Child of Vengeance (25 page)

“He was samurai, yes. And to think, thanks to yourself, all the name Hirata is now known for is murder and savagery and arson. I wonder what your father would make of that? I wonder if his spirit moans in shame, wherever it is?” said Shinmen, voice suddenly cold. He looked at Munisai then, gauging his reaction.

His eyes pierced him, and Munisai knew the lord had his measure entirely. Only one man had been able to do that before, and that was Dorinbo. There were no words he could say, for his mind was blank with shock and shame. All he could do was glare, and slowly a smile spread across Shinmen’s features.

“He was samurai, and though you claim not to be, as much as you bark ‘I am no man’s vassal!’ … I think you are too, Munisai. Why else would you have entered the tournament? Why not have just vanished into nothing, swum out to sea, and not come back? I know that you forced your entry into this tournament with your noble Fujiwara blood. Would a man determined on nothingness so loudly proclaim that? No, you want your name to be known, you want to be recognized. You want purpose.

“Well, I can give it to you. You are strong—fight for me. Become a samurai once more. Together we can take Japan by the throat. We are young and brave and daring, and more than that we
are
unpredictable! This stagnant country of old fools in silver towers is there to be taken, and we can do it! Bodies and souls, down on the battlefield;
you and I, Munisai. We can do that—and restore pride to the name Hirata.”

Fire and warmth were dancing in the lord now, and he stood face-to-face with Munisai. For his part, Munisai felt something igniting within him that he had not felt for a long time. But it was quenched by a familiar aching sense of damnation that before had driven him into great rages, but now anchored him with a terrible shame.

“That name is too far gone to redeem,” said Munisai quietly.

“Then take mine,” said Shinmen, and his eyes were honest.

THE NEXT DAY
, washed, shaven, and wearing a fine kimono in Shinmen’s shade of blue, Munisai had walked into the arena with a wooden sword in his hand and for the first time in years a sense of belonging and duty in his soul. The duel was over quickly; his foe overextended himself, Munisai batted his sword to one side, and then his opponent winced as he anticipated the savage blow he had seen Munisai strike in the bouts before.

Munisai’s sword whipped around, and stopped to rest gently on the man’s neck. The man breathed out, surprised, and then the applause slowly began.

He was samurai.

It was all a great gamble, Munisai later learned. A neutral lord had been present at the tournament, and Shinmen hoped a victory in his name would persuade this lord of his strength and to side with him in a war he was planning. Munisai had felt a momentary sense of betrayal, a childish pique that there was no sense of destiny moving his lord’s hand, but then he considered that everything the lord said had come true. They had fought as honest samurai, and Munisai had earned the respect of men once more. Just as a perfect seppuku eradicated whatever deceit or treachery came before, what mattered was not motives but the perfect unwavering execution of an ideal.

Even if his soul was damned, Shinmen had enabled him at least to try to atone, had given him the sense of worth he needed to be able to face Miyamoto and Bennosuke once more. If the man who had spoken to him then on the eve of that tournament was truly back, then perhaps there would be a chance.

Now, in the household where that lord was sleeping, Munisai
began to think of the future rather than the past. He stalked away to chase shadows once more until the dawn, daring to hope.

THEY RODE EARLY
next morning. Munisai insisted they fly Shinmen’s standard this time. The banner was unfurled, and then they were up the slopes of the valley and gone from Miyamoto below them. Bennosuke turned slightly in his sleep, the clattering of the hooves too distant to wake him. The boy could not help them, for what followed was politics.

The quick pace of the ride was difficult on Munisai’s arm. Every time the beast bucked or reared it tugged the dead limb and wrenched the wound. Eventually he had to wrap a cloth around his face to hide his grimace of pain. He was sure to mutter loudly about dust getting into his mouth as he did so.

One samurai, however, continued to look curiously at him. He was young, and turned his eyes away embarrassed every time he was caught, but still he persisted. During a short break, the two found themselves together, atop their horses as the beasts drank from the shallow stream they stood in.

“Your arm, my lord?” he whispered.

“What of it?” said Munisai, aggressively.

“It … heals?” said the young man, checking over his shoulder as he asked.

