by Steve Bein
“And you certainly obliged him, didn’t you?” said the commander. “You tell me how I’m to leave your head on your shoulders.”
Daigoro tried to slow his breath before he answered. “If I die, you die. And your men too. We outnumber you two to one.”
“We’ve been outnumbered a lot worse than that.”
“You’ve been used, Commander. You were sent here on false pretenses.”
“That’s as may be. Orders are orders.”
“Your orders are no more than a screen of fog. They only cloud what hides behind them, and indeed I believe that to be their purpose. What honor is there in dying on orders like these? Spare your men. Let them die a more glorious death, in a battle worthy of their birthright.”
The commander closed his eyes. He returned his katana to his hip, ready to sheathe it—or, if he was a crafty fighter, ready to attack the moment Daigoro let down his guard. His lips moved almost imperceptibly; Daigoro wondered if it might have been a prayer. If so, Glorious Victory’s work was not yet done.
The commander looked at him again, his eyes utterly emotionless. His gaze did not waver; his sword hand did not shake. He had no fear of dying where he stood. “If you grant me leave to go, I can come back in force,” he said. “I can push this whole mountain into the sea.”
“Yes, you can,” said Daigoro. “And I can send riders and ships to the regent, telling him of how your men barged into my home to pick a fight. Do not forget: my family holds a treaty with the regent. When your reinforcements arrive, it might be your head they come for.”
The commander’s right forefinger was tapping his sword’s tsuba. It was a tell, a nervous tic, and Daigoro desperately wished he knew what it meant.
“Bushido demands forbearance,” he said quickly. “Commander, you must see that by now. It was one of your men who instigated the fight. All I did was finish it. How can you start the fighting anew and still retain your honor?”
The two of them met each other’s gaze. A long, tense, electric silence passed between them. Then the commander sheathed his blade.
Just like that, the danger vanished. The storm cloud hanging over the courtyard dispersed on the wind. Swords went back into scabbards; muscles relaxed; Okumas and Toyotomis found their way into two facing formations of ranks and files, taking care not to bump shoulders with each other as they passed. Daigoro found it surreal. Had Hideyoshi’s commander chosen to strike instead, dozens of these samurai would already be dead.
As it was, Daigoro still thought too many had died needlessly. Making his way back to the veranda, he stepped over four corpses and one bleeding samurai who hadn’t yet succumbed but only had strength enough to blink. Daigoro stopped, took a step back, and looked at the dying man again. His face was a sticky red mask, but nevertheless Daigoro made out his mousy features. This was the lean one with the runner’s body, the one who had started it all. Daigoro resisted the urge to cut his throat and hasten his passing.
He looked up from the instigator only to find Tomo sitting with his back against one of the porch posts. He was staring at his feet, his jaw slack. Then Daigoro saw the little cut just above his collarbone. It was no wider than the tip of his thumb, but it was enough.
Daigoro fell to his knees beside him. Tomo’s palms were red with blood, but otherwise the external bleeding was minimal. By clutching his throat he’d probably been able to keep himself from bleeding to death, Daigoro guessed, but unable to keep the blood from gushing inward. More than likely he’d drowned in his own blood.
It was no way for a fifteen-year-old boy to die. Daigoro wanted to order his men to attack. He wanted to start the slaughter all over again. He wanted to chop and hack and slash until there was nobody left to kill.
Instead he took a silent moment for himself over Tomo’s body, then struggled to his feet. His legs were weak, the right one even weaker than usual. “Commander,” he said sullenly, “I see no need to send word of today’s events to General Toyotomi. The only one who conducted himself dishonorably lies dead. Do you agree?”
The Toyotomi commander looked down at the scrawny, mouse-faced corpse. It did not bleed anymore; it only seeped. “I do,” he said.
Daigoro’s thoughts turned inevitably back to Tomo. It took a while to muster enough energy to speak again. Without looking up at the Toyotomi commander he said, “You may tell your troops to sit if you’d like. I’ll see to it that they have something to eat and drink before you take them on the march again.”
