Heart of the Ronin (9 page)

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Foxes sometimes disguise themselves as beautiful women so they can play tricks on people. Sometimes they lead men to their doom.”

“Why would you think I was a fox?”

He looked away and his ears burned. Haru’s devious smile flashed in his mind. “I must destroy the demon.” He turned his back and took a step toward the demon’s remains, then he stopped and looked at her again. His gaze lingered over her lips, the curve of her neck, and the dark depths of her sparkling eyes, the portions of petal-soft flesh revealed by her torn clothing.

Immediately she seemed small and vulnerable, embarrassed by her near-nakedness, and she tried to gather her thin clothing to cover herself.

He turned his back and heard her trotting up the road to retrieve her clothing.

“Dangai,” Ken’ishi said, “stack your wood on that pile of meat there. And don’t touch the stuff.”

“Fear not, sir. I won’t touch anything!” The woodsman shrugged his burden onto the ground. “Ah! It’s still moving! And bits of it are growing back together!” The old man staggered backward, his eyes bulging, his face twisted into a mask of terror.

Several pieces of flesh had rejoined themselves, gathered together by the groping tentacles of the oni’s black, ropy entrails. “Leave your wood and step back.” The old man scrambled back, stopping several paces away.

Ken’ishi arranged the wood on the vile mass of black and red flesh, then he searched the area for any scattered bits of demon-flesh and flicked the morsels he found onto the mound with one of the spears.

Before long, Kazuko returned wearing her beautiful quilted robes of heavy silk, looking once again like a proper noble lady. The woodsman prostrated himself before her as she approached, and she thanked him for his help.

Ken’ishi gathered kindling and dry grass from the underbrush and lit it with his flint and steel. Soon the fire was crackling, growing, spreading through the cloth and dry bamboo. His lips drew into a taut line and his brow furrowed at the sizzle and pop of burning meat. A terrible stench rose from the fire with a column of oily yellow smoke. The flames changed from yellow-orange to a sickening green. If his stomach had not been empty, Ken’ishi may have lost his gorge at the stench, like death and decay but a thousand times worse, like a maggot-infested barrel of offal left to rot in the sun. The fire blazed with searing heat, and the demon’s flesh crackled and blackened, curled and split. He approached the demon’s living head. Its eyes blazed with feral yellow fire, spewing hatred at him as its teeth snapped in impotent rage. But Ken’ishi also sensed fear and pain there, too. He impaled it again on one of the broken spears, returned to the fire, and thrust the severed head deep into the flames and held it there. Even as the flesh charred and peeled away and the eyes sizzled and burst, the creature glared at him with utter hatred and mouthed breathless curses. The teeth blackened. The black tongue curled into a strip of stiff leather, the blockish jaw clenching tighter with the crisping flesh.

When he was satisfied that the flames were doing their work, he asked the horror-stricken woodsman to cut two saplings, each two ken long and about as thick as his wrist. The woodsman hurried into the forest. Before long, the sound of chopping echoed among the trees. The young woman had wiped away the caked blood from the other’s face. A large wad of blood-drenched bandages lay nearby. The injured woman’s face was pale where unmarred by swelling purple bruises.

The young woman said, “We must find a way to move her. She is bleeding badly. We must find a healer. Can you carry her?”

“I could, but I know a better way. We must move quickly. This place is unclean. I’m afraid the spirits here have been angered by the oni, and its blood has defiled the earth. Has she awakened yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Will she?”

“I don’t know! Oh, this is horrible!”

“Who is she?”

“She is my servant, Hatsumi.” Her eyes and cheeks glistened with tears, tiny green lights from the unclean fire flickering in the sliding droplets. “Her family has served mine for generations. She has been like my older sister since I was a child. I don’t know how I would live without her.”

“Let’s move away from all this blood.”

She nodded. He picked up Hatsumi’s limp form and carried her about fifty paces down the road, with the young woman hovering close behind. After arranging Hatsumi on the ground, he retrieved his traveling pack and his bow.

He said, “You’re good with that sword-pole.”

“It is a naginata,” she said. “You do my father a great compliment. He taught me. This one is for the battlefield, larger than what I am accustomed to using. The blade is heavier.”

“I’ve never seen one before.”

She looked surprised. “They’re most often used in battle.”

