Sword of the Ronin (The Ronin Trilogy)

by Travis Heermann

  The surface of the lake was smooth, flawless, reflecting the forest and the mountains and the gray. And his face, which he found to be a mask of blood. He was not hurt; the blood was not his. But he felt its heat, smelled it, as if heart’s blood were pouring from his skin like sweat.

  A drop of blood fell into the water and swirled into a beautiful pattern, and tiny ripples spread outward in rings across the lake. Tadpoles and insects and tiny fish scattered or changed course at the disturbance, some finding themselves within striking distance of a predator, only to be eaten. The ripples rebounded from distant rocks.

  Another droplet of blood. Another set of disturbances, ripples that merged with the first wave, infinitesimally higher now.

  Another droplet, and another, until the water under him assumed a scarlet cast, and waves of ripples echoed out across the lake, building and reflecting in ways he could not see.

  The boy watched this, forgetting that his face was somehow bleeding, fascinated by the interplay of action and reaction. The waves were coming back now, higher, lapping over his naked toes. He giggled.

  But in the deep, unseen, unnoticed, the waves coalesced. Something moved.

  * * *

  Ken’ishi awoke shivering. His clothes were still wet, and his hands and feet were numb. His entire body ached. The air was stale and thick with the smells of sweat, clothing that had been wet for too long, and smoke from the fire.

  One of the men brought him a basin of clean water. “Here, Captain,” the man said. “To wash your face.”

  Outside, the storm raged unabated.

  Taking handfuls of water, he washed his face, and immediately the water looked like blood.

  Sleeping men clustered around the fire pit for warmth. For a long time, he stood shivering over the coals, rubbing sensation back into his hands. He lay down again.

  Night had long since fallen, and he felt the violence of the utter darkness outside pressing down upon him, driving him closer to the fire.

  * * *

  Ken’ishi’s ears rang from the silence.

  He opened his eyes and listened. He was warmer now, even though his clothes were still damp and the fire had burned to ashes. The noise of the rain on the roof was now a gentle hiss, not a pounding deluge.

  He stood up and approached the door, trying to stretch some of the aches out of his muscles. The cuts that criss-crossed his flesh burned. He slid open the door, and his eyes met with hellish carnage.

  Under the dim sky, rain-soaked death reeked and oozed. The morass of hacked bodies reached as high as his chest in some places. His knees buckled, and he clutched the door jamb.

  When he gathered enough steadiness, he ventured outside. The light rain moistened his face, dripping, runnels flowing through mountains of dead flesh.

  The street led down toward the sea, and for as far out as his eyes could reach, he saw wreckage. The shore was choked with shattered hulls, splintered masts, shredded sails, surging up and down with the low, groaning rumble of the waves. There was even a smashed ship nesting in the collapsed roof of a warehouse near the shore.

  A strange mixture of elation and disgust washed through him—happiness that the invaders had been dealt such a deadly blow, but as he imagined how they died, trapped in rickety, leaky boats amid the black tempest, he felt a shiver that was not from the cold. The ripples of destiny.

  Making his way toward the shore, he found the hulls of the ships were cracked open like eggs, spilling their limp, drenched contents onto the ground like rotten yolks. Waterlogged corpses choked the water around the shattered ships, thousands of them, men and Mongol ponies. Corpses draped the wreckage of masts and smashed hulls, bodies thrown up on shore in great, reeking piles, tangled in seaweed and flotsam, surging back and forth in the wind-blown froth. Gray, lifeless faces twisted by expressions of helpless terror, mouths filled with seawater. The waves pressed the half-submerged ships together against the land, again and again. The wreckage bumped and tore and ground against itself in the ocean’s inexorable rhythm.

  Had Silver Crane done this? Had he done this?

  Most of the buildings near the shore had been demolished by the wind and sea. Dozens more had been stripped of their roofs. And before long, the air would be choked with the stench of thousands of brine-soaked corpses.

  He spotted Otomo no Tsunemori and one of the other commanders on horseback, surveying the damage, and walked toward them.

  Tsunemori said, “A fearful sight, is it not, Ken’ishi?”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “It seems that what we could not accomplish, the gods did for us. The barbarians have been destroyed.”

