“Don’t hurt him, sir,” they called to me. “He doesn’t mean any harm. You surprised him, that’s all.”
The giant had lowered his arms and stood with his one hand held out in a gesture of submission.
“He’s mute,” Jo-An told me. “But even with one hand he’s as strong as two oxen, and he’s a hard worker.”
The charcoal burners were clearly worried I was going to punish one of their greatest assets. They threw themselves at my feet, begging for mercy. I told them to get up and keep their giant under control.
“I could have killed him!”
They all got up, said the words of welcome, clapped Jo-An on the shoulder, bowed again to me, and made me sit down by the fire. One of them poured tea from the kettle. I had no idea what it was made from; it tasted unlike anything I’d ever had before, but it was hot. Jo-An took them to one side and they had a huddled whispered conversation, of which I could hear every word.
Jo-An told them who I was, which produced gasps and more bowing, and that I had to get to Terayama as soon as possible. The group argued a little about the safest route and whether to start right away or wait till morning, then they came back to the fire, sat in a circle, and stared at me, their eyes glowing in their dark faces. They were covered in soot and ash, barely clothed, yet not noticing the cold. They spoke as a group and seemed to think and feel as one. I imagined that here in the forest they followed their own rules, living like wild men, almost like animals.
“They’ve never spoken to a lord before,” Jo-An said. “One of them wants to know if you are the hero Yoshitsune, returned from the mainland. I told them that though you wander the mountains like Yoshitsune and are pursued by all men, you will be an even greater hero, for he failed but you are promised success by God.”
“Will the lord allow us to cut wood where we please?” one of the older men asked. They did not speak to me directly but addressed all their remarks to Jo-An. “There are many parts of the forest where we are no longer allowed to go. If we cut a tree there . . .” He made a graphic gesture of slicing his own neck.
“A head for a tree, a hand for a branch,” said another. He reached over to the giant and held up the mutilated arm. The stump had healed over with a puckered, livid scar, traces of gray running back up the limb where it had been cauterized. “Tohan clan officials did this to him a couple of years ago. He didn’t understand, but they still took his hand.”
The giant held it out to me, nodding several times, his face bewildered and sorrowful.
I knew the Otori clan also had laws forbidding indiscriminate felling of trees: It was to protect the forests forever, but I did not think they enforced such harsh penalties. I wondered what was the point of half crippling a man; was a human life really worth less than a tree’s?
“Lord Otori will reclaim all these lands,” Jo-An said. “He will rule from sea to sea. He will bring justice.”
They bowed again, swearing that they would serve me, and I promised I would do all I could for them when that day came. Then they fed us—meat: small birds they had caught and a hare. I ate meat so rarely I could not remember when I had last tasted it, apart from the wrestlers’ chicken stew. That flesh, however, had been bland compared to the hare. They’d trapped it a week ago, saving it for their final night on the mountain, burying it out of the sight of any clan official who might come prying round the camp. It tasted of the earth and of blood.
While we ate they discussed their plans for the following day. They decided one of them would show me the way to the border. They did not dare cross it themselves, but the way down the mountain to Terayama was plain enough, they thought. We would leave at first light and it should take me no more than twelve hours, if the snow held off.
The wind had shifted slightly to the north, and it held a threatening rawness. They had already planned to dismantle the last oven that evening and begin the trek down the mountain the following day. Jo-An could help them if he stayed overnight, standing in for the man who would be my guide.
“They don’t object to working with you?” I said to Jo-An later. I was puzzled by the charcoal burners. They ate meat, so they did not follow the teachings of the Enlightened One, they did not pray over their food in the manner of the Hidden, and they accepted the outcast to eat and work alongside, quite unlike the villagers.
“They are also outcasts,” he replied. “They burn corpses as well as wood. But they are not of the Hidden. They worship the spirits of the forest, in particular the god of fire. They believe he will travel down the mountain with them tomorrow and dwell with them all winter, keeping their houses warm. In the spring they accompany him back to the mountain.” Jo-An’s voice held a note of disapproval. “I try to tell them about the Secret God,” he said. “But they say they cannot leave their ancestors’ god, for who then would light the fire for the ovens?”
