by Steve Bein
8
If you want these hands, you can have them, Daigoro thought.
He knelt in the dark not three paces from where Shichio sipped his tea. Only a paper wall separated them. He had only to step through it and he could wrap his fingers around the peacock’s throat. Shichio’s samurai would leap to their lord’s defense, and no doubt Inoue would sit back and let them, but Daigoro had no doubt he could snap a skinny peacock neck before they could take him.
His hands had regained most of their former strength. The left was healing well; none of the cuts had festered. The right was still stiff, but the bones had mended well enough that he would soon be able to wield a sword without pain. And how satisfying that would be, to return Glorious Victory Unsought to his hands. From where he sat, he could cut the wall in half with a single blow. With a second he could separate the peacock’s head from his shoulders. It would hardly matter if Shichio’s men attacked him after that. At least he would go down fighting.
Such an easy thing, to walk three strides and take an enemy’s life. An easy thing, as easy as grasping the moon.
Even if he could hold his odachi, he stood a better chance against Shichio unarmed. His Inazuma blade promised glorious victory, but only to those who did not seek it. And what would be more glorious than to cut down his most hated foe in the face of the fatherin-law who would gladly sell him to the enemy? That would be a victory beyond price, and for that reason his sword would never let him claim it.
Yet the very thought of it made his heart race. He shifted silently where he knelt, rising from a seiza position to curl his toes under, pressing the balls of his feet to the floor. In iaido this kneeling posture was a ready stance, and Daigoro started to invent scenarios in which he might be able to pounce. Lord Inoue knew he was hiding behind the shoji. In fact, he was the one to propose this dark little alcove as the perfect place to eavesdrop. What if he betrayed Daigoro’s position? He’d promised he wouldn’t—promised his daughter he wouldn’t, which meant a great deal more than anything he could swear to Daigoro—but Inoue Shigekazu was no true samurai. By birthright he was entitled to the twin swords and topknot, but he did not live by the bushido code. Neither had his father before him, and neither did his sons.
It was his daughter who stayed Daigoro’s hand. He felt her feather-soft palm alight on his forearm, and when he turned to look at her, she pressed her other palm to her belly. She was the love of his life. As of six weeks ago they had been husband and wife, but Shichio’s treachery forced Daigoro to surrender his love and lands. He’d signed a pact with Shichio, renouncing his name as an Okuma, and that meant the baby in Akiko’s belly was now a bastard. Aki didn’t see it that way; in fact, she’d put her fists on her hips and insisted that she wouldn’t consider herself divorced until her husband cast her bodily out of the house. “That’s what the law permits, and that’s what I demand,” she’d said. But Daigoro would stand by the pact; to do otherwise would be to break his word, and bushido would not allow him that. He had every intention to wed her again, but he could not do that so long as Shichio lived.
Akiko put a finger to her lips and Daigoro realized he could hear his own breathing. The thought of avenging himself on Shichio had distracted him, but now he brought breath and heartbeat back under control. He listened as his erstwhile fatherin-law exchanged final pleasantries with the peacock, and restrained his sigh of relief until he heard the Toyotomi company depart.
As soon as the great gate groaned shut behind them, Inoue Shigekazu ripped the shoji aside. Daigoro and Akiko blinked in the sudden sunlight. “There,” Lord Inoue said. “I’ve lied to the crown. Does that satisfy you?”
“Not by half,” Daigoro said. “It would satisfy me if you gave your arquebusiers the order to fire before the peacock gets out of range.”
“I told you, boy, I will not invoke the wrath of the mightiest warlord in the land. Filling one of his generals with leaden balls would be the swiftest way to do that.”
“His name is Daigoro, not ‘boy,’” Aki said. “He made good on his promise to you, Father. He had his opportunity to kill his enemy and he let it pass. Now promise me again: you will not reach out to Shichio.”
Inoue’s beady black eyes darted from her to Daigoro and from Daigoro to the gate. “I won’t.”
“Swear it.”
He glowered at Daigoro. “He is the father of my grandchild, Akiko. Kin of my kin, whether I like it or not. You need no oath from me.”
Akiko’s mouth became a flat, colorless line. She planted her fists on her hips and her eyes narrowed. Anger tended to raise little wrinkles on the bridge of her nose. Daigoro could never admit this to her, but he found it adorable.
