Eternal Samurai (29 page)

He roared away from the foundry, trying to outrun his confusion. Didn’t care where he rode only craving the thrill of speed. The wind tore his hair loose from the confines of his headband. The vibration of the engine sent shivers all the way through his ass—his wanting-to-be fucked ass.

The bike thundered its approval as Tatsu raced along the broken highway toward the distant snow-capped peaks. Riding the wrong side of reckless, he crouched over his handlebars. The tachometer redlined and the engine screamed as he took the broken road climbing the mountain. Dodging potholes and piles of rocks, his knee mere inches from the cracked asphalt, he powered the Drifter through the hairpin curves.

A drunken thrill shivered through him. He balanced on that emotional edge where one mistake would send him tumbling over the edge. Rode the bike the same way. One tiny slip and they’d both hurtle into the abyss. But the exhilaration was a pale shadow compared to remembering that wild ride on Arisada’s mouth.

When he hit the top of the mountain, Tatsu’s chest pumped as if he climbed to the summit on two legs instead of astride a powerful machine. He leaned his ass against the bike and took a deep drag on his cigarette. The clouds parted and a single stream of sunlight bounced in playful glints off the slate-grey water of the Sound. Such a breathtaking sight now lost forever to Bana and Arisada. The knowledge curled into a hard knot in Tatsu’s stomach. Then despite his sorrow, Tatsu’s entire body quickened with lust for the
kyūketsuki
.

Baka
! He’d fucked up. He’d lost his mission. Fallen under the spell of a creature he should have killed on sight. Yet, he knew with a helpless certainty, he could never slay Arisada even if the vampire’s fangs were about to rip out his throat.

He picked up a rock and hurled it off the side of the mountain. “Damn you Saito Arisada!” he screamed over and over. The fierce mountain wind whipped away his screams and carried them into the unheeding sky.

Riding full-throttle back to the city, he reveled in the bite of the air that dashed tears from his eyes, froze the muscles of his face. The Drifter devoured the treacherous mountain road. The snarl of its engine gave voice to Tatsu’s fury.

A blind dogleg loomed ahead, one that promised death to those who ignored its danger. What the fuck? Ignore the vicious curve, hold the Kawasaki straight.
Seppuku
by motorcycle. The impulse mesmerized him.

He felt himself flying, flying, flying off the edge of the cliff. The Drifter’s engine screaming as its tires spun uselessly for lost traction, the sucking grip of the road suddenly gone. The lurch of the handlebars as the motorcycle obeyed gravity and dropped toward slate-grey water. The grips tearing from his hands with a hard jerk. His ass lifting from the saddle, the Drifter dropping away, tumbling over and over beneath him. The freezing shock when he hit the water, his studded boots and swords dragging him under despite his body’s instinctive struggle to live. Perhaps pain, perhaps panic, then a merciful blackness. All pain gone. Finished.

Would his
tamashii
reunite with his ancestors? Would his parents smile and greet him with loving arms? His brother and sister run toward him with cries of joy?

Suddenly, Ojii-san appeared, body rigid with disapproval. With a cold yet sad stare, the venerated old man spoke. “Sukun, you have dishonored our name.”

“No, Ojii-san, I did my best!”

“Then finish it!” The old man cried and vanished.

Tatsu’s defiant cry bounced off the mountain. He rejected the false promise of that hungry curve, leaned with the bike, the symmetry of man and machine conquering the road. In a flash, they were through, easing into highway leading like an arrow toward the city. Toward
fukushū
.

Closer to Seattle, he curbed his speed. Absurdly, his stomach rumbled, reminding him he hadn’t eaten all day. Death—his or others—be damned for the moment. Tonight, he wanted food from home, his true home, Japan. He turned the Drifter toward the huge Olympia Freetrade Market.

Flanked by the fishing docks on one side, a dozen warehouses on the other, and spilling between a half-dozen high-rises, the market was the economic lifeblood of the city. During the daylight hours, it thronged with people hunting bargains among hundreds of mom-and-pop stalls, buying and selling life’s necessities. As dusk approached, merchants dropped their prices and engaged in a furious competition to separate a few more coins from shoppers.

The cacophony of this enterprise filled Tatsu’s ears as he locked the Drifter to a steel fence post and went in search of edible bargains. It took some hunting but he found miso, Soba noodles, fresh vegetables, and a small fish. On impulse, he bought a bottle of sake. Maybe if he got drunk, this crazy obsession with Arisada would magically go away.

