Tale of the Warrior Geisha (7 page)

Yet this same thought had not stopped her with Yoshinaka.

“You wouldn't like life in the capital anyway. You would be like a dog tied to a tree, pacing back and forth all day until you went mad.” He started back along the path, his feet crunching.

“That wasn't very poetic. Surely you can do better than to compare me to a dog.” She caught up to him and punched him lightly on the arm. Wada was right. She would go mad there, not allowed to fight or ride horses or all the things she could do while under her father's roof.

“But the real reason you refuse me is because you are in love with Yoshinaka.”

She stopped moving and stared. Wada looked at her face from under his lashes.
No,
she almost said, but she did not. The crickets played their lonesome song.

“He will never marry you. You cannot increase his rank, either.” Wada's tone was brisk. “You will be only a novelty in his army. Like a dancing monkey who can fight with a sword. Something to entertain the men, give him a name beyond this region. Take your pick: be his concubine, or mine.”

She turned away so he could not see her face, gazing up at the moon as if it was a talisman that would tell her what her future held. “I never knew you to be cruel, Wada.” She tried to keep her voice calm, but she wanted to shove him. He was correct, of course. Her choices were limited. But she knew her place was with her family. In Yoshinaka's army as an
onnamusha
. This was the life she had, and she could choose no other. “I would rather be a warrior in his army than a kept woman in the capital,” she said.

He touched her arm. “We are friends, and friends are honest. Like you are with me.”

The thrushes and crickets went quiet all at once. Tomoe stopped moving. The hairs on her arms rose. Something was wrong.

Screams rose up from the wedding party and people ran away from the pavilion like ants from boiling water. Smoke filled the air. She exchanged a glance with Wada and both broke into a full run. She did not have her sword—her mother would not hear of her having a sword at a celebration like this.

The main temple's roof was on fire, the banquet table kicked aside, their dishes strewn all over. Shadowy figures fought with swords.
It looks like a shadow puppet show,
Tomoe thought.
Who is who?
Yoshinaka. Kanehira. Kaneto. She picked them out of the crowd. Who was attacking?

She ran to the scene. As she arrived, one of the unfamiliar men swung his sword at Tomoe, and without thinking she leaped forward past the steel, looped her arm around his neck and twisted, feeling the vertebrae snap under her flesh. She threw him to the ground. She kicked his arm and picked up his sword.

But then she heard a cry, a grunt combined with an airless scream. Kaneto!

She reached her father as he fell. Blood seeped out from under him onto the gravel. He clutched both hands to his stomach. “Tomoe,” he whispered. “You did a fine job with your
jūjutsu
, little one.”

“I learned from the best.” She put her hands over his wound. Liquid soaked them both. The wound, she realized, went all the way through her father. Nearby, Wada cut down another man with a shout.

Kaneto coughed. “It is the Taira Search and Punish crew.”

“Find Mother!” Tomoe shouted to Wada. She tore off her outer kimono and used it to stanch her father's wound. “You'll be fine,” she said, more to herself than to him. “You are all right.”

“
Ichi-go, ichi-e.
My one chance is gone.” Kaneto put his head back. His face had gone white. “Where's your mother?”

“I don't know.” The blood kept pumping out, like a mountain spring. What else could she do? She had never felt more helpless. “Don't give up.”

“Tomoe,” Kaneto said, his voice so low she could barely hear it. “Take care of Yoshinaka. Of all of them. They are lost without you.”

“Of course.” Tomoe pressed down harder. “But you will be fine. You will die an old man, my son on your knee.” Perhaps Chizuru knew how to stitch up a wound this vicious. Tomoe fought off her rising panic. “Help!” she screamed. “Mother, where are you?”

“Tomoe!” Chizuru called, making her way between the fighters, led by Wada. Chizuru's face was black with soot. She stumbled to the ground and covered Kaneto's wounds with a folded cloth. “Move, Tomoe. Let me try.”

Tomoe moved to the side and stepped away. She could not imagine this world without her father. Not yet. She breathed in and out until she stopped shaking. She stood and looked around.

Most of the battle was over, but the pavilion roof still flamed. Buckets of water sizzled uselessly against it. This place was lost.

Yoshinaka stood at Tomoe's side. His fine clothes were covered in blood and bits of flesh, but he looked more exhilarated than tired. He put his arm around Tomoe. “Nine Taira,” Yoshinaka said with disgust. “Idiots. Why would they send such an unlucky number?” Nine, or
ku
, also meant pain and suffering. “If they think this will stop me, they are fools.”

