Zodiacs - The Exile

Standing atop a gate along with ten other samurai in light armor, Kira held a bow rather than a staff and stared out past the fires of a besieging army of warriors out of the horde-lands.  They'd held for a week against the attack and had the stores to last two months more.
That was more than enough.  
These horders were many, but they were inexpert besiegers.  Even a cub like her could recognize that.  The enemy had been crashing against the walls ineffectually for the entire attack, losing large numbers and having only minimal impact on the warriors within.  At the time she had wondered why they didn't simply go past the castle, but an older perspective on events instructed her the reason.
The invaders had numbers, yes, but not enough numbers to trap the Kikage in their fortress and still conquer the whole of the Meichiga province.  Nor could they leave the Kikage untouched, the wolves would decimate their flanks in coordination with the peasants and mercenaries of the region.
And so came the siege which the horders should not have been successful with.
"Kira!" she called out with an air of relief as a man, two or three years older than her came down the paths toward the gate at the head of a squadron of ashigaru.  "What are you doing down here?  You need to be in position."
"This is my position," he said, taking off his helmet and revealing himself to be human, one of the ashigaru adventurers that served as mercenaries for the samurai.
"The gate is a position for samurai," she protested.  "Not mercenaries.  It is our home, we will take the brunt of the attack."
"The gate is a position for experience, cub," he called out with a tone of voice that she now recognized as disdain, but had once taken to merely be teasing.  "We need people that are inured to the rigors of battle."
"No Kikage samurai will break the line," Toshiko responded.
"We are not common thugs," growled the zodiac at Toshiko's side.  
Kenichi, a mountain lion zodiac that had been adopted into the clan as a child by the stipulations of the Emperor's original edict that created the clan.
"I never suggested you were," Kira said.  "But this comes down from Lord Asano himself."  
The man withdrew a sealed scroll and held it up towards where she stood atop the gate house.
Frowning, she set down her bow and took up her spear before moving to the stairs and walking down to meet Kira on the ground.  The mercenary handed over the scroll to her and watched as she opened it.
"There aren't enough experienced Kikage to man all the key points," he noted.  "So my squad and I are filling in some of the gaps."
Toshiko rolled up the scroll abruptly, noting that it certainly seemed to be in order.  Still, it didn't match with what she had been taught of how the Kikage handled matters.
"I'm going to check with Asano-sama about this," she noted firmly.
"Feel free," he said.  "It's a twenty minute walk to the command room from here and I'm sure Asano-sama will appreciate having his official word questioned.  While you are late to report to your new position."
The wolf hesitated a moment, eyes narrowed as she took in the surly looks of the humans that nominally should have been answering to her.  She was the samurai here, and they merely mercenaries.
"Stay here," she called to the other zodiacs that had been guarding the wall with her.  "I'm going to see about these orders."
It seemed that Kira was eager to have a bit of the glory to himself and didn't appreciate being held back from the fighting.  Taking the scroll with her, much to the annoyance of the human she'd usually had fair relations with, she hurried up towards the main castle.
It didn't take her twenty minutes to make the run up to Asano's audience chamber, but she found it mostly empty.  The generals and daimyo were standing outside at the balcony looking out toward the East, where reinforcements were expected to come from.
"How long?" one of the generals asked.
The answer never came as Toshiko arrived.
"Asano-sama," the girl called out as she came into his presence and brought herself to a knee.
The older wolf turned to look toward the sound and frowned as he recognized her.
"Oishi Toshiko," he said with a bit of question.  "You're supposed to be heading the gate guard."
"Hai," she said.  "The ashigaru Kira brought this and said that you'd assigned him to that honor."
She held out the scroll with its broken wax seal and respectfully waited for her clan's head to take up the scroll.  He moved to her quickly and rolled it out to scan it quickly.
"This is a forgery," he said swiftly.  "You're good to bring this to my attention.  Go back to the gate and see that it stays in…"
The alarms sounded and the wolves moved swiftly to the other wall, looking down into the main courtyard to see a stream of horders spreading out over the lowest levels of the castle.  Asano smacked his hand down into the wood of the balcony's banister and growled wolfishly.
"Treachery," he growled.  "Go, hold them at the stairs!"
