Death at the Crossroads

CHAPTER 5

It was a subtle thing, but he was a man used to living off subtleties. The trees along this patch of road were thick and overgrown with brush, yet deep in the woods, through the tangle of branches, Kaze had seen a flash of red, then gold. He stared intently, seeing if he could spot the colors again, but saw nothing except the dark tree trunks.

Leaving the road, he started making his way into the trees. Silent as any hunter, he carefully stepped over brush and glided from point to point, penetrating the woods with a maximum of stealth and a minimum of sound.

A short distance from the road, he stopped. There the woods opened up into a large clearing. The grass in the clearing was trampled down, forming a space roughly the size of eight tatami mats. In this space, standing alone, was a Noh dancer.

The dancer wore a rich kimono of red and gold. The crimson silk was embroidered with a pattern of golden maple leaves, tumbling from one shoulder and fluttering their way to the kimono’s hem. Stepping through this dry autumn shower, a brown embroidered doe gently peeked from the back of the kimono to the flank of the dancer, looking about warily with wide eyes. The lushness of the kimono’s color was what Kaze had spotted through the trees.

On the face of the dancer was a ko-omote, the traditional mask of a maiden: oval, serene, painted white with red lips and high, expressive eyebrows. The mask was surmounted by a black wig with long, lustrous human hair pulled back into a bun, adding to the illusion that the Noh dancer, who was a man, was really a woman.

The dancer moved with slow grace, his movements controlled and stylized. Kaze, who had not seen Noh for many years, was entranced. Noh was part dance, part drama, and part music. In the silent performance being pantomimed before him, the music and stylized singing and speech of the Noh ensemble were missing, but the grace of the dancer remained.

He was moving in a precise, measured triangle, and Kaze realized that it was Dojoji, a Noh play about a dedication ceremony for a large bronze bell at Dojoji temple. An enchanting female shirabyoshi dancer climbs the mountain to the temple, only to be revealed as a vengeful spirit who turns herself into a frightening serpent when trapped under the bell by the priests of the temple. It’s a spectacular performance, with a costume change for the principal dancer when hidden in the bell, metamorphosing from the robes and mask of the maiden to the glittering costume and fearsome mask of the serpent.

The dancer walked through the small triangle again and again, varying the walk by small degrees. It was the part of the play where the dancer makes the long climb up the mountain to the temple, a part that extends for many minutes in the actual performance. Here the precision and skill of the dancer was taxed to keep the action interesting to the audience, and Kaze was delighted by the finesse shown as the dancer made small variations in these apparently repetitious movements.

When the dancer was done, he straightened up, and Kaze realized that this was just a practice and that the complete Noh would not be danced. Still, the skill shown was extraordinary, and Kaze stepped into the clearing and said, “Superb! I have never seen Dojoji danced better.”

The dancer stiffened and turned in Kaze’s direction. “Excuse me,” Kaze said. “I do not wish to disturb your privacy, but I couldn’t stop myself from praising your skill at Noh.” Kaze made a deep, formal bow to the dancer.

Without responding with words, the dancer gave Kaze an equally formal bow, but it was done with a grace that made Kaze feel thick and awkward.

“Thank you for the pleasure of your dancing,” Kaze said. He turned around and made his way back to the path. Without looking back, Kaze started down the road again.

Kaze had seen many strange sights in his lifetime, but the silent Noh in a hidden mountain clearing had a dreamlike quality to it. Behind the mask, Kaze could not tell what the man was like, but perhaps that was the best way to be these days: silent and wearing a mask.

The world was changing, and not for the better as far as Kaze was concerned. After three hundred years of constant warfare, Japan had known a brief period of peace under Hideyoshi, the Taiko. But even Hideyoshi couldn’t stand a period of warriors dying of old age in bed, and he had attacked Korea with an eye toward eventually conquering China. After some initial successes, the entire Korean war had turned into a disaster, with many of Hideyoshi’s closest allies perishing in his foreign adventure. Hideyoshi himself remained in Japan, and he died of old age in his bed. Yet Hideyoshi’s death marked a dangerous time for his heir and his allies, for Tokugawa Ieyasu was sitting patiently in Japan’s richest region, the Kanto, waiting.