A woman wailed long and loud. Tomoe jumped, at first not knowing from where the sound originated.
“Ie, ie, ie,”
Chizuru howled out the two syllables over and over. “No.” Her breath gone, Chizuru put her head down and cried quietly.

Tomoe moved back toward her parents. Her father's blue face had open, glassy eyes, like a caught fish. Dark blood pooled around him, already cooled. “Father?”

The fire snapped behind her.

This isn't real,
she thought.
It cannot be.
But of course it was.

Yoshinaka put his hand on her shoulder. He squeezed. She spun and embraced him, and he held her close. His smell made her stomach turn, but that was only the remnants of battle. Underneath, she caught the same scent she'd inhaled in the cherry orchard. Earth and sweetness. Without him, she would have collapsed.

“We will make him proud, Tomoe,” Yoshinaka whispered.

She put her cheek against his neck, their skin wet with tears and blood.
Yes,
she said in her head.
We will make him proud.

Yoshinaka released her, then picked up her father and carried him away.

Tomoe Gozen

I
WAMURA
T
OWN

S
HINANO
P
ROVINCE

H
ONSHU
, J
APAN

Summer 1171

Y
oshinaka saddled his horse, Demon, a gigantic black stallion. Demon always looked to Tomoe like he was about to throw Yoshinaka off, the way his eyes rolled and his nostrils snorted steam when it was cold; but Yoshinaka trusted Demon like no other horse. How good a samurai was with a horse reflected how great a warrior he was, so by taming Demon, Yoshinaka had earned the respect of many a doubter. Most of the time, Yoshinaka controlled Demon just by giving him a stern look. Yet today, Demon reared up, whinnying and windmilling his front legs. The saddle crashed to the ground. Yoshinaka swore under his breath.

“Demon. Stop.” Tomoe stepped over and took the reins from Yoshinaka. She put her face on the horse's black one, stroking the white diamond in the middle of his face. Demon calmed as Yoshinaka strapped the saddle. Demon's hooves stilled.

“You coming, Tomoe?” Yoshinaka climbed atop Demon.

Tomoe indicated her new horse, Cherry Blossom, who was already saddled and ready. Yuki had been put out to pasture. “I'm the one who's been waiting for you, Yoshi.”

“Don't call me that in public.” He winked. He had gained twenty pounds of muscle over the last year since the battle that had killed Kaneto. His face was lean and angular, his hair firmly pulled back to be out of the way. He already had a full beard that he refused to shave down into a smaller goatee, and chest hair that Tomoe glimpsed when he took off his kimono to practice swordfighting with Kanehira. In contrast, Kanehira was shorter and wiry, nearly hairless in the way of most of the men Tomoe knew. Kanehira's beard was sparse, the skin visible everywhere.

Yoshinaka trotted Demon out of the camp. Kanehira waited, his face dark and knitted, his brown mare saddled with water and supplies, including gifts of rice for the farmers they were to visit.

Yoshinaka's first decision as the leader was to increase his efforts to drum up support for the Minamoto. Once Yoshinaka had recruited enough men, he would build a fort and establish himself as a leader to be reckoned with. For now, they were a ragtag band, a group of bandits, really, working outside the established government.

The group consisted of Tomoe, her brother, Yoshinaka, and five men from their nearby village. They had traveled five days away from their home, down the mountains to a landscape markedly different. The land was bone-dry, cracked as winter skin.

It was high summer, mid-July, the days long and so humid Tomoe sweated through her light cotton
yukata
before noon, yet unceasingly without the rain that would bring relief. Would anyone want to hear their message when they were suffering with the drought? Tomoe wondered.

Kanehira put his hand up as Tomoe tried to pass him. “You stay at the camp.”

A hot surge of anger flooded Tomoe. “Yoshi asked me to come.” She thought of her mother, at home in the dark house, a refugee of the heat. There was no way Tomoe was going home to squint at sewing in a dark room, the smell of the day's fish lingering on her clothes. She'd rather have sweat and campfire soot in the open air. If she had to cut off her own breasts to fit in here, she would do it.

Yoshinaka nodded once at Kanehira. Her brother put his hand down with an angry sigh.

They trotted quietly through a leafless forest of dead beech trees, following a road made flat by all the horses and people that had walked upon it, parched from the lack of recent rain. Tomoe had to duck frequently to avoid low-hanging branches.

