by Steve Bein
“I would like to speak with Lord Oda. When you return to your mistress, you will tell her so.”
“No need. He’s coming to you.”
“Oh?”
“Lady Nene sends him as a gift. She says he’s better than the sword master you’ve got—”
“Curse that woman!”
Shichio didn’t mean to say it aloud. It just burst out of him. How did she know he’d taken up kenjutsu? Did she know Wada-sensei by name, or was this just bluster? Was Oda so fell-handed that even Wada couldn’t stand against him? And did she honestly expect that Shichio would study under him? A gift, Nezumi said, but Shichio saw the truth: Oda had to be Nene’s spy. She knew he and Shichio shared the same hatred for the Bear Cub, and she hoped Shichio would befriend him on that basis alone—or if not, that his kenjutsu was strong enough for Shichio to keep him on as a sensei.
Well, that is a dance for two, Shichio thought. He would welcome Oda after all, and learn what he could from him, not just of swords but of Nene. And when Shichio had wrung every last drop out of him—
“I haven’t got all day,” Nezumi said.
The ungrateful bastard might just as well have scratched his balls like a mountain monkey. He sat cross-legged now, as if he were in his own home and not sitting before a daimyo. Shichio could hardly believe his cheek. How gratifying it would be to don the mask and show Nezumi everything he’d learned of swordsmanship. But alas, he could not. He needed what this man knew.
“Well?” Shichio said. “Out with it. Your mistress sent you to pass along her secrets. Tell me what you know, then be gone from my house.”
“The Bear Cub was wounded,” Nezumi said. “Oda’s healers nursed him back from death’s door. Even so, the boy was hardly fit to ride when Oda sent him away. North and east, that was his guess. Oda’s, I mean. He knows the boy didn’t ride west.”
“From where?”
“Ayuchi. Near Atsutahama. And he rode with that ronin of his, the tall one with the woolly hair.”
Shichio remembered the man. Katsuhiro? Katsuhama? Something like that. “When did they leave Ayuchi?”
“Six days ago. Maybe seven, maybe eight. I couldn’t say for sure. I know when Lord Oda spoke to my lady and I know my lady sent her pigeon within the hour. As soon as I received it, I came straight here—”
“Silence.” Six days. More than enough time to find the whelp, if only Shichio’s bear hunters weren’t the most inept bunglers he’d ever had the misfortune to hire. How could that wretched boy elude every last one of them? Now he was wounded and still he managed to slip them by. Thanks to Nene, it was harder than ever for them to report to their master. So long as Shichio had stayed in Izu, he was rarely more than a half-day’s ride from his informants. Now, banished to the barbarian north, everything took an eternity.
“I have been patient with you long enough,” he said. “When do you plan to tell me what ‘it’ is?”
“Which ‘it’ would that be?”
“The letter, you fool. ‘I have it.’ What is ‘it’?”
Nezumi shrugged. “I couldn’t say.”
“Because Lady Nene didn’t tell you or because she told you not to tell me?”
“Heh heh. Does it make a difference?”
It was all Shichio could do to leave his katana in its sheath. A good stabbing might improve this creature’s manners. “I will share something with you, Nezumi-san. I think your mistress knows what ‘it’ is. I think she wants ‘it,’ or else the Bear Cub would have no reason to send the letter. It follows that the two of them have been in communication with one another.” Which I can spin into charges of sedition, he thought. “It also stands to reason that they must speak again, or else the Bear Cub has no way to give her whatever ‘it’ is. Tell me, are you the one assigned to make contact with him?”
“Yes.”
“You will tell me where and when.”
Nezumi bowed. “That’s why my lady sent me.”
Shichio couldn’t hide his skepticism. “Is it now?”
“Yes, my lord. When I find him, I’ll arrange for a meeting. The boy has something to give Lady Nene, and she insists on seeing it for herself. Whatever it is, my lady has promised your head in exchange.”
“What?”
“Of course.” Nezumi sat back smiling, amused and bemused in equal measure. “I thought you knew.”
“Make sense,” Shichio told him.
“My lady is laying a trap. So you can kill the Bear Cub.”
