Sword of the Ronin (The Ronin Trilogy)

by Travis Heermann

  And there was another mass of ships behind them, black hulls cutting the waves, bamboo-ribbed sails puffed by the wind.

  The deck under the boy’s feet lurched, and the steersman cursed.

  He hoped he and his people would get away from the people chasing them, because if they didn’t, he would die. He didn’t want his grandmother to die, or the pretty ladies who waited on him. Or his uncle, who stood at the prow with his glimmering blade pointing at the sky. His uncle’s sword was pretty, so sharp and shiny. His uncle told him it was special because of the pattern on the blade that looked like feathers. The morning sun turned the steel into a streak of fire. The boy reached toward it. He wanted a sword so that he could fight, too, when the bad men came, but swords were so heavy.

  Samurai archers lined the rear deck, the lacquer of their armor gleaming, sparkling like eyes in candlelight, the silken laces and threads like daubs of paint. Some of them wore scary, metal menpo over their faces in the likeness of tigers or demons or gods. Their bows were striped with different colors, and the feathers of their arrows fresh and new.

  Distant cries reverberated over the waves, commands.

  High in the sky, he noticed little black lines moving, like tiny threads, or a flock of birds, and the lines were coming closer, arcing down, and then the screaming started, and the sharp, pattering thumping of something striking the ship, tearing the sails. An arrow almost as tall as he was quivered in the deck at his feet.

  His grandmother rushed out and clutched him to her. He could feel her heart beating against him, the warmth of her tears in his hair and cold rage in her voice, but not directed toward him. He loved his grandmother, but he wanted to see what was happening outside, and then, strangely, he could, as if he had become a gull sitting on the yard arm of a sail. The arrows sliced into the samurai. The archers from ships all around him returned fire, storms of arrows flowing back and forth like flocks of birds. Crimson trickled across decks. The ships in pursuit, with their own flapping banners drawing nearer and nearer. Crashing froth and salt spray surrounding the lurching ship. The steersman, bristling with arrows, clutching at the rudder with his last breath, a replacement rushing forward, only to die in the next volley. Ships meandered out of formation, their steersmen dead, sideswiping hulls, ribbed sails tearing into each other. A fleet tumbling into disarray, caught in the grip of invisible tides, pulling, surging.

  His uncle roaring a challenge toward the enemy, two arrows embedded in his armor, great mane of black hair flying in the wind.

  Enemy ships drawing nearer, nearer, swarms of arrows buzzing back and forth, until hulls came together and blades came free and snarling warriors charged over the gunwales.

  The boy’s grandmother clutched him tighter and tighter. She had a dagger in her hand, and she stroked his face with sadness in her eyes, not ferocity. The pretty ladies wept and clutched each other, and he felt sorry for them for being so scared. His fingers squeezed into his grandmother’s Buddhist nun’s habit. She was talking to him, her voice hard and crackling, like the blackened scales of seared fish.

  Blood and brine and screams washed over the decks, spilled under doors, through cracks, dripped in tiny droplets like jewels onto the powdered, white faces of the pretty ladies.

  Then, a calm settled over the ravaged ship. The clamor of battle drew farther off. The smell of smoke drifted in from afar, mixing with the immediate stench of blood and other even more unpleasant odors. His uncle stood in the doorway of the cabin. Blood spattered his face, dripped from his wild mane and the tip of his sword, caked his fingers around the ray-skin hilt. He shared a long look with the boy’s grandmother. Grandmother nodded, then stood with the boy on her arm.

  A terrible understanding dawned across the innocent faces of the pretty ladies. Then they wiped their tears and bowed, foreheads to the floor. Grandmother stepped outside the cabin, and the morning sea breeze was cool on the boy’s face, ruffling loose a few strands from his tightly tied hair. The fleet of ships lay in ruin like leaves upturned on the waves, burning hulls and sails shadowing the sky with soot and ash, waves crested by red foam washing over flotsam of armored backs and staring dead faces, splintered banners like those on his ship tossed on the waves.

