Spirit of the Ronin

by Travis Heermann

  “Read on,” Tsunetomo said, with a hint of tension in his voice.

  Yasutoki’s gaze slid over the letter until he reached a portion describing the number of troops from northern provinces being relocated to Kyushu, with expectations of hospitality from the Western Defense Commissioner and the lords of Kyushu. This was information for which the Great Khan would pay handsomely.

  Yasutoki languidly offered the letter back to Lord Tsunetomo. “So we must prepare quarters for their arrival.”

  Tsunemori scowled. “It chafes, Brother. So many northerners on our soil.”

  “I expect this news will not sit well with any of the other lords,” Tsunetomo said. “There is also the expectation that new fortifications will be built, but as yet there is no further word about that. Who will pay for them? Where are the engineers going to come from? They are in scant supply in these parts.”

  “A wall around the perimeter of Hakata Bay would have been most welcome during the attack,” Tsunemori said.

  Tsunetomo inclined his head in concession, “Of course, but the effort will be enormous. It will take peasants away from farming and from our ashigaru ranks, and turn warriors into laborers. And who knows when the barbarians will attack again? The barbarian emperor is tenacious. He has been trying to conquer the Sung of southern China for twenty years. They will come again. So what are we to do?”

  “The fact that the Sung have been able to resist for so long proves the Mongols are not invincible. And we have the gods on our side,” Tsunemori said. “If they come again, we will fight them again. And now that we know how they fight, we will not be caught off-guard.”

  Tsunetomo said, “I have been in touch with the Shogun’s wisest strategist. The bakufu is developing battle tactics to counter theirs. Next time they come, it will be different.”

  Placidly listening to these two talk about the utter destruction of every one of Yasutoki’s machinations of the last decade required more self-control than most men possessed. Nevertheless, he knew he played his part well, listening attentively, nodding appreciatively at the appropriate moments.

  Tsunetomo turned to him. “You will, of course, oversee the distribution of the rice and see to the preparations of the arrival of the northern troops.”

  “They will not travel in winter,” Yasutoki said, “which is just as well. We will have time to prepare quarters and find laborers.”

  “In the meantime, little brother,” Lord Tsunetomo said, “Write a list of names of warriors who distinguished themselves, living and dead.”

  Tsunemori bowed. “I have already prepared a partial list.” He offered a folded paper. “The other officers will submit their recommendations to me by tomorrow.”

  Lord Tsunetomo took the paper and perused it. “This one, Ken’ishi. You give him the highest distinction. This is the man who saved Ishitaka’s life, yes? Does he have other exploits?”

  Tsunemori leaned forward. “He saved not only Ishitaka’s life, but also the lives of all the men in his unit, if the stories are to be believed. Some say he single-handedly charged into the teeth of an entire unit of barbarian horsemen, with only a breastplate and an antique tachi, and slaughtered them all, men and horses. Some say there were a dozen. Some say a hundred.”

  A tingle passed through Yasutoki so profound that he thought it must be visible to the other men. There could be little doubt that Silver Crane was back in Ken’ishi’s possession. But he had to be sure. If it were so, what a stroke of fortune. Furthermore, it meant that he had vastly underestimated Ken’ishi, because it meant the former ronin had been the masked man who broke into his house near Hakata, somehow found the sword’s hiding place, and stole the sword back. And using the threat of war with the White Lotus Gang as a diversion had been a stroke of genius. And Ken’ishi also knew that Green Tiger was somehow connected to the Otomo clan. Yasutoki’s house in Hakata bore the markings of the Otomo clan, and if Ken’ishi asked questions of the right people, he would know precisely who owned the house in which Silver Crane had been stashed.

  Oh, but the game had just grown considerably more dangerous.

  Lord Tsunetomo raised his eyebrows. “That is the first I have heard of this tale. I presume this is the ancestral blade he mentioned during the fealty ceremony.”

  “Without question, Brother. Having seen the way he defeated three opponents during the sparring trials, I believe the stories are no exaggeration.”

  “What do you know of his background?”

