Cloud of Sparrows (55 page)

He continued to stand at the railing, very still, very quiet.

Without meaning to, he said, “Mary Anne.”

Without knowing it, he began to weep.

Heiko stood at the bow of the ship and looked at the vast expanse of open ocean ahead. How would she survive in that barbarian land on the other shore? She had great wealth, thanks to the gold bullion with which Genji had entrusted her. She had the protection of Matthew Stark, whom she trusted completely as a friend and fellow warrior. But she did not have Genji. She knew she would never have him again.

His parting words to her were lies. He said he had seen in his visions that he would be the last Great Lord of Akaoka. None would follow him. Within a few brief years, there would be no samurai, no Shogun, no Great Lords, no separate domains. A civilization two thousand years old would disappear virtually overnight. So Genji said. Perhaps these were lies, too. They certainly sounded like lies. But they did not concern her. Only one lie really mattered. He had lied when he said he would join her.

She knew he would not because of what he had seen in his two visions.

In one, he meets a mysterious Lady Shizuka. Whoever she was, she could never appear in America. So Genji must meet her in Japan. In the second, his wife, concubine, or lover—he does not see her, so she could be Emily, Shizuka, or yet someone else—dies in childbirth, just after presenting him with an heir. Great Lord or not, Genji would never permit a child of his to grow to maturity anywhere but in his homeland.

He had lied, and she still didn’t know why.

He had lied, and so she was bound for a land where Emily was considered beautiful. In such a place, there was one certainty, if anything was certain. Heiko would be seen as hideous and repulsive. Her fabled beauty would serve her not at all. People would turn away from her in disgust. She would be disdained, ridiculed, treated with cruelty and contempt.

She had not had to wait for time to destroy her beauty. At twenty, she had left it behind in a land already invisible beneath the horizon.

But she would not cry.

She would not fear, or despair, or weaken.

She was a ninja, after all, in the exalted lineage of Kuma the Bear, her uncle, the greatest ninja in the last hundred years. If ever she had reason to doubt herself, she had only to feel the blood running in her veins to know certainty once again. No, she was most definitely not some weeping geisha abandoned by her lover. She was on a mission from her master, Okumichi no kami Genji, Great Lord of Akaoka, a beautiful liar who would surely be Shogun of all Japan one day.

She would not dwell on her misfortunes.

She went looking for Stark. They had many things to discuss. First, they must ensure the safety of the gold. While it was unlikely to be stolen while they were aboard a missionary trade ship, they could not afford to be lax.

Stark stood at the aft railing of the ship. He was very still. As Heiko approached, his shoulders began to shake, and he fell to the deck on his knees, wailing the mindless wail of an animal impaled and not dying fast enough.

Heiko knelt next to him. Would he strike at her if she reached out? And if he did, what would she do? No, she would not anticipate. She was going to an unknown land, and her only path was unknowing itself. She would begin upon it this very moment.

Heiko withdrew from her bosom, beneath both outer and inner kimonos, a plain white scarf of the finest silk, unscented but for the scent of her own flesh, and reached out to absorb Stark’s tears.

Stark did not strike out. As the silk touched his face and drank his tears, he sobbed one last time, touched Heiko’s hand so gently she barely felt it, and said, “Thank you.”

Heiko bowed and began to give a polite response. No words came. Instead, as she looked at his naked, sincere outsider’s face, soft tears welled in her own eyes even as her lips formed a reassuring smile.

Now Stark reached toward her. Into his hand fell the first drop that left her cheek.

It glistened in his palm like a small diamond.

And the
Star of Bethlehem
sails on, and Stark says, Thank you, and Heiko’s silk scarf in her silken hand absorbs his tears as her own fall across her smile and into time, and the
Star of Bethlehem
sails on.

My bodyguard, Go, stood beside me, sword raised. He would decapitate me as soon as I plunged the knife into my belly. Just as I was about to do so, sparrows began rising out of the dry streambed, hundreds and hundreds of sparrows. They flew over me in such profusion, they cast a shadow like a cloud.

The ten-year-old stableboy Shinichi, my frequent playmate, cried out, “Stop! It is an unprecedented omen! Lord Hironobu must not die!”

Go, weeping and falling to his knees before me, said, “My lord, you must lead us into battle! The gods demand it!”

How he interpreted the omen this way, he did not explain. But my retainers, joining him in tears, agreed.

“Let us die attacking defiantly as befits true warriors!”

“There are no better horsemen than the Okumichi cavalry. We will shatter their ranks in an all-out charge!”

So it was that on that very evening, I led our clan’s remaining samurai, numbering one hundred twenty-one, against the Hojo army five thousand strong.

My mother, smiling through her tears, bade me farewell, saying, “When you return, I will wash the blood of our arrogant enemies from your sword.”

Ryusuke was my senior surviving retainer. He intended us to charge directly into the battle array of the enemy at sunrise the next morning. We would cross an open beach filled with flying arrows, collide against horsemen more than ten times our number, then meet the pikes and spears of three thousand foot soldiers. Only after we breached their ranks would we have a chance to attack and kill the cowardly Hojo commanders.

I said, “Tonight, the enemy will encamp in the Muroto Woods. It is a ghostly place that has always frightened me. Perhaps it will frighten them, too.”

Go looked at me, astonished. “The young lord has given us the key to victory,” he said.

We hid in the shadows. The confident Hojo, prematurely triumphant, drank and feasted through the night. In the darkest hour before dawn, while our foes lay in drunken slumber, we infiltrated their camp, entered the tents of their leaders, and swiftly beheaded them.

Then we fired blazing arrows into the midst of the sleeping horde while screaming and moaning with the voices of ghouls from the Land of the Dead.

The enemy rushed to get their orders and found the gruesome heads of their slain lords stuck on the bloody hilts of their own swords, whose broken blades were thrust into the earth.

The Hojo army panicked and dissolved into a fleeing mob. On the beach, our archers shot them down by the hundreds. In the woods, which we knew so well, our swords took a thousand heads from their shoulders. By a stroke of fortune, dawn brought a thick and murky fog from the ocean, which confused and frightened them even more. When we departed from the Muroto Woods the next evening, we left three thousand one hundred and sixteen Hojo heads on the ends of spears, hanging like rotten fruit from the trees, scattered on the beach, and tied to the tails and manes of their blood-crazed horses. To this day, the bones of the dead roll in like flotsam when the storm waves break against the shore.

The following spring, Lord Bandan and Lord Hikari of the two closest neighboring domains agreed to join with us in a campaign against our mutual enemies. Our combined army of three thousand samurai and seven thousand foot soldiers marched first against the Hojo. Our banner was a single sparrow dodging arrows from the four directions.

When our army passed the Muroto Woods, a second cloud of sparrows arose from the place of slaughter. Lord Bandan and Lord Hikari both leaped from their saddles and fell to their knees beside my horse. That second omen caused them to pledge their allegiance to me as their overlord. In this manner, I, Okumichi no kami Hironobu, was elevated to the status of Great Lord. I was then not yet seven years of age.

This was the beginning of the rise of our clan, the Okumichi, and the beginning of the prominence of our domain, Akaoka.

Those who come after me, pay careful attention to the words in these secret scrolls of our clan, scrolls of wisdom, history, and prophecy written in the blood of your ancestors. What I have begun, do not neglect to continue.

May all the gods and Buddhas of the ten thousand heavens smile on you who strengthen our domain.

May all the ghosts and demons of ten thousand hells hound forever those who fail to uphold our honor.

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This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2002 by Takashi Matsuoka

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