Winter Raven

by Adam Baker

  ‘She’s mad,’ said the girl.

  The cook shrugged and continued to peel beans.

  ‘Maybe we’re the ones with clouded vision,’ she said. ‘Maybe we are all dreaming, and she is awake.’

  * * *

  Later, the girl helped carry steaming bowls of rice through to the refectory. Bald novice monks sat in rows in front of long dining tables. They sat with their heads bowed until the women left the room. She drank in the atmosphere of the monastic hall, the transcendent calm.

  She was a girl. Most of the opportunities of the wider world would be denied her. She could be a wife and mother, but little else. Yet as a nun she could voyage inward and explore the infinite vastness of her own consciousness without hindrance. She could sit cross-legged in monastic silence, close her eyes and be free.

  * * *

  The girl slept beside the extinct kitchen fire, cat curled by her side. She opened her eyes. It was still dark. The kitchen was empty and starlight shafted through the window. Innate time-sense told her it would be another hour until dawn. Soon the cook and her helpers would wake, light and heat the kitchen and prepare breakfast for the monks. She got up and lit a lamp. She drank a cup of water and enjoyed the silence. She unhooked a rice paddle from the wall, opened the kitchen door and stepped out onto the terrace. A moonlit landscape. Woodland white with frost. Spectral mist hung over the monastery graveyard and surrounding meadows. It was ice cold. Each exhalation produced a broiling plume of steam-breath.

  She jumped. She crouched. She swung her arms. She performed a bunch of high-kicks and a flurry of punches to galvanise stiff limbs. She swung the paddle back and forth, gently at first, then with increasing strength and aggression. She executed slashes, slices and cuts. She imagined she was surrounded by opponents on all sides. Assailants moved in, swords at the ready. She ducked and skipped, sure-footed and lithe. She became a lethal blur. The ghost-battle executed as a dance, fluid cuts until each apparition lay felled by a decisive killing stroke. She twirled the rice paddle in her hands, span it back and forth.

  A deep voice: ‘Is he really your father?’

  She squinted into shadows and discerned a figure sat against the wall. She gripped the paddle ready to defend herself. The figure got up and stretched. Tameyo with a blanket hooded over his head like a shawl.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep?’ asked the girl.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s my father.’

  ‘You don’t look alike.’

  ‘He saved me. He looked after me. So he is my father.’

  ‘You’ve been very fortunate. A girl on her own. Lucky to find a decent man to take care of her.’

  ‘Yes,’

  ‘My father was a good man,’ said Tameyo. ‘Dirt poor, but a good man. I wish I had been a better son. That’s my chief regret.’

  ‘Where did you learn to be a thief?’

  ‘A backstreet. I was starving one day. I came across an open window and the smell of food.’

  ‘You must have picked up some skills over the years. Someone must have trained you. Show you how to pick a pocket, how to open locks. You don’t learn those kind of tricks on your own.’

  Tameyo shook his head. ‘Nothing to it. Keyholes have a little latch inside, a little lever. Press it and the lock will pop right open. My teacher was hunger, misery and desperation. He was all bad things. And he taught me well.’

  There was a broom propped against the wall. Tameyo picked it up.

  ‘Swordcraft. You should practise with more than one man.’

  ‘I have a master.’

  He jabbed her in the belly with the broom handle.

  ‘He fights a certain way. He has a style, a rhythm. Everybody does. Shouldn’t get too used to it. I mean, I’m not a sword master. Not like him. But I’ve trained with a naginata. When you train for the army, when they teach you how to fight, they make you constantly switch partners. Train with a single person long enough you get too comfortable with their height, their reach. That’s not how it is in combat. In a real fight you’re up against a stranger. You won’t know what to expect.’

  She tried to formulate a polite refusal. He lunged. She parried. He lunged again. She didn’t know what to make of the attack. She wondered if there were some sexually aggressive undertone to the conflict.

  ‘I would prefer not to fight,’ she said.

