Winter Raven

by Adam Baker

  The samurai reached for an outcrop and lost his footing. He slid. He scrambled. His sandals raked stone. He tried to grip a fissure in the rock. His hand slapped and pawed granite. He halted his fall and hung by his arm. He watched his staff tumble, spinning in free-fall until it hit the side of the mountain. It skittered down a scree slope and precipitated a minor avalanche of stone. Tameyo wrapped an arm round the samurai’s waist and hauled him to surer footing on a nearby ledge.

  ‘I appreciate your determination to stick to the plan,’ said Tameyo. ‘But set your pride aside. Forget about the man you used to be. You have one arm. What are the chances of you finishing the climb? Be honest.’

  ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘You could have broken your neck. The mission was almost over before it began.’

  ‘I said I’ll be all right.’

  ‘We can’t afford those kind of mistakes when we reach the other side of the mountain,’ warned Ariyo. ‘Here we can dislodge stone, start a rockfall, make as much noise as we want. But on the other side we’ll need to move with stealth. If we draw attention to ourselves the sentries will pick us off with crossbows. Remember: this is your idea, your plan. Don’t lead us all the way up here then get us killed.’

  The samurai nodded, chastened. A momentary flash of anger at himself then he got it under control. He acknowledged the lesson the mountain was trying to teach him. No point being proud, turning himself into a fortress. The response of a weak man, a man afraid to ask for aid.

  ‘I’m going to need your help to climb,’ he said.

  Tameyo nodded. ‘We’ll rope ourselves together.’

  Tameyo pulled a coil of rope from his pack. They lashed it round their waists, the samurai roped in the middle of the group. If he slipped his companions could halt his fall.

  ‘Everyone ready?’ he asked, when the knots were tested and secure.

  They resumed their climb.

  * * *

  They were half way up the mountain when they got hit by an avalanche.

  Biting wind stung their eyes. Numb hands gripped rock dusted with snow. The first flurries of winter had mounded the ledges and plateaus with loose, powdered ice. Ariyo climbed at the head of the group while the samurai followed, doing the best he could to haul himself one-handed. Each time he shifted grip there was an instant when he had no support, a moment when he was leaning unaided against the rock face trying not to fall backwards and topple into space. He narrowed his focus to the granite surface inches from his face. A couple of times the samurai’s rope pulled taut and he looked back to see Tameyo panting and immobile, the man’s face a mask of anguish. He was locked in his own private hell. Exhaustion had closed round him like a fist and his world had shrunk to blistered fingers and endless stone. When he glanced up all he could see was a vertical vista of rock stretching upward into the sky. No respite. No summit.

  ‘Wait,’ the samurai shouted to Ariyo. All three climbers came to a standstill while Tameyo gathered his strength.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asked the samurai.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Tameyo, angry and defiant.

  ‘We’re all tired. About time we found somewhere to stop and rest.’

  ‘Said I’m fine.’ A slight break in Tameyo’s voice. His words came out like a sob. ‘Don’t patronise me. I’m not a child.’

  The samurai checked him over. Tameyo was in dreadful pain but there nothing to be done. They had to keep climbing. The samurai could insist they rest. They could stay still a while clutching the rock face but it wouldn’t help in the long run. The act of hanging from the sheer granite wall took intense muscular effort whether they were moving or not. The longer they stood clinging to the face the weaker their limbs would become. And even if they found a ledge on which they could sit a while and catch their breath, the pain would be worse when they had to resume their climb. Their legs would stiffen, blisters would bloom on the pads of their fingers and palms. Best to keep moving.

  They resumed their climb and moments later the avalanche struck.

  ‘There are some good hand-holds along here,’ said Ariyo. Then, with a sharp crack like a bullwhip, an over-hanging slab of snow calved from the mountain wall above him. A cascade of powdered ice swept him from the rock face. No time to scream. One moment he was there, next moment he was gone.

  The rope snapped taut. The samurai tried to brace and keep his grip but the rope round his waist jerked him from the granite wall and he fell. He span and swung. He looked down on jagged rocks far below and saw Ariyo hanging beneath him.

