Spirit of the Ronin

by Travis Heermann

  Alone, she had no way to reach friendly lines. She could not see whether Tsunetomo’s army held the field or lay crushed and broken under the enemy’s relentless onslaught. And night was falling.

  “The courage of bloodlust makes no distinction between reason and force, justice and injustice. It is nothing but ferocity, overcoming others, and not being afraid of anything. Like the ferocity of tigers and wolves, therefore, it can perversely impede the human path. Being brave and having no fear resemble the courage of humanity and justice, but having no discrimination between reason and force, justice and injustice, merely inclined to bloodlust, the behavior of tigers and wolves is very lowly. The ones with status start rebellions, the poor ones become bandits.”

  —Nakae Toju

  Ken’ishi gulped dipper after dipper from the bucket of water. He thanked the woman with the bucket and marveled for a moment at the bravery of the women in the supply train. If the defenders fell, the women would get the worse of it in barbarian hands.

  With the fall of darkness, the armies had withdrawn.

  The infantry reinforcements were two days behind, and after two days of riding and a day of battle, the horses were spent. The enemy controlled the valley. The defense forces had been pushed back into the hills but controlled the roads out of the valley. Fortunately, enough fresh troops had occupied the area that the defenders had not been routed.

  On a tree-covered hilltop, Ken’ishi and Tsunetomo gazed across the valley toward the shrine hill. Between their position and the shrine lay hundreds of enemy cookfires, clustered on the dikes between rice fields. Clouds gathered against the stars, thickening. A steady breeze ruffled the branches and leaves.

  “We cannot reach her,” Tsunetomo said.

  Ken’ishi had seen the handful of Scarlet Dragons disappear up the shrine hill. He had seen the enemy horsemen pursue.

  He had not seen the horsemen come back down. But in the chaos of battle, he could not be sure of the outcome.

  “I’ll go, Lord,” Ken’ishi said. “I shall find her and bring her back to you.” Both of them knew Tsunetomo could not go after her. Tsunetomo dared not leave his troops. His death would cut the heart out of them, and it was the Otomo troops who had prevented disaster today.

  Tsunetomo turned to him. “She is a warrior. She may well be dead already. Am I to lose you, too?”

  “I am only one man.”

  “One man who fights like a thousand.”

  “Then no one will be able to stand against me in the dark. Alive or dead, I will bring her back. If she’s alive, she will boost our men’s courage.”

  For several long moments, Tsunetomo gazed out over the sea of enemies. In the silence, Ken’ishi watched the emotions—too many to sort—crossing Tsunetomo’s face.

  Hands clasped behind his back, Tsunetomo said, “Very well, Captain.”

  Ken’ishi bowed and left him there.

  He spotted Hage sitting with several other disguised tanuki around a campfire.

  The group of them watched him approach, some with amusement, some with wonder, some with fear.

  He pointed at Hage. “You, come with me.”

  Hage raised an eyebrow. “Now, won’t this be interesting.”

  * * *

  Yasutoki walked into the Mongol encampment with his hands in the air. Behind him walked the perimeter guard with a spear pointed at Yasutoki’s back. The Mongols chewed their meat and drank their fermented mare’s milk and watched him with a mix of suspicion and interest.

  The guard brought Yasutoki before a tall, barrel-chested man, enormous for one of his breed, swathed in iron and leather, with long drooping mustaches and flint-hard eyes.

  The guard said in the Mongolian tongue, “This man approached me in the dark. He spoke in Chinese. He says he is a servant of the Great Khan. He says he wants to speak to a commander.”

  It was strange for Yasutoki, after all these years, to hear so much of the barbarian tongue. He spoke it as best he could recall after so long. “Forgive, Great Leader. Skill with Chinese better.”

  The commander spoke in Jin Chinese. “Then in Chinese you will tell me why I should not kill you as a spy.”

