The Disfavored Hero (13 page)

Tomoe slung the borrowed bow across her shoulder, then snatched the purchased spear away from the gaping woman and pushed her out of danger's path. Two ninja stood on roofs, a third was in a tree. From each of them, star-shaped shurikens spun through the air at Tomoe. All three contacted the wooden handle of the spear, and stuck.

They had thought to prey upon her chivalry, her inability to deflect darts and stars into the crowd. She had outwitted them.

Immediately, three darts followed. Tomoe jerked the spear handle up and down. The darts stuck clear through, their points black with a rapid poison. By this time, the street was littered with prone, quivering bodies. The recent merrymakers looked up coyly, as curious as afraid.

The din of gaiety was subdued. Tomoe Gozen ran amongst the prone bodies, dancing strangely as she went, to avoid stepping on the people, and to twist about left and right to catch the array of tiny, poisonous weapons along the shaft of the spear's soft wood. They came in swift succession from three places, but she caught them all, their shapes varied but mostly like stars, shooting stars, until the spear's handle was so full of them that it could hold no more. By then, the ninja had spent their supply, and Tomoe had reached a narrow place between two buildings, and vanished.

The ninja in the tree signaled the others with hand and whistling. They leapt from the tops of buildings to the ground and, remarkably, kept right on running toward the spot where Tomoe had disappeared. She stepped out of the alley, fooling them again. Her left hand was full of shurikens, gleaned from the spear; her right hand snatched and tossed them overhand and side-hand, one by one.

The first ninja took one in the face, stomach, knee. Others stuck in the tree where the leader-ninja avoided them. When the first ninja fell, multiply wounded, the one behind him had already rushed to one side and made a surprising leap atop a porch, and from there back onto a building's roof.

The tree-ninja had meanwhile leapt from limb to building, thence to another building, so that he and the other were closing from opposite directions. Tomoe could not see them from the crevice between walls.

A smoke bomb hurled through the air, landed behind her, and instantly the alley was filled with unbreathable stench. Choking, she staggered out, staggered on purpose to look more vulnerable than she was. It looked like she was about to fall on her face, but she made a peculiar twist of her body which not only kept her from the fall but also gave her leverage to propel the spear with powerful accuracy at the closer ninja.

He leapt aside fast enough to miss taking the spear through the chest, but still it tore through the muscles under his arm. It tore far enough through that the wooden handle, pierced with poison darts, put infected splinters in his wound. The quick acting poison made his eyes roll up, and he fell onto a porch unmoving.

The remaining ninja was too far away to effectively toss shurikens, if he had any left, and he might. Tomoe had two of them herself, of those plucked from the violently discarded spear. Also, she had the bow from the gaming range. It was a pitiful weapon, and she had no arrows, but she had seen a trick performed on a battlefield once, and it seemed presently her only hope. The ninja was preparing some kind of blowgun, and she was probably in its range.

Rolling onto her back, Tomoe braced the bow against both feet, holding the bowstring in two hands. In each hand was a shuriken which she held against the string. When she let fly, the string snapped forth and cut her feet—but the shurikens sped toward the ninja. They would have missed him to either side had he refused to budge, but the could not have known that. Had he veered left, the left shuriken would have taken him. But he veered right, and the right shuriken half vanished into his throat.

He stood a long while, wobbling, only his eyes and lips showing from his cloth mask. He fought the poison and the wound, raised the blowgun to his lips. But blood had seeped into his lungs, the shuriken had struck so deep, and when he blew the dart it went only a little ways, held back by the blood which shot through the tube.

Above Tomoe, who still lay on the street almost as if relaxing, the mounted samurai hovered. He looked down with a pleasant face; with, perhaps, some sadness or emptiness behind the gaze. He appeared to be wealthy. “I am impressed,” he said. “I had expected you to die.”

Tomoe stood, brushed herself. A nearby peasant took the liberty of brushing off her back, wishing to touch a hero, whoever she might be. The mounted samurai continued, “If you need a friend, or good employment, follow me.” He reined his horse around and looked back, expecting to be followed. She did not move. “Come along,” he said, a lordly air about him, not expecting to be refused by a ronin.

Forsooth, Tomoe could use good employment, but she said, “I need no friend who would sit, expecting me to die.” She walked the other way.

It did not take long before the attentions of overly solicitous folk grated. She was the talk, and the mystery, of the festival. To escape, she slipped into a
kodan
house.

The kodan stories, war stories, had already begun when Tomoe slipped in, fleeing the raucous, attentive crowd. She came without notice, for the various young samurai, who made up the largest percent of the small audience, were enamored of the elderly samurai's story.

This was one of the oldest tales, about the twelfth Mikado's son. But Tomoe was surprised by the manner of its present interpretation, more sensual than expected.

She sat near the wall in back, upon her knees. With hat shadowing her face and loose, colorful garb somewhat disguising her figure, she looked little different from the male samurai, who were a young and beardless lot; although anyone who looked carefully would know at once that here was someone older, well tested, and of greater dignity. Also, the garb did not completely disguise her sex, was not meant to. Still, the audience was distracted by what they came to hear.

The old storytelling samurai was strong for his years. Although he moved slowly as if his bones might ache, he moved also with grace, punctuating his tale with pertinent movements of his hands, to indicate a dancer, a sword-thrust, someone in their bed. The young, sexually unlearned samurai were especially fascinated by the ribald nature of portions of the recitation, and doubtless some preferred this kodan house for no other reason. Yet the teller was good on other levels too, his lined face wrinkling up or stretching apart to make any number of distinctive characters in the story.

