The Disfavored Hero

by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

  Tomoe’s heart leapt. “Tell me of her.”

  “Of who?” he asked, acting innocent.

  She did not like to be teased. She said hotly, “The jono priestess, whom you mentioned.”

  “There are many priestesses in that strange sect. Which one do you mean?”

  Tomoe stood abruptly, angered. She said, “So! The conniving rokubu does not know everything! If I told you her name, it would be the biggest treachery of my life.” This said, Tomoe Gozen drew forth her sword, slashed, and sheathed it again, in one quick motion. The rokubu never blinked. The Buddha, hanging from the tree, fell to the ground, free of its noose. Tomoe said, “A Buddhist friend of mine, gone from this life, would not have liked him hanging there.”

  She bowed to the rokubu, then went away.

  PART III

  The Invisible Path

  An enormous bronze Buddha hovered in the air, held by winch and pulley. The wharf creaked and bent beneath the relic’s bulk. Forty laborers strained to center it off the end of the dock, to lower it gently onto the junk. It was the Mikado’s own Buddha, so they were careful. Slowly, it lighted on the thick, wooden pallet in the center of the junk’s deck. Laborers crawled over it like ants, removing ropes, placing the moving apparatus into the hold, for it would be needed at the voyage’s end.

  The junk’s hull sank low in the water, to the very limit of its endurance, held down by the heavy bronze.

  Toshima’s mother oversaw the project. Old beyond her actual years, her hair was already greying, and once-stately Madame Shigeno was losing the straightness of her spine. She was strong nonetheless, and hurried along the dock with lively step, squawking orders like a raven. Toshima herself walked along the beach, potentially her last walk upon any of Naipon’s major isles, which was sad to think. Beside her strode the samurai, recently arrived, to Toshima’s delight and surprise. She peered from behind her fan with undisguised happiness, in spite of the sorrow of the voyage, and stepped with a more girlish bounce than she had affected in a while.

  They stopped between the two big rocks, out of sight of the wharf, leaned against the smaller of the rocks, side by side. A crab scuttled sideways, digging its way out of sight. The women looked at one another, and Tomoe thought without saying: Toshima, you have changed, as have I. The last month, if not the whole year, had obviously worn on the Lady. She was tired, and more somber than before, but also matured, for all her girlish act.

  It had been a long time since Tomoe had true commerce with Naipon’s nobility, and Toshima seemed almost alien. On the road, the samurai had grown used to seeing peasant women hardened by toil, or fellow travelers weathered by adventure; and women such as these had given Tomoe an untraditional concept of beauty. Yet Toshima remained beautiful too, it could not be denied. For the first time, Tomoe wondered what the Lady would look like without cosmetics. It could be arranged to find out. Unlike most samurai, Tomoe might share a bath with the Lady.

  But that assumed luxuries. The small island to which they were being sent would have few of those. Baths would be swift, cold experiences in rushing streams—not calm exercises in warm, enclosed chambers with maidens to stroke, cleanse, and loosen muscles.

  “You have acquired a scar,” said Toshima, and reached out to touch the smooth, white marks on the samurai’s dark forehead.

  “A good scar, as they go,” said Tomoe.

  “That is so. It looks like two waves of the sea. Surely you are luck for the voyage.”

  Tomoe turned her face away from Toshima’s touch, could not see the junk or workers or wharf from where she leaned upon the rock. She said, “It is not a good season for seafaring.”

  “The Shogun knows,” said Toshima, and smiled a sardonic rather than seductive smile. Indeed, thought Tomoe, the Shogun might welcome the loss of these voyagers. The junk provided was in horrendous disrepair, an insult to Lady Toshima, and dangerous. It was hardly suited to transport under best circumstances, and might threaten to crumble into flotsam by the weight of the gargantuan Buddha which the disenthroned Mikado had commissioned sent.

  The danger of the trip should have been enough to satisfy the Shogun, but Tomoe quickly suspected other measures were made as well. She heard the sound of someone slinking near; only a ninja could have been more still. Apparently the Shogun was not so certain the voyage would prove sufficiently fatal.

  Tomoe caught Toshima’s eyes. The Lady had heard the movement too. When Tomoe reached for her sword, Toshima touched the swordwoman’s hand to stay the draw, and whispered, “I cannot believe they dare.”

