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The Choshu Chronicles: Chapter Sixteen

by Omasu Oniwabanshi ::: 2005

All conversation in the inn's main room stopped as Takasugi entered.

His face was pale with the faintly yellowish tone of illness. His hair was drawn back carelessly from his pitted cheeks, a souvenir from a bout with smallpox. His face was a thin oval, with narrow, wide-set eyes under dark eyebrows. His Haori jacket, tied in front over a grey kimono, hung loosely from his thin shoulders.

All in all, Takasugi wasn't an impressive specimen physically, until you looked in his eyes. They seemed to burn with barely repressed energy. His strength of will made up for his seeming frailty. He'd been like that since Kenshin met him. Takasugi was the man who'd allowed him to join the Ishin Shishi, to train with the other Choshu Loyalists to bring down the corrupt Tokugawa Shogunate.

"The bandit we captured near Iwakuni talked." Takasugi's words were like a pebble dropped in a pond. Takahata and Nakamura immediately shot a glance at each other. Katsura's face tightened. Oshio and Hojo glanced at each other open-mouthed, not sure why that was important, but sensing that it was.

Kenshin saw Shunme's eyes go flat, expressionless, the story he'd been telling Kenshin completely forgotten.

Leaving his conversation with Nakamura, Katsura walked forward. "What did he say?"

Takasugi came further into the inn, two soldiers flanking him. "It's as we suspected. The bandits are targeting only villages and bailiffs who grew the rice sent to our merchants for Satsuma. They're terrorizing the private rice farmers so no one will sell to our merchants."

"How could they know…?" Katsura began, only to be cut short by Takasugi's mirthless laugh.

"That's what we need to find out. Where's your samurai from Iwakuni?"

Katsura glanced back at Nakamura. "I can't lend him to you. He's needed here."

Takasugi's already narrow eyes narrowed still further. "I need someone familiar with Iwakuni area to go after the head bandit. Someone told him which farmers to target. We need to find out who."

"I'll go."

All eyes shifted to Takahata, who'd risen to his feet and was now looking nervous, yet determined. "I'm from Iwakuni area too."

"That's the only reason Nakamura got him this job." Shunme muttered softly to Kenshin. "Takahata's family is a lower ranking samurai family than Nakamura's. He's the perfect flunky for him."

Flunky or not, Takahata was taking Nakamura's place, relieving him from having to leave Tamako while she was so ill. Kenshin had to admire that.

Nakamura remained silent in his corner.

Takasugi stepped back, to look at Takahata. "Fine," he affirmed. "But I'd like to take Kenshin too."

Katsura opened his mouth, then shut it and nodded. "Until the problem is settled." He agreed.

Takasugi stared at Kenshin. "I'll send one of my squads with them, not that they'll need it."

Kenshin saw approval in Takasugi's eyes, but a question as well. This was a test. Takasugi had given Kenshin's services to Katsura as an assassin. Now he was a simple bodyguard. Takasugi wanted to know if he could still fight.

"Agreed." Katsura said.

And so it was settled. The next day Kenshin, Takahata, and a small squad of Takasugi's men, rode out of Yamaguchi Castletown and began their journey to Iwakuni.

Kenshin rode by himself most of the time. Takahata found out that the leader of the squad was also from a samurai family, despite the fact that he carried a rifle instead of the two swords at his waist common to all samurai. Takahata immediately latched onto the squad leader, barely speaking to Kenshin.

Izo, the squad leader, was a stocky man with a small birthmark on his forehead and a love affair with his rifle, which he cleaned and polished every night.

It seemed that even away from Nakamura, Takahata adhered to the snobbery the older samurai affected. He kept it wrapped protectively about him like a cloak.

The road was difficult. They had to travel through mountains, their sides cut into terraces for rice paddies. The rice fields were barren now, waiting to be flooded and planted in summer. At times long necked birds flew overhead.

"Those are hooded cranes." Takahata told the squad leader, a city dweller unfamiliar with the countryside. "You should see the cormorants in Iwakuni. In summer, the fishermen train them to dive off their boats and capture fish."

"A bird? Captures fish and doesn't eat it?"

Takahata laughed. It was one of the few times Kenshin, listening to the conversation as he rode behind, heard Takahata laugh in anything other than derision or at one of Nakamura's jokes. "There's a leash around its neck tight enough so it can't swallow the fish.

