Spirit of the Ronin

by Travis Heermann

  He raised a calloused hand and touched her shoulder. Longing splashed his face. He squeezed her arm gently, as if remembering the feel of it. Then he glanced at her face, at her veil.

  “Am I so frightening now?” she said. “So ugly?” She peeled the veil away.

  “I see your scar, and all I can think about is how long evil festered here, in our house, right under our noses, and we ignored it, pretended it was not here. How much still remains? How much evil must I excise before we can be happy again? Where does it lie? Within you?”

  “Or within you!” she snapped. “Jealousy does not become you.”

  He stepped back from her. “Someday, the greatest house of the Otomo clan will be nothing but ashes on a funeral pyre.” He gestured to the castle around them, then slapped himself in the chest. “Everything that my ancestors and I have built will be dust, because no one will remain to carry it on.”

  Her anger flared again. “I will bear no more guilt for that. Especially now, after you have avoided my bed these long, lonely months. If your house is to die, shall it die steadfast and honorable, or wallowing in suspicion and jealousy?”

  She stalked toward him, seized two handfuls of robe on his breast. Her cheeks burned with tears, leaking salt into her mouth. She pulled him down and kissed him hard on the mouth. His lips melded to hers. She pulled away again.

  “Be the lord you used to be,” she said, “and I shall be your warrior lady. We shall uproot the evil together, and become the stuff of legends. Our names will ring like bells through the ages.” She gazed up into his eyes, which were smoldering with emotions she could not sort. “Or else cast me out and be done with it.”

  For an eternity of moments, he gazed down into her eyes, hope at war with a multitude of fears.

  She reached up and touched his cheek.

  His fears collapsed like a rotten wall.

  He threw his arms around her and hugged her close, his stubbled cheek warm against her forehead. Relief swelled up in her and burst from her eyes in fresh deluge.

  In the hallway, a stealthy footstep and a surge of burning hatred.

  SO ENDS THE EIGHTH SCROLL

  PART IV: THE FINAL SCROLL

  Hear those baby mice

  Huddled in their nest...peeping

  To the sparrowlets

  —Basho

  Ken’ishi sat, bathed in sunlight filtering through the emerald forest, surrounded by vibrant green lichen clinging to stones that whispered their antiquity. The sound of running water pattering atop his head soothed the fresh aches of his soul. He had grown weary of examining his soul, but he knew its boundaries now—and its darkest corners—better than ever before. The kami nibbled at his awareness like minnows, passing around him and through him.

  The running water had cleansed his skin of most of the dozens of characters and arcane sigils covering his naked flesh from crown to heel. Its raw energy invigorated him in ways that went beyond the flesh, much like the way he had tried to use the mountain waterfall, clumsily, intuitively, to cleanse himself after his first encounter with Hatsumi.

  How many hours he had spent meditating here today, he did not know. How many days since he had climbed Kiyomizu Mountain, he could not fathom. The days from that beginning to now ran together like blood from a terrible wound mixed with water. Finally, the blood stops, and only water flows, but the wound is still open.

  He had not set foot upon the plain below since Lord Abe brought him to this shrine, built three-fourths of the way up the western slope. The local peasants brought offerings here, and the priest was honored to have such a dignified grandee as Lord Abe no Genmei in his presence.

  Lord Abe had warned him the process would be difficult, but he found it difficult in ways he could not have imagined.

  The first days had been spent in meditation. Looking back on them, he thought those days were among the darkest he had ever spent, as dark as the weeks he had spent in Green Tiger’s torture chamber. It was as if he were trapped at the bottom of a dark chasm, hemmed in by black, squirming, biting things. He could imagine the stars high above, just a narrow ribbon visible, where happiness might be found, but the biting things only lay quiescent until he moved. Whenever he reached for the finger holds that might let him climb free, the black things swarmed him, hissing and squealing. He could not fight them, could not vanquish them; they were a part of him. He could only accept them, one by one, and in that acceptance, they dissolved like smoke, and he was able to climb a little higher each time.

