Sword of the Ronin (The Ronin Trilogy)

by Travis Heermann

  “Would that be worse than the lot he’s been born into?”

  “I’m not … I don’t …”

  Norikage’s eyes narrowed, warning Ken’ishi not to say it in front of the boy. “Look at him. Some boys need a man to teach them, some more so than others, such as this one. You said you had a teacher, someone who taught you warrior ways. And you were a stripling like Little Frog once. Who was this teacher of yours?”

  Ken’ishi’s earliest memories were of the lonely mountain cave, long-fingered gray hands giving him bits of raw fish to eat, and rice balls and wild plums. Curling up on a straw mat as the daylight diminished in the mouth of the cave, where Kaa’s tall, spindly form sat silhouetted by the sunset, deep in meditation.

  Little Frog reached for a teacup again. “Da, tea please.”

  Ken’ishi handed his teacup to the boy. Little Frog took it in both hands and sipped in perfect adult style. Ken’ishi did not know if the boy was his son. He could be the seed of half the men in the village.

  Little Frog slurped his tea and grinned.

  Ken’ishi said, “My teacher was a tengu. He raised me from a child smaller than this.”

  “A tengu!”

  “I stopped telling people that when I grew tired of that reaction. Most people think I am either mad or a liar.”

  “My uncle said he saw a tengu once, on a pilgrimage to Mount Kurama. It tricked him into believing it was a mendicant monk, and then stole his food. There were legends of a whole tribe of tengu living atop Mount Kurama. It was a holy place.”

  Hana came out with a fresh cup, poured tea from the pot for Ken’ishi, and hurried back inside just as quickly. She gave Little Frog a quick smile before she departed.

  Norikage said, “It is a harsh thing for him, to be born under such bad kharma.”

  Ken’ishi frowned. Was it any worse than being an orphan with only one clue to his real past? Or being raised by a teacher whose chief instrument of instruction was a bamboo switch? Kaa had been wise beyond Ken’ishi’s young understanding, unfathomably skilled with a blade, and crafty, but a tengu was not a human being.

  He looked at Little Frog and thought of Kiosé, then back through his journey from the north, to the days when he and Kaa had spent enough hours with a bokken to turn a young boy’s hands raw with blisters. He studied Little Frog and considered teaching the boy as Kaa had done. But Ken’ishi was not ready to be a teacher. There was still too much for him to learn, and he could not learn it here. He had a position. The village needed him. Norikage needed him. Kiosé needed him.

  Something stung him inside, and he felt Norikage’s gaze.

  Ken’ishi said, “Even a shogun cannot control the circumstances of his birth.”

  Silver Crane’s presence, resting in the sword rack inside the foyer of Norikage’s house, suddenly reached out to him. Is it worse to be born into expectations and fail to meet them, or to have none at all? To have hope and lose it, or to have never felt the sting?

  Ken’ishi’s frown deepened. He sometimes wondered what sins Little Frog had committed in a previous life to be born the bastard son of a common whore, or the bastard son of a penniless ronin.

  Little Frog’s threadbare rags dripped a puddle around him, but he didn’t shiver. As a boy growing up with his teacher on the side of that far northern mountain, Ken’ishi had learned to tolerate cold. Little Frog had the same grit. Hana came back outside and draped the boy in a blanket. The boy allowed it, and bowed his head to her in thanks, grinning.

  They sat in silence for a time. Little Frog slurped his tea and sighed with satisfaction. Ken’ishi cradled the warm earthen cup in his hands.

  A distant knock echoed through the house. Ken’ishi could hear Hana shuffling through the house to answer the knock. Kiosé’s voice, quiet but half-frantic. Hana’s reassurance. Kiosé’s sigh of relief. Two sets of footsteps shuffling through the house.

  Kiosé came out onto the veranda, bowing effusively. Rain dripped from strings of her hair, plastered her ragged trousers to her legs. “Excuse me, sirs.”

  Little Frog grinned and waved. “Mama!” He held his cup high.

