Umibozu!

The Imperial War Junk surged towards them, sails flashing red in the morning sun, its black cannons bristling on either side. Lady Masako estimated that it would be upon them before nightfall, and then they would all be dead.
   She lowered the golden Portuguese telescope, part of the spoils gleaned from a trading vessel they'd boarded off the Goto Islands a month ago. Her first mate, the poisoner Kamehine, was crossing the deck towards her, her long braids flicking in the breeze, like a horse's tail warding off troublesome flies.
  "Conditions are perfect, my lady, the sea as flat as my mother's koi pond in Kanagawa. Our sekibune is making fine progress."
   "But they are faster," said Masako grimly. "Make sure the women are prepared for boarding, Kamehine." She glanced over the side, into the smooth ocean. "Tiger sharks. Hungry for the flesh of the Chinese emperor's mercenary filth. Let us be their caterers."
   She was more angry than afraid. Lady Masako was a noblewoman, a second cousin of the Shogun on her father's side, a member of the ruling Tokugawa clan. She deserved more respect than the emperor accorded her. Had she and her crew been men, they wouldn't have been pursued with such determination. Wokou pirates had menaced the waters of the South China Seas for decades with impunity. It was only the sex of her crew that had jolted the outraged emperor from his usual complacency.
   Kamehine was standing beside her again, staring up with that cow-eyed reverence Masako found vaguely annoying. Kamehine was a fine assassin, who'd finished off the last half dozen crewmen by putting gu into their noodles, and Masako felt such hero-worship was undignified. Like most of the women on board, Kamehine had spent most of her adult life as a prostitute in China, perfecting her black magic poisons while reluctantly servicing the gross sweatpots of Nanyue. She was an angry woman. Masako recalled the grin on her pretty face as she'd shovelled the last of the original crew overboard, gleefully declaring that the remaining thirty-two women must be the first all-female pirate crew in history. Masako felt an almost motherly pride towards her protégé, though she hid it well.
   "Lady, old Ichi wishes to speak to you," said Kamehine. "She says there- I don't know quite how to say it…"
   "Spit it out, poison mouth."
   "She says we are being pursued. Hunted."
  "Evidently," said Lady Masako, casting her bejewelled hand towards the horizon. "You thought fit to bother me with such wisdom?"
   "No, Madam. Ichi is a Miko, a shaman. She is saying that there is… an ayakashi, behind us, and closing in fast, with evil intent."
  Lady Masako laughed. "Ayakashi? A sea-spirit? That is superstitious man-talk, the frightened gossip of sake-addled sailors. Have I not educated you against such nonsense, girl? Have I not introduced you to the wisdom of the elders, weaned you off of these infantile tales?"
   "Yes, Masako-san. But Ichi says she has seen it. Racing across the flat sea towards us, from the direction of the sun. Moments ago. She felt it, too, in her soul. She says it is an Umibozu." She bowed her head. "But I cannot see it."
   "Bring her to me," said Lady Masako haughtily. "And watch carefully how I deal with such nansensu. We cannot allow ourselves to be distracted, to become hysterical, in our moment of crisis."
   "Yes, Lady."
  Left alone on the deck now, the wind loosening her hair as the sekibune tacked North again, Masako mused on her own words. Wasn't it true that to be great, a woman had to be ten times a man? Ten times cleverer, ten times faster, ten times more steely in her will? Wasn't that remarkable female warrior Tomoe Gozen, who had fought alongside samurai, a better archer, a better swordswoman, than all of those clumsy men around her? Weren't the female cavalries of the old times more swift on their horses than any male rider? Didn't the mighty Myorin defend her city against Shimozu forces more wisely than any loud-mouthed man? She leaned over the side, marvelling at the shadows of the sharks that shimmered beneath the waves. The greatness of women, she knew, was sharpened on the grindstone of prejudice. She was only a pirate, brought to the ship by the fickleness of fate, but she was determined that she would stand alongside these superwomen in the Land of the Dead.
Kamehine returned with old Ichi, the ship's bent-backed cook and unofficial healer.
"You have ghost stories to recount, old woman?" said Masako. "Wasting my time on the morning of our great battle? I should have your back peeled from your bones like the skin of an orange." She would, too; just last week Masako had executed a Korean crewwoman who'd got pregnant on shore leave, a capital crime for women wokou. Kamehine and the crew knew how cruel she could be, although they conceded that it was an orderly, fair cruelty, not random or vindictive like that dispensed by so many men in their lives.
"Whip me if you want," said Ichi, "but if you do, my pain will be short-lived. An Umibozu is upon us, and he will raise a storm and sink us long before the emperor's junk gets here."
Lady Masako waved a hand at the glittering blue sea, the froth that surged and bounced by so serenely. 'The ocean is flat and fast. There is no storm coming.'
"The Umibozu only comes when the sea is still. He is an artist of chaos, and his work is done upon the canvas of an untroubled sea."
A sudden chill breeze wafted across the deck. Kamehine's voice was slow and faltering. "Ichi-san, what should we do? Can we repel this sea-demon?"
"He will wish to sink us," croaked the old witch-cook, "and devour our souls as we drown. He will ask us for a ladle, or a barrel, and then he will use it to overwhelm our boat. Give him a barrel with the bottom knocked out, Masako-san. Most Umibozo are as stupid as they are strong and dangerous. We can escape while he is figuring out what we are doing!"
"Preposterous!" shouted Masako. She was about to issue the command to take Ichi away for whipping, when a sudden and unexpected strong lateral motion of the boat distracted her- and as the sky became dark, and the wind rose, she could hear Ichi's almost triumphant cries.
