Daughter of the Sword

by Steve Bein

  Lord Yasuda shook his head. “I am ashamed I did not think of it myself, young lord. Perhaps your servant has grown too old to be useful. Please allow me to commit seppuku to atone for my oversight.”

  “You will do nothing of the kind.”

  “Then allow me to shave my topknot and retire my swords. I am not fit to serve.”

  Daigoro looked at him sternly, but Yasuda did not meet his gaze. “The Yasuda clan has protected our northern flank for generations,” said Daigoro. “Even an aging tiger is still a tiger. We would have you remain where you are.”

  Even as he said it, Daigoro wondered to what extent his advice applied to himself. How many times had he considered shaving his head and joining the monastery on the hill? Swordsmanship demanded great strength from the right leg in particular, the right being the leading foot, and to fight from the saddle one needed to control a horse with one’s legs. Daigoro’s right leg was no bigger than his right arm. He had learned what he could of archery to compensate, but his brother was the finest marksman in the Okuma clan, maybe the best on the whole Izu peninsula; what could Daigoro offer in light of that? No, better to save his family the disgrace of a crippled son. Better to join the monks before he had to join battle in defense of the clan.

  How many times had those thoughts plagued him in the quietest hours of the night? And now his father was dead, and Ichirō would need to call on him as he learned to lead the clan. Even if their father were still alive, Daigoro could not have it be said of the finest cavalryman in the region that his crippled son was too afraid to take up arms. If Yasuda was an aging tiger, Daigoro was the runt of a tiger’s litter. A kitten with a lame leg. Was that still a tiger?

  30

  The evening’s silence was hard earned; there had been so much to do. The wailers required payment, having done their job of sending off Okuma Tetsurō with the pronounced grief befitting a man of his station. The guests needed feeding and sake and time to speak individually with the family. There was the matter of removing the bones from the ashes, seeing the ashes into the urn, setting the throat bone atop the ashes before the urn was sealed. The abbot and priests wanted payment, as did the Shinto priest who had come afterward to see to it that no evil spirits beset the compound or the ghost of Daigoro’s father.

  But at long last it was quiet, and Daigoro and Ichirō sat with their mother in the main hall of the house. Embers crackled faintly and filled the room with fragrance and warmth. Daigoro could hear waves in the distance, beating their never-ending rhythm against the rocky coast.

  At length Daigoro chose to break the silence, to share some of what Lord Yasuda had told him. He said nothing about how the musket ball struck, but he did tell them that by now the assassin had either drowned or died of his wounds.

  “Father’s bodyguards were fools,” said Ichirō. “They should have placed outriders; they should have foreseen the ambush.”

  “They would have been searching the hills, not the seacoast,” said Daigoro. “The assassin was the fool, to position himself without an escape route. He was no brave man, using a coward’s weapon as he did. Our men could not have predicted an ambush so bold and yet so craven as this.”

  “You make excuses for them,” said Ichirō. “We should send a messenger in the morning to tell Yasuda to have those guards killed.”

  “They died before Father did,” said Daigoro. “Believe it.”

  “You spoke to him about this?”

  “I didn’t need to. How could they have done otherwise? I have no doubt those men slit their own bellies as soon as they had escorted Father to a place of refuge. And if they did not, we can be sure Lord Yasuda has seen to it that they died most painfully. He takes any offense against Father as an offense against himself.”

  Ichirō snorted. “He should have told us that, then.”

  There was no need, Daigoro wanted to say, nothing to have been gained by speaking of more bloodshed during a funeral. But nor was there anything to be gained by saying as much. Daigoro held his peace.

  But Ichirō did not. “Did you command Yasuda-san to commit seppuku for his failure?”

  “He offered. I refused him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Father would not have wanted it.”

  Ichirō gave a laugh. “Does his spirit speak to you already? How do you know what he wanted?”

  Daigoro bowed low. He had no desire for a protracted disagreement with his elder brother, least of all on a funeral day. “I only remember what he taught us about tactics. ‘Those who make their home on the end of a peninsula do well to ally themselves with their neighbors.’ We are vulnerable.”

