Tactics For Hosts and Guests
Choshu Ishi walked the path to White Stone without company. A few of his soldiers had lost their lives when last he fought with Mayhiros Xenon and his masked ally, but many more had been injured. One of his relays, Ashitare Wei, had been pinned by three arrows; impetuous Hoto Xing had broken leg and ribs beneath a horse’s hooves when The Zhuque Brotherhood had broken the Black Thunder Lancers’ charge; and Smiling Tao’s recovery was taking longer than any had expected – whatever other skills he had, he healed as a merely mortal man.
It shouldn’t matter, in any case; the time for strategy was over. Xenon’s forces had scattered, with some even joining the Solars’ side and racing their way with Ishi’s injured talons back to the Eye of Hiparkes. This last fight would be personal.
Not that Xenon was undefended. Ishi met a scattered few of his foe’s still-loyal Black Thunder Lancers on the road, as they rode hard back to their master’s hand or patrolled the land around his hold. He fought them in the way that brave men should, but they were mortal and the outcome was never really in doubt. Even with those delays, Ishi’s trip to White Stone took barely five days.
Smiling Tao had earlier delivered the best of his considerable intelligence, but there was precious little for him to report. A range town, like any of the dozens of others that dotted the northern Marukan, it counted some three hundred people, twenty five families, as residents, and they relied mostly on sheep for their livelihood. White Stone stood out in only one respect: it hosted the Stables of the Smaller Circle, Mayhiros Xenon's manse, headquarters and school.
Ishi kept to the shadows as he made his way through the open gate and deeper into the town. Stealth was not his strong suit, but he had the camouflage systems of his gunzosha armor to aid him and none of the townsmen marked his passage. The rustics were engaged, happily it seemed, in the business of Marukani life. The shearers were busy with their blades, stripping the winter fleece from their sheep in time to have it flaxed for the Spring Market; the farmers crushed their rice in the grist mill; and the smiths pounded away at their forges, turning out mostly horseshoes, it seemed. The Ivory Dragon sighed; he had hoped to find a more despondent group of peasants to rescue.
He found the stables exactly as Smiling Tao had described; a solid foundation of fitted stone supporting straight wooden walls. Inside was a courtyard, open to the air and fronting on twenty five large horse stalls. A few had fine Marukani battlers inside, but most stood empty; this was probably where the Black Thunder Lancers houses their mounts when they were at rest. Ladders rose from the walls to higher level lofts on either side of the courtyard, but Ishi doubted their wood could support his armored weight. Two small doors stood closed on either side, near the stalls, and a great door stood opposite the one he had entered.
Through this last door, open to the fields beyond, Mayhiros Xenon rode on his black charger. He had a jade powerbow in his left hand and his lance, Pine Needle, in his right, and Ishi saw that his anima already crackled slightly green with the power of his Elemental Halo's Mercy. "And so you’ve come. Will you hound me to the ends of the earth? Chase me from every home I care to name?"
Ishi drew his blade, Hidden Riches, and dropped into the Five-Dragon Form, left hand extended, fingers up, with the right hand holding a sword close to his chest, pointed forward and parallel to the ground. He said, “Name whatever home you care to, save one that belongs to another. Madai was never yours to claim!”
On Home Ground, Initiate No Action[edit]
Mayhiros Xenon shook his head and sighed deeply. "Is this why you're here? To chastise me for a situation you don't understand?"
"You took a whole town hostage."
"They asked for my help."
"Lying dog!"
Xenon gripped his weapons, and his temper, tighter. "To my shame, you provoked me to recklessness at Madai. To my regret, you drove me from the field in Yabu Valley. I'd hoped you wouldn't come here."
"Because you're afraid."
"I am a horselord of the Marukan, oh Ivory Dragon, and that means many things. 'Coward' is not among them."
The Ivory Dragon, Choshu Ishi, bent his head for a moment's concentration and specks of glittering mica began to rise away from his gunzosha armor, forming an Aura of Invulnerability around him. "My lords, too, are Marukani, yet I do not shrink from any battle."
"One of your lords, yes. And a good man, by all accounts, no matter what my uncle or cousin have to say on the matter." Xenon gazed past Ishi, out the gate and towards his village, full of proud, free horselords. "But the rest are using him for their own ends."
"My lords are heroes!"
"No!" Xenon shook his head. "They each have dreams they would see fulfilled, and they would change my people into something else to see them come to pass. They would use the souls of others to their own needs met. Is that a hero's mark?
"You prize heroism, Choshu Ishi. If you would be a hero to the Marukan, learn to ride as my people do, turn away from these Solars and help me drive them and their ambitions from this land."
