Sword of the Ronin (The Ronin Trilogy)

by Travis Heermann

  The despair in the man’s voice brought up Ken’ishi’s memories of Kazuko’s quiet cries of passion on the only night they had been together, the intense beauty of her naked body in his arms.

  Hirosuke continued, “I had a lover before her, a wealthy merchant’s daughter whose husband had left her. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever known, but her blood ran so hot and cold, push and pull, that it drove me half-mad with trying to win her fully to me. But how I loved her, and how I despaired.”

  In other circumstances, Ken’ishi would have been uncomfortable with a tale so fraught with private emotion, but now he was simply exulted to hear another’s voice. Perhaps Hirosuke was spilling his heart for the same reason.

  “Part of me was relieved when her father found another husband for her and sent her away. A few months later, I met Yuka, so kind and sweet, and asked her father for her hand soon after. She made me forget the woman who had turned me into a shadow of myself.”

  Ken’ishi’s rough stone cell became a soft futon against his back, and Kiosé’s gentle, warm hands lay upon his chest, on his face, her face sleeping against his shoulder. A spasm of regret shot through him. Her quiet sighs of contentment as she fell asleep in his embrace. The gasps of passion as she pulled him deeper into her. The food she brought him, always without being asked. The cleanliness of his house, all her doing. He missed her so badly at that moment, wished to be with her.

  He whispered to the darkness. “As soon as I have Silver Crane, Kiosé, I will come back to you, and we will take Little Frog and leave Aoka village forever.”

  “What’s that you say?” came Hirosuke’s voice.

  Ken’ishi clamped back the lump in his throat, then cleared it. “I said, maybe they will let you go. Maybe they are just punishing you, frightening you. Maybe they will have mercy.”

  An empty chuckle. “Perhaps.”

  The sound of heavy footsteps splashing over stone broke the conversation. Yellow light swelled through the chamber, blinding bright even in its dimness. Ken’ishi squinted against the glare of the lantern as it came closer and closer. A massive figure loomed before the entrance of his cell, and the enormous Chinaman thrust a bowl of gruel through the lattice.

  Hunger roared through Ken’ishi like a wildfire, but he did not seize the bowl and fall upon it like an animal. He would not give this creature the satisfaction. Instead, he called, “Water!”

  The Chinaman looked back over a meaty shoulder with an expression of amused disdain as he went farther down the passageway and thrust another bowl into some unseen cell.

  Hirosuke’s frenzied slurping brought a smile to the Chinaman’s face that Ken’ishi could just see, a smile and something else, something darker, as of a secret. The Chinaman went back the way he had come and took the light with him.

  Ken’ishi devoured the pitifully small portion of gruel, licking the bowl, sucking at every last kernel of tasteless millet, every drop of moisture. His pierced tongue ached, but there was nothing to be done about it.

  With the empty bowl in hand, he sagged onto his back.

  After an interminable time, Hirosuke’s voice brought Ken’ishi out of his dreams of Kiosé’s arms and Little Frog’s hoarse giggles.

  “Beware the crabs.”

  “What?”

  “I said, beware the crabs. They come out at low tide.”

  Ken’ishi imagined his cell invaded by an army of pincers and shells, pincers that snipped off bits of flesh to be stuffed into little chitinous mouths.

  “Do you know the stories?” Hirosuke said. “Have you seen the crabs with the faces of samurai on their backs?”

  “No, I’m not a fisherman.”

  “In the last hundred years, a new kind of crab has been found, spreading from the straits near Dan-no-ura, the gateway to the Inland Sea.”

  “You say ‘Dan-no-ura’ with much weight. I am not from Kyushu, so I don’t know that place.”

  Hirosuke’s voice brightened as if delighted to share his vast knowledge. “It is one of the narrowest gaps between Kyushu and Honshu. The tides there are fierce. Even experienced sailors approach that stretch of water with care.”

  “And what about the crabs?”