  “Vulnerable? Whose swordsmanship can rival House Okuma’s? Let anyone come at us! We can take them.”

  “If they come at us, I’ll never disagree,” said Daigoro. “But it takes rice to feed a strong sword arm, and if we turn our northern allies against us, we are cut off. Father always counseled peace over war, especially with our neighbors. Lord Yasuda gave no offense. His men failed to find a dead assassin; that is all.”

  “That is all!” Ichirō scoffed. “A vassal failed, and ‘that is all’? Father is dead, and ‘that is all’? I should demand his sword from you right now!”

  Daigoro bowed, stood up, and made for the door. He didn’t need to turn around to hear his brother fuming. He imagined he could feel the heat from Ichirō’s reddening face—or was it his own blood flushing his neck and ears?

  “How dare you turn your back on me?” demanded Ichirō.

  Daigoro stepped out of the room onto the veranda, turned, kneeled, and bowed again. “I must respect my brother and I must respect my father. When my brother asks that I disrespect my father, I have no choice but to take my leave. Begging your pardon, I wish you good night.”

  31

  Daigoro lay atop his layers of futon and gazed at the squares on his ceiling, and after stubbornly doing so for an hour he conceded that he would not fall asleep. With a grunt he rolled to his knees and slid open one of the exterior walls to admit more moonlight. He could smell the tatami mats under his shins, and the promise of rain on the wind. He donned a thin robe decorated with a bear-paw motif and tied its belt around his waist. Then he went to the alcove on the north wall of his sleeping chamber and removed Glorious Victory from its place on his sword stand.

  Through the wood and paper of the shoji door to his left, Daigoro could hear one of his bodyguards shifting in his sandals. Daigoro thrust Glorious Victory’s scabbard under his belt and into position at his left hip. The sword was too long to wear as he usually wore his katana; he had to shift it forward across the front of his hip, almost onto his lap, lest the end of its wooden sheath touch the tatami behind him. Glorious Victory was small as ōdachi went, which meant it stood to Daigoro’s chin, not over his head. Its handgrip, wrapped in ruddy, sweat-stained cord, was fully a hand’s length longer than that of his own katana, the better to manage the huge blade.

  Daigoro knew the sword well, knew it better than he knew either of the samurai watching his door tonight. It was born in the fires of Master Inazuma almost five hundred years ago, the last weapon the great sword smith ever created. Glorious Victory was a horseman’s weapon, long enough to hamstring a foot soldier from the saddle, and also long enough for someone caught afoot to slay a mounted opponent. The steel was strong and pure, with a blood groove running from the base of the blade almost to its tip. Daigoro’s father once plunged it into the heart of a charging warhorse, and the blade had emerged as straight and true as it was when it went in.

  Its cording and lacquered scabbard were russet in color, to match the armor and helmet of its former bearer. The enemies of House Okuma had dubbed Daigoro’s father the Red Bear of Izu, a name he liked well enough to make the bear paw his personal crest. “Slow to anger, bears,” he’d once told Daigoro. “I’ve seen them in the east country. Left alone, they won’t bother you. Once disturbed, nothing I know of can hold them back. A young samurai would do well to take bears a
s his teachers.”

  And thus had Daigoro counseled his brother. Now, looking at the sword in his hands, he wondered whether that truly was the way of Bushido. Did the true warrior avoid combat? Seek to be left alone? What did that imply of a sword like this, one that had drawn so much blood? What did it imply of the battlefield exploits of so many samurai, Daigoro’s father not the least among them? Show me the way of the warrior, Daigoro thought. I will follow it if only I can find it. Tell me, Father, why the path is so difficult to find.

  32

  The next morning was hot almost from the moment the sun dawned on the compound. By the hour of the dragon, the laborers hired from Shimoda to build a permanent shrine on the site of the previous day’s cremation were spending as much time fetching water as they were digging post holes for the roof supports. By noon even the sentries had taken positions in the shade of trees or under the eaves of buildings, and these were samurai, men for whom physical discomfort was a passing trifle.

