Brilliance of the Moon (11 page)

I stood facing Iida’s cousin as I’d wished I’d faced Iida
himself. I knew Nariaki despised me, and with reason: I did not have his
training or his skills, but in his scorn I saw his weakness. He rushed forward,
the sword whirling: His plan was to try to cut me down with his longer reach. I
suddenly saw myself in the hall at Terayama, practicing with Matsuda. I saw
Kaede’s image as I had seen it then; she was my life and my strength.
Tonight
we will sleep in Maruyama
, I promised her again, and
the same move came to me.

Black blood
, I thought; maybe I even shouted it aloud to Nariaki.
You
have it and I have it. We are of the same class
. I
felt Shigeru’s hand within
my own. And then Jato bit
home and Iida Nanaki’s red blood was spraying my face.

As he fell forward onto his knees Jato struck again, and his head
bounced at my feet, his eyes still full of fury, his lips snarling.

That scene remains engraved in my memory, but little else does.

There was no time to feel fear, no time to think at all. The
moves I’d been taught by Shigeru and by Matsuda came to my sword through my arm
but not by my conscious will. Once Nariaki was dead, I turned to Shun. Blinking
the sweat from my eyes, I saw Jo-An at his head; the outcast held my enemy’s
horse too.

“Get them out of the way,” I shouted. Hiroshi had been right
about the terrain. As the Tohan and Seishuu troops were driven back and we
advanced, the crush intensified. Terrified horses stumbled in holes, breaking
their legs, or were forced up against boulders, unable to go forward or back,
panicking.

Jo-An scrambled like a monkey onto Shun’s back and forced his way
through the milling men. From time to time I was aware of him, moving through
the fray, taking riderless, panic-stricken animals to the forest. As he’d said,
there are many tasks in a battle besides killing. Soon I could see the Otori
and Maruyama banners ahead of us, and I saw the Miyoshi crest too. The army
between us was trapped. They continued to fight savagely, but they had no way
out and no hope.

I don’t think one of them escaped alive. The river foamed red
with their blood. After it was all over and silence had descended, the outcasts
took care of the bodies and laid them out in rows. When we met up with Sugita
we walked along the lines of the dead, and he was able to identify many of
them. Jo-An and his men had already taken charge of dozens of horses. Now they
stripped the dead of their weapons and armor and arranged to burn the corpses.

The day had passed without my noticing time. It must have been
the Hour of the Dog; the battle had lasted five or six hours. Our armies had
been roughly equal: a little under two thousand men on each side. But the Tohan
had lost all of theirs, while we had less than a hundred dead and two hundred
wounded.

Jo-An brought Shun back to me and I rode with Sugita into the forest
where Kaede had been waiting. Manami had managed to set up camp with her usual
efficiency and had lit a fire and boiled water. Kaede knelt on a carpet beneath
the trees. We could see her figure through the silver-gray trunks of the
beeches, cloaked by her hair, her back straight. As we drew nearer I saw that
her eyes were closed.

Manami came to meet us, her eyes bright and red-rimmed. “She has
been praying,” she whispered. “She has sat like that for hours.”

I dismounted and called her name. Kaede opened her eyes and joy and
relief leaped into her face. She bowed her head to the ground, her lips moving
in silent thanks. I knelt before her and Sugita did likewise.

“We have won a great victory,” he said. “lida Nariaki is dead,
and nothing now will stop you from taking possession of your domain at Maruyama.“

“I am immensely grateful to you for your loyalty and courage,”
she said to him, and then turned to me.

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so.” The frenzy of battle was fading and I was
aching all over. My ears were ringing, and the smell of blood and death that
clung to me was nauseating me. Kaede looked unattainably clean and pure.

“I prayed for your safety,” she said, her voice low. Sugita’s
presence made us awkward with each other.

“Take some tea,” Manami urged us. I realized my mouth was
completely dry, my lips caked with blood.

