Island of Exiles sa-5

by I. J. Parker

  At first he did not bother to think, to remember, to wonder what had brought him to this state. But pain is a great stimula-tor of thought. Pain will be recognized and acted upon. Pain has nothing to do with dying, and everything to do with being alive.

  You might wish you were dead, but pain fights blessed oblivion and forces you into some sort of action.

  The blinding ache in his head and the swelling on his skull had no associations whatsoever, but when he thought about the leg, touching it and encountering a grossly enlarged knee, something clicked. A cudgel. Many cudgels in a forest clearing.

  Wada’s constables. The mad escape attempt on the horse and Wada with his sword raised high. Then nothing. Strange, he felt no sword wounds, smelled no blood.

  But wait. Someone else had been there. Kumo!

  With Kumo’s image came the rest. So it had been Kumo all along! And that raised the question: why was he still alive?

  The fact that there was no satisfactory answer exercised him for days, though he did more than think. During those days he managed to explore his grave by touch, a very slow process because of his weakness and injuries. He learned that it was carved from solid rock, moist, and hard under his fingers, that the rock floor was gritty and full of sharp bits of gravel. This fact jarred his memory about the distant hammering, which seemed to last for hours at a time. A stonemason might make such sounds. Somewhere nearby people were chipping their way into the rock.

  He was in one of Kumo’s silver mines. For no logical reason this discovery gave him new strength of will and curiosity.

  He could not stand, so he was uncertain of the height of his grave, but by careful rolling and shifting, he established that he occupied a square slightly larger than he was, perhaps six feet by six. Its only opening was barred by thick wooden planks, a door of some sort that was only opened by the female goblin with his food and water. The rock walls felt rough and were bare.

  He moved away from the vomit and excrement to a clean corner and took off most of his filthy clothes, using them to clean himself with. The shirt he kept on. All of this took the best part of a day and required concentration and willpower, but afterward he felt marginally better.

  At some point he had begun to count the visits of his wardress, but he soon became confused. He guessed she had come ten times since he had first seen her. But how much time had passed before, he did not know. He wondered if someone was looking for him. Surely Mutobe would have sent out search parties to comb the island from one end to the other. But they would scarcely look for him underground.

  In his blackest moments he thought of Tamako, his wife.

  And of his baby son. Of old Seimei, who had been both father and mother to him. Of Tora, with his ready smile and his eagerness to be of service. Surely Tora would come to find him.

  Dear heaven, where was this mine? Kumo’s secretary had said the mines were in the northern mountains. Not too far from Mano, then. Two weeks, perhaps more, had passed. On a small island like Sadoshima that meant he was hidden too well to be found. Only his jailers knew he was still alive.

  He forced his mind away from the present and thought of the conspiracy. Okisada, Taira, Sakamoto, Nakatomi, and Kumo. As unlikely a group of rebels as he had ever encountered.

  The prince, of course, had rebelled before, and Taira supported him. But Sakamoto, a fussy professor who spent his nights getting drunk in Haru’s restaurant, was hardly a useful ally. Nor was Nakatomi, who had neither the rank nor the education of the others, though he appeared greedy enough for the spoils.

  At best, these two were minor players. Kumo was different.

  Though he was without ties to the capital, he had enough wealth and local power to make their grandiose plot feasible.

  He had been playing for control of Sadoshima, just as Mutobe had charged.

  The plot failed when the prince had killed himself, yet the conspiracy had continued and was still continuing, or Akitada would not be here. The vengeful Genzo had provided Kumo with Akitada’s papers, proving that his suspicions of the convict Taketsuna had been correct. Treason was punishable by death in one of its more painful forms, and that explained why Kumo had ordered Akitada captured. But it explained nothing else.

  When Akitada was not thinking about Kumo, he exercised his body. He began by stretching his limbs and moving all but his injured leg regularly and repeatedly. The slop he ate, unappetizing though it was, gradually brought back some strength so that the enervating trembling stopped and he was less light-headed.

  The pain was still with him, but head and neck improved until he could sit up and lean against the rock. His right leg did not get better. He feared that he was permanently crippled, for however much he tried to bend his knee, he could not do it. Still he persisted, over and over again, gritting his teeth against the pain as he massaged the swollen flesh, and wondered why he bothered.

  The day he pushed himself up against the wall and stood upright for the first time, the goblin caught him. He heard her at the plank door, but did not manage to get back down because of his stiff leg. When she saw him, she shrieked and disappeared, slamming the door behind her.

  He took a deep breath and made himself slide along the rock toward the door. The right leg hurt abominably every time he put his weight on it, but he needed only a few steps. When his fingers touched wood, they were wet with sweat, and his eyes burned with perspiration. Still he pushed and pulled on the door. But it was locked. He felt all around and above it. The ceiling was barely a foot above his head at its highest point, but the door was much lower, so that he would have to bend to get out.

  He was still leaning against the door when he heard them and saw the light again. In a panic, he tried to get away from the door too fast. Pain, hot like scalding water, shot up and down his right leg and he fell. The door, when it flew open, struck his foot, and Akitada writhed in agony.

