Sword of the Ronin (The Ronin Trilogy)

by Travis Heermann

  Masoku said, “This is it then.” He raised his weapon.

  Yes.

  Ken’ishi raised Fang Shi’s sword to high attack position, and the world was Void. Every breath, every heartbeat became an eternity of infinitely tiny moments wherein the possibilities of the universe unfolded.

  “So it was you, not the White Lotus,” Masoku said, a twist of surprise on his lips. “Clever bastard.”

  They circled each other, spiraling nearer, step by step. They shifted the positions of their blades, testing. Masoku feinted and retreated, testing for reaction, finding no opening, because Ken’ishi seemed to sense the action coming before it happened. He knew where Masoku would feint, knew where the attack would come, almost as if he were privy to Masoku’s thoughts. When the strike came, Ken’ishi caught the blade, struck back, thwarted, slashed, clashed, struck, licked, snicked, clanged, retreated.

  Masoku, too, knew the Void.

  Ken’ishi’s Chinese sword was bulky, clumsy, compared to Silver Crane’s feather-light precision, but it was stout and razor-sharp. Fang Shi had kept his weapon well. The two combatants lunged again, closed with a clang, strained at each other’s blades, nose to nose. Strength surged from outside through Ken’ishi’s hands, arms, shoulders, as if his flesh drank the power of starlight, as if his thews were swelling to their former thickness and beyond with each passing breath, forcing Masoku to slowly, inexorably give way. They separated and struck and thwarted each other’s attacks. Ken’ishi sneaked a quick strike at Masoku’s abdomen, and the tip of his sword struck something hard, unyielding. Armor. Without it, Ken’ishi’s blow would have cut a rib.

  Masoku’s chest heaved with exertion.

  Ken’ishi raised for another attack, a high one. Masoku’s blade rose to meet it, as Ken’ishi had expected. But the focus of his attack was not Masoku’s head; it was to bash Masoku’s blade aside. The heavy Chinese sword struck just above the katana’s guard, striking sparks and driving it from one of Masoku’s hands. Startled by the sheer power of the blow, Masoku stumbled back, eyes wide, raising his off-balance weapon in feeble defense of the blow he knew was coming.

  And it did come.

  Ken’ishi felt no resistance at all, slashing through Masoku’s shattered defense, then his neck, as if both had been mere scraps of silk.

  The body stiffened and felt forward, and the head thumped to the floor, bulging eyes white in the lamplight.

  Ken’ishi slung the blood from the blade and watched the ronin’s head bobble away. Should he feel more triumph? Elation? The dissipation of rage? He felt none of these things. This death was simply a tick on his list of things that must be done.

  The stench of blood was thick in his nose, thicker than it should be, as if he were swimming in it. The kami of the air and earth buzzed with unease.

  A river of death unto the end of the world.

  Hage’s eyes caught yellow in the lamplight. “Find your toy, and let us begone! Guards coming.”

  “Wait.”

  Ken’ishi knelt, rolled Masoku’s corpse onto its back, and spread the robe open to reveal the armor that Junko had given him.

  “What are you doing? It’s ill fortune to play with the dead!” Hage hissed. “Get what you came for!”

  Ken’ishi stripped off the robe and untied the armor.

  A shout from outside the house.

  Hage warned, “Haste!”

  Ken’ishi donned the armor.

  A trickle of liquid moonlight stole across the floor, falling across the house shrine. Ken’ishi knelt before the shrine. He found his fingers probing the edges of the wooden sides of the shelf. One of the boards stood apart, a seam that was too wide or ill-fitted. The board slid free into his hand. An invisible bolt of lightning shot through him. He reached into the black opening, half-expecting some hidden blade to spring out and sever his fingers. With excruciating care, his fingers quested, and encountered a wooden case, heavy enough, thick enough, long enough to house a sword. In a near frenzy, he yanked the case into view.

  He opened it, his heart hammering like a smith’s blows, and revealed a bundle of black silk. The moment his hand closed around it, he knew. A breath of ice rippled up his arm. He lifted it out of the box, and the silk fell away, and there revealed was the worn, stained ray-skin hilt that he knew like his own hands. The silver fittings gleamed. “I have it!”

