Side Story #4: Kohaku's Ranch (Male Version)

<Author’s note: This story takes place before the events of Book 1.>

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Side Story 4: Kohaku’s Ranch (Male Version)

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■■ Western Hyuga ■■

It was high noon on the prairie, with the heat of the summer sun slowing life to a crawl. All life save for a lone samurai and his steed—the latter of which galloped atop the dusty roads like thunder. Kohaku and Tatsuya had traveled from one end of Hyuga to the other, from east to west, from Shima to the place they once called home.

“How long has it been, Tatsu-kun?” the samurai whispered to his horse. “The Westlands...these plains are just as I remember. Keep up the pace a bit longer, now. I hope to be at Mother’s side before her passing.”

Kohaku’s mother was the matriarch of not just his family, but of the entire Nanbu clan. Or at least what remained of it. The Golden Era of Samurai had not ended well for the families on the western frontier, who had faced enemies of every color and under every flag. Were it not for the gallant forces out of Shima led by General Shatao, a once-rival of his father, there would be no home to return to.

“And for that I swear to uphold my service to you, Lord Shatao.” Kohaku re-affirmed his oath, the same oath his father and uncles had taken. Their loyalty was the least they could offer, yet it wasn’t always easy for the frontiersmen to keep away from home. Trouble in the Westlands was more common than a tumbleweed. 

“Woah now,” Kohaku pulled up on the reins to slow Tatsuya down. There was a mare ahead—a pale-coated Nanbu breed, grazing just off the side of the road. It didn’t look the least bit wild, with its saddle and stirrups on, which meant someone must have misplaced it.

Kohaku gave a look of disapproval from inside his helmet. Not towards the horse but the rancher she belonged to. If you were taking off to a watering hole, the least you could do was to find a tree to hitch her to. “Any odd snake in the grass or swooping falcon would send her a-running, sure as sunshine.”

The samurai scowled once more, this time at himself for thinking in the local dialect. Kohaku was all too aware of how ranchers spoke in a certain tongue, using language the rest of Hyuga deemed uncivilized. It was a negative stereotype that some ranchers embodied more than others.

“Well now ain’t this just a bag of nails! Here I am, a-sittin’ in ambush—layin’ in wait and all—and I finds me a sam’rai, suit and all!” Out of some nearby shrubbery came a short and stubby man with a curly moustache, who sported the typical rancher fashion: a farmer’s hat made of straw and a rancher’s coat made of cotton.

The coat was western Hyuga’s interpretation of the haori: it was more a blanket than a coat, with a hole through the middle to fit your head through. They were made of exceptionally light cloth, better to shade you from the sun than to keep you warm. His was dyed blue and decorated with white designs that were all too familiar to Kohaku.

“It’s been a long time, Deputy Susumu.” Kohaku spoke and detached his helmet, freeing his sweaty face from its confines. “I trust you are as well as always?”

“Well I’ll be darn-diddly damned! If it ain’t Koha-kun! You’re looking mighty, well, mighty all caged up in that there iron, yessiree.” Susumu looked the samurai over from top to bottom, whistling all the while. “Yep, spittin’ image of your father! Oh and keep a mind—I’m the sheriff around these parts now, you hear?”

Susumu pointed to his necklace, evidence of his office. The medallion was a wado: a centuries old coin used well before ryō. It had a hole in the center where the string went through, and was made from copper which had long-since turned green. The Westlands had been slow to adopt the ryō, so you were certain to find a few of those relics here and there.

“That’s...great,” Kohaku replied in a flat tone. That a buffoon like Susumu was in charge of enforcing law in the Westlands brought little comfort to the homecoming samurai. After the last era, the frontier clans agreed upon an independent system of law enforcement. It was crude and still a work in progress, as evidenced by the rancher who had trouble getting atop his horse.

After several attempts the rancher finally mounted it. “Ornery one, ain’t she? Should’ve seen her when she was in heat, couple of months back. Hot and bothered is one thing, but trying break through my new fence is quite another!”

“She’s thirsty,” Kohaku replied, pinching the skin between the mare’s shoulders to confirm. It drooped back slowly after he released his fingers, confirming the samurai’s suspicions. “Get her some water when you can. And you’re lucky she didn’t buck you off—you mounted her from the right.”

