Heart of the Ronin (7 page)

* * *

Kazuko eased back against the wooden wall of the carriage and sighed. The rhythmic movement of the palanquin lulled her. She was comfortable on the thick cushions inside, screened from the unpleasantness of the world by light cloth curtains covering the sides. And she felt fortunate today for the roof on her palanquin. The morning rain had been terrible, and she pitied her bearers having to slog through the mud. But thankfully, the rain had ceased, and the sky was beginning to brighten. The only sounds were the footsteps of her carriage bearers outside, the scuffle and splash of their feet on the road, the creak of the wood in time with the bearers’ pace, the rustle of the breeze through the treetops high above, the chatter of the birds echoing in the lofty boughs, and the sound of Hatsumi’s soft snoring as she napped on the seat opposite her in the palanquin. The smell of the moist, warm breeze wafting through the palanquin’s flap helped to dispel Hatsumi’s cloying perfume. As much as Kazuko loved her handmaid, the older woman always wore too much perfume.

Kazuko peered outside through the flap, widening the gap for a better view. The road was hemmed on both sides by towering forest, and the sun shining down through the leaves seemed to give everything a rich, greenish tinge. Spots of sunlight dappled the puddles in the road like scattered golden coins. Through her small gap, she saw one of her samurai bodyguards, walking just ahead of the carriage off to the side. He walked straight and tall, stoic and serious, alert. He was an imposing, handsome figure, and she admired the certainty of his stride, the confidence of his gait, even when he was soaked to the skin. His once proud topknot was now limp and disheveled. She watched him for a while, admiring the smooth movements of his body, the pleasant shape of his face, and his fierce dark eyes. He was so much more of a man than Yuta had been.

Yuta, a servant in the troop barracks, had been her first love, her dangerous little secret. Her father would have been furious if he knew she had let the boy touch her. Yuta was lithe and beautiful, and his kisses had been so tender. She found herself comparing this strong-looking samurai to Yuta, and there was little for comparison. This man was warrior. Yuta was a court poet in peasant’s clothes. His cleverness had allowed him to slip surreptitious messages to her, in his clumsy, ill-educated, peasant’s handwriting, into her father’s house. Where Yuta had learned to write, she had no idea. His audacity had shocked her at first, but his sweet words had gained her attention, and then warmed her heart. His words had opened the box of her desires, ones she did not know she had. She found herself daydreaming about trying her secret knowledge with him, trying the schooling she had received about how to pleasure a husband. They had found a way to be together once, hidden in the stable one afternoon, but she was too nervous and frightened about being discovered to offer more than a few wonderfully fervent kisses. Part of her wanted to know the reality of what it was to be with a man, but part of her feared it terribly. Men were such coarse creatures, most of them.

One day, she ceased to hear from him. His messages came no more. She had looked for him around the grounds of her father’s estate, but he could not be found. She could hardly inquire after him without raising suspicion. The first few weeks she spent fearing something terrible had happened to him, wondering, wondering, wondering. She tried to ask the servants what had happened to him, but discreetly. All of them claimed to know nothing, but how could that be? Eventually, she had given up, not knowing what else to do. She had missed him terribly for a while, but that had been six months ago. These days, she thought about him wistfully, with a pang of fear that something bad had happened to him, but the pain had passed. If something terrible had happened to him, she would have heard about it. Perhaps his family had been moved to a different part of her father’s lands. Perhaps he had left his family to strike off on his own. Perhaps he had fallen in love with another girl, a peasant girl, and ran away to be married.

She found herself studying this samurai again, her bodyguard, and imagined for a moment that she had received some poems of love from him. Now, would not
that
be exciting!

Then Hatsumi’s voice returned her attention to the cramped interior of the carriage. “Are we home yet? I must have been napping.” Hatsumi yawned widely, exposing her prominent teeth without covering her mouth. Such an impolite gesture would have been unacceptable in public, but here in the confines of their small palanquin and the comfort of their long friendship, Kazuko did not begrudge her.

Kazuko smiled. “Of course we’re not home yet. We have several more days of travel.”

“Oh, I know that. But this traveling is so dreary and frightfully boring. We just walk and walk and walk and we never get anywhere. At least the rain has stopped, I suppose.”

