Jade Palace Vendetta (Samurai Mysteries) Page 6

  A tiny drop formed at the end of the limb, swelling until finally it released its bond with the branch and started falling to the ground. Kaze drew his katana and cut at the drop in one smooth motion. The polished blade made a flat arc, meeting the drop in midflight. The drop exploded into a constellation of minute stars that flew outward from the contact point of the sword and the water.

  The borrowed sword had stuck slightly in the scabbard. Kaze made a note to use more force next time. He returned the sword to the scabbard and waited. When the next drop fell he repeated the act, cleanly meeting the drop before it hit the ground. He waited and did it again. And again.

  Then he stopped and looked around the periphery of the space until his eyes finally settled on a young bush. He scrutinized the bush and picked off a tiny budding leaf, smaller than his thumbnail. He put his hand on the sword handle and threw the leaf in the air. The leaf caught a light breeze, and its irregular shape caused it to tumble about in the air, following an erratic path. Kaze drew his sword and sliced at the leaf.

  He bent down and picked up the leaf, looking at it closely. He had missed it completely. He picked off a second leaf and threw that in the air. Once again he sliced at the leaf. Again he missed it. The normal swing of the katana was too long to catch the flitting leaf as it made its erratic way through the air. The dropping water was predictable, but a standard draw and swing on an erratically moving object was useless. Something like a small tumbling leaf required a different technique.

  Kaze kept the sword in his hand and threw the leaf in the air. This time he used a sharp, flicking motion with his wrist instead of a normal cut. It was a motion that wouldn’t generate enough power to deliver a mortal blow to a man, but it allowed the tip of Kaze’s sword to move with blinding speed and catch the fluttering leaf.

  This time when he picked up the leaf, he noticed he had sliced off a tiny section of it. He picked out other leaves and threw them in the air, repeating the process again and again and again until he was picking up two pieces of each leaf cut neatly in half. It was an unorthodox move with a sword, but Kaze practiced it as diligently as he practiced any move.

  The purpose of practice, his Sensei would tell him, was to transcend technique and take his motions with the sword into the realm of expression and art.

  By repeating the motions over and over again, you could reach a point where the mind and muscles no longer had to coordinate consciously. When that point was reached, the sword movement became a part of your body’s existence, like breathing or the beating of your heart—a natural movement of your body that required no thought to execute.

  Kaze still strove to learn his art and to perfect it. But despite the fact that he had great skill, he always considered himself a pupil who had to strive to learn just one more technique or movement. In the hands of a master like the Sensei, the way of the sword was an art, but it was one that could have unfortunate consequences.

  Kaze had thought that great good would come from his skill at one time, when he was much younger. But he understood the capriciousness of fate and that the movement of forces greater than one man often held the key to our lives. One swordsman, no matter how good, could not fight the changes transforming Japan.

  Kaze came out of the woods and returned to the pushcart to find the merchant had found some dry wood and had a small fire going. On the fire was a black metal pot; in it was water boiling for tea.

  “It’s probably best not to light a fire,” Kaze said as he walked up to the merchant.

  “Where were you?” the merchant said quickly. “I was worried you might have left me.”

  “No, I simply went into the woods.”

  The merchant just grunted his understanding, thinking that Kaze was simply answering a call of nature.

  “The bandits might see the smoke,” Kaze continued.

  “I don’t care,” Hishigawa replied petulantly. “I have to get dried off and warmed up or else I’ll die.”

  Kaze shrugged. “Unless we get some help,” he said, “we will not be able to push that cart through these muddy pathways.”

  “Where can we get some help?” Hishigawa said.

  “A pathway always goes somewhere,” Kaze answered. “You simply follow it until you come to a village or farmhouse. There, we might be able to recruit some help to allow us to get this pushcart from here to the barrier.”

  “When do you think I should do that?” the merchant asked.

  “Right now,” Kaze answered. “If you go to a village or farmhouse, you’ll probably find a hot breakfast.”

  The merchant looked over at the pushcart. “But what about the cart?”