As he climbed a hill back to his ride, he passed one of the many second-hand shops. He looked idly through the cracked window displaying a jumble cheap knickknacks and tarnished heirlooms. Obeying an impulse, Tatsu wandered into the dingy store. His eyes fell on an open box of pastels. He traced his fingers over the chalky surface of the crayons. He used to love sketching. A sudden, unexpected memory caught his heart him—
kachan
! His mother holding up one of his drawings, praising it to the family.

He never sketched after he left Japan.

The shopkeeper chattered away in Mandarin as she waddled toward him. She clutched a large sketchpad, which she shoved against Tatsu’s chest, forcing him to take it. She nodded toward the art box. He stammered his refusal. She pointed to the crayons holding up four fingers. A real bargain her gapped-tooth smile said.

Before the enthusiasm of the old woman, Tatsu caved. “
Hai, hai, obaa-san
,” even though he knew she did not understand Japanese. Grinning sheepishly, he handed over the cash and walked out with the pad tucked under one arm, the pastels stowed in his backpack with his food and the liquor.

After dinner, Tatsu changed into his yukata and curled up in his easy chair with a cup of wine. The sketchpad rested on his knees. He ran his fingers over the pebbly surface of the first page. The corners were yellow with age but he rather liked that. Using one of his favorite colors, burnt umber, Tatsu sketched an oval, letting his hand wander where it willed. A second oval evolved into a pair of wire spectacles. He perched them halfway down a button nose. Two quizzical eyes peered over the bridge. His hand moved faster. A pointed chin, narrow face topped by a shock of thick hair chopped ragged and straggling over largish ears. A grin, crooked on one side. Another quick couple of lines, and a beloved, almost forgotten, face emerged.

“Well, hello Hisoka-kun.” Framed by the frayed edges of the paper was Watanabe Hisoka. As Tatsu stared at the portrait, doors to memories burst open. He met Hisoka in grade two and they became inseparable. They shared secrets and joys, and a friendship that might have led to more. After he moved to New Mexico, Hisoka became lost in the fog surrounding Tatsu’s memories.

Just for fun, Tatsu drew a pair of
neko
ears peeking above Hisoka’s spiky hair. The cat ears and glasses gave Hisoka’s face a whimsical look endearingly combined with a deep wisdom. Tatsu took a long sip as he looked at the drawing.

“Soka-kun. How could I have forgotten you?”

Their favorite boyhood game was to make up plays about the other’s future as they tried to outdo the other with outlandish stories. Tatsu’s dramas involved bookish Hisoka defeating evil aliens and giant robots that ran amok in the city. Tatsu acted as the giant robot. Hisoka’s stories always ended with Tatsu wielding his swords to save the kingdom and its imperiled princess.

One rainy afternoon, Hisoka demanded the hero kiss his princess to break the evil spell cast upon her. Caught up in the game, Tatsu agreed. In an awkward, bumping of noses, they mashed their lips together in an imitation of passion.

“That was weird,” Hisoka giggled as he pulled away and straightened his crooked glasses.

Tatsu touched his mouth, tingling with a strange wonderment. His body flamed hot then prickly cold then hot again. Kissing another boy was not weird at all. It felt amazing.

The next time, Hisoka insisted that the story ended with Tatsu falling in love with a beautiful samurai. Tatsu thought Hisoka was twisting the game to cover his embarrassment of their princess-kissing episode.

“
Baka,
Hisoka-kun,” Tatsu punched his bespeckled friend in the arm. “Men don’t fall in love with other men.”

“You will,” Hisoka asserted. They ended up tussling each other to the floor in mock anger. However, despite Tatsu’s protests, Hisoka insisted on ending every story with Tatsu in love with a beautiful samurai.

Tatsu stared at the portrait of his friend as if it could give him answers. Watanabe Hisoka, you were right, he mused. Unfortunately, the beautiful samurai is not only very much male but
kyūketsuki
.

Tatsu flipped the page and began a new image. His mind drifted, absorbed in figure and form. Half an hour later, he looked at his creation. The vague lines depicted a view from atop a mountain. In the valley below, a mist drifted over a cluster of buildings. A man carrying a loaded basket on a pole over his shoulder climbed a narrow path into a line of trees. Deep weariness bowed the man’s shoulders and sorrow weighted that single heavy step. With an odd shock, Tatsu realized he’d drawn the Temple of Mii-dera.

