Shigeru smiled. There was a host of things he might have expressed-pleasure, surprise, amusement at his friend’s connivings. Kiyoshige laughed. There was no need to say any of them. They understood each other.
In the same way, he had not needed to explain his plan to Kiyoshige the day before. His friend had grasped Shigeru’s intentions immediately. Irie had been invited to come and speak with the young men in the garden. Shigeru felt he needed at least one of his teachers to approve his scheme. Irie, who had traveled with him to Yamagata and returned to the town to meet him in the spring, was the one he trusted most, suspecting from what he noticed about Irie during the meetings that the man’s loyalties had been transferred to him. They had had no discussions; Shigeru had not sought advice. He had made up his mind, had told Irie of his intentions and asked-though ordered was closer to the truth-the older man to come with him.
The old warrior had obeyed impassively, but he had met them early, before the appointed time, and Shigeru felt his eagerness was as great as their own. Irie’s outrage had been as deep as Shigeru’s when they had uncovered the duplicity of Lord Kitano and his approaches to the Iida family, and he had been the most affronted by the Tohan version of Miura’s death.
The men who came with them-ten from each one’s personal retainers-were told nothing of the mission. Kiyoshige casually mentioned the need to try out the horses, and he made sure his men rode the youngest, greenest colts to give some appearance of truth; but just like the man who had spoken to Akane on the bridge, what all the Otori men hoped for was the chance to confront the arrogant, insufferable Tohan and teach them a lesson.
The last of the snows had melted and all the mountain passes were open. At first they followed the coast road toward Matsue; after three days they turned east, riding up and down steep mountain paths, sleeping wherever night overtook them, happy to be out of doors while the rain held off, away from towns and villages that might be infiltrated by spies, until they came to the edge of the wide plateau known as Yaegahara. It was circled by mountain ranges that appeared ever more faintly, one behind the other, as far as the eye could see. The most distant were the High Cloud Ranges, which formed a natural barrier to the Three Countries. Beyond the ranges, many weeks’ travel to the east, lay Miyako, the capital of the Eight Islands -the seat of the Emperor, who, in name, ruled over them all. In reality, the Emperor’s power was small, and outlying fiefs like the Three Countries practically ruled themselves. If local clans and individual warlords rose to power and conquered and subdued their weaker neighbors, there was no one to object or intervene. Whatever rights might seem to be ensured by inheritance or oaths of fealty were all subsumed by the final single legitimacy of power. Among the Tohan, the Iida family had risen to supremacy: they were an ancient house, high-ranking warriors, established at Inuyama for hundreds of years-but none of these things made them first among their equals as much as their lust for power and their ruthless and decisive pursuit of it. No one could be at ease with such neighbors.
Inuyama, the Tohan castle town, lay behind the mountains far to the south.
They camped on the edge of the plain, not knowing that most of their party would die there before they were three years older, and rode across it the following morning, urging their horses to gallop over the grassy slopes, surprising pheasants and hares that made the young horses startle and leap like hares themselves. It seemed the thunder-storms had brought an end to the spring rains; the sky was the deep blue of early summer, and it was very hot; both men and horses poured with sweat; the colts were excited and hard to control.
“It turned out a good exercise for them after all,” Kiyoshige said when they stopped to rest in the middle of the day in the shade of one of the few scattered woods on the grassy plain. There was a cold spring nearby where the steaming horses were watered and the men washed hands, faces, and feet before they ate. “If we were to fight an enemy on terrain like this, half our horses would be out of control!”
“We get too little practice,” Irie said. “Our troops have forgotten what war is like.”
“This would make a perfect battleground,” Shigeru said. “Plenty of room to move and a good terrain. We from the West would have the sun behind us at the end of the day, and the slope in our favor.”
“Bear it in mind,” Irie said briefly.
They did not speak much, but dozed beneath the sonorous pine trees, half-stupefied by the heat and the ride from the grasslands. Shigeru was almost asleep when one of the men posted as a guard called out to him, “Lord Otori! Someone is coming from the east.”
He got to his feet, yawning and drowsy, and joined the guard on the edge of the wood, where a pile of large boulders gave them cover.
In the distance, a lone figure was stumbling across the plain. It fell repeatedly, struggled to its feet, sometimes crawled on hands and knees. As it came closer, they could hear its voice, a thin anguished howling that now and then quietened to sobbing only to rise again in a note that made horror touch the spines of the watching men.
“Keep out of sight,” Shigeru called, and swiftly the thirty men hid themselves and their horses behind boulders and among trees. Shigeru’s second reaction after horror was one of pity, but he did not want them to fall into a trap by showing themselves suddenly, or to frighten the man away.
As the figure came closer they could see that his face was a mass of blood, around which flies buzzed viciously. It was impossible to discern any features, but the eyes must have remained and something of the mind, for it was clear that the man knew where he was going: he was heading for the water.
He fell at the pool’s edge and thrust his head into the water, moaning as its chill hit his open wounds. He seemed to be trying to drink, sucking at the water, heaving and retching as he choked on it.
Small pale fish surfaced at the smell of blood.
“Bring him to me,” Shigeru said. “But be careful. Don’t frighten him.”
The men went to the water’s edge. One of them put his hand on the fugitive’s shoulder and pulled him up, speaking to him slowly and clearly. “Don’t be afraid! It’s all right. We won’t hurt you.” The other took a cloth from his pouch and began to wipe the blood away.
Shigeru could tell from the man’s posture that he was terrified anew, but as the blood was washed away and he could see the face more clearly, behind the pain and the fear there was intelligence in the expression of the eyes. The men lifted him and brought him to where Shigeru stood and set him down on the sandy ground.
The man’s ears had been sliced off, and blood oozed from the holes.
“Who did this to you?” Shigeru said, disgust creeping across his skin.
The man opened his mouth, moaned, and spat out blood. His tongue had been ripped out. But with one hand, he smoothed the sand and with the other wrote the characters Tohan. He smoothed the sand again and traced, incorrectly, clumsily.
Come. Help.
Shigeru thought the man near death and was reluctant to inflict further suffering by moving him. But he himself made a gesture at the horses, indicating that he would guide them. Tears poured from his eyes when he tried to talk, as though the realization that he had been silenced forever had only just sunk in-yet neither agony nor grief would deter him from his entreaties. All those gathered around were moved to something like awe at such courage and endurance and could not refuse him.
It was hard to know how to transport him, since he was rapidly losing his remaining strength. In the end, one of the strongest of the retainers, Harada, a man with a broad solid build, took him on his back, like a child, and the others bound him tightly on. The two were helped onto one of the quieter horses, and, touching the man who carried him on the left or right side of his chest, the suffering creature guided them to the far side of the plain.