“He must know how little food there is in the town,” the other replied. “Probably thinks he can starve us out.”
“I suppose it’s better to have him out there than in here.”
“Enjoy it while you can. If the town falls to Arai, it’ll be a blood-bath. Even Takeo ran away into a typhoon rather than face Arai!”
I felt alongside me for Taku, found his shape, and pulled his head close to me. “Go inside the wall,” I mouthed in his ear. “Distract them while we take them from behind.”
I felt him nod and heard the tiny sound as he moved away. Kenji and I followed him over the wall. In the glow from the brazier I suddenly caught sight of a small shadow. It flitted across the ground and then divided in two, silent and ghostly.
“What was that?” one of the guards exclaimed.
They were both on their feet and staring toward Taku’s two images. It was easy for us: We took one each, soundlessly.
The guards had just made tea, so we drank it while we waited for daybreak. The sky paled gradually. There was no separation between it and the water; it was all one shimmering surface. When the conch shells began to sound, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Dogs howled in response from the shore.
I heard the household within erupt into activity: the padding of feet, not yet frantic, cries of surprise, not yet alarm. The shutters were thrown open and the doors slid apart. A group of guards rushed out, followed by Shoichi and Masahiro, still in night attire but with their swords in their hands.
They stopped dead as I walked toward them, Jato unsheathed in my hand, the mist wreathing around me. Behind me the first ships were appearing; the conch shells sang again over the water and the sound echoed back from the mountains around the bay.
Masahiro took a step back. “Shigeru?” he gasped.
His older brother went white. They saw the man they had tried to murder; they saw the Otori sword in his hand, and they were terrified.
I said in a loud voice, “I am Otori Takeo, grandson of Shigemori, nephew and adopted son of Shigeru. I hold you responsible for the death of the rightful heir to the Otori clan. You sent Shintaro to assassinate him, and when that failed, you conspired with Iida Sadamu to murder him. Iida has already paid with his life, and now you will!”
I was aware that Kenji stood behind me, sword drawn, and hoped Taku was still invisible. I did not take my eyes off the men in front of me.
Shoichi tried to regain his composure. “Your adoption was illegal. You have no claim to Otori blood nor to the sword you carry. We do not recognize you.” He called to the retainers. “Cut them down!”
Jato seemed to quiver in my hands as it came alive. I was prepared to meet the attack, but no one moved. I saw Shoichi’s face change as he realized he was going to have to fight me himself.
“I have no wish to split the clan,” I said. “My only desire is for your heads.” I thought I’d given them enough warning. I could feel Jato thirsting for blood. It was as though Shigeru’s spirit had taken me over and would have his revenge.
Shoichi was the closer and I knew he was the better swordsman. I would get rid of him first. They had both been good fighters, but they were now old men in their late forties and they wore no armor. I was at the height of speed and fitness, flesh and bone planed by hardship and war. I killed Shoichi with a blow to the neck that cut him diagonally. Masahiro swung at me from behind, but Kenji parried the stroke, and as I spun to meet my other opponent I saw fear distort his face. I pushed him back toward the wall. He avoided each stroke, weaving and parrying, but his heart was not in it. He made one last appeal to his men, but still not one of them moved.
The first ships were not far offshore. Masahiro looked behind him, looked back, and saw Jato descend on him. He made a frantic, ducking movement and fell over the wall.
Furious that he had escaped me, I was about to jump after him when his son, Yoshitomi, my old enemy from the fighting hall, came running from the residence, followed by a handful of his brothers and cousins. None of them was more than twenty.
“I’ll fight you, sorcerer,” Yoshitomi cried. “Let’s see if you can fight like a warrior!”
I had gone into an almost supernatural state, and Jato was enraged by now and had tasted blood. It moved faster than the eye could follow. Whenever I seemed to be outnumbered, Kenji was at my side. I was sorry such young men had to die but glad that they, too, paid for the treachery of their fathers. When I was able to turn my attention back to Masahiro, I saw he had surfaced near a small boat at the front of the line of ships. It was Ryoma’s. Seizing his father by his hair, the young man pulled him upward and cut his throat with one of the knives fishermen use to gut fish. Whatever Masahiro’s crimes, this was a far more terrible death than any I could have devised for him: to be killed by his own son while trying to escape in fear.
