Death at the Crossroads (Samurai Mysteries) Page 14

  Aoi shook her head no. To her, talk of the rulers of Japan was like talk of the Gods. They were remote and mystical figures. The talk of ghosts and demons had more immediacy and reality to her. It was much more likely that a ghost would alight in this remote village than a ruler of Japan.

  Instead of continuing, Kaze held out his cup. It took Aoi a few moments to react, but finally she picked up the sake flask and reached to pour another drink for Kaze. The rim on the cup made a chattering sound as the shaking flask bumped against it.

  CHAPTER 16

  Young buds don’t always

  grow in sunshine. Sometimes they

  must survive winter.

  It took her several days to work up the courage to visit the bandit camp again. At first she resolved never to return to the forest and hills, but the samurai had said that demons would break down your door if they wanted you, so she told herself that she wasn’t running any greater risk by going to the bandit camp than by staying at home. Besides, the lure of money tugged at her much more strongly than her fear of ghosts, demons, and dragons.

  Still, this time she made no concessions to the need to hide the camp. She didn’t wander through the woods, and she didn’t carry a prop like a mushroom-gathering basket. She didn’t pause to see if someone was following her, but she did look around constantly, straining to see or hear the first inkling of a ghost.

  By the time she got to the camp, she was so sick with anxiety she didn’t bother feigning the mechanical smile that always adorned her face when she visited. Kaze, who was sitting on a high limb in a comfortable tree, saw her rush past below him, and he smiled.

  The next morning, Boss Kuemon was mad. He came out of his hut after a pleasant sleep instigated by sex with the woman from the village, and he found his men sitting around in small groups, talking about ghosts and demons. He scoffed at the talk, but saw in the eyes of his men a kind of fear that prompted him to demand the cause of such foolish talk. “Aoi” was the answer.

  The woman had already left, so all Kuemon could do was stomp around the camp shouting at his men to stop being so weak and foolish. He thought briefly of banning the woman from the camp, but he considered his free “tax” and the morale of his men and decided that action was the best course. Rousting everyone but Hachiro, the kid he used for a sentry, Kuemon took his men out to look for prey.

  By late afternoon the men returned, and the talk of demons and dragons was mostly forgotten. Hachiro was sent to the spring for fresh water to make the evening rice. He took a wooden bucket and walked through the woods, down to the pool of water the camp used.

  The dying sun slanted through the trees, sending ribbons of golden light cascading across the tree trunks. The woods were ripe with the smell of drying pine needles and the familiar sounds of the forest. Hachiro happily whistled a folk tune as he swung the empty bucket in time with the music. He started singing.

  Little, little fire.

  Big, big flame.

  Bubble, bubble,

  Take out the big fire.

  Even though the kettle cries,

  Don’t take off the cover!

  It was a silly song, one sung by mothers to teach their daughters how to cook rice. Hachiro had heard his mother sing it many times to his sisters, with all the children laughing and squealing with delight at the admonition at the end. In the close, homey atmosphere of the Japanese farmhouse, all members of the family wove bonds that created a tight fabric. The thought of his mother and family made the young man stop, the last words of the song catching in his throat. Tears formed in his eyes, and he whispered, “Okaasan. Mother.”

  War had come to Uzen, Hachiro’s home province. And because war was just another name for madness, when it came to Hachiro’s village it created madness for all who lived there. The day of madness was like any other day in Hachiro’s young life. He started the day with a communal breakfast with his family, his mother serving soup and leftover rice to his silent father and his noisy siblings. Hachiro felt there should have been some foreshadowing of the events to come, some disturbing dream the night before, some premonition while he ate, or even some ominous clouds or claps of thunder. There was none of this.

  The day was ordinary in every respect. He fought with his sisters, and his older brother disciplined him by cuffing him on the side of his head. It was an affectionate slap, enough to show Hachiro that his brother cared to discipline him but not enough to hurt. To punish him for his rowdiness, the older brother said Hachiro should go to the bamboo forest and gather bamboo shoots. This brought gales of laughter from his sisters and caused his face to burn red. Gathering takemono, bamboo shoots, was women’s work.

