Year of the Demon fb-2

by Steve Bein

  Again the gate strained against its hinges, struck by some heavy thing wielded by many men. Daigoro couldn’t recall seeing an iron-shod battering ram among the garrison’s equipment; then again, he’d had other things on his mind during his hasty pass through their encampment. In any case, straight, stalwart ironwoods stood in rank and file in the forest outside the Yasuda compound. A makeshift ram was easy to come by.

  “Do you hear that?” shouted the Toyotomi captain. “Sooner or later, your gates will yield. If it is later, it will not go well for you. Deliver the traitor and we will leave you in peace.”

  The gate was huge—or so Daigoro had thought before his ride to Kyoto. Each of its two doors was broader than a wagon, all stout timbers and iron bands. Centipede motifs had been beaten into the metal, with a heavy ring dangling from the center of each door in the shape of a centipede devouring its own tail. The gate to the Okuma compound was a barn door by comparison.

  But Kyoto had temples with doors this big. Daigoro’s long journey had taught him what real fortifications looked like. The great gate at Hideyoshi’s Jurakudai dwarfed that of the Green Cliff: twice as high, four times as broad, and so heavy that only a team of horses could draw it open. The battering ram that rattled the rings on House Yasuda’s doors would not be enough to wake a sleeping guard at the Jurakudai.

  Even so, the Toyotomi captain had spoken the truth: whether it took an hour or a month, there wasn’t a gate in the world that would not yield. The soldiers outside had neither siege engines nor the training to use them, but they had manpower and time, and those were more than enough.

  The gate boomed. Yasuda samurai shifted nervously; Daigoro could hear their gauntlets click against their spears. A warm and sluggish breeze carried the scent of horse feed. The moment he smelled it, Daigoro had an idea.

  “I’m approaching the gate,” he yelled, slowly descending the steps to the courtyard. In a low voice he explained his plan to the shinobi, who nodded once and loped off silently toward the stables. “Do you know who I am?”

  “If you are anyone other than Daigoro the traitor, the Bear Cub of Izu, then I do not care who you are,” the captain shouted. Again the ram thundered against steel and wood.

  “I am the Bear Cub. Now stop that damned hammering. I told you already, I’m coming.”

  “Lord Okuma, no,” said a voice behind him. He turned to see the captain of the Yasuda spearmen stepping forward from the formation. “You are an ally to this house. Please, stay here with us.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Then at least let us go out to fight at your side.”

  “I thank you, but no. I will not have Toyotomi blood on your blades. I’ve brought trouble enough to my own family; I won’t bring it here too.”

  Daigoro took his time crossing the courtyard, certain that his crunching footfalls could be heard on the other side of the wall. Clicks and clacks came from the other side, hundreds of pieces of armor rubbing against each other like chattering bugs at dusk. Daigoro imagined men readying swords and spears. At least they’d set down the ram, but Daigoro wondered how many had picked up bows instead. A lone swordsman stood little chance against archers.

  “I have no interest in fighting you,” he shouted. “How am I to know you won’t cut me down as soon as I open this gate?”

  “You don’t.” There was a decidedly defiant edge to the captain’s voice. “We will kill you if General Shichio wishes it. It is not for you to question his orders.”

  “And how can I know you won’t assault the Yasudas once I give myself over? They have no part in this.”

  “You have my word as a samurai. Lord Yasuda and his kin will not come to harm. Give yourself over and they may go back to sleep.”

  Slow hoofbeats behind him told Daigoro that the shinobi had finished harnessing the horses. As soon as he saw the animals, Daigoro recalled his wedding present. These two could have been sisters to the horses he and Akiko had received along with Lord Yasuda’s blessing. They were majestic animals. They didn’t deserve to be harnessed so sloppily, but Daigoro was short on time.

  He took the lines from one of the mares and tied her to the left-hand gate, hitching her to the big iron ring as if to a wagon. She was not stupid; she could sense the tension in the air and it had her spooked. Only the shinobi’s grip on her bridle kept her from bolting.

  “I hear horses,” the captain bellowed. “Do not attempt to mount a charge against us. You will only doom innocent animals along with yourself.”

