John Flanagan - The Emperor of Nihon-Ja

Will shrugged.

'I guess the tent stays,' he said.

Horace was studying the collapsed western side of the palisade with the foreman of the work gang assigned to repair it. This section of the work had lagged behind the rest of the repairs. The greater part of the palisade was in good condition now, the walkways had been reinforced and in some places replaced entirely, and the wall timbers refurbished where necessary with new, strong logs.

But the collapsed section had problems beyond the simple ravages of time.

The foreman pointed to a deep channel cut in the ground beneath the ruined palisade.

'This area becomes a water course when the snow melts, Kurokuma,' he said. 'The runoff water has gradually undermined the foundations of the wall at this point and washed them away. We'll have to set new foundations.'

Horace scratched his chin. 'And hope it doesn't rain. No point in repairing it if it's all going to be swept away again,' he said thoughtfully. But the foreman shook his head.

'It's too cold for rain. It'll snow. But there'll be no water running through here until spring, when the snows melt. Even then, it would take a few seasons for enough damage to be done. This didn't happen in one or two years.'

Horace studied the man for a moment. He looked confident and he certainly seemed to know his craft.

'Very well. Let's get on with it. I won't be happy until I know the entire palisade is up to strength.'

'We should be able to fix it in a few days. Now the other repairs are almost finished, I can assign extra work gangs to this part.'

'Very well,' said Horace. He gestured for the man to go ahead and turned away, heading back up the slope to the small settlement of cabins that had already been created by the hard-working Kikori.

A small group of the younger men had been excused from labouring work and the commander of Shigeru's personal guard had begun their instruction in the art of Senshi sword technique. He was demonstrating the basic movements to them now, calling a tempo for each cut, block or thrust. Horace stopped to watch, fascinated by the different style. It seemed far more ornate and ritualistic than the drills he was used to. More – he searched for a word and then found it – flamboyant, with its spins and sweeps. But beneath the foreign technique he could discern a similarity of purpose.

Now Moka, the guard commander, ceased his demonstration and called for the Kikori to repeat the sequence. They were armed with swords taken from the raiding party wiped out at Riverside Village.

Moka watched, stony faced, as the young Kikori tried to emulate his movements. They were sadly unco-ordinated and clumsy in their execution. Reito was standing nearby, watching as well. He saw Horace and moved to join him.

'They're not too good, are they?' Horace said.

Reito shrugged. 'Senshi begin learning this when they're ten years old,' he said. 'It's asking a lot for timber workers to learn it in a few weeks.'

'I wonder if they'll learn in a few months,' Horace said gloomily. 'They'll be facing warriors who have been training since they were ten.'

Reito nodded. He thought the same thing. 'But what's the alternative?'

Horace shook his head. 'I wish I knew.' Even if the palisade and the massive cliffs either side kept them safe for the winter, he found he was dreading the confrontation with Arisaka's Senshi army in the spring.

'Sometimes I think we're just postponing the inevitable,' he said. Before Reito could reply, they heard Horace's name being shouted. They turned and looked down the valley, to where they could see the excited figure of Mikeru and two of his young companions. Several of the Kikori stopped their sword drill to turn and look as well. As they did, their instructor shouted angrily at them to get back to work. Sheepishly, they resumed their practice.

'Let's see what Mikeru wants,' Horace said.

'He looks excited,' Reito observed. 'Maybe it's good news.'

'That'd make a change,' Horace said as they walked down the sloping valley floor to meet the young man. Mikeru saw them coming and stopped running. He paused, hunched over with his hands on his knees, while he got his breath back.

'We've found it, Kurokuma,' he said, still slightly breathless. For a moment, Horace wasn't sure what he was talking about. His head was still filled with thoughts of the repairs to the palisade and the seemingly hopeless task of turning timber workers into skilled swordsmen in the space of a few months. Then he remembered the task he had set for Mikeru a few days prior.

'The secret exit?' he said. The boy nodded, beaming triumphantly at him.

'You were right, Kurokuma! It was there all the time! It's narrow and it's difficult and it twists and turns. But it's there!'

'Let's take a look at it,' Horace said and Mikeru nodded eagerly. He bounded away at a half-run, then stopped after a few metres, looking back to see if Horace and Reito were following. He reminded Horace of an eager puppy, waiting restlessly for its master to catch up.

'Slow down, Mikeru,' he said with a smile. 'It's been there hundreds of years. It's not going anywhere now.'

As the boy had said, the well-hidden path was narrow and difficult. It was a steep gully that ran down through the mountain, carving its way through the rock. In some places, Horace thought, it appeared to have been dug out by hand. Seemingly, the original occupants of Ran-Koshi had found a series of narrow gullies running down the mountain and connected them to form an almost indiscernible path leading down through the rock walls.

They slithered and slid down one steep patch, sending a shower of small pebbles cascading before them, rattling off the rock walls either side.

'Not too easy to come up this way,' Reito remarked.

Horace glanced at him. 'That's how you'd want it. Most people would look at this and not recognise it as a back way into the fortress. And even if an attacker knew about it, I've seen half a dozen spots where ten men could hold off an army.'

'Plenty of places to build deadfalls and traps as well,' Reito said. 'You could only come up here in single file.'

'Same going down,' Horace said casually. 'You'd need a lot of time if you wanted to get a force down here.'

'Down? Why would you want to go down? I mean, it's as well to know this route is here. We'll certainly need to fortify it and set up defensive positions to stop Arisaka using it and catching us by surprise. But why would you want to take a force down?'

He knew Horace couldn't be thinking of this as an escape route for the entire party. There were over four hundred Kikori with them now, many of them women and children. It would take weeks to get everyone down this steep path to the mountain plateau below. And even if you could get everyone down, they would be seen almost as soon as they tried to escape across the open ground at the bottom.

Horace shrugged and didn't answer. It was just a vague idea stirring in his mind. Everything he had done so far had been purely defensive. Rebuild the palisade. Find this track, which instinct had told him must be here, and set up defences. But it was in Horace's nature to attack, to take the fight to the enemy, to surprise them. This track could make that possible. Although how he was going to mount an attack against professional warriors with only hastily trained timber workers, he had no idea. Not for the first time, he recognised the fact that he wasn't a planner or an innovator. He knew how to organise defences. He could study a position, assess its potential weaknesses and move to strengthen and reinforce them. But when it came to devising an unexpected or unorthodox method of attack, he simply didn't know where to begin.

'I need Halt or Will for that,' he muttered to himself.

Reito looked at him curiously. 'What was that, Kurokuma?'