by Nick Lake
Hiro interrupted. “He and his men overtook Yoshimoto’s army and ambushed them.”
“How?”
Hiro smiled. The story was an old one, and was hugely popular in Taro and Hiro’s village and indeed the entire Kanto. “That night, Lord Oda’s samurai set up a false army of straw-headed dummies on the mountain pass, to make Yoshimoto think that they were up there. Then they climbed down into the valley under cover of darkness and concealed themselves in the woods. They hid among the trees, waiting for Yoshimoto’s army to take their rest. Soon a storm broke, forcing the enemy into their tents. As the rain fell and the lightning struck, Lord Oda and his men sprang from the trees and killed Yoshimoto’s men as they slept, or as they stumbled in disarray. It was a great victory.”
“They slaughtered a superior army as it slept,” said Shusaku. “It was not a great victory. It was simply a victory of cunning over your so-called honor. They tricked Yoshimoto with their dummies, then they executed him and his men. But did Oda’s men question him when he gave the order? Of course not. Honor is different things to different men. To the samurai, it is the code that binds them by unquestionable loyalty to their lord. To the lord, it is a useful tool to exploit their samurai and their peasants. But a lord has no conception of loyalty. A lord is happy to use ninjas to do his dirty work.” He seemed about to say more, then stopped. “The fact is that Oda’s victory was a despicable act of cold-blooded murder. Yet sometimes despicable acts of cold-blooded murder are necessary.”
“It wasn’t murder! It was an audacious act by a vastly outnumbered army!” exclaimed Taro. The people of the Kanto were great supporters of Lord Oda’s, and Taro saw him in his mind still as the epitome of a samurai, despite the empty villages he had seen, the devastating effects of war on the peasant population. “And anyway, there is honor in victory. Lord Oda won a great rout against an army superior in number. That makes his tactics excusable.”
“Ah,” said Shusaku. “Now you’re learning.”
CHAPTER 14
When night fell, they continued westward into the foothills, leaving behind the broad valley, which stretched like a great flat bowl behind them.
Often they passed abandoned huts, and Taro was starting to realize the effects of the expensive wars Lord Oda had fought against Lord Yoshimoto and others. He saw the effects in the cowed population, the lack of young men—most of them killed or recruited by passing armies—and the painful malnutrition of the children. Shusaku had explained that Lord Oda had only recently raised his tax on rice yet again to pay for a new campaign against a minor, rebellious daimyo, and for many peasants this meant handing over their entire crops, leaving them with nothing to eat.
Shusaku led the boys through the woods, following fox or deer trails, keeping constant watch for the wider trails that might indicate human passage. Taro found that his sense of smell was more acute than ever before. In the darkness he could see little, but he was aware of the scent of wild garlic, tree sap, and deer scat.
They paused at an open clearing in which a luxuriant meadow grew, fed by a clear mountain stream. Shusaku pulled up some wild orchids and handed the roots to Hiro, who accepted them gratefully and chewed them as they walked.
“Only one more valley before we reach the village where the abbess lives,” said Shusaku. “We should arrive tonight.” He stopped to check some tracks in the moss. “Only a stag,” he said. Then he looked up at the sky. “You’ll like the girls. They will make good allies for you in your coming life.”
“Allies?” said Taro. “Don’t you mean friends?”
Shusaku smiled. “The two are the same.”
Soon they began to climb quite steeply, and maples and oaks gave way to pines that clutched on to the soil and rock with gnarled old-man fingers. Shusaku began to skirt around the mountain, heading for a narrow pass that led away from the lowlands and into the wilder country of the west. The going was hard. Many times Taro slipped and grazed his knees or palms, and he suspected that this didn’t hurt him as much as it did Hiro, who was also prone to falling. Nevertheless, the big wrestler kept going doggedly, never complaining.
Shusaku, of course, leaped nimbly from rock to rock, never losing his balance once.
They crossed the pass around the middle of the night, keeping always against the rock since they had passed out of the tree line and their silhouettes would be visible to anyone even far below.