  “How very noble of you,” Daigoro said. He hitched the second mare to the right-hand gate while the shinobi held both animals steady. Then, slowly, silently, Daigoro put his shoulder to the heavy wooden beam that barred the gates.

  “My patience wanes. Come out now and no Yasuda will be harmed.”

  “You gave me your word as a samurai,” Daigoro shouted, setting his feet to take the weight of the bar. “How can I be certain that you are samurai at all, and not some shit-stained farmer’s son like your master?”

  “Enough! Break it down!”

  Someone outside put a boot to the door, but it did not budge. Daigoro heard stones shifting underfoot, swords returning to their sheaths, men cursing and shuffling and taking up new positions.

  Daigoro hefted the bar onto one shoulder. Its weight pressed back painfully against his hands. He retreated from the gates, and not a moment too soon. Outside, he heard big men grunting as they picked up their battering ram.

  An instant before the ram’s next strike, Daigoro loosed a deafening kiai, startling the mares that were already scared out of their wits. The shinobi released the lines. The horses bolted. Hideyoshi’s gates might have required a team of horses to move them, but the Yasudas’ were lighter; they all but burst from their hinges. Both gates flew open, leaving Daigoro in the middle of the gateway with a massive wooden beam in his arms.

  He was not alone for long.

  Six soldiers lunged for him with the ironwood trunk they’d been using as a makeshift ram. But their target was the gate, not him, and without the gate’s mass to meet their charge, the weight of the ram pitched them forward. They collapsed in front of him in a tangle. They dropped the heavy ram, some tripping over it, others falling beneath. Daigoro heard leg bones breaking.

  With almost ceremonious flair, Daigoro tossed the wooden bar onto the heap of men. It broke bones too. Then Glorious Victory was in his hands, and he rushed the first rank of Toyotomi invaders.

  None of them were prepared for his onslaught. Many had returned to their tents, knowing hundreds of strokes would fall before the gate yielded to the ram. Glorious Victory claimed three lives with the first stroke.

  For the first few seconds, Daigoro thought the battle was going well. He hacked off hands even as they were drawing swords. He let a mighty chop spin him all the way around, just in time to cut the knees out from under a samurai who had him outflanked.

  Then the Toyotomis found their footing. In his opening gambit Daigoro had felled ten men, but thirty more now formed a wary circle around him. Most had swords drawn. Here and there an archer took aim.

  Unwilling to be shot down where he stood, Daigoro rushed in like a madman. One, misjudging Daigoro’s reach, lost an arm. Two arrows went wide, both hitting kinsmen. A third archer drew a bead on Daigoro’s jugular. Then his bowstring snapped, cut from below by a shinobi who appeared out of nowhere. The whip-snapping string lacerated the archer’s eyeball. Then the shinobi was gone.

  Daigoro had no more luck tracking him than did the Toyotomis. He knew the shinobi was there only because now and then a man would have him dead to rights, and in the next instant that man would fall. Then the shinobi vanished again into the swirling melee.

  Once, twice, a dozen times Daigoro tried to cut himself a channel to open ground. Each time the enemy denied him, closing back around him as inexorably as the sea.

  Once, twice, a dozen times the Sora breastplate saved his life. Here it turned aside a katana. There it sparked as an arrowh
ead struck home. One of the Toyotomi commanders managed a clear shot with his matchlock. The ball knocked Daigoro two steps back but could not penetrate the Sora yoroi.

  At last Toyotomi steel found flesh. Daigoro’s right leg collapsed beneath him, blood spurting from his wasted thigh. Glorious Victory fell in a deadly arc, killing the one who’d struck him and two more as well. Daigoro fought from one knee, desperately parrying the attacks of six, seven, eight men at once.

  Someone behind him let out an almighty scream. It was no shriek of pain; this was a war whoop. The ground shook. Either a horse was charging him or else a score of men. Daigoro slashed forward, driving a few assailants back, then turned to meet the new threat.

  Katsushima rode through the heart of the Toyotomis, bellowing with a typhoon’s fury. His sword flashed red and silver, claiming limbs every time it fell. His charging bay shattered swordsmen as easily as clay pots. When Katsushima saw Daigoro, he kicked his heels savagely and Daigoro had to throw himself flat or else be decapitated by a hoof.

