Child of Vengeance (44 page)

The riders returned shortly, shouting readiness. With a flourish Ukita produced a large war fan made of iron plates nailed to bamboo spokes that, when unfurled, became as large as his torso. Of course it too was a beautiful thing, painted intricately with a flight of cranes dashing between the beams of a rising sun. It was an ornament that commanded thousands, a lovely and tyrannical fetish, and slowly Ukita raised it above his head and then brought his arm down to point with it toward where the enemy must lie.

“Well, boys,” said Kumagai, “here we go. I trust you all.”

He gave them a last grin, and then snapped the faceplate of his helmet into place, that snarling demon’s visage that dripped with
auburn mustaches. His spear in one hand, he drew his longsword with the other and leveled it at the unknown fog ahead.

“U! Ki! Ta!” howled a distant, familiar voice.

“Hwa!”
barked thousands for a final time, and then the armies of the West sallied forth.

They went at somewhere between a march and a jogging pace, eager for combat but hesitating because they could not see what exactly was waiting to fight them. Bennosuke scanned the mists, wondering if the minutest darker shade of gray was the first sight of Tokugawa’s men or the simple curling of vapor.

The farther they went, the more he felt the knot in his stomach was ready to burst. This great thing that had swallowed him had no head, no mind, no thought. Ukita waved his fan up and down, up and down as he ushered his army onward, as content as a child swatting at a fly. But then, he had bodyguards waiting to throw themselves over him should the slightest danger come his way, didn’t he?

Why had he stayed with Kumagai? Bennosuke asked himself. Why had he not left a week after the Gathering, gone home to Miyamoto and Dorinbo? His uncle would have forgiven him any shame. But he knew that Munisai’s armor would have still been there, ever ready to taunt him.

Why was he asking these questions now, and not once over the last two years?

Bennosuke knew why, deep down. It was riding behind him at a measured, comfortable pace, and he was torn between looking ahead and looking back. Within that mass of lords and bodyguards and banner and horseflesh, that myriad of colors and pomp, the Nakata burgundy was still there.

“Archers!” came the sudden cry, a frantic flurry of arrows being notched as the line stumbled to a halt.

The Tokugawa were there before them, rows of men dark gray on silver mist, so many that the rear of them could not be seen. They stood waiting silently. Ukita’s archers drew their bowstrings back, the arquebusiers sighting their guns, but no order to fire was given.

Before the Tokugawa stood one man, awaiting. A champion.

Of course there would be one. If this was to be a battle for the country, it needed to be blooded in the proper ways. To shoot him or
to loose a volley at Tokugawa’s army while he stood there would be to admit cowardice. Slowly, unbidden, bows were relaxed, the barrels of arquebuses lowered.

The lone samurai between the armies calmly drew his sword and bowed to them. He was a big man, his armor both magnifying his size and making his bare head seem small in the wide expanse of his shoulder guards. His voice was confident, a deep tone that carried easily across the mist.

“My name is Seibei Matsumoto,” he called. “I am of the Yoshioka school. Send me your best.”

His challenge was issued, and so the battle could not start until the clash of champions was over. This was etiquette, as proper as seppuku, and so Ukita’s army was honor-bound to respond. Even Bennosuke had heard of the Yoshioka school, a renowned sect from Kyoto, and so when Seibei offered his challenge there was a few seconds’ pause as men gauged their chances.

A samurai eventually marched forth. Bennosuke could not see the man’s face, and when he made his introduction to Seibei he spoke so quietly his name was lost. His attack was fierce, quick slashes that had no doubt claimed enough lives over the years, but Seibei merely stepped around them, never raising his sword from his side, not even to try to parry. He waited for an opening, and when it came his sword lanced out and took Ukita’s man’s throat in one quick motion.

Seibei bowed to his corpse, bowed to his men as they cheered his name once, and then he gestured to Ukita’s army.

“Again,” he said.

A man carrying a spear walked forward. He bowed to Seibei, and asked whether he would accept a duel against the weapon. The Yoshioka samurai nodded curtly, bowed back, and then the fight began. The spearman came so close to winning; Bennosuke was certain he had impaled Seibei at one point. A feint and a lunge brought the spear down into Seibei’s groin, but the Yoshioka man must have had fine armor, for he merely pushed the blade downward, stepped over it, and then the fight was his.

Once more Seibei bowed, once more his men called his name, and once more he spoke to Ukita’s men.

“Again,” he said.

There was a protracted pause this time. Seibei was good. Bennosuke had found himself peering over his shoulder in the interim. The lords had pushed forward to get a better view of the duels, and he in turn now had a better chance to look for Hayato. It was still too hard to identify anyone.

“Musashi,” said someone close by. “You can take him.”

“What?” he said.

“Aye,” said someone else. “Aye, you can. Go on.”

It took a moment for him to realize they were talking about Seibei. Before he could protest, every man near him was speaking. The words they said were those of encouragement, but in the tone of them he could tell that he was being offered up as a sacrifice. He turned to Kumagai, expecting him not to cast his bodyguard aside, but behind that red demon’s mask his eyes were glinting his special shade of amusement.

