Part 4 (1/2)

”That was never my intention,” I said. ”But I can see how my actions must have looked to him. I owe him an apology. As soon as we are settled at Maruyama I will go to him. Is he at Inuyama now?”

”He spent the winter there. He intended to return to k.u.mamoto and mop up the last remnants of resistance there, move eastward to consolidate the former Noguchi lands, and then pursue his campaign against the Tribe, starting in Inuyama.” He poured more wine for us all and gulped a cupful down. ”But it's like trying to dig up a sweet potato: There's far more underground than you think, and no matter how carefully you try to lift it, pieces break off and begin to put out shoots again. I flushed out some members here; one of them ran the brewery, the other was a small-scale merchant and moneylender. But all I got were a couple of old men, figureheads, no more. They took poison before I could get anything out of them. The rest disappeared.”

He lifted the wine cup and stared morosely at it. ”It's going to split Arai in two,” he' said finally. ”He can handle the Tohan; they're a simple enemy, straightforward, and the heart mostly went out of them with Iida's death. But trying to eradicate this hidden enemy at the same time-he's set himself an impossible task, and he's running out of money and resources.” He seemed to catch what he was saying and went on quickly: ”Not that I'm disloyal to him. I gave him my allegiance and I'll stand by that. It's cost me my sons, though.”

We all bowed our heads and murmured our sympathy.

Kahei said, ”It's getting late. We should sleep a little if we are to march again at dawn.”

”Of course.” Niwa got clumsily to his feet and clapped his hands. After a few moments the old woman, lamp in hand, came to show us back to our room. The beds were already laid out on the floor. I went to the privy and then walked in the garden for a while to clear my head from the wine. The town was silent. It seemed I could hear my men breathing deeply in sleep. An owl hooted from the trees around the temple, and in the distance a dog barked. The gibbous moon of the fourth month was low in the sky; a few wisps of cloud drifted across it. The sky was misty, with only the brightest stars visible. I thought about all Niwa had told me. He was right: It was almost impossible to identify the network that the Tribe had set up across the Three Countries. But s.h.i.+geru had done so, and I had his records.

I went to the room. Makoto was already asleep. Kahei was talking to two of his men who had come to keep guard. He told me he had also put two men to watch the room where Kaede slept. I lay down, wished she were next to me, briefly considered sending for her, then fell into the deep river of sleep.

3.

For the next few days our march to Maruyama continued without event. The news of Jm-emon's death and the defeat of his bandits had gone ahead of us and we were welcomed because of it. We moved quickly, with short nights and long days, making the most of the favorable weather before the full onset of the plum rains. As we traveled, Kaede tried to explain to me the political background of the domain that was to become hers. s.h.i.+geru had already told me something of its history, but the tangled web of marriages, adoptions, deaths, that might have been murders, jealousy, and intrigue was mostly new to me. It made me marvel anew at the strength of Maruyama Naomi, the woman he had loved, who had been able to survive and rule in her own right. It made me regret her death, and his, all the more bitterly, and strengthened my resolve to continue their work of justice and peace.

”Lady Maruyama and I talked a little together on a journey like this,” Kaede said. ”But we were riding in the opposite direction, toward Tsuwano, where we met you. She told me women should hide their power and be carried in the palanquin lest the warlords and warriors crush them. But here I am riding beside you, on Raku, in freedom. I'll never go in a palanquin again.”

It was a day of sun and showers, like the fox's wedding in the folktale. A sudden rainbow appeared against a dark gray cloud; the sun shone bravely for a few moments; rain fell silver. Then the clouds swept across the sky, sun and rainbow vanished, and the rain had a cold, harsh sting to it.

Lady Maruyama's marriage had been intended to improve relations between the Seishuu and theTohan. Her husband was from theTohan and was related to both the Iida and the Noguchi families. He was much older than she was, had been married before, and already had grown children. The wisdom of an alliance through such an enc.u.mbered marriage had been questioned at the time, not least by Naomi, who, although only sixteen, had been brought up in the Maruyama way to think and speak for herself. However, the clan desired the alliance, and so it was arranged. During Lady Maruyama's life her stepchildren had caused many problems. After her husband died they had contested the domain-unsuccessfully. Her husband's only daughter was the wife of a cousin of Iida Sadamu, Iida Nariaki-who, we learned on the way, had escaped the slaughter at Inuyama and had fled into the West, from where it seemed he now intended to make a new claim on the domain. The Seishuu clan lords were divided. Maruyama had always been inherited through the female line, but it was the last domain that clung to a tradition that affronted the warrior cla.s.s. Nariaki had been adopted by his father-in-law before Lady Maruyama's marriage, and was considered by many to be legal heir to his wife's property.

Naomi had been fond of her husband and grieved genuinely when he died after four years, leaving her with a young daughter and a baby son. She was determined her daughter would inherit her estate. Her son died mysteriously, some said poisoned, and in the years that followed the battle of Yaegahara, the widowed Naomi attracted the attention of Iida Sadamu himself.

