Year of the Demon fb-2

by Steve Bein

  “Very well,” Daigoro said. He pushed himself to his feet because he’d burned up what little tolerance he had left for sitting still. “Tell me about my father. But on the Buddha’s mercy, I beg you, be brief and be clear.”

  The abbot bowed his head. “What do you know of Hideyoshi?”

  “He is a master tactician. A master manipulator too, they say, more likely to win a battle with words than with swords. He is said to be uncommonly ugly, uncommonly canny, and uncommonly fond of both drinking and pillowing. And now that Oda Nobunaga is dead, he is the greatest general this side of China.”

  “The greatest? I think not. Better to call him the mightiest. But let us begin where you began. Do you know where he garnered his reputation of being a master tactician?”

  “Of course. He conquered the whole of Shikoku in a matter of months. Kyushu in a matter of weeks.”

  The abbot shrugged. “Unimpressive. Swift victories come easily against unprepared enemies, and more easily still when enemies decide to become allies instead. One does not become a great general by bribing greedy men.”

  “What of his battle at Takamatsu Castle? As I heard it, he was trapped between the fortress and an incoming force of superior numbers. Survival would have been an admirable goal in and of itself, yet Toyotomi outmaneuvered both sides and claimed victory on the day. There are other examples. The list goes on and on.”

  “So it does. But those who compose the list tend to leave out his defeats. I was witness to one of them.”

  “I asked you to be brief,” said Daigoro.

  “Yes, yes. We were camped at Gakuden, in Owari. Not far south lay a hill called Komaki, where Tokugawa Ieyasu had just established a garrison and headquarters. Do you know Tokugawa?”

  “Of course. My father fought with him in the Battle of Mikatagahara. The Tokugawas have looked favorably on us ever since.”

  The abbot nodded and smiled. “If ever you get the chance, ask Lord Tokugawa what your father did to earn House Okuma such special favor. But that story is for another time. For now, Tokugawa is at Komaki and Hideyoshi is in Gakuden—as am I, serving as a scout under his commander, Shichio. Neh?”

  “Go on.”

  “You mentioned that Hideyoshi is a master manipulator. His man Shichio makes him look like a deaf mute. Shichio knew that Tokugawa harbored a great love for his homeland of Mikawa, and that with so many Tokugawa divisions in Komaki, Mikawa was relatively undefended.”

  Daigoro nodded. “He attacked Mikawa?”

  “No, but he enticed another general into doing so. Shichio is not the type to stretch out his neck where others might take a swipe at it. He finds it safer to voice his ideas through others, taking credit when they succeed and laying the fault with them when they fail.”

  “This story does not seem to be getting any shorter.”

  “Forgive me. Shichio manipulated a general named Ikeda Nobuteru into attacking Mikawa. Hideyoshi approved, and sent Ikeda, his sons, and Shichio to spearhead the assault. We rode out expecting little resistance. Little did we know that one of Tokugawa’s minor allies, an unknown daimyo named Okuma Tetsuro, had anticipated a move against Mikawa. He placed informants weeks in advance, in every village surrounding Mikawa, and he received word of our sortie almost as soon as we set out. So there we were, the hammer’s head, expecting to strike an overripe melon and finding an anvil instead.” The abbot dropped a fist into his palm.

  Daigoro nodded. “So instead of striking directly at the enemy’s heart . . .”

  “We marched straight into a Tokugawa slaughterhouse. Ikeda, his son, and his son-in-law were killed before we knew it. But Shichio is not one to lead the charge. He remained in the rearguard, and deployed me and four other riders to scout out a flanking option. To our right we found only a swollen river. To the left a forest of banner poles, all bearing the bear claw of Okuma.”

  “So you retreated?”

  “Oh no. I don’t wish to cause offense, my young Bear Cub, but yours was a minor house in this war. Tokugawa’s advance was the one we had to fear. If the little house of Okuma were the only one guarding his flank, we thought we might press through.”

  “But Father anticipated that too, didn’t he?”

