Chapter 13 - Knives in the Dark

“The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”

- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Shimon had expected triumph to possess a particular character, perhaps the smoke and banners of historical dramas, the relieved laughter of soldiers, or at least enough sake to convince everyone that what had happened counted as glorious. Instead, Kawamori-jō smelled principally of the spoilings of war.

The council gathered the morning after the fall of the castle in what had formerly been the Hōjō commander's principal chamber. The blood had been scrubbed from the boards, although one dark stain remained near a pillar where someone important had apparently died with considerable enthusiasm. Maps now covered the low tables, weighted at the corners with stones.

Now, Shimon knelt several places behind Nagai Morichika and tried to understand why he had been invited.

Most of the men around him held ranks, households, important fathers, recognizable banners, or enough gray hair to suggest they had survived several decades of the warrior life. Shimon possessed an oversized sword, a dubious surname, and the unsettling ability to accumulate power and experience points through homicide.

The powerful senior retainer had simply appeared outside the hunters' quarters and informed him that he was coming.

Kagawa had attempted to follow. That conversation between them, however, had been most brief.

“You were ordered to remain in reserve,” Nagai had reminded the one-eyed warrior with unnerving calm.

Kagawa looked like he had swallowed a bee. “The gate opened, Nagai-sama.”

The senior retainer’s expression remained flat. “I was present.”

“The enemy was breaking,” Kagawa had declared, his jaw tightening. “Our entry contributed to the victory.”

Nagai had regarded him for several breaths before answering. “You disobeyed a direct order during the hunt and endangered the formation. You disobeyed another direct order because, according to my sources, another man laughed at you.”

The scarred warrior's remaining eye had narrowed.

“I will not have you destroy my project because your pride requires witnesses,” the powerful man continued. “You will remain with the hunters. You will not enter the council chamber. You will not issue punishment to the young Fujita for the condition of his spear, or anything else which suddenly offends you. Have I spoken clearly enough?”

Kagawa had bowed so stiffly that the movement seemed physically painful.

Shimon had wisely looked at the floor, or the corners of the room, throughout the exchange.

Now he sat behind Nagai and discovered that the council's most visually impressive participant was not human.

The animal lay beside Lord Imagawa's raised position with its forelimbs stretched before it and its feathered tail curled around one side. It was only about the size of a large dog, which Shimon's experiences had taught him was a dangerously reassuring measurement when applied to carnivorous dinosaurs. Dark brown feathers covered most of its body, broken by irregular cream bands along the neck and tail. Beneath them was the narrow, toothed muzzle and sickle-clawed feet of something distantly related to the velociraptor variants guarding Satomi's own gates.

A leather collar encircled its neck, fitted with small bronze plates bearing the Imagawa crest. Prompted, the chip offered its opinion.

[VISUAL CLASSIFICATION]

Dromaeosaurid-derived organismClosest correspondence: Velociraptor variantEstimated mass: 28.4 kgBehavior: Relaxed / socially bondedThreat assessment: Moderate

Shimon had learned to interpret moderate as capable of opening a man's throat.

The little predator raised its head and looked directly at him, and Shimon found himself looking elsewhere.

The Lord Imagawa, currently allied to the Satomi, was somewhere past fifty, compact and thick through the shoulders, with iron-gray hair and an old cut passing diagonally through one eyebrow. Unlike Nagai, whose discipline seemed built into his bones, Imagawa possessed a redolent stillness of a powerful beast just past its prime. Currently allied was the operative phrase in the age of the warring states, for betrayal almost always came at the drop of a hat.

The lord noticed Shimon’s gaze. “This is Banken,” he explained.

Shimon bowed slowly. “An excellent beast, my lord,” the young man replied evenly

The dinosaur blinked, and a small smile danced across the lord’s face. “Do not flatter him. It makes him unbearable.”

Several of the officers smiled.

Banken opened his mouth in a long yawn, displaying a collection of narrow teeth. Shimon decided not to ask whether the name literally meant watchdog. The joke appeared sufficiently obvious.

Lord Imagawa leaned over the maps. “The crossing is ours,” he began. “That matters more than the fort.”

One thick finger settled upon the river. “Kawamori guarded the best ford for the larger Raijū. Before yesterday, every column we sent north or west from Satomi lands had to choose from a handful of practical crossings. The Hōjō knew those routes. They could watch them, fortify them, and move men against us before we had properly formed on the far bank.”

Next, his finger crossed the river. “Now we are here.”

Several black counters had been placed around Kawamori-jō. Beyond them, red pieces marked Hōjō holdings, roads, fortified villages, supply depots, and several places whose names meant nothing to Shimon.

Imagawa moved one black marker north, another west. “They must now defend against every road we can reach from this side. If they mass against one approach, we move along another. If they abandon the smaller forts, we take them. If they divide their strength, we defeat the pieces.”

