by Adam Baker
He was struck by a sudden gut pain like he’d been stabbed. He gripped his belly, closed his eyes and waited for the sensation to pass. Pain hit him in waves. Eventually he fumbled a box from his pack, cracked open a poppy ampoule and swigged the resin. He sat back, closed his eyes and prayed to Hachiman. Give me strength, he pleaded. Just for a few more hours. Just until my task is done. He turned to Ariyo.
‘We should go.’
Ariyo gestured to Tameyo.
‘And what about him?’
Tameyo was curled at the back of the cave, white as death. He had succumbed to sleep once more. The samurai examined the sleeping man and could tell by the pallor of Tameyo’s skin, the shallowness of his breath, there was no point trying to wake him.
He sat back. He recalled the poem written by Princess Oku as she grieved her brother, Prince Ōtsu, following his mountainside burial.
I, living in this world,
From tomorrow look on
Mount Futakami as a brother
For today he was buried there.
The samurai removed a fur covering the unconscious man and gave it to Ariyo. ‘He won’t be needing this any more,’ he said.
Tameyo had something gripped in his hand. The samurai prised open his fingers. Two black debt stones. He gave them to Ariyo.
‘You better look after these.’
Ariyo tucked the stones into his obi. They crawled from the cave and stood up.
‘Well,’ murmured Ariyo. ‘Here we go.’
A final glance at Tameyo’s ice tomb and then they began a slow, stealthy descent towards the castle ramparts beneath them.
Soldiers kicked open the kitchen door and bustled inside. The girl was asleep near the fire. She was jolted awake by a blast of cold air and the clatter of boots and armour. The kitchen cat had been curled at her shoulder. The spooked animal hissed then streaked between the soldiers’ legs and fled into the courtyard.
The girl shielded her eyes as darkness was suddenly replaced by blazing torchlight. She knelt in a corner as the troops searched boxes and sacks. They tipped up a bag of potatoes, probed sacks of rice with their knives, checked the pantry and adjacent storerooms.
The sergeant stood over her. ‘Has anyone been in here?’ he demanded. ‘Yesterday. Tonight. Have you seen any strangers? Seen anything unusual?’
The girl almost answered No before she remembered she was supposed to be dumb. She pointed at her mouth and shook her head.
‘If you see anything, anything at all, you must report it, understand?’ He spoke slowly like he was talking to an idiot. ‘If you see something strange you must find a sentry and let them know.’
The soldiers left and she lay down once more and went to sleep. Later the soldiers returned and repeated their search, stamping on the boards as if they were trying to find some kind of underfloor cavity like a dug-out den or the entrance to an underground tunnel. She gave up trying to sleep. When the soldiers left she paced the kitchen and waited for dawn to break.
* * *
Next morning she hid in the empty upper rooms of the storehouse in case the cook made her return to the village with the innkeeper once he made his daily supply run. She opened the window shutter a fraction to let a little sunlight spill into the vacant room. She watched the innkeeper arrive at the castle and unload a consignment of fresh food from his cart.
She turned away from the window, crouched and examined footprints on the dusty boards of the room. Soldiers. Prints clustered near the doorway like they had glanced inside during their search of the castle then moved on. Hopefully they would decide the room was so bare, so devoid of any hiding places, they wouldn’t bother to return.
* * *
The cook found her standing in the pantry looking aimless mid-afternoon so she sent her to help a stable lad shovel dung. When the lad had her alone he grabbed her and tried to throw her onto straw in one of the empty stalls. She was an obvious target – a young girl, alone in the world. She gripped the boy’s hand and twisted his wrist, made him bend and fall to his knees. She continued to slowly twist his arm with an expression of detached boredom. The kid clenched his teeth for a few moments and fought the hold. He swore at her then pride and anger leeched away as his shoulder was wrenched almost to the point of dislocation. He begged her to stop. She listened to him beg a little while then released her grip. She returned to shovelling shit like nothing happened.
Later she headed back to the kitchen and washed pots. She surreptitiously glanced out of the window now and again, anxious for nightfall.
* * *
The soldiers were fed in shifts, trays loaded with food and jugs of water carried to the dining benches in their respective dormitories. When all the soldiers were fed the servants were allowed to help themselves to left-over food. The girl was given a bowl of rice and sat in the kitchen with the other maids eating and listening to them chatter. The cook ladled more rice from the pot, so the girl took advantage of the distraction and left the room. She casually headed for the door like she intended to use the courtyard latrine. Nobody noticed her leave.
She walked the edge of the courtyard passing a sentry who watched her with disinterest. She looked down at her feet, tried to shrink into herself, reduce to nothing.
She entered the darkened storehouse making her way down the central aisle between sacks and barrels, navigating by memory. She stood a while, alert for movement, any sign she was being followed. The sentry might have wondered why she was visiting the stores late at night. Or he might wish to exploit the fact she was alone and vulnerable. When she was sure she wasn’t pursued she climbed the stairs to the room above.
She pushed one of the shutters ajar, looked out and could see burning torches along the outer walls. Sentries paced to and fro. There was a long drop to the courtyard below and she could see a soldier standing directly beneath her. A top view of his iron helmet and naginata.