“I’ve never seen a battle. And I’ve never seen a girl who can fight like you.”

“My father had no sons, so he taught me how to use the naginata. Where do you come from?”

“Far to the north of here.”

“You’re a ronin.”

He stiffened. “Yes.”

“That’s an unfortunate thing. Ronin aren’t well regarded in this province. There has been much trouble with robbers.”

He gestured toward the dead bandits back up the road. “I understand why.”

“Having no master must be difficult.”

He nodded once.

Her words caused him discomfort. “Forgive my rudeness. I’m certain a warrior as skilled as you can find service with a worthy lord.”

He nodded again, once.

Then an idea darted behind her eyes. “In return for your aid, I will speak to my father. Perhaps he will offer you service.”

The lump in his throat returned. “I would be in your debt, lady,” he said, trying to keep his voice even and controlled.

“But I do not even know your name,” she said.

Until this moment, he had been quite happy to dispense with names. “My name is. . . .” A suppressed bolt of panic shot through him. What should he say? Somehow, all of his desire to lie and give himself a new name disappeared when she looked at him. His mind was empty. “My name is Ken’ishi.”

“I am Nishimuta no Kazuko. I am pleased to meet you.”

Ken’ishi’s breath seized up. She was a Nishimuta, the same clan as Takenaga. Should he have lied and given a false name? The entire area was doubtless looking for a ronin with his name.

“My father is lord of this province,” Kazuko said.

“Your family is powerful.”

“Not really. We are a small clan, but some of my father’s cousins are close to the Shogunate.” She spoke as if it were sometimes a great burden.

The bushes parted, and the woodsman reappeared, dragging two fresh-cut wooden poles. Ken’ishi took them and placed them side-by-side, sitting down beside them. As Kazuko and the woodsman watched him with curiosity, he took his bedroll, a large needle, and a ball of hemp string and began sewing his bedroll lengthwise to one of the poles.

Kazuko said, “You are very resourceful.”

“A man learns many things to survive without a roof over his head.”

Her lovely eyes widened. “You’ve never had a home? Is a ronin’s life so harsh?”

He smiled grimly and shrugged. “I have survived this long.”

“Didn’t your parents give you an inheritance?”

“I don’t remember my parents. They died when I was very small. My teacher told me my father had been a famous samurai, but would not tell me his name. He said I must make my own name.”

“Who raised you?”

“My teacher.” He finished with one side of the stretcher he was making and started on the other side.

“He must have been a kind and generous man.”

Ken’ishi snorted with amusement. “Not really.”

“Did I say something funny?”

He did not answer her. She stiffened. She was not accustomed to being ignored. He concentrated on his task.

Then, as if she could take the silence no longer, she blurted, “How did your parents die?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m sorry. Does it trouble you to talk about it?”

He said nothing, trying to concentrate on his sewing. An impatient shifting of weight by the woodsman reminded Ken’ishi of his presence. “Dangai, you may return to your village. Please tell the town grave diggers what happened here. These men need a proper funeral or they might come to haunt this road.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll go now and tell them. I hope they have returned. Yesterday, they went out looking for a ronin bandit.”

Kazuko said, “Thank you, sir, for your help. We could not have destroyed the oni without you.”

A bit of color returned to the old man’s previously pale cheeks, and he smiled, a grin missing several teeth, and bowed deeply. “It has been my pleasure to serve. Good luck to you all.” The woodsman again bowed to both of them and hurried up the road as quickly as his spindly old legs would carry him.
 

* * *

Kazuko watched the woodsman totter back up the road, and her gaze could not avoid the sickly green flames and the noxious yellow smoke of the oni’s pyre. Her gaze drifted over the human wreckage covering the road, the dark pools of congealing blood soaking the dirt, mixing with the rain puddles. A tremendous heaviness suddenly fell upon her body, and her clothes were made of stones, weighing down her limbs. Tears burned her eyes, cooling as they trickled down her cheeks. She looked down at Hatsumi, lying unconscious in the dirt, wounded and defiled, soaked with blood, and sobs rose in her breast. Less than an hour ago, she could not have imagined that such horror and pain existed in all the world. And now it threatened to drag her down into an unimaginable hell of sadness and despair. “Poor Hatsumi,” she whispered. The pressure of the sobs built, threatening to explode. Then she glanced at the ronin sitting on the ground, concentrating on his sewing.

