Emperor Hiroto Kurosawa sat cross-legged on a silk mat, his generals sitting likewise in a semi-circle in front of him. In the large chamber there were guards standing still as statues among the orange-red pillars. The double doors at the mouth of the temple were open, his royal pinions flying in the morning wind beside Sakuraichi’s.

Thank the gods we were able to secure the Western Temple.

Despite his thought, he felt a pit in his stomach. Noriko, his only daughter, was missing. She had disappeared during the attack on the palace. Was she alive? Dead? A hostage of his enemies?

He hated not knowing more than anything.

As Emperor, Hiroto would never admit it openly, but he was deeply afraid for the first time in his life. It wasn’t an immediate fear or the quick terror before death, but a lingering, deep-seated fear. A fear for his son and daughter. A fear that he would be the ruler who would lose Mikuma, a royal empire and dynasty that had—up to this point—lasted for over a thousand years.

Despite his fear, he remained placid on the outside, as unemotional as possible. “Tell me,” he said. “What is our situation, General Koto?”

“Not good, Your Royal Highness. We took the temple easily, but the enemy now surrounds us on all sides. They will outlast us here.”

“What is your suggestion?”

“We make for the harbor, Highness,” General Koto said. “It is lightly defended.”

He wants me to run away? Me?

“Flee?!” Hiroto spat, losing his composure for the first time since yesterday evening. “Let an empire and dynasty that has stood for generations fall away to this—this treacherous predator?!”

General Koto flinched, his eyes becoming downcast as he avoided the fire in his ruler’s eyes. Finished with Koto, Emperor Hiroto turned to his other three “generals,” all of them barely past boyhood.

“I am not looking for a solution of escape! The next one of you to suggest such a thing will be thrown from the temple steps!”

There was a very long silence as Hiroto waited for one of his generals to offer something worthwhile. They were his men, young, unblooded, unseasoned military leaders. And while these men and his Guard belonged to his house, the army outside guarding the temple and the approach belonged to Daimyō Sakuraichi, who had stayed behind with a detachment to find out who had attacked them. He and his General Muji.

He still hasn’t returned! Where is he?

As it was, one of Sakuraichi’s captains here at the temple would probably make a better leader than these soft whelps. Sakuraichi-sama’s army was seasoned, every one of its leaders and all of his samurai were veteran warriors of half a dozen battles.

The Emperor felt a fool. An utter fool. Why had he trusted the words of his advisors and courtesans? It had been believed that there was no longer any need for hardened generals, and so those battle-tested daimyōs were moved away from court to places where they could no longer influence the direction of the empire in militaristic ways.

And where is my shōgun? Where is Souji-sama? Were they all gone? Had they all been removed? All but Sakuraichi, Hiroto thought. And only because…

It was in the royal palace. All the daimyōs had obeyed their royal emperor without question, but upon dismissal, Daimyō Sakuraichi had made a scene. Hiroto had been unable to carry through. Today for the first time, Emperor Hiroto Kurosawa knew that he was a fool—that Sakuraichi and the other like-daimyōs of his empire were the real men of honor who kept his enemies at bay, not these pampered children, afforded positions of power because they were born into them, or appointed the positions based on bureaucracy of “fairness.” Such nonsense.

He saw that now. But it was too late. Far, far too late. The leadership of Sakuraichi’s army he could depend upon. He felt this. These men become leaders because they had the skills, and had survived long enough to do so, attaining the honor and experience needed for true sovereign leadership. A harsh leadership, but a strong.

The Emperor felt suddenly tired. Utterly exhausted. We have abandoned our ways.

By now Hiroto was all but snarling as finally one of them spoke up. It was General, Momata. The mustache on his upper lip barely a wisp. The sight annoyed him.

“Your Royal Highness,” he said, swallowing. “we must hold the enemy at bay while maintaining the high ground here at the temple. As we do so, we must get word out to your armies in the south. We need reinforcements!”

“We are surrounded,” Muma added. “We cannot get word out.”

“My daimyō is still out in the city,” Hiroto said. “He will get a message out, or he will die trying!”

It must have not been lost on the three generals there, all newly appointed daimyōs of various small provinces, that the Emperor had just called Sakuraichi “his daimyō,” when in fact, all the daimyōs of the Mikuma Empire were the Emperor’s sworn servants.

Hiroto’s attention shifted from his generals toward the doors where the morning light was coming. He recognized his son, Masaru, flanked by his entourage. He wasn’t a tall man, but his shadow stretched far into the hall because of the position of the sun, his silhouette a black shape in the golden morning sunlight.

“Father!” he said, his pace quickening. “It’s the enemy.”

“Yes?”

“They’re attacking!”

“What?” Koto barked. “But that’s impossible. Attacking our position is suicide.”

“Tell that to them,” Masaru said.

Hiroto got up off his silk mat, his personal guards detaching themselves from the long line of bodyguards within the hall. They followed as Hiroto lead the way outside, his heart beating fast. He wished it would stop.

They all depend upon me. The Empire depends upon me—and I do not know what to do!

As they exited the temple through the main doors, they came out onto a wide expanse paved with cobblestones. The Emperor was quick to rush toward the precipice to see what was happening.

It was as his son had said. The enemy was surrounding the plateau. There would be no escape now. The Mikuma Emperor would fight, and win, or he would lose and his empire would be annexed to another power.

He glanced back toward the mountains, wondering for a moment if they could retreat, but the cliffs were too rocky, too steep to climb. Only an expert mountaineer could make that climb.

“What do we do?” Masaru asked.

Hiroto frowned. “The only thing we can do. We fight, and pray to the gods that Sakuraichi gets word to my armies outside of Mikuma.