Blackguards

by J. M. Martin

  "But ransom—"

  "Ransom be damned. Go, Perimedes!"

  Perimedes went, other bronze-armed shadows following at his heels. Odysseus went to get the cows.

  It was the night before market day in Chryse-town, and there were a lot of cows in the cattle-pens by the market. But cows, unlike baskets of grain and olives, are prone to protest when wakened and moved in the middle of the night. That was why Odysseus had chosen this task for himself and his trustiest men: it was the more dangerous.

  "This is more than we can carry on our ships," a shadow with Elpenor's voice whispered.

  "Never mind," Odysseus whispered back. "Diomedes and Achilles are sending their ships around to the harbor to pick them up. We'll pass some cows off on them. If we have to leave some on the beach, so be it. We want as many as we can possibly take away. Unless you've developed a taste for corpse-fed dog."

  By now there were sounds of fighting from the hilltop palace-temple of Chryse's priest-king. Diomedes and Achilles, and their men, drawing off the town's soldiery with their promised raid. Odysseus silently wished them luck and got down to herding the cattle.

  They opened the pens, and merged the different groups of cattle into one large herd, then drove the herd down the main street in town. There was no point in being quiet anymore; they had to count on speed instead. But Odysseus and a few of his men hung back from the herd, in case they were attacked from behind.

  And they were. They were passing by an alley when a spear flew out of the shadows and struck the face of one of Odysseus' warriors. The man fell dead to the ground. Odysseus didn't have a chance to see who it was as a crowd of armorless men armed with scythes and mattocks suddenly came at them.

  Odysseus and his men closed together against the onslaught. Their peasantish attackers were determined and desperate to save their property, but they had never been trained to fight, they weren't armored, and their weapons were inferior. Soon enough the bravest of them lay dead or dying in the muck of the street and the wisest of them were fleeing away toward the citadel. The city beyond them was already marked with flame—Perimedes must have finished his mission and set the fires, as Odysseus had commanded. From now on, the men of Chryse would be fighting the flames or escaping from them; Odysseus didn't think he'd have to worry about them attacking his men anymore.

  "We have to get poor Lycophron," Elpenor cried.

  "Poor Lycophron's dead," Odysseus observed. "Let's get back to the beach."

  "But they won't bury him!" Elpenor protested. "They'll leave him out for the dogs and the birds to feed on! His ghost will wander the world, homeless, unable to cross the river Styx!"

  Odysseus was not interested in the welfare of ghosts—not when it conflicted with his own—but he could see that Elpenor's plea had moved his other men.

  "Get him, then," Odysseus directed Elpenor. "I'll watch your back. The rest of you, get down to the beach and start loading our plunder."

  They went gratefully: very grateful someone else was risking his life for the dead, Odysseus thought sourly.

  Elpenor leaped over the fallen peasants and lifted Lycophron’s corpse. He threw it over his shoulder and started back toward Odysseus. Then he stumbled over one of the bodies littering the street and went down among them.

  Odysseus cursed Elpenor's clumsiness—it would kill him one day, Odysseus was sure—and ran over to help, but then he tripped on something: a stick of some sort lying in the street, twisting strangely in the moonlight. He looked back at it as he lifted himself from the blood and mud of the street. Then he spied the silhouette of a man emerging from the darkness of a side street. The newcomer's form was unclear, but he wielded an axe with a bright glittering edge, and raised it over his head.

  It took forever for Odysseus to lift his hand from the muck—and it was empty, weaponless: he had lost his sword somewhere. Meanwhile, the axe-wielder moved swiftly. There was no way Odysseus would be able to defend himself. Then the writhing stick rose from the ground, tripping the axe-wielder. He went down on one knee. His face was in moonlight (and firelight) now, and Odysseus saw his expression go from clenched rage to cool bewilderment.

  The writhing stick raised itself still farther from the ground. But it wasn't the stick that was writhing: there were two snakes entwined around it, and they passed in front of the man's face. Instead of looking concerned, he lost all expression, his eyes closed, and he slumped to the ground.

