Sword of the Ronin (The Ronin Trilogy)

by Travis Heermann

  A lonely, deserted mountain shack had been their shelter from the typhoon. They had been cold and hungry, but dry. When the typhoon was over, they had ventured back to Aoka village, found it ravaged, burned, deserted. Hana’s fishing boat had been tossed far up onto shore, even though it still appeared seaworthy. It would take the work of several men to carry it back to the water.

  Distant wreckage peppered the glimmering expanse of sea. Was the battle over?

  Finally, on the road to Hakozaki, they encountered a group of woodcutters, and he had tightened up his courage enough to ask them for news.

  When they told him that the invaders had been destroyed, the immeasurable relief brought him to his knees. His stomach had ceased growling days ago, but now with new hope inside him, the hunger raged like a living beast, dogging his every step. Water was easy enough to find, but he could not drink enough to satisfy his hunger. He tried to find berries or other fruits in the forest, but he could find nothing at this time of year but a few half-rotten persimmons. He did not know how to live off the land like Ken’ishi. And Hana depended on him.

  Where was Ken’ishi now? Was he alive?

  Norikage had spent much time thinking about what had transpired between them. What right did a ronin have to be self-righteous? Norikage had once told Ken’ishi that he himself was a sort of ronin. Now it was true. He could never go back to Kyoto, to his family. He had nothing. No one except Hana. No way to feed either of them, except for the paltry few coins hidden in his robes. When those coins were gone, they would starve, and the coins would run out far too soon.

  When they arrived at Hakozaki, the devastation took his breath away. Much of the bayside had been flattened by the storm. The stench crept across the land far beyond the bounds of the town, clinging inside his throat as he breathed. At the edge of town, huge graves were crammed with countless thousands of ripened corpses. Other similar graves had already been covered over, forming great earthen mounds, while others sat half-empty. Steady streams of wagons and carts hauled piles of rapidly decaying corpses.

  Around the shops of swordsmiths and armorers were piles of Mongol weapons and equipment, untold thousands of Mongol swords and armor plates, all of it destined to be melted down and reused. But as he shuffled through the city, he overheard people saying that some smiths would not touch the tainted foreign steel. Perhaps it was tainted with the demonic fury and brutality of the former owners. A Shinto priest performed purification rites over a neatly stacked pile of foreign weapons. Could the steel be purified to receive the soul of a samurai?

  Samurai were keeping order, preventing looting and lawlessness. Every time he saw a lone warrior, he looked to see if it was Ken’ishi. He yearned to make amends. They had been friends for three years, and they had been through trouble and danger together.

  Norikage finally found a shop selling Chinese noodles, mobbed by hungry people. Hana clutched his arm with a gasp. Only at close range did the smell of pork broth overpower the stench of death and decay that hung so heavy in the air. He mustered all the self-control he possessed to be calm and collected as they waited their turn, almost two hours. But when the bowl of noodles came, he could stand it no longer. He practically buried his face in the steaming broth, taking the chopsticks and shoveling into his mouth, burning his tongue, but he did not care. He began to feel ill, probably because he had eaten too much too fast, but he did not care. He had eaten.

  As he sipped hot tea, waiting for his belly to calm itself, Hana was a quiet presence next to him. She was a woman of few words, which was one thing he liked about her. She allowed him silence. He had initially thought that her silence meant she was simple-minded, but when she spoke, her words carried weight.

  She said, “Perhaps you could find a way to manage an establishment much like this one. You have enough money to make yourself a credible businessman.”

  “Me? Become a merchant?” Merchants were mostly a dishonorable breed, but did that really bother him? Death was preferable to living as a penniless beggar. “Perhaps.” He gave her a little smile. Yes, the idea began to swirl in his mind. But he could not start such a venture in Hakozaki. He would have to go to Hakata, where there were more customers and more profit. Besides, Hakozaki was still a bit too close to Aoka village. He wanted to be far from there.

