had been strapped across its broad back beneath canvas covers, the load secured with enough rope to rig a small ship. 

Their tread literally shook the ground.

Shimon looked up at it.

[VISUAL CLASSIFICATION]

Shunosaurus variant [Sauropod-derived organism]Specific correspondence: Low confidence Load estimate: Excessive by known modern biomechanical models

“Of course it is a sauropod,” he muttered.

The scar-chinned warrior marching beside him glanced over. “What?”

“Nothing,” the young man replied.

Their first camp spread across harvested fields before sunset. Hundreds of cooking fires appeared as men boiled rice, repaired sandals, checked armor, sharpened weapons, gambled with coins, and complained about officers with the universal confidence of soldiers everywhere. The larger dinosaurs were watered away from the central camp, where handlers could prevent them from eating supplies, pack animals, or one another.

The army moved again at dawn and reached the river before midday. Shimon recognized the landscape before he understood why. The water divided around gravel bars and low islands, while both banks still showed the marks of recent fighting: broken stakes, abandoned earthworks, and broad patches of disturbed soil.

His chip helpfully opened a cached map.

[GEOGRAPHIC COMPARISON]

Current local designation: ArakawaPrior offline estimate: Edo River hydrological systemHistoric-map correlation: PoorObserved river course inconsistent with modern referenceAlternate hydrological development likely

Shimon studied the water. This was not precisely the ground where he had appeared in this world, but it was part of the same contested crossing. The battlefield through which he had stumbled on his first evening had been only one fragment of the larger struggle the Satomi were now continuing.

The realization was strange enough that he declined to examine it too closely.

Engineers had prepared the ford before the main army arrived. Heavy lines stretched between driven posts to give men something to hold against the current, while bundles of brush and gravel improved the worst sections. Mounted dinosaurs crossed separately under their handlers, using shallower approaches chosen for the animals rather than the men.

The great baggage beasts required another route entirely. One giant herbivore stopped halfway across and decided that something growing beneath the water deserved investigation, bringing the entire line behind it to a halt while its handler cursed it.

Kagawa guided Kurobane through without difficulty. When the black-feathered fukuiraptor reached the opposite bank, it shook water violently from its plumage and sprayed everyone within several paces.

Seki wiped droplets from his square face before attempting humor. “Kagawa-sama, your mount has attacked the formation.”

The deputy commander pointedly ignored him.

After the river, the army moved for another two days through country that became increasingly empty. Some villages had barred their doors, while others had been abandoned entirely before either army could arrive. Scouts traveled continuously ahead of the main column, and mounted messengers passed between formations with orders from officers Shimon rarely saw.

On the fourth afternoon, the Hōjō fort appeared above the trees. From the grumbling of the men he found its name: Kawamori-jō. But, this nameThe name meant nothing to Shimon.

His biochip agreed.

[HISTORICAL REFERENCE SEARCH]

Kawamori-jō: No reliable matchFortification at current coordinates: No corresponding recordStrategic divergence detected

The castle itself was not especially large. An earthen hill had been cut into terraces and wrapped with ditches, timber palisades, and plastered structures, while the central compound occupied the highest ground behind two outer enclosures. Hōjō banners moved over the battlements, their scaled triangular device becoming visible whenever the wind opened the cloth.

The location explained why the fortification existed in this world. Below the hill, the river widened into a broad, relatively shallow reach suitable for the largest animals. Steeper banks upstream and marshier ground downstream made this one of the better places for an army moving large dinosaurs with heavy baggage and large quantities of equipment to cross.

In Shimon's history, military geography had been shaped primarily by human legs, boats, and horses. Here, different feet created different strategic points.

The Hōjō had built Kawamori-jō to guard one of them, and the Satomi had arrived to remove it.

***

The siege began with considerably less drama than Shimon expected.

There was no immediate assault upon the walls and no mounted charge beneath banners. Instead, men dug, carried baskets of earth, assembled timber shields, cleared approaches, repaired paths, and moved arrows or water toward the forward positions. Archers on both sides exchanged shots whenever someone exposed himself long enough to make the attempt worthwhile.

