1 The Fighting Ground [Training/Private] Sat May 17, 2014 11:49 am
Ringo
D-rank
It was in the morning when Ringo first heard the bell. He was standing in the warm, open field feeling hot, dirty, and bored. His father, not far off, limped as he worked along the newly turned rows of corn. As for Ringo, he was daydreaming, daydreaming about being a soldier.
His older brother was a soldier with the Mizukage in Kiri back during the Seven Bells siege. His cousin had joined in the fight as well. Ringo kept waiting for his father to say that he too could join. He was, after all, twenty-eight. Technically he could have gone off without his father’s permission, but it wouldn’t be right to head into war without his father’s blessing.
Ringo dreamed of one day taking up a gun himself and fighting the enemy. For he had heard his father and his father’s friends talk many times about the savage Seven Bells ; his cruel mercenary-like followers; and the countless puppets that he had at his side. It was former Kiri-nin that had joined up with Seven Bells.
But Ringo’s father no longer spoke of war. During the past winter he had fought near Kirigakure and been wounded in the leg. It was painful for him to walk, and Ringo was needed at home. Though he kept asking questions about the battle, his father only shook his head, while his eyes grew clouded. Still, Ringo could dream. So it was that at the sound of the bell they both stood still and listened.
The bell, at the tavern a mile and a half away, was used to call the men to arms. This time it tolled only once. Puzzled, they stood alert, straining to hear if more would come.
Ringo looked over at the edge of the field, where his father’s set of kunai leaned against a stump. The shoulder pouch of shuriken was also there. The knives were primed, ready to be used. Ringo knew how. Hadn’t his father taught him, drilled him, told him that everyone had to be prepared? Hadn’t he said, “We must all be soldiers now”? And hadn’t Ringo talked with his friends of war, battles old and new, strategies fit for major generals? And, having fought their wars, they had always won their glory, hadn’t they?
So when the bell stayed silent, Ringo sighed with disappointment. His father turned back to work. The beating of his hoe against the earth made a soft, yielding sound, as if a clock had begun to count a familiar piece of time.
But as Ringo resumed his tasks, his mind turned to uniforms, the old Sunagakure uniforms. He pictured himself in the sandy yellow jacket with red facings, white leggings, a beautiful set of kunai held tight in his fists. He wondered if Kumogakure had any uniforms like those he had seen back in Suna.
Softly at first, but with growing sureness, the bell began to ring again. Each stoke sliced away a piece of calm.
“What do you think?” Ringo asked.
His father pulled off his black felt hat and mopped his brow with the back of his hand. He was looking south, worry on his face. Absentmindedly, he rubbed his wounded leg.
Seeing him yet undecided, Ringo walked to the edge of the field to get a drink of water from the clay jar by the set of kunai. The cool water dripped down his neck, trickled over his chest, and made him shiver.
The bell tolled on. Ringo, stealing glances at his father, touched his fingers to the glossy shine of the knife, liking its sharp, smooth finish.
“Maybe you’d best get back to the house,” his father said. “Could be someone’s come on through with news. I’d need to know.”
Ringo sprang up. Too fast.
“Ringo!” his father cried. Grabbed by his father’s voice, Ringo stood where he was.
“Don’t you—by God—don’t you go beyond!”
They looked at one another. Ringo felt his stomach turn all queer, for in that moment his father’s eyes became unveiled, and they revealed themselves to be full of fear.
Quickly, Ringo turned away and began to run through the copse of trees that separated the field from their house. Behind him, the clocklike sound of his father’s work resumed, an echo to the call of the bell.
Ringo vaulted the split-rail fence, hardly breaking stride. As he came up to the house he’d lived in most of his life, his mother appeared at the door. From behind her skirts his young neice and nephew poked their heads.
“What is it?” his mother called before he spoke a word. He could see her worry. Each stroke of the distant bell seemed to make her wince. She had always hated the war, even talk of war, fretting so about his brother, who had gone off and yet never sent a word, not one.
At her question Ringo stopped short, not wanting to get too close. His bare toes curled in to the soft earth. “Don’t know,” he replied. “Father told me to see if anyone came through with news.”
“Not here,” she said.
“Maybe there are some men attacking the village,” he said. Two years before, only twenty miles away, there had been a raid on the Ozaki clan’s village. Some ninja that were trying to cleanse the land of our cursed clan. “Think they might?” he asked, looking about for his shoes. She didn’t reply.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the ringing of the bell stopped, leaving an empty silence. Ringo wondered if he was already too late.
“Want me to go to the tavern to find out what it was?” he asked, edging closer in. He had spied his shoes. They were on the bench by the door.