  The other commander said, “The gods and Buddhas were watching over us, it is certain.”

  Ken’ishi said, “Yes, Lords. The kami favored us.” A cold tremor in his belly.

  Tsunemori looked at Ken’ishi with an appraising glance. “Ken’ishi, you did well yesterday.”

  Ken’ishi’s face flushed with pride, and with something else. “It was nothing, Otomo-sama. There were others who fought better than I, others who suffered more than I.”

  “Nevertheless, you should be rewarded.”

  Ken’ishi wished he could put aside the creeping dread in his belly.

  “I serve my brother, Lord Otomo no Tsunetomo,” Tsunemori continued. “When the enemy first attacked, we were regrettably not prepared for their dishonorable tactics. We suffered great losses. Lord Tsunetomo was wounded, and I was nearly killed, too. But now that the invaders have been destroyed, we can all go home soon. Enough death and horror for a hundred lifetimes.” Tsunemori rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I will need good fighting men to replenish our ranks. Would you fight for my brother? Or do you prefer the life of a wave-man?”

  Ken’ishi remained silent for a moment. He remembered his elation when he had reached Lord Nishimuta no Jiro’s castle with Kazuko so long ago, with her assurance that he would be offered service. Even more clearly, he remembered the shocking, heartbreaking moment when it was ripped away from him like a chunk of his own flesh. “If Lord Tsunetomo finds me worthy, I would serve him with all honor and loyalty.”

  Tsunemori nodded. “Very well. The castle guards do not normally admit ronin inside the gates, so when you arrive, show them this.” He slid the small kozuka blade from its tiny sheath in the side of his scabbard and handed it to Ken’ishi.

  Ken’ishi accepted it with both hands, his head lowered. “Thank you, Lord! I am in your debt!”

  “It is nothing,” Tsunemori said and lightly heeled his mount’s flanks, moving away down the street. The other commander followed him, and they turned their discussion to other matters.

  Ken’ishi looked down at the knife, slightly shorter than his extended hand, about as wide as a finger. Tsunemori’s name was engraved in gold on the kozuka’s tang, gleaming from a recent polish.

  He had never held such a beautiful thing before.

  Ungraciously, under

  a great soldier’s empty helmet,

  a cricket sings

  — Kyoroku

  Yasutoki stood on the shore of Hakata Bay, holding his sleeve over his nose and mouth, staring at the remnants of the invasion fleet and the Mongol army. The stench was worse than anything he imagined this world could produce, worse than the most abysmal hell. He had spent all night camped in Dazaifu, near his wounded lord. After the messenger had arrived with news that the enemy was gone, all Yasutoki’s hopes were dashed on the rocks, along with the splintered bones and shredded flesh of the invading army. The effort of many thousands of men, hundreds of ships, years of preparation, tens of thousands of lives snuffed out in one night, at the whim of the gods. The carnage staggered the imagination.

  He wanted to spill blood to assuage his pain, kill something. His house in Hakata was gone, his underworld empire in ruins. It would take him weeks to even take stock of what remained, perhaps years to recoup his losses. He still had a sack full of gold, but could be sure of little else.

&nbs
p; Red foam stroked the shore. Bodies entangled in seaweed bobbed and rolled in the surf, shredded against the shattered wreckage of countless hulls. The water was thick with body parts, bits of flesh, splintered wood. Triangular fins knifed through the waves, feasting, and smaller fish clustered around the floating bodies to gnaw on the softening flesh. Crabs swarmed on the shore, their pincers tearing. A pile of corpses lay thrown upon the wreckage of a pier some fifty paces away. Even from this distance he could see the rats swarming over the pile, crabs sliding through cracks, crows hopping from splintered wood to splintered bone. All gorging themselves.

  He cursed the gods for their capriciousness. Why? he demanded silently.

  All of it gone.

  All of it.

  Gone.

  Gone, gone, gone.

  All of the danger to which he had subjected himself, all of the painstaking effort, all of the hopes, all of the gold.

