The Snow Empress: A Thriller (3 page)

“Is that who I think it is?” Sano said.

“Hirata-san!” Reiko called, waving at him.

He reached the edge of the dock. The ship had moved some twenty paces out into the current, but Hirata took a running leap. He sprang higher, farther, than Reiko had thought possible. He landed crouched on the railing, then hopped aboard. Sano and Reiko laughed with pleasure as they welcomed their friend.

“Don’t think I’m not glad to see you,” Sano said, “but what are you doing here?”

“You called me,” Hirata said. He’d changed, Reiko observed; there was a new maturity and seriousness about him. I did?“ Sano said, puzzled.

“Whether you meant to or not,” Hirata said. “By the way, where are we going?”

To Ezogashima,“ Sano said as the fleet sailed down the river.

For eleven days the fleet sailed north along the coast. The weather turned steadily colder. Sano, Reiko, Hirata, the detectives, and the Rat spent most of the journey in the cabin, huddled around charcoal braziers. The skies remained clear until they reached the Strait of Tsugaru, which separated barbarian territory from Japan proper. Dressed in quilted cloaks and boots, they stood on deck while falling snow obscured their first glimpse of Ezogashima’s coastline. Wind whipped the snow into swirls and howled around the ship.

“I’ve never seen such a blizzard,” Sano said, as he and his companions hurried into the cabin.

“Get used to it,” the Rat said glumly. “I hate to tell you, but you haven’t seen anything yet.”

Waves slammed the ship. It pitched and rolled, flinging everyone off balance. Wind blew the shutters in with violent snaps. Snow and spray exploded into the cabin. Outside, the sailors fought to hold the ship steady. The ocean topped the deck behind Hirata, the last one to enter. He shut the door against water that poured across the floor.

“This ship had better not sink,” the Rat said. “I’m not a very good swimmer.”

“We can’t sink!” Terrified, Reiko gripped Sano’s arm so tight that he felt her fingernails dig through his padded sleeve. “We have to rescue Masahiro.”

Detective Marume struggled to close the shutters and fight off sliding baggage and furniture. “Merciful Buddha, if you’re not too busy, please save our miserable lives.”

The rigging strained and creaked. Below deck, oarsmen screamed for help as water flooded them. Yells arose from the sailors: “Men overboard!” A sudden, enormous crash assailed the ship. Sano and Reiko catapulted forward, tumbling into the others. Everyone shouted in alarm. A crack like thunder preceded a loud scraping sound that rasped under them. The ship tossed wildly, then canted nose down and shuddered to a halt.

“We’ve run aground!” Sano yelled.

“Welcome to Ezogashima,” the Rat said. “Pretty soon you’ll understand why I never wanted to come back.”

Sano heard his detectives muttering prayers of thanks and Reiko moaning in relief. He barely had time to be glad himself that they’d survived, before they all hastened out of the cabin. Snow fell in thick veils and had already coated the ship-or what was left of it.

“Hey! Where’s the other half?” Marume exclaimed.

The stern had broken off behind the cabin. Snowflakes blasted into Sano’s eyes as he looked out at the gray ocean, which was a mass of whitecaps, curtained by the blizzard, and empty as far as he could see. “Gone,” he said, “with the crew and the fleet.”

No one could survive in that icy water. Sano’s heart ached for the many lives lost. And now he and his few comrades must face the trouble in Ezogashima alone.

“Where are we?” Fukida asked.

Your guess is as good as mine,“ Sano said. A snow-covered beach and forested slope stretched before them. The white terrain was barely distinguishable from the white sky. ”We may have drifted off course from Fukuyama City.“

He noticed the atmosphere darkening: Night came fast in the north. Now he had more pressing concerns than how he would find his son, solve the problems in Ezogashima, or return home afterward. “We’d better get off this wreck and find shelter before we freeze to death.”

Everyone gathered a few possessions, climbed over the railing, and splashed through the freezing shallows while the blizzard keened and tore at them. They huddled together on the beach. Sano turned to Reiko. “Are you all right?”

“I’m better every moment.” Her face was red and pinched from the cold, but her smile shone with happiness. “We’re close to Masahiro. I know; I can feel him. Can’t you?”

“Yes,” Sano said, although he only wished he could. What he felt was dire uncertainty about their prospects. Straining his eyes toward the forest, he said, “Maybe there’s a village up there. Let’s go.”

