Child of Vengeance

by David Kirk

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by David Kirk

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.doubleday.com

  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Jacket design by Michael J. Windsor

  Jacket illustration © DEA / A. DAGLI ORTI / Getty Images

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kirk, David

  Child of vengeance / David Kirk. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Miyamoto, Musashi, 1584–1645—Fiction. 2. Japan—History—Azuchi Momoyama period, 1568–1603—Fiction. 3. Japan—History—Tokugawa period,

  1600–1868—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6111.I74C48 2013

  823′.92—dc23

  2012015187

  eISBN: 978-0-385-53664-6

  v3.1

  A novel of fathers, for my father, Frank

  I’ll work an Uzi into the next one somehow, I swear.

  Many people claim that

  the resolute acceptance of death

  is the way of the samurai.

  However, these people are wrong;

  warriors have no monopoly on this virtue.

  Monks, women and peasants too

  can face death bravely.

  No; the true distinction of a samurai

  lies in overcoming other men

  and bringing glory to himself.

  —Musashi Miyamoto, Go Rin No Sho

  (The Book of Five Rings), 1645

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Author’s Note

  PART ONE

  Ghosts

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  PART TWO

  Bloodflower

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  PART THREE

  The Child’s Crusade

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  PART FOUR

  Sekigahara

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  All names are

  presented in the

  Western fashion of

  given name before

  family name—e.g.,

  Munisai Shinmen

  rather than the

  technically correct

  Shinmen Munisai.

  The armor sits, as it has done for eight years, empty. The boy stands at the edge of the room looking at it, clenching and unclenching his fists. He loathes and he loves what is before him.

  The house around him is dark and silent. It is big enough for a dozen, but the boy alone lives here. He is the son of samurai, and so he is tended to by the peasants of the village. He wants for nothing—the house is cleaned, the garden pruned and raked, food always within chests and barrels—but he never sees his custodians. They are fearful of him and of this house, and he is cared for as if by phantoms.

  The boy is called Bennosuke. The armor is his father’s. His father is not dead, but gone. In his absence the armor must be maintained, but the peasants cannot permit themselves to touch such a thing. Thus it falls to the boy to clean it, and he has done so for almost as long as he can remember. He bows to the suit as he would to the man, and then approaches on his knees, his eyes downcast.

  The armor is magnificent. The body of it is a rounded lacquer cuirass, its black smoothness without flaw. From this, hanging from the shoulders and the waist are large square panels to guard the legs and the arms. Narrow rectangular layers of metal and wood lap over one another like fish gills, each strip hidden beneath a rich base cloth of light blue over which threads of gold and silver have been woven into pattern.

  It is the helmet that is the most striking. It has a large copper crest that rises off the brow in burnished brilliance, shaped after leaves and the whiskers of mythical beasts. The bowl of the helmet is etched with interlocking patterns and within the lines of these the most delicate of prayers to bring fortune and victory are carved. It begs the face of some shining hero, but where that should be is only empty darkness.

  Bennosuke feels that darkness looking into him as he begins to clean. His hands move with years of practice, picking grime and motes of dust from within the crevices of the armor. He rubs fine oils into metal where it is exposed, ensures each link between the pieces still holds strong whether it be steel hoop or tough cord. Then he takes a cloth and a small bowl of wax, and begins to polish the cuirass.

  It is this he hates the most. As his hands rub in small circles, slowly the lacquer becomes as a pool of dark water, as clear as any mirror. The boy begins to see himself reflected, and his blush begins. He is a gangly boy of thirteen, as tall as any man in the village where he lives already, but without poise or grace. He looks awkward, but that is not what shames him.

  Across his face and neck, and then down onto his body hidden beneath the kimono, are sickly red welts and scabs. It is not called plague only because it has not killed him, nor will it, but he knows that this is why he is alone. He knows this is why the peasants fear him. He imagines them coming to this house as a funeral gang, cloths across their faces and incense burning as they quickly fulfill their tasks.

  The image is warped across the curve of the stomach of the armor, twisting his body further and taunting him; the boy dreams of wearing this suit, but what he sees reflected in it shows him that this could never be. Still he dreams of it, though, for he wants to be a samurai above all else. The boy awaits the unknown day his father must return with longing and dread. He imagines the man teaching him to be a strong and proud warrior beloved of the light, and at the same time knows the samurai who wore this armor would be disgusted with the wretch his heir has become.

  He feels his face burning in shame, feels all that twisting in his heart, but the boy continues to polish. Though he hates this task, he knows that this is his duty, and that diligence in duty is the first tenet of a samurai. He perseveres, his hand going in spirals until it is done. Then he folds the cloth, shuffles back on his knees, and bows once more, his brow upon the woven rush mats of the floor.

  The boy holds it for a respectful amount of time, and then rises. He is careful not to let his eyes look upon the name stitched stark white upon the foremost lap guard of the armor, as though the reading of it might somehow summon his father and bring the day he yearns for lurching hideously forward.

