Child of Vengeance

by David Kirk

  Bennosuke did not wait for the other samurai to arrive. He took his chance and bolted, shoving his way through the crowd. The town of Aramaki melted away at some point, but he did not stop running. He ran for Miyamoto, ran until he collapsed to his knees, his sword falling from tired and numb fingers as he gasped for air. Birds sang in the trees above him, brown leaves falling as the wind rustled the branches. So peaceful, but no rest to be had here now—no rest until he was safe in Miyamoto once more.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Death,” said Lord Shinmen, a sticky glob of seasoned rice held in his chopsticks before him. “The Nakata hunger for no other recompense.”

  Munisai watched his lord pop the rice into his mouth and chew, the sound of the mastication alone breaking the silence. They were taking a private meal in the foreroom of Munisai’s household, candles burning behind paper shades. Munisai was feigning coldness to keep his wound hidden deep within his kimono, and he had remained mute for a long time.

  A tense week had passed since Bennosuke had arrived back in Miyamoto. They had elected to wait for whatever would come to them. When Lord Shinmen had been spotted approaching that afternoon, Munisai had felt both vindication and relief. He could sharpen his swords no further.

  Haste had been on Shinmen’s mind; he and his light complement of guards had all been on horseback and carried no standard or banner identifying themselves. Should an enemy have come across them, they could have slaughtered Shinmen and claimed innocence, thinking them no more than roving bandits.

  Munisai had a mind to reprimand his lord for such negligence, but the truth was that Shinmen’s thinking a private concern of his worthy of such risk both flattered and honored him. Indeed, when Shinmen had dismounted from his horse and allowed Munisai to raise his head from the dirt where he had pressed it, the lord had had such a look of concern about him that something deep within Munisai had stirred.

  Perhaps, in the months since he had last seen his lord, he had come to his senses and realized the poison of the Nakata.

  But no, their taint was not quite shed; Lord Shinmen had come as a neutral emissary, and slowly he had spoken of his liaisons with the Nakata clan. What he spoke of was not good, but neither was it unexpected.

  “Death,” said Shinmen again, if only to banish the absence of sound.

  “How is Nakata weaving his tale?” Munisai asked.

  “The young Lord Nakata says Bennosuke was victorious in a duel with his champion Kihei Arima,” said Shinmen. “He said the duel was well fought and fair, and that much I can just about believe. Were it any other thirteen-year-old, perhaps not. But your lad? Perhaps. He must be skilled, or lucky.”

  “Both,” said Munisai.

  “Either way, after he left the village Nakata went to Aramaki, and stayed there,” said Shinmen.

  “Too ashamed to go home defeated,” said Munisai, and he ruefully conceded within himself that this was a possibility he should have considered.

  “That could be it.” Shinmen nodded. “But he claims he was inspecting the town and the garrison for me. Captain Tomodzuna was away during the incident, but according to his men the only thing Hayato was inspecting was the interior of taverns, drinking and working himself up into a fury. There were disturbances nightly.

  “Then the day comes. Nakata says your son ambushed them on a thoroughfare. He killed one man straight off, and then cut off the lord’s arm. Another man fell, and then, realizing he was outnumbered and the element of surprise had gone, your son fled the scene.”

  “Do you believe that?” said Munisai.

  “I cannot be sure,” said Shinmen. “The witnesses are conflicted at best. Some claim they saw a scuffle between Nakata’s men and a samurai matching your son’s description some streets away, others say they saw Bennosuke charging Nakata while the lord was unarm … while the lord was weaponless.”

  “I trust you’ve considered the sway Nakata’s riches might hold over people’s memories, my lord?”

  “It makes no difference. Not a samurai among them. Peasants, merchants, artisans; I wouldn’t trust their word any more than I would a fox’s. All I know is Hayato Nakata is now missing an arm,” said the lord, and sighed before he continued. “Tell me—do you think your boy would do all that?”

  “He fled back here barefoot,” said Munisai, remembering the bloody state of the boy’s soles. “If he’d planned this, I am sure wearing sandals might have occurred to him.”