  A manlike shadow appeared, holding the stick upright. "No need to thank me, Odysseus," said Hermes’ insinuating voice. "I always look after my people. I would have been glad to kill him for you, but he's one of mine, too. Constantly stealing his neighbor's livestock. Go now and take care of your sailors. They're mine now, as well."

  Odysseus turned without a word. He helped Elpenor to his feet, and they carried Lycophron's body down to the town gate, where his men awaited the cattle milling about them. Perimedes' crew was standing there, too, laden with baskets.

  "What are you waiting for?" Odysseus demanded.

  Perimedes pointed down to the beach where a line of warriors had pinned the Greeks against the water. In the moonlight Odysseus could see Diomedes' leathery face and Achilles' almost girlishly pale one. They had looted the priest-king's citadel, as they had sworn they would. But the priest-king's guards had followed them back to the harbor. In the dark water of the harbor, beyond the clashing lines of bronze-armed warriors, stood the Greek ships--their way out of this, if only they could get to them.

  "And if some of us don't, that's more room for cows," Odysseus said aloud.

  "What's that?" Perimedes asked.

  Rather than repeat himself, Odysseus said, "Stampede the cattle. Drive them into the backs of Chryses' warriors. We'll follow them up and finish them off."

  Odysseus' men shouted as one. That was enough to start the cattle running and the men encouraged them with further cries, blows, and insults-unbecoming to any cow. They didn't have much distance in which to work up speed, but Chryses' warriors heard the cattle coming and fled before them.

  The Greeks on the beach, laughing, divided to let the stampede pass. The cattle ran into the shallows of the sea and stood there, bewildered.

  "Come on!" shouted Achilles, as Odysseus came up. "Let's go after them! We can destroy the whole force and take the island!"

  "But not keep it, young warrior," Diomedes observed. "Odysseus, you are, as always, a man of many turnings."

  "We came for food and we got it," Odysseus said, a little gruffly (for something was bothering him). "Let's go."

  "You came for food," Achilles corrected. "We looted the palace storeroom and the women's quarters. We have Chryses' daughter and many fair royal kinswomen besides."

  "They'll ransom well," Diomedes added. "Of course the money may not buy us much…"

  "After tonight it will, I think," Odysseus conceded. "Kings will hear of the fate of Chryse and fear that the same may happen to them. They'll sell to us by day lest we raid them at night."

  "All's well, then," said Diomedes, making it half a question as he stared into Odysseus' discontented face.

  "Let's get our loot on board the ships," Odysseus said.

  That wasn't a king's work so Odysseus turned away and spoke into the darkness, to a shadow he knew was walking there, although he couldn't see it.

  "Hermes, intricate deviser, god of travellers and thieves, I see your vengeance at last. So I thank you for this victory and its plunder. Since I am one of your men, now, I will steal and lie and rob my way across the face of earth and sea until the gods grant me passage home. I will remember you with this praise, and in another song also."

  Then the pirate-captain Odysseus turned back to lead his crews of thieving murdering bastards safely away, as the city of Chryse burned behind its violated gate.

  His Kikuta Hands

  Lian Hearn

  “His Kikuta Hands” is set in Maruyama, the furthest city to the west in the Three Countries. It takes place behind the scenes of Ch
apter Five of Brilliance of the Moon. I’d always wanted to expand these pages where a lot happens in a short space of time. Takeo feels he must take on the Tribe and demonstrate the ruthlessness he will need to be a competent ruler. The Tribe on the other hand don’t believe, firstly, that he knows where to find them, secondly, that he will have the strength of will to deal with them. They are proved wrong.

  ~

  “In the East they call him The Dog,” the older brother said. “He lived with the Kikuta family in Matsue for months and was trained by Akio. The Kikuta master requested it. Apparently he is his nephew and has all the Kikuta skills and more.”

  The Kuroda boy, who was a great scoffer, scoffed now. “You all go on about his talents but I don’t believe he has any. Why would he leave the Tribe if he had? My guess is he wasn’t good enough, he couldn’t take Akio’s training and he ran away.”

