text: The western slopes of the mountains that border Miyako on the east are cut by many steep gullies. These flow with water, and are covered by lush vegetation. They are dotted by small villages making a living off the produce and crafts they sell in the city. They are isolated and generally peaceful. Isei strode boldly through one such small hamlet. The nun followed patiently behind, engrossed in her meditations but keeping Isei in sight. He ignored her, trying only to control the urgency in his loins at the thought of her figure following him. The path twisted downwards, between the houses and small yards. A bamboo-basketmaker raised his head, saw the rough-looking, armed mountain man. He stared, then decided it was none of his business and returned to his basket. Peasants in the tiny fields among tree-clad cliffs did the same. Further down the path, the valley opened up somewhat.
  
  In the midst of a clearing stood a house rather larger than the rest. If had a low wall surrounding it, and even a thatched gatehouse. A gaggle of excited people were congregating before the house, blocking the path.
  
  Isei shouldered through, ignoring the commotion. A hand fell on his shoulder. He turned furiously.
  
  "Wait!" the nun said. "Listen!"
  
  They peered through the gate. The owner, on his knees before his own house, was a strange sight. Beside him cowered his wife, much younger, still attractive. From inside the house came the mingled screams of a child and the oaths of some rough male voice.
  
  "What is happening?" asked the nun.
  
  "Ah, your grace, your grace! A robber ..."
  
  "No, two robbers!"
  
  "Yes, two. Perhaps. I saw only one ..."
  
  The villagers, concerned but also excited by the event, took to arguing.
  
  "Two," said Isei with finality, cocking his ears. "One heavy, the other much lighter. And a child."
  
  "Yes, yes. They were apprehended breaking into a storehouse. They took the landowner's child hostage. Someone has run to fetch the officials, but by the time they arrive ... They have threatened to kill the child unless they get some money ..."
  
  Isei shrugged and turned to go.
  
  "This man will help you," said the nun loudly.
  
  Isei turned and glared at her. He had no such intention. Villagers abused and feared his kind. He owed them nothing. The nun stared back steadily, and he lowered his eyes.
  
  "Call the owner. Say he will be saved, if only he believes."
  
  Isei snorted amusement, then ruefully smiled. He would have to think of a plan ... He looked at the house again. He could see one or the other of the two robbers through an open sliding door. But never both of them at once. Presumably the nun wanted him to save the child, not just dispose of the robbers, though why this should be so, he could not imagine: it was not her child after all. He considered the possibilities as the elderly, pot-bellied landowner came puffing up, wringing his hands.
  
  "It's my daughter. My only daughter," he said, weeping. "They will not let her go."
  
  "Give them what they want," said Isei.
  
  "No, no!" said the villagers. "If we do, and let them go, the authorities will blame us for assisting criminals. The entire village will be punished!! We will not allow it."
  
  The landowner turned on them, but fearful as they were of him and his threats to their livelihood, they feared the official executioner more. Isei had to admit that his sympathies were with them. He knew that in any event, the poor people would be made to bear the blame. But still and all ... The nun stared at him and said again, "This man will help you ..."
  
  Isei scratched his nape, and then his beard thoughtfully.
  
  "We'll need some trays, the kind used for gifts and such. And a rice bale. And a large basket. I saw a basketmaker above. And someone to talk to the bandits ..."
  
  "I will do that," the nun said firmly. "They will not attack me."
  
  The villagers rushed off to do Isei's bidding. The nun listened to his instructions, then walked easily into the house compound. The house owner joined his wife, kneeling halfway to the house platform, their backs to the gate.
  
  The nun knelt on the house platform before the entrance to the house proper and spoke in a low voice with the robbers. They responded with inarticulate screams that gradually turned to a threatening murmur. She returned and reported to Isei.
  
  "One of them will come out and examine the ransom. The other will stand at the window with a knife at the child's neck. If there are any problems, he will kill the child on the spot."
  
  Isei nodded. "That's what I would have done in their stead. Good. We are ready. Take the trays in."
  
  Three villagers quickly bore the footed trays into the compound and laid them on the ground midway between the house and its cowering owners. The woman had not ceased her sobbing, which intensified every time the child within whimpered.
  
  "We are preparing the rice bale," the nun called, as instructed by Isei. "Please do nothing hasty, it will be here right away!"
  
  Isei knew this was the one chancy part of his plan. If the robbers insisted on having everything ready at once ... But no. The robbers were impatient at the sight of the covered trays. The sliding door slid further open and one of the rough looking men, dressed in loincloth and ragged sark and carrying a short sword, stepped cautiously out onto the platform. Another, no less ragged, appeared behind him, clutching a girl of five or so to his chest. A sharp knife rested against her neck. The robbers peered fiercely in all directions, then the forward one descended the steps. The nun hurriedly moved back. Isei shouldered the rice bale and, bent almost double, stumbled clumsily into the courtyard.
  
