Winter Raven

by Adam Baker

  * * *

  The commander sat in the prow of the boat with a blanket pulled over his head like a shawl. On a whim he lifted the mask, leaned over the side of the boat and inspected his reflection. A blurred monster stared back at him. A face split in two and crudely jammed together. Flesh pulled tight and out of shape by crude stitches.

  Raku sat back and experimented with the mask and blanket. He pulled the shawl low, manipulated the fabric with his stumps. That’s how he would need to travel from now on. Cloaked and hooded.

  Some of the boatman’s equipment lay beside him in an oil cloth bag. The shaft of a hatchet protruded from the flap. Raku thought about all the times he gripped his sword. He could feel the heft of it, the silk weave of the tsuka, in his non-existent hands. He’d never hold a sword again, never hold anything again, couldn’t blow his nose without the aid of a nurse. He closed his eyes. When he reached Nakatomi Castle and warned General Motohide of the assassins heading his way, he wouldn’t even be able to commit Hari Kiri. He couldn’t hold a knife. He would have to request one the guards put him out of his misery the way Chisato dispatched his lame horse. A wave of pure despair engulfed him and blotted out the world. He panted for breath. It felt like he was drowning in black.

  * * *

  They travelled all day. The crew at the back of the boat manning the rudder, too scared of the commander’s face to approach the travellers. Chisato stood at the prow alongside Raku so he didn’t have to see his father’s ring hanging round the neck of the boat captain.

  The river swung right and Raku realised this new direction would steer them away from the castle.

  ‘Seems like this is as far as we can go by water,’ he told the Chisato. ‘Get them to drop us on the bank. Imagine they’ll be happy to be rid of us.’

  * * *

  They trudged across farm land, Raku stopped for frequent rest breaks. The physical trauma of losing his hands was still fresh. He was weak and shaky. He tried to keep moving by sheer force of will but his body was starting to mutiny.

  ‘Can I ask you a question, Commander-sama?’ asked the farmer.

  Raku nodded.

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Your injuries. Hard for a wife and children to adjust. You were a warrior. When you return home you will be a very different man. It will be a shock.’

  ‘I had a wife but she died. There is no one waiting for me. And I’m glad. It’s one less burden to bear.’

  They walked in silence a while. The wind picked up. A whispering breeze turned to a blistering howl and sleet drove hard into their faces. Raku lowered his mask. Flecks of hail crackled against the lacquered wood. Chisato lowered his head, shielded his eyes and leaned forward into the wind.

  ‘Can barely see where I’m going.’

  ‘Keep your eyes fixed on the ground,’ said Raku. ‘Maybe you’ll find another ring.’

  ‘Are you sad you survived?’ asked the farmer, hoping conversation would divert them from the misery of wet clothes and foot-sucking mud. ‘No hands. A face that makes folks run in fear. If it were me, well, I think I’d rather be dead.’

  ‘Duty,’ said Raku. ‘Duty keeps me going. I am bound by an oath of loyalty. When I’m released from my obligations, then I can rest.’

  It felt good to declare his purpose aloud. It renewed his determination to reach the castle. He straightened his back and lengthened his stride. Then his legs gave out and he pitched forward in the mud.

  * * *

  Chisato carried Raku on his back. The rain had stopped.

  ‘Two days to reach the castle,’ said the farmer, panting under the strain. ‘We’ll never make it. Not at this speed. I can’t carry you all the way.’

  ‘Just keep going. We must be passing into Etchū soon.’

  ‘Using me like a donkey.’

  ‘A couple of days from now you will have money in your hand and this little humiliation will be a fading memory. So keep going.’

  ‘Ten Ryō.’

  ‘You have my word.’

  They staggered onward. The commander pointed at a distant tree line. A thin plume of smoke rose from beyond the trees.

  ‘A big fire,’ said the commander. ‘Must be soldiers. Put me down. I have to walk. They mustn’t see me on your back.’

  * * *

  Raku and Chisato circled the copse of trees and found twelve samurai resting their horses, throwing brushwood on a fire. General Motohide’s men. His black sun nobori was staked in the ground. Raku assumed they were some kind of border patrol policing the outer reaches of Etchū.

