Black Arrow - [Sugawara Akitada 04]

by I. J. Parker

  Akitada sighed. “My friend,” he said, “and I hope I may still call you that—I have made many mistakes since I arrived. Perhaps some of my mistakes have cost lives and will cost more. Not the least of my mistakes was to doubt you. I should have known that a man who would risk his life to perform an illegal exhumation at my request would not at the same time plot against me.” He bowed to Oyoshi. “I apologize humbly for my foolishness.”

  The doctor became so agitated that he spilled his tea. “Oh, no,” he cried. “Please don’t. You were quite right to suspect everyone, and who more than myself? What could you know about me, who had hidden his past from everyone? What should you think when I gave the wrong testimony in court? Why should you trust me when I was so conveniently on the premises when Mrs. Omeya was killed? You did quite right and have behaved with the greatest justice and patience towards me.”

  “You will stay then?”

  Oyoshi did not answer right away. He put down his teacup and wiped his fingers. “There is another thing. I killed someone,” he said softly. “I had a very bad moment when Tora said something about murderous doctors and looked at me in a very knowing way. May I tell you about it?”

  Akitada said quickly, “There is no need. I am quite satisfied.”

  “Allow me, sir. Many years ago, in another province, I served as personal physician to ... a powerful man. I caused my patient’s death after I discovered that my wife had spent more time in his bed than in mine. It was wrong to love her more than my duty.” He broke off and raised a hand to hide his face in shame.

  “You were not found out?”

  Oyoshi lowered his hand and smiled bleakly. “No. He was ill and I attended him. Once I was a very good physician. I could have saved his life, but I let him die. Afterwards I divorced my wife and left the area. I spent the next ten years traveling, working at fairs and treating the poor, earning a few coppers as a barber now and then to buy medicines. For another fifteen years after that I tried the religious life. I entered a monastery, but in the end the guilt would not leave me and it grated on my ears to be called a holy man. So I took to the road again and ended up here, where I hoped to end my life in obscurity.” He gave a hollow laugh and shook his head.

  Akitada was relieved. “Legally you are not guilty of murder,” he said. “This will not prevent you from serving as coroner.”

  “I must confess to yet another offense,” Oyoshi said sadly. “When I saw you at Takata, ill, outnumbered, outmanipulated, and surrounded by forces you seemed neither by background nor by personality equipped to handle, you seemed lost. Then, when you asked me to serve as your coroner, I formed the somewhat confused idea of throwing in my lot with you. Circumstances favored this, and the more I learned about you, the more convinced I became that joining your downfall would be my personal atonement. I planned to end my life with you and thus make amends for my past. But I was quite wrong. You have fought the evil in this province successfully and you will prevail, while I must continue to bear my guilt.”

  For a moment Akitada was so taken aback by this that he did not know whether to laugh or be angry. Then he remembered the coming battle and said, “I suppose both my arrogance and my ignorance, obvious to everyone but me, blinded me to the local problems in the beginning. You were not wrong about me. I have little to be proud of, and had I known how badly I would bungle, I would have fled in panic. Let us hope that some good may still come of our most foolish actions. I want you to stay.”

  Oyoshi brushed at his eyes. “If you truly wish it, sir,” he murmured. He rose awkwardly and stumbled from the room.

  ♦

  Heavy gray clouds swirled above and sleet stung their faces. Below them, the forest enclosing the frozen fields looked funereal, like a black stole draped across a pallid hempen gown. It was past midday. Hours ago, Akitada and Takesuke had ridden up to the Takata gate and demanded Makio’s surrender. A hail of arrows had been their answer. After that, Takesuke had withdrawn his troops, and Akitada, along with Hitomaro and Tora, had gone to meet Kaoru.

  The four would make the dangerous attempt to get inside the fortified manor. They wore straw rain capes over light armor and waited hidden among trees where they could see part of the road leading up to the manor. A quarter of the hour passed before the old woman appeared, walking slowly and leaning on the arm of a girl.

  “Isn’t that your sister?” Hitomaro asked Kaoru. “Why risk her life?”

  “My cousin. She usually goes along and I could not stop her.”

  They waited again, nervously now, until the two women returned. The girl loosened the shawl around her head and let it blow in the wind for a moment before she retied it.

  “Good girl! All is ready,” said Kaoru, adding grimly, “Let’s hope we do our part as well.”

  Akitada looked up at the sky to gauge the time. There was no sun. The icy wind pushed angry gray clouds before it, clouds so low that they hid the snowy tops of the distant mountains. Wisps of cloud drifted across the dark roofs of Takata manor— shredded silk gauze from a mourner’s train.

  They left the trees at a run and dashed across the road. Up the hill, still at a run, they kept mostly to a gully, a jagged scar which ran up the barren hillside. The gully gave them some cover, but then they were in the open again and close enough to the manor that a single archer on one of the galleries could pick them off one by one, like running deer.