  Hachiro voiced protest, but his older brother stood firm. In the hierarchy established in the family by gender and birth order, Hachiro was very low. He should have accepted his brother’s pronouncement without comment, but instead he tried to appeal to his father.

  Hachiro’s father was a stern, silent man who, nonetheless, loved his children. In some ways he conformed to the idealized view of Japanese fathers recounted in the village’s folktales.

  “Niisan, Older Brother, says I have to gather takemono like a girl,” Hachiro protested.

  Hachiro’s father lifted the soup bowl to his lips and slurped down the final dregs. Looking over the edge of the bowl, he said, “If you’re going to tease and fight with your sisters, then you should do women’s work.”

  The family had waited until the father had made his pronouncement, and the confirmation of the sentence triggered additional waves of laughter. Hachiro didn’t see what was so funny about his father’s statement, but he knew better than to challenge or question it. Under Confucian principles, the father was the master of the household, and the master had spoken.

  Hachiro took a basket and the funny little hooked knife used to cut bamboo shoots and stomped out of the house. The bamboo forest was a good hour away from Hachiro’s village, but he had walked for only ten minutes or so when he heard the distant sound of shouting men behind him. He paused for a second, unsure of what all the noise meant, then turned to run back to the village.

  Hachiro came to the top of a hill and could see the village was under attack. Troops had swooped down on the clustered farmhouses, setting fire to them by throwing lighted torches on the thatched roofs.

  Fire was the most feared force in Hachiro’s life. He had already lived through several shakings of the earth that knocked articles off shelves and made sliding wood and paper doors pop from their tracks. He had lived though times of lean harvests and hunger, although the old people of the village laughed at the complaints of youngsters, telling them they were seeing nothing compared to conditions of true famine. He had lived through a war, although he wasn’t sure what the war was about or which side the Lord of his District was on. Only fire, with its terribly swift destruction of homes, had brought real terror into Hachiro’s life. And now he was learning that fire was just a minor by-product of what men could do.

  Uncertain, Hachiro stood at the top of the hill and watched the scene unfolding below him. The troops attacking the village carried banners with a diamond surrounded by six bent bamboo leaves. This mon was unfamiliar. It was white on black cloth and looked like a malevolent insect. Outside the village a cluster of horsemen stood, watching the attack. In the center of the cluster was a tall, thin man with a black-winged helmet. In his hands was a black war fan, a metal fan used by generals to direct troops on the battlefield. The large size of the fan made the signals of the general easier to see.

  The thin man seemed to be in charge, giving signals to direct different groups of troops in their attack on the village. He stood on the stirrups of his horse and waved a large group of troops toward a previously untouched corner of the village. Hachiro realized that the men were moving toward his house.

  Transfixed by panic and fear, Hachiro saw the troops fan out and enter each of the houses. In some cases the doors of the houses had been barred, but the men easily kicked them
down and entered. He saw a half dozen men entering his own house, and his heart stopped. Hachiro wanted desperately to know what the men who had entered his house were doing. To his sorrow, he suddenly found out.

  He saw his mother rapidly backing out the door to his house. This strange sight was explained as the shaft of a spear followed her out of the house, then a soldier. Hachiro thought the man was just chasing his mother out of the house with the spear, until she collapsed several paces from the door. Then he realized that the point of the spear was embedded in his mother’s stomach and that she was holding the shaft, backing away in a desperate attempt to remove the weapon from her body.

  “Okaasan!” Hachiro shouted.

  His mother hit the dirt in front of the house, and the soldier leaned into the spear, driving it deeply into the writhing body of the screaming woman. Hachiro also heard the screams of his sisters coming from the house.

  Galvanized into action, Hachiro dropped the basket and gripped the bamboo knife tightly. He started running down the hillside toward his house and the body of his mother. Before he had taken two steps, his foot hit a root, sending him tumbling down the hillside. He felt the sting of the knife biting into his side. Then his head hit a rock and blackness descended.