  Why had the Mongols retreated to their ships? They would have been safer on land! The Kyushu defenders had been shamefully unable to stem the Mongol advance. Perhaps the Koryo sailors who manned the ships had betrayed their masters in the face of the coming storm and threatened to leave them stranded. Perhaps the Mongol generals had not wanted to remain alone on a foreign shore with their supply lines cut.

  The Koryo had acquiesced to the Great Khan’s will, but their full hearts had not been in this invasion. Only the Great Khan’s power had driven them to obey; perhaps the power of the typhoon had proven more persuasive.

  Or perhaps this attack had been just a warning, a glimpse of the size of the sword that the Great Khan held poised over the heads of the Emperor and the Shogun. Perhaps this attack had never been meant as a full-scale invasion. Perhaps it was just a test, a feint to determine the true capabilities of the defenders.

  Khubilai Khan was a stubborn, ambitious man. This might be only a minor setback in the Khan’s eyes. Perhaps he would plan another invasion. Perhaps these thousands of dead men were but a paltry few, a drop in the bucket compared to the vast armies of the Golden Horde. To be sure, even with such horrendous losses as this day, the Mongol Empire had lost little of its fighting strength.

  Green Tiger would send the Khan a message, informing the Khan of his well-being and of his readiness to continue his services. If the Khan was not amenable, then Green Tiger could find other ways to cause pain to the Shogunate, the Hojo and Minamoto clans.

  There was still the matter of Lord Tsunetomo’s recovery. If Tsunetomo died, Tsunemori stood to inherit Tsunetomo’s holdings. Many of his chief retainers would commit seppuku to follow him across the river of death. Yasutoki would not, even though he would make a great show of the decision’s difficulty. Then Tsunemori would most likely throw him out.

  It would be best for Yasutoki if Lord Tsunetomo maintained his hold on life, at least for the time being. Lord Tsunetomo’s estate was a secure base for Yasutoki, a den for Green Tiger to lick his wounds and rebuild his empire.

  Fortunately, Lord Tsunetomo, a man of surprising strength and vigor, looked as if he would survive his wound.

  Yes, even this terrible despair and disappointment would end. For now, he would help nurse his lord back to full health and return home with him as if nothing were amiss. He still had pleasant diversions there—Tiger Lily chief among them—to keep his mind occupied while he devised new schemes.

  * * *

  Scratching his head, Chiba wondered how he would ever fix his fishing boat alone. He had just spent the better part of the morning grieving for his brothers and burying their arrow-riddled corpses. There was no woodcutter to help him build a funeral pyre, no priest or monk to chant sutras, no gravedigger to dig the hole. He was alone now, fallen so far that he must do the work of the unclean. Aoka had become a village of ghosts. And the storm had thrown his boat far up onto shore and impaled it upon a tree stump.

  If everyone else was dead, however, perhaps he might find another boat still seaworthy, and the owner would surely not mind his appropriation of it. But first, one more look through his house for anything the invaders had not stolen or burned. The house belonging to him and his brothers had somehow escaped destruction, but its contents had been tossed and looted. He managed to gather the remnants of a few tools, net-making materials, an old rusty gaff hook, a robe of his brother Ryuba’s that he had long coveted, and one last jar of saké, and bundled it all into a net.

  As he thought about it, he realized there might be a few valuables scattered around the remnants of the village, perhaps a few things the barbarians had missed. And if the owners still lived and were foolish enough to return, any missing items would be ascribed to theft by the barbarians. He spent the rest of the day combing through empty houses for coins, jewelry, trinkets, anything that might be of value. Perhaps he would travel south to Kumamoto. At least it had escaped the invasion. He might make his fortune there, if he could find a boat. Aoka had never been a rich village, and the pickings were poor. Nevertheless, all told, he might be able to sell everything for a piece of silver or two.

  He snarled with disgust at the charred remains of the ronin’s abode. “I hope you’re dead, bastard!”

  There among the ashes he spotted a few spears of blackened bone, the curve of a skull. Who would have died in there? Curiosity aroused, he stepped gingerly into the water-logged wreckage, making his way toward the bones. He bent and extracted the skull from its place in the crook between two fallen ceiling beams. Most people would have been horrified at him soiling his spirit with the touch of the dead, but he had already been tainted by hauling his brothers to the village cemetery and digging their graves.

