Yamada Monogatari: The War God's Son

by Richard Parks

  “If I know Tomotoki, he’ll be here in less than two days with a considerable force behind him—the Shibata will not take an attack on their family temple lightly. It would be best if we have as complete a picture of the events leading up to this sad day as possible,” he said.

  “With your permission, Yoshiie-sama, I will question my sister in this matter.”

  “Thank you. While I’m pleased anyone survived this abomination, that it was your sister makes it doubly fortuitous. I had no idea any of your kinsfolk were present here.”

  “Very few did know,” I said, bowing low, “or would be concerned at such a trifling matter. But I thank you.”

  “There were other survivors,” Kenji said. “Two others so far, and I still hope for more. Apparently the nunnery was attacked last, giving some of the residents time to either hide or flee. Clearly the attackers did not think they had the time or necessity to be more thorough . . . although they were certainly vicious enough.”

  “Also with your permission, I will question the other survivors as well,” I said.

  Yoshiie grunted assent. “Be as gentle as the urgency allows.”

  I bowed again. “You may depend on it.”

  Kenji and I took our leave then. Outside, now that the fighting was over, the grimmer work of the aftermath was well under way. The bodies of our attackers were being gathered and carried out the front gates to be deposited in a temporary pile, after first being stripped in search of any identifying marks or items. So far nothing had been found, and I was not surprised—it stood to reason whoever ordered this travesty would not want anything remaining to link them to the sacrilege in any way. If Lord Yoshiie was correct, however, it would scarcely matter so far as his own opinion was concerned. The bodies of the actual priests were being treated with more respect. Cloth taken from the temple’s storerooms was being used to make temporary coverings for them. As Kenji and I approached the gate to the nunnery, it was clear a similar procedure was in place there.

  “I had to bruise the skull of one of Yoshiie’s men who was, shall we say, being disrespectful. You may have to plead my case with his lord.”

  “Somehow I doubt it. It’s more likely any complaint from the fellow would result in one more body on the outside pile, and probably not yours. Yoshiie has no intention of letting this opportunity go to waste. Such a lack of judgment on the part of one his men might endanger this.”

  Kenji scowled. “Opportunity . . . ? Oh. You mean the Shibata.”

  “Just so.”

  Kenji finally sighed. “Well, it stands to reason they’ll want revenge. This isn’t my temple, and I want revenge. Do you really believe Lord Tenshin was behind this?”

  “I don’t think Lord Yoshiie believes Lord Sadato would have sanctioned the attack if he had known the extent of the plan. Whereas I’m not convinced of Lord Tenshin’s scruples about any detail necessary for removing the obstacle Lord Yoshiie represents. Still, so far we have found no evidence of shikigami. All our attackers left corpses and thus must have been human. Whatever I may think, there is no proof either way.”

  “Considering the timing, as you pointed out earlier, and the complexity, I would not have chosen shikigami to carry out this attack in the first place. And there are always provincial bushi for hire,” Kenji pointed out. “Even so, it would certainly take a low or desperate lot to do this.”

  “All true,” I said, but my mind was elsewhere. Perhaps shikigami were not directly involved, but Lord Tenshin would not have been taking advantage of all his resources if he had not used them in some capacity. But what? I had the feeling the answer was close by, if only I had the eyes to see it. At the moment, the answer was eluding me.

  In some ways, the nunnery attached to the Yahiko temple was a mirror of its larger neighbor—there was a temple proper, plus a lecture hall, storerooms, and barracks for the residents. The survivors had been gathered into the lecture hall under guard, but to Kenji’s—and my own—disappointment, no more had yet been located.

  “Kenji—” I began, but he anticipated me.

  “I understand. I believe I am needed elsewhere.”

  Kenji took his leave, and I sent the guard outside. I was left alone with the three surviving nuns. There was an old woman, at least in her sixties, with her head bowed, counting her prayer beads. Another was a young girl, perhaps no more than thirteen or so. She did not kneel but was rather curled up in a ball like a cat, slowly rocking back and forth, shivering. Someone had draped a coverlet over her, but it didn’t seem to help. The third woman was my sister.

  Rie had changed very little. She was a small, delicate-appearing woman. In her forties now, she was still as striking as her mother had been, as best I could remember—she had died when we were both very young. Rie’s head was cowled in white cloth like the others, and I wondered how much gray was now in the night-black hair I remembered. I recognized her instantly, and she apparently did the same of me. I heard a faint gasp. In a moment she was on her feet and had grabbed me in what I imagined a bear hug to be like. I was having some trouble breathing.

  “Goji-kun! Is it really you?”

  “Elder Sister, you had best hope so,” I said, attempting to make her ease her grip. “It would be unseemly for one of your station to be embracing strange men. It . . . it is good to see you.”

  For a moment it was as if we were both twelve again, and the horror that had just occurred was no more than a bad dream. We were the children of the same father but different mothers, and even though she was the elder, it was only by the space of a few months. We had been raised together, and she, like myself, had planned for a very different life before the disgrace and death of our father. When her mother died, Rie had been adopted by father’s First Wife, my mother, as if she had been her own. Before my father’s death, they had been discussing suitable marriages, but afterward my mother had taken holy orders, and Rie had made the decision to join her. My mother had barely lived another year as a nun before a pestilence took her.

