When the dancer was done, he straightened up, and Kaze realized that this was just a practice and that the complete Noh would not be danced. Still, the skill shown was extraordinary, and Kaze stepped into the clearing and said, “Superb! I have never seen Dojoji danced better.”
The dancer stiffened and turned in Kaze’s direction. “Excuse me,” Kaze said. “I do not wish to disturb your privacy, but I couldn’t stop myself from praising your skill at Noh.” Kaze made a deep, formal bow to the dancer.
Without responding with words, the dancer gave Kaze an equally formal bow, but it was done with a grace that made Kaze feel thick and awkward.
“Thank you for the pleasure of your dancing,” Kaze said. He turned around and made his way back to the path. Without looking back, Kaze started down the road again.
Kaze had seen many strange sights in his lifetime, but the silent Noh in a hidden mountain clearing had a dreamlike quality to it. Behind the mask, Kaze could not tell what the man was like, but perhaps that was the best way to be these days: silent and wearing a mask.
The world was changing, and not for the better as far as Kaze was concerned. After three hundred years of constant warfare, Japan had known a brief period of peace under Hideyoshi, the Taiko. But even Hideyoshi couldn’t stand a period of warriors dying of old age in bed, and he had attacked Korea with an eye toward eventually conquering China. After some initial successes, the entire Korean war had turned into a disaster, with many of Hideyoshi’s closest allies perishing in his foreign adventure. Hideyoshi himself remained in Japan, and he died of old age in his bed. Yet Hideyoshi’s death marked a dangerous time for his heir and his allies, for Tokugawa Ieyasu was sitting patiently in Japan’s richest region, the Kanto, waiting.
Ieyasu waited as Hideyoshi’s allies drained themselves of young blood in the ill-fated Korean adventure, while Ieyasu himself adroitly avoided getting deeply involved. Ieyasu waited while Hideyoshi declined in health with only a very young son as heir. Ieyasu waited while the Council of Regents, of which he was a member, decayed into bickering and dissension instead of helping Hideyoshi’s young heir rule Japan. And finally, after a lifetime of waiting, Ieyasu took action and risked it all in a battle involving over two hundred thousand men. He defeated the forces loyal to Hideyoshi’s heir at the battle of Sekigahara, setting himself up to become the undisputed ruler of Japan.
Now Hideyoshi’s heir and widow were holed up in Osaka Castle, like badgers retreating into a lair, and the rest of the country was embroiled in chaos as the Tokugawas inexorably extended their control over the country, casting numerous samurai, who had been loyal to the losers at Sekigahara, free to wander the countryside as ronin in search of new employment. Kaze had no idea how many samurai were now masterless, but it could easily be fifty thousand or more. These men must find employment with some lord or they would lose their hereditary status as samurai-literally, “those who serve.”
Kaze found the large number of ronin wandering the country a convenience in some ways. It allowed him to blend into the crowd because the sight of a ronin anyplace in Japan was not at all unusual now. Normally Kaze’s instincts would be to go to Osaka to fight for Hideyoshi’s heir or to commit seppuku and follow his Lord into death. But he was not free to follow his instincts. In fact, he was not free at all.
When Kaze had been walking for an hour, a pair of eyes watched him much as Kaze had watched the Noh dancer, hidden in the woods and unseen. As soon as the watcher was sure of what he was seeing, he pulled away from his observation post and scrambled down a slope. At the bottom of the slope two men were sitting on the ground, playing dice. They were dressed in a colorful assortment of clothes and had two spears and a sword stuck into the earth next to them.
One slammed down a scruffy wooden dice cup and lifted it quickly. “Damn!” he said as he stared down at the dice.
His companion gave an evil, yellow-toothed grin. “This isn’t a lucky day for you.” He scooped up a few coppers that were on the ground between them.
The first man glowered. “If I find out you’ve been cheating, I’ll slice your guts open.”
“They’re your dice and you’ve been throwing them. Look,” he said, pointing up the slope, “maybe the pup is coming to tell us that your luck is changing. Maybe a nice rich merchant, or maybe a succulent virgin!”
“Someone is coming!” the young lookout reported to the two bandits as he slid to a stop at the bottom of the slope.
“Of course, baka! But who’s coming?”
The young man, Hachiro, scratched his head. “I think a merchant. Or maybe a samurai. I’m not sure.”
“Fool!”
“If it’s a samurai, let’s let him pass,” the man with the yellow teeth said.
“No. Samurai or not, I’m going to recover my loses. Coming?”
“All right. But let’s give the youngster a chance to kill his first man.” He looked at the young lookout, who now had an expression of confusion and fear on his face. “Take one of the spears. We’ll keep him occupied. All you have to do is sneak up behind him and stick him in the back. Shove hard. Sometimes you hit a bone. Got that?”
“Are you sure …?” the young man said.
The bandit with the yellow teeth hit the youngster on the side of the head, knocking him to his knees. “Do you want to be a bandit or not?”
Looking up with tears in his eyes, the young man nodded yes.
“Good! If this is the life you’ve chosen, you might as well do it right! Understand?”
Once again the youth nodded.
The man yanked one of the spears out of the ground, and his companion took the sword. They started scrambling up the slope to the road, setting up an ambush. The youth, rubbing the side of his head, picked up the second spear and made his way to a position where he could circle around and come up behind the man on the road.
As Kaze walked uphill on a long straight part of the road, he realized he could be easily seen from the rise ahead. Around him, the air was still and heavy, and the songbirds were not singing. That, by itself, was not proof that there were others ahead of him, but it served to heighten his senses. Although he didn’t change his stride or slow down, out of habit he listened intently and scanned the side of the road ahead. His alertness was rewarded with the sound of small rocks rolling down the hillside that formed the down-slope portion of the dirt road.
He walked past the location of the sound. Suddenly, ahead of him, two men stepped out of the forest holding weapons. One had a spear and the other held a sword. So he was surrounded, although he wasn’t supposed to know it yet.
“Oi! Hey, you!” one of the men ahead yelled gruffly.
Kaze stopped, watching the two men closely, but not making any aggressive moves. When Kaze said nothing, the man seemed to grow agitated. “Do you hear me?” the man demanded.
“Yes, I hear you,” Kaze replied. “It’s hard not to hear such a sweet voice as yours. And so polite, too.”
The man frowned. He looked at his companion for guidance. His friend said, “Are you being smart with us?” He showed large yellow teeth when he talked.
“I wouldn’t care to be smart with men such as you. In fact, being smart with you would be dumb.”
“What’s that mean?” the one with yellow teeth asked.
“As I’ve said,” Kaze replied.
The two men looked at each other again, puzzled. Then the first to speak said, “Do you know who we are?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“We’re part of Boss Kuemon’s gang. We control the roads around here, and you’ll have to pay us a toll to walk on them.”
“What toll?”
“All your money, of course!”
Behind him, Kaze could hear a shower of pebbles as someone scrambled up the hillside and onto the road.
“Is that all?”