Thousand Shrine Warrior (24 page)

“Don't pray to me!” said the scowling, blood-spattered nun. “I am no god!”

The old woman continued rubbing her palms in the religious fashion as she said, “To me you are a god. Goddess of Mercy.”

The nun turned her head to look right, then left, men dead or writhing on every side. She said, “Grandmother, do not betray yourself to me now. Remain stoic or I will think badly of you. This has not been mercy of the slightest kind.”

There was a muffled clatter of hoofs. The nun looked along the village street, but could see nothing through the blizzard. The hunters, along with reinforcements from the bridges and castle, were approaching.

“Hurry away!” the bikuni demanded. “My mind is not yet clear, for I have been drinking too much. There must be someplace you can find to hide Shinji and Otane.”

Widow Todawa climbed to her feet and urged Iyo to stand also. He slapped at his legs with large hands. Then, without encouragement, he went to help Otane and Shinji remain upon their own unstable legs.

“Leave that way,” said the nun. “I will stay at the end of this street so no one can pursue.”

The family staggered away, looking like a group of crippled pilgrims. The nun, not much steadier, went forth to greet the riders. They came out of snowy darkness in a large group. At their head was Kahei Todawa, released from house-detention on this special mission.

“Kahei!” exclaimed the nun. He drew rein upon the street, then dismounted. Taking a few steps forward, he drew his sword and said,

“You must not meddle in my Lord's affairs. I regret it, but I am here to stop you if I can.”

“Kahei!” she repeated, backing away from him. He was not a young man and had not been a remarkable warrior even in his youth. She could kill him with ease if skill was all it took. But he was the father of Otane. How could she kill him? “Kahei!” She could think of little more to say. “Think better of this!”

The other samurai remained on their horses, watching the drama, waiting to see if the nun would keep her ferocity in such a dilemma. Kahei Todawa, and not a vagrant nun, had the right to decide a matter of rebellion in behalf of his daughter.

“Isn't it for Otane's well-being?” the nun insisted wildly, backing farther from Kahei. “Wasn't Shinji your unofficial son-in-law?”

Kahei stopped. He glared at the bikuni. Her white kimono, gray hakama, and black gossamer vest were streaked with blood. Her sword dripped blood. Her shoulder was injured and bloody. She had risked a lot. She had acted with brash heroism for the sake of his family. How could he take advantage of her reluctance to fight him?

He was like a piece of metal caught between two poles. He owed allegiance to Lord Sato. He must obey his master, even if it meant recapturing Otane and Shinji and killing them at once.

He turned to face the mounted men. He told them, “It will not be said I failed our Lord. Tell him I have given him my blood in remonstration. By this act of
kanshi
, I urge him to become free of Priest Kuro's influence.”

Kahei Todawa put the butt of his sword against the ground and leaned the point upon his belly. The nun ran forward to save him from so rash an act as protest suicide. But he had already lurched forward, his sword coming out at the base of his spine. The bikuni dropped her Sword of Okio on the snow and caught the falling man. “Kahei!” she cried out, as though a loud voice could draw him back from death. “It was unnecessary!”

The silent, older man in her arms rolled his eyes and died with a placid expression.

Riders surrounded her. The bikuni let spitted Kahei fall onto his side. She inched her fingers toward her sword, which lay upon the snow. A mounted spearman charged. She snatched the sword, deflected the spear; and as the horse grazed by, she reached over her shoulder and stabbed the rider in his lower back. Before he had fallen, she had already leapt toward the next man, frightening his mount so that it reared. As the rider tumbled from his startled steed, the bikuni's blade swept upward, severing one arm and half his head with one stroke. He struck the ground in parts, snow and wind swirling about a fragmented, twitching corpse.

She heard more horses, but could not see them in the night and snow. There were additional men afoot, running from she knew not where, searching for her. By now, Otane, and what remained of her family, would have found safe shelter. The nun felt only anguish about the endless slaughter. She was not eager to continue a harvest she had sought previously to avoid. Now that Otane and the others were away, there was no need to carry on.

