by Lian Hearn
In the meantime my wife and I became farmers, riding out every day with Sugita, inspecting fields, woods, villages, and rivers, ordering repairs, clearing away dead trees, pruning, and planting. The land was well surveyed and the taxation system sound and not unjust. The domain was rich, although neglected, and its people hardworking and enterprising. They needed very little encouragement to return to the level of activity and prosperity they had enjoyed under Lady Naomi.
The castle and residence were also somewhat neglected, but as Kaede set about restoring them they quickly regained the beauty created by Naomi. The matting was replaced, screens repainted, wooden floors polished. In the garden stood the tea room built by Naomi’s grandmother that she had told me about the first time I had met her in Chigawa. She had promised me that one day we would drink tea there together, and when the redecoration of the simple rustic building was completed and Kaede prepared tea there, I felt that the promise had been fulfilled, even though Naomi herself was no longer alive.
I was conscious of Naomi’s spirit, and Shigeru’s, with us at all times. As the abbot had said in Terayama, in Kaede and me they seemed to have the chance to live again. We would achieve everything they had dreamed of but had been thwarted in. We placed tablets and offerings in a small shrine deep within the residence, and prayed before it every day for guidance and help. I had a profound sense of relief that I was finally carrying out Shigeru’s last requests to me, and Kaede seemed happier than she had ever been before.
It would have been a time of great joy, celebrating victory and seeing the land and the people begin to flourish again, had it not been for the darker work I felt compelled to undertake, a work that gave me no pleasure at all. Sugita tried to tell me there were no Tribe members in the castle town, so well hidden were they and so secret their operations. But I knew better, for Shigeru had chronicled them all, and I had not forgotten the men Hiroshi had described, who had appeared out of the air, clad in dark clothes, and killed his father. We had found no such bodies among the dead at Asagawa. They had survived the battle and would now be stalking me.
Of the families listed in the records, most were Kuroda and Imai, a few of the richer merchants Muto. There were very few Kikuta this far to the west, but the one existing family maintained their customary authority over the others. I clung to the words of the prophecy that had told me that only my own son could kill me, but even though by day I might believe it I still was alert to every sound, slept lightly at night, ate only food that Manami had prepared or supervised.
I had heard nothing of Yuki and did not know if her child was born or if it was a boy. Kaede continued to bleed regularly throughout the summer, and though I knew she was disappointed not to conceive a child, I could not help feeling a certain relief. I longed for children of our own, but I feared the complications they would bring. And what would I do if Kaede bore me a son?
How to deal with the Tribe was a problem that constantly exercised my mind. The first week I was in the town I sent messages to the Kikuta and Muto families informing them that I wished to consult with them and they were to wait on me the following day. That night there was an attempt to break into the residence and steal the records. I woke to hear someone in the room, perceived his barely visible form, challenged him, and pursued him to the outer gates, hoping to take him alive. He lost invisibility as he leaped over the wall and was killed by the guards on the other side before I could prevent it. He was dressed in black and tattooed like Shintaro, the assassin who had tried to kill Shigeru in Hagi. I placed him as one of the Kuroda family.
I sent men the next morning to the Kikuta house and had everyone in it arrested. Then I waited to see who would keep the appointment with me. Two old Muto men turned up, wily and slippery. I gave them the option of leaving the province or renouncing their Tribe loyalties. They said they would have to speak with their children. Nothing happened for two days; then a hidden bowman tried to shoot me as I rode with Amano and Sugita in a remote country area. Shun and I heard the sound together and evaded the arrow; we hunted down the bowman, hoping to get information from him, but he took poison. I thought he might have been the second man Hiroshi had seen, but I had no way of knowing for sure.
By this time I had run out of patience. I thought the Tribe were playing with me, suspecting I would never have the ruthlessness to deal with them. I had all the adults in the Kikuta family I had taken hanged and that night sent patrols to fifty or more houses, with orders to kill everyone in them except children. I hoped to spare the lives of the young ones, but the Tribe poisoned their own children rather than give them to me. The old men came back to me, but my offer had expired. The only choice they were given now was between poison or the sword. They both took poison on the spot.
A few fled from the province. I did not have the resources to track them down. Most sat tight, concealed in secret rooms as I had once been or in hidden villages in the mountains. No one would have been able to ferret them out except me, who knew everything about them and had been trained by them in their own ways. I was privately sickened by my own ruthlessness and horrified that I was massacring families just as my own had been massacred, but I saw no alternative and I do not think I was cruel. I gave them swift deaths; I did not crucify them or burn them alive or hang them upside down by the heels. My aim was to eradicate an evil, not to terrorize the people.
