by Nick Lake
Fixing the nearest Genji ship – and even that was too far away – he closed down the world around him, making silence of the words of encouragement that were coming his way from the other archers. He drew the rocking of the ship into himself, so that the waves were one with his being.
He prayed. ‘Namu Amida Butsu, and especially the deities of my homeland, the gongen of Nikko, and yuzen of Nasu, please, grant that I may strike that daimyo on his horse.’
There was a cough from behind him. He turned and was surprised to see the emperor, who had escaped, it seemed, from his mother. There were tears on the boy’s cheeks. ‘I never saw a man die before,’ he said. Another tear rolled. Tometomo had been like an uncle to the boy, Chikakiyo knew.
‘Then you are lucky,’ he said.
The emperor touched his arm. ‘Make them pay,’ he said. And then he turned and ran back to his mother, who appeared at that moment, searching for him.
Chikakiyo scanned the deck of the far-off ship. He couldn’t make out details, but he could see a man on a horse, firing off arrows at close range into the Heike ships nearby – as if this were a land battle, and being mounted could possibly do any good. In this instance, it only made the man stand out more as a target. He wore an elaborate helmet, and Chikakiyo could see from this – as well as from the obvious fact that he was mounted on a horse worth a rice farmer’s lifetime earnings – that he was an important Genji lord.
Chikakiyo pulled back the arrow, felt the tension across his chest, then let it fly – and it was precisely a case of letting it, for he felt always in these moments that the arrow wanted this, to meet its target, and he was only helping it along.
A long time passed – what felt like too long – and then, to his amazement, the man on the horse fell suddenly off it, clutching at his body.
Around Chikakiyo, men cheered and laughed, and he smiled at them weakly. It was the first time he had shot a man, though he had killed many a target and many a pretty lady’s fan in his time, winning many a bet.
He felt sick.
The turning point of the battle came not with Tometomo’s death but with the turning of Shigeyoshi, one of the minor lords who had always supported the Heike. Seeing the advantage slowly ebb away towards the Genji, through sheer force of numbers, he defected to their side. And bringing his ship alongside theirs, he told them of the ruse – informed them of where the best fighters were stationed, and where the emperor was being guarded.
Chikakiyo, of course, knew nothing of this. He only knew that Shigeyoshi’s ship was suddenly flying the Genji mon, and that shortly afterwards the Genji ships that were not immediately engaged in battle were plying the waves towards them.
The battle, which had been a faraway thing, became close very quickly. There were archers on the Genji ships, and soon the water was hissing with falling arrows. A moment after that they were striking the wood of the deck.
‘Fire at will!’ said Munemori, one of the samurai lords on the ship.
Chikakiyo subtracted himself from the world.
He took an arrow from his quiver, nocked it, sent it flying at the closest ship, and saw a man go overboard, screaming. He fired again and saw the arrow lodge in a man’s arm, saw him drop his sword.
Then the ships were on them, and there was no time for seeing – he was just feeding arrows into his bow, letting them go again, freeing them into the world. He felt rather than saw the men beside him fall, noticed absently that the deck had grown slippery with blood.
He was woken from his trance only by the shudder as the two ships met – a sensation that went through his whole body, as if he were inside a vast, ringing bell. The other ship was bigger – a man jumped down, katana drawn. Chikakiyo’s arrow seemed to jump out of his quiver of its own accord, fit itself into the drawn-back belly of the bow, then fly straight forward. It buried itself so far in the man’s face that the feathers made him a new, comical nose.
Chikakiyo got the next Genji boarder through the shoulder, knocking him into the sea. He was dimly aware of people to the side of him grappling, the clang of metal on metal. He supposed that he was going to die quite soon, but they would never get to the emperor with him still living.
He had his arrow nocked to take the next one, but the man was too quick. Chikakiyo dropped the bow, drew his short-sword as he ducked, felt the other man’s blade kiss the hairs on the back of his neck. He stabbed upward, hard. His sword sank into something soft, and he had to shrug off the man, who’d fallen across his shoulders as if in an embrace.
