Child of Vengeance Read online

  He looked up and found it was the one-eyed man.

  “There’s enough suffering here,” the old man said quietly in explanation.

  The binds fell free eventually, the many knots taking time, but then for the first time in a day the boy could move his arms. He rubbed them, seeing the bright red lines molded into what flesh was left atop his bones.

  “Thank you,” said Bennosuke.

  The man nodded, and sat back stiffly. The other bandits lay where they had been, some sleeping and some simply staring up at nothing. From outside, the wailing of the tortured persisted even now, but raw agony had been replaced with a pitiable emptiness. It was a haunting sound, a dying sound, but the stillness of the night was strangely calming.

  “What’s your name?” the old peasant asked, keeping his voice low.

  “Bennosuke,” said the boy. “Yours?”

  “Shuntaro,” he said. The weak flame of the lantern lit up the ridges of his face. His eye had been gone for some time, the remaining lid withered into a vestige, but it was weeping from the beating he must have sustained in his capture. “How’d you end up in here, Bennosuke? You say something out of turn to your master?”

  “Theft,” said the boy.

  “What did you steal?”

  “A horse.”

  “Why’s a samurai stealing horses?”

  “I needed one,” said Bennosuke. It sounded pathetic, but he did not want to reveal much.

  “Well, you fouled that right up,” said Shuntaro. “I thought samurai were supposed to die rather than let themselves be captured, anyway.”

  “I didn’t have the chance,” said the boy hotly.

  “I wasn’t judging,” said the man. “And you’ll have plenty of time to die tomorrow, in any case. After us.”

  “You’re all together?” asked the boy, and Shuntaro nodded. “The samurai outside said you were bandits.”

  “He’s right—we’re a notorious crew of demons sent from the pits of hell to plunder and kill. Look at us and tremble,” said Shuntaro. Their hostility gone now, in the darkness Bennosuke saw a group of bedraggled men as wretched as he was. He looked back at the old man, and mirth leapt into the one eye he had. “That, or we were hungry.”

  “You stole to feed yourselves?”

  “Perhaps. I was the head of a village. Taxes and tithes were too high, because of war. War, war, war, always a war, whether in the east or the west or the north or the south. ‘Don’t worry yourself over it,’ the tax collectors said to me. ‘War’s the sole concern of samurai!’ I said. ‘It’s the game of samurai—it’s the concern of everyone,’ ” Shuntaro said, and his face contorted in disgust. “They think they’re the only ones who suffer, because they do the fighting. But who pays for it? We do. The peasants—down to the last grain of rice. They’d take it out of the mouths of our children just to give some archer an ounce more strength to fire one more meaningless arrow in the name of some fool I’ll never see perched on an ivory saddle.”

  He realized how vitriolic his voice had become, and he took a few moments to calm himself before he spoke levelly once more. “Anyway, that was all a few years ago. You know what happens to those who don’t pay their tithe, and, well … Eventually, here we all are. You know, I’ll welcome it almost … Once it’s all done, I fancy I’ll come back as an owl. Free and alone in the quiet of the night. Sounds wonderful.”

  “Aren’t you going to escape?” said the boy. The man considered it, shrugged.

  “Probably,” he said, dabbing at his weeping socket absently. “It’s quite the trick, though. You saw the samurai outside, right? They’re the problem. The guards here, bloody corpsehandlers, we could maybe take them if it was just them—but the band of samurai took us when we were free and armed. There’s no way we can fight our way out now.”

  “What about my swords?”

  “There’s a score of them out there,” snorted Shuntaro. “No man’ll ever take on twenty samurai with a pair of swords and win.”

  “But—”

  “No. Anyway,” the man said dismissively, “the cage is the problem. It’s only wood, and we could bash our way free if we had time, perhaps. But the noise would attract the samurai, and then they’d run in and stick us with spears. We need the key for that lock on the gate, and then to escape without being seen.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I have a plan for the samurai, at least. The good men of the law who hunted us down will make a visit tomorrow, expecting to see us killed. They’ll want to see us here, caged, taunt us probably, and then I’ll act.”

