by Nancy Sauer
Edited by Fred Wan

It was a well-known fact among his retainers and vassals that Shinjo Shono disliked holding court in the throne room at Shiro Shinjo. There were various explanations for this, but Shinjo Natsume had always held with the one that said that it was the memory of his father that Shono was avoiding. Shinjo Yokatsu had ruled from here for years, presenting an honorable face while spinning plots that cut at the heart of the Empire. The thought lent an importance to Shono’s presence in court now.

"And you have nothing to say to these accusations? No witnesses to offer testimony on your behalf?" Shinjo Shono's voice was tightly controlled, with just a hint of anger to edge the words.

Natsume had known this was coming, had braced himself for the moment, and still he felt his heart clench up. "I am innocent, my lord," he said. "Please, you must believe me." He was kneeling in the center of Shono's court, head lowered, and from this position he could just see the three samurai who had accused him. Shinjo Yoshifusa, Shinjo Hoitsu, and Shinjo Kyuwa. Natsume despised them all. He could take all of them together in a fight, and not one of them was intelligent enough to realize that they were being played as a cat’s paw.

"That is all? You cannot call a single samurai to testify on your behalf?" Shono's real eye was blazing almost as much as his nemurani one. Beside him stood his sister Haruko, wearing the blank face of a courtier and idly fanning herself with a paper fan. Natsume closed his eyes and waited, silent.

"You disgust me," Shono said. "Get out of my house, ronin. By tomorrow sunset I want you out of my lands."

"Your will, Lord Shinjo," Natsume said quietly.

The sensei of the Thousand Leaves Dojo had never been a pretty woman, and the years had not improved her any. But her broken nose and scarred face spoke of battles hard-fought, and her eyes missed very little of what went on around her. She glanced over Natsume as he walked across the sake house towards her and then turned her attention back to her sake, gesturing for her younger son to pour her another cup.

Natsume stopped at her table and bowed low. "Excuse me," he said. "You are Ginkgo of the Thousand Leaves, yes?"

Ginkgo picked up her cup and drank it down, leaving her older son to deal with the interruption of her evening. "Examinations for prospective students are held on the first day of the week, starting at the hour of the serpent," he said. "Fees for instruction are monthly and to be paid in advance."

"Apologies," Natsume said, "I am not seeking a teacher. I merely wish to speak with Ginkgo-sensei."

"My mother does not…" the man started, and then Natsume smoothly placed a bottle of sake on the table. "A show of my respect for the sensei," he said.

The older son started to speak again, but Ginkgo cut him off with a wave of her hand. She picked up the bottle and studied it for a moment. "Friendly Traveler sake," she said, and opened it up. "When it is gone, you will leave."

Natsume bowed again and seated himself. "Of course, Gingko-sensei. I am called Natsume."

Ginkgo poured herself a cup. "You already know my name. These are my sons, Azusa," she nodded towards one, "and Hoonoki," she nodded towards the other.
Natsume bowed politely to the two men. Azusa was a tall, thin man with pinched brows that gave him a perpetually worried look. Hoonoki was shorter and more powerfully built than his brother. He also seemed to be much younger; Natsume guessed him to be only a few years past his gempukku.

"So, what is your business with me?" Ginkgo asked.

Natsume hesitated a moment, considering how to best approach the topic. Ginkgo appeared to be a steady drinker, so he decided to be direct. "I wish to speak to you about the Legion of Two Thousand," he said.

"Hrumph. Why speak of them?"

"You are a member of the Legion. A gunso, in fact."

"Was a gunso," Ginkgo said. She jerked her head toward Azusa. "Until him." She tossed back her sake and signaled for another cup.

"You are still listed as such in the Legion's pay records," Natsume said.

Ginkgo looked at him over the rim of her cup, eyes cool and measuring. "You seem well-informed on the Legion already," she said. "One wonders why you needed to speak to me at all." She drank her sake, but her gaze never wavered.

Natsume nodded slightly, acknowledging her point. "I need to speak to you because I intend to see the Legion reformed, and you are the person most likely to know the whereabouts of the other officers."

"And why would the Unicorn wish to see the Legion reformed?"

Natsume had known that his accent would mark him and had prepared an answer for the question. "I do not act for the Unicorn in this," he said. He gestured towards the brown kimono he wore and his mon-less shoulders. "My lord cast me out, saying that I was without honor. But I am an honorable man and I will prove it by my service to the Emperor himself."

Ginkgo snorted. "I'd find a better plan, Natsume-san." She set down the cup and watched as Hoonoki refilled it. "The Emperor does not care about the Legion of Two Thousand. No one does. We fragmented while the Winds fought over the Throne, and no one came to gather us up again." She picked her cup and drank it down, but not before Natsume glimpsed the bleakness in her eyes. He wondered what she saw in his.