  ‘Hey,’ called the samurai. Ariyo was unconscious. He had a cut to his forehead. Blood drips fell into space. The samurai looked up. Tameyo gripped the rock face, arms hooked round an outcrop, supporting the weight of both men. The rope round his waist was pulled tight, threatening to cut him in half. His face was a rictus of agony. He could maintain his grasp a few seconds longer then all three of them would fall to their deaths.

  ‘Hold on. Just hold on a little longer.’

  The samurai swung his legs until the pendulum action brought him close enough to the rock face to grip and pull himself up onto a ledge.

  ‘Get down here,’ he shouted. ‘Help me with Ariyo.’

  * * *

  ‘We need to find shelter,’ said the samurai. ‘Almost nightfall.’The traumatised men nodded, still speechless with shock. They continued to climb. Tameyo was in a place beyond pain. His face had become an impassive mask as if his soul had left his body. Ariyo insisted he had recovered from being hit by the avalanche but his movements were woozy and uncertain. His cut forehead still wept blood.

  ‘Here,’ said the samurai.

  He had found a crevice in the rock. A deep aperture.

  ‘We shall rest here.’

  Tameyo and Ariyo got on their hands and knees and crawled inside the cave. The samurai sat closest to the cave mouth to shield the others from the cutting night wind. Judging by the state of his companions, he would be the only one able to stay awake to ward off hypothermia.

  They crouched with their backs to bare rock. The samurai dug in his pack for a small oil lamp. He unwrapped it, scratched a flint and sparked a flame.

  He could see strange symbols on the rock beside him and held up the lamp to get a clearer look. The granite walls of the cave were decorated with clusters of white palm prints. Someone in the distant past, a dedicated shaman planning to touch the heavens, had climbed to this elevated vantage point, daubed his hand and pressed it to the rock. The cave was a sacred place, perhaps a shrine, dedicated to ancient deities that walked the earth at the very dawn of the world. The samurai reached out and matched his fingers to the palm print. He felt an intimate connection with the yamabushi who sat in that exact spot aeons ago.

  He looked round at his companions and inspected their exhausted faces by weak candlelight. He would need to find some way to raise their spirits a little otherwise they might never leave the cave.

  ‘Eat something,’ he said. ‘It will give you strength.’

  He handed round a pouch of food. They ate dried meat. They tore strips with their teeth and chewed a long while to prolong the meal.

  Tameyo looked in bad shape – gaunt and drained. He wrapped his arms around himself and stuffed a hand under each armpit for warmth.

  ‘Show me your hands,’ said the samurai.

  Tameyo held out a hand. His palms were bleeding and blistered. The tip of each finger was black.

  ‘Do your fingers hurt?’ asked the samurai.

  Tameyo shook his head.

  The samurai massaged the man’s hands. They were stone cold, like the flesh of a corpse.

  ‘Tear fabric from your robe. You need to protect your hands. We’re only half way to the summit. And it’s going to be as cold as hell.’

  He turned his attention to Ariyo. The cut on his forehead had stopped bleeding, but there was something in his manner, his expression, which betrayed a deep fragility. It was obvious the man was far from well. The samurai h
ad, during his years as a soldier, seen men suddenly overcome by the conviction their time had come. Doom settled on them like a sickness. Courageous samurai arming themselves for battle, men that had ridden to arms countless times, seemed suddenly pale and diminished as if Izanami-no-Mikoto herself had laid a hand on their shoulder. He could see the same death-trance in Ariyo’s gaze. He seemed physically robust but the certainty that it was time to die infused his body. The samurai was sharing the cave with a dead man.

  He offered Ariyo some more dried meat but he declined as if to suggest the team’s meagre supplies would be best used by the living.

  ‘Maybe the weather will improve by morning,’ said the samurai, for conversation. ‘Maybe we shall have some sun.’

  His companions didn’t reply.