Shimon understood immediately.

The lord tapped Kawamori again. “Which also means we do not become drunk on yesterday's success and run halfway across Hōjō lands.”

An older officer bowed, interrupting them. “The gate will require rebuilding.”

Lord Imagawa looked toward the open doors. Somewhere outside, the triceratops responsible for much of that damage gave a distant bellow.

“Preferably before someone decides to demonstrate how it was broken,” the lord answered sardonically.

The chamber produced a small measure of restrained amusement.

Imagawa's expression hardened as he moved another marker deeper into the map. “Our destination, eventually, is the Hōjō heart.”

No one laughed now.

“We break their principal seat, bring their house to heel, and put an end to whatever filth they have used against our people. If there are sorcerers among them calling yōma into Satomi lands, they die. If there are priests assisting them, they die. If some Hōjō lord has convinced himself that demons are another weapon to be pointed at his neighbors, he will learn to rue that decision.”

A murmur of approval moved around the chamber.

Shimon noticed that Nagai did not join it. The veteran retainer studied the map instead.

Lord Imagawa continued. “But that is not tomorrow. It may not be this season. A campaign is not a tale told over sake, where one glorious charge carries a man from the border to his enemy's hall before the cup is empty. We take this ground. We repair it. We bring supplies across the river. We secure the roads and discover which villages still have men willing to speak to us.”

He sat back. “Then we advance.”

Banken rested its narrow head across its forelimbs again, apparently satisfied that no one required killing during the strategic discussion.

The council continued for another hour. Scouts reported Hōjō movements. Quartermasters complained about rice. Engineers wanted laborers. An officer responsible for the larger dinosaurs explained that they needed more fodder. Shimon mostly listened.

Once, Nagai asked him to describe the approach by which their hunters had entered the inner enclosure during the assault. Shimon answered as precisely as he could, mentally overlaying his statements with the biochip's recorded information

Lord Imagawa listened without interruption. “You remember well,” the gray-haired lord observed.

Shimon looked down. “I have a good memory, my lord.”

“Keep using it.”

“Yes, my lord.”

When the meeting finally ended, Lord Imagawa remained in the former commander's chambers with clerks, messengers, guards, and Banken. More guards waited in the passage outside, with another pair at the stairs below.

Shimon counted twelve before he and Nagai had passed beyond the inner court.

“That is considerable protection,” the young man remarked.

“Imagawa has enemies,” the experienced warrior replied.

Shimon looked confused. “He is surrounded by an army.”

“Armies do not prevent knives,” Nagai replied, nodding to his own sage wisdom.

The displaced man looked back toward the building, and felt that the last statement seemed unnecessarily ominous.

They crossed the captured enclosure together. Repair work had already begun around them. Men carried fresh timber toward the broken gates, while others stripped damaged Hōjō defenses for anything worth reusing. A line of wounded soldiers waited outside a storehouse turned into an infirmary. Farther down the slope, laborers loaded bodies onto carts for removal before heat, and scavengers made the work worse. And above them all, the Satomi double-line banners moved lazily in the morning wind.

Shimon walked several steps before asking the question that had begun forming during the council. “Nagai-sama.”

The senior retainer glanced toward him.

“How long have the yōma attacks been happening?”

The older warrior did not answer immediately. “Two years.”

Shimon looked over. “That long?”

“That we can identify now. At the time, we did not know what we were looking at.”

Nagai kept walking. “The first deaths were in remote places. Charcoal burners. Woodcutters. A family living beyond a mountain village. Bodies were damaged badly enough that men blamed bears, bandits, or wild thunderbeasts. Sometimes nothing remained but blood and pieces, and there is little wisdom to be drawn from pieces.”

They passed two soldiers carrying a damaged palisade post between them.

“Then the incidents became harder to dismiss,” the veteran continued. “Graves opened from beneath. Men disappearing from locked houses. Travelers found in trees. Things seen on roads after dark. Villagers began refusing to enter certain forests.”

The young man’s brow furrowed. “The Za handled it?”

“At first.”

Something in Nagai's tone suggested dissatisfaction. “Such work was considered beneath proper warriors. Hunting creatures through graveyards, caves, abandoned villages. Following peasant rumors. Cutting apart bodies to learn whether the same thing had killed them. Dirty work. Uncertain work.”

“Ronin work,” Shimon supplied.

“Exactly,” came Nagai's terse response as his mouth tightened slightly. “The Adventurer's Za already dealt with bandits, missing travelers, dangerous animals, escorts, and commissions respectable houses preferred to pay coin for rather than notice. So the yōma were given to them as another unpleasant trade.”

