Sword of the Ronin (The Ronin Trilogy)

by Travis Heermann

  Through countless generations of men, I journey.

  How many men had claimed this hilt? Some of them wise, strong, brave; some of them ambitious, vengeful, petty. How many more would try to claim it, after (Ken’ishi’s?) bones had long become ash and dust? Who was this mere mortal man who now thought to possess such power? Who dared?

  Rivers of blood spill behind me, before me. It is destiny. A river of death unto the end of the world.

  His mind snapped free of its brittle confines. He looked down at the fragile body of a young man, alone on a moon-bathed beach, clutching the hilt of a sword in both hands. The point back against his throat. A deft twist, a tiny thrust, a little pull. So effortless to lay the man’s throat open like a butchered pig’s. And then, perhaps it would find a more worthy master.

  “No!” The raw sound of the young man’s voice crashed through the walls of time.

  The rumble of ebbing tide vibrates through tempered rigidity. The waters of the man’s life recede into the vastness of time. A rigid razor-edge touches the most vulnerable of points. How many throats have I laid open with the slightest touch?

  “No!”

  Ken’ishi became a man again, had hands again. He strained against the pressure that held the point of the blade to his throat.

  Who are you to claim my power?

  “I am Ken’ishi! Son of a great warrior!”

  A great warrior.

  The thoughts came without words, only perceptions, emotions, images. Ken’ishi sensed careful neutrality, without any hint of mocking. “You have served me this long! You belong to me now!”

  Amusement. Perhaps the man belongs to me.

  “Many times, I have sensed you sleeping. You helped me once, in a moment when I would have died otherwise. Why turn on me now?”

  Because time means nothing to the spirit of steel. Perhaps you were worthy then. Perhaps you will be worthy then. Are you worthy now? Death is coming. Death is past. Death is now. I may soon have an old master. I may earlier have a new one.

  “What must I do? You know the story of my family! Tell me!”

  Amusement at foolishness. The man knows nothing. I follow the bloodline.

  “What bloodline?” The long-sought answer to Ken’ishi’s greatest question—who was he?—seemed to taunt him, just out of his grasp.

  The man will know. In the endless river of time, he may already know. But not from me. It is destiny.

  “When will I know? How?”

  The future and the past are meaningless. Only this timeless instant matters. It is all that exists.

  Just as quickly, the voice, the hum of power, the stench of blood, all gone.

  Ken’ishi lay with Silver Crane in his hand, clean and dry, the sand gritty against his back, the stars in the heavens—perhaps his ancestors staring down upon him—cold, aloof. The sword was quiet now, but quiet like a new-discovered mountain path. The path was shrouded in forest, perhaps still difficult to find, but he knew it was there.

  The rivulet of real blood trickling down the side of his throat told him this had not all been just a dream.

  The kami of the sword had spoken to him. He would never be the same again.

  Hell is not punishment; it’s training.

  — Shunryu Suzuki

  The bound ronin snarled and spat a bloody wad at Yasutoki’s feet. The deck shifted rhythmically under them, scents of wood, resin, rope, and stagnant brine filling the hold of this Koryo vessel. The hull creaked and brushed against the pier as the tide came in. This particular dock of Hakata Bay was far enough removed from the trafficked areas that no one would hear any screams. Besides, at this time of night, even sailors were mostly asleep.

  Under the voluminous basket hat that obscured his face, Yasutoki teased his mustache. Loose dark robes, worn Chinese-style, obscured the profusion of deadly weapons secreted on his body. “I am considering having you sliced into chum.”

  “So kill me then!” the ronin gasped. His hands and elbows were bound behind him to a stout wooden club wedged between his elbows.

  Yasutoki glanced at Fang Shi. “Perhaps we should oblige his wishes, Fang Shi. Tenderize him for the sharks.”

  The enormous brute loomed over and laid a powerful kick against the side of the ronin’s head. The man slammed into a stack of barrels before sprawling onto his back.

  Fang Shi looked back at Yasutoki. “I kill, Master?”

  Yasutoki shook his head and stroked his narrow beard.