The first man Shimon saw die at Kawamori-jō was a Hōjō archer who leaned too far over a palisade. Three Satomi arrows rose toward him. One struck his shoulder, another vanished somewhere behind the wall, and the third entered beneath his jaw. The defender folded backward out of sight, and no one nearby celebrated.

Several minutes later, a Satomi soldier carrying a bundle of stakes gave a startled grunt and sat down as though his legs had suddenly failed him. An arrow had entered through one side of his neck. His companions dragged him behind an earth bank, but he died while his hands remained wrapped around the stakes.

Shimon found the casualness worse than the yōma hunt. Against monsters, every moment had narrowed toward an obvious horror. Here men cooked, joked, repaired armor, and occasionally killed strangers several hundred paces away because those strangers wore another banner.

The yōma unit remained in reserve where Nagai had ordered them. For most of the first day, they occupied a position behind the main fighting while soldiers around them developed several names for the small group.

Nagai's hunters. The ghost men. The demon killers.

Shimon sat beneath a temporary awning with Tarō, Heita, the young Fujita, and the broad spearman while arrows occasionally passed high overhead with an insect-like hiss. Despite the circumstances, the gathering felt strangely companionable.

Fujita no longer looked as though every conversation with a senior warrior might result in punishment, and the younger castle retainer had begun answering Seki's insults with growing confidence. When the older spearman complained that the rice had not been cooked long enough, Fujita observed that men with fewer teeth required softer food.

Tarō laughed hard, and even the perpetually anxious Heita smiled. Something had changed between them during the hunt.

They had trained together before, but now they possessed shared memories no one else understood. They knew the exact grunt Seki made when a yōma nearly tore his spear from his hands, the inventive language Tarō used when frightened, and the peculiar transformation by which Matsunaga could vomit before combat and become alarmingly reliable once the fighting began.

They also knew Shimon occasionally spoke to things that were not visibly present, though he preferred that particular knowledge receive less discussion. Still, watching the others argue over the rice reminded him of Team Hachiman.

The thought arrived without warning.

Hana would have been analyzing the enemy strategy by now, Jun complaining about something that had gone wrong, and the rest of them preparing for another match. The quarter-final had taken place weeks ago in Shimon's reckoning.

Perhaps they had found a replacement and won. Perhaps they lost because their best player disappeared hours before the match. Perhaps everyone thought he was dead.

Shimon looked down at his hands. Calluses crossed his palms now, one shallow scar marked a knuckle, and another ran near his wrist where a yōma had found an opening in his armor. He still wanted to go home, and that had not changed.

The Entity claimed it could send him there.

He imagined his apartment, Mochi demanding food, the lights of convenience stores, crowded trains, his bed, his computer, and the wonderful triviality of having too many messages waiting for an answer.

Then he imagined standing in his kitchen after everything he had done here. What was someone supposed to do the morning after cutting off a man's head? Buy coffee, read messages, join practice? Could he sit in a gaming chair and kill digital people for money after learning precisely how killing a real person felt?

He hoped so, because the alternative frightened him in a quieter way. The possibility that killing people, as well as monsters, would become normal.

A shadow fell across the awning as Kagawa stood above them all.

The one-eyed deputy had left Kurobane nearby under a handler's supervision and carried himself with the particularly unpleasant confidence his temporary authority had encouraged.

“Fujita,” he started.

The younger warrior rose immediately.

“That spearhead is dirty.”

Fujita examined it. “It was cleaned this morning, Kagawa-sama.”

The scarred samurai took the yari, inspected the steel, and threw it onto the ground. “Clean it again.”

The younger man's jaw tightened, but he bowed. “Yes, Kagawa-sama.”

Kagawa looked across at the others. “Armor inspection before sunset. Any man whose equipment fails loses his next stipend.”

Seki glanced toward Tarō. The older Kume gave the smallest shake of his head.

Not now.

The mounted warrior moved away.

Fujita retrieved the yari and inspected the perfectly serviceable point again.

Seki rested his arms across his knees. “A title is like sake. Some men can drink deeply. Others become fools after the first cup,” he declared in a deep voice.

The pale Heita glanced anxiously after the deputy commander. “Perhaps do not say that loudly.”

Shimon could not help but feel a sliver of worry enter him.

***

The second morning brought the siege animals forward.

