He stood before his prisoner and donned the mask, binding it tightly in place with leather thongs. He slid his fingertips over the short iron horns jabbing up from his forehead, ran his tongue over the sharp row of fangs that extended down just as far as his own teeth. The prisoner’s eyes widened. He shrank away from the mask. It was a subtle thing, the smallest retreat in military history, but the fear was visible in him now. Shichio found it delicious.
“It gives me no pleasure,” he said. “The bloodshed, that is. To tell you the truth, even the smell of it sickens me. And the thought of tying a man to a table, making him utterly defenseless, and then bleeding him—it’s simply monstrous, isn’t it? And yet I must do as my regent commands. But you understand that, don’t you? Yes. Yes, I think you do.”
Shichio gave him a compassionate smile, stroked the man’s cheek, passed his fingers through the man’s hair. His prisoner pulled away from his touch. It was so easy to terrify these men, these fearless worthies of the samurai caste. They thought nothing of pain, they held death in contempt, and yet the mere sight of a lunatic gave them pause. This one had no idea what to make of Shichio and his mask, and in the structured world of the soldier, to be unpredictable was to be utterly mad. The largest cobra and fiercest tiger were nothing in comparison. Animals had instincts. Their intentions were easily known. Not so with a madman.
The fact that he wore a demonic mask did not necessarily make him a madman. It was the loving caress that made his prisoner shudder. Even Shichio’s bodyguards recoiled at the sight.
“Now, then,” Shichio said, “you were listening earlier, neh? When Jun explained who you are to the regent? Of course you were. Now you’re going to tell me about the things Jun left out. About that scar on your forehead. About the man who gave it to you. About his friend, the monk.”
The prisoner was quaking uncontrollably now. Was he trying to assess what the masked lunatic would do next? Was he evaluating escape strategies? Wondering how many swords and spears stood between this room and the streets of Kyoto, or how far he’d make it with his arms tied behind his back? Shichio was dying to know.
He took the prisoner’s chin between his thumb and forefinger and bent down close enough to kiss him. “Tell me about the monk,” he whispered. “Tell me about the house of Okuma.”
6
The challenger’s bokken smashed across the knuckles of Daigoro’s right hand. Daigoro backed away, but the pain did not. As his challenger circled him, Daigoro flexed the top two fingers experimentally. Pain shot through them as if they were made of broken glass. Two broken bones, maybe more. He’d have to wait until the end of the duel to be sure.
Daigoro limped to his right, mirroring his opponent’s movement. Sora Samanosuke was a cagey fighter. He retreated more often than he advanced and he feinted more often than striking true. The tip of his sword fluttered like a hummingbird. Daigoro knocked it aside, chopped down at the wrists, but Sora backed away. Daigoro lunged, pressing his opponent back, trying to catch him on his heels. Sora circled. Daigoro’s sword chopped high, aiming for the temple. Sora parried and cut low.
His bokken struck just above the knee. Daigoro felt his leg buckle and could only roll into the fall.
“Point, Sora,” said Katsushima Goemon. In that very instant he was in the center of the courtyard, separating the two opponents. The sheer speed of his movement drew a gasp from Daigoro. Half a heartbeat earlier, Katsushima had been kneeling in the judge’s position, yet despite the gray in his topknot and bushy sideburns, he moved as swiftly as any bird of prey. Even on the best of days, it took Daigoro the space of several breaths to rise from kneeling.
Today was not the best of days. Pain burned like a torch in his right hand, and of course his right leg was no help. Even at birth it was skinnier than either of his arms, and now with only one good hand and one good leg, it was just another weight he had to move to get himself back to standing.
The sand of the courtyard was warm under his palm. The wind made the trees whisper on all sides of the Okuma compound, and a dust devil whirled in one corner of the compound’s weathered wooden walls. Daigoro could smell the salt of the ocean on the breeze, and the promise of spring rain, though the only clouds were far toward the horizon. On the opposite side of the courtyard sat Lord Sora, resplendent in his yellow kimono and bright orange haori. His long white beard swayed in the breeze as he regarded the combatants, and suddenly Daigoro felt ashamed of his sand-dusted hakama.
At length Daigoro managed to get to his feet, and with his wooden sword trembling in the two usable fingers of his right hand, he bowed to Sora Samanosuke. The champion of the Sora clan returned the bow and both fighters retired to their sides of the courtyard, Daigoro limping and Sora all but floating. He’d been the underdog, and now his chest swelled with pride.
“What have I told you about patience?” Katsushima said as Daigoro lowered himself to a kneeling position. “You mustn’t press a fighter who wants to be pressed. You’re letting him draw you off your guard.”
Daigoro opened his mouth to respond, then bit down hard as ice-cold spikes of pain lanced through his right hand. He looked down to see Tomo, his baby-faced retainer, peeling his fingers away from his bokken’s grip. Tomo looked up, his ever-present smile bending into a wince. “I’m so sorry, Okuma-dono. Setting the bones is best done quickly.”
Daigoro wondered how a simple potter’s boy could know that. But he could also imagine the pain Tomo would have inflicted by taking his time in straightening the fingers. Better to do it as Tomo had done: swiftly, in one go. Daigoro fought down a wave of nausea and tried to center his concentration somewhere else—anywhere else, anywhere other than his hand.
“I cannot understand you,” Katsushima said, his tone sharper than it should have been. He might have been thirty years’ Daigoro’s senior, but Daigoro was the lord of the house. Then again, Katsushima had sworn no oaths to House Okuma. He’d taken no payment for services rendered. It was true that he’d been acting as Daigoro’s swordmaster, and he’d taken on the role of mentor in a more general sense, but strictly speaking he was more of a houseguest. The man was ronin, plain and simple.
“This is your seventh straight loss with the bokken,” Katsushima said, “and the seventeenth in your last twenty duels. Yet with steel you’re untouchable. Why?”
Because I don’t want to kill anyone, Daigoro thought. Because so long as I don’t wish to kill anyone, Glorious Victory Unsought will never let me lose. And because once you’re in the habit of dueling with steel, playing with bokken is about as serious as monkeys chasing each other through the treetops. This is a game, and one I only play because I have to.
Then that ice-cold pain hammered deep down into the bones of his hand. He looked down and saw Tomo had tied the top two fingers together. They were purple and swollen, but Tomo’s sure hands and a long cotton ribbon would see them bound as painlessly as possible. Some game, Daigoro thought.
“Your focus is as leaky as an old grass roof,” said Katsushima. “Listen to me. Why can you not show the same patience with wood as you do with steel? You never overextend yourself with Glorious Victory. You could have had this Sora boy and you gave the match away.”
“No,” Daigoro said, and he was about to explain why Katsushima was wrong, but then he remembered: Katsushima didn’t believe in enchanted blades. Tales of magic were for farmers’ wives, he said, and now was not the time to rekindle that debate. Daigoro had to prepare himself for a very different conversation.