She ran between two buildings that stood too close together for a horse to get through. Had anyone seen her? She was uncertain. Her only plan was to vanish into the hard blizzard before more vassals found her, attacked her, fell before her blade.

She crossed a small clearing and stumbled on something buried by the snow, plunging to hands and knees. Her fall uncovered the corpse of the young samurai she had slain early in the evening, the first of the many who died in the past hours.

He was frozen solid. His face was contorted, his cheeks sunken, his eyes two sharp crystals. The nun scrabbled to her feet, hearing someone in pursuit. The door of one of the buildings had been flung open. The bikuni sensed an upraised weapon and heard a strange sort of scuffing through snow. She turned, cut crosswise, then stood waiting for her latest victim to collapse.

It was a hunchbacked woman, older than even widow Todawa. Little of her visage could be seen because she had bandaged her chapped face against the weather. Her eyes were ancient and tormented.

Snow rose up around them so that in the whole of the universe, there existed none but the esoteric nun and a feeble hunchback whose stomach cascaded blood. The old woman dropped her knife, clutched at her stomach with bony fingers, and slumped to her knees.

A reedy, sad voice exclaimed, “I regret that I have failed to avenge you, Chojiro!”

The nun knelt before Chojiro's elderly aunty. If not for this one woman, the nun might never have given another thought to the chubby vassal who had begged uselessly to be spared, who had vowed to live an upright life from then on if he could be allowed to live at all. How swiftly his head dropped free of his body! How easy to kill a man! How difficult to raise him up again! What good was there in making a lantern out of stone and placing it somewhere for the sake of one man, or two, or three among the countless slain? Hers was a warrior's life, a warrior's way, a warrior's fate. She could not, in the depths of her heart, feel guilt or shame. But she could feel pity. And she cried above the sound of the snowy gale, “Aunty! I intended all along to give my blood to you! Don't give up! You can still stab me!”

Ancient eyes looked hopeful yet forlorn. She said, “You will let me?”

The nun grabbed the old aunty's knife and put it in bloodied, bony hands. “Strike deep!” she counseled. “Don't die before you've won!”

“Thank you,” said the dying aunty. But as she tried to push the point of the knife into the nun's belly, she found she lacked the strength to cut so much as a thread of the kimono. The nun wrapped her own hands around those twisted, knotted hands of the aunty and helped in the performance of the revenge. The knife went deep into the bikuni's stomach; and the old woman passed gratefully into another realm.

For a long while the bikuni did not move, knowing how well cut she really was. The old aunty, though dead and staring without sight, still clutched the blade, still sat knee-to-knee with the bikuni, snow clinging to her brows and bandages.

There was only the sound of the blizzard.

The only light was that which filtered through snow from the open door of the house from which the old aunty had made her unexpected charge. Lord Sato's men surely searched the area; but they did not seem apt to find anyone in such weather.

The bikuni drew away from the old aunty, whose corpse fell backward, taking out the knife. Blood gushed onto the bikuni's lap. She stretched herself across the snow and began to crawl. She probably had not gone far when her strength gave out. The cold began to numb her body. Aching fingers closed around someone's ankle. She looked upward through whirling flakes and saw a one-eyed man, a young man who was beautiful except for the eye, which had been plucked out, which had healed with frightful scarring of the sunken lid. He gazed at the injured nun at his feet, his one eye impassive. She recognized him, although she had never expected him to have but one eye; it made an awful sense in light of Lady Echiko's inquiry about his vision.

“Heinosuke,” said the nun, raising her hand toward his knee. “Help me, Heinosuke.”

By morning, the blizzard had broken. The snow level had dropped from peaks to the mountain thighs, leaving no trace of autumn on high though in the lower country autumn was still young. Priest Bundori, short and bowlegged and stooped, stood upon the threshold of the shrine-house, gazing over the compound. Every bush and limb and patch of ground was covered with snow, knee-deep in places. The ponds were thinly iced. The garden's smooth boulders had been transformed into bleached skulls.

Beyond sight, but within earshot, snow shook loose from high limbs and crashed noisily toward the ground. Bundori plodded along the path toward a tool shed. After some difficulty getting the door to open, he managed to retrieve a wooden scoop with which to begin clearing the main path.