“That would be most gracious of you,” said the commander, and his permanent frown seemed to lessen somewhat. “And lest I forget,” he added, “congratulations on your baby.”
Daigoro’s shoulders sank. He’d forgotten all about that. He’d have to hunt down Akiko and he’d have to do it soon. She had never seen bloodshed in her own home before. She would need consoling—and so do I, he realized. He felt like a dying campfire in the rain, as if what little spirit he had left was soon to sputter out, never to return.
Daigoro looked around for Tomo, who would have understood what provisions he wanted prepared with no more than a nod. Then his conscious mind took the reins from instinct; he remembered, and then his gaze found the body. The cherubic face was bloodless now, the ever-present smile erased.
How had it come to this? He’d done the right thing, hadn’t he? How could it have been wrong to try to save Tomo’s life? And yet more bodies lay in his courtyard than he cared to count. It could have been just two: Tomo and Tomo’s killer. Now he and Hideyoshi had both lost men—good, brave men who’d spent their entire lives in servitude, and who had surrendered their lives without hesitation.
Daigoro had been so sure he’d done the right thing. Glorious Victory Unsought agreed with him; had he been seeking glory, she would have seen to it that he too lay among the dead. But he was the one to draw first blood. Not Tomo’s captor; Daigoro himself. He was the one who initiated combat, even if he wasn’t the one who instigated it. And now his friend was dead, and others too.
Why? he wondered. Why is it always so costly for me to do the right thing? And why can I not be the one to bear the brunt of it? It should be me sitting there. I should have been the one to drown in my own blood.
It was no way for a fifteen-year-old servant boy to die. It was no better a death for a sixteen-year-old newlywed expecting his first child. Nonetheless, Daigoro wished he’d been the one to fall.
34
Much later, when the regent’s company was long gone and the stars had blossomed in their millions, Daigoro led Katsushima down to the hot spring tucked away in a grotto on Okuma lands. There was a little house built around the spring, not for privacy so much as protection from assassins’ arrows. The Okumas had held this land for a long time, including days when Izu was not so stable as it was now.
As Daigoro lowered his aching body into the pool, he looked up at the stout wooden rafters, wondering which of his forefathers had ordered them hewn. Perhaps his ancestor had hewn them himself, back in the days when the Okumas did not have flocks of servants and laborers at their command. Those old beams had weathered so much, and still they showed no signs of weakness.
Daigoro thought about that while he stretched, bending his neck this way and that, rolling his stiff shoulders under the waterline. He wondered how many years he had left in him. At sixteen he already felt like an old man.
“You were clever,” Katsushima said. He’d let his topknot down and his long gray hair hung wet and limp on his shoulders.
“Choosing the hot spring?”
“No. Seeing to it that the Toyotomi commander would not tell Hideyoshi what happened today. That was your goal in promising not to send riders of your own, wasn’t it?”
Daigoro nodded. “I can only hope it works.”
“It should. You’ve got him thinking defensively. It was his man who started the fiasco, after all.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” said Daigoro. He could only imagine how bad Hideyoshi’s reaction might be if word
ever reached him that Daigoro drew Toyotomi blood after receiving the edict to disarm. The grim-faced commander had threatened to push Soshitake’s twin peaks into the sea, but for an angry Hideyoshi that would be no empty boast. The lord regent was congenial enough in person, but his whims were fickle and his acts of vengeance were well known. Any daimyo could order his generals to commit suicide, but Hideyoshi was known to eliminate even their families. Daigoro thought of Akiko, of how she chose not to join them in the bath lest the water overheat their baby’s little bedroom. As bitter as Tomo’s loss had been, what made his heart race was the thought of how easily Aki might have been slain too.
But what was done was done. Daigoro could not afford to linger on the past. “What now?” he said.
Katsushima shrugged. “Hard to say. Do you think Shichio will move against you again?”
“Yes. He is like Ichiro. He is compelled.”