  The abbot gave a wry chuckle. “He was just getting started. All of a sudden we were surrounded on all sides, a hundred arrows trained on our throats. He stripped us, dressed two of his men in our armor, and mounted them on our horses. They rode back to tell Shichio their comrades had been slain and the Tokugawas could not be flanked. Shichio fled with what little remained of his column. He reported to Hideyoshi, who made a hasty retreat. Hideyoshi is embarrassed by it to this day.”

  Daigoro smiled. Never before had he heard a tale in which the name Okuma loomed as large as names like Tokugawa and Toyotomi. Those were the houses that defined the shape of the empire. To think a little-known horseman from Izu had lent his banners to the cause! Daigoro had never felt such pride.

  But now that he thought about it, he saw the story had holes. “You know too much for a common cavalryman. You must have had Hideyoshi’s ear, or Shichio’s at the very least.”

  “I was Shichio’s top-ranking scout. Of course I had his ear.”

  “Then how could he mistake my father’s rider for you?”

  “Aha,” said the abbot, as proud as Daigoro’s own father had been when one of his sons tamed his first horse. “Very good, my lord. How many head wounds have you seen?”

  “What?”

  “The forehead bleeds terribly when cut. A slice above the eyebrows masks a man’s face so completely that even his own brother might not recognize him.”

  “Hm,” Daigoro said. At first it sounded like the utmost betrayal: his father had bloodied his own men. Worse, he did it for the sake of deceit. Daigoro wondered what it would feel like to draw a sharp knife across his own forehead, and worse yet, what it would feel like to order another man to do the same. But then he saw the truth: any one of his samurai would do it without hesitation. It was the samurai’s duty to obey, and the lord’s duty never to give an order unworthy of obeisance.

  Still, Daigoro wondered how desperate a situation would have to be to order his men to mutilate their own faces. Was such an order ever just? Yes. He had to admit it was conceivable. But could he live with giving the order? Daigoro hoped he would never have to find out.

  “I’m disappointed,” Daigoro said.

  “In your father?”

  “Never. My disappointment is with you. You’ve left out the army of ghosts you promised me.”

  The abbot’s cheeks crinkled in a smile. “Begging your pardon, Okuma-dono, but I haven’t. The ghosts were critical to the story.”

  Daigoro thought for a moment. Then he said, “To your right was the river, and to the left . . .”

  “Precisely. Imagine my shame when I learned the forest of Okuma banner poles was just that: banner poles, with no battalions beneath them. Your father dedicated nearly all of his men to the ambush, with just a handful deployed over the next rise to give the illusion of an army.”

  “His ghost army.”

  The abbot chuckled and shook his head. “As I say, imagine my shame. My own master routed, not by Tokugawa’s legions but by the imaginary army of an insignificant house. Bested without a single sword being drawn. Your father showed me what it truly meant to be samurai. Well, I couldn’t very well keep my topknot after that.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I asked him permission to shave my head. He did me the greatest honor of my life: he cut off my topknot with Glorious Victory Unsought, the very sword you carry today. I joined the monastery. My four comrades were taken as prisoners. The two samurai who cut their own foreheads at your father’s command were rewarded handsomely for their bravery and selflessness. And one of them, it seems, has been dwelling too much on the old days.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Some years ago your father released his four prisoners. Hideyoshi had become too powerful fo
r your father to risk his ire, and the prisoners could no longer do any harm—at least not to the house of Okuma. But Shichio had them crucified anyway. All of them. Why?”

  “Because they knew the truth,” Daigoro guessed. Thinking aloud, he said, “But that would only matter if . . . no. It can’t be. Are you suggesting that Shichio still hasn’t told his master what happened that day?”

  “Never forget, Okuma-dono, Hideyoshi and Shichio are both the sons of farmers. They were not raised as you were, born to a code. Shichio tells the truth only when it suits him.”

  “So even to this day Hideyoshi thinks he was routed by Tokugawa Ieyasu?”

  “A name great enough to rival his own,” said the abbot. “Even that must vex him terribly. Imagine Shichio’s fate if Hideyoshi were ever to learn exactly how he was defeated. Imagine his wrath if he ever learned his most embarrassing defeat should have been a victory.”

