Jade Palace Vendetta (20 page)

K
aze thought he was being held by a demon of enormous size. The demon was an angry red color and had bulging eyes and two curled, yellowing tusks protruding from its mouth. He held Kaze suspended high in the air with one hand. The hand was so large that the demon could hold Kaze with two fingers. With the other hand, he had Kaze’s two arms pinned back behind him and he was pulling on them, trying to rip them out from Kaze’s shoulders the way wanton boys will pull the wings off a dragonfly.

The pain was excruciating, and Kaze felt an agony like the pain of fire. He looked in the demon’s face and saw an idle curiosity. The pain in his arms and shoulders built and built and built. Kaze closed his eyes tightly and grit his teeth to help him bear it.

Finally, when the pain was unbearable, Kaze popped his eyes open, ready to shout his defiance to the demon, telling the creature to pluck off his arms if he must.

Instead of seeing a demon, however, Kaze discovered he was in an eight-mat room in Hishigawa’s villa. His hands were tied behind him. A rope bound his wrists and looped through a hook in a ceiling joist. Kaze had been hauled into the air by the rope. He was dangling above
the mats from his arms, and the weight of his body was causing the pain.

He twisted his wrists, but the ropes binding them were too tight. He was trapped.

Kaze closed his eyes and gathered his strength. He felt the tearing pain in his shoulders, but he tried to ignore it. His face and body were bruised, but he dismissed the beating as the work of amateurs. Instead of worrying about the pain, he tried to take his mind to another time and place. He thought briefly of his first view of Kamakura when he arrived a few days before. The green of the foliage, the blues from the sea and sky and some of the tile roofs, the brown of the earth, and the tiny splashes of color from flowers and birds helped settle his mind. He still felt the pain, but now he regarded his position as just an annoyance.

He wondered if the Lady had been able to take her mind to another place when she was captured. She had endured the same thing, and more.

T
he rain was drumming down with a steady beat on the day that Kaze had tried to save the Lady. He had been crouching under a large bush, smeared in mud as camouflage, watching Okubo’s encampment.

The encampment was a large enclosure at the top of a hill. Poles were set in a rectangle, with ropes strung between them. Hanging from the ropes were large pieces of black cloth, to shield the encampment from wind, prying eyes, and an easy shot by a sniper with a musket or bow. On the cloth was the Okubo crest, looking like a large, malevolent spider.

Frightened peasants told Kaze that the Lady had been captured. Okubo had used the ruse that he was making a courtesy call before joining the main battle force arrayed against the Tokugawas. The Lady and her daughter had opened the doors of the castle and come out to greet him. He had seized them and pressed an attack, surprising
the garrison and overwhelming them with his superior force. Now the castle was destroyed, and no one quite knew where the Lady and her daughter were.

Kaze had watched Okubo’s enclosure all day. Messengers arrived constantly, and the camp seemed to be in a state of intense excitement. If they still lived, Kaze thought the Lady and her daughter would most likely be held prisoner in the encampment. In the late afternoon this suspicion was confirmed in a horrible way.

Activity outside the enclosure seemed at a lull, and Kaze could not see what was happening inside. But he could hear. From inside Okubo’s enclosure came a woman’s scream. It was a scream of pain, torn from her throat. Kaze wasn’t sure if it was the Lady, but even if it was, he told himself to be still and be patient. The second scream almost galvanized him to action, but he knew that attacking the enclosure now would be suicide. Kaze wasn’t afraid to die, but he knew he would not save the Lady by making a senseless attack. So he waited. More screams came from the enclosure. He waited some more, his heart tearing with every scream that long, wet afternoon.

Finally, after hours of the sounds of suffering, Okubo and a strong guard left the enclosure. After Okubo left, two guards came from inside the enclosure and made the rounds of the guards posted outside the fabric barrier. They handed them jugs of sakè, and, with Okubo gone, Kaze could see the guards visibly relaxing and celebrating their victory.

Because of the rainy sky, Kaze did not see the sun go down, but by the sudden descent of darkness, he knew it was night. Still he waited.

Finally, in the small hours of the morning, Kaze moved. He carefully made his way to one side of the enclosure, where a single guard was on duty. The guard was wearing a straw rain cape and stood holding his spear with his head bent under his conical metal helmet to shelter his face from the rain. The guard wasn’t drunk, but in that pose his field of vision was restricted to just a few feet in front of him. Kaze used that fact.