The older samurai rushed for their spears, the katana was forbidden to these zodiacs despite their Emperor decreed samurai status, and hurried down to rally the defense.  Toshiko was slow to respond as she looked down the way towards the gate where she could just make out the sprawled bodies of her first, and probably last command, all young warriors like her.
"Toshiko!" Asano called out insistently.  "Now."
In the hours that followed, the horders took the lowest levels completely and drove the Kikage further and further back into the castle proper.  They lost many doing so, as the Kikage took advantage of their centuries of planning and construction with an eye towards defense, but with the outer walls lost, a state of being overrun was inevitable without help.
Help had to come soon.
It had too.
Briefing heavily and splattered with the blood of many men and zodiac, Toshiko looked down the death strewn stretch of narrow stairs below her.  The last of this most recent band of horders slipped downward off her spear and cascading backwards down the steps to join the other bodies.
"Is there any word from the Tsuwano Clan, Asano-sama?" she asked wearily.
The tired warrior, sitting down to ease his old bones looked toward her face and she knew now that he was watching the hope in her eyes and regretting to destroy it.
"The Yoshinaka watch the battle from the hills," he said grimly.
"They…watch?" Toshiko said in sheer shock, her heart leaping in her chest.  "And why are the Yoshinaka here?  This is…"
She slumped then as months of rumors came to her.  The Shogun had been making noise that the Emperor had turned weak and foolish.  That this push to colonize west was unnecessary and expensive.  That zodiacs did not possess a true samurai spirit.
The Yoshinaka were vocally loyal to the Shogun.
"This is to be an embarrassment," Asano-sama said.  "A short term loss for the Shogun's long term gain."
He looked back into the castle and saw another wolf coming toward him with a silent nod.
"Toshiko, your family has been in the clan as long as my own?" he said by way of question, seeking a confirmation.
"Hai, Asano-sama," she said in a low tone of voice that spoke of her shock and despair.
"And you are not yet seventeen?" he noted.
"I'm skilled Asano-sama," she said defensively.  "And I am not unbloodied."
"More is the pity," he sighed.  The daimyo turned toward the other wolf standing with them, an older general of the clan.  "There is a tunnel in the bowels of the castle.  We've been extending it for the last forty years in case this day came."
"What do you mean, Asano-sama?" Toshiko asked.
The daimyo again looked toward the general.
"All the cubs and house are ready, Asano-sama," the general said.  "And all the samurai under the age of choice have been directed to join them, she is the last.  None older than eighteen have chosen to leave."
"Leave?" she protested sharply, standing up.  "I am samurai and I am old enough to fight!"
"You are old enough to live," the daimyo returned more harshly.  "If the Kikage die here, then we are done and the Emperor loses our support.  The Kikage must live on."
"But we have a duty to protect this province," Toshiko protested.
"And we will," he agreed.  "But you will go with the young and the non-combatants.  You will disperse and stay under the shogun's notice."
"What do you mean 'stay under notice'," she asked.
"Hide amongst the wandering zodiacs," he said.  "Become tradesmen."
"You mean for us to become like the dogs!" she declared loudly in disbelief.  "Undisciplined civilian layabouts?"
"I mean for you to watch and wait," he said.  "I mean for you to survive.  I mean for the Kikage to continue to seek a position to serve the Empire."
"But, Asano-sama," she said.
"This is my command, Oishi Toshiko," he said, reaching out to take a scroll from the general.  "Kikage Toshiko, you must stay ready to serve.  The Shogun will eventually make a more aggressive move and those loyal to the proper order of things must be ready."

****

The woman looked down the hill past the thick growth of trees and rested her cart to the side as she pulled out one of the stools and sat it down.  Setting herself upon it with unusual care, she scratched irritably at the lumpy cloth covering about her head.  By habit, she kept her mouth closed tight as she took the scene in and delayed.
The cart and the woman's plain, practical attire easily displayed her occupation.  She was a cook that made her living selling her wares to passers by on the road or the inhabitants of any town she came to.  Her skin was fair naturally, speaking of a birth from northern climates, but it was tanned and weathered by long exposure to the outdoors.  Strands of prematurely grey hair slipped out from under the wrap about her head that combined with the tired expression on her face to give a false impression of how old the woman was.
