by Неизвестный
“I’ll say it again: What the hell is going on here?”
The Oda generals and retainers surrounded me. Each of them had his hand on a hilt. Oda Nobunaga, the most disruptive warlord the land of Nippon has seen in a hundred fifty years of civil war, stood just too far for me to reach without releasing Sugitani.
The gold on Nobunaga’s helmet was the brightest thing in the room. Now I could see that he was a strong, restless man in his mid-thirties, with a bulbous nose and oddly feminine eyes.
He was a daimyō, and he was waiting for an answer.
“This man was attempting . . . something dishonorable, my lord,” I answered. “I was obliged to stop him.”
He looked Sugitani over carefully, and then turned his attention to me.
“If I’m not mistaken, that is not quite a man,” he said.
“Perhaps not, my lord.”
“Ah. It would seem I owe you my life.”
I bowed.
“And you fight well,” Nobunaga said. “It would please me to have you join my personal guard.”
“Forgive me, sir, but I could not in good faith accept such a position,” I answered.
He cocked an eyebrow. “And why is that?”
“Because I would be obliged to kill you the moment the opportunity arose, my lord.”
A half dozen swords flashed as they were drawn and leveled at me.
The corner of Nobunaga’s mouth twitched with amusement. “Ah. Then you would be of the Rokkaku clan, I take it.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Bad luck for you and me both. Any man here would be happy to kill you, and it would be his duty to do so. Yet you have laid this giri on me, and I am loathe to disregard it. What shall I do with you?”
“Let us go, my lord,” I begged. “We are done here. Let me take him away and burn the body in secret. He was a great and honorable man once, and I loved him.”
“That I cannot do. The whole castle knows by now that there has been an attempt on my life. There have been murders and gunshots. They will expect a very public execution.”
I hung my head. Under my heel, Sugitani continued to groan and squirm. “Then I would beg that you do it in some way that hides what he is. I would not have the depth of his shame be known, or let it taint the reputation of our master.”
“I believe that would be feasible. His end would be that of a common killer.”
Three days ago that would have been unthinkable. I bowed low. “You do us a great kindness, my lord.”
As I have said, when a man’s giri and his heart are not in accord—shame and disaster.
That day word was spread throughout the castle that one of the Rokkaku retainers had hired a band of commoners from outside their clan to assassinate Lord Nobunaga. The mercenaries had scaled the wall and slaughtered the soldiers posted there, and a sharpshooter in their party fired two matchlocks at Nobunaga as he conferred with his advisors. The accomplices had escaped, but through the heroic actions of guards nearby, the sniper was subdued, and Nobunaga was unharmed.
Lord Nobunaga decreed that since this attack on his person was based on a mere business transaction, and had its roots in neither honor nor duty, the assassin would receive the most degrading form of punishment conceivable.
A hole was dug in the center of the courtyard. The sniper was buried in it to the top of his shoulders, so that only his bare head stood out from the ground. A saw made of bamboo was left nearby, and all passers-by were encouraged to try their hand at cutting through the man’s neck. A bamboo saw is a toy that can barely slice through rice-stalks. A hardy man could work it until the blade smoked yet cut less than the width of a finger. It was an exceptionally long, excruciating death.
We were indebted to Nobunaga. The deep hole served to hide Sugitani’s body, so that he could be seen by the entire army, yet none would realize the extent of his wounds, or how little they hindered him. Any mortal man’s mind would surely break under such torture, and the hell-born grimace that twisted his features was expected and fitting. And to those who took part in the slow execution, it seemed natural that when they approached with the saw the desperate man would defend himself the only way he could—snarling, snapping, and biting.
At the end of four days, I knelt over Sugitani and sawed until my fingers bled, guiding the dull blade between the vertebrae of his neck. When his head at last dropped loose a cheer went up, and I let him remain face down in the dust so that none would see that the eyes and jaw continued to move.
It is nearly all done now. Kannonji Castle holds no value for Nobunaga. He has abandoned it and moved on to Kyōto. I have taken away the head and body before Lord Rokkaku could return and see them. I will not fail Sugitani again. In some quiet farmhouse whose owners have been driven out by the war, I will lay him on a hero’s funeral pyre. I will meditate upon the flames consuming one who let only his giri guide him, and then, without the luxury of a second standing behind me, I will complete the seppuku of a true warrior. I have killed myself before, and I know I will not need help to conquer the pain.
Dead Reckoning
Elaine Pascale
Roanoke, Late July, 1590
The boy is screaming.
He is screaming and running through woods he knows as well as his own scent, but which look strange and menacing in the light of the falling sun.
Murder.
That was the word that was causing him to run, causing his cold skin to be scratched by low hanging branches and thorns. The scratches beget lines which beget words which beget warnings: The woods are not for you.
There was no reason that he had not broken free of the woods by now. He had been running for some time, screaming for even longer, and both quantities exceeded the amount necessary to traverse the woods. He had run as fast as he could. Perhaps he had gotten turned around: lost.
