A sword was never the primary weapon of the dragon rider — Soul Lance against the scale, magic against the shield, dragon against everything else. This was what the Academy had taught him. Other than the symbol of prestige, the sword would only be used in self-defence, when all else failed. Some young riders even went as far as to forgo the sword and replace it with a lightning pistol or pneumatic rifle. They would certainly prove more useful in this age of mistfire and thaumaturgy.
Looking at Satō’s sword Bran recognised a weapon designed with just one purpose in mind — to kill a man with a single, fast, precise strike. It was sharp enough to cut through a falling piece of paper. It was well balanced, swift and strong, flexible enough not to snap and hard enough not to bend. The steel was of fantastic quality, the craftsmanship involved incredible — but there were no ornaments on the hilt other than a butterfly crest on the handguard, no superfluous carvings on the scabbard. This was the product of a culture that still esteemed swords as the main armament of a warrior, and knew their value. The boy was certain the blade could easily slash off a man’s arm, leg, or even, with enough skill and strength, a head. But there was no magic about it. A simple bwcler would hold the deadly edge back. This was the most interesting bit of information, and Bran made sure to remember it well.
He thought again of the two men duelling in the streets of Kiyō and wondered whether Satō had also been trained to so ruthlessly destroy a human life. He must have been. The Yamato boy was of a soldier’s age and bore the sword effortlessly. Admiring the blade, Bran was glad to have its owner on his side.
I owned a blade like this once, he thought. It’s a Matsubara if ever I saw one.
“No, I didn’t,” he corrected himself immediately, startled. “I have no idea what a Matsubara sword is.”
He waited for a moment to see if the strange memory would return but there was nothing but silence inside his head now. He sheathed Satō’s sword, stuck it in the sash beside the Prydain blade and went outside.
Dear Tokojiro
How have you been? Edo is cold and wet right now. How’s the weather in Kiyō? Oh, how I miss the sun of Chinzei!
Did you like the salted beef I sent you? It’s of the same cattle that feed the Taikun’s army. I hope it was to your liking. Not as good as Kuma horsemeat, I bet!
Regarding your question — no, unfortunately the court is still not looking for an interpreter of the Seaxe tongue. I assure you, if there is any need I will recommend you for a position at once.
Please take care of yourself,
Einosuke.
Tokojiro crushed the letter in his hand and threw it into the corner of the room in anger. Damned Einosuke - always so nice, always so proper.
“Did you like the salted beef?” He mocked the letter aloud. “The pox on you and your beef! Why don’t you give me your job instead?”
Eight years had passed since the fourteen of them had met for the first time in Black Raven’s little class, sitting around the cage in which he had been imprisoned. The mysterious Barbarian, who looked and spoke like a Yamato man, was teaching them Seaxe, the language of Dracaland, a nation of which they had only heard sometimes in Bataavian reports.
“They will come,” he had been telling them, “one day. They are already at your doorstep, in Qin, and their ships are big and fast. Not only the Dracalish — others will come too - the Midgardians and maybe even the Gorllewin, all of them understanding Seaxe much better than your Bataavian. Nobody speaks Bataavian except Bataavians. When they all come you will be sent out to greet them, trade with them and negotiate with them. Your ability will be priceless.”
They believed him, why not? With his almost-Yamato narrow-eyed face and almost-Yamato speech, he seemed to them like a messenger from the Gods. As the Gods had brought humanity the skill of planting rice and casting iron, so did Black Raven bring new forbidden knowledge to the chosen few. They were his disciples, his apostles. They were young and full of dreams.
And then everything turned to ruin. Black Raven disappeared and his students were accused of aiding his escape — treason of the highest order. Ten of them were executed. Two managed to run away, to vanish without a trace. Tokojiro fled to the Suwa Shrine, where the High Priestess agreed to hide him until the scandal quietened down. And Einosuke…
Einosuke was already safe in Edo by that time, as the official Seaxe interpreter to the Taikun’s court. And there had only ever been one interpreter needed. Despite Black Raven’s warnings, the Dracalish never came. Tokojiro, his name blemished by the bugyō’s accusations, equipped only with the knowledge of an unusable language, could find no employment. His samurai stipend was only enough to keep sobriety at bay. At the age of twenty six his life was as good as forfeit.
