Disciple of the Wind (52 page)

Shichio intended to do just that. As soon as the Bear Cub showed his face, Shichio planned to fall back behind the six in the teahouse, with Oda Tomonosuke at his side. He did not count Oda as a bodyguard per se—he hadn’t known the man long enough to place that much trust in him—but the aging lord had already proved himself an able sensei and a deadly sword hand. He had provided helpful intelligence about Nene as well—quite accidentally, of course, but Shichio did not count that as a mark against him. As a sword master he did not approve of Shichio’s mask, but neither did he mock it, and he begrudgingly allowed his student to wear it while training. As well he should, Shichio thought, since I am his only income. Oda hadn’t yet
given him cause to mention this aloud, another testament to his new sensei’s wisdom.

“She is here,” said Oda, nodding toward a twittering flock of sparrows startled from their roost. Once again the man proved his usefulness. Since he was Nene’s confidant, Shichio decided to keep him at his side; if she sent archers or arquebusiers, fear of hitting her friend might make them reluctant to let fly.

“What do you think?” Shichio asked. “Will she come herself, or will she send an envoy?”

Oda gave him a puzzled look. “Her messenger said she had to see this gift with her own eyes. Isn’t that what you told me?”

“Yes, it is.” And you believe every single thing you hear, Shichio thought. Poor man. “Soon enough we’ll see if she is as good as her word, won’t we? Yes, we will.”

Soon enough, her horse came into view—but not with Nene. The woman in the saddle was chubby, almost barrel-chested. A huge parasol rested on her shoulder, and a silken veil shielded her against the armies of biting insects that made the valley their home. She wore lilac and lavender, not Nene’s finest colors, though Shichio recalled seeing her ladies-in-waiting dressed that way. The man walking ahead of her horse, leading it by the rein, was flailing at a cloud of mosquitoes. Shichio recognized him by his black
hachimaki
. Nezumi. He wore a sword on one hip and a quiver on the other, and swatted uselessly at the mosquitoes with a long, black bow.

“I do not think that is Lady Nene,” Oda said.

No, Shichio thought, and perhaps you might also like to announce whether you think that bright disc in the sky is the sun or the moon. “Well, what do you know? She broke her word to us. Later we’ll have to talk about how often she does that.”

“This one must be a trusted handmaiden.”

Yes, Shichio thought, and it’s the sun, by the way; the moon comes later.

“Lord Kumanai,” Nezumi called. “My lady sends her greetings. And I bring you tidings: the Bear Cub still lives.”

Shichio bit back a frustrated growl. “You know this because you found him? Or because you are wasting my time with an idle guess?”

“Heh heh. I found him right enough. I meant to kill him too, and collect your bounty, but your bear hunters botched it. Don’t you worry, though. When he shows up here, I’ll be the first to put an arrow in him—and then I’ll expect the rest of the reward you promised.”

Expect a few arrows of your own, Shichio thought. Nezumi’s eyes flicked down to the mask, and Shichio realized that imagining those piercing arrows must have heightened his ardor for it. Now he cradled the mask in one hand and stroked it with the other, just like a pet. One finger traced the rim of an eyehole, running around and around and around.

“Your reward,” Shichio said, snapping himself back to the present. “Yes. You’re sure he’ll come?”

“Heh heh. You tell me. How much does he want to kill you?”

Shichio nodded, granting the point. Nezumi smacked a mosquito, squashing it against his forearm and leaving a bloody smudge where it died. The sight of blood usually sickened Shichio, but today it titillated. The mask was unusually hungry—perhaps because triumph was so close at hand? No. This was something else. Something familiar. But he could not place it.

Nezumi stopped the horse some six or seven paces away, and when the girl in lilac tried to dismount, she slipped out of the saddle. Shichio caught only a glimpse as the veil fluttered away from her face, her mouth open in a dumbstruck O. He imagined her embarrassed blush under that white face paint. A delicate courtier like this one had probably never ventured so deep into the wild. Shichio knew everyone thought of him as effete, but at least he knew how to step in and out of the saddle.

No doubt Nezumi also thought of him as effeminate, and saw Oda as the only threat here. So much the better. Shichio glanced up to the falls, verifying that all of his bowmen remained invisible, but something drew his attention back to Nene’s errand boy—or rather, to his
sword. It was the mask that called to him. It seemed to writhe in his hand, waking a lust that crawled through Shichio’s body like a nest of snakes. He’d never felt its need so acutely before, but—no. He had. Once. At the Okuma compound.

