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"The Choshu Chronicles" by Omasu Oniwaban by The Archivist

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CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Takahata was nowhere to be found. Shunme scoured the docks, and set up watchers to intercept him should Takahata try to buy passage out of Choshu on a ship. He also had people watching the roads leading away from Shimonoseki. Kenshin knew this because Shunme began confiding in him.

Usually when Shunme was away on ‘errands’ for Katsura, he never told Kenshin what he was up to, but now that Kenshin knew Shunme’s other job was intelligence gathering, this changed.

“It’s been three days.”

Shunme was lying on the tatami mat next to where Kenshin was sitting on his knees in the room set aside for the guards. The man’s arm lay over his eyes, and his body spoke of the exhaustion of the past few days. Hojo and Oshio had been recalled from Takasugi’s forces to take Nakamura and Takahata’s place as alternate bodyguards. They were on duty, so the room was empty of everyone but Shunme and Kenshin.

“I’m beginning to think he slipped out of town before I could set up my watchers.” Shunme groaned and sat up. “If Takahata is still here, he won’t leave easily.”

Kenshin nodded curtly. He’d been roaming the streets of Shimonoseki also on his off duty hours. There was no sign of the poisonous little man who’d brought Nakamura to his doom.

“You want to go get a drink?” Shunme asked suddenly.

“Thank you, but no.” Kenshin answered. Perhaps Takahata was hiding at a friend’s home. That would explain why he hadn’t ventured out for food or other supplies.

Shunme sighed. “You’re too serious, Kenshin. We’ll find Takahata. It’s only a matter of time.”

That’s what Kenshin was afraid of, that Shunme would find Takahata first, depriving Kenshin of the chance to kill the man himself.

“We might not be here for much longer.” Shunme lay back down on the mat, propping himself up on his elbows and surveying his toes. “Word has it that the Tokugawa commander in Hiroshima is getting fed up with the war. Even with the shogun’s personal samurai and a contingent from Kii Han, he hasn’t been able to stop us. They say their forces are running low on everything from food to ammunition. Their soldiers haven’t been paid, and they’re starting to complain.” He lay back fully on the ground and stared up at the ceiling. “If he retreats, like the rumors say, we’ll advance, and we’ll win.”

“Rumors from your spies?” Kenshin hadn’t meant to speak, or to allow the bitterness into his voice.

Shunme sat up, concern in his eyes. “Yes, my spies. Merchants who travel through that area. Shopkeepers who keep an ear open when Tokugawa troops talk while buying things. Tavern owners. Servants in the inns where troops are staying. Those type of spies, not the type who stab their best friend in the back.”

The reminder of Takahata’s perfidy lay between them in that statement.

Shunme broke off and stared past Kenshin at something only he could see. His voice lowered. “Though I have to admit, it would make my life a lot easier if I had a spy in the Tokugawa forces’ central command at Hiroshima. Nearly all of them gave their personal oath of allegiance to the shogun, so that’s just not going to happen.” The regret in his voice was palpable.

Kenshin closed his eyes. What with guard duty and prowling his way around the streets of Shimonoseki at night, he hadn’t had much sleep the past three days. He didn’t want to care about Shunme’s problems as chief spymaster for Katsura. He didn’t want to hear about it, yet something kept him in the room, allowing Shunme to vent his frustrations.

It was odd, in a way, to realize that he was seeing the true Shunme, the one with lightning quick intellect hidden under a genial, laughing demeanor. Shunme once said he laughed so that he wouldn’t forget how to seem normal for his family when he returned home. Had that been a lie?

“When?” Kenshin asked at last.

“When what?” Shunme’s voice echoed his puzzlement.

“When will we have to leave?”

“Ah Kenshin, you and your one track mind. Even if we leave tomorrow, my watchers will still be in place. They’ll catch Takahata. You’ll see.”

o-o-o


Actually, it was the end of June when the Tokugawa forces in Hiroshima began to pull back from the eastern border. Katsura and Takasugi threw all the forces they could spare into chasing the retreating bakufu troops all the way back to their stronghold.

The retreat was less spectacular than the one on the Kokura coast where Takasugi’s forces had routed the Bakufu forces by burning everything in their wake. There was, however, sporadic skirmishing as the Bakufu troops pulled away. Takasugi, with Katsura’s blessing, claimed both Kenshin and Shunme and added them to the Choshu contingent sent to chase the Bakufu out of their territory.