The squad leader, Izo, asked, "The bird allows this?"

Takahata shrugged. "Like I said, the birds are trained. Besides, with a leash, the cormorant always knows where its master is. I suppose it's comforting in a way."

Izo countered with a coarse remark, and Kenshin fell back a little as the conversation degenerated.

Eventually, they made it to Iwakuni. As they rode down the mountain road, the Kintai Bridge, its five arches like the outline of five turtles in a row, came into view.

Takahata noticed Kenshin looking at the view.

"Not too long ago only samurai were allowed to use the bridge." he said pointedly.

Ignoring him, Kenshin rode ahead. In the end, they crossed the Nishiki River by ferryboat, before having to use the bridge. Izo, reluctant to enter the city and alert the bandits to their presence, set up camp in the hills outside Iwakuni, ordering Kenshin and the soldiers to stay with him.

Takahata went into the city to find information.

Days passed, and each night Takahata returned with stories of the bandits' atrocities, but few leads as to their whereabouts. The squad leader began to get restless.

"I thought you knew this area."

"I do!" protested Takahata. "But I didn't associate with bandits." He spat out the word. "It's difficult to get people to talk when they don't know you."

"Try the taverns." suggested Izo coldly. "Drunks talk."

That night Takahata left the camp. He came back the next day smelling of sake, and carrying information. The bandits had a camp up in the hills. They were planning to raid a village in two days at dawn. Takahata told the squad leader that the only way they could get from the camp to the village was by one mountain path.

He and the Izo scouted it, and found a place where the path narrowed. An ambush was planned. Half the squad would hide in the trees above the far end of the narrow part, and the others would hide behind boulders at the mouth of the path. When the bandits rode past the boulders, the rifle fire from the trees would keep them from advancing, and Kenshin, Takahata, and the other squad members would take them from the rear.

"The goal here is to capture the bandit leader." Izo told his squad. "We want them to surrender, if possible. Look for whichever of them is shouting orders. Kill the others if you must, but only wound the leader."

The squad nodded and muttered agreement. Kenshin looked at their faces. Some were determined, some scared, but all would obey unquestioningly. It was the way Takasugi had trained them. Kenshin remembered his own training at Takasugi's hands. The men would do their job.

They left before dawn, moving quietly into place. Takahata, like Nakamura, preferred to be closest to whoever was in charge. He and Izo crouched behind a boulder near the mouth of the narrow part of the path where steep hills rose on either side.

Kenshin took the rear most boulder uncomplainingly. It didn't matter where he started from. He'd be in the midst of battle soon enough.

The pre-dawn air was cold. His breath ghosted around his mouth when he exhaled. It lacked about an hour until dawn, when the bandits would ride forth to attack the village. Izo believed in being early. Kenshin wondered if the village would ever know they'd been saved. He'd have to kill in order to save. For now, it was all he could do.

There was movement, not from down the road, but from the side past a stand of pine trees. Concentrating, Kenshin blocked out the sound of his comrades' breathing, the small noises they made as they shifted in their crouched positions, relieving aching muscles.

Yes. There were other sounds, not from the squad, but from others. The bandits were surrounding them. The ambush was rapidly becoming a trap.

Kenshin fell backward into a roll, thankful for his dark hair and dark blue kimono style shirt, and melted back into the shadows. So much for the straightforward ambush and capture. There wasn't time to warn the others without alerting the bandits as well. He would fight as an assassin from the shadows once again.

His first victim was crawling on his belly towards a large tree trunk, intending to hide behind it. Kenshin rose up, plunged his blade through the back of the man's neck, and twisted.

There was no sound. The man jerked a little, and went limp. Pulling the sword out, Kenshin crouched down and ghosted his way to the next victim, and then the next.

These weren't skilled swordsmen. They were bandits, used to intimidating unarmed opponents, or catching travelers by surprise. When Hiko had cut through the bandits who'd killed everyone in the slave traders' caravan but Kenshin, Kenshin thought Hiko was a demon, because he'd killed so many bandits so quickly.

Now he knew the truth. It wasn't demonic powers, but knowledge. How to stand, where to strike, which parts of the human body were most vulnerable, that was what made it so effortless for Hiko. Now Kenshin used the same knowledge.