“It was never wounded. You imply that I am feeble?”

“No, Lord, of course not,” said the samurai, flustered. “I—forgive me.”

The samurai bowed, and kicked his horse away as slowly and politely as he could. Munisai let him cower for a few moments before he pulled the mask down and called to his back.

“Kazuteru,” he said, and the boy turned. “You did a fine job. My thanks.”

Pride crossed his young face for a moment, before Kazuteru remembered that a samurai should be humble. He composed himself in an instant and nodded, and then rode back to the body of the men as though he had received an order, nothing more.

Munisai pulled his mask back into place and beneath it he smiled grimly. No need to tell the lad his work had been futile.

Onward still, the narrow rural pathways soon changing to flat roads fifteen paces wide, as well monitored as they were traveled. They passed caravans of merchants and other bands of samurai as they headed for the city of Okayama, the site of the castle of Lord Hideie Ukita. Ukita’s domains were in the southwest of Japan, as were those of Shinmen and Nakata, and so they were sworn to him. Ukita wielded a level of power perhaps only eight other men could rival in the whole country.

He and his clan were truly blessed, for his power was as much the result of simple good fortune as it was due to any innate scheming. From ancient times their territories had been famed for rich deposits of high-quality iron, and thus swordsmiths and forgers of armor flocked to the region. Soon, the reputation of swords made from Okayama steel soared to high renown, and with that came the samurai.

So many warriors had come over the centuries that nobody—save for the clan’s highest-ranking and most incredibly diligent accountants—was sure of the full extent of the present might of the Ukita clan. What was known was that at a whim, Ukita could summon five thousand men to die for him. With a few days’ notice, easily ten thousand. Give him a week, and double, perhaps three times that would follow him. It was a personal force that any other lord in Japan would be hard-pressed to equal.

Indeed, it was so strong that even at twenty-four years of age, the current Lord Ukita had been judged sufficiently wizened to join the Council of the Five Elders.

The Council was a recent but prestigious creation. The Regent Toyotomi, over sixty years old and bedridden, had long been aware of his mortality. His heir was a boy of five—being confined to a bed made certain activities easier to arrange—and Toyotomi knew that he would not see him come of age. Thus, he chose five of the most powerful men in the country to swear to raise his son to manhood, and ensure his dynasty.

The reasoning was that the Council safeguarded the future of Japan, but the truth was they were essentially five men standing in a ring with knives at their neighbors’ throats. Toyotomi was no fool, and so he cannily chose five lords who above all hated one another.
Their many enmities and grudges would prevent factions from forming, and thus one man or side from rising to steal the country from his son.

That one man, everyone feared, was the warlord Ieyasu Tokugawa. Men called him the Patient Tiger, and he was unofficially the successor of both Toyotomi and Toyotomi’s master, the long-dead Nobunaga Oda. The three of them had fought the long and bloody campaign that had given them control of the country, and with Toyotomi fading it was the military might and cunning of Tokugawa that now shone brightest. Though he lacked the sheer numbers Ukita had, such was his tactical genius that if the Patient Tiger was inclined to make a grab for power, the outcome of the conflict would be hard to predict.

That was entirely what the Council was there to prevent, however, and while the regent still lived it worked. Enfeebled as he was, Toyotomi still had the power to order the seppuku of any of them, even Tokugawa. All wishing to keep their guts in their rightful place, he and the elders presented an amicable front of unity, revering Toyotomi’s son. But when Toyotomi finally died and that threat was removed …

Munisai felt the fingers of the world enclosing him once more in every hostile, suspicious checkpoint of their ally they passed through. Miyamoto had lulled him into peaceful concentration, isolated and thinking only of the boy. Now here he was, back in the realm of politics and intrigue. He tried to focus; what mattered was Ukita alone. Let the lord have any scheme of nation or armies of thousands—all Munisai wanted was his ruling on a single youth.

But the lord’s designs were overwhelming; the city of Okayama swarmed with samurai. Munisai lost count of the number of shaven pates and top knots he saw among the crowd, and he found himself marveling at the sheer frantic number of them all. The sounds of anvils being struck seemed to ring constantly from every corner—constructing, sharpening, preparing. Before them on the streets, bodies wormed among one another. Their escort, a captain who had been assigned them a checkpoint back, was unimpressed.

