A Time Traveller's Guide To Feudal Japan

"OORAH!" Morohira bellowed, finding a second wind and arousing his men. When he heard hooves coming from their rear, he already knew who they belonged to. He was surrounded by more dead men than living, but those that could stand kept battling with a fierceness. If the enemy dared to make it near them, they would be torn apart.

With an impact as loud as a bellow of thunder, Gengyo tore through the Uesugi infantry that had managed to work their way around to Morohira's rear. He cut them down with ease from his saddle, each strike filled with enough weight to blast through bone and cast limbs into the air.

Their single action of relief transformed the state of the right-wing in a few short moments. When those men – few as they now were – had but a single direction they needed to fight in, their resistance became that of a solid stone wall. Not only were they holding the enemy back, but a tension was rising, and it would soon burst and they would breakthrough.

Gengyo hacked down the last few remaining men and wordlessly brought his mount free of the melee. His men followed. From across the field, he saw Kenshin lift his fan of war, and bring it down, pointing directly towards him. The bowmen listened to his command. They shuffled their feet and nocked their arrows and unleashed a dark cloud of concentrated projectiles that would not even allow sunlight to pass.

It was a challenge that Kenshin had sent him, and one that Gengyo refused to back down from. He put his heel to the side of stallion all the same, and drove the beast forwards, into that cloud of death.

Before they fell upon him, he managed to use his sword to swipe a large many from the air, but a determined few made it past his guard and punctured his torso, making him sag in his saddle. "Guh…" he complained softly. An arrow in the shoulder of his useless arm. Another through his back, barely missing his lung. And then a third through his thigh.

He dared not look behind him, for he feared that there might not be a single man left. He could not even pause to consider it, for he knew it would take the venom out of his own attack, and render his sacrifice meaningless.

Morohira's right-wing was outnumbered ten to one. His men were more dead than alive. The enemy continued to push against them like a mountain of meat and that weight was beyond fatiguing. It was that enemy's flank that Gengyo targeted, not knowing there were merely ten men behind him.

Kenshin saw his intentions and acknowledged them with a shake of his head. His bowmen drew back their strings to release another arrow, but he held up his hand to stop them. The enemy was defeated, and their numbers few, any arrows fired whilst they were engaged in melee would only harm themselves more. "A valiant effort, Miura Tadakata, but alas against careful strategy your wild style of battling does not work."

He understood how the man in front of him was able to best Shingen. He knew that his old enemy, the Tiger of Kai, would never have been able to resist a battle on even terms, a sharp and testing conflict.

Akiko managed to look over to where she knew her husband to be, after having the briefest of respites. She saw him riding, all but alone, at an enemy that numbered well into the thousands. Her heart softened and sank, and she almost lost the hard will to battle, fearing so intently for him.

She and Rin had thrown everything they could at the enemy in the centre. But it was like punching water – whatever they cut down would be replaced in a few short moments. There was little hope of victory.

"Come on you bastards! Fight, damn it! These are mortal men! Cut them to pieces with the claws of demons!" Morohira screamed, bordering on madness. He remembered a time when their anger alone had carried them through impossible circ.u.mstances. He sought to arise the fighting spirit in his own men as his son had managed to do all that time ago.

It seemed to work, as the men screamed, filling themselves with an energy that did not exist, convincing themselves of a second wind. In truth, they had simply shut down part of their minds.

When Gengyo met with the enemy, rapier in hand, two forces collided with it at once. One, his small group that he arrow-headed, and the other was the small army of demons that Morohira had awakened.

Gengyo hit that fleshy mass of men expecting them to part at his charge, but it felt like driving a car into a wall. He was thrown from his saddle, high into the air, landing awkwardly on his side. His ears rung and his vision blurred. Dusty dirt filled his mouth and the air no longer ran cleanly to his lungs. He coughed, flat on his stomach, hardly able to move.

A man – be it ally or enemy – stepped hard on his legs, fighting to hold on to his last hopes of living. Gengyo scrunched his face up from the pain, unable to think as he usually might. He stumbled to his feet dizzily, and almost fell down again. The arrow in his thigh was bothersome, so he grasped it tightly and removed it, tearing free a lump of his own flesh in his efforts.

He saw his rapier lying in the mud nearby. Its silver guard glistened in the sun, fashioned like the wings of a bird. The very steel itself had been imbued with a red in parts – a labour of love that Takeshi had spent weeks upon. Gengyo coiled his last fingers around its leather grip. "A master swordsman makes the world his weapon," he told himself quietly.

When a bellowing Uesugi man made it to him, Gengyo cut his head clean off.