Child of Vengeance Page 17

  “You will keep a civil tongue in your head, and I am warning you if you so much as look at my Lord Shinmen in the wrong way …” the man said.

  “I won’t attack your lord if he doesn’t attack me first. Let’s get this done with,” said Munisai.

  He surrendered his longsword, but custom permitted him to keep the short one at his side. The elder samurai looked at that warily as he made a coded knock upon the door, waited for the several locks to be undone, and then gestured for Munisai to follow him in.

  It was a small, plain hall, a cursory potted tree in one corner and the walls bare wood, but there were at least twenty samurai crammed into it. They sat in tight rank, glaring at Munisai as he entered. The lord upon the dais took his attention, for it was not the Shinmen he was expecting.

  The old lord had been—well—old, and so he must have died while Munisai had been gone. This new, younger one watched Munisai with interest as he made his way through the narrow space and sat himself down in the center of the room. The gathered samurai made a pantomime of disgust at Munisai’s appearance, but Lord Shinmen’s face was inquisitive, and he rubbed his chin as he looked Munisai over.

  “They say after decades of practice some great masters of ki can summon their energies from within and strike a man a deathblow using only their will before he has even had a chance to draw his sword. But you, Munisai Hirata,” said the lord, in a tone so grave it was practically subterranean, “you, I suspect, strike a deathblow to the nose before the man has even had a chance to see you.”

  “What do you want?” asked Munisai gruffly, angered by the playful twinkle that had jumped into Shinmen’s eyes.

  “Show respect!” snapped the white-haired samurai, who had settled cross-legged on Lord Shinmen’s right. He slapped his hand down on the floor for emphasis, and it echoed around the room.

  “I want to know why you have shirked your duty to me, Hirata,” said the lord smoothly, holding Munisai’s gaze. “I want to know why the first I hear of you in years is when you materialize at this tournament. You are sworn to me, are you not?”

  “I am no man’s vassal,” said Munisai.

  “But Miyamoto falls within my lands, does it not?”

  “I am no man’s vassal,” repeated Munisai, flatly. His tone seemed to goad Shinmen into probing further.

  “Your family has been sworn to govern Miyamoto village for decades now, a village within my domain, and so it holds that you by your very blood serve the Shinmen clan, does it not?” the lord asked. Munisai glared at the floor, unsettled and irritated.

  “That may have been true once. But now things are different. The Hirata serve no one any longer. I am the last of them, and if this is all you had to say, I am going to go now,” he said slowly and definitely, and made to rise.

  “You will leave when you are dismissed!” snapped the man by Shinmen’s side, and once more he struck the floor.

  “Have you any idea how annoying that is?” growled Munisai, lips still loosened by alcohol and unable to keep it from slipping out. There was a threat in his voice, and so the samurai behind him leapt to their feet and made to draw their swords with cries of outrage. Munisai had barely gotten off the floor—he had grossly misjudged how drunk he was and found his legs sluggish and unsteady—when Lord Shinmen’s voice rose above the others.

  “Hold!” he barked. “All of you, hold!”

  The samurai obeyed, barely. Munisai faced them warily. He saw just how badly outnumbered he was, and his mind raced for any kind of solution, any form of escape.

  “Lord Shinmen, why order us to hold? Let us put an end to this farce,” said the elder samurai. “The other lords will thank us. We’ll save them the embarrassment of this savage wretch even having a chance of winning the tournament.”

  “That, or we could raise the wretch higher,” said Shinmen calmly.

  “What do you mean?” asked Munisai, his back to the lord. His eyes were darting from samurai to samurai, trying to guess which one would strike first, which one had the strongest bloodlust in his eyes.

  “Would you walk with me, Hirata? I promise there will be no tricks, no poison blade waiting for you,” said Shinmen.

  “Lord!” hissed the commander, “I have endured your scheme thus far, but surely even you can see the folly of it now? How could you hope to reason with this animal?”

  “Hold your tongue, and stay back,” said Shinmen with a dismissive gesture.