Ieyasu waited as Hideyoshi’s allies drained themselves of young blood in the ill-fated Korean adventure, while Ieyasu himself adroitly avoided getting deeply involved. Ieyasu waited while Hideyoshi declined in health with only a very young son as heir. Ieyasu waited while the Council of Regents, of which he was a member, decayed into bickering and dissension instead of helping Hideyoshi’s young heir rule Japan. And finally, after a lifetime of waiting, Ieyasu took action and risked it all in a battle involving over two hundred thousand men. He defeated the forces loyal to Hideyoshi’s heir at the battle of Sekigahara, setting himself up to become the undisputed ruler of Japan.

Now Hideyoshi’s heir and widow were holed up in Osaka Castle, like badgers retreating into a lair, and the rest of the country was embroiled in chaos as the Tokugawas inexorably extended their control over the country, casting numerous samurai, who had been loyal to the losers at Sekigahara, free to wander the countryside as ronin in search of new employment. Kaze had no idea how many samurai were now masterless, but it could easily be fifty thousand or more. These men must find employment with some lord or they would lose their hereditary status as samurai-literally, “those who serve.”

Kaze found the large number of ronin wandering the country a convenience in some ways. It allowed him to blend into the crowd because the sight of a ronin anyplace in Japan was not at all unusual now. Normally Kaze’s instincts would be to go to Osaka to fight for Hideyoshi’s heir or to commit seppuku and follow his Lord into death. But he was not free to follow his instincts. In fact, he was not free at all.

When Kaze had been walking for an hour, a pair of eyes watched him much as Kaze had watched the Noh dancer, hidden in the woods and unseen. As soon as the watcher was sure of what he was seeing, he pulled away from his observation post and scrambled down a slope. At the bottom of the slope two men were sitting on the ground, playing dice. They were dressed in a colorful assortment of clothes and had two spears and a sword stuck into the earth next to them.

One slammed down a scruffy wooden dice cup and lifted it quickly. “Damn!” he said as he stared down at the dice.

His companion gave an evil, yellow-toothed grin. “This isn’t a lucky day for you.” He scooped up a few coppers that were on the ground between them.

The first man glowered. “If I find out you’ve been cheating, I’ll slice your guts open.”

“They’re your dice and you’ve been throwing them. Look,” he said, pointing up the slope, “maybe the pup is coming to tell us that your luck is changing. Maybe a nice rich merchant, or maybe a succulent virgin!”

“Someone is coming!” the young lookout reported to the two bandits as he slid to a stop at the bottom of the slope.

“Of course, baka! But who’s coming?”

The young man, Hachiro, scratched his head. “I think a merchant. Or maybe a samurai. I’m not sure.”

“Fool!”

“If it’s a samurai, let’s let him pass,” the man with the yellow teeth said.

“No. Samurai or not, I’m going to recover my loses. Coming?”

“All right. But let’s give the youngster a chance to kill his first man.” He looked at the young lookout, who now had an expression of confusion and fear on his face. “Take one of the spears. We’ll keep him occupied. All you have to do is sneak up behind him and stick him in the back. Shove hard. Sometimes you hit a bone. Got that?”

“Are you sure …?” the young man said.

The bandit with the yellow teeth hit the youngster on the side of the head, knocking him to his knees. “Do you want to be a bandit or not?”

Looking up with tears in his eyes, the young man nodded yes.

“Good! If this is the life you’ve chosen, you might as well do it right! Understand?”

Once again the youth nodded.

The man yanked one of the spears out of the ground, and his companion took the sword. They started scrambling up the slope to the road, setting up an ambush. The youth, rubbing the side of his head, picked up the second spear and made his way to a position where he could circle around and come up behind the man on the road.

