“I will go to Terayama to my brother’s grave.”

“It is a little early for that,” Shoichi said. “You will not go there. But you may travel to the East.”

47

Very well, Shigeru thought. I will obey my uncles. I will travel to the East.

He set out the next day, telling Chiyo and Ichiro he would visit the temple of Shokoji and spend a few days in retreat there, praying for the dead. For the first part of the journey he rode, taking Kyu and several retainers with him as companions. He left men and horses at the last small town before the border, Susamura, and went on alone on foot, like a pilgrim. He stayed for two nights at the temple, Shokoji, and on the third morning rose before dawn under the full moon and walked through the mountain pass, directly east, following the twin stars called the Cat’s Eyes until the sky paled and he was walking directly toward the rising sun. Its light fell across the browning grass of the plain; there was little sign now of the ten thousand who had died there, though occasionally bones of horses and men lay in the dust where foxes and wolves had been scavenging. He could not help recalling how he had ridden here with Kiyoshige, how the young horses had galloped eagerly across the plain-and the scenes of torture they had found on the other side in the border village. Now all this country belonged to the Tohan: would any Hidden have survived here?

He saw nobody on the plain, only pheasants and hares. He stopped to drink at the spring where he had rested with Kiyoshige, remembering how the tortured man Tomasu had come crawling toward them, wordlessly imploring them to help him. It was past midday by then and very hot. He rested for a while beneath the shade of the pines, trying to keep from his mind images of a boy with Takeshi’s face dying slowly above a fire, until the sense of urgency drove him on. He followed a fox track that went almost straight across the tawny surface toward the mountains that lay to the north of Chigawa. Mostly, he slept outside, only for the hours between moonset and dawn while it was too dark to see the path in front of him. He followed mountain tracks, frequently getting lost, having to retrace his steps, occasionally wondering if he would ever return to the Middle Country or if he would perish here in the impenetrable forest and no one would ever know what had become of him.

He avoided Chigawa itself, taking the track to the north, and then turning south again. He met few people on the path, but as it bent back around Chigawa, there were signs that a large group of men had recently traveled along it. Branches were broken back; the ground was smoothed out by their feet. Shigeru did not want to meet whoever they were coming back; he was looking for a way to strike out to the East, but the terrain was very wild, with many jagged outcrops of rocks, steep ravines, and thick forest. It seemed he had no alternative but to follow the track all the way to the pass.

He turned a corner to see something pale in the undergrowth. A dead man lay there, his throat recently cut, his barely clothed, emaciated body still warm. Shigeru knelt by him, saw the rope marks on wrist and neck, the callouses on his knees, the broken nails and scarred hands, and realized who was ahead of him. This man had been a miner, one of those forced to work in the silver and copper mines that riddled the district around Chigawa. Part of a group being moved from one mine to another, he must have collapsed from exhaustion and been cold-bloodedly dispatched and left unburied.

He was Otori once, Shigeru thought, one of the thousands that looked to me for protection, and I failed them.

He dragged the body farther up the hill, found a crevice, and buried it there, piling the entrance with rocks and praying before it. Then he went in search of water, both to ease his thirst and to cleanse himself. He found a pool where water had oozed between rocks and decided to sleep for a while to give the mining party time to outpace him. There was no wind, no sound at all other than the mewing of kites and the clamor of cicadas.

He woke to the same sounds, drank again, and went back to the track. As he came to the pass, he could see all the way back across Yaegahara and as far as the sea to the north. The sun was well over to the west; he thought it would be two hours or so before sunset-but anyway he planned to walk all night, south to the mountains behind Inuyama.

He made the descent quickly in the cooler air, always listening for the sounds of human activity on the track ahead. But he was almost in the valley and the light was fading before he came suddenly on the mining party.

They had stopped to rest by a small pool, presumably for the night. The miners, men and women tied together, some hardly out of childhood, had fallen to the ground where they had halted, and slept as if already dead, like grotesque heaps of corpses. No one had made fire: a group of armed men-five by his swift count-squatted at the head of the line, eating cold food from a shared box and passing a bamboo flask around. They ate in complete silence.

Their hands went to their swords when they saw Shigeru: he greeted them briefly and walked on past them, ready at any moment to turn to meet their attack with Jato. Their glances were suspicious; they did not jump on him, possibly deterred by his sword, but one of them called to him, “Sir, just a moment, please.”

He turned: the man who had spoken stepped toward him, a large soldier with an air of authority, not the sort of person he would have expected to find guarding what was little more than a bunch of slaves. Shigeru felt he knew him, might have seen him once years ago when Iida had ridden away from Chigawa. He stood and waited impassively.

The soldier peered up into his face. Recognition flickered into his eyes.

“Is it you?” he began but got no further, as a disturbance erupted behind him among the prostrate bodies. One of the miners was screaming, thrashing against his bonds, tossing those tied to him from side to side, their bony arms rising and falling as though thrown up by the sea.

Shigeru saw Komori, the man who had saved Iida’s life, the Underground Emperor. He realized that Komori knew him, that this was a ploy to save Shigeru’s life, and, in the instant it took to draw Jato, that he would die here rather than abandon him.

The large man screamed to the others, “It is Otori! Don’t kill him! He must be taken alive.” Shigeru struck him from behind, in the neck, severing the spinal cord. Two others had seized a net, with which they trapped villagers to abduct them into the mines. He evaded their first throw, ducking under it and cutting one of them upward deep into the thigh, opening the main artery of the leg. As the wounded man fell, his net descended over him, enmeshing him. Shigeru rolled backward, using his left shoulder to propel himself out of the reach of the fourth man; he landed on his feet and in the same movement went forward and brought Jato down on this man’s right arm, severing it. The fifth man rushed at him, but the roped miners rose like one shuffling beast and wound themselves around him. He cut vainly at them, but they overpowered him and brought him down.

Shigeru ended the lives of the three who still breathed; then, taking out his short sword, he cut the bonds of the prisoners, starting with Komori.

Many of them were wailing with distress and fear; most of them, as soon as they were released, ran to the pool to slake their thirst and then disappeared into the forest.

Komori was bleeding from a cut under his armpit. It was impossible to tell in the fading light how deep it was. Shigeru washed it as best he could and packed it with moss from around the tree roots. Neither of them spoke at first. Komori’s eyes glittered; he was so thin his bones seemed to glimmer palely through his taut skin.