"We should never have started out, Lady. A crew of women is a crime against creation, I've always said so. We make the Dragon Gods angry, and now they send an Umibozo to punish us!"
Masako raised the Portuguese telescope again. The Emperor's ship, the entire horizon, had faded into fog, and as she turned, lowering the instrument, she saw a great shadow rushing towards them across the waves. Unafraid, she stepped forward to meet it.

Masako was seventeen years old when Korean pirates attacked her uncle's boat in the Tsushima straits. They'd been on one of the Joseon Tonsinga goodwill missions to Korea, her uncle being a skilful and renowned diplomat, and he, loving uncle as he was, wanted his intelligent niece at his side to induct her into the mysteries of statecraft. He was killed, smashed by a cannonball, bravely defending the ship, while her beloved brother Jotaro, just fifteen, was murdered in front of her eyes, his wild-eyed assailant leaping onto the deck and running him through before the boy had time to draw his sword. Masako had watched it all, helplessly pinned down under the collapsed rigging. There had been a lot of talk in the weeks that followed about ransoming Masako, and two attempts were made to bring this about; but the second rendezvous was a trap, an ambush off the coast of Mugi initiated by the Shogun, and her captors barely escaped with their hostage. The pirates were angry that their prize now seemed worthless, and she was locked up, and drugged, and raped on several occasions, while they argued about what to do with her.
Masako was even then planning her revenge. But first she had to ensure her survival. She was charming and attractive and spoke Korean very well, and she knew how to please these little savages even though it made her feel dead inside. In time she was able to ingratiate herself to the pirate captain, an obese and foul smelling braggard called Cham-Bok, and he became enamoured of her. The rest of the loathed crew now kept their distance. She taught Cham-Bok Karuta card games and helped him with his Japanese. He would let her sit in sometimes with the other officers during their strategy meetings. He liked the idea of showing off his concubine to his fellow pirates. "Aren't I lucky," he would boast, "that fortune has put the Shogun's beautiful cousin into my bed! I guess that makes me a Japanese noble!"
On one occasion, the officers were discussing a planned attack on a war junk they had learned was hunting them down. There was a general bemoaning of the lack of firepower of the two-cannoned sekibune- the pirates relied on their skills of boarding and close fighting, but against a big ship with multiple cannon it was hard to get close enough.
When the talk had subsided into sullen silence, Masako laid down her cards and said sweetly, "why don't you install more cannons, then? Two fore, two aft. There is plenty of room."
"Don't be stupid, girl," yelled the first mate. "The sekibune cannot take the weight. It would cleave the boat in two, or sink us."
"Not necessarily," said Masako confidently. "You could brace the lower decks with oak beams to strengthen the hull. The ship would sit lower in the water, that is true, but in my opinion that wouldn't be a bad thing, as she sits too high already."
The pirates were all staring at her. She smiled and continued.
"Two more at the front, two more at the back. You could conceal the rear cannon behind moveable panels. As your opponent attacks from behind, wiggle your bottom at him. Flirt with him, let him in close. He will want to approach you broadside to do most damage. While he is ignorant of your additional firepower, you can reveal your rear cannon and sink him.' She arranged her cards carefully into suits. 'Of course, as long as there are no survivors, you can do this again and again."
"Where did you learn such talk?" enquired the first mate, aghast.
"I am a fighting woman from the family of the Shogun. I have some swordsmanship and I can use a short knife well. And I have read Sun Tzu's The Art of War."
Cham-Bok roared with laughter. 'She has studied The Art of War! My pretty concubine knows The Art of War!'
After this, and the subsequent victory, things began to change for Masako. She was allowed to practise her knife-craft with the men, and they saw how lithe and skilled she was. Soon, she was boarding and skirmishing with them, in the thick of the action, and Cham-Bok would watch her prowess, misty-eyed.
"What a savage warrior my dear Masako is. How relieved I am she surrendered so meekly to us the day we killed her uncle!"
A few months later, the crew kidnapped ten women from a Chinese trading junk. The intention was to use them as comfort women, or to sell them into slavery, but Masako had other ideas. "These are all fit and athletic women, well fed. Let me train them as warriors. Then they can be usefully occupied in their days, as well as their nights."
Cham-Bok agreed- he could deny her nothing. And Masako was right, as under her tutelage, these women became useful additions to the crew, fine fighters. Masako was made an honorary commander of all women on the ship. Any thought of ransom was forgotten. She was fully integrated into the crew, but revenge still lurked in her mind.
More women joined. Cham-Bok liked this; he thought it made him seem like a clever freethinker. But shortly after Kamehine and the other Japanese women were recruited, men started disappearing. One or two every week. There were never any witnesses to their desertions; it was thought that they swam ashore, or that boats from nearby islands sneaked up under cover of darkness to spirit them away.
"My crew seems to vanish as quickly as you can supplant them, dear Masako. But surely, not all the replacements need be women."
Kamehine put paralysing poison into Cham-Bok's soup one hot summer night. Masako slipped into his bedroom and while he lay unable to move in his stolen kimono, she very gently garrotted him. As she did so she used a small fruit knife to remove his manhood, and took great pleasure dangling the scrap of flesh before his horrified gaze.
"I will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness, and our weakness for strength," she whispered to him as he died, quoting from The Art of War, "and thus will turn his strength into weakness." She stood, wiping her hands, and turned to Kamehine and the rest of the women. "Dump him overboard. Tell the remaining male crew he abandoned us, betrayed us to the Emperor. Then make preparations. I want the other men dead before the week is out."
"Yes, Lady Masako," they said.