  In this long war, the boy had already seen much death. It no longer sickened him. He hugged his grandmother tight, and her body felt like wood beneath her nun’s habit.

  Enemy vessels were converging on the boy’s ship, more bows and blades on the decks ready for slaughter. Everyone here was bloody, weary, wounded. And still the enemy came.

  His uncle walked to the prow of the ship, slung the blood from his blade and used it to cut through a rope from the massive coil at the prow. Then his uncle tied the rope around his waist and made a series of stout knots. Grandmother waited impassively for him to finish. The enemy was coming.

  Then his uncle and grandmother bowed to each other.

  Grandmother walked to the prow, squeezed him close, held his face to her chest, and stepped into nothing. He gasped as cold waves closed over his head, driving salt water up into his nose. In his grandmother’s arms, they sank amid a swarm of roaring bubbles. He reached toward the light as the embrace of the sea squeezed him tighter and tighter, pain shooting through his ears. The invisible tides dragged at him. A succession of bubbling explosions above, and more figures descended through the explosions. His uncle, with the ship’s massive anchor in his arms, plummeted past them in a swarm of bubbles, trailing blood. Pretty ladies with their silken robes billowing like diaphanous wings followed them toward the dark depths.

  The boy held his breath until he could no longer.

  * * *

  Ken’ishi’s eyes snapped open, and he gasped for breath, rolling onto his side with the taste of seawater still in his mouth.

  As breath and uneasy calm returned to him, he felt a presence nearby, and the warmth of a fire that he had not left burning last night.

  He snatched for his sword hilt, but his fingers closed around a smooth wooden shaft, not a rough, ray-skin grip. A pang of anguish. He rolled to his feet, bokken brandished.

  Hage poked his modest fire with a stick. “You sleep like a stone sometimes, old sot.”

  “You!”

  The gnarled little man grinned up at him, squatting nearby, his hair a wild mess, eyes sparkling. “Indeed, I am me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Why so hostile, old sot? I thought we were fast friends.”

  The fuzziness in Ken’ishi’s mind dispersed like chaff in a furious wind. “Four days asleep!”

  “More precisely, three nights. You must have been very tired. Much on your mind.” Hage rapped his forehead with his knuckles.

  “What did you do?”

  “Do?”

  “I came back to the village and … everything was different.”

  “What do you mean, ‘different’?”

  “Kiosé had forgotten about me. And Little Frog. Was that your doing?” The pain in Ken’ishi’s voice surprised him.

  “I would say that was your doing.”

  “Mine? I don’t have the power to make someone forget!”

  “Of course you do. People come and go throughout a person’s life. If you choose to remove yourself from a person’s life, it will happen. They will forget. Sometimes the forgetting is immediate. Sometimes it takes longer. I merely helped you get what you wanted. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Not like that!”

  “So, you wanted to hurt her then. You said you didn’t want to hurt her.”

  “But—”

  “You can’t have it both ways, old sot. Either you hurt people or you don’t. You hold onto that hurt or you don’t. You have your path. She has hers. Now she’s simply on a path that does not include you.”

  Ken’ishi squeezed his sword tighter, gritting his teeth.

  The old man shrugged. “The balance of pain in the world is still the same. But now you must swallow all of that portion yourself. Sit, have some b
reakfast, and we’ll talk about where we’re going.”

  Ken’ishi blinked as the old man’s words sunk in. “We? Go? No.”

  “Come, sit. Tell me what we’re about. Then we’ll set out. Plenty of beautiful day ahead.”

  “I said, no. I don’t need your help, Uncle.”

  “And what happens if you meet another oni like Hakamadare?”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “Who doesn’t? Are you going to club him with your stick there, or perhaps regale him with Chinese poetry?”

  “There will be fighting coming.”

  “Of that I have no doubt.”

  “I cannot drag you into that. I could die.”

  “You certainly could. Such is the life of human beings. You could slip on a wet stone today and dash out your own brains. A tree could fall on your head. You could catch a fever and expire in a raving delirium.”

