Jade Palace Vendetta (Samurai Mysteries) Page 7

  Returning his attention to the peasants, he said, “That chest tied to the pushcart has gold in it. There are men who want that gold. Perhaps by now there are many men. They’ve already killed the three guards who were assigned to protect that gold, and they will kill us, if they can. We must get that cart to the barrier, where additional guards can be hired to protect us for the rest of the journey to Kamakura. Until then, we will be in great danger. Do you understand that?”

  As Kaze spoke, the eyes of the two peasants grew in size. They looked at each other, then at Kaze, and said, “Hai! Yes!”

  “And do you still want to help?”

  Once again the two peasants looked at each other, then at Kaze. But this time they looked at each other a second time before answering.

  “What do you think, Hanzo?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think these men must be the ones who those other men were looking for. Still, this samurai has been honest with us, and he’s promised us gold. I think we should help.”

  “What other men?” Kaze asked.

  “Last night a group of men came by our hut, looking for a party with a pushcart. I suppose that’s you.”

  “How many men?”

  “I don’t know. A lot.”

  “More than four?”

  “Yes, quite a few more than four.”

  “Yes, they are looking for us,” Kaze said. “They want that gold. We still need your help, and there might be the chance that those men will find us. Will you still help us?”

  Goro looked at Kaze. “We’re not fighters,” he said.

  Kaze smiled. “I don’t expect you to be. We just need men who will push the cart. If there’s any fighting to be done, I’ll handle it.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation as the two peasants looked at each other.

  “Gold for us?” Hanzo asked.

  “Gold,” Kaze confirmed.

  “Then we’ll do it.”

  “Good! There’s no better time than now to start. Yosh! Let’s go! Give us a hand getting the cart back on the road.”

  Goro and Hanzo took a position behind the cart to push it, and Kaze took one of the bamboo rails of the cart, with Hishigawa on the other. As they got the cart back on the road, Hishigawa groaned, “It seems even heavier than yesterday.”

  “It’s the mud slowing us down, and you’re tired from yesterday,” Kaze said.

  Hishigawa grunted a reply and the four men moved the cart down the road. Unlike Hishigawa and Kaze, Goro and Hanzo were not silent. They bickered constantly as they pushed. Kaze noticed that they pushed much better when they were arguing with each other, so he let them. Hishigawa tried to silence them a couple of times, and his harsh words and glowering gaze did silence them for a moment, but within minutes they would find some new cause of dispute between them and the arguments would start again.

  Late in the morning they came to a fork in the road, with paths traveling both left and right.

  “What path do we take?” Kaze asked.

  “We take the left path,” Hanzo replied.

  “No, we should take the right path,” Goro said.

  “The left path is flat and the shortest way to the barrier.”

  “We know bandits are looking for the cart. They’ll surely be waiting along the left path.”

  “But the right path is much longer. You have to circle the entire mountain before you get to the barrier. Along the left path, we’d be at the barrier late today or early tomorrow. The right path will be at least another day of hard travel.”

  “But—”

  “Yakamashii! Shut up!” Hishigawa screamed. “You two bicker like an old married couple. It is intolerable!”

  “Perhaps intolerable, but in this case interesting,” Kaze said. “We have a choice to make.”

  “The faster path,” Hishigawa said. “The faster we get to the barrier, the faster we will all be safe, along with my gold.”

  “All right,” Kaze said, “the left path. But we should remain alert, because if the bandits know anything about the paths in this district, they will surely set an ambush before we get to the barrier.”

  The men started moving the cart down the left branch of the trail, and within minutes Hanzo and Goro were arguing about some past dispute. Kaze sighed but continued pulling on the cart, while Hishigawa ground his teeth.

  For most of their journey, the path went between wooded patches punctuated by open meadows. The tree branches converged over the path, providing the illusion of shelter and safety and highlighting how exposed the group was in the open areas. As they came to each meadow, Kaze stopped the cart and advanced to reconnoiter the territory. Hishigawa protested the first stop, calling it an unnecessary delay, but Kaze’s look was enough to silence him.

