Swords & Heroes Story #15

Last Man Standing by C. L. Werner

Dec 10, 2024

Clint and I go way back…but I never knew it! We’d both submitted stories that were accepted for an S&S project about 15 years ago which unfortunately never saw print. He’s gone on, of course, to write plenty more Shintaro Oba stories as well as novels for popular IPs including Warhammer (see his bio below). So I’m quite honored to feature a brand new samurai themed heroic fantasy to cap off the year. As we head into 2025, I want to thank you all for your interest and support as we bring you “S&S One Story at a Time.” + Ed.

Last Man Standing by C. L. Werner

The stone marker named the village ‘Naragata’. Oba was just able to spot the hip-high block of limestone peeking out from the weeds that had grown up around it. A sense of foreboding pulsed through the samurai, a feeling of wrongness. Civic pride was a cornerstone of the well-ordered Yamajin culture. For that pride to have eroded to such a degree indicated a serious disruption in the lives of Naragata’s inhabitants.

Oba shifted the armor bundle slung across his back and let his right hand drop to the bone grip of the longer of the two swords thrust through his waist sash. Trouble in Naragata could signal the presence of a demon. He was making this journey through the Black Mountains on the advice of the mummified monk Kambei-kai, seeking the coal mines of Hikara, abandoned since becoming the lair of a blood-drinking nobusuma, the bat-demon Kurai-no-ketsueki. He was well aware, however, in the lands of Mu-Thulan, demons infested many parts of the empire and simply because he was seeking a particular adversary didn’t mean his trail might not cross that of a different foe.

The thought set a dark cloud rolling through Oba’s mind as he pressed on along the mountain road. He’d been tasked to find and destroy the demon that held the soul of his late lord, Sekigahara Katakura, but after three years and many battles, he felt no nearer to finding the enemy he sought. Even with the help of the sokushinbutso Kambei-kai and his knowledge of demonology, hunting down Lord Katakura’s enslaver felt like an impossible quest.

A sound from the trees snapped Oba from his dour reflections. He looked to the right side of the road and the thick stands of pine and momiji stretching away into the mountain forest. His hand tightened around the grip of his uchigatana when the sharp noise was repeated. It was the unmistakable report of wood striking against wood, the impact of a pole or branch against a tree trunk. While he gazed into the wilderness, the noise sounded for the third time, but such was the distorting effect of its hollow echo that he gained only a vague idea of direction.

There was a notably hostile aspect to the knocking sounds, and the hairs on Oba’s neck prickled with uneasiness. Yet there was nothing the samurai could pick out that denoted the nature of the threat. Keeping a ready hold of his sword Koumakiri, he turned and continued along the road. The farther he went, the more frequent and violent the knocks grew, but their threatening quality only made him more determined to press on. Before the fall of the Sekigahara clan, Shintaro Oba had been renowned for his courage. It would take more than phantom noises to make him quail now.

Naragata appeared ahead of Oba with an abruptness that startled him. The trees, closing in on either side of the road, suddenly gave way to two rows of timber buildings. Most were small huts, but there were larger homes that sported the luxury of stone-walled gardens outside their doors. He spotted a massive structure that had all the earmarks of a lumber mill and a three-story slant-roofed place that might be an inn or bordello.

The knocking noises stopped when the samurai entered the village. Perhaps it was their absence that made Oba alert to the silence that descended upon him. The village looked like it should have a few hundred inhabitants, but for all of that, a deathly silence held sway over Naragata. The quiet had an aura of menace about it, and as he proceeded down the road he noticed the unmistakable signs of decay and neglect: ragged holes in door panels, missing tiles from roofs, stones fallen from garden walls with vegetables growing wild, spilling away from the remnants of once orderly rows.

“Hello!” Oba shouted. He didn’t speak again, disturbed by the way his voice echoed off the desolate buildings. No one stirred in response. It was to be expected in what he now knew was a ghost town.

Or was it as deserted as it seemed? Walking further into Naragata, Oba caught a flash of motion to his right. It was little more than the suggestion of a dark shape flitting through the trees just beyond the row of huts. Little land had been cleared to build the village and the surrounding forest descended almost to the walls of the houses. Oba stopped and stared at the spot he’d seen the shadow. Had it been a man, or some animal? Or perhaps Naragata was truly a ghost town.

The samurai walked on, his fingers twitching against Koumakiri’s grip. The uchigatana was enchanted against demons, capable of harming one when normal steel wouldn’t, but the blade had no special power against ghosts. If Naragata was haunted by angry yurei, Oba didn’t favor his own chances.