  “I intend my death to serve more purpose.”

  “Oho! Planning for it, are you? Most deaths serve little purpose at all. What makes you think you’re special?”

  An invisible weight settled onto Ken’ishi’s neck, and he sighed.

  “Such burdens, the little mortal life.” Hage scooped steaming rice into a wooden bowl and offered it to Ken’ishi. “All of which are easier to bear with a full stomach.”

  Ken’ishi sat beside the fire and took the bowl. “I am samurai. I must serve. If I cannot serve a lord, I must serve mankind, even with my death.”

  “Noble intentions. So tell me, what’s the quest, old sot?”

  “Someone stole something from me.” Ken’ishi blew steam off the rice.

  “Stole what?”

  “My sword.”

  “Was it a nice sword?”

  Ken’ishi frowned at Hage’s choice of words, as if the old man were describing a flower arrangement. “When its steel is bare, it is beautiful.”

  “Oho, was it shiny? I like things that shine. Were there jewels on it? Precious gems? Gold?”

  “No, none of those things.”

  “So it’s not very valuable then.”

  “It is … priceless. It means more than my life.”

  Hage scratched his stubbly chin. “That doesn’t sound very valuable at all.”

  “Someone thought it valuable enough to go to much trouble to steal it.”

  “Now you want it back.”

  Ken’ishi nodded slowly.

  “Do you know who took it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where you’re going?”

  Ken’ishi pointed to the southwest. “That direction.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  “Oho! Perhaps you’re the one with magical powers! How do you intend to get it back?”

  “Any way I can.”

  “Very well, then.” Hage picked up his own bowl of rice and began to eat, slurping and smacking his lips with relish.

  Ken’ishi took out his chopsticks and ate. The morning air was warm, pleasant, but the birdsong echoing among the trees and bamboo stung him like a chorus of incomprehensible taunts. A lump formed in his throat, blocking the passage of breakfast, until he gritted his teeth to force the regret away.

  His bedroll lying atop the cushion of fallen bamboo leaves had been passably comfortable. Nevertheless, a tremendous weariness suffused his limbs. Three years since he had last lived on the road like this. A true ronin. It felt like falling back into a familiar bed. He had spent so many nights sleeping outside on the ground.

  But now he was without his chief weapon, and he had had the furry warmth of a loyal companion for much of that time. Akao had hunted with him, slept with him, trotted along beside him, and the dog’s sharp nose had rooted out many a rabbit for supper. Last night Ken’ishi had lain down, acutely aware of the cold absence of a dead friend. And the warm arms of a woman.

  “Uncle, if any danger comes, I want you to run. I’ll handle it myself.”

  “Don’t worry about me, old sot. I’m quite adept at preserving my own skin. I’ve gotten this old, and I intend to get older. Now eat up. The day is getting on, and we have ri to cover, yes?”

  Ken’ishi scrutinized the old man. After several heartbeats, his new companion looked up from his rice and grinned.

  He uses the sword and does not kill them means that even though he does not use the sword to cut others down, when others are confronted by this principle, they cower and become as dead men of their own accord. There is no need to kill them.

  He uses the sword and gives others life means that while he deals with his opponent with the sword, he leaves everything to the movements of the other man, and is able to observe him just as he pleases.

  — Takuan Soho, “The Clear Sound of Jewels”

  The tavern keeper’s wife set platters on the table, laden with bowls of miso soup, smoked ayu, and rice topped by pickled plums. Hage’s eyes gleamed as he fell to without preamble. Ken’ishi’s hunger was a satisfying one, product of the many ri that he and Hage had already put behind them today, so he savored it for a moment. At least for a while, he had money to buy food, unlike his wandering life before.

  This town was much larger than Aoka village, a stopover for travelers on the way to Dazaifu, seat of much of the government on Kyushu. The town seemed familiar. Perhaps he had passed through it during his flight from the domain of Lord Nishimuta no Jiro. Strangely, he remembered little of those days, only the pain of having something he loved, something his heart wanted, someone he longed to hold again, wrested from him, along with threat of death on his head if he tarried.

