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!”