  Yasutoki bowed and told the story of how he had visited the lands of the Golden Horde as a boy with his father, how his father had met Khubilai Khan soon after he claimed the title of Khan of Khans after his uncle Ogedei. Yasutoki had been so impressed by the strength and majesty of the Great Khan that he applied himself to learning the Mongol tongue, as well as Jin Chinese. He told of how he had been the Khan’s agent during the previous invasion and how he wished to offer his services now.

  After so long, he could not be sure that his Chinese would be well understood.

  The commander’s face was implacable, shrewd, and ruthless. “I am Batu, zuun of this hundred.”

  Yasutoki bowed. “You may call me Green Tiger.”

  Batu laughed. “A tiger is sick?”

  The men around him laughed.

  Yasutoki maintained his composure. “Today there was a great warrior. He killed many of your men. He fought with only a sword.”

  Batu’s face darkened. “I know this man. Killing him will be a great victory. And a great pity that such a warrior must be cut down.”

  “I have come to give him to you.”

  Batu’s eyes narrowed.

  “Today, there was a group of women warriors,” Yasutoki said. “Some of your men chased them up that hill across the valley.”

  Batu grunted to continue.

  “The leader of that group is the wife of one of the lords who face you. Her husband is among the most powerful lords. Kill his wife, and his spirit will be weakened. The great warrior is going alone to bring her back.”

  “We searched that hill. No one up there still lives.”

  “Nevertheless, the great warrior is going alone, and on foot. He will be an easy target. And if the lord’s wife still lives, you will have her as well. She is renowned for her beauty.” Kazuko and whatever remained of her silly women warriors could have evaded a search. “But you must hurry, or they will escape you.”

  Batu wet his lips. “Very well. But you are coming along. If you lie, you will be the first to die.”

  Yasutoki bowed low. “Of course, Zuun Batu. I am at your service.”

  * * *

  “You won’t have to hold on to me this time to maintain the shape,” Hage said, in tanuki form, balanced atop two enormous, furry melons. “I have been storing up my power. My jewel sack is full to bursting, and the kami here are thick as lice on a boar. They seem to be gathering.”

  “I have felt them,” Ken’ishi said.

  Ken’ishi and Hage had paused in the shadows away from camp, where he told Hage his plan.

  Hage said, “With this much power in the air, I will be able to change her, too, and we’ll all three scamper back here without a scratch.”

  “Let’s waste no more time,” Ken’ishi said.

  With a disquieting familiarity, Ken’ishi shrank into the shape of a tanuki. The world around him was suddenly much larger.

  In the shape of tanuki, they crossed the valley toward the shrine hill, giving the enemy encampment the widest possible berth. The night darkened as they slunk along the dikes, concealed among the trampled rice stalks.

  Hage paused to sniff the air. “This valley is filled with the stench of humans and horses.”

  With such short legs, the distance to the shrine hill looked so much farther. Nevertheless, their small size and natural stealth allowed them great speed.

  At about midnight they paused in the grass near the final dike. Between them and the torii lay open ground, which was littered with dead horses and dead women. The barbarians had taken their dead comrades away.

  The breeze ruffled the fur on Ken’ishi’s back, thick with the smell of blood and mud from behind them. The kami roared in chorus, but there were so many he could not discern if they were warning him of danger. The nearest enemy encampment lay some four hundred pa
ces distant.

  But Kazuko was alive and atop that hill.

  “Come!” Ken’ishi said.

  The two tanuki slunk out of the grass and darted for the shadows of the underbrush at the foot of the hill. In his zeal, Ken’ishi surged ahead.

  “Wait, Ken’ishi!” Hage called. “Something is wrong!”

  An arrow shot out of the darkness, hissed past Ken’ishi’s ear so close the fletching brushed him.

  The arrow speared Hage and sent him tumbling like an ill-formed ball. The tanuki emitted a bloodcurdling, hissing-squeal.

  “Hage!” Ken’ishi’s voice was high and childlike.

  Ahead, he heard a quiet snickering of congratulation from the bushes in a tongue he did not know. They were shooting at the tanuki for sport, or perhaps for food. They were, after all, an army on campaign, and food could be hard to find.