”But by that time she had met s.h.i.+geru,” I said, wis.h.i.+ng I knew where and how. ”And now you are her heir.” Kaede's mother had been Lady Maruyama's cousin, and Kaede was the closest living relative to the former head of the clan, for Lady Maruyama's daughter Mariko had died with her mother in the river at Inuyana.

”If I am allowed to inherit,” Kaede replied. ”When her senior retainer, Sugita Haruki, came to me late last year, he swore the Maruyama clan would support me, but Nariaki may have already moved in.”

”Then we will drive him out.”

On the morning of the sixth day we came to the domain border. Kahei halted his men a few hundred paces before it, and I rode forward to join him.

”I was hoping my brother would have met us before now,” he said quietly.

I had been hoping the same. Miyos.h.i.+ Gemba had been sent to Maruyama before my marriage to Kaede to convey the news of our imminent arrival. But we had had heard nothing from him since. Apart from my concerns for his safety, I would have liked some information about the situation in the domain before we entered it, the whereabouts of Iida Nariaki, the feelings in the town toward us.

The barrier stood at a crossroads. The guard post was silent, the roads on all sides deserted. Amano took Jiro and they rode off to the south. When they reappeared, Amano was shouting.

”A large army has been through: There are many hoofprints and horse droppings.”

”Heading into the domain?” I called.

Yes!

Kahei rode closer to the guard post and shouted, ”Is anyone there? Lord Otori Takeo is bringing his wife, Lady s.h.i.+rakawa Kaede, heir to Lady Maruyama Naomi, into her domain.”

No answer came from the wooden building. A wisp of smoke rose from an unseen hearth. I could hear no sound, other than the army behind me, the stamping of restless horses, the breathing of a thousand men. My skin was tinglmg. I expected at any moment to hear the hiss and clack of arrows, I rode Shun forward to join Kahei. ”Let's take a look.” He glanced at me, but he'd given up trying to persuade me to stay behind. We dismounted, called to Jiro to hold the horses' reins, and drew our swords.

The barrier itself had been thrown down and crushed in the rush of men and horses that had trampled over it. A peculiar silence hung around the place. A bush warbler called from the forest, its song star-tlingly loud. The sky was partly covered with large gray clouds, but the ram had ceased again and the breeze from the south was mild.

I could smell blood and smoke on it. As we approached the guardhouse we saw the first of the bodies just inside the threshold. The man had fallen across the hearth and his clothes were smoldering. They would have burned if they had not been soaked with blood from where his belly had been slashed open. His hand still gripped his sword, but the blade was clean. Behind him lay two others, on their backs; their clothes were stained with their own last evacuations, but not with blood.

”They've been strangled,” I said to Kahei. It chilled me, for only the Tribe use garrotes.

He nodded, turning one over to look at the crest on his back. ”Maruyama.”

”How long since they died?” I asked, looking round the room. Two of the men had been taken completely by surprise, the third stabbed before he could use his sword. I felt fury rise in me, the same fury I'd felt against the guards in Hagi when they'd let Kenji into the garden or when I'd slipped past them-fury at the dullness of ordinary men who were so easily outwitted by the Tribe. They'd been surprised while they'd been eating, killed by a.s.sa.s.sins before any of them could get away to carry a warning of the invading army.

Kahei picked up the teakettle from where it had been sent flying. ”Barely warm.”

”We must catch up with them before they reach the town.”

”Let's get moving,” Kahei said, his eyes bright with antic.i.p.ation.

But as we turned to go I caught a fresh sound, coming from a small storeroom behind the main guard post. I made a sign to Kahei to keep silent and went to the door. Someone was behind it, trying to hold his breath but definitely breathing, and s.h.i.+vering, and letting the breath out in what was almost a sob.

I slid the door and entered in one movement. The room was cluttered with bales of rice, wooden boards, weapons, farming implements.

”Who's there? Come out!”

There was a scuttling noise and a small figure burst out from behind the bales and tried to slide between my legs. I grabbed it, saw it was a boy of ten or eleven years, realized he held a knife, and wrenched his fingers apart until he cried out and dropped it.

He wriggled in my grasp, trying not to sob.

”Stand still! I'm not going to hurt you.”

”Father! Father!” he called.

I pushed him in front of me into the guardroom. ”Is one of these your father?”

His face had gone white, his breath came raggedly, and there were tears in his eyes, but he still struggled to control himself. There was no doubt he was a warrior's son. He looked at the man on the floor whom Kahei had pulled from the fire, took in the terrible wound and the sightless eyes, and nodded.

Then his face went green. I pulled him through the door so he could vomit outside.

There'd been a little tea left in the kettle. Kahei poured it into one of the unbroken cups and gave it to the boy to drink. ”What happened?” I said.

His teeth were chattering, but he tried to speak normally, his voice coming out louder than he'd intended. ”Two men came through the roof. They strangled Kitano and Tsuruta. Someone else slashed the tethers and panicked the horses. My father ran after them, and when he came back inside the men cut him open with their knives.”

He fought back the sob. ”I thought they'd gone,” he said. ”I couldn't see them! They came out of the air and cut him open.”

”Where were you?”

”I was in the storeroom. I hid. I'm ashamed. I should have killed them!”

Kahei grinned at the fierce little face. ”You did the right thing.