"Gingko-sensei, the Legion must reform itself. The Empire needs it." As he spoke, Natsume noticed that Hoonoki was leaning slightly forward.

"The Emperor doesn’t," Ginkgo said bitterly. "Not once has he turned his attention to us."

"And perhaps he was wise in that," Natsume said. "We have seen that not all the members of his court were loyal servants. Had he drawn attention to it, some might have argued to disband it, or absorb it into the Imperial Legions. By apparently neglecting you, the Righteous Emperor preserved the Legion's existence and left it free to act in his name. Is that not a good thing?"

"Yes!" Hoonoki exclaimed. "Once again the Legion must rise to defend the Emperor's people!"

"You need to stop drinking," Azusa said. "You have no head for it and it's making you say foolish things."

"How, foolish? Our fathers were in the Legion. They died in its service! We must do this to honor them."

"We have a dojo full of students, all of whom have paid through the end of the month. We need you to teach, not chase after some Shinjo ronin with dreams of glory."

"We wouldn't be able to do anything before the end of the month anyway," Ginkgo said. "It'll take at least that long for me to get letters out and back."

"Mother!" Azusa said, aghast.

"Your father was a good man," Ginkgo said. She looked over at Hoonoki. "They were both good men. If we can bring back the Legion for them..." her voice trailed off.

"But the dojo, the students…" Azusa began.

"End of the month we'll offer them a place in the Legion. That's why I started the dojo, back when I was carrying you. I'd train up the new recruits, so the officers knew what they were getting."

Azusa drew in a breath, paused, and then bowed his head slightly. "Yes, Mother. But where will we get the money to maintain it? Food, clothing, arrows--even a small legion is expensive to run."

"I have some funds to start with," Natsume said.

"Do you now," Gingko said thoughtfully. She closed up the bottle of sake and rose to her feet. "The first class meets at the hour of the hare. Don't be late. We'll discuss this further at breakfast."

Natsume felt the tightness in his heart ease up for the first time since Shono had disavowed him. "Yes, Gingko-sensei," he said.

"The Fortunes favor us," Ginkgo announced.

"How so?" said Natsume.

Ginkgo indicated the scroll sitting on her desk. "One of my students, Tokaji, has written to say that he can't rejoin us because he has taken a position protecting a small village in the Scorpion lands."

"Why is that good?"

"The village he is trying to protect is being harassed by bandits," said Ginkgo. She grinned fiercely. "Tomorrow is the last day of the month. The day after that, the Legion moves out."

Tokaji was waiting for them when they arrived at Doko Maru. He was standing outside of the small tea house in the center of the village, with two other ronin standing slightly behind him. "The start of the new Legion, Sensei?" he asked.

Ginkgo nodded. "Ten of my students, me and the boys, and him." She jerked her head towards Natsume.

Tokaji smiled. "A good beginning," he said. "I told Washi, who runs the tea house here, that you'd be taking over his place. Utagawa-san and Tamago-san," he indicated the ronin with him, "are here on business of their own, but they have agreed to aid us."

Ginkgo looked them over. "You're fine," she told Tamago. "You'll do," she said to Utagawa. "Natsume, start organizing patrols. I want everyone to have a feel for what the surrounding territory is like." She disappeared into the tea house, shouting for Washi.

"I'll do?" Utagawa said.

"A compliment, from her," Tokaji said. "That's the Thousand-Leaved Ginkgo."

Utagawa lifted an eyebrow. "Her? Really? I'd always thought she would be taller."

"When she has a naginata," Tokaji said, "she's ten feet tall and has four arms. You'll see for yourself if it comes to a fight."

"Do you think it will come to a fight?" Hoonoki asked later that evening. He sounded hopeful.

"I don't know what to think," Tokaji said. He looked around the table where he sat with Natsume, Utagawa, Tamago, Ginkgo, and her sons. "There's really no reason for bandits to be here at all. The people of this village barely grow enough to pay their taxes and feed themselves with what's left over. All the roads in the area go to villages just as poor, so there's not enough trade or travelers to make banditry profitable. In an area like this you expect them to hit a few farms for supplies and keep on moving, but according to Utagawa and Tamago they're settling in."

Utagawa nodded. "There was an unusually vicious bandit leader, Kokei, who we tracked from the Dragon lands to the province west of here. We intended to protect the villagers from him, but they are joining him." She sounded slightly bewildered by this. "Why would anyone destroy their life like that?"

"You would be amazed," Tamago said dryly. Utagawa frowned briefly at him and then looked away. Natsume watched the exchange, wondering. The ronin woman was hard to place, but Tamago's speech had a clear Lion accent and that made the Shinjo nervous. Tamago presented himself as just a ronin, but then, so did Natsume. "Regardless of why, they are a danger to us. We will have to hunt to find them, but if we stay as a group they will just move around us and if we divide up to search they will destroy us a unit at a time."

