27. Yoshi #2
The carts rattled on. Samurai continued racing past, more with each passing minute. How many had the temple sent? How many more were coming from elsewhere? The response seemed massive and well coordinated—this hadn’t been a simple bandit raid.
Time stretched and compressed. The journey felt like both moments and hours.
My mind wouldn’t settle, couldn’t focus, as I tried to prepare myself for what we might find, but how could I? I’d seen violence in Tooi, had watched my home burn and my people die.
But this?
This felt different. It felt like watching poison spread through the Empire’s veins.
What had been a distant horror was now here. It was real. It was immediate.
The cart finally slowed, and the scene that unfolded before us silenced all chatter and drove the air from my lungs. A convoy had indeed been hit, one carrying rice, food for Bara or the troops; but rice was so much more than food. It was currency. Tribute. The lifeblood of the Empire.
A dozen carts sat broken, frozen in time, their contents spilled or stolen.
And there were bodies. So many bodies.
They lay scattered across the road like broken dolls, their blood painting spilled rice crimson. Horses screamed in the distance, their cries mixing with the moans of dying men.
I stumbled from our cart, and the world tilted.
Not again, I thought.
The smell hit me first—blood and death and smoke—so much smoke. It clawed at my throat and filled my nose, tasting of ash and copper and terror, the exact stench that had choked Tooi’s streets, the exact reek that had hounded me for weeks after, haunting every breath.
My legs buckled, and I went down hard, my knees slamming into blood-soaked earth.
Tooi. My father’s land. The home I hoped to inherit, however broken it might still be.
The words exploded in my mind, and suddenly I wasn’t on this road anymore. I was back on my home’s burning streets, watching neighbors fall, listening to my sister’s screams as she was dragged away by ravenous, angry men.
Then I was searching frantically through smoke . . .
For anyone alive . . .
For my father or mother or uncle . . .
For Kaneko.
My voice grew raw from shouting his name.
Kaneko.
A man lay before me, his face frozen in his final moment of terror. His hand still reached toward something—toward someone he’d tried to protect.
Just like Old Kenji had reached for his granddaughter before the wakō had cut him down.
Just like Master had shielded his students with his own body before the flames took them all.
The bodies here wore different clothes, carried different weapons, but death painted them with the same brush.
The same senseless waste.
The same brutal finality.
The message of the attack was clear and simple: We can strike anywhere. We can take anything. You cannot stop us.
“Yoshi-san,” someone said, but the voice came from very far away.
My vision blurred as hot tears spilled down my cheeks. I didn’t have the strength to wipe them away. My whole body shook—not from exertion, but from something deeper, something visceral that had been building since the night Tooi burned.
I’d tried so hard to bury it, tried to focus on training, on strategy, on becoming strong enough to matter, but there, surrounded by death that looked and smelled and felt exactly like the slaughter I’d already witnessed, all my carefully constructed walls crumbled.
This is what they do. This is what they’ll keep doing. And I can’t stop them because I’m too fucking weak.
Then something clicked within, some internal lock slid open, and my eyes opened.
And I saw the way forward.
I have to grow stronger, though I know not how. Whatever it takes. However long. I can’t sit by and wait for some mysterious power to bloom in my chest. I have to find a way . . . some impossible path . . . to grow strong, to protect . . . to lead.
I don’t know from whence those thoughts came, only that they settled in my heart like loadstones, sure and unmovable, a testament to what would be built on their foundation.
I had to seize control, stop allowing weakness to define me.
I had to take whatever next step was required to .
. . to . . . I didn’t know what. I just knew that next step was my destiny, my path.
It would not rise up to meet me. I had to wrest it from the future and make it my own.
And damn it, by the gods, I would.
A hand gripped my shoulder—firm, steady. I looked up through tears to find Uncle Takeo standing over me, his weathered face unreadable.
“Breathe, Yoshi,” he said quietly. It wasn’t a command. It was . . . understanding.
So I nodded and tried to breathe.
Gods, I tried.
But each breath brought more smoke-taste, more memories, more proof that the rebellion wasn’t some distant mainland problem anymore.