  “Ah, it was a terrible day, but a glorious one, almost ninety years ago now. The most glorious day for the Minamoto clan. It was the day that we crushed the Taira clan. So many warriors died on both sides that day. Their bodies must have littered the sea bottom of the straits at Dan-no-ura as thick as fallen leaves, along with the false emperor Antoku and the rest of the Taira who wanted to use him. The sea was awash with blood. This battle ended the war, all but destroyed the Taira.” His voice drew into a practiced cadence, precise, dramatic. “It was soon after the battle that fishermen began to discover crabs with the shape of samurai faces on their backs. It is said that the spirits of the dead Minamoto and Taira samurai went into those crabs. To honor the souls of all those fallen warriors, or perhaps to avoid angering any hungry ghosts, the fishermen throw these crabs back into the sea.”

  Ken’ishi found himself lost in the story, but something else scratched at his memory. “The ‘false emperor Antoku’, you said. Tell me about him.”

  “He was just a boy of six. Minamoto troops were about to take his vessel when his grandmother, Tokiko, a Buddhist nun, took him into the sea, along with all their handmaids and bodyguards. The boy’s uncle, Taira no Tomomori, commander of the ship, followed them to the bottom by tying himself to an anchor. A sad thing for a child to die that way, a pawn of ruthless power-mongers who told him he was the Son of Heaven.”

  “Did Taira no Tomomori have a sword?”

  “That is certain. He was an heir to the Taira clan, son of Kiyomori. Kiyomori’s name is still spoken with awe in the old capital.”

  “I mean, did he have a well-known sword?”

  “There were many relics the Taira had claimed for themselves, symbols of the false emperor’s power, the Imperial Sword, the Mirror, and the Jewel. They threw the Imperial Sword into the sea, but we captured their ships before they could throw away the rest. Tomomori would have had the best of the Taira clan at his disposal. For over three hundred years, they controlled the Imperial Court. They had the most renowned smiths in their employ.”

  “Was the Imperial Sword a tachi-style weapon?”

  “No, it was ancient beyond compare, handed down from the Sun Goddess Amaterasu herself to the first Emperor. It was straight like a Chinese sword, but with a shorter, broader blade. But now it is lost at the bottom of the sea. Tomomori and the others guarding Antoku would have had the best weapons Taira smiths could create. Why all this curiosity? There is more to it than an interest in history.”

  “I have seen dreams of these events, and the things you speak of ring truth for me.”

  “Dreams can be pernicious things, taunting us with our desires, torturing us with our fears, as if the best and worst of what we can imagine come to life when we sleep. I have had such … such dreams in this place. After what I have seen coming in recent months, I have dreams only of war and death.”

  “What have you seen coming?”

  “Dark days! The bakufu’s spies have learned that the Koryo have been building ships for Khubilai Khan, Emperor of China. Hundreds of ships, perhaps thousands, denuding entire forests. The shipyards of Masan and Pusan have been teeming with activity. The Koryo have no love for the Mongols, but they have been forced to submit. The might of the Golden Horde, as they call themselves, is too strong.”

  “But why cross the sea? Is the whole of China not enough?”

  “Not for men like Khubilai Khan. The Khan has sent several emissaries to the Imperial Court and to the bakufu over the last few years. The last one to arrive in Dazaifu carried threats of invasion. The emissary was imprisoned for several months before he was expelled. The Shogunate has ordered the lords of Kyushu to maintain a state of vigilance and to build their troop strength. For three years the lords of the Western Defense Region have been building their arm
ies. But such lords are a willful, fractious lot. If the Mongols do not come, war is likely to erupt among them.”

  Ken’ishi thought about having spent three years in Aoka village. “Perhaps when we get out of here, I will be able to find a lord to serve.” What if he had just kept looking for a lord to serve? What if he had never saved Kazuko’s life and found himself fleeing her father’s grasp, forced to hide in a quiet backwater when he should have been honing his skills and cleaving to the Warrior’s Way?

  After a period of silence, he heard Hirosuke weeping. Ken’ishi said, “Brace up, Hirosuke. You have come this far with honor. Don’t forget it now. Tell me about your life, and I will tell you about mine. Tell me what you’ll do after we escape.”

  “Escape! Hah! You’re mad. There is no escape from Green Tiger.”

  “Don’t lose hope. Tell me.” The bowl in Ken’ishi’s hands was made of plain wood, its lip rounded.

  Hirosuke sighed and spoke, telling tales of his childhood in Kyoto, spending his life in the circles of learning and scholarship, where he studied the Chinese classics, history, and poetry.

