“Now,” Kaze said amiably, “what we have is a very interesting situation. It’s not often that we hold our own existence in our hands as clearly as you do at this moment. I have no particular desire to kill you, although I suspect that your dark life has been lived in a manner that richly deserves killing. But, on the other hand, I don’t want you following us, either. So here’s what I suggest. You tell your friends that when I dropped down on you, you were injured much more seriously than you actually are. Tell them you were unable to walk and therefore couldn’t follow us. You can point them down the road in the direction we’re actually going, so I’m not asking you to lie to them. But I am advising you not to follow us, because if you do, I’ll kill you. Do you understand that?”
The bandit snarled a curse, and Kaze added some pressure to the staff, choking him in midword. The bandit grabbed at the staff to try to relieve the pressure. Tears formed in his eyes from the pain. Kaze eased off and leaned closer to the bandit, staring into the scarred face.
“Defiance is fine, but it’s not called for in this circumstance. I have treated you reasonably, considering the situation. Now prove to me that you have some brains and simply answer my question. The choice is simple. Continue following us and you die. Stay here and you live. Now, do you understand?”
“Hai. Yes,” the bandit croaked, the staff still pressing down on his neck.
“Good. Now remember, your life is in your own hands. If you don’t want it to end today, this will be the last that I see of you.”
Kaze dropped the staff and walked back to the path.
CHAPTER 4
Bitter memories
gnaw at my soul. How many
tears wash away pain?
Did you kill him?” the merchant asked.
“No.”
“Why not?” Hishigawa looked annoyed.
“Because I didn’t need him dead,” Kaze answered. “If you need him dead, then you can kill him. I’m sure he’s still back where I left him. I threw his sword into the bushes. Perhaps if you hurry, you can get to him before he recovers it.”
Hishigawa was used to having his money buy him respect and the services of ronin. He was also used to a certain brusqueness from his aristocratic customers, but, because of his wealth, not from ronin, even though technically any samurai, including a ronin, was far above the merchant class. Only the handlers of the dead and animal carcasses occupied a lower social class than merchants.
Hishigawa would not have been a successful merchant if he didn’t study men and their nature. It helped him to understand the weakness of a man when he was trading. He saw in the ronin a man of ordinary height, but extraordinary will and skill with a sword. The way he attacked the bandits showed that. Now he was helping to escape those bandits, and he was also helping Hishigawa bring the gold back to his Yuchan. He needed this ronin. At least for now. Hishigawa gave a quick bow and said, “Sumimasen. I’m sorry. I simply wanted to assure that the bandit wouldn’t trouble us.”
“If he does, then I’ll kill him,” Kaze said. “Some place up ahead we’re going to have to actually get off the trail and move across country.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s too easy to follow us when we stay on these trails. If we have to constantly cover up the cart tracks, we won’t make progress at all. Once I’ve covered up where we get off the trail, we can proceed for some distance.”
“To where?” the merchant said. “We have to get to the barrier.”
“We will get to the barrier,” Kaze said. “We’ll only go across country until we see another path going in the direction of the barrier. Then we’ll use that. It will take the bandits quite a while to try to figure out which path we’re on.”
“But it might take us days to get to the barrier that way,” the merchant protested.
“Yes. But if the bandits catch us we won’t get to the barrier at all.”
The merchant saw the logic in Kaze’s statement and said, “All right. I suggest we travel on this path a little way before we leave it. That way, even if the bandits surmise what we’ve done, it will still be harder for them to pick up our trail.”
“Good,” Kaze said. He pointed at the cart.
“You pull, I’ll push, and we’ll stop every fifty paces so I can go back and obliterate the cart tracks.”
The merchant looked up at the heavens. “It’s raining a lot harder now.”
“Yes,” Kaze said, “but raindrops won’t stop men in search of gold.”
At a likely-looking place, he and Hishigawa pushed the cart off the path and started threading their way through the woods. At some junctures they had to take wide detours to avoid thick patches of brush that would have totally stopped the heavy cart. It was hard, exhausting work, and at one point the merchant almost collapsed from fatigue.
“We can leave the cart here and take the chance that the bandits won’t find it,” Kaze said to the weary Hishigawa.
“Leave the gold? Never! This gold belongs to Yuchan as well as me. I’ll never leave it.” The merchant was intransigent about abandoning the cart, but the thought of leaving a fortune seemed to add fire to his muscles, and he tugged at the cart handles with renewed vigor. Kaze insisted they stop and rest a bit. Both men sat silently on the cart, drenched by the rain and too tired to speak.
Finally, Kaze got up and wordlessly took his position behind the cart. Also without words, a tired Hishigawa took up his position between the thick bamboo rails of the cart and started pulling as Kaze pushed.
It was the end of the day by the time the two men came across another path. It seemed to go in the direction of the mountains and not toward the barrier, but Kaze knew they had to take it. The two of them couldn’t continue to manhandle the cart through the woods.
The rain was coming down like spears blanketing a battlefield by the time they stopped for the night. Kaze had found a ridge near the path they were on and placed the cart so it straddled it. This had the advantage of making the water run down on each side of the ridge, providing a somewhat drier space under the cart. He was careful not to place the cart in a north-south direction. Corpses were laid out with their heads in the direction of the rat, or north, and he didn’t want to sleep in that position. Both men crawled under. They were exhausted, soaked, and cold.
“This is intolerable!” Hishigawa said, pulling his kimono around him tightly. Water dripped down through the cracks in the cart floor, hitting him on the nose. He jerked his head away, hitting it on the inside of a wheel. “Damn!” he said in pain. “I’m going to get out of here and find some temple or peasant’s hut where I can get some shelter.”
“Dozo. Please,” Kaze said. “Find some building nearby and hole up like an animal in a warm den. Soon the hunters will come to sniff you out. Don’t you think the bandits will search all nearby buildings first? You’ll be warm and dry until they capture you. And when they do, just don’t tell them where I am, no matter how much they torture you.”
Kaze turned his back to the merchant and closed his eyes. He listened to the grumbling merchant for a few seconds to satisfy himself that Hishigawa was not leaving the meager shelter of the cart.
“You said that bandit I killed was after you because of your wife,” Kaze said, his eyes closed.
“That’s right,” Hishigawa responded.
“Why?”
Hishigawa smiled and closed his eyes, lost in reverie. “She is the most beautiful creature you can imagine. Exquisite skin, as white as a camellia and as silky smooth as the skin of a new persimmon. A mouth with lips as dark red as the most luscious plum. The nape of her neck is long, like a swan’s.” Hishigawa opened his eyes and looked out at the rain. “Even Yuchan’s hands are the most perfectly formed things you’ve ever seen,” he exclaimed. “Delicate, small, and extremely graceful in every movement she makes.”