Shimon remembered the market and the cheerful official on the barrel calling for men with sharp swords and empty purses. “And that went badly?”

The other man’s eyes grew flinty. “Some commissions succeeded.”

“But Sakurai…” came the younger man’s protest.

“Sakurai was the final insult, not the first concern.”

The powerful retainer stopped beside the inner wall. From there, they could see the ford below, the river reflecting sunlight between long lines of men and animals moving supplies into the captured fort.

“Reports disappeared,” Nagai explained. “Witnesses changed their accounts. Za officials accepted commissions from men whose identities became difficult to confirm afterward. Hunters vanished. Some returned with trophies which priests declared false. Others returned with no memory of days spent away.”

Shimon's skin tightened. “So you brought it inside the clan.”

“We began to,” the older man replied, folding his arms. “There was resistance. Men who considered monster hunting dishonorable suddenly found many reasons why other men should continue doing it.”

A rare edge of humor touched his voice. “Then I asked several of them whether courage became dishonorable merely because the enemy lacked a lustrous family name.”

Shimon smiled. “That ended the argument?”

“No. I threatened their stipends afterward. That ended it.”

The younger warrior laughed before he could stop himself.

Nagai looked mildly pleased. “The more we learned, the clearer it became that this was not work for desperate men taking contracts from a marketplace. The creatures require discipline. Men willing to return from a hunt and admit what they did wrong, before pride and false honor can turn them astray.”

“Kagawa may have difficulty with that last part.”

Nagai turned his head, and Shimon instantly regretted possessing a mouth.

Then the older man's expression shifted by perhaps half a degree. “Yes.”

For a few moments, the two stood overlooking the river. Something about it felt unexpectedly comfortable. Shimon had respected Nagai almost from the beginning, although respect had initially possessed a strong admixture of terror. The senior retainer controlled rooms without raising his voice, asking questions whose wrong answers might alter lives.

But Shimon had fought beside him now. He had heard Nagai laugh in battle. He had felt the older warrior duck beneath his sword because Shimon called a warning, trusting him without hesitation. There were some distances that ceremony preserved and violence erased.

The age between them made the feeling stranger, Nagai was old enough to be his father. The thought came and intruded without permission.

Shimon looked away toward the river. His own father would have complained about his posture by now. His mother would have tried to feed him despite the impossible distance lay between this world and his own.

He had not visited them in a long time. There had always been reasons. Trivial reasons now that he thought about it: training, matches, and sponsor obligations. The biggest of all, he guiltily admitted, was the trouble.

His parents lived far enough away that visiting required planning, which made not visiting very easy. There had been the weekly family call instead, seven sons appearing when schedules allowed. Shimon had missed the last one.

Not through emergency or tragedy, he had simply been busy. A practice session had run late. Someone had suggested food afterward. His phone had vibrated several times while he was eating, and he had silenced it.

I'll call next week.

There was always next week. That was the trick. You ignored people because you believed you still possessed the option of seeing them later. Shimon swallowed and kept his eyes upon the river.

Kuroha's voice returned unbidden from memory. 

Your mother cries because she does not know where her seventh son has gone.

“You are quiet,” Nagai observed.

“Thinking.”

The commanding man's face remained set in stone. “You spend too much time around Seki.”

He nodded. “Perhaps.”

Nagai began walking again.

Shimon followed, and he did not mention his loneliness.

***

By nightfall, Shimon had discovered that winning a siege did not earn a man a comfortable bed. The hunters had been assigned rooms within the inner enclosure because their unit might be needed quickly if yōma appeared among the dead surrounding the castle. Bedding covered most of the floor. Weapons rested within arm's reach. Armor stood on racks or lay in untidy heaps.

Tarō fell asleep almost immediately. Seki complained that Fujita breathed too loudly, and the young Fujita informed him that this difficulty could be solved permanently if Seki stopped breathing first. Heita lay beside the wall, his naginata within reach, staring upward with an expression suggesting sleep had personally offended him. Kagawa had been given another chamber after declaring that a deputy commander should not be forced to endure Seki's snoring.

No one had objected to this.

Shimon closed his eyes. For once, exhaustion arrived before fear, and finally he slept.

Then something sat upon his chest, and his eyes opened to a dark room. The poor man could not move. The pressure was enormous without possessing true weight. His heart slammed against his ribs, even as the biochip woke with him.

Against its repeated recommendations, Shimon had changed one classification after the shrine. The Entity had promised to send him home. Calling it hostile every time it appeared had begun to seem unproductive if they were going to have a working relationship.

Now the consequence of that decision appeared across his vision.

[FRIENDLY PRESENCE DETECTED]

Recognized signature: ENTITYProximity: Indeterminate

[AUTONOMIC WARNING]

Heart rate: 174 bpmRespiration restrictedStress response: DANGEROUSLY HIGH

Friendly, Shimon thought furiously. Wonderful.