They followed an easier way down the other side, in the bed of a nearly dry stream, and soon they were in the trees again. The scene was framed now by mountains to the east, and from these began to emanate a pale gray light, as morning crept toward them on its relentless westerly voyage.
As they crept through the forest, their footsteps silent on the mossy ground, Shusaku once again held out his hand and they came to a stop. The ninja made urgent gestures with his hands, instructing Taro and Hiro to hide behind trees. They did so, and saw before them a wide path that cut through the soft, loamy ground and snaked up the hill toward another, wider pass.
Taro turned back and saw Shusaku gesturing for them to get down. He crouched.
A stooped figure appeared on the path, walking toward them. It was an oldish man, though Taro thought his hunched back probably owed more to hard work than to old age. The man walked on till he was facing a large maple tree near the trio’s hiding place, then began laboriously to climb it, until he was standing on a wide, low branch and hugging the trunk with his arms.
Taro, Hiro, and Shusaku stayed absolutely quiet while the man felt at the tree trunk. He came to a hole in the tree and shuffled himself around to face it. Then, bracing himself against the tree with his knee, the muscles of his leg trembling, he took a thin taper from his robe. Using what Taro supposed was some smoldering moss, wrapped up in wet leaves to keep it alive, the man lit the taper and held it to the hole. Taro smelled pine smoke.
Gingerly, the man reached into the hole with his free hand, his thigh still shaking alarmingly with the effort of keeping himself upright. He extracted a large honeycomb from the hole, which he dropped into a bag at his waist. Then he climbed down awkwardly from his perch.
Just then, the sound of hoofbeats approached from down the hill. Taro turned to see a small group of samurai, in heavy armor, mounted on impressively large horses. They wore long katana at their waists, in ornately decorated sura sheaths. As they passed, Taro saw the Oda mon embroidered on the men’s backs. What were Oda’s samurai doing on this path in the early hours of the morning?
Whatever they were doing there, the samurai were magnificent. Taro gazed in admiration at the gleaming metal of their armor, at the gorgeous inlaid lacquer work of their sword sheaths. Unconsciously, he took a step toward the men. Each man wore the full, expensive samurai garb: kimonos stitched with beautiful designs of flowers, birds, and mountains; nodowas to shield their throats; sode protecting their shoulders. Full, fitted donakas guarded their torsos.
“You, peasant,” said one of the leading samurai to the old man, who had frozen by the side of the path and was staring at the sudden apparitions in front of him. Taro stepped back behind the tree. Something about the man’s voice frightened him.
The samurai’s horse pawed at the ground as if finding it hard to stay still. It gave an impression of barely contained power. The samurai who rode this noble beast was a very thin man, his moustache and beard straggly and greasy. His skin was very pale, and criss-crossed with broken veins, which fluttered weakly. He looked as if he were being consumed from within by small crawling things.
“I said ‘You, peasant,’” the samurai repeated, his tone threat ening.
The old man still did not reply, seeming struck dumb by shock. A mountain man like this, Taro thought, would not have seen many fully armed samurai in his life. The old man’s mouth flapped open, as he tried to speak.
“What’s that in your bag?” asked the samurai.
The old man opened the drawstring and took out the honeycomb. He showed it to the soldiers.
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bsp; “Ah,” said the samurai. “Honey, stolen from Lord Oda’s forest. Why don’t you hand it over? Let’s consider it a tax. We’ve been riding all night, and we could use some sustenance.”
“B-b-but th-this is the open forest. I pay my taxes in rice.” The old man’s voice was shaky, his eyes wet with tears.
“The open forest is also Lord Oda’s. Would you deny that the province is his to command? Your rice levy is not a tax or a payment, it is simply a giving back of something that belongs already to the lord. Just as you belong to the lord, and just as this forest belongs to the lord, and those bees in that tree just there. You have stolen this honeycomb from Lord Oda.” The samurai leaned down in the saddle and grabbed the honeycomb, which he tossed to one of his companions. “And to add insult to injury, you fail even to bow to us, your superiors.”