“I cannot understand him. I don’t wish to cause offense, but he is much too big a fish to be hunting a little minnow like you. If you were down in Kyoto, yes, perhaps you would be of some consequence. Down there the allegiance of every last family has political implications. But as far as Kyoto politics are concerned, House Okuma might as well be on the moon. Why does he even care that you exist?”
Daigoro winced as he rolled his neck. “My father. Shichio has a grudge against him. On top of that, he fancies Glorious Victory.”
“So give it to him.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? It’s too big for you anyway.”
Daigoro shook his head. “It may not be in the nature of a ronin to understand. My father wrote his will on his deathbed with a musket ball in his spine. In it he made it clear that I was to have his sword. Not his eldest son. Me. I cannot disregard his final wish.”
“If you say so,” said Katsushima, but Daigoro could tell by his flippant tone that he didn’t fully grasp what was at stake. That was the difference, Daigoro supposed—the difference between a samurai with a name to uphold and a ronin who had forsaken all other relationships when he wedded himself to his sword.
“We can be thankful for small mercies, at least,” said Katsushima, who submerged himself until the waterline was just at his lower lip. The very picture of contentment, he said, “At least your mother chose not to fly from her birdcage today.”
“Damn you,” Daigoro said, his anger suddenly spiking. He pounded the rim of the bath with his palm. “Must you speak that way?”
His fatigue was to blame. The entire day had taxed him emotionally, and now his temper was like a willful horse, stronger than him and too hard to control. But like it or not, there he was in the saddle. He did his best to rein his feelings in. “I beg your pardon, Goemon. That was unkind. But it is unseemly to speak of her that way. She is no house pet. She’s my mother.”
Katsushima closed his eyes. “That she is.”
“Is it not bad enough that I have to sedate her day and night? Is it not bad enough that I’m likely to empty the last of my coffers buying all those poppies for Yagyu to milk? You are the only friend I have left. I will not have you berating my own mother. I cannot bear it.”
“How did I berate her? I said she had a good day. She didn’t run off foaming at the mouth.”
Again Daigoro felt that spike of anger. It hit him like a physical thing, stabbing through his veins. He was not certain that the volcano heated the water; his own rage was more than hot enough to make it steam. “First she’s a bird in a cage, and now she’s a rabid animal. What would you have me do, Katsushima? Cull her to spare the rest of the herd?”
“Your words, not mine.” Unlike Daigoro, he kept his voice low and calm.
“Now you’re provoking me on purpose.”
“Am I?” Katsushima gave Daigoro a stern stare. “Or are you finally giving voice to the thoughts you’ve kept to yourself in the darkest of nights? You are not blind, Daigoro: you must see your family would be better off without her.”
“So what do you suggest? That I murder my own mother?”
“I do not suggest anything. I say your family would be better off without her.”
“And what would you have me do? Expel her from her own home? Banish her from the compound? Would that satisfy you?”
“I would be satisfied if you put an end to your temper tantrum and examined your decisions honestly. You are unwilling to sacrifice your sword, unwilling to sacrifice your mother, unwilling to sacrifice your monk, and now you and your family have become quarry. And, as you may have noticed, so have I. I’ve stood by you every step of the way. Have I not earned the right to speak my mind?”
“She is my mother.”
“This has nothing to do with your mother. It’s to do with your refusal to make hard decisions.”
“I drew my blade against the most powerful man in the empire today, and I did it just to save a peasant boy that any other daimyo would sacrifice as easily as he’d part with a piss pot. You tell me that wasn’t a hard decision.”
“You did it because you were afraid of losing your friend. That’s not hard; it’s not even noble. Any common thief would have done the same.”
Daigoro wanted to punch him. He wanted to jump out of the water, grab Glorious Victory, and call him out then and there. And it wasn’t because Katsushima had compared him to a thief; it was because he wasn’t sure Katsushima was wrong.
Until now Daigoro thought of himself as noble for risking his life to save a lowborn servant like Tomo. Now he had his doubts. Katsushima had spoken the truth: even bandits would murder to save their friends. Was defending Tomo a selfless act or a selfish one? Hindsight was never perfect; how could he know for certain?