Somehow, the darkness above him deepened and something leaned close. He could not see the eye, but he knew it was there.

Now is your chance for glory.

The meaning entered his skull with obscene intimacy.

Shimon tried to move his lips, but Nothing happened.

The castle is under attack.

His blood became cold.

Go and rescue your lord.

Orange light opened across the darkness.

[QUEST OFFERED]

Knives in the Dark

Enemy forces have infiltrated Kawamori-jō.

Primary Objective:Save Lord Imagawa before the time limit expires.

Time Remaining: 00:15:00

Optional Objective:Save Nagai Morichika.

Bonus Objective:Slay 10 attackers.

Reward: Experience points and attribute points depending on results.

Failure: Lord Imagawa dies.

Accept?

Shimon mentally struck the acceptance with enough force that the answer might have counted as violence. Yet, a part of him noted that the quest message interface or whatever it was, looked subtly different. Or, was worded differently at least.

[QUEST ACCEPTED]

Suddenly, the pressure vanished and he sucked in air and rolled sideways, nearly colliding with Heita. The scar-chinned warrior was already sitting upright. His face was white in the darkness.

Shimon's chip silently sounded another warning as it drank from his senses.

[HOSTILE PRESENCES DETECTED]

Estimated count above current position: 19–23Movement pattern: Human

Shimon stared at the ceiling. A faint scrape moved across the tiles.

“Above us!” he shouted.

Half the room woke instantly. The other half woke when Shimon kicked Tarō.

“We're under attack! To Lord Imagawa!”

There might be questions later, as to how he knew. But in the heat of battle, no one would ask.

Something struck the roof and a tile broke. Then the ceiling opened, and from it a black-clad figure dropped through amid splintered timber and dust, landing in a crouch with a short blade already moving.

Tarō rolled aside as darkened steel cut through his bedding.

Seki's spear thrust from the floor before the attacker recovered, catching him beneath the ribs and driving him backward against a post.

The room exploded into motion. Another figure appeared in the doorway, and Fujita met him with his spear.

Shimon reached for the ōdachi and immediately understood that swinging it inside the room would be less than efficient, but he picked it up all the same because his daishō, his paired swords, lay farther away.

“Armor later!” he shouted. “Weapons now!”

The situation felt absurdly familiar. It was the experience of waking into chaos and discovering that he might, just might, be able to make something of it.

“Tarō, Seki, with me! Fujita, Heita—find Nagai-sama!” shouted Shimon.

Heita stared at him. “Nagai-sama?”

“He’ll be a target. Go!” the young man confirmed.

Fujita stepped backward from the doorway and knocked aside a thrown blade with the shaft of his spear. “Understood!”

“Kagawa!” Shimon shouted toward the corridor.

The one-eyed warrior emerged from his separate room wearing only part of his armor, his tachi already drawn. “Why are you giving orders?”

A black-clad assassin burst through the paper wall behind him before Shimon could answer. A ninja—or, more accurately, a shinobi, the young man noted almost idly, before Kagawa wheeled around and killed the attacker with a single savage cut. 

As the body collapsed, Shimon pointed down the corridor. “Because I know where they are!” he declared.

That was not completely true, since the chip merely guessed where several of them were, but under the circumstances Shimon decided that was close enough. Kagawa looked as though he intended to argue anyway, until Tarō struck his upper arm with a fist.

“Argue after!” the surviving Kume stated.

So they ran, while behind them Heita and Fujita turned toward Nagai’s quarters. Before Shimon hurried into the corridor, he quickly swapped his large sword for his katana in the corner, hoping that he had not just sent both of them to die.

***

The inner enclosure had become a maze of shadows and violence. Some infiltrators had entered over the roofs, while others must have hidden themselves inside before sunset or passed through the lower defenses disguised as laborers, wounded men, or prisoners. Bodies already lay in the passage leading toward Lord Imagawa’s rooms, three of them Satomi and Imagawa guards and another dressed in black.

Shimon’s chip painted movement through the darkness wherever his sight and hearing provided enough information.

[HOSTILE TRACKING]Confirmed nearby: 6Uncertain: 9+

“Two above!” Shimon warned, even as a part of him registered that there might be enough targets for him to fulfill his quest’s secondary objective

Tarō raised his yari just as the first attacker dropped from the eaves. Seki’s spear caught the attacker in the thigh before his feet touched the ground, Tarō struck him through the shoulder and drove him sideways, and Shimon finished the man with a cut across the throat.

A second attacker threw something from above.

“Down!” he cried out.

Three small iron points hissed through the air, one striking Kagawa’s shoulder guard hard enough to make the samurai warrior snarl. Rather than remain with the formation, Kagawa charged forward.