Arrow. Fire. Kill.
He slipped on the deck – he had been sure he would. He slashed to the left and to the right, thought at one moment he might have hurt one of the men on his own side, knocked aside an axe that was aimed at his legs, slit a man’s throat with his blade, then managed to get one more arrow into his bow and shot a Genji samurai through the back of the neck as he ran towards the deckhouse, looking for the emperor. He did all that, and still he was surprised when he felt a coldness in his guts and looked down to see the hilt of a sword sticking out of his stomach.
He opened and closed his mouth, stupid as a fish.
He put his hands to his belly, felt the hot wetness spreading.
He did not feel the deck when it hit him.
Chikakiyo opened his eyes. By the position of the sun in the sky, he guessed it was the Hour of the Dragon, perhaps a little later. He was surprised that so little time appeared to have passed – he had little experience of death, but from what he had heard about it he expected it to last longer.
The blade in his stomach reminded him of its presence, and as the pain expanded like an opening fist, he knew he was not dead and wished he was.
He heard a woman’s voice, and turned his head towards it.
The dowager empress, the mother of the emperor, stood with him at the prow of the small vessel. A band of Genji stood all around her, but at a respectful distance, clearly nervous about attacking the descendants of a god. The emperor’s mother wore a double silk dress of dark grey mourning colour, and under her arm was the sacred jewel, one of the strand that had held Amaterasu out of her cave, and tucked into her girdle was the mirror that had reflected the goddess’s own light and beauty back at her.
The boy emperor, standing beside his mother, clutched the Sacred Sword Kusanagi. It seemed to be this, Chikakiyo noticed now, that had so transfixed the Genji soldiers.
‘Hand over the boy,’ one of them said. ‘We will not harm him.’
The woman laughed. Inside, Chikakiyo laughed with her – he could not manage to do it out loud, with the agony in his stomach. The Genji would never let the emperor live – it was known that they had already asked their priests and monks to find them a new emperor, someone who had practised the Ten Virtues in their previous lives, someone born under the right stars.
‘I am samurai, and the blood of gods runs in my veins,’ said the boy’s mother. ‘You think I would surrender?’ She moved further back, to the gunwale running along the side of the vessel. ‘Let those of you who dare, follow me.’
Chikakiyo understood that she was going to drown herself, with her son.
The emperor was six years old.
Chikakiyo stared at him, his heart breaking, as the boy moved back with his mother, holding the sword out before him. The boy was so beautiful that it seemed there was a brilliant radiance about him, and Chikakiyo could believe in that moment that he was descended from Amaterasu.
The boy turned to his mother. ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked. She bent down to look at him, tears streaming down her cheeks. Chikakiyo had the feeling that he had been returned from death only to witness this moment, so that one of the Heike should see it, and feel the pride that was required. ‘Some evil karma claims us, my son,’ she said. ‘So turn to the west and say the nenbutsu, so that Amida Buddha and the Holy Ones may come to welcome you in the Pure Land.’
‘But I don’t want to die, Mother,’ said the boy, crying. There were times when he sound
ed very old, and there were times when he did not. Chikakiyo could still feel the shards of his broken heart in his chest.
‘I know,’ said the dowager. ‘But this world is nothing. The Buddha tells us it is small as a grain of millet, in the totality of things. There is a Pure Land of happiness beneath the waves, another capital where no sorrow can come. That is where I am taking you.’
She held him, as he whispered the words of the nenbutsu. Then she turned to the men who had her at bay, like a doe hunted by dogs. ‘At the bottom of the ocean we have a capital,’ she said, perhaps to them, perhaps to her son. Then she jumped with him into the sea.
The samurai hesitated, then one of them dived in after her. There was a confusion of noises, then he shouted out, ‘I have the mirror!’
