Daughter of the Sword (23 page)

It was in the hour of the horse, the midday hour, that Ichirō approached Daigoro’s study, a serving girl in tow bearing tea. “May I interrupt, brother?”

“Of course,” said Daigoro, setting aside his brush. He cleared his low writing desk and Ichirō knelt beside it.

As the girl served their tea, Ichirō said, “I hope I haven’t disturbed anything important.”

“Not at all. I was writing letters to some of the lords who attended yesterday, to thank them for their respects.”

“Lora Yasuda among them, I suppose.”

Daigoro braced himself for a fight. “Yes.”

“Good,” said Ichirō. “Express my thanks as well, if you would.” After a moment he added, “I was in the wrong last night. Please forgive me.”

“Grief,” said Daigoro. “It does strange things to us all. No forgiveness is necessary.”

The two of them sipped tea, and Daigoro watched the hot air shimmer over the sand of the courtyard outside. Grief remained as elusive as the waves of heat: try as he might to grasp it, it escaped him. He looked away from the sand, fixing his gaze instead on Ichirō’s white overrobe. Better, he thought, to focus on relief than grief. It was good to be sitting in the shade without animosity.

“I’ve got an idea,” said Ichirō. “We should have an archery competition, as we did when we were boys. What do you say?”

“I haven’t been serious competition for you since I was ten and you were twelve. I’m not even sure I held my own with you then. I always wondered whether you were holding back to keep me in the race.”

“We were just boys then,” said Ichirō. “Two years is too great an advantage to be overcome by a ten-year-old. Now we’re grown; it’s not so much anymore. Come, let’s go out to the orchard. I’ll have some targets brought out.”

“If you wish,” said Daigoro.

The targets were nearly as wide as Daigoro was tall, covered in deer hide and propped against the outside wall of the family compound. Daigoro and Ichirō stood by as one of their samurai measured thirty-three bow lengths from the target and marked a firing line among the camphor trees. Having the firing line in the shade would make for more comfortable shooting, but more difficult as well; arcing shots through the canopy would be troublesome.

Ichirō and Daigoro both wore white, and both wore the swords they were never without. The three samurai attending them wore their rusty-red house uniforms, with white sashes instead of the usual brown. There was only the faintest of breezes coming off the ocean, its salty smell melding nicely with the camphor leaves crushed underfoot. Daigoro felt a bead of sweat roll down his spine and soak into his waistband.

“Will you take the first shot?” said Ichirō.

“I suppose so.” Daigoro hobbled up to the line, took his bow from an attending samurai, and set an arrow to the string. His right leg made archery difficult because it was hard for him to find a stable stance. He had to weight his left leg heavily, draw the arrow to his ear, and then settle on his right foot as he could. The process required holding his arrow at full draw for a long time while finding his stable stance. It had always been difficult for him, and today the Inazuma blade hanging from his left hip offset his balance further. The wrist and fingers of his right hand strained as he tried to stabilize himself.

At last he loosed his shot and heard it rip through the overhanging leaves. It sank into the target about halfway between the center and the outer rim.

Ichirō’s landed just inside of Daigoro’s, closer to the center by a finger’s length. His delivery was smooth, his posture elegant. Somehow he managed to release his shot without disturbing a single leaf overhead.

“It seems I got the better of you that time,” he said. “Let’s have another go.”

They fired three more shafts apiece. Each time, despite the pulling of the sword, Daigoro managed to put his arrow closer to the center than the previous shot. Each time Ichirō’s landed right next to Daigoro’s, and just inside of it, closer to the center by less than a thumb’s breadth. “Now I know you’re toying with me,” said Daigoro. “You can hit the center anytime you like.”

“Perhaps. But what’s the fun of a competition if I don’t keep you in the running?”

Daigoro shrugged. “As you say. Put one in the center, then. Let me see how close I can get.”

Ichirō pursed his lips, drew a fifth arrow, and plunged it in the very heart of the target. “There. If competition bores you so much, why did you bother to agree?”

“To watch my brother excel.”

“Take your last shot and let’s have done with it.”