Hirata led the way up the slope, outpacing his companions, barely conscious of the cold, the snow, or their predicament. From the moment he’d set foot in Ezogashima, he’d sensed an indefinable strangeness in the atmosphere. It vibrated with sounds at the edge of his range of hearing, like alien music. He perceived a soft yet powerful pulse emanating from the landscape. It resonated through him and called to some deep, uncharted place within him. He realized that this trip wasn’t an abandonment of his mystic martial arts studies but a continuation of his quest. Here he would find the enlightenment he sought.

His master’s involuntary call for help had brought him to this land of his destiny.

As he neared the forest of leafless oaks and birches, his nerves tingled alert to human presences other than those of his comrades behind him. Three figures suddenly emerged from between the trees, into the windswept snow. Hirata stopped in his tracks as the men blocked his path. He stared in amazement.

They were the tallest men he’d ever seen; they stood half a head higher than Detective Marume, the biggest man in his group. Coats and leggings made of animal skins clothed their strong physiques. Geometric patterns with curves, spirals, and cusps decorated their hems, sleeve edges, and neck bands. Thick fur that trimmed their mittens, covered the calves of their fish-skin boots, and lined their leather hoods gave them a bestial aspect. They were obviously not Japanese. They must be Ezo, northern barbarians.

They looked like giant, uncivilized versions of the Rat. Their coarse beards and mustaches were even longer than his. Under bushy brows that grew straight across the bridges of their prominent noses, their eyes were narrow as if permanently squinted against the wind and snow. Their complexions were tanned and creased, their expressions as harsh as the climate.

The one in the middle addressed Hirata in a gruff barrage of syllables that sounded nonsensical. Although the Ezo and the Japanese had engaged in trade for centuries, the Ezo were forbidden to learn the Japanese language. This was a law enforced by the Matsumae clan to protect its trade monopoly. If the Ezo could speak Japanese, they could trade independently with merchants from Japan and bypass the Matsumae middlemen. Now the barbarian made a gesture that meant the same thing in any language:
Go away!

Hirata saw the daggers they wore in carved wooden sheaths at their waists. He instinctively grasped the hilt of his own sword. Sano caught up with him.

“It’s time for you to earn your pay,” Sano called to the Rat. “Talk to them. Find out what they’re trying to tell us.”

The Rat gulped and reluctantly obeyed. His eyes lost their characteristic bold gleam as he spoke to his countrymen in their language. He seemed to shrink smaller. Hirata realized that the Rat hadn’t left Ezogashima solely because he wanted to make his fortune in the city; he’d been a misfit among his own kind.

After a brief conversation with the barbarians, the Rat turned to Sano and Hirata. “They say we should go home.”

“I gathered that much,” Sano said. “But why?”

“They say that we’re in danger.”

“From what?”

The Rat conveyed the question to the barbarians. Frowning, they buttered among themselves. The spokesman, whose strong, not unhandsome features distinguished him from the others, repeated his same words in a louder voice, as if that would make Sano heed them.

“We want to go to Fukuyama City,” Sano told the barbarians. “Can you show us the way?”

Again the Rat translated. The Ezo leader looked disturbed. He conversed with the Rat, who told Sano, “He says to stay away from Fukuyama City. If we want to live, we should go before they find out we’re here.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Hirata asked.

He could see from their eyes that the barbarians understood the gist of his question, but the leader only repeated the same warning in a more forceful manner.

“We can’t go on like this,” Sano said to Hirata. With an obvious effort to quell his irritation, he addressed the barbarians: “Would you please give us shelter for the night, or take us to someone who will?”

When the Rat translated, they shook their heads at one another. The leader stepped boldly toward Sano, flung out his arm, pointed at the sea, and shouted a command in a voice both authoritative and laced with desperation.

“‘For your own good, go back where you came from,”“ the Rat translated.

“We can’t,” Marume said. “Our ship is wrecked.” He advanced on the barbarians, who ranged themselves against him. “Either help us or get out of our way.”

The Ezo responded with pleas, warnings, or threats. Marume and Fukida drew their swords. The barbarians stood their ground, and even though fright shone in their eyes, they drew their daggers.

“Back off!” Sano ordered his men. “We need these people whether they want us here or not. Don’t hurt them!”

He tried to appease the barbarians while the Rat frantically translated. Somehow, at last, the weapons went back into sheaths; tempers subsided.

“Throw us on their mercy,” Sano instructed the Rat. “Tell them that unless they take us in, we’ll die.”

The Rat spoke. This time, as the barbarians discussed what they’d heard, Hirata perceived resignation in their tones. Primitive though they might be, they didn’t lack human compassion, whatever their reason for wanting to chase off newcomers. They nodded, and the leader spoke to Sano.

