They were near the end of their journey. Horace trudged wearily up the rough trail that wound along the floor of a narrow valley. On either side, steep, unscaleable cliffs rose high above them. The further they went, the narrower the valley became, until it was barely twenty metres wide. A few snowflakes fluttered down but they were yet to see the first really heavy snowfalls of winter.
Reito finally called for a rest stop and the long column of Senshi and Kikori slumped gratefully to the ground, easing packs off their shoulders, lowering stretchers to the ground. It was late afternoon and they had been travelling since before dawn. They had travelled long and hard every day for the past week, with Reito hoping to maintain the lead they had gained over Arisaka’s force. Horace found a large boulder and leaned against it. His ribs were still aching from the impact with the cliff face. Shigeru’s physician had bound them for him but there was little else he could do. Time would be the real healer. But now the muscles protecting the cracked ribs were stiff and sore and the actions of sitting and then rising again would have stretched them, causing sharp pain to flare again.
‘How much further?’ he asked Toru. The Kikori who had been guiding them considered his answer before replying. Horace could tell by his expression that he didn’t know, and he was glad the Kikori made no attempt to pretend otherwise.
‘This is the valley. I’m sure of that. How much further we have to go…I’m not sure.’
Horace caught Reito’s eye. ‘Why don’t we go ahead and reconnoitre?’ he suggested and the Senshi, after glancing once at Shigeru, reclining against the base of a large rock, nodded. Since Shukin’s death, Reito had taken his responsibility for the Emperor’s safety very seriously. It was a charge that weighed heavily upon him. Shukin, a long-time close friend and relative of the Emperor, had found it easier to handle the responsibility. He had grown used to the task over a period of years. But it was all new to Reito and he tended to be oversolicitous. Now, however, considering the situation, he decided that Shigeru would be safe enough in his absence.
‘Good idea,’ Reito said. He hitched his swords up and turned to face the valley before them. Toru, without being asked, rose to his feet as well and the three of them set out, walking carefully over the tumbled rocks and stones that littered the valley.
They rounded a left-hand bend. The narrow valley snaked its way among the towering mountains, rarely continuing in one direction for more than forty metres.
Ahead of them they could see the blank wall of rock that marked another twist, this time to the right. They trudged on, their boots crunching on the rocks and sand beneath them.
No one spoke. There was nothing to say. The fortress of Ran-Koshi was somewhere ahead of them. Talking about it wouldn’t bring it one centimetre closer.
They rounded the bend and, suddenly, there it was.
‘Is that it?’ Horace said, the disbelief evident in his voice.
Reito said nothing. He shook his head slowly as he studied the ‘fortress’.
Ahead of them, the valley floor straightened and ran up a steep incline. A hundred metres away, a ramshackle wooden palisade, barely four metres high, had been thrown across the narrowest part of the valley, where the steep rock walls closed in to leave a gap barely thirty metres across. Beyond the palisade, the ground continued to rise and the valley widened out once more. They could see several ruined huts, their timbers grey and brittle with age, their thatched roofs long rotted away.
Reito’s face darkened with anger. He turned to Toru.
‘This is Ran-Koshi?’ he said bitterly. ‘This is the mighty fortress that will protect us from Arisaka’s army?’
For weeks now they had sought this goal, thinking of it as their final sanctuary, as a place where they could rest and regather their strength, where they could train the Kikori to fight, protected by the fortress’s massive walls of stone.
Now here they were, with no more than a derelict line of logs and planks to shelter behind. On the left-hand side, the western side, the palisade was actually half-collapsed, Horace saw. A determined effort by an attacking force would bring it crashing down and open a five-metre gap in the defences, meagre as they were.
Toru was unmoved.
‘This is Ran-Koshi,’ he said. He hadn’t been present at the discussion weeks ago, when Shigeru and Shukin had described the massive, fabled fortress. He had simply been asked if he could lead the way to Ran-Koshi and he had complied. He had known that Ran-Koshi was this simple palisade across a valley – many of the Kikori knew – and he had assumed that so did Shigeru and his followers. There had been no reason for him to think otherwise. He faced the angry Senshi nobleman calmly.
