“Show me,” Tsunetomo said.
* * *
Ken’ishi’s presence annoyed Yasutoki, and this amused him.
At the entrance of Yasutoki’s tent lay two bodies, dragged just out of view. At this hour, no one would have been around to see. These men had been among Tsunetomo’s most trusted guards. Yojimbo duty was reserved for warriors of special merit.
One glance told Ken’ishi these men were expertly killed. But why would Yasutoki kill his bodyguards? Some nefarious scheme relating to his efforts as Green Tiger, most likely.
“Could this be related to the fires?” Tsunetomo said. “Or the murders of the other guards?” As soon as word had spread of the storehouse fires and the murders scattered all over town, guards had been quadrupled at all the posts. Fire crews were still working to contain the blazes. One had gotten away and threatened an entire district.
“I do not see how,” Yasutoki said. “The storehouses are a far from here.... Unless...” He hurried inside the tent. Tsunetomo, Tsunemori, and Ken’ishi followed him.
Yasutoki opened a lacquered document case with trembling fingers, to reveal dozens of small pigeon holes...that all lay empty. His eyes bulged. “My lord, I have been pilfered!”
“Spies,” Tsunetomo said.
The kami buzzed, restless. Undoubtedly Yasutoki was not only capable of murdering the guards last night, but setting the storehouse fires. This was the kind of machination at which Green Tiger excelled. But why would he harm the defense forces? Was he not in just as much danger as everyone else? Had something changed in the five years of Ken’ishi’s absence? How much gold would buy Green Tiger’s service as a saboteur?
Ken’ishi wanted to leap forward, lay the edge of his blade against Yasutoki’s neck, and force him to confess everything to Lord Tsunetomo—and take his head at the first lie. But Yasutoki still held a higher station. Ken’ishi could not publicly accuse him. And there was still the matter between Ken’ishi and Kazuko, of which Yasutoki knew far too much. If time had mended some of the rents in the fabric of Kazuko’s life, Ken’ishi could not readily put her in jeopardy.
The scar on his chest itched. His fingers ached to squeeze Silver Crane’s hilt and strike.
The implications of Yasutoki’s story rang false.
The yojimbo were not fresh kills.
The storehouse fires had been set between midnight and the Hour of the Ox. The guardposts around town had been attacked at roughly the same time. The new guards arriving for their shifts had discovered the murders.
Yasutoki was suggesting someone had killed his bodyguards and stolen all of his documents, including the guardpost and storehouse locations, and then had time to go wreak havoc, all while Yasutoki was in the privy.
Not even a pile of shit like Yasutoki could remain in the privy that long.
“Spies in our midst,” Tsunetomo said, scratching his beard. “Saboteurs.” He spat. “I must inform the other lords. Yasutoki, your first task is to have the remaining storehouses moved. Distribute the food and supplies to other locations. We cannot afford another such loss.”
Ken’ishi bit his tongue and tasted blood. How could a man as wise and stalwart and honorable as Tsunetomo be so blind to the evil right beside him? Ken’ishi swore that Yasutoki would not survive this. The stain of Green Tiger’s existence would soon be cleansed from the world, but only after the barbarians had been cast back into the sea.
* * *
At sunrise the assault recommenced, but this time the focus moved to Shiga. Fifty ships moved into position northeast of the bulk of the defending army. The enemy was trying to open a pathway for its forces; the sandbar was a perfect site to offload troops in great numbers. The Hakata defenses were too strong, but if they could break through the defense lines east of Shiga, outside of Hakata Bay, they would have open paths south and east, just as they had seven years before. Signals came via flag and fan and drum, passed along the shoreline toward Hakata and beyond to Imazu.
Ken’ishi was given command of a hundred peasant spearmen and twenty-five mounted samurai. The thunder of the Mongol bombs echoed across the distance, and he chafed to be in the battle. But it was Silver Crane’s impatience, not his. The foot troops marched with the speed of cold tar. The sword’s hunger, pulsing and thrumming through him, drove him to wish he could simply spur his horse forward and throw himself into the teeth of the enemy. But his troops were mostly frightened fishermen and farmers, like the men he had known in Aoka village, a unit knitted together by desperation and leadership. Bravery would inspire them—as long as it was visible. Michizane was a fine leader, but they did not look to him like they did to Ken’ishi.