As Kaze walked uphill on a long straight part of the road, he realized he could be easily seen from the rise ahead. Around him, the air was still and heavy, and the songbirds were not singing. That, by itself, was not proof that there were others ahead of him, but it served to heighten his senses. Although he didn’t change his stride or slow down, out of habit he listened intently and scanned the side of the road ahead. His alertness was rewarded with the sound of small rocks rolling down the hillside that formed the down-slope portion of the dirt road.

He walked past the location of the sound. Suddenly, ahead of him, two men stepped out of the forest holding weapons. One had a spear and the other held a sword. So he was surrounded, although he wasn’t supposed to know it yet.

“Oi! Hey, you!” one of the men ahead yelled gruffly.

Kaze stopped, watching the two men closely, but not making any aggressive moves. When Kaze said nothing, the man seemed to grow agitated. “Do you hear me?” the man demanded.

“Yes, I hear you,” Kaze replied. “It’s hard not to hear such a sweet voice as yours. And so polite, too.”

The man frowned. He looked at his companion for guidance. His friend said, “Are you being smart with us?” He showed large yellow teeth when he talked.

“I wouldn’t care to be smart with men such as you. In fact, being smart with you would be dumb.”

“What’s that mean?” the one with yellow teeth asked.

“As I’ve said,” Kaze replied.

The two men looked at each other again, puzzled. Then the first to speak said, “Do you know who we are?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“We’re part of Boss Kuemon’s gang. We control the roads around here, and you’ll have to pay us a toll to walk on them.”

“What toll?”

“All your money, of course!”

Behind him, Kaze could hear a shower of pebbles as someone scrambled up the hillside and onto the road.

“Is that all?”

“What else have you got?”

“Aren’t you going to try to take my life, too? The one standing behind me is shaking so much that I can hear his bones rattle. Surely he must be thinking about something like killing me to make him shake so.” Kaze heard a gasp behind him. Then he heard the person behind him step back. Good.

“If we have to, we’re not afraid of killing you!” Yellow Teeth said.

“That’s right, we’ve killed before.”

“Oh? How many times?”

The one with yellow teeth puffed out his chest. “I’ve killed three men! All were smart mouths like you, who didn’t give me their money!”

“And I’ve killed four!” his companion said.

“Seven men. That’s certainly a life’s work to be proud of. Your mothers did a service when they brought you into this world. And how many has the one behind me killed?”

“I’ve killed lots,” said a young voice from behind Kaze. It had a quaver to it.

“You sound too young to have killed many men,” Kaze said without looking behind him.

The two men in front of him laughed. “Pretty good, samurai,” Yellow Teeth said. “Even this stranger can tell you’re a virgin at killing men, boy. An experienced killer would have run this smart mouth samurai through long ago. Like this!”

Yellow Teeth lunged forward with his spear. Kaze stepped to the left and grabbed the shaft of the spear with his left hand as it passed to his right. Spinning in a complete circle, Kaze drew his sword with his right hand and had it swinging in a deadly arc when he completed his spin. The blade caught the man with the sword, who was rushing forward to help his companion. The sword bit deep into his neck and thorax, sliding out as the man’s momentum carried him forward.

Kaze let go of the spear and brought his sword upward into the side of the spearman. The razor-sharp blade cut into the man’s side, slicing deeply just under the rib cage. The man staggered backward, holding onto his side with a surprised look on his face. He lost his footing and fell backward onto the road.

Kaze quickly turned. He was facing a youth holding a spear in trembling hands. Behind him, Kaze could hear the hiss of air burbling from the sliced neck of one man and the groans of pain from the other. Both were dead, or soon would be, and Kaze just had to be careful that the man cut in the side didn’t have the strength to make a last effort to kill him.

Kaze’s eyes met the young man’s. “Well?”

