Yamada Monogatari: The War God's Son

by Richard Parks

  “I only wish it had lasted longer,” she said, and there were tears in her eyes. A moment later her appearance changed. Her shape grew wavy, like someone who had just stepped into a fog. She turned translucent, transparent, and then there was nothing left but a scrap of paper that fluttered to the floor.

  Master Chang shook his head. “You may not believe this, gentlemen, but I really will miss her.”

  Kenji looked grim. “There is a temple nearby, Lord Yamada,” he said. “When we leave here, I would like to go there for a while.”

  Certainly there was a temple nearby. This was Kyoto. There was always a temple nearby. I didn’t say this. Nor did I ask why we would be visiting a temple. I had a feeling I knew.

  “In which case you’ll need this,” Master Chang said. He reached behind the table and pulled out a bag of uncooked rice. He offered this to Kenji, who just stared at it.

  “For your conscience?”

  Master Chang grunted. “Think what you will of me, but my conscience is my own concern. This is for the offering,” he said. “And prayers for Mitsuko’s soul. That is why you’re going to the temple, is it not?”

  “Yes,” Kenji said.

  “Then do it properly. Take the offering. For Mitsuko’s sake, not mine.”

  Kenji took the rice, and I followed him back out into the streets of the capital. The temple was a short walk. They always were. Kenji went inside, and I found a spot in the temple garden and waited while the two bushi accompanying us tried not to look bored. Temples had never been my favorite places, nor did I usually enter one voluntarily unless there was dire need. I tended to associate them most often with funerals, as that was one of their main functions, and the role they had played far too often in my experience. As for Mitsuko, a proper funeral would have taken days we did not have to spare, but prayers and offerings for the departed were the next best thing. I thought about chiding Kenji for doing this for a person he didn’t even know, and without payment, but decided against it.

  Kenji was, at least in some regards, as bad an example of the priestly class as one would ever hope to find; he drank, he ignored the dietary restrictions, and even now in his fifties he was a pursuer of women, a surprising number of whom he managed to catch. Yet he was very much a priest in one regard—he had an extremely clear vision of his own moral center, where the line could be drawn, what lay on one side, and what resided firmly on the other. The plight of the unfortunate Mitsuko had clearly crossed that line.

  When Kenji emerged from the temple, he joined me on my rock in the garden. “Did you do what you needed to do?” I asked.

  “Yes. Did you?”

  “What we learned from Master Chang were things we mostly already knew, except for the technique which created—or rather, resurrected—Mitsuko. If Master Chang’s description of the process is correct, however, we cannot expect an army of such creatures. But consider, a shikigami which can withstand water like a human being, indeed, one which can pass as a human being, undetectable by either of us? This concerns me greatly.”

  “If we’d been dealing with even one such at the Widow Tamahara’s, for example . . . ” Kenji didn’t finish the thought, but he didn’t have to.

  I had considered that scenario. “Lord Tenshin expected Lord Yoshiie to be indoors at the Widow Tamahara’s establishment. His strategy was brilliant, but his tactics were flawed. He considered the chance of rain but fortunately the saké attack didn’t occur to him. He’s very clever, but not infallible.”

  “I often say the same of you, Lord Yamada. What do we do now?”

  “I intend to stop by my rooms at the Widow Tamahara’s establishment and consider if there’s anything there I might need to take with me. If you have any immediate unfinished business in the capital, I’d suggest you see to it now. We will be bound for Mutsu province very soon.”

  “I already have everything I need, so I’ll stay with you for now, if you don’t mind,” Kenji said, looking a bit doleful. “Most of my unfinished business is best settled by me being somewhere else for a considerable amount of time.”

  “Mutsu does have the advantage of being very far away,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  When we arrived at the Widow Tamahara’s, we left our escort on station at the gate and went inside. I had been dreading returning to this place, considering the mess we’d made of it the previous evening, but I needn’t have worried. Most of the damage had already been repaired, and the Widow Tamahara herself, at least by comparison to her scowling demeanor, was in an almost jovial mood.