“We are so dirty…” I began, but she put the cup in my hand and I
drank it gratefully.

It was past sunset and the evening light was clear and tinged
with blue. The wind had dropped and birds were singing their last songs of the
day. I heard a rustling in the grass and looked up to see a hare cross the
clearing in the distance. I drank the tea and looked at the hare. It gazed back
at me with its large, wild eyes for many moments before it bounded away. The
tea’s taste was smoky and bitter.

Two battles lay behind us, three ahead, if the prophecy was to be
believed:
Two now to win and one to lose
.

One month earlier, after Shirakawa Kaede had left with the
Miyoshi brothers to go to the temple guest house at Terayama, Muto Shizuka had
set out for the secret village of her Tribe family, hidden in the mountains on
the far side of Yamagata. Kaede had wept when they said farewell to each other,
had pressed money on Shizuka and insisted she take one of the packhorses and
send it back when she could, but Shizuka knew she would be quickly forgotten
once Kaede was with Takeo.

Shizuka was deeply uneasy about leaving Kaede and about the
impetuous decision to marry Takeo. She rode silently, brooding on the madness
of love and the disaster the marriage would be to them. She had no doubt they
would marry: Now that fate had brought them together again, nothing would stop
them. But she feared for them once Arai heard the news. And when her thoughts
turned to Lord Fujiwara, a chill came over her despite the spring sunshine. She
knew he could only be insulted and outraged, and she dreaded what he might do
in revenge.

Kondo rode with her, his mood no better than hers. He seemed
distressed and annoyed at being dismissed so suddenly. Several times he said,
“She could have trusted me! After all I’ve done for her! I swore allegiance to
her, after all. I would never do anything to harm her.”

Kaede’s spell
has fallen on him too
, Shizuka thought.
He’s
been flattered by her reliance on him. She turned to him
so
often; now she will turn to Takeo
.

“It was Takeo’s order that we leave,” she told him. “He is right.
He cannot trust any one of us.”

“What a mess,” Kondo said gloomily. “Where shall I go now, I
wonder. I liked it with Lady Shirakawa. The place suited me.” He threw his head
back and sniffed.

“The Muto family may have new instructions for both of us,”
Shizuka replied shortly.

“I’m getting on,” he grumbled. “I wouldn’t mind settling down.
I’ll make way for the next generation. If only there were more of them!” He
turned his head and gave her his ironic smile. There was something in his look
that unsettled her, some warmth behind the irony. In his guarded way he was
making some kind of advance to her. Ever since he’d saved her life on the road
to Shirakawa the previous year, a tension had existed between them. She was
grateful to him and had at one time thought she might sleep with him, but then
the affair had begun with Dr. Ishida, Lord Fujiwara’s physician, and she had
wanted no one but him.

Though, she thought ruefully, that was hardly being practical.
Kaede’s marriage to Takeo would effectively remove her from Ishida forever. She
had no idea how she could ever meet the doctor again. His farewells had been
warm; he had pressed her to return as soon as possible, had even gone so far as
to say he would miss her. But how could she return to him if she was no longer
in Kaede’s service and part of her household? Their affair had been conducted
with great secrecy thus far, but if Fujiwara were to hear of it, she feared for
the physician’s safety.
I am as bad as Kaede
, she thought.
Truly you never reach the age when you
escape being scorched by love
.

They passed through Yamagata and traveled another twenty miles to
a village where they stayed the night. Kondo knew the innkeeper; they might
even have been related, though Shizuka did not care enough to find out. As she
feared, he made it clear that he wanted to sleep with her, and she saw the
disappointment in his eyes when she pleaded exhaustion, but he did not press
her or force her as he might have done. She felt grateful and then annoyed with
herself for so feeling.

However, the next morning, after they had left the horses at the
inn and begun the steep climb on foot into the mountains, Kondo said, “Why
don’t we get married? We’d make a good team. You’ve got two boys, haven’t you?
I could adopt them. We’re not too old to have more children together. Your
family would approve.”

