-Ichi-
Ōtoro knelt by the doorway to contemplate the cherry blossoms as the late afternoon breeze dusted them from the branches. The courtyard was a softly rippling sea of white and pink.
“Beautiful,” he murmured.
The servant girl came and poured more tea, and the fragrance of jasmine perfumed the air. He nodded his thanks but did not touch the cup until she was gone. Ōtoro didn’t know this girl and didn’t like her furtive looks. Might be curiosity—everyone was curious about a stranger until they knew the story—and it might be suspicion. Anyone who was not suspicious in these times was a fool; but suspicion could have so many meanings. He kept his sword hand on his thigh until she had closed the door and her soft footsteps had vanished down the hall.
In the courtyard of the inn blossoms fell like silent tears from the trees. Ōtoro sipped his tea. It was a little too strong; the girl had hoped to impress him with its scent so that he wouldn’t notice that she’d over-brewed it. He took a second sip and set the cup aside.
Beyond the holly hedge he saw the tops of two heads bobbing their way toward him. Ōtoro considered the angle of the sun. They were right on time and he appreciated promptness. The two men emerged from behind the holly, paused to orient themselves, saw the open door, and angled that way. The older man was Ito, a daimyo of considerable wealth and connections; his young companion was unknown to Ōtoro.
Ito was perhaps sixty, in fine silks, the other less than half his age in less expensive clothes. Both wore two swords—it confirmed what Ōtoro had learned about Ito, that he was a traditional Samurai, a devout Buddhist rather than a Christian. The Christians did not carry the shorter sword, the wakazashi, as it was against their religion to commit seppuku, even when faced with a loss of honor. Ōtoro disliked and distrusted this spreading departure from the values by which his family had lived for centuries, though he was realistic enough to accept that some changes were inevitable. Europe was closing its fist around Japan and eventually even the age of the samurai would pass.
One day, he knew; but it was a day he would never live to see. Like the samurai culture itself, his time was nearly over.
The visitors drew closer. Ito walked with casual confidence; his companion affected a gamecock strut. They came to the edge of the courtyard and the younger man strode forward, body erect as a statue, his gait that of an experienced but arrogant veteran. The young man made as if to keep walking, but Ito stopped him with an arm across his chest. The older man looked out across the unbroken sea of cherry blossom petals and his face changed from a purposeful frown to a softer look, eyes scanning the color, lips parting slightly. The younger man just looked past the beauty to where Ōtoro sat.
A samurai and a fool, mused Ōtoro.
Ito looked up and made eye-contact with Ōtoro across the forty feet of color. He bowed ever so slightly. Not yet an introduction—but clearly an acknowledgment of the moment. It was that, more than any of the letters and presents Ōtoro had so far received or anything that was said or given later, that decided his mind. Because of the blossoms Ōtoro knew that he would help this man, that he would kill whomever he wanted killed.
-Ni-
Ōtoro lifted his fingers an inch and Ito took that as an invitation to enter the courtyard. He stepped into the blossoms and now it was okay that his footsteps disturbed them. Beauty is meant to behold; it is not meant to endure. The younger man followed him across the courtyard, his strut increasing as they approached.
They stopped again about ten feet away and everyone bowed. Ōtoro and Ito both lowered their eyes when they bowed; the young fool did not. He probably still lacked confidence in who and what he was supposed to be. Dogs are like that. Men shouldn’t be.
“Ōtoro-san,” the older man said. “It is my great pleasure to meet you.”
“Ito-sama. Please be welcome.”
Ito nodded toward his companion. “This is Kangyu, my nephew and heir.”
At closer range Ōtoro realized that the old man’s companion was not a grown man at all but was instead a tall boy of maybe sixteen years. His erect posture and aggressive manner were probably more for show—a display intended to convince others as well as himself that he was a man and a samurai. Seeing this, Ōtoro relented from his previous assumption that Kangyu was a fool. He was merely young.
Ōtoro gave Kangyu a small bow, not out of any real respect but because Ito’s statement surprised him and the bow hid his reaction. Ito had three sons. This boy could not possibly be any closer than fourth in line to inherit the clan’s considerable wealth. Ōtoro hid his surprise behind good manners.
“Please be comfortable. The girl will bring saké if you wish, or tea.”
The guests knelt and Ito pulled his swords from his belt and set them beside him. Kangyu did not; the younger man’s hands fidgeted on the scabbard.
Ōtoro tapped a small bell with a stick and the girl appeared with a fresh pot of tea, clean cups, and a tray of rice cakes. She poured and withdrew.
“The tea is very fragrant,” Ito said but he didn’t drink any and Ōtoro knew that this was a segue from politeness to business, but now that it came to it Ito seemed to hesitate, his face pale and damp from exertion, and Ōtoro wondered if the hesitation was sadness, sickness, or perhaps a trace of weakness.