  Another patron ordered two bowls of noodles and pushed his straw hat off his head, letting it fall across his back. The old man slid onto a stool, bald and portly with a sprout of white beard poking from his chin and a tuft of white hair sprouting over each ear.

  The old man looked at Norikage askance. “You look as if you have a story to tell. Did you lose your post as a scarecrow?”

  Norikage smiled. “I suppose so.”

  “How’s Aoka village?” the old man asked.

  “How did you—!”

  The old man waved a hand. “I’ve passed through there a few times. It’s not a big village. I had an acquaintance who was trying to get back there. I’d like some news of him.”

  “Who?”

  “A young warrior. Perhaps you know him.”

  Norikage could not conceal his surprise. “I saw him!” Then he scratched his head. “How many days ago …? Since the day of the invasion.”

  “Does the old sot yet live?”

  “He lived when he left me.”

  The old man nodded and sipped his tea. “Then perhaps still.”

  “Perhaps. How do you know him?”

  “I have stories to tell about that myself. But you first.”

  Did a cuckoo cry?

  I look out, but there is only dawn and

  The moon in its final night.

  Did the moon cry out

  Horobirete! Horobirete!

  Perishing! Perishing!

  — The Love Poems of Marichiko

  While Hatsumi and Kazuko awaited Tsunetomo’s return, Hatsumi combed Kazuko’s long, beautiful hair, something she had always enjoyed when Kazuko was younger. She had pitifully few opportunities to do it these days. Kazuko had taken to doing many such personal tasks for herself. She said it was because she should ask no one to do anything for her that she could not do herself. Hatsumi had found this sentiment incomprehensible, and perhaps a bit offensive, but she did not press the issue.

  Hatsumi yawned widely. She had slept poorly last night, a sleep fraught with increasingly awful dreams.

  Today was a good day, however, in spite of her sleepiness. Lord Tsunetomo was coming home. Her fears of impoverishment could be put aside for a while. Kazuko’s old, tiresome melancholy seemed to be gone forever. Her spirit had risen and opened once again.

  Hatsumi was also happy that Yasutoki was returning, too. She had even written a poem for him, suggesting a liaison, and she would send it to him discreetly.

  As the sounds of the gate opening reached their lofty window, Kazuko said, “They are here!” She jumped up with excitement.

  “Oh, my dear, run along. I’m not dressed yet.”

  “Please come when you can!” Kazuko wiped tears and ran out of the room.

  Hatsumi sighed and went to the window. If Yasutoki accompanied the entourage, she would stay here. She was not ready to see him yet. Ranks of troops began marching through the gate, spear tips glinting, next several ranks of mounted samurai and officers. There were many fewer now than when they had departed.

  Next came Lord Tsunetomo’s palanquin. Servants and samurai alike knelt at its passage. She could not see Kazuko below, but a ripple of reverence and joy spread through the courtyard at Tsunetomo’s arrival.

  The line of troops stretched down the hill and through the town. Near the end of the line, just ahead of the trains of riderless horses, were groups of scruffy-looking bushi.

  Hatsumi sneered, “They look like filthy ronin!” A stab of hatred in her belly as she looked out over the new recruits, with their strange mishmash of weapons and threadbare clothing. That ronin who had ruined her life and Kazuko’s. Her face tightened. She often wished she would have died at
the hands of the oni rather than live with all the agony she had suffered since.

  The images in her dreams the night before slunk back into her mind, the black, terrible dreams that had driven her out of peaceful sleep into the cold abyss of midnight wakefulness. Last night had been particularly vivid.

