She looked down and played with the loose straps of her travel cloak.
“I believe… sometimes you can change what the vision shows. I hoped I could… I had to try.”
“You knew and yet you threw yourself on the blade.”
She nodded.
He reached out and pulled her to himself, hugging her tightly.
“You’re the bravest of us all,” he told her. She protested feebly.
“My dragon is gone,” he said after a short pause, “I may have to kill it.”
He caught a glimpse of Satō’s vermillion kimono among the cedar trees.
“Dōraku is still alive,” he whispered quickly in Nagomi’s ear. “He’s the Immortal Swordsman.”
He let her go and stood up. It was beginning to rain.
It rained for four days straight.
Where is the damn sea?
Satō cursed the moment they decided to cut short across the valleys in their race towards the sea. Their new guide seemed at ease just wandering around the woods, the concept of being in a hurry meaningless for him, leading them only roughly south as much as his knowledge of the forest allowed. Finally, they got lost among the gullies and hills. What was supposed to be a two-day trek now reached into its fifth, with no end in sight. The food was running scarce; they were left with thin barley gruel and some forest vegetables and roots found by the bear-man, tasteless and smelly, and some bitter herbal concoction Torishi brew in place of cha. It gave her energy enough to walk on, and staved off illness, but did nothing to improve her mood. Bran and the Kumaso ate an occasional hare or wood pigeon caught in Torishi’s traps, but neither Satō nor Nagomi could force themselves to swallow flesh.
I’m not starving yet.
The forest seemed to spread endlessly in all directions, a grey-green wall of cedars, cypresses and camphor trees overgrown with weeds reaching into the air to swallow the moisture, and lichen hanging in great curtains from the branches. Any other time, she would find this a wondrous sight: there were great camphor trees on the slopes of Suwa, but not that tall and in such great numbers. But the rain and the cold made her look only down, to the sodden ground, where Torishi’s big footprints marked the path through the thick cushion moss and dense bracken. She noticed a reddish-brown habu adder slithering away slowly among the roots.
We need to get out of here.
She worried about her friends more than herself. The priestess claimed to have fully recovered from her wounds, but she was pale, silent and gloomy, struggling to put on a brave face whenever she noticed somebody was looking at her. Bran was absent, spending most of his evenings and mornings trying to make contact with his dorako, apparently to no avail.
On the third evening she had noticed Torishi leaning down to Nagomi and saying something quietly. The priestess smiled, nodded and stood up from the campfire, wiping tired eyes.
“Where are you two going?” Satō asked, putting down the book she’d been reading — the collection of samurai stories she had received as a gift from Master Kawakami in Kirishima. She had just finished the chapter about a nameless swordsman of the Bunroku era, during the Civil Wars, who had slaughtered one hundred students of the Ichijōji fencing school in a single battle. She was disappointed with how far into the realm of fantasy the tale had gone.
A hundred men defeated by one swordsman? What a ridiculous idea.
“She asked me to teach her the bow,” replied the bear-man. “All the Kumaso girls knew how to shoot.”
“A bow? What do you need that for?” she asked Nagomi.
“I can’t rely forever on Luck and the Gods to help me,” the priestess said, “and it sounds like fun, too.”
Nagomi followed Torishi towards a nearby open glade. Satō reached for the book, but did not open it again. Her eyes fell on Bran, leaning against a camphor tree. He was staring into the fire.
That’s not such a bad idea, she thought. Training helps take one’s mind off life’s hardships.
“I can teach you how to use a Yamato sword, if you want,” she offered. Bran looked up.
“I’m sorry?”
“I was a teacher in my father’s dōjō, after all.”
“I know how to fence. I had a soldier’s training.”
She couldn’t help bursting out with laughter.
“You call that waving about fencing? Come with me, I’ll show you fencing.”
He looked wounded for a moment, but then smiled and stood up.
A hot spring burst forth from among the stones, covered with white, sulphurous residue, and ran down the glade a pale blue, steaming stream. Satō put her foot into the rippling brook and sighed.
