L5r - scroll 05 - The Crab Read online

  Three more goblins landed heavily on his back.

  "Curse me for a fool!" Kisada barked.

  While he was lost in reverie, the goblins, who had only moments before been running away as quickly as their spindly legs would carry them, were now climbing back over the Wall. They attacked the Crab samurai with a fury born of desperation—or fear. The sniveling creatures kept looking over their shoulders as if fleeing something even more frightening than death by Rokugani steel.

  The Wall shook.

  At first Kisada thought it was an earthquake. They were fairly common in this part of the empire. But earthquakes rarely came in single sharp jolts.

  The Wall shook again. Something was climbing. Something very big.

  The next violent shake came when a monstrous hand reached up to grasp the lip of the parapet. It was vaguely human-shaped but was made entirely of fleshy, ropelike tendrils wound tightly over a skeleton. It was the color of mud mixed with blood. As the hand strained to pull the rest of the creature up the Wall the cords pulled taut, making high-pitched stretching and snapping noises.

  A second hand grasped the top of the Wall. In a deceptively quick motion, the creature pulled itself up onto the tower. Its body was a fifteen-foot tall crimson, ropy tangle of cords. Its muscles gleamed moistly. It looked as though someone had peeled the creature's natural skin off, leaving only the innards to walk around in a mockery of life. Its eyes were bald yellow patches in its sinewy face, but they focused immediately on the Crab daimyo.

  "Hida Kisada," the creature said. Its voice was strained and unnatural, filled with resonant pops and crackles as its sinewy throat mimicked human speech.

  The goblins on the Great Bear's back released their grips and fled.

  "Oni," Kisada answered, raising himself to his full height. He seemed tiny and insignificant next to the hideous beast.

  "I have come for your soul," the oni said.

  The Great Bear nodded, almost bowed, to the oni. Then he launched himself through the air, his tetsubo raised overhead. He brought it down with a mighty swing, lodging it in the oni's forehead.

  The creature laughed.

  Flinging its neck back, the oni snapped the war club out of Kisada's hand. It shook its head wildly, trying to dislodge the weapon, but the tetsubo was too firmly planted in the ropy mass. The oni raised both its hands to its head. The air suddenly fled from its lungs.

  Kisada, howling like a wounded bear, had kicked the creature in the gut. It doubled over. He grabbed hold of a tendril in its chest and began climbing toward his tetsubo.

  Wheezing in deep, popping breaths, the oni couldn't put up much of a fight, but it did manage to wrap both of its arms around itself, crushing the Great Bear to its chest. It leaned back against the ledge of the tower and squeezed as hard as it could while it gasped.

  Kisada could not move and had no weapon.

  The oni sputtered, trying to regain its breath while robbing the Crab daimyo of his.

  All around the tower, the goblins fled back down the Wall. Many of them merely traded honorable death in combat for an ignominious death on the rocks below. A good half dozen Limped back into the gray fog of the Shadowlands.

  Freed from assailants, the Crab samurai saw the titanic struggle between Kisada and the oni. What's more, they saw that the Great Bear's eyes were beginning to glass over as he struggled to escape. Without any order, or even a word of discussion, they raised their weapons and charged. They screamed curses that even they had not thought of before.

  The oni saw the odds arrayed against it. It still couldn't breathe—or even stand—properly. The oni rocked forward, then flung itself back, meaning to launch itself and its captive over the Wall.

  The Crab samurai were too fast. They reached the oni and held firmly to the arm pinning Hida Kisada.

  The creature had no other choice. It released the Great Bear over the Wall. The samurai let go to catch their leader and pull him to safety. The oni dropped to the ground with a thunderous crash and made off into the mists.

  "That was the bravest thing I've ever seen anyone do," one samurai said to Kisada as his eyes began to find their focus again.

  "Hai!" they all agreed.

  The Great Bear seemed not to hear them at all.

  "No!" he screamed and leaped for the Wall as if he meant to spring over it and follow the oni.

  "Kisada-sama!" screamed one bushi as he grabbed the obi around his daimyo's waist.

