by Douglas Draa
It was a wool blanket wrapped around Kinnori’s own katana and wakazashi. His swords were taken from him when Narihiro declared him a ronin and took him prisoner. What stealth this boy must possess, to steal my weapons from Narihiro’s keeping!
Kinnori gazed at Tachikaze in wonder. If Tachikaze noticed Kinnori’s awe, however, it meant nothing to him. “You must take a rowboat and escape. To linger would be your death.”
A draft of chill air swept around them. Kinnori shivered, but Tachikaze appeared untroubled.
When the icy gust passed, Kinnori thrust his swords through his sash and turned to his liberator. “I know that I am in danger here, but I cannot escape until the sekibune is docked. Where would I go, if I flee while still at sea?”
Tachikaze folded his hands together at his chest. “Please believe me. When the moon sets, everyone aboard the Murakumo will die. It is the will of the gods. I wish you spared, Shoji Kinnori, for you are an honorable man.”
Frowning, Kinnori asked, “How can you know what fate awaits this ship?”
“Insight was given to me,” Tachikaze answered, bowing low from his waist, “when this ship’s crew attacked a sekibune belonging to the daimyo of the Imagawa clan.”
A fleeting ache panged Kinnori’s heart. That terrible deed must have shocked and saddened this young Buddhist, just as powerfully as it outraged me.
In late afternoon, hours or a day ago, the Murakumo’s lookout spied an Imagawa guard-ship trespassing in the outermost waters claimed by the Ryuzoji clan. Narihiro, the samurai commanding the Murakumo, ordered his ship’s crew to chase the rival clan’s ship. When near enough, they’d lowered their main mast for use as a bridging plank, and Narihiro led his samurai aboard the Imagawa vessel.
They discovered that the Imagawa guard-ship carried a bridal party. Only five samurai accompanied the bride and her maid-servants. Narihiro and his Ryuzoji samurai outnumbered them ten to one, and made quick work of killing them. Kinnori didn’t protest the slaughter, for naval skirmishes between Nippon’s clans were as common as raids against China.
He felt sickened, as always, when next his fellow samurai killed the Imagawa ship’s captain, helmsman, and sailors. They were peasants, and therefore unarmed. Although samurai had the right to slay peasants, Kinnori hated seeing warriors cut down men who lacked the training to defend themselves.
When Narihiro proposed to rape and murder the bride and her maid-servants, Kinnori could be silent no longer. He looked at the bride, but it was his twin sister’s face he saw: Katsuko—pinned down on her back while brutal men took turns ravaging her. Katsuko—forced to kneel and await the fall of a katana on her delicate neck.
Roaring, Kinnori drew his own katana and leaped between the women and his fellow samurai. He knew he couldn’t win, for he was one man against forty-nine, but he felt compelled to die fighting for what was right. This innocent young woman had no brother there to protect her. Kinnori needed to be her brother and defender, just as he’d want another man to be Katsuko’s guardian, if Kinnori’s sister were in danger and he couldn’t be at her side himself.
“There is no honor in killing helpless women,” he snarled at Narihiro, holding his katana ready for a fight to his own death.
Instead of commanding the other Ryuzoji samurai to kill Kinnori, however, Narihiro laughed. He ordered Kinnori held still, forced to watch as one by one the weeping girls were violated and beheaded. Murakumo’s sailors, unarmed peasants just as their counterparts aboard the Imagawa ship had been, watched the massacre also, powerless to stop it even if they wished to do so.
Kinnori now looked at Tachikaze, probably as innocent as the Imagawa bride whose life he couldn’t save. The boy’s hood shadowed all his face except his narrow lips and the smooth curve of his chin. “I agree that all the samurai serving aboard this sekibune deserve death,” Kinnori told the youth. “But the sailors are sons of merchants, fishermen, and farmers. They did not partake in the murder of the Imagawa women. I must warn them, before I flee the doom of the Murakumo.”
“You ask to take a great risk.”
“And you ask me to believe that you know the future, which can be true only if you communicate with gods.”
They faced each other in silence. At last Tachikaze curled his thin, dark lips into a grimace. “Did you not pray for aid, mere breaths before I loosed your bonds?”
A tingly tremor surged up Kinnori’s spine. “Yes.” He took a deep breath. “So it’s true, then. You talk with gods.”
“Never before. But tonight I do.” Tachikaze’s slim shoulders slumped. “As I said, Shijo Kinnori, you are an honorable man. Therefore you believe most other men must also be honorable. I fear you will be often disappointed. Still, warn the sailors, if your conscience demands it. But I doubt they will reward your compassion.”
Kinnori said nothing, but only nodded. He led the way as they crept up the stairway, Tachikaze following a few paces behind him. He expected to find at least one samurai at the door to the cabin shared by off-duty sailors, as a precaution against Kinnori freeing himself. None stood there.