“Too bad it’s so small. I could really use a hot bath.”
Bran inadvertently imagined the girl naked in the water. The jarring sound of a sword being unsheathed brought him back to reality.
“Stand like this,” she ordered. “Left foot forward, right foot to the back and at an angle. Both bent slightly. A bit more.”
Bran obeyed, although the stance felt unnatural to him, strained.
“Bring the sword to your right shoulder, pointing straight up, a bit towards the rear. Elbow up. That’s the Shadow Frost Stance, the basic form of the Takashima School.”
“All right.”
“My form is the standard Metal,” she said, hiding the blade behind her so that he could only see the pommel. Bran didn’t really try to remember the names.
“Try to strike me from above.”
“The girl is good,” Shigemasa’s voice spoke in Bran’s head. “Her footwork is flawless.”
Bran raised the blade and brought it down at Satō, half-heartedly. The girl dodged aside without moving the sword.
“No, no. You have to really try to hit me. Don’t worry, you won’t manage,” she said, grinning.
“She’s right. There’s no way you can touch her.”
He repeated his strike harder, and this time her sword flashed and clanged against Bran’s blade; its tip hovered by his neck.
“Good,” she said.
“That was good?”
“Yes,” she laughed. “For a beginner.”
They clashed a few more times, each time Satō’s blade ended flawlessly near one of Bran’s vital points, while his own sword flew in some random direction.
I don’t see how this is teaching me anything, he thought, growing annoyed. Hold on, I can show you a trick or two as well.
He raised the sword deliberately too high. He noticed her loosen her stance, certain of herself. He stepped forward and, when she was raising her weapon to block him, pretended to slip on the wet moss. Satō’s sword swished past his head as he lunged forward, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her to the ground with him. He pressed the edge of his blade against her neck.
They were both covered in mud and breathing heavily.
“Well… done,” her lips moved in a whisper. He put the sword aside slowly and leaned down to kiss her, gently at first, but when she didn’t resist, more passionately. She ran her fingers through his hair, pulling him closer.
“Bran? Sacchan? Where are you?”
Satō broke off the kiss and pushed him off. She stood up hastily, adjusting her kimono. She leaned over the hot stream and washed her face.
“You did well,” she said, not looking back at him. “We… we should try it again some day. Fencing. We should try fencing again.”
“What is this silver ribbon? Mist?” Torishi asked, pointing to the southern horizon when Satō and the others joined him on the bald top of the pass. The bear-man was always in front of the group, his long legs carrying him eagerly onwards despite the heavy bag of supplies he carried. His strength was inexhaustible.
“It’s the sea,” Satō corrected him and sighed with relief. “This is the Kinko Bay. And look, that must be Sakurajima — just like in the pictures. At last!”
The mountain rose in a perfect cone from the middle of the bay. Looking down from the ridge, Satō saw an affluent-looking mark
et town, surrounded by citrus orchards and tobacco fields.
“The Sea!” Torishi said with wonder. His hand encompassed the coastal flatland.
“Then this must be the ancient kingdom of my people.”
As if in answer, Sakurajima billowed a puff of thick smoke and ash. The cloud rose tall and wide, shaped like a giant sprawling pine tree, until it dwarfed the mountain itself. The perfect cone of the mountain rising from the middle of the round bay was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. She expected at any moment to hear ringing of alarm gongs and panicked cries in the town below, but nobody seemed to pay any attention to the eruption. Before long, the winds scattered the cloud over the bay, and all the ash fell down from the sky like grey rain. They watched the spectacle for several long minutes in complete silence.
“The Fire Mountain…” said Torishi in an awestruck whisper. “The first thing the Kumaso kings saw when arriving from the Sun Lands. They settled in a flat valley beside the Great Lake in the shade of the Fire Mountain.”
“Try not to exert your birth right too keenly,” Satō said finally. “The people down there may be more terrified of you than peasants. Come, let’s try to get to the town before nightfall.”