  Daigoro thought about it and felt his heart swell with pride. One of the regent’s top generals, living in fear of execution simply because he was outfoxed by Okuma Tetsuro. Execution was no way for a samurai to die, but this Shichio deserved no better. If he were truly samurai, he would have opened his own belly years ago, in the very hour that he failed.

  “Be careful what you take joy in, young Bear Cub.” Daigoro looked up and saw the abbot studying his face. “The Red Bear of Izu earned an enemy in Hideyoshi’s court. Now you have inherited that enemy. One of your father’s men has been telling tales of the old days.”

  “No. Our men are loyal.”

  “What else explains my death warrant? Shichio has learned that I am still alive. I attended to your father’s funeral and your brother’s; any one of your men could have seen me there.”

  “I won’t believe it.”

  “Then you are in need of another explanation. Your father’s scouts were young men when they deceived Shichio. Unless some accident has befallen them, there is no reason to doubt they still live.”

  “No.” Daigoro searched his memory, trying to envision an Okuma samurai with a scar across his forehead. No faces came to mind—but then, Daigoro did not know his every vassal. He knew every man at his own compound, but the Okumas had lesser houses too, scattered across southern Izu.

  “Perhaps one of them was drunk,” the abbot said. “Perhaps he felt you slighted him somehow. Perhaps he felt House Okuma has somehow become unworthy of his loyalty.”

  Oh no, Daigoro thought. Mother.

  The debacle with the Soras had cost Daigoro the most, but it was hardly the first of its kind. Her outbursts were becoming more frequent, more acute, and all too often they happened in public. Could that have been enough to turn a loyal samurai astray? Daigoro hated to think so. But after losing his father and his brother, House Okuma was undoubtedly weaker. Now its matriarch was a madwoman, its lord her crippled teenage son.

  No. Loyalty was loyalty. It if failed even once, it did not exist at all. Father had trained his men better than that. Hadn’t he?

  “Somehow Shichio knows I am alive,” the abbot said, as if he read Daigoro’s thoughts. “How else might he have discovered this?”

  “Augury,” said Daigoro. “Divination. A kami speaking to him in his dreams.”

  “Perhaps. But the more likely explanation is one of this world. A loyal man uttering one word too many after drink loosened his tongue. One of Shichio’s own men, crossing paths with yours by happenstance, recognizing a scar.”

  “What does it have to do with you? You took on the cloth. A man’s old crimes are cut away when he shaves his head.”

  “Among the honorable, yes.”

  “Well, then, this is easy,” said Daigoro. “Hideyoshi was named regent. Perhaps he wasn’t born samurai, but he is certainly samurai now. He has no choice but to live up to it. I’ll tell Hideyoshi the truth, he’ll take Shichio’s head, and this ridiculous drama will come to an end.”

  “You are more than welcome to try. But do remember, Shichio manipulates men as deftly as a potter shapes clay. If you tell Hideyoshi the truth, you will also have to tell him it was your father who bested him in his most public defeat. And more than bested: duped. What will Shichio be able to shape out of your story?”

  “Nothing. The emperor bestowed Hideyoshi with name and title. Let Shichio weave his webs; Hideyoshi will cut through them with a sword. He is samurai now.”

  “And yet you’ve taken to calling him Hideyoshi rather than General Toyotomi.”

  Daigoro grunted and stared at the pebbles in the rock garden. The abbot had a point. Even the emperor could not change what a man was in his heart. The world might regard Hideyoshi as a trueborn samurai, but Daigoro doubted whether one who was born a peasant could ever walk the bushido path.

  “So what am I to do?”

  “Behead me. Save your family and yourself. Buy peace.”

  “No. You’ve committed no sin.”

  “Oh, but I have.”

  “I won’t accept that. Yes, all of us have done wrong in our lives, but you’ve done no wrong by Shichio—and even if you had, all your crimes were absolved when you took on the tonsure.”

  The abbot shrugged. “That’s as may be. But if the price of peace is the head of one innocent man, I think any daimyo in the land would consider it a bargain.”

