Kiku

“Yokishi, you are my trusted. You must act swiftly, and doubtless, you will. I know of your heart and its devotion to Kiku.” Uesugi said as the wind blew peddles of green and pink around his castle courtyard.

“Kiku?” Yokishi asked in a panic.

“Yes, along with others, taken by the Wakō Pirates,” Uesugi responded in ashamed tones.

“Wakō? How?” Yokishi asked, clenching his sword holt as the warm air pressurized with his anxiety.

“The cowardly dogs raided our harbour this morning. In a light unfit for honourable battle.” Uesugi

Yokishi stood, then quickly remembered his place and promptly sat.

“No, you must act now, stand Yokishi,” Usuegi said while standing himself and throwing his white headwrap over his shoulder.

Yokishi never saw the daimyo in such disarray. He embodied haste, clearly denying his right to servants, ashamed of his oversights. “Take our bunes, row south, and find them, get our people back. Our scouts have followed them by horseback. So far, they have not strayed from shore. They are as confident as they are greedy.”

Yokishi scrambled to his feet, “They have never been so bold; this is war!”

“They have never had Nanban desires. These foreigners who travel with them are thieves and profiteers.”

“Nanbans?” Yokishi asked.

“Go, your men wait for you at the water. Take every boat and rower. We must correct this insult, a clan that can not protect its people is unworthy.” Yamanouchi Uesugi said while contemplating his thoughts.

Yokishi bowed and sped down the ornate stairs. Plant and stone blurred his peripheral as he turned the corner of the palace walls and mounted his horse. “Yea!” He roared as his primed horse churned its powerful hooves into motion. The horse ran through tight alleys as Yokishi ducked under ornate rooftops. He passed purple Uesugi flags as they ominously draped limp, refusing to fly in the strong wind.

As he cleared the town, he saw black smoke billowing up from the docks with more settling on the waves. The turbulent sea pulled and dispersed the foul fog as he galloped closer and closer. He could now make out his bunes hastily rowing to the assailed docks. His horse had a keen sense of his will, running towards the lamenting peasants and their burning docks while jumping and dodging the detritus left hastily in the streets.

As he approached a dock, his horse instinctively jumped and continued toward a bune mooring on its tip. “Wooooooe,” Yokishi said as he pulled the reins. The beast came to a halt and the damaged dock rocked under its weight. Yokishi jumped aboard and immediately hacked at the mooring rope with his katana.

His men watched as he angrily struck the line multiple times until it severed. “ROW,” he said as he pointed his katana south.

The bune was high on the water, teetering with the crash of perpendicular waves and falling into the valleys the sea provided then withdrew. The other six bunes tried to close the gap and follow, yet, Yokishis was always first. The oars creaked as they rowed up the face of waves and flexed immensely under stress.

“Row, row,” the men in the gallows hollered as the rhythmic drums beat, and the boat broke through the shallow sea. Wave after wave was either cut, smashed or crushed as the towering vessels pulled themselves up and down.

“We have all been briefed sir,” A young samurai stated as Yokishi finally sheathed his sword.

“The Nanban have strange fire sticks,” another samurai stated.

“They have our people, and my Kiku,” Yokishi said solemnly.

“My wife was watching our stand at the docks. I did not see here on our mooring, she must be among the gathered,” A third deck samurai mentioned.

“We will get them all back or sink in dishonour,” Yokishi uncharacteristically replied.

“Is dying in battle not the greatest honour Yok-” The samurai began to say.

Yokishi berated the man, “Not if they still have my Kiku, my soul will not ascend while my wife is traded like fish.”

Upon hearing this, the commander of the archers gestured to subordinates as they gathered arrows from below deck. The men brought up baskets of missiles along with a large torch plate.

“No fire!” Yokishi said as they stopped in their steps. The men, now balancing as the waves threw them and their large bowl of fire from side to side, stood perplexed on the stairs. “They have hostages. We don’t want to burn our people. Gather the grapples.”

The men scrambled back down and returned with ropes, hooks, and after more trips, boarding planks and spears.

“Umi!” Yokishi yelled as a man dressed in black samurai leather threaded with purple and red accents stepped forward behind him.

“Yes sir,” Umi responded while pulling his religious face cloth beneath his chin.

Yokishi drew his sword again and pointed to a dark shape as they rounded a peninsula. “I want hooked ladders; the foreigners are here in their castle craft. Such cowards the Wakō, taking refuge with those demons and their dragon sticks.”

Umi nodded and turned to a subordinate who ran down the stairs to the rowing gallows. A brief moment passed, and the man emerged with three others holding a ladder crafted from oars with sickles tied to the top. Yokishi nodded and began to give his signalman orders. The adept sailor grabbed his colours and headed to the highest point of the crow’s nest, where he started to wave commands to the other vessels in their flotilla.