Only Inazuma steel could arouse the mask this way. Glorious Victory Unsought was nearby. That meant the whelp was too. But where?

The mask made him acutely aware of Nezumi’s swords, and Oda’s, and his own. Even the samurai in the teahouse seemed to resonate to him, like a bell’s lingering tone long after it was struck. But there was Inazuma steel too. Where? He scanned the pool, the rocks, the bamboo clinging to the valley walls. There was no sign.

Where was the Bear Cub? And what was that hanging in the air? It looked like smoke, a faint blue ribbon of it, rising up from the ledge where his archers lay in ambush. No—not rising up
from
, but falling down
to
. Now there came another, fluttering down from the very crest of the cliff. Shichio could just make out the little iron ball sputtering flame.

45

W
hen people told the story of Prince Yamato, they never mentioned what a difficult time the prince must have had moving around in women’s clothing.

Daigoro found the lilac kimono terribly confining, not because it was too small for him but because a courtly woman wore her garments so tight that she could hardly breathe. Daigoro didn’t suffer that particular problem—his Sora breastplate gave him adequate breathing room—but the silken kimono still made it hard to move. As difficult as it had been getting up into the saddle, somehow he’d given no thought to what would happen when he tried to get back down.

The moment he fell off the horse, he was certain the ruse would fall apart. Shichio looked him right in the eye. But with the makeup, and with his hair down, and with the veil and head ornaments and everything else, Daigoro supposed Shichio must have seen only what he expected to see. And if there was one benefit to wearing such tightly constricting clothes, it was that they made his limp invisible. Since he was confined to small, shuffling steps, it was as if he limped from both legs.

He’d hoped to walk right up to Shichio before the first explosion. Now he could only hope Katsushima would understand what it meant for him to fall from the saddle. They had prearranged the signal yesterday afternoon: when Daigoro dismounted, light the first grenade. That was the last time they’d spoken. Katsushima had spent the whole
night hiking up the neighboring dell. Some time early this morning, he would have looped back down to reach the cliff top overlooking Obyo Falls. Daigoro had allowed him plenty of time, because they had no way to communicate—nor any way to discuss whether tumbling out of the saddle counted as dismounting.

Looking up, he saw Katsushima had arrived at the top of the cliff after all. Right on cue, he’d lit the first grenade. Even now, Daigoro saw the second one fall, trailing a string of blue smoke behind it. It was clear from his bewildered look that Shichio saw it too.

Daigoro jerked his
tanto
from a sheath inside his
obi
and cut away the lilac kimono. As he reached for the fallen parasol, a thunderclap punched him in the ear. It was the loudest noise he’d ever heard in his life.

*   *   *

Smoke consumed the ledge where Shichio’s archers were hiding. In the same instant, a shuddering
bang
almost knocked Shichio flat. A lightning bolt could not have been louder. Then came a second
bang
, and this one did knock him down. Behind him, a horse screamed and reared. He turned, hoping to see the horse running away instead of trampling toward him. Instead he saw the Bear Cub.

The whelp had cut himself free of that ludicrous lilac kimono, and now he was scrambling for the parasol. No, not a parasol. Glorious Victory Unsought, in the thinnest disguise imaginable. Shichio could not believe he’d fallen for the ruse. “Loose, damn you, loose!” he shouted. “Kill them! Kill them all!”

*   *   *

The world fell into chaos. The peacock shrieked like a frightened maid, shouting at his hidden archers. Nene’s horse nearly stove Daigoro’s skull in. It bucked and jumped, spinning with a dexterity Daigoro wouldn’t have believed possible. Then it fled for its life.

A third Mongol grenade exploded, filling the valley with thunder. Still Shichio screamed for his archers, not realizing in his panic that all
of them were dead. Tatters of the damned kimono still clung to Daigoro’s knees, hobbling him as he struggled to reach Glorious Victory. He wasted a precious moment cutting the last of the kimono asunder, then looked up to see the teahouse erupt with armored samurai.

Scrambling on his hands and knees, he reached his father’s sword. Over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of Nezumi drawing a blade—too late. Oda Tomonosuke lunged for him, slow but with peerless form. Nezumi fell, clutching the red gash where his eyes used to be.