  Meanwhile, Ken’ishi slammed the edge of the bowl on the stone, but he was too weak and the wood was too thick to shatter.

  “What was that?” Hirosuke asked.

  “Pay no attention. Tell me more.” Ken’ishi’s fingers explored the bindings of the bamboo lattice, finding them taut and fresh, the bamboo green and rigid. He listened to Hirosuke’s tales, urging him on at intervals of silence. He began to scrape the lip of the bowl against the floor, wearing away the blunt edge to create a sharper one, in spite of the burning pain in his fingertips. “You are a good man, Minamoto no Hirosuke, to have stood up against one such as Green Tiger. Tell me what you will do after we escape.”

  “Ah, you are a dreamer, Ken’ishi. I harbor no illusion that we will escape, but if we do, I will go back to Kyoto and be with my wife and children. Kyushu will never see me again.”

  Ken’ishi continued scraping the lip of the bowl against the rough stone. An edge was forming.

  “I have three sons, two of them bookish boys like I was, but the third will be a warrior, I think. Perhaps when he is grown, he will avenge my death.” Hirosuke’s voice cracked, and he wept for a while.

  Ken’ishi continued scraping his bowl. His belly roared for food, and his throat yearned for water, but still he worked at the bowl until his hands could barely grasp it. After some time, he had worn the rounded lip into a crude edge, and he used it to saw at an inconspicuous corner of the bindings around the bamboo lattice.

  Then the tide returned and turned his wounds to fire once again, and he was too weak to cling to the lattice and also cut at its bindings. He spent hours barely able to keep his face above water.

  At one point, he called out to Hirosuke, “The tide is not as high this time.”

  “But what happens when it fluctuates higher than our ceilings?”

  Clear water —

  a tiny crab

  crawling up my leg.

  — Buson

  When the tide receded again, the Chinaman’s lumbering bulk broke the blackness to bring another bowl of gruel and demanded the old bowl back. Ken’ishi prayed for him to overlook not only the two sets of bindings that had been cut through, but also the ground edge of the bowl.

  In the silence between the jailor’s departure and the arrival of the next tide, Ken’ishi told Hirosuke of Kiosé and Little Frog, Norikage and Aoka village. As he spoke, he ground the new bowl’s edge against the rough stone to create another edge with which to worry at the lattice bindings.

  “We are lucky,” Hirosuke said, “to have women who care for us, even if yours is not a human being.”

  Ken’ishi did not like to think about how the world did not see whores, or former whores, as true human beings. “For a long time, I didn’t believe it, didn’t care. I was selfish, lost in longing for another.”

  “But now things look different.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the girl you lost?”

  “Married to another, a samurai lord.”

  “The world cares not for the yearnings of a boy’s heart. Or a man’s.” Hirosuke said the next words tentatively. “If we can escape, if we ever see the light of day again, I will go back to Kyoto. You must go back to your village and take your woman and keep her with you. And your son.”

  Ken’ishi nodded to the darkness. “Yes, my son.”

  “Bring them with you to Kyoto, and I will see to it that you have a home in the Minamoto clan.”

  “You are a generous—Ah!” A sharp pain sliced into Ken’ishi’s elbow. He jerked his arm away, scraping skin from his hand onto the ceiling.

  Hirosuke said, “What is it?”

  “Something just …” He slid away from the source of the pain and touched his elbow, feeling wetness on his fingers. His back rolled over something crusty and squirming beneath him. Another sharp stab between his shoulder blades. He cried out in anger, lifted himself from the shape, felt it scuttle from under him. “Crabs!”

  “They are fierce. A shame we cannot eat them.”

  Ken’ishi lashed out and swept the first horny shell, about the size of his palm, back out through the lattice. The second snipped him once more on the neck before he snatched it and crushed it against the wall. “When we get out of here, let us feast on boiled crabs!”

  Hirosuke’s chuckle echoed strangely. “Indeed—Away, foul little beast!” A scraping, rustling from Hirosuke’s cell. “Their pincers are small but sharp. In enough numbers, they could strip our bones clean in a few hours.”

  In the silent darkness, Ken’ishi strained his ears for carapaced legs scuttling nearer. He periodically swept his arms blindly over the floor, but he found no more. Somehow, he sensed their presence hovering outside the bars, as if waiting for their chance.