Stories of his successful assaults on the ships were spreading. No matter what he did, people found it worthy of rumors. At fifty heads, he had stopped counting.
The march distracted him from what evils Green Tiger might be hatching in their very camp.
Aoka village was alive again—with encampments. It had become the rear echelon where supplies and weapons were stored. Exhausted and wounded men, pulled off the front lines for rest, watched with wan faces and empty eyes as Ken’ishi’s men marched past.
With less than a ri before they reached the beaches under assault, the crackling explosions of the bombs grew louder.
Captain Tsunemori pelted into Aoka from a northern road through the forest. A splintered arrow protruded from his bloodstained thigh, and his eyes blazed with urgency.
“Go, go, go!” he screamed, waving his war fan to follow him. “Otherwise we will fall!”
* * *
When Ken’ishi’s troops emerged from the forest onto the scrub and sand dunes stretching toward Shiga, a spike of desperate fear shot through his belly.
Fifteen enemy ships had reached the shore. Even now, men and horses were pouring forth behind a stubborn line of Sung infantry. The attack had pried a hole in the defenders’ formation and opened a space for the enemy to gain a larger toehold. Cavalry rode back and forth behind the lines, firing arrows into the Sung ranks, but without visible effect.
Ken’ishi’s men were puffing with exertion, but he must get them into battle. His samurai disdained the peasant spearmen, anxious to join the fray, but he could not leave these peasants alone. Their sergeants would not know how best to engage the enemy. Ushihara led a company of fifty. He was brave and strong, like an old, scarred bullock, but not a tactician.
The desperation on Tsunemori’s face to rejoin the battle burned in his eyes. “Slow, yes, but steady. Do not spend your troops before they reach the battle.”
Behind the defenders’ lines among the cavalry units, a unit of warriors wearing brilliant crimson armor harried the attackers with bow fire.
Lines of spears and naginata rose up behind rows of spiked bamboo barricades just high enough to impale any horse that pressed close. The fences provided little cover from arrows but prevented the Mongol horsemen from charging full into the defenders’ ranks. Bodies littered the sand on both sides. Storms of arrows flew back and forth.
For half a ri eastward, ships tried to land, tried to disgorge their cargo onto the beach, but the defenders were there, spear points glimmering in the morning sun and driving them back to the water.
The scale of the slaughter gave Ken’ishi pause. After five years of meditating on the nature of life, taking it had become a weightier matter than ever. Hundreds, thousands of universes dying before his eyes, some of them foolish, some wise, the strong and the weak, brave and cowardly, all dying together.
Strike now, or you will die! chimed Silver Crane.
But after four days of grueling, blood-soaked battle, it grew easier to watch men die again.
Tsunemori pointed. “There! If those horsemen flank those Shimazu men, the southwest flank will crumble!”
Ken’ishi could see, beyond the chaos of melee, a mass of Mongol horsemen, fresh from newly-landed ships, forming up to swing wide and flank attack a block of Shimazu naginata troops. The Shimazu were fending off a unit
of Sung spearmen. There was just enough space on the beach to allow the Mongols’ maneuver. That hole must be plugged.
“Spearmen!” Captain Tsunemori shouted. “Follow behind us and fill that opening! Horsemen, with me!” With a great cry, they barreled across the sand. If they could swing around the southwest tip of the infantry lines quickly enough, they could strike while the Mongols were still in disarray.
Tip the cup, and I will drink. Silver Crane’s voice rasped across Ken’ishi’s bones and teeth.
He whipped it out. “Then give me power,” he muttered so no one else could hear, and spurred his horse.
Clouds of grit flew from pounding hooves.
They reached the gap just in time to meet the enemy horsemen’s maneuver. The Mongol commander’s face twisted into a sneer at being denied his crushing blow.