It was here. It was everywhere. And it looked exactly like a nightmare that had already stolen everything I loved.
“Stay together,” Master Giich’s voice rose above the commotion.
Takeo leaned in and whispered, “Can you stand?”
I nodded and pushed myself upright, my legs trembling beneath me. My hands were stained red—blood from the ground, mixing with dirt and tears. I stared at them, watching them shake, and thought about how these same hands had failed to hold a bokken steady just hours ago.
I will learn to hold that damn sword. It will never slip again. The vow resonated throughout my being, and I knew it to be true.
Rice lay strewn everywhere. Thousands of grains scattered like snow across ground stained red.
So much waste. There was such great need in the Empire, and here its lifeblood lay ruined, stolen, or destroyed.
Only a few undamaged sacks remained near what had once been the convoy’s center.
Everything else was gone or fouled beyond use.
Just like in Tooi.
Back home, the wakō had burned our storehouses, stolen our winter supplies, left us with nothing but ash and the promise of hunger. I remembered my father’s face as he’d surveyed the damage, the weight of responsibility pressing down on him as he calculated how many might starve before spring came.
And here—the same calculation would be happening in some village, some town, possibly in the capital itself.
People would go hungry because of this. Children would cry themselves to sleep with empty bellies.
The elderly would choose to eat less, perhaps die, so the young might survive.
All for a rebellion that promised nothing but more death and destruction.
All for a fight to put one woman’s fat ass on a throne in place of an old, bearded man.
My heart seized at the blasphemy.
The Emperor was the Son of Heaven. He was divine. I knew I should never speak—or even think—of him so, and yet, standing before such horror—
How many more? I thought, staring at the wasted rice as anger writhed in my veins. How many more convoys? How many more villages? How many more Toois before this ends?
Samurai swarmed the area, some tending to the wounded, others spreading out to search for survivors or threats. But it was obvious from their faces, from the way they moved, that the rebels were long gone.
“They got away,” Kenta whispered beside me. “How did they just . . . vanish?”
I followed his gaze to the nearby mountainside, where the dense forest began. It was the perfect escape route. The rebels had struck fast and hard, killed whomever they chose, took what they wanted, and vanished before any of the Emperor’s men could arrive.
“Yoshi-san,” Master Giichi’s voice pulled me back. “Come.”
I obeyed automatically, my feet carrying me toward where he stood with several other instructors, our master, and a few senior Samurai.
No other students were present. We formed a loose circle around one of the few surviving cart drivers, a man whose face was gray with shock and pain.
Blood soaked his side, but he’d been lucky—whatever had struck him had missed anything vital.
“Tell them what you told me,” one of the Samurai urged gently.
The driver’s eyes were distant, haunted.
“They came from nowhere. One moment the road was empty, the next . . .” He swallowed hard.
“They moved like ghosts. Killed the guards before anyone could raise an alarm. They moved so fast, knew exactly where to strike, which carts to take, how to cripple our defense.”
“How many?” Master Giichi asked.
“Twenty? Thirty? I don’t know. They had archers in the trees.” The driver’s hands shook. “They didn’t fight like bandits. They moved together.”
Organized, trained, and efficient.
This wasn’t desperate rebels scraping together whatever violence they could manage.
This was a military operation.
“The forest,” I heard myself say, not really meaning to speak aloud.
Everyone turned to look at me, and I felt my face flush.
“Yoshi-san?” Master Giichi urged me on.
“They’re using the mountains as their base.
The terrain advantage is enormous—they can strike anywhere along the supply routes and vanish before proper forces arrive.
They’ve probably been up there for years, even before the northern attacks, watching, and waiting .
. . and planning. We are responding to attacks, not preventing them.
We sit on our heels rather than leading with our blades. ”
A few of the Samurai and instructors blanched at the boldness coming from a student, but Master Giichi only nodded and stared, studying me for a long moment. “Yes, that is the problem.”
One of the senior Samurai grunted. I couldn’t tell if it was respect or derision. I couldn’t have cared less. This was too important, too disastrous, to allow personal feelings or insecurities of rank to stand in the way.