They were loosely assigned to a squad of soldiers who were ordered to protect the artillery unit advancing slowly towards Hiroshima. The few cannons the Choshu clan owned were more precious than gold to Takasugi, and he protected them accordingly.

It was hot. The short summer rainy season was long gone, as was the cooling rain that lingered in its wake. Now the air was hot and oppressive, and the only moisture to be found was trickling down the foreheads and backs of the men cursing and wrestling their heavy artillery weapons along the road.

Kenshin and Shunme marched along before the squad, scouting for any bakufu snipers left behind to harry the advancing Choshu forces. Kenshin killed three in the first day, Shunme two, though death had come for their victims in very different ways.

That night, as they camped by the roadside with the other men, Kenshin stared curiously while Shunme cleaned his new favorite weapon, a Spencer Carbine.

The gun was one of those purchased with Ryoma’s help from Thomas Glover, an arms merchant in Nagasaki. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Shunme pulled the tube-like cartridge containing the weapon’s bullets out of the back of the wooden stock, and checked it.

Evidently pleased with it, the round faced samurai stuck it back inside the flat shaped wooden stock, and turned the gun upside down. With a quick, practiced motion, he pulled on a metal lever attached to the underside of the stock to open the weapon, and proceeded to wash and oil the open metal portion inside.

Kenshin looked away. He would never use one of those things. Shunme told him that the Spencer Carbine could kill seven men in half a minute, depending on the shooter’s accuracy. What struck Kenshin as wrong was that the victims could be killed from afar.

At least with a sword, death came face to face with at least a chance of defending oneself and resisting it. Even one as proficient in the Hiten Mitsurugiryu style such as Kenshin might one day die at the hands of a superior swordsman, battling face-to-face and skill-to-skill.

His memory drifted to that time in Kyoto where he’d fought a tall, deadly member of the Shinsengumi to an impasse. The man had the eyes of a wolf, only partially concealed by the strands of hair escaping from his samurai’s topknot. What was it the younger one had called him? Saito?

“Kenshin.”

He looked up at the sound of his name to find Shunme smiling at him, the gun across his legs closed now and the cleaning supplies put away.

“Your thoughts are far away tonight.”

“I was thinking of the past.” said Kenshin slowly.

Shunme’s eyes immediately clouded. “I’m sorry. I…”

Realizing that Shunme thought he was speaking of Tomoe, Kenshin spoke to reassure him. “No, not that. Kyoto. The Shinsengumi I fought there.”

The man’s face rose again in his memory, as did the face of the younger boy, Okita, who he’d fought initially. He remembered the way the older man, Saito, stepped in to protect Okita when the boy began to cough up blood during the fight.

Okita’s response had been part annoyance and wounded adolescent pride, and part hero worship. He wondered where those two were now. There were rumors that Kondo Isami, leader of the Shinsengumi, had been raised to samurai status by the shogun himself. If he were part of the shogunal samurai contingent sent to Choshu, perhaps the other two…?

Shunme chuckled softly, breaking into Kenshin’s thoughts. “I should thank those Shinsengumi. If it hadn’t been for them, I’d never have gone to Katsura about you and I’d probably still be suspecting you of being a bakufu spy.”

“And now?”

Shunme blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Do you trust me?”

A genuinely bewildered look crossed Shunme’s face. “Why wouldn’t I?” He asked simply.

Kenshin lowered his eyes and spoke softly to the ground. “I heard you and Kurata speaking back in Kyoto. You didn’t trust me then.” Kenshin waited expectantly.

He hadn’t meant to reveal so much, or ask so much of Shunme. Something about the night, sitting by the campfire’s light, with the artillery men moving and talking around them in the background seemed to encourage confidences.

Shunme was quiet for a moment, then began to speak. “Kenshin, back then I didn’t know the whole story. It’s my job to suspect everyone. But I don’t suspect you anymore. So yes, I trust you.”

Kenshin glanced up to find Shunme gazing at him steadily, honestly, without the habitual teasing good-humored glint in his eyes.

“In case you didn’t realize it,” Shunme went on. “I consider you a friend.”

Kenshin blinked. “Thank you, Shunme.” he said formally, at last.

