by Steve Bein
Shichio made a pouting face. “Let me ask this one anyway.”
Hashiba smirked. “Why? You’ve got no taste for asking questions anyhow—at least not in the way that guarantees the right answers.”
Shichio suppressed a shudder. He’d seen the fruits of Hashiba’s favored method. He’d seen the horrors of the battlefield too. Hashiba’s technique was indescribably, nightmarishly worse.
And despite Shichio’s efforts to conceal his revulsion, Hashiba saw through his mask. “You see?” he said. “All I have to do is mention real questioning and your blood runs cold.”
Hashiba had him cornered. But if there was one thing Shichio was good at, it was turning a position of weakness into a position of strength. “If I do it your way, you’ll let me ask my questions?”
Hashiba sighed. “If this is Tokugawa’s man, it’ll be nothing but trouble for me.”
“Come, now. He’ll never miss one man, will he?”
“Lord Penny-Pincher? He’d notice if a horsefly went missing. And taking the north will be troublesome enough without goading its best strategist.”
“Please, Hashiba-dono, please. . . .”
Another sigh. Hashiba looked at the prisoner for a moment, pensive, probably calculating benefits and risks. At last he said, “He cannot leave here alive.”
“Oh, thank you, Hashiba-dono.”
“You can thank me later. When you’re done with him, come on up to watch the moon with me.” He looked down at Shichio’s hand and the heavy, cloth-bound, platelike thing it was holding. “Bring that with you.”
“Count on it.”
Then Hashiba was gone and Shichio was alone with his prisoner. “I’m not going to tell you a damn thing,” the prisoner said.
“Oh, we already know that’s not true, don’t we? Yes, we do. It only takes a few drinks to get you talking. Well, I won’t be giving you much to drink, but you’ll find Lord Toyotomi’s other methods are equally tongue-loosening. Now, you’re not going to be so stupid as to run, are you?”
The man stuck out his chin and squared his shoulders.
“No? Good. Our destination isn’t far. I’d just as soon ask you my questions here—they’re going to replace the floors in this room anyway, aren’t they? You might as well do all your bleeding here. But you heard the regent.”
• • •
The prisoner followed obediently to the little outbuilding near the slaughterhouse—not that he had much choice, being prodded along by two of Shichio’s bodyguards. He blanched when he saw the table, and ground his teeth as they stripped him of his clothes, but otherwise no sign of fear showed in him. He knelt before Shichio not as one showing obeisance but as one prepared to commit seppuku. His eyes were already on Shichio’s wakizashi.
Shichio looked down at the sword, then back at his captive. “You samurai! Your thoughts always run straight to bloodletting, don’t they?” He slapped the man’s face. “You disgust me. You should praise your swords for their elegance, their craftsmanship, but no. You smear them in gore. Why can’t you butchers understand? These swords of yours, they’re works of art.”
He began to unwrap the thin, heavy thing he’d been holding all this time, the one he’d taken from the shelf in his study. “Unlike you, I appreciate artistry. Let me show you my favorite piece.”
He took his time peeling back the silk. As the folds of cloth fell away, the face of a demon gradually emerged. It was a mask—or rather a half mask, only big enough to cover him from his forehead to his upper lip. It was a very old thing. Rusty orange accented the recesses: the furrows in its brow, the wrinkles around its scowling eyes. It was the perishability of the mask that made it so beautiful, like icicles sparkling in the very sunlight that would melt them.
The moment his fingertips brushed its rough brown skin, Shichio found himself thinking of blades, of piercing and stabbing. The mask always had that effect on him. Indeed, prior to owning the mask, he’d never seen swords as beautiful. Now he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t appreciated them before. So graceful. So powerful. He found them quite fascinating.
He stood before his prisoner and donned the mask, binding it tightly in place with leather thongs. He slid his fingertips over the short iron horns jabbing up from his forehead, ran his tongue over the sharp row of fangs that extended down just as far as his own teeth. The prisoner’s eyes widened. He shrank away from the mask. It was a subtle thing, the smallest retreat in military history, but the fear was visible in him now. Shichio found it delicious.
