The Crow and Cloud Formation
"He doesn't trust us," Soi Fang said. Though she spoke low, her voice rang like a clarion call and the skitter of her horse sounded like a drum as she brought it up to meet her commander and his aide.
"Ha! I knew it!" Choshu Ishi clenched his fist and shook it in the direction of Madai, the range town across the field. Standing, as he was, in the shade of a pine grove, even the guards who'd turned Soi Fang away from the walls would have been hard-pressed to see the gesture. "Wait. He who?"
"Mayhiros Xenon," said the third in the trio, Smiling Tao, a small man in farmer's homespuns and geta. "A great grandnephew of Mayhiros Tesos and leader of the Black Thunder Lancers. That's his banner, hanging above the gate."
Ishi shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted. "Don't see it. Never mind. Is he just going to keep the gates shut until we've moved on?"
"Longer, probably," Soi Fang said. She was off her horse now, holding its reins and keeping it still by stroking its face with her other hand. "He's worried by the demons lurking around and doesn't plan to let up until they pass."
"Well at least it's not because we ride under the Solar's banner and his loyalty's for his uncle."
Soi Fang looked back towards the town. "That's probably part of it, actually. I heard a while ago that Tesos helped him build a manse at a range town in the north."
"Oh. Right. If he won't let us in, he probably won't give us any food, either."
Soi Fang shook her head.
"Sell us any food?"
Soi Fang shook her head again.
Ishi sighed. Between his Scale, his command and support crews and the camp followers, he had almost a hundred mouths to feed and a dwindling stock to do it from. If they didn't resupply soon... "Do we have enough food to last until the next range town?"
"Probably, and a few days beyond if we restrict rations. But between the demons and what that black sludge in the river did to the fishing this season..." Smiling Tao shrugged.
"A smaller town might not have enough food to part with." Ishi scratched his head. "Well I don't know what to do if he's just going to be a jerk about it. We can't steal the food, but we can't turn back to the Eye of Hiparkes - there are demons out there. Where does he get his nerve?"
"A good question," said Smiling Tao. "Neither he nor his family have any holdings in Madai."
"Wait," Ishi said. "What?"
"No one from Mayhiros holds the lease on any of the farms or pastures in this region, nor on the mill, the smithy, the tavern... None of them even live here."
"You're sure?"
"Very."
Ishi shaded his eyes again and strained to see the town. He could mark the outlines of the hastily thrown up earthen ramparts and the sturdy palisades beyond, but the text on the banner was still a mystery. "Then what the hell is he even doing in there?"
"Taking hostages." Soi Fang's horse skittered away from the angry blare in her voice.
"Or taking advantage of a bad situation." Smiling Tao lived up to his name and it was a grim sight. "If he holds on to the town long enough, and with demons as his excuse I expect he could, he'll call it his own for as long as he lives. It's a short step from 'protector' to 'elder' when you have the power of the dragons to call your own."
Ishi loosened his sword in its scabbard. "Alright then."
Soi Fang and Smiling Tao stumbled over each other to say, "What?"
"Fang, get the gunchei together for orders. Tao, ride on ahead to scout his manse and then back to the Eye to get another scale on the move north; I want to meet up with them by the time Xenon runs back there and I want to know what we're going to face.
"We're going to end this." Once more, Ishi clenched his fist.
"How?" Soi Fang let go of her horse's bridle and the animal trotted a few steps away from her high brass voice. "His lancers are a full Wing. They outnumber us five to one! And Xenon's a double-stylist. He's famous for being both a disciple of the Lightning Hoof Style and an initiate in your own Five Dragon Style!"
"Wow." Ishi blinked. "That's impressive."
"He fights from horseback and uses the direlance 'Pine Needle' and the armor 'Four Layers of Bark!' His signature move is called 'Heaven's Black Lightning Punch' and they say he can use it to shatter a stone fortress wall!"
"Wow," Ishi said again. "He sounds really tough. Everyone's heard of him?"
"Yes!"
Now Ishi smiled and he picked up his own white banner. "Then we're definitely going to end this."
The Crow's Eye Is Plucked
The gunchei had made little protest when Choshu Ishi had laid out his plan; they were too well drilled for that. But not one of them could keep the disappointment and disillusionment from his eyes when Ishi had said, "I'll take the field, alone, before Madai's main gate, with the scale camped behind me, and challenge Mayhiros Zenon to single combat." Chan Fei had even groaned.