  He is careful not to read the name Munisai Hirata.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The battle was over, but still Kazuteru ran. He had duty to fulfill. The young samurai ignored the howling of his lungs and the ache within his muscles and bore forth his sacred burden: a dagger the length of his hand. His lord awaited it on the valley top above him.

  It had rained all day yesterday and most of the morning too, an anomaly in the high summer. The sun shone bright now, but too late. Hundreds of feet and hooves had trampled the
sodden slope and churned it into a swamp. Kazuteru’s armor and underclothes, which had once been a brilliant blue, were now a mottled gray, and his legs were heavy with plastered clay and turf.

  His hands alone were clean, protected as they had been under gauntlets and gloves. Bared, the flesh had remained immaculate enough to hold the dagger. But the humidity and the layers of metal, cloth, and wood he wore had made his entire body slick with sweat. It stung his eyes and he could taste it on his lips, and when the ground gave suddenly beneath him as he ran, he felt it on his hands also. His wet palms fumbled, and the dagger slipped from his grasp.

  The blade caught the light as it fell. It winked white once at him, and then plunged into the slimy dirt and vanished with a sad little sound. Kazuteru let a smaller, sadder whimper escape him. His waiting lord had a thousand swords and spears with him already, but they would not suffice. They were not ceremonial and pure. The dagger, which had been, was now sullied.

  He fell to his knees and plunged his left hand into the muck. It vanished up to his wrist. He began to grope blindly, hastened by desperation but slowed by fear of the blade’s edge.

  Something to his right moaned suddenly, a pained voice so pitiful that it stopped Kazuteru. He saw a man twisted where he had fallen, one leg so shattered and bent that his toes almost touched his hamstring. The samurai had no mind left for words; his eyes pleaded with Kazuteru to kill him, and for a moment he thought to oblige.

  But then Kazuteru realized that the man wore the red of the enemy, and for that he left him. The man’s agony was but one voice in dozens.

  Hundreds.

  His fingers touched blunt metal. He pulled the dagger free, and filth came with it. Kazuteru tried to wipe the blade clean as best he could. Once when he was a child—too young to know about sacrilege—he and his friends had hidden a small cast-iron Buddha in an ox’s feed just to see if the beast was too stupid to notice. It had been, and three days later they had found the Buddha again. Looking at the dagger now, he was reminded of that serene, shit-smeared face.

  Water. He needed water.

  But there was none here, save for that which had soaked into the ground; this was where the fighting had been. There was no time to return to their distant camp, where he had just run to collect the blade in the first place. The only place he could look was up the slope, toward the valley top they had stormed not one hour ago.

  He began to run toward the hilltop once more, skidding and stuttering in the mud, dagger in his filthy left hand with his right hand held high and free of any contamination. Ahead of him, overlooking the entire valley, Lord Kanno’s castle burned. One of the smaller curved roofs groaned loudly, and then collapsed inward. A ragged cheer carried on the distant breeze, and a fresh billow of black smoke erupted into the sky.

  There, in the corner of Kazuteru’s eye—a mangled man lying against a barricade of bamboo stakes, seemingly drunk as he fumbled about himself. His numb hands were trying to put a canteen to his lips. Clear water dribbled from the mouth of the ray-leather bladder, catching the light.

  Kazuteru hesitated, his conscience caught, but it was clear the man was beyond any help that water could possibly bring. He squelched to his knees beside the samurai, and tried to take the canteen. The man held on stubbornly.

  “I need that water, friend,” said Kazuteru gently.

  “W’tr?” mumbled the man, his eyes distant. Still he tried to remember how to drink, still his hands corpse-tight upon the canteen.

  “Our Lord Shinmen requires it,” said Kazuteru.

  “F’r Lord Shinm’n,” the man said. Out of instinct alone, he obeyed that name and released his grip. His eyes closed, something that wasn’t blood or water bubbled out of his mouth, and then he died.

  Kazuteru muttered his thanks to the man’s departing soul as he began to slowly pour the water on the dagger. It was not quite enough, one clod of black mud remaining. There was nothing else to do but stick his tongue out and lick it clean, and then he knew the taste of the battlefield. He spat, and then the dagger was as clean as it was going to get. Back it went into his pristine right hand, and then he ran once more.

  The ground up on the valley top was not so bad, some solid green turf remaining. Nothing slowed him as he weaved his way through the groups of surviving samurai toward where the lords and generals awaited. A cadre of exhausted foot soldiers, all as dirty as Kazuteru, knelt in a clustered circle around their superiors, facing inward to bear witness to this final act. Lungs were still panting, open wounds being treated.

  Kazuteru dropped into a walking crouch as he drew close to the mock court, holding the dagger above his head respectfully. Men parted for him until he came to where his lord, Sokan Shinmen, sat on a small stool. He dropped to one knee and waited.