  The robber paused, started to retreat, then thought the better of it.
  
  "Lay it down right there, you bastard," he yelled. The other, the one in the window, jerked the child to him which brought a wail from mother and child alike.
  
  "Aya, boss," Isei mumbled, laying down his burden and kneeling beside it. The rice bale was a large one, obviously hastily assembled. It bulged unseemingly, its straw mat covering straggling into a lengthy, lumpy sausage-shape rather than the compact barrel-shape most bales were pressed into. The robber grinned and approached the covered tray. He bent over the covers in anticipation and snatched them back.
  
  Isei flipped open the rice-straw matting that made up the bale and whipped out his matchlock. He raised it, smoothly and casually and squeezed the trigger lever with the butt at his hip. The robber at the window grew a third eye, set neatly between the other two, and dropped both knife and child. Isei rolled forward to get away from the thick grey smoke of his shot. The basket spun from his hand. He had laden the rim with carefully balanced river pebbles, and it flew true. The live robber, charging back to the house, found that he could not see as the large tub-shaped basket settled neatly on his head. While he struggled to comprehend the cause of his sudden blindness, and eventually tried to remove it, Isei was leaping forward. The robber managed to remove the basket and turned. He was just in time to see a bearded, wild figure in a sleeveless fur waistcoat charging at him. The robber screamed, raised his short sword. He felt a blow and Isei's heavy nata hatchet swung though flesh and bone and caved in the front of his chest. The return swing took him in the neck. The robber fell, spouting blood.
  
  "You did not have to kill that poor misguided man," the nun said severely.
  
  "What?" said Isei, horrified. "Leave him to the public executioner? To have his head sawn off with a bamboo saw? I would never do such a thing. That is how they serve us, the wild outcasts."
  
  She bowed her head. "I am mortified. You are correct. Better to die as he did."
  
  The house was a small one, even if larger than that of its neighbors. As farmers go, those in the neighborhood of the imperial capital did well. Isei would have much preferred to sleep outside, but the nun had spoken for both of them, accepting the landowner's profusive thanks and hospitality, no less effusive because they had refused any reward but supper and a night's rest. The landowner's wife, younger and pleasanter aspected than he, had prepared delights for them with her own hands, and served them herself. She cast silent glances of admiration at Isei, dressed in a conventional kimono for the first time in his life.
  
  Pallets were prepared for them in the main room of the house, a screen separating their sleeping places. Isei felt uncomfortable. The pallet was too soft, the house too well sealed, and the creaks and thumps of the house settling in the night made him uneasy.
  
  "You are uncomfortable, Isei-san," a pale form said beside him.
  
  "I am not used to this," he responded in a whisper to the nun's question. "It is too soft, too ..."
  
  "She chuckled. "It also has some advantages. Let me show you."
  
  She stripped off her white sleeping robe and laid down on the too-soft bedding. He looked at her, conscious of her nudity as a desirable thing. His cock responded almost instantly. He was ready to leap upon her figure. The dark patch at the juncture of her legs, barely visible in the light of the single lampion, beckoned enticingly.
  
  She smiled approval at his self-restraint. "The first lesson," she said didactically, is to please the other." Without any visible effort she flipped her legs high and stuck her shoulder through the back of her knees. Her cunt was exposed prominently to view, her head seemingly detached from her body, Isei gaped at the sight and the longitudinal opening of her full purse gaped pinkly at him in return. She motioned him forward.
  
  Hypnotized by the sight, Isei followed her beckoning finger. He peered fearfully at the hairy mound gaping in the middle. She pointed out its parts, enumerating them by their secret tantric names. She parted the outer lips, displaying the treasures inside. A sweet musky scent arose from her and Isei sniffed appreciatively. She smiled over his head. Then her hands started stroking his face, caressing his cheeks, bringing his hypnotized eyes closer and closer to her waiting femaleness until the individual hairs and parts disappeared into a haze. She rubbed his nose deeply into her and he followed the scent, burrowing with his nose as deeply into the moist woman-smelling cavern as he could. She jogged herself against his broad nose, wetting it thoroughly with her juices, then withdrew him. His face was inches from her own and she tilted it up to see into his eyes.
  
  "You have two cocks," she said. "In addition to fingers of course. Both are pleasurable in their own way, and you must now learn to employ the Small Opener before knowing the proper use of the Great Triumph. That is what the woman in the mountains wanted, and rightly too. And when you refused to supply it, she rightfully set her kinsmen on you."
  