  Drowning in a lake of sticky, black pitch in some vast underground cavern. And she, alone in the vast abyss, struggling to stay afloat, listening to her own screams echoing endlessly in the cavern. The tar clung to her arms, sucked her down, and she was weary unto death, gasping for breath. Her arms flailed and her legs kicked in the black muck, but she was lost. And there were eyes in the blackness. Beady, yellow eyes that drilled into her and laughed, enjoying the spectacle of her suffering. The more she fought, the more the tar felt as if it had a life of its own, moving across her flesh like an octopus or a squid or a mass of worms, but she could not see in the blackness. Thousands of black, slimy worms, wriggling, squirming, undulating. Searching. Seeking openings to burrow into her. She screamed and screamed again as the worms found their ways inside, wriggling, sliding into her nether regions. She squeezed her thighs together, clenched her buttocks, but she could not stop them. Burrowing. Biting. Gnawing! They were chewing through her skin, slowly, with their tiny, tiny teeth and vicious, sucking mouths. Burrowing into her legs, her arms, her belly, her back. Crawling up her face to slide into her mouth, her nose, her ears. The beady yellow eyes hovering above her, like fireflies in the deep, thunderous, familiar laughter that haunted her every day of her life. The worms tore, wriggling through her flesh, and she screamed and screamed, with no one to hear except the eyes and the worms.

  But the deeper the worms dug, the less she felt their presence, as if their forms were dispersing within her flesh like juices in a stew. A strange calm settled over her. All of her flesh began to quiver, as if her body was being reshaped until she became a worm herself. Or worse, as if she were being remade from the flesh of the black worms.

  That was when she always awoke, cold and sweating.

  But what troubled her almost as much as the dream itself was that she sometimes awoke in strange places. Once, she had returned to wakefulness standing in the middle of the audience hall. Another time, she was in the hallway outside Kazuko’s chamber. Another time, she was lying on the floor outside of Yasutoki’s room. Another time, outside the servant quarters, and that time she had awakened to find a dagger in her hand. What had she planned to do with it? For that matter, whose dagger was it? She did not have one of her own.

  A stabbing pain doubled Hatsumi over, tearing through her lower belly, through her womb. She gasped and clutched her belly. She pressed her forehead against the floor. The pain was like a hot knife stabbing into her womb. No, more like the rape by the oni … She bit back a scream.

  Then, suddenly, the pain was gone, like the flame on a snuffed candle. The shock of its departure was almost as great. She slowly straightened up again, her breath returning to normal. She took a deep breath and released it.

  As she stood, she felt moisture between her legs, but she had not had her woman’s bleeding for three years. Not since the rape. She had told no one this. Not even Kazuko. It had filled her with a sort of shame and fear. On the contrary, she had continued to talk with Kazuko as if her moon’s blood still came. The thought of its return filled her with elation. She would be a whole woman again! Not a ravaged, soiled, wounded thing. She hurried out and returned to her chambers.

  In the privacy of her own chambers, she searched within the layers of her robes and undergarments. She did not want to stain them with blood.

  But blood was not what she found.

  There were only a few droplets of a strange black ooze, oily and viscous, soaking almost reluctantly into her garments. Her breath froze in her throat and she tore off her clothing, engulfed in a miasma of fetid stench.

  For a long time, she sat naked and alone, trembling in the middle of her chamber.

  When she looked down at the small white pile of soiled under-robes, a retch leaped into her throat. A wave of dizziness washed over her, her belly threatening to purge.

  * * *

  She awoke what must have been moments later, lying on her back, looking up at the ceiling. Her body was ice cold and covered in sweat. Her first thought was that the robes had to be destroyed immediately. No one must ever see them. But they already lay half-burned amid the coals of the brazier.

  * * *

  Since the storm abated, Kazuko had waited, near breathless, for some word, any word from Hakata, but there was nothing. Her body felt like a sodden, wrung-out scrap of linen. Her eyes burned from lack of sleep. She had stayed up through two nights to keep watch with the rest of the warriors. No one had expected it of her, but in doing so, she had gained a modicum of their grudging respect. Their obedience, which she already had, was one thing; however, their respect was quite another, and it filled her with pride.

  When the messenger finally came with news that the invading army had been destroyed by the typhoon, relief had flooded her with tears of joy. But what of her husband? Was he alive? Dead? Had his wound been a mortal one?

