by Nick Lake
Repressing a shiver, Taro began to untie the boat. If he didn’t go soon, he would lose his nerve. The sun was high in the sky – and he’d already wasted the previous day speaking to people he knew and filling the priest in on what he had been doing, or at least what he could say of it.
‘Well,’ said the priest. ‘Good luck. May the goddess be with you.’
Taro wondered if he should say that he had seen the goddess to whom Shirahama’s shrine was dedicated, last time he dived. That he had been rescued by the Princess of the Hidden Waters herself. But it would lead to a long conversation, and he didn’t have time for that. He contented himself with saying, ‘Praise the Princess of the Hidden Waters.’
Actually, the Princess was part of his plan, such as he had one. He very much hoped she would be taking an interest in what he was doing.
The priest nodded solemnly, then helped to push the boat out. Hana and Taro jumped in, and Taro took the oars, after clearing some of the fishing paraphernalia that littered the boat – nets, buoys, a couple of weighted lobster creels.
As always, Taro could feel when they were over the wreck. The water took on an unpleasant quality, oily and slick. The birds no longer called and wheeled overhead; only silence hung over this part of the bay. Even the sun no longer seemed so warm, and he saw Hana hug herself as a thin breeze blew.
‘It’s too deep for an anchor,’ said Taro. ‘So you’ll have to hold the boat in place with the oars.’ He pointed to a gnarled tree that clung to the northward cliff. ‘Keep it in line with that tree. I shouldn’t be long.’
‘Taro, I...’ She trailed off. ‘I hope you find it,’ she said, though he had the impression it hadn’t been what she first intended to say. ‘Keep safe.’
‘You too,’ he said. What he meant was I love you, forgive me, but it didn’t come out that way. He felt a pressure on his heart, and before his heart could have a chance to burst, he rolled backwards over the side of the boat, and then he was in the water.
He took a deep breath and dived down. This time he knew where he was going – he found the spars of the ship easily, sticking up as he remembered them, like the ribcage of a great whale. The water was murky at this depth, and his ears roared with pain. He gripped one of the spars – it was slimy in his hand – and clung to it, fighting the urge of his body to rise to the surface.
Below him, a small octopus shot away, running along the sand to disappear into some hidden hole. The sand was covering so much of the ship, and the shifting sea had broken it into such small pieces, that he couldn’t possibly hope to find the sword on his own, even if it was still here. He closed his eyes for a moment, hoping that this wouldn’t be a wasted trip. When he opened them again, a school of small, grey fish shimmered past him, then flicked into nothingness, silver flashes disappearing into the gloom.
When the first Kappa came towards him, he was ready for it. The turtle-demon, its red eyes full of anger, swam for his legs. He pulled them up just in time and let the demon go past. But there were more of them – two seized him by the arm, pulling him down towards the sand, and his death. Others clung to his body, like malignant and enormous limpets.
He resisted only partially. His lungs began to scream at him, telling him to go back to the surface, to breathe in the cool, life-giving air. He ignored them. His vision began to go dark at the edges.
Finally, when he thought that he must drown, there was an impression of suddenly brightening light, and the Kappa began to fall away. Again, the Princess of the Hidden Waters whirled around him, her dress flowing in the water like seaweed. She was beautiful. More beautiful than he remembered. She was the spirit of the amas, their protector, and the guardian of the bay. She was a goddess.
None of which stopped him from reaching out and grabbing her. He held to her as tightly as the Kappa had clung to him.
She didn’t speak, exactly, but he became aware of a questioning presence in his mind. She had turned to look at him. He felt that if he looked into her eyes too long, he would be lost. They were the exact blue of the sea, as if the water had seeped into her, filling her head.
He didn’t dare open his mouth – his traitor lungs would fill themselves with water if he did. So he put all his effort into shouting, in his mind, the same words over and over. More of his vision was falling to the blackness now, and the Princess was in a diminishing circle of light, as he slowly lost consciousness.
Take me to the dragon, he thought. Take me to the dragon, take me to the dragon, so I can find Kusanagi.
