by Givens John
Or allowed to kill themselves, said the Ishida man.
Yes. Of course. Cut the belly like a good boy. Gompatchi looked at Koda. But that hasn’t been your understanding of such matters?
I guess not, Koda said.
You guess not. Earless Gompatchi adopted a thoughtful manner. Perhaps you could describe your own views? Share with us your Dewa samurai heritage?
Koda remained silent for a moment, staring into the crackling bonfire. He looked at Gompatchi. Samurai kill people, he said. That’s what they do.
By which you mean kill those deserving of death.
Koda’s expression didn’t change. People. Whoever is available.
Gompatchi returned his challenge. You’re all alone here.
Fighting many opponents is no more difficult than fighting one, Koda said.
You could be overwhelmed.
I don’t think so.
You don’t think so…
The many will wish to co-ordinate themselves because each man hopes to survive. The man alone has the advantage. And his strategy unremarkable.
You are threatening us?
No.
But you feel you could defeat us?
Yes.
Gompatchi sat pondering this for a moment. I don’t believe you could do it, he said finally.
One of the gamblers sitting near the communal wine pot wore a matchlock pistol shoved in his sash in the manner of the southern barbarians. Start with him, Viper Koda said. Slash him across the eyes. You’ll hear his cries, see his blood, smell his fear. It will change you. You may spread yourselves apart more widely than you should. I’ll cut down the men in the middle. If you close in for support, I’ll swing around from the outside and you’ll impede each other’s sword space. He smiled. Or perhaps I’d start it another way entirely.
But you’d start it?
We’re just talking, Koda said.
What about this? The samurai with the matchlock jerked it out. It’ll shoot a hole right through you!
Koda returned his gaze. I don’t like guns, he said, and the man looked down uncertainly at what he held.
Once you begin, you do it all, Koda said. Any weeper you take pity on will never forgive you the humiliation of it. You’ll be required to confront him eventually. Better to do it now. If a man has brothers, kill them too. If you kill the husband, kill the wife. If you kill the parents, kill the children. Do not insult them by allowing them to survive. Koda looked at the men sitting around him in the flickering firelight, all of them silenced by his snakelike certainty. Then he returned his attention to Earless Gompatchi. What you said is true. No samurai should ever be imprisoned. Cut him down or let him go.
Gompatchi said nothing, but the dour Ishida samurai rinsed his wine cup then poured it full and held it out to Koda.
I don’t drink wine anymore, Koda said.
Not even for the warmth?
Warm yourself.
Ishida held the full cup, unsure what to do with it. I guess you got out of the habit of being with other people, he said.
THEY WERE GONE BY THE TIME Koda got back there, the floor boards stripped out and burned, all the fixtures burned for the heat that could be found in them. Even the little tray table had been thrown onto the fire, and the tatami mat had been hacked apart and burned, leaving dense wads of powdery ash in places, some of which still bore a few charred shreds of the binding brocade.
Koda searched through the outer edges of the berm-road hamlet until he found a freshly trampled path made by a party of men heading out into the moorlands. The day was cold and overcast but no snow fell, and he caught up with them at a newly-built mortuary shelter where they had paused to rest. The land there had been set aside for the city’s future dead. A few clan tombs stood erected already on the snow-filled plain, isolated and forlorn. The foundations for a bell tower occupied the edge of the new cemetery grounds, and the space for what would eventually be a grand funerary temple had been cleared and smoothed near a grove of leafless trees.
Koda watched the morose Ishida samurai as he came out to intercept him. I thought you didn’t want to be with us.
Koda told him he just couldn’t sleep there.
I guess you have refined tastes.
I don’t like other people around me when I’m asleep.
Ishida said most people thought being together was safer.
I guess that means I’m not like you.
Ishida looked off at the snow-covered hills beyond the moorlands. Then why are you following us?
The gamblers had built a fire at the front edge of the mortuary shelter and distributed the rations for their midday meal. They had a cask of rice wine that they heated in an iron pot then dipped out with a ladle, and they had wine cups fashioned from of sections of green bamboo.
Koda picked at the rations he’d been given, moving bits around in a simulation of eating.
Gompatchi studied him then held out his makeshift wine cup to be filled again. So what happened to your basket-hat?
I decided I didn’t like it.
You didn’t like it. So then are we to assume you’re no longer living the life of an Emptiness Monk?
Koda looked at him for a moment then said, I guess not.
And were you ever? said the matchlock owner.
They finished their meal and poured the last of the wine into their big pot then broke apart the wine cask and began feeding bits of it into the fire, the inner surfaces of the wooden slats hissing and steaming as they charred. A couple of the gamblers went outside to piss, choosing to do so behind one of the newly erected family tombs.
I bet pissing in front of people is another thing he won’t do, said the matchlock owner.
A rat-faced gambler said he thought pissing on tombs was wrong.
I guess the dead won’t mind.
The rat-faced gambler thought they would mind. It was his understanding that the ghosts which collected near new tombs were particularly virulent due to the absence of the moderating effect of the older dead.
That’s not it, said the senior mat sweeper. They’re just ashamed.
Ashamed? The pistol owner dipped out another large cup of wine for himself. What a stupid idea.