  Later, another messenger arrived bearing a letter from her husband. He was alive, and he was coming home.

  Throughout the time when Hatsumi was brushing her hair, she could hardly sit still.

  The procession of warriors filed through the castle gates. Tsunetomo rode in a palanquin near the head of the column. Kazuko smoothed her robes. They were her best, exquisitely woven and painted with vines and pheasants. Her face was freshly powdered. She waited patiently, quietly, as a proper wife should, for the bearers to set down the palanquin before the doors of the house, for his men to help him out and to his feet.

  The pain on his face was evident as he tried to straighten, but his jaw hardened and he shrugged it away. His smile spread like warmth when he saw her, and her face flushed beneath the fresh powder. He climbed the steps, hiding his unsteadiness. His face was pale, and dark sacks hung under his eyes as he concentrated on the steps, one by one. Then, his face rose again, his gaze lifted to her, and some of the color returned. Some of the pain lines around his mouth disappeared.

  When he reached the threshold of the house, she bowed low and said, “Welcome home, Husband. I am so happy you are safe.”

  “I am happy to be home, my dear.”

  “Your journey must have been difficult. Please come with me so that you can rest.”

  He nodded, and she took his arm to support him. By the time they reached their chambers, his breathing was heavy with weariness. The air in the room was warm from the braziers of coals.

  She said, “I have prepared a bed for you.”

  “Be careful, my dear. I am not used to being treated like a child. You will embarrass me.”

  Out of the mouth of another man, those words might have sounded harsh, but from him they were good-natured and playful. At this moment, she wanted to do everything in the world to make this man happy, comfortable, and well. She wanted him to recover and to live a long time. She helped him to undress and put on more comfortable robes. She helped him lie down on the futon she had prepared, propping him up on a large pillow. She winced along with him when every movement of his arm caused him pain. She poured him special healing tea.

  As the steam rose from the teacup, its pungent aroma wafting into her nostrils, she was reminded of another time, long ago, when she had smelled another healing concoction. She drove thoughts of Ken’ishi from her mind immediately.

  He said, “The warmth of one’s own house is a wonderful thing when a man has been lying in a cold tent for days. When I saw that arrow coming, and I knew that it would hit me, I thought I was going to die. I was glad that I was not afraid. Only a coward is afraid of death. But I was also sad, because I feared I would never see you again.”

  He looked at her with a deep, searching gaze, and she gave him what he wanted. “I feared I would never see you again as well.” And it was true. “You are a st
rong man, Husband. Many people rely on you, and you never let them down.”

  “I fear I will not be strong again for a long time.”

  “It will come, but first you must rest. Here, drink your tea.” She gave him the teacup, and he took it with his good hand, sipped it gingerly.

  His face grew serious and thoughtful. “The Mongols are a terrible foe. If the gods had not lent their hand to help us, we would have been defeated. We were defeated! It is shameful to think about.”

  “You mustn’t trouble yourself about it now, Husband.”

  “But these are the things that must be considered before the enemy regroups and comes again. Their ways of battle are foul and dishonorable, but effective. It was a slaughter.” He took another sip of tea and stared into the glowing coals.

  She slid closer and placed her hand on his forehead. “You look so pale.”

  “Do not worry, my dear.” He smiled for her. “The fever broke yesterday. I will mend. I thank you for your kindness.”

  “It is you who has been kind to me, Husband. I regret my unhappiness when we were first married.”

  “Your feelings are common among young brides. I know that you have come to love me.”

  She smiled at him again, then leaned over and kissed him.

  Even in castles

  I have felt the searching breath

  Of the wintry wind

  — Kyoroku

  Ken’ishi spent several days with the army, searching northern Kyushu for any Mongols that had escaped. They captured nearly three hundred of the enemy, including Korean sailors who had either managed to swim ashore after their ships sank or missed their ships’ departure altogether. All were summarily executed, their severed heads carefully cleaned, powdered, and mounted on boards for viewing by the Shogun’s representatives, who arrived a few days afterward.