Nagato made a bellow of anger at the sight of the village headman and reached for his swords, still tucked into the sash of his kimono, which he had not bothered to take off.
At the movement of the Magistrate toward his swords, the instinct for self-preservation took over Ichiro and he lunged forward, the sharp blade of the dagger catching the large man just below the breastbone, skittering downward into the soft flesh of his belly. Nagato clawed at the blade, roaring in pain and rage. He engaged in a desperate struggle with the smaller peasant, feeling his strength, blood, and life ebb away through the dagger wounds. Finally, still clawing at the weapon, he expired.
Ichiro’s daughter had had her leg pinned by the corpulent body of the Magistrate during the entire struggle. The weight of the struggling Magistrate, the pain, and the shock of the attack had driven her to hysterics. She was pushing at the Magistrate’s corpse, crying and not yet comprehending what had happened. Seeing his daughter’s predicament, Ichiro dropped his weapon and helped the girl to push the large body of the Magistrate off her. Then, putting her torn kimono around her shoulders to cover her nakedness, he held his daughter to him as she sobbed and shook from her experience.
He tried to provide some comfort to her, but he had no comfort in his own heart. All he could think about was that he had killed them all with his rash act against the Magistrate. He racked his brain but saw no escape from the inevitable results of this killing. No one in the village would side with him, because his action had killed many of them due to the collective responsibility that samurai imposed on peasants. He couldn’t run, because anyone who sheltered him would also be killed, along with their family, too. He couldn’t plead that he was defending his daughter, because he had no right to defend his daughter, at least not from the village Magistrate.
His daughter was crying, and tears formed in his eyes, too. His daughter’s tears were tears of shock and relief, but his tears were tears of despair. Through his tears, he saw a movement in the woods and, suddenly, standing before him was the strange ronin.
Kaze took in the scene in an instant. The half-naked girl being comforted by her father, the large body of the Magistrate with blood covering his stomach, the bloody dagger still impaled in the body of the official.
Kaze stepped over to the body and pulled the dagger out. He wiped the blade on the kimono of the Magistrate. For a second, Ichiro thought Kaze was going to administer justice on the spot, killing both him and his daughter for his crime. In a way, he almost welcomed this, because it would mean their deaths would be simple and quick. It would also mean that Ichiro would not be kept alive under torture so he could watch his wife and children and neighbors all killed before he, himself, also paid the ultimate price for his crime.
To Ichiro’s surprise, Kaze extended the butt of the weapon to him. Taking one hand from his daughter, the village headman took the knife. He was confused about what Kaze was doing.
“It’s terrible how these bandits have gotten out of hand in this District, isn’t it? I guess one of Boss Kuemon’s men took revenge on the Magistrate, mistakenly thinking he was responsible for Kuemon’s death.”
Ichiro heard the ronin’s words but could not understand their meaning. He knew the samurai was strange, but now he thought that perhaps he was insane.
“What?” the headman said.
“I said it’s terrible what the bandits have done. They’re now so bold that they’ve killed the local Magistrate.”
Ichiro still didn’t understand. He looked up at the ronin in total confusion.
“I think you should say that the Magistrate was off for a walk, then later you saw a few of Boss Kuemon’s men in the forest. You went to investigate and found the body. Keep the child in your hut for a few days and tell your neighbors that your wife slipped and hit her face on a rock. Don’t mention you saw me. Now do you understand?”
“But why …?” Ichiro gasped.
Kaze stared down at the shocked peasant, who was still holding his young daughter in one arm and holding the murder weapon with his hand. In a way, Kaze felt like a traitor to his class. His natural sympathies should be with the Magistrate, Nagato, because he was a fellow samurai. Kaze knew that there had often been peasant revolts in Japan and that the savagery and ruthlessness of armed peasants were exceeded only by the samurai who had been sent to suppress such revolts.
Yet, in the two years of his wandering, he had gotten to know the people of the land in a way no regular samurai could. They could be petty and venal and selfish. They could also be warm and generous and full of bawdy humor. More important, in two years of looking for the daughter of his former Lord, he had also seen the treatment of countless young girls and it was starting to disgust him.
In Japan they didn’t indulge in the practice of exposing newborn girl infants as the Koreans and Chinese did, except in times of dire famine. Yet the life of a peasant girl was hard and often brutal, and Kaze sometimes wondered if life was such a precious gift when it was lived in these conditions. He wondered what the Lady’s daughter had experienced in the two years she had been missing and what she would be like when he found her.
“Why?” Ichiro asked again.
Kaze looked at the body of the Magistrate. Kaze was now sure the Magistrate hadn’t killed the samurai at the crossroads. The arrow he had shot at Kaze during the ambush was not like the ones that had killed the unknown samurai and Hachiro. Although the Magistrate could grab any arrow when startled at night, as when Kaze played the trick on the village, Kaze decided that the Magistrate would most likely use his best-quality arrow when he knew he would be killing men.
Still, the Magistrate might as well die for trying to rape the peasant girl as for some other crime, such as taking a bribe from a bandit. In fact, if Kaze had come upon the scene a few moments earlier, he might have killed the Magistrate himself. He had caught sight of Ichiro’s wife rushing into the village, then of Ichiro running into the forest. Kaze had gone to investigate. The peasant wanted an answer for Kaze’s actions, which turned his perception of class and the whole world upside down, but Kaze couldn’t articulate one.
“Because it pleases me,” Kaze finally answered. Kaze walked away, leaving the astonished peasant and the sobbing girl.
CHAPTER 22
Red Fuji, caught in
the caressing rays of the
budding scarlet sun.
When he was a boy, Kaze climbed trees and flew kites from the treetops. He started by flying kites from fields, like other boys, but found he preferred the intense sensation of flying a kite in a swaying treetop. The leaves fluttered with gusts, and if the wind was strong enough, the branches and trunk vibrated. Kaze felt like a part of the kite, weaving with the wind and shaking high above the earth. In his mind, the treetop was like another kite, tied to the real kite by the thin twine in Kaze’s hand, both kites dancing together in the wind.
The wind was a mystery and constant fascination to him. You couldn’t see it, but you saw its results in the bending grass, the fluttering leaves, and the ripples skimming the surface of a pond. If the wind was strong enough, you saw grown men bending into it, fighting their way across a castle courtyard or down a country road. After a particularly violent storm, you even saw trees uprooted or frame and paper houses, held together with pegs and cunning joints, standing with tattered shoji screens and a forlorn, harshly scrubbed look.
Through the strings of a kite, you could interact with this unseen force, playing the gusts and eddies to coax the kite higher and higher into the sky. The force was invisible, but you learned to deal with this force, conforming to the imperatives of the wind while using it to hold up your kite until you ran out of string or patience.