Musashi Province. Kaede Village. The main hall inside the Shrine.
Morning light seeped through the gaps in the paper doors, casting long, slender bands across the wooden floor.
Kōbe Hikaru sat on the steps of the main hall.
The crimson oni mask had been removed, set aside by his knee, baring that pale, handsome face.
He was waiting. And, more than that, watching.
Watching the amusement of the girl bound to the pillar.
Naoe Kanetsugu.
Her deep-blue light armor sat more crooked than before, and the white jinbaori had crumpled into a wad; the slender, youthful curves of the girl looked utterly disheveled beneath the fabric pulled tight around her.
A wad of cloth had been stuffed into her mouth.
She let out muffled cries, unable to form a single whole word.
But those eyes were opened wide and round, brimming with fury.
What had happened earlier hardly needs telling.
With the support of the whole earth of the Kantō behind him, Kōbe Hikaru had ignored the manifold drain that came from military might bearing down on him, and cleanly wounded—crippled, even—every one of the three thousand troops the Uesugi clan had sent south, then driven them all out. Utterly routed.
He had torn down this wall Uesugi Kenshin had raised to the north.
In the course of it, only those four maiden warriors, reincarnations of divine artifacts, had given him any real trouble—but beneath Kōbe Hikaru's endless flow of power, even they could only fall back in defeat.
A pity he'd had no way to take them alive.
Mindful that the grudge born of slaughter might hand the Kyoto yōkai another opening to exploit, he hadn't spelled that out either.
In the end, Kōbe Hikaru had captured alive only Naoe Kanetsugu—the enemy commander who was not a reincarnation of any divine artifact.
But that was enough.
Three thousand crippled men. The blow dealt to Echigo Province was truly terrible—greater, even, than three thousand corpses.
Wounds like that could not be easily healed, not even in this world.
It would demand an enormous price—so great that not even the daimyō of a whole province could bear it.
Add to that the capture of a commander like Naoe Kanetsugu, and the future of the Uesugi clan of Echigo could be seen at a single glance: an absolute, unrecoverable collapse. Even if it clung on by force, it could never launch a second march south.
And then came the present situation.
This very moment.
Kikyō stood at the doorway of the main hall, her longbow leaning against the frame. Her white robe and red hakama were plain and crisp in the morning light, her jet-black hair bound behind her head with a white ribbon, a few stray strands falling by her ears.
She had heard out Kōbe Hikaru's account—that the great northern camp had been nothing but bait, and the stratagem of island-hopping tactics.
And the outcome: how Kōbe Hikaru, by his own strength alone, had routed three thousand warriors, wounding but never killing, breaking the whole game by force.
The shrine maiden's expression tightened slightly, for of course she knew what means he had used.
The very means once used to answer Kibōmaru…
Once again he had shouldered it alone.
Just as, before, he had dealt with the demonic fiends of all four quarters by himself.
"You used the Grandchild system."
She spoke at last, her tone cool and even as ever, but the subject she chose betrayed what was on her mind.
The earth's support could give Kōbe Hikaru an unending flow of yōkai power—yet the drain on the spirit was inevitable all the same.
"I'm fine."
Kōbe Hikaru leaned against the veranda pillar, entirely unconcerned. "A short rest and I'll recover."
Kikyō did not answer.
She turned slightly aside, the tail of the white ribbon swaying gently in the breeze, that slender stretch of neck half-hidden, half-shown beneath her collar.
"From here on—"
She paused. A very short pause, so short it could almost be overlooked.
"Together."
Only the one word.
Yet it made the pale, handsome oni warrior on the steps go still for a moment—and then he smiled.
A true smile, one that rose from the marrow of his bones, the kind that comes from being cared for.
"All right."
The tips of Kikyō's ears flushed with a faint, barely perceptible red, but her face kept its habitual coolness.
Bound to the pillar, Naoe Kanetsugu's muffled cries grew louder.
From the direction of the side hall came footsteps.
Momiji and Botan poked their heads out from behind a paper door.
The two of them saw Naoe Kanetsugu tied to the pillar and moaning, and exchanged a glance.
They stared at each other, at a loss.
"This… who's this?" Botan asked in a small voice.
"The enemy commander," Kōbe Hikaru answered offhandedly.
The corner of Momiji's mouth twitched, and she pulled Botan back into the side hall.
The paper door slid shut.
From inside came a hushed, whispered exchange: "Lord Hikaru… he seems to be getting more and more outrageous…"
"Mm-hm."
Kōbe Hikaru paid them no mind.
His gaze turned toward the south.
Kikyō leaned in beside him, watching along with him.
They both knew that Uesugi Kenshin would surely return north.
She would surely come back.
Come back to this cage she believed she had woven for Kōbe Hikaru—which had, in truth, already become the very place of her own trap.
All they needed to do was wait.
…
That day, at nightfall.
On the hilly mountain roads to the south of Musashi Province, five hundred Echigo elites were marching in silence through the dark.
No torches, no banners—only the faint patter of footsteps and the soft clink of armor plates.
At the very front of the column.
Uesugi Kenshin walked alone, as ever.
The hem of her white monk's robe was stained with dew and mud, a white gauze veil hiding half her face. Silver-white hair hung down her back, and the few black strands threaded through it swayed lightly with her steps.