  More arrows shot toward him, as fat as bamboo stalks to his tanuki eyes.

  He charged across the open ground, still on all fours, zig-zagging around more arrows, rage boiling up in him, turning the night crimson in his vision, boiling away the magic that Hage had imbued in him. By the time he reached the base of the hill, he wore the shape of a man again, and Silver Crane was in his hand.

  The entire forest at the base of the hill began to move. Storms of arrows poured toward him. Silver Crane wove an intricate dance of glimmering steel that sliced and deflected the swarm of arrows as they came. Then he leaped upon the nearest foe to come out of the bushes and cleaved him from crown to crotch with a single blow. His roar of fury echoed like the call of a beast against the hillside.

  Look to your soul, samurai, echoed behind the wrath in his mind, but Silver Crane reveled in its thirst.

  In a trice, they surrounded him, and just as quickly he descended once again into the blood-hazed fugue of the afternoon. His entire being became steel, with a puppet of muscle and bone to wield it. His edge sliced lives away in great frothing buckets of gore.

  He seized fistfuls of destiny threads again and wrenched them for all he was worth.

  The clouds in the sky coalesced. The stars disappeared.

  The tenacity of his foes kept them coming. Their swords licked and hacked. All of them wanted to be the man to bring down this invincible enemy. Such a man could become a tumen, one who commanded ten thousand. Ken’ishi could smell their anticipation of the kill. Surely one man could not stand against a hundred battle-hardened warriors and prevail. Every one of them believed it.

  Ken’ishi did not see the kills anymore. All was a crimson haze. He did not feel his wounds. But instead of blood, starlight glow seeped from the wounds until they closed up again.

  He did not tire.

  He did not stop.

  Kill them all.

  “Kill them all,” he said, over and over.

  Black clouds boiled in the sky.

  A slash of lightning sundered the night.

  Wind rose, stiff and wet and insistent.

  The story in the threads of destiny said that he could not have stood against this many men, no matter what his prowess. These men were to have lived through this day, some of them to have fathered children. Except that their threads had now been severed. Silver Crane’s tiny manipulations had given way to an outright re-weaving of the fabric of fate.

  He smote them and they flew back into their own throng, each taste of blood feeding the sword’s power.

  And then there was only one man left, tall and thick-muscled, with thicker armor than the other men, with long, drooping mustaches.

  A sudden tumult of wind howled across the field, making both men stumble for a moment to regain their balance. Fat droplets of rain pattered against the earth.

  Ken’ishi and the Mongol rushed at each other, traded tremendous blows, drew near and gazed into each other’s eyes, blades crossed between them.

  Ken’ishi kicked him in the knee and felt it snap under his heel. The Mongol commander grunted with pain as his leg collapsed. A swipe of Silver Crane sent the Mongol’s sword hand spinning away.

  He did not need the quiet purity of the Void anymore. He had all the power he could imagine. The world itself lay at his feet.

  He took the commander’s head in a single blow.

  The burgeoning rain pattered into the lakes of blood around him, began to wash away the blood covering him. The earth would drink it all.

  The forest hissed in the howling wind.

  In the distance, the enemy army roused itself, but it was not coming toward him. The sudden storm threw them into an uproar.

  Then he could hear his heartbeat again, feel his breathing, feel the rain on his face. His mouth was full of death.

  “Hage!” he called.

  The skies opened up and poured rain.

  He leaped over dozens of bodies on his way to where he thought Hage had fallen, but found no sign of the tanuki anywhere. He called again and again, but the only reply was the wind.

  Then he looked toward the top of the hill, silhouetted against spatters of lightning.

  I scream as you bite

  My nipples, and orgasm

  Drains my body, as if I

  Had been cut in two.

