Shike, Robert J. Shea [ebook reader that looks like a book TXT] 📗

his quiver, he saw a darkly handsome face with a small moustache. The arrow struck the Takashi samurai square in the chest. He dropped his bow, toppled slowly over the railing of the ship and fell into the sea. When the splash subsided, he was gone.

“I told you not to bother with samurai,” Yukio shouted. Jebu started to explain that the warrior had been about to shoot Yukio, when a wail from beside them interrupted him. It was Moko, clinging to the railing, staring at the place where the Takashi samurai had gone down. He turned tearful eyes to Jebu.

“Accursed am I, that I should have seen this. Years ago that man saved my life. I will never forget his face. He was the only man in the world besides you, shik��, to whom I could truly say I owed my life. And now you have killed him.”

“He was aiming at Lord Yukio.”

“I do not reproach you, shik��. I only say that war is the evillest thing I know, and I hate it.”

They were past the Takashi line now. The ocean, blue-grey and limitless, lay ahead. Behind them, two more Muratomo ships were pushing through the blockade. More Takashi ships closed in. Elights of arrows whistled in both directions. Again the Takashi ships wallowed, disabled, and the Muratomo ships shot by them.

Moko told Yukio and Jebu of the day Domei was executed, and how Kiyosi had seen him hiding in the tree above the Emperor’s head and had not denounced him.

“Of course,” said Yukio. “I would have recognized him if I’d been looking in his direction. I saw him often, especially during the years I lived at the Rokuhara. How strange karma is. On the very day that Kiyosi spared your life, he beheaded my father.”

“I saw him do it,” said Moko. “But also, Lord Yukio, I saw him weep after he did it.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. He was always kind to me. He never said he was sorry that he killed my father; it would, not have been proper for us to speak of that. But somehow I knew he did it because it was his duty, and I never held it against him. Just as it was his duty to aim an arrow at me just now. I hold others to blame for my father’s death. Sogamori, Horigawa.”

“So that was Kiyosi,” said Jebu. “Years ago I shot at him, but it wasn’t his karma to die that day. I have heard nothing but good of him. I am sorry that he died by my hand.” Gripping the rail and bowing his head, Jebu mentally recited the Prayer to a Eallen Enemy with greater fervour than he had felt in years.

A Takashi vessel slammed up against the side of a Muratomo ship trying to break through the blockade. Takashi samurai leaped over the rails. Swords clashed. The decks of both ships were a jumble of fighting men. But two more Muratomo ships cut through to the open ocean.

Yukio gave orders to his signalman. In a few moments the Muratomo craft that had broken the blockade were sailing parallel to the line of Takashi warships, arrows devastating the enemy crews. More Muratomo ships came through. Clouds of arrows fell on the Takashi ships while their samurai, shouting challenges and insults, stood at the rails, futilely waving their swords.

Jebu looked past the crumbling blockade. The other Takashi ships and the commandeered fishing boats from Hakata had joined forces and were sailing towards the harbour entrance in hot pursuit of the Muratomo.

A bright flash caught Jebu’s eye. Elames leaped up on a fishing vessel. The men on it were jumping overboard. Ribbons of fire sprang up all over the fishing boats. The flames spread to the Takashi warships.

“What’s that? More of your planning ahead?”

Yukio nodded. “It was easy to foresee that the Takashi would commandeer boats to come after us. So, aboard the boats today were, not the local fishermen, but Muratomo samurai dressed as fishermen. When the fishing boats were mixed in with the Takashi fleet, my men set fire to them and jumped overboard.”

A few of the Takashi ships seemed to have escaped, but the mouth of the harbour was now blocked by a great ball of fire, as if a piece of the sun had fallen into it. Takashi samurai splashed briefly in the water before their armour pulled them under. One of the fishing boats, manned by Muratomo men, darted here and there, pulling the unarmoured Muratomo survivors out of the water. When they had all been pulled in, the boat followed after the Muratomo fleet. Yukio’s ship fell behind to meet it.

Yukio ran amidships and helped pull wet, naked men from the fishing boat. “Marvellous!” he shouted. “Splendid! Let sake be brought for these men at once. They’re cold from their swim.”

Looking aft, all Jebu could see was rolling clouds of black smoke and a jumble of burning ships. Then his eyes narrowed. Two ships were coming after them. One, judging by its lines, was a Muratomo transport, while the other appeared to be a Takashi warship. He caught Yukio’s arm.

“Look.”

Yukio laughed wildly. “Look again.” There were white banners waving from both ships. Jebu remembered the two ships that had come together and the masses of samurai locked in hand-to-hand combat. Evidently the Muratomo had won.

“We have eleven ships now instead of ten,” said Yukio. “A gift from the Takashi.” He suddenly seized Jebu violently by both arms and shook him with a strength surprising for such a small man.