“I think it is exciting! The world is such a big place, and until we went on this journey, I had only ever seen my father’s house.”

Hatsumi sighed and folded her hands in her lap. “The world is so big that a person could get lost in it.” She shuddered. “It’s frightening! I miss home. I wish we were there.”

“Everything is still too new and interesting for me to miss home. Perhaps if we were on a much longer journey I would begin to miss it. It’s just so exciting! Haven’t you enjoyed yourself at all?”

“Lord Tsunetomo’s garden was quite nice. Very beautiful and quiet.”

“And the cherry trees! They were wonderful! Everything was so wonderful! I could have wept for the beauty.”

“Wet sleeves are always fashionable for young ladies. It helps to attract husbands, so they say in the court.”

“But I’m not a weepy court maiden, Hatsumi,” Kazuko said with a wry smile.

“No, you are a princess of bumpkins, and sometimes you think you are a man,” Hatsumi said with an innocent expression.

Kazuko gasped and slapped Hatsumi’s leg affectionately. “I cannot help if Father’s estate is so far from anywhere important. I’m sure you would rather be the servant of some court concubine, someone with a more wealthy family, or higher standing?”

“Only if you were there, Kazuko. You know I could never leave you.”

“And I also cannot help that Father had no other children.”

“Sometimes
he
thinks you are a boy. But one thing is certain. Lord Tsunetomo did not think you were a boy.”

Kazuko’s mouth fell open, and she feigned ignorance. “What do you mean?”

Hatsumi giggled. “I noticed him looking at you like a hungry tiger.”

Kazuko felt herself blushing. “Yes, so did I. I . . . I didn’t like it.”

“Do you suppose your father is trying to find a husband for you?”

Kazuko shook her head vigorously. “Don’t be foolish.”

“
You
are the foolish one. You are old enough to be married now. You should start paying attention to such things. Why do you think Madame Hayako has been tutoring you in the ways of being a lady? Before you know it, you will be too old to find a husband, like me.”

Kazuko protested, “But you’re not too old! You’ll find a husband someday!”

Hatsumi sighed wistfully. “I hope so, but I’m sure you’ll be married long before me. No man ever notices me when you are nearby.”

“I will talk to Father about matching you with one of his men.”

Hatsumi smiled. “So you want to be my matchmaker, eh? Very well, you can be my matchmaker.”

“Oh, it will be so much fun! And I’ll be sure to find you a strong, handsome husband!”

Hatsumi patted Kazuko’s hand. “I’m sure you will, Kazuko. And don’t forget, he must be rich.”

Kazuko giggled and looked back outside through her small opening in the flap at the bushi guarding the palanquin. “I do not know if any of these men are married.”
 

“Captain Mitsubashi is quite handsome.”

Kazuko leaned back out of view as the yojimbo she had been watching, a man named Harata, turned to glance at her as if he had heard part of the conversation. Her ears grew hot with a flush. Then she said, “Why do you think Lord Tsunetomo never married?”

“I heard that he was married once, long ago, but his wife died from a fever.”

“Oh, that’s terrible, but why did he not get married again? He is too old now. He is near retirement age. So unfortunate that a man of his status has no children.”

“I do not—” Hatsumi was cut off by a sharp scream of pain from outside. The palanquin lurched. Hatsumi nearly fell out of it as the front corner fell to the ground.

Kazuko heard the shouts of her bodyguards and other shouts from farther away, along with a few vulgar taunts.

The palanquin lurched again and fell to the ground as if all eight bearers had dropped it together.

A chorus of more screams, in front and behind.

Another voice louder than all the others, as deep and penetrating as thunder, boomed in the air, laughing with malicious glee.

She peered out past the flap and saw three of her bodyguards, swords drawn, backing up from someone she could not see, looking upward, fear showing on their usually grim faces.

More of that terrible laughter.

Then the palanquin jumped into the air as if it had been kicked by a giant. Kazuko’s head crashed into the ceiling. The palanquin came down on its side, and her breath was driven out of her in a whoosh as she slammed down onto the curtain with the ground beneath. Her vision hazed. Hatsumi moaned in pain. Kazuko closed her eyes and imagined that if she hoped hard enough, she would wake up and find this was all just a horrible dream.

