Muji cut down another enemy warrior as screams and grunts and sharp blades wisped through the air, metal scraping on metal. Blood was everywhere. The dead were scattered about the street.

Another enemy group defeated.

Muji had twelve samurai with him and nearly twice that number in lower born warriors who had flocked to him.

“Good work,” he said to the men around him. One warrior nursed a gash on his arm. Muji gave him a look over. It was a bad injury.

“Are you all right?”

He could tell the man was trying to keep from allowing the pain to show on his face. But his pause before answering told the general all he needed to know. “Yes,” the samurai said. “I am fine. Let us press on.”

Perhaps he would survive. Muji’s daimyō had some healers back at their base of operations. They were no longer roving about the city, looking for weak points to skirmish against. Not now that warriors were beginning to flock to his banner.

His force was now nearly six hundred strong.

Perhaps we have a chance, Muji thought. But chance or no chance, he would fight and he would die an honorable death in service to his daimyō.

“We head back!” he called. “You. You.” He pointed toward two men. “Scout those streets and report.”

The men nodded, obeying the well-known samurai. “Hai!”

Many dreaded him, and rightly so. His blade had stained the stones in these lands for nearly two decades now.

They weren’t far from Sakuraichi’s base, an old slum district with warrens and narrow alleys. Perfect for defense against a much larger force. Whenever the enemy sent vanguard forces to scout the area, Sakuraichi’s best men would hold the alleys while the bulk of his force, unseen and unknown, would retreat to a different area.

They were halted by a sentry with a bow, and then allowed into the warrens. Muji was returning with a fresh force of men to add to the streams already making their way toward them.

He needed to head back out quickly with some good men to make sure the warriors finding their way into Sakuraichi’s ranks wouldn’t be attacked and killed before they could reach the warrens. The enemy was already making effective attempts at burning down the warrens entirely.

Muji looked up into the sky beyond the mountains. He could hardly see the clouds through the smoke, but they were there, dark and roiling.

The rains can’t come soon enough, he thought, gripping the hilt of his katana as it jutted out from its sheath where he had the sword placed on his hip.