The old man babbled an apology, while bowing low—as low as would be expected even in front of a lord.
But it wasn’t good enough for the samurai. “Lower,” he commanded. The old man knelt.
Taro, watching, felt a sickness in his stomach. For a moment the old man’s face flickered and became Taro’s father’s. In that moment Taro felt a burning moment of pure hatred for Shusaku, who had not prevented his father’s death, and who now was doing nothing to help this poor peasant. He began to reach for his bow. But something struck his arm, and he turned to see Shusaku, who was shaking his head vigorously. Taro turned away, ignoring the ninja, and raised his bow once again. He aimed at the leading samurai.
Then Shusaku—who had been the width of two tatami mats away—was suddenly behind him, holding his hands behind his back. He struggled and was about to call out when a scarf was pulled tight over his mouth. Yet his hands were still immobilized behind him. Shusaku must have bound them, somehow, but how had the ninja done it so quickly?
Taro could only watch, his blood boiling, as the samurai humiliated the peasant.
“Lower,” he commanded once again, as the man tried to bow even deeper. He was on his knees by now. “I am Kenji Kira of the Kira clan, and I would see you eat the dirt at your feet to erase this stain on my honor.”
The old man lowered himself still farther, till he was lying facedown on the ground. Kenji Kira laughed, then turned to his men. “Give me some of that honeycomb,” he ordered. One of the samurai handed it to him, and he sniffed it. “Hmmm,” he said. “It smells good. As I’m sure my lord would agree, since the bees and the flowers that made it belong to his ancestral fiefdom.” Kira threw the honeycomb to the ground. “And now”—he drew his sword with a flourish—“you die.”
But rather than use the sword on the old man, Kira slid it back into its sheath with a loud thwock. “Wait. Look up, peasant.” The old man looked up. “Have you seen two boys and an older man pass through here? One of the boys is a leper.”
“N-n-no,” the old man stuttered. “I’m the only one as comes this way, for the honey. I have a little hut down the hill …”
The thin samurai began to draw his sword again, then slid it back into the sheath, sighing. “No,” he said. “I would not sully my sword with the flesh of your kind.” He grabbed the reins with his left hand, turning the horse to ride away. With his right hand he made a sharp, cutting gesture behind his back.
“Oh,” said the old man from the ground, where he had not seen Kira’s gesture. “Oh, thank you, my lord. Thank you for sparing m—”
One of the lower-ranking samurai cut through the man’s neck even as he spoke, and the head as it rolled along the mossy ground continued to utter a wheezy, whistley eeeee sound as it finished its final word.
The riders departed.
CHAPTER 15
Shusaku released Taro. “Don’t worry,” said the ninja. “They’re looking for us, but they’re going the wrong way.”
Taro broke away. “You think I’m worried for myself?”
“Then what—”
Taro turned away. He didn’t want to see the ninja’s cowardly face. He thought if he looked at Shusaku he would be sick. “I’m thinking of this man, who died for no reason.”
“Now you know what the samurai you admire so much are really like,” said Shusaku.
“Really?” asked Taro, still not turning. “Because he would still be alive if it weren’t for you.”
Trembling, Taro walked over to the old man, still not looking back. He kneeled by the corpse and whispered “Namu Amida Butsu” eight times, hoping that this prayer to the Buddha of Compassion might help the old man’s soul on its way to Sukhavarti, the Pure Land. The man had died suddenly, with no time to prepare himself. He would be lucky not to descend to the realm of the hungry ghosts.
For the past few days Taro had thought only of his parents—of finding his mother, of the pain of his father’s loss. He had even started to warm to Shusaku a little, to admire him for doing a little more than would have been expected—giving his mother that pigeon, or how, as they passed through the blighted countryside, the ninja had stopped where an emaciated old woman sat by the road and handed her a coin. When Taro had commented on it, Shusaku had put a finger to his lips and shushed him. “Don’t go telling anyone,” he’d said. “I might lose the respect of my fellow ninjas. We are an amoral sort, you know. Assassinations, secret missions, murder. A man has a reputation to uphold.”