Shichio sneered. “Nene is not in the habit of giving me gifts. She is far more likely to help the Bear Cub take my head than to help me take his.”
“Heh heh. You’ve got it wrong. Lady Nene wants you to have every contentment. She wants you to be so happy here that you never consider coming back to Kyoto.”
Shichio studied Nezumi through narrowed eyes. Was this a bluff? No. A bluff rarely made perfect sense. Shichio reconsidered the ploy with Oda Tomonosuke in a new light. He was Nene’s informant, to be sure, but to what purpose? Was she devious enough to collect reports on Shichio’s happiness?
Yes. There was no end to her cunning. But Shichio would not be taken in so quickly. “Suppose I believe you. Suppose your lady honestly wants me to live out my days here in the blessed north, with a certain boy’s hollowed-out, gilded, jewel-encrusted skull as my chamber pot. If your mistress were to make this gift to me, how would she go about it?”
“She wouldn’t. She is to remain an innocent party. But what you do of your own accord is not her concern.” Nezumi reached into the sleeve of his over-robe and produced a small scroll. “See here,” he said, flattening the scroll on the tatami. “On the southern flank of Mount Fuji there is another volcano called Ashitaka. On the southern slopes of Ashitaka there is a hamlet so small that even the villagers themselves have not taken the trouble to name it.”
“Sounds charming,” Shichio grumbled. He’d grown up in such a village, knee-deep in muck, eternally sweating, besieged by biting flies. He was all too happy to leave those memories by the wayside. A few years back, while campaigning with Hashiba, he’d razed his village to the ground. He had taken a bitter-tasting pleasure in lighting the first torch himself. And now he had come full circle; Kanagawa-juku was large enough to warrant a name on the map, but only just.
“The hamlet sits at the mouth of a narrow valley,” said Nezumi. “Follow the stream up the valley and you will find Obyo Falls.”
“Or I can stand on my own roof and have a piss.” Shichio had never understood the commoners’ fascination with waterfalls. He much preferred a book of poetry or an evening of kabuki. It was not mere beauty that captivated him, but artistry. “Make your point.”
“At the falls there is a teahouse, as secluded as any place on earth. My lady will go there under the pretense of visiting a beautiful site. She will tell her husband she enjoyed her time in the north and wants to see more of it. The truth is that this teahouse is where I am to arrange a meeting between my lady and the Bear Cub.”
Shichio scoffed. “I think not. If there is one thing that boy is known for, it is sensing a trap. What makes you think he will come?”
“He is a fugitive. He knows my lady cannot meet him in the open. Besides, I’ll tell him it’s safe. Heh heh.” There was that ghoulish smile again. “What I won’t tell him is that there is a rock shelf overlooking the teahouse, about halfway up the cliff. From below it is invisible; the spray from the waterfall makes the plants grow thick and lush. From the teahouse one only sees the cliff and the greenery clinging to it. If my lord were to lie in wait up there, perhaps with a platoon of archers …”
Then they might engage in a little more than bear hunting, Shichio thought. If Nene caught a stray arrow in the fracas, it would only serve her right for colluding with a known criminal.
No. Shichio would not be so lucky. Or rather, Nene would not be so naive as to place herself in harm’s way, not while a host of Shichio’s archers lay within bowshot. She would take shelter in the teahou
se, surrounded by a ring of armored guards. She might even place troops of her own atop the rock shelf, to ensure Shichio’s good behavior. It did not matter. Shichio would bring bodyguards of his own, in case she intended to play him false. But he would go. He knew he would never have a clearer shot at that damnable boy.
“When?” he said.
“My lady already rides for Ashitaka. She departed Kyoto some days ago. When I find the Bear Cub, I will send word to her, and when I hear back—”
“How? How, damn you, how can you find this boy when all of my hunters cannot?”
“Heh. I just sing his name.” Nezumi gave Shichio a gleefully guilty grin. “Don’t forget, Lord Kumanai, the boy wants me to find him. He’s got spies of his own, thanks to that wife of his. Put the right words in the right ears and sooner or later he’ll come calling.”
“What then?”
“Then I’ll send word to you, and to Lady Nene, and we’ll all gather at Obyo Falls. The Bear Cub will never know what hit him.”