  After several hours the path left the woods, went down a long slope, and passed into a marshy valley filled with tall reeds. At the fringe of the remaining woods, Kaze stopped the cart and told the three to wait. Hishigawa opened his mouth as if to protest again but closed it without voicing his frustration over the delays.

  Kaze started down into the valley. Soon the reeds were above his head. It was the perfect place for an ambush, because the reeds could conceal any number of men. He didn’t like the looks of this part of the journey and returned to the edge of the woods and the pushcart.

  “Well?” Hishigawa demanded. “Can we finally continue our journey? We could have been at the barrier by now if it weren’t for these constant delays.”

  “I don’t like the feel of what’s ahead.”

  “Feel? Feel? That’s no reason to stop us!”

  Kaze made no response. Instead he stood looking at the valley, searching for some clue of what was ahead. The valley stretched before him like a sea of green and brown. In a slight breeze, the reed stalks swayed with the grace of a Noh performer. The brown heads of the reeds rippled as the wind caressed them, revealing the green stalks below. A soft rustling sound emerged from the waving sea of stalks. At the end of the valley, Kaze saw a flight of birds ascend into the blue sky, startled by something. In a few seconds, Kaze saw another group of birds leaving the safety of the reeds, just a short distance from the first.

  “There are men in there,” Kaze said.

  “Where?” Hishigawa asked.

  “Moving. Watch the far side of the valley.”

  As he talked, a third group of birds flew up from the reeds.

  “There,” he said.

  “I don’t see any men,” Hishigawa said.

  “Neither do I,” Goro said.

  “Me, neither,” Hanzo echoed.

  “You don’t see the wind, but you can see its results on the reeds. You can’t see the men, but you can see the results of their progress through the reed field. When Minamoto Yoshiie led an expedition against Kiyohara Takehira, he was able to detect an ambush from geese taking flight from reeds, disturbed by men getting into position. Here three groups of birds have also escaped from the reeds, fleeing the approach of men.”

  “They could be fleeing the approach of a badger or tanuki,” Hishigawa said.

  “Are you willing to take that chance?” Before Hishigawa could answer, Kaze added, “If you die, you will not see your wife, Yuchan, again.”

  That seemed to convince Hishigawa. “What should we do?” he asked.

  “We don’t know how many men are there, so there may be too many to fight. Also, it’s likely they haven’t seen us yet because they’re among the reeds, so their view is blocked. I think we should return to the fork in the road and take the mountain path.”

  “But it will take hours to get back to that path, and we won’t reach the barrier today,” Hishigawa protested.

  “Is your life worth a few hours of travel?”

  Hishigawa sighed. “All right.”

  “When we go back, try to keep the cart in the same ruts. Perhaps we can fool them if they get tired of hiding in the reeds and come down this path looking for us.”

  Kaze went int
o the bushes and cut a branch from a bush and a stave from a small sapling. When he returned to the road, the three men had turned the cart around and were already moving it down the path, following Kaze’s instructions to try to keep the cart in the same ruts.

  Kaze used the branch to smooth out the soft mud of the path, erasing the evidence of the cart having been turned around. Then he used the sapling as a staff, gouging out false ruts in the dirt road to make it look as if the cart had been taken off the road and into the woods. This was the same technique Kaze had used to fool the bandit who had been following them earlier, making it look as if the cart had gone off the path and miraculously been able to pass through a tree. Kaze continued making the false ruts into the woods. When he reached ground rocky enough to stop the creation of the ruts, he threw the staff away. Now it would look as if the cart had been taken off the road again.

  Come on, fools,” Hishigawa said.

  Hanzo stopped pushing and motioned to Goro to do the same.

  “You shouldn’t call us fools,” he protested.

  “What are you talking about?” Hishigawa snapped.