  “Can I help?” Bennosuke said. “I can’t die here.”

  “No, only I can do this,” he said. “It’s only right for me to do this. When it’s done, though, I won’t be in any position to stop you escaping too. No one deserves to be crucified … Well, not over a horse.”

  “Thank you,” said the boy.

  “Now you have to put the ropes back on,” said Shuntaro. “If the guards see you free they’ll be suspicious. I’ll do it loosely, though. You won’t really be tied up. That all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” The old man sighed, and it seemed he was speaking to himself as he began to loosely loop the rope around the boy’s torso once more. “Life is all a deception, lad, never let anyone know the true state of things around you. Then you’ll have the surprise over them.”

  When the work was done, Shuntaro shuffled back to nestle among his men and closed his eye. Bennosuke watched him as he slept. The man’s empty eye socket lingered half open like half the face of death; a skeletal sentinel taking in all in its blackness. The lanterns flickered, and outside the screaming and the night went on.

  WITH THE LIGHT of dawn, Bennosuke found that the sense of dread had left him. He was not safe, he knew that, but he had a chance. That was more than he had had yesterday, and the simple hope of having an avenue of escape—more than that, of being able to influence his own fate—was soothing.

  Shuntaro and his men continued to sit huddled together as morning came around them. Some were awake and some slept. They gave no greeting to Bennosuke when he rose, as tense as he was. Perhaps the old man had not told them what he planned either. They waited, motes of dust hanging in the light all around them. The screaming had ended, Bennosuke realized, to be replaced by birdsong. Not the braying of carrion birds, but the lilt of gentle summer creatures unable to understand what men were doing to one another so close by.

  But there was no need for carrion birds when samurai were here, and when they came they came as crows; a murder of them marching quickly, their feet passing in front of the low window. The door was thrown open, and they stalked down into the jail. A half dozen of them scoured the room for danger, checking that the gate remained locked and that the prisoners were all accounted for. One came across Bennosuke’s swords. He poked them with his toe, and then gave a disgusted glance at the boy where he had shuffled apart from the bandits.

  “The most honorable Marshal Fushimi approaches,” barked one, and then he and his men moved to the sides of the room and stood to rigid attention.

  There were more samurai crowding the mouth of the stairway, and they made way to allow Fushimi to come down into the jail, the stairs rattling under his riding greaves. He was a tough-looking man with a cloth clutched across his mouth, his eyes pinched in revulsion and anger. To be among an enclave of the corpsehandlers disgusted him, but he would endure.

  His expression did not change as he came to stand before the cage and looked across the bandits. It reminded Bennosuke of the way the peasants used to look at him in Miyamoto. When the marshal caught sight of Shuntaro, however, his eyes lit up.

  “Ah,” he said, from behind the cloth, “this must be the Yamawaro of the Red Hills.”

  “Sir Fushimi,” said Shuntaro plainly, and ducked his head in a bow. A yamawaro was a mythical, one-eyed mountain ogre, a filthy, rag-clad beast that delighted in evil mischief. The men around him glowered.
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  “You know manners?” asked Fushimi.

  “I know manners, sir,” said Shuntaro.

  “Then you will come and kneel before me as I pass judgment upon you,” said the marshal, and pointed at the ground. Without a word, Shuntaro obeyed. His men parted, and then he knelt in the formal way and kept his eye on the ground.

  “I name thee a canker,” said Fushimi after a considered pause. “A troublesome disease of which we have at last cured ourselves. Theft and murder and arson … All manner of havoc and mayhem you have created. You are responsible for the massacre at Takasago village—”

  “I contest that, sir.”

  “You were identified by the survivors.”

  “I was there, sir, I do not deny that. I contest that it is named ‘massacre.’ It was a battle between armed men, and we won.”

  “It will be recorded in history as a massacre, and remembered as such.”

  “That I cannot contest, sir,” said Shuntaro meekly.