  “No. It’s wrong.” But even as he heard himself say it, Daigoro knew it was the easiest path. The abbot had no family, nor even any fear of death. He had embraced his own impermanence. Outside the walls of Katto-ji, the world would scarcely notice his passing. And in taking his head, Daigoro could appease this Shichio, a man with the might of a warlord but the conscience of a petty thief. Who knew what he might do if he felt slighted? Daigoro couldn’t even guess. All his life Daigoro had striven to live up to his name, his birth, his father’s image. He had no idea what went on in the minds of dishonorable men.

  Daigoro took his leave, and allowed his mare to set her own slow pace on the ride back down to the Okuma compound. He was thankful to be alone in making this decision. Tomo was a good servant and a better friend, but he was lowborn. And Katsushima had strayed from the path as soon as he dedicated himself to his sword over his master. Neither of them could fully understand what bushido demanded.

  If it were as simple as delivering his own head to Hideyoshi, Daigoro would have known what to do. Self-sacrifice in the name of family came as naturally to him as breathing. But killing an innocent man in the name of family smacked of cowardice, not selflessness. And yet the abbot was right. Usually peace was bought with the blood of thousands. Heroes died for it. Why could a monk not be as heroic as any samurai? The abbot had offered his own neck and offered it freely. He’d neither insisted nor shied away. Daigoro could ask no more of any soldier in his command.

  But the abbot was no soldier. He’d renounced the sword, and in so doing he’d put himself on the opposite side of a line Daigoro was loath to cross. Peace, at the cost of moral compromise. Principle, at the cost of endangering his family.

  Daigoro knew what he had to do. He just didn’t know what to do with the fear. Too often doing the right thing had made him suffer. This time it made him tremble.

  11

  Shichio’s favorite room in the Jurakudai was the highest deck of the moon tower. Hashiba liked it too, but for very different reasons. Hashiba enjoyed the view of the city; the lofty perspective made him feel more powerful, and the quiet made him feel more at peace. Shichio liked the moon tower for its austerity. It was one of the only places in the entire palace that hadn’t yet been gilded and painted and overdone. Hashiba was oddly embarrassed by that fact; he seemed to equate ostentation with wealth, and, by extension, tastefulness with poverty. That meant the upper deck of the moon tower was an intimate place for him, a good place for dalliances and for private meetings with his closest advisers.

  Shichio was content to serve in both capacities. At the moment that meant wiping Hashiba clean after they’d finished. The demon mask seemed suddenly heavier—or rather, Shichio sudde
nly felt its weight on his neck muscles, now that he wasn’t otherwise distracted—and so he shifted it to sit atop his head. Moonlight streamed in through the open walls, and a cool breeze raised goose bumps all up and down Shichio’s naked, sweat-slicked body. Hashiba never seemed to feel the cold. He was tougher than Shichio, in that way and many others.

  “Look at you,” Hashiba said, chuckling. He bunched Shichio’s silken kimono in his fist and threw it at him. “Why do you carry on this way? I’ve concubines enough. Why not invite a few of them up here to warm you?”

  Shichio understood the subtext well enough. Hashiba didn’t understand that sex might be like the moon tower for them: enjoyable for two very different reasons. For him, real men did the penetrating, not the receiving, and so he found their liaisons shameful—not for himself, but for Shichio. That was why he wanted a consort to join them: so that Shichio could be the conqueror for once. But there were two ways of conquering too. That was something else Hashiba didn’t understand.

  “Tell me,” Shichio said, “has there been any word from that Okuma boy?”

  Hashiba laughed. “Him again? We can bring some of our own boys up here some night if you like.”

  Shichio’s hand slipped down to the inside of Hashiba’s upper thigh. “Come on. Tell me.”

  Hashiba sighed. “He married. I can only assume it was to forge an alliance with that Inoue clan. That’s good. I can use one to apply leverage against the other.”

  “I don’t care who some bumpkin boy shares his bed with. I want to know about my present.”

  “Ah. That.” Hashiba folded a pillow under his head and settled back in. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any monk’s heads for you. Don’t we have enough monks around here? Go march on Mount Hiei. Collecting a few heads up there will help keep the rest of the monasteries in line.”