  Munisai risked a quick glance backward. Shinmen merely nodded and beckoned a hand toward the paper screen door at the back of the room. It was a strange, bold move for a lord to invite anyone to be alone with him, let alone a potential enemy, and the curiosity this aroused in Munisai moved him to raise himself slowly out of his fighting crouch.

  The gathered samurai watched him cautiously as he slowly took one reverse step after another into the room beyond the hall, refusing them the chance to strike him from behind. Shinmen slid the door closed, and then they were gone from his sight. The lord nodded to an even smaller door leading outside, and together they walked.

  They passed from the orange of lanterns into the blue of the night, up onto the battlements of the castle that overlooked the city, lights glimmering before them and the murmur of a hundred thousand voices on the breeze. Shinmen leaned his elbows upon the parapet and took it all in. Guardedly, Munisai moved to stand beside him. The air was cool and refreshing, and he found his mind began to function on more than base, hostile thoughts. He waited in silence for Shinmen to speak.

  “I apologize for my commander,” said Shinmen after a moment, eyes not leaving the nightscape. “He is diligent, but there is diligence and then there is zealousness, I suppose. But it doesn’t matter: he doesn’t trust me. He thinks me ‘unpredictable.’ So he’ll be gone soon. It’s being seen to. We must stand as one in this clan, or we shall not stand at all.

  “In any case, I will soon be in need of another in his role,” he said, and he turned to look at Munisai then, eyes giving a wordless proposal. Munisai looked away, more out of shock than anything.

  “I am not a commander,” he said.

  “Your father was,” said Shinmen, returning his gaze to Osaka. His voice became warm and wistful with memory. “Shogen Hirata. Now there was a samurai. Did you know he was the only man my father permitted to touch me when I was growing up? He certainly loved to prove the point. He knocked two of my milk teeth out once; cracked me across the face with a spear butt because I’d been in the paddocks startling the horses. He scared me, but I grew to respect him. I’d see the way he protected my father, or the way he’d organize things, and I’d just … know that things were safe, that they were under control. Do you understand? It’s hard to explain.

  “I was there the day he died. I wasn’t sad, but I wasn’t happy … I don’t know if melancholy is the right word. I … It was a good death. If I had a choice I would hope to die like it one day, not lingering and sick and just waiting in bed for my soul to flutter out like my father did. No, your father … Do you know how he died?”

  “Why are you telling me this?” said Munisai uncomfortably. Of course he had heard the story, but like most of his past life he had tried to numb its memory and consign it to oblivion. Yet he said nothing as Shinmen carried on speaking.

  “It was a battlefield like any other, I suppose. It wasn’t my first battle, but it must have been early, because I remember my face was burning with spots. I was excited, though. I had a new horse, a man’s horse, and I wanted to see how fast it could run. Of course, then the killing began and I started feeling sick and scared. Bodies everywhere, men screaming, the stink of blood and fear, you know … It’s funny how we get used to it, isn’t it? How we lose that common sense.

  “Anyway, your father sees me going green, and he rides over and slaps me around the head, and tells me to pull myself together. Yelling at me about composure of a lord in public, to pull my armor tighter, not to jerk the reins of my horse so hard … It’s all good advice, but it’s
going in one ear and out the other, and then the arrows came.

  “Archers on the battlefield loose their arrows high and arcing into one great cloud, and people say you can hear them whipping and cracking through the air as they come, but that’s not true. You catch a glimpse of movement in the sky, and your first instinct is that it’s just a flock of birds. But then your eye can’t ignore this flock of birds that is getting larger and larger, and then you realize it’s heading right for you. And then they drop down among you—into you.

  “Your father leapt on top of me, pushed me from my saddle, and shielded me with his body until the last had fallen. He made no sound, but when he let me up I could see them sticking out of him. That was the first time I realized how big war arrows really are, the length of your arm with that big heavy blade to punch through armor—they seem a lot smaller notched on a bowstring. But your father’s got two in his back straight through his plate, and the one that killed him, I’m sure, that had snuck under the lip of his chest piece and down into him. Into his lungs, maybe, or lower. The shaft is barely visible; it’s deep down into him wherever it went. He doesn’t make a sound, just looks me up and down as we get to our feet. He sees I’m fine, and then he hops back on his horse and signals the attack on the archers who fired on us.