  As they ran uphill, the low clouds finally released the first heavy drops. They congealed into sleet in the cold wind and stung their faces. Akitada clasped his heavy sword to his side so it would not get between his legs and trip him. His armor was also heavy and cumbersome, and the rain-soaked straw cape flapped wetly against him. His breath soon came in hoarse gasps, his chest hurt, and his leg muscles ached, but he was ashamed to fall back behind the others. When they reached the steep outcropping under the eastern wall, he sagged against the rock, drenched in sweat despite the bitter cold.

  They huddled there for a little, in a blind spot where an overhanging gallery hid them from watching eyes above, and waited for the signal. The icy wind cut through the straw coats and turned the metal scales of their armor into ice against their wet bodies. Akitada’s teeth chattered from cold and nerves.

  Below the land stretched away, empty sere fields traversed by the darker line of the road. They had come from the forest to the north and followed a path so narrow and overgrown that only Kaoru had known how to find it. He had kept an eye on the ramparts above them, but they had seen no watchers. Takesuke and his men were on the other side, below the approach to the manor’s gate, and that was where Uesugi expected the attack to come from.

  Here immense slabs of rock rose to an outer wall and to the black timbers of a gallery jutting into the stormy gray sky above them. Dry shrubs and stunted trees grew from cracks in the rocks. Kaoru moved along the path to one of the slabs of rock and felt it. He grunted and gave a push, and Akitada saw a crack widen into a thin black fissure.

  Like the tomb entrance, Akitada thought with a shiver. He said aloud, “What about the signal?”

  Kaoru nodded. “We wait a little longer, but there isn’t much time left.”

  So they stood, shivering in the sleeting rain with their sword grips freezing to their perspiring palms, wondering if Koreburo had been caught. Akitada heard distant drumbeats carried on the wind in snatches. Takesuke was following instructions and exercising his troops. Akitada wished himself a common foot soldier, trotting briskly and unencumbered by heavy armor to the command of an officer. He was impatient to get this over with, to confront what lay in wait behind the stone door. Action, any kind of action, was preferable to this agonizing process of congealing in the freezing blasts.

  When it finally came, that cry of the snow goose, once, and quickly again, they exchanged glances, then tossed off their straw wraps and gripped their swords more tightly. Kaoru and Tora together pushed the stone aside. A dark and narrow stone stairway ascended inside.

  Suddenly, before Ka
oru could take the lead, Hitomaro pushed past Akitada and disappeared into the darkness. Tora muttered a curse, and Akitada drew his sword and went after Hitomaro into the murky shaft leading upward. Hitomaro’s rapid steps sounded ahead, but it was too dark to see. What was the fool doing? At any moment he might run into danger and give them away. More steps shuffled behind, but Akitada was bent on catching up with Hitomaro.

  The climb through a tight black space, only occasionally lit by air holes in the outer walls, seemed to last forever. The steps twisted, turned, and switched back. Akitada’s sword once clattered against the wall and he caught it. Someone behind him slipped and cursed softly. Sweat trickled down Akitada’s temples, and his fingers cramped around the sword hilt. He tried to listen, but his breathing and the blood pounding in his ears muffled all other sounds. If Hitomaro had encountered a guard, he was already a dead man. And so were they all.

  Then he caught a faint whiff of burning oil. Wood scraped on wood and, as he turned a corner, faint light came through a grate just large enough for a man to get through. Hitomaro cowered there, a hulking black shadow, until Akitada saw his face flushed by the light as he removed the grate and slipped through the opening.

  “Come, sir,” he said softly, holding out a hand to Akitada. “It’s safe.”

  “That was a very foolish trick,” Akitada hissed angrily. “You might have ruined everything by rushing ahead when Kaoru knows the way.”

  Hitomaro’s face was expressionless. “Sorry, sir.”

  Akitada climbed out into an empty enclosed gallery. The corridor was a little over a hundred feet long, its narrow shutters closed tight against the weather, and the dim space lit at each end by large metal oil lamps attached to beams. It was silent and deserted, but they could hear men shouting outside. No doubt Uesugi’s warriors were getting ready for Takesuke’s attack.

  The other two joined them. Akitada said, “Very well. Let’s see about finding Uesugi and opening that gate.” It sounded ridiculously simple to his ears and, standing there in the enemy’s stronghold, he half believed it would be.

  “Come and see,” Kaoru grunted and opened one of the shutters a crack.

  When Akitada joined him, he looked through a loophole from which an archer could shoot arrows into the lower entrance courtyard. Armed soldiers sat about in small groups. Black-and-white Uesugi banners were everywhere. One man carried equipment to the tower above the gate. Akitada’s heart sank. They could not reach the gate without being cut down in the attempt. Even if the men in the courtyard could be distracted long enough, the watchtower above bristled with archers.

  Kaoru closed the shutter and went to put the grate back into place. “We cannot stay here,” he said softly. “Someone might come any moment. Follow me, but remember the place in case you have to run for your life.” They ran down the corridor away from the main house. Akitada chafed at this and at the fact that Kaoru had taken over and was giving the orders, but he submitted. He felt badly out of his depth.