  The biting things were his innumerable failures, the desires he could not relinquish, the wrongs unrighted, the injuries that had never healed, the cruelties he had committed through purpose or indifference, the blood he had spilled.

  In these endless meditations, he was forced to gaze deep into the bowels of his own soul and scrape out the corruption that festered there.

  The blood of enemies still stained him. Nishimuta no Takenaga, the arrogant constable. Green Tiger’s thugs and henchmen. Even the Mongols he had slain were sons and husbands and brothers. They had more family than he himself. He entreated their spirits to forgive him.

  Lord Abe brought him many scrolls to read. Treatises on Confucian ideas by the Chinese ancients, Taoist wisdom, stories of the life of the Buddha. He read and chanted special sutras, performed esoteric mantras at hours deemed most efficacious according to the cosmic shifting of stars, moon, and planets.

  When Ken’ishi was not meditating or studying, Lord Abe put him through daily rites of purification. When the stars and planets were favorably aligned, he subjected Ken’ishi to exorcism ceremonies. Lord Abe wrote arcane spells upon sheets of pristine white paper, emblazoned with pentagrams, and pasted those papers to Ken’ishi’s forehead, where they rested as he painted Ken’ishi’s body, front to back, top to bottom, with hundreds of characters in black and red, all the while chanting in deep concentration. The process took hours, after which, even in winter, Ken’ishi would meditate under what Lord Abe called “the purest stream in the world.” The waterfall would slowly erase the characters and wash away the evil they drew out.

  He was allowed to drink only from the waterfall. He was allowed to eat only one day out of three, and then only rice, plus the fruit and vegetables the local peasants occasionally brought him. Their gifts of food were a hardship to them in these times, he knew, but he could not insult them by refusing. To them, he was simply the Man Living On The Mountain. They did not ask why he was there, but Kiyomizu was a sacred place where one might cross into other realms, so they thought his presence was probably important. The kindness and compassion Lord Abe admonished him to show, especially early on, when the stain of evil still ran deepest, when he was still prone to fits of unreasoning anger, ingratiated him with the peasants. The eel in his belly protested such kindnesses, chewed at him for it, especially in the first year after he came.

  Ken’ishi had wanted to maintain his practice with Silver Crane, but Lord Abe had forbidden it. He was allowed to practice with only bokken. Silver Crane’s power was a corrupting influence. Sometimes, in the depths of his meditations, he sensed the silver threads of the sword’s influence passing through him, tugging at him. In the beginning, he had demanded that Silver Crane remain with him at all times. It was his.

  But Lord Abe placed Silver Crane into a box of fresh pinewood, nestled it in silk, and placed one ofuda atop the sword, another atop the box. These paper talismans were written with complex spells and charged with magic. The box was then wrapped in ropes of rice straw and draped with shide, white paper cut into zigzag strips, signifying the boundary between the sacred and profane. He would not touch Silver Crane again until he was purified of the evil that had taken root in him.

  Swathed in the ancient forest, he reverted to his old ways under Kaa’s tutelage, practicing his woodcraft in the ancient forest. By now, he knew even the smallest patch of the mountain, and he still found it a place of wonders.

  Near the summit on the south slope, he had discovered an
old path choked by bamboo. At the top of it, an ancient, stone tomb, just over waist high, had been carved into a rock outcropping. Two sharp-eyed fox statues, as tall as his thigh, guarded the entrance. The suggestion of red paint remained on the entrance seal. Above the entrance, a bronze plaque read: Third Empress of Kyushu, followed by a series of characters Ken’ishi did not know, presumably the woman’s name.

  Many times he sat before the tomb entrance, pondering the relentless sweep of history and wondering how many hundreds of years had passed since this empress had reigned, since she had laughed and loved. Where had her palace been? What had her domain been like? What would be remembered of her in a thousand years? Would the barbarian hordes slaughter every samurai and impose their domain here, as they had across China and all the way to lands beyond the sunset?