  Masaie crouched in undergrowth. He parted a couple of branches and looked out at the distant village. A cluster of single room farmhouses had been built into the side of the valley. Plank walls and turf roofs. He wondered how long the houses had been standing. It was a precarious settlement. He guessed it would only take one unusually heavy rainy season for a mudslide to wipe out half the village, or maybe it had already happened a couple of generations ago. Maybe the village had been destroyed and rebuilt countless times by folks who had learned to accept periodic catastrophes, folks for whom there was no world beyond the valley, no choice but scratching a hand-to-mouth existence in the mud.

  He watched children play and women walk to and from the stream that cascaded down the side of the valley and filled a network of irrigation trenches. Men worked the fields, twists of cotton wrapped round their heads. They used handcarts to haul soil and rebuild tiered paddy berms ready for spring cultivation. None of the men seemed inclined to approach the woods. Hopefully they would regard the forest twilight with dread, regard it as place of ill omen, home to oni and other nameless monsters.

  Masaie backed deeper into the brush. He moved slowly. He didn’t want to draw attention by thrashing branches and maybe scaring some birds into the air.

  He decided to move further into the woods.

  The samurai had laid out a clear timescale. He and the rest of the team would need three days to get in position and be ready to launch their assault on the castle. In the meantime Masaie would need to make camp in a remote part of the woods and remain undiscovered, ready to emerge and play his part when the attack was due to begin.

  No doubt villagers came to the woods to hunt, but they probably wouldn’t venture too far into the forest. They’d keep open fields visible through the trees. They wouldn’t want to get lost. The forest was an ominous place. Deep shadows. Oppressive stillness. The kind of place daemons and the unquiet, cannibal dead might reside.

  Masaie passed through a small clearing. He took the opportunity to kneel on a bed of twigs and leaves, scatter rice and ask the forest gods allow him to pass through the woods in safety.

  * * *

  Masaie limped through the forest. It was hard to navigate. He looked up at the branches above him and tried to gauge the position of the sun from glare shining through the forest canopy but the day was too dull. He tried to commit the topography of the forest to memory. The undulations, the mounds and gullies. The distinctive lean of a certain tree, the partially exposed roots of another.

  He was forced to make frequent stops to rest and massage his injured leg. He leant against a trunk, rubbed his shin and peered at surrounding bamboo thickets. He kept glimpsing movement out of the corner of his eye but each time he turned his gaze directly on the deep undergrowth there was nothing to be seen. He was convinced the forest was alive and watching his every move.

  He found a toppled oak. It looked like a good place to hide the pack of explosive arrowheads. No point carrying them around for days. Best stow them somewhere safe. The tree was a distinct landmark, the kind of place he could find again with ease.

  He made sure the pack was securely wrapped against the rain then shoved it into a small depression beneath the fallen trunk. He obscured the hiding place with a couple of dead branches and handfuls of leaves. He stood back and admired his handiwork. The stash blended in with surrounding brushwood. There were no signs of disturbance. No indication anything was hidden.

  * * *

  He wandered deeper into the forest wanting to be far enough from the village to escape discovery. He wanted to light a fire without alerting anyone to his presence.

  It would be dark soon. He needed shelter for the night. Partly to protect himself from the elements, partly to hide from the phantasmagoric creatures that owned the night. The ghosts and spirits which haunted the dark remote places of the world and emerged to prowl after sunset.

  He found a massive granite knuckle, big as a house, projecting from the wooded hillside. A titanic slab of rain-streaked rock mottled with lichen. The overhang would provide shelter from rain but he would need to construct some kind of lean-to as a wind break. It would be easy enough, he reasoned. He had a poor man’s ingenuity. He could hunt, patch clothes and fix up a shelter. All the skills a person had to learn if they couldn’t pay others to labour on their behalf. He had a sturdy knife tucked in his waistband and there was plenty of brushwood scattered nearby. It was just a question of summoning energy, willing himself to ignore the constant aching throb from his injured leg. And once he had built a serviceable den he would need to lay traps before sunset to ensure he got some substantial food.