“I apologize for all this delay,” he said to Munisai, eyes glittering with anger as they waited for a merchant to move his cart to one side.

“Is it always this bad?” Munisai asked.

“Only recently. It’s turning into a human swamp,” said the man. “My Lord Ukita provided ten thousand samurai for the invasion. Apparently, we didn’t get very far.”

More politics, more distractions. That Toyotomi could not become the shogun because of his low birth haunted him, and so now the old man sat in his bed, thirsting over maps of Korea and China, seeing himself as the heavenly emperor of both. Even the lowest Japanese was more worthy of a throne than those the mainlanders called divine, after all.

The first invasion five years ago failed ignobly, unable to overcome the millions of Chinese and Korean warriors who opposed them. A second had been launched earlier this year, and already it had faltered. Should it fail too, it might break Toyotomi’s spirit, and some already saw carrion birds circling the regent.

“It’s a nightmare to catalog them,” continued the captain. “Coming back by the boatload, their papers lost or burned. We have to write up new ones on the docks. Most of them need to send riders off to their homes, asking for identification by their families, waiting cramped on their ships. A clean-shaven man is fully bearded by the time the gates open for him.

“That’s just the half of it too. Once they get in, ten thousand shamed warriors here, all looking to prove their honor again? That’s trouble. Fights every night, crucifixions the next day, but no matter how many they nail up as an example they still keep getting into it. I don’t understand it. It’s like they got infected with barbarity from the chinks. I’ll be glad when the War starts, to be honest.” He sighed.

The War
. When had they started calling it that, differentiating it from the kind of war that had existed in Japan for centuries, the kind that Shinmen and Munisai had waged upon the Kanno earlier that year? The War they all knew was coming. A straight fight for all or nothing in the void Toyotomi would leave.

“Won’t be long now,” grunted Munisai from behind his mask.

“It’ll be good to get it out of the way,” said the captain. “I’m sick of the waiting. I don’t even care if we win or not.”

“We won’t lose,” said Munisai.

“ ‘We’?” said the captain with a wry smile. “There’s no guarantee we’ll be on the same side by then, though, is there?”

There was no malice in his voice. Knives at each other’s throats impassively. The world of samurai. Ukita’s castle appeared, still under construction but beautiful and imposing nonetheless. Someone was hastily stringing up Shinmen’s blue standard upon the walls, but Munisai barely noticed.

His eyes were locked solely on the ten feet of burgundy silk alongside it.

MUNISAI FOUND HIMSELF
looking at Ukita’s wife during their audience. She sat behind and to the side of the lord, silent and demure, her long hair parted in the middle pooling on the floor behind her. Her real eyebrows had been shaven off; in their place the two smudges of charcoal up near her hairline painted her eternally serene. Once or twice, her eyes caught Munisai’s, and they reminded him of Yoshiko. The two women looked nothing alike, but the memory of his wife seemed to dance around him constantly now.

Did a similar hatred or misery lurk behind those eyes? Did Ukita’s wife despise Ukita and scheme for his downfall? Or was she his confidante, the classical, traditional rock of a wife who tempered the male fire with reason and compassion? The woman’s face was unreadable, perfectly noble and samurai. She could be Yoshiko or she could be an angel—but Munisai could see only the former. That was good, in a way. This was her son’s fate; Yoshiko should be here.

He wanted her to be here.

For her part, Ukita’s wife was here solely as part of a masquerade. Normally women would not be permitted to witness the affairs of men. Yet Ukita had no wish to air such a bitter quarrel within his faction before the gossips and visiting emissaries of his court—they all already spoke of the attack, of course, but lacked the proof that a public hearing would give them—and so the lord and his guests had come to a private, minor hall hidden within the bowels of the castle to ostensibly share a private evening as friends and allies.

It was not surprising that the Nakata had also come to entreat Ukita. Munisai was not overly concerned, either. A confrontation was inevitable, and today was as good a day as any other. They had arrived a day or two before, but Ukita had been too busy to receive them until
now; they had not had a chance to spread their poison yet, and that was good.