Off to his right, a black figure darted just at the edge of his vision, hurrying between the buildings. The sighting was too brief to tell anything other than its dark color...and that it moved on two legs.

The sense of menace that had dogged him since he’d heard the first knocks was now an icy alarm coursing through Oba’s veins. He felt enraged eyes watching him, plotting….

Oba paused only a few yards from the lumber mill. He could just see past its open doors. The vast interior was lost in darkness, but for a moment he thought something moved inside, something even darker than the surrounding shadows.

“By the Dominance!” Oba gasped, invoking the Emperor of the Kami in his shock. A log, old and weathered but every bit of four hundred pounds, sailed out from the lumber mill, hurtling toward him as though launched from a ballista. Leaping to one side, the samurai dodged the enormous missile by a matter of inches. The rotten wood shattered to splinters as it struck the road, peppering him with debris.

A high-pitched scream-howl thundered from the mill’s depths. Oba scrambled as a second log hurtled toward him, missing him as narrowly as the first one.

“Show yourself, coward!” Oba raged at the darkness. He dropped his armor bundle and drew both of his swords.

A dark shape stalked from the shadowy mill, slightly shorter than the samurai but with arms that hung well past its knees. Shaggy black hair covered almost the whole of the creature’s body. The face and the palm of the one hand he could see were bare and a pale greenish white. Oba was especially struck by the brute savagery of the visage, with low and craggy brow, beady and piggish eyes, broad squashed nose, and jutting lower jaw with sharp, jagged fangs thrust out from behind its lips.

The most imposing aspect, however, was what the monster carried at its side. With one hand, the beast lugged a third log, carrying it as a man might carry a rod of bamboo. It was a feat of strength to chill Oba’s blood.

The creature took several loping steps onto the road, its red eyes never straying from Oba. Then, with an underhand heave, it sent the log spinning through the air at him. The samurai dove to one side as the crude missile rushed toward him. This time, the man-monster was ready for his evasion. Snarling in a stream of gibbering, monkey-like chatter, the creature sprang for the samurai.

Oba swung Koumakiri as the beast charged, but it was a hasty slash, succeeding only in cutting one of the apish arms. The monster grunted in surprise and jumped back. It glared down at its injury, dabbing at the blood with its other hand. Then it lifted its gaze, and Oba saw the primal fury glowering in its tiny eyes. He braced himself for the creature’s next attack.

Before the monster could lunge for him, a loud report echoed through the village. Oba saw a patch of earth a few feet away from the beast explode in a puff of dust. The creature chattered in its bestial tone, then turned and dashed back into the shadow-filled mill. A moment later, Oba heard it crashing through the underbrush on the other side of the building as it fled into the forest.

“Damn, I missed it!” The disgusted voice carried down to Oba a moment before he saw a man emerge from one of the desolate huts. He was a rough-looking fellow, with a wiry build and a sunburnt complexion. The kimono he wore was likewise rough and weathered, the daisho thrust under the black sash around his waist marking him out as a samurai. In his hands was a bajo-zutsu, smoke still rising from the pistol’s barrel.

Oba bowed his head as the man approached. “Timely intervention, just the same.” He wiped the blood from his uchigatana. “I was barely able to keep that thing from getting hold of me. I don’t like to think what would have happened then.”

The smile the other samurai gave Oba was grim. “The hinagon would have torn your body limb from limb and scattered your entrails in the air.” He nodded to emphasize the severity of his claim. “Oh, I’ve seen it happen too many times.” He frowned at the pistol in his hand. “If I’d hit it, that would have been the end of the matter. As it is, you’d better come with me. My post is this way.” The man started back up the road.

“It isn’t safe to linger,” the samurai called to Oba when he hesitated to follow. “I scared off the hinagon, but it’ll be back, and when it returns it’ll be even angrier than before.”

“I am Kumagaya Hiroo,” the samurai said, introducing himself when they reached one of the larger buildings Oba had noted upon his arrival in Naragata. What he’d mistaken for a hut to one side of the structure proved to be a stable, though at present there was only one horse occupying it, an animal as rough-looking as its master.

The room that was Hiroo’s post was spacious. A counter served to partition a small section off from the remainder, behind which stood rows of shelves above large niches, like open-faced closets. All of them were empty, the dust-covered cobwebs showing they had been so for some time.

Oba bowed his head in a show of respect, then ostentatiously looked around the room. “Seems as though business has been bad,” he commented.