Calling them siege engines was perhaps generous, because most were combinations of timber, rope, woven screens, animal strength, and human optimism.

Large herbivores had been fitted with heavy padded harnesses and wooden protection over their heads and shoulders. Under the cover of archers and broad wicker mantlets, they dragged bundles of brush toward the outer ditch, where laborers cut the ropes and spilled the fascines into the depression before retreating under arrow fire.

Another team used two armored Ankylosauridae dinosaurs to pull ropes secured to sections of the palisade. The first attempt snapped the cable, while the second tore several posts sideways. The defenders answered with stones, arrows, and pots that burst into flame. One animal screamed when burning liquid struck the hide behind its shoulder, and its handler cut the harness before panic could drag half the work crew beneath its feet.

Shimon watched from the reserve line. “They are going to hate us after this.”

Tarō glanced over. “Who?”

“The Raijū,” he replied, his chip helping with the translation. The Thunderbeasts.

The rough warrior studied him for a moment, before shaking his head.

By midday, the outer defenses had been damaged badly enough for infantry to approach, although the main gate remained stubbornly intact.

That was when the triceratops appeared. Even among the army's dinosaurs, the ceratopsian drew attention. Its shoulders stood perhaps twice the size of a man, while layered hide, padded rope, and lacquered protection covered its neck and flanks without interfering with the horns. It was a living engine of war.

The gate had already endured axes, ropes, and repeated blows from a conventional ram. The triceratops was not being asked to perform a miracle against untouched fortifications; it was being brought forward to finish the work.

Handlers led it back along the prepared approach. The Hōjō archers understood what was happening and began firing. Broad wooden screens rose around the animal, while Satomi bowmen answered from their own protected positions.

Someone near Shimon whistled.

Kagawa smiled. “Now that is how a gate should be opened.”

“From very far away,” Heita murmured beside him.

The first charge struck hard enough that Shimon felt the impact through the earth. Timber cracked, dust burst from the frame, and the triceratops recoiled violently, shaking its head hard enough that one handler narrowly escaped being caught by a horn.

The gate, against all the odds, survived.

Men turned the animal and prepared another run. The second impact broke one of the damaged doors inward at its lower hinge. The frame twisted, and part of the barricade beyond collapsed beneath falling timber. A roar moved through the Satomi lines, not victory yet, but the unmistakable recognition of opportunity.

Men began assembling for the assault. But that was when the argument started.

A group of armored infantry passed the yōma hunters on their way toward the forward line. Their leader wore another Satomi retainer's device upon his sashimono and already carried dried blood across one sleeve.

His gaze passed over Kagawa before settling upon the hunters waiting behind the main force. “Nagai's freaks are still resting?”

The one-eyed deputy turned, a tick in his face. Tarō closed his eyes briefly, muttering something.

The other samurai grinned. “Must be difficult work, watching men fight.”

“We have orders,” Kagawa returned stiffly.

“Of course. Demons,” the other leader jibed.

Several soldiers laughed at this.

Their leader looked toward the enormous sword carried by Shimon. “Does the tall one actually use that, or is it there so the yōma know which man to eat first?”

Shimon decided silence was the most useful contribution available.

The boisterous Seki, however, did not. “He uses it well enough that you should keep walking unless you wish to test the matter,” the broad warrior replied with deliberate calm.

The soldier's smile disappeared, but Kagawa, their deputy leader, stepped forward before the exchange could develop further.

The other samurai looked back toward him. “We will be through that gate while Nagai's pets are still polishing their charms.”

His men laughed.

The remaining eye in Kagawa's face narrowed dangerously. “You think us afraid to fight men?”

“I think Nagai-sama keeps you behind the line.”

“We will enter with the assault,” the mounted warrior declared, nostrils flaring.

Tarō stared at him. “Our orders are to remain in reserve.”

“I command this unit in Nagai-sama's absence,” the one-eyed man growled.

“You command it to hunt yōma,” the older spearman reminded him.

Kagawa moved close enough that the challenge became personal. “Are you frightened, Kume?”

Tarō's expression hardened, and Ayanokouji knew exactly how badly this was going.

Seki spoke from behind them with surprising, uncharacteristic restraint. “Let them boast. It matters not..”

