Death at the Crossroads (7 page)

K
aze woke to the sounds of a man groaning in pain. It took him a few befuddled moments to realize that the sounds were coming from him. He stopped the groans and sucked in a breath of air to clear his head.

He was sitting hunched up in a wooden cage barely large enough to hold him. He felt his face with his fingers, wincing at especially tender spots. Good. His neck, cheek, shoulders, and face were bruised but apparently not broken.

He looked around and could see that the cage was in some kind of small courtyard. Next to him was another, similar cage. Inside the cage was Jiro, his knees drawn up and his head hanging down.

“Oi! You!” Kaze said to get his attention. Jiro looked up. His expression was one of despair and infinite sorrow. Instead of being moved to compassion, Kaze grew angry. Jiro had already given up. “Why are we here?” Kaze demanded.

Jiro made no reply. He just hung his head down again.

Kaze snorted in disgust and looked closely at his cage. It was old but of surprisingly good construction. He lifted his feet and pushed against the door with all his strength. Nothing. He looked around the cage once more to make sure there wasn’t a weak spot but satisfied
himself that trying to break out of the cage was a fruitless effort. He would have to wait until they took him out of the cage for some reason. That might not be for days, so he got himself as comfortable as possible and tried to relax, husbanding his strength.

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t help but think of what his Sensei, his teacher, would have said about his current predicament.

“Baka! Fool! You knew there was something suspicious and you still went stumbling in like some rank amateur! It’s disgusting.”

“Yes, Sensei. But the net was unexpected. It …”

Of course, the Sensei would then skewer him with a look of contempt. In the old days, Kaze would drop to his knees and bow with his head touching the ground.

“You know the lessons,” the Sensei would say. “What lesson is appropriate for this?”

“Expect the unexpected.”

“Of course. Careless!” Sensei had a way of saying “careless” that made it sound worse than the foulest oath Kaze had ever heard a drunken castle guard utter. Kaze would never have a response after Sensei said this word. He could only wait in silence to see if he would be forgiven. Somehow, he always was.

“I don’t know why I continue to waste my time with someone so stupid,” the Sensei would eventually say. Then he would sit Kaze down and carefully explain to him how he could avoid the situation in the future. Besides the tactical advice on how to handle the situation at the hut, the Sensei would have undoubtedly also told him that he could stay out of this kind of trouble by simply minding his own business and staying focused on what he was supposed to do. It never prospered a man to pursue problems that were not his own.

Kaze wished his Sensei were still alive because he often needed advice and now had no resources to get it. It would be embarrassing to have to confess to him his current situation, but he would gladly trade that embarrassment just to hear his Sensei scold him once again.

Keeping his eyes closed, Kaze listened intently for the sound of
anyone approaching, but he let his mind drift to when he first met his Sensei.

He was eight. A group of boys his age were trudging up a narrow mountain path. The boys were giddy with thin mountain air tinged with the smell of adventure and freedom. It was early winter and a light dusting of snow covered the ground, even though it was not exceptionally cold. Gaunt black branches hung over the twisting path as the boys engaged in a steady chatter composed of youthful spirits and high expectations.

“I hear he’s a master of
kumi-uchi
and
tachi-uchi
style of fencing,” one boy said excitedly.

“Of course he’s a master. He killed fourteen men in individual duels before he retired to these mountains.”

“I’m going to kill a hundred men! It’ll be a case of the student surpassing the master!” another boasted.

“He hasn’t accepted a student for a long time,” Kaze cautioned.

Lord Okubo’s son, who was higher ranked than Kaze, looked at him and said, “He may not accept
you
, but he’s certainly going to accept me. It will be an honor for him to have an Okubo as a student.”

Kaze, who had already shared some military training with Okubo, knew to say nothing. Okubo was a year older, but Kaze had still bested him at everything, including a schoolboy fight in front of the temple where they took writing instruction. The larger Okubo was still smarting from that and could use only his superior social position as a weapon.