  The man they were discussing was the new lord of Maruyama, by name Otori Takeo, though to them he would always be known as The Dog. Maruyama was the only great domain in all the Eight Islands to be inherited by the female line, an anomaly which infuriated many in the warrior class. When the last lady, Naomi, died in Inuyama, several of the clan’s elders wanted to change the system quietly and install as lord someone from the Iida family, whose wife had a slight connection with Maruyama through marriage but not by blood, thereby saving themselves the trouble of finding the next female heir, for Lady Maruyama’s daughter had drowned with her.

  Now Otori Takeo had turned up in the city with a Shirakawa wife, Kaede, claiming she was the heir to the domain, in which he was supported by the Sugita family, senior retainers to the Maruyama.

  “I told you to kill the Sugita boy,” the older brother said.

  “His father and the other guard took us longer than we expected,” the Kuroda boy replied. “When we’d finished with them the son had vanished. We could hear Otori’s horses; we had to get out of there.”

  There had subsequently been a huge and bloody battle in which most of the warrior class had been killed, including the Iida pretender, resulting in the Tribe not receiving payment for dispatching the two guards, an omission which annoyed Jiro’s father immensely. Soon it would be the least of his worries.

  The young men were chatting before training. If people thought about the Tribe at all, for very few even knew they existed, they probably imagined their skills came to them magically at birth. It was true that talents were innate but they were nothing without training. Hours were spent every day in gruelling routines to build up muscles needed for leaping, bare hand fighting, and garrotting; even the less common talents like invisibility and the second self, though they seemed effortless when they first appeared, usually just before puberty, withered away without constant practice.

  Jiro’s elder brother usually led the sessions. There were not many pupils—Jiro himself, three Muto boys, and two Kuroda: the scoffing boy and a girl who someone thought might have some talent, though so far there had not been much evidence of it. Mostly she was used to run errands and make tea. Jiro was interested in her as she was the same age as him, and he’d heard whispers in the kitchen where the women gossiped that she would be married either to one of the Muto boys or to himself. His older brother was already married to the only Muto girl in their generation.

  They did not use names much, just the common ones: Taro, Jiro, Saburo. When they became elders they would be given names that meant something to the Tribe. Jiro hoped he might be called Shintaro after the famous assassin who had died in the failed assassination that had brought The Dog to the attention of the Tribe. He was thinking about this as he began to limber up. It was already very hot. The training room had a wooden floor but the walls were plastered and painted white—if you could maintain invisibility against a stark white background, you could do it anywhere.

  It had been believed that it was impossible for Shintaro to fail. He had murdered hundreds flawlessly throughout the Three Countries, yet The Dog had heard him and he had been apprehended. He had immediately bitten into the poison capsule, aconite encased in wax, which they all kept at the back of the jaw where the molar tooth had been extracted to make space for it. His death had sent shock waves through the Tribe, even as far away as Maruyama.

  There were few families in the West. Their father feared they were dying out and wondered if they should not move east to Inuyama, but the years went past and he never made that decision. In Maruyama at least he was the sole ruler of his empire, even if it was a meager one. There was not a lot of work: the Seishuu clans of the West were an easy-going lot who settled their differences with marriage alliances, ceremonies, hunts, and feasts. The attack on the guards had been an exciting event—it was too bad they weren’t going to get paid for it.

  His brother cuffed him round the head, hard enough to make his eyes sting.

  “Concentrate! Get to work! You’re always dreaming about something or other. One day you’ll wake up with a knife in your throat.”

  He faced up to his older brother, the Kuroda girl to hers. By the end of the session they both had bruised knuckles and ringing ears. He had been knocked down three times, the girl twice. He was seething inwardly.

  The older brother said, “Hate me as much as you like. Hate your opponent, have no pity, and no hesitation.” Then he went to the targets and loosed a few shafts. He was far and away the best marksman among them and loved his wisteria-bound bow and his eagle-fletched arrows.

