Child of Vengeance (36 page)

All that separated the two men were the bars of the cage, spaced widely enough for an arm to fit through. Bennosuke watched the old bandit’s hands, seeing if he had a blade concealed, or was preparing some form of attack. But they were empty, fists not even clutched in anger. He had the stillness and pose of a man at worship. Fushimi seemed puzzled, or at least surprised by this too. He looked at Shuntaro for a while before he spoke again.

“ ‘The Yamawaro of the Red Hills,’ ” said the marshal eventually, lingering over the words. “Do you know your infamy? That started as a sobriquet alone, but now some people actually believe you live in the rock of the mountain itself as a spirit and emerge to steal children away at night. For a while I feared that might be true. I chased your shadow for so long, I began to doubt there was a body attached to it. But now here the flesh is before me, finally beaten. Just a man after all.”

“That I am, sir,” said Shuntaro. “As are we all.”

“No. We share a like body, you and I, but our souls our different.”

“How, sir? I see the sky and feel the wind the same way as you.”

“There are many reasons, but the simplest and most profound is that you are afraid of that which you face today,” said Fushimi. “You are afraid of death.”

“Are you not, sir?”

“No.”

“Have you ever faced it?”

“Every time I have drawn my blade,” said the marshal, and banged his fist against the weapons at his side.

“That is mortal risk. That is different,” said Shuntaro. “Have you ever held a baby as its body withers to nothing, for the breast it feeds upon has run dry with the starving of the mother? That is death.”

“How very vivid,” said Fushimi. “But the breasts my children suckle from will run full and ripe and young until the sky falls, while you—you are all to be speared like rabid dogs before the sun is down.”

“Might I plead clemency, sir? For my men?” asked Shuntaro.

“Of course you may not.”

“I do not know all the ways of the civilized, sir,” said the old bandit, and such was the careful poise of his tone that Fushimi allowed him to speak. “But surely in all the history of war there must be some case of a surrendered army being spared by the sacrifice of the general?”

“A civilized surrender is seppuku, from the highest lord to the lowest soldier. Any who choose to remain alive after the shame of defeat excuse themselves from the ranks of the civilized, and are to be treated thusly,” said Fushimi, and as Shuntaro began to speak again the marshal cut him off curtly. “I am no wrangler of law, merely a giver of it. You are all to die.”

At that Shuntaro’s body sagged, his head falling low enough that his brow touched the earth. Fushimi’s eyes changed. They did not gleam in vicious, sneering triumph, but there was vindication there, a reaffirmation that behind the clouds the sky was still blue.

“See—your heart quails,” he said.

“I am disappointed, not afraid, sir,” said Shuntaro.

“The spirit of a man like you does not come back, you know, not even as a beast or a rock. You face the damnation of the myriad hells. Does that not scare you?”

“I am unafraid, sir,” said Shuntaro, “because I know that when I get to whichever particular hell I go to, I shall have the pleasure of sinking my hand up to the wrist in your mother’s waiting cunt.”

Shuntaro looked up then, met the marshal’s gaze, and as he held those two narrow, cold eyes with his one, he hooked a finger into his empty eye socket, snapped his wrist in a flick, and then gobs of
coagulated blood and pus and whatever other murk lingers on the inside of men spattered across the front of the marshal.

“Spear me like a dog, will you? You think I’m afraid of that? I’ve already been speared,” spat Shuntaro, and he pulled his jerkin open to reveal a twisted patch of scar across the side of his stomach. “I’m afraid of nothing you could possibly do to me. Crucify me. Cut me to pieces. Bring all your men, and I will teach you like the children you are. I will show you how to die, I will show you my body and my soul and whatever else you want to see, and then my ghost will come back to make whores of your daughters.”

Fushimi had made only the slightest of flinches as the filth had landed on him, the hand holding the cloth to his face dropping in stunned disbelief. But as Shuntaro had continued the skin upon his face had pulled back into ridges of complete and utter fury, his lips curling into a snarl until his teeth seemed fanged and his face looked like some carved wooden theater mask of a devil.

“Find a cauldron,” the marshal barely managed to breathe. “Find oil.”