Now, though, it seemed the Gods took pity on him. With one stroke of luck, the hapless interpreter had gained a chance to prove his loyalty to the Taikun — which would no doubt be rewarded — and humiliate the bugyō, who had persecuted him so wrongfully.
He put a straw cloak on top of his brown kimono and walked out into the rain. It was time for him to accompany the Western boy on his strange adventure.
The gardens of Suwa Shrine exploded with mounds of purple, blue, pink and red. All the flowers opened to drink the most of the first strong rain of the season. Bran didn’t know the names of most of them. A storm of lilac icicles hung from the eaves, frayed balls of crimson and mauve burst on the bushes below. Late magnolias still clung to the green branches, like great white and scarlet butterflies frozen in time in their finest hour. Spiral fireworks of icy white erupted along the walls and streams. Heaps of otherworldly pinks and reds exploded with a dizzying sweet smell. The air was so dense with fragrance that it turned almost tangible, edible; an air one wished to drink, or bathe in like perfume.
The lanes and avenues of the shrine were being decorated for some upcoming event. Along every path were strung ropes of colourful paper ribbons, fluttering in the wind in their hundreds. There were few people on the shrine grounds at this time of day, in this weather.
At first Bran was apprehensive — he had been hidden for so long, he was used to skulking and creeping along the eaves. Unnoticed, he passed towards the main gate, a great, heavily ornamented construction of gilded wood. He stopped for a moment, ostensibly to admire the intricacies of the carvings, the workmanship involved in the building. In truth, passing this threshold was a difficult decision. Outside was an unknown dangerous world, a world where the only protection he could trust would be his own wit and strength.
There were dragons carved upon the gate, winged and wingless ones, and horses and fish with dragon heads. The craftsmen who had built the shrine seemed obsessed with the creatures. Bran wondered again about the Yamato dragons. He had seen them painted and sculptured throughout the shrine, but no live ones. Then again, he had not seen much of Yamato outside the shrine and the nurse’s house, either.
Tokojiro coughed, urging him to hurry. Taking the presence of dragons on the gate as a good omen, Bran stepped forwards. He looked down and his heart froze. Up the stairs marched a troop of armed and armoured men in rich clothes. The samurai, Bran remembered the interpreter’s explanation, the knights of Yamato. He was to pretend to be one of them. They were led by a grim-faced official in a wide-brimmed lacquered hat, accompanied by a standard-bearer. There was nowhere to hide at the top of the long empty stairs. He had to pass them.
He tried to look inconspicuous, which seemed to work at first — but after a few steps one of the samurai turned towards the boy angrily, waving his little wooden paddle like a sword, and launched into a furious tirade. One of his men drew his weapon halfway out of the scabbard, threateningly.
Bran started panicking. He had no idea what he had done wrong, or how to appease the angry man. He looked at Tokojiro, pleadingly. The interpreter suddenly grabbed the boy by the shoulder and cast him forcefully to his knees. He spoke to the samurai, bowing deeply. Bran caught the word Karasu spoken several times — it was the na
me he had taken as part of his disguise, meaning “Crow”, a name written on hastily forged identity papers he had been given by the High Priestess. The men laughed and sneered. One of them kicked Bran playfully then the group moved on upwards.
“Apologies, Bran-sama,” said Tokojiro when they continued down the stairs.
“I don’t understand, what happened?”
“The bugyō holds the highest office in the city. Above him is only the Taikun and the divine Mikado. You have insulted him greatly by not bowing first. Even if you did, you would probably still insult him.”
“How come?”
“It’s important how low to bow before whom. In this case, a long bow, bent in half, and you wait in this position until he responds.”