She climbed onto the window sill, feet dangling over the edge. She got to her feet, reached up and gripped the gable above her head and hung, legs swinging, anxious not to drop a sandal or make a sound in case the sentry looked up.
She hauled herself onto the thatch roof, crawled to its apex and clambered down the other side.
The storehouse had been built against the mountain wall. She reached for the crags, found a snow-dusted handhold and hauled herself upward, climbing a granite face three times her height before rolling onto a ledge. She surveyed the torch-lit castle beneath her.
She scooped snow and placed the nub of a candle in the depression to shelter it from the wind. She struck a flint and lit the wick. The guttering flame was hidden from the castle below but visible to anyone looking down from above.
‘We’ll be on the mountainside above the castle,’ the samurai had told her. ‘Find us a route down, a way inside the stronghold. Then give us a signal. We’ll be watching.’
Sitting with her back to the rock face, she tried to compact herself into a tight ball for warmth. The high castle walls acted as a wind break sheltering everyone inside the compound from the merciless night wind. But up here on the mountainside there was no relief from the gale. It must be miserable for Tameyo, Ariyo and the samurai camped somewhere above her, enduring darkness and lethal cold. It must have been a horrifying climb.
Eventually she heard the rasp of sandals mingle with the night wind and looked up. The tell-tale grunt and scuffle of someone descending the rock face above her head. The samurai lowered himself to the ledge and sat beside her. They were both too diffident to embrace and say glad you made it but they felt it, unspoken but understood.
‘I found a room in the castle,’ she said. ‘It’s safe. Neglected. A good place to hide. Fetch the others. Time to get under cover. You’ll freeze to death if you stay on this mountainside.’
Commander Raku walked the ramparts, his boots pounding the wooden walkway as he prowled past archers manning the arrow ports. None of the troops dared turn round and face the hooded apparition stalking the battlements
but kept their attention fixed on the triangular ports as the skirts of Raku’s cloak swished by.
Raku stood above the gatehouse, brooding as he looked down on the moonlit valley below. He tried to put himself in the position of the assassins. If he were determined to enter the castle and kill the general what would he do?
The captain of the watch joined him standing nervously by Raku’s side, unable to read the mood of the man hidden behind the mask.
The commander leant over the edge of the ramparts and peered down at the mountainside. He could see torches among the rocks. Soldiers checking the outer defences.
‘The iron spikes at the base of the wall are secure,’ volunteered the captain of the watch. ‘Nobody has tampered with them.’
‘The sluice for the latrine?’
‘The outflow is secured with heavy bars. No one could crawl up that shit pipe, even if they wanted to.’
The commander nodded. ‘Have the men do one more circuit of the castle then bring them inside. We will repeat the inspection during daylight.’
‘As you wish.’
‘And have the castle searched one more time. Check every niche, every alcove. Lift every table, move every cupboard. Look for the slightest sign of recent disturbance.’
The captain of the watch nodded assent and hurried away to give the order.
The girl descended the rock face and lowered herself onto the storehouse roof, the samurai and Ariyo following.
‘Where’s Tameyo?’ hissed the girl.
The samurai shook his head. He didn’t make it.
‘He didn’t survive the journey?’
‘No,’ said the samurai.
‘He fell?’
‘He froze.’
They followed the girl’s lead as she slid over the apex of the roof and belly-crawled to the lip of the gable. She peered over the edge. They looked down on the sentry still positioned twenty feet below. He was resting against his naginata. They could see the disk of his iron helmet. The girl turned and whispered to the samurai.
‘Any noise, we’re dead.’
He nodded and checked Ariyo had seen the sentry. Ariyo blinked confirmation.
* * *
The girl climbed back through the window and lowered herself into the empty room. Ariyo passed her their packs from the roof above. Wooden frames lashed with bedrolls and provisions. She strained to haul the packs through the window. Soundless effort as she tried to haul the equipment inside the storeroom without alerting the sentry below.
Ariyo climbed through the window then helped the samurai clamber down from the roof. He gave support as the samurai hung one-handed and tried to reach the sill with his feet while ignoring the vertiginous drop onto flagstones below. As soon as they were inside the girl sealed the shutter and lit a candle, holding up the flame and examining the two men. They were blue and shivering. Their clothes and beards were crisp with ice.
‘So what exactly happened to Tameyo?’ she asked.
‘It was difficult out on the mountain,’ said the samurai. His understatement implied a high-altitude ice hell. ‘We did our best for him.’
They sat cross-legged and faced one another. The samurai tried to pull his blanket round his shoulders one-handed, but fumbled. The girl helped hood it over his head. Ariyo shivered. He rubbed and shook his hands to try to return some warmth to his fingers.
‘So cold,’ he said, through clenched teeth.