Reito made a frustrated, infuriated gesture with both hands. He felt suddenly helpless. Worse, he felt that he had betrayed the trust that Shukin and Shigeru had placed in him. They had struggled through the mountains for weeks, carrying their wounded, fighting their way up treacherous, muddy tracks where a false step could lead to disaster. Shukin and his men had given their lives to buy them time. And they had done it, they had endured it, for…this. For a moment, he was within an ace of drawing his long sword and running the Kikori guide through. But he mastered the impulse. He looked at Horace, his face stricken.
‘What can I tell the Emperor?’
But Horace, after his initial surprise, was nodding slowly as he studied the terrain around them.
‘Tell him we’ve found Ran-Koshi,’ he said simply. Reito went to make a bitter reply but Horace stilled him with a raised hand, then gestured at the sheer mountains that enclosed them on all sides.
‘These are the mighty stone walls of the fortress,’ he said. ‘It’s the valley itself. This is the fortress. No army could scale these walls, or break them down. The palisade is merely the gateway.’
‘But it’s derelict! It’s falling down on itself!’ Reito burst out in despair.
Horace placed a calming hand on his shoulder. He knew the reaction was caused by the sense of duty and obligation Reito felt to the Emperor.
‘It’s old, but the structure is sound enough apart from the western end – and it can be rebuilt,’ he said. ‘We simply need to replace some of the larger logs in the main wall – and after all, we have two hundred skilled wood workers with us.’ He glanced at Toru. ‘I’d say your people could put this to rights in three or four days, couldn’t they?’
‘Yes, Kurokuma,’ he said. He was glad that the gaijin warrior had seen the bigger picture. ‘And we can rebuild the cabins so that we have warm, dry quarters for the winter.’
Slowly, the sense of anguish was draining from Reito as he looked at their surroundings with new eyes. Kurokuma was right, he thought. No army could scale or breach these massive walls. And the palisade was a mere thirty metres wide – it could be easily held by the two or three hundred defenders they had at their disposal.
Another thought struck Reito. ‘Once the snows come, this pass will be metres deep in snow. An enemy couldn’t even approach the palisade in any numbers,’ he said. He turned to Toru and bowed deeply. ‘My apologies, Torusan. I spoke without thinking.’
Toru returned the bow and shifted his feet uncertainly. He was unaccustomed to having Senshi warriors apologise to him, or bow to him. He mumbled a reply.
‘There is no call for you to apologise, Lord Reito,’ he said.
But Reito corrected him. ‘Reito-san,’ he said firmly, and the Kikori’s eyes widened in surprise. The Senshi was eschewing the honorific of ‘Lord’ for the more egalitarian ‘Reito-san’. Horace watched the interplay between the two men. By now he was familiar with the etiquette of forms of address and he realised the giant gulf Reito had just bridged. That boded well for the coming months, he thought. It would be better to have the Kikori as willing partners, rather than inferior subjects. He clapped both men on the shoulders, drawing them together.
‘Let’s go and tell Shigeru we’ve found his fortress,’ he said.
They made their way back down the valley to where the
column waited for them. Horace was conscious of a new spring in his step. After weeks of climbing and staggering onwards, they had reached their objective. Now they could rest and recuperate.
Shigeru saw them coming, saw the positive body language among the three of them and rose expectantly to his feet.
‘You’ve found it?’ he said.
Horace deferred to Reito. The Senshi felt the responsibility of leadership deeply and Horace thought it only fair for him to deliver the good news.
‘Yes, lord,’ he said. ‘It’s barely a few hundred metres away.’ He gestured up the valley behind him. ‘But Lord Shigeru, I should tell you. It’s not…’ He hesitated, not sure how to proceed.
Horace, seeing him falter, filled in smoothly for him. ‘It’s not exactly what we expected,’ he said. ‘It’s a natural fortress rather than a man-made one. But it will suit our needs just as well.’
