Heaven's Net Is Wide

by Lian Hearn

  They camped on the edge of the plain, not knowing that most of their party would die there before they were three years older, and rode across it the following morning, urging their horses to gallop over the grassy slopes, surprising pheasants and hares that made the young horses startle and leap like hares themselves. It seemed the thunder-storms had brought an end to the spring rains; the sky was the deep blue of early summer, and it was very hot; both men and horses poured with sweat; the colts were excited and hard to control.

  “It turned out a good exercise for them after all,” Kiyoshige said when they stopped to rest in the middle of the day in the shade of one of the few scattered woods on the grassy plain. There was a cold spring nearby where the steaming horses were watered and the men washed hands, faces, and feet before they ate. “If we were to fight an enemy on terrain like this, half our horses would be out of control!”

  “We get too little practice,” Irie said. “Our troops have forgotten what war is like.”

  “This would make a perfect battleground,” Shigeru said. “Plenty of room to move and a good terrain. We from the West would have the sun behind us at the end of the day, and the slope in our favor.”

  “Bear it in mind,” Irie said briefly.

  They did not speak much, but dozed beneath the sonorous pine trees, half-stupefied by the heat and the ride from the grasslands. Shigeru was almost asleep when one of the men posted as a guard called out to him, “Lord Otori! Someone is coming from the east.”

  He got to his feet, yawning and drowsy, and joined the guard on the edge of the wood, where a pile of large boulders gave them cover.

  In the distance, a lone figure was stumbling across the plain. It fell repeatedly, struggled to its feet, sometimes crawled on hands and knees. As it came closer, they could hear its voice, a thin anguished howling that now and then quietened to sobbing only to rise again in a note that made horror touch the spines of the watching men.

  “Keep out of sight,” Shigeru called, and swiftly the thirty men hid themselves and their horses behind boulders and among trees. Shigeru’s second reaction after horror was one of pity, but he did not want them to fall into a trap by showing themselves suddenly, or to frighten the man away.

  As the figure came closer they could see that his face was a mass of blood, around which flies buzzed viciously. It was impossible to discern any features, but the eyes must have remained and something of the mind, for it was clear that the man knew where he was going: he was heading for the water.

  He fell at the pool’s edge and thrust his head into the water, moaning as its chill hit his open wounds. He seemed to be trying to drink, sucking at the water, heaving and retching as he choked on it.

  Small pale fish surfaced at the smell of blood.

  “Bring him to me,” Shigeru said. “But be careful. Don’t frighten him.”

  The men went to the water’s edge. One of them put his hand on the fugitive’s shoulder and pulled him up, speaking to him slowly and clearly. “Don’t be afraid! It’s all right. We won’t hurt you.” The other took a cloth from his pouch and began to wipe the blood away.

  Shigeru could tell from the man’s posture that he was terrified anew, but as the blood was washed away and he could see the face more clearly, behind the pain and the fear there was intelligence in the expression of the eyes. The men lifted him and brought him to where Shigeru stood and set him down on the sandy ground.

  The man’s ears had been sliced off, and blood oozed from the holes.

  “Who did this to you?” Shigeru said, disgust creeping across his skin.

  The man opened his mouth, moaned, and spat out blood. His tongue had been ripped out. But with one hand, he smoothed the sand and with the other wrote the characters Tohan. He smoothed the sand again and traced, incorrectly, clumsily.

  Come. Help.

  Shigeru thought the man near death and was reluctant to inflict further suffering by moving him. But he himself made a gesture at the horses, indicating that he would guide them. Tears poured from his eyes when he tried to talk, as though the realization that he had been silenced forever had only just sunk in—yet neither agony nor grief would deter him from his entreaties. All those gathered around were moved to something like awe at such courage and endurance and could not refuse him.

  It was hard to know how to transport him, since he was rapidly losing his remaining strength. In the end, one of the strongest of the retainers, Harada, a man with a broad solid build, took him on his back, like a child, and the others bound him tightly on. The two were helped onto one of the quieter horses, and, touching the man who carried him on the left or right side of his chest, the suffering creature guided them to the far side of the plain.

  At first they went at a walk to spare him extra pain, but he moaned in frustration and beat his hands against the chest of the man carrying him, so they urged the horses into a canter: it was as if the colts sensed the new gravity of their riders, and they went forward sweetly and smoothly, as gently as mares with foals.

  A stream flowed from the spring, and for a little while they followed the slight depression it made between the rounded slopes. The sun was lowering toward the west and their shadows rode before them, long and deep. The stream widened and flowed more slowly, and suddenly they were in cultivated land, small fields cut from the limestone, diked and filled with the river’s silt, where the young seedlings glowed green. The horses splashed through the shallow water, but no one came out to grumble at the damage to the plants. The air smelled of smoke and something else—charred flesh and hair and bone. The horses flung up their heads, eyes huge and nostrils flared.