The guard was bored by the sentry duty and fighting to stay awake.
He had given up trying to stay warm in the rain hours before and had settled into a state of patient acceptance when he heard the sound of running feet. Startled, he looked up just in time to see a samurai descending on him. He opened his mouth to sound the alarm, but before he could shout his throat was cut by the samurai’s katana.

Kaze took the guard and leaned him up against one of the poles holding the fabric barrier. If someone spotted him, it would look like he was asleep. It would buy Kaze a few moments before they realized the guard was dead.

Kaze cut one of the cords holding the bottom of a fabric panel to a pole and slipped under the panel. Inside the enclosure Kaze saw a couple of tents and another closed-off area. Unsure of where the woman’s screams came from, he decided to try the closed-off area first.

Slipping like a shadow against the background of the black cloth, Kaze went to the small area and entered it. Three long poles had been set up to form a tripod. Hanging from the tripod was the Lady. Her arms were tied behind her and she was hoisted up by those arms. Her kimono was open and hung wet on her body. Her head was bent forward, and she was so still that Kaze thought she might be dead. The cruel rain made her long black hair hang down in front of her face like the hair of a ghost.

Kaze approached her and whispered, “My Lady?”

She moaned and raised her head slightly. Her wet hair still obscured her vision, but she said weakly, “You!”

“Yes. Stay strong. I’ll have you down in a minute.” Kaze placed one arm around her, and as he drew her close his nose was assaulted by the smell of burnt hair. He reached up with his sword hand and cut the rope suspending her. He stopped her from falling to the earth, but she gave a moan of pain when the rope was cut.

Kaze cut the ties on her wrists and laid her on the ground.

“Can you cover me?” she asked. “I’m afraid my arms are dislocated, so I can’t do it myself. I’m sorry.”

Kaze wrapped her kimono around her body and as he did so, the
cause of the smell of burnt hair became apparent. Her privates had been burned with fire or hot irons.

“My daughter …” she said.

“Do you know where she is?” Kaze asked. “I’ll get her, too.”

“No. They took her yesterday. Okubo told me he was going to sell her. He wouldn’t tell me where. He said it was punishment for my husband and me always thinking we were better than him. It’s true. We always did think we were better. Now I know we are. But the revenge he took because of that…” Her voice trailed off. Then she said, “I think he did this to me because he liked it. He liked it very much.”

“My Lady, it’s best if you don’t talk now. We still have to get out of here, and as soon as they find out you’re gone, they’ll come looking for us.” Kaze picked her up in his arms. He kept his sword in his hand and carefully made his way out of the enclosure. He was halfway to the opening in the outer enclosure when a samurai in armor and a helmet came out of one of the tents.

He saw Kaze and drew his sword. “Alarm! Intruders!” he shouted, and started running toward Kaze.

Kaze took a few seconds to put the Lady down, instead of dropping her, and those few seconds almost cost him his life.

Kaze took the first sword blow while he was still bent. The best he could do was to parry the samurai’s blow. A man in armor was hard to kill, because there were only a few vulnerable spots. Even if the armor didn’t completely stop a blow, it could lessen its effectiveness, leaving a man with a cut instead of a mortal wound.

Using all his strength, Kaze pushed the man away. He knew he had to end this duel quickly, because he could hear the camp stirring. Reinforcements would be arriving any moment. His katana was made for slashing, not thrusting, but he knew there was one vulnerable spot on the armored man that would end the contest quickly. He stepped back and dropped his guard.

Seeing his chance, the armored samurai attacked, slashing at Kaze with an over-the-head blow. At the ready, Kaze narrowly dodged the blow and lunged forward, the point of his katana aimed at the man’s
neck, right below the chin. Kaze caught the man in this unarmored spot and shoved his sword home. The man dropped his sword and grabbed at Kaze’s blade, now stuck in his neck. Kaze withdrew his sword with a sideways motion, slashing the man’s throat. The man collapsed.

Kaze took a second cut at the man’s throat, not to deliver another death blow, but to cut the ties that held the man’s helmet. He scooped the man’s helmet off his head and placed it on his own head just as the troops, roused from a drunken victory stupor, started rushing out of the tents, holding their weapons.