“Stay together!” Shimon ordered.

The one-eyed warrior growled, “I do not take battlefield instruction from a boy!”

“Kagawa!”

The warning came too late, and the one-eyed samurai disappeared around the corner. Steel rang almost immediately, followed by a scream. Shimon swore and followed. They found Kagawa standing over a dead infiltrator whose chest had been opened almost to the spine. 

The one-eyed warrior glanced back with savage, gleeful satisfaction. “One.”

Shimon saw the shadow moving behind him before Kagawa did. “Kagawa, right!”

The warrior turned just as a black sleeve whipped past his face and something burst against him. It was not steel but powder, and Kagawa recoiled with a shout as both hands flew instinctively toward his remaining eye.

The shinobi followed immediately, driving a short blade toward the underside of Kagawa’s jaw.

Shimon moved, and the world narrowed around him as his hand found the katana hilt. Something inside him answered. Perfect form, and perfect line. The line of the draw appeared before him, followed by another and then another until eight possibilities crossed the darkness.

Yae Ikazuchi, the eightfold path of thunder.

Shimon drew and cut in the same instance.

For less than a heartbeat, the ninja seemed motionless. Shimon’s katana passed through the first line, returned to the scabbard, changed angle, and moved again with a speed even his enhanced muscles could never have achieved unaided. Steel flickered through black cloth and flesh, crossing arm, side, thigh, and shoulder before Shimon completed the final cut across the infiltrator’s torso.

The man staggered backward and collapsed amid torn cloth and blood as orange text appeared across Shimon’s vision. It was thoroughly overkill.

You have slain a Hōjō infiltrator.18 experience gained.

You have learned Iai Style [6]                                                   You have learned Iai Style [7]                                                                                                

You have gained 1 Spirit.

[SPIRIT BREAK EXPENDED]Yae Ikazuchi unavailable: Recovery required.

Shimon’s right hand began trembling violently.

“Shimon!” Tarō caught him by the shoulder.

“I’m fine,” the young man protested.

Kagawa, meanwhile, remained on his knees with blood and black powder covering the right side of his face. When he finally spoke, his voice was so quiet that the words frightened Shimon more than a shout would have.

“I cannot see,” he cried, the words filled with anguish. The one-eyed warrior began scrubbing frantically at his face. “I cannot see!”

Seki caught both of his wrists. “Stop rubbing it.”

“Get off me!”

“You will tear out what remains.”

Kagawa swung blindly, but the broad spearman avoided the fist and seized him by the back of his armor. Shimon glanced toward the corridor as the quest timer continued counting down.

00:09:41

“Bring him,” someone said, and Shimon thought it might have even been him.

Dark fluid streamed from Kagawa’s ruined eye. “I can fight.”

“You cannot see!” someone else added.

“I can fight!”

Shimon looked toward Tarō, who apparently reached the same conclusion. The surviving Kume stepped forward and struck Kagawa hard behind the ear with the base of his spear, causing the warrior to sag in Seki’s grip. Shimon winced, blows that knocked you unconscious were not like movies where you woke up with minor headaches. There was a real risk of permanent damage.

Seki stared at him in disbelief.

Tarō merely shrugged. “He was slowing us.”

Shimon almost laughed cruelly despite himself, but there was no time for it. “Move.”

***

Every guard outside Lord Imagawa’s chambers was dead. The first lay across the steps, another remained seated against the wall with his sword still clutched in one hand, and three more had fallen inside the entrance. Something cold settled through Shimon as Tarō surveyed the bodies.

“They came here first,” the older spearman murmured.

The inner door stood partly open, with blood smeared across its frame. Something growled beyond it, the sound unmistakably inhuman, and a man screamed a moment later. Shimon entered nonetheless.

A black clad figure stumbled backward into the room with Banken attached to his forearm. The little dinosaur twisted with astonishing violence, its hind feet striking the man’s thigh while its jaws remained locked around his wrist. The infiltrator tried desperately to stab downward with his free hand, while Lord Imagawa stood behind an overturned writing table holding a short spear.

“Banken!”

The dromaeosaur released immediately. The shinobi staggered, and Imagawa thrust the spear into his chest before Banken leaped again and took him by the throat. There was a wet, final sound as the little predator shook its head twice, released the corpse, and stood over it with its feathers raised.

Lord Imagawa looked toward the newcomers. “Ayanokouji.”

“My lord.”

“You took your time,” he stated gruffly.

Shimon glanced meaningfully at the bodies around the chamber. “I apologize. I was not sure you were expecting guests.”

The lord’s attention shifted toward Kagawa, who was being half-carried by Seki. “What happened to him?”

“He had a minor accident,” the broad-shouldered man stated non too kindly.

