The flight south was to continue, and to carry them through the lands of Mittsu and into those of Hokutō just to the south of the former. It was there that they came to a halt near the river Hokugawa, a place that Satomine knew well and was confident he might find aid. The reason for his confidence lay in how thereupon a small almost inland islet with a pair of stone-bridges stood the great fortress of Yōsashima. Built two centuries prior by the finest stone-workers the Tahara could possibly find, it stood more than thirty meters high, was twenty wide and long so that it covered the whole of the islet. To either side of it that is to say to the east and west there were a pair of smaller forts eighteen meters high, long and wide which guarded the pair of stone-bridges that led to the great fortress. Each of them was built in the Zipangan style, which involved pagoda roofs, white marble stones and high twenty meters high walls.

  Dubbed the ‘Gateway to the North’ it was also called the ‘Northern Wall’ as it was long believed that so long as it stood, the Emishi would never cross south to challenge the Empire. The trouble in the view of Satomine, Motonaga would advance forward with the traitor-armies and Emishi vanguard acting as a kind of advanced force against the rural forts of the Emipre.

  He only hoped that the example of Yōsuke still lived on in the hearts of the lords of Yōsashima. The founder of this fort, who had fought and bled for the Empire and worked tirelessly to expand the frontiers further north than they had ever been before, would have already charged forth from behind the castle walls in his view.

  The current occupant of the castle had proven to Satomine upon his last visit therewith Yoshinobu and many of his men, a descendant of Tahara no Yōsuke. Descended from that great man’s eighth son, his lineage had become associated with the fortress to such an extent that they had adopted it as their name. It was said that during the northern frontier wars, it had been them that had led the bushi in the war against the Emishi. At other times they had guarded the whole of the marcher lands from the northerners.

  “What is this place?” Harukor gasped amazed by so grand a vision, “Amazing, who built it?”

  “That would be Tahara no Yōsuke, one of the finest men of that illustrious lineage, he was father to the first Kampaku, if you must know. He was a hero of the Second Wars of Darkness, and was said to have fought the enemy to a stand-still thereupon the isle of Yōsashima. It was for this reason that he wished to build a great fortress, seeing it as necessary in the continued besieging of the north. The trouble for him was that he was needed in the south and was recalled from this place.” Satomine explained to him, quite familiar with the history of this locality as he had spent much time within this region throughout his youth.

  Yoshinobu was on extremely friendly ties with the old lord of the Yōsashima who was his cousin, by virtue of his grandfather’s marriage to a daughter of the latter’s line. The sole reason that this lord had not been brought north was due entirely to his concern for the fortress.

  “Will we find succour there?” Akemi asked of the young bushi, worried for her uncle, “Shinkei-ojiisama shan’t survive another fortnight without medicine and new bindings.”

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  Nodding absently to her, Satomine was to respond with a helpless shrug of his shoulders, “Do we have any other choice ahead of us?”

  In response to those words, Akito spurred his horse forward, keen to approach the great keep, with nary a glance at the bushi who followed after him if somewhat reluctantly. It was with a glance in his direction that Akemi was to ask of him with a great deal of consternation, “What of this keep? Why do you still look hesitant?”

  “We have met with treachery all throughout the journey to and from the north, so that I wonder if maybe it has found its way like a disease into the heart of Yōsashima-dono,” Satomine said with more than a little worry and with a glance over his left shoulder.

  He could have sworn that he had heard something from behind him. It sounded not unlike hooves striking the ground, however it did not sound as though it were the horses of a whole army but those of a singular steed.

  “Satomine-san! Satomine-san! Why are you not listening to us?” Akemi growled at him from where she sat now upon the horse of Akito.

  Seeing how irritated she was made him grimace if only to himself all the more. It was with a glance at Harukor that he saw that the other youth shared his opinion. The man was weary of her company and was evidently more concerned about Shinkei. “It is only that I thought I heard something that sounded akin to hooves behind us.”

  “There is nothing,” She said after listening for a moment.

  The men for their parts turned their heads with their ears open and their eyes searching the distant woodlands they had surged forth from. Neither of the two young men nor the monk knew exactly what sort of man it was that they were searching for, only that he would likely come riding out on a horse.

  No one came. Relieved at how nothing had happened, they were to chortle nervously, with Akito remarking, “Mayhaps it was just the wind, Satomine-san?”

  “It was not.” He replied certain that it was very much real. Experience had taught him in recent days that there were no mirages, no illusions that was pursuing them, but very real shadows and scouts of the wiliest sort.

  They had travelled far since the [woodlands] forest and had come some way, in their journey and yet there still remained a persistent thread of doubt towards the bushi. Quite why, was a source of mystery to the youth who felt another spark of irritation against his newfound friends. Glancing at the wounded monk, he regretted the fact that the old man, was not in any condition to discuss their pursuers and the situation with him. He would have liked to discuss the matter of those in pursuit of them with the old man, yet as the man was almost listless thereupon the back of Harukor’s horse it was highly unlikely for him to be able to have such a talk.

  Worried over this matter, he followed after his travelling companions, ignoring the derisive words of Akito as the youth complained at some length about Satomine. Deriding him, and treating him as an incompetent, even as Akito was to sigh in frustration and snap at the other youth and Akemi.

  Though they regarded him with mixed views, as some looked on him as a source of embarrassment to his entire caste, with the other half of their group looking on him with respect, the bushi himself felt no animosity towards them. He did however regard them with impatience and irritation, as their complaints and the protecting of them served to continuously slow him in his journey south.

  If he had only the temerity to abandon them he might well have throve and made it as far south as the fortress of Yōsashima, in the heartland of the northern branch of the Takimoto family. Yet he could not do so, thus he was trapped, he mused as he internally felt listless at the realization even as he sought to project the sort of confidence that Yoshinobu-dono would have. It was the only way that he might instil in his companions the sort of strength and courage they would need going forward, and respect in the people of Yōsashima that might otherwise convince them not to punish him for the betrayal at Midorigawa.

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