  Four samurai stepped out from amidst the rocks upon the beach, two on each side of the narrow space between boulders where the Lady and her samurai rested and talked. These four men bowed low, grandly respectful. They were bigger than most samurai, dressed well but not richly. Toshima stepped away from the rock, chin raised, and demanded, “Is the honor of samurai preserved by killing me?”

  “Not you, Lady,” said the nearest. “But you must take no retainers with you into exile. We come for Tomoe Gozen.”

  One of the samurai grabbed Toshima from behind, held her with arm around her throat, pulled her from the path of promised battle. The other three drew their swords. Tomoe had not drawn her own, but said coolly,

  “The Shogun must despise you also.” She drew her sword at last, and added, “For he sends you to your doom.”

  While Tomoe guarded against three swords, Toshima was not idle. She reached into her hair and withdrew a long steel pin. A moment later, it was lodged in the spleen of the man who held her. He let go, staggered back, trying to remove the needle. Toshima turned to face him with her fan wide open. He was not prepared for her attack, was directed not to kill her anyway, and least expected that her fan would be razor tipped around its edge. She slid the fan along the samurai’s neck before he realized. Blood pumped forth in gushes from the big vein.

  In the same moment, Tomoe had slain her foremost attacker, and was left with only one murderous emissary before, and one behind. Trapped between unyielding boulders, it was difficult to move and to guard both front and back. Lady Toshima threw her fan at the back of Tomoe’s rear attacker. The fan spun through air, struck deep enough into the samurai’s shoulder to stick there, weakening him, but not stopping him.

  Tomoe met the forward blow with one that countered, then slid her sword smoothly behind and broke the attack of the injured man at her back. With dizzying speed, the sword came forward again, before her attacker could complete a new maneuver; and again, she slashed backward in time to keep the other man from pricking her kidney.

  It was difficult to do more than this defensive action, in her confined space. Few could protect their own front and back while simultaneously launching an assault.

  The rear attacker was losing strength as blood flowed down his back from the sharp edge of the fan. Toshima brought forth another pin from her hair, threw it like a dagger. It sped past Tomoe’s shoulder, took the front attacker through the eye. The man squealed, dropped his sword, then fell to the ground when Tomoe’s sword cleaved through his shoulder. She whisked about, broke the attack of the other instantaneously.

  Toshima retrieved her fan and the second pin, knelt to a tidepool to remove the blood. Tomoe cleaned her sword on the jacket of the last to fall. Only one of the four still lived, the one losing blood from his jugular and with Toshima’s other hairpin in his spleen. Already he was pale from blood loss, too weak even to plead a more honored death by the sword. But Tomoe understood his eyes, and her sword licked down to where he sat, cutting through the bones of his chest and exposing the heart.

  The women walked away, did not look back, told no one of the encounter. On the wharf, Toshima looked at the great Buddha sitting in the decrepit junk, and reminded, “A dangerous voyage ahead. It would be best to wait a month.”

  “If we could,” said Tomoe, and smiled for the first time that day. She added, “But we would have to kill too many if we stayed.”

  Three days at s
ea and no untoward incidents, Tomoe Gozen almost found relaxation, despite the serene, impudent face of the Buddha which watched her every motion. Or so it felt to be. No matter where she walked in front of it, the eyes seemed always on her, though she could not properly say she had seen them move.

  The junk glided smoothly over calm waters, the wind a gentle nudge against the slatted sails. Tomoe stood aft, to avoid the Buddha’s eyes, and looked into the clear, green waters. The sun was at a good angle to see deep into the sea, and Tomoe thought she beheld a white highway and a temple. When she looked harder, she saw less. A patch of cloud passed before the sun, and when the cloud moved on, there remained nothing of Tomoe’s illusion of a seafloor road.

  Buddhism provided the sects for richer Naiponese, but the sailors were poor, therefore as disturbed by their cargo as was Tomoe. They paid homage and apology to the Shinto gods of the sea and wind several times a day, and gazed never on the bronze visage of the Buddha. The prayers may have held sway for these three days, but toward evening of the third, billows of angry clouds erased the sunset, waiting ominously in the distance. The sailors began to batten down their supplies, in preparation for ill weather.

