Child of Vengeance (5 page)

It was Munisai, still in his armor, face pinched into a dull fury and looking at Kazuteru with mirthless eyes.

“You,” he said. “Come.”

The samurai jerked his chin at the darkness beyond the burning castle and marched off toward it. Kazuteru hesitated for a few heartbeats, shocked both at his commander’s sudden appearance and that he had been singled out. He wondered what he had done wrong.

“Do not keep me waiting, boy,” said Munisai, neither stopping nor turning.

No one around Kazuteru had noticed, no one leapt to his defense. He felt suddenly alone among those he had thought his comrades. He knew there was nothing to do but obey, and so he skittered after the man and fell into a nervous pace a respectful distance behind him.

It came to him as they walked—the dagger. Lord Shinmen must have said nothing at the time for fear of spoiling the ceremony any further than Kazuteru already had, but he had not forgotten. Munisai must be here to enact some form of punishment upon him. The commander’s swords were at his side still. Kazuteru looked at them fearfully. Surely he would be spared for so small an error?

Though was it a small offense? Kanno had been a lord, after all, Ueno a general too … He could not tell, and it was impossible to glean any hint from Munisai. The man did not acknowledge him further, merely led Kazuteru toward the edges of the camp until they came to a burning brazier. A pair of guards stood by it and they moved to challenge Munisai, but when they recognized who approached them they bowed low.

“Nothing to report, my lord. All is calm, sir,” said one, his eyes cast low.

“Very well. You are relieved. I’ll take your post,” said Munisai. The two guards looked from him to Kazuteru, guessed whatever it was they guessed, and then scurried off, bowing.

When they were entirely alone, Munisai turned to face the young man and looked him up and down. He flexed his shoulders, rolled his head, and nodded.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said.

The commander was bracing himself for something. Kazuteru bowed his head, kept his eyes upon the ground, and with a voice that seemed fragile and weak tried to save himself.

“I apologize wholeheartedly, my lord, and beg your forgiveness,” he said, his stomach churning. “I did drop the dagger, but I cleaned it as best I could, and I thought that that would be sufficient for what … But obviously … I apologize, and await your punishment.”

Munisai said nothing. Kazuteru swallowed drily, and carried on guessing.

“Perhaps it was the song. Perhaps I was too loud and boorish, and brought disgrace upon you by acting the savage. I apologize for this a hundred times and beg your—”

“What song? What dagger? What are you going on about?” interrupted Munisai, irritated.

Kazuteru allowed himself to look up. Munisai had turned away from him and was slowly unbuckling his armor with some difficulty. The samurai favored his right hand, his left arm sluggish and stiff. A great weariness seemed to come into Munisai the more he struggled. When he finally managed to remove the cuirass, it slipped from his grip and dropped heavily to the ground. There was a ragged tear through the layers of Munisai’s underclothes, darkened by blood.

The commander slowly rolled the kimonos off his shoulder, and exposed his flesh to the night. A vicious-looking gash stretched from just under his left armpit to the base of his rib cage near the spine.

“A desperate fool jumped me from behind in the battle for the castle,” said Munisai in explanation, and as he spoke Kazuteru watched the split flesh flap and distort painfully. “Got his blade under my armor while I had my sword up parrying. If he had kept his head he would have thrust it straight into my heart, but he was an idiot and he failed and now he is dead for it. Nevertheless, the wound has closed poorly. It doesn’t feel right. You’ll need to reopen it and clean it.”

“Lord?” the young man asked, dumbfounded.

Munisai produced a small bag and threw it to Kazuteru. The young samurai opened it and found a folded paper sachet of salve and a clean roll of bandages inside.

“Lord, I have no experience with medicine. You should visit a healer.”

“Who do you think I got that from?”

“But … why didn’t they treat it?”

“There are others far worse than me for them to tend to. I can bear this, so I did. That is duty,” said Munisai simply. “Now, you need to open the wound once more, remove the dirt, apply the salve, and bandage it. Do you understand?”