  "It's one hundred feet down," another said wrapping his arms around Kisada. "You'll never make it!"

  "I don't care!" growled the Great Bear. "Don't you see? That creature—that thing has my tetsubo!"

  All Crab samurai considered their weapons to be symbols of themselves—of their souls, forged and tempered into living weapons. Parents passed their weapons to their children, who in turn passed them on to the next generation. They became more than instruments of death. They were symbols of a family's history and value.

  Hida Kisada stared out into the Shadowlands.

  "My tetsubo."

  DEFENDING THE CODE

  Hida Kisada is an uncouth, arrogant bully, and he has no right to embarrass the emperor the way he has!"

  Hida Sukune bristled at the accusation being leveled against his father, but more importantly he worried about his elder brother's reaction. Hida Yakamo knelt stock-still next to Sukune, his arms and shoulders twitching slightly. The younger brother was certain that he heard a long, low, animalistic growl escape Yakamo's clenched teeth.

  They sat before a council of representatives from the major Rokugani clans—all except the Crab. As was tradition, the council sat on a slightly raised tatami dais, while the Hidas knelt on small mats laid on a hardwood floor. Sukune and Yakamo had come to Otosan Uchi with the belief that they were supposed to fill the Crab seats on this particular council meeting. Upon arriving at the Imperial Palace, they learned that they were actually there to stand in defense of their father and their clan.

  "What offense has our daimyo caused, Mirumoto-san?" Sukune asked with as much deference as he could muster. More than any other Crab, Sukune was welcomed in the court of the emperor-—indeed, in any court in Rokugan—but there was only so much slander even he would suffer at the hands of these bureaucratic imbeciles. He was smaller, weaker, and more socially adept than most Crab, but he still held the deep-seated belief that samurai from any other clan were merely playacting the roles of bushi—of warriors—and that politicians and courtiers had no right to lay claim to that title at all.

  Mirumoto Hitomi, the representative of the Dragon Clan, seemed barely to acknowledge Sukune's presence. She stared un-blinkingly at Yakamo as she spoke.

  "The same offense every Crab daimyo has caused since the beginning of time." Hitomi spoke slowly and purposefully. "The Great Bear follows no one's orders but his own. He fails to spend the required time in the emperor's court. He shows complete and utter disregard for the decisions and jurisdiction of the other clans. He shames us all by using siege engines and other weapons of mass destruction against ordinary troops. He follows none of the rules of etiquette or manners prescribed in the code of bushido. All in all, I ask you what he does that is not offensive in some way or another?"

  The other members of the panel looked at one another with slightly dismayed expressions. Clearly Kisada's arrogance was the subject about which they wished to speak, but the young Dragon was pressing the point too hard. While they all wished the Great Bear would at least make a show of being more mindful of tradition and etiquette, none of the others would question his dedication to bushido, the way of the warrior. What's more, Hitomi seemed to take particular glee in provoking Yakamo.

  "One inoffensive action? Is that all you want?" Sukune asked. His temper too was rising, but his tactical mind told him clearly this was not the time or place to give in to the family temper. "Perhaps orchestrating our entire defense against the Shadow-lands gives you offense, Mirumoto-san, but I doubt you speak for everyone on this council. Hid
a Kisada has personally planned and led every major action against the armies of the Dark One in the past twenty years. It is by his efforts that the empire is not overrun by demons, ghosts, and goblins. This is a task he performs every waking hour of every day. If he has not had time to attend every function the court conducts, it is only for the sake of making sure that uninvited guests from the realm of darkness do not attend either. If you would prefer—"

  Without warning, Yakamo rose from his place, spat on the cherry-wood floor of the audience chamber, and began to stalk out of the room.

  "You see?" said Hitomi with undisguised revulsion. "You see how his son acts? And this is nothing compared to the father. He comes into this council room wearing full armor, as if to bully us into forgiving all his father's trespasses. He cannot dress for anything but a conflict, and he is so barbaric that he must let his younger brother speak for him in open court. If the Great Bear cannot even train his own cub to act like an honorable, civilized samurai, what does that say for the rest of his clan?"