  That night, there were no stars, for clouds engulfed the sky. The junk’s sails were folded tight, making of the craft a sleeping beast. Firebrands burned fore and aft, reflecting orange trails out into the sea. There was no other light. The voyagers watched the sky with terrified anticipation, but there was no wind, no wave, no obvious cause of alarm. Only the atmosphere was noticeably changed, seeming stifling and thick; and the sailors wrought their own atmosphere of dread.

  The Buddha’s bronze visage was black upon the night. A fire brand reflected in its eyes, nowhere else.

  Then, way off over sea, a sound arose, the sound of all voyagers ever taken by the sea, their souls bound to the underwater land of the Dragon Queen and the mythic city of sea-dead, sea-folk, and horrifying gods. The sea-dead rose from slavery on rare occasion, to become the bitter, hateful Divine Wind.

  Rain refused to fall. No wind touched the ship. But they heard that terrifying wind growing louder, and the sailors fell in anxious prayer, clapping their hands and chanting: “Protect us! Protect us! Oh Heaven do Protect us!”

  Toshima’s mother came up from the junk’s bowels, lit joss sticks from a firebrand, placed these lengths of incense in the lap of the Buddha. The pungence wafted along the deck, and out upon the sea.

  White fire blazed momentarily in the distance, briefly lighting the roof of roiling, tortured clouds. Moments later, there was a deep, throaty growl—as though the Dragon Queen had waked, had breathed the fire.

  Still, the rain would not fall. But the wind rose fast and screaming, and sailors screamed back in fear. The calm sea became a hell of angry fists, reaching up higher and higher with each blow upon the complaining hull. One fist reached up in fore, another aft, and doused the brands. The Buddha’s eyes continued to glow, not with fire, but with icy blackness darker than the dark. Tomoe wondered if the seated figure would suddenly stand, but it did not, for no Buddha could ever rule the sea. Buddhas captured naught but human minds.

  Tomoe held Toshima onto the deck as the junk rocked and twisted about. An invisible sword—the wind—slashed the folded sails, tore the mast from the junk and flung it into the sea. Sailors screamed louder, mourning for themselves.

  Toshima’s mother stood before the Buddha with her hands held high, shouting a charm or prayer of entreaty at the huge bronze figure who watched her dispassionately. Woe be to the world if the gods should ever war on each other, so the Buddha remained passive. A wave swept over the deck, soaking all in spite of the lack of rain. Madame Shigeno alone had dared to be standing, and only the prematurely old woman was washed away. Toshima struggled to escape Tomoe, to crawl to the edge of the deck where she would have cried out uselessly for her mother. But Tomoe held fast, lest her mistress go over the rail. The Lady kicked in tantrum.

  The deck of the junk began to crack, the pressures of the stirring sea pulling the wooden hull in various directions. The wood cried like a man. The Buddha, sitting on its heavy pallet, added to the tensions. It fell through the deck and punctured the bottom of the hold.

  Sailors were already trying to launch fishing boats over the side, but the living sea reached out with cruel fingers, snatched the boats, pulled them away and down. Braver sailors flung themselves to their doom. Others clung to the rails and to life and begged the sea to spare them.

  The junk was sinking fast, drawn down by the giant Buddha and the sea’s grisly insistence. Only the head of the Buddha protruded from the junk’s bowels, its shoulders below the broken deck. Something must have pushed at it from below, for the statue began to rise … then fell once more so the junk split near in two. Then the sea enveloped the whole of the junk. The Buddha’s head was last to sink from view, gone perhaps to decorate some hall of the Dragon Queen’s country, for the folk below could not make their own ornaments and stole even their cities by sinking lived-on islands.

  In the raging waters, Tomoe clung to Toshima. The Lady used her fan like a fish’s fin, and it was difficult to say who was keeping who afloat. They saved each other, or at least held one another back from swifter death. They gasped each time a wave passed out from under them, filled their lungs with air, then held their breaths until the clinging sea let them up once more.

  All was darkness, or nearly. Tomoe’s eyes strained to see through salty sea, black as squid’s ink. She could not tell up from down when submerged with Toshima, and was not certain if what she was seeing were vagrant stars above, or city lights below. The sky, she knew, was shrouded with clouds—but what fire could burn on the bottom of the sea? There was no logical answer, so Tomoe closed her eyes.