Daigoro became aware of the sweat on his neck, and he knew it was not born of the summer heat. His every effort at peacemaking seemed doomed to failure. He limped up to the line, nocked an arrow, and drew. His father’s sword pulled heavily at his belt, but this time he did not bother to compensate for it. What would be the point? Ichirō wanted his victory. Teetering off balance because of the sword, he loosed his arrow.

It split Ichirō’s arrow down the middle.

One of the attending samurai gasped. Another stifled his astonishment by trapping his mouth shut. The third showed the least restraint of all, laughing and saying, “Excellent shot, my lord!”

“It was,” said Ichirō, glowering. Though Daigoro managed to keep the emotion from his face, he was as angry as Ichirō, for different reasons. The samurai’s blurted praise was an unofficial announcement that Daigoro had won the competition; no shot of Ichirō’s had earned similar accolades. Wholly accidentally, Daigoro had managed to show up his brother in the skill Ichirō excelled in most.

“It was nothing,” said Daigoro, knowing it was too late. “A lucky shot.”

“Then you have the luck of the seven gods of good fortune,” said Ichirō. “It’s not often a man gets to see the work of the gods. Let’s do it again.”

He snatched an arrow from the samurai who’d managed to keep his mouth shut and fired it at the target. It struck just a finger’s breadth higher than Daigoro’s last shot, so close as to make the feathers quiver. “Come,” he said, stiff-jawed. “Test your luck again.”

Daigoro stepped up to the line and drew back another arrow. For a moment he considered drawing less than full strength and letting his arrow fall short of the target. But that would not do; it would be too obviously a deliberate miss. Instead he tried to fire as he normally did, centering his weight as best he could at full draw, then releasing his shot when he was stable. He aimed for the upper half of the target, far from Ichirō’s most recent shot. But again he found the counterweight
of the sword difficult to manage, and just as he thought he was stable enough to fire, his balance shifted to his left. His shot was already airborne, and Daigoro watched with a mixture of horror and awe as another one of his shafts splintered his brother’s arrow.

This time all were hushed. At least their attendants were reading Ichirō’s emotions rightly, Daigoro thought. He would have all three of them sweating with the shrine laborers before the day was out. But the immediate problem was Ichirō. Daigoro could think of nothing to say that would appease him, yet saying nothing and letting him find his own peace was no solution either. Ichirō was in no mood to seek peace; he was unsettled and savoring it.

His father is dead too, Daigoro reminded himself. He’s found grief before you have; maybe this is how he is letting it run its course.

“Swords,” said Ichirō. “We can stage a duel.”

Daigoro’s heart sank. This was not about grief, he realized. It was about revenge. About jealousy. In short, it was about the Inazuma.

“No, Ichirō. I won’t fight you.”

“No? You’ll let the fickle habits of the wind carry your arrows, and let everyone believe you’re the better archer?”

“No one here believes I’m better than you. As I hear it, I could sail two days in any direction and still not find a better archer than you.”

Ichirō’s left hand gripped his scabbard just behind the
tsuba
. His right hand stabbed a finger at Daigoro’s chest. “If those were lucky shots, then you need to bring that kind of luck to the battlefield. With lucky arrows like those on your back, who could stand against us the next time we go to war?”

“I have no interest in going to war.”

“Ha!” Ichirō spat on the ground near Daigoro’s feet. “Listen to the son of Okuma Tetsurō, wielder of Glorious Victory! A samurai who will not make war!”

Daigoro took a deep breath and let it out, hoping his brother might do the same. “I did not say I would not make war. I said I would not go to war. If war comes to us, I will kill as many men as the enemy
can line up in front of me. I’ll keep fighting until death finds me or the last of our foes is lying headless at my feet. But Father said war is bad enough without going looking for it. I will not seek out enemies for the clan, and I will not have you as my enemy.”

“You’ll die of old age, then. You’ll sit here and let that sword rust in its scabbard.”

“If I am that lucky, yes.”

Ichirō barked a scornful laugh. “Well, you’ve got no shortage of luck,
neh
? Look forward to your senility, little brother. For my part, I look forward to spilling my blood to make Okuma a greater name.”

With that he stormed away, alone, leaving Daigoro with the sea breeze at his back.

33

Returning to the compound, Daigoro brushed the dust from his feet, entered his study, and drew Glorious Victory. It was slow on the draw, so long that even when he pulled the scabbard back with his left hand he could scarcely clear the tip of the blade. Once again Daigoro had to imagine what strength his father must have had to wield the sword one-handed.