Her callused fingers tapped idly at the counter of her food cart as she continued to deliberate, shifting about on her seat as if not entirely comfortable.  It was that time of year again.  
Time to try and push south again, ahead of winter.
This time she hoped to finish the journey instead of allowing herself to be drawn and herded back north by old concerns and old acquaintances.  
This time, she'd leave Ryouiki behind.
Maybe she'd make a place for herself in Bharita, or perhaps it would be safer to head for the Star Republic further west, supposedly it was a true republic like out of the ancient tales.  In any case, she'd leave this place behind and find somewhere no one knew her.
Drawing in a long breath with her nose pointed upward, she sighed and reluctantly stood up, placing the stool back in its place and moving about in front of the cart, reaching down to lift up the poles and then starting to draw the cart forward, one step in front of the other.
She could have traveled a little faster, but not with the cart behind her, and besides, it wouldn't do to attract that sort of attention this far north into the Shogunate's domain.  There was too much to worry about.
Taxes.
Harassment.
Summary Execution.
The normal attention a commoner could expect from the current crop of samurai.  
When she finally slipped in under the trees, the winds carried all manner of scents to her awareness, causing her to pause in the road for a moment in appreciation and consideration before starting her walk again with a momentary grimace on her face.
It wasn't more than an hour later that she was walking into town and finding herself a place in the town square, across from a small fountain that no longer sprayed but still held water.  The stools were out, the fires started and she whipping the vegetables about the wok when the first customer sat down across from her.
"How long will it be?" the hushed question was asked even as the cook could hear the wood of her chair groaning.
The speaker was a village woman looking across the square over her shoulder toward a tall robust man with vibrant red hair streaked with black and a brush of white bangs.  A tail to match twitched lazily about behind the man.  He was talking to the innkeeper, who looked a bit unsettled by the attention.
The woman looked back towards her, nervous, and a little disgusted at the way the zodiac was behaving so brazenly.
"Horrid isn't it," she said.  "He acts as if he belongs."
"Last I heard," the cook said.  "The Zodiac's Investiture still held."
"But he's not from one of the clans," the woman noted.  "He's some…wild thing."
As if Zodiacs were animals either tame or wild, devoid of reason.
She kept such thoughts to herself as she cooked and served and watched.
The first woman brought others and a little gossip circle grew up around the chef, speaking about the foreign zodiac across the square until well after he left the center of town, not realizing that the woman serving them was, herself a zodiac.  The woman left eventually, after a long spate of gossiping that past beyond the zodiac onto more local concerns, but with that little start, others
soon followed.
The town was small, almost a village, in fact, despite the small manse on the opposite edges, but there was a small stream of visitors eager to try something new.
The constable, after the tiger zodiac's loud declaration that she had gotten in unnoticed, came to check her out, and left with a free and satisfying breakfast prepared silently by the traveling woman.  The blacksmith stopped by soon after to try some of the food, followed by a woodcutter's wife.  An innkeeper from across the square came next, eager to discuss recipes and arrange a possible trade, always a thing to consider.
It was going to be a busy day, a profitable day.
That thought almost brought a twitch to her mouth.  
Profits brought flies.
They came out of the alleys and dark corners of the town square, young toughs in black leather, swords and guns boldly displayed under boastful grins.  The woman was already mentally counting out money when the apparent leader sat down.  
Behind him stood a tall bruiser leaning on a long staff eyeing the cook like a vulture over a corpse.
"You're turning quite the business day here," the narrow headed man said in something that was supposed to be a subtle threat.
"I am," the cook said simply, shaking her wok to get the vegetables swirling and adding in some diced snake meat that she had hunted up the day before.
"Well, there's a tax to pay on business in this town," the greasy thug said.
"There always is," was the tired response.  "How much do I owe?"
"Well, that's a pleasant change," the thug said, taken aback.  "Most of you traveling merchant types quibble over this sort of thing."
The woman did not respond to that with anything more than the frustrated look of someone who's repeating an oft-hated task.
"Hey," the thug with the staff spat angrily.  "You show us the proper respect."   He was confused by the woman's behavior and expressed that confusion in suspicion and anger.
She paused only a moment in her cooking, letting things sit, to look up into the thug's eyes.  The staff-wielder stepped back involuntarily, shocked by the momentary glimpse of iron he'd seen in those orbs.  Just as quickly, the woman was back to cooking and lowering her eyes to her work.
