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

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 would see fulfilled, and they would use my people, change them into something else, to see their own needs met. 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 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, even as Xenon did the same, and battle was joined.

On Foreign Ground, Strike Deep

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Heaven's Mandate