CHAPTER 1 - The Tengu's Promise

        The story was an old one, and the teller had been told it many times. Each carefully chosen word had fallen upon his ear again and again like the waves of the ocean wearing away the rocks of the shore, etching themselves upon his memory. So much so, that the words themselves lived within him. Though he was a man that had little use for words, when he told this story he became most deft of tongue and gesture. The story filled his lip and limb like a puppeteer, directing him to tell the tale as the story itself thought it should be told.

        The child who now listened and watched loved the story for this reason. Not because of the content of the story, which was in fact gripping, but in the way Nirimaru told it, which was in fact sublime. They had just eaten an unusually large and stodgy meal. Nirimaru had eaten sparingly and selectively, but had encouraged the boy to eat all of his favorites as much as he could stomach.

        Conspicuously, a place had been set for the boy's father and yet that place had not been taken during the meal. Stranger still was that no place had been set for his mother. The other man, the older man had indicated that they eat without him. There was an air of ceremony in the room.

        "Long ago, in a forgotten empire across the endless western seas there was a small village in a forest. The creatures of this village were not men; they were called Tengu, creatures that were part man and part spirit. In order to protect themselves they spoke with the spirits of the forest and through many generations they learned their secrets. They learned to become light as sea spray and to dance on water; they learned to become unseen and to fly without wings.

   

        In the mountains many miles still further to the west there lived an ancient evil; a creature called Tian Gao the Wolf Witch. She fed upon children to extend her own life and she could steal the souls of men. The Wolf Witch heard of Tengu in the east and she set out to destroy them for the gifts of the Tengu rivaled her own and she could not allow something to exist in the world that might be a threat to her.

        She sent her children, the Ookami, they were creatures who had once been men but had their souls replaced with the souls of wolves.

        The Ookami descended on the Tengu village like plague of shadows; killing everyone they found in order to purge the Tengu secrets from the world forever. Fueled by the witch's own dark teachings the Ookami were able to root out the Tengu people and kill all of them, all of them but one. The history of my people tells us that Tengu’s name was Amakuni.

        Amakuni was in the temple when the Ookami attacked and his teacher quickly bundled all of the scrolls that contained the Tengu's knowledge into a sack and sent the boy out of the village defending him and slowing the wolves so the boy could escape.

        The witch then, learned of the boy's escape and sent a single pack of Ookami after him. Thirteen of the wolf men were sent to kill the boy. Amakuni fled the village and the Ookami and made his way across the trackless deserts to the edge of the sea where he took a boat and sailed to our land, but still the Ookami pursued him. Still they hunted him into the lands of the Takeda clan and it was there they cornered him, and prepared to feast upon their quarry.

        It was then that fate chose a different path for Amakuni. A young lord galloped with his hunting party and bodyguard upon the scene. The ragged Ookami looked like bandits surrounding Amakuni, who he took for an innocent child and the young lord immediately sought to intercede. The Ookami were surprised due to their focus on their target and they were scattered; for an Ookami or Tengu taken by surprise is as a normal man. They wear no armor and do not ride horse or carry a saber or lance their weapon is speed and the shadows.

        The Ookami sought to run but Amakuni could not let them return to the wolf witch to know he escaped. He ran them down as they fled, killing them one by one and as he pulled his short sword from the body of the last Ookami he realized the Lord and his party, who had followed him, were standing dumbfounded at the blood soaked child.

        'It is a demon!' the hunting party exclaimed, they said that the boy must be killed.

        'I am no demon, I am Tengu' said Amakuni. 'If you spare my life great lord I shall repay you by guarding your person and teaching your people my arts. I and my sons after me will always stand by you and your sons until the end of time; this I pledge upon the souls of my mother and my father, who these animals murdered.

        Takeda Nigiri, the young lord and your distant ancestor, asked the Tengu a question.

        ‘What are your arts, little one? What is it that you can teach us?’ The Tengu looked squarely at the lord.

        ‘This I promise to those who are chosen; they will become unseen, and they will fly without wings.’ At that the lord Takeda accepted the Tengu’s promise.

        “In time a hidden village grew and disciples of the Tengu ways learned the teachings of the Tengu and what Amakuni had lost was in a way reborn under the protection of the Takeda Clan and Lord. That is why I am here, Akira, to stand beside your father, and my nephew Inkui will come in time to stand beside you." Takeda Akira sat in the candle lit interior of his private chambers. The room was full of the tapestries of his family's history. These included one that depicted the discovery of the Ookami and the young Tengu.

