Shike by Robert J. Shea (the reading list txt) 📕

The Muratomo were finished, thought Jebu. Almost all the leaders of the clan were dead. Hideyori was as much Lord Bokuden’s prisoner as his ward. Jebu himself could do no more for Domei’s family. He worked his way southward towards the capital, still serving the Mu ratomo as the Order commanded. But the wings of the White Dragon had been clipped. Any lives lost now were being lost for nothing.

He was trudging over terraces of harvested rice. Behind him was another lost battle, if it deserved to be called a battle. The Takashi had ambushed a dozen hungry Muratomo samurai with whom Jebu had been riding. Jebu had warned them it might happen, but the Muratomo warriors had insisted that no true samurai would attack another samurai without proper warning and challenge. Whoever was leading the Takashi apparently didn’t care about such niceties.

Outnumbered many times over, the Muratomo samurai had thrown away their lives. What good had their sacrifice done the dead Domei?

Jebu reminded himself to think as a Zinja. To a Zinja there was no good or evil, failure or success, life or death. The Zinja simply threw his energy into the task at hand and did not concern himself about the outcome. Erom that point of view, his Muratomo comrades, alive a few hours ago, now dead, had lost nothing. At the very least, they no longer suffered the pangs of hunger.

A rider emerged from the woods behind Jebu, galloping directly across the rice stubble. There was no point in trying to outrun him, and no place to hide. Jebu quickly slipped off his bow and arrows and laid them at his feet. He nocked one arrow and laid it across the bow. He drew his sword and waited.

The samurai approached to within ten feet of Jebu and stopped. He looked sleek, strong and prosperous, like a well-cared-for warhorse. Quite different from the ragged, half-starved Muratomo samurai Jebu had been riding with. The laces holding together the many small plates of his armour were dyed a deep magenta.

“I saw you riding with that pack of Muratomo dogs we jumped, and I saw you sneak away when the battle went against you. I will not tell you my name and lineage because you do not deserve the courtesy. You are merely to be exterminated, like vermin.” He unslung his huge bow and positioned an arrow.

Jebu stood silently. The instant he saw the samurai’s fingers twitch to release the bowstring he threw himself to the ground. The ordinary warrior always gives a warning-a movement of the hand or fingers, a tensing of the arm muscles-when he is about to move. He consciously commands his movements, unlike the Zinja, who acts as the Self directs.

As the thirteen-hand-span samurai arrow whistled overhead, Jebu had his own ready. He stood up and fired. The point of his willow-leaf arrow struck the samurai in the left eye and buried itself deep in his head. Jebu felt no pleasure as he watched the samurai slide out of his saddle. It was a bit too much like killing a duck sitting in the water.

Jebu seized the horse’s reins. Holding the horse with one hand and speaking gently to it, he set his foot on the dead man’s forehead and pulled the arrow from the crushed eye. He wiped the arrow and re turned it to its quiver. He took the man’s sword and scabbard and strapped them to the saddle. Then he asked forgiveness of the samurai he had killed and looked around, trying to decide which way to ride.

Erom horseback he could see further. Behind him was the forest where they had been ambushed. All around him were rice fields. Before him were the hills and mountains, and beyond the mountains was Heian Kyo. It was the first time he had been this close to the capital since last winter when he had ridden out of it with the defeated Muratomo army.

Now it hardly mattered where he was. The Takashi controlled everywhere. Any place he went for food and a night’s shelter would be the home of Takashi adherents or people who now claimed to be. He would have to say he was a Takashi man as well. A good thing about being a Zinja was that you could present yourself as serving one side or the other as you chose, or else you could pretend to be a simple monk minding his own business. Unless, of course, someone recognized you, as the now-dead Takashi samurai had.

But he had not eaten in over seven days. His Zinja training had inured him to going without food and even water for long stretches of time, but he could feel himself growing weaker. At this rate, soon he would no longer be able to draw his bow. He would have to stop somewhere. If we did not have to eat, he thought, all of us would be safe and free. It is when the bird lands on the ground to peck at seeds that the cat pounces.

Riding south towards the hills he caught sight of a manor house overlooking the rice paddies. Whoever owns that house is undoubtedly lord of this land, he thought. An important landowner would have to take one side or another. But this close to Heian Kyo and undamaged, it must be a Red Dragon house. The huts of peasants were clustered around the base of the hill on which the manor stood, and more huts climbed the hill behind it, where a high waterfall turned a mill wheel three times the height of a man.