“”Come with us,“” the Rat said with a sigh. As he and the rest of Sano’s group followed the barbarians into the forest, he muttered, “I hope we won’t be sorry.”

The barbarians led the way along a path that paralleled the coast. The trees screened the view of the ocean and served as a windbreak. Hirata was glad the natives had decided to cooperate. The farther he walked into Ezogashima, the stronger he felt its pulse, the more compellingly sounded its call.

A clearing appeared in the forest, and Hirata saw what he first took to be huge, pointed mounds of snow. As he moved closer, he realized they were huts. Pungent wood smoke drifted up from chimney holes. Smaller outbuildings, some elevated on stilts and accessible by ladders, stood nearby. Hirata didn’t so much as hear voices inside the huts as feel conversation stop when he and his party approached. Thatch curtains lifted to reveal doorways. Barbarians peered out, gazing suspiciously at the strangers.

Their escorts made straight for the largest hut at the center of the settlement. The leader entered for a brief time, then reemerged. He beckoned and spoke to Sano.

“He says to come in,” the Rat said.

The pull that the island exerted on Hirata was stronger near the hut. “Shall I go first and make sure it’s safe?” he asked Sano, who nodded. Hirata cautiously ducked under the thatched doorway curtain that the leader held up for him.

He found himself in a cramped entryway, where he dusted the snow off his clothes and removed his boots. The leader ushered him under another thatch curtain and into a room filled with smoky, flickering orange light from a fire that burned in a square pit at the center. An Ezo sat near the pit, hands folded in his lap, on woven reed mats that covered the door. His long hair, mustache, and beard were white with old age, but his frame was strong, his posture erect. His hands and face were so weathered and deeply lined that he seemed made of gnarled wood. Silver hoops with dangling black beads pierced his ears. He wore a blue robe patterned with the same designs as on the other barbarians’ clothes. Hirata had assumed that the man who’d done the talking on the beach was their leader, but now he knew this man held the authority.

His eyes, which scrutinized Hirata from beneath thick, white brows, reflected the firelight and gleamed with dignified, calm intelligence. As their gazes met, a thought flashed through Hirata’s mind.

Meeting this man is crucial to my destiny.

The Ezo inclined his body in a bow that indicated familiarity with Japanese manners. He spoke in a deep, resonant voice and spread his hands in a universal gesture of welcome.

Hirata hesitated a moment, shaken by his revelation. Then he called through the doorway to Sano and his other comrades, who were waiting outside. “It’s all right.”

Everyone crowded into the hut, knelt around the fire pit. The air steamed with the snow melting on their garments. Hirata sat on one side of their host, Sano on the other. Although Hirata was transfixed by the old barbarian, he hadn’t lost his samurai habit of always taking note of his environment. He tore his attention away from the Ezo long enough to glance around the hut.

Fishnets, hunting weapons, kitchenware, bedding, and household miscellany were piled against dirt mounds that insulated the walls. Thatch curtains covered windows. Pots and tools hung from a shelf suspended from the ceiling above the fire. Additional light and fishy-smelling smoke came from wicks burning in scallop shells filled with oil. In a corner stood a stick, its bark shaved down from the top and hanging in a mop of curly strands. Hirata felt an aura shimmering in invisible waves around it. He intuited that it was a sacred object, the repository for a divine spirit.

“Introduce us,” Sano told the Rat.

The Rat bowed to their host, gave what seemed to be a polite greeting in Ezo language, and reeled off speech in which Hirata recognized only the names of his party. The barbarian elder nodded, replied briefly, and bowed to the assembly.

“He says his name is Awetok, and he’s the chieftain of the tribe,” the Rat explained.

The other barbarians stood by the doorway. “Honorable Awetok, why did your men try to chase us off?” Sano asked.

The Rat translated. The chieftain answered, “To save you.”

“From what?” Sano said. “Or whom?”

“Those that control Ezogashima.”

“And they are…?”

Hirata could feel Sano wondering whether the chieftain meant Japanese in the persons of the Matsumae clan, or invaders from China who’d occupied Ezogashima.

Caution glinted in Awetok’s eyes as the Rat interpreted. He spoke, removing two objects tied to his sash and holding them up. One was a metal tobacco pipe such as one might find anywhere in Edo. The other was a bearskin pouch. Awetok opened it and revealed a quartz flint, a fragment of iron that served as a striker, a piece of charcoal for tinder, and dried tobacco leaves inside. The habit of smoking was apparently as popular among Ezo as among the Japanese.