By the time they reached the lowlands, Satō understood why none of the locals paid any attention to Sakurajima’s eruption. The mountain spewed ash and smoke twice more that day, each time the cloud dispersing harmlessly before reaching the land.
Everything seemed calmer, brighter and nicer on the plain. The sea breeze pushed the rain clouds northwards up the mountains — which explained the wretched weather the travellers had had to suffer for the last couple of days. The sky over the lowlands was the colour of pure, bright azure, the air crisp and fresh, smelled faintly of damp and sea salt. For the first time in a very long while, Satō had to shield her eyes from the bright sun.
As they passed through the fields and orchards, the farmers stopped their work and watched them with curiosity; their eyes were focused mostly on Torishi’s great, hairy form, much to the bear man’s unease.
But the farmers, or rather their equipment, were an equally curious sight to Satō. Even Bran halted in surprise when they had first encountered the strange machine.
In the middle of a tobacco field stood a black cylinder, taller than a man, with a narrow funnel spewing white steam. Attached to it was a set of gears, pulleys and flywheels increasing in size; the last one, as big as an oxcart wheel, pulled a thick hemp rope. At the other end of the rope was a plough, pulled against the dirt by the power unleashed by the cylinder. There were three such machines in the fields around them, each serviced by a team of samurai and scholars bearing Satsuma crests on their clothes.
“That’s a traction engine,” said Bran, astonished. “Only the richest farmers in Gwynedd have them.”
“Welcome to Satsuma,” said Satō with a grin.
CHAPTER 6
At the edge of the town stood a wooden watchtower; it was empty. A single samurai rested in a ditch on the side of the road, chewing on a straw, his face covered with a bamboo hat. He heard them approach and raised the brim lazily. Seeing Torishi, he jumped up immediately, spitting out the straw and straightening his clothes.
“Halt!”
He put on the air of a proud, militant bureaucrat. He bowed before Bran and the girls, before turning to the bear-man.
“You can’t carry those here,” he said, pointing at the bow and the long knife. “You’re far away from your forest, hunter.”
Torishi looked helplessly to his companions.
“He’s right,” said Satō. “We will carry your weapons for the time being.”
She took the bow and quiver and Bran took the knife. With their clothes and hair in disarray, they could both easily pass for the mountain hunters, if it wasn’t for the clan crests still visible on their kimonos through the dirt and stains.
The samurai let them pass, eyeing them curiously. Before long, Satō heard his feet thumping on the dirt road.
“If I may be so bold,” he said, after catching his breath, “you seem to be in some distress. May I offer you lodgings in my house? It’s not far, by the harbour.”
“My son has gone to the wizardry school in Kagoshima,” explained the samurai, showing them an entire empty wing of his residence. “You can use any room.”
“You’re very kind,” said Satō weakly. The warm, cozy inside of the house made her drowsy; she was wearier than she had realised.
“The servant will prepare a bath. If you excuse me, I need to send for somebody to take my place at the tower.”
The samurai’s plump, rosy-cheeked wife appeared to take over the duties of a host. Seeing the state they were in, she raised her hands to her head in a comic display of grief.
“Eeh! What terrible thing happened to you? Did you get lost? Were you attacked?”
“Both,” said Satō, quickly coming up with a story of a group of bandits they had to fight off in the deep forest, with the help of Torishi, who had agreed to escort them for the rest of their journey.
“So close to Hayato! I always knew you shouldn’t trust those highlanders,” the woman said, glancing nervously at Torishi, before leading Satō and Nagomi to the bath room. “It’s all those vapours and fog up the mountains, makes them go crazy. Do you have any other clothes?”
The wizardess shook her head. Nagomi’s travel clothes almost fell apart as she took them off; Satō’s vermillion kimono was in no better shape.
“I’ll take you to the market tomorrow,” declared the samurai’s wife, “for now, please use our yukatas.”