For the first time in many days, Shigeru smiled. Horace saw his shoulders lift, as if a giant weight had been taken from them.
‘The entrance needs repairing,’ Horace continued. ‘But the Kikori will handle that easily. And we can build huts and a proper shelter for the wounded.’ He was all too conscious of the fact that the wounded men, who had travelled without complaint, had been constantly exposed to the bitter cold, sleet and snow while they had been travelling. Several had succumbed to their wounds already. Now, with the prospect of warm, dry quarters, the others would have a greater chance of survival.
Word had quickly travelled down the column that Ran-Koshi was within reach. Without any orders being given, the Kikori and Senshi had risen to their feet and were forming up in their marching order once more.
‘Thank you, Reito,’ Shigeru said, ‘for bringing us safely through the mountains to this point. Now perhaps we should inspect my winter palace?’
They climbed through the ruined western end of the palisade, picking their way carefully over the splintered timber. As they emerged on the far side, Horace stopped in surprise.
The valley widened out here, the ground still rising gradually. But there was a considerable open space behind the timber wall. And the area was dotted with huts and cabins.
‘Somebody’s been here recently,’ Horace said. Then, as they moved further up the valley and he could see the condition of the buildings more clearly, he revised his estimate. ‘Maybe not recently,’ he said to Reito. ‘But certainly a lot more recently than a thousand years ago.’
The timber of the buildings, like the palisade itself, was grey and dried out with age. The roofs were made of split shingles and in most cases, the support beams had collapsed, leaving only sections of the roofs still in place.
The newcomers stared around in wonder, puzzling over who the most recent inhabitants might have been. Then one of the Kikori emerged from a cabin that he had been inspecting and shouted excitedly.
‘Kurokuma! Here!’
Horace moved quickly to join him. The cabin was larger than most of the others. There were no window spaces. The walls were blank and solid, with just a door at the end.
‘Looks more like a warehouse than a cabin,’ he said softly. And as he stepped gingerly inside, glancing up to make sure that the roof wasn’t about to come crashing down on him, he saw that he was right.
The interior was littered with old, decaying wooden boxes and rotted scraps of woven fabric that might have been the remnants of food sacks. They were scattered in all directions. Obviously, animals had been at work here over the years, rummaging through the contents of the building in search of anything edible. But what caught his interest was a rack running down the centre of the room.
‘Weapons, Kurokuma!’ said the Kikori who had called him. ‘Look!’
The rack held old weapons. Spears, pikes and simple swords – not the carefully crafted weapons used by the Senshi, but heavier, straight-bladed weapons. The leather bindings and wooden shafts were rotten with age and looked as if they would crumble at a touch. And the metal heads were pitted with rust and age. Unusable, Horace saw at a glance. They hadn’t been good quality when they were new. He guessed they were iron, not tempered steel. They would be more dangerous now for the user than an enemy.
‘Can we use them?’ the Kikori asked, but Horace shook his head. He touched the blade of one of the swords and rust came away in red flakes.
‘Too old. Too rusty,’ he said. He turned to Reito, who had followed him into the cabin. ‘Any idea who might have built all this?’ he asked, sweeping a hand round the interior of the ancient warehouse. Reito stepped forward and examined one of the swords, noting the poor quality.
‘At a guess, I’d say bandits or brigands,’ he said. ‘This would have made an ideal hideout for them while they preyed on the Kikori villages and travellers through the valleys below.’
‘Well, they’re long gone now,’ Horace said, wiping traces of rust from his fingernails.
‘I think we’ll build our own cabins,’ he added. ‘I’d prefer to sleep at night without worrying that the roof is going to fall on me.’
They set up camp in the wider area behind the palisade. For the moment, they would shelter in tents, but Horace directed the senior Kikori as to where cabins and a hospital shelter should be located. With such a large number of skilled workmen at his disposal, he also gave instructions for the renovation and reinforcement of the palisade to begin, with priority to be given to the collapsing left-hand side.