  All that separated the two men were the bars of the cage, spaced widely enough for an arm to fit through. Bennosuke watched the old bandit’s hands, seeing if he had a blade concealed, or was preparing some form of attack. But they were empty, fists not even clutched in anger. He had the stillness and pose of a man at worship. Fushimi seemed puzzled, or at least surprised by this too. He looked at Shuntaro for a while before he spoke again.

  “ ‘The Yamawaro of the Red Hills,’ ” said the marshal eventually, lingering over the words. “Do you know your infamy? That started as a sobriquet alone, but now some people actually believe you live in the rock of the mountain itself as a spirit and emerge to steal children away at night. For a while I feared that might be true. I chased your shadow for so long, I began to doubt there was a body attached to it. But now here the flesh is before me, finally beaten. Just a man after all.”

  “That I am, sir,” said Shuntaro. “As are we all.”

  “No. We share a like body, you and I, but our souls our different.”

  “How, sir? I see the sky and feel the wind the same way as you.”

  “There are many reasons, but the simplest and most profound is that you are afraid of that which you face today,” said Fushimi. “You are afraid of death.”

  “Are you not, sir?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever faced it?”

  “Every time I have drawn my blade,” said the marshal, and banged his fist against the weapons at his side.

  “That is mortal risk. That is different,” said Shuntaro. “Have you ever held a baby as its body withers to nothing, for the breast it feeds upon has run dry with the starving of the mother? That is death.”

  “How very vivid,” said Fushimi. “But the breasts my children suckle from will run full and ripe and young until the sky falls, while you—you are all to be speared like rabid dogs before the sun is down.”

  “Might I plead clemency, sir? For my men?” asked Shuntaro.

  “Of course you may not.”

  “I do not know all the ways of the civilized, sir,” said the old bandit, and such was the careful poise of his tone that Fushimi allowed him to speak. “But surely in all the history of war there must be some case of a surrendered army being spared by the sacrifice of the general?”

  “A civilized surrender is seppuku, from the highest lord to the lowest soldier. Any who choose to remain alive after the shame of defeat excuse themselves from the ranks of the civilized, and are to be treated thusly,” said Fushimi, and as Shuntaro began to speak again the marshal cut him off curtly. “I am no wrangler of law, merely a giver of it. You are all to die.”

  At that Shuntaro’s body sagged, his head falling low enough that his brow touched the earth. Fushimi’s eyes changed. They did not gleam in vicious, sneering triumph, but there was vindication there, a reaffirmation that behind the clouds the sky was still blue.

  “See—your heart quails,” he said.

  “I am disappointed, not afraid, sir,” said Shuntaro.

  “The spirit of a man like you does not come back, you know, not even as a beast or a rock. You face the damnation of the myriad hells. Does that not scare you?”

  “I am unafraid, sir,” said Shuntaro, “because I know that when I get to whichever particular hell I go to, I shall have the pleasure of sinking my hand up to the wrist in your mother’s waiting cunt.”

  Shuntaro looked up then, met the marshal’s gaze, and as he held those two narrow, cold eyes with his one, he hooked a finger into his empty eye socket, snapped his wrist in a flick, and then gobs of coagulated blood and pus and whatever other murk lingers on the inside of men spattered across the front of the marshal.

  “Spear me like a dog, will you? You think I’m afraid of that? I’ve already been speared,” spat Shuntaro, and he pulled his jerkin open to reveal a twisted patch of scar across the side of his stomach. “I’m afraid of nothing you could possibly do to me. Crucify me. Cut me to pieces. Bring all your men, and I will teach you like the children you are. I will show you how to die, I will show you my body and my soul and whatever else you want to see, and then my ghost will come back to make whores of your daughters.”

  Fushimi had made only the slightest of flinches as the filth had landed on him, the hand holding the cloth to his face dropping in stunned disbelief. But as Shuntaro had continued the skin upon his face had pulled back into ridges of complete and utter fury, his lips curling into a snarl until his teeth seemed fanged and his face looked like some carved wooden theater mask of a devil.