  Her shoulders slumped with relief. She bowed again to Ken’ishi. “Thank you for bringing him with you. I was too busy working and he just disappeared, and …”

  Ken’ishi said, “It’s no trouble.”

  “He loves going with you.” A lilt to her voice, a subtle yearning.

  “He’s no trouble.”

  Kiosé held out her arms. “Come.”

  Little Frog jumped up, shedding his blanket, and ran into her arms with a happy croak.

  “You’re soaking wet! I have some fish soup at home. You like fish soup.”

  The boy twisted like a monkey and reached for Ken’ishi. “Da!”

  Ken’ishi smiled as best he could. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  Kiosé’s face brightened. “We can come again tonight, then?”

  He nodded.

  Joy bloomed in her face, making Ken’ishi squirm.

  She bowed to Norikage. “I’m sorry for your trouble. Excuse us.”

  Norikage smiled. “It’s no trouble at all.” He waved to the boy.

  Little Frog waved over his mother’s shoulder as she disappeared back into the house.

  Ken’ishi’s gaze fell to the floorboards and meandered along the wood grain. When he glanced up again, Norikage’s expression bore a strange mixture of pity and reproof.

  “She certainly behaves as if the boy is yours,” he said.

  “She wants me to claim him. I know that.”

  “It is more than that. She believes it to be true.”

  “I don’t see how she can know.”

  Norikage pursed his lip and stroked his chin. He sighed.

  Ken’ishi said, “What is it?”

  “Forgive me if this stretches the bounds of our friendship, but … you don’t love her.”

  Ken’ishi stroked his cup. “I am fond of her.”

  “She is so much happier these days, since you came to the village.”

  “She’s not a whore anymore.”

  “You forget that I was raised in the Imperial Court. Survival there depends upon the ability to read people like a scroll, to perceive what is underneath the ink of the characters. She’s not yet twenty, but there’s something of an old woman’s gaze in her eyes.”

  “Perhaps we should be drinking saké instead of tea.”

  “I shall say this, and then we shall never speak of it again unless you choose to. I see the way she looks at you, the way her eyes follow you, the way she sighs. And I pity her, because there is something of you that she’ll never have. It is as if you wear armor, even when you’re out there on the beach half-naked, practicing your sword techniques. Your spirit is closed and hard, like the shell of a clam.”

  “It doesn’t do for a warrior to oblige his heart. It distracts from discipline.”

  “Ken’ishi, you and I have known each other for almost four years. Why have you never mentioned anything of your life before coming here? Only a few vague comments. Nevertheless, I am certain there was a girl.”

  The earthen teacup withstood Ken’ishi’s tightening grip. Some memories he clung to like an old pair of trousers, habitually slipping into them, but they were trousers too soiled and fraught with holes to be useful or proper. Memories of someone else, who had once stoked his heart to a brighter fire. How many nights had he lay here on his futon beside Kiosé and stared into the rafters with another’s name a mere half-breath from his lips? And that name turned to a half-snarl, turned his guts into a roiling pit, when he thought of the hands of another man upon her, a man who was, long since by now, her husband. How many children had she borne him since? Two? Three? Had she accepted her duty with happiness and forgotten the penniless ronin who loved—

  His exasperation with his own thoughts trod its familiar path.

  “Some people can let that kind of pain go,” Norikage said, “but you do not. You clench it tight around you li
ke a breastplate.”

  “You overstep.”

  “Hear me out. Priests and monks have a saying: the past and the future make men suffer. I saw people at court play at love like a game of kemari. The anguish of broken hearts ran in runnels down those sacred corridors tainted with the scent of lust. I played the game with the wrong girl, and it landed me in exile.”

  Ken’ishi’s shoulders tensed, and his belly clenched as if drawn tight by the same spring. “It is not a game. Do you have a point to make?”

  “Do not cling to it forever. As long as you wear that breastplate, you do not have to look at that pain.”

  “Why would I want to look at it again?”

  “If you do not look at it, and choose to let it go, it will fester. And you will destroy the spirit of someone who cares about you. Her spirit is already fragile.”