Soon all the bandits on his side of the road were dead.

He was moving back to check the other side, when the bandit leader gave a shout, and the attack began.

Yelling, four men burst from the trees opposite Kenshin and charged toward the three squadsmen hiding behind rocks at the side of the road. Their backs were turned toward their attackers, and they had almost no time to react.

One squad member got his rifle up, but had to use it to block the downward slash of a bandit's blade whistling toward his head. The second squad member abandoned his weapon and jumped over the rock he'd been hiding behind, keeping it between him and the bandit intent on ending his life.

The third squad member wasn't so lucky. Two of the bandits were spearmen. Confronted by both simultaneously, he was pierced through before Kenshin was halfway across the road.

They didn't have time to enjoy their victory for very long. While their spears were still imbedded in their hapless victim, Kenshin leapt onto the rock at the corpse's back. Two bandit heads left their bodies with a horizontal swipe of Kenshin's blade.

Not bothering to wipe his blade, he jumped down again and engaged the two bandit swordsmen, distracting the one who was on his way around the boulder to dispatch the unarmed squad member.

The man snarled and managed to block Kenshin's blade. His friend whirled and ran at Kenshin from behind.

Kenshin allowed his sword to slide off the first bandit's, and continued the motion begun by his downward stroke, angling his blade from downward stroke to upward as he twisted his body in a turn.

He dropped his right shoulder just as the second bandit's horizontal attack was about to pierce it, and brought his right hand, grasping his own blade, up at an angle and across the bandit's torso, slaughtering him.

A shot rang out.

The squad member who'd kept his rifle was now standing weapon at his shoulder pointed at a spot behind Kenshin. Kenshin whirled and found that his senses hadn't deceived him. The first bandit had jumped on top of a boulder, intending to cleave him with a downward stroke as he jumped. Kenshin already planned to point his blade to the rear, and plunge it upward into the man's chest as he jumped, but the rifle ball forestalled him.

The wounded bandit lay moaning on the boulder, a bullet hole through his gut.

Kenshin glanced back at the rifleman, and saw a look of horror cross his face.

Following the man's gaze, Kenshin saw Izo, who'd come running to help when he'd realized what was happening, staggering back along the path, a hand clapped to his bloody shoulder.

He'd been standing right behind the bandit when the bullet traveled through the man.

Kenshin assessed the situation.

He'd killed all the bandits on the right side of the road. He'd also killed three on the left, the last one wounded by the rifleman. That accounted for the bandits, but what of his own men?

Izo had stationed three men on each side of the road, including himself. One was now dead. Where was Takahata?

Then Kenshin saw him. He was pointing down the road with an expression of horror. "F…F…Fire!" He burst out.

And so it was. Kenshin raced through the narrow pass. The trees at the other end where the path opened up after the hills were ablaze from the bottom up. The last four squad members were stationed in those pine trees, positioned to shoot down at the bandits.

Kenshin smelled whale oil. To speed the immolation, the bandits must have splashed the base of the trees when they set them afire with torches.

The other two riflemen close on his heels, Kenshin made it through the narrow pass, continuing on towards the burning trees.

To give them credit, the squad members in the trees were shooting, but with the smoke and confusion, it was doubtful they could see where they were aiming.

Mindful of Izo's warning, Kenshin looked for the bandits' leader. He was standing with his men a distance away in the shelter of a further stand of pines to the left of the path. His sword was out of its sheath, and he was surveying the burning trees with a great deal of satisfaction on his face.

Glancing up, he saw Kenshin and the two soldiers who'd come charging along behind him. The leader pointed his sword at them and yelled. Two bandits immediately attacked at a run.

As they approached, Kenshin dropped, and swung his blade across the first one's shins, bringing him down, and rose to block the other's downward stroke. Tilting his blade, he let his opponent's blade slide off his, and as the man stumbled forward, Kenshin whirled and sliced across the back of his unprotected neck.

When he turned to see what had become of the man he'd wounded, he saw that the squad member who'd accidentally shot Izo was using his weapon as a bludgeon.

Rocks hit the dirt near Kenshin. Only they weren't rocks. The squad members, disoriented by the smoke, were firing at him.

