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

against frontier barbarians and against other landowners who coveted their holdings. They armed their servants, who became known as samurai.

Meanwhile the Imperial army had dwindled to a few troops of exquisitely caparisoned courtiers who had neither the will nor the ability to wage war. And so, when there was hard fighting to be done, when great landowners rebelled against the throne, when the hairy Ainu attacked in the north, when pirates made the Inland Sea impassable, the Son of Heaven would call for help from his cousins, the Takashi and the Muratomo. The armed clans became known as the teeth and claws of the crown, and their samurai armies grew larger. Inevitably the two families became rivals, trying to outdo each other in feats of glory and conquest.

Inevitably, too, they became involved in the intrigues around the Emperor. There had always been factions jockeying for power around the throne, and those who failed at political manoeuvring sometimes sought to win through force, with the help of the samurai. As a matter of course, whichever side the Muratomo took, the Takashi would support the opposing faction.

The competition between the Takashi and the Muratomo had turned into a blood feud four years earlier, when the Emperor’s brother had raised a rebellion, claiming the throne for himself. The chieftain of the Muratomo clan came out in support of the pretender, setting up a stronghold in a palace in Heian Kyo and sending out a call for reinforcements.

One prominent member of the Muratomo family remained loyal to the incumbent Son of Heaven. This was Domei, captain of the palace guard. He had taken an oath to protect the Emperor, and he believed the rebel brother’s claim to be false. Domei was the son of the Muratomo clan chieftain, so his decision put him in the agonizing position of fighting against his own father.

The Takashi also sided with the Emperor. The chieftain of the Takashi was Sogamori, a wily, bloodthirsty and ambitious warrior. Seeing that most of the Muratomo were backing the pretender, Sogamori saw his chance to ruin the rival clan by making war on them. Thus, the unhappy Captain Domei found himself fighting alongside the enemies of his clan.

Domei was a renowned and audacious fighter. In spite of his difficult situation he led the palace guard and his temporary Takashi allies in a night attack on the rebel stronghold. He burned it to the ground and captured his father.

The victorious Emperor now had to decide what to do with the leaders of the uprising. Since the coming of the Buddha’s gentle way to the Sacred Islands, centuries ago, there had been very few executions. Those rebels who had survived the perils of battle might expect, in the normal course of events, no worse punishment than exile. The death penalty was meted out only to commoners, and then only when they were found guilty of murder or major theft. Sogamori now shocked the capital by calling for the execution of all the captured rebel leaders.

Sogamori had an ally close to the throne, Prince Sasaki no Horigawa, an Imperial adviser. Prince Horigawa pressed the demand for the death penalty in the Emperor’s council. Finally the Son of Heaven decreed over seventy executions. Going beyond that, he commanded Domei to behead his own father, the Muratomo clan chieftain.

Ultimately, another Muratomo relative volunteered to perform the execution, then killed himself by cutting his stomach open.

“What a painful death that must have been,” Jebu said. “Why would anyone deliberately do that to himself?”

“It is a new practice among the samurai,” said Taitaro. “They kill themselves to expunge stains on their honour. But they don’t want it to be said that they committed suicide from want of courage, so they inflict on themselves the most excruciating death imaginable.”

Instead of rewarding Domei for his loyalty to him, the Son of Heaven had ignored him ever since, resenting Domei’s failure to execute his father. The Takashi, on the other hand, enjoyed the Emperor’s favour and were raised to new heights. Sogamori, the Takashi leader, became Minister of the Left, one of the Emperor’s chief councillors.

Domei, still captain of the palace guard, was now chieftain of the Muratomo clan. He seethed with hatred for those who had engineered his father’s death and his own disappointment. And all over the country small battles between supporters of the Takashi and Muratomo would break out at the slightest provocation.

“It is into this cauldron that I am about to toss you,” Taitaro chuckled, “to serve the Shima family of Kamakura.”

“What will I do?”

“Lord Shima no Bokuden, chieftain of the house of Shima, is sending his daughter, Taniko, to Heian Kyo to be married to a prominent person there. You will escort Shima no Taniko to Heian Kyo for her wedding. Your party will journey down the Tokaido Road from Kamakura to the capital.”

Jebu grinned delightedly. “Heian Kyo. I have been hearing about it since I was a child. The most wonderful city in the land. And soon I shall see it. And the famous Tokaido Road as well.”

Taitaro shrugged. “I hope you won’t be disappointed. Had we lived in earlier times, then you would have seen Heian Kyo in its glory. Now the city is tumbling down and overrun with brawling samurai. As for the Tokaido, much of the territory it passes through is controlled by the Muratomo. And the girl Taniko is a kinswoman of the Takashi. What’s more, her husband-to-be is Prince Sasaki no Horigawa.”

“The one who pressed for the executions of the Muratomo?”