Kazuteru said nothing, and Munisai lowered himself to kneel with his back to the fire. The young samurai reluctantly sat down behind
him and examined the wound closely. He could see the lopsided way the flesh had bunched together, probably where the tightness of the armor had pressed against it, and along it there were angry red eyes that were still open and weeping. It looked to him like someone had poorly sewn an overflowing sack of meat together and it was slowly coming undone.

“Get started, boy,” said Munisai.

Kazuteru hesitated, more nervous now than when he had thought punishment was coming. He thought of trying to conjure an excuse, but he knew there was no escaping an order from his commander, however bizarre it was. The young samurai ran his fingers along the wound. The surrounding flesh tensed in pain, but Munisai made no sound. The man was perfectly still and silent, staring into the night.

Not knowing what else to do, Kazuteru reluctantly drew his shortsword and placed it to the worst of the wound.

“Forgive me the pain, Lord,” he said, and pushed the blade down.

Again, Munisai tensed, but he remained silent. The elder man began breathing in long, slow breaths that rose and fell, and after a spell Kazuteru found himself breathing in unison. It was calming. Kazuteru worked quickly, his sword, still battle-sharp, cutting through the clotted mess of flesh with ease. He was relieved to see the wound fall back to a far cleaner and straighter-looking line, but through this the white bones of rib winked back.

When he had cut all he dared to, he wiped the sword clean of blood and returned it to its scabbard. Munisai didn’t move or speak. The guards had had a flagon of water with them, and from this Kazuteru filled a jug to rinse the wound before applying the poultice. The powder was greenish and foul smelling, but as he filled the wound with it the bleeding stopped almost instantly. That was promising. Then he began to wrap the bandages around Munisai’s torso.

At the touch of the cloth, Munisai took a deep breath and seemed to rouse himself as if from a deep slumber.

“Is it over?” he asked quietly.

“Almost, Lord,” said Kazuteru.

It was but a few more moments of binding, and then Kazuteru knelt backward onto his haunches. Munisai flexed his shoulder experimentally. A slight grimace played across the corner of his mouth, but
the man grunted approval. He gestured for the water that was left in the jug, and drank slowly from it, staring into the glowing coals of the brazier. Kazuteru waited silently for a long while, but eventually he found the nerve to speak.

“Why me, my lord?” he asked.

“You were the first man I found by himself,” said Munisai simply, “and you have my thanks.” He turned then and looked at Kazuteru, really looking at him for the first time. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen, Lord. Eighteen in the autumn.”

“That’s old enough,” said Munisai, and looked back to the fire once more, his voice wistful. “And how old do you suppose that young Lord Kanno was, earlier today?”

“Nine, I think, Lord.”

“Nine years old. That’s old enough too. Do you know what his death poem was?”

“No, Lord,” said Kazuteru.

“ ‘Sayonara.’ Just ‘sayonara’ in a child’s handwriting. It was perfect,” said Munisai. There was no hardness in his voice. It was the same tone that he had used when he had spoken to Kanno at the seppuku earlier: sadness and longing. “We should cherish such perfection, because it is fleeting. This is a marred world we live in. Soon you will come to be defined by imperfections. Soon you will come to be defined by your shames. Do not think that the gods or fate has marked you any differently. I did once, and …”

There was nothing more. Kazuteru looked on uncomfortably. Munisai seemed vulnerable, and to have seen that was an intimacy he did not know how to deal with. Perhaps the commander realized that too, for he slowly leaned forward and put his good hand on the back of his neck. His knuckles whitened and the man rocked ever so slightly. He took a breath, and then raised his head once more. Gone was any hint of softness; his face was set in determination, his lips tight and his eyes stone.

“I believe that the time has come for me to go and see my son,” he said, and then he was up, the kimono rolled back over his body, his cuirass in his hand. He did not look once at Kazuteru as he left into the night.