The youth dropped his spear and started running down the road, propelled both by the downhill slope and a jolt of terror. Kaze shook his head and turned to view the two bodies. The entire incident had taken seconds.

Kaze walked over to the man cut in the side. He was desperately trying to hold the pieces of his belly together while his lifeblood gushed out. Kaze put his sword at the ready, prepared to give the coup de grâce. “Should I?” he asked.

The man looked terrified and violently shook his head no. Kaze lowered his sword, wiped it clean on the man’s clothes, and put it back into its scabbard. Then he dragged the man to the side of the road, where he could lean back against a tree out of the sun.

He went to the man with his neck cut but saw that he was already dead. By the time he returned to the man with the cut side, he was dead, too. Kaze looked down at the dead bandit and reflected on the human tendency to sustain a few more miserable seconds of existence in this troubled world. Sometimes it didn’t make sense to him, especially since men would be reincarnated and live again. He sighed. He desired to be free to live or die as he wished, instead of tied up by debts of honor and obligation.

Before she died, the Lady had said, “Find my daughter.” It saddened Kaze to think of that night and all that led up to it. Instead of the serene beauty he associated with her, the Lady’s body was twisted and ravaged by the torture she had endured. Her face was haggard and lined with pain, and Kaze was desperate to find some warm, dry shelter for her. Instead, she was lying in the rain under a crude bower Kaze had constructed from tree limbs. After rescuing her from the Tokugawas, he had eluded the men with the banners with the family crest that looked like a spider: eight bent, white bamboo leaves surrounding a white diamond, all on a black background.

Walking in the dark storm, he had carried her deep into the mountains and, although he was weary, he wanted to continue fleeing the pursuing guards. But he realized she needed rest and had taken the risk of stopping to build a shelter to protect her from the hard rain. Kaze dared not build a fire and was considering asking permission to lie next to the Lady so his body heat could warm her when she had started speaking.

“I don’t know how, but if she’s still alive I want you to find her. It’s my last wish and my last command to you,” she said. She looked at him with feverish eyes, black from strain and pain. The translucent whiteness of her skin was caused by cold and her weakened condition, not by carefully applied rice powder, as it would have been in happier days. It gave her a ghostly appearance.

Kaze couldn’t speak. He bowed formally in response to the Lady’s order. Hot, wet tears flowed down his cheeks and mingled with the icy raindrops striking his face. The Lady extended a weak hand. It trembled with the effort to keep it in the air. “Give me your wakizashi.” Surprised, Kaze removed his short sword from his sash, putting it in her hand. The weight of the sword caused her hand to drop to the ground, but she clutched the scabbard fiercely. At first Kaze thought the Lady had lost heart and was going to use the short sword to commit suicide, but then she said, “This represents your honor and the ability to take your own life. It is now mine until the girl is found.”

Now the sword reposed in the Lady’s funeral temple, waiting for him to reclaim it. That was how many villages and towns ago? And how many faces of little girls had he looked at, hoping to see a glimmer of the Lord or the Lady in that face? She was seven when he started, and now he was asking about nine-year-olds. Would he be asking about ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-olds before he could find her? But ahead was another village, and maybe in this village he would find what he was seeking. Then his life would be his own again, along with his honor.

He looked around for the bandit’s sword and went to pick it up. Using this weapon instead of his own sword, he started scraping out two shallow graves. When he finished burying the men, he looked at the trees lining the road until he found one that suited his purpose. Using the bandit’s sword, he cleanly sliced a limb off, then took a second cut at the limb’s stump to cut a piece of straight tree branch as long as his hand. He took out the small knife embedded in his scabbard and set to work, his hands moving with practiced economy as he carved the wood. From the rough wood emerged Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy. With a few final slices of his knife, he finished the folds of her robe and then gazed into her serene face. It was the face of the Lady, not as he had seen her last, but the way he wanted to remember her.

Placing her by the side of the road where she could look upon the graves of the two bandits, Kaze continued his journey.