“It gives me no pleasure,” he said. “The bloodshed, that is. To tell you the truth, even the smell of it sickens me. And the thought of tying a man to a table, making him utterly defenseless, and then bleeding him—it’s simply monstrous, isn’t it? And yet I must do as my regent commands. But you understand that, don’t you? Yes. Yes, I think you do.”
Shichio gave him a compassionate smile, stroked the man’s cheek, passed his fingers through the man’s hair. His prisoner pulled away from his touch. It was so easy to terrify these men, these fearless worthies of the samurai caste. They thought nothing of pain, they held death in contempt, and yet the mere sight of a lunatic gave them pause. This one had no idea what to make of Shichio and his mask, and in the structured world of the soldier, to be unpredictable was to be utterly mad. The largest cobra and fiercest tiger were nothing in comparison. Animals had instincts. Their intentions were easily known. Not so with a madman.
The fact that he wore a demonic mask did not necessarily make him a madman. It was the loving caress that made his prisoner shudder. Even Shichio’s bodyguards recoiled at the sight.
“Now, then,” Shichio said, “you were listening earlier, neh? When Jun explained who you are to the regent? Of course you were. Now you’re going to tell me about the things Jun left out. About that scar on your forehead. About the man who gave it to you. About his friend, the monk.”
The prisoner was quaking uncontrollably now. Was he trying to assess what the masked lunatic would do next? Was he evaluating escape strategies? Wondering how many swords and spears stood between this room and the streets of Kyoto, or how far he’d make it with his arms tied behind his back? Shichio was dying to know.
He took the prisoner’s chin between his thumb and forefinger and bent down close enough to kiss him. “Tell me about the monk,” he whispered. “Tell me about the house of Okuma.”
6
The challenger’s bokken smashed across the knuckles of Daigoro’s right hand. Daigoro backed away, but the pain did not. As his challenger circled him, Daigoro flexed the top two fingers experimentally. Pain shot through them as if they were made of broken glass. Two broken bones, maybe more. He’d have to wait until the end of the duel to be sure.
Daigoro limped to his right, mirroring his opponent’s movement. Sora Samanosuke was a cagey fighter. He retreated more often than he advanced and he feinted more often than striking true. The tip of his sword fluttered like a hummingbird. Daigoro knocked it aside, chopped down at the wrists, but Sora backed away. Daigoro lunged, pressing his opponent back, trying to catch him on his heels. Sora circled. Daigoro’s sword chopped high, aiming for the temple. Sora parried and cut low.
His bokken struck just above the knee. Daigoro felt his leg buckle and could only roll into the fall.
“Point, Sora,” said Katsushima Goemon. In that very instant he was in the center of the courtyard, separating the two opponents. The sheer speed of his movement drew a gasp from Daigoro. Half a heartbeat earlier, Katsushima had been kneeling in the judge’s position, yet despite the gray in his topknot and bushy sideburns, he moved as swiftly as any bird of prey. Even on the best of days, it took Daigoro the space of several breaths to rise from kneeling.
Today was not the best of days. Pain burned like a torch in his right hand, and of course his right leg was no help. Even at birth it was skinnier than either of his arms, and now with only one good hand and one good leg, it was just another weight he had to move to get himself back to s
tanding.
The sand of the courtyard was warm under his palm. The wind made the trees whisper on all sides of the Okuma compound, and a dust devil whirled in one corner of the compound’s weathered wooden walls. Daigoro could smell the salt of the ocean on the breeze, and the promise of spring rain, though the only clouds were far toward the horizon. On the opposite side of the courtyard sat Lord Sora, resplendent in his yellow kimono and bright orange haori. His long white beard swayed in the breeze as he regarded the combatants, and suddenly Daigoro felt ashamed of his sand-dusted hakama.
At length Daigoro managed to get to his feet, and with his wooden sword trembling in the two usable fingers of his right hand, he bowed to Sora Samanosuke. The champion of the Sora clan returned the bow and both fighters retired to their sides of the courtyard, Daigoro limping and Sora all but floating. He’d been the underdog, and now his chest swelled with pride.
