The air in Lord Kuroda's mountain headquarters was thick with the smell of damp stone, herbal medicines, and a growing sense of unease. The initial fervor of their holy war was beginning to curdle in the face of the enemy's monstrous, inhuman logic. Lieutenant Tanaka Isoroku knelt before his spymaster, the flickering light of a single oil lamp casting long shadows across their faces.
"My lord," Tanaka began, his voice strained, "the mission was a partial success. We have the hostage. The collaborator governor's father-in-law is secured in the lower caves." He paused, the words catching in his throat. "We also… followed your orders regarding the medical convoy. Their supplies are destroyed. We left your message."
"Excellent," Kuroda said, his voice a low, satisfied hiss. He sat perfectly still, a predator conserving its energy. "The governor will now feel our pressure directly. The Chinese will learn that their own wounded are now pawns in this game. This will sow fear among them."
"But my lord," Tanaka pressed, unable to keep the distress from his voice, "the price was high. Kenji, the boy from Ino village, and two other men were captured during the raid on the governor's family villa. We were forced to leave them behind." His voice dropped further. "And the Chinese response to our first ambush… the one that killed the patrol near Omi… they have retaliated. The village of Omi no longer exists. A traveler brought the news. The Chinese army marched in, executed every male over sixteen, took the women and children for slaves, and burned every structure to the ground."
Kuroda's expression did not change. He seemed to be expecting this news. He processed it not as a tragedy, but as a predictable move in the great, bloody game of Go they were now playing.
"The village of Omi has paid the price of patriotism," he stated, his voice devoid of all sentiment. "Their sacrifice, while tragic, is not without value. Their ashes will fertilize the fields of our resolve. The story of their martyrdom will fuel the hatred of a dozen other villages. The Chinese Emperor believes he is teaching our people a lesson in fear. He is a fool. He is actually teaching them a lesson in pure, undiluted hatred. Fear can be overcome. Hatred is a slow poison for which there is no cure. It will work for us in the end."
Tanaka stared at his master, horrified. "You knew this would happen? You sacrificed them? You sent my men on that first raid knowing that hundreds of innocents would pay the price?"
"This is a total war, Lieutenant," Kuroda said, his eyes narrowing. He was disappointed in Tanaka's sentimentality. "In such a war, there are no innocent bystanders. Every life, Chinese or Japanese, is now a resource. A resource to be spent, to be traded, to be sacrificed for a greater tactical or strategic advantage. Do not grow soft. It is a luxury we can no longer afford."
The coldness of his leader's calculus was a physical shock. The noble resistance Tanaka had envisioned, a war of samurai protecting the common folk, had become a cynical game of sacrificing peasants to score points. He felt a part of his own spirit begin to wither and die.
"What of the hostage?" Tanaka asked, changing the subject, needing to cling to the original purpose of their mission. "What are your orders for the old man?"
The hostage, the governor's father-in-law, was brought before Kuroda. The old man was terrified, but his pride and defiance were still intact. "Kill me if you will, you dishonorable thugs!" he spat, his voice trembling but full of contempt. "I will not be your bargaining chip! My son-in-law is a dead man to me already!"
Kuroda looked at the old man with a dispassionate, analytical gaze. "He is useless to us like this," he said to Tanaka, as if the hostage wasn't even there. "His defiance is an inconvenience. We need to send a message to the governor that is… unambiguous. A message that will break his will completely."
He turned to one of his personal guards, a man with a scarred face and dead eyes. "Take the old man to the back of the cave. Cut off the little finger of his left hand. Cauterize the wound; we need him to survive the shock. The finger is to be placed in a small silk box and delivered to the governor's wife. The message will be simple: the next package she receives will contain her father's head if her husband does not begin feeding us accurate intelligence on Qing troop movements."
Tanaka felt a wave of nausea. This was not war. This was the work of common criminals, of yakuza thugs. He watched in horror as the old man was dragged away, screaming curses and threats. He had set out to fight a demon, and in doing so, he was being asked to perform the devil's own work.
Just as he was grappling with this new abyss of moral compromise, a scout, breathless from running, burst into the cave.
"My lord Kuroda!" the scout gasped, bowing hastily. "We have one! We captured one of them!"
Kuroda's head snapped up, his previous coldness replaced by a sudden, feverish excitement. "One of who? Speak clearly!"
"A soldier from the Chinese Emperor's elite guard!" the scout reported. "A small patrol of ours stumbled upon him. He was alone, wounded, separated from his unit during the fighting for the northern wall of Nagasaki. He fought like ten demons, my lord. Killed four of our men before he collapsed from his wounds. But we have him. He is alive."
A predatory gleam entered Kuroda's eyes. His plan to capture one of the Emperor's elite, a long and difficult gambit, had just fallen into his lap by a stroke of luck.
"Alive?" Kuroda hissed, his voice filled with a sudden, intense purpose. "Is he grievously harmed?"
"He is heavily wounded, my lord," the scout confirmed. "But our healer says he will live."
"Excellent," Kuroda whispered. He stood up, his mind already racing, the hostage in the back of the cave completely forgotten. "It does not matter. Keep him alive at all costs. Give him water, bind his wounds, but do not speak to him. Bring him to the deepest part of the monastery's cellars. Chain him to the wall."
He turned to Tanaka, his face animated with a new, terrible energy. "Forget the governor's father. He is a piece of bait. This… this is the real prize." He began to pace, his mind alight with new, darker possibilities. "This man is a window into the Dragon's soul. He holds the secrets to our enemy's true strength. We will not just interrogate him. We will break him. We will take him apart, piece by piece, until we understand how they think, how they train, how they fight."
He stopped and looked at Tanaka, his eyes burning with a fanatical light. "And through him," he said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper, "we will finally find a way to kill the Dragon himself."
The resistance had just won a major intelligence victory, but it had come at a terrible cost to their own morality. They now had a prisoner of their own, a member of the Emperor's elite, and in the dark, cold cellars of the ancient monastery, they were about to descend into the same darkness their enemy inhabited.