"So we will give them a reason to come to us," Natsume said. "Even peculiar bandits need supplies to maintain themselves, and if the area they are in can't support them they'll need funds to buy supplies with. So we'll let it be known that Doko Maru has gotten nervous about the unrest and are sending their taxes in early, in cash. That should draw them."

"But this village is too poor to have that kind of money," Tokaji objected.

"It doesn't have to be true," Natsume said, "just plausible. Over the years they might have scraped up enough savings to cover a bad year. Would Kokei really pass up the opportunity to take it?"

"No," Utagawa said. "But how do we let them know about it? This is the kind of thing that we would want to be kept a secret."

"I know how to do it," Azusa said, a rare smile on his face. "I've seen it all the time, out drinking with Mother--bored, irritated samurai getting drunk and complaining loudly about their life to anyone who would listen. The next time I'm supposed to be on a patrol I'll show up at one of the western villages instead and plant our story. Within a day everyone in the province will know."

"We'll do it," Ginkgo said. "Natsume-san, while Azusa is setting them up you will scout our route and find the best places for an ambush. The rest of us will carry on as usual."

Natsume rode easily, trying to breathe around his nervousness and wishing he had a weapon in his hand. The group was coming up on an ambush point, and something in the back of his head insisted that this would be the one. After a moment he looked behind to ask Ginkgo a meaningless question and check on their formation. Ginkgo, Utagawa and Tamago looked utterly relaxed. All the others looked alert and slightly tense except for Hoonoki, who was obviously jittery, and Azusa, who was obviously disapproving of Hoonoki. Ginkgo gave a meaningless reply and Natsume started to turn back around. As he did so, Tamago caught his eye and nodded very, very slightly. Nastume's mouth went dry and the tightness around his heart got a little worse.

The road dipped down to cross the remains of a dried-out riverbed. Natsume was at the point where it started to rise back up again when he caught a flash of movement on the upstream side. He reacted without thought, turning his horse towards the motion and drawing his katana. As he raced through the bandits rushing down towards the group he slashed and cut, drawing screams and blood as he went. Then he was past the crowd and his horse was scrambling up the bank. When they gained the top Natsume reigned around and surveyed the battle below. What he saw shocked him. The plan had been for Natsume's counter-charge to frighten and confuse the attackers, but that hadn't happened--the surviving bandits had ignored his charge completely and were now fighting with a ferocity that Natsume usually associated with the Matsu and Moto. Worse still, there seemed to be twice as many as they had planned. Despite that, the Legion samurai were holding their ground. Tamago was carving through his opponents with no thought of his own defense, and Utagawa and Azusa had placed themselves on his flanks to catch anyone who tried to take advantage of that. Gingko had moved off a little to get room for her naginata, and as she wheeled and spun Natsume decided that four arms was a low estimate. The remainder of the group was arranged around the pony-cart that held the alleged tax money. The pony itself was dead, the bandits' first victim.

Natsume was about to send his horse back into the battle when he saw another dozen bandits silently racing up the downstream side. His cry of warning died on his lips as he saw Ginkgo drop the man she was fighting, turn about, and run out to meet them alone. As the new bandits fanned out to surround her, Natsume spurred his horse down the bank.

Natsume ran a hand through his hair, bone-weary and heart-tired. The bandits had stood their ground and fought to the end, with one exception: a tall, powerfully built man covered with tattoos, who had carved his way out of the Legion's line while laughing joyously. Eventually the Legion's samurai had won, but they had lost half of their own.

Slowly Natsume walked over to where Gingko's remains were sprawled. Hoonoki was kneeling next her, weeping loudly into his hands. Azusa stood next to him, silent, with tears running down his face.

"Twelve feet tall," Natsume said, "six arms." Azusa smiled through his tears.

Natsume paused outside the practice room, listening. He had appointed Hoonoki as the dojo's senior instructor, and the young man had shown such zeal for it that the students had started calling him the Hundred-Leaved Hoonoki when they thought he couldn't hear them. After a moment he continued down the hall to the office. His office, now--Gingko's sons had insisted that she would have wanted Natsume to assume command of the Legion, and the others had supported them.

Once inside the office Natsume knelt at the desk and pulled a blank scroll out of his sleeve. Azusa was off laying a one-man siege of the Imperial Magistrate's office, trying to get them to acknowledge the Legion's pay vouchers, so there would be no interruptions of his work. As he prepared the ink and brush Natsume mentally reviewed the cipher he had been taught. When all was ready he methodically wrote out a report of all he had done, concluding with a delicately worded request for more operating funds. Azusa would probably succeed, but it never hurt to have a few extra koku for emergencies. As he rolled up the scroll and sealed it in a case Natsume felt the tightness around his heart dissolve away, and he started to smile. "Your will, Lord Shinjo," he whispered.