Heaven's Net Is Wide

30

Early in the fifth month, Shigeru left the city of Hagi with close to five thousand men. His father came with him. Lord Shigemori had his armor prepared and his warhorse brought in from pasture. The decision seemed to strengthen him, and he rode erect in the saddle, Jato at his side.

Shigeru had gone to Akane the day before to say good-bye to her. She had been strongly moved, had clung to him and wept, her usual self-control abandoned. His leave-taking of his wife had been much colder. He felt Moe was glad to see him go and would be relieved if he did not return, though her father and brothers would be fighting alongside him, and if he fell, they probably would too. He wished he was leaving children behind but then recalled that if he was defeated, they also would die, and he was relieved that he was to be spared that sorrow. At least Takeshi was safe at Terayama.

He rode alongside his father across the stone bridge a little before midday. Akane stood by her father’s grave, among the townspeople who had gathered to bid the army farewell. Shigeru’s eyes met hers, and on the far bank he turned to look back at her, as he had once before.

He had received messages from Mori Kiyoshige at Chigawa, saying the Tohan were amassing just over the border, as he had expected. There was no element of surprise in the attack. Everyone knew the battle was inevitable. The villagers along the road from Hagi were digging earthworks and mounds to protect themselves. Along the way, the army was joined by more retainers with their own armed forces. Others, such as Otori Eijiro, had traveled south of the ranges and through the pass known as White Pine Pass and they met up a week later on the western edge of the Yaegahara plain. A small range of hills extended into the plain, and on top of the most easterly one stood a wooden fort. The range curved around to the southwest road, and here Shigeru expected to find the Otori vassals from the South: the Yanagi and the Noguchi. He sent Irie with a troop of men to make contact with them and set up camp along the western bank of the small river that flowed north from the plain.

Messengers were also sent to Chigawa, where Kiyoshige was under instructions not to attempt to defend the town but to retreat to the plain, bringing the Tohan army into the encirclement of the Otori forces. The messengers returned with Harada, who informed Shigeru that all the indications were that the Tohan would advance as soon as dawn broke the following day. Their forces were estimated at around twelve thousand-outnumbering Shigeru and his vassals by three or four thousand. But the advantages of the terrain lay with the Otori: from midday on, the light would favor them, and they would be defending their own land against invaders.

The foot soldiers had all carried long wooden spikes with them, and these were now erected in lines of palisades to slow the attack and give cover to bowmen. As the sun set, the smoke from hundreds of small fires rose in the still air. The hum of the army, the noise of men and horses, drowned out the evening song of birds, but when night fell and the soldiers snatched a few hours of sleep, owls could be heard hooting from the mountain. The stars were brilliant, but there was no moon; toward dawn a mist rose from the river, and when day broke, the sky had become overcast.

Irie returned as Shigeru was eating, to tell him that Kitano had taken up position on the far east of the plain, concealing his men on the slopes of a wooded hill, and Noguchi was a little to the west of him, covering the road to the South. Yanagi and his sons were between Noguchi and Otori Eijiro, who was within sight of Shigeru’s main force. Shigeru remained in the center and sent his father with Irie to the eastern flank, beneath the protection of the wooden fort.

The men readied themselves: rows of bowmen and foot soldiers behind the palisades and along the banks of the river; horsemen with drawn swords, the horses restless and sweating in the still, warm morning; bannermen holding aloft the crested banners, the Otori heron seen everywhere, white against the deep blue background, together with the family crests of the vassals: the twin carp of the Noguchi, the chestnut leaf of Kitano, the galloping horse of the Mori, the willow leaves of the Yanagi, the peach blossom of the Miyoshi: here and there the scarlet and gold of decorated armor; helmets topped with ancient moons, stag antlers, or stars; and the flash of steel swords, knives, and lance tips. The grass was shooting new bright green, and flowers dotted it-white, pink, and pale blue.

Shigeru felt his heart swell with pride and confidence. He could not conceive that this magnificent army could be defeated. On the contrary, the day had come when the Otori would defeat the Tohan once and for all and drive them back beyond Inuyama.

In the distance, across the plain, a cloud of dust signaled horsemen approaching, and before long, Kiyoshige, Miyoshi Kahei, and most of their men rode up to the stockades. They had already had a taste of battle; the Tohan had taken Chigawa, and though Kiyoshige had retreated immediately as planned, the advance had been so swift and brutal they had had to fight their way through.