  Rie finally let go, and when she did, she staggered. I helped her kneel back down on one of the available cushions.

  “Are you injured?”

  “No. I’m just . . . ooh, my poor sisters . . . ”

  The guards had brought water, and I offered some to Rie, but she demurred. “I’m afraid I might not be able to keep it down. Perhaps later. We . . . we understood Lord Yoshiie would be making a pilgrimage here, but I never suspected you would be with him. You should have written me.”

  “There was no time, and too much chance of any letter being read by the wrong people. Besides, you know why I have kept my distance.”

  “I’ve never agreed with your reasoning,” Rie said softly. “But I do understand it. Yet danger has found me anyway, has it not?”

  I had no reply. Even as a child Rie had a knack for pointing out the obviously true things one might not want to admit. It was clear this was something about her which had not changed. “Lady Rie, we will speak of other matters later, but for right now I need to know what happened here. Anything you can tell me might be useful, however insignificant it may appear to you.”

  “The prioress sent me on an errand to Yahiko . . . ” She paused and looked to the older woman. “Tomoko-ana? Do you know if she . . . ?”

  She had addressed the old woman with the honorific for a woman who had taken holy orders, and I wondered if I should be thinking of my sister as “Rie-ana,” since she had not adopted a new name for her new life, as so many others did. For her part, the old woman just looked down and continued fingering her prayer beads. She appeared to be weeping. Rie looked away. “I had just returned when the attack on the monastery began . . . and ended very quickly, it seems. The gate was barred, but one of those worthless men must have already been inside, because the next thing we knew, the gate was open and the murderers were among us. I didn’t know what to do . . . I don’t think any of us had time to really grasp what was happening. Some of the women didn’t even run . . . I hid in a stora
ge building, but our supplies were depleted—that’s what I went to Yahiko about—and there was no good place to conceal myself. I heard the screams getting closer, I knew they were searching the buildings . . . I was certain I was going to die. But then everything stopped.”

  “What did you do then?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Rie said. “I was too terrified to leave the storeroom, afraid someone would see me. I’m not sure how long I was in there . . . not long, I think, before I heard the fighting start up again. It must have been when Lord Yoshiie’s party was attacked. Is he . . . ?”

  “Lord Yoshiie wasn’t harmed. Fortunately we detected the deception before the trap was fully sprung. But it was a close thing.”

  “I am grateful for his safety and for your own, brother. At least the cowards didn’t get what they came for,” Rie said.

  While I did not have the greatest respect for our attackers, I would not have described them as cowards. Vicious, certainly, and without scruple or piety, to murder priests and nuns without hesitation, but cowards? They had to know their chances of carrying out their mission and withdrawing safely to Mutsu were slim at best. Even if they’d managed to wipe out Lord Yoshiie’s personal guard as well as Yoshiie himself, that still left an entire army at the temple gates, most of it mounted and able to move swiftly and dominated by Minamoto loyalists keen on revenge. There was another, smaller gate on the east side, but no northern gate, and the east gate was in full view of the main road, so there would have been no means of escape

  Unless . . .

  “My sister, you said there must have been someone already inside the nunnery, but no one saw who it was or how they entered?”

  “Yes.” Rie frowned, and then she sifted positions to place herself next to the old nun. “Tomoko-ana, did you see anything? Please, it’s important. Try to answer.”

  “I-I hid under the guest quarters,” the old woman said finally. “When the gate was first barred. I didn’t see what happened. I heard . . . oooh.” Her voice dropped. “You can ask Mai-chan, but I don’t think she’s come back to herself yet.”

  That much was clear. The young nun still lay on her side, holding her knees, making no more sound than the occasional whimper. When Rie tried to touch her, the girl shied away from her, terror in her eyes. Rie sighed. “My brother, I’m afraid you’ll learn nothing more from us for now. Perhaps if . . . when, Mai has had time to recover?”

  I turned and summoned the guard back into the room. “I am Lord Yamada, acting on behalf of Lord Yoshiie in this matter. What is your name and what are your instructions?”

  The man bowed. “I am Hojo no Toshiro. I was to hold these women until they had been interrogated, and await further orders.”

  “Just so. Your orders now are simply this—you will continue your duties until you are relieved, but these women are not to be considered prisoners. You are here for their continued protection only. See they are provided with whatever necessities they may require. Understood?”

  “Yes, Yamada-sama.”

  I spoke again to Rie. “I have matters to attend to, but for now I need you and your companions to stay together. Do what you can for Mai-chan, as I would still like to speak to her when possible. I will see you again, soon.”

  “Until then, go with Amada.”

  I went, but I wasn’t sure if the Buddha had decided to join me or not. Back outside in the main compound, the grim work of gathering the bodies continued. I found Kenji serving in his priestly capacity by a row of draped bodies. “No other survivors among the priests?” I asked.