Her heart sank at the thought, especially as she knew her family
probably would approve.

“You’re not married?” It seemed surprising, given his age. “I was
married when I was seventeen, to a Kuroda woman. She died several years ago. We
had no children.”

Shizuka glanced at him, wondering if he grieved for her. He said,
“She was a very unhappy woman. She was not completely sane. She had long
periods when she was tormented by horrible imaginings and fears. She saw ghosts
and demons. She was not so bad when I was with her, but I was frequently
ordered to travel. I worked as a spy for my mother’s family, the Kondo, who had
adopted me. On one long trip away I was delayed by bad weather. When I did not
return at the expected time, she hanged herself.”

For the first time his voice lost its irony. She perceived his
real grief and found herself suddenly, unexpectedly moved by him.

“Maybe she was taught too harshly,” he said. “I’ve often wondered
what we do to our children. In many ways it was a relief to have none.”

“When you’re a child, it’s like a game,” Shizuka said. “I
remember being proud of the skills I had, and despising other people for not having
them. You don’t question the way you’re brought up; that’s just how it is.“

“You are talented; you are the Muto masters’ niece and
grandchild. Being Kuroda, in the middle, is not so easy. And if you don’t have
natural talents, the training is very difficult.” He paused and went on
quietly: “Possibly she was too sensitive. No upbringing can completely
eradicate a person’s essential character.”

“I wonder. I’m
sorry for your loss.”

“Well, it was a long time ago. But it certainly made me question
a lot of things I’d been taught. Not that I tell most people. When you’re part
of the Tribe, you’re obedient, that’s all there is to it.”

“Maybe if Takeo had been brought up in the Tribe, he would have
learned obedience as we all do,” Shizuka said, as if thinking aloud. “He hated
being told what to do and he hated being confined. So, what do the Kikuta do?
Give him to Akio for training as if he were a two-year-old. They’ve only
themselves to blame for his defection. Shigeru knew how to handle him from the
start. He won his loyalty. Takeo would have done anything for him.”

As we all
would have done
, she found herself thinking, and tried
to suppress it. She had many secrets concerning Lord Shigeru that only the dead
knew, and she was afraid Kondo might discern them.

“What Takeo did was quite considerable,” Kondo said, “if you
believe all the stories.”

“Are you impressed, Kondo? I thought nothing impressed you!”

“Everyone admires courage,” he replied. “And, like Takeo, I am
also of mixed blood, from both the Tribe and the clans. I was raised by the
Tribe until I was twelve and then I became a warrior on the surface, a spy
beneath. Maybe I understand something of the conflict he must have gone
through.”

They walked in silence for a while, then he said, “Anyway, I
think you know I am impressed by you.”

He was less guarded today, more open in his feeling toward her.
She was acutely aware of his desire and, once she had pitied him, less able to
resist it. As Arai’s mistress or as Kaede’s maid, she had had status and the
protection status gave her, but now nothing was left to her apart from her own
skills and this man who had saved her life and would not make a bad husband.
There was no reason not to sleep with him, so after they stopped to eat, around
noon, she let him lead her into the shade of the trees. The smell of pine
needles and cedar was all around them, the sun warm, the breeze soft. A distant
waterfall splashed, muted. Everything spoke of new life and spring. His
lovemaking was not as bad as she’d feared, though he was rough and quick
compared to Ishida.

Shizuka thought,
If this is what is to be, I must make
the best of it
. And then she thought,
What’s
happened to me? Have I suddenly got old? A year ago I would have given a man
like Kondo short shrift, but a year ago I still thought I was Arai’s. And so
much has happened since then, so much intrigue, so many deaths: losing Shigeru
and Naomi, pretending all the time I did not care; barely able to weep, not
even when the father of my children tried to have me murdered, not even when I
thought Kaede would die
…