  “I’ll stay here and watch it,” Kaze said.

  “But…” The merchant let the word trail off.

  Kaze smiled. “Don’t worry, I can’t push the cart by myself either. So your gold will be safe. If you can’t recruit some help, we are going to be here two or three days, until the roads dry up.”

  Sighing, the merchant took one last, reluctant look at the water starting to boil in the kettle and said, “All right. I’ll go get some people to help us push the cart.”

  He started off down the road in search of a farmhouse or village. As he left, Kaze looked at the cart. He stared at it for several minutes, thinking about the possibilities.

  Hishigawa was tired, stiff, and cold. All these things drove the fear from his heart and replaced it with anger. He was used to ronin doing as they were told, not giving orders. In fact, he was used to most people doing as they were told.

  He was raised as the only child of a wealthy merchant family. First-born sons of Japanese families were always special anyway, but being the only son of a rich household made him the object of constant attention and pampering.

  His first nurse, Ando, was barely older than he, yet she insisted on carrying him about on her back, his legs around her waist and a wide piece of cloth strapping him in place. This continued until Hishigawa was almost as big as Ando, so Ando would stagger around with the burden, a burden she seemed to relish. Ando was still with him, and as a reward for her loyalty, Hishigawa had given her more responsibility than a servant and a woman usually had.

  Hishigawa wished she was with him now, to tend to his comfort. Instead, he was being sent to scour the countryside for help while the strange ronin was supposed to be guarding his gold. Gold. Until he met Yuchan, his entire life was motivated by the need to acquire more and more wealth. Now his life had two driving objectives.

  His father had given up the life of a samurai to enter commerce. Hishigawa still wore the swords of a samurai and claimed two names, maintaining the fiction that he was a samurai, but he had never received training in the use of swords and knew that technically he was not entitled to wear them. Still, the ability to wear the two swords was just one of the privileges that wealth brought, so he guarded his wealth closely, insisting on personal involvement when large amounts of it were at risk, such as during this transfer of gold from Kyoto.

  His apprehension over what the ronin might be doing with that gold added quickness to his step. He ignored the aches that pushing the cart and a night in the rain had brought to him. Curse that ronin! Why couldn’t he have let them find a nice temple or farmhouse to spend the night in, away from the rain?

  Goro and Hanzo were arguing. That was the natural condition for the two men. They lived in the same small farmhouse and shared a farm that was currently too muddy to work, so instead of bickering in the fields, they bickered in the home.

  “Those must have been soldiers,” Goro said.

  “They didn’t look like soldiers. They looked like bandits,” Hanzo answered.

  “What do bandits look like? You’ve never really seen a bandit because you have nothing worth stealing!”

  “I have seen what soldiers look like, and they didn’t look like them. And, if I had a better partner in this farm, I’d have plenty worth stealing.”

  “I’m the one that does all the work!”

 
“If you did all the work—”

  “Oi! You! Is someone home in there?” Hearing the abrupt greeting “oi” rather than the polite “sumimasen,” both Goro and Hanzo froze. Despite their bluster, they had been scared by the group of armed men who had stopped at their hut the night before, searching for a party with a pushcart.

  “Do you think they’re back?” Goro whispered, a quaver in his voice.

  “I don’t know. I don’t recognize the voice,” Hanzo whispered back.

  “What should we do?”

  “I don’t know. Should we open the door?”

  “I don’t know, either. If we don’t open the door, they can break it down.”

  “I think we better open it.”

  “Okay,” Goro said. He looked around and grabbed a rake leaning against the wall, holding it like a weapon. “You go ahead and open it.”

  “I don’t want to open it!”

  “We just said we should open it. If you—”

  “Oi!” The voice was more insistent and angry. “I hear you whispering in there. Open the door!”

