Every time Koroku looked at this son, who resembled him so little, he feared that this was the end of his family line, and deplored Kameichi's gentle nature and scholarly bent. Whenever he had even a little leisure, he would call the boy into the garden and try to pour some of his own fierce fighting spirit into him through the martial arts.

"Take a spear."

“Yes, sir.”

“Adopt the usual stance and strike without thinking of me as your father." Koroku leveled his own spear and charged toward his son as though he were an adult.

Kameichi's weak-spirited eyes shrank at his father's terrifying voice, and he retreated, Koroku's unmerciful spear struck Kameichi's shoulder hard. Kameichi screamed and dopped to the ground in a dead faint.

Running into the garden from the house, Koroku's wife, Matsunami, was beside herself. "Where did he hit you? Kameichi! Kameichi!" Obviously angered at her husband's rough treatment of her son, she called abruptly to the servants for water and medicine.

"You fool!" Koroku scolded her. "Why are you crying and consoling him? Kameichi is weakling because you've brought him up that way. He's not going to die. Get away from him!

The servants who had brought the water and medicine simply looked with blank expressions at Koroku's severe face, and kept their distance.

Matsunami wiped her tears. With the same handkerchief she pressed down on the blood that flowed from Kameichi's lip as she cradled him in her arms. He had either bitten his lip when his father had struck him, or it had been cut by a rock when he fell.

"It must hurt. Were you hit somewhere else?" She never quarrelled with her husband, regardless of how displeased or excited she felt. Like any woman of her day, her only weapons were her tears.

Kameichi finally regained consciousness. "I'm all right, Mother. It was nothing. Go away." Picking up his spear and gritting his teeth in pain, he got up again, for the first time demonstrating a manliness that must have delighted his father.

"Ready!" he shouted.

A smile softened his father's face. "Come at me with that kind of spirit," he encouraged him anew.

At that moment a retainer ran in through the gate. Turning to Koroku, he announced that a man claiming to be a messenger from Oda Nobunaga had just tied his horse at the main gate and said that he absolutely must speak with Koroku in private. What should be done with him, the retainer wanted to know. "And he's a little strange," he added. "He walked in casually through the gate alone, without any ceremony, looking around as though he were familiar with the place, saying things like, ‘Ah, it's just like home,' 'The turtledoves are cooing as always,' and 'That persimmon tree has gotten big.' Somehow it's hard to believe he's an Oda messenger."

Koroku cocked his head to one side. After a moment he asked, "What's his name?"

"Kinoshita Tokichiro."

"Ah!" Suddenly it was as though his doubts had melted. "Is that so? Now I understand. This must be the man who sent that message earlier. There's no need for me to meet him. Send him away!"

The retainer ran off to throw Tokichiro out.

"I have a request," said Matsunami. "Please excuse Kameichi from practice just for today. He still looks a little pale. And his lip is swollen."

"Hm. Well, take him along." Koroku left both the spear and his son with his wife. Don't spoil him too much. And don't give him a lot of books, thinking you're doing him favor."

Koroku walked toward the house, and was about to untie his sandals on the steppingstone, when the retainer ran up again.

"Master, this man is getting stranger and stranger. He refuses to go away. Not only that, but he walked through a side gate, went right into the stables, stopped a groom and a garden sweeper, and was talking with them as though he had known them for a long time."

"Throw him out. Why are you being so easy on someone coming around from the Oda clan?"

"No, I even went beyond what you told me, but when the men spilled out of the barracks and threatened to throw him over the mud wall, he asked me to talk to you one more time. He said that if I told you he was the Hiyoshi you met ten years ago at the Yahagi River, you would certainly remember. Then he stood there looking like you couldn't budge him with a lever."

"The Yahagi River?" Koroku couldn't remember at all.

"You don't remember?"

"No."

"Well then, this fellow must be really strange. He's just rambling on in desperation. Shall I rough him up good, slap his horse, and chase him back to Kiyosu?"

It was obvious the man was getting annoyed at being a messenger again and again. With a look that said, just wait and see, he turned and had run as far as the wooden gate when Koroku, who was standing on the steps to the house, called out and stopped him.

"Wait!"

"Yes, is there something else?"

"Wait a minute. You don't think it could be Monkey?"

"You know the name? He said to tell you it was Monkey if you didn't remember Hiyoshi."

"It is Monkey, then," Koroku said.

"Do you know him?" the retainer asked.

"He was a quick-witted kid we kept here for a while. He swept the garden and took care of Kameichi."

"But isn't it strange that he's come here as a messenger from Oda Nobunaga?"

"That makes no sense to me either, but what does he look like?"

"Respectable."

"Oh?"

He wears a short coat over his armor, and it looks as though he's come quite a dis­tance. Both his saddle and stirrups are covered with mud, and he's got a wicker basket for meals and other travel supplies on his saddle."

"Well, let him in and we'll see."

"Let him in?"

“Just to make sure, let's take a look at his face." Koroku sat on the veranda and waited.

It was a distance of only a few leagues from Nobunaga's castle to Hachisuka. By rights, the village should have been part of the Oda domain, but Koroku did not recog­nize Nobunaga, nor did he receive a stipend from the Oda clan. His father and the Saito of Mino had supported each other, and the sense of loyalty among ronin was a strong one. Actually, in those troubled days, they esteemed loyalty and chivalry, along with their honor, even more than did the samurai houses. Although they were fated to live as savage plunderers, these ronin were bound together like father and children, so that disloyalty and dishonesty were not tolerated. Koroku was like the head of a large family, and he was the very source of these iron rules of conduct.

Dosan's murder and Yoshitatsu's death the previous year had caused one problem after another in Mino. And there had been repercussions for Koroku as well. The stipend paid to the Hachisuka while Dosan was alive had been cut off after the Oda blocked all the roads from Owari into Mino. But even so, Koroku was not going to forget his sense of loyalty. On the contrary, his enmity toward the Oda intensified, and in recent years he had indirectly aided defections from Nobunaga's camp and had been one of the major plotters of agitation in the Oda domain.

"I've brought him in," the retainer said from the wooden gate. Just in case, five or six of Koroku's men surrounded Tokichiro as he came in.

Koroku glowered at him. "Come here," he said, with an imperious nod.

An ordinary-looking man stood before Koroku. His salutation was also ordinary. "Well, it's been a long time."

Koroku stared fixedly at him. "Sure enough, it's Monkey. Your face hasn't changed much."

In contrast to his face, Koroku could not help being surprised by the transformation in Tokichiro's clothes. Koroku now clearly recalled that night ten years ago near the Yahagi River, when Tokichiro, dressed in a dirty cotton tunic, his neck, hands, and feet covered with grime, had been sleeping by the riverbank. When a soldier had shaken him awake, he had responded with such big words and such fighting spirit that they had all wondered who he could be. Under the light of the soldier's lanterns, he had turned out to be noth­ing more than a strange-looking youth.