  Kenji looked grim. “If there are, they are well-hidden indeed. Before you ask, I did have the walls inspected. There’s no sign of a breach, and if anyone scaled the wall, they did it without so much as breaking a tile.”

  “Which doesn’t mean it did not happen, but whoever did manage to get in was very skilled. I need to look for myself.”

  “Do you need my assistance?”

  “I can see you are needed more here. I will send for you if my situation changes.”

  The bodies of the real monks were being moved into the main temple to join those of the murdered abbot and the other priest we’d discovered inside. Lord Yoshiie had withdrawn from the first hall and had commandeered the main lecture hall as a temporary headquarters. I presented myself to him there.

  “Your men have located no other survivors?” I asked.

  “None, I’m afraid. What did you find out from the nuns?”

  I summarized what little I had learned from Rie and the elder nun. “The one called Mai is still overcome by the terror of what happened to her. If she comes back to herself, I will question her as well, but it’s not likely she knows any more than we’ve already learned.”

  He sighed. “I was hoping for more.”

  I shared his disappointment. “Have your men found where the attackers entered?”

  Yoshiie scowled. “I had assumed they came in through the main gate. It’s normally not barred, and we know they were in disguise.”

  “In which case they would have knowingly committed suicide, whether they succeeded or not, as they must have known the only means of escape would be blocked by your army. While certainly conceivable, I think we should check out the alternative—they had another way out.”

  “Considering how close they came to accomplishing their mission, perhaps I have underestimated them,” Lord Yoshiie said. He immediately summoned three of his bushi and ordered them to accompany me. I led them toward the rear of the compound where there were no buildings, only the trees which had taken it over. I felt my suspicions intensify.

  “Was this area searched?”

  “Yes, Lord Yamada,” said the leader of the bushi, a stolid, forty-ish man named Akimasa. “Lord Yoshiie wanted to be certain we had accounted for all the fallen monks and any attackers who might have hidden themselves.”

  “And so you concentrated your efforts among the trees then? Not the wall?”

  Akimasa frowned. “We did look for a breach, but that was all, my lord.”

  As I had surmised. “Spread out,” I said to all three. “Search the wall and the area just under it.”

  Akimasa looked puzzled. “Your pardon, Lord Yamada, but what are we looking for?”

  “Gentlemen, I promise you will know it if you find it.”

  It did not take long. One of the bushi discovered three long bamboo poles lying on the ground by the side of the wall nearly opposite the main gate. Each had an iron hook affixed to the end. “Does anyone know the purpose of these items?” Akimasa asked.

  I picked one up and examined it. The pole was far too flimsy to support the weight of a man, so any idea I might have had of the assassins sliding down on them from the wall was easy to dismiss. Yet the hook on the end was suggestive. I took three steps back from the wall itself and looked up. At first I could see nothing but the tiled roof covering the top of the wall, but then I noticed a piece of rope barely visible above the roofline, I tested the flex of the pole.

  “Let’s see.”

  The pole was long enough to reach the top of the roofline, and when I snapped it forward against the tiles, the hook swung around over it just like a fishing pole. When I pulled it back it was dragging a rope ladder. “There should be at least two more. Find them,” I said.

  The bushi took the other two bamboo poles, and in short order there were four rope ladders hanging down into the compound. I seized the first. “Follow me.”

  The command was a bit redundant. One of the younger bushi had reached the top of the wall before I was barely halfway up. “They were here,” he said.

  When I reached the top of the wall, I could see what he meant—the assassins had made an encampment within the shadow of the wall itself. While there was no sign of a fire, such proximity seemed rather reckless to me until I realized, judging from the undergrowth and tree litter nearby and the vines on the wall itself, this area of the compound was very lightly patrolled, if at all.

  The attackers k
new that. I’m beginning to think they knew nearly everything there was to know about this temple. They picked their spot and waited until the time was exactly right.

  None of this should have been a surprise to me. It was likely the temple had been visited many times in the past by Abe partisans, and even guileless pilgrims would have had useful information to impart to someone more interested in tactical concerns than in the Yahiko temple’s traveler facilities. The question still on my mind was how had they timed the attack so precisely? I had no answer for that.

  The ladders had been spiked to the beams beneath the tile roof, but on the outside just past the apex, so they were inconspicuous from inside the compound itself. Clearly, they had used these to gain entry. Concealing them afterwards seemed a bit overcautious to me, but it was always possible that someone might stumble upon them and sound an alarm, plus the ability to hide the ladders after they had completed their mission would have slowed down any pursuers for the time it would have taken them to discover where the assassins had gone. In context, the attempted slaughter of everyone inside the temple compound made perfect sense; locking everyone within the nunnery instead would require posting guards since the gates were designed to be barred from the inside, not the outside, which would have cost them manpower they could not spare. Nor could the victims have been confined inside even the larger buildings, since none of those structures were designed to act as prisons and could be easily escaped, and in any case their shouts almost certainly would have been heard. No, the more I understood, the more it became clear to me the massacre of the priests and nuns had been dispassionately and ruthlessly calculated as the price for achieving Yoshiie’s death. As much as I tried not to let my personal feelings intrude, I could see no other hand save Lord Tenshin’s at work here.