  “I think you’re really a merchant, not a samurai. You don’t act like that other samurai, Matsuyama-san. If you’re not a samurai, you shouldn’t be calling us such rude things.” By rights, peasants actually ranked higher on the social scale than merchants, right under nobles and samurai.

  “My family is a samurai family,” Hishigawa said.

  “But you’re not a samurai, are you? You’ve given it up to become a merchant. Isn’t that true?”

  “Why, you little—”

  “You really should control your temper,” a voice said.

  Hishigawa, Hanzo, and Goro looked about them.

  “Up here.”

  They looked up and saw Kaze sitting on the branch of a tree above their heads. He was balanced in the lotus position, completely at ease at a height twice that of a man. He had circled ahead of them and had been waiting.

  “We need the help and hard work of Hanzo and Goro,” Kaze said reasonably. “It’s not much to show politeness. When dealing with customers, you must do it all the time, even when you don’t feel like doing it.”

  “I…” the merchant started, then thought a bit about what he was about to say. “You’re right,” Hishigawa said to the samurai. “There’s no reason for us to fight,” the merchant said with forced affability to Hanzo and Goro. “We all want to get out of here.”

  Goro looked up at Kaze. “Do you think the bandits are gone now?” he asked.

  The samurai shook his head. “They won’t rest until they get that chest of gold. I laid a false trail for quite a distance. Eventually they’ll figure out that the cart didn’t go through the woods. Then they’ll come back to the point where we took the cart off the road and start searching.”

  Kaze put his hands on the tree limb to steady himself and unfolded his legs from the lotus position. Then, with the lightness of a child, he swung downward from the limb, hanging from his arms briefly before he dropped to the earth.

  Picking himself up as quickly as he had dropped, Kaze said, “Come on. Let’s get back to the path that leads toward the mountain.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Swirling water is

  deep and murky. I claw to

  the surface and gasp.

  Before they came to the mountain path’s branch, they came across an old peasant trudging down the path with a load of firewood on his back. Seeing there was a samurai in the group, the old man bowed his head and stood to one side of the path.

  “Do you have any coppers?” Kaze asked Hishigawa.

  “Why?”

  “I need a few.”

  “For what?”

  Kaze held out his hand, and, reluctantly, Hishigawa put three coppers into it.

  Kaze walked over to the old peasant and said, “Hello, Grandfather. Are you traveling a long way?”

  The peasant, startled that a samurai was talking to him, bowed his head even further and mumbled, “All the way to the barrier, Samurai-sama.”

  “Then you will be going through the valley of the reeds.”

  “Yes, Samurai-sama. To get to the barrier, one must travel through that valley.”

  “I would like you to do a service for us, Grandfather.”

  The peasant, who had seen Kaze get the coppers from Hishigawa, looked up and eyed Kaze shrewdly. “What service is that, Samurai-sama?”

  “When you go through the valley of the reeds, or perhaps before then, you may be stopped by some men. If you are, they will ask you if you have seen two men with a pushcart. All you have to do is say no. As you can see, we are four men with a pushcart, so you won’t even have to lie. Can you do that?”

  “Hai. Yes, Samurai-sama.”

  Kaze held out the coppers, and the peasant reached forward with both hands cupped together. Kaze dropped the coppers into the old man’s hands. The peasant put his hands together and brought them up to his forehead in a sign of gratitude. “Rest assured, Samurai-sama, I shall say nothing.”

  “Good.”

  Kaze rejoined the group and started moving the pushcart down the path.

  “You should have killed him,” Hishigawa said. As a samurai, Kaze had the right to kill any peasant for any reason.

  “Perhaps,” Kaze observed mildly, “but so many men have already died on this journey, and there is no need to add another. Besides, I don’t like to use a dead man’s sword to kill another.”

  Darkness fell before the men reached the mountain path branch, so they pulled the cart off the path and fell down around it, exhausted. Hishigawa told Hanzo to get the iron pot from the cart and make some tea.

  “It’s all muddy,” Hanzo said.