  —The Love Poems of Marichiko

  The massive camphor tree in which Kazuko sat in a high crook swayed with the growing breath of the wind. Warm rain lashed her face, almost like the spray of blood. The ancient tree stood sentinel over the shrine below. The torii atop the steps opened into a flat clearing before a rock face, which had been pried open by the unstoppable growth of the great tree, the wood almost flowing around the stone. A thick rope of rice straw encircled the base of the tree, and she had prayed to the kami of this mountain to protect her.

  Earlier, a scout party of Mongols had searched the hilltop. The closeness of the rock face had allowed her to scurry up the tree and hide among the thick boughs. Fortunately, the scouts had not thought to search the canopy. She still clutched her naginata across her knees.

  Across the stony glade, the shrine itself sat with its shide papers, disintegrating in the rain, and its bright red bell rope. She considered climbing down to take shelter under the eaves, but the wind would drive the rain underneath to keep soaking her. And the Mongols might return. She had just heard a frightful clamor of battle and slaughter below.

  A figure appeared under the torii. A man in armor, calling her name.

  In an instant she recognized him. “Ken’ishi!”

  His gaze swung upward, and a thrill of joy shot through her.

  “Kazuko, is it you?” he called.

  She called his name again and shimmied down the tree as fast as she could. He put his sword away and ran toward the tree.

  They reached its base together, and he threw his arms around her so tight she could not breathe. The armor between them was stiff and sodden.

  But she did not care.

  He was here, and she would live.

  Giddy with joy, she laughed and drew back from him. In the lightning, she could see the streaks on his face that must have been blood.

  Seeing him like that, ensanguined, his eyes glimmering with heat, touched her in a way she was not ready to name.

  Her menpo was long gone, and she had no veil.

  His finger traced the scar, and his touch sent fire through the numbness of her cheek, deep into her veins where it throbbed with a life of its own.

  Her breath caught.

  Their eyes met.

  The only way she could think to tear her gaze away was to hug him close again and bury her face in his neck.

  Instantly she remembered the smell of him. It was still there, masked by the stench of blood and battle and death, but still there. She noticed her hands trying to squeeze him against her, but the armor stymied her.

  She pulled away.

  His hands fell to his sides, clenched.

  She said, “What of the enemy?”

  “They were waiting below, like they knew I was coming.” He gazed up into the roiling clouds. “T
he storm...” His voice trailed off, as if he sensed something she could not. “They won’t come again.”

  He sank to his knees, as if all his strength had drained way.

  “Ken’ishi! What is it? Are you wounded?”

  “I...was. Not now.” He looked up into her eyes, and they were both young again, and no one existed in the world but them. “I’m so tired.”

  “Let me help you.” She knelt before him and reached to unlace his armor.

  “No, the enemy—”

  “If they find us here, let them kill us. There will be no more armor here, in this place.”

  He seemed to relax more with each piece she removed: his shoulder guards, his do-maru, his thigh guards, his forearm and shin plates, until all he wore were a soaked, bloodstained robe and trousers.

  His shoulders shuddered with his breath. His chin fell to his chest. His hands fell palm up against his thighs.

  The continuing flickers of lightning illuminated his arms and face. When had he gotten so many scars? They all looked healed, but she could not conceive how he had gotten so many.

  Still so much blood on him.

  Rainwater sluiced down the rock face, gushing outward in a cascade not far away, splashing into a natural channel in the rock.

  She took his hands and helped him to his feet. He roused from some inner torpor then, as if remembering she was there.

  He began untying her armor as well, and she helped him. Her heart swelled with each piece that clattered to the earth. Soon she was left in only a robe and trousers as well.

  She took his hand and led him toward the small waterfall. They shed their sandals as they walked.

  She guided him under the water. Beneath the waterfall was a natural depression in the stone, forming an ankle-deep pool. The waterfall was warm, and even with the thundering of her heart, she felt the kami pouring over him. Blood ran from his hair in dark streaks, darkening the pool around him. Untying his obi, she let his robe fall open, baring his hard-muscled chest and the livid scar on his left breast, surrounded by what looked like a birthmark she did not remember. And so many more scars. She wanted to kiss each one of them.