It was not a popular measure with the warrior class, who had benefited from the services of these merchants, had been supplied with soy products and wine, had borrowed money, and occasionally taken advantage of the other, darker trade of murder. It added to their mistrust of me. I tried to keep them busy training men and maintaining the borders while I supervised the recovery of the economy. I’d dealt the merchant class a terrible blow by removing its Tribe component, but on the other hand I’d taken all their assets for the domain itself and had set a great deal of wealth, previously tied up by them, circulating through the system. For two weeks it seemed we would be faced with a shortage of essential goods before winter, but then we uncovered a group of enterprising peasants who, fed up with the extortion of the Tribe, had been distilling and fermenting on a small scale in secret and who knew enough about the process to take over production. We provided the money to set them up in the Tribe’s former premises, and in return took sixty parts out of a hundred for the domain treasury. This promised to be so lucrative a practice it seemed we would need to take no more than thirty parts from the rice harvest, which in turn made us popular with the farmers and villagers.
I distributed the Tribe’s other lands and assets to those who had come with me from Terayama. One small hamlet on the banks of a river was given over to the outcasts, who immediately set about tanning the skins taken from the dead horses. I was relieved that this group who had helped me so much was now settled peacefully, but my protection of them baffled the elders and increased their suspicions.
Every week a few more Otori warriors turned up to join me. The main Otori army that had tried to surround me at Terayama had pursued me as far as the river we had crossed on the outcasts’ bridge, and was still camped there, controlling the roads between Yamagata, Inuyama, and the West and, apparently, giving Arai a few anxieties too.
I joined Kaede most afternoons in the tea room, where, together with Makoto and the Miyoshi brothers, we discussed strategy. My main fear was that if I stayed where I was for too long, I would be encircled by the Otori to the North and Arai to the Southeast. I knew Arai was likely to return to his own town, Kumamoto, during the summer. I could not hope to fight on two fronts. We decided that now was a good time to send Kahei and Gemba to Arai to try to make peace of some kind for however short a period. I was aware I had very little to bargain with: our brief alliance against Iida, Shigeru’s legacy, and the records of the Tribe. On the other hand, I had enraged him by my earlier disappearance and insulted him by my marriage, and for all I knew, his anger against the Tribe might already have been tempered by expediency.
I had
no illusions about peace with the Otori. I could not negotiate with Shigeru’s uncles and they would never abdicate in my favor. The clan was already so divided that it was for all intents in a state of civil war. If I attacked their main force, even if we were victorious, they would simply fall back to Hagi, where they could easily hold us off until winter itself defeated us. Despite the recovery of the Maruyama domain, we did not have the resources for a long siege at such a distance from our home base.
I’d escaped from the Otori army by using the outcasts, whom no one else had dreamed of approaching, and now I began to wonder how I might take them by surprise again. When I thought of the city, I saw it lying in the cup of the bay, so defensible on its landward side, so open to the sea. If I could not get to Hagi by land, might I not be able to go by water?
Troops that could be transported rapidly by sea: I knew of no warlord who had such a force. Yet history tells us that hundreds of years ago a huge army sailed from the mainland and would have been victorious had the Eight Islands not been saved by a storm sent from heaven. My thoughts kept turning to the boy who’d been my friend in Hagi, Terada Fumio, who had fled with his family to the island of Oshima. Fumio had taught me about ships and sailing, he had taught me to swim, and he had hated Shigeru’s uncles as much as I did. Could I turn him into an ally now?
I did not speak openly of these ideas, but one night, after the others had retired, Kaede—who watched me all the time and knew all my moods—said, “You are thinking of attacking Hagi in some other way?”
“When I lived there I became friendly with the son of a family, the Terada, who had been fishermen. The Otori lords raised the taxation of their catch to such an extent that they took their boats and moved to Oshima; it’s an island off the northwest coast.”
“They became pirates?”
“Their markets were closed to them; it was impossible to live by fishing alone. I’m thinking of paying them a visit. If the Terada have enough resources and they are willing to help me, it would be possible to take Hagi by sea. But it must be done this year, and that means I must go before the typhoons begin.”
“Why do you have to go yourself?” Kaede asked. “Send a messenger.”
“Fumio will trust me, but I don’t think his family will talk to anyone else. Now that the rains are over, Kahei and Gemba must go at once to Inuyama. I’ll go with a few men, Makoto, Jiro, maybe.”
“Let me come with you,” Kaede said.
I thought of the complexities of traveling with my wife, of bringing one woman at least to accompany her, of finding suitable accommodation.
“No, stay here with Sugita. I don’t want us both to be absent from the domain at the same time. Amano must stay here too.”
“I wish I were Makoto,” she said. “I am jealous of him.”
“He is jealous of you,” I said lightly. “He thinks I spend far too much time talking to you. A wife is for one thing, providing heirs. Everything else a man should look for in his comrades.”
I had been joking, but she took me seriously. “I should give you a child.” Her lips were pressed together and I saw her eyes moisten with tears. “Sometimes I am afraid I will never conceive again. I wish our child had not died.”
“We will have other children,” I said. “All girls, all as beautiful as their mother.” I took her in my arms. It was a warm, still night, but her skin felt cold and she was shivering.
“Don’t go,” she said.
“I will only be away a week at most.”
The next day the Miyoshi brothers set out for Inuyama to plead my cause with Arai, and I left with Makoto for the coast the day after. Kaede was still upset and we parted with a slight coolness between us. It was our first disagreement. She wanted to come with me; I could have let her, but I did not. I did not know how long it would be or how much we would both suffer before I saw her again.