  ‘Do you think that approach will work face-to-face with an enemy? Sorry, not in the mood today? You don’t get to choose a time and place.’

  He twirled the broom and stabbed forward once again. She parried and stepped back.

  ‘Seriously. I don’t want to do this.’

  ‘Fight.’

  She dropped her guard a little and fooled him into taking a shot at her torso. He lunged. She jumped aside, swung the paddle and knocked him out with a blow to the side of the head.

  The company rose before sunrise. The monks had already been awake an hour and the temple reverberated with their collective chant. The somnambulant convicts ate a bowl of cold rice in the kitchen then shouldered their packs. They left the temple and set out down the dirt track that led through farmland and into the woods, shocked alert by the dawn cold.

  * * *

  They waded through tall grass. The morning sun had turned frost to dew. Water soaked through the crude seams of their leather shoes and their feet were soon wet and numb. They had left the monastery far behind. Each time they breasted a rise a fresh tract of meadowland stretched ahead of them. Their legs felt heavy and their supplies weighed them down. Masaie adjusted the rope straps of his pack-frame and walked bent forward, burdened by the weight of explosives on his back. His leg hurt. His limp was getting worse but he was too proud to ask for help.

  Masaie had, as a child, seen a condemned man led to the town square and beheaded. For days afterwards he wondered why the man consented to be marched by local militia to the execution spot. Why had the prisoner been so docile? Why had he compliantly knelt and bowed his head? Why didn’t he resist? Why didn’t he fight? Masaie concluded that, even in those final moments, the man couldn’t comprehend the finality of death. Even as the executioner raised his sword, the prisoner on some level didn’t fully understand his life was about to end. Part of him expected some kind of reprieve. Masaie looked down and watched his feet kick through tall grass and wondered if that same mix of resignation and incomprehension was carrying him to his doom, driving him forward onto a sword tip that waited on a remote mountain far from home.

  He tried to ignore the pain in his leg but now and again his ankle was twisted by a stone hidden beneath tall grass and he winced and stumbled like his leg was struggling to support his weight. Next time they reached a decent bamboo thicket he would need to cut himself a staff.

  The girl walked by Masaie’s side and could hear his laboured breathing and the sharp intake of breath each time uneven ground caused his leg to jolt. She glanced at him now and again. He looked weak and tired. The pack seemed to weigh him down like it was full of rocks. His kimono was wet with perspiration. Sweat steamed in the cold morning air. His clothes fumed like he had been dragged from a fire. He stared straight ahead, locked in his own private misery.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asked the girl. ‘Is your leg still giving you trouble?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he snapped and wiped sweat from his eyes.

  ‘Maybe I should carry the pack a while.’

  He bridled at the idea; choked at the shameful suggestion a girl should carry his burden.

  ‘Just stay away from me.’ He hobbled fast to get away from her.

  * * *

  ‘Well there it is,’ said the samurai.

  The others joined him at the top of the hill and contemplated the mountain ahead of them. Their first sight of the castle – a sinister, mongrel structure built into the side of the mountain. The stone foundations and outer ramparts of the building were a product of Honshu’s pre-history, a relic of the emishi, the earlier races long since driven to extinction by Chinese
settlers. Massive granite blocks built into a cliff face, weathered like they had endured countless winter storms. There was no way of knowing how the gargantuan slabs had been hauled up the mountainside and positioned to form impregnable ramparts. The ancient foundations of the castle had been topped with a more recent wooden structure. A white bailey, five storeys high, stood at the centre of the citadel compound. The general’s black sun standard flew from a pole over the gatehouse. Hard to judge from a distance, but the gate itself seemed to be built from pine bulwarks ribbed with iron bands. Alternate teams of men propelling a battering ram would labour for hours to make any impression on the castle entrance, dead from a hail of arrows and crossbow bolts long before the portal gave way. A road zig-zagged down the side of the vertiginous slope to a cluster of houses at the foot of the mountain. They could see a white smudge, probably a cart, labouring up the steep gradient to the castle.