  He nodded dumbly, not really knowing what she meant. Slowly and deliberately she extruded her tongue, thickening it by rounding her lips. Suddenly he realized what she meant. For an instant he was overcome by revulsion at what she expected. Then the sweet warm smell of her cunt came to his nostrils again. Attracted and repulsed he lowered his head once again. He licked tentatively at the outer lips. The taste was salty-sour with a fragrance that reminded him of some wildflower. He tried again, and she rubbed her cunt the length of his partly-willing tongue.
  
  Suddenly a strange lust overcame his reluctance. He lapped at the hairy lips with great gulps, extracting as much of her moisture as he could. But as soon as he had gathered her honey, her infinite depths produced more. She stopped him with a gesture and a whisper.
  
  "Point your Vermillion Rock at my Lotus Gate first." Not knowing what he was doing, he allowed her to position his head as she wished. She rubbed his tongue against her clitoris then described long characters against the length of her inner lips. Finally she poised his oral cock against the entrance to her tunnel.
  
  "Thrust!" she said urgently. He pushed forward with his head, tongue stiffly extended. The flesh of his nose pushed and rubbed down against the nubbin of her clitoris. His tongue stabbed deeply, again and again, into her wet channel. She regarded his laboring head with approval and then allowed herself to relax.
  
  Isei felt shudders, tiny at first but growing rapidly, go through her body and focus on her cunt into which his tongue was digging so blindly. The tremors grew to massive shivers and spasms. Her cunt grabbed at his slippery tongue. He felt her orgasm the way he had never felt a woman's pleasure before. His mouth was inundated with her salty-sweet juices. He clutched at her buttocks with his hands, but she batted his fingers away. On all fours, head buried between her legs, he felt his own cock responding to her pleasure. It jerked tightly against the muscles of his belly. The release of tension without any touch, his own or another's, was so intense he cried out into her welcoming lower mouth. Her cunt responded by a further series of shudders and a final jerk that buried him deeply into the tight chasm to heaven.
  
  He pulled away from her and regarded the small pool of his jetted milk with confusion and chagrin. She followed his gaze and her eyes lit up.
  
  "Wonderful, Isei. You have leapt ahead on the path. Not many men can do that--pleasure themselves solely by pleasing their companions--it is a valuable gift."
  
  He looked at her in confusion as she sought her own bedding behind the screen.
  
  He closed his eyes and fell quickly into a deep sleep. There was a soft sound as the fusuma sliding door moved aside. A pale figure stood there. Isei, wakened by the tread outside, could smell the body fragrance of the landowner's wife. She knelt inside the door and slid herself forward.
  
  "Isei-sama," she whispered.
  
  He raised his head slightly.
  
  "Could you come here a moment?"
  
  He slipped quietly out of his uncomfortably soft pallet and followed her noiselessly. She entered a room crammed with bales and boxes of household goods and knelt there in the light of a tiny candle.
  
  "Isei-sama, I wanted to thank you myself. My husband is so gruff you see ..." She pushed a folded bundle towards him. Isei touched it doubtfully. It was a handsome though worn suit of clothes: pantaloons, and a robe. He bowed in thanks. She stayed still, on her knees. Her dark eyes were fathomless in the candlelight, as if she was waiting for something. He noted that her light summer yukata was loosely tied. Her breasts were full and showed clearly at the opening of her robe. A quiet motion from the corridor behind him attracted his notice.
  
  He cast a look backwards and was surprised to see the face of the nun smiling at him from behind the door.
  
  The landowner's wife knelt and bowed a second time. One of her full breasts popped out of the robe. She made no attempt to replace it, raising her torso instead to allow him a full view of its size. He raised both breasts with his hands, thumbs on their prominent nipples. She closed her eyes to mere slits and breathed rapidly through her nose. Isei pulled her to him and nibbled at her neck. It occurred to him that the nun's lesson might also apply to her mouth, and he sucked at her lips, inserting a questing tongue into her. Not only did the woman not object, but she responded fervently, running her own lips across his, licking back at him with her tongue. Isei explored her full body joyfully. She twisted and moved with his exploring hands, obviously enjoying the prolonged sensation of his palms on her, his lips on her own. They stripped one another in the dimness and she allowed him to enjoy the sight of her plump body in the dark. She had a small scar on her belly, perhaps from childbirth. Otherwise he found her perfect, plump and thick in the thigh and shoulder. She rolled over against him, her full buttocks digging into his loins.
  