“We are in a hurry to reach Kagoshima-” started Satō, but the woman interrupted her, waving her hands.
“Nonsense! My husband will get you a fast boat, you’ll reach the city in no time. You take your time, girls.”
“Well, this is nice,” said Satō after the woman had left them alone. The cypress-lined bath was almost as large and luxurious as the one at the Takashima Mansion and, for the first time in many weeks, the wizardess allowed herself to completely relax.
“I can’t believe we survived so much,” she added, shaking her head, “it feels almost like a bad dream right now.”
“I’m just glad we’re all still together,” Nagomi said, splashing her face with hot water.
“Don’t ever do that again,” said Satō, turning serious.
“Do what?”
“Sacrifice yourself for me! Bran told me about your vision.”
“I had to do something…”
“I understand, and I’m grateful. But we can’t lose you. I can’t lose you.”
Satō reached out and touched the thin scar running between Nagomi’s breasts.
“If I’m wounded, you could just heal me, right? But if you are injured, I am helpless. I never want to feel that helpless again.”
Nagomi submerged herself till the tip of her chin touched the hot water.
“It’s not like the old days, when I could mend your broken bones without breaking a sweat,” she said and smiled.
“I’m not that old,” said Satō in a pretend indignation; she smiled too.
Nagomi regarded Satō’s naked body.
“You’re a woman now,” she said, “everyone can see that. When you are not wearing your male clothes, all men turn their heads. No wonder Bran — ”
She stopped and covered her mouth with her hand. Satō blushed; they both fell silent. A magpie screeched outside.
Bran lay in the darkness of the vast, eight-mat room he had been given all to his own and felt terribly lonely. It had been long since he had to spend the night alone in a single room, without so much as hearing any of the girls’ breath as they slept. They always chatted in whisper for a while before going to sleep.
He wanted to go home. He wanted to see his mother again, reading a book by the fireplace. He wanted to find out what had happened to his father, to Edern, to Gwennlian, to all those people he had so much more in common with. The girls now called h
im a “friend” — and he appreciated this rare privilege — but how many times had Satō pointed out he was a stranger here?
The wizardess never mentioned the episode by the brook again; she avoided his gaze, his touch. It was driving him mad. What is wrong with me? Am I not good enough for her? Too alien?
Out of nowhere, Atsuko’s face appeared in his thoughts. The alabaster skin, the almond eyes, the smell of rosewood... the faint touch of her lips on his, like a butterfly landing. He was not too alien for her. She might have been attracted to him because he was a spark of unfamiliarity to her dull life, but what was wrong in that? Who could tell what reasons compelled people to be with each other, to spending time in each other’s presence?
The silence inside his mind only exacerbated the loneliness. With the Farlink gone even Shigemasa’s brooding murmur could not replace the resounding hollowness left by Emrys.
“I may have found something that will help you with that,” said the General.
“I really dislike it when you read my thoughts.”
“I can’t help it, boy. You think I enjoy your wallowing? I preferred it when you were in a rage.”
Arguing with the old Spirit was the last thing on Bran’s mind.
“What have you found?”
“It will be best if you follow me.”
Bran closed his eyes and transported himself onto the red dust plain. It was getting easier every time. The General was already waiting for him. He seemed haggard, wind-worn. His lacquer armour had lost its sheen and several of the metal scales.
“When you last cast me away I found myself in a strange part of this place, one that I have not seen before,” Shigemasa explained, leading the way towards the horizon, “it takes a while to get there, but with little else to do around here, exploring it was a welcome distraction.”
The plain, flat and featureless so far, began to rise and fall in a chain of hills and canyons. The earth turned from red to grey and then black. Bran cast a worried glance behind: the red-eye tower was barely visible.
Will I be able to get back on my own?
They climbed to the top of a tall black mound and the General pointed into the narrow canyon below. Something moved at the bottom, glinting green. Bran started down the slope to look closer. Half-way down he finally realised what he was seeing.
The Year of the Dragon Omnibus Page 77