“Your father tell you to?”
When Ringo gave no reply, she pushed a slip of hair beneath her cap and slapped away a tugging child’s hand. “Maybe you’d best,” she said. “Your father can’t. And we don’t want to be surprised.”
Not wanting to give her time to change her mind, Ringo leaped forward, pulled on his shoes, then bolted up and began to run.
“Just find out!” she called after him. “Then come on right back! You hear?”
Pretending he had not heard, Ringo kept up his steady run. He lengthened his stried, turned a sharp angle, then beat his way to the creek. He passed the cooling house. He sped along the path that edged old dark woods where the warm, soft smell of rotting wood filled the air.
Maybe, he thought as he ran, maybe it was going to be a battle, a big one. Maybe he would take a part in it.
“Oh please,” he said to himself. “Make it be a battle. With armies, big ones, and swords and knives and blood and bodies for me to loot!” Oh, he could, would fight. Good as his older brother. Maybe as good as his father. Better, maybe. Hopefully it would be better, as his older brother died in a fight back during Seven Bells only a few months ago and his father wounded.
He was running harder now, having broken from the path to the main road. He passed the place where a boy he knew used to live; they hadn’t quite been friends. He’d gone off and gotten killed. Ringo didn’t like to think of that. Besides, the boy’s folks said it was an awful fight, cursed it, spat on it when they could. People, hearing them, hinted that the family was known to have issues with each other and have harbored ill will to their own son. A few other families were like that, mainly had to stay drunk to be friendly. Sometimes the drinking only made things worse. It was better that they weed themselves off. Lighten the load, lessen the herd.
Ringo moved up a small hill and, once on top, paused to catch his breath. A swirl of red-breasted pigeons coursed the air. A squirrel scolded, a crow cackled. It was spring, and warm, and wonderful ripe for a battle. Ringo felt sure he could try anything, be anything, do anything anyone might set before him.
And even as he stood there, unsure what to do, the bell resumed its vibrant call. He could go home . . . or to the tavern. But if he went to the tavern, he knew it wouldn’t be just to get the news. He meant to go and fight.
“Do it!” he told himself. “Go and fight!” His father was afraid, but he wasn’t. And again he began to pelt toward the sound of the bell, his blood as warm as the swollen, spring-tied earth.
The tavern was the biggest place around, and was perched on the highest point. Built entirely of stone, it seemed a fortress, a castle at the crossroads, with sparkling glass windows and a high, peaked roof.
To the south seven miles were the roads that lead to the rest of the Lightning Country. Twenty miles distant was Kumogakure. That was where the hated group of ninja had approached from two years back.
As he approached the tavern, Ringo could see the bell. An old neighbor, a boy several years younger than his own age, was heaving the cord. The bell hung in its own rack, set up to sound alarms. It stood to one side of the green where the men practiced for militia duty, an exercise that Ringo dearly loved to watch.
Some men had already gathered at the tavern and were busy talking. Becoming shy, Ringo slowed his pace. As he approached, a man climbed a tree to watch the roads.
Ringo wished someone would tell him what was happening. But no one paid him mind. He thought, “They don’t know I’ve come to fight.”
“Here comes someone!” yelled the man in the tree.
“Got his sword?”
“Looks it!”
Shuriken pouches, straps of kunai, and swords had been left against the tavern. Ringo wished he’d brought his father’s set of kunai and shuriken.
He felt a tap on his shoulder. “Your father coming?” was the question.
Before he could reply, someone else said: “His leg’s still sitting poor.”
They paid no more mind to Ringo. Frustrated, he went over to the bell. Though he would rather have spoken to the men, he talked to his young friend. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Ninja,” said his friend, fitting the word between strokes of the bell.
A whip of excitement cut through Ringo. “Enemy ones?”
“That’s what they say,” his friend answered.
As Ringo watched, a man came out of the tavern, someone he had never seen before. He was a large man, with broad shoulders and a red, badly pock-marked face. His shirt, spilling out of his trousers, wasn’t very clean, and his dark-green jacket with fraying cuffs was clearly old. His boots were caked with mud, his hat was too small.
When the man came out of the tavern, he was holding a tankard with one hand, wiping crumbs from his mouth with the other. He stood in front of the tavern door, surveying the gathered men who, in turn, kept keen eyes on him.
“Any more coming?” the stranger called.
“Be some time yet” came the reply.
“We don’t have time,” the stranger snapped. He took a half step around as if to go back inside. The tavern keeper stood in the doorway. “By God,” the stranger said, “don’t they understand? IF we don’t move, they’ll get through.”