He shook his head, forcing himself out of the melancholy created by the sketch. He tacked the picture on the wall behind the
kake
stand before curling in his chair. Sipping on his glass of sake, he stared at the drawing.

He remembered his history lessons. How every Sōhei of Mii-dera died in one brutal, bloody day. How they were betrayed by their leaders. Recalled Arisada’s pain as he talked of his lover’s betrayal.

“You coward, Arisada” Tatsu muttered. “Why are you avoiding me?”

Like individual beads on a prayer necklace, each memory of their time together slid one by one through Tatsu’s mind. He emptied the bottle into his glass. Fuck it, might as well get drunk. Still staring at the drawing of the monk, Tatsu let the warm haze take him down into its alcoholic whirlpool.

The Temple of Mii-dera, Nipon, Spring 1179

Koji Nowaki was cold, tired and frustrated as he trudged through the wooden gates of Mii-dera with his exhausted brethren. They had finally finished the backbreaking task of felling hundreds of trees. The denuded forest was now a sea of stumps. Tomorrow, they would hack the logs into stakes and place them facing outward to form a barricade around the monastery walls. Other massive timbers lay in piles ready to roll down over the enemy. The path to a narrow bridge—the monastery’s only vulnerable point—had been hidden by a seemingly impenetrable pile of boulders.

This year had been brutal for all in Nipon. A bitter winter left snow and ice on the ground far longer than normal. Food supplies depleted and starvation threatened. With the coming of spring rains, rumors of warfare among the clans compelled the Sōhei to fortify the temple. In addition, fighting practice had been extended far into the night hours.

Despite his pride in the work to fortify the temple, Nowaki’s resentment flared. It was not just that he was compelled to toil with the younger acolytes. Nowaki felt he should be commanding the combat drills. Instead, he’d been relegated to the status of supervising the woodcutters.

Was he not one of the elite Sōhei warrior class? Just a few weeks ago, he killed two men during practice with the
ninjato
. His sensei, Michinaga, offered only a curt nod of approval before signaling for the bodies to be carted away.

Just inside the massive gates, Nowaki shouldered his way through the crowd of peasants huddled together like a gaggle of frightened geese. Their chatter bordered on hysteria. A peasant had been killed last night, the corpse found drained of blood. The villagers showed less fear of the impending war than that an
oni
, a demon, stalked them.

Nowaki snorted with derision at the peasant’s superstitious babble about a
kyūketsuki
, a blood-sucking
oni
. Starvation and fright turned reasonable men’s minds into those of frightened children.

“Koji-sensei,” a young boy of eight dropped forehead to the ground. “
Gomen
. I beg you to forgive my interruption of your thoughts. Saito-sensei says he wishes to meet with you after the hour of the Rat when the bathhouse is no longer in use.”

Nowaki acknowledged the information with an ungrateful grunt. He was hungry. Mud caked his clothes and wooden
geta
, chilling his feet. He wanted to bathe before eating. But today he would have to wait. The bathhouse was reserved for the guests from Enryakuji until the hour before midnight.

Enryakuji, their supposed sister monastery. More like traitors he sneered inwardly. For the last year, a contingent from the temple on Mount Hiei visited almost every month. The abbot of Enryakuji coveted the leadership of Mii-dera. But it was also known that, as supporters of Emperor Taira no Kiyomori, they came to censure Mii-dera’s alliance with the Taira’s enemy, the Minomoto clan.

Nowaki chaffed at the conventions requiring that he honor people considered the enemy. He regarded every visitor as a spy sent by their enemies to ferret out weaknesses in Miidera’s fortifications—weaknesses his station in life would not allow him to address.

Daily, his respect for the competence of Mii-dera’s leaders diminished. Despite his youth, he instinctively understood large-scale military tactics. He only needed a chance to prove it. Unlike his brethren, he lusted for the war to begin so he could show his courage and prowess.

Loud conversation interrupted his disgruntled thoughts as dozens of men emerged from the abbot’s house. Ignoring his low place in the Sōhei order, Nowaki stared at the Enryakuji monks. Some were dressed in
kamishimo
, the richly decorated court garb that contrasted with the drab garments of the Sōhei. He envied any with status and power. He also despised his brethren who deferred to the visitors.