He was glad to take this load off Reito’s shoulders, leaving him free to look after Shigeru’s wellbeing. Reito was a Senshi but he was a courtier, not a general, and Horace was better qualified to see to the defence of Ran-Koshi. He strode about the valley with a new energy in his step, followed by a group of a dozen Kikori elders – the leaders from the villages that had joined their party. He was pleased with the way they quickly accepted his right to give orders. Even more gratifying was the fact that they were willing to co-operate with each other. Any intervillage rivalries that might have existed before were snuffed out by the current situation.
One of them pointed out that there was little in the way of heavy timber in the valley itself. Work parties would have to travel back the way they had come to fell timber outside the valley and drag it up to the fortress.
Horace nodded acknowledgement of the fact.
‘Then tomorrow we will rest,’ he said. ‘After that, work starts.’
The assembled Kikori nodded agreement. A full day’s rest would make the work go faster, they all knew.
‘Get your work parties detailed,’ he told them. The senior Kikori all gave perfunctory bows and he returned them with a quick bob of his own head. Interesting how quickly it became a natural action, he thought. Then, as they drifted off to their respective groups, he looked around for Eiko and Mikeru. The two were never far away and over the past weeks he had become accustomed to detailing them to specific tasks.
‘Eiko, can you organise scouts to go back the way we’ve come and keep watch for Arisaka’s approach?’
‘I’ll go myself, Kurokuma,’ the heavily built lumberjack said but Horace shook his head.
‘No. I may need you here. Send men you can trust.’
‘Will I go with them, Kurokuma?’ It was Mikeru, the youth who had guided them from the first Kikori village and, as a result, had escaped the brutal attack of one of Arisaka’s patrols. He was keen and intelligent and energetic, always ready for something to break the monotony of the long, hard march. He was the ideal person for the task Horace had in mind.
‘No. I have something else I need you to do. Get three or four of your friends and explore this valley. Find the secret path out to the flatland below.’
Mikeru and Eiko both frowned, puzzled by his words.
‘Secret path, Kurokuma? Is there a secret path?’ Mikeru looked around the rock walls that enclosed them. They seemed impenetrable. Horace smiled grimly.
‘This was a fortress. But it’s also a trap. A dead end. No military commander would put his men in a fortress
like this unless there was a secret way out. Trust me. It’ll be there all right. It’ll be narrow and it’ll be difficult but it’ll be there. You just have to find it.’
Wolfwill glided into the narrow cove under oars. There was no breath of wind and the surface of the water was calm and glassy, marred only by the sixteen rippling circles left by each stroke of the oars and the arrow-straight wake the ship left behind her.
Four days previously, they had left Iwanai and sailed up the west coast of Nihon-Ja. A brisk southerly wind was blowing and Gundar had raised both starboard and port sails, and sheeted them home out to either side. They stood at right angles to the hull. In this position – Gundar called it goose-winging – they formed a giant M shape. With the wind astern, he could use twice the normal sail area.
The sea had been calm and with this extra thrust behind her, Wolfwill had flown up the coastline. As Halt had seen when he studied the chart, three days’ easy sailing had saved them weeks, compared to the alternative – slogging over hundreds of kilometres of mountain ranges. And they had avoided the attention of Arisaka’s patrols. Now they had reached the northern part of the island and somewhere, not far inland, lay the fortress of Ran-Koshi.
‘That’s far enough, I think, Gundar,’ he said quietly. Gundar called an order, also in a muted tone, and the oars ceased their constant motion. It seemed right to keep their voices down. Everything here was so still, so peaceful.
At least, for the moment. Time would tell what lay beneath the trees on the thickly forested shore of the cove. Behind the first few tree-covered hills, the mountains began to rise again, now covered to halfway down their height in snow.
Wolfwill drifted, seeming to rest on her own inverted image, while her crew and passengers studied the shoreline, looking for signs of movement.
‘Have you been here before, Atsu?’ Selethen asked and the guide shook his head.
‘Not to this province, lord,’ he said. ‘So I don’t know the local Kikori. But that shouldn’t be a problem. The Kikori are loyal to Emperor Shigeru. I will simply have to make contact with the local tribes.’