I turned to face the crowd of retainers. “I have a huge force of men on the ships out there and Lord Arai is in alliance with me. I have no quarrel with any of you. You may take your own lives, you may serve me, or you may fight me one-on-one now. I have fulfilled my duty to Lord Shigeru and done what he commanded.”
I could still feel his spirit inhabiting me.
One of the older men stepped forward. I remembered his face, but his name escaped me.
“I am Endo Chikara. Many of us have sons and nephews who have already joined you. We have no desire to fight our own children. You have done what was your duty and your right in a fair and honorable way. For the sake of the clan, I am prepared to serve you, Lord Otori.”
With that he knelt and one by one the others followed. Kenji and I went through the residence and placed guards on the women and children. I hoped the women would take their own lives honorably. I would decide what to do with the children later. We checked all the secret places and flushed out several spies hidden there. Some were obviously Kikuta, but neither in the residence nor the castle was there any sign of Kotaro, who Kenji had been told was in Hagi.
Endo came with me to the castle. The captain of the guard there was equally relieved to be able to surrender to me; his name was Miyoshi Satoru: He was Kahei and Gemba’s father. Once the castle was secured, the boats came to shore and the men disembarked to move through the town street by street.
Taking the castle, which I had thought would be the hardest part of my plan, turned out to be the easiest. Despite its surrender and my best efforts, the town did not give in altogether peacefully. The streets were in chaos; people tried to flee, but there was nowhere to go. Terada and his men had scores of their own to settle, and there were pockets of stubborn resistance that we had to overcome in fierce hand-to-hand fighting.
Finally we came to the banks of the western river, not far from the stone bridge. Judging by the sun, it must have been late afternoon. The mist had lifted long ago, but smoke from burning houses hung above the river. On the opposite bank, the last of the maple leaves were brilliant red and the willows along the water’s edge were yellow. The leaves were falling, drifting in the eddies. Late chrysanthemums bloomed in gardens. In the distance I could see the fish weir, and the tiled walls along the bank.
My house is there, I thought. I will sleep there tonight.
But the river was full of men swimming and small boats loaded to the gunwales, while a long stream of soldiers pressed toward the bridge.
Kenji and Taku were still alongside me, Taku silenced by what he had seen of war. We stared at the sight: the remnants of the Otori army in defeat. I was filled with pity for them and anger at their lords who had so misled and betrayed them, leaving them to fight this desperate rearguard action while they slept comfortably in Hagi Castle.
I had been separated from Fumio, but now I saw him at the bridge with a handful of his men. They seemed to be arguing with a group of Otori captains. We went over to them. Zenko was with Fumio, and he smiled briefly at his brother. They stood close to each other but did not say anything.
“This is Lord Otori Takeo,” Fumio, told the men wh
en I approached. “The castle has surrendered to him. He’ll tell you.” He turned to me. “They want to destroy the bridge and prepare for siege. They don’t believe in the alliance with Arai. They’ve been fighting him off for the last week. He’s right behind them. They say their only hope is to get the bridge down immediately.”
I removed my helmet so they could see my face. They immediately dropped to their knees. “Arai has sworn to support me,” I said. “The alliance is genuine. Once he knows the town has surrendered, he will cease the attack.”
“Let’s break the bridge down anyway,” their leader said.
I thought of the ghost of the stonemason entombed alive in his creation and of the inscription that Shigeru had read aloud to me: The Otori clan welcome the just and the loyal. Let the unjust and the disloyal beware. I did not want to destroy such a precious thing, and anyway, I could not see how they would dismantle it in time.
“No, let it stand,” I replied. “I will answer for Lord Arai’s faithfulness. Tell your men they have nothing to fear if they surrender to me and accept me as their lord.”
