The Journey of Shinjo Yashida

Shinjo Yashida, his cousins and their horses stood at the edge of Ryoko Owari. Yashida rode in front of them, formed up, looking them over proudly. This was a carefully held diversion to hide the fact that he could never think of anything exceptionally inspiring to say before a scouting mission. What was there? "My brothers and sisters, we will ride over the hill like a storm to the enemy, and...take a good look at them! Then, in the face of danger, we will turn around, and bravely ride home! Hopefully undetected!"

It took a moment for him to realize he'd said it out loud. But the way the laughter trickled from the regiment, he could tell that at the very least he was easing some tension. Once again, he had to finish the joke he'd started.

"And focus not on the fact that we turn from the blades and slings of our wretched and unworthy enemy, but look forward to the hour when we return with the Utaku Battle Maidens, whose silent charge will allow the barbarians to hear our gleeful laughter at their annihilation! For our battle cry is, 'there they are! Get them!'"

More laughter. This was going to be a good day.

---

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Yashida's eyes opened. They drank in the cloudy sky.

Five days.

They'd tried to get around the Gaijin patrols for five straight days. Each day, they met and evaded a force superior

to their own, and tried again. Except the fifth day.

Clouds were gathering. He heard thunder. Soon the rain would come. It would give life to the grass under his back, and the trees that grew in the distance. It would wash away the blood of his cousins, all dead around him. It would bring rust to their weapons and armor. It would wash the color from their clothes, the paint from their mons, and the tears that formed weakly in Yashida's eyes at their passing. The water would wash the blood, sweat, tears, and sword oil into the earth, mixing with that of the Gaijin and horses and all that had ever fallen in the world.

Yashida's hand moved. Just slightly. The move broke his heart. His katana was light. He heard a jingling noise as the broken tip contacted the pieces of the shattered blade.

He was vaguely aware of being in pain of some sort. All over. Mostly his leg where an arrow had struck him above the knee the week before.

He had failed. He waited for his body to die. On the hill, far away, he knew the spirit of his brother was standing.

Waiting. Together, they would face eternity.

His eyes fluttered closed again...

---

Rain.

Yashida awoke, and his vision of heaven blurred with the drops of a summer shower. He blinked them away and saw very little. It was night. Eternity was certainly taking its time. For a dying man, his mind was remarkably clear.

No, he thought. No, no, no. Why hadn't he died? Why wasn't he in the halls of the fallen, feasting with the honorable? Yashida was not, as he'd expected, fatally wounded. In fact at this rate, he might even survive.

He closed his eyes again and tried to think dead thoughts.

"What the hell is taking you so long?!" His brother was there to comfort him. "Our cousins are dead and you're sleeping!"

Yashida found he could speak. "Brother, please...not now."

"You've been riding in circles trying to get around these Gaijin bastards for five days, Yashida, if not now, when?!" Yashida opened his eyes. He observed the intangible spirit pacing back and forth, not bothering to step over him, but passing through his body somewhere below his sternum over and over again. "Look around you if you can still lift your head. You have been defeated, Yashida, your katana is shattered, and your cousins lie in ditches around you. The only one not following their example is you! So find your feet to commit Seppuku straight away, or succumb to your wounds and die on the spot! Just decide soon, because it won't be a glorious death in battle if you wait! There are limitations on these things!"

The living half of the Shinjo brothers sighed. Then he stirred. He groaned at the pain of his battered body. Then he sat up. In the dim light of the setting sun behind the storm clouds, he saw that the fortunes had a rather twisted sense of humor. An arrow protruded from his left leg. In exactly the same spot as the first. He felt it carefully with two fingers. It wasn't that deep. He pulled.

As Yashida's agonized shout died away, the voice of his brother could be heard. "No, no, no, what the hell are you doing?! Stop playing with that chopstick and find your wakizashi, the sunset is the perfect time! Don't bother making your body look pretty! What are you doing?!"

Yashida was trying to stand. "I'm not dying here."

"Good, now get the---what!"

"I said I'm not dying here."