  “Indeed,” said Shinmen.

  “Bennosuke claims that Nakata was the aggressor, and I believe him. The boy is hotheaded but he is not a murderous fool. I trust him,” said Munisai, and he needed the slightest of pauses before he could say the next words: “He is my son.”

  Shinmen did not notice the lull—why would he have? To him that was merely a fact, not an avowal. The lord continued: “Nevertheless, Nakata is a great lord. His word carries a great deal of weight.”

  “I shall cede to whatever decision you deign to make, my lord,” said Munisai. “As always, my will is as yours.”

  “Munisai, you do not have to feign,” said Shinmen, surprised at the lack of protest. “You can reveal to me your true feelings.”

  “I have none that you do not keep within your own heart, my lord,” said Munisai.

  “You weren’t always like this,” said Shinmen, amused by the obsequiousness now.

  “Thankfully, I remembered who I ought to be, my lord,” said Munisai, his face still as ever. Shinmen gave up.

  “Very well,” the lord said. “This situation is troubling, but you should not worry. I am sure this quarrel can be sorted out before it festers. We shall go to Lord Ukita; Nakata is sworn to him as much as I am. There we shall find resolution. There should be no conflict within our alliance.”

  “As you wish, my lord,” said Munisai.

  “You can trust me, Munisai,” said Shinmen, seeing the doubt in the samurai. “I know Nakata. We shall come through this, and your boy too. Have faith in me, my friend.”

  Munisai bowed to his lord, and could not help but flush inwardly at the extravagant compliment his lord had paid him: friend. But he could not share Shinmen’s confidence.

  No other recompense but death.

  Munisai kept his silence, and wondered if Yoshiko’s spirit was watching, so close to where she had died.

  Lord Shinmen was staying at Munisai’s household and his samurai were barracked down in the dojo, so Bennosuke had come to the one place where there was space left for him—the temple of Amaterasu. The boy sat and looked down across the lights of the village at night, listening to the hum of cicadas. As it always did at times of stress, the rash upon his face was throbbing and he had to fight the urge to scratch at it.

  He had been at the temple most of the week. His feet were in ruins, caked in bloody scabs and ugly, pus-filled blisters caused by the panicked flight away from Aramaki. Dorinbo changed the bandages daily, but the wounds were slow to heal. Bennosuke could just about walk now, but nothing more than that. Hobbled, he had had nothing else to do but sit down alongside his uncle and busy himself with the binding of the prayers.

  The time of the great pyre drew near. They were down to the last few chests. Dorinbo had worked with a furious devotion, and Bennosuke had tried to keep pace. The binding had helped take his mind away from imagining the beating of war drums and burgundy banners appearing on the horizon.

  He tried to tell himself he wasn’t afraid. Men had tried to kill him—twice now—and he’d come out the other side of each encounter. But inexorable dread overwhelmed him. A lethal fight was frightening, but it was an immediate terror overcome by both the fact that he could rely on his own skill and the thrill of victory. What Bennosuke faced now was the opposite. He felt powerless and small, and he hated it.

  The boy wished that he could see it as Tasumi and Munisai did. Both the samurai seemed impervious to doubt or worry. Indeed, Tasumi had laughed when Bennosuke had told him, his face creasing up and the peals booming around the empty d
ojo.

  “You threw hot coals at one of them?” he said when he could find a breath. “Mercy, boy—you’re a sadist, you.”

  “It was the only thing to hand,” Bennosuke said sheepishly.

  “What of my little present?” said his uncle.

  “Oh,” said Bennosuke, remembering the throwing blade. It was still attached to his left biceps. He had forgotten all about it.

  “You see, you need to think, Bennosuke. All the coals did was anger your enemy and buy you a few seconds. Had you used the dagger, you’d have taken his throat out and bought yourself even longer.”

  “I see, Uncle.”

  “All’s well in hindsight, I suppose. It’s not like it made a great difference. Remember for next time, eh?” Tasumi said, and then chuckled again. “Coal to the face! Hah, it’s unique if it’s anything.”

