L5r - scroll 05 - The Crab

AGAINST THE TIDE

The Wail" was all Hida Amoro ever called it. The three-hundred-year-old, hundred-foot-tall structure ran across the entire southern end of his clan's territory—of the Crab lands. It defined the border the same way it defined the clan itself. The Crab not only stood upon the Wall; they
were
the Wall.

"It is a good day to die," said Amoro as he stood watch. "But it is a better day to crush our enemies!"

"You say that every morning, Amoro-san," Hiruma Waka said with a dark chuckle. He had guarded the Wall longer than any other man in his regiment and was considered a symbolic father by many young samurai. Waka ushered them into the world of the Wall, saw that if they died in those first weeks it was because of the enemy's strength, not their own youthful folly, and eventually set them free to follow their karma. Hiruma Waka was there when Hida Amoro first stepped foot on the Wall, and

he watched him grow from an ambitious young samurai to a leather-skinned veteran.

"Have you ever known a morning when I have been wrong?" asked Amoro.

"No," said Waka, "but I have known days when I would rather not think about it. We all know our duty, Amoro-san, but no one relishes it more than you."

"What about my cousin?" Amoro looked Waka in the eye. "What about the Great Bear?"

Waka looked to the west. Fifty yards farther up the Wall was a tower identical to the one on which he and Amoro stood. Identical towers stood every fifty yards for the entire length of the Wall. Each tower stationed two regiments of samurai—one to work the catapults, ballistae, and other siege engines, and the other to take up sword, club, or spear against any creatures determined enough to make it to the top. Most of the infantry samurai stayed within the tower sleeping, drinking, or gambling until the sentries let out the call to arms. Amoro and Waka were on sentry duty at their tower. Hida Kisada, known to all as the Great Bear, stood watch on the tower to the west.

"Your cousin is a great man and an exemplary samurai," said Waka, "but even he does not live for battle."

"What? How can you say such things? He is daimyo of the Crab and yet there he stands on the ramparts, waiting for the enemy. How can you say that he does not live for battle?"

Hiruma Waka put an armored hand on Amoro's shoulder.

"Sometimes it is easier to fight demons than courtiers," he said. "Other daimyo spend half their days in the capital currying favor—the emperor grows old, and they know that his days cannot be many. The Great Bear goes to the Forbidden City only twice a year and spends nearly all that time trying to undo the damage his so-called friends have inflicted on his reputation."

"Bah! "Amoro spit at the mention of the Imperial Court. "The emperor grows senile! Let the courtiers do what they wish—without the Crab they would drown in their own blood."

"I am certain Kisada feels the same as you," Waka agreed. "However as daimyo he
knows
that he must have the cooperation of the other clans. Look out at our enemies, Amoro, look to the Shadowlands!"

Waka pointed to the south. Beyond the Wall, the land itself was tainted. The grass was brittle and gray, the ground soggy and covered with foul-smelling bogs, and every creature the eye could see was heinous and unnatural.

"Once, a very long time ago, that land belonged to my family— to the Hirumas. We Crab stood on a wall at the bottom of Hiruma lands, but our defenses were not strong enough." He looked over the desolate, cursed land before them and tried to imagine what il looked like when his ancestors ruled there. Waka owned several woodblock prints, heirlooms handed down through the generations, that depicted the Hiruma lands as lush rolling hills covered with grass. Peasants tended the fields, birds flew through fantastically blue skies, and the entire countryside rang with song and joy. A chill ran down his spine when he considered that for all he knew they might right now be looking at the exact place that inspired those prints. The Shadowlands taint blighted everything it touched.

"The Crab have but one responsibility—to protect the empire at all costs. To do whatever it takes to keep the Shadowlands out."

"Exactly! So why should we care about honorless dealings among politicians?"

"Because we cannot do this ourselves. We cannot hold the Wall
and
grow our own rice
and
clothe our young. We cannot do it all. We need the help of the Crane, Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, and Unicorn clans. We even need the help of the treacherous Scorpion clan. They are the empire we protect. But they must be reminded from time to time that this protection comes at a price."

"Then let them stand on the Wall, even for a single day, and they will never again forget what it is we do. After they defend the empire from the Shadowlands, perhaps they will stop tearing it apart from within."

"Stop thinking like a politician," Waka chided. "Hold the Wall, let no creature of darkness get beyond us—if there is more than that in your head, you are not doing your job. Life is simple; we always know the best course of action—the
only
course of action.

That is why the Great Bear spends so much time here, I think. When you stand on the Wall, your choices are clear. Live or die. Succeed or fail. As daimyo, your cousin must face problems that have no clear and obvious solution." Waka let out an uncharacteristic sigh.

He feared Amoro was right on several counts. The emperor, the thirty-eighth Hantei to sit on the Emerald Throne, was growing old. Some claimed he was becoming senile, but Waka had his doubts. Such a toothless leader would not be able to command Hida Kisada's respect or obedience, and the Crab daimyo still swore fealty to the emperor. Hantei the 38th had been a strong leader for a long, long time. It was his will alone that kept the petty disputes that constantly flared between the proud clans of Rokugan from erupting into open hostilities. But Hantei the 38th grew old, and his heir was not yet strong enough to ascend. The clans did not dare confront one another openly, but behind the scenes they conducted vicious wars of propaganda and rumor, struggling to gain influence over the young Hantei—the future emperor. Kisada refused to take part in the political nonsense, but it nonetheless left the clan in a precarious position in the walls of the Forbidden City.