And neither will Nene, Shichio thought. The woman knew him too well: if this was a trap, the Bear Cub was juicy bait. Shichio could not pass it up. But neither would he walk in blindly. He harbored no illusions: he was bait himself. Bear bait. He was the only prize that would draw out the Bear Cub. Nene intended to use Shichio and Daigoro as praying mantises, captured and tossed into a wicker cage. They were supposed to fight for her amusement.
So be it. The surviving mantis could still bite the fingers holding the cage. Shichio would not forgo his clearest shot at the Bear Cub, but if he must walk into this trap, he would not go unprepared. Kyoto was a long way from Ashitaka. Shichio would arrive first, and set his own traps in place.
“Be gone,” he told Nezumi. “And be sure to thank your mistress for all of her lovely gifts.”
He did not bother to see his guest to the door. He had too much planning to do.
38
“I know you,” Daigoro told the woman threatening him with the knife.
She was a skeletal hag with skin like old leather. Her thick, yellowed fingernails matched her sharp, yellowed teeth. The knife quivered in her bony hand, but if she dropped it, she had seven more tucked into her belt. Not to mention the seven men with her, all of them armed to the hilt.
They had chosen their battleground well. It was late in the hour of the tiger, not long before sunrise, when Daigoro was still groggy. Katsushima insisted that they always set out before first light. He and Daigoro were safest when they were on the move, and Shichio’s bear hunters were mercenaries—“a shiftless breed, the lot of them,” according to Katsushima. “Never up before dawn. Even the ronin among them lose their soldier’s discipline. And why shouldn’t they? There’s no sergeant to whip them if they decide to have a lie-in.”
Not this bunch. They must have stalked Daigoro to the bordello where he and Katsushima had spent the night. Now, just as Daigoro was saddling his mare, the scrawny harridan and her pack had formed a semicircle at the mouth of the bordello’s stable. The only way out was to cut a path through them—no trouble at all, if only they were armed with knives like their ringleader. Daigoro and Katsushima had faced numbers far worse than four to one. But the other seven were archers, with seven arrows already drawn back to their ears. Daigoro could hear their bowstrings creak.
“You’re Whalebelly’s woman,” he said.
“Who?” She laughed—an awful hacking sound—when Daigoro’s meaning struck her. “Whalebelly! That name fits him as well as any. Well, Whale Carcass now, thanks to you.”
“Daigoro, who is this creature?” Katsushima asked. Muffled by his words, his katana clicked as he loosened it in its scabbard.
“A yamabushi I met near Fuji-no-tenka. One who takes her coin from Shichio now, unless I miss my guess.”
“You don’t miss,” said the woman. “Now you can come peaceful or we can stick you full of skewers.”
And maybe roast a few skewers over a fire after it’s done, Daigoro thought. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in days. But maybe she always looked that way. Maybe that haunted look in her eye had nothing to do with hunger. She might simply have spent too long in the wild.
She stood no chance against Daigoro. His father’s sword was nestled deep in his horse’s pack, but his wakizashi still had superior reach over her knives. He’d already seen that she had a practiced hand, but a thrown knife was a weapon of desperation. It lacked penetrating power, and Daigoro was armored. Unless she hit him in the eye or the throat, he would be on her after the first throw.
And then a hail of arrows would strike him down. Some would blunt themselves on his armor, but not all. Two cornered swordsmen had little hope against seven archers. Even if he and Katsushima somehow managed to find cover, their hunters had only to set fire to the barn. There was no escape.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“She had help,” said the nearest of the archers. He wore a black hachimaki and an evil smile. Even in the twilight, Daigoro could see his teeth were stained and broken. “Not that it’ll do her much good. Heh heh.”
He loosed his arrow, but not at Daigoro. It hissed as it flew, and punched through the breastbone of one of the other bowmen.
That one let fly as he fell, but his shot wobbled and sailed wide. The rest went to pieces. Some froze in horror. Others trained their arrows on the traitor. Whalebelly’s woman took her eye off of Daigoro just for an instant, to see what was happening. Then Daigoro cut her down.
