Shike, p.60
Shike, page 60
"Why don't you kill me?" he asked, staring into Taitaro's eyes. Taitaro quoted The Zinja Manual: "When it is not necessary to do a thing, it is necessary not to do it."
"True, I am about to die," Sogamori said, "but the Takashi will win this war. The whole realm supports us. We have the Emperor. Hide-yoni has only a rabble of country samurai, and Yukio's army are barbarous foreigners. We will move to the west where we are strongest. All the great samurai families will rally to us against the rebels. My grandson is the Heavenly Sovereign, and my great-grandson and all my descendants will sit on the Imperial throne until the end of time. In this world I have nothing left to desire. My only regret is that I cannot see the head of Yukio."
Taitaro sighed. "Lord Sogamori, do you want to go into the Void shouting lies to deafen yourself or do you want to be liberated from illusion?"
"You Zinja speak of insight," said Sogamori. "Can one who is not a Zinja achieve it?"
"You have your last chance now to experience insight in this life," said Taitaro.
"Who will I be in my next life? Do you know, Zinja?"
"We do not claim to know what comes after death."
"A year ago a saintly monk came to me and told me he had been to the kingdom of the dead in a dream. Emma-O, the king of the underworld, told him I am the reincarnation of the famous priest Jie Sojo, who lived three hundred years ago. Emma-0 said that even my evil karma will help mankind. If so, I am no ordinary man, and my future life will not be ordinary."
"The future does not exist," said Taitaro. "There is only the present. While I am with you, let me help you."
"I am not afraid to die," Sogamori whispered.
"I do not seek merely to free you from fear," said Taitaro. "I seek to make you an infant again, stripped of possessions, rank, kindred, knowledge, past, future, even of language itself. So that you will go into the Void as a baby goes to its mother's arms."
Sogamori is the man who killed my mother, Jebu thought, but he was more interested in what Taitaro was saying than in his hatred of the Takashi chieftain.
"You are not Sogamori," Taitaro went on. "You must give up Sogamori, forget him. Sogamori was a festival mask you wore, but the dance is over now."
"I shall take another mask for another dance." Sogamori's voice seemed fainter.
Taitaro leaned forward and stared intently into Sogamori's eyes. "There is no other dance. There was no dance before this. All time was, is and will be now, and you have always worn this mask, but the mask was never you. Relinquish it. Now." He snapped his fingers over Sogamori's face, a loud, startling sound, like the cracking of a bone.
There was a silence, and then Sogamori said, "I see."
"What do you see?" There was eagerness in the way Taitaro crouched over him.
"I see Sogamori. I see him as a young man shooting his arrows at the warrior monks of Todaiji-at their very shrine-without fear of the gods. I see him with his son Kiyosi subduing the enemies of the Emperor. I see the Son of Heaven proclaiming him chancellor, even the Eujiwara bowing before him. I see him closing the circle that was. opened when his ancestor, Emperor Kammy, was on the throne. Sogamori, Takashi no Sogamori."
"Not Sogamori," said Taitaro softly. "Not Takashi."
"Not Takashi?" Sogamori whispered plaintively. The voice was weaker still. The words slurred. Jebu knew that Sogamori was making his last slide down into fever, delirium and death. "Not even that? If I am not a Takashi, I am nothing. If I am nothing then I am-" There was a long silence as Sogamori searched Taitaro's face, stared up into the shadows of the temple hall, peered at smiling Kwannon.
"Everything," Sogamori said, and closed his eyes.
Taitaro, Jebu and the three other monks sat cross-legged and waited. From outside the temple came the cries of Mongol soldiers playing some game of chance. In the late afternoon, during the hour of the ape, Takashi no Sogamori died. Taitaro laid his hand on the broad, immobile chest, now cool to the touch, and nodded to Jebu. He began removing the needles from Sogamori's body. The two Buddhist priests intoned prayers, while the monk Suzuki led Taitaro to a chest in the corner of the temple, containing Sogamori's remaining possessions. The priests had rescued it from the carriage in which Sogamori had gone on his last journey. There were gold and silver cups and bowls, jade statues, bolts of exquisite silk, scroll paintings and several magnificent swords. Jebu looked for the famous Kogarasu, but it was not there. There was another sword, though, that Jebu recognized. It was very long, the blade straight in the style of hundreds of years ago. The hilt was ornamented with a coiling silver dragon on a black-lacquered background.