  The gallery adjoined another, equally empty, and this led to one of the service areas. Kaoru peered out cautiously. It was the kitchen yard, and deserted. No smoke came from the kitchen hearth. The cooking fires had been extinguished prior to battle. Kaoru crossed the yard, headed for a storage shed. They followed, slipped in behind him, and he closed the door.

  “You’ll be safe here for the moment,” he said.

  They stood in a small space filled with baskets and brooms, kettles and pails, faggots and oil jars, all the paraphernalia to keep a large household stocked. Akitada’s heart was pounding. He said, “The gate. We must reach that gate. How many men does it take to open it?”

  “One, at the most two.”

  Kaoru still sounded confident, but Akitada had become all too aware of his own lack of planning. “You’re sure?” he persisted, wondering if two of them could engage the soldiers he had seen, some fifteen or twenty, long enough to let the other two slip past to the gate. With the archers above, it wasn’t likely.

  “There’s a counterweight. I can do it by myself.”

  “We need to draw some of the soldiers away. What about that fire Koreburo was to start?”

  Kaoru opened the shed door and peered out. He closed it again. “No sign of it. He should have done so already. If you’ll wait here, I’ll try to find him.” Before Akitada could protest, Kaoru had slipped out.

  Akitada suppressed a sudden panic and motioned to the other two to sit down. They sat, each caught in his own thoughts, and waited in the murky semidarkness of the small shed. The smell of wood and dried grasses hung in the chill air.

  Tora’s eyes were wide open and his hands twitched occasionally with suppressed excitement. Hitomaro leaned back against the wall, perfectly still, his eyes closed, his chin on his chest. Looking at them, Akitada reflected how close these two men were to him, and how danger affected them all differently. He remembered Takesuke’s fervent wish that Uesugi would attack the tribunal, while he himself had been weighed down with fears for his family and his people. Takesuke’s high spirits had struck him as irresponsible and bloodthirsty then. Now he wondered if he was the one who was inadequate to his duty. Takesuke, Tora, and Hitomaro were all trained soldiers, while he was an official. What did he know of war? Yet, by accepting this appointment, he had also accepted the possibility of having to fight.

  Here he was, in unaccustomed armor and uncomfortable, feeling ambivalent about the violence he was about to face and—worse—to commit. They had gained entrance to the stronghold without being discovered, but the real test still lay ahead, and Akitada doubted that he could pass it.

  If Kaoru was caught, he would be questioned under torture. Whether he revealed their presence or not, a subsequent search would find them, and then they would die ignobly here, slaughtered among brooms and braziers. There was no defense against the odds, even if it were possible to swing a sword in these cramped quarters.

  It wasn’t going to be easy at all.

  * * * *

  TWENTY-ONE

  TO THE DEATH

  A

  kitada did not want to wait for death.

  Neither did the others. Tora broke into his thoughts impatiently. “Where in hell is Kaoru? He has nerve, telling us to sit here and wait for him. Who does he think he is? I don’t like it. We’re stuck here like rats in a box.” He stood up and walked to the door, opening it a crack.

  Hitomaro went to join him. “It’s too quiet,” he said.

  Tora asked, “What if it’s a trap, sir? To my mind the fellow’s just too well informed about this place for a mere woodsman.”

  Akitada hated the inactivity, but he shook his head. “No, we must trust Kaoru. He’ll be back any moment.”

  Hitomaro closed the door and paced. Tora grunted and sat down.

  Akitada thought he could find the way to the gate from what he remembered of his earlier visits. They had been taken from the gate to an inner courtyard. From there, Akitada had gone into the main house. The trouble was, he was not sure where they were now. He closed his eyes and pictured Kaoru’s sketch of the secret entrance. He must somehow get back to the main house. The gallery from which he had seen the north pavilion had been on the west side, but they had gone there through another gallery that served as an armory.

  Never mind. They were not headed to the north pavilion but to the gate. They had to open the gate to let Takesuke in before they did anything else. The problem was how to get there from here. He had spoken to the servants in a courtyard not unlike the one they were in. For that matter, where were the servants? Some must be in the kitchen, even with the fires out. Had they all been pressed into defending the manor?

  “Tora,” he said, opening his eyes, “where did they take you during the banquet?”

  “One of their barracks. They fed me. Seemed decent fellows.” Tora grimaced.

  Akitada guessed that Tora did not like the thought of killing such hospitable men, or being killed by them. “But where were the barracks? In relation to th
e gate and the main house?”

  “Between the house and the gate. Why?”

  That accounted for one of the courtyards. “I’m wondering if we can find our way to the gate without Kaoru. Takesuke’s men are preparing to attack. We cannot wait much longer.”

  “Then let’s go, sir.” Hitomaro was on his feet. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Akitada sighed and rose. “Yes. Something must have gone wrong. We have waited long enough. Take another look outside and tell me if you see any smoke anywhere in the compound.”

  Hitomaro reported, “Nothing, sir. They must’ve caught both of them.”

  Akitada looked around the shed. “Very well. Since the materials are at hand, we’ll make the fire here. Pile up all the baskets, brooms, and kindling against that wall over there. Then we’ll pour the lamp oil over it and light it.”