Heaven's Net Is Wide Lian Hearn (leveled readers .TXT) 📖

Tohan man thrust up into Karasu’s neck. The horse shuddered and plunged sideways, knocking the other horse in the shoulder. It fell, unseating its dying rider, and Karasu stumbled heavily, throwing Shigeru to the ground on top of his enemy and collapsing over him, pinning him down.

He must have been stunned by the fall, for when he was able to extricate himself from the horse’s body, he was aware that the sun had moved to the west and was beginning to sink behind the mountains. The main thrust of the battle had passed over him like a typhoon and retreated; the small valley where Karasu’s body dammed the stream was deserted, apart from the dead who lay in strange heaps, Otori and Tohan together, in ever-increasing numbers toward the plain.

We are defeated. The ache of misery, rage, and grief for the fallen was too vast to contemplate for more than a moment. He set his mind now on death, welcoming the release it would bring him. In the distance he thought he could see Tohan warriors walking among the dead, severing heads to line them up for Sadamu’s inspection. He will have mine too, Shigeru thought, a brash of rage and hatred washing through his belly, but I must not let myself be captured. He remembered his father’s words: his father must be dead, and Jato was lost. He would cut himself open, the only way to assuage his pain, for no physical suffering could be greater than what he felt now.

He walked a little way up the stream and came to the spring itself, welling coolly from a gap in the black rocks. Ferns and bellflowers grew around it, the white flowers startling in the last of the light. In the rocks above the spring was a small shrine built from boulders and roofed with a single flat stone; another flat stone served as a sill for offerings. He took off his helmet and realized he was bleeding heavily from the scalp. He knelt by the spring and drank deeply, then washed his head, face, and hands. He placed his sword on the sill of the shrine, prayed briefly to the god of the mountain, spoke the name of the Enlightened One, and took his knife from his belt. He loosened his armor and knelt on the grass, opened the pouch that hung at his waist, and took out a small flask of perfume with which to scent his hair and beard, to honor his head when it was displayed to the gaze of Iida Sadamu.

“Lord Shigeru!” Someone was calling his name.

Shigeru had already embarked on his journey toward death and did not take any notice. He knew the voice but did not bother placing it; no one among the living had any hold on him now.

“Lord Shigeru!”

He looked up and saw Irie Masahide limping up the stream toward him. Irie’s face was greenish-white; he clasped his side where the armor had been hacked away.

He has brought me Jato! Shigeru thought with profound sorrow, for he no longer wanted to live.

Irie spoke in gasps. “Your father is dead. It is a complete defeat. Noguchi betrayed us.”

“And my father’s sword?”

“It disappeared when he fell.”

“Then I can kill myself,” Shigeru said with relief.

“Let me assist you,” Irie said. “Where is your sword? Mine is shattered.”

“I placed it on the shrine. Be quick-I fear capture above everything.”

But as Irie reached out to pick up the sword, his legs buckled and he pitched forward. Shigeru caught the older man as he fell and saw that he was dying. The blow that had cut his armor had gone deep into the stomach area. Only the lacing of the armor had held him together.

“Forgive me,” Irie gasped. “Even I have failed you.” Blood gushed from his mouth. His face contorted and his body arched briefly. Then life fled from his eyes, and his limbs relaxed into the long sleep of death.

Shigeru was moved deeply by the determination of his old teacher and friend to seek him out in the agony of his last moments, but the incident only reinforced the utterness of the defeat, and his aloneness now. Jato was gone; it was confirmed. He washed Irie’s face and closed his eyes, but before he could kneel and take up his knife again, a shimmer at the corner of his eye made him turn, grasping for the knife, uncertain whether to plunge it immediately into his own belly or to deal first with this new threat. He was achingly tired: he did not want to fight, to dredge up from somewhere the energy to live; he wanted to die, but he would not let himself be captured.

“Lord Otori.” Another voice from the past that he could not place. The fading evening light seemed to fracture in a way that was vaguely familiar to his desperate mind. A fragment of memory from a different lifetime, a different light made greenish by the forest and the falling rain…

The fox spirit stood before him, holding Jato. The same pale, mobile face; the unremarkable, slight stature; the black opaque eyes that took in everything.

“Lord Otori!”

The man who had said he was called the Fox held out the sword in both hands, taking care to use the lightest touch, for any pressure on the blade would immediately slit the skin. Its scabbard was lost, but the bronze and pearl settings gleamed in the hilt. Shigeru took it with reluctant reverence, bowed to his benefactor, and felt the sword’s power as it settled into his hand.

Life, full of unbearable pain and impossible demands, came rushing toward him.

Don’t kill yourself. Was it the man’s voice or his dead father’s or the sword’s? Live and get revenge!

He felt his face change as his lips parted. His eyes filled with tears and he smiled.

He took Irie’s empty scabbard from the warrior’s belt and slid Jato’s blade into it. Then he took his old sword from the shrine and held it out to the Fox.

“Will