Sword of the Ronin (The Ronin Trilogy)

by Travis Heermann

  The tall, gray-feathered bird, with its thin body and spindly limbs, crimson beak and beady eyes, looking at him. And the sword in its … hand. So swift he could barely follow the movement, the creature sheathed its weapon, stepped out of sight for a moment, then returned with another sword in hand, his father’s. It picked up the pretty scabbard and put the bloody sword away. A great wind cleared the air of smoke. The creature stood over him, reached down and took the boy’s hand in its own long fingers. Knuckles covered in soft gray down …

  Ken’ishi’s eyes opened again in the present. These memories had been from the day Kaa, a tengu, had shown mercy to a human child, saved his life, and taken him into the mountains to raise him and teach him the ways of the warrior. These memories had never before crossed his thoughts, but he knew them to be true.

  A chill whispered over his shoulders and neck and took a long time to go away.

  Fever-felled halfway,

  My dreams arose to march again

  Into a hollow land

  — Basho, Death Poem

  Ken’ishi was thinking about these strange new memories, even as he returned to his house that evening.

  As he climbed the steps to his door, a stick darted between the steps and whacked the side of his ankle—not hard enough to be painful, but enough to startle him out of his reverie. He leaped back, hand on his hilt. A muffled giggle sounded from under the steps, and he smiled.

  “How unfair to strike from ambush!” he said to the dirty little face hiding in the shadows. “Show yourself, ruffian, and let us duel like men!”

  Little Frog darted from under the steps, topknot bobbing, twig clutched in both hands like a sword. He swung the sword and struck Ken’ishi across the knee.

  “Oh, well struck!” Ken’ishi allowed his leg to collapse. “You are victorious, sir! Spare me my life, and I will be your faithful servant forevermore.”

  Little Frog put the point of his stick victoriously to Ken’ishi’s chest and sniffed nonchalantly.

  Ken’ishi stood and swept the boy up into his arms and onto his shoulders. “Allow me to carry you, my lord. Where shall we go?”

  The boy pointed toward the inn. “Mama!”

  “Very well.”

  Ken’ishi carried him to the inn where Kiosé was doubtless still hard at work. Naoko was a kind enough employer, but the duties associated with an inn often went late into the night, even with as little outside traffic as Aoka village received.

  Reaching the entrance, he took Little Frog down and led him inside.

  Naoko spotted them from the door to the kitchen, and her face softened into webs of happy wrinkles. She called into the back for Kiosé.

  Moments later, Kiosé came out, wiping her hands on a towel. Her haggard face beamed like a warm dawn when she saw Ken’ishi and Little Frog together. She saw Ken’ishi noticing this, and averted her eyes.

  She bowed to Ken’ishi and then held out her arms to Little Frog. The boy leaped into them. “Thank you for bringing him,” she said. “He has not eaten today, and I just made some rice balls.” She wiped at the grime on the boy’s face. “Are you hungry?”

  The boy nodded vigorously.

  A few other villagers, all of them men without women at home to cook for them, sat in the large tatami room at little tables, where they ate their evening repast.

  Ken’ishi noticed that her clothes looked particularly threadbare today, but the happiness on her face warmed him. Perhaps he would speak to the village seamstress about a new kimono for her.

  She said, “It was good that you stopped the fight today. Those poor woodcutter boys might have been hurt very badly, or killed.”

  “That was the worst brawl since … since I came. And somehow that family is always involved.” It was in this very room, on Ken’ishi’s first arrival in Aoka, that his life had been changed from wandering ronin to respectable constable. And it had all started with Kiosé. Back then, she had been a whore indentured to the inn. In a drunken frenzy, Yoba had threatened to kill her, only to be stopped by Hojo no Masahige, the administrator of the village, Norikage’s former master. In the ensuing brawl, Yoba stabbed Masahige to death. To avenge Masahige and save Kiosé’s life, Ken’ishi had drawn steel and cut Yoba down. Norikage had subsequently hired him as assistant constable.