“Should I inform Lord Shinmen, Lord?” the young samurai
called after him, rising to his feet but not daring to follow. “What should I tell him? Should I …”

The call died on his lips. He was alone. Not knowing what else to do, Kazuteru settled himself by the brazier, taking guard duty unbidden. Behind him, the sound of celebrations went on. Before him, down in the valley where the fighting had been, there came only the mewling moans of those left behind and lingering still on the cusp of death. They were bleak and strange company, but duty was duty.

CHAPTER TWO

“Amaterasu,” said the monk Dorinbo, and he gestured to the morning sun behind him. “She who illuminates the heavens. The source of all goodness in this world. Receive her blessing.”

The pilgrims looked to the sun as best they could, squinting, letting light squeeze through the narrow gaps between their fingers. They had waited since long before dawn in one huddled congregation on top of this high ridge looking east across the ocean, men and women standing and the children sitting cross-legged between their feet.

The monk had appeared just before sunrise, and had ignored them. He had stood and watched the sun as it rose until its roundness was perfect, his hands held upward in praise and the hanging sleeves of his robes shaping his silhouette as though he were a manta ray leaping from the waves in chase of it.

Suddenly he had turned to them and spoken, telling the long story of the coming of the world, of the timeless seas of chaos, and then the isles of Japan falling from the blade of a celestial spear. An untrained man’s voice would have grown hoarse, but Dorinbo’s did not falter as he told of the first gods and their agonies, of the thundering turmoil that threatened all life and spirits until Amaterasu, golden Amaterasu, had come to be as a tear that fell from her father’s eye, a daughter so pure that she made order and peace and love in the hearts of all things.

All the while the sun had risen ever higher behind him, Amaterasu in her celestial form bathing them in light. When the tale at last wound its way to the ascension of the goddess to the higher planes of
the heavens to reign as she did now, Dorinbo clasped a balled fist into the other hand and raised them high in salutation to her. The pilgrims mimicked the gesture of prayer, some falling to their knees and pressing their heads to the earth in their earnestness.

“But that is not the end of the story of Amaterasu, not why some of you have traveled the length of the country to come to this small village,” Dorinbo said as they lifted their eyes to him once more. “For when she left this world, the time of men came. She watched us from the heavens as we grew, and slowly she came to love us most of all the things she had bequeathed upon this plane.

“She saw that we were weak and scared sometimes, and so she decided to give us one last gift: her own grandson, Ninigi of heaven. It was he who planted the first rice fields that we might eat, and he who taught us how to fight and made us strong that we might fear no evil. Ninigi was too magnanimous ever to claim a throne for himself, but in time his bloodline was rightly praised. His great-grandson became the first emperor, and unbroken for centuries his line has continued to rule as emperor from then until today.

“All that, though,” said Dorinbo, raising a cautionary finger to stem another outbreak of rapture before it began, “all that stems from here. It was here, right here in this village called Miyamoto, that Amaterasu carried Ninigi to earth. This was where the god child took his first steps, and where the last footfalls of she who illuminates the heavens ever graced mortal soil.”

The monk gestured to the land around them. “This is the bridge between the end of the time of the gods and the beginning of the time of man. No other place on earth can claim such a thing. This little temple is special, and we too are special for we stand in the light that bounces off it. Though her blood does not flow in us, we are all of us the children of Amaterasu, and we stand here in her grace. Let us worship.”

They did, offering silent prayers to the sun, imagining a face within whose beauty they could not possibly comprehend.

From down in the darkened alcove of Dorinbo’s hovel, the boy Bennosuke watched the cluster of their silhouettes on the high ridge. Gradually the sky above them turned from the peach of dawn to the blue of day. The pilgrims had not noticed his arrival, and nor had he
wanted them to; his ugly, scabbed rash brought disgusted reactions, especially from those who thought they basked in the holy and pure.