“Ito-sama,” Ōtoro prompted, “your letter indicated that this was a matter of both grave importance and some urgency.”
The old man studied him for a moment, then gave a curt nod. “Importance? Yes, without a doubt. Urgent?” He smiled a weary smile. “That’s relative, all things considered.”
“Timely, perhaps?” Ōtoro suggested.
“Timely indeed.” Ito took a breath. “I am dying, Ōtoro-san.”
Ōtoro was careful not to move or show anything on his face. Less than a year ago that statement would have been one of indifference to him. People tended to die, old men more so. Now, however, death was a spirit who whispered in Ōtoro’s ear. Death, he reflected, takes on so many new meanings when you are, yourself, dying.
But there was more to it than that. Death had reached out its hand across the entire nation and many thousands had died. The coastal merchants called it the ‘Spanich Disease,’ attaching the label based solely on a popular belief that the plague originated among the passengers on a Spanish trading vessel. That claim had never been substantiated, though the government burned three Spanish traders to the waterline and issued an inflexible warning to all others to steer clear of all Japanese ports.
Ōtoro studied Ito for the signs of the disease, but although the old man’s skin was pale it was not gray. There were no visible signs of unhealed bites or sores. On the other hand, clothing hid so much and a bite could be anywhere. Even so, this man was still able to speak. If he did have the Spanich Disease, it could not be very far advanced.
It did make Ōtoro wonder more about the presence of Kangyu. Was his nephew traveling with him as a bodyguard, or as a kaishakunin—the person entrusted with the death cut during seppuku?
Ito must have been reading his thoughts because he smiled and shook his head. “No, Ōtoro-san, I don’t have the Spanish Disease. I have a wasting sickness of the bowels. A cancer.” He made a small gesture. “Not the most dignified way to die, and not the ideal end for a samurai.”
The old man’s eyes were penetrating as he said this, and there was an expectant quality to the fragment of a smile on his mouth.
After allowing a moment to come and go, Ōtoro said, “All things die.”
“And some in better ways than others,” Ito replied, and Ōtoro nodded to acknowledge the point.
“Are you looking for a kaishakunin?”
“No, Kangyu will be my second when it comes to that.”
Ōtoro almost smiled. The boy looked absolutely terrified at the thought, and Ōtoro guessed that for all his posturing and strutting, this boy’s sword had never yet coaxed blood from the flesh of another person. He looked positively green at the thought.
“Then how may I be of service? I’m no doctor.”
“I know exactly what you are, Ōtoro-san. You come very highly recommended. My good friend daimyo Chiyojo has spoken so highly of your services for ten years now. No, don’t be alarmed—he is my cousin, and we have no secrets between us, though none pass through me to anyone else.”
Ōtoro cut a small glance at Kangyu, but Ito shook his head.
“I say now only as much as I need in order to impress upon you the fullness of my confidence in your abilities,” assured Ito.
After a pause, Ōtoro shrugged. “Many people can kill, and I am not an assassin.”
“If I wanted an assassin, sensei, there are many schools of ninja I could hire. And the countryside teems with ronin if all I wanted was someone competent with a sword. No,” said Ito slowly. “If artless slaughter was what I wanted I could have hired a gang and it would be done. I came looking for a warrior. A true samurai.”
Ōtoro sipped his tea, nodded. “What is it that you want done?”
Ito picked up his own cup and gazed into its depths as if it was a window into his own thoughts. “There is a rumor in the city …”
“A rumor?”
“About you,” said Ito, raising his eyes. “About your future.”
Ōtoro waited.
“I have heard idle gossip that you have been putting your affairs in order, that you have sold your estate and your holdings, that you have given much of the proceeds to the monks. They say that you are nearing your death. Some think that you have become disgusted with this world, or with the politics of our nation, or with the influence of Europe, or with some point of honor. There are many bets on when you will commit seppuku.”
“Is that what the gossipers say? And does a man of your position listen to wagging tongues?”
“Occasionally. Not all gossip is mere chatter and noise.”
Ōtoro said nothing.
“There are many opinions on this,” continued Ito. “It seems that you are a very popular man, sensei. One might go as far as to describe you as a folk hero.”
“Nonsense.”
Ito raised an eyebrow. “False modesty?”
“Self-knowledge,” countered Ōtoro. “I have met heroes. They lay down their lives for causes, they throw away their lives for their clans.”
“You wear two swords …”
“And I would commit seppuku without hesitation for the right reason. I have found, Ito-sama, that most ‘causes’ are transient things. To die for a whim or to soothe the feelings of a nobleman who feels slighted—these things are not worthy of a good death.”
“What is a good death?” asked Ito. “To you, I mean. To your mind.”
“The aesthetic of the samurai is to find beauty in a violent death, the death of one in his prime, a death in harmony with life.”