  “We win the battle, and hours later he’s still in the saddle. He’s bound the sword into his hand so it wouldn’t fall. He’s gone gray and cold, but his eyes are still open, still fierce. The arrows are still sticking out of him, but no one wants to touch him because it’s perfect. Soundless, loyal, on the battlefield. The immaculate death for a samurai. People kneel to him. Kneel to his memory. Shogen Hirata …

  “He was samurai, yes. And to think, thanks to yourself, all the name Hirata is now known for is murder and savagery and arson. I wonder what your father would make of that? I wonder if his spirit moans in shame, wherever it is?” said Shinmen, voice suddenly cold. He looked at Munisai then, gauging his reaction.

  His eyes pierced him, and Munisai knew the lord had his measure entirely. Only one man had been able to do that before, and that was Dorinbo. There were no words he could say, for his mind was blank with shock and shame. All he could do was glare, and slowly a smile spread across Shinmen’s features.

  “He was samurai, and though you claim not to be, as much as you bark ‘I am no man’s vassal!’ … I think you are too, Munisai. Why else would you have entered the tournament? Why not have just vanished into nothing, swum out to sea, and not come back? I know that you forced your entry into this tournament with your noble Fujiwara blood. Would a man determined on nothingness so loudly proclaim that? No, you want your name to be known, you want to be recognized. You want purpose.

  “Well, I can give it to you. You are strong—fight for me. Become a samurai once more. Together we can take Japan by the throat. We are young and brave and daring, and more than that we are unpredictable! This stagnant country of old fools in silver towers is there to be taken, and we can do it! Bodies and souls, down on the battlefield; you and I, Munisai. We can do that—and restore pride to the name Hirata.”

  Fire and warmth were dancing in the lord now, and he stood face-to-face with Munisai. For his part, Munisai felt something igniting within him that he had not felt for a long time. But it was quenched by a familiar aching sense of damnation that before had driven him into great rages, but now anchored him with a terrible shame.

  “That name is too far gone to redeem,” said Munisai quietly.

  “Then take mine,” said Shinmen, and his eyes were honest.

  THE NEXT DAY, washed, shaven, and wearing a fine kimono in Shinmen’s shade of blue, Munisai had walked into the arena with a wooden sword in his hand and for the first time in years a sense of belonging and duty in his soul. The duel was over quickly; his foe overextended himself, Munisai batted his sword to one side, and then his opponent winced as he anticipated the savage blow he had seen Munisai strike in the bouts before.

  Munisai’s sword whipped around, and stopped to rest gently on the man’s neck. The man breathed out, surprised, and then the applause slowly began.

  He was samurai.

  It was all a great gamble, Munisai later learned. A neutral lord had been present at the tournament, and Shinmen hoped a victory in his name would persuade this lord of his strength and to side with him in a war he was planning. Munisai had felt a momentary sense of betrayal, a childish pique that there was no sense of destiny moving his lord’s hand, but then he considered that everything the lord said had come true. They had fought as honest samurai, and Munisai had earned the respect of men once more. Just as a perfect seppuku eradicated whatever deceit or treachery came before, what mattered was not motives but the perfect unwavering execution of an ideal.

  Even if his soul was damned, Shinmen had enabled him at least to try to atone, had given him the sense of worth he needed to be able to face Miyamoto and Bennosuke once more. If the man who had spoken to him then on the eve of that tournament was truly back, then perhaps there would be a chance.

  Now, in the household where that lord was sleeping, Munisai began to think of the future rather than the past. He stalked away to chase shadows once more until the dawn, daring to hope.

  THEY RODE EARLY next morning. Munisai insisted they fly Shinmen’s standard this time. The banner was unfurled, and then they were up the slopes of the valley and gone from Miyamoto below them. Bennosuke turned slightly in his sleep, the clattering of the hooves too distant to wake him. The boy could not help them, for what followed was politics.

