The Kuritans parted to let the three Dragoons pass through their midst. Jaime Wolf was flanked on the right by Hans Vordel. The bodyguard's years had etched deeper lines into his hangdog face and whitened some hairs, but had not weakened his warrior tread. The Dragoon on the left looked like a frozen moment from the past. He appeared to be William Cameron, Wolf's communications specialist, but he was not. Cameron had died on Crossing. This must be a son.

Wolf was smiling, as if amused at some joke. "Who told you I was here?"

"Your kiis strong."

Wolf's smile vanished and he looked toward the memorial tablet. "He said much the same thing when we first met. If you keep it up, you may yet persuade me about Kuritan mysticism."

"You will believe as you believe, whatever I do or say."

"Maybe so."

Michi lifted an arm and waved it to encompass the rows of memorial tablets. Each was a plain white stone, engraved with the formal characters of a warrior's name and rank. "Harumito Shumagawa is responsible for this. He was the officer in command of the forces remaining here when Warlord Samsonov ordered the Dragoon dead disinterred. Samsonov wanted the bodies left to the ravages of this planet's weather, to obliterate their presence. Samsonov said the Ryuken had failed, that their dead were not to be honored. Had he been more confident in his power, he might have ordered the same fate for their bodies as he had for the Dragoons, but he commanded only that their graves go unmarked. Those orders were among the last he gave before he fled. Shumagawa had survived the battle here; he only lost a leg. He knew what had happened.

"Minobu-sensei taught us that a warrior was to be honored; the warrior's gender, the color of his skin, or the uniform he wore didn't matter. Shumagawa felt dishonored by the warlord's order but, as a samurai, he was obliged to obey. Or at least appear to. He ordered a select group of his men to move the remains of the dead, Ryuken and Dragoon, to this cavern and then he swore them to secrecy. They were all Ryuken veterans; they understood. He could not let courage and valor go unremembered. After reporting the completion of his task to the warlord, he resigned his commission. His veterans dispersed among the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery while he came to live in this cavern and began to engrave these tablets. It took him twenty years. He died here by his own hand, atoning for his lie to the warlord.

"His spirit will be pleased to know you have seen this place."

Wolf stared out over the massed ranks of the tablets. "There are those who wouldn't understand this."

"Do you understand, Colonel?"

"I'd like to think so." Wolf turned his gaze to Michi. "Do you?"

Michi was surprised at the question. To evade the flutter of disturbance in his wa,he spoke. "Why have you come here?"

"I was asked to come by those who believe that I might do some good. Perhaps even prevent one more unnecessary loss in a tragic story."

"Kiyomasa."

Wolf smiled. "He is a persuasive young man."

"You hear another voice in his call. Do not delude yourself listening to the past."

There was a sudden wariness in Wolf's eyes. "Breaks with tradition are the sort of thing I've made a habit of. I know it doesn't come easy to your sort, but your teacher wasn't exclusively a stickler for tradition."

"He knew when tradition was important."

"Mostly. But he was human. I believe he made a mistake when it came to the end here on Misery. You believed it, too, or you wouldn't have vowed vendetta. And that didn't exactly turn out like you figured. Think about that."

"I have."

Wolf bent over and picked up the honor sword. He snapped the blade into the sheath. "Maybe you haven't thought about it enough. The dead have a lot to tell the living, but you can't just listen. You've got to do something about what they tell you." Wolf stepped to Minobu's memorial tablet and took up the katana.

He handed the pair to Kiyomasa. "These were his swords. What do you Kuritans say about there being no future, no past? That only the present is real, and a lot can happen that can change unpleasant probabilities."

Kiyomasa looked puzzled, and Michi felt echoing confusion among the Kuritans and Wolf's aides. But the words Wolf spoke were not meant for them; they were solely between Wolf and Michi.

Wolf looked at Michi. "And what are you now, this instant, Michi Noketsuna? Alive or dead?"

"Alive."

"Think about that, too. Once, I made you the offer of a place in the Dragoons, and you said you had other things to do. I took that as a 'talk to me later.' Looks to me like all the old business is finished. If you were really going to kill yourself at the end of it, you'd have done it by now. So what is it you're looking for, Noketsuna? It isn't death."

No, Michi realized, it was not death he sought, but what it was, he didn't know.

"Well, I've got things to do," Wolf said in a sudden display of impatience. "Can't live in the past."

Wolf turned and walked away. His Dragoons gave Michi brief bows, then followed their commander.

The Kuritans watched them leave, then turned to Michi, awaiting an answer.

"Michi -sama?" Kiyomasa asked for all of them.

33

It was strange to have Kuritans aboard the Chieftain.In training I had studied their culture, perhaps a little more intensively than that of other Inner Sphere states because they were billed as high-probability opponents. But the reality was different from expectations, as it always is, I suppose. Though we were on a military ship, we were not in the midst of a military operation; perhaps that was part of the reason they did not behave as I expected them to.

Their clannishness was predictable, however. They were among strangers, some of whom had once been their enemy. Spheroids don't incorporate the losers of an operation into the winners' side like the Clans do. Well, it wasn't standard Dragoon practice, either. We had taken in Clanners, though, and in some ways they were stranger than these expatriate samurai and their families.

I wondered about those families. Not all of the Kuritans had brought theirs. Did that mean those who brought no one had no families? Might they be orphans, cast-offs, or even renegades? I didn't have the opportunity to seek out the answer because the families were billeted on the ships the Kuritans had brought with them. Since the ships were still the property of individual Kuritans, until proper transferrals could be made at Outreach, we Dragoons rarely visited them during the journey.

How many of those wives and children had voluntarily chosen to accompany their warriors? How many were forced into the journey? How did they deal with going among strangers to find a new life? I could have understood if they had all been sibkos. To see the unknown, to try new ventures together—that sort of comradeship was natural. How did families deal with it? I also wondered how similar this tiny exodus was to the departure of the oldsters from Wolf Clan.

I never worked up the courage to ask any of the officers who had regular conferences with Colonel Wolf. I just watched them come and go. Occasionally I overheard them speaking to one another of their families, but I could never be sure whether they spoke of someone on the accompanying ships or someone left behind. Maybe it was all part of the living in the present business that the Colonel had talked about with Michi Noketsuna. I didn't know.