  “What do you think will happen?” asked Bennosuke when his uncle’s mirth had subsided.

  “Let them come,” the man said with a shrug.

  Munisai had not even reacted when the boy had been brought before him, Dorinbo and Tasumi carrying him between them with his mangled feet off the ground. The samurai’s face was as stone as he listened impassively to Bennosuke tell of Nakata’s ambush.

  “You should have killed all of them,” he had said simply when it was done. “If they were all dead, no one would have known it was you. There are plenty of masterless warriors wandering the country. Why not one of them who did it?”

  Munisai had nodded in dismissal then, and that was that. He had barely seen his father for the rest of the week.

  Bennosuke knew that to both samurai this situation was like holding on to driftwood in a deep, raging river. If you panicked and thrashed, you would tire yourself and drown struggling. But if you trusted the current, and simply relaxed and focused on holding on, eventually you might be carried to land once more.

  It was easier to understand the philosophy than to feel it. Bennosuke found his eyes drawn, like a tongue probing the absence of a tooth, to the distant specks of lantern light twinkling around his home. There he knew his fate was being decided, and …

  He forced himself to look away, behind and into the small building where Dorinbo was sitting. The monk was reading poetry by candlelight, legs crossed, completely still. After the initial shock of his return and examination of his feet, like the samurai the monk had seemed little changed. Yet on them it seemed fitting; on Dorinbo it seemed odd.

  The monk became aware of the boy’s gaze, and slowly looked up.

  “Are you all right?” he said. “Do your wounds need tending?”

  “No,” said Bennosuke. The monk tried to go back to reading, but found the boy’s eyes too distracting. He looked up wordlessly, expectantly.

  “Are you angry with me?” asked Bennosuke eventually.

  “No, Bennosuke,” he said. “Why would I be?”

  “I killed again,” said the boy.

  “You’re samurai; this is what happens,” said Dorinbo.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Death snaps back and forth because of stupid, stubborn pride. Nakata insults your father—your father insults him back. Nakata tries to kill your father—you kill Nakata’s champion. Nakata tries to kill you—you cut off his arm and kill his men. Now what do you think will happen?”

  “Nakata will try to kill me again.”

  “Exactly. And for what, in the end?” asked Dorinbo. Bennosuke had no answer.

  “What should I do?” he asked.

  “Do? I …” said Dorinbo, and he shook his head and sucked air through his teeth. “Try to survive, Bennosuke.”

  “I can do that.” The boy nodded. “I can fight the Nakata.”

  “No—do you see? I say survive, and you interpret that as fight. That’s the samurai way of thinking you chose when you killed Arima, and that’s what I mean.”

  “What?”

  “Can you fight the entire world?” said the monk. “For this is the way it works, the way it is if everyone behaves as you are. Everyone blindly assenting to the paths trodden a million times before, until they are eventually crushed by them.”

  “Then what should I do?”

  “Run. Live.”

  “No. I can’t do that.”

  “For what reason, other than a foolish ideal? The fear of shame, the fear that Munisai or Tasumi or the hells know who else will think less of you?”

  “I won’t run.”

  “Then you are complicit in your own annihilation, if not now then certainly at some point in the future,” said Dorinbo.

  “Stop talking like this,” said Bennosuke.

  “You’d prefer I lied and coddled you like a child? I won’t. You’re old beyond your years, Bennosuke, and that is what torments me the most—that your life has barely had the chance to reach its potential,” said Dorinbo. Bennosuke saw tears glistening in the man’s eyes, and that took from him any retort he might have made.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  “You do not need to apologize, Bennosuke,” said the monk. “It’s a cruel world to demand such of one so young. That, I think, is why we are allowed to come back.”

  “Perhaps,” said Bennosuke.

  He looked back across the valley, to spare them both embarrassment. The lights of lanterns still twinkled. Bennosuke found himself reminded now of the lanterns of the Obon Festival of the Dead; orbs set to float upon the lakes and rivers of Japan to represent the souls of the deceased, drifting away and slowly flickering their flame out in the darkness.