"Zenon's pride as a martial artist will demand he answer and his men, who ride in the enclosure of his reputation, will flock to the walls to see.
"That's when Chan Fei and Han Ying will take their Fangs over the north wall, under cover of morning mist, and open the doors from within. The rest of you, be ready." They had smiled conspirational smiles, then, and gone to prepare their men.
For all their preparation, Mayhiros Xenon kept them waiting until the next evening; provoking the horselord had proved harder than Ishi had supposed. But when he came, he came in splendor. Whatever metal lay at the core of his lamellar armor was papered over by strips of still-living bark and in his hand he held his direlance, a single, thin green spike as befit its name. He rode a black battler, a Marukani horse that, though less swift, was larger and stronger than even the finest.
Ishi looked to his own simply straight sword and wondered if he hadn't made a mistake. He had little time to reconsider, though, as Xenon came barreling down towards him. The plains rolled before the horselord like a snake, the grasses themselves twisting in the waves and mystic patterns of his anima banner. No probing strike for the enraged Xenon; he lead with the full force of his Heaven's Black Lightning Punch.
And Ishi stood ready to meet him. No horse for the Ivory Dragons; earth aspects are at their strongest with their feet planted firmly on the ground. So Ishi had assumed the wide-legged stance of the Five Dragon Form, sword arm close to his chest, the other leading, and let the power of his anima flare forth. A colossus rose around him, a towering construct of white marble salvaged from an age long lost. Veins of glittering mica ran across its surface, reflecting the last, dying light of day with martial purity.
The colossus mirrored Ishi's gesture as he raised his arm for the Five Dragon Blocking Technique, but even his Essence-enhanced skill was not enough to carry so weak a blade as the nameless straightsword to a successful parry against so mighty a strike. Xenon's lance struck home with mountain-shattering force, driving through Ishi's white-enameled gunzosha armor and even his elementally-hardened skin.
Only his instinctive call upon the Five-Dragon Fortitude saved him from death. As it stood he was hurt and, worse, had exhausted his Essence reserves from the effort. As Ishi spun his blade up for his own attack in response he wondered, for the second time, if he had made a mistake.
The Clouds Disperse the Lightning
While Choshu Ishi was fighting for his life before Madai's main gate, Chan Fei and Han Ying were having problems of their own. Though their arms were bolstered by the Essence of Ishi's Strength of Stone Technique, there are some problems that cannot be solved by force alone. "I don't see why," Han Ying grumbled, glaring balefully at the stout gate set into the town's northwest stone wall.
"Because if we break the gate that separates us from demons and bandits and Mayhiros revenge, this happily walled range town will stop being of any use to the people who live inside." Chan Fei set her lips straight.
"Ah. Right. And none of your men can open it?"
"We're Tiger Warriors, not the damned Baihu Society! We know spears and bows, we know how to ride. Forgive our not knowing the finer points of lock mechanics!"
An equine head bumped Han Ying's shoulder. "Shh," he said. "You're riling the horses." He turned to stroke the horse's face abd wgusoered softly in its ear. Crowding around that horse, and the ten soldiers pressed against the small gate, were another sixty Marukani swifts and battlers - half the mounts of the Black Thunder Lancers.
Han Ying scratched his bristly chin. "Hhn. Maybe we could stampede the horses into shattering the lock?"
"We're not breaking the gate!"
Han Ying help up his hands. "Okay! Okay! No breaking. But we've got to get out of here, somehow."
Chan Fei sat down on a two-wheeled hay cart, which tipped down under her weight. "It's not like you're offering to pick the lock yourself, or have one of your own Tiger Warriors do it."
Han Ying glared at his fellow gunchei. Then he rolled his eyes and sighed and caught sight of the top of the walls. "Hey... How high do you think this wall is?" He glanced down at Chan Fei's tilted cart, then over at some large clay jars against the wall of a nearby building.
The woman followed his eyes down, then looked up at the wall. "No. They'd break their legs in the fall."
"These are Marukani horses."
"We'd never get them to take the leap."
"These are Marukani horses."
"We're going to need running room to get them up to speed."
Han Ying and his Fang were already moving the jars, creating a platform for the horses to bound up onto the wall's top. "Will you shut up and help us get this done?"