  Raku and Chisato trudged across grassland and approached the group expecting to be met with hostility. Most junior troops would have been drawn from farming backgrounds. They were destined for a circumscribed, dirt-poor life. But each of them had survived harsh selection trials and entered the general’s service. They had travelled, learned to read, taken a role in the affairs of great men. They were contemptuous of peasant folk, secretly fearful that just as they had been raised up by good fortune, an unforeseen twist of fate such as an injury or perhaps the overthrow of General Motohide himself, could tip them back into poverty.

  Raku and Chisato looked so tired, so ragged, the sentry blocking their path didn’t bother to draw his sword.

  ‘Be on your way.’

  Chisato bowed deep. ‘Could I speak to your officer?’ he asked.

  ‘Get out of here. Go on.’

  Raku looked around. He spotted a soldier sitting cross-legged on the grass examining a scroll while troops erected a tent behind him.

  ‘On your feet, lieutenant,’ bellowed the commander. ‘On your feet and salute your superior.’

  The shout was enough to prompt the soldier to roll the paper and get to his feet to investigate the commotion. The lieutenant approached the filthy vagrants and looked them up and down. Evidently lunatics, the type of demented beggars often seen wandering the byways shouting at the sky or pulling out their hair.

  ‘Food,’ said the lieutenant. He spoke loud and slow like he was addressing someone deaf or dim-witted. ‘We’ll give you some rice, then you go. Go, understand? You can’t stay here.’

  The lieutenant’s voice trailed off. Raku’s face was hidden by a hood but he could see the white chin and painted lips of a mask.

  The commander raised one of his stumped arms and clumsily pushed away the blanket that cowled his head. A murmur of apprehension as the soldiers saw the gigaku mask tied round the stranger’s head with a lace. Raku lifted the mask to reveal his bifurcated face. The soldiers got to their feet and backed away. The man in front of them was the embodiment of all their fears. The only thing worse than dying in battle, experiencing the brief agony of a naginata gut-thrust, was the prospect of being maimed. They had each heard horror stories of soldiers who lost their arms and legs and spent the rest of their lives helpless. Grown men who were stretchered back to their villages to be fed, dressed and cleaned by their relatives. And stories of soldiers who suffered head injuries which robbed them of sight and hearing and left them alone in the dark forever. Better to die a clean death than to become a monster.

  ‘Look at me,’ said Raku. He said it with such force the lieutenant was compelled to meet his gaze. ‘Look me in the eye.’

  The lieutenant cautiously approached and examined the commander’s ruined face. A look of dawning realisation as the lieutenant recognised the man in front of him.

  ‘Commander Raku,’ he murmured. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry. What happened to you?’

  ‘A team of assassins are on their way to kill the general. They are travelling as we speak. We have to reach the castle before they do.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m certain. And this is as much of a debate as I will allow, lieutenant. There is no time to waste. Muster your men. We ride. We ride until we reach the Dragon’s Lair.’

  The samurai climbed the wooded valley wall. Ariyo and Tameyo followed close behind moving through the f
orest twilight like fluid shadow. They paused now and again to survey the woods around them to make sure they were unobserved. They were passing close enough to the village that they might encounter a trapper checking his snares.

  They moved tree to tree to help haul themselves up the steep gradient. Sometimes the slope became so sheer they had to scramble upwards on all-fours, grabbing fistfuls of bracken as hand-holds. It was an arduous climb.

  The samurai was seized by a wracking cough and leant against a tree until the spasm passed. Ariyo and Tameyo took the opportunity to rest and catch their breath. They waited for the samurai to regain his composure. They knew better than to offer help.

  Tree cover allowed them to circle away from the castle and village. They were manoeuvring round the base of the mountain so they could climb free from prying eyes. It was a simple plan: scale the rear of the mountain then descend on the castle from the summit.

  They left the woods at noon and made directly for the mountain. Undergrowth become sparse and they found themselves skirting bare granite knuckles protruding from the soil.