The tavern keeper said nothing at all.
A man came running, cresting the hill. A katana glistened in his hand. “Where they coming from?” he called.
“From the trade roads,” called one of the men.
“How many?”
“Fifteen or less.”
“Who saw them?”
“The Corporal’s come.”
Again, heads turned to the stranger. He was finishing off his drink. When done, he handed the tankard to the keeper, who took it silently.
“Here’s more!” cried the man in the tree. “You be patient, Corporal,” he called to the stranger. “You’ll have an army yet.”
The tavern keeper shook his head. “It’s groundbreaking time.”
The Corporal strode down from the doorway and approached the men.
“How long will it take these ninja to get here from Linvale?” he asked.
“That’s four miles,” came an answer.
“An hour and a half,” was the calculation.
Impatiently, the stranger rubbed his hands together, then suddenly swung around to face the bell, where Ringo was standing, watching.
“That’s enough!” the Corporal barked to Ringo’s friend. “They’ll either come or not.”
The boy let the rope drop. Again the stranger considered the group of men, then, turning, discovered Ringo’s eyes fixed on him. “You handle yourself in a fight?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Ringo managed to get out.
“And you?” the stranger asked the other boy. The boy shook his head no.
The Corporal glowered, then shifted around once more and drifted toward the men. Four more had run in, making thirteen in all. The Corporal appraised them, then turned to the tavern keeper. “You coming?” he asked.
“We’ll need to have ourselves a second line in case they get through,” said the innkeeper. “I’d best stick here.”
The Corporal frowned and then, lost in thought, went outside and tightened up his sandals. Only then did it occur to Ringo that this Corporal, whoever he was, had ridden in with the news. He wondered where he had come from and just what he had seen, and why he’d come to this place.
When he finished fussing with his shoes, the Corporal swung around to face the waiting men. “There’s no more time,” he said. “We need to go.”
Ringo noticed that the men were now watching one another as much as they watched the stranger. “Aren’t we going to wait for more?” came the question that was on all of their faces.
“It’s late,” the Corporal replied. “Yes or no? Are we going?”
No one spoke. Then someone, Ringo didn’t see who, gave a murmur. Others took it up, a brief swelling sound, not quite a word.
“All right,” the Corporal said, choosing to take the sound as ‘yes.’ He looked about again, his eyes coming to rest on Ringo.
“You,” he said, pointing. “You said you could fight. Get your gear together. You’re needed.”
2458 words
His older brother was a soldier with the Mizukage in Kiri back during the Seven Bells siege. His cousin had joined in the fight as well. Ringo kept waiting for his father to say that he too could join. He was, after all, twenty-eight. Technically he could have gone off without his father’s permission, but it wouldn’t be right to head into war without his father’s blessing.
Ringo dreamed of one day taking up a gun himself and fighting the enemy. For he had heard his father and his father’s friends talk many times about the savage Seven Bells ; his cruel mercenary-like followers; and the countless puppets that he had at his side. It was former Kiri-nin that had joined up with Seven Bells.
But Ringo’s father no longer spoke of war. During the past winter he had fought near Kirigakure and been wounded in the leg. It was painful for him to walk, and Ringo was needed at home. Though he kept asking questions about the battle, his father only shook his head, while his eyes grew clouded. Still, Ringo could dream. So it was that at the sound of the bell they both stood still and listened.
The bell, at the tavern a mile and a half away, was used to call the men to arms. This time it tolled only once. Puzzled, they stood alert, straining to hear if more would come.
Ringo looked over at the edge of the field, where his father’s set of kunai leaned against a stump. The shoulder pouch of shuriken was also there. The knives were primed, ready to be used. Ringo knew how. Hadn’t his father taught him, drilled him, told him that everyone had to be prepared? Hadn’t he said, “We must all be soldiers now”? And hadn’t Ringo talked with his friends of war, battles old and new, strategies fit for major generals? And, having fought their wars, they had always won their glory, hadn’t they?
So when the bell stayed silent, Ringo sighed with disappointment. His father turned back to work. The beating of his hoe against the earth made a soft, yielding sound, as if a clock had begun to count a familiar piece of time.
But as Ringo resumed his tasks, his mind turned to uniforms, the old Sunagakure uniforms. He pictured himself in the sandy yellow jacket with red facings, white leggings, a beautiful set of kunai held tight in his fists. He wondered if Kumogakure had any uniforms like those he had seen back in Suna.
Softly at first, but with growing sureness, the bell began to ring again. Each stoke sliced away a piece of calm.
“What do you think?” Ringo asked.
