by Ronan Frost
Chapter Three
The shivering tightness of cramp that imprisoned my flesh begin to ease, unwinding strand by strand as my body gave up, opening the gate of its defenses to the soporific cold. How could I have not seen how easy and how simple it could be?
Something ticked at my face.
My eyes cracked open. Through that narrow slit of vision fickle puffs of wind toyed with drifting flakes of the first snow of the year. I watched for a time, entranced.
The sound of cracking branches startled me with their proximity and the dancing light of a lantern splashed over the thicket. “Over here,” a guard shouted. “He landed here!”
It surprised me to discover my will to live remained, like tiny embers glowing into life when the cold grey ashes of a fireplace are turned over. The heat was enough to focus my thoughts and draw my knees under me in preparation to stand. I heard several more footsteps running through the mud. In my state of shock, I did not feel the pain of my injuries, yet when I eased weight through the bones of my arms the joints gave way. Surprised at this sudden weakness my chest almost fell to the ground, yet somehow I held myself, and forced myself to crawl, dragging myself deeper into the reeds as the lantern light chased at my feet.
Another guard joined the first. “Do you see it?”
“Spread out!” cried the first voice. “Someone is trying to escape, I saw him! Find him!”
Blocks of ice seemingly had taken the place where my feet and hands had once been, and I wondered if the sharp twigs and thorns should be causing me pain. My nose was packed solid with frozen mucous, forcing every inhalation of freezing air directly through my mouth, splitting my lips. Behind me I heard the guards hesitate to leave one another’s company in the darkness, standing in a tight circle and rattling their weapons. Exchanging orders, they gathered courage to fan outward, beating at the undergrowth.
Without realizing it, I had collapsed. I lay immobile, my clothing soaked through to my skin, ice forming in the strands of my hair, with no shelter other than the concealment of scrubby bushes. Slowly the light from the lanterns of the guards grew stronger, shafts of light skewing across my body.
The snow had grown heavier and thicker, a sudden downpour of swirling eddies gathering in and around the branches of the scrub above me. I did not move, and speck by speck the snow built up over my body. Tickles of snow melted under my head, filling my ears with water.
The sound of thwacking of bushes grew loud and very close. I remained motionless, my eyes moving under snow bristled eyelashes. The lantern light, bespeckled in the falling snow, drifting right above my head and a pair of booted feet stalked before my eyes. A blanket of snow fell with a wet thump as the reeds were struck. I would be discovered as soon as he took one more step…
There was a cry from the guard post.
“Riders approach! Riders!”
The guard stopped and I saw his feet pivot away with the sound of a score of galloping horses upon the road nearby. The guard shouted to his companion, making me jump in fright, as he rushed back to his post.
“Let them through! Lord Date approaches!”
The rapid tattoo of hooves came louder, pitch changing as they went from the hard packed gravel of the road to the wood of the drawbridge. I took advantage of the distraction and noise to break the mold my body had made in the snow, rising to my feet. I half-ran, half-stumbled further down the sparsely treed slope and it seemed I walked among people, but what where they doing here in this snowfall and darkness? As I staggered closer they would stop moving and my forearm would come up against the hardness of tree trunks.
Then, rising like a wall before me in the darkness were the shadows of the houses closest to the castle, those of the samurai and monks. How much to trust my senses? I stopped briefly to rest, my breath pluming in the shafts of light leaking through the boards in the windows. There was a narrow corridor of low bushes between houses, and I judged my chances of being spotted where high if I were to cross through, yet I had little other choice for the houses continued for some fair distance to either side. The cold was bone-deep now, and I could not afford to spend time searching for a better way. I plunged forward, dragging heavy footprints in the snow, passing close enough to have reached out with either hand and touched the sides of the houses, and although I heard sounds of activity within there came no shout of alarm.
As I stumbled down the hillside the density of houses began to thin and the trees of the forest grew taller. I tripped upon fallen branches that lay obscured beneath the blanket of unblemished snow, feeling oafish as I destroyed this stark and serene beauty. I wondered if it would be best if I just sat down and rested a while and let that snow cover me and take me into the next life…
I broke free of tangled underground and onto tended fields, where the moonlight peeking through occasional gaps in the cloud shed a pale light through the whorls of falling snow. I instantly felt lost in the vastness. It was only when I had reached the bottom of the hill that I turned and looked back at where I had come from. I saw the castle at the crest of the rise, a remote spark of light high in the distance containing everything that had once mattered to me.