Hiroo smiled and nodded in agreement. “Quite bad.” The words left his mouth in a weary sigh, but the expression in the man’s eyes betokened suppressed excitement. Ever since he’d sheathed his swords, Oba had felt Hiroo’s gaze lingering over the sight of Koumakiri’s carved grip. Admiration? The appreciation for a fine blade? Or was there something less noble in Hiroo’s fascination?

“The monster?” Oba posed the question.

Again, Hiroo nodded. He set his pistol on the floor and shuffled over to a teakwood box. “The hinagon has been a menace to Naragata for decades,” he stated, removing powder and shot from the box. “Even in its best days, the village was kept from being truly prosperous because of the monster.”

“What exactly is it? A demon?” Oba doubted the suggestion. There were few demons that could withstand a cut from Koumakiri the way this creature had. It was no ghost, for its wound had bled. That made it a flesh and blood beast. “I’ve traveled much, but I’ve never heard of a ‘hinagon’ before.”

Hiroo lowered his head and set to the task of recharging the bajo-zutsu. “They live nowhere except the Black Mountains,” he said. “Even here, they are rare. A dying breed.”

“But what is this monster?” Oba asked again. His question trailed off when he saw the peach-pit sized lead ball Hiroo fed into the barrel of the pistol. The samurai didn’t like to think of the wound such a bullet would inflict.

“The hinagon is something not entirely beast nor entirely man,” Hiroo said. “Something abandoned by the gods when they were making men.” He shrugged. “What it is matters little. What the hinagon does is what matters, and what it does is to kill.” Hiroo used a small wooden rod to slam a patch of wadding down the barrel of his pistol. “It kills and kills and kills.” With each repetition of the word, Hiroo tamped down the charge in his pistol.

Oba felt the misery behind those words. “So you must keep prepared in case it returns,” he said, gesturing at the bajo-zutsu.

Hiroo laughed and raised the weapon. “Oh, the hinagon is sure to return,” the samurai declared. He aimed the gun at his guest. “But when it does, I won’t be here.”

Oba’s first impulse was to reach for his sword, but the yawning threat of the pistol held him in check. Anything but the most glancing shot would finish him and in the confines of this room, Hiroo couldn’t possibly miss.

Hiroo laughed again when he saw his prisoner’s sullen resignation. “You might reach me,” he taunted, “but I’m ready to take that chance.” He shuffled back a few paces and rose to his feet. Reaching behind the counter, he produced a folded piece of paper. He showed it to Oba with a dramatic flourish. Oba recognized the seal affixed to the document. It was the crest of Yoshinaga-kubo, Shogun of Mu-Thulan.

“A Shogunate lackey,” Oba spat.

Hiroo bristled at the disdain in the samurai’s voice. “A loyal retainer,” he coldly corrected. “Entrusted with maintaining the post relay of Naragata.” He waved the pistol at Koumakiri. “That’s how I recognized you, Shintaro Oba. The last time a messenger passed through here, he carried a circular about you.” A faraway look came into Hiroo’s eyes. “That was...that was sixteen months, two weeks, and three days ago.”

For the first time, true fear crawled down Oba’s spine. Capture by an enemy was one thing, but when he heard that speech from Hiroo, he heard more than just words. There was madness in the other samurai’s voice.

“Your information is old,” Oba told Hiroo, picking his own words carefully. “The Shogun prefers to use subterfuge and trickery against me now. Ninja and bounty hunters, people Yoshinaga can claim no responsibility for. He will not thank one of his own loyal retainers for taking such direct action.” It was Oba’s turn to smile. “The reward you get may not be what you hope for.”

“Whatever my lord decides, I will accept. Even if I’m deemed a disgrace and must perform seppuku, I accept that fate.” Hiroo shook his head. “Anything is better than being forgotten.”

The bitterness in the man’s voice sparked an idea founded on the precision with which Hiroo remembered the last messenger’s visit. “How long have you been the last man in Naragata?” Oba pressed.

The question shook Hiroo. He leaned against the counter and his eyes started to water. “Thirty-two months, three weeks, four days. That was when Akitsu closed the mill and left with the last of his workers, caring nothing for what the Azukizaka clan might do to him.”

No wonder the man was mad! The only inhabitant in an isolated, desolate village for nearly three years. Haunted by the omnipresent threat of being killed by the monster. Three years of being constantly on the alert for an attack.

“The Azukizaka don’t care,” Hiroo continued, almost absently. “There are other places the daimyo can get lumber. Places where his workers won’t be murdered by the hinagon.”