  The two peasants looked at each other. Hanzo finally went to the door, removed the stick that functioned as a lock, and slid the wooden farmhouse door back. Standing before them was a potbellied middle-aged man, dressed like a merchant but wearing two swords. He was bedraggled and smeared with mud from head to foot. It spotted his hair, streaked his kimono, daubed his legs, and encrusted his sandals. He looked like he was half clay and half flesh. His filthy appearance made a comic counterpoint to his bearing. He was standing with a hand on the hilt of his katana, his weight on one foot, staring down his nose at them like he was the greatest daimyo in the land. Relieved, the two peasants burst out in laughter.

  Hishigawa couldn’t understand what the two louts were laughing at and shouted “Yakamashii! Shut up!” at them. The two peasants sobered up at the command, and Hishigawa invited himself into the relative warmth of the crude farmhouse, demanding that they serve him breakfast.

  “Please come in, Samurai-sama,” Goro said, bowing low. He went to the cook fire in the hut to stir the breakfast soup, where he was joined by Hanzo.

  “Do you think we should have let him in?” Hanzo whispered.

  “What choice do we have? He’s wearing the two swords.”

  “Yes, but he’s covered in mud. He doesn’t look like any samurai I’ve ever seen. He looks more like a merchant. In fact, I’m not even sure he’s human. He might be a kappa. He’s covered with mud, like he just crawled out of a pond.” Kappa were creatures who lived under bridges and in ponds who drowned children.

  “What are you whispering about?” Hishigawa shouted. “Where is my breakfast!”

  “Coming, coming, Samurai-sama,” Goro said soothingly. Then, whispering to Hanzo, he said, “How can we tell if he’s human or kappa?”

  “Kappa have little saucers of water in the top of their heads. They have to be near water or they grow weak, so they always carry water with them. If we knock him down so the water spills out, he’ll be helpless.”

  “A saucer in his head?”

  “Yes. Made of flesh.”

  “I’ll check,” Goro said.

  He took the bowl of miso soup and walked over to Hishigawa. Hishigawa reached up for the bowl, but Goro, intent on peering at the top of Hishigawa’s head, kept moving the bowl as Hishigawa reached for it. The merchant made a couple of ineffective grabs for the soup bowl, but Goro unintentionally moved it each time as he shuffled to the side to get a better view, just to make sure a fleshy saucer of water wasn’t hidden in the man’s thinning hair.

  Finally, in exasperation, Hishigawa shouted, “What is wrong with you?”

  Snapping to attention, Goro said, “Oh, nothing, nothing, Samurai-sama. Gomen nasai, excuse me. Here is the breakfast soup. It is humble, but please enjoy it.” He gave the bowl to Hishigawa and scurried back to the fire and Hanzo.

  “Well?”

  “He’s going bald, but I didn’t see any saucer on his head. He doesn’t have lice,” Goro added helpfully.

  Hishigawa drained the soup and held out the bowl for another helping. Goro gave it to him, scraping the bottom of the pot in the process. When he had finished the second bowl, Hishigawa asked, “Is there a village near here?”

  “About two ri away, Samurai-sama.”

  Hishigawa moaned. That was too far to walk. “Are there porters or samurai at the village?”

  “No, Samurai-sama. It’s just a small village. Nothing but poor farmers.”

  Hishigawa sighed. “I have need of porters and fighting men.” He looked the two scrawny peasants over and decided they were better than nothing. “How about you two? Do you want to earn some money? I’ll give you four coppers to go to Kamakura.”

  “Kamakura?”

  “Yes. I have a pushcart that I need moved to Kamakura. With this mud, I need help.”

  The mention of a pushcart raised alarm bells in the two peasants. The men who came by the night before were searching for a party with a pushcart.

  “But we have our farm to tend. In a few days the fields will be dry enough for us to work them.”

  “All right, six coppers,” Hishigawa said.

  Normally six coppers would have gotten their cooperation, but the memory of the men made the peasants hesitate. “But all the way to Kamakura! We’ve never been to Kamakura,” Hanzo said.

  Hishigawa glowered at the peasants. Peasants were shrewd, but these two wouldn’t know the value of making a dangerous journey. “Ten coppers, my final offer,” Hishigawa said sternly.

  “I’ll take it,” Goro said hastily.

  “That’s for both of you,” Hishigawa added.