  It was in the hour of the horse, the midday hour, that Ichirō approached Daigoro’s study, a serving girl in tow bearing tea. “May I interrupt, brother?”

  “Of course,” said Daigoro, setting aside his brush. He cleared his low writing desk and Ichirō knelt beside it.

  As the girl served their tea, Ichirō said, “I hope I haven’t disturbed anything important.”

  “Not at all. I was writing letters to some of the lords who attended yesterday, to thank them for their respects.”

  “Lora Yasuda among them, I suppose.”

  Daigoro braced himself for a fight. “Yes.”

  “Good,” said Ichirō. “Express my thanks as well, if you would.” After a moment he added, “I was in the wrong last night. Please forgive me.”

  “Grief,” said Daigoro. “It does strange things to us all. No forgiveness is necessary.”

  The two of them sipped tea, and Daigoro watched the hot air shimmer over the sand of the courtyard outside. Grief remained as elusive as the waves of heat: try as he might to grasp it, it escaped him. He looked away from the sand, fixing his gaze instead on Ichirō’s white overrobe. Better, he thought, to focus on relief than grief. It was good to be sitting in the shade without animosity.

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Ichirō. “We should have an archery competition, as we did when we were boys. What do you say?”

  “I haven’t been serious competition for you since I was ten and you were twelve. I’m not even sure I held my own with you then. I always wondered whether you were holding back to keep me in the race.”

  “We were just boys then,” said Ichirō. “Two years is too great an advantage to be overcome by a ten-year-old. Now we’re grown; it’s not so much anymore. Come, let’s go out to the orchard. I’ll have some targets brought out.”

  “If you wish,” said Daigoro.

  The targets were nearly as wide as Daigoro was tall, covered in deer hide and propped against the outside wall of the family compound. Daigoro and Ichirō stood by as one of their samurai measured thirty-three bow lengths from the target and marked a firing line among the camphor trees. Having the firing line in the shade would make for more comfortable shooting, but more difficult as well; arcing shots through the canopy would be troublesome.

  Ichirō and Daigoro both wore white, and both wore the swords they were never without. The three samurai attending them wore their rusty-red house uniforms, with white sashes instead of the usual brown. There was only the faintest of breezes coming off the ocean, its salty smell melding nicely with the camphor leaves crushed underfoot. Daigoro felt a bead of sweat roll down his spine and soak into his waistband.

  “Will you take the first shot?” said Ichirō.

  “I suppose so.” Daigoro hobbled up to the line, took his bow from an attending samurai, and set an arrow to the string. His right leg made archery difficult because it was hard for him to find a stable stance. He had to weight his left leg heavily, draw the arrow to his ear, and then settle on his right foot as he could. The process required holding his arrow at full draw for a long time while finding his stable stance. It had always been difficult for him, and today the Inazuma blade hanging from his left hip offset his balance further. The wrist and fingers of his right hand strained as he tried to stabilize himself.

  At last he loosed his shot and heard it rip through the overhanging leaves. It sank into the target about halfway between the center and the outer rim.

  Ichirō’s landed just inside of Daigoro’s, closer to the center by a finger’s length. His delivery was smooth, his posture elegant. Somehow he managed to release his shot without disturbing a single leaf overhead.

  “It seems I got the better of you that time,” he said. “Let’s have another go.”

  They fired three more shafts apiece. Each time, despite the pulling of the sword, Daigoro managed to put his arrow closer to the center than the previous shot. Each time Ichirō’s landed right next to Daigoro’s, and just inside of it, closer to the center by less than a thumb’s breadth. “Now I know you’re toying with me,” said Daigoro. “You can hit the center anytime you like.”

  “Perhaps. But what’s the fun of a competition if I don’t keep you in the running?”

  Daigoro shrugged. “As you say. Put one in the center, then. Let me see how close I can get.”

  Ichirō pursed his lips, drew a fifth arrow, and plunged it in the very heart of the target. “There. If competition bores you so much, why did you bother to agree?”