His feet furrowed the fallen twigs and the sound multiplied in the silent forest. His run slowed to a sporadic jog and he wondered if others were in his part of the woods, or if he was alone. He didn’t know, after all he had seen, which predicament scared him more.
The blood. His world has been tainted with blood and now everything has changed.
The boy runs until he becomes more afraid of dropping to his knees than of anything that might be chasing him. He fears succumbing to the woods. His young mind envisions the weeds and brambles growing over his body as it lay on the forest floor. When his father had been alive, he had always spoken of new crops covering past mistakes. But the errors had been fewer when father had been there to protect them, and the boy had just witnessed the ultimate transgression.
Murder.
The boy feels the bushes reaching for him. He remembers the ones who had mouths like steel traps, dripping with gristle. He remembers that they devour rather than eat. He remembers that they kill without mercy. He knows that they will come after him if he does not make it through the woods. At twelve, he has lived long enough to know that there were some secrets that needed to remain hidden.
Roanoke, February 1590
The baby coughed.
Over and over.
His tiny fists bunched around his mouth, his thin thighs pulling up to his chest as his body was wracked by the coughs. He had passed his fourth birthday, but Elizabeth knew he had not grown in months and was undersized. He was always cold and his eyes had trouble focusing. She tried wrapping him in blankets, but he would not warm and he would not return her embraces.
When he coughed, splotches of blood speckled his fists. The blood had come from inside of him, coughed onto his hands. Elizabeth knew that that was a very bad sign.
Her happiness was dependent on him. His father was no comfort. “The angels are calling him home to the Maker,” Ambrose would say. It was this blind faith that had brought them to the colony. Blind faith that kept them looking to the horizon for ships that were promised to return.
Elizabeth had seen the brown woman watching them. The woman studied the baby like a sailor studies a ma
p, making sense of every bump and every sallow spot.
One day, after she took corn meal from the brown woman, Elizabeth tried to engage her, looking at her pleadingly. This woman, and her people, had given them so much, couldn’t she give a little more? It wasn’t food Elizabeth wanted; she craved answers: “My child,” Elizabeth began her supplication, “he will grow strong here. Yes?”
The brown woman had shaken her head and answered, “No.” That one syllable, spoken by a woman who had learned it so recently, was enough to break something stored deeply inside of Elizabeth.
While broken, Elizabeth would not give up. The baby’s father, the one she was supposed to accept as her authority, wanted to leave matters to God, the God that he believed would help him to save the brown people. Ambrose had been coming to her in the night, as she slept, bent over the baby’s small pile of bedding. He wanted her to conceive again, to have an heir ready as this one waned. Ambrose wanted to go forward with life and to help create the new society.
Elizabeth revoked him. She prayed. She prayed to the God she had always known, the one who had made life seem promising back in England. But the boy grew sicker and sicker. His breathing became raspy, turning him into something not human, something that once had breathed fire but now only emitted gusts of smoke. Elizabeth prayed and prayed and prayed until he died.
Once John White had returned to England for supplies, they had been left with eighty men, seventeen women and ten children. Now there were nine children. Since baby Virginia had been born, there had been no new births. People whispered of a curse. They blamed the brown people. Elizabeth began to blame the God that had led them here.
They buried her baby without her. They tore it from her arms and buried it, while she hid inside of her house and cursed every curse she could utter. Hoarse, she remembered that the brown woman had taken pity on her; eventually she remembered the words the brown woman had taught her.
Desperate, Elizabeth ran to the beach. She could no longer rely on the God of her husband, the God of the people who brought her here—who brought her son to die. She revoked both God and husband; they had given up on her child, so she would spare no mercy for them.
The brown woman had made a promise to Elizabeth. She had looked her in the eye and promised her. The brown woman, while savage, understood pain. So Elizabeth recited the heathen words taught her, the words exchanged through whispered repetition because neither woman could read or write. “Alicarl, gaugbrojotr, istrumagi, kamphundr, kamphundr.”
It was not long after saying the words that Elizabeth saw the lights summoned from the sea. Was this God coming to save her, or to take the baby?
Others had also seen the lights. The other women, who felt angry and oppressed, had seen the lights. They were whom the lights were for. As promised by the brown woman, the lights came for the powerless and gave them power. When Elizabeth said the words, only eight women saw the lights, but the lights would give them the strength of soldiers.
Roanoke, March 1590
The children are screaming.
They are running and screaming. They are playing a game that they always play, with sticks and rocks. They are running where they always run, minding the warning they were given to avoid the woman’s house.
The woman’s house is tucked into the side of a small copse. The thick trees watch her back, rendering an ambush from the rear impossible. The land falls down from her front stoop in a series of crops. She is the envy of the colony, as no one has been able to grow anything substantial. Some people whisper about her and call her “witch,” especially because her garden blooms at night. Her small parcel of land is full of animal bones and there are many small scavengers creeping around the property.
A large bird has swooped upon a mouse. The woman walks past without noticing. She is called Grossi Gerta by the village children, but she has no living children of her own. Her Christian name is Agnes, but she calls herself Aegeni.