The one-eyed deputy ignored him. “We enter with the second wave.”

Heita went noticeably pale. Fujita looked toward the distant command banners, where Nagai was somewhere among hundreds of officers, messengers, guards, and mounted retainers preparing an assault upon a fortified position. Shimon would have much preferred not being part of the unit that would charge into the breach.

“Nagai-sama will stop us,” the young Fujita managed.

Kagawa laughed dismissively. “Nagai-sama is commanding an army. He does not have time to hold the hands of ten men.”

Unfortunately, that was probably true. Heita walked several paces away, bent beside an earth bank, and vomited. The soldiers who had mocked them laughed again.

The scar-chinned warrior wiped his mouth with one sleeve, returned to the others, and carefully inspected the edge of his naginata, stopping much of the laughter.

Shimon looked toward Tarō. “This is stupid.”

“Yes, it is,” the surviving Kume replied simply, with the air of someone who has been much aggrieved by something.

“We are still doing it?” Shimon asked, nervousness edging his voice.

The rough-spoken spearman lowered his yari and gave him a resigned look. “We are samurai. It is our duty to do and die.”

“That is not an answer.”

He shrugged. “In this case, it is.”

A horn sounded from the forward line, and the assault began.

***

The triceratops broke the gate completely on its third charge. One of the doors tore loose from its upper mounting and fell inward beneath the horns, while the great animal followed farther than its handlers intended and crashed into the damaged barricade beyond. Men scattered, ropes tightened, and the beast was finally hauled around amid a confusion of splintered timber and shouting.

The Satomi infantry surged forward before the defenders could rebuild the opening even as the Hōjō archers began firing up above.

Shimon had played matches in which hundreds of movements demanded attention at once, yet nothing had prepared him for the disorder of men willingly entering a place designed to kill them. The first wave reached the gate and disappeared into the fighting beyond it.

Kagawa waited only long enough for the breach to become unmistakable before lifting his tachi from Kurobane's saddle.

“Forward!” the one-eyed deputy roared, all earlier instructions concerning reserve duty apparently forgotten now that glory lay within reach.

Tarō swore and lowered his yari, but followed. Seki and Fujita moved with him, while Shimon found himself running because refusing the order beneath a rain of arrows seemed even more dangerous than obeying it. Shimon carried the ōdachi low, the long scabbard knocking against his armor as Heita kept behind him with the naginata drawn close enough not to catch the soldiers around them.

Their first dead man lay fifty paces from the wall, a Satomi soldier face-down with an arrow through the back of his neck. Another stumbled away from the gate with both hands pressed against his stomach, and the advancing men simply divided around him.

There was no room for sympathy in the movement of an assault. Stopping obstructed the men behind, and obstructing hundreds of armed soldiers beneath enemy archers merely created more corpses.

A warning appeared across Shimon's vision.

[HOSTILE TRAJECTORY ANALYSIS ACTIVE]

Multiple projectile sources detectedThreat density: HIGHRecommended action: Seek cover

“No kidding,” he muttered. “Thanks for the obvious.”

A soldier beside him glanced over. “What?”

The man's expression changed before an answer became possible. An arrow entered through the upper cheek and emerged behind his ear, dropping him so abruptly that Shimon nearly caught his sandal on the body.

Another shaft descended. The chip marked its arc and estimated position of origin. Shimon shifted, letting his reflexes take over, and the arrow passed close enough that he heard it rush past him before it struck someone behind him.

Then the gate swallowed them. The entrance opened into a cramped defensive court similar to the killing pockets Shimon had studied at Satomi's own castle. He had admired their design from the protected side; experiencing one from the other direction cured much of that appreciation.

Hōjō spearmen waited behind overturned carts and a half-broken timber barricade, their yari extending through gaps as the first Satomi soldiers crashed against them. The men behind continued pressing forward, compressing the assault into a mass of armor, spear shafts, shouting, and bodies with nowhere to go.

Shimon immediately understood that the ōdachi was useless in such confines. There was barely enough room to turn his shoulders, much less swing a blade longer than some of the men around him. He shouldered the big weapon and drew his katana instead.