  “To watch my brother excel.”

  “Take your last shot and let’s have done with it.”

  Daigoro became aware of the sweat on his neck, and he knew it was not born of the summer heat. His every effort at peacemaking seemed doomed to failure. He limped up to the line, nocked an arrow, and drew. His father’s sword pulled heavily at his belt, but this time he did not bother to compensate for it. What would be the point? Ichirō wanted his victory. Teetering off balance because of the sword, he loosed his arrow.

  It split Ichirō’s arrow down the middle.

  One of the attending samurai gasped. Another stifled his astonishment by trapping his mouth shut. The third showed the least restraint of all, laughing and saying, “Excellent shot, my lord!”

  “It was,” said Ichirō, glowering. Though Daigoro managed to keep the emotion from his face, he was as angry as Ichirō, for different reasons. The samurai’s blurted praise was an unofficial announcement that Daigoro had won the competition; no shot of Ichirō’s had earned similar accolades. Wholly accidentally, Daigoro had managed to show up his brother in the skill Ichirō excelled in most.

  “It was nothing,” said Daigoro, knowing it was too late. “A lucky shot.”

  “Then you have the luck of the seven gods of good fortune,” said Ichirō. “It’s not often a man gets to see the work of the gods. Let’s do it again.”

  He snatched an arrow from the samurai who’d managed to keep his mouth shut and fired it at the target. It struck just a finger’s breadth higher than Daigoro’s last shot, so close as to make the feathers quiver. “Come,” he said, stiff-jawed. “Test your luck again.”

  Daigoro stepped up to the line and drew back another arrow. For a moment he considered drawing less than full strength and letting his arrow fall short of the target. But that would not do; it would be too obviously a deliberate miss. Instead he tried to fire as he normally did, centering his weight as best he could at full draw, then releasing his shot when he was stable. He aimed for the upper half of the target, far from Ichirō’s most recent shot. But again he found the counterweight of the sword difficult to manage, and just as he thought he was stable enough to fire, his balance shifted to his left. His shot was already airborne, and Daigoro watched with a mixture of horror and awe as another one of his shafts splintered his brother’s arrow.

  This time all were hushed. At least their attendants were reading Ichirō’s emotions rightly, Daigoro thought. He would have all three of them sweating with the shrine laborers before the
day was out. But the immediate problem was Ichirō. Daigoro could think of nothing to say that would appease him, yet saying nothing and letting him find his own peace was no solution either. Ichirō was in no mood to seek peace; he was unsettled and savoring it.

  His father is dead too, Daigoro reminded himself. He’s found grief before you have; maybe this is how he is letting it run its course.

  “Swords,” said Ichirō. “We can stage a duel.”

  Daigoro’s heart sank. This was not about grief, he realized. It was about revenge. About jealousy. In short, it was about the Inazuma.

  “No, Ichirō. I won’t fight you.”

  “No? You’ll let the fickle habits of the wind carry your arrows, and let everyone believe you’re the better archer?”

  “No one here believes I’m better than you. As I hear it, I could sail two days in any direction and still not find a better archer than you.”

  Ichirō’s left hand gripped his scabbard just behind the tsuba. His right hand stabbed a finger at Daigoro’s chest. “If those were lucky shots, then you need to bring that kind of luck to the battlefield. With lucky arrows like those on your back, who could stand against us the next time we go to war?”

  “I have no interest in going to war.”

  “Ha!” Ichirō spat on the ground near Daigoro’s feet. “Listen to the son of Okuma Tetsurō, wielder of Glorious Victory! A samurai who will not make war!”

  Daigoro took a deep breath and let it out, hoping his brother might do the same. “I did not say I would not make war. I said I would not go to war. If war comes to us, I will kill as many men as the enemy can line up in front of me. I’ll keep fighting until death finds me or the last of our foes is lying headless at my feet. But Father said war is bad enough without going looking for it. I will not seek out enemies for the clan, and I will not have you as my enemy.”