  His fingers sought the crab that he had crushed, brought it to his mouth and sucked at the foul paste leaking from its shell. His belly rebelled and forced him to spit it back out.

  Its body was a pulpy mess of ooze and sharp edges. His fingers traced a ragged, broken pincer. With his tiny tool, he began to saw through the bamboo bindings.

  * * *

  Another tide came and went.

  As the sea receded, the sound of sloshing feet echoed through the cavern, accompanied by even more light. This time, it was the torturer who passed by Ken’ishi’s cell, carrying a lantern, followed by the Chinaman, who carried not only a lantern in one hand, but also some sort of stout wooden rack under the other arm.

  Now in the light, he could see the level of his cell opening was perhaps half his height above the uneven floor of the outer cavern.

  Ken’ishi pressed his face against the lattice, straining to see, a sick dread building in his belly. The men hung their lanterns on hooks embedded in the stone, and the Chinaman began to erect the wooden rack. Only one corner of the rack lay within Ken’ishi’s field of vision.

  Hirosuke’s voice trembled. “What are you doing? What are you going to do to me?” He repeated this over and over as the Chinaman continued his work.

  Ken’ishi could see ropes hanging from the rack. Some shifting, clattering sounds, and Hirosuke’s voice grew higher, building level upon level of desperation.

  The rhythmic scrape of a blade on a whetstone.

  The sounds coming from Hirosuke’s cell ceased. A limp dragging, scuffling sound, the slap of flesh against wood, the slither of ropes. Ken’ishi saw the Chinaman bind Hirosuke’s clenched fist to the wooden rack. The rest lay out of view, but Ken’ishi surmised that Hirosuke was now tied to the rack with arms and legs outstretched.

  The torturer’s voice sent a bolt of ice through Ken’ishi’s veins and clamped his teeth together. “Our friend Fang Shi here taught me this technique. Those Chinese, they are inventive.” More scraping of the whetstone, the ring of expectant steel.

  Hirosuke blubbered. “I have money. My family has money! Let me go, and I will reward you! Please!” />
  The Chinaman and the torturer laughed long and loud.

  Hirosuke hung silent in his bonds, falling into shallow, quavering breaths.

  Ken’ishi called out, “Don’t! Take me instead!”

  The torturer laughed. “Oh, don’t be foolish. The Master may still have use for you. Ah, my noble friend,” he said to Hirosuke, “I have been looking forward to this for days. You will give me such joy.”

  Fang Shi rumbled, “Ropes tight, pinch skin hard. Stop blood.”

  “Of course! In my excitement I almost forgot. With the ropes too loose, he may bleed out too quickly. You may do the honors, sir.”

  More slithering, tightening ropes. Hirosuke’s grunting, gasping, his breathing becoming shallower, constricted.

  The torturer purred, “Ah, lovely little gobbets of flesh now, so graspable, easy to cut. Well done, Fang Shi. Shall we begin?”

  Ken’ishi’s voice failed him, and hope drained away.

  Hirosuke screamed.

  Ken’ishi could not tear his gaze away from Hirosuke’s outstretched hand as it spasmed and clenched. Something trickled into the sheet of seawater covering the floor. A little splash as of something tossed into the water.

  The torturer grinned with satisfaction. “See, now that was just a little piece. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  Hirosuke screamed again, and again his fist clenched, but weaker this time, and the trickling grew, and something else plopped into the water.

  “Ah, so lovely,” the torturer said, “like twin red camellias on your breast. You will be one of my greatest works, my friend.”

  Ken’ishi closed his eyes and tried to block his ears against Hirosuke’s screams. The torturer marveled over each cut, the beauty of the blood flow, speaking to Hirosuke as if they were long-lost friends, intimate confidants. The stench of blood and emptied bowels filled the cavern. Hirosuke’s fist was no longer a fist. It was just a bloody, fingerless palm. Then the palm was gone, shrunk to just an oozing wrist with the white bones peeking out through the trickling blood and sliced sinews. Bits of flesh pattered into the shallow crimson water, dozens of bloody morsels, fingers, knuckle by knuckle, toes, ears, all floated around the feet of the two executioners. The floor of the cavern was awash with blood and bits of flesh.