They believe I wouldn’t trouble to talk to the sailors. A guard is certain to be posted at the door to the deck.
His hand strayed to the hilt of his katana, but he pulled it back and instead pushed open the cabin door. One task at a time, he reminded himself. Waking and warning the sailors will do no good if I’m touching my sword as if I’m thinking of killing them.
In the cabin the air was warmer, but a frigid draft from the hold followed them. One of the sailors sleeping nearest to the door shivered as the chill reached him, pulling his blanket tighter around his shoulders. Kinnori knelt by the man’s side and tried waking him by pulling the blanket away, but the sailor only muttered and hauled the covering over himself again. Then Kinnori shook the sleeper’s arm until at last his eyes opened, and swiftly laid a hand over the man’s mouth to silence him.
“Please, do not be afraid of me, for I hope to save your life,” Kinnori whispered into the man’s ear. “A doom has been laid upon this sekibune. Be gone before the setting of the moon, if you wish to live. Warn the sailors, but not the samurai.”
He waited a few breaths, then lifted his hand from the man’s mouth. For a few breaths more, the sailor neither moved nor spoke, but only gazed at Kinnori with wide-open eyes.
Suddenly the sailor sat up and backed away. “Guards!” he shouted, “the ronin Shoji Kinnori is loose!”
Every sailor in the cabin snapped his eyes open. Kinnori pivoted, drawing his katana, and rushed up the remaining stairs to the deck, trusting Tachikaze to follow. When he dashed through the door he whirled around, ready to fight one or more guards, but again there were none. Tachikaze sped through the door onto the deck, seized Kinnori’s free hand, and ran dragging him toward the stern. From the stem came running the few samurai who were on night watch.
At the stern Tachikaze leaped over the rudder and into the port-side takasebune tethered behind the guard-ship. Kinnori jumped after him, and with his readied katana he slashed the rope tying the rowboat to the sekibune.
While momentum and the wind in its sails speeded the ship away from the rowboat, Kinnori hastened to take up the oars and row in the opposite direction. At any moment he expected the samurai to drop their swords and let arrows fly from their bows, and meanwhile he heard orders shouted to the helmsman to turn the ship and pursue the fugitives.
A blast of freezing wind began blowing, and it endured, thwarting the sekibune’s effort to turn and give chase. Looking back, Kinnori witnessed arrows blown backward and falling into the rolling waves. When he turned back to the oars he realized Tachikaze still stood, gaze fixed on the vanishing guard-ship, hooded robe billowing in the fierce squall. Neither the swells of the sea nor the blasting wind budged the youth.
Kinnori trembled, though not from the icy gale engulfing them. He’d heard that Buddhist monks wielded
powers of a magical nature—from glimpsing the future, to commanding the elements. Such tales, however, always involved men or sometimes women advanced in years. Even if raised by a monastery from birth, Kinorri suspected this boy couldn’t have mastered such arts in his few years. Who are you really, Tachikaze?
As if privy to Kinnori’s thoughts, Tachikaze flashed a small smile and took a seat. He gestured at the moon high overhead. “It will not be long until death comes to the Murakumo.”
Looking at the starry sky, Kinnori reckoned the distance to Nippon’s nearest shores, and a new dread froze the blood in his veins. “Whatever fate befalls the Murakumo, we would have been wiser to stay and share it.”
Shadowed by his robe’s hood, Tachikaze’s face was impossible to read. “Why do you think so?”
“We brought no supplies with us, and I cannot row fast enough to reach the coast before we die from lack of food and water.”
Tachikaze laughed, though not from merriment. It was a laugh that echoed drought-stricken reeds blown by a hot, dry breeze that gives no comfort to any who feel its passage. “Turn and follow the sekibune, but do not hurry. In a few hours everyone aboard will be dead, and the ship’s supplies will have no owners. Who then will stop you from boarding and taking whatever you wish?”
Kinnori turned the takasebune and rowed in the same direction that the Murakumo was sailing. As he did so, the wind diminished to the mildest of breezes. Yet he trembled as if still cold.
Beyond doubt, Tachikaze communicated with gods. He knew things no person could know, unless the gods revealed them.
Most gods were indifferent. Some were compassionate. A few were evil.
Which kind of god sent Tachikaze to me, and why?
What is in this boat with me?
* * * *
“Awake, Shoji Kinnori.”
Seagulls cried somewhere far away. Tachikaze leaned over Kinnori, his hood an impenetrable void. Dark, too, was the night sky—neither moon nor stars were in view.
Tachikaze pointed at a mote of light flickering ahead. “That is the Murakumo.”
Closing the distance, Kinnori realized the cries he heard weren’t of seagulls. They were screams of men.