There was a feeling in his head like a pitying sigh, and then the Princess was swimming, or gliding, and he was gliding with her. They went deep and far, hurtling out to sea; he had a moment to wish that he was not leaving Hana behind, and then all the light went from his surroundings. He thought for a moment he might have passed out, or died, but then a strange glow as of phosphorescence illuminated the seabed.
Uncurling itself before him, stretching out its endless coils, was a dragon so big that even as Taro looked at it he felt as if he were imagining things. Its ship-size head was bearded and horned. It kicked off from the seafloor with taloned feet, snaking sinuously towards him. As it breathed, fire spewed from its nostrils, boiling the sea – he had never seen fire underwater before. The fire was, oddly, blue, as were the terrifying creature’s eyes. The effect was of heat haze, when it made the air bend and shimmer, and Taro understood that it was the source of the otherworldly glow. The dragon must have been as long as a valley, as tall as a mountain. Its skin, which was made up of diamonds of hard armour, was green and blue, such that if you were not looking carefully, it might blend away into the sea. He knew suddenly that he had never really experienced fear until this moment.
Then two things happened, in quick succession.
First, he felt the Princess gently remove herself from his embrace, understanding as she did it that she could have extricated herself at any time, had she wanted to, and then she was gone – he felt her departure as a lessening of warmth, a growing of fear.
Second, the dragon reared its head back, then launched itself at him, opening its mouth. The heat of a furnace enveloped him, a blue like sapphires. He had a brief image of teeth like swords, set in a wide-open jaw, and then the mouth closed over him and everything was blackness.
CHAPTER 33
The same place
Five hundred years earlier
CHIKAKIYO LOOKED OUT across the flat, grey bay of Shirahama towards his death. Five hundred ships were anchored there, just out of bow-shot. The full might of the Genji force, arrayed against the hundred or so ships on his own side.
Today the proud family of the Heike, for whom he was a samurai, would be destroyed utterly, would be made as dust in the wind.
Chikakiyo, along with the other Heike, had hoped even as late as last night that Lord Tanso would join them, with his two hundred ships, for his family owed the Heike a great debt. But as the sun set on the straits of Shirahama, they had watched ships without end, flying the mon of house Tanso, as they drew alongside the traitorous Genji. It had been a shock that had rippled through the Heike, like an earthquake, when the great fish underneath Japan twists and twitches.
The rumour, just as damaging as the blow to morale, was that Tanso had consulted the gods on which side to take. He had gone to the shrine at Tanabe and spent seven days meditating there. As a result of this, however, he had received an intimation from the deity that he should pledge his allegiance to the Genji. Still doubtful, though, given his family’s gratitude to the Heike, he had taken seven white cocks and seven red cocks, and held a cockfight. All seven of the red cocks were defeated and ran away, and as the mon of the Heike was red and the mon of the Genji was white, finally he had decided to side with the Genji.
Truly, thought Chikakiyo, it seems the gods are against us.
The gods should be on the side of the Heike, of course. They had the young emperor, possessed of the Ten Divine Virtues and the Three Imperial Treasures. He was the rightful
ruler of Japan, a direct descendant of the Goddess Amaterasu, heir to the legendary objects she had passed down: the mirror and jewels that had lured her from her cave and then trapped her outside it, to make the world light again; and the sword her brother Susanoo had used to kill the eight-headed dragon, and later given to her as a gift of reconciliation.
These objects were close at hand. Very close.
Belowdecks, on the very ship on which Chikakiyo stood, were the legendary sword Kusanagi, the mirror and the jewel. The boy emperor, too – though his mother was keeping him down there, so he would not see the Genji ships and be frightened.
Chikakiyo thought this was a good idea. He was older than the emperor, but he was looking at the Genji ships, and he was very frightened. He did not believe the gods could be on their side. Otherwise why would they have been running from the Genji pretenders for so long, why would they be so outnumbered now?