“Why did they leave us alone?”
The interpreter smirked.
“I told them you were my cousin who was dumb and weak in the head. If I hadn’t been with you, they would have cut you down on the spot.”
“Cut me…” Bran remembered the two swordsmen, “for not bowing properly?”
“Of course,” Tokojiro scoffed. “You must learn these things if you wish to survive. For now, just observe me and play dumb.” Saying this, he bowed slightly in the direction of another samurai passing them by. Bran repeated the nod. “That was my equal, a mid-ranking samurai, so we only needed a little more than a nod, and it didn’t matter who bowed first. Never bow first to one lower than you, and never bow to a commoner.”
“How did you know what rank he is?”
“In this case, I knew the man personally, but you can tell by the way men dress, walk, speak, if you’re observant. Now be quiet,” Tokojiro warned him, as they reached the bottom of the stairs and found themselves at a crowded street running along a narrow canal, in front of what Bran guessed was an inn.
It was Nagomi who found them, as Bran was looking for her fruitlessly. He would not have recognised her easily with her jet-black hair tied in a bun and the simple travelling clothes she was wearing instead of the shrine uniform.
She exchanged a few questions with the interpreter then they went towards the stables.
“The hair…” Bran whispered, reaching out a pointing finger. Tokojiro translated.
“I dyed it with a mixture from Kazuko-hime. It would be too conspicuous otherwise.”
“I… I liked your real hair better,” he said with a honesty which surprised him.
The girl blushed slightly and looked away.
“Let’s find Satō.”
They could not find the boy anywhere.
“Where is he? The rain is getting stronger.”
Bran was growing irritated. He still could not shake off the edginess brought on by the incident at the gate and the nagging feeling of something odd happening to his mind. There were too many people around, too many men, armed and scowling. They needed to move on.
A street boy, all bent in polite bows, clothed in the stained cotton jacket of a commoner, torn at the elbows, approached Bran trying to sell him a tattered paper umbrella. The dragon rider waved him away, but the boy insisted, pushing against Bran with his wares. Annoyed and frightened that he would be recognised, he tried to evade the peddler. At last he looked at the boy’s face, dirty under the straw conical hat.
“Sa-!” he started, but the boy put a hand on his mouth.
His face beamed with a wide smile, showing milky-white teeth, contrasting with the colour of his skin, bronzed with soot.
“Good, we’re all together now.” Tokojiro appeared between them glancing around nervously. “Let’s get out of here.”
Bran followed the others into the criss-crossing network of narrow streets of the merchant district. They were slowly directing themselves towards the southern borders of the city.
An endless array of tiny shops, workshops and dining establishments lined the thoroughfares on both sides. It seemed almost every house had some kind of mercantile enterprise going on at the ground floor, with sliding doors opened wide invitingly under a piece of green or blue cotton. The whole district was one big market. Nobody here afforded a moment of idleness. Entire families of owners worked in these businesses, from pretty young girls inviting clients in, to shrivelled old grannies dusting the shelves.
The wide avenues lined with peach and plum trees soon gave way to the winding paths of the residential area sprawling over the low hills south-east of the city. The houses here were small and narrow, with open windows and doorways staring at each other across the street. As the hills rose and the buildings grew more scarce, all the roads eventually combined into one highway leading towards a mountain pass. Rows of meagre narrow houses, covered with thin thatch, lined the road.
“Who lives here?” Bran asked.
“Servants, cleaners and seasonal workers,” answered Tokojiro. “Those who keep the city working.”
Beyond the pass the road descended slowly into a narrow canyon, its banks covered with dark unkempt conifer forest. The landscape here, in the low mountains surrounding the city, was one to which Bran was more accustomed.
“These woods look just like the ones in Gwynedd, my homeland,” he remarked.
They didn’t speak much as they walked down the road, keen not to draw attention to themselves. There were crowds moving in both directions along the thoroughfare and he had to pause between sentences whenever a stranger was passing them by, waiting until Tokojiro translated his words. All the questions crowding in his head had to wait for when they were alone.