  He communed with the pheasants and rabbits, the tanuki and foxes, the sparrows and finches. None of the tanuki he met were as personable—or as powerful—as Hage. He wondered what the old rascal was doing with himself these days. These tanuki preferred to keep to themselves, likewise with the foxes. After two dangerous encounters with foxes, he favored giving them a wide berth anyway. Lord Abe forbade him to eat any of the game animals, with the reproach that any further deaths burdening his soul would disrupt the purification.

  Ken’ishi allowed Storm to roam free on the mountaintop. With more fresh grass than the stallion could hope to eat in a thousand lifetimes, he was content to await the day when Ken’ishi might need to ride him into battle. Ken’ishi exercised him often, lest he grow fat with all that grass and nothing to do.

  Lord Abe often left Ken’ishi alone on the mountain and returned with news of the outside world. He possessed webs of information gathering, both prosaic and supernatural. So much had happened since Ken’ishi had climbed Kiyomizu Mountain five winters ago.

  The fortification had been completed. A stone wall half-again the height of a man now encircled the entirety of Hakata Bay, from beyond Shiga spit all the way to Imazu, some ten ri, cutting through Hakozaki and Hakata. A man could climb it, but a Mongol pony could not, and only fifty or so paces lay between the water’s edge and the wall. The invaders would not be able to mass large formations of troops. The backside of the wall had an earthen embankment sloping to the top. Men and horses could run right up to the front edge and rain arrows down upon the enemy below.

  In the winter of the year Ken’ishi had come to Kiyomizu, the bakufu had concocted a scheme to counterattack the shipyards in Pusan and other ports on the Koryo peninsula and wrest them away from the enemy. Thousands of samurai, tired of waiting on their laurels for the next attack, heeded the call for volunteers. Hakata and Hakozaki were turned from trade ports into shipyards, but the number of large ships required proved too costly. The project was abandoned after a few months. Instead of large ships capable of carrying an invading army, a smaller, more agile kind of vessel became the favorite. These vessels were designed to attack the incoming fleet pirate-style. Scores of them had been constructed.

  A series of signal beacons had been erected across northern Kyushu, and they were constantly manned. When the barbarians came again, the news would spread with the speed of flame.

  And come the barbarians would. It was only a matter of when. Three years ago, the Mongols had finally conquered the recalcitrant Sung empire after an effort of twenty years. This war had been Khubilai Khan’s focus, a thorn in his side, a major diversion of resources, and a distraction from the “small country” that had defied him across the sea. But with the submission of the Sung, the Mongols now had command of the largest trading fleet in the known world.

  Another embassy arrived from the Khan, went before the shogun, and were promptly beheaded as spies.

  Two years ago, the Khan ordered his son-in-law, king of the Koryo, to build him a thousand ships. The shogun’s spies reported that fifty thousand Mongols had moved into the Koryo peninsula, along with untold thousands of Chinese and Koryo troops, awaiting completion of the invasion fleet.

  Talk in the capital was of war. Talk in Kamakura was of war. Talk across Kyushu was of war. Of course, Kyushu had been living under imminent threat for six years. It was in the air now, in the water, in the crops—that is, what crops remained.

  With all the peasants working on fortifications, ships, and others defenses, fields languished. Moreover, two years of drought, followed by two years of blighted crops, had left much of Kyushu starving. Immense quantities of grain had been shipped from the north, but it was only a bandage on a half-severed limb. The peasants were suffering, simmering with growing unrest.

  Lord Tsunetomo’s domain was hard hit. An entire corner of his domain had rebelled over tax collection the year before. Dozens of half-starved farmers and a handful of bumpkin samurai had to be executed before the rebellion was cowed.

  Now, with the fortifications completed, in the burgeoning of summer with rice seedlings growing, people were looking ahead, hopeful for good crops, but fearful the barbarians would burn the crops around them. The farmers could only do their planting and, if the barbarians came, hope their fields were not ravaged.

  It had not happened immediately, but perhaps six months into the purifications and exorcisms, the crimson mark on Ken’ishi’s chest began to shrink. With that discovery, hope bloomed within him. He might return someday to service, if Lord Tsunetomo would have him. Month by month, year by year, the mark shrank to a few small tendrils around the scar. Kazuko was no longer a specter of aching desire, but a warm, treasured memory that resurfaced only occasionally.