It was only the Hour of the Hare, but it was summer, and the sun was already rising slowly in the east, beginning to stain the waves with red. Chikakiyo chose to see this as an omen. Before the day was out, the water would turn to blood. Still, he knew that he would lay down his life to protect the emperor. He was a samurai: it was what he was for. He glanced to his sides and saw the other men, grimly testing their own weapons. He knew they were thinking the same thing, and that was a good thing about being a samurai – there is a companionship in duty, because you are all trained to have the same reactions, the same feelings.
Chikakiyo ran his finger along the string of his Shigeto bow, testing its tautness for the thousandth time. Then he took his quiver from his back and examined the arrows – thirty in all, feathered with the black-and-white feathers of hawks. Chikakiyo was not yet twenty, but he was the best shot in the Heike’s rapidly dwindling army, and so he had been posted here, on the imperial ship.
Not that the ship was especially imperial in appearance. It was a small sloop, not even flying the imperial mon. Instead the symbol of a lesser lord fluttered on its mast. It sat low in the water, its paint peeling. In part this was due to the steady decline in the Heike fortunes. From the most powerful dynasty in Japan, protectors of the emperor, they had – through a succession of misfortunes, battles, and ill-judged acts of arrogance – ended up a people of fugitives, harassed and harried through the entire land and then the sea, to end up here, at their last stand, a collection of vagrant lords.
It was years since any of them had seen their ancestral lands, years since any of them had slept a full night, without being woken for the watch. And now, finally, the Genji had run them to ground, or rather run them to sea. They had nowhere farther to run. They must face their enemies now – the Genji, the proud western clan who wished to take the empire for themselves. But though the Heike had fallen, they were still samurai. They would not allow the emperor to be killed, and the Three Treasures to be taken, without a fight.
Nor were their straitened circumstances the only reason for the crudeness of the ship on which Chikakiyo awaited the attack of the Genji. This was the strategy of Lord Tometomo, the leader of the Heike forces. He had placed the fiercest warriors in the smallest ships, leaving the huge Chinese war galleons at the centre of the fleet more or less undefended. The idea was that the Genji would attack the strongest ships, and the cream of the fighters could then attack them from the rear.
It was a good idea. Chikakiyo just wasn’t sure if it would make up for their being outnumbered five to one.
As he thought this, Lord Tometomo himself appeared outside the deckhouse of the ship. He, too, would remain on this imperial vessel, apparently a weaker ship hanging at the back of the conflict, to help protect the emperor.
‘They are too many!’ he shouted. There was no need for him to keep his voice down – the ships of the Genji were still too far away for them to see him, or hear him. ‘It seems, if we consider numbers of warriors and ships the deciding factor, that we must die today!’
Silence.
Lord Tometomo drew his sword.
‘But I say no!’ he continued. ‘I say that fate and the gods are on our side. Warriors are flesh; ships are wood. We have the finest samurai in the land, the finest archers. They are westerners, unused to the sea. They will be like fish climbing a tree! We have only to pluck them and throw them into the waves, where they belong. They have numbers. We have the emperor, true heir of the sun goddess, and the Three Treasures!’ At this, he thrust his sword into the air, and whether by plan or by accident the sun caught its blade, and Chikakiyo – along with everyone else – gasped.
Tometomo’s was a simple sword, ostensibly at least. Straight, made of a steel so black it seemed to absorb the light. No decoration on its pommel, which was simply wood wrapped with leather. But Chikakiyo could feel it, even from here – it was humming in the light. It looked like a sword that could cut through the world.
‘This is Kusanagi!’ said Tometomo, which was of course perfectly obvious to everyone. ‘As long as we have this sword, and the mirror and the jewels, we cannot lose! We are the protectors of a living god, and we will not be allowed to fall. Look at the men beside you. Look at them, now.’
Chikakiyo turned to the archer at his side. They were a row of archers, at the front of the ship. The first cordon against attack by the Genji, if the enemy should realize where the emperor was and come for him. The archer next to Chikakiyo was middle-aged, at least twenty-five years old. His name was Yoshimoto, and he had once got so drunk with Chikakiyo that they’d fallen into one of Edo’s rivers and had to be pulled out by a passing fisherman. Chikakiyo knew that he had a son and daughter at home, in some small province in the mountains. Chikakiyo saw fear in the man’s eyes – but he also saw pride, and hope.
