Cara and I glanced at each other, remembering what the keeper had told us when he had given us the quest—that a brave Samurai had gone out alone to investigate the threats, and had been ensnared.
“Your friend,” Cara asked gently. “What was his name?”
“Yakuna,” Toshiro whispered. “His name was Yakuna.”
We looked at each other again. Yakuna was the name the Keeper had given us. This, then, was one of the objects of our quest. We would find Yakuna and cleanse the Festering from him, freeing the land of his dangerous presence and laying Toshiro’s friend to rest in the process.
“Should we make a plan to find Yakuna?” I asked.
The sound of hurrying feet prevented any answer to my question. We all looked around to see old Win moving quickly toward us. He looked worried.
“What’s wrong?” asked Toshiro, instantly picking up on the old man’s concern.
“There is a large party of horsemen coming up the road toward the valley entrance. They are led by a man in a Kitsune priest’s robes, but they are a heavily armed and mean-looking band. My gut tells me they mean to bring trouble.”
“Very well,” Toshiro said, springing to his feet. “We will go and see them, though I’m not sure what I will be able to do...”
“You don’t have to worry,” I said reassuringly, laying a hand on Toshiro's shoulder. “Cara and I will see them off if they try to start trouble.”
Chapter Twelve
Cara and I, clothed in our Personas, followed Toshiro through the main hallway of the big house and out onto the road in front. On the left, the wide expanse of the deep lake filled most of the valley, curving around to protect the left side of the house. On the right, the land dropped away into the valley, and the road climbed up in front of us to the high ridge over which we had come yesterday.
Now, looking up from the porch, we could see dark mounted figures streaming over the ridge.
“There are very many of them,” Toshiro said in a quiet voice. Then he called over his shoulder, “Win, tell everyone to get inside the house. They should go into the stone wing, they’re least likely to be injured there.” The old servant, who had followed us out front, hurried off to carry out the master’s orders.
“Those mounts don’t look like horses,” I commented as the dark mass of figures moved down the slope at an even pace toward us.
“They’re almost like wolves,” Cara added.
“They are Byakko, white tigers,” Toshiro confirmed. “In the northern islands there are places where the local people train the tigers as war mounts, then capture their spirits, but here in the south there is only one group who use them; the Byakko mercenaries.”
There was fear in his voice as he said it, and that made me glance at him. “Particularly fierce mercenaries, I take it?”
He gave me a wry look. “You could say that. They are bound to the spirits of the tigers they ride, and they are imbued with the ferocity of their mounts when in combat. It’s said that the Byakko mercenaries have never been defeated in battle.”
I reached out and felt the reassuring presence of the heavy armor of Ironside just waiting for me to reach out and claim it.
“Perhaps we’ll break that myth for them today,” I said.
The mounted horde thundered down the sloping incline toward Toshiro’s house. They pulled up fifty yards from where we stood, a band of two hundred battle scarred and fearsome looking men armed with all manner of bladed weapons; long spears with curved heads, graceful, slightly curved samurai swords, axes, straight swords, daggers, and knives. Many had bows on their backs as well. Their armor was brightly colored and followed no uniform pattern, except that every man has somewhere on his gear a symbol of a tiger’s head.
Their mounts were like nothing I’d ever seen during my life in Saxe. We’d heard of tigers—I’d seen images of them in books, and once I’d seen a carving made of stone which had been traded from an unknown land—but nothing in my previous experience prepared me for this.
They were easily as tall as horses, and broader than any warhorse I’d ever seen. Heavy muscles bunched and bulged under thick coats of dense white fur, striped in black. They were dressed in battle harnesses of leather, chain mail, and plate, and like the armor of their riders, this was brightly colored and followed no discernible pattern except for the lion’s head motif stamped into the metal and worked into the leather.
A deep, grumbling growl came from deep in the throats of the creatures. Heavy paws with claws like swords scraped the ground, and red eyes glowed from the shadows of helmets. Their long tails flicked menacingly back and forth.
Suddenly, these demonic riders parted to let a much less impressive figure through. It was, of all people, the little priest who I’d seen at the Kitsune shrine earlier, the first person I had met upon entering Yamato. He was mounted not on a tiger but on a tall warhorse, and he looked small and ridiculous perched on top of the enormous, noble creature.
Beside him rode a much more impressive figure, a tall samurai with a long spear on his back and two blades at his belt. From his armor, and his horse, I guessed he was not one of the Byakko mercenaries. He wore a tall, red-lacquered helmet with a flared neck guard and a half disk of gold, like a half moon on his brow. His armor was made of flexible, hanging plates of leather and metal, layered over chainmail. He had a thick black beard, and his eyes were dark and fierce.
“You,” he said, pointing a finger of one gauntleted hand at me. “I am General Koshu. I'm here to arrest you in