Endo and Miyoshi came up on horseback and I sent them to carry the message to the Otori soldiers. Little by little the confusion settled. We cleared the bridge and Endo rode to the other side to organize a more orderly return to the town. Many men were reassured enough to settle down where they were and rest, while others decided they might as well go home, and set off for their farms and houses.
Miyoshi said, “You should be on horseback, Lord Takeo,” and gave me his horse, a good-looking black that reminded me of Aoi. I mounted, rode across the bridge to speak to the men there, causing them to break out into cheers, and then rode back with Endo. When the cheers died away I could hear the distant sound of Arai’s army approaching, the tramping of horses and men.
They came down the valley, a stream of ants in the distance, Kumamoto and Seishuu banners unfurled. As they came closer I recognized Arai at their head: chestnut horse, stag-antlered helmet, red-laced armor.
I leaned down to say to Kenji, “I should go and meet him.”
Kenji frowned as he peered across the river. “Something feels wrong,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Be on your guard and don’t cross the bridge.”
As I urged the black forward slightly, Endo said, “I am the senior retainer of the Otori clan. Let me take news of our surrender to you to Lord Arai.”
“Very well,” I said. “Tell him to encamp his army on that side of the river and bring him into the town. Then we can enforce peace with no further bloodshed on either side.”
Endo rode forward onto the bridge and Arai halted and waited on the other side. Endo was almost halfway across when Arai held up his hand with the black war fan in it.
There was a moment of silence. Zenko cried at my side, “They are arming their bows.”
The war fan dropped.
Though it was happening right in front of my eyes, I could not believe it. For several moments I stared incredulous as the arrows began to fall. Endo went down at once, and the men on the bank, unarmed and unprepared, fell like deer to the hunter.
“There,” Kenji said, drawing his sword. “That’s what’s wrong.”
Once before I had been so betrayed—but that had been by Kenji himself and the Tribe. This betrayal was by a warrior to whom I had sworn allegiance. Had I killed Jo-An for this? Fury and outrage turned my vision red. I had taken the impregnable castle, kept the bridge whole, pacified the men. I had handed Hagi, my town, to Arai like a ripe persimmon, and with it the Three Countries.
Dogs were howling in the distance. They sounded like my own soul.
Arai rode onto the bridge and came to a halt in the center. He saw me and lifted off his helmet. It was a derisive gesture. He was so sure of his own strength, of victory. “Thank you, Otori,” he called. “What a good work you did. Will you surrender now or shall we fight it out?”
“You may rule over the Three Countries,” I shouted back, “but your falsehood will be remembered long after your death.” I knew I was about to fight my last battle, and it was, as I had known it must be, with Arai. I just had not realized it would come so quickly.
“There will be no one left to record it,” he sneered in reply, “because I intend now to wipe out the Otori once and for all.”
I leaned down and seized Zenko, pulling him up onto the horse in front of me. I took my short sword and held it to his neck.
“I have both your sons here. Will you condemn them to death? I swear to you, I will kill Zenko now and Taku after him before you can reach me. Call off your attack!”
His face changed a little and paled. Taku stood motionless next to Kenji. Zenko did not move, either. Both boys stared at the father they had not seen for years.
Then Arai’s features hardened and he laughed. “I know you, Takeo. I know your weakness. You were not raised as a warrior; let’s see if you can bring yourself to kill a child.”
I should have acted immediately and ruthlessly, but I did not. I hesitated. Arai laughed again.
“Let him go,” he called. “Zenko! Come here to me.”
Fumio called in a low, clear voice, “Takeo, shall I shoot him?”
I can’t remember replying. I can’t remember letting go of Zenko. I heard the muffled report from the firearm and saw Arai recoil in the saddle as the ball hit him, piercing his armor above the heart. There was a cry, of rage and horror, from the men around him and a scuffle as his horse reared; Zenko screamed, but these sounds were as nothing to the roar that followed them as the world beneath my horse’s feet tore itself apart.
The maples on the far shore rose almost gracefully and began to march down the hillside. They gathered up Arai’s army as they went, wrapping them in stones and soil and rolling them into the river.