Gerta is not only the grower of crops, she is a friend of the natives. She makes secret trades with them. She has no man in her home, so she has to be savvy and wise. Perhaps the natives believe she is some sort of witch? They do like the items she has managed to acquire and give to them.
Unfortunately, she was running out of trinkets, and feared she was running out of time. Many people around her seemed to be dying. Those that were not dying spoke of fleeing. Gerta is a practical woman, so she will not run. She will not run from her formidable crops and her alliance with the natives. She also did not look away when the lights had surrounded her. She had let the lights land on her. The lights had inspected her, violated her. Now, she hides pus-filled boils: she itches, and she hungers.
Animals have disappeared. Rumors abounded of Freybug, whispers of Revenants and Phoukas. Colonists and natives alike complained of the stench of rotting deer and fish and rabbits. They looked the other way when the mauled carcasses were removed, some impaled on the decrepit posts near Gerta’s property.
That did not prevent the children from forgetting their warnings and wandering onto her land. That did not serve as enough of a caution to keep the kids from chasing the rabbit into the sharp, long grass in her yard.
They didn’t know that flesh kept her healthy and reduced her boils. They didn’t know that if you sifted through the ashes beneath her kettle, you would find charred human bones. They didn’t know what was hanging and being smoked in the back of her house or how the blood lights could create a hunger so strong that one would commit the ultimate sin against nature.
The ultimate crime.
Gerta sits in an enclosure in the thicket. She smells the children as they approach: their earnest, dirt-streaked skin and stale clothing. Their ripeness was not displeasing. In fact, it had the opposite effect: Gerta salivated and her stomach rumbled.
“Elizabeth?”
He knew she was angry with him. God had spoken to him and told him to have patience. In time, they would have many more children. They would establish the land. They just had to hold their faith in the highest regard.
“Elizabeth?”
She was not answering him. He assumed she was in their home. She had not left her bed during the day for weeks. Sometimes, at night, he suspected that she rose, but he was too tired to look after her. He had learned to sleep through the scratching. He spent most of his days constructing the church. Once that was in place, once the altar was finished, then their bad luck would end.
He felt a drop of water fall onto his wrist. Only, he was inside and he had patched the roof himself. He looked at his wrist. The drop had a yellowish quality to it. Had he not been so lost in his faith, had he not been so secure in his divine protection, he would have looked up. But he never would have allowed himself to believe that his own wife was clinging to the ceiling like a spider, a thread of drool leading from her lips.
There are now seventy-five men, seventeen women, and seven children.
Roanoke, April 1590
The girl is screaming.
She is screaming and standing over what she knows to be a man’s hand. While she is classified as one of the women, she is still very young. She is young enough that the only male body parts she has seen are hands, beardless faces, and necks. This hand is attached to nothing. It lies on the ground, on the deadened grass, palm to the heavens as if in supplication. The hand is asking for something; for what, she does not know. Perhaps it wants to find the rest of its body. This thought confuses her. Who does the hand belong to? They had already buried several men that had been relieved of large chunks of flesh. Their bodies had been brutally ravaged, but not one had been missing an appendage.
She screams again, hoping someone would hear her, hoping that someone would know what to do next. She feels far too young to be dealing with the horrors that have befallen her people. There are whispers of there being a curse, but everyone knows the savages are after them. John White had wronged the savages and they were suffering because of it. She should have remembered the savages before sh
e started screaming.
Someone is coming. There are sounds of someone making his or her way through the brush behind her. The girl is relieved to see it is one of the women. She would have been concerned to be alone with a man, as no one has figured out whom to pair her off with yet. She would have been in dire straits if the figure had been brown. She is relieved to see the woman, until she notices the large boils on the woman’s skin, until she notices that the woman is salivating as she looks at her.
Suddenly, she finds that she can no longer scream.
There are now seventy-two men, sixteen women, and seven children.
Emme swore she would run away. She had no intention of remaining and marrying Griffen. He had been a clod back in England and a clod he would remain. Her father was pushing the union, the colony desperate for more children. Their numbers were decreasing and none of the other couples seemed to be able to add any additional souls to Roanoke. She had put off marriage long enough; her father was forcing her to move forward. Emme swore she would run away, if only she knew where she could run to.
She had been crying on the beach. She had been cursing her situation and cursing her family for forcing her to come here. She could have remained in England. She could have stayed with her cousins and ended up marrying someone wonderful. Some successful and handsome landowner, not some talentless carpenter who smelled like an animal.
She had been crying on the beach when the brown woman had found her. The brown woman had such kind and understanding eyes. The brown woman understood pain and she knew how to make it go away. The brown woman taught Emme the words: “Alicarl, gaugbrojotr, istrumagi, kamphundr, kamphundr.” Later, Emme said the words and the lights came. The lights came buzzing and boldly, and they made Emme very, very hungry.
The men are laughing.
The men are laughing and joking as they build the fence that will protect the compound. They tell ribald tales as a way of distracting themselves from the task at hand: the need to put a wall between themselves and the natives. They don’t realize that they are trapping themselves inside with the evil.