text: Several days walking finally brought Isei out of the mountains onto the lush plains. He came to a small town as dusk fell. A rainstorm was on its way and he felt the need for some shelter in this strange land of sleek keen men and rounded soft women. People shied away from him and occasionally small children threw stones, at which he growled and they fled.
  
  He was hungry and tired and the strange place made him nervous. He left the town hurriedly. Shadows were gathering in the eaves and lanterns, glowing like the more familiar fireflies, were being lit. At the edge of the town he stopped. A wonderful smell was coming to his nostrils. He sniffed with appreciation, then again. It was coming from somewhere to his left, through a grove of pine trees. He left the roadway and padded silently into the forest. The smell increased. He came to what appeared to him to be a magnificent structure. The house was large, constructed of well-planked wood. The eaves were not thatched but tiled: an innovation he had never seen before. The smell was coming from a semi-detached cookhouse, connected to the main building by a covered walk. Isei slavered at the smell, and wondered at the effect it had on him. There were sounds of movement from the house. Male voices and obedient female ones. He knew he should move on, but the smell drove him frantic with hunger and he crept closer.
  
  A woman was bent over the stove. A pot of rice was simmering on one pot hole, another pot on the other. As she stirred the second pot a blast of the magnificent smell overwhelmed Isei. He fell to his knees beside the open doorway, his gun, forgotten, almost slipping from his hand. The woman turned, startled at his movement. Her hand flew to her mouth and she suppressed a shriek. She had a pleasant, smoothly-rounded face and her hair was covered by a scarf. To Isei she was finely dressed, but he did not notice the patched condition of her kimono, her worn geta sandals, nor her simple hairdo.
  
  She started to scream, then seeing his passive kneeling form she asked sharply, "What do you want?"
  
  "Ah ... ah ..." he stuttered, overwhelmed by the scent.
  
  "Yes? What is it? We want no beggars here!"
  
  "Ah, Mistress ..." Isei said miserably, "What ... What is that thing?" he waved vaguely at the pot.
  
  She looked at him then laughed, not bothering to hide her mouth politely. "A cooking pot, you fool. What are you that you don't know ..."
  
  "No, please. The food you are cooking."
  
  "Hmf. A beggar. I thought so. And a dirty polluted sanka at that," she sneered. "Haven't you ever seen soup?"
  
  "I am no beggar," Isei said proudly, rising from his knees. She retreated, and he fumbled behind him to produce the soft pelt of a fox. "I will pay!"
  
  "For a bowl of soup? Of simple miso-shiru bean-paste soup? With a fox pelt!?" She laughed incredulously.
  
  He nodded dumbly, bowing to the floor again then raising the pelt in both hands. She snatched it greedily from his hands.
  
  "Have you a bowl?" she asked. He shook his head. She fumbled in the dark corners of the cooking hut until she found an old cracked wooden bowl and ladled the dark brown steaming soup into it. Isei watched with bright eyes as she held it out to him with one hand. He turned and squatted by the door, ignoring her completely. He peered into the depths of the warm liquid. A reddish cloud floated in the transparent steaming liquid. Vegetables, known and unknown, a tiny fish, and squares of some unknown substance floated in the soup. It looked like something his grandfather had once described to him, having heard it from his grandfather. Isei raised the bowl carefully to his lips and took a slow sip. His mouth was flooded with an exquisite sensation. He closed his eyes in appreciation, lost in the pleasure of the moment.
  
  Heavy footsteps and the smell of cheap stale liquor overwhelmed him suddenly. A blow sent him and the bowl flying.
  
  "We want no beggars here!!" a male voice broke into his pleasure. Furious, Isei rose to his knees and started groping in the dark for his matchlock. He faced a large dark man holding a big wooden mallet, the kind used for pounding rice.
  
  "Get out of here you lousy beggar!" the man snarled. "This is an inn, not a beggars' home."
  
  "Hey, what have we here innkeeper?" Three other male figures, reeking of cheap sake, staggered out of the inn's backdoor. One was in the act of exposing himself for a piss.
  
  "Har, a mountain man, a sanka. What's the dirty one doing here? Class of the place going down, eh innkeeper?"
  
  The innkeeper raised his stick and took a furious step towards Isei.
  
  "Having it off with your wife, was he?" one of the men egged the innkeeper on.
  
  The woman protested furiously, rebuking the man and cursing Isei in the same breath.
  
  "Let's have some fun with the dirty beggar!" one of the men said. The five of them advanced on him in a group, and finding his matchlock, Isei took to his heels. The chase was short. Isei's pursuers would not venture into the trees, and his own woodcraft allowed him to speed silently into the welcoming darkness.
  
  He peered at the dilapidated inn from his shelter. As the night wore on he brooded about the treatment meted to him. The sound of the drinkers at their cups came to him through the night and he mourned his lost soup, savoring the memory of the one sip he had gotten.
  