Her father did not. He buckled physically, as if someone had dropped a yoke on his shoulders. With a long, exasperated intake of breath he said, “I swear to you, daughter of mine, I will not betray your faithless husband to General Shichio. Nor will I lend my aid to any of the countless hunters who seek to bring him to justice—which, I might add, they are right to do, since he is a known fugitive.”
Daigoro gave him an anemic smile. Thank you for reminding me, he wanted to say. I’d almost forgotten the price on my head.
“Nor will I harbor him any longer,” Inoue said. “Believe me, boy, I meant what I told the general. If not for my promise to my daughter, I would sell your sword for a song and keep your skull as a pot to shit in. If she should miscarry my grandchild, or if any accident should befall her, I will be the first to send messengers to General Shichio. Do we understand each other?”
“We do. It’s not a subtle point you’re making.”
“Then get my daughter to her home. Until I can talk your lunatic mother into marrying my daughter to a better man, Akiko belongs behind Okuma walls.”
She does, Daigoro thought; she belongs in the only place on this earth where I am legally forbidden to stay. That was the condition that allowed him to keep Shichio from driving the entire Okuma compound into the sea. The only way he could protect his family was to renounce them, formally surrendering not just his title but his very name. Okuma Daigoro was no more; only Daigoro remained, a ronin and a wanted man.
But here he was unwanted. He gave Lord Inoue a curt bow, then limped with Akiko onto the veranda. It was hot in the sun, and Izu’s drought showed no signs of relenting. Aki had no tolerance for it—she overheated so easily now that she was pregnant—but Daigoro took it as a gift. Wet trails aided the hunter, not the hunted, and Daigoro’s hobbling gait left distinctive footprints. “My lord,” he called back, “may we stay until after sunset? Your daughter is not fond of riding in this heat.”
The old bastard actually had to think about it. “Very well,” he said at last. “I suppose you’ll be wanting something to eat too. Akiko may dine with me. You and your man will eat at the servants’ table.”
Your man was Katsushima Goemon, who was just emerging from the towering gatehouse. He was not yet fifty, but his hair had grayed and long years of traveling the countryside as a ronin had wrinkled his sun-browned face before its time. Sitting still, Katsushima might have passed for sixty-some years, not forty-some. But those who saw him move beheld a tiger in human form. Quiet, surefooted, inhumanly fast, Katsushima was the victor of more than fifty duels. He attributed his success to patience, a virtue he was forever trying to instill in Daigoro. Daigoro figured patience probably came much more easily to a man whose sword was quicker than thought.
Katsushima strode toward Daigoro with a stern look clouding his face. He carried a great bow and a single arrow in his hand. “I couldn’t do it,” he said.
“Couldn’t do what?” Daigoro asked.
“It was that damned palanquin. Once he was inside, I never had a clean shot.”
Aki gasped and rushed to Daigoro’s side. Shocked as she was, she still managed to keep her voice at a whisper. “Buddhas have mercy! You didn’t plan to shoot Shichio, did you?”
Katsushima frowned at her in exactly the same way he would regard a
talking butterfly. “Why on earth not?”
“This is my father’s land!”
“And your father prefers tiny leaden balls to arrows. Everyone knows that. No one would lay the blame at his doorstep.”
“Your target was on his doorstep!”
Katsushima shrugged. “An errant shot. Loosed while pheasant hunting. Or peacock hunting, as the case may be.”
He smiled at his own witticism. Aki did not reply in kind. Keeping her voice at a whisper only made her sound angrier. “Daigoro made a vow to my father—”
“And my name is not Daigoro, as you may have noticed. Nor is it Okuma. My quarrel with Shichio is my own.”
Aki fumed like a volcano. She balled her fists as if she were actually going to strike him. That would have been a grievous mistake. Katsushima entertained her outbursts because he seemed to find them amusing. Being punched by a teenage girl would not amuse him. He was not above striking a woman—few men were—and he rode with Daigoro as a friend, not a retainer. Akiko may have been mother to the heir of House Okuma, but Katsushima had never sworn loyalty under an Okuma banner. He certainly had no fear of Aki’s father, nor of any other man whose idea of battle was hiding in a tower and pouring black powder down a metal tube.
But Aki was highborn. Perhaps she should have feared a dusty itinerant ronin, but she didn’t have it in her nature. “You will take that look off your face.”