        Around the floor of the room lay many wooden toys and carved figurines. Akira was six years old. The man that now stood in the room was over fifty and dressed in the plain gray and black garments of a peasant. Akira stared at Nirimaru as he told his story in wide wonder as he always did when the usually silent man chose to speak. Akira was a quiet, bright child he loved to hear the stories of the old soldiers in the fortress. Nirimaru walked to the door of the young prince's chamber and slid the paper and bamboo partition back to reveal the quiet little garden in which the boy played during the daytime.

        Without warning a gigantic rock landed in the garden with a huge crash and skidded ten feet, cutting a clumsy furrow through the grass and gravel. Nirimaru didn't even flinch. The boy walked to his side. The bolder was at least six feet in diameter but had many flat sides, it was a range finding bolder for a trebuchet and it seemed they had found their range. The thing hadn't rolled as it had impacted in the soft mud. As the boy and Nirimaru watched, the boulder's weight carried it over on its side through the walkway on the other side of the garden with an inexorable crash.

        "Where did that come from Nirimaru?" asked Akira with his voice full of wonder.

        "The men outside the fortress are trying to get in. They are the army your father's enemy." Nirimaru pointed up at the large gouge the rock had taken out of the wall above the Diamyo's living quarters. It seemed so strange to Akira that his father might have enemies. The boy walked up to the large boulder and put his hand against it. On one area there was moss where it had protruded from the valley floor and then on another it was covered in earth that had surrounded it for eons before it had been ripped from the ground and thrown through the sky to rest here. Akira saw an earthworm wriggle in the earth still attached to the bolder.

        "Why is he my father's enemy Nirimaru?"

        "The man's name is Iga and he wants to be emperor of this land. Your father stands in his way." Nirimaru replied.

        "Why then does my father not simply get out of his way?" Akira then felt the man's hand clamp down on his upper arm and turn him to stare eye to eye with Nirimaru.

        "You listen to me now Takeda Akira. Your father stands in this man's way because he knows him to be evil. He fights not only for you but for all the people he represents, clan and peasant. He stands because he must, it is his duty. Pray that when the time comes you have half the bravery your father does." Akira nodded.

 

        He was taking all of this in when a group of bedraggled warriors in samurai armor burst into the garden. They halted when they saw Nirimaru standing resolute beside the boy who transferred his wonder laden gaze between Nirimaru, the rock and the samurai. Takeda Noburo shouldered his way through the ranks. His eyes fell on his son and heir and his shoulders fell in relief and his eyes went up to the sky in a silent prayer of thanks.

 

        "Back to the defenses" Noburo said with finality and the samurai scattered back to the walls and breach points they'd been defending. When the samurai had left, lord Takeda, a man of perhaps thirty five summers, approached Nirimaru.

 

        "You must take him Uncle." Nirimaru shook his head.

 

        "I must stay to defend you all. That is my vow; surely your allies have sent forces..."

 

        "My messengers never reached their destinations, my archers reported today that each of their heads is staked to mark our bow shot range, all of them. There is more at work against us then just Iga. Your vow is to protect Takeda; he is the last hope for the clan. There is only Akira. You know this as much as I do." For a long moment Nirimaru paused staring into the Noble's eyes. Then he cast his own eyes to the ground.

 

        "We have failed you then." They were walking toward the main courtyard. Servants were rushing to and fro with buckets and supplies, Akira wondered where his mother was.

 

        "No Uncle, the Tengu's promise lies in him. Go now." Tears now were in both men's eyes as they turned from each other for the last time. Noburo turned to his son and placed both hands on his shoulders.

        "You must go with Nirimaru Akira, your mother and I must stay here but Nirimaru will protect you, with his life. You can always trust him. I love you; always remember that your mother and I love you and that you are Takeda." His father turned around and walked back to the lord's apartments.

        "Come Akira." Nirimaru said as he swept the boy up and they made their way through the courtyard to the leeward side of the great structure. The fortress had been built into a cliff to make it defensible to the last behind the cliff was a great lake. Nirimaru now made his way to a grate in the courtyard and lifted it. As he did so Akira caught sight of his mother who came out of the Lord's apartments just as his father reached the steps she ran toward Akira who waved at her.