Tarō was already fighting a Hōjō spearman. The enemy combatant thrust across the barricade, and the experienced Kume knocked the point wide with his yari before driving his own weapon beneath the man's ribs. He twisted, pulled, and kicked the dying defender away from the shaft with none of the clean elegance sensei Matsuda tried to beat into them. 

To Shimon's left, Seki struck another defender across the face with the butt of his spear, reversed the weapon, and pushed the point into the opening beneath the man's arm. His square face showed neither anger nor pleasure. The terse warrior killed with the same economical concentration he had shown when finishing the condemned prisoner in the forest.

Fujita's first thrust missed. The younger castle retainer possessed better spear technique than confidence, and for one dangerous instant an old hesitation returned as the Hōjō soldier answered with a sword.

“Down!” Shimon shouted.

Thankfully, Fujita obeyed before thought could interfere and the blade passed over his helmet. Shimon cut across the attacker's wrist, between the lacquered plates. Steel opened flesh and tendons, the sword fell from useless fingers, and the young spearman surged upward to bury the yari in the man's chest.

You have defeated a Hōjō soldier. 

6 experience gained.

Bitterly, Shimon realized that there was an experience penalty for group kills.

Fujita stared for half a heartbeat.

“Keep moving!” Tarō barked while wrenching his own weapon free.

That broke the hesitation and together they moved. Training had done something to the five of them that Shimon had not entirely appreciated in the yard. They no longer fought as separate men occupying the same patch of ground. Tarō and Seki instinctively guarded the longer approaches, while Fujita reinforced whichever gap weakened. Heita's naginata worked behind and around the yari, and Shimon filled whatever space the polearms could not control.

At first, they fought much as they had trained against straw yōma. Then Shimon discovered that men were easier. Much, much easier.

He had to stop himself from thinking of them as walking bags of experience points.

A Hōjō ashigaru forced his way through the spear line with a shortened yari, perhaps expecting the swordsman behind it to be the weak point. Shimon saw the rear hand tighten, the shoulder turn, and the man's weight commit before the thrust properly began. His enhanced reflexes provided the time, while Matsuda's training supplied the answer.

Shimon knocked the point aside, entered before the spearman could recover, and drove the katana through his unprotected throat. Resistance traveled through the hilt, followed by the awful yielding sensation of steel entering the body beneath.

The soldier's breath struck Shimon's cheek. The young man casually pulled the blade free, and flicked the blood off the blade.

You have defeated a Hōjō Asigaru. 

13 experience gained.

He had to stop himself before thinking “better”.

Another defender reached him before he could process the notification. This one was older and better armored, his first cut forcing Shimon backward while the second struck hard enough against his guard to almost jar both. But Ayanokouji, although weakened by his new “gift”, was still much stronger than he had been.

The man's hips began to turn.

[COMBAT ANALYSIS ACTIVE]

Committed attack probability: 82%

Shimon stopped watching the sword and watched the body. When the cut came, he moved outside its line and answered across the thigh. The first stroke failed to pass completely through the armor but broke the man's balance, allowing Shimon to follow with a thrust into his neck through the gap in his armor that his chip painted for him.

Blood struck his helmet.

You have defeated a Hōjō Retainer. 

19 experience gained.

A spear point passed through the space where the notification had been. Even with his attention mostly focused elsewhere, his near magical reflexes allowed him to avoid it with almost contemptuous ease. A quick glance around him showed something was happening. Beyond the barricade, Satomi soldiers hauled part of the timber aside, widening the opening enough for the mass behind them to spill into the outer enclosure.

That was when Kagawa arrived.

Kurobane forced his own route through the assault. Men scattered rather than argue with several hundred kilograms of angry, predatory dinosaur and its claws and teeth. 

Still, there were those who had found bravery in battle. Or, perhaps, they had remembered honor.

The fukuiraptor struck a Hōjō spearman with chest and jaws almost together, lifting the man from his feet, while the scarred rider cut downward from the saddle at another defender.

Kagawa was smiling.

Shimon had seen that expression at the execution stakes, and finding it again amid the battle made something in him tighten.

“Left!” Tarō called, the warning pulling him back toward the cell.

Three Hōjō soldiers were moving around the broken barricade to strike their flank. Seki met the first with his yari, driving the point beneath the man's armor. Fujita caught the second through the shoulder, but the third forced himself between their shafts and reached the rear line.