Bowstrings hummed and men cried out. Katsushima was as fast as an arrow himself. Somehow he was in the fray before Daigoro even managed to pull his wakizashi free of its first victim. In no time at all, only three were left standing: Daigoro, Katsushima, and the traitor in the black hachimaki, who stood with his palms out in a peacemaking gesture. He’d tossed his weapon aside, and he eyed Katsushima’s sword warily. “Easy now, gentlemen, I’ve come to help.”
Daigoro didn’t bother sheathing his wakizashi. “The last man who offered me his help tried to kill me.” And damn near succeeded too, he thought. He was gasping for air even after such a short skirmish. His body still hadn’t recovered from the bloodletting he’d suffered at the hands of the priest-assassin.
“Not the last one,” Katsushima said, “the last two.” He took a menacing step forward, driving the turncoat archer back. “Oda broke his word, Daigoro. We’ve gone weeks without detection, but no sooner did we cross his path than this lot crosses ours.”
“Heh heh,” said the traitor. “It’s a good thing he turned on you. This old bag’s been hunting you since Yoshiwara.” He nodded toward the dead woman still clutching her knife. “She came close too, before I found her. More talent than the rest of these put together.”
“And you led her straight to me,” said Daigoro. “You’re Lady Nene’s envoy, neh?”
“Nezumi, at your service.” He bowed as deeply as he could without skewering himself on Katsushima’s sword.
“And Katsushima’s right? Oda betrayed us to Shichio?”
“Not quite. You could say that was me. Oda delivered your message to my lady, she delivered it to Shichio—by way of the honorable Nezumi-sama, of course. Then he paid me extra to kill you instead of passing along her instructions.”
How nice, Daigoro thought. The peacock never stops pecking at me. “Then I’m glad you’re more loyal to her than to him. Now what do you want?”
“Only to do my duty. My lady wants to meet you and see … well, whatever it is you have to show her.” He peered into the stable, perhaps hoping to spy something in Daigoro’s pack. “She intends to make good on your agreement. In fact, all the arrangements are already in motion.”
“Oh?”
Nezumi smiled an ugly, brown-toothed smile. “Yes. Lady Nene already rides north. She will meet you at a teahouse on the southern slope of Mount Ashitaka, at the foot of Obyo Falls. Do you know it?”
“The waterfall, no. The mountain, yes.” Daigoro had seen it quite recently, in fact. It stood in view
of Yasuda Jinichi’s castle, Fuji-no-tenka.
“I have a map for you, if you won’t cut my hand off when I try to reach for it.” He looked hopefully at Katsushima, who took a half step back but did not lower his sword. Gingerly plucking a little scroll from the pocket in his sleeve, he said, “Lady Nene intends to meet you in the teahouse. It is a very old place, perfectly secure—except for one thing. There is a rocky shelf, hidden from below by all the greenery growing in the spray of the falls. It overlooks the teahouse and it’s far larger than anyone would suspect. Large enough for Shichio to hide a platoon of archers up there, waiting for you.”
Daigoro looked at Nezumi’s scroll for a moment, wondering if he should touch it. A year ago he would have taken it without hesitation. That was before he’d felt the sting of a shuriken laced with contact poison, or had poisoned tea poured on his face by an assassin dressed as a priest. “Open it,” he said, and only after he’d seen Nezumi handle every part of the scroll did he consent to holding it himself.
“Cagey bastard, aren’t you? Heh heh. I like that.” Nezumi pointed at the scroll. “I gave Shichio something similar, and I told him everything I’m telling you. But I left one thing out: that rock shelf isn’t safe. It’s halfway up the cliff, but you can’t climb any higher from there. The rock’s too brittle, and there’s too much spray from the falls. But if a fellow were to come down the long way, from higher up on the mountain, he could walk right to the edge of that cliff and no one on the shelf would ever hear him coming. If he were a sneaky fellow like you, he might bring some of those Mongol grenades with him, assuming he knew someone resourceful enough to get his hands on them. Have you ever seen one of those?”
“No.”
“They make an awful mess, believe you me. That gunpowder is the reason Emperor Go-Uda prayed for the kamikaze to sink the fleets of Kublai Khan. Wicked witchcraft, that stuff. Louder than thunder and it stinks like hellfire, but it gets the job done.”