“How far up the mountain is his hut?” puffed fat Yoshii. Although he was the son of a samurai, his parents indulged him, and his weight and lack of physical training made the journey a tough one.

“I don’t know,” Kaze admitted. “It’s supposed to be at the end of this trail.”

“I’ll be glad to get there,” Yoshii said. “I could use something hot to eat and some time warming myself by the fire.”

“Don’t you know anything?” sneered Okubo. “When we get there
we’re supposed to get on our knees and bow to the door of the Sensei’s hut. It shows we’re serious about getting him to train us. If necessary, we’re supposed to stay there all night to show him how serious we are.”

“All night?” said Yoshii.

Okubo wrinkled his nose in disgust and picked up the pace. The other boys, including the puffing Yoshii, hurried to catch up. Kaze didn’t mind the faster pace, but he was sure Okubo was doing it just to be cruel to Yoshii.

Presently the boys came across a wider patch of road, where the snow was laid like a pristine white futon. They plowed through the ankle-deep snow for several steps before Kaze stopped and said, “Chotto matte. Wait a minute.”

“What now?” Okubo said, stopping. “First that pig Yoshii and now you. If we keep stopping we’ll never get there. What?”

“Look.” Kaze pointed to the road ahead.

For a long distance ahead of the boys the road was not the smooth white surface it had been. It was disturbed by marks in the snow.

“I don’t see anything,” Yoshii said.

“Look at the road,” Kaze instructed.

Yoshii stared intently, then confessed, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at.”

“The road is disturbed.”

“I can see that.”

“But what is it disturbed by?”

The boys gathered around one of the marks in the snow. It was long and narrow, with three claws in the front and a fourth claw, like a rooster’s spur, in the back. From a lifetime close to nature, they were sensitive to shifts in weather or the tracks of animals. They had hunted with their fathers and the other men of the clan. The large tracks were like nothing they had seen before.

“Is it a bird?”

“Have you ever seen a bird this big?” The tracks were longer than the length of a katana.

“Is it a lizard?”

“That’s even sillier than a bird. A lizard would have to be the size of a dragon to make a track this big.” An awful stillness descended as the word “dragon” was uttered.

Kaze looked around. “The tracks come from the side here, then go down the road for quite awhile, then go off into the trees ahead. Let’s follow them.”

“Are you crazy?” Yoshii spluttered.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before, and I want to see what it is.”

“I’m not following this thing!”

“Me, either!”

“We’ve got to get to the Sensei’s hut,” Okubo said. “We don’t know how far it is, and we might not even get there before dark.”

“Dark?” Yoshii uttered.

“Maybe. We don’t know how far it is.”

“I’m going back to town,” Yoshii said. “My parents can send me to one of the schools there. I don’t have to be up in these mountains with a crazy hermit just to learn
kendo
.” Silence greeted Yoshii’s declaration. Even Okubo didn’t take the opportunity to sneer at the pudgy youngster’s desire to return to the town. Emboldened by the lack of criticism, Yoshii went one step further. “Is anyone coming back with me?” he asked.

Several of the boys looked at each other, and finally one said, “That sounds like a more sensible idea to me.”

“Yeah.”

“Me, too.”

“Fine,” Yoshii said, surprised at his newfound position as a leader. “Let’s head back. It doesn’t do for us to be up here in the dark. Only the gods know what is up here in these mountains.” And, without a word of goodbye, he turned on his heels and started back down the mountain trail with considerably more speed than he showed coming up it.

The boys who agreed to return with him looked surprised but scurried to catch up.

“Cowards!” Okubo shouted. “Scared because you see tracks in the snow! Disgusting!” He looked at Kaze and said, “Why don’t you hurry up and join them, too?”

Kaze observed mildly. “I just pointed out the tracks in the snow. I didn’t say I wanted to turn back.”

“Well, you should turn back, along with the rest of the cowards!”

Kaze said nothing, observing Okubo.

“Why don’t you say anything?”

“I have nothing to say. I’m just waiting for us to move on.”

“Do you think I’m afraid to go on?” Okubo asked.