Heita stepped forward. The scar beneath the naginata fighter's chin stood pale against his face, yet his hands had stopped trembling. His eyes looked from his open helm without hesitation. Without regret. That was becoming the pattern with Matsunaga: fear owned him before the fighting, but once steel began moving, another harder part of him took control.

His naginata cut behind the Hōjō soldier's knee. As the man collapsed, the pale warrior reversed the weapon and drove the blade through the side of the neck with an efficiency that would have satisfied even the grizzled spear instructor Ishikawa.

Another defender rushed him almost immediately. Heita shifted aside and cut across the abdomen before the attack could properly develop, the strike not penetrating armor but stopping his opponent. A stab through his open faced helm, however, finished him easily.

Shimon stared for the smallest fraction of a second. “Remind me not to frighten him.”

“You frighten him constantly,” Tarō grunted as he thrust past Shimon's shoulder.

Fair.

The battle spread through the outer enclosure. Hōjō archers continued firing from raised platforms until Satomi soldiers forced their way up the stairs, while smaller fights developed around storehouses, gates, and passages between the earthworks.

The hunters should never have been part of the assault. They were also, Shimon realized with growing unease, remarkably good at it. But their lives should never have been risked here… in this mundane battle.

Weeks of training against things stronger, faster, and considerably less concerned about injury than human beings had altered their expectations. A man recoiled when a spear entered him. A man slowed after losing blood. A man did not generally seize the blade that had cut through his fingers and keep attacking.

Yōma had taught them to expect worse.

Tarō killed another defender with an ugly thrust beneath the ribs. Seki lost his yari when a falling man trapped the shaft beneath his body, drew his katana without complaint, and continued fighting. Fujita took a shallow cut across one cheek and appeared more offended than frightened by it. Behind them, the scar-chinned warrior remained pale and efficient, the curved blade of his naginata appearing wherever the spear line opened.

Shimon stopped noticing individual notifications of the death he brought.

They followed the Satomi advance toward the next enclosure until shouting erupted from their right. A side gate had opened beneath the central earthwork, and several dozen Hōjō warriors came down the slope beneath their banners, attempting to cut through the men who had entered the castle and isolate them from the breach.

The organized advance dissolved.

Men collided from several directions. Shimon lost sight of Tarō and nearly lost Fujita as well. Someone struck him across the back hard enough to drive him forward, although the armor absorbed most of the blow.

Health: 22/24

The young man turned and cut at the attacker, forcing him away, only for another defender to enter from the right. Shimon caught one stroke and deflected another before a body collided with his back.

He began to turn.

“Watch your front!” a familiar voice commanded over the fighting.

It was Nagai’s and Shimon obeyed. 

The Hōjō warrior ahead thrust, and Shimon stepped outside the line before cutting through the forearm. Behind him, steel struck steel with a hard metallic crack.

Then the senior retainer laughed. It was not Kagawa's laughter, and the difference mattered. There was no cruelty in it and no pleasure in another man's fear. The powerful warrior sounded exhilarated, alive to a kind of work he understood completely. Beneath the discipline of council chambers and measured commands remained a battle-hardened retainer who had spent much of his life preparing for the confusion of battle.

“Left!” Nagai called out.

Shimon turned in time to catch a spear shaft against his katana. The veteran warrior's sword passed beside his shoulder and struck the spearman across the face. The young man was quickly realizing that no matter how fast his reflexes were, he could not react to something he could not see.

“Behind you!” Shimon warned in turn.

The older samurai ducked without looking, trusting the warning immediately. Shimon cut over him and opened the attacking man's side beneath the raised arm.

Nagai came upright, and for several exchanges the two of them fought back-to-back. The familiarity of it struck Shimon almost as hard as the violence.

It was not the swords or armor. It was the communication: movement caught at the edge of vision, short warnings, and the assumption that another person would cover the space you could not see while you dealt with what stood ahead.

Team play. But, in the here and now, with much more permanent and deadly results.

“Two o’clock!” Shimon shouted reflexively.

Suddenly, a Hōjō soldier rushed Nagai from the right.