My horse backed in terror, reared, and fled from the bridge, throwing me sideways onto the road. As I got to my feet, winded, the bridge groaned with a human voice. It cried out in its efforts to hold itself together and then flew apart, taking everyone on it down into the river. Then the river itself went mad. From the confluence upstream came a yellow-brown flood of water. It drained away from the bank on the town side, gathering up boats and living beings impartially, and raced over the opposite bank, where it swept away the remnants of two armies, breaking the boats like eating sticks, drowning men and horses and carrying their corpses out to sea.
The ground shook fiercely again, and from behind me I heard the crash of collapsing houses. I felt as if I’d been stunned: Everything around me was hazy with dust and muffled so I could no longer hear distinct sounds. I was aware of Kenji beside me and Taku kneeling by his brother, who had also fallen when the horse reared. I saw Fumio coming toward me through the haze, the firearm still in his hand.
I was shaking from some mixture of emotions close to elation: a recognition of how puny we humans are when confronted with the great forces of nature, combined with gratitude to heaven, to the gods I’d thought I did not believe in, who once again had spared my life.
My last battle had begun and ended in a moment. There was no further thought of fighting. Our only concern now was to save the town from fire.
Much of the district around the castle burned to the ground. The castle itself was destroyed in one of the aftershocks, killing the remaining women and children who were being held there. I was relieved, for I knew I could not let them live, but I shrank from ordering their deaths. Ryoma also died then, his boat sunk by falling masonry. When his body was washed up days later, I had him buried with the Otori lords at Daishoin, their name on his gravestone.
In the next few days I hardly slept or ate. With Miyoshi and Kenji’s help I organized the survivors to clear the rubble, bury the dead, and care for the wounded. Through the long sorrowful days of work and cooperation and grief, the rifts in the clan began to heal. The earthquake was generally held to be heaven’s punishment on Arai for his treachery. Heaven clearly favored me, I
was Shigeru’s adopted son and nephew by blood, I had his sword, I resembled him, and I had avenged his death: The clan accepted me unreservedly as his true heir. I did not know what the situation was in the rest of the land; the earthquakes had shattered much of the Three Countries and we heard nothing from the other cities. All I was aware of was the enormity of the task that faced me in restoring peace and preventing famine in the coming winter.
I did not sleep at Shigeru’s house the night of the earthquake, nor for many days following. I could not bear to go near it in case it had been destroyed. I camped with Miyoshi in what remained of his residence. But about four days after the earthquake, Kenji came to me one evening after I had eaten and told me there was someone to see me. He was grinning, and for a moment I imagined it might be Shizuka with a message from Kaede.
Instead it was the maids from Shigeru’s house, Chiyo and Haruka. They looked exhausted and frail, and when they saw me I was afraid Chiyo would die from emotion. They both knelt at my feet, but I made them get up and I embraced Chiyo as tears streamed down her face. None of us could speak.
Finally, Chiyo said, “Come home, Lord Takeo. The house is waiting for you.”
“It’s still standing?”
“The garden is ruined—the river swept through it—but the house is not badly damaged. We’ll get it ready for you tomorrow.”
“I will come tomorrow evening,” I promised.
“You will come, too, sir?” she said to Kenji.
“Almost like old times,” he replied, smiling, though we all knew it could never be that.
The following day Kenji and I took Taku and some guards and walked down the familiar street. I did not take Zenko. The circumstances surrounding Arai’s death had left his older son deeply disturbed. I was concerned for him, seeing his confusion and grief, but did not have time to deal with it. I suspected that he thought his father had died ignobly and blamed me for it. Maybe he even blamed or despised me for sparing his life. I myself was not sure how to treat him: as the heir to a mighty warlord or as the son of the man who had betrayed me. I thought it best for him to be kept out of my way for the time being and put him in the service of Endo Chikara’s family. I still hoped his mother, Shizuka, was alive; when she returned we would discuss her son’s future. Taku I had no doubts about; I would keep him with me, the first of the child spies I had dreamed of training and employing.