Cloud of Sparrows (49 page)

Kawakami could see his men retreating from the monastery toward him, and in rapidly worsening disorder. “Our forces appear to be moving in the wrong direction.”

“The unexpected gunfire has caused some confusion,” the adjutant said.

“Then go forward and restore order.”

“Yes, lord.” But the adjutant did nothing to urge his horse forward.

Kawakami was about to unleash a torrent of invective when he was interrupted by shouts behind him.

“Genji!”

“Genji!”

“Genji!”

Shouting the Okumichi war cry, mounted samurai crashed through the undefended rear of Kawakami’s position. Caught on foot without their own horses, with their muskets stacked and unreachable, trapped between volleys of gunfire and charging cavalry, Kawakami’s battalion dissolved in total panic. Many threw down their swords and ran for the only exit from the trap, the road back to Edo. Bullets, swords, and horses’ hooves decimated them as they fled.

Kawakami and his adjutant were surrounded before they could go very far. Their resistance being feeble, both were captured with little drama.

“Hold,” Kawakami said. “I am more valuable to you alive than dead. I am Lord Kawakami.” Despite being a captive, his sense of importance was undiminished. This was merely a setback, not a permanent defeat. “Despite the banners you fly, you are not Okumichi samurai, are you? Who is your lord? Take me to him.”

For fifteen years, Mukai had been a loyal, subservient assistant chief of the Shogun’s secret police. He did what his lord, Kawakami, told him to do, without much concern about the frequent anguish and very occasional satisfaction his work produced. The purpose of life was not to seek particular joys, after all, but to venerate and obey those above, and to command and discipline those below.

Almost too late, he had learned that such an existence was not life, but no more than living death.

This was life.

The raw animal power of the charging warhorse beneath him was nothing compared to the vital energy surging through his own being.

“Genji!”

“Genji!”

“Genji!”

Electrified by an almost painful ecstasy, Mukai felt himself to be the living embodiment of the Lightning God as he led the charge to Genji’s rescue. His love had showed him possibilities he had never before dared to imagine. Acting on his love had liberated him forever. The happiness he felt was selfish, personal, utterly pure. He had no thought of duty, family, place, history, tradition, obligation, face, or shame. There was nothing in him but his love, and there was no world except the unity of himself and Genji.

One hundred eighty loyal retainers had followed him in the desperate ride from his tiny northern domain. They had been convinced to do so by Lord Genji’s prophecy of certain victory. Genji had not, to Mukai’s knowledge, made such a prophecy. Mukai had simply lied, and lied extremely well. Love had mysteriously given him the eloquence he needed. His retainers, so used to a clumsy, self-effacing, tongue-tied lord, were amazed into belief and obedience.

Now, the sparrow-and-arrows banner flying over him as in his dreams, Mukai was beyond fear and hope, life and death, past and future. He struck at the men obstructing his path with joyous abandon.

“Genji!”

He shouted the name of his love, a declaration, a battle cry, a sacred mantra.

Mad with fear of flying bullets and crashing horses’ hooves, many of Kawakami’s men tried to find sanctuary within Genji’s circle. The press of so many panicky swordsmen threatened to do what Kawakami’s planned assault had not. Genji and his companions were on the verge of being overwhelmed.

Had he come this far only to arrive moments too late? Mukai cursed the poor grasp of strategy that failed to tell him where Kawakami would set the ambush; had he been blessed with a better military mind, he would have known where to go and would have arrived days ago. He cursed the wretched sense of direction that had led him down one wrong path after another on his way through the mountains; with a better knowledge of the stars, of wind patterns, of the seasonal movement of birds, he would not have lost precious hours going east instead of west; he cursed the fifteen years he had spent in windowless interrogation chambers; an active outdoorsman would have known the geography of the region, and this would have remedied any failure of strategic wisdom or directional acuity.

No! They could not die apart. Not after love and fate had brought them so close. He broke away from his bodyguards and charged headlong into the swirling mass of men and swords.

“Genji!”

Slashing wildly left and right at every head he saw, he forced his way toward Genji’s position. The sheer multitude of enemy weapons soon brought down his horse. He barely felt the spear thrusts and sword cuts that tore at his body. Genji. He had to reach Genji. He continued to fight his way forward on foot.

“Lord Mukai! Wait!” His retainers struggled to catch up.

“Genji!”

“Mukai!”

He leaped over the wall of horses to Genji’s side. “My lord.” He bowed. “I have come as I promised.”

“Watch out!” Genji used his sword to deflect a blow aimed at Mukai’s back. “We should dispense with the courtesies for now. Let me just say, I am very surprised, and very happy to see you, Mukai.”

“My lord,” Mukai said.

As love had given him eloquence, now it took it away.

“My lord.”

It was all he could say.

Genji was drenched in blood from head to toe. Whether it was his own, that of his enemies, or from the shattered remnants of horses, Mukai could not say. Did it matter? In this doomed and precious moment, together with Genji, fighting at his side against the most impossible of odds, all sense of self and other disappeared. There was neither subject nor object, nor absence of subject and object. There was neither the passage of time, nor the absence of its passage. What was within him and what was without? Not only was he unable to find an answer, the question itself was nonsense.

“My lord.”

For several desperate moments, it seemed the end had come. There were too many of Kawakami’s men, and too few of Genji’s. For every one they cut down, three more took their place. Then, just as the ring of swords began to close around them for the final time, another volley of musket fire came from the walls and all resistance collapsed. All at once, as if a silent command had passed among them, Kawakami’s men discarded their weapons and threw themselves on the ground.

It was over.

Mukai said, “You have triumphed, my lord.”

“No,” Genji said, “you have triumphed, Mukai. This victory is yours alone.”