“The town is on fire,” Kiyoshige said. “Many of the townspeople were massacred. The Tohan are right behind us.”

His face was somber beneath the dust and blood. “We will win this battle,” he said to Shigeru, “but it will not be easy, or short.”

They clasped hands briefly, then turned their horses toward the East, as the conch shells sounded and the Tohan warriors came pouring across the dusty plain.

It was around the Hour of the Horse, and the sun had broken through the clouds and shone from the southeastern corner of the sky, making it difficult to see the Kitano and Noguchi forces clearly. Since the Tohan were passing in front of their position, Shigeru expected the attack of arrows from moment to moment. From the northwest he could see Irie’s men preparing to loose their arrows on the Tohan horsemen’s right flank.

“Why are they delaying?” he said to Kiyoshige. “They must move now. Ride to Noguchi and tell him to attack at once.”

Kiyoshige urged his gray black-maned horse, Kamome, into a gallop across the plain toward the South. The Tohan horsemen were still beyond bow’s range. The arrow that hit Kamome in the chest could not have come from one of them. It came instead from Noguchi’s archers and was followed by several more. The horse went down. Shigeru saw Kiyoshige leap from its back, landing on one knee and steadying himself before rising immediately, drawn sword in his hand. He did not have the chance to use it. A second burst of arrows came like a wave of the sea, dragging him under; as he struggled to get to his feet, one of Noguchi’s warriors ran forward, severed his head with a single stroke, lifted it up by its topknot and displayed it to the soldiers behind him. An ugly shout rose from their throats, and the Noguchi surged forward, trampling over the headless body and the dying horse, racing not down the slope in the direction of the advancing Tohan force but up the slope, along the side of the plain, outflanking Shigeru’s main force, pushing them up against the northern range, rendering the palisades useless.

Shigeru hardly had time to register anything-not the realization of betrayal, not grief at Kiyoshige’s death-before he found himself fighting for his life against his own clansmen, rendered desperate and vicious by their treachery. Afterward, scenes were engraved on his memory that would never be erased: Kiyoshige’s head separated from his body yet still in some way living, eyes wide in shock; the gut-aching moment when he had to believe his own eyes and realize he had been betrayed; the first man he killed in a pure reflex of self-defense; the Noguchi crest; then the replacement of his own shock by a fury unlike anything he had ever experienced, a blood-lusting rage in which all emotions left him, save the desire to kill the whole traitorous horde himself.

The foot soldiers were in disarray, mown down by the Tohan horsemen in front of them and the Noguchi bowmen to the side. Shigeru led his horsemen time and again against the Tohan, but as they were forced back toward the hills, each time there were fewer to follow him. He was aware of his father and Irie away to his left. The Kitano, whom he expected to reinforce him from the south, seemed to have vanished. Had they retreated already? Scanning the banners in vain for the chestnut leaf, he saw Irie lead an attack on the right flank of the Tohan; as he turned Karasu to urge him back into the fray, he spotted Eijiro with his oldest son, Danjo, alongside him. They rode forward together, cutting a swath into the foot soldiers, forcing them to retreat a little, but then Eijiro was struck from the side by a lance and went down. Danjo gave a howl of rage, killed the man who had killed his father; at almost the same moment a horseman rode at him and split his skull.

Shigeru fought on, possessed by the same blind fury. A fog seemed to have descended on the battlefield, dulling vision and hearing. He was vaguely aware of the screams of men and horses, the sigh and clack that preceded another deadly shower of arrows, the shouts and grunts that accompanied the heavy labor of slaughter, but he himself was dissociated from it, as though he saw himself in a dream. The fray was so intense it was almost impossible to distinguish his own men from the Tohan. Banners fell in the dust; crests on surcoats were obliterated by blood. Shigeru and a small handful of men were forced back up the course of a small stream. He saw his companions fall one by one around him, but each one had taken two Tohan warriors down with him. Shigeru was left facing two enemy soldiers, one on foot, one still mounted. All three of them were exhausted; he parried the hacking blows from the horseman, driving Karasu closer to the other steed and bringing his sword quickly back down as the horse stumbled. He saw his opponent’s blood spurt and knew he had disabled him at least for a moment or two; he turned to counter the foot soldier on his right, killing him just as the 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 you take this in exchange?”