He did not remain with them. Fushimi stalked up the stairs, his whole body taut with rage. The other samurai, shock and anger on their faces, followed their master outside and shut the door behind them.

Alone once more, Shuntaro had a strange look on his face. All in the cage looked at him. The old man breathed out through his nose.

“Well, it’s done,” he said, and smiled wanly. “My plan.”

It broke the spell. The other bandits realized that what had just happened had actually happened, and so they swarmed Shuntaro, surrounded him, bludgeoned him with questions and anger and disbelief. The old man weathered it like stone.

“Why?” said one with tears in his eyes, and it was he who drew a response from Shuntaro, the man looking at him for a moment with what seemed like shame across his face. “That’s not a plan—what are you doing?”

“My son, surely you of all people understand …” he said to the younger man, but then he stopped, composed himself, and spoke to all of them. “No. Listen to me. You are all of you as my sons.

“For years you have followed me without complaint, even though
it was my choice that started all this. You have shown me loyalty, and all the best in men, and in this life I cannot repay you for all that that means to me. This is … I’ve distracted them for you. They’ll all be watching me now for however long it takes, which means that you can escape. You’ll have to figure out how to get out of the cage, but I know you can. And then just run. Forget about me, just go and run and run until you feel that you are safe. Find a new home. Have sons and daughters and live. Do you understand?”

“No, Shuntaro, we can’t leave you,” said one, the voice of them all.

“You must,” said the old man.

“They’re going to butcher you.”

“I know that.”

“We can’t—”

“It is too late to change it now,” said Shuntaro. “This is the way of the world. I have nothing more to give to it, and so it is my time to go. Do not fail me. Get out of this cage, and leave me to die.”

Though his voice had quavered, he alone had kept dry eyes. But he had reopened a wound when he had dug into his socket earlier, and so now a rivulet of blood was trickling down his cheek. It gave him a strange symmetry with his men, who were all either blinking back tears or openly weeping.

It all seemed so alien upon men so hard. Bennosuke watched them as they severed a bond the boy had never known.

IN A CHARNEL
hamlet, where the corpses of animals were rendered down to make leather or glue or plectrums of bone that would someday strum delicate melodies upon silk strings in fine halls, and where the crematory pyres stopped only for the severest of weather, a cauldron and oil were not hard to find. They soon came back for Shuntaro.

It was all done in silence. The door opened, and two samurai came down and opened the gate. Shuntaro was kneeling, waiting, and he crawled out and rose to his feet of his own volition. Not one of his men moved. Their eyes were rimmed red, staring hatred at the two men who tied their leader up and then led him up the stairs. Shuntaro did not look back, and then they were gone.

The boy found himself wondering what Shuntaro had really intended. Had he expected to be able to talk Fushimi into letting his men go? Perhaps he had been counting on a streak of honor from a code he did not really understand to force the constable’s hand. That was always going to be a vain hope; a farmer could hope to argue with a samurai as much as the deaf could hope to sing.

But when that failed, Shuntaro had offered his life and in doing so shown at some primal, fundamental level that he did know the way of samurai. The difference, Bennosuke realized, was that he had offered his life for others. Samurai offered theirs more often than not to recover their own pride.

The boy thought on that in the silence. No one spoke in the cage. They all knew that screams would be coming soon, and they listened for them with the dread of imagination. Each of them envisioned blades or whips or brands, and each knew that the samurai up there had an imagination as vivid as theirs but with the means to make it a reality.

Yet the truth was they also longed to hear that horrendous sound, for that would be their signal to start their escape; if Shuntaro was in agony, then the samurai were distracted and he had fulfilled his part of his plan. It was a terrible thing to anticipate, but they could not deny that they did with a mixture of shame and fear and twisting in their guts. They crouched or squatted in tense repose, their eyes unused and staring at the floor, their ears sifting for the minutest whimper.

The heavy door lurched opened, startling them all. The crash of wood was much too close and much too sudden, and the bandits swiveled like panicked sparrows. Two of the corpsehandlers entered. They looked as though they had purpose, and they came down to stand before the cage.

“Right,” said one, wasting no time, dropping into a squat so he was at eye level with the prisoners. “You’re bandits, and famous ones at that. That means you have something stashed somewhere. We want it, whatever it is—gold or weapons or anything.”