  He rubbed his eyes. It was hard to think straight. One minute he was planning a shelter from stacked branches, next moment he was staring blankly into space trying to remember his own name. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. He dabbed sweat with his sleeve. Illness was starting to cloud his mind. He was running hot and cold. One minute he wanted to strip out of his kimono, next moment he wanted to curl shivering in blankets. It was the onset of fever.

  He shook his head again and tried to focus. He counted off tasks on his fingers. Build a shelter. Light a fire. Collect water. Find food. He had to do it all before nightfall. And he had to do it all before he was overcome by sickness otherwise he might spend the night delirious on the forest floor as the temperature dropped, lie helpless and trembling, assailed by leering hallucinations as he slowly succumbed to exposure.

  For a moment the creases and depressions scored in the rock made the granite pinnacle seem like a titanic skull. He rubbed his eyes to clear his vision and dragged branches from the undergrowth. He stamped on them to break them into usable lengths and propped them against the granite wall. He strung a couple of crossbeams using stripped nettles for cordage and patched the cavities between the branches with bracken. He stood back and surveyed his work. The shelter was big enough to lie inside. It would shield him from the wind and trap a little body heat.

  He walked through surrounding woodland and set a bunch of twine snares but didn’t stray far from the camp. He worried that in his disoriented state he might forget where the snares had been laid. He watched his hands set the traps, fingers numb like they didn’t belong to him. If he had been in good health he would have foraged for berries, roots and fungi, maybe prepared himself a feast, but he didn’t have the strength. Any attempt to scour the underbrush for food would burn more energy than he’d gain. He tore clumps of ivy from tree trunks and hung them from nearby branches as markers.

  He returned to his camp and built a small fire. One of his father’s old sayings: A fool builds a big fire and sits far away. A wise man builds a small fire and sits close. And a small fire would reduce smoke. He didn’t want a column to rise above the tree tops and betray his position to folks living in the village.

  It took a while to spark a flame. Recent rain had left the forest floor mud and mulch. The sticks were wet and disinclined to burn but eventually tinder caught light, dead leaves curled, smouldered and flared into flame. Branches popped as sap cooked off. He lay beside the fire, closed his eyes and slept a while.

  * * *

  He woke up as night fell and decided to check the traps. If he ha
d snared an animal in the past couple of hours he ought to retrieve it. If he let the creature struggle all night, let it thrash and keen in the darkness, a predator would snatch it by morning and there would be nothing left of his prize but an empty snare and a blood trail.

  Masaie walked through the forest twilight surrounded by lengthening shadows. He was unbalanced by dizzy spells and violent chills. He moved tree to tree, holding each trunk for support before moving on. Maybe food would set him straight. Food and more rest. He looked up at the surrounding branches and searched for the hanging clumps of ivy he used to mark his trap-trail.

  He found one of the snares. A strand of ivy hanging from twigs and something thrashed among the bracken beneath. A rabbit with its leg caught by twine. The rabbit renewed its struggle as he approached. The creature’s eyes rolled white with mortal terror. He grabbed the rabbit by the back legs and smashed its head against a tree. The first blow made it fight harder. The second blow made it flop dead. He reset the snare.

  * * *

  He lay by the fire wracked by a high fever. A seemingly unending cycle of muscle cramps, hot sweats and cold shakes. He curled foetal and hugged his chest.

  Once, when he was a child, he had seen the burned body of a man pulled from the ruins of a house. It was a bamboo shack, home to an old man who had fallen into the habit of cutting poppy bulbs and licking the resin. One night his house caught fire. It burned fierce and turned the sky orange. Sparks and flames rose into the dark. The villagers scooped river water in pots and tried to douse the flames. Later a couple of villagers, ex-soldiers used to horrors, kicked through the smouldering debris and retrieved the body. The old man was twisted into a ball. An effect of the intense heat. Cooked muscle had caused the man’s head and limbs to curl like a sleeping infant. He seemed shrunken, little bigger than a child. Masaie looked down. For a moment he expected to see his forearms seared by flame. He expected to see bubbling, charred skin.