In the previous invasion, the Mongol horsemen had moved like flocks of birds, in perfect unison. Their favorite tactic had been to swoop in close, loose great clouds of arrows, draw the samurai forces into attack, and then retreat. The samurai, in their zeal to engage, would invariably give chase, and find themselves overextended. Then the horsemen would sweep in and crush them into bloody paste.
The narrow confines of the sand and dunes, funneled between beaches and sea, were too constricted to allow this maneuver. They were surrounded on three sides—by the sea, by their own troops, and by the defenders’ barricades. Ken’ishi saw the Mongol commander’s recognition of his situation, then his roar of command to meet Tsunemori and Ken’ishi’s charge.
The Mongol unit outnumbered Ken’ishi’s by four to one, but the constricted space would negate the enemy’s superior numbers.
The cavalry units slammed together, a horrific carnage of horses and men. Screams of rage and pain filled Ken’ishi’s ears as he slashed left and right. Horses stomped and bit and screamed, crushing each other and any men who fell into the sand.
Storm roared his challenges to the Mongol ponies, taunting them for their stunted ugliness.
Silver Crane shattered blades and sundered armor, cleaved helmets and split flesh. As the blood flowed, strength surged into Ken’ishi’s limbs. The sky and the air filled with silver veins that pulsed and flowed like the blood of destiny itself, entwining men, horses, stones, and sky.
Mongol blades licked at him, touched him, but he felt no pain.
He hacked and hewed, and his fury drove the Mongols back. His men surged forward, sensing their advantage. Slashing naginata laid open swaths of meat, man and horse. The sand turned to crimson mud. The horses fought for footing.
The Mongol commander traded blows with Tsunemori, katana to saber. With a savage snarl, the Mongol launched himself off his horse, grabbed Tsunemori, and dragged him to the earth. In his heavy o-yoroi, injured, Tsunemori slammed into the ground like a bag of grain. The Mongol pulled a dagger, stabbed at him. Tsunemori caught his wrist.
Ken’ishi spun Storm and spurred toward them, but the surge of battle crossed his path. He hacked his way through two more Mongols, but lost sight of Tsunemori on the ground.
When the crush parted, the Mongol commander jerked his dagger out of Tsunemori’s throat, raised it, brought it down again two-handed into Tsunemori’s face. Tsunemori’s arms fell limp to the bloody sand.
Rage exploded white-hot in Ken’ishi’s breast. He leaped out of the saddle and plowed into the Mongol commander, bearing him off Tsunemori’s body. Grabbing the Mongol was like trying to wrestle with an oak bough, but the power surging through Ken’ishi was mightier than any tree.
One hand hooked into the neck of the Mongol’s armor, the other clutching his belt, he lifted the writhing knot of fury into the air above his head.
And then he brought the Mongol down across his knee.
The wet crunch sounded even above the clamor of battle.
The Mongol’s legs went limp as sackcloth. Ken’ishi let him slip to the sand, but instead of fury, the barbarian’s face blazed with terror. Even so, he clutched for a weapon that he might take Ken’ishi’s life with his last breath.
With a single stomp, Ken’ishi burst his head like a melon.
Power surged away from him in waves, like a boulder dropped into water, driving the space around him wider. Friend and foe alike fell back.
In a single bound, Ken’ishi was back in the saddle.
With the loss of their commander, the Mongols broke and fled.
Ken’ishi spurred after them, heedless that this was exactly the tactic they had used years before.
He roared after them, Silver Crane trailing blood as it pierced the sky.
He caught one fleeing horsemen and severed his head.
The rest fled through the ranks of their foot troops, putting the infantry in momentary disarray. However, the Koryo spearmen closed ranks again behind the Mongols, and formed a bristling wall of spear points. Ken’ishi hauled Storm to a halt just out of range of the spears. The Koryo spearmen, pouring sweat in their heavy armor coats, similar to those of the Sung, lunged forward, thinking to spear this lone warrior’s horse, but Storm drew back.
Ken’ishi leaped from the saddle and lunged into them, feeling the invisible silver threads entwining his body, the spears, the limbs and heads of his foes. He swept their spears aside, plowing through their ranks like a charging boar, slashing right and left.