  ‘It’s an impossible task,’ said Ariyo, with an air of finality. ‘The strongest army in the world couldn’t take that castle. It’s unassailable.’

  ‘Maybe we could smuggle ourselves inside,’ said Tameyo. ‘Hide in a cart when they take in supplies from the village.’

  ‘You can bet they search everything that goes through that gate,’ said Ariyo. ‘Stab a knife into every box, every barrel, every sack of corn. The general isn’t a fool. He knows his life is in danger. They will have been ordered to check and double check every consignment that comes over the threshold.’

  ‘Maybe we could dress as soldiers.’

  ‘The men garrisoned at the castle won’t be regular infantry. They are his praetorian guard. The best of the best. They’ll guard against infiltration, change their password every watch rotation. As I said: impregnable.’

  ‘There’s always a way,’ said the samurai. ‘We just have to banish our preconceptions and look with fresh eyes.’

  ‘So let’s hear it.’

  ‘Look. Look closely. There’s a big blind spot. An open avenue of attack.’

  The convicts studied the castle.

  ‘I don’t see any blind spots,’ said Tameyo. ‘The castle commands an uninterrupted view of the surrounding terrain. It’s an excellent vantage point. We couldn’t get close to the place without being observed. In fact a sentry with good eyesight could see us standing here right now. There’s no cover, no chance of getting over those walls. Grappling hook? Hopeless. They’d hear us. They’d see us. Archers would pick us off at their leisure. Best we can do is wait for the general to ride out and try to ambush his caravan. And that could be a long wait.’

  ‘Look again,’ said the samurai. ‘See? All their attention, all their sentry points, are directed downward in anticipation of attack from the valley below. They expect the enemy to come marching up the mountain road en masse.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So we shall attack from above.’

  ‘You want to scale the mountain? Climb down to the castle from the summit?’

  ‘Yes. It’s quite clear they don’t expect an enemy to descend on them from the mountain top. It is an open channel of attack.’

  ‘Winter is closing in,’ said Ariyo. ‘If the weather turns bad, if we get stranded on that mountainside, we wouldn’t last long.’

  ‘We can do it,’ said the samurai. He contemplated the desolate peak a while. ‘Yes. If we set our minds, our hearts to the task, we can do it.’

  * * *

  They entered a wooded gorge which wound through the increasingly vertiginous foothills clustered at the base of the mountain. They stopped by the side of a stream to rest and refill their flasks. Masaie sighed with relief as he unstrapped his pack and set it down. He sat, then lay back on the grass and looked up at the trees.

  ‘Show me your leg,’ said the samurai.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Masaie reluctantly unlaced his leather sandal and pulled the tabi from his foot. His foot was red. The samurai crouched beside him, lifted his hakama and examined his leg. The calf was purple and inflamed, flesh hot to the touch.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ asked the samurai, gently prodding the wound.

  Masaie winced and flinched.

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Masaie. ‘I got scratched a couple of days ago. A thorn, an insect bite. A tiny wound, so slight I didn’t notice it happen. Then it started to itch. Then it started to swell.’

  ‘We should make a poultice.’

  ‘How? Do you know medicine? There are no physicians out here.’

  ‘We can get some honey on it, at least.’

  ‘You’re not taking my leg,’ said Masaie with sudden vehemence like he was voicing fears that had dogged him the past few days. ‘I’ve seen this before. A canker. Rot leading to amputation. I’d rather die than lose my leg. Seriously. I’d rather die whole than be half a man. I don’t want to end my days a street beggar. I don’t want to be a cripple rattling a cup.’

  The samurai gestured to his missing arm, as if to say: I’ve lost a limb, yet I still consider myself a capable man. Masaie shook his head, refusing the unspoken consolation.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘If it comes to it, I’d rather die. Anyway it will probably clear up by itself, right? A little wound. A few days from now it’ll be nothing but a fading scar.’

  The samurai nodded, unconvinced and gestured to the pack.