“Maybe it’s all one,” I said, teasing him a little, for the meat and the warmth that the fire god provided had raised my spirits.
He gave me one of his slight smiles but said no more on the subject. He looked suddenly exhausted. The light was almost gone and the charcoal burners invited us into their shelter. It was roughly built from branches and covered with hides, which I guessed they had swapped for charcoal with the tanners. We crawled in with them, all huddled together against the cold. My head, closest to the oven, was warm enough, but my back was icy, and when I turned over I thought my eyelids would freeze shut.
I did not sleep much but lay listening to the deep breathing of the men around me, thinking about my future. I had thought I had placed myself under the death sentence of the Tribe, each day hardly expecting to be still alive at nightfall, but the prophetess had given me back my life. My own skills had developed relatively late: some of the boys I had trained with in Matsue were already showing signs of talent as young as eight or nine. How old would my son be? How long would it be before he was skilled enough to confront me? Maybe as much as sixteen years; it was nearly my entire lifetime. This bald calculation gave me some bitter hope.
Sometimes I believed in the prophecy and sometimes I did not, and so it has been all my life.
Tomorrow I would be at Terayama. I would have Shigeru’s records of the Tribe, I would hold Jato in my hands again. In the spring I would approach Arai. Armed with my secret information on the Tribe, I would seek his support against Shigeru’s uncles. For it was obvious to me that my first encounter must be with them. Avenging Shigeru’s death and taking up my inheritance would give me what I most needed, a power base in impregnable Hagi.
Jo-An slept restlessly, twitching and whimpering. I realized he was probably always in pain, yet awake he gave no sign of it. Toward dawn the cold eased a little and I slept deeply for about an hour, only to wake with a soft, feathery sound filling my ears, the sound I dreaded. I crawled to the entrance of the shelter. In the firelight I could see the flakes beginning to fall, could hear the tiny hiss as they melted on the embers. I shook Jo-An and woke the charcoal burners.
“It’s snowing!”
They leaped up, lit branches for torches, and began to pack up their camp. They had no more desire to be trapped on the mountain than I did. The precious charcoal from the last oven was wrapped in the damp hides off the shelter. They prayed quickly over the embers of the fire and placed them in an iron pot to be carried with them down the mountain.
The snow was still fine and powdery, mostly not settling but melting as soon as it touched the ground. However, as dawn came we could see that the sky was gray and ominous, the clouds full of more snow to come. The wind was picking up, too; when the heavier snow did start to fall, it would be as a blizzard.
There was no time to eat, no time even for tea. Once all the charcoal was ready, the men were eager to get away. Jo-An dropped to his knees before me, but I raised him up and embraced him. His frame in my arms was as bony and frail as an old man’s.
“We will meet again in the spring,” I said. “I will send word to you at the outcasts?
?? bridge.”
He nodded, suddenly overcome with emotion, as though he could not bear to let me out of his sight. One of the men raised a bundle and placed it across his shoulders. The others were already filing down the slope. Jo-An made a clumsy gesture to me, a cross between a farewell and a blessing. Then he turned and, stumbling a little under the weight of the burden, walked away.
I watched him for a moment, finding myself repeating under my breath the familiar words the Hidden use when they part.
“Come, lord,” my guide called to me anxiously, and I turned and followed him up the slope.
We climbed for what must have been nearly three hours. My guide paused only to bend twigs now and then to mark the path back. The snow stayed the same, light and dry, but the higher we climbed, the more it settled, until ground and trees all had a thin powdering of white. The rapid climb warmed me, but my stomach was growling with hunger. The meat the night before had given it false expectations. It was impossible to guess the hour. The sky was a uniform brownish gray, and the ground was beginning to give off the strange, disorienting light of a snowy landscape.