That apparently explained enough. The Japanese always had a knack for understatement, even in this ancient alternate version of Japan.

More movement sounded from the roof, and Shimon immediately turned toward the entrance. “Tarō, door. Seki, stay with Imagawa-sama. No one enters alone. Banken—”

The dinosaur looked directly at him.

Imagawa pointed toward the door with his spear. “Banken. Guard.”

The animal immediately moved beside Tarō. The older spearman looked down at Banken, Banken looked up at Tarō, and neither seemed particularly pleased with the arrangement.

Shimon’s quest text updated behind his eyes.

[PRIMARY OBJECTIVE COMPLETE]Lord Imagawa secured.

Optional Objective Remaining:Save Nagai Morichika.

Bonus Objective: 4/10Time Remaining: 00:06:58

The young man registered that group kills seemed to count for objectives, which was reassuring in its own way.

Shimon looked toward the corridor. “Nagai.”

Tarō caught his arm before he could leave. “You are not going alone.”

The young man shook his head. “Imagawa-sama needs you.”

“He has Seki… and a Kagawa,” the surviving Kume noted.

Tarō glanced toward the blinded warrior. Kagawa had begun cursing and swearing again.

“Sit.”

“I am your commander!” protested the crippled man.

“You are furniture until someone examines that eye,” declared the other man matter-of-factly.

Kagawa reached blindly toward him, but Seki simply moved beyond his grasp. Lord Imagawa almost smiled.

Shimon looked back at Tarō. “Protect him.”

The older spearman’s expression hardened. “You give orders too easily now. Do not make a habit of it.”

Tarō released him, and Shimon ran.

***

Shimon found Fujita first, lying in the passage outside Nagai’s assigned chambers. For one stupid moment he thought the young retainer had merely fallen, but then he saw the blood.

Fujita’s yari remained clutched in both hands, its point driven through the body of a dead ninja pinned against the wall. A short blade, however, protruded from beneath Fujita’s ribs, and his eyes remained open. Shimon stopped beside him.

The younger warrior had spent weeks looking as though every senior man around him might suddenly discover some reason to bully him. Only recently had he begun holding his own against Seki. Now Fujita looked almost surprised in death.

There was no time to mourn him, and the cruelty of that realization hurt more than the sight of the body. Shimon stepped over Fujita and entered the chamber.

Heita was bleeding badly, with a cut running from his shoulder into his upper arm and darkening most of one sleeve, yet the strange warrior still held his naginata. He stood in front of Nagai, while Nagai in turn stood between the attackers and the priests.

Chief Priest Noritsuna had one hand on Aya’s shoulder, although the gesture looked less protective than restraining. His daughter stood slightly ahead of him with a naginata Shimon had never seen before, her white sleeves and red hakama surprisingly still clean. Aya’s dark hair had partly escaped its bindings, leaving one strand across her cheek, but her hands remained steady. She held the blade between her father and the three remaining infiltrators.

Abbot Ryōzen stood beside them with a long staff held in both hands. One enemy shinobi lay unconscious or dead near his feet. Nagai had blood across his face, although it did not appear to belong to him.

The final three attackers had spread across the opposite side of the room. Two were men, while the third was a woman, and although Shimon did not know who she was, he understood almost immediately what she represented. Despite the frailty of her sex, she was dangerous.

Her clothing was dark without resembling the absurd black costumes that modern entertainment assigned to ninja. A charcoal kosode had been bound closely enough around her body not to catch on anything, while dark trousers disappeared beneath wrapped calves and soft-soled footwear. Light armor protected little beyond her forearms and ribs, and the cloth that had once covered the lower half of her face now hung loose around her neck.

Of what he could see, she appeared to be around Shimon’s age, perhaps a little older, and she was beautiful without looking remotely delicate. Her face was pale, while her full mouth remained slightly parted as she controlled her breathing. Dark eyes watched the room with fierce concentration, and she held a short blade in each hand.

Aya and the stranger stood perhaps fifteen feet apart, and the contrast between them struck Shimon immediately. The shrine maiden possessed grace through stillness, the impression that every motion had been chosen before it began. Even frightened, she seemed composed around a core of iron.

On the other hand, the kunoichi possessed an entirely different kind of grace. Her weight shifted continuously from foot to foot, her shoulders rolled by fractions, and her body remained loose everywhere. Her hips and spine moved with the quiet, predatory flexibility of a cat.

Aya reminded Shimon of sunlight over snow, while the other woman was more like black flame. He had just enough time to think that before the woman looked directly at him. Her gaze moved first across his sword and then to his face, whereupon something resembling amusement touched her mouth.

Wonderful.

Nagai never looked away from the attackers. “Ayanokouji.”

“Yes?”

