The Disfavored Hero (18 page)

A human neck would have been snapped from the blow that Tsuki delivered, but the oni shook its ugly scarlet face and came again. Tsuki said through gnashing teeth,

“It is wrong to kill even you!” Her pole slapped it in the ear, sending it off balance before its own spear point was delivered. She added, “But I will do it unless you run away!”

She shook her pole in a specific fashion, turning a triggering mechanism with one hand. A long spike protruded automatically from the end of the pole which was aimed toward the oni.

The oni understood her meaning entirely, though some people claimed oni were stupid. It believed her, too. It gazed at her a moment, disbelieving human kindness of any sort for oni, maybe worshipping the moment. Then it turned around and fled through reeds and darkness.

On another side of the lodge, two soldiers worried at a single violet oni. They could not break through the guard of its
kama
scythe, with which the oni hooked, blocked, or captured every slash of the two swords. It grunted and snarled and slobbered, green eyes glowering hatefully from its violet visage.

In a muddy area away from the lodge, the leader of the warriors, who had been called Haniwa-san by Great Lord Walks, was similarly worried by two blue-tinged oni. He was pitted against an
ono
axe and another of the grim kusari-gama sickle-and-chain. He dodged the whirling chain as it was released in his direction; he dodged in the direction of the other oni, and with a quick swipe of his sword severed the oni's hand so that axe, with hand, fell into the mud.

A third oni, bright red, came running through the night with a nun's promise fresh in its mind. It hurtled the barbed spear through the air and caught Haniwa-san in the leg. Haniwa-san fell, as the scarlet oni kept on running.

The oni with the sickle-and-chain was still gathering in its chain, to start it whirling again. The second blue oni who had lost its hand went howling into the night, chasing after its red cousin who had thrown the spear so effectively. Haniwa-san sat in the mud, and wrenched the barbed spear loose from his leg, tossed it from his sitting position after the two craven oni. He never knew whether he made his mark, having to turn his attention elsewhere.

Haniwa-san rolled out from under the downward slash of the remaining oni's sickle, regained his feet, and though poorly balanced on his hurt leg, fought on.

His two men with the violet oni held against the tree were finally succeeding in breaking the guard of the kama bearer. Its neck was already cut deeply on the right side. One warrior let the wounded oni catch his sword with the scythe. Sword and scythe held each other immobile. The other warrior took advantage, and hacked deep into the left side of the oni's neck, a score deeper than the previous cut.

The oni's head started to topple off. It dropped its kama scythe and attempted, with a little success, to hold its mostly-severed head in place. The warriors left the violet oni to die its slow death, and hurried toward the place where their leader limped and battled against the sickle-and-chain. Surrounded, the blue oni knew it would lose.

Unlike bakemono, mountain oni could not speak. This one dropped its kusari-gama and fell upon its knees, silently pleading mercy with clenched palms.

“Run away then,” said the leader. The oni stood and fled. The two men hurried to hold their tottering leader, lest he fall from the leg.

Tomoe Gozen was meanwhile entertaining the seventh oni, a head taller than herself, albino, broad-shouldered, and lacking nose. It bore a sword of spear-length, and its guard was good though the sword itself was rusty and ill-cared for.

The white oni's weight pushed its feet deep into the muddy ground, giving Tomoe her best advantage against a sword so big only a devil could wield it. Due to the samurai's smaller size and greater swiftness, the oni had already taken several minor wounds from Tomoe, and offered none which she accepted. It had lost a lot of its thick, black blood from the dozen scores; but oni were indeed hard to kill. It fought on, never lessening in ferocity, red eyes glowering.

Tsuki Izutsu appeared beside Tomoe. Her bo, its spike withdrawn once more so that Tomoe yet knew nothing of its additional value, out-reached the oni's overlong sword. She cracked its ribs, smashed its fingers so that it dropped the sword, then bashed it in the temple. It wailed the inhuman cry peculiar to oni. Tomoe Gozen leapt forward and thrust her sword into its throat, cutting off the cry in a gurgle and rush of blood, cutting through the neck bone so that the oni's head flopped sideways. It fell down, still gurgling, death slowly enveloping it.

“It was already defeated!” stormed Tsuki. “You did not have to kill it! It would have run away!”