Mukai smiled a smile so radiant he felt certain his whole body glowed.

“Mukai!” Genji caught him in his arms as he collapsed.

“Lord!” Mukai’s retainers came forward. He waved them off without taking his eyes away from Genji’s face for a single moment.

“Where are you hurt?” Genji said.

Mukai didn’t care about his wounds. He wanted to tell Genji dreams came true not only for visionaries but for ordinary men like himself, too, if they were completely sincere. He wanted to say he had dreamed of this very moment with perfect clarity—the blood, the embrace, the death, the fearlessness, and, most especially, the eternal, transcendent, ecstatic oneness beyond all limitations of perception, definition, and understanding.

Then he no longer wanted even that, and there was only the smile.

“Lord!” Mukai’s men watched in shock as Genji lowered their lord’s body to the ground. He had told them Genji had prophesied victory. He had said nothing about his own death.

“Lord Mukai is dead,” Genji said.

“Lord Genji, what are we to do? Without Lord Mukai, we are masterless. He has no blood heir. The Shogun may well confiscate his fief.”

“You are the loyal retainers of a most loyal and self-sacrificing friend,” Genji said. “All who wish may enter my service.”

“Then we are henceforth your vassals, Lord Genji.” Mukai’s former lieutenants bowed deeply to their new lord. “What do you command?”

“Well, well,” Kawakami said, “how touching, and how dramatic. Perhaps one day this will appear as a scene in a kabuki play about your life, Lord Genji.” He looked down at them from his saddle, his expression as confident as always. Intimidated by his status, Mukai’s men accompanied him as they would a guest rather than a captive. In vivid contrast to everyone else, he and his adjutant wore immaculate clothing unblemished by combat.

“Dismount,” Genji said.

Kawakami frowned. “Permit me to caution you against getting carried away. The only change is an improvement in your chances of survival.” He was no swordsman. His art was otherwise. It was, ironically enough, knowledge, that very quality the Okumichis supposedly possessed beyond all other men. It was knowledge that would give him the ultimate victory. “If you negotiate intelligently, you may actually enjoy significant benefit. May I suggest—”

Genji reached up, grabbed Kawakami’s arm, and threw him to the ground.

Kawakami, choking and gagging, lifted his face out of the muddy gore. “You—”

Genji’s sword arced above Kawakami and sliced through most of his neck in a downward cut from right to left. The dead man’s head flopped between his shoulders, held there by spinal gristle. Blood fountained into the air for an instant, then subsided as quickly as blood pressure dropped to nothing. The corpse fell forward into the mud, the head still between the shoulders, the stupefied face staring at the sky.

Genji looked at the adjutant. He had been in the tent when Kawakami had spoken of Heiko’s origins.

“Lord Genji,” the adjutant said.

“Kill him,” Genji said.

The two men on either side of the adjutant struck immediately. The corpse struck the ground in three pieces—head, right shoulder, and the rest.

Genji looked at the cowering prisoners, perhaps three hundred in number. They were rank-and-file samurai, unlikely to have been privy to any important information. Kawakami had always been fascinated by knowing what others did not. He could not enjoy that advantage by sharing with many. The adjutant knew. Probably, Mukai had also known. Who else? His wife? His concubines? Other geisha? Even if he went on a countrywide killing spree, he couldn’t be sure of eliminating every possibility. With Kawakami gone, it might not be necessary. Few would dare bring forth such outrageous allegations without supporting evidence. That, of course, was the key. The supporting evidence.

Genji said, “Check the monastery for more explosives. Once it is clear, prepare the bath.”

“What of the prisoners, lord?”

“Release them. Without their weapons.”

“Yes, lord.”

He would deal with the evidence as soon as he could. First, he had a meeting with the Shogun to attend.

Miraculously, Saiki had not been killed by the massive explosion inside the monastery. He was unconscious when Mukai’s musketeers found him, covered with the remains of Masahiro and his horse. He was groggy as he lay on the litter bearing him toward Edo. His ears were still ringing and he couldn’t hear anything else. But what bothered him most was that he had missed Kawakami’s decapitation. That he would have liked to see. When his hearing was restored, he would ask Hidé for a detailed report.

Ethan Cruz wasn’t in the monastery. But he was somewhere, and he was alive. He had to be. Stark looked back. This was the second time he’d passed this way. He remembered the trail. He’d find his way here from Edo.

And he’d find Ethan Cruz.

Emily didn’t feel the saddle under her. She hardly felt her own body. Though her eyes were open, nothing she saw made any impression upon her mind.

She was in shock.

So much blood.

So much death.

She tried to recall a comforting line of biblical verse. Nothing came to her.

In that moment when it had seemed they would all die, Genji’s eyes had met hers, and he had smiled at her in his familiar way. Since then, he had once again begun avoiding her. He was careful not to let it appear so. But Heiko could tell. Nuance and subtlety were among her special talents.

What had Kawakami said to Genji at their meeting?

Hanako looked up at Hidé from the litter where she lay. She was very proud of him. With every crisis, he matured further, grew braver, became more focused. Even his posture astride his horse was changed. He was well on the way to becoming the fine samurai she had always known he could be. All he lacked was a wife appropriate to his station in life.

She said, “I release you from our marriage,” and turned her head away. No tears flowed from her eyes, and she controlled her breathing so as not to give the appearance of distress.

Hidé said to Taro, who rode alongside him, “She is delirious.”

Hanako said, “I am no longer fit to be your wife.”

Taro said to Hidé, “Yes, delirium without a doubt. Even the mightiest of warriors, suffering grievous injury, sometimes babble nonsense in the aftermath. Blood loss and shock, I believe, are the causes.”

Hanako said, “You need a life companion who is unmaimed, who can walk behind you without bringing you shame and derision.”