Kenshin jumped back, deliberately knocking the two squad members behind him to the ground.

"Stay down." he commanded, and rolled away to the forest on the right side of the road. The soldiers would have to use the dead body of the bandit for whatever cover it provided.

Meanwhile, the bandit leader was calling to his remaining four bandits. Three now, as the rifleman who'd dropped his weapon earlier obviously remembered what it was for, and shot one of the bandits, who fell with a surprised cry. Unable to cross the path due to the covering fire, Kenshin decided on a different objective.

One of the snipers in the tree dropped his rifle and began climbing away from the fire below him. He was cursing, an unending stream of terrified swear words.

Kenshin ran to the tree. The heat from the base of the trunk made it difficult to come near. Ignoring it, Kenshin stepped forward, concentrated, and sent his blade on a horizontal slash. It made it halfway through the trunk.

He jumped back, the edge of his hakama beginning to singe. Dropping to one knee, he stamped out the smoldering bits with the end of his sword hilt, then strode forward and tried again.

Pine trees were thicker than the tatami wrapped bamboo and small logs he'd trained on. It would take greater strength than usual. This time the blade made it all the way through. The tree swayed and fell, carrying the squad member with it.

He turned his attention to the next tree. The squad member in this one looked down in horrified fascination as Kenshin again stepped close to the flames, and chopped the tree trunk in half.

The tree fell into another pine and stopped. Without hesitation, the squad member jumped onto the non-burning tree and began climbing to the ground.

Kenshin turned his attention to the last tree. The rifleman was nowhere to be found, until he heard a moan. He walked around the flames and saw that the man had already jumped. He lay near the fire, leg bent un-naturally. It was broken. The tree above him was dropping burning pine sap and smoldering bits of wood. One landed on the man's arm, and burned through his sleeve, causing him to curse in pain.

Kenshin quickly grabbed the man by the back of his kimono collar and pulled him away, ignoring the shriek he made as the movement jarred his leg. Better hurting than dead.

Movement from under another fallen tree reminded Kenshin of the first sniper. As he came up, the man was just getting out from under the branches, one arm hanging limp and useless. Kenshin grabbed him by the collar as well and hauled him out the rest of the way.

Then he turned his attention back to the bandits. They were gone, and so were the two riflemen he'd knocked off their feet.

Kenshin plunged into the forest after them.

He met the two riflemen on their way back. "Three of them got away. I think I wounded one. Takahata's got the leader." said the rifleman who'd dropped his weapon. The other stayed silent, holding his rifle as if he wasn't sure what to do with it, as if he wanted to throw it away, but couldn't quite bring himself to do that.

His friend smacked him on the shoulder. "Come on. Let's go see how Izo is doing."

The other man winced, but followed.

Kenshin stepped back to let them pass then continued on in the direction they'd come.

The forest opened out into a small clearing. Near a wild plum tree, barren now, lay the bandit leader. Takahata stood over him with a bloodied sword.

He glanced up and saw Kenshin, his eyes registering part triumph, part sick fascination. "I did it."

Kenshin merely looked at him.

"I killed him. My first kill." Takahata blanched, swallowed hard, and stared back at the corpse. "Now Nakamura will respect me. He won't take me lightly." His voice was a mixture of pride and horror. He couldn't seem to look away.

Kenshin reached into his kimono sleeve and pulled out a small square of rice paper. Ignoring Takahata, he used the paper to wipe the blood from his blade and resheathed it.

Then he handed one to Takahata.

"Thank you." Takahata said automatically, and began wiping his blade.

Kenshin raised his face to the sky. The sun was rising, and its light was beginning to fill the clearing. His first kill had been in a spot much like this one. It had been a small clearing, green, beautiful, near a path. When spring came again, this clearing would be even more beautiful. The plum tree would be in blossom then, and the scent of its flowers would fill the air around it.

For now, the clearing was just a place of death.

Cleaning job done, Takahata stared at Kenshin nervously. "I know I wasn't supposed to kill him, but…" The small man raised a hand in a helpless gesture.

'Wasn't supposed to kill.' the phrase echoed uncomfortably in Kenshin's mind. He wasn't supposed to kill, but he had. Suddenly, the clearing with its dead became unbearable.

"Come." said Kenshin, and led Takahata away.