The senior retainer moved at once, turning the incoming blade aside. Then, Nagai drove his point into the attacker's throat. Another defender came at Shimon, and while the young samurai slipped the first cut and blocked the second, the third never arrived because the older warrior struck the man's leg from behind. Shimon finished him.

“You are useful, Ayanokouji!” the veteran retainer laughed as he recovered his guard.

The Satomi line began to reform around them, and Tarō reappeared through the dust with blood streaked along one side of his helmet.

“You disappeared!” the older Kume shouted angrily.

A Hōjō soldier charged before Tarō could continue with his complaint. The experienced spearman killed him with a thrust high into the chest, the tip slipping in between the lacquered plates, pulled the yari free, and then pointed the bloody weapon toward Shimon.

The Hōjō counterattack did not collapse all at once, but once failure began, it spread quickly. One group yielded ground, nearby soldiers saw the retreat, and soon the defenders were moving backward faster than their officers could force them forward.

The central enclosure gates began closing too late, and Satomi troops reached them before the heavy bar settled into position. Men hacked at timber, spears thrust through the narrowing opening, and screams sounded from the other side as defenders struggled to force the doors shut.

Then Kurobane pushed through the crowd. Blood darkened the feathers around the fukuiraptor's jaws, and an arrow protruded shallowly from the leather protection over one shoulder. Kagawa leaned forward in the saddle, his remaining eye bright with the same ugly excitement Shimon had noticed earlier.

“Clear the way!” the mounted warrior bellowed.

Men obeyed as Kurobane struck the half-closed gate with shoulder and chest, widening the gap enough for the surrounding Satomi soldiers to force themselves through.

The one-eyed rider entered first.

Tarō watched him disappear and drew a breath through his teeth. “He is going to tell that story until he dies.”

The broad-shouldered Seki wiped his katana against a dead man's sleeve. “Then we should pray for a short story.”

Even Heita managed a strained laugh. They followed.

***

The fighting ended near sunset, although Shimon never noticed the precise moment when battle became victory. The noise simply diminished until the clash of weapons behind one building ceased, the shouting faded, and finally the Hōjō banners disappeared from the highest earthwork. Satomi soldiers climbed in their place and raised the futatsu-hikiryō above the captured castle.

Some defenders surrendered once the inner enclosure fell. Others escaped through rear paths before they could be surrounded, while a few continued fighting until enough Satomi men gathered around them that courage and suicide became difficult to distinguish.

Shimon remained standing in the courtyard for several moments before realizing that no one nearby was trying to kill him. And, no one was trying to kill each other. His arms had begun to tremble from exhaustion, and the inside of his armor seemed to contain every bruise he had ignored during the assault. Dust drifted across the enclosure while smoke climbed from a damaged storehouse, and soldiers moved among the dead gathering weapons, carrying wounded companions, searching for officers, and finishing enemies whose injuries made movement impossible.

Outside the shattered main gate, the triceratops—the Raijū as this world liked to call dinosaurs—stood with its head lowered while several handlers examined one horn and fussed over it.

Kurobane drank noisily from a trough under the supervision of an anxious groom, and Kagawa had already begun explaining the assault upon the inner gate to anyone unable to escape him.

Tarō sat upon an overturned bucket with his yari across his knees. The rough-spoken spearman was filthy, blood-spattered, and visibly exhausted, but something of his usual humor had begun returning as he watched Seki approach carrying a replacement spear acquired from an uncertain source.

The young Fujita touched the cut across his cheek every few moments, apparently surprised to discover that he still possessed both sides of his face.

The pale Heita had gone behind a wall to vomit, as was his habit.

Shimon finally sheathed his katana and looked at his hands. They were dark with drying blood, some of it his and most belonging to men whose names he would never know.

The System, or whatever it was, chose that quieter moment to reclaim his attention. Somewhere in all of the chaos and blood, and most likely because of it, he had advanced in power.

Congratulations, you have advanced to the next level.

You have been assigned advancement points: 3 Attribute Points and 1 Skill Point.

Apparently, fewer than twenty minutes had passed since the notification first appeared, although fighting through the castle had seemed long enough to occupy most of the day.

