text: The woman watched calmly as Isei approached across the clearing. She looked around casually, then smiled at him in open invitation. Dressed in blue-dyed and patterned jacket and baggy pants, he took her to be the farmer's wife. He had taken a shortcut, over the towering mountains that bordered Lake Biwa to the east. This modest farmhouse was the first he had seen on his way. It looked prosperous with a smug sort of satisfaction that came from hidden wealth.
  
  "Would you like some hot water?" the woman asked as Isei came up to her. He bowed his thanks and after a casual look around, she went into the thatched house. Huge twisted black beams framed the roof. There was a sense of stillness and mystery.
  
  "The master is away?" Isei asked, sitting down, his feet on the pounded earth floor of the genkan entrance.
  
  "Yes," she said meaningfully. "For the rest of the day. Surely you would like to come up and sit comfortably?"
  
  He followed her into the house, over polished wooden floors, through two large rooms to a smaller one on which was thrown a loose woven mat. Real zabuton sitting pillows, an innovation Isei had never seen before, beckoned to him. He sat down cross-legged and she brought the hot water, a grass infusion steaming in it. She sat down at his side and looked at his face.
  
  Her hand casually brushed his thigh. He sipped his drink, ignoring it. There were weapons hung on the darkness below the thatch, and a strange looseness to some of the rear wall panels. She stroked the length of his thigh and he finally turned and smiled shyly at her. She touched his stubbled face with light fingers.
  
  "They will not be home for a long time," she said, pulling him down to her. He slipped his hand through the opening of her striped jacket and opened her baggy mompei pants. Her bush was full and her nether lips plump and covered with her liquid. He nuzzled her neck and pulled her robe open. She had wide tits with large oval areolas. He squeezed the mounds and rose to his knees. She helped him slip off his nether garments. She was twisting now with passion, silently, with nothing but her heavy breathing to accompany the sounds of their bodies. Isei nibbled at her neck and her jaw and explored her mouth with his. She raised her knees somewhat and he cupped her full hairy mound in his hand.
  
  She started pulling at his head, trying to force him lower. He obliged her, remembering that his own woman had liked having her breasts bit a bit. She squeaked when he bit down on her prominent nipples, but kept on pushing him down.
  
  "Go on," she mumbled. "Down. Do me lower. With your mouth. Now. I need it so ..."
  
  Puzzled, he fought his way up and tried to introduce his prick into her. She grabbed his long hair and pulled him down towards her hips. Isei rolled onto her, his prick rampant, ready to thrust and bury itself in the joyous channel between her thighs.
  
  She fought him. "No. I'm not ready. Lick me. Please. I'll do whatever you want afterwards. Lick me. Suck. Tongue my bud. Oh ... oh ..."
  
  Her mutterings made no sense to him, and he felt he was playing in some strange game whose rules he did not know.
  
  He pushed against her, and now she started resisting him in earnest.
  
  "If you won't do what I want, you can get out of here," she blazed at him. By now though Isei's lust was aroused to a fever pitch. He slammed his full weight at her. She resisted and twisted in his grasp, tried to leap away from him. He caught her slick hip and forced her down with his weight. She struggled against him furiously, though still silently. Isei's superior strength began to tell and her struggles, which were motivated by lust at the start, became an attempt to escape his embrace as they progressed, rolling about the ground. By the time she had remembered and tried to employ the devices her menfolk had taught her, she was immobile, spread on the ground, and the mountain man's full weight was resting on her buttocks. She scratched at him futilely with her hands and he responded by whipping a length of her sash around her hands. He pulled down her baggy mompei trousers and exposed her full brown moons to view.
  
  "These are lovely," he said thickly, stroking each halfmoon affectionately, then pulling them apart. She cursed as she felt the length of his thick cock probe between her buttocks and nose at her anus. Unwillingly she raised her buttocks to facilitate the man's aim. The swollen knob of his tumescent organ probed between the full lips of her cunt. Isei thrust forward, burying himself between the soft moons. They supported the full weight of his belly and he pushed forward again. She began to feel the start of her own pleasure and raised her buttocks, burying her face in her arms.
  
  Isei rocked back and forth on her, finding the pleasure of her buns mashing into him almost more than he could bear.
  
  "So deep, so deeeep," she muttered finally.
  
  She was lost now to the world, he saw, enjoying the pleasure of his masculine movement. He squatted over her buttocks, humping into her and she began muttering brokenly, urging him on to greater efforts. Her muscles clenched around the base of his cock, nipping at the long shaft. He saw her bare her teeth in a rictus of pleasure. He was ready to turn her over and pulled back just as she slammed herself forcefully into him. Globs of his seed showered her interior and flooded down her legs. Isei ground himself, almost unconscious with pleasure, into the waiting hole.
  