  Icy warmth shot through him, a deluge of strength that he had not felt in years. He could slay an army of oni. He almost felt his clothes tighten as his flesh seemed to rejuvenate.

  Destiny.

  “Then let’s go!” Hage dropped to all fours and lunged for the door to the garden. “The rear gate!” It was just visible at the far corner of the garden.

  Ken’ishi snatched up the Chinese sword as well—best to leave no evidence behind—and turned to follow Hage.

  A sharp cry from behind spun him around. “Stop!” Two warriors burst into the room, swords drawn.

  Ken’ishi whipped out Silver Crane and faced them. Instantly, he found the Void and charged. The sword was a glimmer of moonglow as it arced and sliced. The first man’s thighs split open, deep and to the bone like a soft rice cake, at Silver Crane’s passing, and the blade’s continuation drove aside the second man’s sword, creating an opening for Ken’ishi to thrust straight to the heart with the point like a crane’s beak. The first man was still falling, his legs unable to support him, as Ken’ishi drew out his sword, spun, and took his head in a single swift stroke. Gore spewed across rice paper walls and new tatami.

  The two bodies fell across Masoku’s headless corpse.

  Power surged through him. Strength. Ferocity.

  And it felt right. As if it were meant to be.

  He snatched a lamp down from its place on the veranda and dashed it against the floor, spilling oil and flame over wood and tatami. Then he grabbed another, throwing it against rice paper walls and wooden lattice. Orange flames rushed and licked and breathed. In the glow, Ken’ishi spotted the girl, her eyes bright with fear. Their eyes met, and then her face hardened. She retreated.

  He sprinted through the garden, dodging stalks of bamboo, with fleeting thoughts of dead men feeding their roots. Hage waited for him at the rear gate, jumping up and down with the urge to be away. Ken’ishi threw open the bar, flung open the gate, and out they ran into the night.

  My sword leans against the sky

  With its polished blade

  I’ll behead the Buddha

  And all his saints.

  Let the lightning strike where it will

  — Shunpo Soki, Death Poem

  As they ran down the path toward Hakata, the flames of the burning house burgeoning in their wake, Ken’ishi flung the Chinese sword into the roadside undergrowth. His thoughts raced through possibilities of what to do next. He had not made plans beyond finding Silver Crane. He had not expected to survive the attempt.

  Thoughts of Kiosé and Aoka village, his promise to return. In his imprisonment, he had imagined often going back and taking her and Little Frog away from the village. Would they remember him now? Could Hage undo the magic, awaken Kiosé from her dream of forgetting?

  Then an unbidden thought: would his success gain Kazuko’s attention if she knew? How would she feel if she could see him at this instant? Could his bravery and strength win back her heart if she knew? Would she approve of the man he had become? Would she have nursed him back to health?

  The man has shown courage, strength. The man is worthy.

  Ken’ishi stumbled for a moment with the sudden force of the voice.

  The thief also showed strength and courage, but his spirit was steeped in even more blood than I. An ocean of it, frothing and limitless, spilled at his hands. The thief’s hand sharpened my thirst for it, and the taste was bitter. Now, the man’s hand brings sweetness and justice to the taste. It is good.

  Ken’ishi’s feet pounded the earthen road. The first hint of paleness rose behind the mountains on the eastern horizon.

/>   I am old as the sea, young as the mountains. At moments of great destiny, I cut through barriers of possibility. I have lain at the bottom of the sea in a dead man’s hand. I have been washed ashore and found. I have shaped the lives of powerful lords and simple warriors, fishermen and crafters. I am a shuttle moving in the loom among the threads of time and happenstance. And I am grateful to the man.

  Ken’ishi’s mind whirled with confusion. The voice thundered through him, leaving silver after-images of thought like lightning bolts.

  What does the man regret most in all his life?

  A swirl of thoughts exploded in his mind, a swarm of the regrets, and the first was that Kazuko could not see the man he had become, what he had accomplished, the justice he had done.

  He shook those thoughts away. “Kiosé,” he muttered. “I regret that Kiosé no longer knows me.”

  Words and thoughts so seldom align. The crane’s feathers stir the winds of fortune. The man’s destiny shifts.