  Yakamo whirled on his heel and snarled at Mirumoto Hitomi. "Civilized? You want us to act civilized when every day we are up to our breastplates in evil so pervasive, so unyielding that its taste fouls our food and its scent clings inside our nostrils?"

  With four giant strides he stood immediately before the Dragon councilor. It would be easy to mistake him for a youthful Kisada. Yakamo was not as large as his father, but he still stood head and shoulders taller than most samurai and looked powerful enough to tear a man apart with his bare hands.

  "We provide the safety that allows you to make these inane rules, defining honor in terms of dress code ana public speaking. If it is so important that we follow your rules, then come to the Wall and stand guard while we send our entire army off to learn the art of flower arrangement and extemporaneous poetry. But do not sit here in the shade of our protection and accuse us of disloyalty in the act of providing it! You do not know as much as you think you do, little Dragon."

  Like his father, Yakamo generally preferred to speak as little as possible. However, as the members of the council now knew, this did not mean he was tongue-tied. Yakamo could be quite eloquent, and he was maturing into a skillful leader. When the Great Bear finally decided to leave his seat of power, his first son appeared to be more than ready to fill the void.

  Hitomi and Yakamo stared furiously at one another for a long few moments. At first it seemed, with the Crab towering over the kneeling Dragon, that he was in the dominant position. But it soon became clear that Hitomi's calm, centered focus and knowledge of exactly what she was doing at least evened the score.

  Yakamo turned so quickly and with such force that some of the other council members thought he had struck Hitomi.

  "Come, Brother," Yakamo growled as he passed Sukune, still kneeling in a supplicating position. "We are done here."

  Sukune did not follow immediately, however. He sat in his place until after Yakamo stormed out of the room. Only then did he bow and say, "I hope that the members of this council will forgive my brother for his outburst." His voice dripped sarcastic sincerity. "Perhaps the strain of defending the empire has become too much for him. Perhaps you would be wise to have both him and my father removed from the Wall. But I ask you, where else would you put such men? Their spirits are unbreakable. Where would you prefer they be, on the border defending all our fives or here in your midst trying to find some outlet for their warriors' spirits?"

  With that, Sukune bowed even more deeply, rose, and followed Yakamo out of the castle.

  THE CRAB AND THE DRAGON

  When Rokugani spoke of the Crab Lands, they almost always meant the Great Wall of Kaiu, which many simply called the Carpenter's Wall. The truth was that the clan controlled a great swath of the empire's southern region. Most of this territory was rocky and uninhabitable, but that was to the Crab's liking. Their land was as tough and unyielding as their warriors.

  Between the Twilight Mountains and the Hidden Forest was a long, thin strip of rich soil. Crossing that plain was like riding past one tremendous rice paddy. So great was the Crab army's demand for rice that every available inch of usable land was devoted to the task. It was still nowhere near enough, but the farmers knew their efforts were just as important as those of the samurai on the Wall. Without their rice, the samurai would have no strength to lift their weapons, and without the Crab samurai the tide of the Shadowlands would roll across

  all of Rokugan. The defense of the empire was their responsibility. Without Crab farmers, the Emerald Empire would fall. At least that was how the commoners saw it.

  Samurai from other clans who visited the Crab Lands saw it differently. They said, "Even the peasants are arrogant, rude, and far too proud."

  Crab samurai were proud of their common folk, who worked twice as hard as those in any other territory. They told stories of farmers who, in years of hardship and drought, offered to commit seppuku to atone for the shame of having a poor crop. No clan was as dedicated to a single purpose as the Crab, and no clan was as tightiy knit top to bottom.

  A pair of Crab samurai rode along a plain of rice. The farmers who worked the paddy did not kneel as in other regions of the empire. Rather, they stood tall and waved. One shouted, "Ho, Brother! How goes the war?" and another, "A bowl of my rice will strengthen your sword arm!" Such familiarity got commoners slain in lands belonging to other clans. These two samurai simply waved back and continued their journey.