His father pulled off his black felt hat and mopped his brow with the back of his hand. He was looking south, worry on his face. Absentmindedly, he rubbed his wounded leg.
Seeing him yet undecided, Ringo walked to the edge of the field to get a drink of water from the clay jar by the set of kunai. The cool water dripped down his neck, trickled over his chest, and made him shiver.
The bell tolled on. Ringo, stealing glances at his father, touched his fingers to the glossy shine of the knife, liking its sharp, smooth finish.
“Maybe you’d best get back to the house,” his father said. “Could be someone’s come on through with news. I’d need to know.”
Ringo sprang up. Too fast.
“Ringo!” his father cried. Grabbed by his father’s voice, Ringo stood where he was.
“Don’t you—by God—don’t you go beyond!”
They looked at one another. Ringo felt his stomach turn all queer, for in that moment his father’s eyes became unveiled, and they revealed themselves to be full of fear.
Quickly, Ringo turned away and began to run through the copse of trees that separated the field from their house. Behind him, the clocklike sound of his father’s work resumed, an echo to the call of the bell.
Ringo vaulted the split-rail fence, hardly breaking stride. As he came up to the house he’d lived in most of his life, his mother appeared at the door. From behind her skirts his young neice and nephew poked their heads.
“What is it?” his mother called before he spoke a word. He could see her worry. Each stroke of the distant bell seemed to make her wince. She had always hated the war, even talk of war, fretting so about his brother, who had gone off and yet never sent a word, not one.
At her question Ringo stopped short, not wanting to get too close. His bare toes curled in to the soft earth. “Don’t know,” he replied. “Father told me to see if anyone came through with news.”
“Not here,” she said.
“Maybe there are some men attacking the village,” he said. Two years before, only twenty miles away, there had been a raid on the Ozaki clan’s village. Some ninja that were trying to cleanse the land of our cursed clan. “Think they might?” he asked, looking about for his shoes. She didn’t reply.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the ringing of the bell stopped, leaving an empty silence. Ringo wondered if he was already too late.
“Want me to go to the tavern to find out what it was?” he asked, edging closer in. He had spied his shoes. They were on the bench by the door.
“Your father tell you to?”
When Ringo gave no reply, she pushed a slip of hair beneath her cap and slapped away a tugging child’s hand. “Maybe you’d best,” she said. “Your father can’t. And we don’t want to be surprised.”
Not wanting to give her time to change her mind, Ringo leaped forward, pulled on his shoes, then bolted up and began to run.
“Just find out!” she called after him. “Then come on right back! You hear?”
Pretending he had not heard, Ringo kept up his steady run. He lengthened his stried, turned a sharp angle, then beat his way to the creek. He passed the cooling house. He sped along the path that edged old dark woods where the warm, soft smell of rotting wood filled the air.
Maybe, he thought as he ran, maybe it was going to be a battle, a big one. Maybe he would take a part in it.
“Oh please,” he said to himself. “Make it be a battle. With armies, big ones, and swords and knives and blood and bodies for me to loot!” Oh, he could, would fight. Good as his older brother. Maybe as good as his father. Better, maybe. Hopefully it would be better, as his older brother died in a fight back during Seven Bells only a few months ago and his father wounded.
He was running harder now, having broken from the path to the main road. He passed the place where a boy he knew used to live; they hadn’t quite been friends. He’d gone off and gotten killed. Ringo didn’t like to think of that. Besides, the boy’s folks said it was an awful fight, cursed it, spat on it when they could. People, hearing them, hinted that the family was known to have issues with each other and have harbored ill will to their own son. A few other families were like that, mainly had to stay drunk to be friendly. Sometimes the drinking only made things worse. It was better that they weed themselves off. Lighten the load, lessen the herd.
Ringo moved up a small hill and, once on top, paused to catch his breath. A swirl of red-breasted pigeons coursed the air. A squirrel scolded, a crow cackled. It was spring, and warm, and wonderful ripe for a battle. Ringo felt sure he could try anything, be anything, do anything anyone might set before him.
And even as he stood there, unsure what to do, the bell resumed its vibrant call. He could go home . . . or to the tavern. But if he went to the tavern, he knew it wouldn’t be just to get the news. He meant to go and fight.
“Do it!” he told himself. “Go and fight!” His father was afraid, but he wasn’t. And again he began to pelt toward the sound of the bell, his blood as warm as the swollen, spring-tied earth.
The tavern was the biggest place around, and was perched on the highest point. Built entirely of stone, it seemed a fortress, a castle at the crossroads, with sparkling glass windows and a high, peaked roof.