Now, though, Taro saw in his mind only the old man falling.
As if it came from another world, he heard Hiro say to Shusaku, “He was looking for us. And he wore the mon of Lord Oda.”
“Yes,” said Shusaku. “I think they must have found the men from the palanquin.”
“They’re going to a lot of trouble to hunt us down,” said Hiro.
Shusaku grunted. “It would seem so.” His tone did not invite further comment.
Taro was surprised when Shusaku knelt beside him and began reciting the same prayer to Amida Buddha. Taro stood, tears welling up in his eyes. “Why did you stop me from helping? We could have saved him.”
“Because we would have had to kill the samurai,” Shusaku replied, his voice as calm as ever. “And a missing patrol would have raised suspicion, forcing us to kill whoever came looking for them. And what if one of them got away, to tell Oda that you live, still?” He clicked his tongue. “Better that we keep you hidden, that you be thought dead, than have to kill all those men. And who says a farmer is worth more than a soldier? It is only your head full of romance and honor that tells you so. The leader, Kira, was cruel, I’ll admit, but I would bet you that the others are only ordinary boys, far from home and without anyone to guide them. So which would you rather on your conscience—one dead farmer or six dead soldiers?”
“I would rather neither,” said Taro. Above the tops of the pines, a cloud moved to uncover the moon, causing a dull light to glow. It suffused the old man’s corpse and the flowers, making the scene eerily beautiful.
“That is not your choice,” replied the ninja. “We are not in a monagatori tale here, boy. Leave an old man to die, so as not to have to kill many more. That is the best we can do.”
Taro nodded. But he didn’t agree. The best they could do was better than that, and he was going to find a way to achieve it. He would find his mother, and he would avenge his father.
And then he would go looking for those who preyed on the weak, and he would make them pay.
CHAPTER 16
Clouds parted over the waning moon, illuminating the world with dull light.
Taro was growing to enjoy this itinerant life. His muscles were taut from walking, and the journey gave him a sense of purpose he had never before experienced. Shusaku pointed now to smoke, rising on the other side of a clump of trees. “That is the village where the abbess lives. We’ll stay there for a day or two. Then, from there, the mountain where I live is only a night’s walk.”
Despite knowing that once they reached the mountain they would with luck learn where his mother had hidden, Taro couldn’t help feeling a guilty pang of disappointment. He loved life in the open countrys
ide. The blood of a rabbit sang in his veins, from yesterday’s meal, not enough to tide him for long, but enough that hunger didn’t stab his stomach; the land beneath his feet was springy, seeming to want to help him on his way.
As they approached the little village, they had no choice but to step out from the trees and onto the road, but they had left Kenji Kira far behind and traveling in the opposite direction. Shusaku was confident that they could enter the village safely—and anyway, they needed a place to stay for a while before going on to his mountain home. Taro needed new string for his bow, and all of them needed new clothes. Taro was still dressed in the too-long trousers and robe of the ambassador whose palanquin they had stolen.
As they passed the first houses, Taro looked around at the blue lanterns. Where the plain around Nagoya had been half-emptied of people, this village seemed warm and welcoming. Smoke rose from the little houses, all of them seeming inhabited. Gaku charms had been hung on the eaves of the houses to ward off bad spirits, and the charms chimed softly in the breeze.
As they had walked, obon season had begun in earnest. In every window burned a light to guide departed loved ones home. Taro felt a pang of longing for his old life, for his mother, who always sought his help in collecting and arranging the food for the spirits, laying out bowls of rice on the shoryodana shelf, and lighting the obon lamp for the first time.
He wondered if anyone would light a lamp for his father in the hut by the shore in Shirahama.
Shusaku crept toward the outlying houses, navigating by the light of the lamps—these paper lights guiding a different spirit from the ones intended, as he slipped into the village.
Taro and Hiro followed. Their senses were improving all the time, and they could now walk almost as soundlessly as the ninja. Then a snatch of melody carried on the night air toward them—a girl, singing the obon song.
Obon is a joyous season!