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Onboard the massive foreign vessel, Kiku — trained in the samurai ways by Uesugi warrior monks — grappled with her captivity. A fellow captive dabbed her head wound with a rancid cloth left in the cargo hold by the Nanban devils, who she could hear chuckling about on the upper decks. She already had an escape planned that was doomed to fail without help from the upper decks. If they were to plow through the poorly constructed door at the top of her stairs she and her many companions would be cut down before they could reach the light. She understood what a bottleneck meant to an army. If she was to use their numbers, they needed to egress before combat or face the wrath one by one as they climbed out of their floating dungeon.

“Forward!” Yokishi hollered as they closed with the first of Wakō pickets.

Yokishi counted three heavy bunes and ten or so smaller sampan-like craft huddling close to the visitors’ towering vessel. “Get me fire,” Yokishi said, realizing he contradicted an earlier order. The smaller pirate vessels would surely use flames to bring down Yokishis fleet, and he knew the prisoners would not be held on the sampans. However, even a sampan with four archers could start a fire that would devour his burly ships.

“Umi, drop your yari and help pour missiles on these dogs,” Yokishi ordered.

Umi bowed and pulled his bow off his shoulder.

“I want ten-man volleys on every craft and a constant speed to leave the trailers in our wake; we don’t want to be surrounded by this rabble,” Yokishi added. “Bees can overwhelm a wasp.”

Umi bowed as they rowed for the left picket in the pirate congregation.

“When they try to encircle us, row fast and out, and our other vessels will entomb them in arrows,” Yokishi said as the foreign vessel made a massive popping noise. Before they could turn their heads at the noise, their boat lurched with a wood-shattering impact.

Cries erupted from the bottom decks as the projectile ripped through the rower’s ranks. The oars on the right fell limp, and the boat began to turn to starboard.

“What has happened,” Yokishi said as he and Umi ran down to the depths of the ship. There was violence sprayed about the wood and men. Groans of agony crescendoed as they pushed their way to the front of the mess. Umi helped a wounded man up only to realize he was only moving at the seas command, and his chest was peppered with wounds from splintered wood. Another was missing an arm, and another, his midsection.

Yokishi immediately pushed the dead aside and called for help from the other rowers. Enough came over from the opposite sides to fill the gaps right as another round struck the upper deck, and the archers cried out in muffled agony.

“Dogs!” Yokishi yelled as he dizzily made his way back up the stairs. They both egressed to commotion; deckhands were stamping out coals that were once the firepot, now overturned and endangering their vessel. There was samurai armour strewn about with macabre red streaks where the foreign projectile had torn their tradition.

Umi was the first to call for a comrade he no longer could see. Another samurai grabbed him by the shoulders and shook his head. As Umi clawed at reality, Yokishi ground his teeth helplessly, watching the small vessels surround his wounded craft. Luckily, his other loyal bune commanders were gaining just as quick now, desperately rowing to their commander’s aid.

One pirate sampan was particularly fast and came within a hundred feet of Yokishis bune. “Loose!” Yokishi cried as his archers unleashed thirty strong salvo of arrows that fell short of the boat.

The pirates now understanding their overzealous mistake tried to turn and regroup when a second salvo fell atop their poorly suited craft. The four archers aboard were pinned to their sampan while their porcupine of a vessel was gently pushed away by waves. The other witnessing sampans tightened up their formation and rowed with more fury, followed in flank by their three heavy bunes.

The Wakō pirates were now foolishly blocking the fire from their foreign friends and rowed straight for Yokishi’s bune. “Loose Umi,” he yelled as two more boats came into range. One was hit with half the missiles, while the other was missed entirely due to an intervening wave. As it bobbed up, Umi saw another friendly salvo from his comrade’s ship shower it in flaming shafts.

As another two pirate vessels were bathed in fire, the Wakō bunes were now in range of Yokishi’s flagship, and one was angling in for boarding. “Yari!” Yokishi yelled as some of his samurai dropped or shouldered their bows and readied spears and swords.

The first of the grapple hooks landed at Umi’s feet and, as it pulled taught a soldier with an axe severed the line. Umi grabbed his arm as he sped away and said: “No, we want them to board; we have the steel.”

Another three hooks landed and closed the gap between the vessels. The pirates immediately started to board while Yokishi’s men speared them into the sea, one after another. The archers from both ships rained death on the marauders, skewering some before they unsheathed their weapons. However, the Uesugi ships had clever netting over the spearmen, buying them crucial minutes before the archers decided to engage each other.

Just then, the thunder started again as the foreign devils began to bombard Yokishis vessels not shielded by Wakō bunes. The vast boat had swivel cannons no bigger than human fists and delivered blow after blow to the outlying craft.

Umi watched in horror as one of his friend’s boat took three rounds, caved under the impacts, and tipped into the sea. Another friendly bune went to help rescue survivors but got peppered by the strange projectiles. They burrowed deep into the hull, and where they hit, the oars would cease.

Yokishi’s vista was more promising as he admired a burning collection of sampans and one bune that belonged to the greedy pirates. A vast explosion erupted the heavy bune, and Yokishi realized why the Wakō traded humans.