When my guide stopped we were halfway up the main peak of the mountain range. The path we’d been following now twisted away downward. I could see the valley below through the veil of falling flakes, the massive branches of the beeches and cedars already turning white.
“Can’t go any farther with you,” he said. “Want my advice, you turn back with me now. Blizzard’s coming. Best part of a day’s walk to the temple, even in fair weather. You go on, you perish in the snow.”
“It’s impossible for me to go back,” I replied. “Come a little farther with me. I’ll pay you well for it.” But I could not persuade him, nor did I really want to. He seemed uneasy and lonely without his fellows. I gave him half the coins I had left anyway, and in return he gave me a leg bone from the hare with a fair bit of meat still attached to it.
He described the path I had to take, pointing out the landmarks across the valley as best he could in the dim light. A river ran through it, he told me, not knowing I’d already heard it long before. This marked the fief boundary. There was no bridge, but at one point it was narrow enough to jump across. The pools beneath held water spirits and the current was swift, so I must be careful not to fall in. Also, as this was the easiest place to cross, sometimes it was patrolled, though he did not think that was likely on such a day as this.
Once into the next fief, I was to continue in an easterly direction, descending toward a small shrine. Here the paths forked. I must take the right-hand, lower path. I had to keep going east, otherwise I would find myself climbing the mountain range. The wind was from the northeast now, so I had to keep it against my left shoulder. He touched my shoulder twice to emphasize this, peering into my face with his narrow eyes.
“You don’t look like a lord,” he said, his features twisting in a sort of smile. “But good luck to you anyway.”
I thanked him and set off down the slope, gnawing the bone as I went, cracking it open with my teeth and sucking out the marrow. The snow became slightly wetter and denser, melting more slowly on my head and clothes. The man was right: I did not look like a lord. My hair, which had not been cut since Yuki had clipped it in the style of an actor, hung shaggy round my ears, and I had not shaved for days. My clothes were soaked and filthy. I certainly did not smell like a lord. I tried to remember when I’d last had a bath—and suddenly recalled the wrestlers’ stable, our first night out from Matsue: the vast bathhouse, the conversation I’d overheard between Akio and Hajime.
I wondered where Yuki was now, if she had heard of my defection. I could hardly bear to think about the child. In the light of the prophecy, the idea of my son being kept from me and taught to hate me had become even more painful. I remembered Akio’s taunt; it seemed the Kikuta knew my character better than I knew it myself.
The noise of the river grew louder, almost the only sound in the snow-filled landscape. Even the crows were silent. The snow was starting to cap the boulders along the water’s edge as I came within sight of it. It fell from the mountain some distance upstream in a waterfall, then spread wide between steep crags, tumbling over rocks in a series of rapids before being forced into a narrow channel between two flat outcrops. Ancient, twisted pines clung to the sides of the crags, and the whole landscape, whitened out by the snow, looked as if it were waiting for Sesshu to come and paint it.
I crouched down behind a boulder where a small pine clung precariously to the thin soil. It was more of a bush than a tree, and it gave me a little shelter. The snow was covering the path, but it was easy enough to see where it led and where to jump across the river. I looked at the crossing for a while, listening intently.
The pattern of the water over the rocks was not quite constant. Every now and then a lull appeared, bringing an uncanny silence, as though I were not the only creature listening. It was easy to imagine spirits dwelling beneath the water, stopping and starting the flow, teasing and provoking humans, luring them to the edge.
I thought I could even hear them breathing. Then, just as I’d isolated the sound, the ripple and babble of the river started up again. It was infuriating. I knew I was wasting time, crouched in a bush being gradually covered by snow, listening to spirits, but slowly the conviction grew that there was someone breathing, not all that far from me.
Just beyond the narrow crossing, the river dropped another ten feet or so into a series of deep pools. I caught a sudden movement and realized a heron, almost completely white, was fishing in one of them, oblivious to the snow. It was like a sign—the Otori emblem on the boundary of the Otori fief—perhaps a message from Shigeru that I had made the right choice at last.