  The ronin had restrained any cry of pain. His one unswollen eye blazed with defiance as he glared at Fang Shi and Yasutoki. “Cut me free, and let me die like a man!”

  Yasutoki hovered as still as a cobra waiting to strike. “No one steals from me and lives.”

  The ronin snarled, “How was I to know that money-changer worked for Green Tiger?”

  “So you know who I am.”

  “Who else could you be? Green Tiger, the Lord of the Underworld!”

  The level of fear and reverence given to Yasutoki’s secret identity, Green Tiger, always pleased him. He smiled inside his basket hat. “What is your name?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I once had an oni in my employ, until some unwashed ronin with too much fortune for his own good killed my poor Hakamadare. Ah, you’ve heard of him, have you? Then you know I am not a man who forgives. Tell me your name so that when you die, I can send an oni to hound you into Hell.”

  The ronin laughed. “I already walk the road to Hell. Perhaps your oni and I will bow to each other, have some saké, and go whoring.”

  Yasutoki studied the man again. Unshaven, unkempt, filthy, stinking of old sweat and piss. The man had long ago abandoned the samurai topknot and let his hair fall in bedraggled strings around his face, crusted with blood and the detritus of his week-long captivity. But there was also a suggestion of pride long lost. He had not always been a bandit, but what else could a warrior do with no master and no wars to fight? After fifty years of peace, what were all those bored warriors to do except fight among themselves or prey upon the weak?

  “How did you do it?” Yasutoki said. “The guards saw nothing.”

  The ronin laughed, a harsh, ragged sound. “Would Green Tiger give up his secrets?”

  Fang Shi buried his meaty heel in the ronin’s belly. There was a muffled crack of bone.

  The ronin curled into a ball, gasping, hacking.

  “That was a rib.” Yasutoki waited for the ronin to regain the ability to speak; he was nothing if not patient. When the man’s gasps subsided into ragged breathing, Yasutoki stood over him. “What did you do with the gold?”

  “Spent … it …”

  “All of it?”

  “Debts …”

  Yasutoki laughed. “You stole from me to pay debts?”

  “Not all of it. I had a good time.”

  “You must have had a very good time.”

  The ronin was regaining control of his breath. “I made many a whore smile and many a saké brewer re-count his stock.”

  “You didn’t gamble it away?” If he had, then Yasutoki might have at least have already reclaimed some of it through his gambling dens. Most such men, in the depths of such a binge, spewed money like blood from a severed head.

  “Gambling is for fools. The house always wins.”

  Yasutoki found himself not wishing to kill this man anymore. At least for now. “What is your name?”

  “Call me Masoku.”

  “Who was your family?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Yasutoki nodded. This ronin did not appear to cling to his past. Such entanglements could create mixed loyalties.

  Fang Shi fidgeted and cracked his thick knuckles. “I kill, Master?”

  Yasutoki shook his head. “You see, Masoku, how eager my man is? I can scarcely restrain him.”

  Fang Shi sighed like a child denied his favorite game. His broad, naked brow furrowed.

  The ronin’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “I’m in your de
bt for such boundless restraint.”

  “My, but you do have a serpent’s tongue. And you are, indeed, in my debt. For quite a sum.”

  “How long was I in that barrel?”

  “A week. Does it matter?”

  “Let me stand on my feet like a man before you take my head.”

  “What makes you think I’m going to take your head?”

  “Why should I think you won’t?”

  “The taking of heads is a warrior’s business, a pleasantry exchanged by ‘honorable’ men. I could just as easily gouge out a couple of loops of your entrails, hamstring you, and leave you in the sun. Bury you to the neck in a cistern of shit. Slice you into fish bait and salt the cuts. Let Fang Shi here pound your arms and legs flat with his hammer, one extremity at a time. Stuff your mouth with fetid—”

  “I get the idea!”

  Yasutoki knelt before him in an instant. The needle that had been concealed in his palm hovered a finger’s breadth from the ronin’s good eye. Even in the dimness of below-decks, the black stain of poison was evident on its tip. “Listen to me, Masoku. You are correct that you already walk the road to Hell. I own the road to Hell!”

  Masoku did not flinch, did not blink. Most other men would have quailed in fear.

