The Disfavored Hero (10 page)

Even with this one inhabitant, the chamber gave the impression of emptiness, a feeling of spacious, even eternal desolation.

Huan was locked in a draining trance, breathing slowly, deeply, weakened by the long day of war regardless of the fact that he had not physically moved. He smiled in his slumber, dreaming his dreams of conquest, of power, cloaked in the silvery shadow of these dreams.

The samurai approached the sorcerer. He did not stir. From the tapestries, carpets and relief ceiling, protective spells licked out and tasted Tomoe Gozen, recognized her flavor, let her be. She gathered the old man up in her arms; he was as long-boned and light as a stork. As she had done many times, she carried Huan to his private cell. There she laid him with tenderness upon the narrow couch. His eyes opened the slightest crack, the pupils large and mismatched. He looked at her with childlike trust, the trust of a baby for its most precious and familiar toy. He closed his eyes again.

If he thought of anything at all, aside from the dreams of his vanity's sake, he must have thought the woman was there to guard him through the trio of nights it would take to regain his strength.

She pitied him, this man of sorcery, who sought to grasp all the world like a ripe peach. He thought himself mighty, but had been manipulated by a greater power like nothing more than a black stone sitting on a gaming board. The stone was moved against the Shogun, never comprehending its place.

In Huan's present dream, he might envision himself disposing of the Mikado. From the Imperial Palace in Kyoto he could reach across the Sea of Naipon to harry the coast of Ho, tearing it like a jackal and depleting all Naipon's resources to reduce the Celestial Kingdoms, ultimately, to gigantic provinces of a comparatively tiny island empire.

Dream of your mightiness and of undefeated sorcery
, thought Tomoe.
Dream of your immortal dynasty. Sleep without worry, poor Lord Huan, O sad and evil man. Dream of a puppet warrior at your side when you return to your land in a chariot of gold and iron, conqueror of Naipon and Ho
.

He snuggled against the couch and sighed, sounding as he often did like an old woman, looking to be no one's threat, unknowing that his sleep would soon be dreamless and final. His knees drew upward toward his stomach. His spidery, long-nailed hands folded near his throat. Tomoe's sword rose above her head, centered, poised, invisible in the dark.

Tendrils of sorcery stroked her, in no threatening way, but lovingly. This affection stilled her hands more certainly than would any effort to hold her back by force. The Lord Huan loved her in his selfish fashion, she knew; his magic could do her no harm, for all the terrible way in which he constructed it to keep others out.

If she could blame him entirely for Ushii's gruesome fate or for the slaughter of the clans, then his love would disgust her and her sword would fall with ease and pleasure. But the descendant of Shining Amaterasu was the master of this sport, safe in the Imperial City. Tomoe was not certain that the next stones swept from the board would not include herself, and she was full of blasphemous thoughts: she envisioned the Mikado sitting in his austere palace, child of Light in a darkling's habitat, plotting, conniving, striving to hold or regain power against the military government in Kamakura.

Yet must she maintain fealty with the Mikado, and pray that never again would her duty to a godling monarch conflict with her duty to the Shogun. Perhaps, after this performance, she could flee to the northernfrontier, and serve both governments equally by fighting the vicious Ainu who vainly, uselessly strove against Tomoe's dominant race. Perhaps she would retire from the world altogether, to become cloistered in some mountain place. Or she could throw down her sword to be a strolling nun.

Small as a babe seemed Huan, shrunken like a newborn, curled in upon himself as though the womb were a recent memory. Tomoe was merciful. One swift stroke, and the smiling face did not even move, though the head was completely severed. Still sleeping, dreams fading, Huan's heart pumped blood to soak into the couch and cover. The tendrils of magic faded like the dream; the haunting was over; and Tomoe Gozen was alone.

PART II

The Bakemono's Curse

Something tracked the wandering samurai, something or someone vigilant and unseen. Another might have thought it imagination, after turning many times and swiftly only to see nothing. But Tomoe was not given to gross imaginings. She knew that she was watched.