As he worked, he looked worriedly about. The labor was less fulfilling than usual. He felt more wretched than he had felt in many years. He had tended to brood in his youth, but had almost forgotten the feeling.

The white buck had gone off in the middle of the blizzard, only to return well before dawn, his white flanks stained with blood not his own. His crimson eyes were wild, as from a battle. Bundori did not know what to make of it; he certainly did not like it. When the buck returned, Bundori was quick to cleanse the blood from the beast and say prayers of exorcism, lest the blood of dead animals or men despoil the shrine.

Now, as Bundori shoveled the path, he could see the buck in his open shelter, looking innocent as he slept, his flanks shaking occasionally as he dreamed.

At the end of the previous day, Bundori had sent one of his white birds, charged with protective charms, on a mission to discover the whereabouts of the nun. As the nun had been gone the whole day, Bundori worried; but he was reluctant to put his nose in more of her affairs, since she would not count it as a favor.

Akuni had come back with a slightly clipped wing—or, rather, a cut kimono, since she had straggled home in human guise. She brought disturbing if somewhat circumspect news. She also brought the nun's incognito-hat or amigasa, and the alms-bag which had had sword-damage done to it since Bundori last set eyes upon it. Akuni said the nun had left these items outside a shuttered teahouse and then headed for the castle.

Avoiding a few pertinent queries, Akuni pled weariness and returned more eagerly than usual to her true form. She retired to her nest, aided by Bundori's hands, since her wings were unbalanced; and she snuggled with her pretty husband Udo.

Bundori was unable to sleep during that long night. By the light of the fireplace coals, and while the blizzard whistled and growled at his door and roof, Bundori sat with dry straw to repair the nun's alms-bag. When this was finished, he began to reinforce an extra pair of straw boots for her, since she had gone off in borrowed geta, not expecting a first snow or one so heavy. The straw sandals she had worn to the shrine were worn out, not to mention unsuited to the change in weather. “She'll like these,” he said, putting the straw boots alongside the bamboo amigasa and wicker alms-bag.

The night had become even more disturbing when he found his white buck had run off, only to return bloodied like that. Increasingly fretful, Bundori began to invest strong Omo and lordly Guma with as strong a protective spell as he could muster. When the blizzard stopped before dawn, he sent the two birds over the snows to see what they could find out about the missing nun. If she were in trouble, Bundori would feel responsible.

As he worked upon the path, he kept watching for the return of Guma and Omo, whether flying home or returning through the snow in human forms. As it turned out, when they finally appeared, they came as humans; and they carried the serpent youth, to whom Bundori had not given much thought after the day the bikuni had brought a small white snake to the shrine.

The two man-birds carried the seriously wounded youth to the edge of the shrine grounds, setting him down at the property's periphery. Omo remained with the uncomplaining youth. Guma, looking like the moody ghost of an early Mikado, went forth to meet Bundori halfway along the path.

“Raski is hurt and may not live,” said Guma. “He has caused a lot of harm in the night. For this reason I am uncertain whether you will want him to die upon these holy premises. Perhaps he is not pure and blessed as other white beasts, and his death within these grounds would be a desecration. Nevertheless, he is our friend, though we didn't know him long.”

Bundori went to the rustic fence to see how Raski fared. There were two arrows sticking out of his chest and a number of sword cuts about his body. He had lost more blood than he retained. His eyes had the same wild look that the white buck had borne home. “Yes,” said Bundori. “Bring him. Break the fletches from the arrows and draw the shafts on through. I'll mix a healing unguent, though it doesn't look like anything will help.”

Inside the shrine-house, Guma's imperious wife Iwazu set her infant down and quickly unrolled a bamboo mat on which the man-birds placed poor Raski. They tried to get him to speak, but he would only stare wildly. His sallow face and bright red eyes were far more frightful and weird than the faces of the pale bird-folk, who were strange but oddly placid creatures.

“He doesn't have his senses,” said Iwazu. “I don't think he's in pain.”

Lordly Guma said softly, “We may never know.”