  At last he recovered and pulled out of her. Dribblets of his come followed, trickling between her thighs and pooling on the polished wooden floor. She rolled over and watched him dress. The expression on her face was unfathomable. The only thing she said as he left had no meaning for Isei.
  
  "You should have eaten me," she glowered into his eyes. "You would have had nothing to worry about then. They never do it to me ..." She turned her face to the wall, not wishing to see him go, then pulled on her clothes and went in search of a rag to clean the floor of the evidence of her visitor.
  
  The meaning of her words soon became clear to Isei. He became conscious of the stalkers soon after they had gotten him in sight. Isei grinned to himself. To a villager or townsman their stalk would have seemed ghostlike. Completely silent. But a mountain-man had to learn to be able to get close enough to a rabbit to stroke its fur. He wondered why they were stalking him. Perhaps they were friends of the dead samurai and the woman had been a trap? Or had she some reason to dislike him? Unlikely, he decided. She had enjoyed herself after all. Nonetheless, they did not appear to be stalking him for fun and he quickened his pace. The slope rose above him and he slipped through gnarled roots and bushy passages with the ease of long practice. Listening carefully he noted that one of the pursuers was lagging behind the others. He reached a stream and started wading up its rough, moss-covered course. The stream widened somewhat and Isei found a place he wanted.
  
  Three of the pursuers paused above his hiding hole. They conferred in whispers.
  
  "He could not be far off."
  
  "Scatter quietly. Find and kill."
  
  A latecomer joined the others. "Kacho," one of the men called quietly. "He is hiding around here."
  
  "Good," a breathy voice answered. "We'll find him. Someone has gone to fetch the rest of the house. I want his balls. No one can have one of our women without being punished. Damned sanka."
  
  Isei would have shook his head in amazement. He could not understand what the men wanted from him. Or the woman. She had enjoyed it as much as he, and she was the initiator. He sank soundlessly into the narrow hole waiting patiently for his stalkers to leave.
  
  Rising slowly from the fox's earth, a boulder before him resolved itself into the wet back of a brown-clad man lying silently and watchfully in the water. Part of the trap. The others were no doubt trying to cut him off. Isei thought for a moment. These brown-clad, masked men were something new in his experience: they moved almost like born mountain men, but spoke like townsmen. Curious. And dangerous. He carefully unpacked his blowgun from the pack at his side. The shiny steel needles were unlike anything any other mountain man owned. But then many of the sanka retained items that were at odds with their present humble existence: evidence perhaps that the dim ancestral memories of former glory were true. Isei's needles, like his nata hatchet, were made of finest steel. The flights were floss of mountain flax. He put it carefully to his lips and waited, patient as the hunter until the shinobi raised his head cautiously out of the water to peer around him. He never heard the slight puff that drove the steal splinter from six feet away into the soft spot at the base of his skull. Nor did he make a sound as he sank back into the water and drowned, unable to move.
  
  By the time he was dead, Isei was heading away from the net. In the late afternoon he was climbing a high pass leading in a westerly direction. Cover would be sparse until he descended the other side. He cast a look back. Brown figures were racing after him, heedless of being seen. Isei climbed further, crossing a meadow almost recklessly, rising higher until bare rock was under his feet. He paused and looked back again. Only three men were after him. If they caught him here, in the open, he would not survive the encounter. He turned and rested his butt comfortably on a sun-warmed rock. His slow match was soon lit, and he eyed the three assassins' approach with equanimity.
  
  The three shinobi stopped at the edge of the meadow. They conferred for a moment, then split up and stationed themselves at the edge of the wood. Hidden, or so they perhaps thought, from his eyes. It was clear they were aware, cautious but contemptuous, of his weapon.
  
  Suddenly they sped together from the shelter of the trees. They zigzagged across the meadow, tumbling and weaving to spoil his aim. Isei smiled and raised the match lock. The lead slug took the slowest shinobi by surprise. It smashed its way down the length of his back. The others heard the shot and saw the plume of grey smoke. Internally they relaxed. Matchlocks, however accurate, took almost a full minute to load. The second slug tore into the lead shinobi's chest. He coughed, amazed, and fell. The last man suddenly realized that he was not dealing with a common musketeer. The knowledge took him by surprise. He changed his mind, trying to melt into the bare meadow, changed it again and tried to race for the shelter of the trees. Panting, he turned and peeked back at the talus slope where the sanka hid. He was a master of camouflage and the venerable oak provided almost perfect cover. For a moment he could not see the quarry, grey as the rocks among which he hid. Then the shinobi could not see a thing as his eye and brain filled with the pressure of Isei's slug that tore through his skull.
  
  Isei turned to go. The shinobi's self-confidence amazed him somewhat. Didn't the man expect a hunter to be able to shoot a man's eye at two hundred paces? And did they really think an experienced hunter would wait any more than three seconds before having his matchlock ready to fire again?