He decided against asking the peasants for their hospitality. It would endanger them, and they had little enough to share. No, the thing to do was ride boldly in through the gate, present himself as a Takashi messenger on an important mission, and demand shelter, food and provisions. While he was at it, he might get some news of the Muratomo and find out where he could rejoin them.

He rode through the rice fields and up to the gate of the mansion. A group of guards stood by it.

“I am Yoshizo, a monk of the Order of Zinja,” said Jebu, using the name of a brother he knew was working for the Takashi. “I am on my way to Heian Kyo with a message for His Excellency, the Minister of the Left from-” Jebu said the first name that came to him “-his kinsman, Lord Shima no Bokuden of Kamakura. I require a night’s lodging and food.”

The guards didn’t move. “That’s a samurai sword and a samurai saddle,” one said, gesturing with the naginata. “I didn’t think Zinja monks used such fancy equipment.”

“Quiet,” said another guard. “He can kill you so quickly you’d be dead a minute ago. We’ll find out soon enough if he’s from Lord Bokuden. Come on in, monk.”

The first guard brightened up. “Yes! Come in, monk.” He grinned, stepped aside and waved the long-handled naginata towards the open gateway.

The manor house was old, Jebu saw, perhaps a hundred years old, built at a time when there was no need for fortifications. Both the stone wall around it, twice the height of a man, and the gate were new. A gang of workmen was putting up a wooden guard tower at one corner of the wall.

Jebu dismounted. One of the guards said, “I’ll take your horse down to the stables, monk.”

“Very good,” said Jebu. There would be no easy escape now. He was angry with himself for the vanity of his sword-collecting project and for not getting rid of the saddle, or disguising it. If the samurai he killed were a local personage, the sword, the saddle and the horse might be recognized. But it was now too late to do anything but keep walking onwards.

The other guard took him into the courtyard and slammed and barred the gate. “Chief of guards!” he called. An armoured man wearing a sword immediately stepped from a building to the right of the manor house, trailed by a group of men carrying naginatas. This household had its own little army, Jebu thought.

“Chief Goshin,” the guard said, “this monk claims to be from Lord Bokuden on a mission to the Minister of the Left in Heian Kyo. But he has a samurai’s horse and equipment. I thought to myself, we’ve got a way of testing whether he’s really from Lord Bokuden.”

“Of course,” said Goshin. He was a squat man with a frog-like face, huge eyes, flat nose, and wide mouth. “I’ll go see her.” He turned to his men. “Keep this monk at the ends of your naginatas. If he makes a move, skewer him at once. Don’t hesitate, or you’ll be dead. I’ve run up against these Zinja before.” He spat out “Zinja” as if it were a foul word. Goshin turned and strode into the manor house.

Jebu stood in the centre of a ring of levelled naginatas. He looked at the guards calmly and kept his hands away from his swords and his bow. What kind of test did they have in mind, he wondered.

The sound of hammering distracted him. He looked over at the men building the guard tower. One of the carpenters, a short man who gestured and shouted orders to the others, looked familiar, but he was too far away for Jebu to see his face.

“All right,” said Goshin. “There he is, my lady. Do you recognize him?”

Jebu turned from the guard tower to the veranda of the manor house. Through the blinds he could just make out a shadowy figure.

Then he heard a light voice, like the chiming of temple bells. “I have seen this monk visit my father. Who could forget that hideous red hair?”

Jebu felt himself go cold and then hot. He wanted to laugh and call out to Taniko, run up the steps, push his way into the manor house and put his arms around her. He forced himself to look coldly in the direction of her voice as if he had never seen her before. He reminded himself that he was a monk named Yoshizo.

She went on, “Of course, he could know my father and still be working for the Muratomo. It is my father’s custom to give his messengers a password to identify themselves to any members of the Shima family they might meet. Did Lord Bokuden give you such a word, monk?”

Jebu played along. “He did, my lady, but it is for your ears alone. I must take the liberty of whispering it to you.”

“Come up, close to these blinds, then,” came the icy voice.

“Careful, my lady,” said the frog-faced Goshin. “He might just be trying to get close enough to you to seize you as a hostage.”

“Goshin, I command you now, if he takes me hostage you are to kill both of us immediately.” She paused significantly. “I’m quite sure Prince Horigawa would want it that way.”

Jebu slowly and carefully laid his bow and arrows and his two swords on the raked earth of the courtyard.

“It would be rude of me to approach you armed, my lady,” he said. Then he looked coldly at the guards. “But let no one touch my weapons.”

“A