  “Such words surprise me from a man who has at times claimed to have no heart, a man who aims to have a helpless widow in his bed.”

  “A man can lament his own folly. And as for Hana, it is not just my little warrior doing the thinking.”

  “Are you saying that I should marry Kiosé?”

  “Not at all. You have nothing of wealth or position to gain. But the way you embrace her with one arm and keep her at arm’s length with the other hurts her. That is cruel. She dotes on you because she loves you. It is wrong to accept that with coldness.”

  Ken’ishi looked off through the rain, wishing that the wetness would not ruin his bowstring or rot his scabbard. Practicing weapons came easier than understanding people. “Thank you for the tea.”

  Before Ken’ishi could stand, Norikage said, “Think about what I’ve said.”

  Ken’ishi nodded.

  “Have you finished reading the book of poems by Ri Haku?”

  “Fear not, I have been studying. I must say that sometimes you surprise me, Norikage. You have never struck me as the poetic sort.”

  “The Chinese classics have long been out of favor at court, but there are still schools in Kyoto that teach them. Of course, a randy lad must master the tools of love, so I applied myself with vigor. There are few things that make a woman swoon and moisten with desire faster than poetry.

  “For a poet, Ri Haku lived a life much like a ronin, using his brush for a sword. But he loved wine too much. My master always said that one should not love anything in this world too much.” Norikage paused, looking out at the rain. “Perhaps you should take his advice.”

  Ken’ishi opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

  In the park a crow awakes

  And cries out under the full moon,

  And I awake and sob

  For the years that are gone.

  — The Love Poems of Marichiko

  Lady Otomo no Kazuko sighed as she smoothed her soft robes over her legs. Morning birds trilled just outside her window, along with a chorus of higher, smaller voices, a clutch of hungry hatchlings with their throats upraised for their attentive mother. The nest had been built among the eaves of the tile roof, outside the highest chamber of the castle. For a week now she had listened to the hatchlings crying for their sustenance, and the songs of the parents as they came and went, while she sat here in her chambers, often alone after her husband’s departure.

  Her handmaiden, Hatsumi, had wanted to “knock the filthy, noisy things out of there,” but Kazuko had refused. Perhaps they were an auspicious omen.

  Kazuko had done her duty for today. Her husband’s seed lay deposited within her. The sweat on her skin cooled, along with the memory of his hands upon her.

  The cup of special fertility tea cooled in her hands as the squawkings of naked, blind swallow children filled her reverie. This was a new kind of tea, commissioned from a renowned midwife who served the Hojo clan in faraway Kyoto. It was said that if anyone knew the secrets of conceiving a healthy heir, she did. Kazuko sighed again. This tea could hardly be less effective than everything else Lord Tsunetomo had tried.

  She heard movement just outside the door, moments before it slid open, and Tsunetomo’s face appeared. His eyes darted from her face to the cup in her hands; then, the slightest expression of relief disappeared behind his stoic features. Putting down her cup, she turned on her knees and bowed to him.

  Although she would not call him handsome, he was far from ugly, and his eyes were deep and insightful—gentle at times, hard and unyielding at others. Her father, Lord Nishimuta no Jiro, could certainly have found a worse husband for her, even though she had been too sick with love for another to appreciate Tsunetomo at the time. “I am sorry to intrude upon your tea, my dear. I have received a letter from the Governor. He has invited all the lords of Kyushu to attend the naming ceremony of his son next month in Dazaifu.”

  She maintained her composure, and even managed a bit of happiness. The chance to leave the castle and visit the island capital was a welcome one. She often felt like a cloistered Buddhist nun, shut up within this stone prison. Summoning her best smile, she said, “That is wonderful news, Husband.”

  Tsunetomo’s face flushed, and his gaze lingered on her face. “You and Lady Yukino will see to the arrangements, yes?”

  “Of course, Husband. I will speak to her as soon as I can. The arrangements for the trip will be made with all speed.” Perhaps she might even indulge in a game of Go with Yukino as a respite from worries about quickening her womb. Lady Yukino was ten years older than Kazuko, but had married the younger brother, Tsunemori. Kazuko’s position as wife of the elder brother, a man more than twenty years her senior, sometimes created tensions of etiquette and status, but in almost four years, she and Lady Yukino had always handled matters amicably.