  The quick pace of the ride was difficult on Munisai’s arm. Every time the beast bucked or reared it tugged the dead limb and wrenched the wound. Eventually he had to wrap a cloth around his face to hide his grimace of pain. He was sure to mutter loudly about dust getting into his mouth as he did so.

  One samurai, however, continued to look curiously at him. He was young, and turned his eyes away embarrassed every time he was caught, but still he persisted. During a short break, the two found themselves together, atop their horses as the beasts drank from the shallow stream they stood in.

  “Your arm, my lord?” he whispered.

  “What of it?” said Munisai, aggressively.

  “It … heals?” said the young man, checking over his shoulder as he asked.

  “It was never wounded. You imply that I am feeble?”

  “No, Lord, of course not,” said the samurai, flustered. “I—forgive me.”

  The samurai bowed, and kicked his horse away as slowly and politely as he could. Munisai let him cower for a few moments before he pulled the mask down and called to his back.

  “Kazuteru,” he said, and the boy turned. “You did a fine job. My thanks.”

  Pride crossed his young face for a moment, before Kazuteru remembered that a samurai should be humble. He composed himself in an instant and nodded, and then rode back to the body of the men as though he had received an order, nothing more.

  Munisai pulled his mask back into place and beneath it he smiled grimly. No need to tell the lad his work had been futile.

  Onward still, the narrow rural pathways soon changing to flat roads fifteen paces wide, as well monitored as they were traveled. They passed caravans of merchants and other bands of samurai as they headed for the city of Okayama, the site of the castle of Lord Hideie Ukita. Ukita’s domains were in the southwest of Japan, as were those of Shinmen and Nakata, and so they were sworn to him. Ukita wielded a level of power perhaps only eight other men could rival in the whole country.

  He and his clan were truly blessed, for his power was as much the result of simple good fortune as it was due to any innate scheming. From ancient times their territories had been famed for rich deposits of high-quality iron, and thus swordsmiths and forgers of armor flocked to the region. Soon, the reputation of swords made from Okayama steel soared to high renown, and with that came the samurai.

  So many warriors had come over the centuries that nobody—save for the clan’s hig
hest-ranking and most incredibly diligent accountants—was sure of the full extent of the present might of the Ukita clan. What was known was that at a whim, Ukita could summon five thousand men to die for him. With a few days’ notice, easily ten thousand. Give him a week, and double, perhaps three times that would follow him. It was a personal force that any other lord in Japan would be hard-pressed to equal.

  Indeed, it was so strong that even at twenty-four years of age, the current Lord Ukita had been judged sufficiently wizened to join the Council of the Five Elders.

  The Council was a recent but prestigious creation. The Regent Toyotomi, over sixty years old and bedridden, had long been aware of his mortality. His heir was a boy of five—being confined to a bed made certain activities easier to arrange—and Toyotomi knew that he would not see him come of age. Thus, he chose five of the most powerful men in the country to swear to raise his son to manhood, and ensure his dynasty.

  The reasoning was that the Council safeguarded the future of Japan, but the truth was they were essentially five men standing in a ring with knives at their neighbors’ throats. Toyotomi was no fool, and so he cannily chose five lords who above all hated one another. Their many enmities and grudges would prevent factions from forming, and thus one man or side from rising to steal the country from his son.

  That one man, everyone feared, was the warlord Ieyasu Tokugawa. Men called him the Patient Tiger, and he was unofficially the successor of both Toyotomi and Toyotomi’s master, the long-dead Nobunaga Oda. The three of them had fought the long and bloody campaign that had given them control of the country, and with Toyotomi fading it was the military might and cunning of Tokugawa that now shone brightest. Though he lacked the sheer numbers Ukita had, such was his tactical genius that if the Patient Tiger was inclined to make a grab for power, the outcome of the conflict would be hard to predict.

  That was entirely what the Council was there to prevent, however, and while the regent still lived it worked. Enfeebled as he was, Toyotomi still had the power to order the seppuku of any of them, even Tokugawa. All wishing to keep their guts in their rightful place, he and the elders presented an amicable front of unity, revering Toyotomi’s son. But when Toyotomi finally died and that threat was removed …