The heron was on the same side of the river as I was, working its way along the pool toward me. I wondered what it found to eat in midwinter, when frogs and toads were hidden away in the mud. It seemed tranquil and unafraid, certain that nothing threatened it in this lonely place. As I watched it, feeling as safe as it did, thinking that at any moment I would walk to the river and jump across, something startled it. It swung its long head toward the shore and instantly launched itself into flight. The clack of its wings sounded once above the water and then it disappeared silently downstream.
What had it seen? I strained my eyes, staring at the same spot. The river fell silent for a moment, and I heard the breathing. I flared my nostrils and on the northeasterly wind caught a faint, human scent. I could see no one; yet, I knew someone was there, lying invisible in the snow.
He was so placed that if I went directly to the crossing, he could easily cut me off. If he could maintain invisibility for as long as he had, he had to be from the Tribe, and so might be able to see me as soon as I approached the river. My only hope was to take him by surprise and jump farther upstream, where the crossing was wider.
There was no point in waiting any longer. I took a deep, silent breath and ran out from the cover of the pine tree and down the slope. I kept to the path as long as I could, not sure of the footing beneath the snow. As I broke away from it toward the river I looked sideways and saw my enemy rise up out of the snow. He was dressed entirely in white. I felt a moment of relief that he had not been invisible, merely camouflaged—maybe he was not from the Tribe; maybe he was just a border guard—then the dark chasm loomed beneath me and I jumped.
The river roared and fell silent, and in the silence I heard something spinning through the air behind me. As I landed I threw myself to the ground, scrabbling on the icy rock, almost losing my grip. The flying object whistled over my head. If I’d been standing it would have caught me in the back of the neck. Before me lay the star-shaped hole it had made in the snow. Only the Tribe use such throwing knives, and they usually use several, one after the other.
I rolled, pulled myself to safety, still keeping low, and went invisible at once. I knew I could maintain invisibility until I reached the shelter of the forest, but I did not know if he could see me or not and I forgot
about the tracks I would leave in the snow. Luckily for me, he also slipped as he leaped across the river, and while he looked bigger and heavier than me and could probably run faster, I had a head start on him.
Under the cover of the trees I split myself and sent the image sideways up the slope while I ran on down the path, knowing that I could not outrun him for long, that my only hope was to ambush him somehow. Ahead, the path curved round a large rocky outcrop; a tree branch hung above it. I ran round the corner, stepped back in my own footprints, and sprang for the branch. I pulled myself up onto it and took out my knife, wishing I had Jato. The other weapons I carried were those with which I’d been meant to kill Ichiro, garrote and neck spike. But the Tribe are hard to kill with their own weapons, just as they are hard to outwit with their own tricks. My best hope was the knife. I stilled my breathing, went invisible, listened to him falter as he saw my second self, then heard him run again.
I knew I would only have one chance. I dropped on him from above. My weight unbalanced him, and as he stumbled I found a gap in his neck protection and drove the knife into the main artery of the throat, pulling it crossways through the windpipe as Kenji had taught me. He made a grunt of amazement—one I’ve often heard from Tribe members who don’t expect to have to play the part of the victim—and the stumble turned into a fall. I slipped from him. His hands went up to his throat, where the breath was whistling noisily and the blood was spurting. Then he went down for good, on his face, the blood turning the snow red.
I went through his clothes and took the rest of the knives and his short sword, which was a particularly fine one. He had a selection of poisons, which I also took, having none of my own at that time. I had no idea who he was. I removed his gloves and looked at his palms, but they did not bear the distinctive straight line of the Kikuta, and as far as I could see he had no tattoos.
I left his body for the crows and foxes, thinking it would be a welcome winter meal for them, and hurried on as quickly and as silently as possible, fearing he might be one of a band watching the river, waiting for me. The blood was racing through me; I was warmed by my flight and the brief struggle, and I was deeply, primitively glad it was not me lying dead in the snow.