For a split second, he wondered that he had not sought the Void. He no longer needed it. Its realm of endless possibility was superfluous. He needed only slaughter.
Behind him, somehow, he felt his comrades sense the enemy’s surprise.
A lone warrior charging a fully armed and armored unit?
The dance of Ken’ishi’s sword and body placed him without fail between every enemy spear thrust. Every step was perfectly timed to move him out of harm’s way and into range for another lethal attack of his own. His feet moved with the precision of a dancer. Men fell around him like scythed grain.
Hooves pounded across the sand from behind him.
Encircled now by ten hostile spear points, he whirled and slashed, severing spear hafts and limbs and necks.
Fresh screams filled his ears again as his troops crashed into the Koryo spearmen.
This hammer blow shattered the enemy’s courage. A dozen died under the furious cavalry onslaught, and the rest broke and ran.
The momentum shift filled the air like an oncoming storm.
The enemy infantry across the spit, seeing their flank collapse, started to fall back, to contract and protect both flanks again with the sea. The defenders pressed their advantage and charged past their barricades.
In an endless cascade of moments, the enemy fell back with increasing speed, like an avalanche gathering momentum.
The collapsing lines retreated into the narrowing spit, and all became chaos. Bottlenecked, the infantry units fouled each other, panicking the crowded Mongol ponies.
Seizing the moment with a roar of triumph, Ken’ishi and the defending commanders led a devastating charge into the rear of the retreating enemy.
It was there the gods flung open the gates of every Hell to catch the deluge of blood.
Ken’ishi waded through the deepest of it.
The defenders tore through the invaders, leaving hundreds of dead in their wake. The retreat continued westward across the sandbar. Ships that had been safely behind friendly lines now lay exposed on the beach. The defenders stormed them before they could retreat from shore. They butchered the crews and burned the ships.
The enemy commanders struggled mightily to rally their troops and managed to stem the retreat only a few hundred paces from Shiga Island, where the spit narrowed to only fifty paces.
When the advancing defenders encountered this solid block of spears, Sung halberds, and fresh arrow fire, they withdrew out of range.
By midafternoon the engagement had settled once again into a stalemate, but the invaders had lost nearly all of the spit. Fourteen ships burned along the sand. The defenders still held the shore east.
/> Ken’ishi collapsed at the head of the defenders’ lines, drenched in blood from crown to toe.
Four men carried him to the rear. He was only vaguely aware of the shock of his bearers as they talked about someone’s wound. His flesh was raw and painful, as if the blood burned him, but he had no strength left to wash it off.
Then he saw the hole the size of a spear point in the side of his do-maru.
I will not forget
This lonely savor of my life’s
One little dewdrop
—Basho
Kazuko saw them carry Ken’ishi away from the front lines. Other wounded men were carried back, but he was the only one who looked as if he had bathed in blood. It dripped from his wild mane like rainwater. His half-lidded eyes told her he still lived.
After so long, seeing him like this unleashed a tumult of emotions she would need time to sort.
She swallowed the tear-fueled lump in her throat and assessed her own losses. Attrition had reduced the Scarlet Dragons to just over half of their previous number. They were only eighteen now. All of them hard, bloody veterans after almost two weeks of fighting. Six of her women lay wounded back in the village behind the lines.
They had acquitted themselves well today.
An uneasy stalemate descended over the beach, the spit, and the sea. The enemy had formed what looked like an impenetrable block of spears and stubborn fury near Shiga Island, daring the defenders to try to push them back again. The defenders had likewise formed a similar formation.
Ships hovered offshore, withholding further bombardment. Hundreds of their thunder-crash bombs had rained down upon the defenders. How many of them could the enemy have brought in ships’ stores?
As Kazuko rode through the ranks of spearmen, she heard men speaking.
“Did you see what that Otomo man did?”
“I can’t believe it!”
“He gave us the day.”
“What a glorious death!”
“Was he wounded?”
Spirit of the Ronin Page 37