Daughter of the Sword (22 page)

Daigoro gave him a sharp glance. “Are you always so forthcoming? I thought we might bandy about for a while before coming to the inevitable. The weather, the state of the war, perhaps your grandnephew,
neh
?”

“I am an old man, my lord, at a younger man’s funeral. What little time I have left will not be spent wastefully.”

“So be it,” Daigoro said, wanting to smile but refusing to indulge that inclination. If he could not feel grief, at a minimum he would not be seen grinning like a fool even as his father’s body burned. “If we are speaking candidly, tell me, Yasuda-san, why are you pleased that the famous Glorious Victory should rest at the hip of a cripple rather than in the able hands of his brother, a warrior of some repute? Why does
it please you that, contrary to tradition, the younger brother should inherit the sword, and not the new head of the clan?”

“Since when has it been contrary to tradition to uphold a father’s dying wish? It seemed possible, my young lord, that your brother would claim the sword as his birthright, even in defiance of the late Lord Okuma. It was made by the great master Inazuma, after all; wars have been waged over the possession of such a blade. Hence it pleases me to see it with you because the late lord’s request was so earnest and so specific. He had clear reasons for bequeathing it as he did, even if those reasons were clear only to himself.”

Daigoro felt his heart quiver and his throat stiffen. Something was stirring within him: perhaps at last it was grief, but now it was mixed with anger. It was impure, so he suppressed it. “How,” he said with some effort, “do you come to know so much about my father’s dying wish, when his own sons and wife received it just yesterday, and only in writing?”

Lord Yasuda bowed his head. “It was my hand that wrote it, Okuma-sama. It was I that tended to him at the last.”

Daigoro stopped in midstride. Until now he’d assumed his father had written his last will himself, and Daigoro had taken comfort in the idea that even in dying his father had maintained such a steady hand. Nor was Daigoro the only one; his mother had been the first to suggest that the graceful handwriting indicated their father had not been in significant pain.

He shuffled half a step closer to Lord Yasuda and whispered, “How many know you wrote his last letter?”

“My young lord and myself,” said the aging daimyo. “There were serving women as well, two of them, ministering to your father. Shall I have them dispatched?”

“No. There has been enough blood already. But they will say nothing of his death. To anyone.”

“It goes without saying, my lord.”

Daigoro nodded. At least his mother would be spared that much
grief. He turned, and Yasuda turned with him, to face the column of gray smoke ascending from within the square of billowing white curtains. “He suffered much, then, before he died?”

“The ball pierced his breastplate and smashed his spine. The bleeding was bad, but worst was that his arms and legs were like a dead man’s. He could not move them at all. But if his body was like a dead man’s, I do not think it pained him.”

“But he could not move his hand to write.”

“No, my lord.”

With a curt nod from Daigoro, they continued toward the main house and climbed the wide, shallow stairs to the broad veranda surrounding the building. But instead of heading left, toward the main gathering, Daigoro led the two of them slowly around the right side of the house. “The gunman,” he said. “You saw him?”

“No, my lord. Your father came to us in the middle of the night. How he managed to stay on his horse that long, I’ll never know. I gather he rode all the way from Edo, and half that distance with a musket ball in his chest. The men that rode with him were too weary to stand, and they were uninjured.”

“What did they tell you of the—the assassin?” It was the right word.
Assassin.
His father was dead. An assassin had killed his father.

“Very little,” said Lord Yasuda, and Daigoro had to struggle to remember what this was in answer to. “His bodyguards said they saw blue smoke after the shot, a cloud of it in a tumble of rocks near the water. They fired arrows at it, and saw the back of a man as he made a dash for the sea cliff. This was just south of Odawara castle.” Yasuda closed his eyes, took a breath, and opened his eyes again. His gaze was fixed on Daigoro’s feet. “My lord, the gunman escaped. Your father’s bodyguard told me he put an arrow through the man’s thigh, but the assassin was still able to leap into the sea. One of them searched the shoreline to kill him or collect the corpse, while the others brought your father to me. As soon as I heard, I sent my fastest riders to assist in finding the killer, but his body never resurfaced.”

“Never mind,” said Daigoro. “He is dead.”

“He may be,” Yasuda said with a bow, “but my men still scour the coastline in case he is not.”