The irrepressible humor that was part and parcel of Shunme rose to the surface. He grinned. “Good, now that that is settled, I will prove to you how much I trust you by allowing you to take first watch.”

Shunme turned, and rummaged in his pack to find his bedding, and began to cheerfully unroll it by the fire. “I trust you to protect me from bakufu troops, stray shinsengumi, bed bugs, and Inui out looking for an evening snack.” he ended, referring to one of the artillerymen who was notorious for eating his own food then scrounging leftovers from everyone else in the squad. “I don’t want to wake up in the morning to find Inui has chewed off one of my toes, so you be sure you stay awake, alright?” Shunme grimaced at Kenshin in mock severity.

“Yes.”

At Kenshin’s assent, Shunme grinned, rolled under his blanket and settled down for the night.

Kenshin turned his back to the fire and stared out at the darkened tree line surrounding their campsite, regaining his night vision. The fire warmed his back, but no more than the memory of Shunme’s words warmed him inside.

Friend.

Shunme called him a friend. This time, Kenshin believed it.

o-o-o


The artillery pounded in migraine producing monotony. Kenshin hung back watching the six men teams load and fire their cannons. These cannons were black in color, not like the bronze ones he’d seen on Takasugi’s ship.

The canon directly in front of him, a long cast iron cylinder seated on a wheeled wooden carriage platform, was being loaded with quick efficiency by its team.

One man handed the ammunition, a cone shaped metal object tapering at the rear into seven raised ridges, to a second man, who placed it carefully in the mouth of the cannon. As soon as his hands left it, a third man on the other side of the cannon took a stick-like object and rammed it down the cannon’s mouth. Another man fussed at the base of the cannon, stepping back to allow still another to stick something that looked like a brass tube in a vent at the base, and grab hold of the lanyard, the piece that when pulled, ignited the primer and propelled the cone shaped object out of the mouth of the cannon.

The gunner, the member of the team responsible for aiming and giving the command to fire, waited patiently in the rear.

In a short while, the cannon fired, shooting its deadly load at some trees at the base of a hill many yards away where a squad of straggling bakufu soldiers were holed up.

Kenshin looked away, not wanted to see the splinters of wood, shrub, and human bodies thrown up in the air at the point of impact.

White clouds of smoke drifted around the base of the cannons, their acrid smell filling the hot June afternoon air.

He wondered how Shunme, who’d left on a scouting mission with some other soldiers, was faring. Kenshin and the rest of the squad were ordered to stay behind in case some of the Bakufu snipers tried to sneak up from behind and shoot at the artillerymen.

The Bakufu forces may have been retreating to Hiroshima, but they left behind several men to do what damage they could to slow the approaching Choshu forces.

“Hey, you!”

An officer, one of the nameless, bossy individuals who barked orders like Murata, without consideration or politeness, rode up on a chestnut horse and stopped before Kenshin.

The man glared around, pulling his restless animal into a few backward steps before getting the horse under control. “Where’s your rifle?” he barked.

“I don’t have one.”

The man squinted through the receding smoke of the last cannon’s fire. “Right. You’re that one.”

Kenshin wondered what the man had been told about him, then dismissed the thought as the horseman continued.

“There’s word that a group of soldiers may be sneaking around the next village trying to circle behind us.” The man nodded to the northwest of their position, still needing both hands on the reins to control the nervous beast beneath him. “They were seen moving that way. You’re to go check it out.”

Kenshin nodded, but the man was already wheeling his horse around and cantering away.

o-o-o


Blessed quiet.

As he melted into the surrounding forest, finding a track that led northwest, Kenshin heaved a silent sigh of relief to be away from the relentless pounding sounds of the artillery at his back. The more he was around the western style weapons, the more he disliked them.

He found the first bakufu soldier just outside the village the officer spoke of. He was stealing quietly uphill into the trees when Kenshin saw him. He waited for the man to come close then leapt from the top of the hill down on him, allowing gravity to add force to his blow as his sword cleaved the man through from head to torso before the bakufu soldier could do more than draw breath to cry out.

There were three more, just emerging from behind the first outlying hut of the village. Those three were able to scream briefly as Kenshin ran between them, his blade flashing as he took them down with torso cuts, ignoring the rifles in their hands. Not that they’d had time to raise or aim them anyhow.