  The Toyotomis scattered in the wake of the leaping horse. Suddenly the field was clear enough that Daigoro could struggle back to his feet.

  Katsushima killed two more before wheeling his mount around. “Come on!” he shouted. “This is no time for patience!”

  Already the Toyotomis were regrouping—what few remained. Most were dead, dying, or crippled. Daigoro hobbled over a pair of broken men, settled his left foot in Katsushima’s right stirrup, and stepped up to grab the saddlehorn with his left hand. “Good to see you again,” Daigoro said.

  “I’m glad to see there’s something left of you to see,” said Katsushima. “But talk later. We’ve work to do yet.”

  He nodded toward the gate, where the surviving Toyotomi swordsmen had formed a line to deny access to the keep. Heedless of the dead, deaf to the moans and cries of the wounded, they stared Daigoro down with grim determination.

  Determined or not, footmen were no match for Glorious Victory Unsought. She was a cavalry sword, at her deadliest when she struck with the weight of a warhorse behind her. Katsushima charged the line. Daigoro, effectively a human outrigger, stretched Glorious Victory out long. Inazuma steel mowed down the right flank. Katsushima claimed one on the left. Their horse crushed two in the center.

  Then the blood work was done. Daigoro would not honor the wounded with a clean death. Any man who bowed to a lickspittle like Shichio wasn’t worthy of such a gift. Moreover, Daigoro didn’t want killing them to burden his conscience. He hadn’t asked for this fight. Had their positions been reversed, Daigoro would never have resorted to using Shichio’s family allies as playing pieces in their private war. He chose to let his defeated foes explain why they still lived, and let Shichio bear the burden of sending them on to join their ancestors.

  Daigoro limped across the courtyard, leaving a bloody footprint wherever his right foot touched the gravel. The Yasuda soldiers watched him in wonderment. Their spears still jutted out like quills from the doorway to their master’s bedchamber, as if they hadn’t yet realized the fighting was over. Daigoro looked down at his blood-spattered hakama and haori, then at their spotless moss green garb. He felt absurd: these ranks of older, wiser men gaped at him like he was a battle-hardened veteran—a veteran still months away from his seventeenth birthday.

  He’d forgotten he was still wearing Toyotomi colors—what was left of them, anyway. He’d also forgotten that he was armored; only the sight of an arrow recalled it to mind. The arrow looked like it was sticking out of his gut, but in truth it had only caught in his haori after shattering against his Sora breastplate. He remembered first donning the armor on the banks of the Kamo not so long ago, remembered how heavy it had felt then, how awkward, how alien. Now he wore it like his own skin.

  By the time he reached the stable to fetch tack and harness, the shinobi had reappeared beside him, noiselessly as always. Swords had sliced his clothing in a hundred places. He bled from his face, his forearms, his shoulders, his shins, but most of the blood on his tattered clothes was not his own. He gave Daigoro a silent, approving nod.

  Halfway back to the horses still tied to the gates, Daigoro’s throbbing hands prompted him to wonder why he hadn’t walked the horse to the saddle instead of lugging the saddle to the horse. His mind was as exhausted as his body; his thoughts plodded along as if wading against an undertow.

  “Who’s your friend?” Katsushima asked when Daigoro reached his mare.

  “He is of the Wind,” Daigoro said, laughing weakly. “The Wind is without name.”

  Katsushima’s eyes narrowed, and the smile of a proud father played at the corners of his mouth. “You found them.”

  “I did.”

  Katsushima looked at the shinobi with new eyes. “Whatever your name is, Wind-sama, I thank you for saving my good friend’s life.”

  The ninja’s only response was to grunt as he heaved his saddle up over his saddle blanket. If Daigoro hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn his shinobi was actually fatigued.

  “How did you find me?” Daigoro asked.

  “I was on my way to your family’s place when I heard the commotion,” Katsushima said. I never expected to find you here. I thought I had a few days’ lead on you on the Tokaido.”

  “We came by ship.”