"This is Higekiri, the Beard Cutter," he told Taitaro. "The oldest sword of the Muratomo. I last saw it in Domei's hand, nearly twenty years ago, when he sent me with his son Hideyori to Kamakura. The Takashi captured him soon after that, and Sogamori must have kept the sword ever since. Yukio will be delighted to see Higekiri again." Followed by the three priests carrying the chest, Jebu and Taitaro walked to the temple entrance, where Torluk waited for them.
"What did you do, holy man? Poison him with those needles and that drink?"
Taitaro shook his head. "Those things were to wake him up and ease his pain, not kill him."
"I'll never understand shamans and monks," Torluk growled. "Well, he's dead now and I can take his head to Lord Yukio."
Without a word, Taitaro went back into the temple. He picked up the candles on the altar one after the other and tossed them at the paper screens and wooden walls, while the Buddhist priests screamed and Torluk bellowed at him to stop. Soon the whole interior was a whirlwind of flame and smoke.
Torluk's face was red with rage. "If you weren't a man of religion and your son weren't Lord Yukio's companion, I'd kill you, old man."
"I felt that Sogamori's body deserved to be burned, not mutilated," said Taitaro calmly.
"You've burnt down the temple," one of the priests screamed. "You're no holy man. You're a devil." Taitaro gave Jebu a meaningful look.
"Sogamori built hundreds of temples," Taitaro told the priest. "The Lord Buddha and the Goddess Kwannon can spare one for him."
"We might have had some reward if we could have brought Sogamori's head to Yukio," Torluk grumbled. "Now we'll get nothing."
"Yukio doesn't need to see Sogamori's head," said Jebu. "The news that we captured him and he died will please Yukio well enough." He held up Higekiri. "He will surely reward those involved in the return of this sword to his family."
"I will never understand what you did," Jebu said later, as he and his father rode north along the Shujaku. Even though they could not see Heian Kyo, a grey cloud to the north told them it was still smouldering.
"An inner voice told me I should not let Sogamori be tortured, killed and mutilated," said Taitaro. "He seems a monster to us now, a man who destroyed his country, but perhaps it is as he told us; even his evil karma will benefit mankind. Perhaps, indeed, he was no ordinary person. There are moments in my life when our notions of right and wrong, our customs, common sense itself, must be set aside and I must act in a strange way that seems right, though I can see no reason for it. This encounter with Sogamori was such a moment. If you would understand it better, spend more time with the Jewel."
Chapter Thirteen
Yukio urged his chestnut horse down the steep, pine-shaded path that wound over the eastern slope of Mount Higashi. It was the hour of the rooster, and from the top of the mountain he had seen the setting sun glowing on the rooftops of Heian Kyo. On this side, twilight had already fallen. It was cold enough now, in the Ninth Month, for his horse's breath and his own to turn to steam in the air before him. The prospect of meeting Hideyori made Yukio nervous. In childhood he had known Hideyori as someone who was big, formidable, older, who treated him with undisguised contempt. Now he reminded himself of all he had seen and accomplished since he last saw his half-brother. His victories surpassed those of any other general in the history of the Sunrise Land. Hideyori had yet to win a single important battle. If Hideyori was about to take control of the government, it was Yukio who had given it to him as a gift. I am not a child any longer, Yukio thought, I am thirty years old. Still, Yukio felt towards Hideyori as a boy feels towards a revered and feared elder brother. Why, he wondered, had Hideyori insisted in his messages that Yukio and he must meet alone, in concealment, outside the city? Why the furtiveness? He noticed a row of tumbled stones along the side of the road. Over twenty years ago, Jebu had told him, a Zinja temple had stood here. It had been destroyed by an earthquake and never rebuilt. A horse and rider stood motionless in the path ahead of Yukio. There was something ghost-like about the figure in dark armour sitting astride a pale grey horse.
Yukio climbed down from his horse and called, "Hideyori? Brother, is that you?" There was no answer. After a moment, the armoured figure dismounted and slowly walked towards him. In the half-light Yukio saw, under a horned helmet, a stern, strong face with glittering black eyes, a face that immediately reminded him of his father, Domei.
Now Yukio was sure this was Hideyori. He dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead into the earth.