  Shigeru drew his sword and all of them followed, the steel blades sighing from the scabbards in unison. Harada turned his horse in response to his guide’s bloodied hands and rode to the left along the dike.

  The fields were the outermost of a small village. Hens were scratching on the banks, and a wandering dog barked at the horses, but otherwise there were none of the usual sounds of village life. The horses’ splashing sounded astonishingly loud, and when Kiyoshige’s gray whinnied and Shigeru’s black replied, their neighs echoed like a child crying.

  At the far end of the dike a small hill, hardly more than a mound, rose abruptly among the flooded fields. Its lower half was covered in trees, making it look like a shaggy animal, and craggy gray rocks crowned it. Their guide signaled to them to stop, and by his contortions indicated to Harada to dismount. He gesticulated toward the other side of the mound, holding his hands to his ruined mouth to tell them to be silent. They could hear nothing except the hens, the birds, and a sudden crackling sound like branches breaking. Shigeru held up one hand and beckoned to Kiyoshige. Together they rode around the side of the hill. Here they saw steps cut in its side, leading up into the dark shade of oaks and cedars. At the foot of the steps, several horses were tethered to a line between two trees; one of them was trying to tear leaves from a maple. A guard stood near them, armed with both sword and bow.

  The horses saw one another and neighed. The guard immediately took aim with the bow and let the arrow fly. He shouted loudly, drew his sword. The arrow fell short, splashing into the water near the horses’ feet. Shigeru urged the black into a gallop. He had no idea who this sudden enemy was but thought he could only be from the Tohan. Their own Otori crests were clearly visible: only the Tohan would attack them so boldly. Kiyoshige had his bow in his hand, and as his horse broke into a gallop alongside Shigeru’s, he turned his body sideways in the saddle and let the arrow fly. It hit the other man in the side of the neck, finding the gap in his armor. He staggered and fell to his knees, clutching vainly at the shaft. Kiyoshige passed Shigeru and cut the horses’ lines, shouting and flailing at them to scare them away. As they splashed off through the fields, kicking and squealing, their riders appeared, leaping down the steps, armed with swords, knives, and poles.

  There was no exchange of words, no challenge or declaration, just the immediate grappling in battle. They were
equal in numbers. The Tohan had the advantage of the slope, but the Otori were mounted, could withdraw and attack with speed, and in the end the horsemen prevailed. Shigeru killed at least five men himself, wondering as he did so why he should end the lives of men whose names he did not know, and what fate had led them to his sword, late in the afternoon of the fifth month. None asked for mercy when the outcome became clear, though the last few remaining alive threw down their swords and tried to run through the shallow water, stumbling and slipping, until the pursuing horsemen brought them down, and their blood drifted across the sky’s peaceful reflection in the fields’ mirror.

  Shigeru dismounted and tethered Karasu to the maple. Ordering some of the men to gather the bodies and take the heads, he called to Kiyoshige to come with him and began to climb the steps, sword still in his hand, alert to every sound.

  After the clashing and screaming of the short battle, the hillside’s usual sounds were returning. A thrush was calling from the bushes, and wood pigeons cooed in the huge oaks. Cicadas droned plaintively, but beneath all these everyday noises, beneath the rustle of leaves in the breeze, something else could be heard—a dull moaning, hardly human.

  “Where’s the man we brought?” Shigeru asked, stopping on the step and turning to look back.

  Kiyoshige called to Harada and the soldier came running. The tortured man had been removed from his back, but his clothes and armor, even the skin of his neck, were soaked in his blood.

  “Lord Shigeru, he died during the battle. We laid him down out of harm’s way, and when we returned, his life had left him.”

  “He was very brave,” Kiyoshige murmured. “When we find out who he was, we will bury him with honor.”

  “He will surely be reborn as a warrior,” Harada said.

  Shigeru did not reply but went on up the steps to discover who it was the man had sought so desperately to help.

  Just as the sound had been hardly human, so the bodies that hung from the trees were barely recognizable as men and women—and, he saw with a searing mixture of disgust and pity, children. They hung head down, slowly circling in the smoke of the fires lit below them, the skin swollen and roasted, eyes bulging from reddened sockets, pouring useless tears that the heat dried instantly. He was ashamed of their suffering, that they could be treated worse than beasts, that such humiliation and pain could be inflicted on them and they still remained human. He thought with a strange longing of the swift and merciful death brought by the sword and prayed that such a death would be his.

  “Cut them down,” he said. “We will see if any can be saved.”