“Leave them there if it will ease your mind, Yasuda-san, but any assassin who would use one of these southern barbarian guns is no man of magic. A
shinobi
would have used an arrow; there’s no telling where a musket ball will fly. No, it was a lucky shot that killed my father. No assassin worth paying would rely on the southern barbarians’ weapons. I would not be surprised if it was a disgraced rival, resorting to the musket since he could not win with the sword.”

Lord Yasuda shook his head. “I am ashamed I did not think of it myself, young lord. Perhaps your servant has grown too old to be useful. Please allow me to commit seppuku to atone for my oversight.”

“You will do nothing of the kind.”

“Then allow me to shave my topknot and retire my swords. I am not fit to serve.”

Daigoro looked at him sternly, but Yasuda did not meet his gaze. “The Yasuda clan has protected our northern flank for generations,” said Daigoro. “Even an aging tiger is still a tiger. We would have you remain where you are.”

Even as he said it, Daigoro wondered to what extent his advice applied to himself. How many times had he considered shaving his head and joining the monastery on the hill? Swordsmanship demanded great strength from the right leg in particular, the right being the leading foot, and to fight from the saddle one needed to control a horse with one’s legs. Daigoro’s right leg was no bigger than his right arm. He had learned what he could of archery to compensate, but his brother was the finest marksman in the Okuma clan, maybe the best on the whole Izu peninsula; what could Daigoro offer in light of that? No, better to save his family the disgrace of a crippled son. Better to join the monks before he had to join battle in defense of the clan.

How many times had those thoughts plagued him in the quietest hours of the night? And now his father was dead, and Ichirō would
need to call on him as he learned to lead the clan. Even if their father were still alive, Daigoro could not have it be said of the finest cavalryman in the region that his crippled son was too afraid to take up arms. If Yasuda was an aging tiger, Daigoro was the runt of a tiger’s litter. A kitten with a lame leg. Was that still a tiger?

30

The evening’s silence was hard earned; there had been so much to do. The wailers required payment, having done their job of sending off Okuma Tetsurō with the pronounced grief befitting a man of his station. The guests needed feeding and
sake
and time to speak individually with the family. There was the matter of removing the bones from the ashes, seeing the ashes into the urn, setting the throat bone atop the ashes before the urn was sealed. The abbot and priests wanted payment, as did the Shinto priest who had come afterward to see to it that no evil spirits beset the compound or the ghost of Daigoro’s father.

But at long last it was quiet, and Daigoro and Ichirō sat with their mother in the main hall of the house. Embers crackled faintly and filled the room with fragrance and warmth. Daigoro could hear waves in the distance, beating their never-ending rhythm against the rocky coast.

At length Daigoro chose to break the silence, to share some of what Lord Yasuda had told him. He said nothing about how the musket ball struck, but he did tell them that by now the assassin had either drowned or died of his wounds.

“Father’s bodyguards were fools,” said Ichirō. “They should have placed outriders; they should have foreseen the ambush.”

“They would have been searching the hills, not the seacoast,”
said Daigoro. “The assassin was the fool, to position himself without an escape route. He was no brave man, using a coward’s weapon as he did. Our men could not have predicted an ambush so bold and yet so craven as this.”

“You make excuses for them,” said Ichirō. “We should send a messenger in the morning to tell Yasuda to have those guards killed.”

“They died before Father did,” said Daigoro. “Believe it.”

“You spoke to him about this?”

“I didn’t need to. How could they have done otherwise? I have no doubt those men slit their own bellies as soon as they had escorted Father to a place of refuge. And if they did not, we can be sure Lord Yasuda has seen to it that they died most painfully. He takes any offense against Father as an offense against himself.”

Ichirō snorted. “He should have told us that, then.”

There was no need, Daigoro wanted to say, nothing to have been gained by speaking of more bloodshed during a funeral. But nor was there anything to be gained by saying as much. Daigoro held his peace.

But Ichirō did not. “Did you command Yasuda-san to commit seppuku for his failure?”

“He offered. I refused him.”

“Why?”

“Because Father would not have wanted it.”

Ichirō gave a laugh. “Does his spirit speak to you already? How do you know what he wanted?”