Shuntaro’s men did not respond. The corpsehandler grinned. He was remarkably clean, his teeth as full as any man’s and his eyes quick and clever. From a bag at his waist he produced a thin stoppered vial made from a hollowed young bamboo trunk.

“This is a nice little concoction of viper’s spit and poison leaves and mushroom caps,” he said, still grinning. “Drink it and you’ll be dead within a minute. Tell us where you left your goodies and it’s yours. Only enough for one, mind, so first one wins it.”

Silence.

“Come on,” said the corpsehandler, the grin faltering, “you really ought to take this. I’ve seen what they’re preparing for you out there.”

“Ask the samurai,” said one of the bandits, jerking his chin at Bennosuke, and the others laughed.

“A nice idea, but we already have his treasures there on the wall,” said the crouching man, laughing with them in an attempt to build repartee, and waving a hand to where Bennosuke’s swords were hung upon the rack. His partner picked the weapons up and rocked them as he would a baby with a sarcastic leer upon his face.

“Now,” said the crouching man, still smiling, “I don’t believe for a moment that you have left nothing behind unclaimed. What you have to understand is that you are dead already. No one will remember. No one will care if you ‘betrayed’ something. This is a simple choice between agony or a quick and private end. Do you understand that?”

“ ‘Viper’s spit and mushroom caps,’ ” said one of the bandits mockingly. “You think we’re stupid? No vipers in these woods.”

“I cut the fangs myself,” said the man, and he leaned in close to the bars. “We breed them. Snake leather fetches a fine—”

He was interrupted by his friend, who had placed the swords between his legs as though he were endowed by the gods, poking him in the cheek as he mimed masturbation. The first one tried to stop the disgusted grin on his face as he slapped them away. “Take this seriously.”

“I am taking it seriously,” said the second man, and he slung the swords into his leather belt and as he spoke started marching up and down in mockery of a samurai’s stride. “I told you they wouldn’t spring for it. Just look in their eyes. Pride, there. Stubborn gang of pricks, like a bunch of samurai.”

At that an inspiration for further mirth came to him, and he turned to Bennosuke. “You, come here,” he said. The corpsehandler
stood close before the cage, as imperious and majestic as a man in rags could be. Bennosuke stumbled forward on his knees, making a show of how he was bound.

“What do you think, eh, samurai?” he said, and his hand was running back and forth across the handle of the longsword, a similar gesture to before, though now he was unaware of doing it. “You think they suit me?”

Though he kept his eyes down, the boy saw dull iron keys hanging at the man’s waist opposite the weapons.

“You’re wearing them wrong,” he said.

“What?” said the man.

“You’ve got them upside down,” said the boy. The corpsehandler had thrust them into his belt with the edge downward so that the smooth arch of the swords appeared a shallow dish. “Imagine the swords are bows. You want the string at the bottom toward your feet so that the edge of the blade curves over the top.”

“What difference does that make?” said the corpsehandler.

“You can’t strike from the draw with the edge downward like you’ve got now; it’s hard to get any real strength going underhanded from low to high. Overhand, though, you can flick it out in one movement, bring it down, and take an arm off or attack the chest,” said Bennosuke. “There’s another reason too, you know.”

“What is it?”

“It makes it very easy for people to disarm you,” he said, and shook the ropes off himself.

The look on the corpsehandler’s face for one glorious instant was of complete shock. He could do nothing as Bennosuke’s hand whipped out through the bars and grabbed the handle of the shortsword, could only watch as the inverse curve of the scabbard all but caressed the blade free, and could only yelp as Bennosuke grabbed the back of his head, hauled his body against the bars of the cage, and leveled the point of the sword at the quivering base of his throat.

“Give me the keys,” said Bennosuke, and he knew he was grinning as he said it. “Give me the keys, or I’ll skewer you.”

A set of hands came from behind and grabbed Bennosuke’s, forcing the sword forward. The blade lanced up into the corpsehandler’s
neck, and the flesh split and blood flowed and then the man was gurgling and sputtering his terror through the hole in his neck as he died on his feet.