  “Perhaps you would like the opportunity to walk this road a bit longer, put off the inevitable a bit longer. I have plans coming to fruition, you see, and I need swords. Yours was a passing fine blade. Of course, I examined the make of it during your stay in the barrel. Saburo Kunimune was a renowned swordsmith in Bizen. The Shimazu clan would not entrust such a weapon to a man of no ability. Unless you stole the blade from someone more worthy.” His gaze bored into Masoku, drilling for truth, but the ronin said nothing.

  “At this moment, I am inclined to give you the opportunity to repay what you stole from me. It was a sizable sum, so by my calculation, I now own you for the length of your stroll to Hell. I would prefer to regain some value over time, but I would also be content to take a one-time repayment from your guts. What say you?”

  The ronin’s eye flickered with surprise, and with calculations. His breathing slowed. He licked his lips, crusted with old and fresh blood. “I would say, let us go drinking and whoring on this road together. Master.”

  The season’s first melon

  Clutched in its arms —

  The child sleeps

  — Issa

  The afternoon rain sprayed the world in sheets, turning the streets outside into a morass. Ken’ishi settled himself onto a cushion on Norikage’s rear veranda overlooking the modest garden. The emerald moss coating the stones seemed to grow richer with every passing moment, the grasses to open their throats. It was the end of the summer rainy season, and there was little respite from the humid air, even at night.

  Norikage settled his reedy form nearby, brushing his robes around his feet, then stroked his thin beard with a bony hand. “I am fortunate to have returned from the woodcutters’ house again before this awful rain. Is Chiba still trussed up in my office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we should let him go.”

  Ken’ishi stiffened. “What?”

  Norikage sighed. “Poor Miwa is terrified. She will not speak against him. She is afraid that if Chiba is punished, his brothers will kill her or her brothers.”

  “You know as well as I that he is the likely culprit.”

  “Indeed, but if she will not speak publicly against him, we may as well let him go. There were no other witnesses.”

  Ken’ishi shook his head with a sigh. “I will release him later.”

  Norikage smiled. “Oh, do take your time about it. Stay a while. Hana will be bringing refreshments momentarily. She made some tasty bean cakes yesterday.”

  Rainwater sluiced over the eaves. Ken’ishi breathed deep of the scent of rain-washed foliage. With thoughts of Chiba melting away at the sound of the downpour, his mind turned to the visions of blood and violence of the night before. His body still ached as if he had been beaten with clubs, but his skin was free of bruises.

  Norikage said, “You have the look of something troubling you.”

  “My master from when I was a child taught me many things. The ways of the sword and the bow, how to speak to the animals of the earth and sky, how to listen to the voices of the kami.”

  Norikage leaned forward, cocking his head.

  “Last night, the kami of Silver Crane spoke to me. It has never done so before.”

  Norikage raised his eyebrows. “What did it say?”

  “It was unlike any kami that ever touched me before. Most kami are thoughtless, capricious things, flowing over the earth, through it, around it, moment by moment, like pinpricks of thought. This was almost like speaking to another person, but not a person, something with thoughts that go far beyond, travel farther than a human being can, as if it sees the past and the future. I couldn’t understand much of what it said.”

  Norikage studied him. “Fascinating.”

  “It was cold and cruel, but powerful. Have you ever heard of such kami within a sword before?”

  “The Imperial Court’s augurers, the onmyouji, speak of such things, but only in the quietest of whispers. I never pursued such knowledge. My attentions were more base than those lofty realms—the under-robes of princesses and such things.”

  “I felt this sense of its history, bigger than the world itself, or so it seemed, but that history was hidden.”

  “I heard those in the court say that many of the ancient, sacred Imperial regalia possess such spirits, growing in power from their long march through the hands of many emperors. There are few realms more charged with lust, intrigue, and cruelty than the Imperial Court. Perhaps some kami feed on such feelings.”

  Norikage’s serving woman appeared through the rice-paper door and knelt beside them with a tray of tea and cakes. Hana was a bit older than Ken’ishi, in her mid-twenties, with a solid, working woman’s carriage and a pleasing face. With deft hands, she poured them each a cup. Just as silently and efficiently, she withdrew into the house. Norikage cast a lascivious glance after her.