Daigoro bowed low. He had no desire for a protracted disagreement with his elder brother, least of all on a funeral day. “I only remember what he taught us about tactics. ‘Those who make their home on the end of a peninsula do well to ally themselves with their neighbors.’ We are vulnerable.”

“Vulnerable? Whose swordsmanship can rival House Okuma’s? Let anyone come at us! We can take them.”

“
If
they come at us, I’ll never disagree,” said Daigoro. “But it takes
rice to feed a strong sword arm, and if we turn our northern allies against us, we are cut off. Father always counseled peace over war, especially with our neighbors. Lord Yasuda gave no offense. His men failed to find a dead assassin; that is all.”

“That is all!” Ichirō scoffed. “A vassal failed, and ‘that is all’? Father is dead, and ‘that is all’? I should demand his sword from you right now!”

Daigoro bowed, stood up, and made for the door. He didn’t need to turn around to hear his brother fuming. He imagined he could feel the heat from Ichirō’s reddening face—or was it his own blood flushing his neck and ears?

“How dare you turn your back on me?” demanded Ichirō.

Daigoro stepped out of the room onto the veranda, turned, kneeled, and bowed again. “I must respect my brother and I must respect my father. When my brother asks that I disrespect my father, I have no choice but to take my leave. Begging your pardon, I wish you good night.”

31

Daigoro lay atop his layers of futon and gazed at the squares on his ceiling, and after stubbornly doing so for an hour he conceded that he would not fall asleep. With a grunt he rolled to his knees and slid open one of the exterior walls to admit more moonlight. He could smell the tatami mats under his shins, and the promise of rain on the wind. He donned a thin robe decorated with a bear-paw motif and tied its belt around his waist. Then he went to the alcove on the north wall of his sleeping chamber and removed Glorious Victory from its place on his sword stand.

Through the wood and paper of the shoji door to his left, Daigoro could hear one of his bodyguards shifting in his sandals. Daigoro thrust Glorious Victory’s scabbard under his belt and into position at his left hip. The sword was too long to wear as he usually wore his
katana
; he had to shift it forward across the front of his hip, almost onto his lap, lest the end of its wooden sheath touch the tatami behind him. Glorious Victory was small as
ōdachi
went, which meant it stood to Daigoro’s chin, not over his head. Its handgrip, wrapped in ruddy, sweat-stained cord, was fully a hand’s length longer than that of his own
katana
, the better to manage the huge blade.

Daigoro knew the sword well, knew it better than he knew either of the samurai watching his door tonight. It was born in the fires of Master Inazuma almost five hundred years ago, the last weapon the
great sword smith ever created. Glorious Victory was a horseman’s weapon, long enough to hamstring a foot soldier from the saddle, and also long enough for someone caught afoot to slay a mounted opponent. The steel was strong and pure, with a blood groove running from the base of the blade almost to its tip. Daigoro’s father once plunged it into the heart of a charging warhorse, and the blade had emerged as straight and true as it was when it went in.

Its cording and lacquered scabbard were russet in color, to match the armor and helmet of its former bearer. The enemies of House Okuma had dubbed Daigoro’s father the Red Bear of Izu, a name he liked well enough to make the bear paw his personal crest. “Slow to anger, bears,” he’d once told Daigoro. “I’ve seen them in the east country. Left alone, they won’t bother you. Once disturbed, nothing I know of can hold them back. A young samurai would do well to take bears as his teachers.”

And thus had Daigoro counseled his brother. Now, looking at the sword in his hands, he wondered whether that truly was the way of Bushido. Did the true warrior avoid combat? Seek to be left alone? What did that imply of a sword like this, one that had drawn so much blood? What did it imply of the battlefield exploits of so many samurai, Daigoro’s father not the least among them? Show me the way of the warrior, Daigoro thought. I will follow it if only I can find it. Tell me, Father, why the path is so difficult to find.

32

The next morning was hot almost from the moment the sun dawned on the compound. By the hour of the dragon, the laborers hired from Shimoda to build a permanent shrine on the site of the previous day’s cremation were spending as much time fetching water as they were digging post holes for the roof supports. By noon even the sentries had taken positions in the shade of trees or under the eaves of buildings, and these were samurai, men for whom physical discomfort was a passing trifle.