  Chiba and his brothers had once cornered Kiosé behind the inn and beaten her in revenge for Yoba’s death. Perhaps those were the memories behind her eyes as her expression went cold. “You can believe Miwa’s story. She is a very nice girl. She doesn’t … treat me the way the other women do. She’s kind.”

  Ken’ishi nodded. Because of Kiosé’s history as the village prostitute, she would never be accepted among the other women. He had bought Kiosé’s contract, freeing her from indenture, but such prejudices died only with the passing of generations.

  “I am certain Norikage will have the truth of it from her, and if it’s true, he’ll hang for it in Dazaifu.”

  She shuddered, and her mouth hardened. “Few men deserve it more than he does.” Her eyes turned back toward Ken’ishi and a flush appeared in her cheek. “May I—may we come tonight?”

  They had not lain together for several days, as she had secluded herself in the inn’s storage hut until her moon’s blood had passed.

  “Yes.”

  Ken’ishi had bought her contract, but he had not married her. Whisperings of their relationship were never kind—“How fitting! A ronin and a whore!” Sometimes he refused her requests for a visit. She never refused his.

  She put Little Frog down and bowed to Ken’ishi, bowing her son’s head as well. He bowed in return.

  * * *

  They sat together quietly after Little Frog had been tucked into his futon under the great gauzy mosquito net. Bowls lay picked clean of rice, fish, and fresh daikon radish.

  Ken’ishi waited until Little Frog lay sound asleep, which did not take long, as the three-year-old spent every day exhausting himself at untold adventures around the village and its environs. Then he took Kiosé in his arms, pulled her to him and kissed her. The angles of her bones were little padded by softness, but her breasts were still full with milk, her lips soft and hungry, and the fervor of her grip arousing in its intensity. She wanted him. Her arms and legs clutched him with a wanton, desperate heat, and every dozen, close-packed heartbeats, her body convulsed as she bit back cries of ecstasy. And when he spent his seed within her, she clutched him tighter and tighter as if desperate for it to take root.

  Rolling off her, their bodies sheened with sweat and musk, Ken’ishi lay naked in the wet summer night, letting himself dry.

  She sidled up to him, still gasping in the afterglow of pleasure. “Again?” she whispered.

  “Perhaps later. Sleep now.”

  She fell asleep against him.

  As the sweat dried on him, his thoughts trailed off into nothingness—

  Until suddenly the kami awoke him with words he could not hear, not words at all, but flashes of perception, stabs of emotion that were not his own, not even those of a human being, but the silent spirits that permeated all things, the spirits of the air and earth, of fire and sea, of trees and bamboo and grass, of life itself.

  He had been asleep, but did not know how long.

  Starlight trickled through the window slats, across the floor toward the rack where Silver Crane rested. The ephemeral glimmer turned the mother-of-pearl inlays on Silver Crane’s scabbard into daubs of moonglow, like a pearl amid lava stones, painting the mosquito net overhead into silvery gauze. The light grew so bright, even the black-lacquered stand caught the gleam. His modest, one-room house echoed with the sounds of night under the dark canopy of the thatched roof, the sounds of breathing near him, against him. Outside, night creatures sang among the silent houses of Aoka village.

  Kiosé lay in the curve of his arm, her breathing quiet, snuggled up to his chest, the softness of her breasts pressed against his side, her leg on top of his. Whenever he pushed her away, she whimpered i
n her sleep until she could cleave up beside him again. With a sigh, he allowed it. Nevertheless, it was a distraction.

  His thoughts turned immediately to Miwa’s accusations against Chiba, who still sat tied up in Norikage’s office closet. Norikage had not been able to speak to Miwa. Her brothers said she was hiding in the forest for shame. Norikage would try again tomorrow. How sweet it would be for justice to find a reprehensible bastard such as Chiba.

  He lay still, hoping sleep would return, but anger at how Chiba and his brothers had treated Kiosé—and anyone else in town who crossed them—drove any relaxation away. Strange how memory was such a malleable thing, like clay. His memories of the night he had killed Yoba were as solid now as kiln-fired pottery. And yet, he considered these strange new memories. Where had they come from, so half-formed they hardly felt real? Even as they slipped away, his thoughts clung to them, sifting them for images of his father, but found only blood and fear, smoke and screams. Why had they opened to him now?