  They had no trouble at all with him after that. The three men made quick work of tying him up with a thick rope. The goblin held a burning torch for them, and later he was to remember the scene like something from a painting of hell, with himself the tortured soul about to be fed to the flames. Then the door clanked shut and he was alone again.

  Things were immeasurably worse than before. His wrists were lashed together behind his back, and the rope continued to his ankles, which were also tied together. Not only did the rope restrict his circulation, but he was now in an arched position causing continuous pain to both his neck and injured leg.

  He also could no longer feed himself. The goblin had left his soup and water within reach, but he was lying down and his hands were tied. Eventually ravenous hunger drove him to stretch enough so that he could lap like a dog, covering his face and beard with food, dirtying his water.

  Why did they not just make an end of him? What was he being saved for?

  After a while, he resorted again to taking his mind off his condition by concentrating on other things. He was not entirely successful in this, because the moment he cast his mind back to his family and pictured himself with his wife and child, or practicing stick-fighting with Tora, he would be seized by despair. Even the playing of an imaginary flute did not work any longer. Eventually he turned his thoughts again to the events in Sadoshima.

  The trial must be long over by now, its outcome surely a guilty verdict without Akitada’s information. Had Toshito been taken to the capital or quickly executed in Mano? And what about his father? Mutobe would hardly remain governor.

  Perhaps father and son had been taken off the island together.

  That would account for the lack of interest in the disappearance of the convict Taketsuna. And even if Mutobe reported in the capital, help would not reach Akitada in time.

  All his thoughts tended to the same dismal conclusion. More time passed. Nothing happened, except that now when the goblin brought his food and water she was accompanied by a short, burly man with the same long matted hair and a long curly beard. The man carried a cudgel and wore
some sort of fur. Once Akitada tried to speak to them, begging to have the rope loosened a little, but he was ignored. They communicated only with each other in strange grunts and left again as soon as possible.

  It came to him then that they must be Ezo. He had seen people of mixed Japanese and Ezo blood. But these were full-blooded Ezo. That accounted for their curly hair, their strange light eyes, the fur clothing, and their guttural language. If his guards knew that he was an official in the service of the emperor, they would have little pity for him.

  He suddenly wondered if he was being kept alive because they planned to ransom him. Perhaps he would go home after all, home to hold his wife and child, home to breathe the clean air, home to become human again.

  That hope brought such relief that he relaxed in spite of his miserable condition and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  But waking up in the same hot, stinking darkness cured him quickly of ridiculous hopes. He had forgotten Kumo, the man who had put him here, as well as the fact that no ransom payment would be made for him. His family certainly had nothing to trade for his life. And the imperial government would hardly raise a large amount of gold or trade territory for a junior official who had so signally failed in his assignment.

  Knowing how powerful his enemies at court were, and how little his superiors thought of his ability, he doubted they would even negotiate on his behalf. So it would only be a matter of time before either Kumo or the Ezo got rid of him.

  When the goblin and her companion brought his food, he looked at them more closely. Both creatures looked brutish, but they seemed indifferent to him as a person. There was no particular animosity in the way they treated him, just caution and dull obedience to orders.

  In spite of an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, he ate.

  Life was extraordinary. The more someone tried to crush it out of you, the harder you struggled to stay alive. There was neither honor nor pride in this persisting. Chained in the bowels of the earth, lying in your own filth, and lapping food from a bowl like a dog, you were nothing. Yet you clung to life.

  One faculty distinguishes a man from a trapped animal: his reason. Akitada spent the waking hours thinking. What, for example, were Ezo doing working in this mine? They had been subjugated everywhere except in Hokkaido. Their presence lent some credence to the fears that had brought the imperial secretaries first to Sadoshima and then to him. Okisada and/or Kumo had formed some sort of alliance with the warlords of Dewa or Mutsu, strongholds of the subjugated Ezo. Their territories were only a short ship’s journey away. Aided by a rebel Ezo army and funded by Kumo’s wealth, the traitors could march on the capital to place their candidate Okisada on the throne. No doubt the Ezo lords had been promised whole provinces as reward for their help. Such an alliance had happened before when Koreharu had rebelled. It had taken decades to subdue the uprising.

  But then the prince had died, and an extraordinary thing must have happened next. Kumo had apparently stepped into Okisada’s place. With Mutobe out of the way, he would take over the government of Sadoshima and from there join the rebel army and attack the northern provinces of Japan. He could hardly claim the throne by birth, but other possibilities were terrible enough. Because of his carelessness Akitada had failed to stop him. Even if, by a miracle, he survived this ordeal, and even if Kumo’s rebellion was crushed, there would be no future for him anywhere.

  He fretted over his helplessness and became so discouraged that he stopped eating, and even the simple act of breathing seemed an intolerable burden.

  It seemed particularly bad one night, or day, when he awoke, choking and gasping for air. After a moment he realized that he was breathing smoke, dense, acrid, throat-searing smoke. As if being buried alive were not enough, he was apparently about to be cremated alive.

  But he was wrong. Just when he was about to give up the pointless struggle, they came for him.