"I apologize," she said quietly, trying to give a better impression of tired frustration.  
"Don't mind him," the leader said.  "He gets cranky without his afternoon nap.  As to the price, the tax, that is going to be one coin out of ten"
The woman nodded as if expecting that and pulled open a drawer to retrieve the demanded funds, placing the coins down in front of the man with enough hesitance to communicate that it was a heavy blow to her funds.
"Thanks for that," the leader said, taking the first bite out of the order she'd placed in front of him.
Common, posturing thugs, but they were careful not to press their posturing too far with the common residents.  They were only harassing her so much because she was an outsider, which meant larger extortion rates and a larger threat behavior.
A pack of chihuahuas, protecting their hunting grounds.
It was a scene that she had seen played out a thousand times and more before.
"Boss, look over there," one of the other thugs noted, pointing toward another collection of men coming in from the wilds just like the cook had.
They were looking upwind of her, so she had to crane her head up to see what they were looking at.  As soon as she saw what they were looking at, she flexed her fingers in wary anticipation.
Five men, weapons sheathed practically, for ease of access rather than merely thrusting them in people's faces.  A basic understanding of stances and form.   Piecemeal armor, scavenged from any of a number of places.  Lean, hungry faces with quickly moving eyes.
It was a combination of ignorance with hard-earned competence that screamed one word: bandits.
If she was lucky they'd keep acting the way they were.  This might have been a small town, but five bandits was still not a problem for even a large village, much less a small town.  Things would get a little bumpy, but she wouldn't have to do anything herself.
Still, she took in the weapons and the body styles.  
One rifle, nearly-empty ammo belt, fixed with bayonet.
Two Ryouiki katanas.  One wielded by an emaciated man eyeing her booth hungrily but not breaking from the others, the other wielded by stocky man who put too much force behind his blows judging by the condition of the blade as he drew it.
That was a bad sign.
One brutish man with a heavy, two-handed club, probably held himself with the most skill of all of them.
It would be the biggest one who had the most skill.
The last was a weasely man carrying a small arsenal of daggers.
"Hey, look, the constable's going off to question them," the boss said, noting the constable.  "Let's go stand somewhere obvious."
"I wouldn't," the cook said coolly.
The boss turned to look at her incredulous.
"This cook thinks she knows better than us," the man said, laughing.  "Stay with cooking, lady, let professionals handle this."
Professional woodcutters, amateur fighters, the woman thought disparagingly as  they left, laughing uproariously.  The large one with the staff glared at her outright.
The wind changed and a plethora of new smells whipped through the town center, pulling the woman's eyes wide for a moment.  There were more of them, all through out the town based on the cacophony of scents she was just barraged with, including a few zodiacs other than the one she'd already seen.
Slowly and carefully, checking behind her first to see if anybody was watching, she pulled her traveling breeches down an inch or two and grimaced as a fluffy brush of a tail pulled itself out of the uncomfortable confines.  She quickly pulled the breeches back to a modesty-preserving position, or as close as she could with the tail in the way, and grabbed a second apron to wrap around back
of her.
It wasn't the best of disguises, but it would keep her fully combat ready.
It was only a matter of time.  There were too many bandits in too many places.  
It was dry tinder awaiting a spark.
Letting her cooking fire die down, the tailed woman started casually moving around towards the general store near the developing conflict, bucket in hand as if going to seek ingredients or provisions.
She wasn't more than a quarter of the way there when the spark ignited somewhere.
A series of gunshots cracked through the late autumnal air.  
The local thugs and constable made the mistake of turning toward the sound.
The bandits obviously didn't know precisely what was going on, but they were twitchy enough to react before they found out the full situation.
The woman's slow and careful steps were traded with quick, light steps that seemed to catapult her silently into the air and across the square, but she wouldn't be there in time for the first blows.
The huge bruiser swung out, clocking the staff-wielding local thug across the temple, sending the man rocking back on his feet.  The two katanas drew and sliced downward on the constable before he could draw his sai, drawing two long red lines across his body.  Another of the local thugs went down with a dagger in his eye.  Only the thugs' boss got off any attack as he drew a line across the bayonet wielder's face even though the butt of the rifle smacked into his gut.