  “I see your shop has been mostly set to rights,” I said.

  She grunted. “Thanks to Prince Kanemore. A gang of workmen showed up at my door this morning and said they were hired by His Highness, Prince Kanemore. He even sent payment for the saké your friend there was flinging around the room.”

  “The waste of it grieved me even more than it did you,” Kenji said.

  “I would not wager on that,” she said.

  As for the saké, truth be told I could still smell it clinging to the air of the room, for all that everything had been freshly scrubbed. Since the room always smelled slightly of saké, I had no doubt the intensity of the aroma would fade in time. “Prince Kanemore is the most generous of men,” I said. “Is everyone all right?”

  “One of my guards has a knot on his head the size of a lantern,” she said. “But otherwise everyone escaped unscathed . . . Lord Yamada, first there was my previous guard, and now these things. Am I to expect that such strangeness will continue as long as you are under my roof?”

  “It’s possible,” I said, “but unlikely, as I will not be under your roof for some months. If the place burns down in my absence, it will have nothing to do with me, I swear.”

  “Hardly comforting.” The old lady waved a single bony hand in dismissal. “Fine then. But make sure your rent is paid for the interval before you leave.”

  “Tamahara-san, before I go—did those workmen go anywhere else on the grounds?”

  She frowned. “No, I would have seen. They came in, did as they were directed, and left again. Frankly, I could use more like them. Why, what do you suspect?”

  “Oh, nothing at all. Just curious.”

  Kenji followed me out onto the veranda. “Do you suppose Prince Kanemore really did send those workmen?”

  I considered. “It is the sort of thing he might do and fail to mention. And considering Lord Yoriyoshi is more likely to put his son in a cage than to let him come back here, I don’t see what an enemy would have to gain by such a deception. And if the Widow Tamahara is correct, they had no opportunity for mischief even if mischief had been the intent. But we had best take a look around the compound while we are here.”

  We made as thorough a search as we could, and since Kenji was neither drinking nor distracted at the moment, I trusted his heightened sensitivity to the supernatural to detect the things I could not see. Neither of us found anything amiss.

  “We can ask Prince Kanemore about it if we get the chance, but I think perhaps we are overly cautious.”

  “When extremely clever people are trying to kill you? There is no such thing as ‘overly cautious,’ ” Kenji muttered.

  I had no disagreement with that. Back to our original mission, we went to my rooms. Referring to them as “rooms” perhaps gave them too much credit: I had one six-mat room and one other, which was little more than an alcove, for extra storage. I had one small chest for brushes, paper, and inkstones. I slept on a cushion on the floor, covered with less or more layers of clothing, depending on the weather. I already carried my dagger and tachi. There was little else to consider save some extra clothing, which I began to gather into a bundle while Kenji watched.

  “I have not asked how you feel about going to Mutsu,” he said.

  I knew what he meant. There had been many wars against the Emishi over the years, and one of them had destroyed my father and thus my clan, or rather the scheming of a former Fujiwara official had led my father to be
branded a traitor to the Emperor. What had been taken from my father and thus my family would likely never be restored, and while I had gained some measure of revenge long ago, restoration of my father’s good name seemed forever beyond my reach. Prince Kanemore had requested we go to Mutsu, and he had done so in the full knowledge of my family’s history, friend or no, because he believed it necessary. Considering Lord Tenshin’s abilities and the Mutsu Abe’s obvious ambitions, so did I. This did not mean I was fond of the idea, and I said so.

  “If there were a choice? I would not go. But there is none. For either of us.”

  Kenji just sighed. “You will do what your friend asks. I will do what the Crown Prince’s royal uncle commands. Either way? No choice at all.”

  When we emerged from my rooms, I was carrying my bundle. We found Kaoru in the courtyard, standing beside the Widow Tamahara’s one scrawny sakura. Only it was no longer quite so scrawny looking, now that it had begun to bloom. I was a little ashamed to realize I had not even noticed.