        Then Noburo grabbed her, they exchanged words and she looked back towards Akira wide-eyed. She reached out to him and began to call his name. Nirimaru picked him up then and dropped through the grate. He heard his mother scream his name across the courtyard and he and Nirimaru descended into the darkness. They made their way through the drainage tunnels until they came to a great pipe that extended out over the lake some two hundred feet in the air.

 

        "Akira, hold your breath." Nirimaru said and while the boy was in the act of drawing in his breath they were suddenly falling, Akira continued to hold his breath. Nirimaru flipped his body somehow at the last second before hitting the water and they both hit the surface painlessly and with barely a splash. They surfaced and the boy sucked in a great gulp of air. Nirimaru began to swim backward with the boy held above the water against his chest. They got out of the water near an old fishing shack and slipped inside. They could hear horse patrols from the army of lord Iga all along the shore.

        They dried off and Nirimaru pushed open the door in the darkness. The old bodyguard breathed steadily and deeply in the spring night. He pulled the boy close to him against his chest. Then they were moving. Twenty feet away a group of horsemen moved along the banks all were looking in their direction yet somehow Nirimaru ran between their fields of vision. The moon was bright and Akira could make out each face yet none focused on them. Had Nirimaru made them unseen through some magic? He had always had a sense that the old man was a great and respected warrior even among his father's generals but this? Nirimaru had the ability to walk right in front of his enemies without being seen... to be invisible. Akira had not really believed the story of the Tengu it until he actually witnessed it.

        It was then that they started to fly. They hit the tree line and Nirimaru took to the air. The old man began to walk among the branches as if he were on the ground every so often he would bunch himself up and spring across a large gap flitting through the middle foliage as light and quiet as a breath of wind. The exhilarating feeling of flying through the trees took Akira away from the trepidation of the night’s events.

        The thought had occurred to him that his father was in danger but surely in a battle his father would win. Was his father not the best warrior in all the lands? The boy assured himself that his father and his men were worth thousands of lord Iga's soldiers. He assured himself that he was only being taken from the fortress for safety's sake.

        For those brief moments Akira was free, almost careless, he could not believe the speed Nirimaru was traveling at. As suddenly as they had begun their short journey though they stopped, something hit them in flight.

        Everything then happened quickly, very quickly. Akira flew from Nirimaru’s arms and bounced against the ground; the air flew from his lungs. He saw Nirimaru roll as he, in turn hit the ground. In front of Nirimaru a figure dressed in black alighted. The creature was the size and shape of a man but his lower jaw seemed to be made of metal and was the shape of some animal’s jaw.

        Nirimaru drew his sword; it was not the long semi-curved saber that his father used but a straight short sword. The figure didn't draw its weapon it just stood looking at Nirimaru. Akira saw a plume of dust behind Nirimaru then and suddenly another shadowy figure was standing off to the bodyguard's right. This one had a sword extended in his right hand. Akira looked back at the old warrior. Strangely in the moonlight Nirimaru seemed to be standing, now, in two black pools. Akira suddenly realized with growing horror that these were pools of blood. In the small clearing Nirimaru dropped to his knees, hemorrhaging from his almost severed legs.

        The first man laughed and lunged in with his now drawn sword driving it into Nirimaru's neck. There was a terrible moment of silence and then the creature withdrew the sword letting the old warrior's body fall to the ground. Then they turned to the boy. He was still trying to coax breath into his shocked lungs. His mind reeled from the shock of what had just happened. The two man flanked him on either side. They were wiping their swords.

        "It’s your turn my brother, you deserve the kill for your generosity in letting me have the old man." The assailant that had crippled Nirimaru grinned over what Akira now realized was a wolf mask, Ookami a creature from a child’s story stood before Akira. The fact that it was a mask somehow did not make it any less frightening because the eyes visible over the mask were not human at all, even in the darkness Akira could see that. The Ookami placed the point of his sword against the child's neck.

        "I only wish I had more time for thi..." This last word was literally cut off as his neck suddenly opened and blood started to spray from the wound. The boy watched as the sword whose tip was resting against his neck dropped from the Ookami's hands away from him to the ground.

        Akira then looked up at the other Ookami, the tip of a sword protruded about six inches from his mouth. Akira was showered in blood. He stood up as if in a dream, shock was like a warm numbness shutting down his senses. On the other side of the Ookami a man stood with his sword extended backward through the back of the Ookami's head. He was taking one long deep breath, he then twisted his sword and pulled it from the would-be assassin’s medulla. The body fell to the ground with a muffled thud. The newcomer turned to face Akira, the resemblance to Nirimaru was striking.