  ‘Let’s get as high as we can before dark,’ said the samurai.

  * * *

  They jumped boulder to boulder.

  ‘This way,’ said the samurai.

  He led them on a detour towards a couple of dead trees. The trees had grown to a good height but thin soil had stopped them bedding deep enough to survive a fierce wind. They lay on their side among rocks – exposed roots and gnarled, weathered, bark-less trunks.

  The samurai snapped and trimmed a branch to make himself a staff. Ariyo and Tameyo turned their backs so he wouldn’t feel eyes on him as he struggled to strip the branch one-handed. He didn’t ask for help, didn’t give in to self-pity. His missing arm turned even the smallest task into a laborious chore and it took an age for him to strap his boots each morning. He couldn’t raise the bowl to his mouth when he ate. A weaker man might have grown frustrated and angry, but the samurai drilled himself to face each difficulty with serene acceptance. Life threw up obstacles. One day a person is fit and vigorous, next day they are laid low by injury or age. It was simply the ever-turning wheel.

  The samurai continued to trim the branch. He paused to stretch. His body was lop-sided, permanently out of balance. His muscles had to adapt to a subtly shifted centre of gravity and he had to lean to the right to steady himself. The twist in his spine triggered excruciating muscle spasms. Pain set in fifteen minutes after he started walking each day and burned sharp like a knife to the back until sundown. He consoled himself with the thought these were his last days on earth. All he had to do was endure a little while longer then he could rest forever.

  He tested the staff. It would make it easier to walk. Maybe he should have swallowed his pride and walked with a stick from the outset.

  * * *

  The mountain was the highest in a cluster of granite peaks – a line of crags ridged like a row of teeth. The summit was sharp as a canine, a vicious stone fang. It was utterly barren. No sign of human hand. The place was in hiking distance from the village but the samurai couldn’t imagine anyone came here. The rockscape held nothing a person could want. No one could look up at the bleak landscape and feel anything but dread.

  They strode towards the peak despite the urge to turn and run. Tameyo looked up. The grey mountain merged with a bruised sky. It was like they intended to climb into the heavens.

  The samurai tried to break the sombre mood.

  ‘I heard that when the Mongols came, generations ago, they brought tales of a land called Tövd. Great mountains to the east of China. Very remote. Only a handful of men have laid eyes on them. They say the mountains are so high they almost touch the moon. I would have liked to see them. One of the many things I shall never do, I suppose. Maybe in the next life.’

  The gradient grew steeper and they found themselves clambering over barren terrain. Titanic rubble, slabs and boulders sheered from the mountainside.

  The travellers stood a while, caught their breath and looked up. Barren rock. Crags and ledges. Treacherous scree slopes. The upper traverses of the peak were white with snow and veiled by cloud.

  ‘That’s a monumental climb,’ said Tameyo. ‘Has anyone done it before? Has anyone climbed to the top?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the samurai. ‘A place like this attracts ascetics, holy men determined to commune with Buddha-nature. Wouldn’t surprise me if men have come here and climbed into the clouds.’

  ‘But did they come down again? That’s the question.’

  ‘It’s a simple journey,’ said the samurai. ‘Not easy, but simple. We can do it. It’s a continuation of the trek we’ve already made. We are down here. The peak is up there. All we have to do is put one foot in front of another and climb.’

  Ariyo looked unconvinced, as if a hard life had left him with a deep contempt for optimists.

  ‘Don’t look at the summit,’ said the samurai. ‘You will be overwhelmed. Look at that ledge instead.’ He pointed to an outcrop of rock ahead of them. ‘See how it can be climbed? Concentrate on that, the immediate obstacle, and stage by stage we will make it to the top.’

  ‘This place makes my skin crawl,’ said Tameyo, looking around in trepidation. ‘It’s evil. I can feel it. Nothing can live here.’ He suppressed a shiver. ‘A dragon sleeps beneath the mountain? Isn’t that what people say?’