  On nights like this, when the moon waxed round and the sky was clear, Silver Crane’s voice whispered at its loudest, but even then it was only the merest suggestion of a voice, like trying to pick out a murmur amid a typhoon. Had the sword whispered to his father so? The kami residing within Silver Crane seemed to have something to say, if only he could learn to hear.

  Perhaps if Kaa were here, the old bird could teach Ken’ishi how. Whenever he felt the sword’s silent touch, he reached for it, but it retreated, and each time his frustration redoubled.

  It seemed the closeness of the sword’s voice increased on the nights after he had coupled with Kiosé, and the hard spike of guilt lay coldest in his belly, a guilt he would never express to her. Her presence sometimes added another layer of the world’s distraction that he had to push aside, to quiet the typhoon.

  Other flashes of memory flitted through his mind, moments of passion with her, bursts of emotion that inevitably led his thoughts toward guilt, toward memories of another lover who had made his soul sing as Kiosé never would.

  He sat up, pushed the mosquito net aside, and stood naked. His thigh ached as he stretched, and he pressed his thumb against the dimpled puncture scar there, given to him the night that Little Frog had come into the world. Little Frog lay there now, at rest on his own small sleeping pallet a couple of paces away, the only time when he was ever at rest. The sleeping boy was like a ball resting at the top of a mountain; at sunrise the ball would roll and bound and bounce down the mountain with such energy it was exhausting to watch.

  Thoughts tumbling into flashes of the two oni he had slain, the demon-bandit Hakamadare and vengeance-crazed Taro, and then the soft musky richness of … her. She whom he had saved from Hakamadare’s lust … She who had taken his heart and never given it back …

  Frustration tightened his jaw, and he got up and paced the room. Would he ever have peace in his own mind?

  Then an idea came to him. Silver Crane’s voice had been most accessible when he was in battle. He must find a way for it to speak to him at his own choosing. But how could he recreate those moments when the sword had awakened? Must he be near death? Perhaps if it finally spoke to him again, it might give him more clues to the identity of his father, knowledge of his ancestors—a place in the world where he might belong.

  He crossed the room to kneel before the sword on its stand. The silver fittings of the tachi’s curved scabbard glistened brighter than they should, leaving an afterimage behind his eyelids. He took a series of long, deep breaths, allowing his mind to go still, gently pushing his thoughts away. Kaa had taught him to seek the Void, the timelessness between moments where true clarity lay hidden like the secret treasure of the universe. Perhaps in the Void, he would find respite from the typhoon of the everyday world.

  Frogs sang outside to the music of the crickets. An arrow-shot away, the rumbling sea stroked the shore with gentle fingers. A shutter down the street clunked once in the faint breeze. A neighbor’s tom cat yowled its loneliness at the moon.

  Amid these external noises wandering past his ears, a presence.

  His awareness snatched for it, and it swirled away like a butterfly.

  His nose caught the sudden scent of blood. Thick. A river of it.

  His eyes snapped open. He looked about him in the dark, down at himself for the source of the smell, at Kiosé and Little Frog to check that they were still sound and whole.

  The scent was gone.

  He had not smelled such a profusion of blood since the last time he had killed, almost four years ago, a long time for a man of only twenty summers. His body was whole. No blood on the floor or anywhere in sight.

  He sniffed deeply. Only the smell of wood, tatami mats, and a wisp of smoke from the fire pit.

  A chill brushed the back of his neck.

  Kiosé moaned in her sleep like a lost soul.

  The chill had not been the warning of danger. More like the touch of winter, an imminent frost. He frowned.

  Kiosé moaned breathlessly again, “… touch … me.” Her hand blindly cast about the bed for him.

  Ken’ishi often sought the pleasures of her flesh, but her yearning for him sometimes felt so needful that he found himself drawing away.

  “Don’t … touch me!” she groaned.

  His annoyance evaporated into pity for her. What must it have been like for her to lay with so many of the village men?