She must not break down in front of this rude stranger. He observed no courtesies, and worst of all, he ignored her! She must be strong! As she spoke, she hoped he did not hear the quavering in her voice. “I must get the swords of my bodyguards. Their families deserve to have them. They fought with honor and courage.”

He was hunched over his work, absorbed, but nodded his head. “As you please.”

She walked back up the road toward the scene of the melee. The stench of the oni’s pyre gave her something else to concentrate on so she could push aside her own weakness. She covered her mouth and nose with her thick sleeve, but even though the stench was screened out, the air felt oily and putrid against her skin. She felt unclean now, and she wanted a bath more than anything. The corpses of her carriage bearers lay sprawled in the dirt, riddled with arrows, twisted into unnatural positions, their glazed eyes staring into eternity. She looked at their faces, seeing some of them for the first time. So often, her servants were just faceless peasants, part of her life, yet invisible and taken for granted, like the wind. These poor men had not stood a chance in the ambush.

She picked her way among the puddles of blood. Her hands were shaking now, and her knees felt weak. Was this what some warriors called the thrill of combat, and the naked, empty feeling that remained when the thrill was gone? Using the naginata had felt so natural; she understood now why the grueling hours of practice had been necessary. They had prepared her for the moment when all that practice had been vital, and she had not had to think. She had just acted. Thinking back about the moments of the fight, she marveled at how it had felt so effortless, so instinctive. Every moment was etched in clear detail in her memory, the horror of it, the sickening feeling in her belly, and the final elation at the oni’s defeat. She clasped her hands to stop them from shaking, then lifted the hem of her robes to keep them out of the blood.

So much blood! It had gushed and poured from the savaged bodies. She hesitated to touch the dead flesh for fear of becoming polluted by death. Then she realized that she was already polluted from her fight with the oni. She already needed purification, so she wasted no more time gathering the swords and scabbards from bloody, clenched fingers. She wrapped the weapons in the soiled remnants of one of the curtains from her palanquin.

By the time she was finished with her grim task, she had gained control of her emotions. She carried the swords to where Ken’ishi still toiled, then went back to retrieve the naginata. The weapon’s heft and deadly balance bolstered her strength and resolve, as if the steel of the blade lent her some of its strength. She wiped the tears from her face.

Then she jumped and nearly dropped the naginata as a sudden bloodcurdling scream seemed to tear a hole in the air itself, echoing among the trees and up the sun-dappled road.

Five

“Young men should discipline themselves rigorously in intention and courage. This will be accomplished only if courage is fixed in one’s heart. If one’s sword is broken, he will strike with his hands. If his hands are cut off, he will press the enemy down with his shoulders. If his shoulders are cut away, he will bite through ten or fifteen enemy necks with his teeth. Courage is such a thing.”

—
Hagakure

When the morning dawned, Taro awoke wondering why he was doing this. The rain had turned his small fire into sodden coals, and he was alone in the woods. The other villagers, even the other deputies, had returned to the village the previous evening. Why had he left his home to pursue this ronin? With Takenaga’s swords nestled beside him in his blanket, the answer was easy. He had long dreamed of somehow being able to leave the village. True, it was the only place he had ever known, but he knew there was a wider world, and he yearned to explore it. In truth, life in Uchida village was frightfully boring and far too much work. He was so happy to be chosen for one of Takenaga’s deputies, to relieve himself of some of the relentless boredom and field toil that farmers endured.
 

He found that he liked being a deputy. He liked the authority. Even though he was young, he became more powerful than many of the older village men. And the village’s pretty young girls admired him for it. He liked the training. The life of a farmer’s son had made him strong and fit, but Takenaga’s training regimen had made him stronger, more agile. With his jitte, he was not afraid to face a man with a sword or spear. Once, he had even been able to disarm Takenaga during practice. Of course, this had angered his master, who had subsequently beat Taro bloody. Takenaga had called it a “lesson in being prepared,” but Taro knew that it was just rage. Takenaga had been a man full of rage his whole life. Because of that rage, he had been placed far from Lord Nishimuta’s estate. No one spoke of it, but everyone knew that was the true reason. Before Takenaga, Uchida village had had no constable at all.