Was it possible the blade was cursed? He’d heard legends of cursed swords, even of cursed Inazuma swords, but he’d never heard anyone speak ill of Glorious Victory. On the contrary, he’d heard countless stories of his father’s sword, and all of them sung its praises. But Daigoro knew almost nothing of how the sword had come to be in his father’s possession. At one time his father had had two brothers, but they had both died in war when Daigoro was still in swaddling clothes. Had the sword caused enmity between them? When Daigoro’s grandfather died, did he pass the sword directly to his son Tetsurō, or did the three brothers fight over it first? Daigoro had never heard those stories. Had this weapon stirred animosity in his house before?

Or was it just Ichirō’s nature to covet the sword? If so, why was it not bequeathed to him? Daigoro had no desire for it; he wanted only to fulfill his father’s will, and to follow the path of Bushido. As Daigoro understood them, these two were one and the same. Why could Ichirō not see that?

Daigoro felt his heart racing, felt the heat creeping into his skin even in the cool shade of his study. Better to put his mind somewhere else, he decided. He wrapped his left hand around the base of the pommel, settled his right foot, and experimentally attacked the air in front of him.

He slashed a ceiling tile, nearly burying the blade in one of the rafters. The sword was too long for indoor use, at least for overhead swings. Red faced, Daigoro resheathed it and limped outside.

He found a quiet place near the
sake
stores where he could practice unobserved. With each thrust and parry, his feeble right knee threatened to give out. His wrists and forearms lacked the strength to stop the blade with any precision. As it sliced through the hot afternoon air it hissed, and the pitch of the hiss told him this was the sharpest blade he’d ever encountered. That was no surprise: Inazuma steel was said to hold an edge better than any other. But this sword would demand more of him than any other. He needed strength to complement its power, balance to make the most of its reach. Lacking these, he tried shorter swings, tighter movements. The sword sang in the air; he could almost hear it asking him for more. More speed, more ferocity, longer cuts, wider arcs. Still he could not manage it, and now he felt he was disappointing not only his father but also his father’s sword.

When at last he allowed himself to relax, he found his body covered in sweat and the sun drawing close to the treetops beyond the compound wall. Sand shifted underfoot behind him, and he turned to see the Zen abbot who had presided over his father’s funeral. The abbot had been watching him, Daigoro guessed; Daigoro had been too focused on his exercises to notice. Now the abbot walked away, a preternatural grace to his movements that Daigoro found both admirable and mysterious. Where did it come from? Was it enlightenment made visible in the body’s movements? Daigoro didn’t think so. If anything, the abbot actually reminded him of his father. There was balance, strength, and sureness in the old man’s steps; he moved like an expert swordsman facing an opponent.

But he was only there for a moment, disappearing behind the
sake
storehouse on whatever errand had brought him here. Now Daigoro could hear voices on the far side of the storehouse. Shuffling toward the commotion, he saw the Okuma samurai arrayed in the courtyard for sword practice and, on the opposite end of the courtyard, the abbot exiting the main gates of the compound.

Tired as he was, Daigoro limped forward to join the last rank of warriors. His father would have asked no less of him. Usually Daigoro and Ichirō did not take part in swordsmanship exercises with the common troops. Theirs was the family that headed the Okuma clan, and Okuma the clan that led so many others. They were not royalty, but they were as close to it as anyone in the region, and so they had always trained under their own sword master. But their father had always told them they were not too good to train with the men. Better, he said, to train beside them from time to time, to be certain their swordsmanship was all it should be.

As the nearest samurai noticed Daigoro among them, they bowed deeply, then resumed their attention stance as if he were no more than a passing shadow. Daigoro stood likewise, and did his best to keep up with them as they began their exercises.

No sooner had they started than Daigoro was dripping with sweat. His burning muscles begged for release. At fifteen, Daigoro had already been practicing swordsmanship for eleven years, but the samurai around him had been training for longer than he’d been alive. Most were battle hardened, and none had spent the afternoon training with a sword too big for him. It was not long before Daigoro noticed he had stopped sweating entirely. Soon after that, tingling white spots came to dance before his eyes.