  In the darkest hours of the night Lord Shinmen slept soundly, a belly full of alcohol. Four samurai stood guard in the gardens outside, while Munisai prowled the black hallways of his house. An assassin would have to be prescient to think of attacking Shinmen here, but protocol demanded a watch, and so it was done.

  The shadows being empty, inevitably he came once again to where his old suit of armor hung. Shinmen had laughed in disbelief when he had seen it.

  “You honestly wore this once?” he had said.

  “Munisai Hirata did, my lord,” Munisai replied.

  “Ah; sincerest apologies, my dearest name-sworn,” said the lord in slurred, mock seriousness.

  He was acting like he had previously, before the rot of Nakata had set in. He was open, a warmth in his eyes that was rare in the nobility. Munisai had never met another lord prepared to joke as Shinmen did, nor another who seemingly trusted as he did. Lords were supposed to have a healthy streak of fox’s blood in them, a thousand different faces for a thousand different allies and a thousand different plans for a thousand different sacrifices.

  But Shinmen—Shinmen made you believe.

  His mind wandered back to his last night as Munisai Hirata, the eve of the final of the Grand Tournament. He had been in a cheap tavern, drinking bad sake by the bottle, not caring that tomorrow he had to fight one of the finest swordsmen in the country. That was a dawn away, and that was more than he needed. But then men in fine blue had come for him.

  It had been a little over three years since he had killed Yoshiko and left Miyamoto; his kimono was a shade of grime, his hair and beard wild. Long, matted strands that had long grown out of the samurai style fell from his head, while his beard straggled off his chin in curly wisps. He had not bathed in weeks, and he could see disgust at the stench written across the faces of the men as they bundled him out into the street.

  Good. Let the miserable pricks suffer.

  The rage and hurt that had been so fierce in the weeks and months immediately after killing Yoshiko had by then settled into a dull, seething resentment of everything. He eyed everyone suspiciously, kept his jaw permanently clenched and his sword loose in its scabbard. He just wanted to kill and it took restraint not to fight the blue men, but he had no wish to spend the next day getting tortured to death for breaching the peace.

  The streets of Osaka were always busy, but now they were packed because of the tournament. The samurai had to push their way through t
he crowd, and they were not helped as some stopped and stared at Munisai, whispering to one another. He had become infamous; it was a wooden-sword tournament, a test of skill and not a display of gore, and the competing samurai were expected to show some level of restraint. Munisai—a masterless, bedraggled warrior in the midst of immaculate soldiers—had managed to crack two ribs, fracture an arm, and finally strike a man so hard on the side of his skull that his eye had filled with blood and then gone blind.

  Though many protested none could stop him, and he learned the level of his notoriety from the morbid eyes of the onlookers. The angry part of him took a certain antagonistic pride, but the hidden, honest part hurt. It reminded him of his youth, when he had walked proudly while men looked at him with admiration and women with lust.

  There was no ease to be found in his guards either; Munisai recognized the shade of blue his escorts wore. His family, the Hirata, had been sworn to the clan Shinmen for generations, and he had shirked that duty when he had fled to wander the wilderness. The lord was not famed for forgiveness.

  The samurai led him to the castle at the heart of the city; it was newly built, its walls still pristine white and unmarked by battle. It was labyrinthine and well designed, a series of concentric battlements layered upon a man-made hill, and their little group passed through many bottleneck checkpoints until they reached the noble guest quarters. There they stopped outside the doors of a residence—not the biggest and yet not the smallest—where more samurai in blue stood guard.

  An old samurai, his hair cloud white, awaited. The richness of his kimono told Munisai that he was important. He looked at Munisai disdainfully, eyes running up and down him until they met Munisai’s challenging glare.

  “I want you to know that if you make one move toward our lord, you’ll be killed,” the man said curtly. “I don’t care how good you are, I’ve enough men to drown you in bodies if need be.”

  “While you would be, I should imagine, running very quickly in the other direction,” growled Munisai, and the samurai’s face tightened in disgust.