Suddenly Chikakiyo understood why he had been kept alive. The Genji didn’t need the emperor. But they did need the Three Treasures. Anyone possessing them could legitimately claim rule over Japan, even without the blessing of the temples. Who could contest that a person owning the Three Treasures was ordained by Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun that was Japan’s symbol, to have that honour?
Screaming under his breath, he crawled towards the gunwale. He could feel his blood smearing on the deck. It was not a pleasant feeling. He could also feel something trailing behind him – he feared it was a part of him. He realized suddenly that he needed something heavy. He saw that one of the dead men beside him was dressed, stupidly for this battle, in steel armour. Groping with the bindings, he took off the breastplate and helmet and arranged them as best he could on his own body.
When he reached the railing, someone shouted out. He didn’t turn – just hauled himself over, the pain exquisite as the soft things that should have been inside him caught on the wood. He held on to his short-sword, or perhaps it was someone else’s. He had picked it up from the deck beside him. Then he was falling, crashing into the water as if it were something solid. The steel he wore took him down quickly, into the water that grew colder as he descended, as if it were a passageway into death.
Which was what it was, of course.
He kept his eyes open, the stinging of the salt water nothing to the fire in his belly.
His blood ribboned out around him, almost beautiful, like delicate silk creatures.
Chikakiyo could see two samurai, weighed down by their armour, struggling to hold on to the emperor’s mother. One of them was tugging the string of jewels, and she was rolling to try to pull them from him. He couldn’t see the boy, until he turned his body and perceived – through the gloom – a slender body, drifting downward, a samurai swimming purposefully towards it.
Gritting his teeth, he forced himself down after the samurai, stretching his sword out before him, as if the sword were pulling him through the water. He could hear a thin crackling in his ears, a noise his mother – who was an ama – said came from the movements of the tiny creatures that lived in the sea. The weight of water pressed on his ears. He tried to swallow, to relieve it.
Already his lungs were swollen, bursting. He almost took in a breath, but when he opened his mouth, involuntarily, the harsh salty water rushed in and shocked him into closing it again.
If the samurai had been prepared for Chikakiyo, it might have gone differently. Chikakiyo had lost a lot of blood, and strength with it. But the man didn’t see him coming. The Genji had just seized the emperor’s sleeve, halting his descent to the depths, when Chikakiyo mustered all his force and thrust the blade of his short-sword through the man’s neck.
There was no scream under the water. The Genji samurai just went limp and floated away. Chikakiyo saw that the emperor’s eyes were open, but were seeing nothing. The boy was dead. He was six years old, and he had grown up in the Palace of Long Life in Edo, which was accessed through the Gate of Eternal Youth, and now he was dead in the cold sea.
Chikakiyo held on to the frail body and would have wept, if he hadn’t already been immersed in the tears of the sea. The emperor was still holding Kusanagi, and that was a mercy, at least.
Gently, Chikakiyo arranged the sword so that it was between the two of them, and turned to make sure that no one else was following them. In fact, it was already difficult to see – as the water grew colder, so it was leached of light, such that they drifted down now through near blackness. His weight and the boy’s, combined with the armour he wore, made them sink rapidly.
He felt something in his ears burst, and water come in – feeling with its cold little fingers. He had heard from his mother that this happened, that amas who were over-ambitious in their diving could have their bodies invaded by the sea, their ears broken.
They never heard again, not properly, but that wasn’t important to Chikakiyo right now. There was nothing he needed to hear.
Slowly, he felt his life force slip away into the embracing sea. He sent up a silent prayer to Amida Buddha, asking the enlightened one to welcome him, if it was his desire, into the Pure Land. He thanked the gods for allowing him this one final act, the saving of Kusanagi from the Genji. They might claim the throne now – probably they would have a replica made, it was the obvious thing to do – but they would never truly own it, not while Kusanagi lay at the bottom of Shirahama bay.
Just then there was a sudden lightening of the water, as if a cold blue fire were burning, and he wondered if this was death coming.
But it wasn’t death. It was a dragon.
