Disciple of the Wind (55 page)

Then he realized the awful, inescapable truth: he could not win. Glorious Victory Unsought would not allow it. The blade guaranteed victory only when he did not want to fight. More than anything in this world, he wanted Shichio dead. Glory be damned, he thought, but by the gods and buddhas, this is the one victory I cannot go without.

Drained, burnt, and bleeding, he stood no chance. His own sword would fight against him. But what choice did he have? The way of
bushido
was to dash in headlong. And maybe there was a way to get Shichio to defeat himself. The peacock was no swordsman. He also had no patience, nor any control over his temper. If Daigoro could provoke him, the peacock might grow reckless. The footing was treacherous here, slick and uneven; it would be easy to slip and fall. Daigoro might not have to
defeat
Shichio; he would only have to lift his heavy sword above his foe, then let the blade do what it wanted to do.

He dove back down, found his sword, and found Oda’s
kosode
too. He would sustain the camouflage for as long as he could. With what little strength he had left, he dragged his heavy cargo into shore. When the water was shallow enough, he pulled the
kosode
over his head, struggled to his feet, and limped out of the pool. Glorious Victory Unsought rested on his right shoulder, a bright orange tiger stripe in the firelight. Just before he reached the shore, he let the cloak drop.

“You!” the peacock screeched. “Impossible! You should be dead!”

“Lord Oda found his courage. He died a samurai’s death.”

Shichio backed away, terrified. Daigoro could only imagine what the peacock saw in him: skin burned as red as a demon’s, but with a face streaked white like a ghost’s. His hair hung long and limp, like a drowned man’s. He even moved like a dead man, his steps slow and stilted, yet he bled like the living. What Shichio saw emerging from that pool was a condemned soul walking out of hell.

“You should be dead,” was all Shichio could say. “You should be dead.”

“You
will
be dead. Soon.”

“No!” Shichio’s katana whistled as it flashed from its sheath. “Look at you! You can barely stand.”

He squared himself in a proper
kenjutsu
stance. That was the moment that Daigoro knew he’d lost. Shichio had been training. He couldn’t have learned much, but a stable stance was the only advantage
he needed. The treacherous footing wouldn’t turn against him after all; it would turn against the half-dead boy with the crippled leg.

“Father, what should I do?” He breathed the words, too low for Shichio to hear. And his father answered: in his position there was only one thing a samurai
could
do. He had an enemy before him and a sword in his hand.

Daigoro lowered Glorious Victory Unsought to a ready position. His left hand caught the pommel just in the nick of time; the sword was so heavy, and Daigoro’s arms so tired, that he nearly dropped his weapon. Shichio settled deeper into his stance. He would wait for Daigoro to press the attack—or else for Daigoro to simply pass out from exhaustion. Daigoro could not afford the luxury of patience. Yet another advantage in Shichio’s favor.

The Inazuma blade reached for him and Shichio retreated. The two fighters moved inland. Daigoro tried to circle, to drive Shichio toward the fire, but Shichio seemed to feel it coming in advance. He chopped at Daigoro’s hands. Daigoro parried, and Shichio used that instant of reprieve to correct his course.

“It’s the mask,” Shichio said. “It sees your sword. No matter what you do, I will feel it first. You’re fighting two of us, not one.”

Three, Daigoro thought, if you count my father’s sword. Four against one, counting the terrain, or five, counting Daigoro’s own exhaustion. He feinted high and cut low, and nearly lost his hands. Shichio’s blade passed just short of them.

“Call out to your friend,” Shichio said merrily. “The one up on the cliff. Ask for advice. Or bid your final farewell.”

He’d almost forgotten Katsushima was looking on. No doubt Katsushima himself would prefer to be forgotten, because now that he was on Daigoro’s mind, he was a distraction. How awful it would be to watch helplessly as a good friend got killed—and cut down by an honorless coward, no less.

Daigoro lashed out, aiming for Shichio’s sword. Shichio hopped back, just out of reach. Now they fought on the narrow trail leading
back up the valley. The trees pressed close on either side. Glorious Victory’s reach would soon be a disadvantage.

Let the blade do what it wants to do, he thought. That was his best strategy before. It was the only idea he had left. The alternative was to fight a running battle all the way back to the valley mouth. Somewhere along the way, Shichio would get lucky and Daigoro would fall.