Ashamed of being dead, said the mat sweeper. When someone dead looks at you, what they want is not to be rejected. It was the mat sweeper’s responsibility to manage the flow of a game, and the other gamblers respected him and paid attention to his opinions.
I guess I never heard anything like that, said the rat-faced gambler, and Earless Gompatchi said it was new to him too.
They know you’re disgusted by them, said the senior mat sweeper. And they are too. How could they not be? What they want is not to be blamed for it.
Blamed for being dead? said the man with the pistol. He stared at Koda. You ever hear of anything like that?
No.
As if it’s their fault they got that way? And that’s why they feel ashamed? You don’t see how stupid that is?
No one said anything then Koda said, It’s never anyone’s fault.
I guess that’s what I just said, said the pistol owner. I guess we agree.
Every man’s death holds him, Koda said. Like a thing in a hand. And every year you go past your death-day without knowing how special it is. Of course you can’t know. But if you could, would you? What would it be like to know the day of your death but not the year?
Or know the year but not the day? said the rat-faced gambler.
That’s it too, said Gompatchi. But which would you choose?
The gamblers looked at each other, afternoon drinkers pondering thoughts of sufficient novelty and merit as to require careful consideration.
I’ll tell you the one I wouldn’t chose would be the day of it, Earless Gompatchi said.
Because you’d worry as it came closer? said the mat sweeper. But think how free you’d feel on all the other days. You could do anything, fight anybody.
I’ll drink to that, said the pistol man, and he d
rained his cup then refilled it.
But what a thing to know, said the rat-faced gambler, also dipping out more wine.
But knowing your death-year, too, said the mat sweeper, although they agreed that knowing the year of it would be less binding.
Unless of course you keep hanging on and hanging on, said Gompatchi, autumn passes and winter arrives, then winter settles in and everybody else is paying off their debts and cleaning house and getting ready for the end-of-year celebrations…
But you don’t clean your house, said the mat sweeper.
The rat-faced gambler laughed. You’re just sitting there all alone. Hoping that maybe death forgot.
How could you do that? said the pistol man, his face pink with wine and his grin loose. That’s a stupid thing to hope.
You’d still hope it.
Still a stupid idea, he said, drinking.
Or like death got the year wrong, the senior mat sweeper said, a clerical error not caught in time; and they smiled at that idea then shoved the remaining cask slats onto their bonfire.
The man with the matchlock emptied his cup then dipped it full again, slopping wine over the edge. He held it out to Koda. Fellowship of the gang.
I don’t drink anymore.
Just one.
Koda said nothing.
One for you, said the pistol man, still pushing it towards him. Cheer you up.
Koda took the makeshift wine cup and held it then gave it back. Like I said.
You won’t sleep where we sleep. You won’t piss how we piss. And now you won’t even taste our wine?
Koda the Viper watched him but said nothing.
He said before he doesn’t like drinking, said Earless Gompatchi. All the more for you.
The pistol man held his cup as if trying to decide. Then he tilted it slightly and let a loose dribble splatter Koda’s feet. Sorry, he said.
By twilight they had reached a town large enough to sustain them. The gamblers set up a game in the local inn while the bullies and knife boys settled in an annex, ready to intervene should their skills be required.
Earless Gompatchi and Ishida brought Koda to the game site. You need to understand how to read the room, Gompatchi said. Separate the outside from the inside.
Koda said nothing, but he was listening.
There are occasions when unscrupulous types will try to rob us. They’ll usually have one or two in the game. You need to understand how it should be so you can recognise when it’s going wrong.
They ran that game until just before dawn then slept a few hours and started the next one in mid-afternoon. A few of the fighters and knife boys sat around the fire pit in the back, distracting themselves with a pot of cloudy rice wine that they warmed over the fire in the hopes of masking the sourness of it. Earless Gompatchi had continued to instruct Koda in the art of the way of the flower-cards, with Ishida adding comments occasionally. They ordered another pot of the cloudy wine and platters of titbits to go with it, and Koda slung his too-long sword across his back and went outside.
The sun hung low in winter mist above the western hills, spreading a reddish tinge throughout the cloud-wash there while the snow-covered slopes darkened with shadows. Koda crossed through the snow field then stopped and stood gazing at the streaks of red behind the blackness of the far hills, the pale aquamarine of the upper sky lovely, the water star low on the horizon.
Let’s have a shooting contest. The matchlock owner had come out behind him. He drove a patched ball into the firing chamber with his ramrod then primed the pan. The trunk of that dead pine down there.
I told you I don’t like guns.
I didn’t ask what you liked.
The others had followed him outside, and Earless Gompatchi came out too. Put it away, he said.
The matchlock owner blew on the punk cord until it glowed then used both thumbs to ease the serpentine forward to half-cock. He chose an exaggerated firing stance, with his arm extended, pointing the pistol in the direction of the target. You have your skills and I have mine. Then he turned slowly as if he’d anticipated a response he wasn’t hearing, bringing his arm around too, not quite aiming at Koda but showing him what that might be like. You look a little worried now, he said, enjoying himself, twisting his wrist this way and that in a demonstration of bravado that was both a threat and the parody of one.