  Hage huffed as he ran next to Ken’ishi. “Who are you talking to?”

  “No one,” Ken’ishi replied. “One last visit to Shirohige and Junko, and I am going home.” Even if Kiosé did not know him, she soon would again. He would see to that. He would take her away from Aoka village, carry her away on his shoulder if need be, and start a new life somewhere else, and he would find real service with a lord. Perhaps he would go to Kyoto and tell Hirosuke’s family of his demise, and the Minamoto clan would reward him. And he would be a better man to her than before.

  * * *

  The glow of the flames over the treetops sent a spike of fear through Yasutoki, spurring him into a run. Rage boiled up in him. All his careful plans and meticulous maneuverings crumbling into ashes, imploding upon themselves too quickly for him to stem the collapse. One worthy henchman dead, the other missing, possibly dead. His enterprises savaged by a mindless gang of foreign thugs.

  And now his house rose in a pillar of smoke and flame—the house of Yasutoki, not Green Tiger.

  Silver Crane was still inside.

  He charged up the hill again, his flagging vigor renewed by desperation. He had been all over the city of Hakata tonight. A heavy satchel of gold sloshed with great weight against his back. He had emptied the coffers of both of his moneychangers, lest the White Lotus know of those ventures and attempt to rob him. They even seemed to know where he lived! Had his entire identity been compromised? If Otomo no Yasutoki’s identity as Green Tiger was revealed to Lord Tsunetomo or the bakufu’s governor in Dazaifu, his punishment would make Minamoto no Hirosuke’s death look like child’s play.

  A torrent of flames engulfed his house. Three of his guards stood in the road, with a handful of early-rising onlookers and three bleary-eyed firemen with their jackets stained by smoke. Piles of household possessions, artworks, boxes of scrolls and books, all lay in the road, well away from the flames.

  Tiger Lily saw him first. Even with hair singed, cheeks smudged by soot, eyes streaming tears of sadness and relief, she was still breathtakingly beautiful. She almost threw her arms around him, fought with the want of it, and stopped short, throwing herself at his feet. “I’m sorry, Master!” Sobs thickened her voice. “I could not stop them!”

  The three guards threw themselves past her, prostrating themselves at his feet, blubbering with fear and apology, spurning her.

  “There were five of you,” Yasutoki said to the guards. “What happened?”

  Kanehiro, the head guard under Masoku, pressed his forehead to the earth again and again. “I apologize, Master! Forgive us!”

  “Tell me what happened!”

  “Captain Masoku is slain. Sadamichi and Naiki are dead as well. We think someone killed them, but we did not see.”

  “How could you not see? Speak up!”

  Kanehiro’s mouth worked.

  Tiger Lily slid forward. “I saw it, Master!” she said, “I screamed when I saw the intruders. They were after … They took—”

  Twin bolts of dread and elation exploded through his breast. Dread at what might have been taken, elation that it had not faced so ignominious an end as to be destroyed in a fire.

  Tiger Lily glanced around at all the possible ears nearby. “They took it, Master,” she whispered.

  Yasutoki spurned Kanehiro with his foot, making space so that he could kneel close to her. “Who?” The White Lotus? How could they have known of Silver Crane?

  “A man, he wore a mask, I did not see his face, and—”

  “And?”

  Her voice was a peep, fraught with trembling. “And a bear. I saw—”

  “A bear!”

  “Yes, Master. A huge, ferocious bear came after me, and I screamed and ran. A horrible, red-eyed beast with fangs like spear points!”

  He considered this. She was too terrified to lie. “Did the man wear a white headband?”

  “No, Master. He had a mask over his face. And he killed Masoku-sama. Then he found it.”

  He stroked her hair. Then with a deep breath, he approached the nearest fireman, a bald, gnarl-limbed man with eyes bloodshot and watery.

  The fireman bowed deeply, sheepishly. “We are very sorry, Lord. We came as fast as we could, and there aren’t so many of us in this district …”

  Yasutoki bowed in return and kept his voice admirably even, in spite of the seething tar pit his innards had become. “You have my gratitude. I commend you for your help, and I shall recommend you to the district constable for—”

  “Hey! Look!” A voice from one of the onlookers rose in wonder and alarm. The man’s arm pointed straight out toward the bay.