“Gosh darnit, did I really? Well mud my face and send me a hollerin’, you’d think I was one of them savages!” Sheriff Susumu was referring to Kondos, namely the Kondos Who Don’t Bow, a group of free and wild folk who Hyugans had driven to the inhospitable Westland deserts. It was the responsibility of the frontiersmen to keep them there.

Kohaku was in a hurry, yet his curiosity made him linger a little longer. “There a reason you were hiding in a bush, Sheriff?”

Susumu let out an exaggerated sigh. “Word’s bound to reach your ears sooner or later. Got us a horse thief about, and here’in I was layin’ in wait. Sittin’ two hours on your bum in this sun—heck if it ain’t melted right off!”

“Oh, and er,” the sheriff continued, “mighty sorry about missing your party.”

“Come again?” Kohaku asked, tightening the grip on his horse’s reins.

Susumu took off his hat, a gesture ranchers used for both greetings and apologies. In this case it was the latter. “A birthday comes but once a year, and twenty-and-five’s a nice even number, far as I figure. Wish I could make it, really I do.”

Kohaku sat frozen still beneath the summer sun. The realization had hit him all at once: the letter of his mother’s illness, the urgency in it, and how his arrival oddly correlated with his own birthday. This was no mere coincidence.

“Giddy up, Tatsuya!” Kohaku commanded his steed. “If you’re not dying, Mother, you’ll soon wish you were!”

■■■■

Lady Nanbu wasn’t on her deathbed when his son arrived that late afternoon. He was at the races, or rather, out on the race track inspecting the horses. Their family estate was quite large and—by Westlander standards—quite luxurious, hosting the finest and perhaps only racetrack in Hyuga.

It was certainly the only track of land so meticulously paved and maintained. While Kohaku’s father had bred horses for war, her mother bred them for sport. It was little wonder that combined, Nanbu steeds were the finest in the land.

The lady herself was of a short and skinny build, a natural jockey for racing. Kohaku’s father had been tall and burly, so between the two the samurai had turned out rather average. Or rather, ‘below average’ if you considered his heart condition. A younger, hot-headed Kohaku certainly did—one the reasons he had left to become a samurai in the first place.

“Who’s that over there, dusting up my track? You’ll dirty up the lines we just put in!” Lady Nanbu yelled out at figure galloping towards her. She didn’t know who it was, but the picture drew clearer the closer the samurai came. Lady Nanbu was growing nearsighted in her old age, yet no amount of cataracts could hide her long-lost son from her.

“Goodness me, it’s you! My little Koha-kun has returned!” The old lady fell to her knees and prayed, as if Kohaku had been sent to her by some higher power. The reality behind the samurai’s return was a bit less holy.

“Odd. You don’t appear to be at the verge of death to me, Mother.” Kohaku pulled out a letter from his sash and ripped it to pieces. “I don’t appreciate being lied to! I travelled across the entire country, abandoned my liege lord—and for what? A birthday party?!”

The samurai’s yell echoed across the quiet track, startling the horses and his mother most of all. Lady Nanbu gasped and tumbled backwards, clutching her heart as if it would burst. “Now I know you’re mad as a hornet—every right to be, but a mother’s got a right to see her boy! Come on down and give this ole gal a hug.”

Kohaku was determined to pout for a while longer, and had even entertained the idea of turning around, but in the end he dropped from his saddle and into his mother’s embrace. There was a saying that you couldn’t stay mad at the woman who birthed you, though the two hadn’t departed on the best of terms.

“The way you up and left me, up and takin’ your daddy’s sword, headin’ off to who-knows-where, why...I thought I’d never see you again, my little Koha-kun!” Lady Nanbu weeped, “This old widow can’t run the ranch by herself anymore. Not a rancher alive who takes to horses like you do. So why don’t you hunker down and take off that outfit?”

“This outfit is a gusoku, Mother!” Kohaku yelled, pounding his gauntleted fist into his chestpiece. “It’s what Father wore into battle. I do so as well with great pride. But you never understood that—you never even tried!”