With a great
kiai
, Daigoro pressed the attack. Huge overhead swings should have cut his opponent in two. Each time Shichio turned them away. Ringing steel sang in the vale, scaring the birds from their roosts. Daigoro hacked and stabbed, and Shichio parried every blow. Deep in the trees now, Daigoro put everything he had into one last slash. He let the blade do what it wanted to do.

More than anything, he wanted Shichio dead. Glorious Victory knew it. It pulled him off balance. Shichio ducked, and the Inazuma blade sailed harmlessly over his head. It buried itself in a dead tree trunk. Daigoro could not pull it free.

When Shichio came for him, Daigoro met his assault. Unarmed, he grabbed Shichio’s sword arm, then raked the demon mask down over his eyes. Then he yanked Shichio’s
wakizashi
out of its sheath and gutted the son of a bitch with his own weapon.

Shichio cried and bent double. His katana rolled rustling through the underbrush. He fell to his knees. His hands, suddenly weak, pawed at the sword in his gut. His fingers rolled bonelessly off its grip.

Daigoro peeled the mask off his face so the two of them could see eye to eye. Shichio was pale, quivering like a leaf. “Ironic,” Daigoro said. “You’re unworthy of the twin swords, and now, because you’re wearing both, you’ll die on the one you never deserved.”

Shichio sobbed. Pain wracked him, twisting his whole body around the blade. “I’d like to leave this sword in your belly,” Daigoro said. “You’d be a long time in dying. Probably all night. But a man spared me from dying a dog’s death tonight, and so it’s my karma to spare you.”

He stepped around Shichio and kneeled down behind him. “If you want to be samurai, you should die like a samurai,” he said. “I will help you.”

He reached around, took the
wakizashi
in both hands, and pulled it all the way in to the hilt. Shichio’s screams reached the heavens. Daigoro rolled the blade over, turning it spineward. With agonizing slowness, he drew it across Shichio’s belly.

Performed correctly, seppuku required a second. When the condemned man plunged the blade into his gut, the second stood with sword raised, ready to behead him. That way the condemned could not disgrace himself by crying out in his final moments. Shichio did not have the luxury of a second. He left this world screaming like a lamb at the slaughter, and died facedown in his own entrails.

48

T
he Green Cliff stood as strong as ever, its verdant moss glistening in the westering sun. A persistent drizzle hung over Izu, never quite turning to rain, never quite fading away. The horses bore it miserably, but Daigoro found it soothing. The teahouse fire had given him the equivalent of a whole-body sunburn, and though full-fledged raindrops would have stung like needles, the misty sprinkling came as cool relief.

“We’ve made it,” Daigoro said, shooting his friend a worried look. Katsushima’s arms ended in ugly stumps, for both hands were swaddled halfway to the elbow in dirty, bloodstained bandages. He claimed he could still feel his fingers. That was good, but Daigoro misliked the smell. Those bandages needed replacing, and soon. Daigoro hoped Old Yagyu was still at Lord Yasuda’s bedside, because if anyone could save Katsushima’s hands, it was Yagyu. The worst-case scenario did not bear thinking about. Katsushima had wedded himself to the sword; if his
kenjutsu
days were over . . . Daigoro could not even bring himself to finish the thought.

Getting out of the Obyo valley had not been easy. On his way in, Daigoro spied the platoon Shichio had stationed at the mouth of the vale. If their commander did not return, sooner or later they would have to send a scout to look for him. Daigoro had planned for this possibility; Katsushima had carried a knotted rope with him, which he could have bound to a tree if only he had two good hands. In the end he’d managed to tie a knot using his teeth and the crooks of his elbows, and found an angle to toss down the rope where the spray of the falls wouldn’t soak it through. It had taken Daigoro the better part of the night to muster enough strength to climb that damned rope.

As weak as he’d been, he couldn’t manage the weight of his father’s sword, so he had to pull it up behind him. Tied with it were the remains of his Sora
yoroi
, which he’d wrapped in a makeshift bag made from a fallen samurai’s kimono. Everything not made of metal had burned away, but the most important piece was still intact: the scarred steel breastplate. It was supposed to be lacquered in white, the color of death. As soon as Daigoro had picked it up from the embers of the teahouse, the lacquer disintegrated, blowing away like so many cherry blossoms on the wind. There was a poem to be written there, Daigoro thought.