Shichio’s samurai advanced in unison—warned, perhaps, that they stood no chance against Daigoro if they faced him one-on-one. Daigoro drew Glorious Victory and struggled to his feet. This would not be like the Green Cliff. There he’d taken his enemies by surprise. These ones were waiting for him.

But not for the smoking iron ball that fell in their midst. A trail of thin blue smoke arced behind it, all the way back up to Katsushima. The explosion was deafening. Men flew in every direction. Daigoro caught a faceful of shards, both metal and bone.

He could not let it slow him. Half blind with blood, he lashed out and took a man’s leg at the knee. Something chopped him right under the arm, ringing off his Sora
yoroi
. He chopped back. Someone screamed and died.

His sudden onslaught bought him a moment’s reprieve, just long enough to wipe the blood from his eyes. There was no sign of Shichio. Four samurai lay dead; Daigoro only remembered felling two of them. Two others still stood, spreading out to flank him. Nezumi rolled on the ground, howling and clutching his face. Daigoro glanced over his shoulder and saw exactly what he did not want to see: Oda Tomonosuke, a broken and vengeful man, a man with nothing to live for, yet one who had made his name as an expert swordsman.

Daigoro was alone, surrounded on three sides. He could not see Shichio anywhere.

*   *   *

Everything had gone to hell. Shichio had no idea what happened on that rock shelf, but all of his archers were dead. Dead before loosing a single arrow. The air tasted of mud and burnt gunpowder. Half of his samurai were dead, maybe more. He didn’t dare look. Nezumi screamed piteously. His cries echoed off the cliff, even louder than the waterfall.

Shichio cursed himself for a craven. He hadn’t even managed to draw his sword. He cowered behind the teahouse, the water just ankle-deep, but since he was crouching he was in to his balls. Cold and dripping, safe but humiliated.

Only his mask could restore his courage. As he tied it in place, the huge Inazuma blade sang out to him. It was visible even through the wooden walls of the teahouse, glowing like the sun through closed eyelids. The mask saw the other swords too, and one thing more: a little globe sailing through the air.

Shichio looked up and saw the thing. It smoked and sparked as it flew. Totally without thought, acting solely by reflex, he swung at the flying orb. He couldn’t even say how his sword came to be in his hand. Guided by the mask, the flat of his blade hit the globe and sent it right back where it came from.

Halfway there, it vanished. Smoke and fury took its place. The noise was enough to buckle Shichio’s knees. A thousand fragments pierced the surface of the pool. A thousand more hit the cliff, the teahouse, the mask. Some flew upward too. Shichio heard a grunt from above, and for the first time he noticed the shabby
ronin
.

The explosion sent some of its deadly claws into the
ronin’s
face, and since he’d shielded his eyes, the claws tore up his hands too. Now he bled freely. Either the wounds did not pain him or he was too much the samurai to cry out, but Shichio could hear him curse.

Good, he thought. The son of a bitch would have a front row seat to the Bear Cub’s demise.

*   *   *

Daigoro heard a metallic
clang
from the pool. An instant later a Mongol grenade exploded in midair.

It took everyone by surprise. It was also just the distraction Daigoro needed to cut his way free of his fate. But by the time he realized that, the others did too, and they were all right back where they started—with one crucial difference: Katsushima was out of the fight.

Daigoro didn’t need to see him to know his friend was hurt. Hearing Katsushima’s curses, he knew they came through gritted teeth. That was all the attention he could spare for his closest friend, for he had enemies encroaching on three sides.

“Oda-sama,” he called, “this is not your fight. I killed your son; don’t make me kill you too.”

A cold, cruel light filled Oda’s eyes. “You forget: I asked you to kill me.”

He was right: Daigoro had forgotten. Now Daigoro reassessed that look in Oda’s eye. It wasn’t cruelty: it was total detachment. Oda no longer cared whether he lived or died. It was a fearless, deadly state of mind.

“You could marry again,” Daigoro said. “Have more sons. Continue your family name. Don’t be the last of the Odas.”

Oda lowered his blade. It was still a fighting stance—upward cuts were best for slipping underneath armor—but it was not especially aggressive. For a moment, Daigoro thought he meant to stay clear of the fray. But then, in a soft, calm voice, Oda said, “I will press the attack. You two, cut for the hamstrings. And beware his reach.”