Oba saw the desperate gleam in Hiroo’s gaze. The man was most certainly his enemy. The fact that he’d made no demand for his prisoner to lay down his swords indicated that he had no intention of bringing him to Yoshinaga’s court alive. At some point, the bajo-zutsu would fire, but Hiroo was delaying that moment. Why? Simple loneliness. The samurai had been alone for so long that he was frantic for someone to talk to.

Oba pushed Hiroo to keep talking. “The hinagon killed everyone?”

“Not everyone!” Hiroo scoffed. “Most of the people fled. A family here, a family there. Naragata withered away by degrees.” He scowled and a distant look came into his eyes. “The hinagon was merely dangerous many years ago. A hunter or lumberjack might go missing once or twice a year. Enough to disquiet the village, but not enough to make everyone flee.”

A faint sound from outside drew Oba’s attention. It was remote, but he would swear it was knocking from the forest. He recalled his journey to Naragata. The sound of a human voice seemed to provoke the hinagon. A dangerous plan occurred to him.

“What pushed the people over the edge?” Oba prodded Hiroo. He had to keep the samurai talking, keep him from firing his pistol. Let the beast’s anger escalate.

“Lord Kosugi heard about the hinagon,” Hiroo said. “He wanted its hide to display in his castle. His hunters came here and after a few months, they caught and killed one of the monsters. Not a big one, a little one. They skinned it and took it back to the daimyo. After they left, the attacks increased. The hinagon would come right into Naragata and slaughter entire families in a single night.”

Outwardly, Oba displayed complete fascination with Hiroo’s story. Yet he was even more intent on the wood knocks. The noise drew closer and closer to the village. “Why didn’t you run with the rest?” he asked, hoping to keep Hiroo from noticing the sounds.

Hiroo shook the document bearing the Shogun’s seal. “I am no commoner!” he growled. “I am samurai! I was tasked with keeping the post relay open. It is my duty to remain here until I am relieved.”

“Aren’t you afraid the monster will get you?”

“I have this,” Hiroo brandished the pistol. “The hinagon is the one that’s afraid. It knows what a gun can do. Usually it keeps clear.”

The wood knocks abruptly stopped. Oba wondered if that was because the beast had retreated or if the creature was through with warnings. “It came into Naragata today,” Oba reminded Hiroo.

“That was your fault,” Hiroo said. “The monster always comes down when somebody else comes here. It doesn’t want anyone resettling Naragata.”

“So the village is now part of its territory,” Oba observed. “That can’t be a good place for you to be.”

The reminder was the wrong thing for him to say. Oba winced when Hiroo’s mouth twitched. “That won’t be my problem,” he snarled, aiming the pistol at his prisoner’s chest. “Taking your head to the Shogun is reason enough to leave my post. Whatever happens, it’ll be better than staying—”

Hiroo’s speech was interrupted by the impact of a powerful body against the wall of the building. The timbers burst apart as a black, shaggy shape plunged into the room. Oba was knocked aside when debris from the wall smacked into him. The impact threw him across the room to slam into the counter. Shaking away the stars that swirled through his vision, the staggered samurai could only watch as a brutal scene played out before him.

The sudden havoc caught Hiroo as much by surprise as Oba. The retainer had only started to turn when the apelike hinagon was on him. The beast’s inhumanly long arms clasped him in a crushing embrace. Hiroo screamed in pain as blood erupted from his mouth, the monster’s hug splintering his ribs and puncturing his lungs.

In his agonies, however, Hiroo managed to bring the heavy bajo-zutsu up and around. There was a deafening roar as he triggered the pistol against the hinagon’s chest. The smell of scorched hair and burnt flesh struck Oba’s nose, snapping him to full awareness.

Drawing his swords, Oba lunged to his feet and started toward the combatants, but the course of the fray was already decided. Blood streamed from the hinagon’s body, too much for its wound to be anything but a mortal one. Even as it was dying, the beast clapped one of its pale hands around the top of Hiroo’s head. The retainer shrieked as the monster exerted its prodigious strength. With a single wrenching motion, it curled the man’s head around, twisting it until Hiroo’s dead eyes stared over his own spine.

The hinagon let the corpse fall, then staggered and glared at Oba. Torn and bloody organs protruded from the hideous hole in its chest. The manbeast chittered at the samurai and took one lurching step before it collapsed beside the dead retainer.

Oba returned his swords to their sheathes and stared across the carnage. Years of siege had finally ended in annihilation.

Now, Naragata was truly a ghost town.

Last Man Standing © 2024 by C. L. Werner (3500 words) All rights reserved. You may restack this story via Substack but please do not republish elsewhere. Banner by Gilead; katana illustration by Impermanent via Pixabay; and katana clip art via Pixabay, all used by permission.

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