She hoped they would be well received by this next group in Iwamura Town. So far, they had been to two villages. At the first, no one would meet with them. At the next, they had gotten several farmers to agree to join their army, when the need arose. It would take several years to raise enough support and people to make a difference against the Taira.

The people of the land were divided between the Taira and the Minamoto. Who the enemy was wasn't so clear-cut. Sometimes, those with the name Minamoto supported the Taira, while those with the name Taira supported the Minamoto. Sometimes loyalty was based largely on convenience.

By the end of Kiyomori Taira's successful campaign to become shōgun, the Minamoto had been cut down to almost nothing, either slain or abandoned by their supporters. It would take years, perhaps decades, to regain their numbers and gain enough support for a Minamoto to become shōgun again. And who knew who would change sides to the Minamoto cause at the last minute, once people understood they were unstoppable?

They traveled in silence, Yoshinaka uncharacteristically quiet. Last week, a letter had arrived at their home, brought by a tired horse and even more tired messenger, bearing a banner with the bamboo-leaf and violet-flower crest of the Minamoto family. Yoshinaka took the letter and disappeared with Kanehira, reemerging grim-faced an hour later. Whatever the letter had contained, no one had shared with her. But now they were off doing this.

She caught up to Yoshinaka. Kanehira and his horse were slightly behind. She knew her foster brother must know what the letter said. “Everything all right, little brother?”

Yoshinaka looked startled. “I wish you wouldn't call me that. I'm not your brother.”

“You're like a brother.” She reached over and gave him a playful shove, wanting to cheer him up. “Remember when you whacked me with that branch?”

His nostrils flared. “Tomoe, I am not your brother. You are not my sister.” His voice was held back, as if he had something in his throat.

She reached down for her flask. “Drink some water.”

“The letter from my cousins,” he said.

She put the flask down. Her horse picked up on her nervousness. “Yes?”

“If I raise my own army, I can fight with them.” He stared straight ahead, as though the letter hung in the trees. “I'll be in charge of the north.”

“That's what we expected.” Tomoe waited to hear the rest. That was good news, wasn't it?

“There's more.” Yoshinaka pulled up on his horse. “They speak of me as though they don't trust me. As though I could turn against them. Me. Up here. With twelve men to my name. No land.” He laughed. “You should have seen the simple words he used, Tomoe. Writing as though I am a simpleton. They think I'm a bumpkin.”

“They don't trust you because they don't know you,” Tomoe said. “Once we fight with them, they will understand how loyal you are. You just want your father's land back.” She could see why the other Minamotos would doubt him. But surely they didn't see Yoshinaka as a real threat.

“And a lordship,” added Kanehira from behind. “And positions for all your friends.”

“Up here,” Yoshinaka said. “Not down in the capital. I would die of suffocation.”

They passed through fields of hard dirt, picking their way along the narrow muddy paths. Much of Japan was mountainous, difficult to farm. Where they lived, closer to the melting snowpack, the lands were more fertile, providing them with water and rice. The weather was cooler in the summer. Tomoe had not realized how lucky they were.

Dust rose into Tomoe's nostrils and she sneezed. The humidity made the sun seem even hotter than usual. Tomoe perspired heavily. No one looked up or waved.

Tomoe saw a baby swaddled on its mother's back as she worked a hoe on a paltry patch of vegetables, pulling up anemic carrots with brown tops. As she came closer, she saw the baby's legs were long and thin. It was actually a child, perhaps four or five. And she had thought
she
came from a poor village. She stopped and reached into her pack for a rice ball, bending low off the horse to offer it to the child.

The mother, despite her sunken cheeks underneath her sunhat, turned away.

Pride. Or fear—fear that accepting the rice would mean obligation. Tomoe jumped off her horse to offer it again. “Please. Your child is hungry.”

“Many children are hungry,” said the woman. “What difference is one more?”

The child turned its head to look at Tomoe. She couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl, so short was the hair. She wanted to rip the child off the woman's back, put it on her horse, and take it someplace safe.
Which would be where?
she asked herself. Nowhere. Soon Tomoe herself would be fighting, and probably dead.

Tomoe held the rice out once more, her head bowed, her eyes closed.
Take it,
she willed the woman.

She opened her eyes. The woman had walked away.

Kanehira plucked the rice ball out of her hand and into his mouth. “Why are they so poor? The government surely takes enough rice from us to feed extra people.”

“You know the Taira don't feed the people with our taxes.” Yoshinaka frowned. Already he had a permanent furrow in his forehead, making him look much older.