  ‘I consulted the archives in Kyoto before we began our journey. Read all they had concerning the castle and the surrounding peaks. They say the ground here shakes every couple of generations. Old folks in these parts still remember the last time the dragon shifted in its sleep. The earth shook and split open. Great fissures opened in the hillsides. Houses collapsed. Cows dropped dead in the fields.’

  ‘Is that why Motohide made this place his seat? To defy the gods?’

  ‘They say there are crude stone blocks littering the lower slopes of the peak beneath the castle. Something older, much older, something built before recorded history, used to stand on that ledge. It was wiped out by an unimaginable cataclysm. No idea who built it or what it was for. Might have been a castle. Or it might have been a fortified temple constructed for the worship of ancient gods. The foundations and outer walls remain. But the old castle itself was scattered like pebbles. Perhaps one day the current castle will be razed. The mountain will shake it off like a dog shaking off rainwater. All that wood and stone cascading onto the village below. Yes, I would say, on some deep level, Motohide is compelled to court disaster.’

  ‘And this is your plan? Climb the mountain? Invade the dragon’s domain? We’ll be swatted like mosquitoes for our presumption. There will be ghosts up there. The ancient dead. Inhabitants of the previous castle; the one that was destroyed. They’ll want to keep us. They’ll want us to join their ranks.’

  ‘We are not children,’ said the samurai. ‘We are men. No reason to be conquered by our fears. Whatever is up there, whatever lies in wait, we will face it like warriors and we will fight.’

  The samurai knelt in front of a boulder. He splashed water and left an offering of rice. He bowed low and prayed to the mountain for safe passage. Ariyo and Tameyo reluctantly got to their knees and joined him in prayer.

  ‘… Miroku Oomikami, you bless us and protect us. Meishu Sama, you bless us and protect us for the enrichment of our soul and the fulfilment of your will …’

  * * *

  They continued to walk across rubble-strewn terrain. Tameyo looked at the summit once more, at the dark peak and a backdrop of scudding cloud. As he stared it seemed like the sky was still and the mountain was toppling and threatening to crush them. He looked away and shook his head clear.

  ‘Two nights on the mountain,’ said Tameyo. ‘No real shelter. They say cold seeps into your bones. Freezes your very core. They say death comes like a welcome sleep.’

  Tameyo held up his hand to gauge the breeze. ‘This wind could bring us all kinds of weather. Blizzards. A deluge. Anything at all. A sailor wouldn�
�t set to sea if he saw a sky that grim. He’s stay moored in the harbour and wait for calm.’

  ‘Enough talk. If we wait for the perfect moment to set out, we could wait forever.’

  They scrambled up a scree slope. The samurai planted his staff deep in the shingle and levered himself upward step by step.

  * * *

  They reached a fissured rock face, the true foot of the mountain, the point where the upward gradient became a vertiginous vertical climb. Tameyo said a prayer then they inspected the surface for hand-holds. They rubbed their hands in scree to matt them with rock dust.

  They began their ascent. The samurai climbed slowly. He couldn’t rely on his arms to pull himself higher so had to use his feet to find purchase and push upward. They climbed until they reached the top of the outcrop then stopped to rest. They sheltered in a cleft to escape a cutting wind.

  Ariyo examined blistered palms abraded by sharp gneiss handholds. He tore strips from his cloak and wrapped them round his hands. The samurai had some spare boot leather in his pack and wrapped it round his hand then sat while Tameyo lashed it in place with a thong.

  ‘Beautiful,’ said the samurai, drinking in the view while Tameyo tied his hand. He surveyed wooded hills and the cultivated plain. ‘All of it. Beautiful.’

  ‘High-born,’ said Ariyo with a derisive snort. ‘Only folks who grew up warm and well-fed romanticise the wilderness. Rivers and hills seems pretty from a mansion window. Peaceful. Uncomplicated. But people who’ve known cold, known hunger, don’t look on the wilds with any kind of relish. Out here, you’re either hunter or prey. There is no beauty in it.’

  * * *

  They continued to climb.

  ‘We should be able to get a little higher by nightfall,’ said the samurai as they laboured onward. They retreated into themselves, each acutely aware of the drop behind them, the long fall onto bone-splintering rock below.