“What have I told you about patience?” Katsushima said as Daigoro lowered himself to a kneeling position. “You mustn’t press a fighter who wants to be pressed. You’re letting him draw you off your guard.”
Daigoro opened his mouth to respond, then bit down hard as ice-cold spikes of pain lanced through his right hand. He looked down to see Tomo, his baby-faced retainer, peeling his fingers away from his bokken’s grip. Tomo looked up, his ever-present smile bending into a wince. “I’m so sorry, Okuma-dono. Setting the bones is best done quickly.”
Daigoro wondered how a simple potter’s boy could know that. But he could also imagine the pain Tomo would have inflicted by taking his time in straightening the fingers. Better to do it as Tomo had done: swiftly, in one go. Daigoro fought down a wave of nausea and tried to center his concentration somewhere else—anywhere else, anywhere other than his hand.
“I cannot understand you,” Katsushima said, his tone sharper than it should have been. He might have been thirty years’ Daigoro’s senior, but Daigoro was the lord of the house. Then again, Katsushima had sworn no oaths to House Okuma. He’d taken no payment for services rendered. It was true that he’d been acting as Daigoro’s swordmaster, and he’d taken on the role of mentor in a more general sense, but strictly speaking he was more of a houseguest. The man was ronin, plain and simple.
“This is your seventh straight loss with the bokken,” Katsushima said, “and the seventeenth in your last twenty duels. Yet with steel you’re untouchable. Why?”
Because I don’t want to kill anyone, Daigoro thought. Because so long as I don’t wish to kill anyone, Glorious Victory Unsought will never let me lose. And because once you’re in the habit of dueling with steel, playing with bokken is about as serious as monkeys chasing each other through the treetops. This is a game, and one I only play because I have to.
Then that ice-cold pain hammered deep down into the bones of his hand. He looked down and saw Tomo had tied the top two fingers together. They were purple and swollen, but Tomo’s sure hands and a long cotton ribbon would see them bound as painlessly as possible. Some game, Daigoro thought.
“Your focus is as leaky as an old grass roof,” said Katsushima. “Listen to me. Why can you not show the same patience with wood as you do with steel? You never overextend yourself with Glorious Victory. You could have had this Sora boy and you gave the match away.”
“No,” Daigoro said, and he was about to explain why Katsushima was wrong, but then he remembered: Katsushima didn’t believe in enchanted blades. Tales of magic were for farmers’ wives, he said, and now was not the time to rekindle that debate. Daigoro had to prepare himself for a very different conversation.
So instead he said, “It hardly matters now.” He had taken the first point but lost the last two. In a few moments Katsushima would call out both fighters and announce Sora the winner. But on the positive side, Daigoro thought—still trying to keep his mind off his ruined right hand—at least the Soras won’t ask me to duel with steel. Glorious Victory is too heavy for me even at my best. Today I’m not sure I could even keep her tip off the ground.
Katsushima shook his head, gave the tiniest of snorts, and returned to the center of the courtyard. “Fighters, bow!”
Daigoro stood, bokken in his left hand and cold, piercing pain in his right, and bowed. “Fighters, approach!” said Katsushima, and the two duelists marched in lockstep with each other to meet Katsushima in the middle.
“Winner, Sora Samanosuke.”
And that’s that, thought Daigoro, bowing deeply to his opponent. Now we can get down to what’s important. He’d never had much taste for dueling. For years he’d wondered whether he might have felt differently if he’d been born tall and strong like his father or brother, but at the moment he wondered only about how quickly he might have been able to get down to business if everyone else weren’t so taken with duels.
Glorious Victory Unsought was half the trouble. It was his father’s sword, a genuine Inazuma blade, but even without it his father would still have been famous as a warrior, a diplomat, and a tactician. It was probably his fame that had gotten him killed. It was his sword that got Daigoro’s elder brother Ichiro killed—well, that and Ichiro’s ego, Daigoro supposed, but certainly these damnable duels were no help. Challengers came from far and wide to face House Okuma’s famed Inazuma blade. Now only Daigoro remained to face them. Ichiro’s death condemned Daigoro to a lifelong sentence of working day and night to uphold their father’s reputation.