  She smiled at us. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “Yes,” I said but without much enthusiasm. Soon the sakura all over the capital would be in glorious bloom, winter would have officially released its grip on the land, and spring would be here again. Time to put the winter clothing away, time for pruning, time for planting . . .

  Time for war.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  For some reason I had assumed Kenji and I would be walking with the foot soldiers or, at best, assigned to one of the supply wagons. Prince Kanemore had an entirely different perspective. He had assigned mounts for each of us and a ration of fodder, along with a groom to see to the horses properly. The last bit I considered no more than sensible—Kenji and I both knew how to ride, after a fashion, but that’s where our understanding of the beasts ended.

  “Highness, you know how I feel about horses,” I said.

  “I do, but there is something I need you to understand, and this is more from a friend than a prince,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “You’ve never taken part in a war. Fighting? Yes, and more than most, but war is a different thing. An army is a different thing. The fact you are not there as a bushi may not be relevant, since there is a lot of confusion in a battle and you might find yourself in the middle of one, intended or not. You may find it will be necessary to give orders and have those orders obeyed, most likely by men who won’t have a clue as to who you are and what your rank may be. Do you see what I mean?”

  “You’re saying there’s a much better chance of being obeyed if I’m on horseback.”

  He laughed. “I’m saying there’s a good chance they won’t even notice you, let alone obey, if you are not. Mounted archers will make up the majority of Lord Yoshiie’s warriors, and anyone who commands them in the field will be mounted as well. They expect this. Granted, in an army of this size not everyone on horseback is important, but everyone who is important is on horseback. In order for you to be effective, it’s not enough to be important. You have to look the role as well. Which is why I have supplied you and Kenji with new clothing. It is also why you will overlook your belief that horses are dumb, skittish beasts, and learn to appreciate them.”

  I was never inclined to disagree with Prince Kanemore any more than necessary, and especially when he was right. War was his domain, not mine, and I would have been a bigger fool than I usually attempt to be to argue the point. “Thank you. I will do my best not to embarrass you, Highness.”

  “Bring the horses and my servant back if you can, but mostly try to stay alive and keep Lord Yoshiie in the same condition,” he said. “That will be thanks enough. Much depends on this.”

  By the end of the first day on the road I was not exactly in a thankful mood. My posterior was as sore as it had ever been, including the time I fell off a high wall and landed on a mound of pine cones. Plus, the army had made a temporary bivouac on the shores of Lake Biwa. The place had unpleasant associations for me.

  Kenji found me standing in a small clearing not far from shore. He didn’t say anything at first, for which I was grateful. For a while we just looked across the water to the high hills bordering the shoreline.

  “This is where it happened,” he said finally. It wasn’t a question.

  I didn’t know how much he knew about the death of Princess Teiko. It wasn’t something I talked about, but then I wasn’t the only one there, and Kenji had a talent for finding out what he wanted to know. It was a useful trait but, from time to time, an inconvenient one.

  “There are times,” he said finally, “when I wish I was as wise as priests are reputed to be. Maybe then I’d know what to say to you.”

  “There’s nothing to say. I’ve made peace with my loss.”

  He grunted. “No you haven’t, because no one ever does. You try to accept it. You remind yourself this is a transient world, no more than an illusion, and yet the scar still aches. Personally, I don’t mind my own scars. There are worse things than pain.”

  Sometimes it was easy for me to forget Kenji, in his way, had known loss as great as my own. Yet here we both were, going on with life and doing what needed to be done, partly for duty’s sake, but also because we still believed such things mattered. It wasn’t healing, exactly, but it would have to do. While we stood in companionable silence, I noticed a patch of white within the woods near the shore.

  A ghost?

  I looked closer and realized it was not a ghost. It was a fox-demon. “Lady Kuzunoha is here,” I said.

  Kenji shrugged. “You did say she was planning to accompany the army, and Lord Yasuna is with our group, not Yoriyoshi’s. Do you think she wants to talk?”

  “I seldom see her unless she does. I’d better go alone.”