  Neither Yakamo nor Sukune had spoken a word after the first day of their journey back from the capital. Seven days of silence— it seemed to Sukune a test of wills. Clearly there was more between Yakamo and Mirumoto Hitomi than met the eye, but his brother did not want to talk about it. Sukune, on the other hand, did not want to talk about anything else.

  On the first day of their journey he'd raised the subject every way he could think. Each time Yakamo responded with an angry grunt and urged his steed from a trot to a gallop. From then on, they rode and camped in silence, neither one willing to back down from his own personal wall.

  When they were young, Yakamo could always beat Sukune at any physical test. The younger brother had been frail and sickly since birth. He never attained the size or strength of his brother or even his sister—though Hida O-Ushi was never a dainty chrysanthemum. Sukune did, however, show a great aptitude in the tactical arts. While Yakamo would chase dogs, cats, and other children around with a stick, pretending it to be a tetsubo, Sukune would spend hours reading about military si rategy. He used pebbles and twigs to re-enact famous battles of ancient generals, and more than a few of his father's own campaigns. He could usually see ways to improve on the historical results.

  As they grew, Sukune learned the martial arts required of every Crab samurai, though he did not excel at any of them. He was not afraid of combat and proved himself quite able to defeat even much more skilled opponents if he had time to discover their weaknesses. Yakamo, on the other hand, was always at the top of his class in military training. He was bigger, faster, and stronger than anyone else.

  It surprised no one that Kisada favored his elder son. Yakamo turned into the spitting image of his father. No one ever expected Kisada to find the same connection with his younger son, not even Sukune himself. But the daimyo still found it difficult not to look at his second son without lingering disappointment. Sukune found glory on the battlefield, garnered fame with his writings about Crab army tactics, and was an immeasurable help in planning strategy against the Shadowlands. It was not enough. He was a tactical genius, but he did not have the physical presence of a Crab, let alone that of a son of the Great Bear.

  Sukune's only other advantage over his brother was his unending patience. He drew on this gift during the ride back from Otosan Uchi. He would not utter another word until his brother told him the provocation behind the confrontation in that council chamber, even if it meant not speaking to Yakamo for weeks after they returned to the Wall.

  As it turned out, he needed to wai
t no longer than that very evening.

  While Sukune silently fanned the flames under a small cast-iron pot filled with rice and wild vegetables, Yakamo grabbed his tetsubo and stood. For a minute he didn't move at all, at least not voluntarily. Sukune could see that the muscles of his arms and neck were twitching. For a minute he thought that something in his elder brother's mind had snapped—that instead of giving in, Yakamo would fly into a murderous rage.

  Though he seemed about to win their personal competition, Sukune decided it was better to lose. He could allow his brother to save face but still encourage Yakamo to tell his tale.

  "The dinner is almost cooked, Brother," said Sukune hunkering closer to the fire. The night air gave him chills. Even all these years later, his early birth and weak constitution still plagued him. Sukune fought a chronic cough and was susceptible to disease.

  Yakamo turned to his younger brother, the spasms in his neck subsiding, and a smile crawling across his face.

  "Couldn't take the silence, eh?" It was not in Yakamo's nature to win gracefully. He had to gloat at least a little. "I don't blame you, it was starting to drive me crazy as well."

  "Then why don't you tell a story?" Sukune suggested. "Perhaps why Mirumoto Hitomi hates you enough to antagonize you in open court."

  Yakamo looked at Sukune, shocked.

  "Is that why you've been giving me the silent shoulder?" Yakamo laughed. "I thought you were displeased with how I handled myself back there!"

  Sukune shook his head. "I have no idea why a Dragon samurai-ko would bear you such ill will. What did you do to her?"

  "Oh, not to her," Yakamo whispered conspiratorially. "To her brother."

  xxxxxxxx

  It was not easy being the son of a great man. Hida Yakamo never really understood the truth of that statement until the final year of his training. By that time he was beginning to really look like his father. Even his friends began to tease him about being the "Young Bear." This was all good-natured, but it still bothered Yakamo. He wanted a chance to be himself—to prove his value as a samurai based on his own skills and merits, not his relation to the Crab daimyo.