Kohaku felt as if he had become a teenager again, when he had spent most of his time lashing out at his mother or mourning his deceased father. Most of his frustrations he vented out through rigorous training, but this prairie dug up angers long-buried.

Lady Nanbu’s back straightened and the rest of her features grew more rigid; her voice had become stern, sounding every bit like the leader of one of the Golden Era’s great clans. “You’re not between the hay and grass anymore, Koha-kun. You’re a man now—not the rascal who left home with nothing but his knapsack and father’s sword.”

“Hate me to your heart’s content,” she continued, “but you can never hate the Westlands. These are the fields my husband settled. I was at his side as he grew and civilized these untamed wilds. We are the heart of the frontier. Make no mistake: he would’ve wanted you here, Kohaku.”

As a samurai, it wasn’t only his heart condition that Kohaku tried so hard to hide. He had also tried to mask the Westlander in him, the rancher who longed to ride on the golden plains. He was ashamed—of the dialect, the traditions, even the blankets they wore over their heads. It was uncivilized and crass, lacking the glory and honor true samurai had. And yet it was part of who he was.

“I wish Father was here to tell me what he wanted,” Kohaku said with a dejected sigh. “But he isn’t. So I’ll stay—but only for a week. You hear?”

Lady Nanbu jumped with joy, and soon had all the farmhands doing the same. Kohaku shook his head, and spoke to the only friend he had. “What sort of trouble have we gotten ourselves into this time, Tatsu-kun?”

■■■■

Trouble looked like a silk kimono. It was dyed a dark green—Kohaku’s favorite color—and decorated with flowers and butterflies down the legs and arms. It was a tad tight around Kohaku’s well-developed shoulders and chest, but aside from that it was the perfect fit for the lad who left the Westlands all those years ago.

He couldn’t help but wonder how long his mother had stored this away, or how expensive it must’ve been to find silk this far west. This was Kohaku’s first time wearing silk though he was too embarrassed to enjoy it; he felt naked without his heavy armor weighing him down. Just walking felt weird to the man accustomed to being encased in iron.

“Well ain’t you a strapping fellow? Girls, reckon we came to the right ranch!” said a woman who giggled along with several others. They each bowed and introduced themselves before carrying on with the festivities. Kohaku’s birthday party had begun the day after he arrived, and every ranch within seeing distance and beyond had hurried over for a hoedown.

Kohaku didn’t have experience playing the role of a host—especially considering he was the outsider here. He recognized most faces and recalled more than half of their names, yet everyone seemed so different. Most of the girls around his age had children clinging to their legs or babies held in their arms. Most of the men had large guts, wore mustaches and smoked tobacco.

“A stranger in my own home,” the samurai sighed aloud. Though he was constantly approached and greeted by guests, he couldn’t help but feel lonely. More lonely than he ever felt in General Shatao’s army, marching and drilling and learning the way of the sword.

“All by yourself? Now that won’t do at all,” said a man with a white mane of hair. His name was Etsuji, whose hair used to make him look older than he was. But now it seemed to fit the aging doctor quite well. “How have you been keepin’ on, Koha-kun? Not getting into too many fights over there in Shima, I hope!”

“Just a few,” Kohaku smiled. “Practice duels mostly. But you’d be surprised what sort of welts you can get from a wooden katana. Some men don’t know how to hold back.”

Etsuji’s stare fell down to the samurai’s chest. “I pray you aren’t one of them, son. Your mother worries about your heart, and I can’t say I’m no different. May not be as much honor to wranglin’ broncos but—”

“Thank you for your concern, Doctor,” Kohaku said curtly and bowed just the same. “But if you’ll excuse me, I must see to the other guests.”

The samurai forced himself into a group of acquaintances who were hollering and having a good ole time. These men welcomed him as one of their own, and unlike the doctor they didn’t know about his heart condition. His hidden weakness.

“Manner-up boys, we’ve got ourselves a sam’rai in our midst!” The ranchers chuckled, one of them passing over a bottle of saké. Kohaku accepted it with some reluctance. In the West they drank straight from the bottle instead of using cups, passing it around to whoever looked like they needed a swig the most.

