Location: Guest Quarters, Kiyosu Castle, and the Western Palisades.
Current Date/Time: Early Morning. Late Summer, 1559.
The heavy cedar door of the guest quarters clattered open along its wooden track. The damp, sweltering heat of the late-summer morning rolled into the room, carrying the foul stench of stagnant river water.
Soma Kurogane lay flat on his sleeping mat. He rotated his right shoulder. The blinding, white-hot agony from the matchlock’s recoil was gone. The dark purple contusion over his anterior deltoid had faded to a mottled, yellowish-green shadow. The torn muscle fibers were finally knitting back together.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position. The severe soreness in his quadriceps and core had subsided to a manageable stiffness. His body was adapting to the unoptimized physical labor of the Sengoku period.
A low-ranking servant knelt in the threshold. The man kept his forehead pressed firmly against the warm grain of the floorboards.
"Honored Guest," the servant whispered, his shoulders trembling. "The Lord of Owari commands your presence at the western perimeter. You are to survey the palisade. The Lord has assigned a man known as ‘The Monkey’ to assist you in the mud. He waits for you there."
Soma rubbed his face with his pale hands, clearing the sleep from his eyes. Nobunaga was moving rapidly. The Warlord had accepted the prioritization matrix, and the primary emergencies were officially in motion. The theoretical blueprints drafted in the black notebook were about to meet the raw earth.
"I understand," Soma said. He kept his voice steady and professional. "Tell Lord Nobunaga the survey starts now."
The servant scrambled backward on his knees and pulled the door shut.
Soma stood up. His bare feet gripped the tatami mats as he walked to the low wooden chest. The premium Aizome silk kosode and matching Kukuri-hakama rested on top.
He picked up the dark indigo fabric. The combed silk was incredibly smooth and dense, offering immediate thermal relief compared to the abrasive hemp he had worn for a week.
Soma hooked his thumbs under the thick knot at his hip, forcefully yanking the coarse cotton of his fundoshi loose to gain an extra inch of slack. The heavy fabric drooped, releasing its punishing grip and let out a breath of relief.
He took a single step. The coarse cotton instantly shifted, scraping uncomfortably against his flesh. He missed the synthetic, moisture-wicking support of modern Tokyo with profound intensity. Soma reached down, gripped the ends of the coarse wrap, and hauled the knot back to its original, rigid tension.
He pulled the Aizome silk over his shoulders, tied the sash, and stepped into the tapered trousers of the hakama. He slid his drafting pen and Moleskine notebook securely into the breast of his kosode and walked out into the corridor.
Thick, swirling mist coated the flatland castle grounds. Two heavily armored ashigaru foot soldiers waited at the base of the wooden steps. They wore lacquered conical hats and held long, iron-tipped spears.
They lowered the tips of their spears toward the mud and executed a crisp bow.
"We will clear the path to the western wall for you, Honored Guest," one guard stated, keeping his eyes averted.
"Lead the way," Soma said.
The commute through the sprawling footprint of Kiyosu Castle revealed a massive shift in local optics. The late-summer mud sucked at his straw sandals, but his focus remained on the perimeter.
Laborers carrying heavy timber beams stopped dead in their tracks. Servants hauling well water dropped to their knees in the muck, pressing their faces away from him. They stared at the deep, rich indigo silk. They stared at his pale, unscarred face.
Hushed whispers bled through the morning mist long after he passed. The rumors had mutated. They whispered about the pale man who commanded the heavy Southern Gate with a single stick, and the sorcerer who made the iron thunder-stick roar in the courtyard.
The inner courtyards gave way to the active construction zone of the western perimeter. The stench of rotting timber and human waste hung heavily in the damp air. Soma’s sandals sank two inches into the warm muck with every step.
The western palisade was a structural nightmare. The massive vertical logs bowed outward toward the moat, warping visibly under the load of the heavy wooden watchtowers perched on top.
Soma stopped at the edge of the construction zone. He crossed his arms over the deep Aizome silk, scanning the base of the wall. The foundation was compromised. The heavy rainfalls had turned the soil into a soft sponge, and the vertical pillars were sinking unevenly. Unequal weight pushed down on soft earth, tearing the structure apart.
A figure scrambled down from a pile of discarded, rotting lumber. The man hustled forward with a low center of gravity, his bare feet slapping loudly against the wet earth.
He was short, severely malnourished, and built like a bundle of tightly wound wire. A thin rag of a loincloth and a frayed tunic barely covered his ribs. He stopped three paces away and dropped into a sharp bow.
His eyes darted upward, locking directly onto Soma's unscarred face. They vibrated with a frantic, calculating energy.
"Honored Builder!" the man barked, his loud voice cutting through the damp air. He held the bow, his face hovering just inches above the mud. "I am Kinoshita Tokichiro. The Lord of Owari commanded me to be your hands in the dirt. I am at your disposal."
Soma evaluated the man. Tokichiro was a peasant sandal-bearer, but he possessed a sharp, opportunistic drive. He recognized the modern engineer as a fast-moving ladder and was determined to grab the first rung.
"Stand up, Tokichiro," Soma said, adopting his standard site-manager tone. "I don't need the bowing. Give me the direct status report on this timber."
Tokichiro snapped upright. A wide, genuine grin cracked the dried gray mud on his face. He stepped closer to the wall, gesturing sharply with a dirt-stained finger toward the base of the massive vertical logs.