  He examined the skull, turned it around, imagining whose face this might once have been, smaller slightly than a man’s.

  Then a sound turned his head, a woman’s cry of pain, of anguish, of hurt and rage, sounding from a distance.

  He froze. Could the barbarians still be about, ravaging one of the village women? The voice had been familiar somehow.

  Then he saw her, shambling out of the forest some hundred paces distant. She wore a pale, tattered robe, colorless, hanging over her feet. Long, bedraggled hair obscured her face, hanging below her waist, tangled with things too small to see at this distance.

  She stopped there, just at the edge of the wild forest, and the slight cant of her body suggested she had noticed him. Her shoulders bore the stooped curve of a woman beaten down by either age or the suffering of life.

  The wail came again, closer now, sending a chill down through his feet into the ground, a sound so harsh his eyes watered, and he blinked away the tears. Somehow in those instants she had crossed most of the distance between them, but she was not walking. She simply stood. The glimmer of eyes regarded him from beyond the veil of unkempt, black hair.

  With a gasp and strangled cry, he dropped the skull back into the ashes, and scrambled out of the wreckage. Stumbling over the last tangled, blackened debris, he found himself suddenly face to face with her. She swayed slightly, as if weak.

  Only two paces away now, he could see that her hair was wet with blood, beslimed by the afterworld, crawling with beetles and maggots. The tips of her fingers were claws, reddened as if by her own dried blood. Her head tipped back, allowing her face to emerge from the black torrent of hair, and Kiosé’s face rose toward heaven and unleashed another screech of such rage and despair that Chiba felt a burst of warmth spew down his leg.

  Her face swiveled toward him, and her gaze flamed orange-red, boring into him like red-hot spear blades as she launched herself at him.

  Chiba covered his face with his arms and fled like a lunatic, screaming. Her shriek filled his ears, his brain, and his legs pumped as he dashed blindly into the countryside, arms flailing, forgetting his stolen trinkets, forgetting any thought of stealing a boat, forgetting all but to run for his very soul. He ran until he collapsed from exhaustion, but the screech forced him up again and drove him on, to run until he collapsed again, then again, then again, until his limbs could
no longer support his weight, and his mind could no longer support the weight of Kiosé’s rage.

  When he awoke, somewhere alone in the wild mountains, the scream was gone, but he sensed the presence still, hovering just out of sight.

  He sat on a rock and wept.

  That night, deep within the thick of the woods, with a mountain rearing at his back, he built his fire high, and hunched close in the circle of light, hugging his knees, his eyes catching smudges of black hair emerging from every shadow. Drifting embers became eyes like coals. He wished for the jar of saké he had left behind. He wished for some food to fill his belly. He wished for a bed and a safe place to sleep.

  The typhoon clouds shredded themselves against the sky. The moon rose, and the stars drifted between the treetops.

  His heart jumped into his throat at the brush of a robe against his elbow and the stench of death filling his nose. She hovered beside him, loomed over him, and the hem of her robe floated a hand’s breadth above the ground with no feet visible beneath.

  He scrambled back like a crab, a wild ululation tearing from his throat, but she followed, reaching down, down, her claws coming for him, snatching at his shoulders like knife points, falling down upon him, those eyes like coals burning into his, bearing him down against the earth, the breath of the grave in his nose, cold, scabrous lips closing over his, stifling his scream. He tried to tear himself away, to breathe, but cold tendrils of black hair snaked around his head, cinching, writhing, squeezing his lips onto hers. Her claws pierced deep, grating across bone.

  Eventually, somewhere near morning, his screams died.

  * * *

  Norikage had almost starved to death by the time he found his way to Hakozaki. He had not eaten in days while he hid with Hana in the forests and mountains. His clothing hung like a sack on his already spare frame, and his legs wobbled. He had a small sack of coins hidden in his now filthy robes, and he needed to spend some of them on food. Every time Hana stumbled from weakness, he felt a pang of guilt that he should be providing for her.