The Tigers of Chi-Ha-Tan ReRise Volume 0: The Veil Before Glory

A Night for Steel and Blood

"Not far now my lady," Michiko said, as she and Nakano walk through the woods to the bandit camp.

They were lucky the moon was high in the cloudless sky now, illuminating their path before them. While they had left Nakano's horse behind, so it would not give away their presence as they inch ever closer to the bandit camp. Every so often the sound of raucous laughter could be heard in the distance, with it getting louder the closer they got. Nakano felt her heart squeeze every time there was the sound of laughter, thinking it might be the screams of the women they had taken captive.

Though she was on a mission to save these women from their fate, great shame fill the Nishizumi's heart. For their clan had an obligation to protect their people from the horrors of banditry. There had been a time when the Nishizumi clan had been feared across Japan as warriors, masters of horse archery, and deadly with their katanas.

That time had seem to have passed after Nakano's father had returned home from Nobunaga's war.

He had returned without her brother...

For he had drowned to death in the Battle of Tedorigawa...

Nakano remembers her mother crying for days over the loss of her son...

With that beginning the fall of the Nishizumi clan's power and influence with it...

"My lady we're here," Michiko said quietly.

Bringing herself out of her thoughts of the past, Nakano focuses on herself. The two women took a point of observation behind a tree, some distance from the camp still that was illuminated by many campfires.

Another physical ability that Nakano prided herself in, was her excellent vision. She could always pick out objects at extreme ranges, with no child or even adult able to outdo her. Her father would always challenge his men to try to beat Nakano spotting things in the distance, to which they always failed and her father would always have a good laugh at them.

A pleasant memory of who Nakano's father once was, not the battered man he was now.

Focusing herself again, Nakano, using this enhanced vision, now sweep the camp over. The first thing she pick out was the small house that lay behind the camp. Nakano remembers a rich merchant family who once had lived here, the Kawano family if she remembers right. Though they had abandoned the home when the Nishizumi clan's power faded and bandits would roam free through their territory.

Another reminder of her family's failing house.

Pushing the self-loathing away, Nakano concentrates back on the camp. The sliding doors of the house were closed, while the rest of the rouges were sitting on the ground floor in front of it, keeping close to their fires trying to keep warm as the night air became colder around them. Peering more closely, Nakano could see they were arm to the teeth as Michiko had said earlier.

Spears, katanas, sickles, and maybe a bow or two. The bandits themselves were light dressed as well, with just simple kimonos and hakama's. Some had added leather armor parts to their chest and shin guards as well. Yet for the most part, and thankfully in Nakano's mind, there was no one wearing Dō armor, the heavy-scale cuirass that was hard to puncture sometimes with sword and bow.

Nakano knew this well since the Nishizumi clan always train their soldiers to wear heavy armor to protect every part of them so that they could always advance through a hail of arrows and swords. They were considered by most to be the most heavily armor samurai in all of Japan, earning the nickname, Aiantaigāsu, the Iron Tigers. They even went so far as to add under armor parts to possible weak points, though it would weigh them down, the men were trained to move in it like it was made of feathers.