  “What about it, Hanzo? Let’s go to Kamakura. When we get there, we’ll have money to spend,” Goro said.

  Hanzo hesitated a second, still not sure that the gruff, mud-covered man was completely human, but the wheedling of his friend finally got him to agree. The thoughts of the searching men were driven from his mind by the thought of more money than their little farm could earn in a year.

  CHAPTER 7

  Two chickens on a

  branch. The clucking sounds of

  meaningless discourse.

  A few hours later, Kaze saw the merchant returning with two other figures. Kaze was in the midst of packing mud into the end of one of the large bamboo poles that formed the rails of the cart. The bamboo was almost as thick around as a man’s arm, and it took several scoops of mud to block off the end. Then Kaze bent down and washed his hands in a puddle of rainwater.

  Kaze’s brows furrowed into a V at the sight of the merchant’s recruits. Both were short and skinny. That wasn’t necessarily a sign of a lack of strength for pushing the cart, because peasants were notoriously wiry and full of stamina. What caused Kaze to frown was that both seemed to be engaged in some kind of dispute, gesturing wildly and shaking their fists at each other.

  Hishigawa, leading the quarreling pair, had a grim look to his face, his jaw set and a clear look of displeasure painted across his visage. As the trio approached, Kaze was able to pick up the substance of the argument.

  “We should split it evenly,” one of the peasants said. He was wearing a filthy gray kimono.

  “No, I am the one who agreed to this job, then I asked you. Therefore, you are working for me. I should have two coins for every one you get. In fact, you should call me Boss Goro for the rest of the journey!” He was wearing a pair of traveling pants and a jacket. His bald pate was topped by a headband of twisted cloth.

  “Ridiculous!”

  “It’s ridiculous that you think it’s ridiculous!”

  “Yes? Well, it’s ridiculous that you think my saying it’s ridiculous is ridiculous!”

  Goro had his mouth working like a fugu, a blowfish, as he sorted through his companion’s retort, trying to understand what his response should be. He gave up and hit Hanzo on the forehead with an open hand. The blow made a sharp slapping sound.

  “Itai! Ouch! What
gives you the right to hit me like that?”

  “Because I’m the boss.”

  “You’re not the boss! What makes you the boss?”

  “I told you it was my idea to take this job.”

  “You don’t speak for me. When you asked me, I was the one who said I would take the job.”

  “See! See! You admit I asked you. That makes me the boss.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “It does!”

  “Ridiculous!”

  “Ridiculous yourself.”

  Slap.

  “I said that hurts! You better stop that before I get mad and hurt you, too. But I won’t just give you a slap on the head. I’ll smash you!” Hanzo shook a fist at Goro.

  Slap.

  “Oh! Now you’ve really hurt me!” Tears formed in Hanzo’s eyes. He grabbed his forehead and moaned.

  “There, there. I didn’t mean to really hurt you. I see I’ve gone too far. We’ll split the money evenly. I promise you. You don’t have to call me Boss.” Then, in a low mutter, he said, “But I’m still the boss!”

  Kaze cocked his head to one side and looked at Hishigawa. “This is the best you could do?” he asked dryly.

  “Of course it’s the best I could do,” Hishigawa said with a tight jaw. “They’ve been arguing like this ever since we left their farmhouse. They won’t stop!”

  “What are you called?” Kaze asked the peasants.

  The two were a bit surprised that a samurai would bother to ask their names.

  “I’m Goro,” the man with the headband said.

  “I’m Hanzo,” said the one in the filthy gray kimono.

  “What were you told about what we want you to do?”

  Goro pointed to Hishigawa. “He promised us ten coppers if we’d help him push a cart to Kamakura.”

  “You’ll get gold,” Kaze said.

  “Gold!”

  “What are you promising?” Hishigawa said.

  “Now listen carefully,” Kaze said to the peasants. “There will be danger.”

  “Why are you telling them—”

  Kaze looked at Hishigawa, silencing the angry merchant. “I’m telling them because they should know. Their lives will be in danger, as ours have been.”