After a long silence Waka finally said, "I've read that the problem with being a great leader is that you can no longer simply be a good man."

"Perhaps not," said Amoro, "but you can still be a warrior. Look!"

Waka looked again toward the tower to the west. While he and Amoro talked, Shadowlands creatures had begun to lay siege to Hida Kisada's tower.

A brigade of goblins, with a few skeletons and zombies to fill out the ranks, climbed over one another with amazing speed. They reached the parapet in no time. Sentries banged war gongs in staccato bursts, and the Crab samurai swarmed out from the bowels of the tower.

It was hard to think of the creatures as warriors, or even as individuals. They seemed to come and go in rolling waves. Like the tide, they pounded the Wall night and day, no matter that it had stood for three hundred years or that for every samurai the monsters slew, the Crab kiEed five of their own.

Amoro watched as Hida Kisada waded to the front of the parapet. He stared in obvious awe at his cousin's ability to lead his troops and to deal death to the enemy. Kisada was a giant of a man who, despite being older than most samurai standing on the Wall, was one of the most lethal warriors in the clan. Every swing of his tetsubo crushed the skull of at least one Shadow-lands goblin. The great iron-spiked club was already dripping with the enemy's blood.

As he watched Kisada and his troops battle the ever rising tide of Shadowlands creatures, Amoro panted, as if he desperately wished he were stationed on that tower.

"Oh what a glorious battle!" he said.

"Don't grow too attached to watching," said Waka peering over the side of their own tower. "That wave is about to crash here too!"

Joining his companion, Amoro looked down. A row of zombies leaned flat against the base of the tower as others climbed on top of them. Behind those were one more rank of zombies and then a veritable army of goblins.

Hiruma Waka moved quickly to the brass gong hanging next to the doorway. He banged out a rapid six-beat rhythm three times in succession—the sign to the men below that an attack was imminent.

Samurai flooded out the doorway and took positions around the tower. They were a motley bunch; men and women wearing lacquered armor dyed a cool gray and stained with battle. They all wore a circular insignia depicting a crab with claws raised—the clan
mon
—announcing to the world that they were Crab samurai.

Archers moved to the edge of the parapet and nocked arrows in their dai-kyu. In one fluid motion, they leaned over, fired, and pulled back to reload. Pained groans rose from below, followed immediately by arrows and stones launched at the now-empty air atop the tower. When the air cleared, the Crab archers unleashed another volley of death.

Hida Amoro drew his no-dachi and held the tremendous sword over his head. He focused on the battle ahead. As the goblins grew closer, blood pounded in Amoro's temples. A thin red veil seemed to be drawing slowly across his eyes.

The samurai assumed difficult-to-maintain battle postures. The rhythm of the archers made it easy to lose focus, but battle postures forced the samurai to remain fully alert for the moment when the enemy arrived.

A massive yellow hand reached up and grabbed one of the archers by the head and pulled him savagely over the edge. Where the archer had been, a swarm of pale green goblins scampered up the Wall, waving short swords and spears and shouting obscenities. Before the Crab samurai could move to stem the tide, half the tower was awash in creatures out of nightmare.

The Shadowlands creatures were like a force of nature, or unnature—goblins, zombies, skeletons, ogres, and particularly oni. Oni were tremendous, dwarfing even ogres. Some seemed almost human, others were goblinlike, and still others looked like nothing anyone had ever seen before. Scholars argued whether oni were personifications of human vices or were simply creatures of great power created by the Dark God, Fu Leng. The Crab samurai neither knew nor cared about the answer—all that mattered here on the Wall was how to
kill
them.

Within a matter of moments the tower's stone floor grew slick and tacky with blood. Crab katanas and warhammers and tetsubo beat out a savage and deadly percussion on the Shadowlands forces. But the sheer number of monsters surging over the Wall took its toll on the samurai as well.

No one on either side dispatched foes as efficiently as Hida Amoro. His no-dachi sliced through two and sometimes three goblins at a time. Though, truth be told, he was barely aware of it. The thin red veil across his eyes had become a thick crimson haze. Through it, Amoro could barely tell friend from foe. With each blow, each anguished and brief death rattle, his vision dimmed a little further until he could see no more.

THE CLAWS THAT CRUSH

The Great Bear stood amid the chaos of battle and thought, "This is where I belong."

His tetsubo whistled as he swung it in a great arc over his head. It made a delicate sound, like a shakuhachi played under the full moon in a secluded garden. The swing ended by caving in a skull.

Goblins were tenacious, that was certain. Although they had bodies like withered old men, their skulls were unusually thick, and their skin was tough. It took a good blow from a heavy weapon to kill them. Kisada's tetsubo often sent his foes flying so far back that they didn't land until they hit the bottom of the Wall.