How I Ended Up Here

It was a dark and stormy – wait, no, it wasn’t at all. It was actually quite nice out, warm breeze from the south and everything. Mother had just heard back from her old sensei about Sister. Passed her gempukku with flying colors and took the name Kyou, something about honoring one of our great aunts or the like. That was also the day we lost Cho.

Or Hayate, I guess I should call him now. See, Hayate’s my older brother – twin, actually, born about a half-hour before I was. The two of us were nigh inseparable, always getting into some trouble or another. Mother sending Cho to the Moto really sucked, even if it was part of the marriage contract.

Apparently, Hayate and Kyou did really well for themselves during their training. Hayate even took his gempukku a year earlier than I did! He still rubs that in whenever he has a chance to write home.

Me? I ended up taking the name Virendra, though it was mainly to satisfy Mother. She’s fanatical about the old Ivory Kingdoms. Mother practically begged me to take a foreign name, showing me all kinds of scrolls about “strong gaijin women” or some such. And Mother can be so forceful at times.

Gempukku was also when I found out about Father’s impending retirement. Apparently, he’d made the same offer to each of us kids upon our gempukku: come or stay home, learn to sail and lead and all that, and we'd inherit the White Storm. And I don’t blame Kyou or Hayate for passing up that opportunity. Father’s kobune is so rickety, it barely floats. I didn’t have the heart to tell him this, but I guess both my siblings did. He was so mad he almost disowned them. As it is, neither is allowed to return home to take the Yoritomo name. So they’re both Unicorn now, which kind of sucks.

Anyways, I’m getting the kobune – but of course, not right away. See, I guess there’s a whole bunch more stuff Father wants me to learn, so he sent me off with the Tortoise, of all the clans, on a merchant ship called Daikoku’s Heart. By the kami, Captain Tatsu is one of the greasiest, slimiest men I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. The man does, however, know his goods. Learned a lot from him about buying and selling all different kinds of wares in the year I spent aboard that rat-trap.

But at least that rat-trap was better than ferrying stuck-up, know-it-all “courtiers” and “ambassadors” to the Isles. Don’t get me wrong, the crew on the Thunder’s Fury was pretty awesome; even Moshi Sakura could curse a blue streak – something you don’t really expect from a Moshi priestess. It’s just that escorting people who’ve never been onboard a raft, much less a kobune, before is sort of tedious.

Which brings me to how I ended up in North Company, I guess. See, I’d spent a couple years on that boat, shuttling various “dignitaries” and escorting merchant ships back and forth, all up and down the Rokugani coast. We’d been in some scraps with pirates, but nothing like this. I mean, their kobune and crew were about half our size! Fortunes were with us, right?

Wrong, oh so very wrong. We were escorting a minor Emerald Magistrate named Bayushi Rin and his yoriki, who if I remember rightly was also a Scorpion, from the Isles back to some port in Crane lands, I can’t even remember which now. It was pretty early in the morning, and the water looks awesome at that time, with a soft sheen of mist. Out of the fog rolls this kobune full of ronin, who start screaming and yelling, changing their course and charging straight for us. Captain Aiyumi didn’t even flinch. She called out the archers and started raining arrows down on their little kobune. The ronin didn’t flinch either. Next thing I knew, they were swarming up the starboard side of the Fury, weapons drawn. That’s really the last thing I remember clearly.

I do remember seeing Rin fight, though. Man, he was slick. His yoriki took a beating and was tossed overboard, though. We never did recover his body, or his daisho. Sakura and the Captain both survived as well, along with perhaps eight other men and women. All told, there were a lot of families we couldn’t return a daisho to that day.

Anyway, I don’t know exactly how it happened, all right? Captain Aiyumi put me in charge of the few remaining ronin we’d captured. I don’t know where the order came from; only thing I do remember is that Rin was hovering close by. So we get the ronin rounded up, and I told the crew to chain them to the mast, that we’d take them in to the magistrates when we pulled into port. I turned away for a moment, and the next sound anyone heard was a couple of rather loud screams followed by a large splash. Soon, all the ronin were screaming, mainly because their buddies’ weight was dragging them overboard. We’d chained them together, and that’s how they went to Suitengu.

Oh, I never got into any real trouble over it, but no one would believe my accusations that Rin somehow changed my orders – or tossed them over himself; the guy was a little weird like that. Not that I blame anyone for not believing me. He is, after all, an Emerald Magistrate; I'm no one, comparatively.

However, some story or another got out. It was passed around so much that I think one version has me bodily tossing all of the poor sots over myself. It kind of sucks and I guess is causing some embarrassment to my folks. See, the White Storm is renowned for fairness in its captain’s treatment of prisoners. I guess Father doesn’t want me, the “Scourge of Suitengu,” to captain his kobune. Even Mother doesn’t believe my version of the tale. So when the appointment from the Imperial Legions came in, both of my folks were okay with it.

And that’s how I ended up in North Company. Oh, it’s not all bad. And some of the guys don’t think I didn’t toss those ronin overboard.

At least, I think they don’t.