Kaze looked up with the helmet on his head and shouted, “I’ve killed two of them!” He pointed to the body of the dead samurai and the Lady, who was moaning softly from pain. “Quickly! They’ve gone into the enclosed area and rescued the Lady! Hurry! There’s a dozen of them!” Kaze pointed to the enclosure where he had found the Lady. “They’re in there! Hurry! Get them!”

In the dark, with an Okubo helmet on, the troops took Kaze for an officer and immediately rushed to obey. They ran past in a frenzy, bumping into one another in their confusion and bewilderment. As soon as they were past, Kaze scooped up the Lady and made a dash for the place in the compound barrier where he had entered.

T
he Lady wasn’t heavy, but by midday Kaze was weary of carrying her. He had not slept or rested for several days, ever since learning of Okubo’s treachery. Kaze had taken to the mountains immediately. He knew that if he stayed on level ground the Okubo troops would soon hunt them down on horseback. In the mountains Kaze had an advantage, because Okubo’s troops would have to proceed on foot and Kaze could stretch his meager head start as the troops tried to track him.

The rain had not abated, and the dreary wet weather matched Kaze’s mood. His children were dead. His wife was dead. The fate of his Lord was unknown. The Lady’s daughter had been kidnapped and presumably sold. The Lady had been tortured and dishonored. In his arms, she made an infrequent moan of pain but never complained as Kaze took her deeper into the mountains to get away from Okubo’s men.

Kaze was exhausted, but he would have willed himself to continue, except that the Lady seemed near the end of her strength. He found a sheltered spot under a crooked tree and made a damp nest for the Lady from pine needles and cut branches.

He sat next to her and asked if she wanted him to find something to eat.

“No. Not for me. Find something for yourself.”

“I’m not hungry,” Kaze lied. “We’ll rest here for a while. The rain seems to have made it difficult for Okubo to pursue us. We’ll go through the mountains, and I’ll find a safe place for you. Then I’ll make contact with the Lord. Just recover so we can plan our next move.”

“You know, I always admired you for your courage. I don’t think I’ve ever told you that. The Lord and I used to talk about it often. I wish I had some of that courage now. I don’t want to die.”

“You won’t die.”

She gave a faint smile. With her drawn face it looked more like a grimace. “You always were a very poor liar,” she said. “I can feel my strength and life slipping away. Still, I want to thank you for rescuing me. I wouldn’t want to die strung up like that. It’s a poor death. An
inujini
. A dog’s death.”

“Don’t die, Lady!”

“I don’t think I have a choice. There are still so many wonderful things I want to do. But the biggest reason I want to live is to make sure my daughter is rescued and safe. I can’t do that now, so I need your help. I don’t know how, but if she’s still alive I want you to find her. It’s my last wish and my last command to you.” She looked at him with feverish eyes black from strain and pain.

Kaze bowed his head in response to the Lady’s order. Hot tears flowed down his cheeks and mingled with the icy raindrops striking his face. Despite the pain, the Lady reached up and, using the sleeve of her kimono, brushed the tears from his face. It was a gesture that had no practical purpose, because his face was covered with raindrops as soon as her sleeve moved across it. Yet Kaze found comfort in the gesture. Her touch was so light it felt like a breeze caressing his cheek, the kind of soft breeze he felt when he climbed into treetops and put his face into the wind.

Kaze found it strange that the dying should be comforting the living. With his children gone, his wife gone, his clan defeated and in disarray, and the fate of his Lord unknown, Kaze thought that it might be best to follow the Lady in death when the time came.

As if reading his thoughts, the Lady stopped brushing away his tears and extended a weak hand. It trembled with the effort to keep it in the air. “Give me your wakizashi.”

Surprised, Kaze removed his short sword from his sash, putting it in her hand. The weight of the sword caused her hand to drop to the ground, but she clutched the scabbard fiercely. At first Kaze thought the Lady had lost heart and was going to use the short sword to commit suicide, but then she said, “This represents your honor and the ability to take your own life. Your honor is now mine until my daughter is found and safe.

“Promise me!” she said fiercely.

“I promise, Lady. But this is not necessary. I will honor my promise to find your daughter, as I have always honored my pledges. And you will be alive to see her and hold her again.”

The Lady looked at him with tired eyes. “I wish that were true.” She said no more and closed her eyes to rest. In a few minutes she had fallen into an exhausted sleep. Kaze tried to remove the wakizashi from her hand so she could rest easier, but even in her sleep she gripped the short sword.