Tomoe panted and glowered, her eyes angry like an oni. She answered, “You let one go?”

“I did. So did our warrior friends. Three in all.”

“Three alive,” Tomoe said, pondering. “That is bad. They are held to the bakemono by magic. They may return.”

The five warriors were gathered together. With the help of one of his men, Haniwa-san came forward to Tomoe on his hurt leg. The clangor of weapons had ceased to echo through the nighted marsh. Frogs and other creatures made no sound, having themselves fled or hidden, so the silence was quick and eerie. Four corpses of the bakemono's oni-samurai were adrift in the rank water, or face-buried on muddy ground, already decomposing. The reason no one ever brought an oni's body home to stuff was because they rotted almost as soon as they finally died.

The seven victors had suffered no casualties, and only one injury. The injured leader asked, his voice quavering more from hope than pride,

“Are you impressed?”

There was a little anger left inside Tomoe, because the warriors, like Tsuki, had let some oni go. But she was indeed impressed, for the victory was undeniably a good one, without loss of friends. She bowed low from the waist and replied, “I am amazed.”

Haniwa-san bowed in turn, standing on his own. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.” Then his men braced him again. He said, “We must hurry, so I bid you farewell for myself and these men. Amaterasu comes soon, and it is our last day without dreams for a while. Perhaps you will come again to the Festival of Great Lord Walks, and join us in our exhibition.”

“Perhaps,” said Tomoe, thinking not. Her road was too vast.

Without further formality, they went away to rejoin their lord in his mansion. They left behind the two women and four smelling corpses. For the five warriors, the play was over. For Tsuki, Tomoe and the captives in the lodge, it was not.

The bakemono had stepped out of his mud lodge, appearing not too upset that his oni-samurai were defeated or slaughtered. He bore a forked sword, a sword with two separate blades sprouting from the hilt. In the candlelight behind him, Yabushi's sister sat on her knees, bowing and praying over her dying brother.

The bakemono-with-no-tail scanned the bloodied mud and water, then laughed horrible deep laughter.

“So we meet again!” he said. “You do remember me, samurai?” He turned his naked butt to her, and slapped his own behind, both to insult her and to remind her of her deed.

Tomoe Gozen answered from afar, “I had forgotten you before, but now I remember.” The veil cast on her memory began to dissolve like mist. “You cursed me more than a year ago, and thereby bound our fates together. Yabushi lies in your lodge dying of kappa-fever, for you said I must lose a friend as you had lost a dinner. And when you and I engage in battle, you will probably leave a scar upon my face, using your two-pronged sword. For that too was in your curse. I might have been afraid one time, but no more. Samurai are aware that our friends, and ourselves, will be killed and scarred. It is part of the Way of the Warrior. That being so, your curse was foolish after all. In the end, you have only guaranteed that I kill you.”

Bakemono are instinctively cowardly, which was partly why this one never came out to join the battle. But he did have the sword, rumored to be magical, and apparently the rumor was true if it helped him contain seven oni from the mountains. He cried almost hysterically that, “The gods who heed curses did not figure this!” he shook his magic sword, its two blades humming as he did. “With this, I cannot be defeated!” His crooked mouth approximated a smile.

Tomoe was about to say that, perhaps, the gods figured the sword quite well. But the first ray of sun seeped into the marsh, and Tomoe Gozen awoke with her head in Tsuki Izutsu's lap. She opened her eyes. Tsuki was already awake, smiling down at Tomoe, stroking the samurai's face and hair.

“You had a dream?” asked Tsuki.

Tomoe sat up, looked around for the old woman who was nowhere in the shrine's small temple. Sunlight angled in from outside.

“I did!” she answered. “We must find the place again!”

Samurai and strolling nun searched the swamp a long time, sometimes swimming where the water was deep. They had grown used to the foul wetness and the eerie trees and small animals, and were unafraid. But they searched a place labyrinthine and huge, a frustrating task. Real as their dream had seemed, real as it must have been, there was yet no recollection of a single proper direction or landmark.

When Amaterasu was high in heaven, Tsuki cried out, “There! That dry hump of ground! That is where we saw Great Lord Walks and his retainers!”

Tomoe looked hard. “But there is no mansion.”