It began to rain toward evening, when she came to a farmhouse and knocked upon the door. A ragged family of five gathered in the entry and looked her up and down. She was clad well, was Tomoe, not having been on the road so long that her fine kimono and wide
hakama
trousers were tattered or badly soiled; neither were the bright patterns of the cloth yet faded by the sun nor hidden beneath the dust of travel. Samurai with pride intact were fastidious to a fault. Her longsword was held close to her loin by the narrow obi wrapped around her waist. Her big straw hat was lacquered black, and her face dark beneath it.

She was magnificent outside their door, she knew, for it reflected in their eyes.

The samurai stood against the last rays of daylight, an ominous presence, but she smiled at them, and it eased them, and pleased them, and the father said, “Enter, samurai. Enter and be our guest.”

Pleasant cooking smells had wafted to her earlier, along the road. Within the plain but unsevere farmhouse, the scent of simple fare tempted and overwhelmed. It was a poor family, to be sure, and it would not be unfelt if they fed strangers; but the area had been neither used nor misused by lords or samurai, so this family thought of the higher classes with admiration rather than anxiety, and were honored to share what they had.

It was a meager meal, but one which Tomoe found completely and extremely adequate. She praised the mother and the daughter who had cooked it, but pleaded that she was full when they offered excessive portions. Tomoe had added her paltry share to the meal, in the form of dried fruit and pickled fish, which was all she had been eating on the road for many days. The pickles especially pleased the family, since this inland country had swamps instead of lakes or sea, and therefore a scarcity of wholesome fish.

Two of the three children were very young. They crawled in Tomoe's lap like kittens upon an amazing, patient wolf. Tomoe stroked these youngsters, and jabbered with them, until it was late and they climbed into a loft to pretend slumber and take careful peeks over the ledge. Tomoe sat with the parents and the oldest sister, listening more than speaking, but telling a little of her adventures when poked.

It was a gracious family, their etiquette somehow resounding with fewer falsehoods than the etiquette of richer households. The warmth of their fire and company calmed her, comforted her, for she had been lately missing comrades dead or far away, and the road had become a lonesome place to tread.

A few months earlier, she would never have supposed a peasant clan capable of filling such a void of friendship; but the road changed a samurai's perspective, causing sometimes a dangerous bitterness, and sometimes a deeper wisdom, but always disillusion. The family made her long for a simpler heritage—but her blood was samurai, and she was bound, if not to a master, then at least to her own line.

Yet even the friendship was illusion. She was a stranger to these friendly folk, an awe-inspiring, transient guest—not kin, not even the same class.

The eldest daughter looked at Tomoe with admiration near unto worship. At an appropriate point of conversation, and at her proud father's insistent prodding, the girl brought forth (with much blushing and seeming reluctance) a fine heirloom halberd. It was a common weapon among girls and women, one which could dismount a warrior entirely, and often best a sword. The daughter held it with care, and had clearly learned from some nearby temple to wield it with skill.

After a while, the eldest daughter went off to her quarter of the floor and rolled out her mat to sleep. The old father continued to ply Tomoe for more words, and the complacent mother listened and smiled. The daughter, like the younger ones, feigned sleep, though the younger ones had by then given in to weariness. At present, only the eldest among the children secretly listened; and later, perhaps, she dreamed of her halberd or a sword.

Few samurai came to these parts, unless rich ones who passed quickly without greeting, with their masters or without, never lingering in the poor land, deigning only occasionally to throw some low-value coin to whatever bold child or admiring adult stood watching from well off the road. Tomoe's willingness to sit with peasants charmed them, boosted their esteem for themselves and for her, although she was virtually a beggar (which they did not notice).

The fire was left to die low; the rain was a pleasant drumming on the roof; and Tomoe was wishing to be given over to sleep. She was about to hint at this desire, when there came a knock upon the door. The mother scurried to the rap, and slid the door aside. Tomoe and the husband looked on, wondering who would come at such an hour.

There against the rainy night was a dark and dirty itinerant priest, a
rokubu
with a bulky wooden Buddha tied by its neck and slung upon his back. The priest was stooped beneath this burden, and looked to have been through many provinces never once setting it down. It was very nearly a part of him, was the Buddha, akin to the bent spine of a hunchback.

