Year of the Demon (57 page)

“I’m glad to see there’s something left of you to see,” said Katsushima. “But talk later. We’ve work to do yet.”

He nodded toward the gate, where the surviving Toyotomi swordsmen had formed a line to deny access to the keep. Heedless of the dead, deaf to the moans and cries of the wounded, they stared Daigoro down with grim determination.

Determined or not, footmen were no match for Glorious Victory Unsought. She was a cavalry sword, at her deadliest when she struck with the weight of a warhorse behind her. Katsushima charged the line. Daigoro, effectively a human outrigger, stretched Glorious Victory out long. Inazuma steel mowed down the right flank. Katsushima claimed one on the left. Their horse crushed two in the center.

Then the blood work was done. Daigoro would not honor the wounded with a clean death. Any man who bowed to a lickspittle like Shichio wasn’t worthy of such a gift. Moreover, Daigoro didn’t want killing them to burden his conscience. He hadn’t asked for this fight. Had their positions been reversed, Daigoro would never have resorted to using Shichio’s family allies as playing pieces in their private war. He chose to let his defeated foes explain why they still lived, and let Shichio bear the burden of sending them on to join their ancestors.

Daigoro limped across the courtyard, leaving a bloody footprint wherever his right foot touched the gravel. The Yasuda soldiers watched him in wonderment. Their spears still jutted out like quills from the doorway to their master’s bedchamber, as if they hadn’t yet realized the fighting was over. Daigoro looked down at his blood-spattered
hakama
and
haori
, then at their spotless moss green garb. He felt absurd: these ranks of older, wiser men gaped at him like he was a battle-hardened veteran—a veteran still months away from his seventeenth birthday.

He’d forgotten he was still wearing Toyotomi colors—what was left of them, anyway. He’d also forgotten that he was armored; only the sight of an arrow recalled it to mind. The arrow looked like it was sticking out of his gut, but in truth it had only caught in his
haori
after shattering against his Sora breastplate. He remembered first donning the armor on the banks of the Kamo not so long ago, remembered how heavy it had felt then, how awkward, how alien. Now he wore it like his own skin.

By the time he reached the stable to fetch tack and harness, the
shinobi
had reappeared beside him, noiselessly as always. Swords had sliced his clothing in a hundred places. He bled from his face, his forearms, his shoulders, his shins, but most of the blood on his tattered clothes was not his own. He gave Daigoro a silent, approving nod.

Halfway back to the horses still tied to the gates, Daigoro’s throbbing hands prompted him to wonder why he hadn’t walked the horse to the saddle instead of lugging the saddle to the horse. His mind was as exhausted as his body; his thoughts plodded along as if wading against an undertow.

“Who’s your friend?” Katsushima asked when Daigoro reached his mare.

“He is of the Wind,” Daigoro said, laughing weakly. “The Wind is without name.”

Katsushima’s eyes narrowed, and the smile of a proud father played at the corners of his mouth. “You found them.”

“I did.”

Katsushima looked at the
shinobi
with new eyes. “Whatever your name is, Wind-sama, I thank you for saving my good friend’s life.”

The ninja’s only response was to grunt as he heaved his saddle up over his saddle blanket. If Daigoro hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn his
shinobi
was actually fatigued.

“How did you find me?” Daigoro asked.

“I was on my way to your family’s place when I heard the commotion,” Katsushima said. I never expected to find
you
here. I thought I had a few days’ lead on you on the Tokaido.”

“We came by ship.”

“Did you?” Katsushima whistled. “You weathered an unholy bitch of a storm.”

“A Toyotomi blockade too. Shichio’s men are watching every last pebble of coastline.”

“Then we’re apt to find many more of them when we reach your mother’s house.”

Daigoro gave him a long, studious look. His friend looked back down at him, red spatter dotting his woolly sideburns. An hour’s conversation passed between them in that single glance. Then Daigoro made a final adjustment to the girth, and with energy reserves he didn’t even know he had, he stepped up into the saddle.