“I recognize it anyway,” said Tsuki. “It is the one place in these wetlands seen by Buddha. I know it.”

There was no sign of a gate, not even a flake of rust where it had been. They could see no walkway of stone and wood. A single post was discovered amongst the weeds, set there long ago perhaps to hold a garden's lantern; but of the garden itself there was no remnant; of the mansion, no sign.

On the highest part of the dry hill, under an accumulation of brush, they uncovered the entrance of a tomb: a tunnel angled downward into darkness. Outside this entrance was a wagon tongue and the broken fragment of a single wheel. Tomoe kicked amongst the rubble, and found an ancient wooden mask, its paint long worn away, the wood itself eaten in places by worms. It might have been some precursor to the masks worn in Noh dramas.

All about were the bones of horses, dead so long there remained no measure of flesh for insects to nibble.

There may once have been a wooden seal at the tomb's entrance; but if so, it had long ago been stolen, or reduced to dust. Tsuki and Tomoe entered the unblocked corridor, ducking because the ceiling was low. The way led down a steep, stone ramp and into a single large chamber. The chamber was lit by a hole in the center of the high ceiling.

In the single room, amidst the rubble of the deceased's belongings was a sarcophagus. It was carved with old symbols not used in five or six hundred years.

“Buddhism came to Naipon half a millennium past,” Tsuki said. “Great Lord Walks must have been the first to embrace the new religion.” She peered into the sarcophagus, which had no lid, and Tomoe joined her in this occupation. Therein lay only bones and dust, and one colorless scrap of linen bearing no resemblance to the great lord's colorful costume they had seen the night before. Tomoe stared at this contents a long while, but Tsuki turned away, upset. Tomoe's eyes lifted, looked into a dark corner where the narrow shaft of light from the ceiling barely touched.

“Look there,” said Tomoe, whispering, for voices were loud in the deep, small room. Tsuki followed the direction of Tomoe's hand. In the shadows away from the shaft of light were five small haniwa figurines made of clay, their mud-carved swords across their backs.

Tsuki fell upon her knees before the little statues, and lifted one gently. It had a flaw in its leg. Tomoe looked on as Tsuki Izutsu recited ancient prayers which meant nothing to Tomoe. When the nun was finished, she set the statue down and looked up with moist eyes and charged: “Your gods are cruel, Tomoe.”

“To give life to clay?” she asked softly. “They begged us not to call their final night a dream, for their lives were more than that. They were glad of their life, which would not exist but for Shinto magic. If the gods of Shinto are cruel, then stomp those fragile figurines into dust! Then, come the next festival of Great Lord Walks, the first native Buddhist of Naipon will awaken alone, and have nothing to send the peasants he assuredly loved. The gods are unfathomable. But cruel? We cannot judge them.”

The faintest laughter responded to Tomoe's words, and it was not the laughter of samurai or nun. The sound came from above, and the two women looked up to see a third woman: the beautiful kami spirit, peering down the light-hole into the tomb. She was only there a moment, then went away.

Although Tomoe and Tsuki hurried out of the tomb, they could not see the direction taken by the kami spirit. Tsuki said, “I think that the kami is one-and-the-same with the old woman. Do you remember the story of Izanami told us before we slept? Young by day and old by night …”

“We will pretend not to see her if she comes again,” Tomoe suggested. “We must find the bakemono's lodge, and not be diverted. In the dream—if dream it can properly be called—I think we started off that direction from this hill.” She pointed, started forward. Tsuki followed Tomoe back into the mire.

The marsh was more tangible than it had seemed during the dream, and far less fearful by day than night. Still Tomoe entertained doubtful thoughts, remembering a saying: that those who have commerce with the dead (as she and Tsuki had with the unnamed great lord) soon join them properly. She wondered if the goddess Izanami came to protect or confound. The dream of the night before could have been conceived a gift, as its weaving spilled into reality of a wakeful sort and wrought defeat for the oni devils. Izanami was an ambiguous deity to be sure, more so than others, who all appeared devious to mortal vision. As overseer of love as well as death, Izanami was at once sought and feared, and in every case, required. On whim, Tomoe spun around and shouted over the wetlands: “Izanami! Because we love him and he is so young, do not let Little Bushi die!”