"The earth here is a liar, Honored Builder," Tokichiro said rapidly. "It looks solid in the dry months, but the river bleeds under the surface. The base logs sink into the damp. The wood drinks the moat water and rots."
Soma stepped forward, sinking into the mud. He crouched down beside Tokichiro. The hem of his expensive indigo silk dragged directly in the foul-smelling muck. He ran his pale fingers over the slimy, dark wood of the pillar.
"The foundation is sinking because the load isn't distributed," Soma confirmed, examining the grain. "The straight vertical logs force all the weight of those watchtowers into a single point in the mud. What about the joints?"
"The iron," Tokichiro said. He scrambled up the muddy embankment, pointing to the massive iron spikes driven through the overlapping horizontal beams. "The guild uses heavy nails. The dampness eats the iron. The rust flakes expand and split the timber. When the watchtowers sway in the wind, the weight pulls the rusted nails straight out. The iron can no longer hold the joints together."
Soma stood up, wiping the warm mud from his fingers. Tokichiro lacked mathematical formulas, but his empirical observation was flawless.
"You're right," Soma stated, looking up at the precarious tilt of the palisade. "The iron is a massive liability. We pull it all out. We rebuild the joints using interlocking angles. We use the gravity of the watchtowers to compress the wood together, instead of using nails to fight the tension."
Tokichiro looked at the massive stretch of the western wall, then stepped closer to Soma. He lowered his voice.
"Diagnosing the rotting wood is an easy task, Honored Builder," Tokichiro murmured, angling his shoulder toward the far end of the construction zone. "The real friction today is not the mud. The traditional carpenter guild is here. They were tipped off."
About forty yards away stood a group of twenty men gathered around a stack of unhewn cedar logs. They were heavily muscled, their skin baked to a dark leather and covered in a thick layer of sawdust. They carried heavy iron adzes and long, jagged crosscut saws.
They stood in a unified block, arms crossed over their chests, staring directly at Soma.
"A servant whispered to the guild that the Demon King’s new 'Honored Guest' was coming to inspect their timber," Tokichiro said tightly. "Their chief is leading them. He does not care about your math, Honored Builder. He cares that you are standing on his dirt."
The heavy, rhythmic sucking sound of bare feet marching through the mud broke the morning dampness. The traditional carpenter guild of Owari approached.
Kinoshita Tokichiro took a calculated step backward, yielding the frontline to the tall engineer.
The chief of the carpenters, Genjo, stepped ahead of his men. He was built like a load-bearing timber, short, incredibly wide, and packed with dense muscle. White scars and fresh splinters covered his thick forearms.
Genjo stopped directly in front of Soma. He crossed his massive arms over his chest. He smelled of pine sap and cheap rice wine.
Genjo turned his head and spat a thick wad of phlegm into the mud, an inch from Soma’s straw sandal.
Splat.
"So, this is the silk-wearing stranger the servants whisper about," Genjo barked. His gravelly voice fought through the ambient noise of the camp. "They say you parade around under the title of Builder."
Genjo’s eyes swept over the pristine indigo silk and the pale, unscarred hands resting at Soma’s sides.
"I look at your hands, Builder," Genjo mocked, stepping a fraction of an inch closer. "I see a man who has never held a saw. The skin on your palms is softer than a tavern whore’s thigh. What are you doing in my mud? Are you going to cry to the Demon King when you get your first splinter?"
The twenty carpenters let out a chorus of low grunts. They shifted their grips on their heavy iron adzes.
Soma stepped forward. He reached out, grabbed a thick oak measuring rod from the nearest carpenter’s hand, and ripped it from the man's grip.
Soma drove the heavy wood violently downward. It buried a foot deep into the sweltering mud, exactly an inch from Genjo’s bare toes.
Thwack.
"I am not here to measure pride with you over a rusted saw, Genjo," Soma said. His voice was a flat, unyielding baritone. He squared his broad shoulders against the chief. "I'm not here to take your jobs. I'm here on Lord Nobunaga's direct orders
Soma pointed past the chief toward the bowing structure of the western palisade.
"I am here to fix the math, so this wall doesn't crush your men when the enemy hits it," Soma stated.
Genjo uncrossed his arms. His calloused hands dropped to his sides. "Math. You think numbers hold back a battering ram? We build with iron and cedar. We know this wood. You know nothing but the inside of a silk robe."
"You don't know why your walls are rotting," Soma corrected him, his tone absolute.
Soma pointed his pale finger directly at the collapsing timber of the upper watchtowers.
"Look at how the upper towers lean," Soma commanded. "You drive iron nails into the joints to hold the logs together. The wood swells with the dampness from the moat. The high winds push against the heavy towers. The wood wants to move. But iron doesn't bend."
Soma tapped the top of the oak rod planted in the mud.
"The iron acts exactly like a wedge," Soma explained, stripping away the academic jargon for pure, practical builder's logic. "It holds the center rigid while the wind pushes the rest. It splits your timber entirely from the inside out. If a vanguard hits that wall with a ram, the iron will shatter the logs, and the entire section will collapse outward into the moat."
Genjo stared at the pale man in the indigo silk. The chief closed his mouth. He looked past Soma, his dark eyes tracking slowly up the massive, split timber of the leaning watchtower.