Kaze sat next to her. He held his own kimono sleeve above her, holding it out like a tent flap with his other hand, despite his fatigue, to keep the raindrops off her face. In meditation, he had been taught to listen to his own breathing, because breath means life. Now he listened to the Lady’s ragged breathing. It became shallower and shallower, until it was barely detectable. Then it ceased altogether.

Kaze sat immobile, watching the pain-racked face relax slightly with the release of death. Then he did something he would never have done while she lived. He placed his hand on her cheek, gently cupping her face. Her position as his Lord’s consort made such an action unthinkable to Kaze while she was alive, but now that her spirit had departed
her body, touching her face, as she had touched his, seemed the only comfort available to him after days of pain and sorrow.

He stared at her face, seeing her in happier days instead of the visage with black, sunken eyes and tightened jaw muscles before him. The face he tried to see was serene and kind, with the sparkle of good humor in its eyes. It was the same face he carved on the Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy, that he made.

K
aze heard the door of the room slide open. Hishigawa entered, holding a sword. He dropped the sword’s scabbard on the floor, unsheathing its blade. Kaze realized it was his own sword, the Fly Cutter. Hishigawa slid the shoji screen closed and turned to look at Kaze. He smiled. “We use this room when we occasionally have a girl that won’t cooperate. I told you we buy maids for the villa, and when they are sufficiently seasoned, we convert them for sale to a brothel. Sometimes we have one who is recalcitrant about the new life we have planned for her. An hour or two hanging as you are is usually enough to make her see the error in her ways.

“You tried to steal Yuchan from me. Although it might be mildly amusing to torture you further, I am not a cruel man. I am reasonable. I am a businessman. I deal in judgments about what is profitable or not profitable to pursue. Keeping you alive is not profitable, so I have decided to cut my losses.” Hishigawa laughed at his pun.

He hefted the blade, looking at it. It caught the yellow light of the lantern, reflecting a silver arc against the walls and ceiling of the room as Hishigawa moved it around. Even through his pain, Kaze thought the blade beautiful.

“Since I paid for this sword, I thought I would use it,” Hishigawa said. “I don’t have the skill with the blade that you have, but you’ll find that I’ll still be able to take your head, even if it might take me two or three blows to sever it. I’ve ordered many deaths, but I’ve never killed a man myself, so this will be a novel experience for me.”

Hishigawa smiled again. “I know you samurai all like to do your fancy death poems when the end is at hand. But as I said, I am a man
who deals in efficiency.” He put both hands on the sword hilt. “I believe it would be most efficient to dispatch you without allowing you to declaim the rubbish that you samurai like to yammer as poetry. You see, although I have to deal with you and your stupid wives because they are my customers, I really don’t like samurai. You’re parasites, feeding off the land and interfering with business every time you start one of your stupid wars.”

Hishigawa lifted the blade to the point-at-the-eye position, judging its weight and balance. “I suppose this really is a fine weapon,” he said conversationally. “Maybe I’ll be able to take your head with only one or two blows, instead of having to hack it off.”

Kaze stared at Hishigawa, and, although his body was in pain, he came to an epiphany. He was not afraid. Always in battle there was a chance of him dying, but now he knew that it was a certainty. And yet, despite the knowledge that he would die, Kaze was able to face it with a studied indifference, certain in the fact that life and death were the same and that existence is only an illusion.

Of course, he had been bred as a samurai and trained in the ways of Zen. He had been raised with the thought that the true samurai is always ready to die in the service of his master or his cause. Yet, from personal experience, Kaze knew that such noble sentiments were not always played out in the hearts of men.

At the mere threat of death, some men cowed and broke, their fear overtaking them. In battle Kaze had seen even highborn samurai, new to the violence of war and the clash of arms, shrink from contact with the enemy and shake from fear. It was said that even Tokugawa Ieyasu, when he was a very young man and engaged in his first battle, actually fled the scene of the fighting on his horse. When he reached safety, one of his chief retainers, Honda, looked at the saddle and saw evidence that Ieyasu had lost control of his bowels when fear had overtaken him.

Instead of remonstrating with his young Lord, Honda had simply laughed. Kaze hated Ieyasu for what he and his men had done and yet, even though he was familiar with the story of his first battle, he
would not call him a coward—not after the battles he had fought and won subsequently. Any man might lose his nerve the first time he’s confronted by war.