The serpent was perhaps three ship-lengths in size, and it curled itself around Chikakiyo and the emperor. Its eyes burned blue in its bearded, horned head, like sapphires. Chikakiyo was so afraid he forgot that he was dying.
Chikakiyo felt, rather than heard, the words of the dragon in his head.
‘You are safe,’ it said.
Chikakiyo’s mind spun. How could he be safe? He was dying, in the embrace of a dragon whose teeth – he could see – were longer than his wakizashi.
‘We dragons serve Amaterasu,’ the dragon said. ‘You and the boy will be buried in my palace under the sea. I will hold Kusanagi there, and keep it safe from all traitors.’
Chikakiyo smiled. He was glad. But he was worried, too, that the Genji would never stop trying to recover the real sword – and others aside from the Genji too, if it was discovered that only two of the Three Treasures had been recovered from the sea. Anyone possessing those three treasures could claim with them the right to rule Japan.
‘Don’t fear,’ said the dragon, as if it had read his thoughts. ‘The sword will be safe with me. If anyone comes to claim it, they will pay with all they hold dear. So it has always been.’
Chikakiyo nodded slowly, pleased that he had done his duty by his emperor, as the light leaked from the world – and this time it wasn’t the depth, it was his dying.
CHAPTER 34
DARKNESS, ALL AROUND him.
Then a feeling of expulsion, violent and painful, and he was on his face on a hard floor, coughing hard. The water was gone; he was in the air again. Was he dead?
Taro levered himself onto his knees, his lungs tearing. He looked around, failing to understand. He was in some kind of cave, its walls glistening with moisture. Somewhere far away, he could hear the sea roaring. Was he under it? The cavern was large – as big as a palace – and stretching above was a high ceiling of rock. In the whole echoing vastness of the place, there were only three objects to be seen. One, propped against a large stone in the centre of the hall, was the skeleton of a dead man, dressed in old-fashioned armour, wearing the Heike mon on his helmet.
The second, heartbreaking, was the much smaller skeleton of a boy, cradled in the man’s arms.
And the third, laid on the stone against which the skeleton sat, was a sword so beautiful, and yet so ordinary, it took his breath away. It wasn’t ornate; it was simple, actually, with a leather-bound pommel and a straight, double-edged blade. But it had a quality of ultimate swordness he couldn’t remember ever having seen before. It was as if this were the original sword, and all other swords wer
e descended from it, pale imitations of it.
Kusanagi.
A shifting noise from behind him, and then the air was filled with the swish of fast movement, as the dragon unravelled itself into the emptiness of the cavern, filling it with its unimaginable bulk. The dragon reared above him like a snake looking down on its prey. Smoke drifted from its nostrils and mouth. Its eyes glowed blue. Taro suddenly noticed that he wasn’t breathing; with a conscious effort, he expanded his diaphragm and filled his lungs.
A voice spoke inside his head.
‘You are the first to come seeking the sword,’ it said. ‘In five hundred years, I thought there would be more.’
Taro blinked and got to his feet. The dragon did not sound angry, not particularly. Surprised, perhaps, but not angry. ‘They made a replica,’ Taro said. ‘I thought it was real. Most people did.’
The dragon breathed fire, and Taro flinched. ‘Predictable,’ said the dragon. ‘But a replica cannot rule a country, not forever.’
Taro patted his side, looking for the short-sword that was usually there. It wasn’t. It would have hampered him when diving, of course. He glanced towards the stone where Kusanagi lay, judging the distance. Could he get there before the dragon burned him off the face of... wherever this place was?
‘If you are thinking of trying to reach the sword,’ said the dragon, ‘I wouldn’t advise it.’ Stretching itself out to full height, it flashed towards Taro, unbelievably fast, then cascaded down in rings around the stone, encircling it, blocking it with its massive, scaly body. It breathed fire onto the stone before Taro’s feet, melting it, and Taro jumped backwards.
Steeling his nerve, he went down on his knees. ‘Come, then,’ he said. ‘Kill me.’ He was ready for it. He was ready to join Shusaku.