The Ivory Dragon seemed barely to listen to Xenon's words; he shouted, "I would be a hero to the whole Scavenger Lands!" More white Earth Essence bled into his anima, and Xenon saw his muscles ripple with the Strength of Stone.
Xenon dropped into his own Lightning Hoof Form and grew calm as his anima called the waving grasses of the Marukani plain up from the ground beneath his horse's feet. He held up his jade powerbow, Cloud of Pollen. "I have learned new tricks in the weeks since last we fought, Ishi. If you will not join me, you'd do well to turn back to your masters now."
"My lords will thank me, all of Marukan will thank me, for ridding the land of a coward and traitor!" Ishi gave a final twist of his wrist, activating the Five-Dragon Blocking Technique. Xenon saw and did the same. And then, battle was joined.
On Foreign Ground, Strike Deep[edit]
Though Choshu Ishi wanted, more than anything, to end the fight with a single, swift blow, he had learned the value of patience where Mayhiros Xenon was concerned; he would wait to see the secret of these "new tricks" before he struck. He flooded his anima with more Essence and the mica there took on the Radiance of a Glowing Coal, even as a phantom colossus rose up around him.
Ishi didn't have to wait long for Xenon's trick. The horselord threw his lance, Pine Needle, high into the air and put an arrow to his bow as he rode his black Marukani battler in a hard circle around the Ivory Dragon. Xenon cried out "The Rose Has Many Thorns" as he drew back the bowstring and green-glowing thorny vines seemed to grow beneath him as he let the arrow fly.
The Ivory Dragon spun his white jade daiklave, Hidden Riches, and cut the arrow from the air.
But there were three arrows in all, fired as the horselord rode circuit around Ishi and, to the Ivory Dragon's horror, none were slowed by his Glowing Coal Radiance. The second and third arrows found their mark.
The wooden shafts punched through Ishi's gunzosha armor, but the worst of their damage was turned aside by his elementally-hardened skin. Ishi raised his blade and charged the undefended horselord, backed by the force of the Mountain Toppling Method.
The cutting edge bit hard, but Xenon pulled a trick Ishi himself had used in their first encounter, reinforcing his skin with Five-Dragon Fortitude, and sword bounced harmlessly away from skin. Hidden Riches shook in Ishi's hand, almost seemed to laugh, and the floor quaked beneath the Ivory Dragon's feet, throwing him to his back.
That was when Pine Needle fell from the sky, backed by the power of the Five-Dragon Force Blow. Ishi tried to roll out of the missile's path, but so fast it fell that he couldn't avoid it. The spear punched through his chest. Xenon rode past, grabbing Pine Needle and ripping it free again.
Ishi rolled to his feet in an instant and pressed his hand over the vicious wound. Though it burned, he forced air into his lungs and drew the glowing mica of his anima banner along with it. The mica suffused his flesh, plugging the bleeding hole with stone. Ishi raised his sword behind him and centered his stance. As Xenon readied his spear and rode in for the charge, Ishi hit the horselord with the wide flat of the blade, a thunderclap impact driving hard into his ribs and knocking him to the ground.
The horselord was fast, on his feet in and spear raised to defend in an instant, but swift as a landslide, Ishi placed himself between Xenon and his horse. Xenon flicked his eyes towards the battler, and Ishi smiled to know he had denied him the advantage of its height.
The Ivory Dragon pulled Hidden Riches back for a chambered strike. "This ends, villain! Submit to the Stone's Judgement!" Ishi charged forward, digging Hidden Riches' tip through the flagstones below and where he passed the rubble took the shape of scales. Sword extended, trailing an avalanche of stone behind, Ishi hammered into Xenon.
The horselord flew back, crashing into the manse's wall and breaking it to splinters. Already, white and yellow Essence flowed from the broken geomancy, licking around everything it could. Xenon struggled to rise as Ishi considered the honor of a killing stroke.
Before he could decide, the Marukani rushed through the open gate. Ishi saw them and he smiled; they must have been drawn by the fight. "You're free," he told them. "Mayhiros Xenon will oppress you no more."
The people ran not to Ishi, though, but to his rival. "Elder," they called him, and "lord." They cradled him in their arms, lifted him on their backs; a pair even took up Pine Needle.
"But..." Ishi dropped his sword and shook his head. He drew near Xenon and the crowd of mortals. "I don't understand."
Visibly calling up all of his will, Mayhiros Xenon lifted his head and gazed long at Choshu Ishi. "I am a horselord of the Marukan," he said in a voice weak but full of pride, "and that means many things. Here, it means I am the hero."
Then the people carried Xenon away, and Ishi was left to return to Hiparkes' Eye alone.