‘Those men who stand beside you will fight with you to the death. You know this,’ continued Tometomo. ‘But remember this! It is not just men who stand beside you. The gods stand with you too.’
With that, he sheathed the famous sword and returned into the deckhouse.
At first Tometomo’s strategy worked: the Genji focused their attentions on the heavy ships-of-war, ignoring the smaller boats on which were stationed the best archers and fiercest fighters of the Heike. Soon, many of the Genji ships had been surrounded by nimbler vessels and boarded. Blood ran from their decks into the sea.
The sun was higher in the sky now. Chikakiyo watched as the Heike mon was raised on a great ship – he thought it might have been one belonging to the turncoat Tanso. He allowed himself, for a moment, to believe that they might win this battle and cause their names to be spoken in hushed tones of reverence forevermore.
Tometomo stood on the deck near him, covering his eyes to watch the action. Often, it was hard to tell who was carrying the fight. Ships would clash, arrows would fly into the air like whining insects. Men would fall from the side, and into the waves, dragged under by their heavy armour. But they were not close enough for Chikakiyo to make out their mons.
It happened very suddenly, when it happened – certainly there was nothing Chikakiyo could have done about it. First the emperor asked to come up on deck, so that he could see the battle. Judging that the real heart of the fight was still far enough away, Tometomo assented, and soon the young boy stood with his mother on the deck, looking out over the shifting sea to the men dying on the other side of the bay.
‘They are like toys,’ said the boy. ‘And yet they are suffering. Maybe this is how the gods see us. As things whose feelings are not to be credited or pitied too much, because they are so small and insignificant.’
Chikakiyo stared at him. He had spent a little time in the company of the emperor, and he was always struck by how the boy could say things that sounded so old. It was as if he had lived before, many times.
‘No,’ said Tometomo. ‘The gods are your ancestors. They will protect you.’
The boy emperor’s expression was half-sad, half-amused.
There was a very soft sound, something like shhhhh, and then there was the shaft of a lon
g arrow sticking out from Tometomo’s chest. The great general of the Heike looked down, stunned. He was wearing only the lightest leather armour, appropriate to a battle at sea. Chikakiyo heard the slapping of the waves against the deck, smelled the salt of the sea and the iron of Tometomo’s blood, as time seemed to stop.
Tometomo touched the shaft. Blood ran from the wound – Chikakiyo noticed, suddenly, that the point was protruding from the older man’s back. Samurai rushed forward, but Tometomo waved them back. He pointed to the arrow. Down its length something had been written. Chikakiyo saw the second half of a name – Yoichi, he thought – and then a message. Send this back if you can.
Chikakiyo looked over to the Genji ships, amazed. They must be seven tan away, a distance over which a man would be hard-pressed to fire an arrow, let alone hit his target. It was pure luck that Tometomo had been hit, he assumed. The Genji did not know about this ship and the important cargo it carried. The person who fired this arrow had simply wanted to strike a blow from afar, to show their skill.
Chikakiyo felt anger flood his body, but also admiration.
At that moment, Tometomo pulled out the arrow. He beckoned to Chikakiyo, as blood poured from the open wound. ‘Send it back,’ he said, handing it over. Then he sank to his knees, his eyes closing. Guards moved forward and caught him, taking him back to the deckhouse. The emperor, who had seemed so composed a moment ago, screamed. His mother caught him up and held him tight, then carried him towards the gangway that led down into the ship.
Chikakiyo weighed the arrow in his hand. He took his bow and nocked it, drawing it a couple of times without firing, to feel its balance. It was longer than he would like, for himself, and it was fletched with white feathers of the crane, and black feathers of the goose. A length of unadulterated bamboo. Showy, and light. Built for distance, not accuracy. Nothing like his own arrows, which were as the hawk – made to take down birds as they flew and prey as it leaped. It was said of Chikakiyo that he could kill a fleeing deer from five tan away, and when it was said, he never denied it, because it was true.