It was a flurry of steel, blood, movement, and hot air filled with the screeching and crying of the men who died by metal slashing through their flesh. The red-coated samurai was rapt, all senses alert and all reflexes swifter than the wind, and it was as though a god of war's spirit had seeped through the warring men and bloody light to have enlivened the samurai's limbs, to have made his blades cry out for the feeling of hot flesh and blood pulling against the pull of the gleaming silver edge. It was as if true power had come charging from the heavens above and had struck the swordsman in a manner akin to a lightning bolt, though the very s