  When he woke, he thought he was in hell. One eye seemed stuck shut from the dried blood that came from the gash on his head. But through the half-open other eye he could see only darkness and orange flames. He smelled acrid smoke. When he opened his parched lips, a bitter white ash entered his mouth. That set him coughing, and the coughs aggravated both the pain in his head and the pain in his side. He reached down and felt sticky blood on his flank.

  If he had been carrying a regular knife, instead of the tiny, hooked takemono knife, Hachiro would be dead. Although the bamboo-shoot knife inflicted a nasty gash, it didn’t penetrate enough to hit a vital organ. Still, with the darkness, flames, smoke, pain, blood, and dizziness, Hachiro was not sure that he wasn’t dead. He tried to sit up to see what was around him, but he was so weak he could only roll over. Then he slipped into blackness again.

  After he returned to consciousness, he had enough wits about him to realize the darkness was simply night. The smell of smoke and taste of ash was still strong, but the dancing orange flames were gone. He sat up and felt weak from loss of blood and his head wound. He slumped forward a few minutes, catching his breath and building his strength. Then he thought of his mother. What had been a village a few hours before was now a collection of embers. Hachiro realized the flames of hell he had seen were the flames of the village. In a way, it really was hell.

  He stumbled to his feet and swayed unsteadily. Holding his side and walking slowly, he made his way down the hill and toward what was left of his house. The fire had burned down to just embers, and the dull glow from the collapsed beams provided scant light. As he approached, he saw a shapeless form in front of the house. He fell to his knees and reached out to touch the cold body of his mother. With trembling fingers, he stroked her hair and cried tears of pain, loss, and anger.

  When the sun came out, he made his way to the stream next to the village to get a drink. When he approached the water, he recoiled in terror. His image, captured in the sluggish waters of the stream, was a frightening specter of dried blood, bruised flesh, and matted hair. He realized that he must have looked dead to the troops that destroyed his home village, which is why he survived.

  He never found out which side or whose troops slaughtered the village. He didn’t even know why or if the troops even had a reason.

  With his family killed and his village destroyed, Hachiro fled to the mountains. There he was stopped by Boss Kuemon’s brigands and captured. At first he was used as a kind of slave, but soon he was adopted more like a pet. The brigands had even decided that they would teach him to be a killer, but thus far they had been unsuccessful.

  Hachiro sighed. Now he was involved with men he had been taught to fear, carrying messages for them. Since neither Kuemon nor Hachiro could read, these were verbal messages, often with puzzling content. Hachiro wondered what kind of life his karma had led him to, and he decided he must have been very wicked in a past life to deserve this fate. He started walking again.

  He reached the spring, looked around at the tranquil woods, and brightened up a bit. The clear water made a cheerful sound as it burbled from the earth. Hachiro’s stomach was full, something that wasn’t always true in the life of the farmer. Despite the work and abuse, maybe this life of the bandit was not too bad.

  He looked down at the spring to dip his bucket in. His eyes widened in disbelief, and for a few agonizing moments he was paralyzed with surprise and fear, unable to run and unable to cry out. Then, dropping the bucket, he ran back to the camp as fast as his legs could carry him, shouting for help.

  Fifteen minutes later a noisy group of men returned to the spring. They were making jokes and talking loudly among themselves. Hachiro was being dragged by the arm by one of the men, who pushed the youth toward the spring and demanded, “Well, baka! Where are they?”

  Hachiro pointed down at the soft mud that surrounded the spring. “There!”

  The men gathered around and looked at the mud. Deeply imprinted into the black earth were the footprints of some giant creature. The laughter and talk died.

  “It looks like some kind of giant bird,” one man said in the silence. “It has three front toes and a spur out the back.”

  “Maybe it’s a lizard.”

  “Have you ever seen a lizard that big? Each footprint is longer than my forearm.”

  “Well, have you ever seen a bird that big?”

  “Has anyone ever seen dragon prints?”

