Shike by Robert J. Shea (classic children's novels txt) 📖

a fine piece of land on a hill overlooking the beach, my lady. I am building a house on it. I’ve sent to Hakata for my son and his mother, whom I plan to marry. I may even at last acquire the five children-or was it six?-I told you of when we met so many years ago. I have also been accepted into the joiners’ guild of Kamakura. That wasn’t easy. They’re a tightly knit lot. I couldn’t do any work here without being accepted into the guild. I promised to help pay for a new guild-hall for them, and I showed them a new system of construction proportions which I learned in China. In the long run I hope to become a shipbuilder.”

A silence fell between them. Suddenly Moko said, “I’m sorry you and the shike couldn’t stay together.”

Taniko sighed. “Jebu has a war to go to. I must fight a battle inside myself.”

“I was there,” said Moko softly. “I saw him kill Kiyosi.” “Jebu told me that.”

“I was the first person in all the world to weep for Kiyosi’s death, my lady. Lord Kiyosi was a great and good man. But it is madness to let his death years ago inflict so much suffering on the living today.”

“I agree, Moko. Madness seizes us, though. It does not go away when we tell it to. I can only hope that this madness will leave me in time. I think that it will.”

Taniko felt a tapping on her shoulder. She woke instantly. It was one of her maids. The maid beckoned her. Taniko stood up, pulling her kimono closer around her. A driving summer rainstorm was hammering on the roof of the women’s building. It must be past the middle of the night, Taniko thought. She followed the maid to a partly opened screen overlooking the Shima mansion’s courtyard.

A small band of horsemen was just coming through the main gateway. Their heads were bent against the rain, their faces hidden under hooded cloaks and sedge hats. Something more than the rain had beaten these men down. Their movements were heavy, weary, hopeless. As they dismounted lightning flashed and Taniko recognized Hideyori.

“Does Lord Hideyori have a wife or woman to attend him?” Taniko asked the maid.

The maid shook her head. “His one wife died in childbirth two years ago.”

“Go to him. Tell him Lady Shima Taniko offers to serve him and see to his comfort, if he wishes it.”

The maid looked shocked, but said nothing and hurried away. I’m not going to lie with him, you idiot, Taniko thought. But after what he’s been through, a man needs dry clothes, food, warm sake and someone pleasant to talk to. Surely the head of the Muratomo clan deserves that much.

Hideyori was shivering. He drained four cups of sake in quick succession, each time holding the empty cup out to her without a word. He stared at the wooden floor, his face impenetrable.

This was the first time she had been in Hideyori’s chambers. The room was utterly bare except for a writing table, a plain wooden pillow and a rolled-up futon. In a tokonoma alcove stood a small blackwood statue of the war god, Hachiman, grim of face, on horseback, armed with bow and arrows. Hachiman hasn’t been much help to Hideyori so far, Taniko thought.

At last he looked up at her. “I do not deserve to live,” he said in a voice faint with fatigue.

He’s trying to find out what I think of him, Taniko thought. “My lord, you have an obligation to live. The whole future of the Muratomo depends on you.”

He shook his head. “I watched my father lead our clan to disaster. I vowed I would never make the same mistakes. Nineteen years later I have my first opportunity to lead a Muratomo army into battle, my first chance to strike back at the Takashi. Another disaster.” He waved his hand vaguely southwards. “I had five thousand men under my command. I lost four thousand.”

Taniko wanted to console him, but she could find nothing to say that was both kind and honest. “I am sure the eastern warriors displayed the courage for which they are famous,” she said at last.

“Courage.” He laughed bitterly. “They ran away in the night. I ran with them. But women aren’t usually interested in talk of war.”

“I do not like war, my lord. Still, I consider it too important to ignore.”

“I have always thought you an unusual woman. I marched out of Kamakura, then, as you saw, at the beginning of this month, with high hopes. Many landowners and their men joined us as we went. By the time we were ready to besiege Takashi Kanetake in his stronghold, we were three thousand. We took Kanetake’s castle and put him and all his people to the sword.”

Taniko felt a hollowness in her stomach just as she had when Kublai talked to her about the Mongol massacres. “You took no prisoners, I suppose.”

“Samurai never take prisoners. My aim, when this war is over, is that there be not one Takashi left alive. At least, that was my aim, until Ishibashiyama.”

“What happened there?”

“After our victory over the Takashi governor we felt invincible. More samurai flocked to us. We were five thousand. Then I received word that Mochihito, Motofusa and their followers had been wiped out by the Takashi. Now there was no reason to march south, I thought. Unless Yukio was continuing to push southwards. He and I might take the capital together. Otherwise it would be better to stay here, to consolidate our hold on the north-eastern provinces and the Kanto plains. Let them stretch their lines coming after us.