"My lord. My brother. I am your younger brother, Muratomo no Yukio."
"I know. Stand up." The voice was gruff, the words rude. Hideyori had spent the last twenty years of his life in the uncultivated eastern provinces, Yukio reminded himself. Perhaps that was the way they spoke there. Yukio stood and smiled at Hideyori, but there was no answering smile.
"I brought you a gift, Brother. Give me leave to get it." At Hideyori's nod, Yukio went to his horse and unstrapped a long package wrapped in green silk, which he held out with both hands. Erowning, Hideyori unwrapped it, saw the ancient sword with the silver dragon coiling around the hilt, and gave Yukio a questioning look.
"I am sure my honoured brother recognizes this sword."
"It is Higekiri," said Hideyori wonderingly.
Yukio told him how the sword had been found in Sogamori's baggage. "As head of our family, you are the rightful owner of Higekiri. I am happy to be able to present it to you on our first meeting." Yukio only regretted that the gift could not have been given at a splendid public ceremony. All Heian Kyo was eager to see and greet the chieftain of the victorious Muratomo clan. But Yukio had promised himself that he would offer the sword to Hideyori at the very first opportunity. Yukio had hoped that when he met his half-brother their common blood would kindle a warmth between them that would dispel his trepidation. But nothing, it seemed, had changed since his childhood. He still dreaded Hideyori's cold contempt.
Hideyori seated himself cross-legged on the ground and gestured to Yukio to join him. He rewrapped the sword and laid it across his knees.
"There are things we must discuss now," he said. "In a day or two you and I and our officers will be meeting with the Retired Emperor and his councillors. We should not disagree before them." Yukio was overcome as, point by point, in rapid succession, Hideyori outlined his plans. Yukio, he proposed, would take to the water, seizing all the ships he could find along the coast, and hound the Takashi from their island strongholds and ports along the Inland Sea. Hideyori would wage a land war against the Takashi and their allies throughout Honshu. Eor now, Go-Shirakawa would reign in place of the Son of Heaven. After the war they would choose a successor to the Takashi usurper, the boy Antoku. Clearly, Hideyori had been thinking carefully about these things while Yukio had been blundering from battle to battle. Yukio felt foolish. It was for the best that Hideyori was the older of the two of them and the head of the family.
"Do you agree to all of it so far?" Hideyori asked.
"I am a warrior, not a statesman," said Yukio. "I am sure your judgment in these matters is superior to mine. My only thought has been to overthrow the Takashi and win justice for the Muratomo."
"Justice we will have in good measure, Yukio-san," said Hideyori, a friendlier note in his voice. It warmed Yukio to be addressed as Yukio-san by his forbidding elder brother. "You know, I had no idea what sort of person you would be or what you would want. We seem to agree on most things, as brothers should. Let us turn to the difficult question of the Mongols, then. You know, of course, that there are those who say that you have come to conquer our land for the Emperor of Mongolia, who has promised to make you his vassal-king?"
Was Hideyori going to condemn him, as so many others had, for bringing a foreign army into the Sacred Islands? "What must I do, cut my belly open to prove my loyalty?"
"Do not suggest such a thing even lightly, Yukio-san," said Hideyori. "There's really a very simple way for you to show you are not an agent of foreigners. Relinquish command of the Mongols."
Yukio was stunned. "To whom?"
"To me, of course. No one questions my loyalty. I've never left the Sunrise Land."
"You couldn't command the Mongols."
"It's foolish for us to try to talk to each other in total darkness," said Hideyori, changing the subject in a pleasant tone. "Can you light a candle, Yukio-san?" Yukio took a tinder box and a scrap of candle from a kit at his belt. He lit the candle and set it on the box on a bed of fallen maple leaves between himself and Hideyori.
"Good," said Hideyori. "Now tell me what you mean about my not being able to command the Mongols."
"Of course, they would take orders from you," said Yukio. "Eorgive me for speaking frankly, honoured Brother, but I must give you my opinion as a soldier or fail in my duty to you. The question is, how well could you lead them? I don't think you know enough about the Mongols' special ways of fighting to make good use of them. You don't speak their language. They don't know you. A leader must be known to his men to arouse their fighting spirit."