  They cut the ropes and dragged him out of his grave and back into fresh air, life, and time.

  It was nighttime outside, a chill, wet mountain night with a slight drizzle falling. They dumped Akitada somewhere near a tree and ran back.

  Akitada did not know this and, had he known, he could not have taken advantage of the perfect opportunity for escape. He wanted nothing but breath after breath of clean air. He lay on his belly on the wet ground, shaking with the sudden cold after weeks in his grave, and coughed in great wrenching spasms. The moisture in the air he gulped made him aware of a great thirst.

  He was breathing water, he thought. He was drowning in sweet-smelling water. Pressing his face and lips into the rain-drenched moss, he sucked up the moisture and wished he could stop shaking and coughing, and just let himself float in the moist, clean air.

  His coughing stopped after a while. He rolled himself into a ball against the chill and opened his eyes. In the light of torches and lanterns, men darted back and forth, their shadows moving grotesquely against the cliff face. Others lay about, inert or barely moving. He thought belatedly of escape, but collapsed after the first attempt to rise. After that he sat, staring around him, thankful for the air-much cleaner than any he had breathed in weeks, dizzyingly clean-and enthralled by the visual spectacle after all the time spent in darkness.

  A fire in a mine is deadly not because there is much to burn.

  Later Akitada was to learn that there were only the notched tree trunks the miners used to ascend and descend between shafts, and baskets and some straw and hemp rope to raise and lower the baskets, and the many small oil lamps and occasional torches with which they lit their way through the tunnels. A fire might start easily if oil was spilled on rope and somehow ignited, but it was the smoke that did the damage. The smoke had nowhere to go and seeped through the tunnels, choking the men.

  Eventually Akitada thought of the filth caking his skin and took off the sodden rag of a shirt. Pressing it against the wet moss and then scrubbing himself with it was exhausting work, but he felt better afterward. Sitting there, stark naked in the chill mountain air, he looked around for something to cover himself with. No one paid attention to him. He crawled over to one of the still bodies. The man was dead, his eyes rolled back into his head and his face black with soot, but his clothes, a cotton shirt and a pair of short pants, were almost dry because he lay under a tree. Akitada managed to take the shirt and pants off the corpse and put them on himself. But the effort was all he could manage. He collapsed beside the dead man and fell into a brief sleep of exhaustion.

  He woke when the goblin and her companion wrapped a chain around his waist and attached it to the tree. It was loose enough to allow short steps if he could have stood up. His hands were tied in front with rope, so that he was much more comfortable than in the mine. The corpse was gone, tossed on top of a couple others. Akitada spent the rest of that wet cold night leaning against the tree trunk, alternately shivering and dozing, too weak and tired to take notice of the dark figures milling about and the coarse shouts and cracks of whips.

  The rain stopped at dawn when blessed light returned, a gray and filtered light here under the tree on a cloudy morning, but that, too, was a blessing, for his eyes were no longer used to sun. The goblin returned with a bowl of food. He ate it gratefully, sitting up and lifting the bowl to his mouth like a man instead of an animal. It took so little now to please him.

  But the distinction between men and beasts began to blur again as he saw his surroundings. They were somewhere in the mountains, fairly high up. Before him was a wide, open space covered with rubble and stone dust and ragged creatures. Ahead rose a cliff perforated by many holes, some only large enough for a small animal to enter, some-like the one from which he had emerged and around which still hovered a slight smoky haze-large enough to drive an ox carriage through.

  For a mine, it was a small operation. Akitada saw no more than fifty people. About a third were guards. Several of them were Ezo, bearded and wearing fur jackets, and all were armed with bows and swords or carried leather whips. Most of t
he miners wore few clothes, and chains hobbled their feet so they could only shuffle along. So much for Kumo’s gentle treatment of his workers, Akitada thought. Though these men had been condemned to hard labor for violent crimes, the number of armed guards seemed excessive, particularly in view of the convicts’ miserable and cowed behavior. Indeed, where would they run to on this island?

  At the moment, they sat or lay on the ground, but already one of the guards was walking about, snapping a leather whip.

  One by one, the men stood, chains clinking, heads hanging, arms slack. A few glanced toward the corpses, but nobody spoke.

  Some of the miners were half naked, and several of the smallest had rags wound around their knees and lower arms like little Jisei. Akitada glanced up at the holes in the cliff face.

  They must be the badger holes the doctor had talked about.

  The guards rounded up the bigger convicts and marched them back into the smoking cave opening. They resisted briefly, protesting and gesturing, but the whip soon bit into their backs

  and bare calves and, one by one, they disappeared into the earth. One of the guards followed but returned quickly, gasping and coughing, to wave another guard in. They took turns this way, but the convicts only reappeared briefly, dragging charred timbers or carrying baskets of equipment. The cleanup had begun.

  As the daylight grew stronger, he saw that his knee was still swollen and the tight skin was an ugly black and purplish red.

  But the cooling rain had soothed the throbbing, and after a while Akitada began to test his leg. He could move foot and ankle easily, but the knee was too stiff to bend more than a little.