  Rice stuffed Hage’s cheeks and flecked his lips as he spoke. “Do you always walk so slow, old sot? I’m walking with a turtle. I thought you were in a hurry.” He put down his bowl and patted his belly. “I’ve been wasting away from hunger!”

  Ken’ishi raised an eyebrow. “You’re an old man. I didn’t want to overtax you.”

  Hage’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ve been getting around just fine for much longer than you’ve been alive.”

  They sat in the open tavern front on a bench, bellied up to the bar, behind which the tavern keeper and his wife grilled fish and summer vegetables over a bed of coals. The wall of the tavern opened up like an awning and shielded them from the noonday sun. The street behind them bustled with activity. Crafters, tradesmen, farmers, women and children, a constable in a distinctive helmet that looked like half a clamshell. Even a handful of warriors passed by, wearing the crest of a lord Ken’ishi did not know.

  Ken’ishi’s attention followed them until they passed out of sight. They wore their swords differently than he did. Theirs were made in the modern katana-style, with slightly less curvature than Silver Crane, with hilts wrapped in an outer sheath of silken cords over ray skin, rather than just ray skin. They walked with swagger and camaraderie, and the villagers bowed to them as they passed.

  A small gasp from the innkeeper’s wife snagged Ken’ishi’s attention from picking smoked fish flesh from its bones. He followed her gaze toward the three burly men approaching the tavern. They wore rough clothing, except for the one who walked in front with a shiny silk jacket over his robes, sword thrust into his brightly woven sash.

  The tavern keeper spotted them, too, and quickly wiped his hands, his face blanching. His gaze flicked about as if looking for something, a place to run, but found nothing. Then he steeled himself and presented a wide grin to the three men as they ducked under the wooden awning.

  The kami roared silently in Ken’ishi’s mind, raising the hairs on the nape of his neck.

  The tavern keeper’s lips stretched, and he bowed repeatedly. “Good day, Yuto-sama. Would you like some lunch? Some saké perhaps? I just—”

  “We would,” Yuto said.

  The bench creaked as the three men sat, the largest not far from Ken’ishi. The tavern keeper and his wife bustled about the tiny kitchen preparing platters, and Ken’ishi’s nose wrinkled. The men stank of sw
eat and saké. Hage ignored them.

  The wife tried to smile at them, but failed.

  The men waited like wolves, silent, their expressions barely masking contempt and menace. Platters were set before them, bearing much larger portions of food than Hage and Ken’ishi received. The men fell to without a word.

  Ken’ishi finished his meal, and let his awareness encompass the men without looking at them. Two wore swords. The largest one carried a pair of farmer’s sickles thrust into the back of his sash.

  An unspoken pall coalesced with the smoke of the grill. The tavern keeper’s face tightened with dread.

  The men ate their meals. Ken’ishi felt their eyes on him.

  When Yuto was finished, he picked up his rice bowl and flung it at the tavern keeper’s head. The bowl bounced high, and the tavern keeper yelped in pain. The bowl clattered to the floor. The tavern keeper turned, a tight smile on his face as he rubbed his skull. “The meal is on the house, Yuto-sama.”

  “You know why we’re here.” Yuto sucked rice from his teeth.

  The tavern keeper sighed and nodded. He withdrew a small paper-wrapped bundle from under the counter and slid it toward Yuto.

  Yuto picked it up and hefted it. His eyes drilled like icicles into the tavern keeper. He shoved the bundle back across the counter. “There are a lot of bad men around here. Has no one discovered why the Sparrow’s Nest Inn burned down last week? That was terrible, just terrible. We don’t ask for much. Imagine what would happen if bad men decided they didn’t like you? What would happen then?”

  The tavern keeper trembled.

  Yuto picked up another bowl and threw it hard at the tavern keeper’s face. The tavern keeper managed to duck just enough that the bowl only glanced off. “I said, what would happen then?”