Still, I rode out cheerfully enough with Makoto, Jiro, and three men. We went in unmarked traveling clothes so we could move swiftly and without formalities. I was happy to be leaving the castle town for a while and happy, too, to be able to set aside the ruthless work I’d undertaken to eradicate the Tribe. The plum rains had ended, the air was clear, the sky deep blue. Along the road we saw signs everywhere of the land’s gradual return to prosperity. The rice fields were brilliant green, the harvest would be brought in; this winter, at least, no one would starve.
Makoto was silent and reserved in Kaede’s presence, but when we were alone together we talked as only the closest friends can. He had seen me at my weakest and my most vulnerable, and I trusted him as I trusted no one else. I opened my heart to him, and, apart from Kaede, only he knew of my constant expectation of attack from the Tribe and my deep dislike of what I had to do to eradicate them. The only thing that pained him about me was the depth of my love for Kaede. He was jealous, perhaps, though he tried to hide it; but, over and above that, he thought there was something unnatural about it: It was not seemly for a man to feel such passion for his wife. He did not speak of it, but I read the disapproval in his expression.
He had taken Jiro under his wing with his usual unobtrusive thoughtfulness and found the time to teach him writing as well as training with the pole and spear. Jiro proved quick to learn. He seemed to grow several inches over the summer and began to fill out, too, now that he was eating properly. Occasionally, I suggested that he return to his family in Kibi and help with the harvest there, but he begged to be allowed to stay, swearing he would serve either me or Makoto for the rest of his life. He was typical of most of the farmers’ sons who had come to fight for me: quick-witted, courageous, strong. We armed them with long spears and fitted them out with leather armor, dividing them into units of twenty men, each with its own leader. Any who showed the right aptitude we trained as bowmen. I counted them among my greatest assets.
On the afternoon of the third day we came to the coast. It was not as bleak as around Matsue; indeed, on that late-summer day, it looked beautiful. Several steep-sided islands rose abruptly from a tranquil sea whose color was deep blue, almost indigo. The breeze ruffled the surface into triangular waves like knife blades. The islands seemed uninhabited, with nothing breaking the solid green of the pines and cedars that clung to them.
Far in the distance, just visible in the haze, we could make out the bulky shape of Oshima, the cone of its volcano hidden in the clouds. Beyond it, out of sight, lay the city of Hagi.
“Presumably that’s the dragon’s lair,” Makoto said. “And how do you intend to approach it?”
From the cliff where our horses stood, the road led down to a small bay where there was a fishing village—a few hovels, boats pulled up on the shingle, the gates of a shrine to the sea god.
“We could take a boat from there,” I said doubtfully, for the place looked deserted. The fires that the fishermen burn to get salt from seawater were no more than piles of black and charred logs, and there was no sign of movement.
“I’ve never been in a boat,” Jiro exclaimed, “except across the river!”
“Nor have I,” Makoto muttered to me as we turned the horses’ heads toward the village.
The villagers had already seen us and gone into hiding. As we approached the hovels they tried to run away. The beauty of the place was deceptive; I’d seen many impoverished people throughout the Three Countries, but these were far and away the poorest and the most wretched. My men ran after one of them who was stumbling across the shingle, carrying a child of about two years. They caught up with him easily, hampered as he was by his son, and dragged them both back. The child was wailing, but the father had the look of a man beyond grief or fear.
“We are not going to hurt you or take anything from you,” I said. “I’m looking for someone to go with me to Oshima.”
He glanced up at me, disbelief written in his face. One of the men holding him cuffed him hard.
“Speak when His Lordship questions you!”
“His Lordship? Being a lord won’t save him from
Terada. You know what we call Oshima? The entrance to hell.”
“Hell or not, I have to go there,” I replied. “And I’ll pay for it.”
“What good is silver to us?” he said, bitterly. “If anyone knows I have silver, they’ll kill me for it. I’m only alive because I have nothing left worth stealing. Bandits have already taken my wife and my daughters. My son was not weaned when they kidnapped his mother. I nursed him on rags dipped in water and brine. I chewed fish and fed him from my own mouth like a seabird. I cannot leave him to go with you to certain death at Oshima.”
“Then find us someone who will take me,” I said. “When we return to Maruyama we’ll send soldiers to destroy the bandits. The domain now belongs to my wife, Shirakawa Kaede. We will make this place safe for you.”
“Doesn’t matter who it belongs to, Your Lordship will never return from Oshima.”
“Take the child,” Makoto ordered the men angrily, saying to the fisherman, “He will die unless you obey!”
“Take him!” the man shrieked. “Kill him! I should have done so myself. Then kill me and my suffering will be over!”
Makoto leaped from his horse to seize the child himself. It clung to its father’s neck like a monkey, sobbing noisily.
“Leave them,” I said, dismounting, too, and giving the reins to Jiro. “We cannot force them.” I studied the man, taking care not to meet his gaze; after his first quick glance he did not look at me again. “What food do we have?”