  ‘You look a little unsteady on your feet, though. Might be best if someone else carried the explosives from now on.’

  * * *

  They walked all afternoon. The samurai carried the explosives. They built a fire as evening fell.

  ‘Don’t burn too much wood,’ advised the samurai. ‘We don’t want to create a big smoke plume. People might see it over the trees. We shouldn’t attract attention.’

  An oak leant from the bank and overhung a stream. Ariyo hung lines in the water. He sat on the bank and watched until each length of twine pulled taut. He hauled in four fish. He gutted them, impaled them on twigs and set them to cook over the fire. They ate with their fingers. Then they stripped and washed themselves with rags in the stream. They rinsed their hair and beards. They dried, dressed, retied their topknots then sat round the fire.

  ‘This is our last meal together,’ said the samurai. ‘Tomorrow morning we split up. We will each have a responsibility. A task to perform. Our own little piece of the plan. I have to be honest. I doubt we will see each other again.’

  He looked at the faces of the convicts.

  ‘You’re good men. Strong men. Whether you know it or not. You’ve led very ordinary lives. Other people might regard you as worthless. You stink. You’re clothes are filthy. You can’t read. You can barely sign your names. But each of you carries the seed of greatness. You weren’t born to lead, to conquer. But each of you holds the potential for one great act. This is it. This is the moment. One way or another people will know about us whether we succeed in our mission or not. They will hear of our exploits. Songs will be sung. Stories will be told. So play your part. Don’t let yourselves down. You are about to become the stuff of fables.’

  The confederates stared into the dancing flames of the camp fire, each of them turned inward, lost in their own anxieties. Tameyo pulled the black debt-stone from a fold in his obi and turned it in his hand. Ariyo sharpened his sword.

  * * *

  The girl and the samurai chose a patch of level ground away from the camp and fought with sticks. The samurai attacked. The girl cleared her mind and defended with fluid strokes.

  ‘Let’s try something a little different,’ said the samurai, tiring of the routine sword-play. He tied a scrap of fabric round the girl’s head as a blindfold.

  ‘Now. Defend yourself.’

  The girl stood still as she could. She could see nothing but the glow of evening sunlight through woven cotton tied over her eyes.

  A sudden impact. The samurai’s staff hit her right thigh. She stumbled and tried to mask the hurt. She shook her head
clear and resumed an alert posture.

  Another impact. The staff hit her left shoulder. She couldn’t suppress a snarl of pain. She flexed her shoulder and resumed a ready stance. Each strike had been preceded for half a second by the tell-tale fabric rustle of the samurai’s kimono. She listened for the sound.

  A faint rasp to her left. She blocked. A sharp crack as their staffs slammed together.

  A faint rasp to her right. She blocked.

  She didn’t hear the third blow but felt a sudden change of air pressure. She instinctively knew something was coming at her so she raised the sword in an overhead block to protect her head and intercepted a down-cut aimed at the top of her skull.

  ‘Good,’ said the samurai. ‘You are starting to employ all your senses.’

  She stood still as she could. The samurai circled, waiting for the next propitious moment to strike.

  ‘I have every sympathy with the general,’ he said. She followed the sound of his voice to gauge his location. He was circling to her right. ‘He isn’t an evil man. He found himself in an impossible position.’

  The samurai swung from the left. She blocked too late and took a strike to the shin. She struck back and slashed thin air.

  ‘How do you mean?’ she asked, ignoring the pain.

  ‘He was one of the Emperor’s most competent soldiers. A good tactician. A man who inspired loyalty among his troops. These are dangerous virtues. A man like that inspires envy among his peers. And he inspires fear in his Imperial masters, always on the look-out for anyone who might challenge their rule. They already have a rival in the Shōgun. A second ascendant warlord would double their problems.’

  The samurai swung at her right shoulder. She blocked the blow then quickly swung her staff to parry a second cut coming in from the left. She lunged forward and stabbed thin air.