  Jiro spent a lot of time hating him but at the same time would die to save his life—in the Tribe that went without question. No one liked or had much affection for anyone else, but their loyalty was complete.

  The girl gave him a quick glance. He thought he saw contempt in it, though maybe it was pity, which was no better. Her brother’s back was tattooed in the Kuroda fashion. He wondered if hers was too. The thought obsessed him and he began to daydream about slipping the jacket from her shoulders and exploring the inked skin. He was at that age.

  Maybe since she was the same age her glance showed interest.

  Their skins were slick with sweat in the heat. The cicadas from the grove around the shrine were deafening. The thick woods cast dense shade on the rear of the house. It was on the edge of the city and, from the front, seemed a typical merchant’s store where rice was fermented into wine, stored in casks and sold. The Tribe had the monopoly on its production in Maruyama, just as they had for the soybean paste that flavored everything they ate. Both had lately become more profitable than their other traditional trades of spying and assassination.

  Behind the storefront were the living quarters, including several secret rooms and closets, and at the back were the indoor and outdoor training areas and the well.

  Jiro lowered the bucket into the well, drew it up, and poured cold water over his head. He did the same for the Kuroda boy, admiring how the wet tattoos gleamed. Then he turned to the girl.

  “Take off your jacket. I’ll cool your skin.”

  She ignored him.

  Inside the house the midday meal was waiting, trays and bowls set around the room. Their father was already taking up the wooden eating sticks. The men sat down. The girl went to the kitchen to eat with the other women. One of them said something to her that made her laugh.

  Their father selected a morsel of grilled eel and ate deliberately and slowly, then he said quietly, “I’ve received a message from the Dog, and so have my colleagues in the Muto family, summoning us to consult with him tomorrow. I am a little surprised he knows about us and where to find us.”

  “What is there to consult about?” the Kuroda boy said cheekily. “Does he want us to tell him how we plan to kill him?”

  “Will you go, Father?” Jiro asked.

  Before he could answer the girl came from the kitchen and said, “Master, someone is here to speak with you. He says it is urgent.”

  Their father laid down the eating sticks and made a beckoning gesture. The man entered and fell to his knees. Jiro knew him by sight. H
e was of solid build with a plump face that looked dull apart from his glinting, deep-set eyes. He was from the Imai family and worked at Maruyama castle as a groom.

  “What do you have to tell me that can’t wait till I’ve finished eating?” the Master said.

  Imai whispered, “There is a box containing records, made over the years by Otori Shigeru.”

  “Everyone knows Shigeru made records of everything, all his farming experiments and his crop yields.” The Master drank his soup. “And all his failures. That would make a long list.”

  “These are different. They are of the Five Families, of the Tribe.”

  “It is not possible,” the Master said. “Nothing has ever been written down. The structure of the Tribe means no one knows more than they need to, at any time, not even myself and the other Kikuta masters.”

  “Yet the records exist. They are in the current Otori lord’s possession. His wife carries them hidden among her clothes, and she has begun making copies.”

  Jiro sensed his father’s unease. The Tribe’s power depended on secrecy, on the ability to strike without warning and disappear without trace. As he said, no one, even within the Tribe, knew everything. How could an outsider?

  The Kuroda boy said, “It would not be difficult to steal the records or get rid of The Dog or, better still, both. Shigeru was a failure: this Otori is a weakling, we know that much.”

  Jiro’s father smiled. Maybe he was a little uneasy but he was not yet truly concerned.

  “May I?” said the Kuroda boy.

  The Master nodded. “It will have to be tonight.”

  The girl spoke from the doorway. “He will hear you, as he heard Shintaro.”

  “He will not hear me or see me,” boasted her brother.

  No one slept that night at they awaited his return. At dawn there was a clattering in the street outside, men pounding on the gate. The two brothers and the girl fled over the roofs on the father’s orders while he took refuge in one of the secret rooms. They went to a Muto house nearby. The girl and Jiro were quickly hidden away in a cavity in the wall while the elder brother donned merchant’s clothes and went out into the town to gather news.