“Aki, please,” Daigoro said, taking both of her hands in his own. When she would not turn to face him, he stepped between her and Katsushima. “I have few friends left in this world. I would not have them fight. In any case, Goemon never loosed his arrow. No harm done, neh?”
“Neh,” Katsushima grunted. “And we’re not likely to see a better opportunity, Daigoro. He’s getting wiser, hiding in that sedan chair instead of traveling ahorse. That troubles me.”
“It troubles me more that my former fatherin-law advised him to double his bodyguard.” Daigoro ran his palm over his scalp. He had a field of short bristles where he once shaved his head in the manner of a samurai. He did not have the heart to snip off his topknot entirely, but he could not bring himself to shave his pate every morning. That was an Okuma’s birthright, not Daigoro the ronin’s. “But the peacock did bristle at that, didn’t he?”
The anger seeped out of Akiko’s face. She enjoyed seeing her husband being clever. “What are you thinking?”
“He has men enough,” Daigoro said. “He told your father he’s got eyes watching every port, every crossroads. That’s a lot of eyes, neh? So he could double his bodyguard, or even triple it. Instead he protects himself from me by hiding in a sedan chair, and he sends his men out far and wide. Why?”
“Not to find you?”
“I don’t think so, Aki. That sedan chair … it must be stifling in there, neh? He’s a princess; he’d ride in comfort if he could.”
“He’d lie on silken pillows sucking Hideyoshi’s cock if he could.”
Daigoro gaped, shocked at his wife’s tongue. Katsushima barked a laugh. “Now I see why you like this woman.”
“Well?” Aki’s smile was at once gleeful and guilty, devilish and demure. “What’s a girl to do if her father commands more spies than any clan in Izu? Is it so bad if I harvested a few for myself? Sometimes I hear things.”
Daigoro still gaped. “Things about the regent’s cock?”
“You take what fish swim into your net.” It was almost an apology, almost a boast. She gave him that smile again.
“I suppose you do… .” Daigoro wiped a trickle of sweat from his stubbly scalp. It was hot in the sun, far too hot for a preening sophisticate to box himself in a sedan chair. Shichio would not travel that way unless he saw no other choice. So he feared Daigoro enough to shield himself from arrows, but something else scared him more—something greater than a physical attack. Whatever it was, it required dozens of men scattered all over Izu, men who could have served as bodyguards instead. “The wedding stories!” Daigoro said. “He’s more worried about containing them than he is of a chance encounter with me.”
Katsushima gave Aki an appraising look. “I take it back,” he told Daigoro. “Now I see why you like this one. You were right to deploy those rumors, girl. That was well played.”
Akiko answered with a self-satisfied squint and chose not to correct him for calling her girl. Turning to Daigoro, she said, “You see? Statesmanship, not swordsmanship. That’s the only way to win this battle.”
Statesmanship wasn’t the word Daigoro would have chosen to describe Aki’s tactics. Ignoble was the first that came to mind. The only path he understood was his father’s path, the path of bushido. Aki’s father followed the path of skullduggery, and that way ran through unfamiliar territory. Daigoro would never have thought to order the men of his house to spread gossip in taverns and gambling halls. That was exactly what Aki had asked of her many brothers. Katsushima had been only too eager to help. He plotted a circuit from one pleasure house to the next, and in each one he dropped a few silver coins in the hands of the right whore. Through them, the tales of Shichio’s wedding would swell from whispered rumor to common knowledge—and if Katsushima happened to engage in a little pillowing after his scandal-mongering, such were the rewards of a job well done.
Now Aki’s strategy had paid off. It was already known that Shichio had deployed his shinobi far and wide. That much was clear even before Shichio set foot on Izu’s shores. Their original purpose was simple: kill the Bear Cub. But of late they had changed tactics from hunting to trapping: where once they rode abroad, now they lay in wait. Bear traps on every road, in every port, at every checkpoint, if Shichio’s boasts were true. Daigoro was not so foolish as to take him at his word, but this much was clear: the peacock used to ride in force, but now he took shelter in a wooden box and halved his personal guard. Once he dispatched hunting parties of his own, but now he sought to recruit Inoue Shigekazu to do his hunting for him. He was stretched thin.