Daigoro still didn’t understand why the clan leaders had agreed to name him Izu-no-kami, Lord Protector of Izu. At sixteen Daigoro was not only the youngest of the five lords protector; he could have been a grandson to any one of them. Okuma Tetsuro had left such a lofty reputation for his son to live up to, and Daigoro was not yet accustomed to shaving his pate.
“My lords,” Daigoro said, “it has been my honor to be defeated by such an agile warrior. Now, if you would like to join me for dinner—”
“Not so fast,” said Lord Sora. He stood and approached the fighters, his yellow kimono flowing behind him and the broad orange shoulders of his haori all but glowing in the sun. Sora Izu-no-kami Nobushige was another lord protector of Izu, and had held that station since even Daigoro’s father was a little boy. Despite his many years his white topknot had not thinned at all, and his red face still seemed as though he’d just left the forge that made him famous. Upon arrival at the Okuma compound, Lord Sora and his grandson had presented Daigoro with two of their clan’s famed yoroi, breastplates so well crafted that they were said to be able to deflect even the musket balls of the southern barbarians. Daigoro could not help thinking that the gift was made too late; had the Soras provided their unique armor a year earlier, they could have been meeting with Daigoro’s father today.
Years of hefting and hammering had made Lord Sora’s body strong, but the decades afterward had slowed him considerably. “My grandson is unsatisfied,” he said, almost shouting because he’d made so little progress across the courtyard. Daigoro noted the old man’s shuffling steps with sympathy; he wasn’t much faster himself. But he also noted that between Lord Sora’s shouting and his perpetually red face, it was impossible to read the man’s emotions.
“He believes the famed Bear Cub of Izu has not fought at his most bearlike,” said Lord Sora, still booming. “He believes our young lord has gone easy on him so that our parley will go smoothly. I am sure the young lord will explain to him why this is a misperception.”
At least that wasn’t hard to read. Daigoro was certain the doubts hadn’t come from Samanosuke at all. They came from the old man.
And the solution to all of this could have been so easy. Daigoro had but to hike up the hem of his hakama and show the Soras the wrist-thin leg concealed within. But to reveal his own weakness would have brought shame on both his clan and his father’s memory. Only a handful knew the son of Okuma Tetsuro was a cripple.
So instead he said, “My lords, my prowess has indeed been spoken of highly—more highly than it should have been. I assure you, I fought my best.”
“Then how is it that my grandson bested you so easily? Your reputation precedes you, Okuma-dono. Everyone knows you are undefeated in duels with live steel. If my grandson were so inclined, he might come to the conclusion that you have insulted our house. That you were toying with him. Even that you let him win in order to secure a better price on Sora yoroi.”
And one might also conclude, Daigoro thought, that you deliberately read the worst into every situation, the better to drive up the price of your precious armor. Or that you believe two broken fingers is too small a price to pay for nothing more than the honor of dining with you. Or that your grandson’s life is no price at all, that it will be good enough for your house if one of your lineage dies on Inazuma steel.
But Daigoro could say none of it. He could only try to keep from shaking his head, to hold his breath rather than let out a scoff. Lord Sora was close now, standing shoulder to broad shoulder with Katsushima. Daigoro hoped he’d contained himself well enough, because the old man was close enough to see the slightest hint of disrespect.
“I don’t suppose,” Daigoro said, his tone less gracious than it should have been, “that your grandson would like to come here and voice his concerns himself.”
Sora’s red cheeks wrinkled in the wake of a thin, spreading smile. “I fear he may have lost his composure.”
“He certainly wouldn’t want to do that,” said Katsushima, giving Daigoro a piercing stare.
“No, indeed,” said Daigoro. “No, he would not.” Stubborn old bastard, he thought. Damn you for making me do this. “But perhaps he might be willing to face me in a second duel?”
Sora’s white eyebrows pushed up toward his topknot. “Why, Okuma-dono, what sort of a barbarian do you take him for? He has his honor to think of. It wouldn’t do to challenge a man he’s just beaten.”
“Of course not,” said Daigoro, grinding his teeth. “I mean to say that, if he would be so gracious, I would be honored if he would accept my invitation to fight me steel to steel.”
