Jade Palace Vendetta

CHAPTER 24

Kaze thought he was being held by a demon of enormous size. The demon was an angry red color and had bulging eyes and two curled, yellowing tusks protruding from its mouth. He held Kaze suspended high in the air with one hand. The hand was so large that the demon could hold Kaze with two fingers. With the other hand, he had Kaze’s two arms pinned back behind him and he was pulling on them, trying to rip them out from Kaze’s shoulders the way wanton boys will pull the wings off a dragonfly.

The pain was excruciating, and Kaze felt an agony like the pain of fire. He looked in the demon’s face and saw an idle curiosity. The pain in his arms and shoulders built and built and built. Kaze closed his eyes tightly and grit his teeth to help him bear it.

Finally, when the pain was unbearable, Kaze popped his eyes open, ready to shout his defiance to the demon, telling the creature to pluck off his arms if he must.

Instead of seeing a demon, however, Kaze discovered he was in an eight-mat room in Hishigawa’s villa. His hands were tied behind him. A rope bound his wrists and looped through a hook in a ceiling joist. Kaze had been hauled into the air by the rope. He was dangling above the mats from his arms, and the weight of his body was causing the pain.

He twisted his wrists, but the ropes binding them were too tight. He was trapped.

Kaze closed his eyes and gathered his strength. He felt the tearing pain in his shoulders, but he tried to ignore it. His face and body were bruised, but he dismissed the beating as the work of amateurs. Instead of worrying about the pain, he tried to take his mind to another time and place. He thought briefly of his first view of Kamakura when he arrived a few days before. The green of the foliage, the blues from the sea and sky and some of the tile roofs, the brown of the earth, and the tiny splashes of color from flowers and birds helped settle his mind. He still felt the pain, but now he regarded his position as just an annoyance.

He wondered if the Lady had been able to take her mind to another place when she was captured. She had endured the same thing, and more.

The rain was drumming down with a steady beat on the day that Kaze had tried to save the Lady. He had been crouching under a large bush, smeared in mud as camouflage, watching Okubo’s encampment.

The encampment was a large enclosure at the top of a hill. Poles were set in a rectangle, with ropes strung between them. Hanging from the ropes were large pieces of black cloth, to shield the encampment from wind, prying eyes, and an easy shot by a sniper with a musket or bow. On the cloth was the Okubo crest, looking like a large, malevolent spider.

Frightened peasants told Kaze that the Lady had been captured. Okubo had used the ruse that he was making a courtesy call before joining the main battle force arrayed against the Tokugawas. The Lady and her daughter had opened the doors of the castle and come out to greet him. He had seized them and pressed an attack, surprising the garrison and overwhelming them with his superior force. Now the castle was destroyed, and no one quite knew where the Lady and her daughter were.

Kaze had watched Okubo’s enclosure all day. Messengers arrived constantly, and the camp seemed to be in a state of intense excitement. If they still lived, Kaze thought the Lady and her daughter would most likely be held prisoner in the encampment. In the late afternoon this suspicion was confirmed in a horrible way.

Activity outside the enclosure seemed at a lull, and Kaze could not see what was happening inside. But he could hear. From inside Okubo’s enclosure came a woman’s scream. It was a scream of pain, torn from her throat. Kaze wasn’t sure if it was the Lady, but even if it was, he told himself to be still and be patient. The second scream almost galvanized him to action, but he knew that attacking the enclosure now would be suicide. Kaze wasn’t afraid to die, but he knew he would not save the Lady by making a senseless attack. So he waited. More screams came from the enclosure. He waited some more, his heart tearing with every scream that long, wet afternoon.

Finally, after hours of the sounds of suffering, Okubo and a strong guard left the enclosure. After Okubo left, two guards came from inside the enclosure and made the rounds of the guards posted outside the fabric barrier. They handed them jugs of sakè, and, with Okubo gone, Kaze could see the guards visibly relaxing and celebrating their victory.

Because of the rainy sky, Kaze did not see the sun go down, but by the sudden descent of darkness, he knew it was night. Still he waited.

Finally, in the small hours of the morning, Kaze moved. He carefully made his way to one side of the enclosure, where a single guard was on duty. The guard was wearing a straw rain cape and stood holding his spear with his head bent under his conical metal helmet to shelter his face from the rain. The guard wasn’t drunk, but in that pose his field of vision was restricted to just a few feet in front of him. Kaze used that fact.

The guard was bored by the sentry duty and fighting to stay awake. He had given up trying to stay warm in the rain hours before and had settled into a state of patient acceptance when he heard the sound of running feet. Startled, he looked up just in time to see a samurai descending on him. He opened his mouth to sound the alarm, but before he could shout his throat was cut by the samurai’s katana.