In the candlelight Yukio saw a dull red flush spread over his brother's face. Hideyori started to raise his hand in what appeared to be an angry gesture, then stopped himself. Gradually, the colour faded from his face. He stroked his small moustache thoughtfully.
"As you said, Yukio-san, that is your opinion as a soldier. If I had not realized that, even as you spoke, I myself would have been tempted to distrust you just as others do. If I, your brother, could suspect you, think how much easier it is for those who do not know you to believe the worst of you. You may be right when you say that I do not know how to use the Mongols as effectively as you do. Remember, though, that wars are not won on the battlefield alone. If it becomes widely believed that the Muratomo are not loyal to the Sacred Islands, the supporters we need will turn to the Takashi instead."
There was much in what Hideyori said, Yukio realized, even though he suspected that Hideyori had other, unspoken reasons for wanting the Mongols under his control. He felt as if he had been asked to give away his sword in the middle of a battle. At this stage of the war, though, the Mongols were not as necessary as they had been when he first landed in the north. Now, just as Hideyori said, their presence might be more of a hindrance than a help in winning the war. In war, just as in go, there were fuseki, chuban and yose-opening, middle and end games-each requiring a different strategy.
"I will have to have samurai to replace the Mongols," he said at last. Hideyori's lips stretched in one of his rare, chilly smiles.
"You shall have them, as many as you need, tough fighters from the eastern provinces, the best men in the land. Erom now on, though, you'll need ships more than men. We have a new shipbuilder in Kamakura, a man who studied the art in China. I will commission him to build for you. Erom what I know of the Mongols, they would be little use to you at sea."
An inexplicable inner reflex of caution kept Yukio from telling Hideyori that the shipbuilder was Moko, an old companion of his. "True," he said. "The Mongol homeland is far from the sea." He was already regretting having yielded to Hideyori. He had lost his best weapon, the Mongols, and had agreed to undertake the most difficult, dangerous phase of the war-fighting the Takashi at sea. Still, heavily outnumbered, he had beaten the Takashi in Hakata Bay long ago. The vision of what he could do with plenty of ships and men began to excite him.
"One question, Yukio-san," said Hideyori. "I believe you have no intention of betraying the Sacred Islands, but what are the intentions of the Mongols themselves?"
Yukio laughed. "I've always assumed that they could be spies or the vanguard of an invasion. Eor now, let us make use of them. When they become a problem, let us deal with them."
Hideyori clapped Yukio on the shoulder and stood up. "Exactly my thought. We must always remember that today's ally may be tomorrow's enemy." He raised his arms. There was a rustling in the trees that grew throughout the Zinja temple ruins. Yukio stared about him, startled. Shadowy figures-samurai armed with bows and arrows-emerged and formed a circle around himself and Hideyori.
"You said we were to meet alone," Yukio choked out.
Hideyori smiled. "I told you before, Yukio-san, until now I had no idea what sort of person you are or what you would want. This meeting has gone very well, honoured Younger Brother. I look forward to seeing you in a day or two in the capital." One of Hideyori's men brought his grey stallion forward for him to mount. With a wave,
Hideyori turned and rode off down the mountain path, his men following on foot.
Yukio stood alone among the broken stones, asking himself what kind of man his brother was. A man who feared treachery, yet deceived others without a flicker of shame. Yukio felt hot anger rise within him at the thought of the archers concealed in the forest while he talked with his brother. That was why Hideyori had asked him to light the candle, to make him an easy target for the archers. What if he had refused to let Hideyori have the Mongols? He'd be lying dead on the ground right now, riddled with arrows. Yukio shivered as a death-like chill travelled up his spine. Calling to his horse, he stepped angrily on the guttering candle and ground it out.
Chapter Fourteen
As if to show that they could be far more destructive than men, the gods chose to halt the War of the Dragons for a time with a series of natural calamities. The Year of the Hare began with blizzards, which turned in the spring into heavy rains and sudden floods. In the summer there was a drought. Many landowners and samurai deserted both the Muratomo and Takashi forces to try to save their farms. By autumn there was famine in the land. The contending clans sent most of their warriors home because they could not feed them. Hundreds of thousands of people starved to death. The dead lay unburied in the streets of Heian Kyo. A group of monks went around the city painting the character "A" on the foreheads of corpses in the hope that they might be reborn in Amida's Western Paradise. They reported that they had found over forty-two thousand dead within the city limits alone.