  Again, the sea parted from them, and the women choked for air, clutching one another tightly. Tomoe could not see the Lady’s face, for all was held in darkness, but she remembered with some irony that she had wished to see Toshima without cosmetics.

  Almost as if some chiding deity were granting this request, lightning split the sky with a fiery gulf, and Tomoe saw Toshima’s face twisted with fear and agony, frightful as a devil’s mask, wet hair clinging like tendrils around a horrifying visage.

  Then rain fell at last, so that sea and sky were one, and Tomoe knew they were lost, forever lost, and cursed the awful sea.

  It may have been that the sea did not hear Tomoe Gozen’s hateful charge, its own racket had been so miraculous. Or the sea may have heard perfectly well, and had set itself about the preparations for a more grueling death for a samurai and her mistress.

  Vomiting seawater, Tomoe fought her way upward from a coma deep as the waters. She was entangled with Toshima in lengths of kelp and rope—rope from the winches which had been stored in the junk’s belly. They were adrift upon the Buddha’s pallet, with no other remnant of the lost voyage in sight.

  Toshima lay akimbo amongst the rope, breathing easily and therefore commonly asleep. Tomoe fathomed how it had to have been: the Lady managed to drag both of them onto the pallet, in spite of the tangle of hemp and seaweed which had caught them. Certainly Tomoe had no recollection of herself achieving this temporary salvation or respite. She had been stricken alongside the head by a fragment of the splintered junk. That was her last memory.

  The sky was startlingly clear and intensely blue, fading toward light green on the empty horizon, where sky blended with jade waters. The sea was calm. There was no breeze.

  Inspecting Toshima, Tomoe saw that the Lady’s neck was already blistered from sleeping face-down in the hot sun. Tomoe, hardened by her career, suffered less from the exposure. Carefully, she untangled herself from the ropes, and gently unwrapped Toshima as well, turning her carefully. The Lady stirred, groaned, woke in Tomoe’s arms and nearly smiled, but cried out in agony instead.

  Her arm was swollen. It was not broken, but badly wrenched. It hurt to move it even a little, but with Tomoe’s aid, the injured limb was soon bound between
Toshima’s breasts, immobilized by the Lady’s obi sash which served as bandage and sling.

  “Alive at least,” said Toshima, her voice husky from so much saltwater swallowed and coughed up. They were grateful for their lives, but shared doubts about their fortune when looking in all directions to see nothing but blue and green horizon.

  “We can fashion a sail,” said Tomoe. “My sword can serve as mast. My jacket can hold the wind.” But when the makeshift sail was fashioned, there was no wind to fill it. Neither did they have a paddle. There was no wrack from the lost junk, aside from their immediate selves, and therefore nothing they might adapt as oar. Eerily, there was not even a natural current to move them on. It was too quickly evident that they could not hope to use the pallet-cum-raft as more than an island of slow, suffering death.

  For a long while they sat on the raft, looking at each other, then at their knees, but never at the surrounding sea. They did not speak. They listened to their own breaths, and the tiny waves lapping around the edges of their minimal habitation. In a while, Tomoe began to handle the rope in a diverting manner. Slowly, her eyes grew more and more intense with considerations. Finally, she said,

  “We can make a harness of this rope! I will draw the raft with the power of my own limbs.”

  It was true Naipon bred strong swimmers, being as it was a land of many rivers, lakes, wetlands, and surrounded by oceans and seas. Martial training had given Tomoe stronger arms and legs than most good swimmers could boast. Her will as much as her training rendered her adept at arduous tasks. All the same, it was a terrible thing to set herself to perform, a thing she would not have proposed were there other choices.

  Toshima helped as best she could with but one good arm, and soon the two women had fashioned a harness which Tomoe fit over her head and around her shoulders. The further ends of the rope were attached to one edge of the square pallet, which perforce became the prow. The horror of the night before had left Tomoe less than trustful of the sea, but she entered it, and would long endure it. She swam to the rope’s length, took the tension, and pulled. The raft moved slowly at first; but because the sea was calm, it did not battle her strokes. Soon, she was giving Toshima the swiftest ride possible by the power of a single swimmer.