Powerful emotions arose from the hollow of my gut, uncontrollable sobs racking my chest. My feet curled with pain, every ligament in my body taut, the clothes against my skin frozen into solid boards. I tasted a metallic tang in my mouth and spat viscid strands of blood to the ground.
Somehow, I kept walking, but my mind was gone. I had no sense of the passage of time other than the slow sinking of the moon in the sky and the steadily dropping temperature. The night was the coldest when the moon set and I found myself slowing almost to a stop. My jaw ached and I tried to imagine the faraway warmth of a summer’s day, the strength of the sun upon exposed skin, but such heat seemed impossible and my daydreams were of no solace.
I blinked the snow from my eyes, for it seemed somehow I was close to a hamlet of houses, the outlines of the buildings vague shadow upon shadow. I approached the nearest of them, a small one, aged, set a little apart from the others. It was only the size of a single room, set up on stilts above the mud. Feeling myself distant from my body I climbed the few stairs and rapped my knuckles upon the door.
There were no noises or response from within, and I slumped down against the door, feeling the strength leaving me. A tiny thought echoed in my head. Something I had forgotten to do, or something I had to think before I died.
Aki.
What retaliation had master Masakage taken out on her? Would it be simply a quick death, or perhaps some drawn out torture and disfigurement to bring her family shame? Tears of a coward brimmed upon my eyes, my heart log-jammed in my chest. I could think of only her, and with it came the golden vignette of memory; summer, three years before …
She had been accompanied by an older woman, both of them carrying large baskets under their arms as they crossed my line of sight. Lord Date’s archers were practicing that day, taking up the entire courtyard with their field, forcing the two women to walk the long way around from the main castle towards the washhouses. From my vantage upon the second storey I saw Lord Date Masamune dressed in black and gold armor prowling the ranks of archers. He wore no helm upon his head and even from this height and distance I could see the deep lines bracketing the downturn of his mouth serving to highlight the savageness to his scowl and the puckered flesh surrounding the empty socket of his right eye.
I had paused, torn for a moment in indecision. The front rank of archers with bows almost as tall as themselves had completed the careful action of pointing the nocked arrow skywards and drawing back the bow in the same action as lowering to take aim, elbows high, stance wide. They held that pose and with it seemed to stop time itself.
The tension of the moment broke as Lord Date barked a command and the archers released, the volley slicing the air and impacting straw targets with a rapid tattoo. I reached my decision and broke into a run in a direction that would parallel the Aki’
s path, making for a point to intercept her.
I lost sight of them and stopped running, catching my breath. Perhaps I had misjudged. From the other side of the building I heard another volley of arrows hitting their target. Then I saw movement; they had been walking slower than I had supposed. I was now in front of them, they were headed in my direction. Feeling a blush rise to my face I lowered my head and acted as if I was upon some urgent errand, clinging close to the side of the path, seeing them only from my peripheral vision, feeling the sternness of the matron, knowing the girl did not even glance in my direction.
At that last moment, just as we passed each other, I shot my gaze in her direction. I could not be sure, but was that a hint of a smile plucking the corner of her beautiful cheek?
I felt a fool and a hot blush colored my face as I hurried back to my duties, with thoughts of her in my mind.
The memory of that smile resonated in my heart like the quivering string of an empty bowstring.
Suddenly I awoke.
“Who are you?” asked the woman leaning over me. “Are you a soldier?”
She had been sitting by my bed, at her back the low angled sunlight piercing through the gaps in the walls. I found I lay upon a thin futon beneath the weight of coarse blankets, and although I was dry I remained chilled and could not feel my fingers or toes. Feeling the imperative to her question I rapidly fought to separate dream from reality and place myself; my head swimming with confusion after my long sleep.
“Well?”
What was she asking again? A solider?
I shook my head.
“You didn’t look like one,” she muttered, almost to herself. “But you can never be sure. The One-Eyed Dragon will even take the skinny ones like you for his army.” She started to poke at the fire in the hearth that burned with a deep languid heat, almost without flame. She pushed a singed corner of cloth further into the coals and it flared with a brief yellow light that reflected upon her wrinkled face. My clothes. She had burnt the last scraps of my clothes.