  There were fifteen in all—seven men, four women, and four children. Three of the children and all the women were already dead. The fourth child, a boy, died immediately when they lifted him down, as the blood flowed back into his body. Five men still lived, two because their skulls had been opened to stop the brain swelling. One of these had had his tongue torn out and died from loss of blood, but the other could speak and was still conscious. Once he had been strong and agile. His muscles stood out like cords. Shigeru could see in his eyes the same gleam of intelligence and strength of will as he had seen in their rescuer. He was determined this man should live, that the other man’s fortitude should not have been in vain. The remaining three were so near death it seemed kindest to give them water and end their suffering, and Kiyoshige did so with his knife, while the conscious man knelt with joined hands and spoke a prayer that Shigeru had never heard before.

  “These are Hidden,” Irie said behind him. “That is the prayer they use at the moment of death.”

  When the dead were buried, while it was still light, Shigeru went with Irie to the top of the hill where the Tohan heads were laid out before the entrance to the shrine. The place was deserted, but signs of their enemies’ encampment were still evident—stores of food, rice and vegetables, cooking utensils, weapons, ropes, and other more sinister instruments. He gazed impassively on the dead, while Irie named those he recognized from their features or from the crests taken from their clothes and armor.

  Two were, surprisingly to Shigeru, warriors of high rank: one, Maeda, closely related to the Iida family through marriage, the other, Honda. He wondered why such men should defile their reputation and honor by participating in torture. Had they been acting on Iida Sadayoshi’s orders? And what were the Hidden that they aroused this vindictiveness and cruelty? His mood was somber as he descended the steps again. He did not want to sleep near the shrine, tainted as it was with torture and death, and he sent Harada and some other men to look for alternative shelter. The one survivor of the atrocity was being looked after in the shade of a camphor laurel that grew on the bank. Shigeru went to him; fireflies were beginning to glitter in the blueness of twilight.

  His face and head had been washed, and salve applied to the burns. The slashes in the skull oozed dark blood but looked clean. He was conscious, eyes open, staring upward at the dark shade of the tree, where the leaves were rustling slightly in the evening breeze.

  Shigeru knelt beside him and spoke quietly.

  “I hope your pain has been eased.”

  The man’s head turned toward his voice. “Lord Otori.”

  “I am sorry we could not save the others.”

  “They are all dead, then?”

  “Their suffering is over.”

  The man said nothing for a moment. His eyes were already glistening and reddened. It was impossible to tell if he wept or not. He whispered something Shigeru could not quite hear, something about Heaven. Then he said more clearly, “We will all meet again.”

  “What is your name?” Shigeru asked. “Do you have any other family?”

  “Nesutoro,” he replied. The name was unfamiliar: Shigeru could not recall ever hearing it before.

  “And the man who came to us?”

  “Tomasu. Is he already dead too?”

  “He had great courage.” It was the only consolation Shigeru could give.

  “They all had courage,” Nesutoro replied. “Not one recanted; not one denied the Secret One. Now they sit at his feet in Paradise, in the land of the blessed.” He spoke in gasps, his voice rasping. “Last night the Tohan lit a great fire in front of the shrine. They taunted us, saying, ‘See where the light bursts forth in the east. Your god is coming to save you!’ ” Tears begin to well in his eyes then. “We believed it. We thought he would see our suffering and our fortitude and come for us. And we were not wholly wrong, for he sent you.”

  “Too late, I’m afraid.”

  “God’s ways are not for us to question. Lord Otori, you saved my life. I would offer it to you, but it already belongs to him.”

  There was something in the way he said it, an attempt at humor that raised Shigeru’s spirits, almost comforted him. He felt an instinctive regard for this man, a recognition of his intelligence and character. At the same time the words bothered him. He did not fully understand the man’s meaning.

  It was nearly dark by the time Harada returned, his men carrying torches that flamed and smoked, hastening nightfall. The village from which the Hidden had been taken lay a short distance away. Some of its buildings still offered shelter, though most had been destroyed during the Tohan attack. Many of its inhabitants had escaped, run away and hidden; they returned when they saw the Otori crest. A rough stretcher was made for the injured man, and two men carried him on foot while the rest rode, leading their horses and three others whose masters had died during the clash with the Tohan. A narrow stony track led from the hill along the side of the cultivated fields, following the course of the stream. The water babbled and sparkled in the torchlight; frogs were croaking among the reeds. The summer evening air was soft and caressing, but Shigeru’s mood was dark as they approached the village, and the sight of the destruction there angered him still more deeply. The Tohan had crossed the border and come deep into Otori land. They had tortured people who, whatever their beliefs, were Otori, and who had been unprotected by their own clan. He regretted
that he had not acted earlier, that these attacks had not been punished before. If the Otori had not appeared so weak and indecisive, the Tohan would never have grown so bold. He knew he had been right to come, right to engage in the brief battle, but at the same time he was aware that the deaths of the Tohan warriors, especially those of Honda and Maeda, would enrage the Iida family and worsen relations between the two clans.