“You took your time,” the powerful grunted.

“Imagawa-sama is alive, but Fujita has crossed the river,” Shimon stated.

Heita’s face tightened, while Nagai’s expression remained unchanged, at least for the moment.

Then the female shinobi moved before Shimon could dwell on things, crossing toward Aya so quickly that he barely saw the beginning of the attack. She had not chosen the shrine maiden because Aya posed the greatest threat, but because Noritsuna stood behind her.

Aya thrust, a textbook strike. The kunoichi bent around the naginata point with such extraordinary flexibility that, for a heartbeat, her body seemed to fold rather than dodge. One of her short blades knocked the shaft aside while the other flashed toward Aya’s throat.

The young man, despite all of the dark woman’s speed, saw it all in slow and exquisite detail. Shimon intercepted it.

His katana struck the short blade hard enough to throw sparks, and suddenly the ninja’s face was much closer to his than he would have preferred. The woman’s eyes widened slightly before she smiled and twisted, sending one foot around toward Shimon’s knee.

The chip caught the movement.

[HOSTILE MOTION PREDICTION]Low-line attack: 89%

Shimon shifted before the kick landed, and her heel missed him completely. He immediately cut at her, but she bent backward and allowed the sword to pass barely an inch above her chest. Rather than simply recover, she continued the movement until one hand touched the floor, her legs passed over her body, and she stood completely unfazed.

It was raw flexibility against trained form, and when he attacked again, she moved inside the cut instead of retreating from it. One blade scraped across his cuirass, inflicting minor impact damage.

Shimon struck her with the hilt. She turned her head quickly enough to take the blow against her cheek rather than her nose, then answered by driving an elbow into his chest. He stepped backward, and she followed immediately.

She was fast, although not impossibly so. She was neither chip-fast nor Shimon-fast, but she possessed enough technical superiority that the difference in their raw speed became uncomfortably small.

Matsuda’s lesson returned to him. Your reactions are good. That will not save you from someone who knows what she is doing.

This woman most certainly knew what she was doing.

One of the male ninja attacked Nagai, but Heita intercepted him despite the blood pouring down his sleeve. The naginata blade caught the attacker’s forearm and tore through cloth and flesh, while Ryōzen’s staff struck the other man across the knee with an audible crack. Aya remained beside her father, but Shimon no longer had attention to spare for any of them.

The kunoichi feinted high, and his faithful friend the biochip marked the movement.

[ATTACK PROBABILITY: 61%]

Shimon did not trust the number and watched her hips instead. Her rear foot turned, betraying the low attack before the short blade actually came, and he moved in time to let the first blade miss his stomach.

The second blade was already changing direction.

His lightning reflexes saved him, neither elegantly nor heroically, because his body simply moved faster than hers could complete the deception. He caught her wrist, and surprise briefly opened her expression before he twisted hard enough to make the blade fall.

She immediately drove her forehead toward his nose. Shimon turned just enough to take the blow against his cheek and held on despite the flash of pain, leaving the kunoichi suddenly pressed against him with one arm trapped between their bodies while her other hand searched for another weapon somewhere behind her back.

Her knee came upward, but Shimon blocked it with his thigh. She instantly changed the angle, hooked one foot behind his ankle, and began pulling him off balance before he fully understood what she had done.

Rather than fight the fall, Shimon turned with it and allowed his yawara training to take over. He stepped across, trapped her arm, and redirected their combined momentum so that the kunoichi struck the floor first and Shimon landed above her.

Her free hand flashed toward his throat, but he caught it.

For one heartbeat they remained face to face, both breathing hard. Her hair had escaped whatever had held it beneath the hood and now spread in black strands across the floor, while blood marked the corner of her mouth where his hilt had struck her. She looked up at him with an expression that held no fear whatsoever. If anything, she seemed interested.

Then a whistle sounded outside, or a bird’s call, three short notes cutting through the confusion, and the woman’s expression changed instantly. Shimon felt her entire body coil beneath him.

She drove both feet into his chest and threw him backward. By the time he recovered, she was already standing, one of the male infiltrators was moving toward the window, and the other had thrown a cloud of powder into the room.

“Down!” Nagai barked.

Shimon covered his face as the smoke burned his eyes and throat. Something struck the outer wall, feet crossed the roof overhead, and then the chamber fell silent almost as quickly as the violence had begun.

The chip borrowed his senses and counted the movement receding across the buildings.

[HOSTILE SIGNATURES WITHDRAWING]Confirmed retreating: 5Direction: Western wall / lower enclosure

Shimon coughed and reached the window just in time to see the kunoichi standing on the roof opposite. She remained there for only an instant, moonlight catching her face as she looked directly at him, before she stepped backward into the darkness and disappeared.

Shimon remained at the window a little longer than necessary.

