“Nana the pig is out of the pen again.” Irritation was evident in the young woman’s voice.
“I don’t have time for that now, get one of the boys and see to it — Get going girl.” The wizened woman replied.
“Yes Nana.” The young woman said with a huff before turning on her heel and departing the room.
Yuki was the eldest person in the village. In her sixty-four years she had seen all manner of social circumstances. Now she was the the leader of a struggling village deep in a bamboo forest. It wasn’t always humble trappings for the venerable matriarch.
Yuki’s nimble fingers tugged on strings that provided tension against a laminated length of bamboo. For more than six months she had coaxed the naturally reedy material into a shape of her choosing. Yuki’s mind drifted back some years. She and her adult daughter were standing on a parapet wall looking down on the smoky streets of a burning village. Baskets once filled with bamboo arrow shafts now only held a handful. Mother and daughter exchanged a knowing glance as they tried to penetrate the haze that obscured the enemy below. The two women held Yumis. The asymmetric bow was taller than the diminutive women. In their hands the weapon was lethal beyond two hundred yards.
“There!” Cried Yuki’s daughter. Yuki wiped the sweat from her brow and peered into the mask of smoke. Standing at the edge of a row of houses was a red Oni. His belt decorated with the trophy heads of defeated warriors; Yuki counted seven heads. The creature hadn’t noticed them yet. Yuki let loose a volley. Her arrows struck the creature, but only appeared to anger the red demon. Kari Followed her mother’s lead loosing an arrow of her own. The women reached back to retrieve the remaining half dozen arrows. Yuki and Kari let fly another volley at the Oni. This time the creature hunkered down and sprang skyward. The arrows landed on the ground near where he once stood. In defiance of reason and gravity the demon continued to propel himself upward toward the two women. Yuki and Kari each loaded and fired another arrow. Both women found there mark. The arrows protruded from the creature’s bare chest as he landed on the parapet wall before them. Kari loaded her last arrow, but before she could release it the menacing Oni tore the bow from her grip, nearly tossing the petite woman off the wall in the process. Yuki, learning from her daughter’s folly, took a step back before letting her arrow fly.
“Nana!” Came another voice. Yuki ceased her musing, giving her attention to the moment.
“What it is?” She replied.
“The men have returned. The men who were attacked by the Oni.”
Yuki set down her project and stepped out into the path. At the edge of the village traveling on foot and horseback were the company of men that had com in search of the Daimyo’s daughter. The men were an unusual collection of foreigners and native born. Yuki felt a shiver of surprise pass through her when she saw the foreign born man Kolya standing amongst the living. It was not the first time Yuki had witnessed such powerful magic, but it moved her none-the-less.
Yuki moved out into clear view of the men. They halted their animals, dismounting before approaching the matriarch.
“I see the Gods have favored you.” Yuki said with reverence. “It is an extraordinary thing.” She said with a flutter in her voice. “I am glad.” She finished.
The men were anxious to keep moving. They were not satisfied to just recover their companion. They were set on dealing with the Oni. Yuki knew the men were not novices, but she wanted them to have every chance at succeeding. Calling the members of the village with skill and knowledge to assemble, together they provided information regarding the fortress village to the north as well as details of the Oni camp.
Though these men were not samurai or even conscripts of the Daimyo they were set on doing the business of those so long absent. Yuki volunteered herself and her granddaughter to the task. She had lived too long with the oppressive Oni and would see this through, or die trying.
The men offered her a horse to ease the difficulty of the journey. Soon they were traveling. The narrow path, obscured by the bamboo forest, made the journey seem longer. Yuki had not ridden a horse in years and the nostalgia of the act thew her back to her musings.
Yuki and Kari had drawn their blades. Holding the sharpened steel in the way that was their family tradition. Fear was always a companion when dealing with a dangerous enemy, but the two women were the picture of serenity. Towering over them, the red Oni held a massive tetsubo. Clumps of hair and caked blood clung to the weapon, a sign of its recent use and lethality.
The Oni had been raiding the countryside for weeks. Until now neither of the women had come face to face with the outsiders. Reports from those who had faced them had provided Yuki with a healthy respect for the creatures. Their strength and magical abilities made them lethal and unpredictable. Successful encounters were those that ended quickly, before the Oni could reach too deeply into its bag of tricks.
The two women had trained together for years and knew each others abilities as an extension of her own. Kari was a new mother with a young daughter. She had even started to train her little girl in the martial ways, though she was too young to be an effective warrior, she was never to young to frame her thinking. When Kari lowered her blade and took a step back into the waki-gamae stance, it was an invitation to the Oni that would be followed by an overhead strike from Kari. Yuki held her attack waiting for the Oni to seize on the opportunity. The foul crimson creature didn’t hesitate. Jumping down from the half-wall with his club raised high, he intended to crush the slender woman in a single blow. In that moment Yuki knew that Kari would slide her trailing foot a few inches to the rear, pivoting to avoid the blow and at the same moment she would counter with her own overhead strike. The force of the Oni’s blow and the weight of his weapon would leave him exposed for a moment. Thats when Yuki would add to Kari’s attack. With a little luck they would end the creature then and there.
Out of the corner of her eye, Yuki watched for the foot-slide that would precede Kari’s attack. Too late she noticed that the Oni had not fully taken the bait. Yuki watched in horror as the Oni turned his overhead strike into a sweeping attack that caught Kari in the ribs. The snapping sound preceded the crumpling of her form. Yuki barely had time to acknowledge what had happened to Kari when the continuation of the blow caught her in the shoulder and head. Stars exploded in the space between her eyes and the afternoon sky like bees from a broken hive. The pain had not yet registered. She wasn’t sure if it ever would. If this was death it had been swift.
A moment later her view dropped to the stone tiles of the battlements as she too crumbled to the ground. There she watched as the Oni stomped the life from her daughter before vaulting to the castle beyond.
A tear moistened Yuki’s cheek at the memory of her loss. Ahead of her just beyond the trees the facade of a bamboo wall peeked through the trees.
“There through the tops of the trees, I see the palisade wall of the town.” Called the dark-skinned paladin. His excited words focused her back in the present.
The men assembled at the base of the berm that supported the wall. Takeshi announced that he would destabilize the earth below the wall if the others could cut the ropes that bound the wall together. With a skill Yuki had not seen in ages the long man, though force of will pulled at the earth and the earth relented.
Once inside, the group spread out, taking defensive positions before the inner palisade that guarded the governor’s house. Repeating the same process on the inner wall, they moved inside.
The weaponless fighter Kaito vaulted to the second story and entered though a shutter. The others pressed in on the ground floor. They moved across the tatami mats quietly. Abu Haasan Mahaad called upon the Gods of wind and chance to suppress the ability of the Oni to move invisible among people. It wasn’t long before his magic bore fruit. In the doorway at the far end of the room stood a grey man with a twisted Oni boy stilton on his shoulders like a mounted rider.
The two were formidable, but against such odds they eventually succumbed to our combined efforts. There, from the highest point in the town we looked down over the village. Was the worst this place hd to offer behind us? Or would we meet something fowler in the streets below.
Yuki had a longstanding vendetta with the Oni. It would not bring her daughter back, but there would be satisfaction.