It was unhygienic, but the samurai raised it and poured the liquor into his mouth all the same. The moment he did, one of the ranchers pushed up the bottle, pouring the stuff into and all over Kohaku’s mouth. He nearly gagged before spitting it out and pushing the idiot off him. Everyone was laughing but him.

“That your idea of a joke?!” Kohaku spat. “You lot are no more mature than the boys I left way back when. What’s next—cow tipping?”

“Awh, don’t be like that Koha-kun! We were just boozin’ you up, figured you needed a little liquid courage before you rounded up a few of them lassies over there.” The overly friendly rancher gestured behind the samurai, and whipped his hand around in the air as if it held an invisible lasso.

True enough, there were a group of lassies—several groups, actually—eying Kohaku while trying not to look too obvious about it. But Westlander women weren’t known for their subtlety, and when they weren’t fanning themselves off they trying to present their best sides over in his direction.

“Go off and git’em, now!” A rancher pushed Kohaku off towards the women. Actually it took several of them to budge the samurai from his spot. “Oh and ‘uh, stay clear of them Fujioka sisters. Them been ridden more than a discounted mule! Huah-haha!”

Kohaku forced himself right past the group of spinsters who attempted to chat with him. He was angry that it had taken him this long notice how much the ladies outnumbered the men, and how most of those girls just so happened to be unmarried and in the market to settle down. This wasn’t a birthday party at all.

One of the women—a particularly bold one, swooned right in front of Kohaku, forcing him to grab her in his arms. “Oh goodness me, I’m going to blush! Your swordsman arms are so strong and thick, I—wah?!”

*thud*

Kohaku dropped her and marched on. The commotion had silenced the guests and so he turned around to address them. “Enjoy the party,” he said, more as an order than a salutation. It took everything in him not to run, not flee the scene and the Westlands entirely. Right now Kohaku needed a friend, and there was only one of those around.

Of course, that friend was a horse. Tatsuya was in the stables—were a disgruntled Kohaku was headed next. He was done pretending to be a host, and if Tatsu-kun was up to it, a night stroll on the trails might be just what he needed.

The stables were packed with all manner of stallions, mares and mules from the guests. While the building itself was perhaps the most impressive on the estate, Kohaku still worried if Tatsuya had enough room. It wasn’t that the warhorse was the private type, but he had trouble getting comfortable around strangers.

“In that regard we’re just the same, aren’t we?”

The stables weren’t manned, which seemed odd. It was nowhere late enough to retire for the evening, yet there wasn’t a single light to be seen from inside. As Kohaku approached, he gripped his hands around the katana that wasn’t there. Cursing silently, he peeked into the darkness to see what was amiss.

Scurrying about from inside was a tall figure who looked shady, though in the darkness anyone would be. Not being the sneaky type, Kohaku marched in and addressed the stranger head-on.

“Show yourself! What are you doing, lurking about?”

The figure jumped out of surprise, hopped on a horse then galloped right through the stables, right in Kohaku’s direction. The movement spooked the horses, and it certainly didn’t help when the rider started screaming out in a Kondo cry.

“Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiyeh! Aiiiii!” He roared right past Kohaku, who had to jump to get out of the way. The savage was a good rider and had a good eye for horses—that mare he was riding was one of Lady Nanbu’s finest. Kohaku hurried in to find Tatsuya, only to find him and the rest of the faster horses double-hitched with ropes tied in knots.

By the time he undid them to give chase, the horse-thief was long gone.

“Kuso! I’m too late!” Kohaku scolded himself. He wasn’t even certain he could’ve stopped him, not without his katana by his side. And without his armor he never felt more vulnerable and weak. “Have I changed at all, Tatsu? Am I really a samurai, or am I just a boy playing pretend?”

Tatsuya nuzzled his snout against his owner and pawed against the ground, letting out a soft sigh as he did so. At least one of them was in a good mood. Kohaku would’ve been fine to stay that way but a flicker of something metallic drew his attention to the ground.

“Did the Kondo drop this?” he asked aloud, bending over and bringing it to the light. It was a copper coin with a hole through it, a wado just like the one he had seen from before.

Rubbing it between his fingers, the samurai grinned. “Tatsuya. What say we catch ourselves a horse thief before heading back east?”