Then he sat down hard. His arm lay on the ground beside him, its hand still gripping the pistol. He looked up at Koda amazed. Blood flooded out of the stump where his arm had been. Then his face blanked white and his eyelids fluttered, and he lay back on the icy surface of trampled snow and sighed. He blinked his eyes as if to clear them from some irritation then sighed again and stopped blinking them.
Koda reached down and plucked up the hem of the dying man’s robe. He cleaned the edge of his too-long sword with it.
The others all stood there looking at him.
I don’t like guns, Viper Koda said.
Earless Gompatchi turned away, and the others followed him back inside, but Ishida stayed with Koda. That shouldn’t have happened like that.
Koda returned his too-long sword over his shoulder into its scabbard, the sweep of it sliding home like the sound of a door shutting. But it did.
THE NARROW ROAD TO DEWA
A solitary rider came ambling across the autumn fields, accompanied by an entourage of insects that flared up all around him in the slanting orange light of late afternoon. The young warrior wore a sleeveless battle jacket studded all over with metal discs, but his two swords were shoved together through his sash in such a manner that the fist-protector of one might impede access to the other.
The rogue samurai Hasegawa Torakage sat under the eaves of a roadside inn and watched the rider’s approach.
That’s some bogey, said the innkeeper.
Yes, it is.
A primitive iron helmet protected the young warrior’s head, the kind of riveted old brain-roaster no sensible person would choose to wear, with the chin cords dangling disreputably, bits of travel debris caught in the metal plates of the neck guards, and the rusty stub of a snapped-off flange on the frontal plate indicating where some kind of heraldic device had once been mounted.
You think he has the right to carry those swords?
I don’t know, said Hasegawa.
Travel gear piled behind the young fighter’s saddle had been tied on haphazardly with rice-straw ropes, as if his provisioning had been organised by apes. A long wooden pannier hung down awkwardly on one side, causing his horse to move with an oblique and staggering gait. He rode past the inn without pausing and turned up onto the road north to Dewa.
You think the Dewa-men might wonder about it?
Hasegawa said it was no concern of his what a man did. He ordered another flask of wine.
Hasegawa watched the sunlight on the fields and hills. He could have written about it but didn’t. Others had described such places. The world didn’t need him to repeat what had already been said.
It’s nice country, said the innkeeper; and Hasegawa finished his wine then counted out what he owed, placing the coins one by one in a row on the table.
The road north to the Land of Dewa led through paddy fields, the yellow-dry sea of rice shimmering in the warmth of the afternoon. Hasegawa thought he remembered what he was seeing from when he was a child, but he also thought maybe he just wanted to feel that way.
The road left the valley and climbed into the deep shade of a cedar forest. He came to an orange bird-perch gate. A flight of stone stairs led straight up to where a shrine would be. Pilgrims dressed in white were resting there. Vows written in bold characters decorated the fronts of their robes. Hasegawa exchanged greetings with them and shared thoughts on the weather and the topography and the pleasures of mountain rambling in autumn but didn’t linger, for they would be a slow-moving company prone to breaking out into prayer chants at the slightest provocation.
Hasegawa reached the next village just before sunset. The fooli
sh young warrior was sprawled like a proprietor on a stack of rice-straw sacks that local farmers had prepared for the harvest. You want it? His horse stood with its rear hoof held off at an odd angle, the fetlock swollen and bloody. Save me the bother of killing the stupid thing.
You kill it you’ll be carrying your gear.
I guess I’ll find a replacement first.
You see many horses around here?
The young warrior shifted his sword handles forward. I guess I only need one.
Hasegawa looked at him then turned away and continued up through the village and back onto the mountain road. He walked at an easy pace, and when he came to the ruins of a fortress destroyed by the Tokugawa Shogunate he stopped. On the grassy ridge above it stood an immense ginkgo tree blazing against the clarity of the autumn sky like a geyser of sulphur-yellow flames. The defenders had been given an opportunity to record their true feelings, some adding poems and some admonitions; and each man’s document had been attached to his head cask for the trip back to Edo, where the shogun himself had agreed to participate in a formal viewing. Nothing was left of the buildings that had been there, and only rectangular sections of the granite foundation blocks remained, like abandoned jetties in a sea of autumn grasses.
Hasegawa built a small comfort-fire on the leeward side of one of the massive ashlars, soot from his smoke blackening that already there. The defeated garrison were local samurai who would have sought consolation. Perhaps they had mentioned the splendid ginkgo tree in their farewell letters, trying to describe what they saw even as they were waiting to be called out for the commencement of slaughter procedures.
Shit. I thought you were a bandit. The young warrior came up off the road, his absurd helmet worn so low over his eyes that he had to tilt his head back to see. I was about to get out my throat-cutter.
He was on foot now and leading his gimpy horse, the gear as ineptly arranged as before, with rice-straw ropes wound around hither and thither in a comedy of incapability. Probably you’ve heard of me. He declared that he was known everywhere as Tarō, the Hell-kite of Edo, and that all men who met him soon realised he was a stone-cold killer with an icy heart and a fondness for the beauty of war.