“I am not a warrior. I have no use for a sword.”

“You have the courage of a warrior,” Shigeru replied, “and the Otori clan, if any survive, are forever indebted to you.”

“Let’s get out of here,” the other replied, smiling slightly, as if Shigeru’s words had somehow pleased him. “Take off your armor and leave it here.”

“You probably think I should take my own life,” Shigeru said, as he complied. “I wish I had, still wish I could. But my father’s last command to me was to live-if Jato, his sword, came to me.”

“I don’t care one way or the other. I don’t know why I’m helping you. Believe me, it’s not my customary practice. Come on, follow me.”

The Fox had put Shigeru’s sword back on the flat rock, but as they turned toward the mountain, shouts and the padding of feet came from below and a small band of men burst upon the scene, the triple oak leaf clearly visible on their surcoats.

“I might need this after all,” the Fox muttered, as he seized the sword and drew it from the scabbard. At the same time, Jato came to life in Shigeru’s hand. He had held the sword before, but this was the first time he had fought with it. He felt a flash of recognition.

They had the advantage of the slope, but neither of them had any protection, and the Tohan men were in full armor, three carrying swords and two spears with curved blades. Shigeru felt his energy return, as if Jato itself had infused new life into him. He parried the closest man’s sword thrust and with snakelike speed stepped sideways and let the man stumble past him; Jato hissed back through the air and slid beneath the helmet into the back of the neck, severing the spinal cord. A spear thrust followed from below, but the Fox had gone invisible and now reappeared behind the warrior, slashing with the long sword, cutting the man from shoulder to hip. The spear fell uselessly to the ground.

The Tohan men might have guessed whom they were fighting and their hopes of a huge reward spurred them on, but after the first two men died so quickly, the second spearsman retreated backward down the hill, clearly preferring not to be killed now that the battle was over. However, he was shouting for help. At any moment, Shigeru knew, others would come pouring up the slope: if he was to avoid capture now, he must kill the remaining men and flee immediately, but he knew he was tiring as he was fighting them both at the same time, Jato moving through the air like a striking adder. He thought the Fox had abandoned him; then he realized the man was fighting at his side-and had been joined by a third, curiously similar in appearance. In the moment when their opponents were distracted, the Fox caught one man’s sword arm with a return stroke, taking it off at the shoulder. Jato found the other’s throat and cut deep into the jugular.

“Ha!” the Fox said with some satisfaction, looking at the bodies and then at the sword blade before returning it to its scabbard. “It’s a good weapon. Maybe I’ll keep it after all.”

“You have earned it twice…” Shigeru began, but the other man cut him off.

“You have a fine way of putting things, Lord Otori, but with all respect, there’s no time for that now. You must know the entire Tohan army is looking for you. Sadamu has offered rewards for every Otori head, and the biggest one of all is for yours. I found you first and I’m not going to let anyone else get you.”

“You did not give me my father’s sword in order to hand us both over to Sadamu?”

“No, if I wanted to kill you, I’d have done it by now, before you even realized it. I’m trying to help you.”

“Why?”

“I think we might discuss that later, when we get to wherever it is you want to go.”

“It seems I am to live,” Shigeru said, glancing briefly back toward the place he had thought would be his death scene. “In which case, I must return to Hagi as soon as possible and save what I can of the clan and the Middle Country.”

“Then we will go to Hagi,” the Fox said and began walking swiftly up the slope into the darkness of the forest.

The last sounds of the battlefield faded as the forest deepened around them. It was almost completely dark and the first stars had appeared: the Great Bear low in the northeast corner like an omen of evil to come. A vixen screamed, making the back of Shigeru’s neck tingle. He remembered how he had followed this man before, when he had been just a boy, before he had killed even a single man, when his whole future had seemed full of hope. Then his world had been knocked out of kilter-by the collision with a supernatural reality. Now his world was again reeling-he did not know if it was within his power to steady it or if it would tilt and fall, hurtling him and everything that had any meaning for him into oblivion.

The vixen screamed again. She would be hunting to feed her young at this time of year-an undreamed-of feast awaited her on the plain below. He shuddered, thinking of the scenes dawn would bring, the crows feeding on the dead.