  Ken’ishi lifted a cup and took a deep breath of the earthy steam. The green tea from nearby Mount Takatori was exceptionally aromatic. “It was good of you to offer her a position after Yuto’s death.”

  Norikage sipped his tea and shrugged. “A man gets tired of living alone.”

  “She is pretty.”

  “She is passing acceptable.”

  “What about her family? Can she go back to them?”

  “I have asked her about them, but she is tight-lipped. She mentioned her father briefly, but …”

  “You haven’t yet bedded her.”

  Norikage frowned. “She’ll eventually bow to my will. Yuto’s death remains too fresh for her, I suppose.”

  “Your patience is gracious.”

  “Indeed. I even bought Yuto’s fishing boat from her.”

  “Wasn’t it damaged in the storm?”

  “Not badly. It is perfectly serviceable.”

  “What do you want with a fishing boat?”

  Norikage shrugged. “A man never knows the vicissitudes of life. Recreation, perhaps. Perhaps I shall one day give up the luxurious life of Aoka’s administrator and become a fisherman.”

  Ken’ishi chuckled. “You have never lifted a fishing pole, much less hoisted a net.” His gaze was drawn to movement outside the wooden fence opposite the veranda, a faint scrabbling in the corner.

  “Perhaps I’ll have slaves, or at least henchmen. They can hoist the nets for me. And Hana can manage my pole.”

  Movement across the garden snagged Ken’ishi’s eye. A small arm reached under the garden fence, questing.

  Norikage followed Ken’ishi’s gaze. “What are you looking at?”

  “A visitor.”

  Norikage squinted. “My eyes are not so good. A tanuki?”

  Ken’ishi smiled. “I hardly think we would see a tanuki during the day. At least not
in its everyday shape.”

  “A fox?”

  “No, this is not an animal.”

  A round pink head tufted with black fuzz thrust itself into the hole under the fence. Small, hoarse grunting noises. The child’s brow wrinkled as he wriggled. Two arms now, grabbing for purchase at the fence.

  The little boy’s progress halted. His lips pursed as he realized that he was stuck, but he redoubled his efforts.

  “Is that Little Frog?”

  Ken’ishi smiled.

  “In this rain!”

  The diminutive body squirted through the opening with a wet slurp. Little Frog rolled over and stood, his meager clothes drenched and muddy. The little black tuft of topknot on the crown of his head looked like the withered stalk of a melon. He took a deep breath and wiped the rain and mud from his face. When he spotted the two men on the veranda, his eyes lit up and he jumped up with glee. “Da!”

  Ken’ishi’s smile faltered only for an instant.

  Little Frog toddled through the puddles, giggling his hoarse giggle at the splashes.

  Norikage said, “Is his voice getting better?”

  Ken’ishi shook his head. The boy was stricken with a croak for a voice, and he loved to splash through puddles, hopping like a frog.

  Little Frog threw himself against the edge of the veranda, thrust his little body up onto it, then hoisted a leg up. Water splashed off him. Ken’ishi grabbed the boy’s arm and pulled him up. Little Frog’s face was absurdly serious as he sat beside Ken’ishi and reached for his teacup with an expectant expression.

  Norikage laughed. “Some tea to warm the belly, little man?”

  Little Frog nodded once. “Mm.”

  Norikage called into the house. “Hana, one more cup, please!” Then to Little Frog, “Does your mother know where you are?”

  Little Frog nodded again, once. “Mm.”

  “Somehow, I am skeptical.” Norikage smiled.

  Little Frog looked up at Ken’ishi, beaming, assuming his posture.

  A look of pity flickered across Norikage’s face. “Are you going to teach him?”

  “Teach him?”

  “Samurai ways.”

  Ken’ishi frowned. “And make him ronin like me?” He had been the constable of Aoka village for almost four years. He thanked the gods and Buddhas that no one had ever questioned his and Norikage’s arrangement. Norikage was not Ken’ishi’s lord, just a bookish man who needed a sword to back up his position, a man who had given Ken’ishi a place to exist.