  “Only that he was a ronin, said to be from the mountains of northern Honshu. He has never mentioned a family name. Ishitaka speaks well of his skill with a bow. However, he needs training on horseback. His knowledge of military strategy and tactics is unknown.”

  “Watch him closely, little brother. I want to see how he develops. If he is as formidable as they say, we are fortunate to have him. If he proves himself not just a capable warrior, but a leader as well, we shall see that he receives military instruction under Yamazaki-sensei.”

  Oh, yes, Yasutoki thought, watch him closely indeed.

  I am sad this morning.

  The fog was so dense,

  I could not see your shadow

  As you passed my shoji.

  —The Love Poems of Marichiko

  “If you will forgive me for saying so, my lady,” said Lady Yukino, “you look frightfully weary.”

  Kazuko smiled faintly at her elder sister-in-law. “I can hardly take offense. I must look such a mess. I feared to look into the mirror this morning.”

  Here in the second tower, which housed Tsunemori and his family, the rooms bore the same cold walls of white plaster as the other tower, but were smaller and less grand than in the main keep, and a hominess here bespoke a long-settled family. The family shrine held funeral plaques for Lady Yukino’s ancestors and offerings for the house kami of a rice ball and a cup of saké. Servants came with a tray of tea and rice cakes.

  “It would be rude of me to ask why....” Nevertheless, Lady Yukino seemed to hope for an explanation as she slid the Go board between them, the precision of its two perpendicular sets of nineteen lines mirroring the precision with which she arranged it, and then smoothed her beautifully embroidered robes. As always, Tsunemori’s wife’s hair was immaculately brushed and styled, her face powdered to conceal the lines of age encroaching on her mouth and eyes. Her oval-shaped eyebrows were drawn high on her forehead, as was the fashion for noble ladies. Kazuko hoped that if she lived another twenty years to be Yukino’s age, she would be as graceful.

  Gnawed by grief and fear, Kazuko tried not to think about the horrors of sitting at Hatsumi’s side the night before. “My handmaiden, Hatsumi, fell ill, and I took care of her.”

  Yukino’s brow crinkled. “You must love her very much.”

  “She has been like my sister since I was a child....”

  Silence hung between them, filled with grasping for meaning in words best left unspoken. Directness was vulgar and rude. Together, they opened the gilded drawers on the lacquered Go board and revealed the stones, black and white.

  Kazuko and Yukino had been meeting regularly over tea and a game or two of Go since Kazuko had taken up residence here. In those early days, when pining for Ken’ishi had been an icy spike through Kazuko’s heart, she had taken great comfort in Yukino’s quiet, womanly wisdom. Nevertheless, she had kept Ken’ishi a secret. Other noblewomen—especially those so much older—might have been jealous of Kazuko’s superior position as the wife of the lord, but Kazuko had never seen evidence of it, despite Hatsumi’s whispers to beware of the “scorpion in the other tower.”

  Lady Yukino must have been stunningly lovely in her youth. Now she had assumed a handsome, well-groomed beauty that her husband and son doted upon. “She falls ill quite often these days.” Her face and voice were neutral as she spoke.

  “It is true. I fear for her. Last night was the worst I have seen. This morning she seems quite recovered, but...”

  “You fear the sickness, what
ever plagues her, will return again?”

  Kazuko nodded.

  “And perhaps that disease will spread to others?” Yukino placed her first stone, black, near the center of the board of vertical and horizontal intersecting lines, nineteen in each direction, the battlefield upon which each of them would try to claim the most territory while preventing the other from doing the same.

  Kazuko shook her head. “I did fear that, in the early bouts, but...it has not spread to me or the other servants. I called for my husband’s physician yesterday, but he is injured and could not come.”

  “A stroke of ill fortune. He is the best healer in the province. Perhaps she has been infected by evil kami. A rite of purification, perhaps?”

  Kazuko considered this, remembering the purification a priest had performed on Hatsumi, Kazuko, and Ken’ishi after the attack of the oni. “It could not hurt,” she mused, placing her first stone.

  Lady Yukino gestured a nearby handmaiden to pour the tea. Kazuko took the cup when it was offered, but the memory of what she had experienced last night at Hatsumi’s side turned her belly into a cold swamp.