Kaze cocked his head to one side, shrugged, and continued his journey down the path without comment. Okubo looked at the three other boys who remained, then started down the path after Kaze. They all walked in awful silence, devoid of boyish laughter or taunts. Trees that were merely gaunt in winter now took on a sinister look, and the dark shadows in the woods were scanned with nervous glances as the boys closed ranks into a tight pack. The cawing of a winter crow made the boys jump, then giggle with nervous relief when they saw the bird.

About a half hour before dark, they reached the end of the road and found a rough country hut. The hut had a thick thatched roof and walls formed by stacked logs. A door of uneven wood dominated the face of the structure, and it seemed to have no windows. It was the kind of crude shelter a woodcutter or charcoal burner might have, not the grand abode of a master fencer.

“Is this it?” Okubo asked.

“It must be. We’re at the end of the trail.”

“Are we supposed to bow now?” one of the boys asked.

Okubo didn’t respond, but he dropped to his knees and bowed facing the door of the hut. Kaze stared at Okubo’s back, looking at the white family mon near the neck on Okubo’s black outer kimono.
It looked like a white spider, with bent bamboo leaves surrounding a diamond. The other boys, including Kaze, did the same and Kaze tried to clear his mind and meditate. Meditation would not anesthetize you from the effects of the snow, but through meditation you could learn to ignore it.

Night fell, and the mountain cold started creeping through their knees and feet, chilling each boy to the bone. The boys had already been taken on mock military maneuvers in the field. They were used to being outdoors, even in winter, and they had been toughened by a life lived close to nature. Still, they weren’t used to kneeling in snow for long periods of time. It was an uncomfortable and stressful end to a disturbing journey.

From inside the hut, they could hear the banging of pots, so they knew someone was home. As it got darker a sliver of light peeked out from under the bottom of the door. The smell of smoke mingled with the crisp pine air of the mountains, creating a tantalizing smell headier than any incense. Kaze could imagine what it was like to be in that hut, huddled around the fire with a warm quilt wrapped around him. Almost immediately he cursed himself, using the boyhood curses he had picked up when he was around older men. It did no good to imagine what it would be like to be warm. It only increased the torture of being in the snow. Instead, following the lessons he was taught about the Zen style, he cleared his mind and tried to think of nothing, simply existing in the universe and ignoring the cold that was steadily taking over his limbs.

The movement in the hut stopped, but the door remained closed. In a few minutes the light from under the door was extinguished.

“Do you think he knows we’re here?” one boy asked.

“He wouldn’t be much of a Sensei if he didn’t.”

“Do you think he’ll let us in?”

“I guess not. Maybe he wants us to stay out all night to show how determined we are.”

“It’s an insult to leave an Okubo out here this long!”

“Are you going to knock at his door?”

“Of course not. I have my pride to think of. I’d lose face if I did something like that. Why don’t you knock?”

“I have pride, too.”

“But you should—”

Okubo’s comment was cut short by a strange sound. It was a whipping sound that in the silent mountain night echoed very loud.

“What’s—”

“
Yakamashii!
Shut up! Listen.”

The swish, swish sound continued.

“What is that?”

“I don’t know. It sounds a little like a riding crop moving through the air before it strikes the horse.”

“Where’s it coming from?”

Two of the boys got up from their bow and looked around. Suddenly, with a shaking finger and an equally shaky voice, one of them pointed and said, “Lllooook!”

All the boys, including Kaze, looked in the direction the boy was pointing. There, in the darkness of the woods, they could barely make out a white shape in the faint starlight. It was at a level more than twice as high as a man’s head, it was the size of a large bird, and it flitted between two trees with alarming speed. A swishing noise accompanied its movement.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen—”

“It’s a ghost! I know it’s a ghost! Lord Buddha protect me! It’s some kind of mountain spirit that will kill us all! Those weren’t dragon tracks, they were demon tracks!” The boy who made this identification jumped to his feet and rushed to the door of the hut. Two others were right behind him, panic lending both speed and strength to their cold-numbed legs. They started pounding on the door.