“Yes. The Muratomo hate him even more than they do their Takashi foes.” Taitaro stood. “Prince Horigawa comes of a Heian Kyo family that has an ancient name but little wealth. The Shima have an inferior name but great wealth and great ambition. Both sides look on the match as useful.”

Together Jebu and Taitaro walked out of the monks’ quarters. Taitaro went on. “But Lord Bokuden, Taniko’s father, is one of the most tight-fisted men in the Sacred Islands. Witness the fact that he is only willing to pay for one Zinja initiate to escort his daughter all that way through enemy territory. As for Horigawa, he is bloody-minded and treacherous, and has worn two wives to death already. And the Lady Taniko is a wilful girl of thirteen. She has never met Horigawa, and my informants tell me she rebels fiercely against the match. She would rebel even more if she had met him.

“You are going to be in the midst of a very interesting situation.”

Then Jebu found himself alone, standing at the edge of the cliff with the temple behind him, its peaked roof spreading low over the rock like the dropping wings of a huge bird. The sea wind blew against his face; the rising sun warmed his back. Below, the white-capped waves rolled in as regularly as the beating of a heart, carrying unreadable messages from the land of his father.

The women’s quarters of the Waterfowl Temple were set back from the cliff, to the east and north of the main temple and a respectable distance from the monks’ building. It was a distance that made little difference, because there was nothing in the Zinja rule to stop the men from visiting the women’s quarters whenever they wished. In the past few years Jebu had been among those unattached monks who slipped into the women’s quarters at night. There was great pretence of secrecy about such visits, but actually they were condoned by the Order.

As befitted the wife of the Father Abbot, Jebu’s mother, Nyosan, had the largest bedchamber on the eastern side of the women’s quarters, with a view of the morning sun and the monastery garden. Amazingly, there were no other women in the building, or so it seemed when Jebu entered. Nyosan was sitting with her back to him, watching the red ball of the sun float above the small, wind-twisted pine trees. A singing board, placed so as to warn the abbot and his wife of intruders, squeaked under Jebu’s foot as he entered the room. Nyosan’s back stiffened.

“Mother.”

Nyosan turned, looking at him with anguish and joy, and scrambled to her feet. “I have been waiting. I have been waiting oh, so long. This has been one of the two longest nights of my life.” She did not have to tell Jebu what the other one was.

They held each other, and she wept in his arms. “My son, my only son. I died a thousand deaths for you. All last night and the weeks before that, when your father told me the time had come for your initiation.”

They sat facing each other. Jebu’s mother was not yet forty, but her face was lined and tired, though her eyes were serene now that she knew her son had lived through the Zinja ordeal. She wore a plain commoner’s robe, as did all the women connected with the temple. Beside her there was a pot of hot rice gruel, a bowl of pickled vegetables and a basket of cakes. She handed him a cake. Smiling at her, he took it and devoured it in two bites. It was juicy and still warm. She handed him another and filled a small bowl with rice gruel. Except for the cakes, it was an ordinary Zinja breakfast.

“Was it truly dangerous? Might you have died?”

Jebu thought of protecting her from the truth, but instead said, “Yes.” When tears came to her eyes he added, “Mother, I am a Zinja. The Zinja are dedicated to death. You must remember that I may die at any moment. Perhaps you should think of me as one already dead.”

Nyosan wiped her eyes with her sleeve and shook her head. “Strange. Your father spoke that way to me, many times. When I told him I feared to lose him, he said, ‘Think of me as one already dead. I have been condemned, and I await my executioner.’ “

“Taitaro-sensei says they are going to send me away at once, Mother.”

“He told me. And I may never see you again. But I am thankful for the years I have had with you, even though I know you are doomed, just as your father was doomed.”

“To be alive is to be doomed,” Jebu said.

Nyosan laughed. “Oh! Ordination in the Zinja has made my son a wise man. He is full of sayings that boom like the hollow log in the temple.”

Jebu joined in her laughter. “You’re right, Mother. My sayings are hollow. I know nothing.”

“How could you be expected to know anything, a boy of seventeen years? You will know something of life if you live as long as I have. I have been the daughter of a peasant, and I became, barely out of childhood, the bride of a splendid foreign giant, rich with jewels. And your stepfather, Abbot Taitaro, he, too, is a strange and wonderful man. He has loved me fully, and I have been very happy. Not that I’m so old. I may be twice your age, but I’m still young enough to have babies. Only, what the monks call karma has decreed that Taitaro-sensei beget no babies. So you will always be my only son. My magnificent, red-haired, grey-eyed giant of a son. Live long, Jebu.” She took his hands and held them. “Live long, long, long. Love. Marry. Be a father. Don’t let the Zinja destroy you when you are still little more than a child. You are not just a Zinja, to be used and thrown away like a grey robe. You are Jebu. A man.”