  Yasutoki bit down on his annoyance at the rude interruption as his gaze fell upon the distant cause of the outburst.

  Dawn reached over the eastern mountains, painting the smooth surface of Hakata Bay pink and orange. Speckling the colored tapestry was a profusion of black specks trailing foam streaks. Sails and masts.

  Hundreds of ships, filling the bay, so many and so thick that a man could almost jump from deck to deck, ships in such numbers as he could never have imagined, all of them aiming for shore.

  Yasutoki forgot all about his burning house.

  PART 3: THE FIFTH SCROLL

  “Battle! We are invaded! Ships! Hakata … Hakozaki … under attack! We will fall!”

  The greatest joy a man can know is to crush his enemies, to see them driven before him … to ride their horses and plunder their goods … to see the faces of those who were dear to them bedewed with tears … to clasp their wives and daughters into his arms … to ride from their burning villages to the lamentations of the dying.

  — Genghis Khan, grandfather of Khubilai Khan

  The shadow warrior known only as Kage crouched on a rock escarpment overlooking dawn-painted Hakata Bay. The sea and sky merged with the gray of early morning light, and small black islands in the distance seemed to hang suspended in the grayness. But there was something else in the mist. Dark hulks, sliding through the water toward Hakata and Hakozaki. Even a man as jaded and stoic as Kage could not fail to be awed by the sight of so many ships. He lost count somewhere after six hundred, and the endless fleet just kept coming.

  The ships were of Koryo make, their decks swarming with more men than were required to crew the ships. Armor and weapons glinted in the gathering sunlight. The breeze bore the scent of horses. The ships rode low in the water, frothy wakes licking at their gunwales.

  So this was what Green Tiger had worked toward for so long. There had been no large-scale war since a catastrophic rift between the Emperor’s court and the Shogunate in Kamakura, a rift that had only been healed by the defeat of the clans loyal to the Emperor. Aside from the usual squabbling and skirmishing between rival samurai lords, the country had been at peace for almost half a century.

  In the last three years, Kage had supplied Green Tiger with counts of troop strength from every domain on Kyushu, from the Otomo lords in the north to the Shimazu in the south, and the smatterings of the Nishimuta, re
mnants of the Taira, and other, smaller clans in between. He had stolen a Taira clan relic from a bumpkin samurai. He had disrupted communications and sabotaged fortifications. The oncoming horde would have solid knowledge of what opposed them, and they would tear through Kyushu like a butcher’s cleaver.

  Kage was not worried about the coming storm of war. A man like him, with his talents, could thrive amid the chaos of conflict. Knowledge of the enemy could be valuable, and he did not care which side employed him. These would be … interesting times.

  Kage knew enough about Green Tiger’s past, through their mutual ties to the Taira clan, to know that he would stop at nothing to see the Minamoto and Hojo clans destroyed, even if it meant opening the door to barbarian invaders.

  As the ships passed, he saw many of the decks laden with strange, mechanical contraptions. By now, the Golden Horde’s empire stretched far to the south and west into distant unknown lands, and their mastery of warfare was spawning legends. No one had been able to stand against them. No one.

  Khubilai Khan’s relentless belligerence had put the Shogunate and the samurai lords on their guard. The Mongols would not find the warriors of Kyushu completely unprepared. Nevertheless, the information that Kage had provided to Green Tiger would be priceless in the hands of an invading general.

  Hakata was the chief trading city on Hakata Bay, and the wealthiest city on Kyushu. It lay within striking distance of Dazaifu, home of the offices of the Western Defense Commissioner, the hub through which most of Hakata’s trade was distributed, and the seat of the Shogun’s government on Kyushu. Beaches perfect for landing encircled much of Hakata Bay. Construction of stone fortifications to protect against attacks from the sea had begun last year, but were still in the early stages, and therefore useless.

  Thanks in part to Kage, their construction had experienced numerous unforeseen difficulties.

  The flap and snap of bamboo-ribbed sails reached him on his promontory, the slice of the hulls through the waves, and weeping. Realization of the sound dragged his thoughts from the majesty of spectacle and imminent chaos.