  He crossed to her and knelt at her head, reaching under the mosquito net to stroke her hair. She quieted with a deep sigh. He waited a few more moments, then stood up and left her asleep, taking Silver Crane with him out into the night.

  The moon had just risen like a gleaming coin. A hum vibrated through his left hand, the hand that gripped Silver Crane’s scabbard, up through his arm, becoming a spreading warmth across his chest. His heart sensed the warmth and sped its rhythm. The shower of celestial light cast black shadows at the feet of nearby houses, the inn down the street, the constabulary office. Beyond the houses, the white froth of Hakata Bay washed across the beach, around the legs of the docks where the villagers’ fishing boats floated against their moorings.

  Aoka village lay as silent as a sleeping dog. Larger villages or areas threatened by ronin bandits often employed night watchmen who roamed the streets with lanterns, but Aoka was too small. A mere two hundred-odd fishermen, tradesmen, and townspeople comprised the village, and Ken’ishi the only samurai.

  The hum intensified, and the smell of blood crept back into his awareness. He raised his nose into the breeze, but no matter which way he turned, he could not discern the source, as if a great slaughter had been wreaked here. The scent subsided again, maddeningly. Out here, bathed in the glimmering quiet of night, the whisper brushed closer against his mind.

  The sand of the moon-frosted beach skritched under his feet until he found a suitable spot a hundred paces or so from the village. He knelt, resting the sword across his knees. A deep breath. Reaching for the Void.

  Crabs scuttled around him, sidelong blurs of motion along the pale sand. For a moment several of them looked as if they were moving en masse, like warriors to a battle.

  And then—

  Blood. Gore so thick and heavy and drowning it flooded over him like a hot waterfall.

  He gasped against it, through it, sucking its coppery stench into his nose.

  It filled his ears like warm water, spilled into his mouth, choking him, washed a deep, crimson haze over his vision. He coughed, retched, gasped for air, confusion crashing through him. Muffled by the unclean deluge, the whispering became a murmur.

  He snatched Silver Crane free of its scabbard and whirled into the high guard stance, wiping at his eyes with his wrists, but feeling no wetness.

  Something bowled into him, a heavy weight smashing into his back, driving him forward a step. He spun and slashed, but the feathery blade sliced only empty air. Another blow, this time from the front, like fists plowing into his ribcage, drove him back two steps. He slashed again, unable to g
limpse any attacker.

  Another blow from the side.

  He bit back a cry of pain.

  Another blow.

  Another.

  Another.

  Pounding.

  Pounding.

  He thudded onto the sand, all breath expunged from him.

  His mouth and nose full of blood that was somehow not his own, as if it were pouring into him from outside.

  His eyes burning.

  Like a pure, clear temple bell, a thought reverberated through his mind.

  My life.

  He slashed blindly.

  He caught a glimpse of a wispy shape streaking toward him, an instant before he felt another blow. A wispy shape with a contorted face, the embodiment of rage and blame.

  My history.

  The hilt in his hand had become a thrumming vibration. More ghostly shapes pummeled through him, pale faces barely glimpsed.

  Honor. Courage. Slaughter. Glory.

  Ken’ishi’s body suddenly was made entirely of hard, sharp lines. No more softness of mortal flesh, or even of bone. Only steel. With a single, supple razor-edge. A thing—a being—created for the sole purpose of taking life. Infused with the power of those whose lives it had taken. And through those lives, to bring power to the man strong enough to claim it. A man of honor, of courage. Of lineage.

  Through lakes of blood, I glide.

  He stiffened, his body curving painfully backward, his legs feeling as if they were bound tightly together with thick silken ropes.

  Through halls of power, I pass.

  The sensation of his hard edges and contours gouging into the sand, scoring the surface of a nearby rock with his edge undulled.

  Through screams of the dying, I conquer.

  The memory of his razor-sharp edge slicing through untold mountains of muscle, forests of wet bone, rivers of pungent entrails. The courage of a man holding firm his hilt, courage flowing like ki, lifeforce itself, strength, into the man, out of the man, into the sword, out of the sword, in a rhythm that fed upon itself.