“Do it, Musashi,” he said. “Take that Yoshioka bastard to pieces.”

W
inter in the fort. Bennosuke had been on watch, up in the wooden tower with his breath frosting in the air. The night was still and clear, the stars above the color of ice. Beneath him, away from him as they always were, the other men were clustered around a firepit. The boredom and isolation had truly set in; what had started as a game of Go had degenerated into one man betting the others he could spit the stones into a cup from ten paces.

His first attempt was too short, his second attempt much too long. The white chip caught an edge and rolled in a long curve to fall into the pit. It nestled among the coals at the bottom.

“Well, get it out, then,” said Kumagai, smiling. He was squatting on his haunches on the edge of the fire’s light, his face orange.

“It’s just a stone,” said the man who had spat. “I’ll get it in the morning.”

“It’s clamshell that, it’ll char,” said Kumagai. “Get it out now.”

The man knew he could not argue with his captain, and so he went and got a poker and tried to press the stone up against the wall
and drag it upward and out. He did it at arm’s length, the air shimmering with heat. Five times he tried, and five times the little white disk fell back.

“Looks like you’ll have to use your hand,” said Kumagai.

“What?” said the man.

“Use your hand,” said Kumagai. He was very still, and the fire lit up the spark in his eyes.

“It’s too hot, sir,” said the man after a moment.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Kumagai. “Don’t you understand that you have no choice in this? The world was written long ago, our names chosen, the color of our eyes. You were always meant to spit that stone. You were always meant to put your hand in after it.”

“But …” said the man.

“What are you afraid of? Whatever will happen to you has already happened—how can you be afraid of that?” said Kumagai. “Don’t you understand that your mother bore you burned? Don’t you understand that your mother bore you
dead
?”

Kumagai stared at the man. The fire crackled. Frost wrote itself in spider’s thread upon the blade of Bennosuke’s spear. Kumagai and the samurai were of an age, but in that moment it did not seem it.

The man’s throat tightened, and as quick as he could he thrust his hand down and grabbed for the stone. A shower of sparks and embers came with his hand as he flicked the white disk up and out, and then he swore and clutched his hand. But it turned to laughter because Kumagai was laughing, and he took the man’s wrist.

“See! See!” he said, and showed the man his own hand. The flesh wasn’t even blistered. “Enlightenment!”

They were all laughing then, save for Bennosuke in his dark tower. The men kept laughing, the spitter showing them his hand, and they did not stop as Kumagai walked away from them, spread his arms wide, rolled his head back, and gave a wordless snarl of a yell.

“My word, I’m bored,” he said to no one in particular, and tottered off aimlessly into the night, clutching at the back of his neck.

Upon the paving slabs, the white stone cooled.

T
he boy looked into Kumagai’s eyes now, and he knew he would not be allowed to refuse. There was a crushing sense of isolation for a moment, surrounded though he was. Kumagai took his spear from him, still grinning behind his mask, and then the other samurai parted and cleared a way to the front for him. They looked at him expectantly.

Bennosuke saw Seibei too move to stand and wait at the mouth of the tunnel. He cut an imposing figure, perfectly still with his sword bloody, an oily, red sheen across the blade. A man, a proud warrior, a samurai—all the things Bennosuke knew that he was not. The knot was there, obscene and peristaltic and wrapping itself around his spine to the base of his skull. He knew he deserved oblivion, and so now that it was before him he should have been grateful to fate for arranging what he lacked the strength to do himself.

But he wasn’t. He looked back once at the Nakata and the cluster of lords. Every eye there was upon him. There was no escape, nothing he could say or do. The tunnel waited, and so Bennosuke fought the urge to quiver and stepped forward into it.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Seibei’s composure was immaculate, his face like stone as Bennosuke approached him there in that little private chasm between two hordes. The boy was wringing the scabbard of his sword without realizing it, and Seibei’s blade was so very still. The Yoshioka samurai bowed respectfully to Bennosuke, and the boy returned it.

“What is your name?” Seibei asked.

Bennosuke said nothing. His heart was pumping so fast with nerves he was worried his voice would crack. The boy kept his silence, drew his sword, and felt thousands of pairs of eyes upon him.

“What is your name?” Seibei asked again, and this time something broke across his face. It was impossible to tell what it was, whether it was pain, or anger, or confusion. His eyes bored into Bennosuke, beseeching, but Seibei saw only the cold metal visage of the facemask. No answer was coming, the Yoshioka samurai realized, and so with resignation he dropped into a fighting stance and moved forward.

Bennosuke began breathing slowly, the long exhalations seething and rattling around his helmet, trying to calm himself. He warily kept his distance, making no move to swing at Seibei. The other two samurai—
dead around your feet, stay clear of their corpses, do not trip on them
—had gone straight for him, and Seibei had thrived on it. He wanted to be attacked, to counter rather than lead. The boy would not give him such an opportunity again.