  Kenji respected Lady Kuzunoha almost as much as I did, but that didn’t change the fact she was a fox-demon and he was a priest. Neither was ever going to be completely at ease in the other’s company.

  “I’ll wait here,” Kenji said affably. He sat down with his back against an old maple tree and made himself comfortable. I went down into the woods.

  Lady Kuzunoha met me in a small clearing on the edge of the water.

  “I have heard,” she said without preamble, “that you and my lord saved young Yoshiie’s life.”

  “It is true. Lord Yoshiie is very grateful to Lord Yasuna.”

  “And yet my lord is still a prisoner,” she said.

  “Lord Yoshiie’s personal gratitude does not change the Emperor’s orders to take Lord Yasuna to Mutsu, and so he will. But Yoshiie agrees there is little to gain by attempting to use him as a hostage.”

  Lady Kuzunoha looked disgusted. “I have lived among humans for many years, easily—for the most part—passing as one of them. Yet I admit I still don’t understand them.”

  I couldn’t suppress a smile. “Lady Kuzunoha, what makes you think we do? I will say Lord Yoshiie is in a very difficult position. On the one hand he must obey his father and the Emperor both, yet he also owes his life to a man they have compelled him to place in harm’s way. There is simply no way to reconcile these things, save to do what he must while—to the degree possible—keeping Lord Yasuna from harm. If the worst were to happen—”

  “In which case,” she interrupted, “I have told you what I will do.” For a moment the foxfire glowed brightly around her.

  “If the worst does happen,” I continued, “Lord Yasuna would not want Lord Yoshiie harmed on his account.”

  “Did he say so to you?” she asked.

  “No. But he understands why he’s here in the first place. He does not blame Yoshiie for his situation. And if you know Lord Yasuna as well as you should, you would know what I say is true.”

  The last of the foxfire winked out. Lady Kuzunoha looked as weary as I felt. “I do know that. So tell me, Lord Yamada—what do you propose I do with my rage if I am cheated of my revenge?”

  “What are you doing with it now?” I asked.

  She frowned. “I don
’t understand.”

  “Not too long ago you reminded me of your true nature. Suppose Lord Yasuna had been a fox himself, and another vixen had lured his affections from you. What would you have done then?”

  “I would have killed her,” she said. “And taken great pleasure in doing so.”

  “So how is this different? You cannot be with him, and I know that is what you desire above all else, save perhaps reuniting with your son, Doshi. Yet both are beyond your grasp—taken from you not by a rival but by cold circumstance, which feels neither pain nor regret. How do you tear out its throat? You have been cheated of your revenge since the day you left Lord Yasuna’s household. Tell me the idea of finally having a target for your revenge doesn’t appeal to you.”

  “At the cost of my lord’s life?!”

  “Yes,” I said. “That is the cost. Whatever you decide to do, please remember this.”

  I knew I was stepping on treacherous ground, but the rage in Lady Kuzunoha’s eyes faded as soon as it appeared. Which was very fortunate for me. I knew very well what she was capable of, and goading her was perhaps not the wisest thing I had ever done. But I had to see if there was a way to change her mind. I did not want Lady Kuzunoha as an enemy, but I knew, if something did befall Lord Yasuna with the current situation unchanged, she would try to do exactly as she had said, just as I would protect Lord Yoshiie at all costs, as I had said. If a confrontation came to pass it would mean the death of at least one of us. I hoped there was another way. “If you truly wish to protect your former husband, then help me. There is much we don’t know about what forces Abe no Sadato has at his command.”

  She scowled. “You’re not referring to bushi, are you?”

  “Such things are Lord Yoshiie’s concern. Mine is for the onmyoji Lord Sadato has at his command. Lord Tenshin, for one. He learned some techniques from Master Chang, but he clearly had another teacher. He is quite skilled, and I don’t yet know the extent of his power. It would be to both the Minamoto’s and Lord Yasuna’s advantage if I did know.”

  “Lord Yamada, you do have the habit of looking for alternatives, whether they exist or not.”