The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) Read Online Free PDF

felt as if he had awoken in a Kurosawa epic and could not escape,” Koyama added.
    They all ignored the mysterious last sentence; the Grand Steward was given to gnomic references nobody else could understand.
    Egawa’s second-in-command Nakamura Ichiro spoke; his left arm was bandaged and in a sling.
    “These
gaijin
look so
strange
, though. More so than the pictures prepared me for. Hardly like human beings at all. More like characters in an ancient
manga
!”
    Reiko tapped her fan on her chin; that had struck her too. Nobody born in Japan since the Change had seen a living
gaijin
, of course. When nine hundred and ninety-nine in every thousand perished, it wasn’t to be expected that any of a tiny group of foreigners centered in the cities where devastation was worst would survive. For her generation, their parents hadn’t seen one either, though there were surviving photographs.
    A representation was one thing, the living reality another. The fantastic hair and eye colors were like something from a dream, and the odd angular features, even the way they differed so strongly one from another in things like the tint of their skin—she had seen everything from the commonest odd-looking pink shade through normal tan to a very dark brown almost the color of an aubergine. It all made it a little difficult to see most of them as individuals, though she supposed she’d grow accustomed to it.
    And frankly, most of them are repulsively ugly. So hairy! Almost like
oni
. Though this Princess Órlaith is striking, in a deeply strange way—hard to realize that the yellow hair and blue eyes are real. And her face is like a blade.
    “They seem civilized enough in some respects,” she said thoughtfully. “Not too smelly, at least.”
    Everyone nodded. The communal bathhouse in the little village looked as if it had been among the very first things built there when the settlement was established a few years ago, and it had been almost exactly like the
sento
, the equivalents back in the homeland. Almost as if it had been modeled on them, with provision for scrubbing down first and then soaking in a large tub of hot water. Hers were a fastidious people, when they could be, and it had been a deep relief to be properly clean again after so long. Though it had been a little strange and sad to be rattling around in it by herself.
    “General Egawa, your military evaluation of our . . . hosts,” Reiko said.
    She wanted everyone to have the facts, and she was also interested to see if his judgment would match hers.
    And the battle was so . . . chaotic. Despair, and then it was arrows and lances in the enemy’s back. I could easily have missed something crucial. I am the descendant of the Sun Goddess, not Herself. And even the Great
Kami
are not omniscient.
    “Majesty.”
    He passed his bandaged hand over the shaven strip on his head, back towards the topknot, and frowned for a moment as he organized his thoughts.
    “Their High King’s personal troops dealt with the
jinnikukaburi
who were about to wipe us out very well. From what I observed their individual weapons-handling with sword and lance was reasonable, allowing for different weapons and styles. The archers were truly excellent, as good as our
shashu
, and the heavy cavalry charge was fearsome, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Or those horses!”
    “Huge but graceful,” Reiko agreed.
    “Feeding them might be a problem, though—I’ve seen that they eat grain, General-sama,” his second-in-command said thoughtfully.
    Egawa nodded; it was a valid point. In Japan, animals ate only what humans couldn’t, apart from the odd handful of barley to keep chickens tame enough to be easy to catch. The Imperial Guard commander went on:
    “Coordination between arms was nearly perfect. Beautiful timing, which requires not only a commander with good judgment but a force with maneuver discipline. And the way they deployed indicates to me that they scouted carefully with