  Finally Isei's rage overcame his caution. He crept down to the building unnoticed. A tilted lantern, its sides torn and bearing letters he could not read, announced the name of the inn. Furiously he struck at it. The lantern tilted further and the paper sides caught fire. The fire climbed to the wooden support. Isei opened his mouth to call out, then shut his mouth with a snap. His rage was fuelled by the laughter inside, and he watched curiously as the flames rose and started licking along the posts and lintels. He crept back into the woods, grinning like a wolf as screams suddenly erupted from the dilapidated building. More and more of the structure started glowing with the flames in the front. In the confusion, one of the drinkers must have dropped a candle, for suddenly there were flames bursting out of other corners of the inn. The handful of people inside fought their way out as best they could. Isei watched them, laughing. Then his eyes narrowed. One of the figures rushing out was trailed by a tail of sparks and a minor flame of its own. He hurried after the figure through the woods. The figure screamed in a high-pitched female voice: it had noticed the flame on its tail.
  
  Rather then trying to take her clothes off and beat out the flame, the innkeeper's wife ran in panic through the woods. Isei caught up with her. He gripped the corner of her kimono and pulled it from her, stamping on the flames in the tail of her dress. She screamed mindlessly as he ripped it completely from her, leaving her in her red shift.
  
  She cowered away from him, trying to cover her nakedness with her hands. "Are you going to rape me?"
  
  Isei stood there dumbly, only raising the burnt kimono to show her what had happened.
  
  "No, no. I'll not let you!" she cried out hysterically. Her crossed forearms covered her breasts and she glared wildly about. "Dirty sanka, I'll not let you. Rape! Help, rape!"
  
  "Shut up woman," he said fiercely. When she did not stop, he reached for her and put a hand over her mouth. She struggled furiously and his patience broke. He bore her back on a convenient fallen trunk. The rough bark scratched at her back.
  
  "Stop your screaming!" he hissed wildly, then released his hand. Perhaps misunderstanding his motives, perhaps not caring or scared out of her wits, she immediately started to scream again. Isei's hand was back on her mouth in a flash. Then he became conscious of their situation. And of the fact that he had a painful and taut erection. He held her down wordlessly and began undoing his homespun trousers. She struggled, silently now, and the smoothness of her body excited him further. He pushed her down on the log, straddling her thighs, then began biting--as softly as he could under the circumstances--at her nipples. They were tight with the cool night air and his warm breath softened them somewhat. She peered at him fearfully over her breasts, her fears realized. He smiled back and she turned her eyes away, renewing her struggles. The motion of her hips on the log excited Isei further. Her pubic mound was raised high and he could feel its prominence rubbing against his stomach and chest. Lustful pictures filled his brain. He had never taken a woman against her will before, had never needed to. Mountain women welcomed male attentions, or simply ran off. But they were never as soft and as helpless as this female.
  
  At last she was spread over the log. Isei straddled her, then pulled his rough pants and loincloth off completely. His thick stubby cock sprang into the cool night air. He lowered his bottom between her splayed legs and directed the top of his cock to her entrance. She struggled at the pain of his insertion into her dry cunt. Isei pulled out and groped at his belt. He poured a small handful of oil from the tiny flask and applied it to her dark bush, then rubbed it in furiously. The pepper and roots he had macerated in the oil started taking their toll. She struggled less, not only resigned to her fate but realizing suddenly that there was pleasure in it for her as well. Isei's thick blunt cudgel sank smoothly into her and the oil started lighting a fire in her loins. The position was uncomfortable, and their combined weight dug splinters into her back, but the fire roused by the oil was unquenchable now. She mewed with relief when their hairs meshed together and the mountain man began rising and sinking into her helpless body.
  
  Isei explored as much of her upper torso as he could with his lips and tongue. This plains woman tasted different from any other woman he had ever had. But her cunt was the same slick avenue of all the others. His movements became abrupt and he felt his climax beginning to rise. Beneath him, her mouth still shut by his palm, he could see that the woman was pleading about something. She too had noticed the impending climax. Isei slowed down, allowing her time to catch up. Muffled cries came from beneath his palm. Her eyes closed to slits and the whites showed. She seemed gripped by a palsy and Isei knew she was about to join him. He let himself go and they rocked together on the rough wood. She finally managed to raise her legs high, and as the volcanoes of their passion exploded, throw them over his back. They rolled off the log together, onto a bed of ferns. Through the trees Isei could barely make out the glow of the fire and the calls and cries of people around it.
  
  He stood up over her, his shrivelled member cool, tucking himself into his clothes.
  
  "You raped me," she said wonderingly.
  
  "Yes," he said gruffly. He felt obscurely guilty. "You were screaming so loud, so ..." He threw his hands up.
  
  "I've been raped before. By a samurai, before I was married. It was nothing like this." She was talking to herself, hadn't even heard him. She felt her cunt delicately with her fingers and a smile of bliss came to her. She looked up at him as he retied his belt. Hesitated a moment. "Will you come again? Sometime? I won't scream ..."
  
  "Maybe," he said.
  
  "We can meet here," she said eagerly. "I'll ... I'll bring some soup!"
  
  He grinned and turned to go.
  
  She watched his shadow slip between the trees, then searched for her scorched robe and slipped it on. The mountain man had forced her and yet, ... Yet it was the best fuck she had had. She puzzled over it, and over her lack of shame as Isei made his way into the wood and down the road, heading west and south.