The Golden Naginata by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Author:Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453293683
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Tade Shimataka’s white cape swirled about him like snow. He was himself like snow upon a black mountain. “Fight me on the ground!” said Hamba, and Kiso’s man was willing, though aware no man had ever won a grappling exercise with ape-armed Narita Hamba. They battled back and forth with pikes until Tade Shimataka’s pike was broken, and then it was sword against pike, until Hamba’s pike was broken. Hamba did not draw his sword as would be expected. Instead, he seemed to hunch down shorter than he was, his bowed legs becoming more so, then he sprang underneath Shimataka’s swinging sword to catch the arm and hold it in a vise-grip. So they grappled this way and that way and it looked as though a stout black monkey had somehow gotten hold of a piece of white cloud and was wrestling it to the ground and tying it up! Lord Kiso’s man’s arms were quickly strapped behind his back and his chances of winning became bleak. But in the wrestling, Hamba’s arrows had been scattered from his quiver, and Shimataka rolled over one of the iron arrowheads, cutting his bindings, but not letting on that he was loose. When Narita Hamba fell to strapping the legs of the cloud-colored man, one of Hamba’s own arrows was snatched from the ground and smashed against the back of his thick neck. With a second blow of the knife-edged curve of the moon-shaped arrowhead, Narita Hamba’s head and helmet fell into Tade Shimataka’s lap. Shimataka, gasping for breath, exclaimed, “A loss to our country!” Then, as Nenoi Yukika had done at the Battle of Dazai, Tade Shimataka, at Fuhara, began to weep. These two men belonging to Lord Kiso had known lives of war too long for them to fail to recognize the pathos of all things.

Imai Kanchira on the other hand was scarcely more than a boy and for him war was new. He was so pretty that if someone ever succeeded in cutting off his head and taking it as trophy, someone else would surely say it was the head of a girl. He was the third shi-tenno, and Tomoe Gozen’s brother. The fourth shi-tenno was Higuchi Mitsu, who was not much older than Imai. The pity of things had not yet settled into their intellects, so they were filled only with the glory and wonder of their own tremendous actions, untouched by the sorrow of lost lives and of an ancient, mighty clan crushed by youthful supersession. Imai and Mitsu fought side by side and laughing, giving contradictory orders to their men by means of their marshals’ fans, causing the Battle of Shinowa to look more like a riot than an ordinary assault. The Ryowa forces were the more confused by this. With fighting on every side, it was difficult for the dying of either army to be sure they fell down facing the enemy. To fall facing away from the enemy would be construed to mean they died in cowardly retreat; but this might not be the case in confusion such as this.

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