  He turned his head and saw the nun smiling encouragingly at him. She made pursing movements with her mouth, then indicated the woman's buttocks with her hand. When Isei failed to respond, she crept over to the couple and pulled at his hands. Instructed by her he slid lower, parting the woman's full buttocks. She writhed against the pressure, allowing him liberty to explore her. The nun pushed his head lower and he understood. His tongue licked out, striking between the mounds of her bottom, searching for the sweet hole of her pussy. The woman bent almost double, holding still in expectation. He found the hole and pushed in with his tongue. It was tight and resisted his efforts. She had been to her bath and her hole was still dry. He moistened it with his tongue and began working slowly at the hole, enlarging it while he explored. The nun, her head bent close to his, whispered into his ear.
  
  "Very good. Explore her with your fingers. Encourage the flow of her essences to supplement your own."
  
  The woman was trembling now, her ass butting against Isei. She raised her upper thigh and stuck out her ass. Her hands came around to feel his head and she led his hands forward along the almost hairless meeting of her thighs. Isei was lost in his pleasure, though he was now conscious that of the woman's two holes, his tongue was slipping into the lower one. His lover guided his head and without missing a beat he began probing her higher up. The sensation was different, looser and more flexible and she jerked as wildly as before, then forced his head back against her anal ring. Isei obeyed her desire and the shaking of her body increased.
  
  "Very good," the nun whispered. "Do it again. Move from one to the other. Use your fingers on her. Sooth her belly."
  
  Isei obeyed and the nun moved back, then twisted his hips so that his painfully erect cock was directed straight up. He felt her warm breath on him and redoubled his efforts with his tongue as the nun's mouth sucked strongly at his erect penis. She engulfed the entire staff, sucking and milking it with the entire length of her mouth and throat. Just as Isei felt he could take no more, she withdrew. At his mouth the woman was convulsing with a series of explosions that spattered his mouth with the juice of her cunt.
  
  The nun slid into the shadows as the woman turned and held out her hands to the mountain man. He rose on all fours and positioned himself above her. The woman's eyes were closed and she urged him on with clawed fingers on his neck. The nun's hand came out of the dark and grasped the base of his root forcefully.
  
  "Not yet," she said in a whisper audible only to his trained ears. "Walk about the grove awhile first." He did not recognize the simile until she started running the tip of his rampant cock through the woman's sparse cunt hairs. Beneath him the landowner's wife moaned and begged incoherently for his maleness. The tip of the cock stimulated her fantasies and she could feel her desire fanned into a second orgasm. Her hips twitched and moved uncontrollably. She thought she heard a female voice call commandingly, "Now!" but it must have been her own, distorted by the lust of her orgasm.
  
  Isei plunged forward at the nun's command. He feared the landowner's wife would hear the nun, but the naked woman was so deep into her own pleasure that she might have been dreaming. The crown of his cock found her entrance unerringly and he drove himself to the depths of her clutching hole with all his might, her knees clamped at his side as her mouth clung to his. They moved together violently, the frequency of their body movements increasing to a blur. As his own pleasure rose Isei felt the nun directing his fingers to the woman's sweating ass. He dipped a finger between her buns and scratched at the muscles of her asshole just as she let down a final spray of moisture, erupting violently against him. He exploded as well, flooding her thirsty interior with his juices and grinding mindlessly against her like the minks he had seen coupling in the snow.
  
  "Excellent, wonderful," the nun's low voice congratulated him.
  
  "Yes, excellent indeed," the other woman echoed.
  
  Isei rolled away from the plump, naked woman below him. The nun's voice arrested his motion. "Not so fast," she whispered. "Make her remember you. Play with her some more."
  
  Obediently for once, Isei stroked the woman's heaving sides, squeezing her breasts lightly, and slipped a finger into her gluey crack. He was rewarded by a diminishing series of spasms and a grateful sigh.
  
  The nun was nowhere in sight when the housewife rose to her feet. Isei started getting up too but she motioned him to wait. She returned after scrabbling in a series of chests. She bore a small parcel and knelt before him, still gloriously naked.
  
  "You are the best man I have ever had," she whispered. "My husband is older than I, and of course quite adequate, as a girl ... Well, no matter. We are a good family, my people are former ashigaru of Honganji temple at the capital. Please accept this as a token of my appreciation." She pushed the stiff cloth bundle at him. "If, as you say, you are on pilgrimage to a temple at the capital, this will allow you to move freely in the town. They are suspicious of mountain men there, such as yourself. Please accept it ..."
  
  He unfolded the bundle. A sleeveless jimbaori doublet unrolled before him. In it was a long brocade sleeve with tasseled ties. He puzzled over it for a moment, then understanding struck. It was a covering for his matchlock.
  
  "The mon device on the back of the coat will allow you to move freely," she said shyly in a whisper.
  
  He bowed to her. "We are then both of gunner families. I am grateful to you, Elder Sister."
  
  She simpered as he gathered his gifts and padded back to his room.
  
  "That was very well done," the nun said from behind the partition. Isei fell asleep, warmed by her appreciation.