  The lord was sitting in his underarmor of toughened cloth. During the battle an arrow had thumped into the plate of his chest armor almost directly over his heart, and he had removed the heavy cuirass to nurse the bruise it had left. The narrow escape had given the lord a spark of manic joy in his eyes that he was unable to conceal.

  Shinmen took the proffered dagger and examined it. Kazuteru held his breath. The lord raised an eyebrow for a moment at the drops of water upon the blade, but he said nothing. He shook it dry and nodded appreciatively at Kazuteru. The samurai bowed low, and then backed away on his knees to melt into the crowd. The taste of mud still in his mouth, relief and pride flooded him; he had done his duty.

  “Lord Kanno,” said Shinmen, turning back to the three who awaited in the center of the gathering, “do you know what follows now?”

  Lord Kanno was the defeated enemy, and he had nervous tears in his eyes as he knelt. Regaled in a full set of miniature armor, he could have escaped from some comedy theater. He was nine years old.

  “I think so,” the boy lord said. “I have to perform seppuku. But …” the boy began, then faltered.

  “But?” said Shinmen.

  “But I don’t know how, Lord,” Kanno said sadly. His small shoulders wilted. “I was never allowed to see. I wanted to, but Father said I was too young.”

  An affectionate laugh rippled through the crowd of samurai. Only two men remained silent. One was Kanno’s General Ueno, who knelt beside his lord. He was an old man with thinning gray hair that hung disheveled around him. It was he who had been truly in command of the enemy, and he who had lost the day. His eye was bruised, his nose was bleeding, and he bristled with futile venom.

  The other stood behind the kneeling pair, his face emotionless for it would be obscene to show joy in front of defeated enemies, and it was he above all the men there who had defeated the Kanno clan. His armor was plain and practical, without any mark of garish boasting save for perhaps the dents and scrapes that spoke of how much fighting he had seen and yet still stood. He was Munisai Shinmen, commander of the lord’s foot soldiers, and so trusted and beloved was he by Lord Shinmen that the lord had bestowed the honor of his own name upon him. Now he waited for command patiently, one hand upon the swords at his hip.

  The mirth subsided, and then Lord Shinmen spoke on. “Seppuku is not difficult, Lord. It is what we are bred for.”

  Kanno still looked nervous. “My brothers told me that you put a sword in your belly. Is that right?” the boy said.

  “They were right, Lord.”

  “But doesn’t that hurt?” asked the boy.

  Shinmen smiled at the innocence. “I should imagine it does. But not for long, Lord. A moment of pain, and then your honor is restored and your spirit is free to wander the heavens and be reborn. It is a good death,” he said.

  “But I never lost my honor! It was my father, Lord! It was he who declared war on you!”

  “The clan is as the lord,” said Shinmen. “This is the way of nobility. The body changes over the years but in you is your father and your grandfather, as my father and my grandfather are in me, all the way back through to the start of time. In you all of their honor rests—will you disappoint them?”

/>   “No! I’m not afraid …” said Kanno, panicking because he could not explain himself and like all children feared looking small in front of adults. “It’s just … I … I don’t know!”

  “Well then, perhaps your general could show you how it’s done?” said Shinmen. The kneeling Ueno raised his maddened eyes.

  “If you think I’m going to give you cowards the honor of that, you dogs can—” He began snarling, spit flecking from his lips.

  “Where is your dignity?” snapped Munisai, speaking for the first time. “Your lord needs your help, and you act like this? Are you samurai, or did someone dress a shit-tossing peasant in the general’s armor this morning?”

  “A cunning ruse, perhaps,” said Shinmen.

  “You’re one to talk of ruses, Shinmen! Accepting our gold and feigning peace like some demon fox! And you”—the general growled, jerking his head toward Munisai—“you are one to talk of samurai! Instead of standing on the field like any true warrior would have, you sneak around our rear like some common thief!”

  “That rear was where I found you hiding,” said Munisai.

  “I was protecting my lord!” Ueno shouted.

  “A fine job you did of that,” said Shinmen, and laughter rippled around the gathered men. There was no warmth this time. Ueno could do nothing but glower at the ground and try to endure the humiliation, but it was much too great to bear.

  “To the hells with you all!” he spat. “Very well, I will show him! Give me the blade!”

  “What of your death poem?” asked Shinmen.

  “I have nothing I want to say to you. Tossing coins to stray cats,” said Ueno, as he unbuckled his armor, hands furiously jerking the clasps open. He placed the cuirass on the ground before him and rose into a dignified kneel.

  “The blade,” he commanded. Shinmen wrapped the dagger in a length of white silk, and then it was conveyed respectfully to the general, who took it wordlessly.

  “I suppose I will have the honor of the great Munisai Shinmen taking my head?” Ueno sneered as he placed the tip of the dagger to the side of his stomach.