They reached the village. The place was far from prosperous, full of falling-down shacks with roofs in need of repair, bug holes in the timber, dirt roads dusty as though no one ever walked on them. The people sitting on their dilapidated porches watched their progress with dull eyes.
Too tired to care,
Tomoe thought.

Yoshinaka swung his leg off his horse and jumped effortlessly down. He strode over to the one young man who appeared somewhat interested in what the strangers were doing here. “Take me to your elder, son,” he said, though the man was clearly older than he.

The young man stared at Tomoe, ignoring Yoshinaka. His mouth worked on a sentence he couldn't get out.

“What do you want? Money?” Yoshinaka fumbled about for one of the few coins they had. “I will feed your village, boy! Speak up!”

A few people had looked up. Several gathered around, watching, though silent. The young man finally found a voice. “It's Kiso from the mountainside. We thought you were a myth!” The onlookers laughed, showing missing teeth.

Yoshinaka's face reddened.
Kiso
meant “hillbilly,” uncouth, and was the nickname some detractors had given him. To have this man, so obviously Yoshinaka's inferior, call him
kiso
was unconscionable. He moved his large form to the man's tiny one. The man scooted backward. “Kiso? You dare to call me Kiso? Your mouth won't be able to talk when I'm through. I'll rip off your leg and stick it down your throat!”

Kanehira grabbed Yoshinaka's arm, but he shrugged him off. The smaller man cowered.

Tomoe suddenly knew what to do. Instinct took over. She stepped in between the men, her back to Yoshinaka. She smiled her best, most gracious smile, fixing her eyes directly on the young man's reddened ones. They blinked, slightly covered in yellowish crust. “We are here at your service,” she said in her softest voice. “Would you please fetch the village elder?”

The young man bobbled his head, then took off down the street, his bare feet slapping. Yoshinaka drew back his head, surprised. “You sounded almost like a lady, Tomoe.”

She blushed. She was surprised herself. It wasn't as though she had great opportunity to practice her womanly skills. Her mouth went dry. “I
am
a lady. Haven't you noticed by now?”

His narrow eyes seemed to graze her from top to foot, stopping at last on hers. His were not reddened like the boy's, but very white around his brown irises. She saw herself reflected back, a miniature of herself. Girl no more. Her cheekbones high, her skin miraculously pale despite her love for the outdoors. Her obi tied below her breasts, drawing attention to them. He bowed his head. “I have noticed for some time, Tomoe Gozen.”

Gozen.
Lady. Her pulse thudded in her throat. She put her hand there, sure that blood would burst out at any second, so wild it felt.

Kanehira coughed. “Maybe Tomoe can be of some use, after all.”

Her brother had broken the moment. She frowned. “I can shoot a moving hare out of its hole on a moving horse, Kanehira. You can't shoot a horse from six feet away. And you say maybe
I
can be of use? Just because the fates granted you an extra limb”—she pointed between his legs—“doesn't mean it's a useful thing.”

Yoshinaka and the other men laughed. Kanehira reddened.

Tomoe clutched the reins, digging her fingernails into her palms. It was only because Yoshinaka saw her value that she was here at all. The other men, she knew, made crass comments about her behind her back and under their breath. It did not matter that she had beaten every single one of the men, including Yoshinaka, at sword fighting. It did not matter that she was the best archer in all of Japan (a fact she would prove, if allowed to compete against the men in the archery contests). No. She was here and unbothered only because her family protected her. Because Yoshinaka protected her.

Gaining respect was another matter. Especially from her own brother.

The young man appeared out of a doorway, waving to them.

“Come.” Yoshinaka turned and walked to the building.

Kanehira started after him.

“I meant Tomoe,” Yoshinaka said without stopping.

Tomoe paused. Surely Yoshinaka knew she would not be well received on an occasion like this, no matter how much she yearned to be. Women were considered little more than property, no matter how dear they were to their own families.

Kanehira spoke. “Yoshinaka, I do not think it is proper . . .”

“Do you not trust me?” Yoshinaka growled. “If you do not, then leave. Forever. I, Kiso, bend to no one. Come, Tomoe Gozen. Now.”

Her face burning, Tomoe hopped off Cherry Blossom and followed her foster brother inside, feeling the hard stares of the other men watching her. She did not have to glance at Kanehira to know her brother held on to his horse, willing himself still. The Minamoto cousins were right about one thing: nobody, including her, knew what rules of conduct and honor Yoshinaka was willing to break.