  “Dragon prints? Have you ever met anyone who’s seen a dragon? Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “Ridiculous? Me? Listen, you son of a union between a dog and a pig, did you ever see anything as big as these prints? Why not a dragon?”

  “Does anyone know what a kappa’s tracks would look like?”

  “A kappa? How big would a kappa have to be to leave tracks like this?”

  “Maybe they have big feet.”

  “But what is it?”

  “The tracks come from the forest, where the pine needles hide them. It went to the spring for a drink, then it turned around and returned to the forest. See! Right here. The tracks fade out as it went back on hard ground.”

  “Look, here comes Boss Kuemon. Maybe he’ll know what this is.”

  Kuemon approached the knot of men and said, “What’s all this foolishness? Are you letting a baby-faced boy spook you? First the woman and now the boy. I’ve never seen such a bunch of weak-minded baka!”

  “But look! Hachiro didn’t imagine the tracks. They’re still here.”

  Kuemon walked up to the spring and stared down at the tracks. He stared for a long time, the rest of the men waiting for his judgment. Finally, one of the braver bandits prompted, “Well?”

  Tearing his eyes away from the tracks, Kuemon stuck out his chest and said, “It must be some kind of trick. Or maybe a freak accident of some kind. They just look like tracks. They couldn’t be real.” He glared at his men. “If one of you is making some kind of joke with these tracks, I’ll cut your heart out! Tell me now, before I really get mad! Did one of you do this?”

  “No.”

  “No, Boss.”

  “It’s not one of us. They look real.”

  “We were all with you. It couldn’t be a trick.”

  Kuemon looked at the faces of his men, trying to detect a guilty party. They were all hardened men, however, and used to lying. Still, Kuemon could see nothing in their faces except questions and fear. Curse that woman, and now this boy.

  “Well, whatever it is, I’m not going to let a few tracks in the mud bother me. Hachiro! Pick up the bucket you dropped and fetch the water. We still have to make the evening’s rice.” Kuemon straightened his shoulders and strutted back to the camp. It bothered him that none of the men immediately followed. They w
anted to stay by the spring, staring at the tracks.

  In the hills above the camp, Kaze saw the men rushing to the spring. He settled back into a comfortable spot at the foot of two large trees. He didn’t have to sneak down to the spring to see what was happening. He knew the effect of the dragon tracks would be as great as when he and the boys first saw them in the snow, so many years ago.

  In the bandit camp, the men were silent and sullen. Kuemon didn’t like it, and after dinner he decided to give the men courage through drink. “Hachiro! Bring out some shochu from my hut,” he ordered. “Open a barrel of sake, too!”

  The men, sitting around a campfire after their evening meal, looked up in anticipation at Kuemon’s order. Shochu was a fiery liquor produced by peasants.

  “What’s the occasion, Boss?” one asked.

  Kuemon laughed. “I’ve decided to have a party. It isn’t every day we see the footprints of ghosts or dragons.” He raised his hands high into the air, making claws with his fingers. On his face he put on a grimace worthy of a kabuki actor. “I’m the ghostly creature,” he intoned as he made his way around the campfire, provoking nervous laughter from the men. “I don’t know what I am, but I must be pretty scary to have such big feet! Maybe I’m a ghost. Maybe I’m a kappa. Maybe I’m a demon. Maybe I’m just a stupid bunch of tracks designed to scare old women and weak boys! Boo!”

  The tension of the men dissolved in laughter. Kuemon, meeting success, started an impromptu dance, scampering around the fire saying “Boo!” at the men. Soon other men were joining him, striking twisted poses and making blood-curdling shrieks.

  Hachiro broke open several jugs of shochu. He poured the contents into cups and handed them around. Then he took a barrel of sake out and broke it open and poured some of its contents into an old metal pot. Instead of putting the pot into hot water, he simply put it over the fire to warm up. In a few minutes he was handing Kuemon a square wooden box that acted as a cup, filled with sake. Kuemon drained the sake in one long drink and demanded more from Hachiro before the others could be served.