Daigoro limped across the courtyard, leaving a bloody footprint wherever his right foot touched the gravel. The Yasuda soldiers watched him in wonderment. Their spears still jutted out like quills from the doorway to their master’s bedchamber, as if they hadn’t yet realized the fighting was over. Daigoro looked down at his blood-spattered hakama and haori, then at their spotless moss green garb. He felt absurd: these ranks of older, wiser men gaped at him like he was a battle-hardened veteran—a veteran still months away from his seventeenth birthday.
He’d forgotten he was still wearing Toyotomi colors—what was left of them, anyway. He’d also forgotten that he was armored; only the sight of an arrow recalled it to mind. The arrow looked like it was sticking out of his gut, but in truth it had only caught in his haori after shattering against his Sora breastplate. He remembered first donning the armor on the banks of the Kamo not so long ago, remembered how heavy it had felt then, how awkward, how alien. Now he wore it like his own skin.
By the time he reached the stable to fetch tack and harness, the shinobi had reappeared beside him, noiselessly as always. Swords had sliced his clothing in a hundred places. He bled from his face, his forearms, his shoulders, his shins, but most of the blood on his tattered clothes was not his own. He gave Daigoro a silent, approving nod.
Halfway back to the horses still tied to the gates, Daigoro’s throbbing hands prompted him to wonder why he hadn’t walked the horse to the saddle instead of lugging the saddle to the horse. His mind was as exhausted as his body; his thoughts plodded along as if wading against an undertow.
“Who’s your friend?” Katsushima asked when Daigoro reached his mare.
“He is of the Wind,” Daigoro said, laughing weakly. “The Wind is without name.”
Katsushima’s eyes narrowed, and the smile of a proud father played at the corners of his mouth. “You found them.”
“I did.”
Katsushima looked at the shinobi with new eyes. “Whatever your name is, Wind-sama, I thank you for saving my good friend’s life.”
The ninja’s only response was to grunt as he heaved his saddle up over his saddle blanket. If Daigoro hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn his shinobi was actually fatigued.
“How did you find me?” Daigoro asked.
“I was on my way to your family’s place when I heard the commotion,” Katsushima said. I never expected to find you here. I thought I had a few days’ lead on you on the Tokaido.”
“We came by ship.”
“Did you?” Katsushima whistled. “You weathered an unholy bitch of a storm.”
“A Toyotomi blockade too. Shichio’s men are watching every last pebble of coastline.”
“Then we’re apt to find many more of them when we reach your mother’s house.”
Daigoro gave him a long, studious look. His friend looked back down at him, red spatter dotting his woolly sideburns. An hour’s conversation passed between them in that single glance. Then Daigoro made a final adjustment to the girth, and with energy reserves he didn’t even know he had, he stepped up into the saddle.
Katsushima had to dismount to lash Daigoro’s right leg in place, and even then Daigoro felt on the verge of sliding off his horse. His own saddle, the precious one Old Yagyu had fashioned for him, was many ri behind him. Sitting in an ordinary saddle, the weight of Daigoro’s left leg threatened to drag him down and his right leg wasn’t strong enough to counteract it. He could only stay ahorse by balancing there, the muscles of his belly, chest, and back shifting constantly, as if he were an acrobat on the tip of a pole. It was exhausting even when his horse was standing still, and impossible at a full gallop.
It was necessary, then, that Katsushima lash down his right leg. Nevertheless, Daigoro could not help thinking that usually it was the injured and dying who were tied into the saddle. When at last they set out on the road, his coal black mare shied from the twitching of pained, bloodied men, nearly throwing him. Only by gripping the saddlehorn with both hands did he manage to stay mounted.
But soon the miasma of battle was behind them and Daigoro could settle into a rhythm. “If I didn’t know better,” Katsushima told him, “I’d swear you just stole a horse.”
“Lord Yasuda knows I’m good for it,” Daigoro said defensively, realizing only too late that his friend was kidding him. “I apologize, Goemon. I’m too tired to think. Why did you ever come back? Why do you want to have anything to do with me?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I can’t even imagine.”
Katsushima’s wry smirk faded away. “How did we meet?”
“You dueled my brother.”
“And then?”
“You dueled me.”
“Almost,” said Katsushima. “We had tea first. Then dinner. Then we talked all night, at your insistence. ‘I want to discuss swordsmanship with you, and bushido as well.’ That’s what you said.”
Daigoro nodded. Even through the haze of fatigue, he could recall Katsushima’s response: I expect we have much to learn from each other.
“So let’s discuss,” Katsushima said. “Bushido demands that you fight even against impossible odds, neh?”
Daigoro nodded.
“To describe your odds of besting Shichio as ‘impossible’ seems blithely optimistic to me. Would you agree?”
Daigoro nodded. It was easier than talking; the jostling of his saddle did most of the work.
“So why not give up bushido? Following it is certain to kill you. You gave up your name. It only makes sense to free yourself of the rest.”
Daigoro nodded again—due more to the rocking motion of his horse than to his own agreement. But Katsushima wasn’t wrong either. Not entirely.
“A ronin keeps his swords and throws the rest aside,” Katsushima said. “Duty, family, lord, name, honor; they’re shackles. All you have to do is give up the shackles and you’ll be free.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? You’ve already given up the ones you value most.”
“Yes,” Daigoro said. “I’ve surrendered my family and with them my name. I have no other lord—save Izu herself, perhaps, but without my title I’ve abandoned her too. With every sacrifice I feel I’ve done what honor demands, but my only reward is to be hunted like a traitor and a criminal. There’s no honor in that. I have no honor left.”
“Then what else remains?”
“Duty.”
“To whom?”
“To my father’s memory. To what little sense of family I still have left. To bushido itself.”
“Your father’s gone, Daigoro. When you gave up your name you gave up your family too. Why not shed the last of your shackles?”
It sounded so inviting. Done properly, it might even end the feud with Shichio. He could give up being samurai. Put down the burden of his father’s sword. Make an obsequious and public apology. Cut off his topknot and go home unmolested. Comfort his mother. Share Akiko’s bed. Be there for the birth of his child.
He could have had everything he wanted, and all he had to do was betray his code. “I can’t,” he said, near to tears. “I can’t give up duty. I don’t know how.”
“That is why I follow you.”
58
There was no shore party to greet him when Shichio made his landing at the Okuma jetty. In any other circumstances, failure to send an honor guard for the great Toyotomi no Hideyoshi might have got a daimyo and his family crucified. (Though not a convert to the southern barbarians’ religion, Hashiba found their religion’s obsession with crucifixion quite exotic. It had become his favorite method of execution.) But today the Okuma clan would receive a pardon, not because their honored guests had come unannounced—they should have seen Hashiba’s flagship from ten ri away—but because it was Shichio’s wedding day, and that had the regent feeling jovial.