  “Did you?” Katsushima whistled. “You weathered an unholy bitch of a storm.”

  “A Toyotomi blockade too. Shichio’s men are watching every last pebble of coastline.”

  “Then we’re apt to find many more of them when we reach your mother’s house.”

  Daigoro gave him a long, studious look. His friend looked back down at him, red spatter dotting his woolly sideburns. An hour’s conversation passed between them in that single glance. Then Daigoro made a final adjustment to the girth, and with energy reserves he didn’t even know he had, he stepped up into the saddle.

  Katsushima had to dismount to lash Daigoro’s right leg in place, and even then Daigoro felt on the verge of sliding off his horse. His own saddle, the precious one Old Yagyu had fashioned for him, was many ri behind him. Sitting in an ordinary saddle, the weight of Daigoro’s left leg threatened to drag him down and his right leg wasn’t strong enough to counteract it. He could only stay ahorse by balancing there, the muscles of his belly, chest, and back shifting constantly, as if he were an acrobat on the tip of a pole. It was exhausting even when his horse was standing still, and impossible at a full gallop.

  It was necessary, then, that Katsushima lash down his right leg. Nevertheless, Daigoro could not help thinking that usually it was the injured and dying who were tied into the saddle. When at last they set out on the road, his coal black mare shied from the twitching of pained, bloodied men, nearly throwing him. Only by gripping the saddlehorn with both hands did he manage to stay mounted.

  But soon the miasma of battle was behind them and Daigoro could settle into a rhythm. “If I didn’t know better,” Katsushima told him, “I’d swear you just stole a horse.”

  “Lord Yasuda knows I’m good for it,” Daigoro said defensively, realizing only too late that his friend was kidding him. “I apologize, Goemon. I’m too tired to think. Why did you ever come back? Why do you want to have anything to do with me?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I can’t even imagine.”

  Katsushima’s wry smirk faded away. “How did we meet?”

  “You dueled my brother.”

  “And then?”

  “You dueled me.”

  “Almost,” said Katsushima. “We had tea first. Then dinner. Then we talked all night, at your insistence. ‘I want to discuss swordsmanship with you, and bushido as well.’ That’s what you said.”

  Daigoro nodded. Even through the haze of fatigue, he could recall Katsushima’s response: I expect we have much to learn from each other.

  “So let’s discuss,” Katsushima said. “Bushido demands that you fight even against impossible odds, neh?”

  Daigoro nodded.

/>   “To describe your odds of besting Shichio as ‘impossible’ seems blithely optimistic to me. Would you agree?”

  Daigoro nodded. It was easier than talking; the jostling of his saddle did most of the work.

  “So why not give up bushido? Following it is certain to kill you. You gave up your name. It only makes sense to free yourself of the rest.”

  Daigoro nodded again—due more to the rocking motion of his horse than to his own agreement. But Katsushima wasn’t wrong either. Not entirely.

  “A ronin keeps his swords and throws the rest aside,” Katsushima said. “Duty, family, lord, name, honor; they’re shackles. All you have to do is give up the shackles and you’ll be free.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not? You’ve already given up the ones you value most.”

  “Yes,” Daigoro said. “I’ve surrendered my family and with them my name. I have no other lord—save Izu herself, perhaps, but without my title I’ve abandoned her too. With every sacrifice I feel I’ve done what honor demands, but my only reward is to be hunted like a traitor and a criminal. There’s no honor in that. I have no honor left.”

  “Then what else remains?”

  “Duty.”

  “To whom?”

  “To my father’s memory. To what little sense of family I still have left. To bushido itself.”

  “Your father’s gone, Daigoro. When you gave up your name you gave up your family too. Why not shed the last of your shackles?”

  It sounded so inviting. Done properly, it might even end the feud with Shichio. He could give up being samurai. Put down the burden of his father’s sword. Make an obsequious and public apology. Cut off his topknot and go home unmolested. Comfort his mother. Share Akiko’s bed. Be there for the birth of his child.

  He could have had everything he wanted, and all he had to do was betray his code. “I can’t,” he said, near to tears. “I can’t give up duty. I don’t know how.”