Chapter 528: Single Combat
The next day, at dusk, as the blood-red sun was setting.
Kyoto's main gate had a huge barbican behind it. A barbican was a second wall built behind the main wall, a kind of double insurance.
A barbican didn't just make a city harder to take. It could also be used offensively.
For example, you could mass your soldiers in the barbican, then suddenly throw open the gate and charge out, catching the enemy by surprise.
The main gate in the outer wall had already been smashed open by the demons and stood wide.
The soldiers inside had worked through the night to repair the barbican, building a new gate for it out of wooden planks and steel.
The battered barbican gate opened, and a towering samurai in black armour strode out, wearing an iron mask, every part of him covered except his eyes.
The moment he stepped out of the inner gate, it shut tight behind him, leaving him alone in the barbican.
The black-armoured samurai spread a white cloth on the ground and knelt formally on it.
Following the etiquette of bushidō, he knelt upright and perfectly composed on the white cloth, like a great bell.
His eyes were fixed on the open outer gate, sharp as a sword!
His ears were pricked, listening to the noise around him.
He heard it. Outside the gate, in the distance, the tremor of the Big Yōkai coming down from Peach Blossom Mountain, step by step, toward Kyoto.
He heard the samurai on the walls swallowing hard out of nerves.
And he heard, from behind the barbican wall, the crying of the children who had been seized, and the heart-rending cries of their parents.
As the black-armoured samurai listened to the children crying, he sighed.
His head, held upright all this time, bowed. He looked down at the earth beneath him.
When he raised his head again, the Giant Yōkai, six metres tall, utterly hideous, kanabō in hand, had arrived in front of him with his demon army!
The Big Yōkai around the Giant Yōkai let out bestial roars and wanted to rush in and tear the black-armoured samurai apart.
But the Giant Yōkai held them back with his kanabō, and the Big Yōkai all retreated, not daring to step out of line.
The Giant Yōkai looked down at this black-armoured samurai, whom he could crush underfoot with no effort at all.
"You stink. There's a stench on you that disgusts me!"
The black-armoured samurai looked up and slowly rose from the ground.
"Demon! Do you hear it?"
The Giant Yōkai asked with interest, "I have very good hearing. What do you mean?"
The black-armoured samurai raised his head and met the six-metre Giant Yōkai's gaze.
"You foul, wicked demons dare to bring chaos to the world of men!
"You eat the child and make the father watch. You eat the father and make the son watch. You tempt husbands and wives to betray each other. You shatter the courage of soldiers until they dare not raise their swords against the enemy, yet dare to cut down their own people!"
When the samurai on the walls heard this, every one of them lowered his head in shame.
From the first day the Big Yōkai entered the city, they had thrown away all their courage. They couldn't call themselves samurai anymore.
The true samurai had died on the walls on that very first day.
The black-armoured samurai drew the treasured sword at his waist and pointed its tip straight at the Giant Yōkai.
"You demon who toys with men's hearts! I, Minamoto no Hei, will take your head with the Steel-Cleaver handed down by my ancestors and restore peace and light to All Under Heaven!!"
With that, under the eyes of the thousands of samurai on the walls, and amid the cries of the children and their parents behind the walls, Hei charged the Giant Yōkai!
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