He put all three Attribute points into Body. After the loss imposed by the Closed Gate, the choice required little consideration; strength, Health, endurance, and survival remained more immediately useful than almost anything else. The Skill point went into Swords, because he felt that would help the most with his current predicament. 

He had also gained a single point of Mind for reasons completely unknown to him in the battle. 

Perhaps the mind and body were linked and all of that stuff, he thought grimly.

The changes settled through him with the familiar internal pressure. Some of the weakness left his limbs, and several sharper pains beneath the armor softened into tolerable aches.

Nagai approached through the settling dust soon afterward. Fresh cuts marked the senior retainer's armor, one sleeve had darkened with blood, and he carried his helmet beneath one arm with approximately the same composure he brought into a council chamber.

“You disobeyed orders,” the commanding man observed.

Shimon glanced toward Kagawa. “He ordered us.”

“I know,” the older man said flatly.

The calm answer carried considerably more menace than shouting would have managed.

Both men looked toward the one-eyed deputy, who was demonstrating his charge through the inner gate with broad sweeps of his tachi while three unfortunate listeners endured the account.

“He will receive my congratulations,” Nagai remarked evenly.

Shimon had learned enough about his patron's temperament to suspect that congratulations could take several forms.

The veteran retainer turned back toward him. “You fought well.”

Shimon bowed. “Thank you, Nagai-sama.”

“You kept your head,” he stated gruffly.

“Mostly,” the young man replied sardonically.

A faint movement touched the older warrior's mouth. “You also shout strange things.”

Shimon remembered two o'clock. “I was confused.”

“You were useful while confused,” Nagai returned dryly. His eyes moved over Shimon with the same measuring attention he had shown when they first met. “For a man who knew almost nothing of real war when we found him, you learn quickly.”

Shimon looked across the captured courtyard. A dead Hōjō soldier lay beside the well with one hand still wrapped around a broken spear shaft. Another corpse had been covered with a cloak, while two Satomi men carried a wounded companion toward the gate upon a door torn from its hinges.

“I am not sure that is a good thing,” Shimon confessed, more to himself than to anyone else.

The powerful senior retainer considered him before answering. “Good has little to do with whether a man learns.”

With that, the battle-hardened commander moved away to the more difficult task of turning a captured fortification into something Lord Satomi could hold. Shimon remained behind and watched the two-line banner move above Kawamori-jō. A fortress that should never have existed in the first place, in a world and land that was, to him at least, an illusion.

He had spent years winning battles before coming here. Simulated cities, ruined factories, forests assembled from polygons, orbital stations created by designers who knew exactly where violence ought to become interesting; Shimon understood kill counts, damage numbers, rankings, round times, and the clean satisfaction of victory screens.

This possessed none of their cleanliness.

A man had died beside him before reaching the gate. Shimon had killed men whose names he would never learn, while Tarō, Seki, Fujita, and Heita had done the same around him. Nagai had laughed while fighting at his back, and for several minutes Shimon had understood the exhilaration behind that laughter more clearly than he wanted to admit.

He had survived a genuine battle between armies beneath real banners, fought for a river crossing and a castle that had never existed in his history because this world possessed different roads, different animals, and almost different everything. The realization should have made the victory feel more significant. Instead, Shimon mostly felt tired.

Behind him came the sound of retching, followed eventually by approaching footsteps. Heita emerged from behind the wall wiping his mouth with one sleeve, his scarred chin and already pale face looking worse than usual.

Then the spiritually sensitive warrior stopped. Whatever exhaustion had occupied his expression disappeared beneath naked unease.

Shimon recognized the look immediately. “What is it?”

Matsunaga did not answer at once. His eyes moved past Shimon, beyond the captured banners and the soldiers beginning to celebrate, and settled instead upon the bodies scattered throughout the enclosure. The chip stirred almost simultaneously.

[UNKNOWN CARRIER SIGNAL DETECTED]

Signal Strength: LowPattern: IncreasingMultiple interference points suspected

Ayanokouji followed the scar-chinned warrior's gaze across the captured castle and felt the satisfaction of survival begin to curdle in his stomach.

Around them, Satomi soldiers celebrated the taking of Kawamori-jō, drinking, shouting, and calling to companions who had survived the assault. Among the dead, beyond the sight of nearly everyone present, other things had begun to gather.