        "You are Inkui!" The boy said. "Nirimaru said you would come..." Inkui backhanded the boy across the face. The world again stood still for Akira. What had he done? Was this not his protector? The force of the blow and the pain of it rang in his head. Akira had never been struck this hard before, not even in the mock sword practice he had with his playmates. The shock of it was startling, numbing, the whole world shuddered and all Akira could think was please let him not hit me again.

        "I am Inkui and you will speak to me when I specifically tell you it is required do you understand?" Akira nodded; he tried to reason out what had just happened. The last thing he saw before he fainted was the expression on Inkui's face. Wide eyed, somewhere between rage and fear and perhaps despair as well. The vague thought occurred to him that perhaps something far worse than the Ookami had found him but before that thought had a chance to solidify he slipped into blackness.

*

        When he woke up it was daylight, he'd been wrapped in a bamboo bundle and was being carried across the back of an old peasant who moved slowly along the road.

        "Excuse me?" Akira realized too late it was Inkui in disguise carrying the bundle. The bodyguard lurched and the bamboo smacked painfully into his small body.

        "Be silent boy, and stay still." Akira quickly realized that they were both in disguise. This way they could travel without the Ookami being able to ask after them. For even if a trained eye might be able to see though Inkui's disguise up close, no one would notice or remember a slumped peasant with a bundle on his back. Out of fear of Inkui Akira stayed still. This turned out to be a slow way to travel, but also an effective one. Travel they did, north through farms, hills and mountains. Furthermore Akira was able to rest and recover from the shock of his escape somewhat though he was still terrified of Inkui.

        After about a week they shed their disguise and started to travel at night. This way they moved very quickly. Inkui would make Akira run with him until the boy collapsed then, after he was sure the boy was completely exhausted, he would carry him. For the first few nights Akira thought he would break down completely, perhaps die. Then he gradually noticed himself getting used to it. Yet every time he thought he had accomplished something Inkui would push him harder and harder. These first weeks of travel were brutal for the child but he knew that if the Ookami caught them that they would be killed. In his few words of instruction Inkui had imparted this at least but fear of his new protector was a far more immediate motivator than fear of the Ookami.

        Other than firm concise orders Inkui didn't speak to the boy. As they rested hidden during the day the boy would wake from sleep often and see his tormentor awake and staring off into space. The boy never spoke, he knew better and he was afraid if he express any emotion whatsoever he would start to cry. He was terrified of what might happen if the warrior saw him cry. Furthermore Akira's feet were a mass of blisters though he didn't apprise Inkui of this out of fear. At the end of the first week of travel Inkui noticed the boy hobbling around after they had rested.

        "Let me see your feet." He said sternly but not without trepidation. The child approached Inkui and removed his foot wraps and shoes. Inkui recoiled slightly the child's feet were raw with burst blisters and his foot wraps covered in blood.

        "You fool! Why did you not tell me of this?" The boy hesitated. "ANSWER ME!"

        "It doesn't hurt, I can go on." Akira said this quietly and levelly engaging Inkui's eyes and never blinking. Inkui's shoulders fell and he turned his head away. Akira could see him blinking. Inkui then sent an open handed slap across the boy's face sending him sprawling, he got up then and kicked the boy squarely in the stomach. Tears began to form in Akira's eyes but the child did not cry as he was terrified of what would happen if Inkui saw him cry.

        "From now on you will tell me of any injury you sustain immediately, do you understand?" The child nodded. "Stay here" Said Inkui and he left the hide.

        The boy went back to a pile of bull rushes he'd gathered for a bed the day before. They'd made a camp in a stand of shrubbery at the foot of a hill about a mile from the road. Inkui had disguised the clearing with branches making it impossible for anyone to see it from a distance. Akira sobbed himself to sleep in short order.

        He awoke to a searing, itching pain that surrounded both of his feet. He opened his mouth to scream but Inkui clamped his hand over his mouth with an unnerving speed. Akira got the message and held his voice in check. He laid there, his small body wracked in pain breathing through his nose because he was afraid that if he opened his mouth he would let a sob escape. After a little time the pain subsided but the itch remained.

        "The poultice is a Tengu secret; it will stop infection, accelerate the healing and make the skin grow back far thicker than it was." Inkui said. "We will rest here till tomorrow night; you should be ready to travel then." Akira turned over. When his face was away from Inkui he began to cry, he couldn't hold it in any more. Before long his body was wracked with sobs. If the man noticed he didn't say anything. Akira fell asleep when all his tears were gone.