He slowed and stopped, shaking then wiping his blade before resheathing it, then turning around to gaze dispassionately at the bloody corpses at his feet.

Guns or swords, the soldiers were just as dead. Why should he care how he killed, as long as he killed bakufu troops and helped bring an end to the corrupt Tokugawa regime? Yet he did care, and he would not trade his sword for one of Shunme’s carbines for all the rice in Japan.

A gasp caused Kenshin to whirl and place his hand on his sword hilt.

A middle-aged woman in a tan and white kimono with her hair tied back in a kerchief stood by the front of the hut, her hand over her mouth and her eyes wide as she took in the dead bodies.

Kenshin lowered his hand from his sword.

“Are you…? Are you with…?” The woman stammered and looked again at the bodies.

“Choshu.” Kenshin answered her shortly. This village was right on the border of Choshu, the area the bakufu soldiers stationed in Hiroshima had invaded. The woman’s loyalty would be to her Han, Choshu.

“Oh.” Relief began to edge out the horror in the woman’s eyes. She collected herself and bowed. “Thank you very much for saving our village.”

Kenshin blinked. He hadn’t realized that she would see it that way. He wondered exactly how badly the bakufu troops had behaved when they’d invaded the area.

From the huts behind hers, peasants began to poke their noses out of doorways, curious to see what had happened to the men who’d screamed so briefly.

“I am Suzuyo. Did you happen to see where the other Choshu soldier went?”

“Other soldier?” Kenshin’s eyes narrowed.

Not noticing his reaction, and glancing abstractedly back and forth between him and the bodies, the woman continued, nodding. “Yes, he came to our village several days ago. He spoke with a Choshu accent. He said he wanted to fight the bakufu soldiers so badly that he’d come on ahead of the army. He seemed most disappointed that they’d already gone. If he hadn’t sprained his ankle on the road I think he’d be chasing after them yet.”

She laughed quickly, then stopped herself, fighting tears of hysteria. “He had such determination for such a small man.”

Already thinking of ways to extricate himself from the talkative woman and be on his way, Kenshin paused and listened to what the woman just said.

“How small?” he asked, forcing his voice to lose the edge of sharpness he felt rising within, along with his predator instincts.

“Hmm? Oh, about this high.” The woman raised her hand about five feet above the ground. “And scrawny looking too, like a hound dog that hasn’t eaten enough.” She bit her lip, and bowed her head. “I’m sorry. That was a rude thing to say. Please forgive me. I don’t mean to insult any Choshu soldier.”

“Where is he?”

The woman stood up straight. “That’s just it. We heard the bakufu soldiers sneaking back through the village. I called to him to hide, then I ran to warn my neighbors to hide in their houses too, but when I got back, he was gone.” She shrugged. “He was fussy, but a good tenant. I’ll miss him.”

“Which way did he go?”

The woman’s brow furrowed in thought. “Well, if you didn’t see him coming towards you, and the soldiers missed him, he must have gone that way.” She pointed to her right where a succession of rice paddies were terraced into the hills. The water-logged plants’ tender green leaves pushed up through the liquid toward the sun.

Between the terraced paddies, plum and persimmon trees held on, bordering the terraces to prevent soil erosion, but also providing excellent cover for a samurai on the run.

Nodding his thanks to the woman, Kenshin turned and jogged away in the direction she’d pointed, leaving her and the villagers to strip the bodies of valuables and bury them as they pleased.

A small man, wanting to get to the bakufu troops, slowed by a sprained ankle. He’d arrived several days ago. The time frame fit. It had to be him.

Takahata.

END CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

A/N Since I wasn’t able to find out which specific American Civil War army surplus weapons/ammunition was sold by Thomas Glover to the Choshu forces during the war, I had to guess. For all you civil war buffs out there, I chose the Parrott 10 pounder cannon since it was one of the most common ones used by the Federal Army, and gave it the Schenkl shell as ammunition. The Spencer Carbine was a very popular weapon of choice for soldiers to use, so I figured there were a lot of them floating around after the war that Glover could have bought up and sold to Sakamoto Ryoma for Choshu. If anyone has any solid leads on exactly what types of weapons and ammo Glover sold to Choshu during this time, please let me know! I can always substitute something more historically accurate later.


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