Stories Thread

[Kagemusha]

Somewhere between Constantinopol and Sinop 1225

Tender summer breeze from Black Sea touched the cliffs and waved the dry bushes that grew between the large cliffs. The same breeze threw small sparkles from a campfire of Ioannis Kantakouzinos and his small retainer band. As Ioannis turned his eyes to the sky. He could see the thousands and yet thousands lights up in the sky and the large harvest moon, which shone is ghastly light on the black waves of the Black Sea.

Others were soundly asleep as it was his watch. When moving with his close men, Ioannis had always shared the hardships with his men. Eating the same, drinking the same, sleeping like the others did, under the bare sky. These men had became his brothers, while there was not a question who the leader was, Ioannis treated his men as equals and did not allow any luxuries to himself.

There Kantakouzinos sat and watched the fire as it created dancing shadows on his face thinking about the past and the future.

He thought about the past years.The wild dreams of the young man he once was. The despair that almost swallowed him at one point. The same despair in the end had made him want to die and it had been that wish of death that had brought him back to life. To a different life. To a life where serving had replaced ambition, maybe not entirely, but mostly. To a life where he had found out that he was not alone fighting the world, but together with others fighting for a cause. A cause which was defending the Empire, against all outside and also internal enemies.

Ioannis understood that life had not made him the most pleasant of men, nor that his hands were not clean of blood of the innocents. He knew that many of his fellow senators saw him as a madman or a man of villaneous character, but he also knew that if it was needed to be a villain or to drown the enemies of the empire into pools of their own blood. He would not feel bad about it. If the Empire needed terrible men in order for it to prosper, he was ready to sacrifice the last inch of goodness from his character for the Empire.

Ioannis also thought about a woman and not just about any woman. He was thinking about the a princess. Thinking about Anna. He had never stopped loving the princess, who had discarded him from her feelings probably a long time a go. She had married and given birth to many children to another man. But Ioannis did not feel hate towards her or her husband for it. He still held the green cloth, now stained in blood and old dirt, but still Ioannis kept it next to his heart at all times. It was as if the cloth had started to personify everything good that was left in him and also about the longing he felt for a woman that he never could have. Soon enough he should have to marry himself and give a heir to the Kantakouzinos family.

That was one last task he should full fill, before he would even bit more free from his oblications, but in the end Ioannis understood that his oblications would never end, until death would free him from his duties. Once he would have children he would have to protect them as he had to protect the Empire and the Royal family, from anything which would dare to threaten it.

After hours of lonely thoughts, Kantakouzinos woke up from his thoughts and lifted his eyes from the fire. There on the opposite side of the campfire, he regocniced familiar features. Hector his shield bearer and right hand man had already woke up and said to his master.

"Sire. There are still few hours before the sun comes up. Take your rest, it is my turn to guard the camp."

Ioannis smiled to Hector and lied down on his blanket, while the scarred veteran added some more firewood to the fire. Lying there under the stars on the shore of the Black Sea, Comes Kantakouzinos slept, slept and dreamed about the past and about the future.