“It seems most of the world between here and Dracaland is covered by jungle or desert.”
“You must have travelled a lot?” asked Satō.
“It was my first journey.” Bran smiled, pleased to talk about something other than the urgency of his plight. “Six months sailing from the port of Brigstow to Fan Yu in Qin. Twenty thousand miles, over three oceans,” he added, proudly.
“I have never even been out to sea,” said Nagomi, chuckling at herself. “A Kiyō girl, can you believe it?”
“I have never been farther out than Naniwa,” said Satō, “and that was a long time ago, before my father’s arrest. I only remember waiting for the tides to change at Tomonoura…”
“I’ve only been a passenger on the ship,” Bran said. “I didn’t do any sailor’s work. Walking is challenging enough for me. How far do we have to go today?”
There was no answer — the interpreter was silent. The boy looked up. Tokojiro was looking back towards the city, not paying him any attention.
“Sir?”
“Ah, yes, I’m sorry.” Tokojiro turned back towards Bran. “You were saying?”
Bran repeated the question and this time it was promptly translated.
“Mogi is our first stop — a fishing harbour on the eastern coast,” the Yamato boy replied. “We should reach it easily before sunset if nothing slows us down. Beyond this valley it’s just one ri downhill, along the river. Lady Kazuko mentioned a Butsu temple that can accommodate us.”
“I hope she’s right,” added the interpreter. “there are only few inns in Mogi and the harbour may be crowded today.”
“Crowded? Why?” asked Bran.
“Tomorrow is the great festival of rice planting at Suwa,” explained Tokojiro, “and there will be many pilgrims arriving to Mogi from the big cities on the other side of the bay.”
“I see,” Bran said, nodding.
He glanced back to see what Tokojiro was looking at, but could see nothing except the narrow road winding among the trees.
CHAPTER IV
When he awoke, Shūhan found himself lying on a cold stone floor in a straw-padded chamber. The setting sun’s red light penetrated through a narrow window fortified with sturdy bamboo bars. He was gagged with a piece of cloth, his arms and legs tied tightly with a single length of rope, his fingers bound stiff to bamboo sticks so that he could not cast even the weakest of enchantments.
The burn wounds he had suffered from magical energies and the dagger cut in his side had be
en treated roughly to ensure he would not die, but not enough to diminish the pain. He was stripped to the loincloth and shivering from the cold.
A door opened and into the cell came his adversary in the long crimson robe, hair tied neatly in a ponytail. His face was gaunt and pale-yellow like old paper, once handsome but now twisted perpetually in a mocking scowl. A crest of a black eight-headed serpent adorned his chest. He crouched before Shūhan with a mocking smile. The wizard winced at the strong odour of blood and death surrounding the creature.
“That was quite a trick you pulled off there. I had to port us out of the city to break down your defences. Almost ruined my plans, that.”
Shūhan closed his eyes, relieved. He had bought Satō enough time to reach safety.
“But I’ve got you, and that should be enough. I’m sure you can tell me everything I need to know. Don’t look at me like that!” the man protested. “We are both noblemen. I won’t dishonour you with torture. I don’t need to torture people to learn their secrets,” he continued, his smirk revealing sharp, blackened teeth. “At least not anymore, not since I have my Tetsu.”
He rose and called out. A creature of nightmares stepped slowly and hesitantly into the cell. It was clad in the orange robes of a Butsu monk. Black, parchment-like skin barely covered the bones and joints. Its face was a skull covered with thin leather, with gaping holes where the eyes and nose would be and an eternal creepy smile of gumless lipless jaws. It moved slowly, feeling its way with a claw-like hand. The smell of forbidden alchemy and arsenic surrounding the monstrosity was overwhelmingly nauseating. Shūhan jerked back in horror, but the ropes held him in place.
The Year of the Dragon Omnibus Page 27