“Ayanokouji.”

Nagai’s voice brought the young man from a different world back. “Yes.”

“Unless you intend to follow them alone and barefoot across the roofs, assist Matsunaga,” the senior man ordered.

Shimon glanced down and discovered that, at some point during the fight, he had lost one of his sandals. “Right.”

Heita was sitting against the wall with one hand pressed over his wounded shoulder, while Aya had already torn a strip of cloth and begun binding the injury. Her movements remained controlled, but when Shimon approached, she looked up at him and let her gaze drift toward the window before returning to his face.

There was something in her expression that he could not quite identify, perhaps concern mixed with annoyance.

“You are bleeding,” she remarked coolly.

Shimon touched his cheek and found blood on his fingers. “So are several other people.”

She huffed. “That does not make yours disappear.”

Her tone remained perfectly polite, and Shimon decided that arguing would achieve nothing.

The quest display opened as if it were a prophecy.

[OPTIONAL OBJECTIVE COMPLETE]Nagai Morichika saved.

Bonus Objective: 7/10QUEST STATUS: ACTIVE

Shimon frowned. The status made no sense, since the primary objective had been completed and Nagai had been saved, yet before he could investigate further, shouting erupted outside. It was not the sound of retreating would-be assassins. There were far too many voices.

A horn sounded from the lower enclosure, another answered from beyond the wall, and then a third joined them.

Nagai rose immediately. “Report.”

One of Imagawa’s guards appeared in the doorway, breathless and bloodied. “My lords—the lower gate!”

“What of it?”

“Hōjō troops are attacking from outside. Men were hidden in the woods and villages, and they came when the fires started.”

Nagai’s eyes narrowed. “What fires?”

The guard swallowed. “The western storehouses are burning.”

Nagai’s face hardened as the purpose of the raid became clear. The shinobi had not merely entered the castle to kill its leaders; they had come to create the confusion necessary to open it.

Shimon helped Heita to his feet. “Can you walk?”

The strange man gave him a strange look. “Yes.”

The spiritually sensitive warrior answered automatically, but his gaze had shifted somewhere beyond Shimon. A moment later his expression changed so abruptly that the answer came again, this time with an entirely different meaning.

“No,” he muttered.

Shimon tightened his grip on him. “No?”

Heita stared toward the open passage, although he was looking neither at the soldiers nor at the fire beginning to color the night beyond the roofs. His attention seemed fixed upon something Shimon could not yet perceive.

“They are here,” he declared.

Shimon’s chip pulsed in his mind with fresh information.

[UNKNOWN HOSTILE SIGNATURES DETECTED]Multiple.Classification match available.

YŌMA — GREY FEEDERYŌMA — UNKNOWNYŌMA — UNKNOWN

Estimated count: Increasing.

“No,” Shimon whispered.

They gathered the survivors. Lord Imagawa emerged from his quarters behind a wall of guards, with Banken walking close against his leg and blood still dark around the little predator’s jaws. Kagawa followed, supported between Seki and another warrior, his remaining eye covered with cloth, while Tarō joined them at the inner gate.

The rough spearman looked immediately toward Shimon. “Did you find Nagai-sama?”

“Yes.”

“And Fujita?” Kume added.

Shimon could not make himself answer, but Tarō understood from his silence. The older man’s mouth tightened.

“After,” he murmured.

There was always supposed to be an after, Shimon thought. Somehow, no matter how many people died, everyone kept promising themselves there would be time afterward. Humanity’s optimism was at times suicidally blind.

They climbed toward the highest fighting platform overlooking the lower enclosure, where the castle had become a confusion of fire, shadows, and moving men. The western storehouses burned brightly enough to cast black shapes across the earthworks, while Satomi soldiers rushed toward the lower gate beneath crossing arrows. Beyond the walls, Hōjō war cries rose from the darkness as the outer fortifications became a battlefield once again. Yet the Hōjō attack was not what made Shimon stop.

Something was climbing over the palisade. It had long arms, gray flesh, and a divided jaw that opened beneath the firelight. A Satomi soldier turned too late, and the Grey Feeder seized him before dragging him bodily from the wall. Another shape appeared behind the first, followed almost immediately by another, while farther out beyond the reach of the fires, the fields themselves seemed to move.

They were not moving with men. Things were following them.

Heita stared into the darkness. “There are too many.”

Below them, someone began screaming about demons. Nagai drew his sword, while Lord Imagawa looked from the Hōjō assault to the creatures climbing through defenses his army had only recently captured.

The first Grey Feeder reached the courtyard and raised its blood-wet face. Behind it came the dead harvest of the battle.

Shimon drew his katana as orange text opened across his vision.

[QUEST UPDATED]

SURVIVE THE NIGHT.