Katsushima had to dismount to lash Daigoro’s right leg in place, and even then Daigoro felt on the verge of sliding off his horse. His own saddle, the precious one Old Yagyu had fashioned for him, was many
ri
behind him. Sitting in an ordinary saddle, the weight of Daigoro’s left leg threatened to drag him down and his right leg wasn’t strong enough to counteract it. He could only stay ahorse by balancing there, the muscles of his belly, chest, and back shifting constantly, as if he were an acrobat on the tip of a pole. It was exhausting even when his horse was standing still, and impossible at a full gallop.

It was necessary, then, that Katsushima lash down his right leg. Nevertheless, Daigoro could not help thinking that usually it was the injured and dying who were tied into the saddle. When at last they set out on the road, his coal black mare shied from the twitching of pained, bloodied men, nearly throwing him. Only by gripping the saddlehorn with both hands did he manage to stay mounted.

But soon the miasma of battle was behind them and Daigoro could settle into a rhythm. “If I didn’t know better,” Katsushima told him, “I’d swear you just stole a horse.”

“Lord Yasuda knows I’m good for it,” Daigoro said defensively, realizing only too late that his friend was kidding him. “I apologize, Goemon. I’m too tired to think. Why did you ever come back? Why do you want to have anything to do with me?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I can’t even imagine.”

Katsushima’s wry smirk faded away. “How did we meet?”

“You dueled my brother.”

“And then?”

“You dueled me.”

“Almost,” said Katsushima. “We had tea first. Then dinner. Then we talked all night, at your insistence. ‘I want to discuss swordsmanship with you, and
bushido
as well.’ That’s what you said.”

Daigoro nodded. Even through the haze of fatigue, he could recall Katsushima’s response:
I expect we have much to learn from each other.

“So let’s discuss,” Katsushima said. “
Bushido
demands that you fight even against impossible odds,
neh
?”

Daigoro nodded.

“To describe your odds of besting Shichio as ‘impossible’ seems blithely optimistic to me. Would you agree?”

Daigoro nodded. It was easier than talking; the jostling of his saddle did most of the work.

“So why not give up
bushido
? Following it is certain to kill you. You gave up your name. It only makes sense to free yourself of the rest.”

Daigoro nodded again—due more to the rocking motion of his horse than to his own agreement. But Katsushima wasn’t wrong either. Not entirely.

“A
ronin
keeps his swords and throws the rest aside,” Katsushima said. “Duty, family, lord, name, honor; they’re shackles. All you have to do is give up the shackles and you’ll be free.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not? You’ve already given up the ones you value most.”

“Yes,” Daigoro said. “I’ve surrendered my family and with them my name. I have no other lord—save Izu herself, perhaps, but without my title I’ve abandoned her too. With every sacrifice I feel I’ve done what honor demands, but my only reward is to be hunted like a traitor and a criminal. There’s no honor in that. I have no honor left.”

“Then what else remains?”

“Duty.”

“To whom?”

“To my father’s memory. To what little sense of family I still have left. To
bushido
itself.”

“Your father’s gone, Daigoro. When you gave up your name you gave up your family too. Why not shed the last of your shackles?”

It sounded so inviting. Done properly, it might even end the feud with Shichio. He could give up being samurai. Put down the burden of his father’s sword. Make an obsequious and public apology. Cut off his topknot and go home unmolested. Comfort his mother. Share Akiko’s bed. Be there for the birth of his child.

He could have had everything he wanted, and all he had to do was betray his code. “I can’t,” he said, near to tears. “I can’t give up duty. I don’t know how.”

“That is why I follow you.”

58

T
here was no shore party to greet him when Shichio made his landing at the Okuma jetty. In any other circumstances, failure to send an honor guard for the great Toyotomi no Hideyoshi might have got a daimyo and his family crucified. (Though not a convert to the southern barbarians’ religion, Hashiba found their religion’s obsession with crucifixion quite exotic. It had become his favorite method of execution.) But today the Okuma clan would receive a pardon, not because their honored guests had come unannounced—they should have seen Hashiba’s flagship from ten
ri
away—but because it was Shichio’s wedding day, and that had the regent feeling jovial.

The bile rose in Shichio’s throat when he remembered his last visit to this wretched place. He’d left the Okuma compound in disgrace, no thanks to that giant pig Mio. Shichio would have thought the fat man’s precious
bushido
code would have forbidden throwing a fight to a cripple.

