Child of Vengeance (42 page)

The marshal rode along the ridgetop above the fog, weaving his horse between the clusters of men who for whatever reason had found their way here in the night. In peace he was a giver of law and now in war he was trusted to bring order to this host. What was a marshal to do but marshal?

He saw the men all around him on the slopes, hunched over like gangs of ravens on branches looking down upon the world. The accents that he heard were a strange and awful corruption of the language he spoke—the central, true tongue. These samurai were men from the farthest parts of Japan, from the western tip of Honshu and
from the southern isles of Kyushu and Shikoku; he understood but one word in three, and he wondered if they comprehended any more or less of his speech.

All the clans drawn here, a countrywide coalition focused on no more than a mile square of land. Fushimi was disgusted; these men were practically Ryukyuan, Korean, Chinese. Oh, that on this day of days he should be alongside men of this caliber.

He rode on, one hand on the reins, the fingers of the other running over his armor absently. The suit had been worn before him by his father and his grandfather and his grandfather’s grandfather, and through scores of battles had proved itself true. Hidden beneath the decorative thread that lay over the cuirass he found a familiar ridge; a long gouge from a sword strike that had been repaired years ago, filled in with molten metal that had hardened across the bowl of the stomach like a tumescent vein.

Fushimi’s fingers went back and forth across it, back and forth across the vein, the lifeline, and he wondered which of his ancestors had born this blow, and if the successor had toyed with it as he did now, and whether they were watching, willing him onward through this as a bastion of propriety among the mongrels and the disloyal and the …

“We advance!” he yelled again before his thoughts ran too blackly, looking for men he could recognize, the few he trusted. “To your posts, all of you! Advance!”

B
ennosuke watched the man on horseback pass him, screaming his commands, repeating his message to all whom he found. He looked vaguely familiar, but the boy could not remember where from. Perhaps it was just the disgust in the man’s eyes, evoking old memories of Miyamoto. He didn’t care, and neither did he brood for long; he rose and placed his helmet on his head, for he had his orders.

That was where the two years since his failure had gone, Bennosuke knew—orders. That was what made a soldier’s life a soldier’s, and what had made his life as mindless and numb as he had hoped.
As he followed the other men trooping down, he looked across the clouds wistfully before his descent and envelopment by the fog stole the serene view from him. He remembered the graceful curve of the hawk’s flight; curling, curling, upward, equilibrium, and then down and gone.

And then he too was gone, down into the mists and into war.

From somewhere distant there was a fog-stifled roar that unfolded like a peal of thunder. A cannon perhaps, or a rank of muskets firing. At what, Bennosuke could not tell, but as he descended the frantic preparation that had been hidden by the fog engulfed him. He walked through narrow paths that wound their way through the trees, but because they were crowded scores of men had abandoned them entirely. Their spectral silhouettes flitted between the upright obelisks the tree trunks had become, fading from black to gray to invisible within a mere twenty paces.

That consuming fog and the twisting of the paths revealed brief images before stealing them away; men racing past, armor clattering, others shouting fiercely as units came together. Barricades of sharpened bamboo spears laying ready, the ribbed green trunks as long as two men. A fletcher desperately tarring feathers to shafts, any sort of art forgotten in the simple need for arrows, and behind him another man struggling to roll a barrel of gunpowder to waiting arquebusiers. A stony-faced samurai staring into a copper mirror checking that the pate of his head was immaculately shaved, a boy to one side holding his razor. A dog leashed on a chain and black as coal snarling and leaping around and around in maddened circles, drool flecking from its maw.

All here to fight were samurai, and so all carried swords, but they were the secondary weapons today. Men bore further armaments, be it spear or halberd or bow, ready to fall into formation and play the desperate game of counteracting; spears taking cavalry, cavalry taking missile troops, and missile troops taking spears.

There were great warriors present, some dripping with armor so fine it put Munisai’s set in Miyamoto to shame, painting them as angular demons, but most men could afford only the basics of protection: a simple cuirass, an iron conical helmet tied under the chin, and then toughened underkimonos of leather and cloth to protect their
arms and legs. Some did not even have that, the armories of clans having been entirely depleted.

Though it was overwhelming, Bennosuke wove his way through all of it, having made careful note of his path to the ridgetop the day before. Eventually he came to men he recognized, the first of the eighty whom Kumagai commanded. These samurai gave Bennosuke nothing but curt nods of respect as he passed, and he in turn gave nothing more back.

Even after two years, they were fellow soldiers only.

T
he fort that Bennosuke, Kumagai, and his men had been stationed to hold was set upon a bleak and barren stretch of land, nestled at the narrowest point between two rocky slopes so steep they were practically cliff faces. Though a garrison had been maintained there for centuries, what buildings and fortifications there were had not been designed to withstand the firepower of modern cannon and musketry. That would need to be remedied, and when they arrived the first tentative steps of cladding the frail wooden walls in stone had been made.

Craftsmen would come to finish the job, they were told, but none did. Every man in the land who knew how to cut or shape stone suddenly found himself diverted to the great cities and set to the task of adding extra ramparts and buttresses to the castles there. They took the best quality stone with them, adding armor upon armor upon armor while those on the outskirts and boundaries were left vulnerable.