 

        When he awoke he examined his feet. Peeling away the dried poultice he examined his wounds. It was as Inkui has said, they were mostly healed and the new calluses that had grown back were thick and pliable almost like the paw of a dog.

 

        "Get ready, we leave at sunset." Nodding Akira bound his shoes back to his feet. He surmised that he had slept for well over a day as the dusk was gathering. His muscles were stiff and ached terribly but from recent experience he knew that this would pass as they traveled. Inkui had examined Akira’s ribs where he’d kicked the child but said there was no break and he would be fine to travel.

 

        The night running began again. Inkui had the unnerving ability to find his way in the dark. Not only that but the few souls they saw on the road Inkui would detect long before they even came into view. No one saw them pass. No one would know they had come this way.

 

        Hours into the night Akira stopped. Inkui noticed immediately and rounded on him

 

        "Tired already boy?"

 

        "No, I want you to let me go. Just let me go somewhere I will work as a peasant in the fields I don't want you to take me anywhere. I don't want to be here with you, I want to go home. The battle will be over by now and my father victorious..." The boy squared himself against the man ready for the blow he knew would come. Instead Inkui drew his sword. There was a moment where Akira was sure he was about to die. Then Inkui threw the sword down at the boy's feet.

 

        Akira looked dumbly at the weapon, then back to Inkui. He considered all he had been though in the past days. He was tired, tired to his very soul. He realized that he hated Inkui deeply. The gravity of his situation washed over him. Akira had not had the time in life to develop a true sense of noble entitlement but a vague sense of it was there. A vague sense that this was not right, this should not be happening. Rage flowerd through him like an explosion. In one movement he strode over the sword, scooping it from the ground then his body came around in a hacking arc towards Inkui.

        Inkui for one instant was surprised. A normal man taken aback like this would have ended up with the sword buried in his gut. The boy had not only attacked with a fair amount of grace, but with enough momentum behind the sword to kill whatever unfortunate target he hit with the swing.

        Inkui's mind had been taken aback, but Inkui was not a normal man. His body reacted perfectly he dropped backwards under the sword arc and flipped back to his feet with blinding speed. Using the momentum he gained from the flip he pushed the boy with both hands to the ground. The sword skittered away. To Akira it had happened so fast that Inkui seemed only to flicker in the darkness and the sword appeared to pass right through him.

        "Some people can choose their own path. We do not have that luxury. You and I are bound to ours by honor and by fate." Inkui said. "The only way you can be free is to kill me. Until then you are the student and I am the master. You can run I will find you; there is no way to hide from me. I will never stop chasing you for I am bound by the promise of the Tengu. Akira, rest assured when I catch you your penance will be sever." Inkui did not say that Akira's father and mother were dead; he spared the boy that at least.

        Akira let out a long shuddering breath. He had come into the care of a mad demon; one that intended to make him a mad demon in turn. They stared at each other for a long while in the moonlight, something had changed in Inkui certainly for the first time since they had met he laughed and they turned to jog away.

        "Come Akira" He said, "I will teach you to become unseen, and to fly without wings."

*

        They continued north, skirting the bases of great mountain ranges until they came to the sea. The channel of dragons stood in front of them and in the great far distance they could see the island of Nobunata. In the night Inkui stole a fishing boat and they crossed the channel to the northern Island.

        The weather as they crossed the Channel of Dragons was poor. Akira would learn later that the weather in the channel was always poor. Legend had it that two great Dragons had fought a duel for the honor of the gods in this channel and they had cut a furrow through the earth as they fought separating Nobunata from the mainland. Their rage, the legend said, still dwelt in the depths of the seas causing the channel to be a most inhospitable place for seafarers.

        Akira sat in the bottom of the small fishing boat as Inkui steered it through the waves. He felt the small vessel carried into the air by the waves and dashed down to the bottom of great valleys of water. Inkui, by sheer force of his incredible strength and will kept the boat from being swallowed by the sea time and again.

        Akira crawled to the edge of the boat and looked at the swelling waves. He looked back at his protector and thought of his parents. Surely the Ookami had killed them, creatures that even Inkui ran from; creatures that could kill Nirimaru. The one that had meant to kill him had wanted his death to be slow. 'More time' he said he wanted.

        Akira could not imagine what pain would have awaited him if that time had been available or even if Inkui had not arrived. His young mind only had a very vague idea of what torture was but he knew that it had been done to his father, to his mother and to all he had loved.