Shichio supposed he owed the fat man a debt of gratitude. If it weren’t for his superhuman endurance—if he hadn’t survived long enough to reveal Shichio’s designs for marriage—the Bear Cub might never have approached the Wind, and then Shichio’s informant could never have betrayed the boy. He knew now that his assassin had failed; the absence of a second communiqué proved the first message was false. But it was enough just to learn that the boy had made contact with the Wind. Shichio had stepped up his wedding plans, while the Bear Cub must surely have gone to ground. That typhoon had forced even Hashiba’s flagship into port. No cripple could withstand it.

Shichio touched his hair, which was behaving peevishly in this all-pervading heat. He stepped out of the launch to walk side by side with Hashiba down the jetty toward the palanquin. Once inside, he carefully brushed all the sand from his fine silk stockings and smooth wooden sandals. There was little sand on the jetty to begin with, but Shichio would abide no imperfections on this perfect day.

As his palanquin rocked side to side with the footsteps of the bearers, Shichio looked out at the emerald tangle of kudzu strangling the black rocks. He wondered how long it would take him after the wedding to sell his new holdings and buy an estate in the Kansai. Only barbarians could make a permanent home in Izu. The humidity alone was reason enough to leave and never come back.

“What have you got in that scarf of yours?” Hashiba said, nodding at the little parcel Shichio unconsciously worked in his hands. It was wrapped in the finest Chinese silk, which did little to soften its horns, its teeth, its furrowed brow. Hashiba squinted at it, then laughed. “Well, I’m damned if I know what to get you for a wedding present. You name a gift that tops that mask and I’ll buy it.”

Shichio felt himself wince and quickly converted it into a coy smile. He couldn’t let Hashiba see how he’d come to fear the mask, and yet he hadn’t been able to leave the mask in their cabin, either. He wished he had. So long as they were behind closed doors, it was enough to let Hashiba ravage him. It wasn’t hard to tempt him into being a little rough. The mask would not be sated, but it could be distracted.

Shichio had wrapped it up in the hope that he could satisfy his unconscious need to hold it while avoiding the touch of its iron skin. He envied the mask; even in this heat, it would never sweat. He wanted nothing more than to disrobe it, to press its cool cheek against his own, but that was out of the question. This was no time to compromise self-control. He had a madwoman to bring to heel.

Seeing Hashiba’s expectant look, he said, “Gifts be damned. And let the wedding and the wife be damned too. Once I have her name, my mask and I come back home to serve their rightful lord.”

“Already thinking like a trueborn samurai,” Hashiba said with a wink. He smiled his impish, simian smile.

The palanquin’s woven bamboo window screens were no proof against the sweat-stink of the bearers, who grunted in time with each other as they plodded up the cliffside trail. “These commoners smell like animals,” Shichio said, grimacing. A tiny part of his mind insisted that the bearers’ parents probably worked a farm no different from the one Shichio had grown up on, but he would not dwell on that. Soon enough he would have rank, name, station, and esteem. He would be above the commoners for ever after.

At last the countless switchbacks took him to the top of the cliff trail, and through the window screen he could see the high white wall of the Okuma compound on his right. Soon to be
my
compound, he thought—very soon, in fact. That fact hung over him like the rain clouds he’d endured the day before, and so it was especially irksome to hear a runner coming from somewhere ahead. The man stopped to kneel beside the palanquin, panting like a horse. Delay after delay; it was the only way the lower classes could exert power over their betters.

Shichio slammed the sliding door aside and looked down upon the messenger kneeling in the weeds. “What do you think you’re doing, stopping your lord on the way to his wedding?”

The man bowed deeper. “General, your orders were to deliver any news of the Bear Cub, day or night.”

The Bear Cub? How could any word of him have reached Izu already? Shichio’s fleet had been the first to set sail after that storm, and it should have swept up all other ships in its net. No horseman could have outrun them.

He looked down at the mute messenger. “Well? Spit it out, boy.”

“My lord, the Bear Cub stormed the Yasuda compound last night. We lost fifty men.”

“
Fifty?
”