“China, Jebu! China! A whole new world for us! Let the Takashi perish in the nine hells. The future is ours.”

Yukio laughed again. “Out to sea,” he called to the pilot. “Take us to China.” The signal flags flapped, and the Muratomo vessels turned away from the mouth of the harbour and set their course westwards. All sails were up, and all rattled as the strong wind from the east took them.

Yukio’s feverish gaiety subsided. “If only we hadn’t killed Kiyosi. That takes some of the joy out of this victory for me, Jebusan. He was the wisest of all the Takashi, the best fighter, the noblest lord. In killing him we’ve dealt the Takashi a blow from which they may never recover. Still, I would rather he had lived, if karma allowed it.”

Jebu shrugged. “It was his day to die. I’m sure he was as ready and willing as you and I are. And he was trying to kill you.”

“You saved my life. Again. I am in your debt for ever.” Yukio gripped Jebu’s upper arm, hard. “But it’s a great sadness, not just for Kiyosi’s sake. His death harms others for whom I care. There was a woman, Kiyosi’s woman. She was very good to my mother and me. Remember I told you how my mother became Sogamori’s mistress to save my life? Well, this lady acted as a go between, for no other reason than her affection for my mother. And she suffered for it. Her husband was Prince Sasaki no Horigawa, who wanted Hideyori and me dead. He punished his wife by-Why are you staring at me?”

Jebu’s body went cold. Even now, he reminded himself, the secret must be kept. He made himself assume a calm expression.

“This lady. Was her name Shima Taniko?”

“Yes, that was she. Did you know her?”

“Long ago,” Jebu said, waving his hand as if it were of no consequence. “I’ll tell you about it some time.”

“She had a baby by Kiyosi, a son, while I was at the Rokuhara. I suppose he’d be about nine by now. Another son whose father has been torn from him. Moko is right. War is an evil thing.”

Yukio turned away and began to walk among the men on his ship, praising them, even talking to the rowers and patting their shoulders. Then he called for a small boat so he could visit the other ships. A dinghy was lowered over the side, and Yukio leaped into it with the astonishing, easy grace that Jebu had first seen seven years ago on the Gojo Bridge.

Jebu walked along the deck to the forecastle and stood staring into the empty blue sky. His eyes burned and his cheeks were wet.

Why am I crying? he thought. If I hadn’t killed Kiyosi my friend would be dead now.

Instead, another son has lost his father. As Yukio did. As I did.

Another woman has lost the man she loved, as my mother did.

He had never wanted to know what Taniko was doing. Only once had he asked, when Moko told him what happened at Daidoji. That had been the worst moment of his life. He had never asked about her, because it hurt too much. Hardly the attitude of a true Zinja.

What if he had known what Kiyosi was to her? Would he have hesitated to kill him? Or would jealous hatred have gone winging along with his arrow?

No, he had never wanted to invade her life. Even when Domei said he was sending men to kill Horigawa, his first thought had been that he must not go. How much less would he want to kill this Kiyosi. After all, he himself had given her nothing.

He didn’t really know how much Kiyosi had meant to her. He might just have been a protector, someone to whom she could escape from Horigawa. Or he might have been a true lover, a man who had made her cry out with delight in the darkness, as she had wanted to, -but never could with Jebu.

Whatever she shared with him, Jebu had reached out from all this distance, after all this time, and destroyed it. Just by letting go of a string that propelled an arrow. Such a little thing. So easy to kill a man, end his whole life and whatever it meant, perhaps destroy many other lives at the same moment.

But even if he’d known what he was doing, he’d have done it anyway, to save Yukio.

Why was he crying? Because he’d done an evil thing? But a Zinja was beyond good and evil. A Zinja was always aware of his own perfection.

Erom a dark chamber in his memory a voice whispered, The Zinja are devils. He had not thought of the Saying of Supreme Power in years.

Was this what it meant? That in trying to do good the Zinja did evil, and then tried to tell themselves it didn’t matter, that good and evil were the same thing? If war was an evil thing, as he had been shown today, and the Zinja were devoted to war, then truly they were devils.

He had hurt Taniko. Had hurt her child. And there was no way he could undo it. He couldn’t even want to undo it, because the only other choice would have meant the death of his friend.

He wondered if she would ever hear a description of the man who killed Kiyosi. He wondered if she would realize that it was he.

The sun had crossed the sky and now hovered, white hot, ahead of the Muratomo fleet. It paved a road of dazzling white jewels in the sea before them. Somewhere at the end of that glittering pathway lay the land of his father, the empire of the Mongols. Perhaps he would actually see the land where his father was born and meet again his father’s killer.

And perhaps, too, the great distances would help him forget for a time that small, white, lovely face that had haunted him ever since that journey down the Tokaido.

With trembling fingers he reached into his robe for the Jewel of Life and Death.