"...Shinjo Yashida, if you dare show your face to the Council, I swear to the Kami Shinjo I will see that you do not sleep for the rest of your natural life. I want you to imagine what that will be like!"

"I'm not going home," Yashida said.

"Then what, you're defecting to the Gaijin? You want your head placed beside Ide Kana's? Or are you going to become a Ronin and live in a tree off in the hills somewhere?!"

"No," Yashida said. "I'm going on with my mission."

Yashida was surprised to hear no opposition from the ghost as he wrapped a scrap of battlefield fabric around his leg. "I have nothing to lose now. If the blood of my cousins cries out for my death from the ground, so be it, but I'll not be falling upon my own sword when I've come this far. If I fail again by my lonesome, the Gaijin will kill me, and that will be the end of it. For all anyone in this world will know, I fell to an unexpectedly large force and died valiantly with my cousins at my side. The Kami will know I tried the last. And on the off-chance I should succeed, I will save so many others. And then, if it will make you happy, after all that is finished, I will make the three cuts, in the palace garden, by the stone benches. In our place of meeting." Yashida grabbed a dropped polearm of Gaijin make, one he wasn't familliar with or proficient in using, but would serve as a walking stick.

With it, he hoisted himself up, putting his weight on his good leg. There stood the spirit of his brother. Watching him. Nothing more. "This is my last mission. My last act upon this world. I need your help, Oniisan...come with me."

The sprit said nothing. Only watched. Yashida turned and began to walk, trying to get used to his leg...

"Yashida!" The living Shinjo turned. His brother stood, as though contemplating, for a long time. Then: "You...are not the only survivor."

"Oh?"

"No." The ghost pointed toward a nearby plain. "Your horse."

Yashida fell down again. "Kaze is alive?!"

"When you were dislodged from him, he went running toward those trees. And if we're going to succeed, it looks like we need to get you in the saddle again."

--

Yashida rode silently through the night, the rain covering the sound of his passing. He wasn't sure how his brother was keeping up, but whenever Yashida stopped, there was the ghost, looking ahead, watching the skies. They saw torches of more enemy foraging parties, but this time Yashida did not have an entire unit at his back. No longer limited by numbers, he outmaneuvered the patrols, and, climbing a ridge, he saw it.

It was the temple! He'd made it. And below him, he saw that the monk had not exaggerated. Torches. Campfires. Everywhere. As far as he could see, on all sides of the great temple of Osano-Wo. His heart was cold. If he came back, he would not have good news.

Nor precise...

Yashida dismounted.

"What are you doing?" The spirit spoke for the first time in hours.

"I'm going down there. I came out here for a detailed report. I'm going to go find it."

"If they catch you, they will kill you. And then no report will reach the council at all." The spirit was not jeering this time, not insulting. Just warning.

"I know, Oniisan. But it would not be enough to say we saw torches and campfires. Not for the price we've paid."

"How will you get in?"

"There is a stream near here. I have an idea."

---

They stood at the bank, downstream from the barbairan camp. The river stank with the waste of horses and men, but had swelled with the rain. The spirit saw Yashida tying his horse to a tree, then throwing off his armor. The ghost suddenly began to revert to its tone nagging mockery. "You're not going to swim in that, are you?! Damn it! Why did I let you drag me out here in the first place?! You're going to make an idiot of yourself!"

"I absolutely am, honored ancestor," said Yashida, removing the rest of his clothes. "You can help me or not. The choice is yours. And for the departed, choices are uncommon." Wearing nothing but his loin wrappings, he took a deep breath, leapt into the cloudy water, and submerged his head.

He crawled as far as he could. When his head came up and he drew breath, he saw the edge of the camp. He submerged.

Again his head came up and he drew breath. He could see the tents and bonfires. He submerged. He crawled and he crawled. Then, just as he was about to rise...

...he felt a hand against his back, holding him under.

"Wait..."

Apparently, having no earthly lungs or breath, the spirit could make its voice heard underwater. Yashida waited.

"Wait...wait...wait.......wait........breathe! Quietly!"

Yashida felt the hand of his brother lifted. He popped his head out of the water and drew breath again. Then he submerged. He crawled some more.