The rokubu was homely, unbathed, and disturbing. For all his travel, he was overweight. His yellow robe was turned brown by its accumulation of soil. One of his hands clutched the end of the cord which held the Buddha by the throat and over his back, while the other hand was thrust forward like the beggar all rokubu were—a less esteemed and less appreciated beggar than Tomoe Gozen.

This was a land of uncomplicated people, faithful to the Shinto deities, little concerned with the confounding methods of Buddhists. In fact, the husband did not much like even clean Buddhists, although the mother took some pity and was inclined to share some scrap.

Tomoe was unsettled by the priest's sharp eyes, which scanned the interior of the rude farmhouse and lingered a moment, without surprise, upon the samurai.

To save the husband and wife from further argument or depletion of their small resources, Tomoe withdrew one small, oblong coin of silver and tossed it. The priest's grubby hand scooped it neatly from the air, and, blessing the house in a hard voice, he turned his sharp eyes away and vanished into the wet night.

The next morning, the children saw the samurai off with a few cautious complaints, wishing she would stay, and she almost wished it as well. She lifted up the smaller ones and hugged them in her arms, then put them down and scooted them back toward the house. To the oldest daughter, Tomoe bowed slightly, one hand on her sword, which made the daughter swell with pride, this being the greeting or farewell for samurai and samurai, not samurai and peasant. Tomoe felt guilty immediately upon doing this, for the low-caste girl had the same duty to her birth that Tomoe had to hers, and the girl's bold imaginings ought not be cruelly encouraged.

The mother came up the path in a hurry, proffering Tomoe a bean-filled dumpling for the road—a costly treat for poor to offer. Tomoe in turn left them the remainder of her pickled fish. Then, waving to the husband in the doorway whose eyes were misty with a private musing, Tomoe was again upon her road.

The short time with this family had been like some purification rite. Tomoe felt as though she had left a clean, cooling brook in favor of a parched land—although the ground was still wet from the night's rainfall, outer reality denying the inner feel.

It was not long before she knew she was once again, or still, being followed. In truth, she had fancied eyes at the cracks of the farmhouse the whole night long. She no longer spun around to see who followed, for she knew that someone skilled in
inpo
, the art of hiding, would not in any case be seen. She grew more and more annoyed by the persistent audacity of her shadower, or shadowers (for she suspected more than one).

A goodly distance passed beneath her feet before the sun was very high. The land had dried out in the warm sun, but later became the dank edge of a swamp. The air became steamy by midday, awful to the smell. The road stayed reasonably dry—but on first one side and then both, frogs peeked from amidst reeds in the filthy water which bordered her path.

Further on, the ginkgo trees became dense, their leaves like fans, and even at high noon, the thickening swamp was somewhat darkened.

It was somewhere along this point that Tomoe became hotly annoyed, partly because the miserable humidity beneath the roof of trees had shortened her temper. She wheeled about to march the way she came, sporting a baleful expression. Several paces along, she stopped and called out, “Ninja! Slinking spy! Assassin! Face me with honor, or hunt elsewhere!”

There was no reply. If, as she suspected, ninja were on her trail, they could not be expected to answer a challenge like some honest samurai. The vile pursuer might at this moment be lying in the mud and filth of the swamp, covered over with green and slimy water, breathing through a hollow reed or even a sword's sheath. Or the wretched, furtive spy might be in some tree, invisible to the eye, disguised somehow as a branch—or else squeezed into a narrow badger hole, if there were any such pits unmolested by the marsh soup.

Yet, to her surprise, she
did
hear something, and it made her wonder between two things: was it a trap, or was it someone less skillful than a ninja who shadowed her?

She turned abruptly to the sound, and saw ripples of water rushing from the deeper gloom away from the road.

Tomoe hitched up her long garb and, kicking off her clogs, waded out toward the source of the persisting noise. The water was shallow and about the same temperature as urine, though purplish green instead of yellow. Her feet sank into the vilest ooze, in which things wriggled and might have attached themselves to her were she to stand in one place too long.