“Then new messages arrived. The Takashi were on their way north, coming up the Tokaido. My officers were all of one mind. We must go to meet them. We must not allow the Takashi to invade our home provinces, murdering and pillaging. I would have preferred to retreat, drawing the enemy into our territory until we could ambush them somewhere. But my brave eastern warriors wouldn’t hear of that. They were all for attacking at once. I couldn’t put up much opposition. After all, I’ve never proven myself in war, and if samurai get the notion that their leader is a coward, they’ll never fight for him again. So I let myself be led by my followers.

“We marched south through the Hakone mountains. We crossed the neck of the Izu Peninsula. I stopped to pray for victory at the Mishima Hachiman shrine. At last our scouts brought us word that the Takashi were at Shimizu. They estimated that there were thirty thousand of them. We were outnumbered six to one. Now I insisted that to attack was madness. There were those among the officers who were still con vinced we could win. The Takashi aren’t fighters, they said, but effeminate courtiers. Five thousand real samurai could easily beat ten or even twenty times that number of decadent fops.

“Einally, one officer who knew the countryside near by came up with a proposal that satisfied everyone. Near the sea coast, north of Mount Fuji, there is a valley called Ishibashiyama that cuts through the Hakone mountains. It is so narrow that no more than a hundred men can stand abreast at its widest point. At this pass we could make our stand. The Takashi could not go around us, because then we could strike at their rear. They would try to come through the pass, but in that narrow area their numbers would be useless to them. They could come at us only a hundred men at a time. We could inflict such casualties on them that they might eventually give up and retreat. News of a setback to the Takashi like that would bring many more samurai to our side.

“It took nearly two days for us to take up our positions at Ishibashiyama. By then it was the twenty-third day of the month. A Takashi advance guard had pursued us. Before entering the pass we turned and slaughtered them. This gave us even more confidence.”

Atsue could have been riding with that advance guard whose slaughter Hideyori so casually described, thought Taniko. I must not think about that.

“Would the Takashi follow us or had we guessed wrong? Would they try to bypass us instead? It wasn’t till almost nightfall that we heard taiko drums and flutes playing martial music and saw rank after rank of mounted samurai climbing over the foothills.

“Our two armies camped a short distance apart for the night. I thought it might be a good idea to retreat under cover of darkness, but my officers refused to listen.

“Then, in the middle of the night, there was a thunderous noise from behind us, the north end of the pass. Men jumped up in the darkness. Someone shouted, ‘It is the army of the Takashi coming to attack us! There are hundreds of thousands of them.’ They thought the Takashi had stolen around the mountains in the darkness and were attacking us from the rear. Our samurai, half-armed and half-dressed, ran forward, right into the Takashi camp. The Takashi slaughtered hundreds of them.

“By this time some of us realized that the noise that set off the panic was the whirring of the wings of a flock of waterfowl that had taken off in the middle of the night from a lake at the north end of the valley. We started to retreat up the pass, but the narrowness of the valley slowed us down. The supposedly effeminate Takashi fell upon us like a bear chewing up a deer. Less than half our men got out of the valley alive.

“I fled into the forest beyond the pass. It was every man for himself by now. I was alone. I lay with my face in the mud while enemy troops searched the bushes a few feet away.” He looked at Taniko. He could not say that he had been nearly mad with terror, but she could see it in his eyes.

“Eor five days the Takashi scoured those mountains and forests, killing every Muratomo samurai they found. Most of all, though, they were looking for me. Throwing off my armour, keeping only my sword, I fled them and hid from them.” His face brightened. “The worst moment of those five days was also the best. I know the kami are protecting me. I hid in a hollow tree. I could hear a band of the Takashi crashing through the underbrush. Then they were all around me. One of them approached the tree. I recognized him. He was a samurai who had served in the palace guard under my father. He looked into the hollow where I was hiding and right into my eyes. I clenched my fist around my sword. I was determined that I would kill him before he killed me, even though I could never escape his comrades. Then he smiled at me. He stepped back from the tree and struck it twice with the flat of his sword. Three doves that had been perched in the upper branches took flight. ‘No one over here,’ he called and walked away. Do you see? The gods must be watching over me.”

Taniko remembered how, long ago, Kiyosi had seen Moko hiding in a tree and spared his life. On that same day Kiyosi had beheaded the father of this man sitting before her.

She said, “Even in time of fiercest strife some men feel kindly impulses.”

“Kindly impulses?” Hideyori looked at her, surprised. “No, it was not the warrior who saved me. It was Hachiman. The dove is the messenger of Hachiman, and there were three doves in that tree. Hachiman clouded that man’s mind so he would not see me. It was Hachiman