Now Kaze was facing something else for the first time. It was the certainty of his immediate demise. He almost marveled that all the things that he had been taught throughout his entire life about how a samurai faces death were now coming to fruition. He was facing his own death with courage and indifference. He did not want to die, but if he was going to die, then it was the fate of all men. It was simply his time. Karma.

He leaned his head to the side to provide a better target for Hishigawa. Instead of stepping forward to take the cut, Hishigawa hesitated, unsure what to make of Kaze’s hard eyes staring back at him. The eyes held no fear, no pleading, and no sense of panic, all the things that Hishigawa knew he would display if the situation were reversed.

Instead, the ronin’s eyes met his steadily and the ronin’s face was impassive, perhaps even tranquil, because of some deep-seated core of courage that Hishigawa could not begin to understand.

Hishigawa raised the sword and started to step forward so he could deliver the blow to the ronin’s neck. Suddenly, there was the sound of paper tearing behind him and in the pit of his back there was a burning pain. He was propelled forward and could not bring the sword blade down for the death blow. Instead, he felt his knees grow weak and his grip on the sword become numb. The sword slipped from his hands and tumbled to the tatami mat. Hishigawa fell to his knees.

He reached behind him and felt the shaft of a spear. It had been thrust through the shoji screen because the wielder of the spear had decided there was not enough time to open the door. The silhouette of the man holding the sword was the target, and the spear had been driven home.

Blackness started to descend on Hishigawa as life drained out from the thick hole in his back. He gave a cry of pain mixed with fear at the thought that this blow might be mortal. He tried to give a shout, in a
desperate attempt to get help. Instead, all that came from his mouth was a long, slow hiss that ended in death.

The shoji screen was kicked down, and Kaze straightened his head to look into the fierce face of Elder Grandma. She had thick arms, well suited to using a spear, Kaze thought, and the anger and blood lust on her face was as fierce as that found on any warrior.

She looked down at the corpse at her feet. She kicked away a scrap of paper from the shoji that masked the face of her victim, revealing Hishigawa’s face. His eyes were still open, but lifeless. His mouth also open, the last scream still on his lips, cut short by death. Seeing Hishigawa, Elder Grandma stopped a moment. Then she placed her foot against Hishigawa’s back and, grabbing the spear shaft with both arms, pulled it hard to release it. She looked at Kaze and a grim smile came to her lips.

“It’s done,” she said. She pointed to the headband that bore the character for “revenge.”

“It’s done,” she said again with a fierce tone to her voice. “It’s done. The vendetta is completed and our family is avenged. Our honor is restored.”

“If you’ll cut me down,” Kaze said mildly, “I’ll help you see if we can restore your granddaughter, as well as your honor.”

E
lder Grandma used Kaze’s sword to cut him down. When she cut the ropes from his wrists, Kaze’s hands burned with pain as the circulation returned to them. He tried to hold his sword, but initially his fingers would not close around the hilt. After the blood returned, he was able to grasp the weapon, and he took a few tentative swings to see how much damage had been done to his shoulders and arms.

“Where’s your grandson and the servant?” he asked.

“Like me, they were searching for you to see what happened with Yuchan. We got tired of waiting in that garden. I saw Hishigawa enter this room and decided to take my chance at revenge.”

“Go gather Nagatoki and Sadakatsu up before they get into trouble. Yuchan is in the palace on that little island. She is not in good
condition and will need help. What I thought was a life of luxury turned out to be a life of horror. There are guards, but I’ll take care of them. In fact, it’s better if I take care of things here in the villa before going to the island.”

“What are you going to do about the guards?”

“I’m going to kill them. Kill them all. Someone told me that only bad ones are here, and I believe it. In the yard I found a shallow grave. The grave seemed too old to be Mototane’s, but I was curious about who was buried there. I found the bones of two young people. They were probably girls. Maybe Hishigawa’s efforts to persuade girls to co-operate as prostitutes by torturing them resulted in two deaths. Maybe two girls committed suicide when they realized the life they would lead. Regardless of the reason, they buried the two bodies on the villa grounds to hide the deaths, and they probably didn’t pay a priest to say the proper prayers for their departed souls. It’s a bad business conducted by bad people. It’s better if all the rats are cleared out of this den.”