'Can we use them?' the Kikori asked, but Horace shook his head. He touched the blade of one of the swords and rust came away in red flakes.
'Too old. Too rusty,' he said. He turned to Reito, who had followed him into the cabin. 'Any idea who might have built all this?' he asked, sweeping a hand round the interior of the ancient warehouse. Reito stepped forward and examined one of the swords, noting the poor quality.
'At a guess, I'd say bandits or brigands,' he said. 'This would have made an ideal hideout for them while they preyed on the Kikori villages and travellers through the valleys below.'
'Well, they're long gone now,' Horace said, wiping traces of rust from his fingernails.
'I think we'll build our own cabins,' he added. 'I'd prefer to sleep at night without worrying that the roof is going to fall on me.'
They set up camp in the wider area behind the palisade. For the moment, they would shelter in tents, but Horace directed the senior Kikori as to where cabins and a hospital shelter should be located. With such a large number of skilled workmen at his disposal, he also gave instructions for the renovation and reinforcement of the palisade to begin, with priority to be given to the collapsing left-hand side.
He was glad to take this load off Reito's shoulders, leaving him free to look after Shigeru's wellbeing. Reito was a Senshi but he was a courtier, not a general, and Horace was better qualified to see to the defence of Ran-Koshi. He strode about the valley with a new energy in his step, followed by a group of a dozen Kikori elders – the leaders from the villages that had joined their party. He was pleased with the way they quickly accepted his right to give orders. Even more gratifying was the fact that they were willing to co-operate with each other. Any intervillage rivalries that might have existed before were snuffed out by the current situation.
One of them pointed out that there was little in the way of heavy timber in the valley itself. Work parties would have to travel back the way they had come to fell timber outside the valley and drag it up to the fortress.
Horace nodded acknowledgement of the fact.
'Then tomorrow we will rest,' he said. 'After that, work starts.'
The assembled Kikori nodded agreement. A full day's rest would make the work go faster, they all knew.
'Get your work parties detailed,' he told them. The senior Kikori all gave perfunctory bows and he returned them with a quick bob of his own head. Interesting how quickly it became a natural action, he thought. Then, as they drifted off to their respective groups, he looked around for Eiko and Mikeru. The two were never far away and over the past weeks he had become accustomed to detailing them to specific tasks.
'Eiko, can you organise scouts to go back the way we've come and keep watch for Arisaka's approach?'
'I'll go myself, Kurokuma,' the heavily built lumberjack said but Horace shook his head.
'No. I may need you here. Send men you can trust.'
'Will I go with them, Kurokuma?' It was Mikeru, the youth who had guided them from the first Kikori village and, as a result, had escaped the brutal attack of one of Arisaka's patrols. He was keen and intelligent and energetic, always ready for something to break the monotony of the long, hard march. He was the ideal person for the task Horace had in mind.
'No. I have something else I need you to do. Get three or four of your friends and explore this valley. Find the secret path out to the flatland below.'
Mikeru and Eiko both frowned, puzzled by his words.
'Secret path, Kurokuma? Is there a secret path?' Mikeru looked around the rock walls that enclosed them. They seemed impenetrable. Horace smiled grimly.
'This was a fortress. But it's also a trap. A dead end. No military commander would put his men in a fortress like this unless there was a secret way out. Trust me. It'll be there all right. It'll be narrow and it'll be difficult but it'll be there. You just have to find it.'
Wolfwill glided into the narrow cove under oars. There was no breath of wind and the surface of the water was calm and glassy, marred only by the sixteen rippling circles left by each stroke of the oars and the arrow-straight wake the ship left behind her.
Four days previously, they had left Iwanai and sailed up the west coast of Nihon-Ja. A brisk southerly wind was blowing and Gundar had raised both starboard and port sails, and sheeted them home out to either side. They stood at right angles to the hull. In this position – Gundar called it goose-winging – they formed a giant M shape. With the wind astern, he could use twice the normal sail area.
The sea had been calm and with this extra thrust behind her, Wolfwill had flown up the coastline. As Halt had seen when he studied the chart, three days' easy sailing had saved them weeks, compared to the alternative – slogging over hundreds of kilometres of mountain ranges. And they had avoided the attention of Arisaka's patrols. Now they had reached the northern part of the island and somewhere, not far inland, lay the fortress of Ran-Koshi.
'That's far enough, I think, Gundar,' he said quietly. Gundar called an order, also in a muted tone, and the oars ceased their constant motion. It seemed right to keep their voices down. Everything here was so still, so peaceful.
At least, for the moment. Time would tell what lay beneath the trees on the thickly forested shore of the cove. Behind the first few tree-covered hills, the mountains began to rise again, now covered to halfway down their height in snow.
Wolfwill drifted, seeming to rest on her own inverted image, while her crew and passengers studied the shoreline, looking for signs of movement.
'Have you been here before, Atsu?' Selethen asked and the guide shook his head.
'Not to this province, lord,' he said. 'So I don't know the local Kikori. But that shouldn't be a problem. The Kikori are loyal to Emperor Shigeru. I will simply have to make contact with the local tribes.'
'Just so long as you don't bump into Arisaka's men instead,' Halt said dryly.
'We don't know that Arisaka's men have penetrated this far north-west,' the guide said.
Halt shrugged. 'We don't know they haven't, either. Better to assume the worst. That way, you're not disappointed when it occurs.' Halt turned to Gundar. 'I thought you could camp on that island we passed, rather than in here on the mainland.'
The skirl nodded. 'My thought too. We could be here for weeks, even months, while the winter passes. We'll be safer on the island.'
It had been decided that Gundar and his men were not going to accompany them into the mountains. A captain was always reluctant to leave his ship for even a short time, and they could be at Ran-Koshi for months. Instead, the Skandians would take Atsu back to Iwanai, then return to this point and spend the winter in a camp, beaching their ship and hauling her high above the tide mark to protect her from winter gales. They planned to build huts in the shelter of the trees. Skandians often wintered like this while they were travelling. Gundar had re-provisioned the ship while they were in Iwanai so they had plenty of food on board. Plus they could come to the mainland to hunt and fetch water if there were none on the island. The island was a lucky break. Four hundred metres offshore, it would provide security and early warning of any possible attack.
'Put us ashore in the skiff,' Halt continued. 'Then get out to the island. We'll camp on the beach tonight while Atsu tries to contact the locals.'
Forty minutes later, the shore party watched as the wolfship's oars went forward on one side and back on the other, pivoting the neat craft in her own length. Then both banks of oars began to pull together and the ship gathered speed, heading out to sea. On the stern, Gundar waved farewell.
As Wolfwill rounded the point and disappeared from sight, Will felt strangely alone. But there was no time for introspection. There was work to be done.