Tied to his
odachi
and armor was one last encumbrance: his new
wakizashi
. Since Shichio destroyed Daigoro’s short sword, Daigoro had replaced it with Shichio’s. In addition to having a certain sentimental value—namely, Shichio’s bloodstains—the sword also had a lineage not far shy of Glorious Victory Unsought’s. It had once belonged to Toyotomi Hideyoshi himself.

“How is it that you come by such noble swords?” Katsushima had said when he saw it. “That makes two for you and none for me.” When Daigoro pointed out that Hideyoshi’s katana lay somewhere in the underbrush, Katsushima laughed ruefully. “Let the weeds have it.”

They’d returned together along the meandering trail that had first led Katsushima up to the cliff overlooking Obyo Falls. From there they’d shuffled on weary feet to the first homely house that would take them in—a brothel, not surprisingly. Katsushima was a veritable
homing pigeon when it came to finding whores. The madam had promised she could get them the rest of the way home if the price was right, but neither Daigoro nor Katsushima could bear the indignity of how she meant to send them. She had a good packhorse with two large baskets slung on either side of the saddle. “The baskets are most comfortable,” she’d insisted. “My girls travel this way all the time. Their feet are as soft as a babe’s.”

Raw and blistered though they were, Daigoro still thought his feet were tougher than a baby’s, and on no account would Katsushima be seen sitting in a basket like a heap of laundry. Instead, the two of them opted to keep their rooms for a few nights, lingering until Daigoro felt he’d recovered strength enough to ride. His wounds never stopped weeping, though, and in the end he overruled Katsushima’s counsel of patience. As soon as the
ronin
started showing signs of a fever, Daigoro’s concern for Katsushima’s hands outweighed any concern he had for himself.

Now, approaching the great stronghold of House Yasuda, Daigoro found he could hardly keep himself ahorse. A dull ache had penetrated his thighs and belly and back. That was just from the effort of staying in the saddle; his burns and cuts pained him still more. He couldn’t help but remember the last time he’d ridden through the Green Cliff’s gate, when Katsushima had to tie him into the saddle just so Daigoro could stay on his horse. This time felt much the same, except Katsushima was in no state to tie knots.

As the great gate yawned open, Daigoro mustered the last of his strength to hold himself tall and proud. He would not have Kenbei and Azami see him loll drunkenly in the saddle. In the courtyard he saw the master and mistress of the house, and also Yasuda Jinichi, Kenbei’s elder brother and lord of Fuji-no-tenka. Daigoro saw his mother there as well, holding her little lord and husband, Gorobei. Akiko stood beside them, looking radiant in red. She’d chosen a bright yellow
obi
to emphasize the child growing so swiftly in her womb. Daigoro wanted to leap off his horse and kiss her belly.

But the fact that so many were in attendance did not bode well. No doubt they had come to pay a final visit to Yasuda Izu-no-kami Jinbei, master of the Green Cliff, patriarch of House Yasuda. Daigoro could imagine other reasons they might have come—Jinichi to escort his money to his venal brother, Aki to see Daigoro a half-day sooner—but in all likelihood, Lord Yasuda had taken a turn for the worse.

Aki blanched when she saw Daigoro. As well she might, he thought. He was burnt as red as a boiled lobster, and Shichio’s bonds had left raw, suppurating cuffs around his wrists. The cuts Shichio had taken out of Daigoro’s back, arm, and stomach had never closed properly, and all the rocking in the saddle had cracked the scabs open. Red spots seeped through his borrowed kimono. That was to say nothing of the eggplant-purple bruises coiled around most of his body, which she would only see later, once he disrobed. What she saw now was enough to stop her heart. “Get Yagyu!” Aki cried. “Daigoro, what happened to you?”

“I’ll be all right,” Daigoro said. His voice sounded weak even to his own ears. He tried to sound more like his father. “Yagyu should tend to Goemon first. I—”

“No,” Kenbei announced. “First you two will speak to me. I will not harbor fugitives, and I would have you tell me how many Toyotomi soldiers are on your heels.”

“None,” said Daigoro. “My quarrel with the regent is over. The peacock is dead. The pact we signed died with him, and that means my only remaining tie with Hideyoshi is the treaty he signed with my father.”

With a flick of the rein he urged his horse closer. “Do you remember it?” he asked. “It said the lords protector of Izu would maintain a united front, and would pose no threat to Hideyoshi’s expansion. In exchange for political stability, he promised us our independence. Do you understand, Kenbei-san?”