Her pace was unhurried—one might even call it a stroll.
She had no need to hurry.
She trusted that the three thousand she had stationed to the north had already begun to push south, and she needed only to walk into position at her own rhythm.
She could already feel the orderly footsteps coming from the north.
That, beyond any doubt, was an army.
By the plan, the only force now to the north should have been her own legion.
But as she reached a bend along a ridge, she suddenly stopped.
The air ahead had changed.
There was thunder—and the scent of blood.
Very thin, but she felt it.
The young girl, God of War, standing at the turn of the mountain road, lifted her eyes and looked slowly at the gentle slope ahead, lit by the moon.
At the top of the slope, a figure stood as if it had been waiting there all along.
Gray robes, pale long hair.
The crimson oni mask was all the more savage in the moonlight.
Purple arcs of lightning leapt soundlessly around him. The hilt of the Muramasa was gripped in his hand—but the blade had not been drawn.
He simply stood there, blocking the road ahead of the five hundred.
"We meet again."
Kōbe Hikaru's voice came from beneath the oni mask.
Uesugi Kenshin's steps did not halt for long.
She walked two more paces forward, closing the distance to Kōbe Hikaru to twenty steps.
Behind her, the five hundred guards fanned out into formation without a sound.
Spearmen in front, archers behind—the arrangement unfurling with perfect precision.
It was the formation called Kurumagakari, spreading layer upon layer, coiling round and round—a complex art of war that, in this age, only Uesugi Kenshin could command.
Kōbe Hikaru showed no reaction to it at all, only lowered his blood-red eyes.
"You don't seem the least bit surprised."
Kenshin spoke at once, her tone as flat as the night before, like a chance-met friend making conversation. "You knew I would come back from the south?"
"I knew."
"From when did you know?"
"From the night you came alone to Kaede Village."
Kōbe Hikaru's voice was neither hurried nor slow, and utterly certain.
Uesugi Kenshin looked at him, and in those eyes, still as an ancient well, surfaced an interest unlike any before.
Not in his fighting strength—but in his mind.
"You saw through my arrangement."
She said it.
Not a question—only a confirmation.
Kōbe Hikaru had indeed seen through her strategy, her tactics, seen through her island-hopping.
Her red lips parted lightly, and she asked, "You came here to stop me? One… man?"
"I can't stop you."
Kōbe Hikaru shook his head, entirely candid. "And besides—five hundred elites plus you yourself—it's a bad trade for me to face head-on alone."
"Then what did you come to do?"
"To look at you."
Kenshin's brow moved faintly.
"To see just how serious you are."
Kōbe Hikaru, deliberately drawing heavy breaths, let his hand slip from the hilt of the Muramasa and folded his arms across his chest. "If you've only come to make war, then there's nothing to say—we simply fight."
"But if you truly believe you're acting out some 'divine righteousness'—"
His voice dropped a little lower.
"Then think it through. Of those people behind you, how many truly believe in you—and how many are only drifters you've swept along in front of you?"
"If they die because of you and me, then how can you call yourself a 'buddha'?"
Kōbe Hikaru was working to shake the enemy's morale.
Faith is born of human qi; human qi is born of the momentum that gathers a crowd into a force.
If he could break the enemy's momentum, then what came after would be that much easier.
Just like what he had done before with the dead.
Only, Uesugi Kenshin would not be cowed by the dead.
Nor did she answer at once. She stood in the moonlight, the edge of her veil lifting in the wind, baring her whole face.
Exquisite, spirited, aloof.
Like before—like an idol of a buddha, untouched by feeling.
But the light in those eyes held a little more than it had that night before.
"Interesting."
She said the word softly.
Then she raised a hand.
The five hundred guards halted their steps.
"All forces rest in place. Wait for the north to fall into position."
The order was given.
The soldiers sat down upon the ground without a sound.
They looked entirely unshaken.
Beneath the oni mask, Kōbe Hikaru clicked his tongue, thinking it truly would not be so easy.
Kenshin herself kept her eyes on Kōbe Hikaru. "You don't intend to run?"
"I can't run, and there's no need to."
Kōbe Hikaru seemed perfectly clear on his own position.
Uesugi Kenshin nodded, showing that she understood.
Once the encirclement from north and south was complete, at the speed of the yōkai before her he could of course break out—and so could that shrine maiden, Kikyō.
But the villagers of Kaede Village could not.
She would not abandon them.
He would not abandon her.
Uesugi Kenshin asked again, "Then—you still don't intend to surrender?"
"Obviously."
The corner of Kenshin's mouth moved.
In the moonlight, that faintest curve could almost be called a smile.
"Then let us wait for dawn."
She said, "After dawn, when the two armies close the ring, everything will become clear."
So it had been said.
And so.
"You won't live to see it."
Kōbe Hikaru finally decided to drop the act, and laid his cards on the table:
"The one fighting alone, right now, is you."
"It's not us who are surrounded—it's… you."
And as those words were spoken.
The footsteps from the north that Uesugi Kenshin had felt all along drew near at last—and at last came into view.
Far off, amid billowing dust and smoke.
The three-lozenge banners of the Hōjō clan unfurled wide beneath the night.
Bringing with them the thousand-strong army of the Sagami Hōjō clan!
Uesugi Kenshin: "—!?"
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