Hooves sounded in a muffled thunder upon the mud of the road outside. She shot to her feet with the alacrity of an old crow and hopped to the window. She cracked the shutter open, a draft of chill morning air gusting in along the floor and remained there until the sound had died away.
“Lord Date’s samurai,” she said quietly, remaining a moment longer as if to satisfy herself they had gone. “Something has happened at the castle.”
My temples pounded with a savage headache and I tried to speak but found no words.
“You’re safe here,” the woman said, her voice hardening with a bitter edge. “I owe Lord Date and his pointless armies no love.”
She returned to my side, dropping into a crouch before the fire, agitated and nervous as she stirred the ashes.
“Safe, but for how long…? No, I can’t hide you here,” she said to herself, shaking her head and on her feet again and crossing the room. She threw open a low cupboard, tossing out clothing in my direction.
I still could not find my voice and simply lay there, transfixed and confused, wondering why she simply did not just give me up to the soldiers. My gaze moved about the room with its quiet arrangement of simple furnishings. Despite the blockage in my nose, I could taste on the back of my tongue the musty odor of one who has lived alone for many years.
Racing thoughts chased each other around in spirals. Aki surely needed my help, I should give myself up and free her. A wild fantasy took me, somehow I had my hands in hers, I could feel her touch. I heard again her words of warning she had spoken in the stables, telling me to flee. I closed my eyes and shook my head, miserable in my worthlessness.
The woman was at the front door again, her sharp ears catching something mine had not. A moment later I heard it too, voices raised in sharp command. She was at the window, up upon her tiptoes and peering out.
“They come!” she hissed.
I did not move. The old woman rushed to the back of the house, speaking as she went, and slid open the panel of the rear window.
“They are searching, you cannot stay!”
When she returned to my side I still had not moved. She shoved the pile of clothes in my direction.
“Get that look out of your eyes, you’re not beaten yet!”
I struggled stiffly from the blankets. The clothing she had stuffed into my lap was of woven hemp, well worn. I noticed stitched patches of repair in the knees of the pants as I pulled them on, slightly too small for me, coming up to my mid-calf. With clumsy fingers I tied the drawstring then pulled on socks with a separation between the big toe and other toes, and could not help but wince as it felt like the skin on the soles of my battered feet sloughed away. Meanwhile, the woman had been rooting in the cupboard and at last found what she searched for, returning with a pair of boots. Her hands had made fingerprints in the thin layer of dust clinging to their surface. I sorted left boot from right and pulled them over my feet; the fit was perfect, the leather so worn as to be almost like skin.
“Oh my sweet boy… You look just like him.” Her eyes were suddenly rheumy with some ancient memory.
A strange misgiving struck a shiver over my flesh that was not due to the cold. Whose ghost did I supplant?
A heavy knock on the door to the cottage snapped us both back to the present.
“Take the path up the hill by the well, head north to Kanayama Pass,” she whispered urgently. “Get away from here. Far away!”
With those words she hoisted me through the low window at the rear of the cottage. As I fell I heard two noises simultaneously; the window being slid closed and the front door forcibly opened. I hit the ground, landing awkwardly upon a cushion of new snow and reeds. I lay for a moment in the sudden chill, the air holding that special kind of muffled silence that comes after snowfall. I hesitated a moment, waiting, and again the desire to simply lay still and give up almost took me.
I rolled to my feet, staying low, moving away from the village and the open fields and into the trees. The low angle of the winter sun shone through the snow upon the trees, white and clean and without shred of warmth. Clutching my arms and hunching my shoulders I slogged through the deep snow up the hill where I saw the low roof of a communal well. The path the woman talked of was almost impossible to find. Nobody had trodden the path since the snowfall, and all that was evident of it as it wound up through the sparse trees was a slight dip and smoothness in the snow. It was heavy walking, and my boots soon seeped water, likewise the shins of my pants.
The path, such as it was, angled across the slope until it met with small stream where a makeshift bridge of two logs bound together spanned the running water. As I crossed I saw miniature world constructed of ice in the river’s flow, tiny caves and crystals carved and created by an untold number of tiny hands with infinite patience. My feet slowed and I stood swaying, losing myself to memory.