“So Yamato-dake came alone to the island of Kiushiu,” he continued, “and saw that it would be difficult to breech the walls of the guarded castle. The rebellious conspirators were many, and he but one, and the question was how to get to the central palace and slay the Mikado's sworn enemy, Nomonaka.

“Yamato-dake decided on a disguise—a disguise which even the wary Nomonaka would not suspect.

“The young prince was not yet in his seventeenth year when he undertook to avenge the insult to his father, and already a renowned hero. His was the body of nubile youth, very slender but more round-cornered than angular. He was still without beard, and much envied by the women of his parents' court for his fairness and grace.

“Thus he went to the pleasure house of the nearby village, where the skillful ladies fawned upon and admired him and vied for his attentions. Modestly, he told them, ‘Beauties supreme, I am unworthy of your observance, and, alas, am sworn to a fortnight of celibacy for my patron deity. I would beg a boon, however.'

“The young women were very eager. ‘The boon,' said Yamato-dake, ‘is to possess one outfit from among your store of pleasurable clothes.'

“The ladies all giggled tremendously, but were not surprised, for they had thought right away that Yamato-dake would have been as pretty a girl as he was a boy. They found the most daring dancer's costume for him, and painted him nicely, and Yamato-dake enjoyed this very much. Then he went away from the laughing ladies, who begged him to return when his fortnight was over, so they could show him pleasures such as geishas show other geishas. They begged him thus, it may be supposed, because they desired his beauty. But also they must have been extremely curious what kinds of conquests the temporarily womanly prince could make, being as he was celibate and looking as he did so virginal and sweet.

“Prince Yamato came to the front gate, where the sentry was alert and made threatening challenges to the dark. Yamato-dake stepped into torchlight and stamped his foot, saying in a haughty girl's voice, ‘I want to see your boss!'

“The sentry espied the girl and judged her comely. Yamato-dake was of exceeding beauty, it cannot be over said. The sentry asked the seeming-girl what business she had out so late and all alone.

“‘I am a dancing girl from Kuji,' Yamato-dake said, for the dancing girls of Kuji were famous even then, ‘and I am on a Wandering for the love of my patron deity. I have walked a long way, and desire to sleep in the richest house of this country.'

“The sentry laughed at this audacity. The disguised prince said, ‘I can earn my night of lodge by dancing.' Then Prince Yamato began to dance a little bit, to show the guard. He was impressed a lot, and thought to himself: ‘My boss will like this girl for his sport.'

“So the sentry took the dancer to the innermost part of the castle. There, young geishas were serving sake and playing samisen. Yamatodake saw also that enemy chiefs had gathered from various smaller islands.

“The sentry groveled before his boss, begging a reward for delivering the gentlest flower of Kuji. The boss was swayed indeed, for the Kuji dancer looked very nice to him. He rewarded the sentry with all the other geishas, who went away with him to another place in the castle.

“‘Dance for us,' boss Nomonaka commanded, and the prince danced with the gracefulness of a sweet girl. Dancing was not so different from swordplay, and Yamato-dake had happened to learn both, the latter from his father and the former from his mother.

“So well did Yamato-dake dance, he captured the hearts of half the chiefs but especially of Nomonaka. The flames of desire were high in the heart of the boss, so that when Yamato-dake was through with dancing, Nomonaka pulled the beauty harshly to his chest.

“‘Come with me now!' he demanded. The dancer giggled and blushed and struggled meekly, saying, ‘I cannot. I have never.'

“Hearing these words of innocence, the flames burned higher in Nomonaka, and he dismissed his envious visitors, dragging the dancer into private chambers. There, he urged his prize to a soft grass mat, put his arms about the lithe beauty, and held tightly. He demanded the dancer hold him similarly. Yamato-dake obeyed, wrapping strong arms around Nomonaka. The seeming-girl began to squeeze.

“At first the boss laughed at the surprising bear-hug of the dancer. But then he could not breathe and began to struggle. He squeezed in turn, and it became a kind of contest which boss Nomonaka was not winning.

“There was terror on Nomonaka's face, his face which was red with blood squeezed still within his veins. He felt his own heart stop and the life go from him.

“Presently Yamato-dake went to the chambers of the guests, these being chiefs who conspired against the twelfth Mikado. They gathered about and welcomed who they thought a girl; who was in tears; who said she had been much abused by the cruel Nomonaka, and she had therefore batted him on top of the head with a pot and rendered him incogitant.

“One of the chiefs ran to see, and returned quickly to say, ‘It is true, he lies unconscious on his mat. He will be angry with this beautiful girl and have her slain, and that will be a waste.'

“The beauty fell upon the floor wailing for aid, and the chiefs, taking pity, put Yamato-dake in a sack which they carried with them to the outer gates. The sentries were surprised to see the chiefs leaving so soon, but dared not bar the way. A certain guard, suspecting some conspiracy, ran to tell his boss that the chiefs were leaving under cloak of darkness.

“Though unmarked by any wound, boss Nomonaka could not be roused, and so the sentry gathered that his boss was not asleep, but dead. He called the alarm.

“Nomonaka's faithful retainers were after the chiefs, and there was a battle at the crossroads which Yamato-dake heard from inside the sack.

“When the battle was over, someone opened the sack, and it was a chief. They had killed all the men from the castle, and lost only one of their own number. But they were angry, having learned during the battle that Nomonaka had been killed.

“‘They thought we killed him,' complained the chief who opened the bag. ‘But it was you, and we no longer believe it was an accident. Yet we will let you go if you pay us well, here upon the road, for having saved the life of a murderess!'

“Yamato-dake allowed the first chief to embrace him, and in that moment stole the big man's two-edged sword and killed him. The other chiefs fought bravely and with skill, but fell before the sword wielded by the apparent damsel.