Black Powder: it was a crime against honour in Yokishis eyes. The heavens did not sanction such cowardly warfare. He thought as he unsheathed his blade while taking a Wakōs arm in the fluid motion. Another man landed on his deck to his back; hearing the double footfall, he turned and ducked while swinging his blade. The pirate fell backward from his freshly severed shins in a confused yelp. Yokishi quickly cut downward, banishing the thug to hell.

Most of the pirates were still trying to get past Yokishis spear retinue, and sworded samurai quickly dispatched those who found other means of boarding.

On the Nanban ship, Kiku was admiring the boldness of these sailors. When brought aboard from the Wakō pirate vessels, the people were untied and guided via sword into the cargo hold. It was either courageous or stupid. She thought as she looked through cracks in the floors.

“Boooom,” she heard time after time, followed by occasional laughter and cheers. She understood they were under attack, and as far as she knew, they didn’t travel very far. It was highly likely Uesugi was behind the excitement. Yokishi! She screamed in her mind.

Another: “boom!” and she pictured Yokishi’s boat erupting. She looked at the fifteen other captives and felt their coiled anger empower her. In unison, they all charged the door and shattered its hinges on the first coordinated strike. Their combined weight pushed the wall-sized door over, and as it hit the floor, they all charged down different directions in search of weapons.

On the flagship, Yokishi saw scaffolding go by the front of his ship. He ran to port and saw the other Wakō bune preparing to board his unprotected side. Every man on his boat was wielding a weapon of some sort. He turned slightly and looked for Umi, the only one he knew could help.

Umi drove his yari spear into another pirate as another chopped it in half. He used his broken spear as a staff and jabbed the pirate in the face staggering the man. As he threw the severed yari to the side, he unsheathed his sword and cut across the man’s neck as the Wakō stepped forward for another attack. The man dropped his weapons and fell on Umi, clawing at his throat in a vain attempt to hold onto his life. The boat lurched, and Umi, having an experienced idea of what the lurch meant, turned to meet the boarders of the other craft and caught a brief glimpse of Yokishi jumping into the fray.

As Umi ran across his ship’s deck, he kicked up a spear into his hand and hurled it at the closest pirate. The man dodged the spear, and it impaled an unsuspecting Wakō behind him. As he fought the adept pirate, he felt another jerk as a fourth vessel grappled the third pirate vessel, and the battlefield turned into four tethered boats with samurai and pirates cutting each other down on every flat surface.

Yokishi, blocking blow after blow of Wakō while backing up into the front of the pirate vessel, was relieved by his reinforcements who poured onto the pirate ship hacking everything not clad in the Uesugi livery. The majority of pirates that were not severed, speared, or cast into the sea remained below decks, unwilling to face the samurai wrath above.

The Nanban foreigners, realizing their pirates were no longer a help, began firing at the mass of huddled ships.

As wood and debris showered Yokishi, he began looking for his commanders in the slippery aftermath. Blood and bodies were strewn about, both samurai and pirates. Yokishi finally saw Umi up top as he cut down the last of the pirate archers in the citadel of the third ship.

“Umi!” Yokishi shouted. “We must break free and row!” He said as another Nanban round tore through the upper deck and his leg in the process.

Umi jumped down in horror upon seeing his commander fall to the side of his missing leg. He began to feel dread, realizing their tactical position. They were a floating whale with no way of moving- easy targets for these indiscriminate fire-belching cowards.

Every boom that erupted panicked Kiku; she knew whatever was happening, the foreigners were winning. There wasn’t an ounce of panic in their voices. As she rounded another corner, she saw two of her friends strangling a foreigner to death. She was pleased to see the life leave his alien aquiline face. Behind him, their weapons! She thought as she shoved past her companions and grabbed the first thing she could see, which was a short katana. My Wakizashi, she thought as she grabbed the blade and ran up more stairs with freshly armed comrades in tow.

As she-and her party of freshly freed slaves-entered another ornately decorated room, they startled a foreigner in colourful clothing with more frills than her daimyo. He had a feast laid across his table and, upon seeing them, lifted his ornate thin blade. As he aimed it toward them, one of Kiku’s companions simply used his longer spear to pin the man to the wall. Kiku heard him cry out in some strange tongue as she used the stairs in the room to access the upper deck.

As Kiku and her band breached the final floor, the Nanbans faced the sea, huddled around their dragon tubes. A couple turned around right as Kiku and her team began to spear and slice them down. They spared no one. For if you want to trade in humans: you must incur their wrath, Kiku thought as she cut furiously into the midst of the alien-armoured fools.

Umi was now helping Yokishi up with his stump of a leg wrapped in Umi’s turban. Yokishi and Umi both peered toward the now silent Nanban ship. They could see a brave female waving her sword amongst elated others.

“Awwww, my Kiku,” Yokishi said proudly as his brave samurai began to cheer.

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Originally published at https://ficdiction.substack.com on July 13, 2021.