A limb could be sacrificed, the heart could not—the logic was sound but hard to swallow for those of them in that limb. Kumagai had clucked his tongue, but rather than wait for Tokugawa to come knocking with a rain of fire, he eventually decided they would persevere and try to learn the ways of architecture themselves. He ordered his men to take from the walls around them, chipping away malformed, fractured lumps of rock and stone, which they would pile around the wooden beams as best they could.

It was tiring work, muscles forming on all of them, but Bennosuke liked it. When he had a pickax in his hands he did not have to think, he could just do. There was a purity in it; nothing more than the next swing, nothing to acknowledge but hard stone. But they could not dig forever, and when work was done for the day there was always the uncomfortable closeness of the others.

When he had first joined them, they had wanted him to be the surrogate little brother. They had joked with him, called him friendly diminutives, roughhoused with him as they tried to coax some form of light or mirth from him, all to no avail.

They had started to realize this only on the night that they had made him drink for the first time. He had coughed and spluttered and forced the sake and the stronger spirits down because they expected him to, and then the next thing he knew he was crying, and he could not stop himself. The world was spinning, and he was blubbering hot, wet tears of shame, and the other samurai were sitting staring stonily, embarrassed for and by him. He knew this and he was ashamed, but still the racking sobs had come because inside he knew he was alive when he should be dead, and he couldn’t explain that to them.

They stopped inviting him eventually. He became a pariah again, and though he knew he deserved it—these men were samurai, after all—the sensation of being alone among them made him feel hollow in his bones. When they were not working or sleeping and when the other men had gathered to talk of nothing in the long hours while waiting for an enemy that never came, Bennosuke sidled away to practice the sword.

The men left him to his strange ways, no one interested enough to unravel whatever it was that made him act so. He obeyed them, and that was enough. But time dragged on, and in the way of idle groups of men they began to search for entertainment wherever it could be had.

Early one evening, with the stone around the wall standing as high and as broad as a man and with the heavy sun just beginning to set, the boy had headed off to the corner of the fort he used in place of a dojo. He was not out of sight, for there was nowhere to hide here, but far enough away that people could pretend not to see him—if they wanted to.

He was running through a defensive technique meant to ward away pole arms when he became aware of being watched. Two samurai were standing a short distance away, chewing balls of salted, hot rice.

“A strange form you’re using,” said one, a narrow-eyed man of minor rank named Goto. “You never told us where you studied, Musashi.”

“My father taught me, sir,” said Bennosuke. He made as if to continue, but Goto strode forward, pushing the last of the rice ball into his mouth and wiping his hands on his clothes already dirty from labor.

“Looks pretty in and of itself, but is it functional?” he said. It was not a challenge, but genuine curiosity.

“I’ve never fought a duel, sir,” said Bennosuke.

“Looks like you’re spoiling for one, the way you’re practicing.”

“We’re at war. Swordsmanship will be useful, sir.”

“Indeed. How about some real practice?” Goto said. “You against me, wooden swords, traditional rules?”

“I cannot dig if I am injured,” said Bennosuke, feigning modesty, and growing more uncomfortable the closer the man got. “For now, digging is my duty, sir.”

“Don’t be so pious your whole life—forget all that. Everyone else has certainly forgotten us up here,” said Goto, nodding at the ragged wall. “Come on, lad. A wager change your mind?”

“I have no money to gamble, sir.”

“Then what do you have?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“What about your armor? You’re still wearing the old scrap Sir Kumagai gave you, right?”

“Yes. But it is not scrap. It is perfectly serviceable, sir,” said Bennosuke.

“So is your hand when you can’t find a woman, but you’d rather have one over the other, wouldn’t you?” Goto laughed. “So how about my gauntlets against yours? Mine are much finer, nothing for you to lose.”

“I’d rather practice alone, sir.”

“Come on,” said the man, and a small crowd was gathering now.
Bennosuke felt his throat seizing up and thought about simply walking away—running away, his shame taunted him—but then from the crowd came Kumagai. The man was stripped to the waist and caked in dust from the day’s work.

“How about I order you to duel?” he said, slurping from a mug of water. There was no malice or command in his voice, but he had that glimmer in his eyes that he had worn in the Gathering.

The man loved his sport, and orders were orders.

His hand forced, Bennosuke nodded silently. Goto took a wooden sword, and as he did Kumagai and the other samurai backed off. They became silent in complete respect for the duel, and in that quiet Bennosuke and the man bowed to each other. They readied their swords, and at the slightest of nods from Kumagai the duel began.

Bennosuke let Goto lead the fight. He had no intention of engaging him properly; if the other men saw nothing out of the ordinary, perhaps they would not bother him again and would leave him alone to his shame. There was nothing original in Goto’s attacks, and Bennosuke dodged or parried them easily and then offered predictable counters to them. After he had judged a length of time had passed that would earn him neither humiliation nor praise, he braced himself to let the man strike him. Goto saw his chance and whipped his sword up ready to strike.