The gnarled man hauled Kazuchiyo to his feet, which could barely hold him. The field smeared into black and gray and the stench of blood, and Kazuchiyo swayed dizzily as his father’s body became just one of the thousands. A small cart beyond Aritaka and his entourage carried more silk bags, enough for every one of Shigenaga’s sons and generals. To Kazuchiyo, it was an impossible outcome, and he felt that at any moment he would slip away into some terrible dreamscape.

But then, that scream. Over the rolling field that wrathful cry continued unceasing, and in fact sounded more forceful than ever. Kazuchiyo’s bleary ears clung to it—his throat vibrated around it, as if it spilled from his own lungs. He could not make a sound but the furious stranger did it for him, and he quaked with emotion.

They marched him north across the field, into the ranks of Aritaka’s foot soldiers. Here the scream grew louder, and with time more ragged, interspersed with clashing iron and men cursing. Before long they came upon a circle of Aritaka soldiers, each of them shifting anxiously even as they shouted orders at the man in the center: the source of that thunderous voice, the howling wolf.

To any man he would have been a ferocious sight, but to Kazuchiyo, torn asunder by an evening of traumas, he was godlike: nearly two meters tall, shoulders broad as a torii gate, legs planted in the earth as sturdy as a centuries old oaks. Dark Aritaka armor was fastened haphazardly across his muscular frame as if he had outgrown it in moments, bursting the seams. The Tatsutomi spear he brandished suggested instead that all his armaments had rather been scavenged, but no matter. His wild crop of brown hair was matted down by blood, only a small portion of it his, his chest plate stained with gore. A dozen failed challengers lay at his feet. As Kazuchiyo watched, one of the surrounding Aritaka men fired an arrow, and it struck deeply in the woven plates of his shoulder guard, enough to draw blood. But he didn’t slow. The warrior snapped the arrow shaft with his fist and then charged, scattering Aritaka’s bravest. With a vengeful bellow he thrust his spear into the offending archer’s throat. One soldier advanced while his wiser peers retreated, hoping to find some opening in the warrior’s defense, only to quickly realize there was none. The spear whipped about with incredible speed, its blunt edge cracking the soldier’s jaw from his face. A second blow felled him onto his back before the blade stabbed clear through his armor to his heart.

The circle widened. The soldiers looked to each other in helpless confusion. For some time a stalemate dragged on as the warrior caught his breath, his dark eyes flashing from one man to the next in challenge.

“What’s taking so long?” said the gnarled man holding Kazuchiyo captive. “Shoot him and be done with it.”

“But you saw—” replied the soldier closest, who flinched in alarm when the warrior turned eyes on him. He gulped. “There’s gold for you if you can take his head.”

The warrior’s penetrating eyes fell on Kazuchiyo next, but he did not flinch. He stared straight back, more fearful for than of the fearsome madman. Already he had watched invincible men killed by easy strokes. Perhaps it would have injured his father’s pride to know that watching a stranger felled by Aritaka arrows and spears would have been the final, unbearable burden. But to Kazuchiyo this was more than a stranger, this was rage incarnate—this was the fist around his throat, the burning behind his eyes. This was vengeance and fury in human form, a beast, a dragon, a weapon. All the hate he could not raise to his surface was already a force in the world, dozens of corpses to its credit. If his enemy snuffed even that out, he would have nothing left.

The warrior charged without warning. His face twisted in rage and he roared, lightning and thunder at once. The gnarled man cast Kazuchiyo down and drew his sword, but his assailant was inescapable, and the worn katana snapped like a twig beneath the crossblades. Then, his arm, severed at the elbow. All around the soldiers reeled and panicked, those with arrows knocked loosing them on their unstoppable foe. Kazuchiyo shuddered at the sickening thunk of the few that found their mark. But still the warrior fought, gutting and cleaving, while Kazuchiyo watched in awe. He fought until his voice was raw and his knees shaking, the Aritaka retreating so far that he couldn’t cross the distance. Even Lord Aritaka himself came to watch the spectacle draw to its inevitable conclusion, the mysterious robed woman beside him. The vision of a young, fearless warrior driving back the Aritaka soldiers was a fitting beginning for what would one day become an unapproachable legacy.

At last he was spent, collapsing to his knees among his victims. Kazuchiyo was there to catch him. Though neither had arms free or strong enough to bear the other, they leaned chest to chest beneath the cool autumn rain. The warrior trembled, and Kazuchiyo with him. Strangers, then. But only for a while longer.

“Thank you,” whispered Kazuchiyo, thinking that at any moment his champion would crumble at his seams like all the rest. “Thank you—he killed my brother.”

The warrior panted, each hoarse breath stirring the hair against Kazuchiyo’s cheek. “You’re samurai?”

“Yes. My name is Kazuchiyo.”

“Kazuchiyo,” he repeated, blood on his lips. “I’ll kill you, too.”

At the time, he must have meant it. I wondered often, at the end of it all, if he regretted making that promise. But I do know that Kazuchiyo believed him. He always believed in him.