        He stood up in the boat and, wavering only for an instant, threw himself into the roiling waves. The water was acidly cold and he let himself float in it. Knowing that he would be carried too far beneath the waves eventually and he would have to take water into his lungs as if it was air and in doing so drown.

        Under the water was roaring peace. He felt the pain of his lungs starving for air the cold penetrated deep into his flesh but he didn't care. He just wanted to sleep, forever in blackness and perhaps in that dark endlessness he would be somehow beside his father and mother and in the endless emptiness they could all rest forever.

        In the darkness he floated with flashes of lightning illuminating the endless depths before him. He was cast out of the waves and as he cleared the surface of the water he reflexively breathed in a lungful of air then the power of the wave that had him drove straight down and he was forced into the depths. As he recovered his senses he floated there, still in the blackness. So here was the place he would die.

        Lightning then flashed again and he saw something massive in the water right in front of him, looming up from the endless blackness of the sea. Terror gripped Akira as the lightning outlined a huge reptilian snout and long snake-like body disappearing back into the storm tossed water.

        A pair of eyes opened in the darkness in front of him, each one was taller than he was from lid to lid. The eyes glowed with their own inner light and they seemed to be made of diamonds and onyx. As the creature fixed its gaze on him a bolt of lightning struck the water somewhere out along the body of the great serpent and the creature's entire body took in the power of the lightning and it danced along its scales. Akira had never seen anything so magnificent, and thought that he never would again.

        The dragon's eyes stared into the boy's eyes for a long moment. Akira heard from his tutors that all things living knew what a dragon was when they saw one. While the word used to articulate changed from language to language what it described was exactly the same thing. The first and perfect children of creation and those charged with its protection, titans, wyrms, or dragons. Things, some said, greater than even the gods.

        The creature seemed to know all that had happened to him and all that fate had in store for him. Eons of knowledge echoed in the eyes of the ancient thing. Then the head turned away and it disappeared into the depths quickly and without warning, its scales rushing by in the water, sending him upwards. Akira's lungs had started to burn again and he started to black out.

        Then an iron grip then clamped around one of his arms and pulled him upwards. The pain of Inkui's powerful grip brought him to full consciousness. His head cleared the surface of the water and his lungs again reflexively pulled in a large gulp of air. Inkui's arm circled his chest and they started to move through the water at a ferocious speed.

        The boat was nowhere to be seen, and they were alone in the terrible sea. Inkui just kept swimming as if he knew exactly where he was going. Then, sure enough, over a large wave the small boat came into view. Miraculously it had not capsized. It took what seemed like an eternity in the cold water to get to the vessel. Then Inkui pulled them over the side.

        Akira flopped onto the deck, face down. He tried to turn around but a sharp blow across the back of his neck sent him sprawling. He crawled back under the prow board as Inkui resumed his place at the rudder. Akira tried to drop into a shivering miserable sleep.

        He could not imagine ever being able to stop Inkui. He asked himself if he could ever truly defeat what fate had set against him. Inkui was right in front of him and he was impossibly strong. No normal man could ever hope to stand against him and even he was afraid of the Ookami. He thought about the dragon in the water. Akira remembered it so clearly he thought of the majestic body crackling with power and the ancient eyes. In the dark and misery of the boat Akira then realized the simple truth of his predicament; either he would prevail or he would die.

        It was a cold and wet day when they entered the fishing town of Ishikari, the capital of Nobunata. They had beached their craft at a fishing outpost down the coast and they had made their way toward the town. Inkui had made a hide in some coastal hills the night before and they had dried their clothes on a small fire. Akira had not spoken about seeing the Dragon. Partially he didn't tell Inkui because knew that Inkui would tell him that it had been a hallucination or a dream, something to do with drowning. Partially he didn't say anything because the dragon had come to him, not Inkui but to him and that was his to keep; it was his dragon.

        Nobunata was a land of no great importance; a poor but fiercely independent and self sufficient island nation whose people shunned contact with the outside world. Strangers were disliked on Nobunata but Inkui and weeks of hard travel had made them look like nothing but the lowest beggars, weather strangers or not beggars were always treated the same way; as if they were invisible.

        They searched the sprawling town and eventually found a dry root cellar under a warehouse that looked as if it had been abandoned for years. Inkui instructed Akira in a method of making the entrance both secure and looking disused as he entered and left then they settled down to sleep. The sleep they slept was deep indeed.