The implications hung in the air: Rebels had training and leadership. Rebels could strike Imperial convoys with impunity. Rebels had already spread throughout the Empire, prepositioning for a full-scale invasion, an overthrow of all we held dear.
A shout erupted from near the overturned carts.
Everyone turned as a young Samurai emerged from the wreckage, his face pale, holding something in his hands. He ran toward the gathered officers, nearly stumbling over bodies in his haste.
“Sir!” He thrust the object—a leather satchel—toward the senior Samurai. “I found this beside one of the shattered carts. Looks like they dropped it.”
The senior officer took it, his hands quickly working the leather ties. When he opened it and removed the contents, his face went stone-still.
Maps. Detailed maps of the southern territories. And marked on them, in fresh red ink, were multiple locations. Around the edges, in tight, neat script, were annotations I couldn’t read from a distance.
“By the gods,” one of the officers breathed.
Master Giichi moved closer, and I followed without thinking, drawn by the sudden tension radiating from the gathered men. The senior Samurai spread the maps across the bed of a partially intact cart, and my strategic mind began cataloging what I saw.
Supply routes. All of them marked.
Guard stations. Numbered and noted.
Temple locations—including Temple Suwa.
Shinto shrines. Every last one.
And in the corner of one map, a detailed rendering of Bara’s southern approach.
“This wasn’t random,” the senior Samurai said, his voice tight. “This attack was reconnaissance. They were testing our response times, measuring our strength.”
Another officer jabbed a finger at one of the circled locations. “That’s the grain depot at Chiba. There’s more than ten thousand koku of rice stored there.”
“And this,” Master Giichi said quietly, pointing to another mark, “is the temple at Nakatomi. Three hundred monks live there, no Samurai, no guards. They are defenseless.”
“Temple Suwa,” I heard myself say, my finger hovering over our location on the map.
It bore three circles and a notation that looked like numbers—perhaps counting students, perhaps something worse.
The senior Samurai looked at me, as though seeing me for the first time, and I saw something in his eyes that made my blood freeze.
Fear.
“This changes everything,” he said, rolling up the maps with shaking hands. “These aren’t just raids; they’re preliminary strikes.”
“Preliminary to what?” another officer demanded, though his voice suggested he already knew the answer.
“A coordinated assault.” Master Giichi’s words fell like stones into still water. “Multiple targets with simultaneous attacks. They mean to cripple the entire southern region in a single blow.”
“But we are so far south of Bara,” someone protested. “The Asami rebellion has never struck this deeply into the Emperor’s lands. They’ve kept north of the capital, always. Everyone knows their strongholds are in the northern provinces.”
“Not anymore,” the senior Samurai said grimly. “If they’re scouting and raiding this far south . . .” He trailed off, but didn’t need to finish.
If they could strike here, they could strike anywhere.
“The Emperor,” I whispered, my eyes drawn back to the detailed rendering of Bara’s approaches. “They’re planning something against the capital. They’re going to attack from the south, the soft underbelly, where we would never expect it.”
No one contradicted me. The silence stretched, broken only by the wind and the distant groans of wounded men.
“How long before they strike again?” Master Giichi asked, more to himself than the group.
“Who knows? We failed to kill or capture a single man.” The senior Samurai studied the maps, his jaw clenched. “This ink looks fresh. Days, maybe? A week? They’ll likely hit another convoy or go after a softer target, like a temple or shrine.”
“We need to warn—”
“Everyone,” Master Giichi finished. “Temple Suwa, the monasteries, the shrines, supply depots.” He turned to one of the younger Samurai. “Ride. Now. Take the fastest horse and don’t stop until you reach Bara. The Emperor must know.”
The young man bowed and sprinted toward the horses.
“The rest of you,” the senior Samurai commanded, “search every cart, every body, every inch of this wreckage. If they left one set of maps, they might have left more. I want every fucking grain of rice turned over before the sun sets.”
Men scattered to comply, their movements urgent now, purposeful. Even students joined the search, lifting shattered planks and sifting through scattered rice.
I stood frozen.
I couldn’t stop staring at the map of Temple Suwa with its ominous triple circles, my home for these past months.
And how it was marked for destruction.