Silence fell when the sekibune came into view. He dropped the oars for a few breaths, stunned to see the proud vessel adrift and its sails hanging in tatters.
As Tachikaze tethered the takasebune, Kinnori climbed over the railing and onto the deck. He slumped to his knees and almost retched as the molten-copper stench of fresh blood overwhelmed him. By the light of lanterns hanging from the masts, he witnessed slaughter.
Murderous Narihiro still stood at the ship’s helm, somehow. His hands gripped a spear. Upon its tip was impaled his severed head, teeth bared as if in a final defiant snarl—or a terrified scream. Seated around him, the rest of the samurai and all the sailors held their own severed heads in their hands.
His heart thundering, Kinnori leaned against the main mast. “Gods, how did this happen?”
“They died as they chose to live.” By his side, Tachikaze bowed his head and folded together his pale, slim hands. “For the gods shape the world as men and women believe should be, and give each of us the life and death our actions deserve.”
“How can that be true?” Rage swelled up in Kinnori’s gut. Still on his knees, he gripped the hilts of his swords with such force that his knuckles ached. “This fate was well deserved by the men serving on the Murakumo, but the Imagawa bride and her maid-servants cannot have earned decapitation.”
Tachikaze laughed again, the sound of reeds in a hot wind. By the light of a lantern over their heads, Kinnori now realized Tachikaze’s robe was not silver or pale gray. He stared at his white-clad rescuer and trembled. White: the color of death, and of tragedy.
“You are but a man, Shoji Kinnori. Who are you to judge what those young women deserved? Did I not say the gods shape the world as men and women believe should be? Know this: the Imagawa bride had stolen a ship and servants from her grandfather, the daimyo, to go marry her forbidden lover from an enemy clan.”
A solution to the riddle of the youth’s powers leaped into Kinnori’s mind, and he gasped and bowed low, murmuring, “You are one of them, one of the gods, aren’t you?”
With a cool hand, Tachikaze raised Kinnori’s head so their gazes met. His other hand pushed back his hood. Kinnori yearned to look away, but couldn’t.
“No, I am not one of the gods. I am but their servant, only for this night.” Dropping the hood, Tachikaze revealed himself to be the murdered Imagawa bride. A ring of dried blood showed where Narihiro’s katana cleaved her head from her neck. Her eyes were flat and clouded, her face and hands pale, her lips blue with death.
From the door leading down to the cabins and the hold, the maid-servants emerged carrying baskets of food and jars of water. In silence they loaded these provisions into the takasebune Kinnori used earlier to flee. When they passed by him, they bowed their heads. Their necks, too, were ringed with dried blood from their earlier beheadings.
“You must go, Shoji Kinnori.” Tachikaze bowed from her waist. “Go to a province where you are unknown. Marry a farmer’s or craftsman’s daughter, learn his business and make it your own. There is honor enough for any man in the growing of wholesome food or the making of solid wares, but there is no honor in bloodshed. Also,” her thin dark lips curled in a smile, “you lack the temperament to be a samurai.”
Kinnori opened his mouth to protest, but the words died on his tongue. He indeed lacked the arrogance he’d seen in Narihiro and other samurai. Yet he wondered why a young woman who condemned bloodshed, even between professional warriors, obeyed the commands of gods to slay murderers.
“But you—” he started to ask.
“—are dead.” Tachikaze backed toward the rowboat, beckoning him to follow. “What use can the dead have for honor?”
Once again an icy gale blew. Kinnori jumped down into the takasebune and rowed away from the guard-ship, and the bride and maid-servants gathered at the stern and watched him go. A white tiger stalked to Tachikaze’s side and sat at her feet, and a shower of cherry blossoms fell over all. Before he lost sight of them, the ship and the dead faded to nothing in the rosy sunrise on the horizon.
Kinnori opened a water jar. He washed his face and hands, exactly as the god Izanagi did after failing to bring back his wife Izanami from the land of Death. Thus purified, Kinnori imagined himself cultivating a bountiful orchard. He steered the takasebune toward Nippon and thought: The life of a farmer must be a blessed life, indeed.
▲
PENELOPE, SLEEPLESS, by Darrell Schweitzer
Who is this bloody stranger
who lies beside her at night?
Sure, he has washed, but
the stink of death will not leave him,
anymore than it can be scrubbed
from the walls and floor of the hall
where he slaughtered the suitors.
He sleeps with his great bow
always within reach,
murmuring of battles,
or weeping for comrades lost,
or trembling in cold sweat
over something he must have seen
in the Underworld.
Of course their son adores him,
but does anything remain
of the man-boy who left her
nineteen years ago for the war?
She’s losing hope,
certain that he is planning
another voyage.
Therefore, silently,
she gets up,
goes to her loom,
and resumes her weaving.
▲
you for reading books on Archive.