The girl dug in her pocket and found another couple of candle stubs. She lit them. Ariyo and the samurai huddled close to the candles for meagre warmth holding their hands over the flames. They winced and flexed. They experienced a series of sharp, stabbing needle-pricks as feeling returned to numb fingers. After a while the ice in their beards began to melt and drip making them look like they’d both been pulled from a river. Ariyo tried to shake himself dry like a dog. The samurai used the blanket to towel himself off. The girl had left a bag on the floor of the room. A bottle of water and a few apples. She watched while the men ate and drank
‘A shame Tameyo couldn’t hold on a little longer,’ said the girl. ‘He could be here with us now out of the wind.’
The samurai nodded. Ariyo chewed an apple down to the core, too much of a fatalist to be drawn into what-might-have-beens.
‘So what do you have for us?’ asked the samurai when he had warmed enough to speak without a quavering voice.
The girl pulled a roll of paper from her sleeve, unscrolled the chart and laid it on the boards pegging it with candle stubs. They examined the layout of the castle.
‘As you can see the buildings are laid out in a crescent. The stables, armoury and barracks are on this side,’ she said, indicating buildings on the right of the courtyard. ‘And the domestic quarters, kitchens and storerooms are here, on the left.’
‘What do you know about the tower?’
‘It’s a fall-back position, as you would expect. A castle within a castle. Lot of internal stone. If the main compound falls they can retreat to the keep and seal the doors. They could hold out for a few more days if they thought help was on its way. Or give them enough time to commit seppuku in an ordered manner.’
‘What do you know about the interior of the tower?’
‘The general lives in the upper floors. I can’t get past the second storey, so I’ve no idea of the layout. Access to the upper levels is via a single stairwell which is guarded. Sentries; too many to rush. Theoretically you could climb on the roof and pull up the tiles but it would be impossible to do without someone raising the alarm. And, as I say, we have no idea of the layout. You would drop inside and run around blind. Chances are you would be discovered and cut down before you got anywhere near him.’
‘Have you seen Motohide? Does he ever emerge from the tower?’
The girl shook her head. ‘No. He hasn’t left the keep. They’ve doubled the guard. They’ve conducted regular searches of the compound. They’re burning every torch they’ve got. The place is lit bright as noon. There are constant patrols.’
‘When did this activity begin?’
‘Last night. A stranger arrived at the castle. He must have known of our mission and warned the general.’
‘Who is he? This stranger? Did you see him?’
‘He’s been prowling the ramparts for most of the night. He’s out there right now.’
The samurai stood at the window and pushed the shutter ajar. He surveyed the ramparts, the rows of archers manning the arrow ports and saw a cowled figure standing on the battlements near the gatehouse.
‘Have you seen his face?’
‘He wears a mask,’ said the girl.
‘A mask?’
‘And he has no hands.’
‘No hands,’ murmured the samurai. ‘By the gods. He survived.’
‘Who?’
‘I fought a man when we were attacked in the woods. I took his hands and split his head. Somehow, he survived and made his way back to the castle. Extraordinary force of will.’
‘You admire him?’
‘Of course,’ said the samurai pulling the shutter closed.
‘You work in the kitchen, neh?’ said Ariyo. ‘Can we poison the general’s food?’
The girl shook her head. ‘He has his own cook. I imagine all his food is thoroughly tested by the time it is put in front of him.’
‘Is there any way we can get past the guards?’
‘They wear open-faced helmets and use code-words. You couldn’t bluff your way inside.’
The samurai stood and paced. He faced the shuttered window.
‘Motohide is a stone’s throw away. We’ve travelled across the country. We fought a battle and climbed a mountain. Now a couple of walls are all that separate us from our prey. There has to be a way to make that final short distance.’
The girl watched him pace and patiently waited for him to reach a decision. Ariyo began to succumb to exhaustion, his head nodding as he tried to stay awake.
‘You have access to the barracks?’ a
sked the samurai, as if he had the glimmerings of a plan.
‘Yes,’ said the girl.
‘Do you have access to weapons?’
She shook her head. ‘Their swords and naginatas are shut away.’
‘But arrows. Can you get arrows?’
‘We have our own arrows,’ interjected Ariyo. He had a bow and a quiver of arrows strapped to his pack but the samurai shook his head.
‘I need one of theirs. Just one.’
‘There are bales of arrows stacked in the storeroom downstairs,’ said the girl. ‘Part of the supplies they stock-piled in case of a siege.’
‘Good. Fetch one.’
* * *
The girl crept downstairs holding a hand cupped round the candle flame and searched the storehouse. She found bales of arrows bound with twine. She tugged one from the pile.
She heard a rustle in the far corner of the room and froze. She peered into the deep shadows. Another rustle. She blew out the candle and stood in darkness. The girl heard a scampering sound, probably a rat. She headed back to the stairs, navigating by memory.
* * *
The samurai examined the arrow and handed it to Ariyo.
‘Do you think you could take the shot?’
Ariyo patted the bow on the floor beside him. ‘I can do it in my sleep.’
The samurai turned his attention back to the girl. ‘And you can gain entry to the lower levels of the main tower, neh?’
‘I think so. If I wander over there with a broom and bucket I might be able to get through the front door. But I’ll be kicked out soon enough. And as I said, I wouldn’t have access to the top floors.’