The fight continued in slow motion for the leaping zodiac, hands at her side and fingers splayed ready to grasp and twist.  The air rushing past her tore at the cloth binding about her head, loosening it to fly back in the wind and let her wolf's ears flip free into the air, even as her lips pulled back revealing a set of sharp canines.
The thugs and constable tried to fight back, weakly, as she sped through the air behind them, as yet unseen by the combatants.  Already more bandits were flooding into the square from other parts of the town, a small stream of hungry rats looking for something to eat, chasing down mice that ran before them.  
Then she landed in between the fight already in the works, a cloud of road dust rising up around her as she put one hand down to the ground to balance herself.
Bandits and locals alike stared at what to them was a sudden appearance and stepped back from the grey-haired wolf woman as she fluidly pushed herself forward, giving her grasping hands an extra body length of reach to grasp at the rifleman's weapon and, anchoring off her forward momentum, threw herself backward into a flip, pulling on the rifle as she did so.
The rifleman rocketed across the square, sans his weapon, to slam into a tree growing out of the road hard enough to send a cascade of splinters out of its bark.  At the same time the woman flipped back and fell into a straight upright posture, hands to either side, rifle discarded to her side.
She watched them, seemingly still in shock from her appearance, much less the fact that she'd already taken one of their number out of the equation.  Their fidgety motions twitched over an eternity as they, one by one decided what to do, minds not yet registering that she was already in motion.
A short dash and hop brought her behind the knife thrower, one hand slipping out across the divide of inches to collide into the back of the man's neck with a lethal snap.  
The stocky swordsman had finally decided the fight was still happening and was in the process of stepping forward, pulling his katana back for a swing.  
The wolf stepped around the falling body of the dagger-thrower and reached up a hand to grip the swordsman's elbow as he was still in the set-up backswing.  Her arm twisted down and around as she walked and stared past the man, leaving him behind her, screaming in pain and bleeding from where the splintered edge of bone protruded from his arm.
The club-wielder was backing up behind a swell of reinforcements, some of whom
were distracted from harassing the visible townsfolk by the last three seconds' massacre.  The emaciated swordsman had managed to start swinging his katana forward on a wobbly arc that might have been intended to either slice her throat or stab her heart.
She reached out to the side as it approached, catching his hand while her eyes sought out the next target.  The katana was pulled past her to slice into a thug that had made a wide and obvious route to come at her back and the emaciated swordsman had just time to note the second hand reaching to his chin before his larynx was twisted out of his throat.
Two thugs ran out of ahead of the general pack as more came in from behind.  She idly ducked under the first of the two, twisting slightly to both toss more energy into his trajectory and dodge a swinging axe from his partner.  The thrown thug slammed into the group forming behind her, causing little harm but scattering the bulk of them like bowling pins.
"That's Kikage Toshiko," the club-wielder from the start of the fight was shouting from somewhere near the back.  "Kill her and we'll be rich from the bounty."
The other forward thug, a young zodiac stared at her in terror as he tried to recover his swing.  The axe was rudely ripped out of his hand as a casual, dismissive open palm pushed into his solar plexus sending him solidly, but gently, against a nearby wall.
"Sit out of it, pup," the woman said coolly as her arm whipped forward, tossing the axe into a loop the rabble probably thought was the height of skill, but which the warrior woman recognized as merely passable.
"It's the coward of the Kikage siege," the clubber shouted again.  "Kil--ggrk."
The wolf warrior moved onward to her next targets even before the axe embedded itself into the skull of the shouting bandit.
Her walking pace, as far she perceived, quickened slightly as a bandit tried to divert to the side, hoping to reach a peasant woman frozen in a nearby doorway.  
The forward-aiming flip took the bandits by surprise as they collided over her original spot with the bandits that had recovered from her scattering them earlier.  She'd bought herself at least two seconds as they unraveled that mess.
That was plenty of time to intercept the would be hostage taker, grab the arm that he held his dagger in, snap it so that his dagger embedded in his own throat, turn to the peasant, push her harmlessly back into the building and shut the door behind the panicking woman.
This left her walking near the thugs and constable that had earlier tried to fight back, the staff-wielder was just recovering as she grabbed the staff from his hands, whipped it about to plant into the ground and launch herself forward into the middle of the bandit swarm.  The staff deflected the few blows that managed to come within a foot of her, and then, as she landed, it swung outward cracking skulls along its path.