  Before she realized what was happening, she blurted, “Tsunetomo thinks I should send her away.”

  Lady Yukino’s hand hovered above the board with its stone. “A difficult decision.” She slowly placed the stone with her index and middle fingers.

  “It is difficult to—” Kazuko choked off a sob and the rest of what almost came out. It was difficult to watch a loved one go mad.

  Lady Yukino straightened herself. “Have you ever heard the story of the Princess of the Full Moon?”

  Kazuko shook her head. She had read pillow books and the tales of the famous nobleman Genji, with his adventures and liaisons, but she had not heard the story of the Princess of the Full Moon.

  “In centuries past, in Kyoto, there was a captain of the Imperial Guard. The Imperial Court then, as now, was a glowing brazier of schemes, intrigue, and romantic liaisons. Lovers drifted between ministers, nobles, and courtesans on waves of poetry, the most popular means of wooing the object of one’s affection.

  “The captain was handsome and honorable, and a number of the court ladies were quite enamored of him. But he was in love with a mysterious noble lady. This noble lady was known to leave the Imperial Palace on the nights of the full moon, concealed in her palanquin, and visit the Heian Jingu shrine. On such nights, the captain would accompany her as her chief yojimbo. He never saw her face, as she never left her palanquin. But through the slats in her blinds she would view the majesty of the full moon and grow despondent, which the captain knew from hearing her quiet weeping. His heart went out to her. Every night he pleaded with her to tell him why she was so sad. Every night, she refused.

  “One night, he heard her speaking a poem about the full moon, but it was clearly a poem from a lover. With his heart full in his chest, he wrote his own poem to her on a fan, decrying the cruelty of the lover who had deserted her, and passed it within the palanquin. She took the poem, and before long he heard her say, ‘Captain, you are the kindest man I have ever encountered.’

  “He responded, ‘And you are my Princess of the Full Moon.’”

  Kazuko’s heart stirred, and wondered if Ken’ishi, rough, uncultured, uneducated as he was, could woo with such eloquence as the nobles of old.

  “And then she called her bearers to return her to the Imperial Palace.

  “Meanwhile, over several months, a series of strange apparitions had turned the Imperial Palace almost upside down with fright, even in the midst of what should have been a joyous time. You see, one of the Emperor’s concubines, the daughter of the Minister of the Right, was with child, and everyone hoped that she would bear his first heir. But little by little, over several months, strange moanings and cries began to fill the palace halls in the dead of night, voices so unearthly and terrifying that no one had the courage to seek the source. They spent their nights huddled in their chambers, praying that the evil would not fall upon them. Servants and court ladies told stories of seeing a shadowy, slumped figure with long, black hair. Whispers spread that the palace had been cursed to be haunted by a yurei. Onmyouji were summoned, but even the most skilled augurers, exorcists, and masters of yin-yang sorcery could not assuage the fear that permeated the palace. Some even feared for the welfare of the baby soon to be born.”

  The strange sounds in the tower at night, coupled with Hatsumi’s increasingly erratic and incomprehensible behavior, echoed with Lady Yukino’s words.

  “The new mother’s time came nigh on the night of a full moon. She secluded herself in the specially appointed house away from the palace grounds so that the birth blood would not pollute the palace any further than the curse had already done.

  “The captain, as chief of the palace guard, accompanied her entourage to the place of birth, and stood guard outside the house with several of his best men. They patrolled the fence and the surrounding streets.

  “The lady’s labor commenced at sunset and continued for several hours, her cries of pain and exertion emanating from within the birthing house until finally, after midnight, the cries of the baby joined those of the mother. Immediately one of the ladies-in-waiting announced that the child was a boy. The Emperor had an heir!

  “But then, in the darkest hours of the night, frightful moans and distant shrieks of agony, echoing from several directions, put the captain and his men on high alert. The sounds grew nearer.

  “With the full moon high above, bathing the garden in milky moonglow, a figure with long black hair that seemed to move like living shadow appeared in the garden, moving toward the house where the newborn baby lay. One of the guards attempted to apprehend the figure, but it slew him in the most unspeakable way. The noise of the guard’s demise drew the captain thither, and then he heard a voice call out from the figure, quiet and sad and yearning, ‘Your Majesty, are you there, my love? I hear our child crying.’