It continued. "Wait. Wait. Wait. Breathe. Wait. Stop! Wait...all right, go! Breathe!" The water was cleaner. Soon now. "Go. Slowly! Wait...breathe!" He was inside. It was time.

Yashida burst boistrously from the river. He strode up to the bank and snatched a cloth from a small bush and draped it over his shoulders as though he had just finished taking a bath. With a satisfied smile, he walked unabashedly past the rows of tents.

None paid him any heed.

"Well, well..." said the ghost.

---

"You can't keep walking around like that. Someone is going to get suspicious. Don't say anything to me!"

Yashida snapped his mouth shut again. He was right. Rokugani would stand out like a purple oni in the midst of the alien tongue of the Gaijin, to say nothing of a naked man talking to himself. He'd need a disguise.

"Yashida-Kun. Look."

Yashida stopped and looked. A larger tent ahead of them emanated sounds that made it evident that the barbarians had brought their women. Man and ghost exchanged glances, and as one they saw their chance. Four sets of Gaijin armor hung outside. As though he owned it, Yashida helped himself to the one that slighted him the least. His features were accented by generations of mingling with foreign nations. For all anyone knew, he was one of them.

He set off to learn more. The spirit silently followed.

---

Yashida was no engineer, but he saw primitive siege engines.

He was no architect, but he saw that the temple stood, though embattled.

He was not familliar with the teachings of Iuchi, but he knew holy men when he saw them.

What he was, was a strategist, however inept he appeared that week. He saw that they had brought their own livestock, and were eating rice and red meat. What disturbed him was that he observed them drinking blood. He made a mental inventory of the forces he saw. He estimated eight thousand peasant troops, fifteen hundred capable warriors, and five hundred of their holy men. He tried to ignore the fact that this was probably the largest assembly of forces he'd ever lived to see.

He failed.

---

He'd spent a day and a half amongst the Gaijin. For fear of being discovered, he hadn't slept. He'd had to grunt and snort to "communicate" when neccessary. He'd been called to the front line of the battle, and was forced to fire on his own side. Of course, he made sure to land his arrows in the side of the wall, or, when no one was looking, on the enemy ground forces. The warm summer rain had not let up, and Yashida was always soaked. He had no dislike of red meat, but had not dared touch the food. With nothing to write on, he committed everything to memory. And with all observed that could be observed, it was time to go home.

Under cover of darkness, Yashida left the way he had come, through the swelling stream.

He recovered his clothing, his armor, and his horse.

As he mounted, he threw something away he didn't need.

His brother smiled. They rode nonstop for home together.

---

Utaku Hanako sat on her horse, Kabe, who drank from a stream. The Battle Maidens had just finished a rather unsatisfying slaughter of a supply line caravan and were preparing to move on the bulk of the retreating Gaijin forces. Her gaze went from the distant horizon where the enemy cowered to the river where her steed's grateful lapping made small waves in the calm waters, rolling against a piece of cloth there. It was rectangular.

She recovered it. In what looked like dried blood boiled into the fabric, she read what was written.

To my family.
I go under Rokugani law and the order of my Lord. Know that in the course of my duty, my comrades fell around me. While we did not predict the magnitude of the forces I was sent to investigate, this does not excuse me, and my heart is black with sorrow. Their deaths are my failure, my survival my misfortune. But I am not to be pitied. I stand and return to my duty. Acting alone, I will set out to finish what an entire unit set out to do. I will surely die. None will sing, none will remember. I will simply perish with some small modicum of honor in the course of my duty. But like most things, I am nothing. I have never asked for anything more than for my existence to conclude properly, in accordance with the will of the Kami and Fortunes, and that when I arrive in the hereafter, one of them grants me a smile before turning their deserving attention to the real heroes of the world. Our coming victory is at all times certain in my mind, and I keep this final testament on my person in the hope that it is found in the meticulous cataloging of the aftermath. Know that I go forward without fear, or at the very least in spite of it. Tell my cousins my small story. Tell everyone.

I go.

Shinjo Yashida