  “Nonsense,” Hishigawa said. “Only tea water is boiled in that pot.”

  “Well, it appears—”

  “Don’t bother,” Kaze said. “We shouldn’t make a fire tonight anyway. If we stay quiet and the bandits come down the trail tonight, they’ll miss us in the dark. If we make a fire, they’ll certainly see us.

  After some grumbling by Hishigawa, Kaze prevailed, and the men made a meager supper of some cold brown rice that Hanzo and Goro had brought with them.

  The next morning, Goro was up first. He looked about him in the half-light of dawn and saw that all the others were still sleeping soundly. Stealthily, he got up and crept to the pushcart. He looked at the strongbox on the cart, reached out with one hand, and speculatively fingered the rope tying the treasure chest to the cart.

  “Even if you took some, I’d find you.”

  Goro jumped in surprise, spinning around to find the ronin standing behind him, watching him.

  “You scared me, Samurai-sama!” Goro said. “I was, ah, I was …”

  “I promised you gold,” Kaze said, “but you must earn it.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about stealing!”

  “Of course not. Now come with me into the woods so we can gather some roots for breakfast.”

  Early in the morning the men returned to the branch in the path and turned onto the road to the mountain. Soon the path grew stonier and started rising in elevation, which made moving the push-cart harder. The men were pushing the cart up a path cut into the lower slope of a volcanic mountain. The gray rock was pierced with sparse outcroppings of the most tenacious plants, but otherwise it was bare and forbidding. The desolate nature of the surroundings silenced even Goro and Hanzo; the only sound was the grunting of the men, the creaking of the cart wheels, and the rush of a river, down the slope from the path.

  Hot and thirsty, the men stopped the cart. Goro picked up the water jug from the cart and peered inside. “It’s almost empty,” he said.

  Kaze pointed down to the river, rushing at the foot of the path. “There’s an unlimited supply of fresh water,” he said.

  Goro and Hanzo made their way down the long incline to the river with the jug to fetch fresh water. All the way down the slope, the two men were arguing.

 
“When we get paid for this job, I think we should pool our money and start a business,” Hanzo said.

  “Well, I want to keep my money and enjoy myself. We’ll be in Kamakura and can have a lot of fun. If we have enough, I might want to go and see the new capital, Edo.”

  “Wasting money on pleasure is not the way to wealth. We should save it for a business.”

  “What business?”

  “How should I know? We’ll decide that after we see how much money we get. The samurai said gold.”

  “The samurai didn’t even have copper. He had to get the money for the old peasant from the merchant. The merchant said copper.”

  They reached the river. It was full from the recent rains and flowing swiftly. Goro got on a large rock, bent down, and dipped the jug into the swiftly flowing current to fill it. Standing up, he said, “Regardless of whether it’s gold or copper, I want to have a good time with it.”

  “You’re stupid,” Hanzo said. “A business is the right thing to do with it.”

  “You don’t even know what business to be in. You’re the one who’s stupid!”

  “I am not!”

  “You are too!”

  His face red with anger, Hanzo gave Goro a push. Goro, off balance because he was holding a heavy jug, staggered backward, slipping off the rock and into the rushing river. He was instantly swept up by the river’s current, moving downstream at a rapid rate.

  “Help!” Hanzo screamed. He looked up the slope at Kaze and Hishigawa. “Please help! Goro can’t swim, and neither can I!”

  Kaze handed his sword to Hishigawa and started running down the road, following Goro’s progress in the river. When he caught up with the hapless peasant, he plunged down the steep slope to the river, keeping to his feet with amazing balance.

  “Try to hold on to a rock,” Kaze shouted to Goro.

  The peasant heard the command and tried to flail out and secure himself to a rock. He wasn’t able to, but his efforts slowed him down as Kaze leapt from rock to rock in an effort to reach the peasant. Finally, seeing that he was as close as he was going to get by acting like a mountain goat, Kaze plunged into the foaming river.