  “It was a voice the captain knew well, the voice of his Princess of the Full Moon.

  “But when he saw her now, her countenance was frightfully changed. She had become an oni, and even in her corrupted beauty, he recognized her as the daughter of the Minister of the Left, whom the emperor had also taken as a lover at the urging of her father. The Minister of the Left had been hungry to secure his place in the Imperial Line by providing the Emperor an heir and was furious when his daughter would not become the Empress Dowager. Palace gossip said that His Majesty had lost interest in her, in favor of the daughter of the Minister of the Right. But she had loved His Majesty deeply and yearned to give him an heir. The chance to bear his child had been denied her by the vicissitudes of love. For months she had prowled the halls of the palace, little by little losing herself to jealousy and grief, until her emotions consumed her, and nothing was left but a demon.”

  Kazuko’s eyes teared. Had she not encountered a living, breathing oni herself, she might have dismissed this as just a story. How far had she herself gone down this road with so much time spent yearning for Ken’ishi? Was it too late for her? Was it too late for Hatsumi?

  Lady Yukino’s gaze penetrated Kazuko. “The captain tried to stop her, but she flung him aside and charged toward the house. She ripped open the doors, ran inside, and seized the newborn heir from his mother’s arms. She had her hand around its tender throat when the captain caught up with her. He took her head in one swift stroke.

  “In her hand he found a fan, upon which was written a poem:

  The full moon of spring rises high,

  The portal to my heart,

  To the land where dew glistens

  Upon the exquisite lily

  “This poem to which she had clung for so long was not the poem the captain had written to her. Alas, his poem, doubtless filled with his own eloquent words of love, has been lost to the dust of time.

  “The captain was lauded as a great hero by the entire Imperial Court and His Majesty himself, and he was showered with rewards. But soon afte
rward, he took his monastic vows and retired from public life.”

  The familiarity in this tale pulled tight around Kazuko’s thoughts, threatening to choke her, making her squirm. She took several deep breaths, realizing her heart was beating fast. Her hands were clenched in her lap.

  Lady Yukino placidly placed another stone on the board. “It is your move.”

  “When Lord Katsushige was young, he was instructed by his father, Lord Naoshige, ‘For practice in cutting, execute some men who have been condemned to death.’ Thus, in the place that is now within the western gate, ten men were lined up, and Katsushige continued to decapitate one after another until he had executed nine of them. When he came to the tenth, he saw that the man was young and healthy and said, ‘I’m tired of cutting now. I’ll spare this man’s life.’ And the man’s life was saved.”

  —Hagakure, Book of the Samurai

  The morning dawned like every morning of the last several days, chill and gray, frost thick on the well heads, on the tufts of grass ambitious enough to grow here, on the pebbles and the hard-packed earth of the yards, on the ceramic tiles of the roofs, becoming an extra sheen of glittering diamonds on the whitewashed walls.

  Ken’ishi had found that life in the barrack was simple. A futon and a blanket were preferable to the cold ground. Braziers of coals heated the barrack, but here on the castle hill, the cold wind whipped with a fervor like the highest mountain slopes. His old master, Kaa, would have admonished him for growing soft, over-accustomed to the comforts of human civilization.

  Other similar barracks were situated around the perimeter of the walls, housing more than two hundred men in total. Some were veterans, skilled warriors; others were new recruits, varying from long-time ronin to former peasants.

  Being thrown in with so many peasants would have once bothered Ken’ishi, so proud had he been of his samurai heritage, but it was a heritage about which he knew nothing. Having no real knowledge of his pedigree, it seemed unfair to look down on anyone. No doubt his father had been a true warrior—Kaa had told him as much—but he had given up the life of a warrior to work a plot of land. What life would Ken’ishi’s father have wanted for him? What name would he have been given? He did not even know what his baby name had been. Throughout his time with Kaa, he had just been called Boy. When Kaa had sent him out into the world, Ken’ishi had chosen his own name, Sword meets Stone.