To the south seven miles were the roads that lead to the rest of the Lightning Country. Twenty miles distant was Kumogakure. That was where the hated group of ninja had approached from two years back.
As he approached the tavern, Ringo could see the bell. An old neighbor, a boy several years younger than his own age, was heaving the cord. The bell hung in its own rack, set up to sound alarms. It stood to one side of the green where the men practiced for militia duty, an exercise that Ringo dearly loved to watch.
Some men had already gathered at the tavern and were busy talking. Becoming shy, Ringo slowed his pace. As he approached, a man climbed a tree to watch the roads.
Ringo wished someone would tell him what was happening. But no one paid him mind. He thought, “They don’t know I’ve come to fight.”
“Here comes someone!” yelled the man in the tree.
“Got his sword?”
“Looks it!”
Shuriken pouches, straps of kunai, and swords had been left against the tavern. Ringo wished he’d brought his father’s set of kunai and shuriken.
He felt a tap on his shoulder. “Your father coming?” was the question.
Before he could reply, someone else said: “His leg’s still sitting poor.”
They paid no more mind to Ringo. Frustrated, he went over to the bell. Though he would rather have spoken to the men, he talked to his young friend. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Ninja,” said his friend, fitting the word between strokes of the bell.
A whip of excitement cut through Ringo. “Enemy ones?”
“That’s what they say,” his friend answered.
As Ringo watched, a man came out of the tavern, someone he had never seen before. He was a large man, with broad shoulders and a red, badly pock-marked face. His shirt, spilling out of his trousers, wasn’t very clean, and his dark-green jacket with fraying cuffs was clearly old. His boots were caked with mud, his hat was too small.
When the man came out of the tavern, he was holding a tankard with one hand, wiping crumbs from his mouth with the other. He stood in front of the tavern door, surveying the gathered men who, in turn, kept keen eyes on him.
“Any more coming?” the stranger called.
“Be some time yet” came the reply.
“We don’t have time,” the stranger snapped. He took a half step around as if to go back inside. The tavern keeper stood in the doorway. “By God,” the stranger said, “don’t they understand? IF we don’t move, they’ll get through.”
The tavern keeper said nothing at all.
A man came running, cresting the hill. A katana glistened in his hand. “Where they coming from?” he called.
“From the trade roads,” called one of the men.
“How many?”
“Fifteen or less.”
“Who saw them?”
“The Corporal’s come.”
Again, heads turned to the stranger. He was finishing off his drink. When done, he handed the tankard to the keeper, who took it silently.
“Here’s more!” cried the man in the tree. “You be patient, Corporal,” he called to the stranger. “You’ll have an army yet.”
The tavern keeper shook his head. “It’s groundbreaking time.”
The Corporal strode down from the doorway and approached the men.
“How long will it take these ninja to get here from Linvale?” he asked.
“That’s four miles,” came an answer.
“An hour and a half,” was the calculation.
Impatiently, the stranger rubbed his hands together, then suddenly swung around to face the bell, where Ringo was standing, watching.
“That’s enough!” the Corporal barked to Ringo’s friend. “They’ll either come or not.”
The boy let the rope drop. Again the stranger considered the group of men, then, turning, discovered Ringo’s eyes fixed on him. “You handle yourself in a fight?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Ringo managed to get out.
“And you?” the stranger asked the other boy. The boy shook his head no.
The Corporal glowered, then shifted around once more and drifted toward the men. Four more had run in, making thirteen in all. The Corporal appraised them, then turned to the tavern keeper. “You coming?” he asked.
“We’ll need to have ourselves a second line in case they get through,” said the innkeeper. “I’d best stick here.”
The Corporal frowned and then, lost in thought, went outside and tightened up his sandals. Only then did it occur to Ringo that this Corporal, whoever he was, had ridden in with the news. He wondered where he had come from and just what he had seen, and why he’d come to this place.
When he finished fussing with his shoes, the Corporal swung around to face the waiting men. “There’s no more time,” he said. “We need to go.”
Ringo noticed that the men were now watching one another as much as they watched the stranger. “Aren’t we going to wait for more?” came the question that was on all of their faces.
“It’s late,” the Corporal replied. “Yes or no? Are we going?”
No one spoke. Then someone, Ringo didn’t see who, gave a murmur. Others took it up, a brief swelling sound, not quite a word.
“All right,” the Corporal said, choosing to take the sound as ‘yes.’ He looked about again, his eyes coming to rest on Ringo.
“You,” he said, pointing. “You said you could fight. Get your gear together. You’re needed.”
2458 words