  “Of course, of course, I trust you to handle it.” He glanced overlong at her teacup again.

  A sizzle of anger, a dash of despair.

  In almost four years, her womb, chosen for its youth and her father’s influence in central Kyushu, had yet to grant him an heir. She bit back a stab of recrimination upon herself. Perhaps this was the will of the gods, punishment for the fact that she had not been a virgin on her wedding night. She had desecrated herself. How many endless nights had she lain beside her husband, wishing that it had been another man who had just bedded her? How many nights had she yearned for those moments of ecstasy she had only experienced with him? Certainly, her husband’s lovemaking was gentle enough, strong enough, frequent enough to give her some pleasure, but never the flaring, flaming convulsions of bliss that had torn her apart on one single night so long ago.

  The young ronin still haunted her dreams, so handsome, so strong, with his wild hair, the strange mixture of innocence and earnestness in his eyes, fierce one moment and kind the next, and the deep devotion between him and his rusty-red dog.

  As she did every day, she wondered briefly of Ken’ishi’s whereabouts. Was he alive? Had he been killed in some meaningless brawl? Starved in the wilderness? Or had he found service with a samurai lord?

  So many regrets.

  The rigid mask of control on Ken’ishi’s face at the banquet where her father had announced her betrothal to Lord Tsunetomo. The expressions of surprise and ecstasy on his face that night she had stolen out of her father’s house and come to him. The forlorn despair and anger as he fled before sunrise, on pain of arrest.

  How many days had she spent lost in yearning for him, worry for him, regret for him?

  And her womb would not take seed and quicken with her husband’s heir.

  Tsunetomo awkwardly shifted his blockish shoulders and cleared his throat, opened his mouth to say something, glancing at her tea, then simply bowed to her and backed out of the room, sliding the door closed behind him.

  Kazuko sipped her tea. If only she could speak to birds, as Ken’ishi claimed he could—she had practically called him liar then, another regret among many—if she could, perhaps the swallows might tell her the secrets of bearing children.

  The cicada’s cry

  Foretells no sign of

  How
soon it must die.

  — Basho

  Yasutoki leaned back and stroked his chin, concealing his pleasure at his dinner companion’s discomfiture. The serving maid had already brought small bowls of fish soup and rice, with several courses still to come. The Bamboo Snow was one of the finest inns in Hakata—and one of the most private. This quiet third-floor dining room overlooked a pond and beautifully manicured garden, where a nightingale’s melody echoed from one of the meticulously trimmed trees.

  Such a conversation as the one coming would have been impossible unless he owned the entire establishment and everyone in it.

  The Mongol sniffed the fish soup and grimaced. A creaking boulder of twisted leather and horsehair, taut with muscle and distrust, he never let his glance slide too far away from Yasutoki. “When is the meat coming?”

  “Fear not, my friend, there will be blood and flesh aplenty. How long has it been since we last met? Three years? Four?”

  “Not long enough. Count yourself lucky I haven’t already taken your narrow head.”

  “Is that any way to treat a fellow servant of the Great Khan?”

  The Mongol grunted. “I fail to fathom why the Great Khan covets these islands. The women are too skinny, the liquor makes mare’s piss taste like honey nectar, and there are no open places to ride.”

  Yasutoki slid his hands into his sleeves, restraining his smirk as the Mongol tensed. Memory of their last meeting—when his deftly thrown poison needle had left the Mongol in a somewhat ignominious position—doubtless made the horse warrior more civil than he would otherwise have been. Yasutoki hoped the Mongol was wearing different trousers than those in which the poison had caused him to empty his bowels. “Nevertheless, we have a task, don’t we? We are loyal to the Khan.”

  The Mongol tossed the bowl of fish soup out the window. “I estimate that you’re loyal to the thought of the gold and women he promised you when he finally claims these pitiful islands for the Golden Horde.”