There was one explanation: his shinobi had reported back to him with whispers of Akiko’s wedding stories. The fact that he’d reacted so swiftly could mean only one thing: he saw them as a threat—a dire threat, one worth the loss of twenty personal guards, if that meant twenty more men stationed in Izu’s taverns and common rooms. Anywhere men talked, Shichio needed ears.
“But why?” Daigoro said, thinking aloud. “What is he afraid of?”
“Losing face,” said Aki. “No man wants his cock compared to an infant’s.”
“This one isn’t a man,” Katsushima said. “He tried to marry Daigoro’s mother so he could take her name. And now you tell us he services Hideyoshi with his mouth? That’s boy’s work. Women’s work. A man gives, he doesn’t receive.”
Akiko harrumphed. “And to think you haven’t found a nice woman to settle down with.”
“I’ve women enough. Even a nice one now and again. It’s the settling down that bothers me.”
Daigoro barely registered the exchange. His thoughts were still wrapped up in Shichio. Katsushima was right: if quashing these rumors were merely a matter of saving face, Shichio wouldn’t bother. Shame might trouble him, but not dishonor. He had no honor to speak of. This was something else.
“He’s competing with someone.” Again he spoke aloud without meaning to. “He must be. He’s lost his monopoly on Hideyoshi’s attention. Now he worries who else Hideyoshi might listen to.”
Aki and Katsushima stopped their squabbling. Daigoro let them watch him in silence while he took a moment to think things through. “Aki, you never saw him with General Mio—”
“Oh, he was that giant fellow, wasn’t he?” She made a nauseated face. “Didn’t you cut his ear off?”
“I did.” In a fair fight, Daigoro thought. We shared a meal together afterward, and toasted each other with sake and whisky. Then Shichio tied him down and cut him to pieces. “You should have seen how the two of them spoke to Hideyoshi. They were yin and yang. Mio sat before him and spoke his mind. Shichio sat
to one side and whispered in his ear. Mio spoke from the heart and never shied from the truth. But Shichio … I hardly know how to describe it. He doesn’t say what Hideyoshi wants to hear; he makes Hideyoshi want to hear what he’s saying.”
“I remember,” Katsushima said. “It verged on witchcraft.”
“That’s why he thinks nothing of besmirching his name,” Daigoro said. “Whatever ill you say of him, he can twist it, so long as he can whisper into Hideyoshi’s ear. But now there must be someone else whispering, someone whose witchery is strong enough to dispel Shichio’s. He protects his name now because he must. This new advisor … I don’t know who he is, but I think there must be someone, and I think he scares Shichio more than I do.”
“Then let us make an ally,” Akiko said. “We have held back our deadliest arrow. I say we let it fly.”
A thrill rippled up Daigoro’s spine. He could see Katsushima felt it too; the ronin’s fist closed tighter around his bow and arrow, as if seizing victory itself. Both of them were eager to loose this shot.
Daigoro knew the true story behind Hideyoshi’s most ignominious defeat. The Battle of Komaki was four years gone, and Hideyoshi had won grand victories since then, but this one rout still loomed large in his memory. He had dared to test his might against Tokugawa Ieyasu, the only other warlord of his stature. Tokugawa had left Mikawa, his beloved homeland, undefended. At Shichio’s urging, Hideyoshi made a bid for it. But a little-known samurai named Okuma Tetsuro anticipated the sally. Hideyoshi’s vanguard thought to pounce on sleeping deer but found a pack of wolves instead. Routed, they sought another way around; it was Shichio’s duty to find a vulnerability. He failed, not because Mikawa was impregnable but because Okuma predicted his movements, captured his scouts, replaced them with men of his own, and sent back false intelligence to Shichio. Shichio fell for the ruse and Hideyoshi ran home with his tail between his legs.
The tale had become one of Daigoro’s favorite stories about his father. That battle was the last time Hideyoshi had taken the field against Tokugawa. Had he carried the day, there was no doubt that Hideyoshi would be not just the empire’s mightiest warlord, but rather its uncontested ruler. If the general who cost him that victory had been samurai, he would have confessed his failure to his lord, then committed seppuku to erase his shame. But Shichio was a craven with no sense of honor. He lied to Hideyoshi from the beginning, and now, four years later, the regent still had not heard the truth. But Daigoro knew the true story, and he wanted nothing more than to write it in a message, tie it to an arrow, and sink that arrow right through Shichio’s heart.