The fact that he couldn’t be sure of his own motivations made Daigoro even angrier. He slammed his fist down like a hammer on the rim of the pool. The black lava rock was sharp enough to cut the fleshy part of his hand, but Daigoro didn’t care. “Damn it, Katsushima, what need was there for him to die? And why does she have to be pregnant? And why can none of this be easy? Just for one day, why can it not be easy?”
Katsushima rose from the bath. “You’ve never understood me. My choices. How I could stomach the thought of going ronin. I think you’ve just gotten your first glimpse.”
Daigoro dropped his bleeding hand back into the water. As it plopped through the surface it made a little wave—a fleeting phenomenon, a manifestation so ephemeral that it could hardly be said to have happened. It made Daigoro think of the word ronin, “wave man.” A samurai without his liege lord was said to be as free as a wave on the ocean, owing nothing to anyone, dependent on no one. But Daigoro’s classical education had something very different to say about waves.
He remembered discussing the Tao Te Ching with his father when he was very young. He’d been confused by the idea that the wave and the ocean were just two faces of one thing, so his father had taken him down to the beach. “Tell me where the ocean ends and the wave begins,” his father had said. “Which drops belong to the wave but not to the ocean?”
It was impossible to answer, of course. There were no oceanless waves, nor were there waveless oceans. And if no boundary could be found between those two, how could there be a boundary between the wave named Daigoro and the ocean called House Okuma? How could Daigoro be himself without being an Okuma? Son of Tetsuro and Yumiko. Brother to Ichiro, husband to Akiko, father to the next little wave on the Okuma sea. There was no Daigoro except Okuma Daigoro.
Was a ronin any less dependent? If so, then why had Katsushima stood back-to-back with him, with fifty swords pointed at their throats? Wouldn’t he have expressed true independence by simply standing back and observing?
Katsushima began the long, moonlit walk back to the compound, and Daigoro punched the surface of the water again. He almost wished he’d gone through with his attempted seppuku. There was no point in doing it now—as an act of protest, it had to be done in full view of the regent—but if his courage hadn’t failed him then, he could have solved his two
greatest problems: how to protect his family and how to fulfill his father’s dying wish. By committing the ultimate sacrifice, he would have convinced the regent of the abbot’s innocence. In addition, once Daigoro was dead there would be no disgrace in parting with Glorious Victory Unsought. His father had bequeathed her to Daigoro, and Daigoro would have kept her until the end. If Shichio wanted her after his death, so be it. If he still wanted to kill the abbot, so be it. No one could say Daigoro hadn’t done his utmost to fulfill his duty.
A chill ran over his body, in spite of the heat of the bath. It came not on the midnight breeze, but with the realization that seppuku was still an option. He had only to ride to Kyoto. Hideyoshi had a palace there. Daigoro could request an audience, carry out his ritual disembowelment, and see his family protected once and for all. Better yet, perhaps he could find a way to make a bid for Shichio’s neck. Suicide was far more honorable than execution, but Daigoro would gladly suffer the shame of a death sentence if he earned it by driving Glorious Victory through Shichio’s heart.
Either way, he had no choice but to ride to Kyoto. The road would be long and hot, and he knew death awaited him at the end. It was inevitable. So long as Okuma Daigoro lived, all of the Okumas would be under threat.
So unless he could conjure some third option before he reached Hideyoshi’s palace, his fate would be to commit seppuku or to be executed for the murder of one of the regent’s top aides. He hoped Katsushima would still be willing to ride with him. If it came to seppuku, Daigoro would need a second, and if it were execution, he would need someone to deliver his head to his family.
Whatever the outcome, he hoped Katsushima would acknowledge his willingness to make the difficult choice.
35
Daigoro had been as far as Hakone before, the last time to disastrous results: Ichiro was killed—brutally, predictably, needlessly—right before his eyes. That had been in the winter, when Hakone was cloaked in heavy snow and there was little of the town to see. The north road had been nothing more than a thin track of mud and slush, but now, in the height of summer, Daigoro found it had become an entirely different entity.