Then she thrust it behind her, pushing straight back on a young human bandit.  
With her attention apparently behind her, a snarling thug moved in with an ugly knife, only to have the short end of the shaft slammed down his head, bringing the rear end to swing up into the kid's chin.  
The kid sprawled back into the fountain, back against the rim of the pool and completely unconscious.  The thug in front of the wolf woman had the sensation of feeling all his vertebra collapse in on themselves before he himself collapsed to the ground like a wet sponge.
Staff tucked under one arm, she jabbed a pair of fingers like a small dagger out to her right into an approaching bandit's chest, crushing the muscle into the heart and stopping it instantly.  The dead body, its mind not yet gone, stumbled past her, axe clattering out of its numbed fingers.
The pole came back to both hands with a snap of motion that cracked the knee of one bandit and crushed the throat of a second.
The field was rapidly running out of bandits for her to be concerned with.  The remaining five were starting to back away, scattering in three directions under the assumption that she couldn't catch them all.
A swift leap brought her down between two of the runners, the staff coming hard enough against the small of their back that their necks snapped from the whipping.  Lashing her body out as she had against the rifleman to start the fight, her staff found just the reach it needed to snap the third runner's knee.
Not bothering to pull back out of the lunge, she slipped into it, landing feet first on the skull of the fallen third, caving it in and giving her a surface to rebound off of to land ahead of the furthest of the two remaining running bandits.  
The bodies of the first two runners finished collapsing to the ground.
The staff speared past the first slamming into a cavity just under the rib cage of the second, shutting off his lungs long enough for a painful death as her elbow caught the last in the chin.  The jaw shattered and the neck snapped.
She walked past the crumpling body surveying a scene of dead, dying and crippled men, waiting to see if anybody else felt like continuing to fight or threaten the citizens of the town.
A cracking sound behind her brought her ears flaring up to attention and she turned minutely to see the constable shaking as he stepped forward, a sai in his hand.
"Ki…ki….kikage..T…T.T.T.T…," he tried to say.
She turned about, frowning as the man considered whether or not to try and arrest her.  A long sigh came out of her nose, down past her mouth, it appeared  she would have to leave earlier than expected.
Jun's eyes closed as her thoughts worked backwards more than eight years when she had had to be ordered to survive and go into hiding.
And now?
"My name is merely Jun," the wolf answered him with a twinge of morose regret.
He slowly shook his head at her response.
Then someone came up behind the constable.  A tall Bharita man, hair streaked white with age, laid a calming hand on the man's shoulder and stepped past him, a slight smile on his face.  Jun, Toshiko, whatever name she used, she could feel the sweat beading on her forehead as he approached.
"Don't worry, Hari-san," the old man said.  "Sit down, you're bleeding."
She shifted smoothly into a guard stance, pole forward of her to keep the unknown away, or at least that was her intention.  Instead she found the pole swiftly, gently and unstoppably pulled from her grasp and looked up to see it in the old man's hands.
"I believe you said your name was Jun," the old man said evenly.
Shock at how outmatched she, the man's sheer presence and the fact that he wasn't moving to attack her all combined to set her off-balance and she quickly defaulted to older days for a quick response.
"Hai," she said, coming to a stance of attention.
Behind the preternaturally serene old man, the constable put away his sai and breathed a sigh of relief, apparently willing to accept anything the older man was willing to.
"No need for that," he said, waving aside the formal tone she'd used.  "I just need you to start cooking some food, we're looking at some hungry work."
"Hai" she repeated, feeling a bit out of sorts for disregarding the man's instructions to not be so formal.  Then, half without thinking, she turned and walked toward her cart to start cooking again.
The first batch of food was well on its way when she realized how easily she'd just given in to the man's requests.  A chilling thought worked its way down her spine as she realized that he might have just as easily asked her to walk into a cell and let them lock her in.
Her eyes stood wide, and her ears perked out to the side as she let that realization soak in, spatula hanging over her wok until the realization that she was about to let the food burn brought her to action again.
The wolf looked up briefly from her wok and over to where the old man was tending the fallen, seeing who was alive and who wasn't, and wondered…just who was this man.