  “Find a cauldron,” the marshal barely managed to breathe. “Find oil.”

  He did not remain with them. Fushimi stalked up the stairs, his whole body taut with rage. The other samurai, shock and anger on their faces, followed their master outside and shut the door behind them.

  Alone once more, Shuntaro had a strange look on his face. All in the cage looked at him. The old man breathed out through his nose.

  “Well, it’s done,” he said, and smiled wanly. “My plan.”

  It broke the spell. The other bandits realized that what had just happened had actually happened, and so they swarmed Shuntaro, surrounded him, bludgeoned him with questions and anger and disbelief. The old man weathered it like stone.

  “Why?” said one with tears in his eyes, and it was he who drew a response from Shuntaro, the man looking at him for a moment with what seemed like shame across his face. “That’s not a plan—what are you doing?”

  “My son, surely you of all people understand …” he said to the younger man, but then he stopped, composed himself, and spoke to all of them. “No. Listen to me. You are all of you as my sons.

  “For years you have followed me without complaint, even though it was my choice that started all this. You have shown me loyalty, and all the best in men, and in this life I cannot repay you for all that that means to me. This is … I’ve distracted them for you. They’ll all be watching me now for however long it takes, which means that you can escape. You’ll have to figure out how to get out of the cage, but I know you can. And then just run. Forget about me, just go and run and run until you feel that you are safe. Find a new home. Have sons and daughters and live. Do you understand?”

  “No, Shuntaro, we can’t leave you,” said one, the voice of them all.

  “You must,” said the old man.

  “They’re going to butcher you.”

  “I know that.”

  “We can’t—”

  “It is too late to change it now,” said Shuntaro. “This is the way of the world. I have nothing more to give to it, and so it is my time to go. Do not fail me. Get out of this cage, and leave me to die.”

  Though his voice had quavered, he alone had kept dry eyes. But he had reopened a wound when he had dug into his socket earlier, and so now a rivulet of blood was trickling down his cheek. It gave him a strange symmetry with his men, who were all either blinking back tears or openly weeping.

  It all seemed so alien upon men so hard. Bennosuke watc
hed them as they severed a bond the boy had never known.

  IN A CHARNEL hamlet, where the corpses of animals were rendered down to make leather or glue or plectrums of bone that would someday strum delicate melodies upon silk strings in fine halls, and where the crematory pyres stopped only for the severest of weather, a cauldron and oil were not hard to find. They soon came back for Shuntaro.

  It was all done in silence. The door opened, and two samurai came down and opened the gate. Shuntaro was kneeling, waiting, and he crawled out and rose to his feet of his own volition. Not one of his men moved. Their eyes were rimmed red, staring hatred at the two men who tied their leader up and then led him up the stairs. Shuntaro did not look back, and then they were gone.

  The boy found himself wondering what Shuntaro had really intended. Had he expected to be able to talk Fushimi into letting his men go? Perhaps he had been counting on a streak of honor from a code he did not really understand to force the constable’s hand. That was always going to be a vain hope; a farmer could hope to argue with a samurai as much as the deaf could hope to sing.

  But when that failed, Shuntaro had offered his life and in doing so shown at some primal, fundamental level that he did know the way of samurai. The difference, Bennosuke realized, was that he had offered his life for others. Samurai offered theirs more often than not to recover their own pride.

  The boy thought on that in the silence. No one spoke in the cage. They all knew that screams would be coming soon, and they listened for them with the dread of imagination. Each of them envisioned blades or whips or brands, and each knew that the samurai up there had an imagination as vivid as theirs but with the means to make it a reality.

  Yet the truth was they also longed to hear that horrendous sound, for that would be their signal to start their escape; if Shuntaro was in agony, then the samurai were distracted and he had fulfilled his part of his plan. It was a terrible thing to anticipate, but they could not deny that they did with a mixture of shame and fear and twisting in their guts. They crouched or squatted in tense repose, their eyes unused and staring at the floor, their ears sifting for the minutest whimper.