Hatsumi yelped with surprise, then screamed, a scream that quickly receded. Kazuko opened her eyes again and gasped when she saw that Hatsumi was gone, and the side-flap of the carriage now hung open above her. The carriage heaved again, throwing her against the ceiling, and again her head struck a wall of the carriage, casting her into blackness.

* * *

When Ken’ishi reached the source of the noises, he saw an overturned palanquin lying in the middle of the road, surrounded by the bleeding corpses of its eight bearers. A brutal melee swirled around the fallen palanquin. Four grim-faced samurai defended the palanquin against eight bandits. All of them bled from numerous small wounds, blood soaking the lips of the neat gashes in the fine, silken folds of their clothes. One of them clutched vainly at a slash in his abdomen; his strength was flagging.

The bandits laughed and taunted them as they fought, but their snarling faces held no true mirth, unshaven, twisted and ugly. Their clothes were ragged, except for a few instances where one of them wore a fine obi or tunic they had doubtless stolen from unfortunate victims like these. Ken’ishi glanced down at his own clothes, and suddenly felt the weight of the coins.

The bandits attacked with a multitude of weapons, swords and spears, one with a sickle in each hand, and one with a strange weapon that Ken’ishi could only describe as a sword blade attached to the end of a one-ken-long pole. The blade was different from that of a katana or tachi, heavier and with more curvature near the point but straighter along the length.

Ken’ishi would feel no qualms about killing hardened criminals such as these.

A bandit with a katana charged into close quarters with one of the samurai, driving him back a step. The samurai stumbled, and the muscular bandit with the unusual sword-pole lunged into the opening with the long reach of his weapon, slashing with a powerful downward stroke with all the leverage of the pole and body. The curved sheen of steel split the hapless samurai in a diagonal cut from shoulder to hip. In a spray of crimson gore, the cleft body fell to the earth.

A wounded samurai summoned a surge of strength to batter one of the bandits’ spears aside, then lunged in and slashed across the bandit’s wrist. Half of the bandit’s spear fell to the ground with a single hand and wrist still clutching the severed shaft. The bandit reeled back, howling in pain and fear, watching his blood spurting from the stump of his forearm, his scream fading as he passed out.

Another agonized shriek pierced the air, and Ken’ishi’s gaze snapped toward the source. A woman’s scream. Just off the path, the leaves of a bush shook with rhythmic violence, and a deep cruel laugh followed the scream like the rush of a bull. A scowl hardened Ken’ishi’s brow, and he reached for an arrow. He stood to his full height, now only half hidden by the tree. With unhurried speed, he nocked the arrow, raised the bow to point skyward, then lowered the point of the arrow and drew with a single motion. He released a heartbeat later, allowing the arrow to find its own way. The arrow hissed as it flew and sank deep between the shoulder blades of one of the bandit swordsmen. The bandit lurched forward onto his face, clutching at the out-of-reach shaft. The remaining six bandits shuffled their position to put the samurai between them and Ken’ishi’s position. The samurai followed, staying between the bandits and the carriage.

Ken’ishi nocked another arrow, drew, and fired. A spearman fell to the ground, convulsing around the feathered shaft protruding from his belly just above the groin. As one, the remaining bandits decided that they were finished playing with the three samurai. They rushed forward and impaled two of the samurai on their spears. The one remaining samurai shouted a brave cry and slashed open the ribcage of one of the spearmen with a precise diagonal cut.

Two of the bandits charged Ken’ishi’s position, the one with the sickles and the one with the strange sword-pole. He saw them coming for him in a strange slow motion, as if he watched them from the bottomless well of emptiness between instants. With what seemed to Ken’ishi no particular hurry, he readied another arrow and fired, sending the polearm wielder face down in the dust with an arrow through his heart. Then the sickle wielder reached him. The bandit cursed at him and slashed with his wickedly curved blades. Ken’ishi dashed his bow into the man’s face and leaped aside. The well of emptiness was gone like a dried-up pool, leaving him scrambling for his life. He dodged around the tree, and the sickle man hacked through the space he had just occupied, one of his weapons lodging in the bark of the tree.