Kaze took the guard and leaned him up against one of the poles holding the fabric barrier. If someone spotted him, it would look like he was asleep. It would buy Kaze a few moments before they realized the guard was dead.

Kaze cut one of the cords holding the bottom of a fabric panel to a pole and slipped under the panel. Inside the enclosure Kaze saw a couple of tents and another closed-off area. Unsure of where the woman’s screams came from, he decided to try the closed-off area first.

Slipping like a shadow against the background of the black cloth, Kaze went to the small area and entered it. Three long poles had been set up to form a tripod. Hanging from the tripod was the Lady. Her arms were tied behind her and she was hoisted up by those arms. Her kimono was open and hung wet on her body. Her head was bent forward, and she was so still that Kaze thought she might be dead. The cruel rain made her long black hair hang down in front of her face like the hair of a ghost.

Kaze approached her and whispered, “My Lady?”

She moaned and raised her head slightly. Her wet hair still obscured her vision, but she said weakly, “You!”

“Yes. Stay strong. I’ll have you down in a minute.” Kaze placed one arm around her, and as he drew her close his nose was assaulted by the smell of burnt hair. He reached up with his sword hand and cut the rope suspending her. He stopped her from falling to the earth, but she gave a moan of pain when the rope was cut.

Kaze cut the ties on her wrists and laid her on the ground.

“Can you cover me?” she asked. “I’m afraid my arms are dislocated, so I can’t do it myself. I’m sorry.”

Kaze wrapped her kimono around her body and as he did so, the cause of the smell of burnt hair became apparent. Her privates had been burned with fire or hot irons.

“My daughter …” she said.

“Do you know where she is?” Kaze asked. “I’ll get her, too.”

“No. They took her yesterday. Okubo told me he was going to sell her. He wouldn’t tell me where. He said it was punishment for my husband and me always thinking we were better than him. It’s true. We always did think we were better. Now I know we are. But the revenge he took because of that…” Her voice trailed off. Then she said, “I think he did this to me because he liked it. He liked it very much.”

“My Lady, it’s best if you don’t talk now. We still have to get out of here, and as soon as they find out you’re gone, they’ll come looking for us.” Kaze picked her up in his arms. He kept his sword in his hand and carefully made his way out of the enclosure. He was halfway to the opening in the outer enclosure when a samurai in armor and a helmet came out of one of the tents.

He saw Kaze and drew his sword. “Alarm! Intruders!” he shouted, and started running toward Kaze.

Kaze took a few seconds to put the Lady down, instead of dropping her, and those few seconds almost cost him his life.

Kaze took the first sword blow while he was still bent. The best he could do was to parry the samurai’s blow. A man in armor was hard to kill, because there were only a few vulnerable spots. Even if the armor didn’t completely stop a blow, it could lessen its effectiveness, leaving a man with a cut instead of a mortal wound.

Using all his strength, Kaze pushed the man away. He knew he had to end this duel quickly, because he could hear the camp stirring. Reinforcements would be arriving any moment. His katana was made for slashing, not thrusting, but he knew there was one vulnerable spot on the armored man that would end the contest quickly. He stepped back and dropped his guard.

Seeing his chance, the armored samurai attacked, slashing at Kaze with an over-the-head blow. At the ready, Kaze narrowly dodged the blow and lunged forward, the point of his katana aimed at the man’s neck, right below the chin. Kaze caught the man in this unarmored spot and shoved his sword home. The man dropped his sword and grabbed at Kaze’s blade, now stuck in his neck. Kaze withdrew his sword with a sideways motion, slashing the man’s throat. The man collapsed.

Kaze took a second cut at the man’s throat, not to deliver another death blow, but to cut the ties that held the man’s helmet. He scooped the man’s helmet off his head and placed it on his own head just as the troops, roused from a drunken victory stupor, started rushing out of the tents, holding their weapons.

Kaze looked up with the helmet on his head and shouted, “I’ve killed two of them!” He pointed to the body of the dead samurai and the Lady, who was moaning softly from pain. “Quickly! They’ve gone into the enclosed area and rescued the Lady! Hurry! There’s a dozen of them!” Kaze pointed to the enclosure where he had found the Lady. “They’re in there! Hurry! Get them!”

In the dark, with an Okubo helmet on, the troops took Kaze for an officer and immediately rushed to obey. They ran past in a frenzy, bumping into one another in their confusion and bewilderment. As soon as they were past, Kaze scooped up the Lady and made a dash for the place in the compound barrier where he had entered.