  Lord Abe had refused to answer any questions about her for more than three years, and only then after a special divination ritual where he determined if the spike of longing in Ken’ishi’s heart was gone.

  Diminished, perhaps, but never gone.

  According to Lord Abe, Tsunetomo had not divorced her as many had speculated he would do when an heir was not forthcoming. Instead, she had risen to the stature of Captain Tsunemori and was recruiting women of samurai birth for a special unit under her command.

  Some thirty women had answered her call, a mix of warriors’ wives and women who eschewed the company of men. She had created quite a sensation—although some called it scandal. She trained her followers in the naginata, and Tsunetomo’s horsemaster, Ishii no Soun, trained them in horsemanship and yabusame. Ken’ishi smiled with pride at the thought of her leading such women.

  On a night in the sixth month, Ken’ishi sat on a west-facing ledge near the summit of Kiyomizu, looking out across the verdant plain toward the Ariake Sea, across the glimmering patchwork of flooded rice fields where the stars shone. The lights of Setaka village flickered like fireflies. He had fashioned himself a new bamboo flute and played it now. It soothed him, as it always had. The songs of sadness and longing no longer felt right to him, so he played happier tunes, smiling occasionally at his own inventiveness.

  Then the corner of his eye caught a flare of yellow-orange light in the distance, a sudden blossom. The flames hung high above the plain, from a hilltop south of Yame village.

  He stood and squinted into the hazy, star-studded distance. Farther to the north, another long beacon burned, and farther still, yet another.

  A door seemed to shut in his mind.

  His days of healing and renewal were over.

  * * *

  Lord Abe was not here tonight. He had been staying as guest of the Nishimuta lord who oversaw Setaka village, Lord Jiro’s cousin.

  Ken’ishi could waste no time looking for him, either. The lighting of the signal beacons carried only one meaning. The barbarians were coming.

  His purification was not complete, but he must assist in the defense. And if he ended up in one of the Nine Hells for his efforts, he would fight his way back out again.

  It is time where many threads converge, rang Silver Crane’s voice in his mind. The man’s destiny is at hand.

  “Indeed, I suspect it is,” he said. “Will you serve me?”

  I am here,
in this time, in this place. I will serve. Will the man?

  Ken’ishi wondered about the cryptic last question, but asking for clarity would bring no response. The sword had always revealed its secrets in its own time.

  He approached the sealed box. Five years of exposure had weathered it. Lord Abe replaced the shide often, so the boundary papers looked fresh.

  Ken’ishi was about reintroduce a dangerous relic back into the mortal world.

  That was when the admonishment of the sword polisher Tametsugu came back to him: At the moment you most desire to use Silver Crane, when deepest peril and greatest triumph are suspended in balance, you must put the sword away.

  Was this that moment? But how could he leave such a powerful weapon here, unused, when the fate of the entire country, thousands of souls, was at stake?

  Look to your soul, samurai, Tametsugu had said.

  Was one man’s soul worth more than those of thousands?

  Ken’ishi sensed the sword’s amusement at his hesitation, and its thirst after being locked away for so long. Its anticipation of battle tingled over Ken’ishi’s flesh.

  What would happen to him if he unleashed Silver Crane’s full power? How many deaths could he withstand, without losing himself, before he was no longer human? How many deaths would slake the sword’s thirst? It had the power to drive him into the thickest fighting before he knew what had happened. It could reshape fortune and circumstance to deliver the thickest bloodletting unto itself, and Ken’ishi would become its pawn.

  He untied the rope around the box and lifted the lid.

  There it lay, just as it ever had. An unassuming, antique sword.

  He picked it up and tied it to his obi.

  To battle! its voice rang.

  “To battle.”

  “The knowledge of a general is an understanding of human affections. If a general does not have sincerity, righteousness, and human-heartedness, it will be impossible for him to be in harmony with human affections. It has been clearly understood both in ancient and modern times that when a man does not acknowledge human affections, his strategies will turn into disasters.”