The boy, Kangyu, interrupted and blurted, “The Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to death, there is only the quick choice of death.”
Ōtoro and Ito looked at him.
“You quote the Hagakure well,” said Ōtoro, “but do you understand it?”
Kangyu puffed up his chest. “It is the desire of every samurai to die gloriously in battle amid a heap of his enemies.”
Ito heaved out a great sigh of disappointment. Ōtoro affected to watch the dragonflies flit among the flowers.
“What?” demanded Kangyu, perplexed by the reaction. “Uncle, you know that I can recite every passage in the—”
“You can recite the passages,” said Ito, “but how many times have I told you that you do not interpret them correctly?”
“What other interpretation is there but that a samurai yearns to die in glorious battle? And I am not afraid to die, Uncle,” the boy insisted. “I will swim into eternity on a river of my enemy’s blood.”
Ito turned to Ōtoro. “Do you see? This is what the younger generation has come to. When I hear such things, I do not despair of my own death, even one as ignoble as that which approaches. It will spare me from witnessing such a world through the eyes of a helpless dotard.”
Kangyu began to protest but Ito held up a hand and the boy snapped his jaws shut as if biting off his words. It was clear to Ōtoro that Ito’s heart was breaking at the thought of his clan’s lineage being handed over to so misguided a child as Kangyu. It was a sad end for a house whose bloodlines had produced some of the nation’s greatest heroes. Like the nation itself, Ōtoro thought, becoming soft and losing a true connection to the old ways. Entropy was a great evil that no sword could slay.
“We were speaking of idle gossip,” said Ōtoro, steering the conversation back onto its road.
“We were speaking about heroes,” Ito corrected.
Ōtoro smiled and shook his head. “And as I said, I’m not one of those. Heroes will march unflinching into a storm of arrows to defend a point of philosophy. And why? Because they believe that to die in such a way guarantees the favor of heaven and the enduring praise of those who live on to record his passing in song and story. They die well, to be sure, and those songs and plays are written, but their deaths are, in the end, without meaning, without effect, and without true beauty.”
“How can they lack beauty if their deaths live on in songs?” snapped Kangyu.
“Singers exaggerate to make the mundane seem extraordinary,” said Ōtoro. “However, a truly beautiful death does not require a single word of embellishment. It is a sacred thing, shared between the samurai, his enemy, and with heaven. No other witnesses, no further praise is required.”
“But how would anyone know if the death was beautiful?” insisted Kangyu.
“A perfect death only matters to he who passes through it.”
“No,” said Kangyu and he gave a fierce shake of his head. “Beauty does not exist unless it is witnessed.”
“When a samurai knows he is going to die,” said Ito thoughtfully, “he often writes a poem. A bit of haiku to try and convey his understanding of life and death, of honor and beauty. The simplicity and elegance of the verse is all that eloquence requires.”
The boy opened his mouth to reply, but this time he lapsed into silence without a command or rebuke. His eyes became thoughtful as he considered his uncle’s words.
“Ôuchi Yoshitaka wrote one two hundred years ago,” said Ōtoro. He closed his eyes and recited. “Both the victor and the vanquished are but drops of dew, but bolts of lightning—thus should we view the world.”
Ito nodded. “An ancestor of mine, Shiaku Nyûdo, who died hundreds of years ago, wrote this poem: ‘Holding forth this sword I cut vacuity in twain; In the midst of the great fire, a stream of refreshing breeze!’ Now that is the poetry of death.”
Ōtoro met Ito’s eyes and much was said between them that was not spoken aloud. They were both true samurai, and they both understood what Kangyu did not or, perhaps, could not.
“So,” said Ōtoro at length and changing the subject, “is it only gossip that brings you all the way here?”
Ito smiled faintly. “Hardly that. I have come for two reasons, sensei.”
Ōtoro inclined his head to indicate that the old man should continue.
“First, I came to satisfy my curiosity, for I, too, have wondered about these rumors, just as I, too, have a theory for why you have been divesting yourself of all of your worldly possessions. I believe that you, like me, are sick, Ōtoro-san. I believe that you, like me, are dying.”
Ōtoro said nothing, but the moment when he should have denied such a claim came and went. Ito nodded to himself. They watched as a breeze stirred the branches and caused more of the lovely blossoms to fall like slow, pink rain.
“And the second reason for your visit?” asked Ōtoro.
“I want you to kill my family, Ōtoro-san.”
-San-
Ōtoro stared at him.
“Which family members do you want killed?” His eyes darted briefly toward Kangyu, but Ito shook his head.
“My nephew and his two sisters will inherit my estate,” said Ito. “My sons are …” He let the rest hang.
“Are they dead?”
Ito’s eye shifted away. “Who can define ‘death’ in these times?”
“Ah,” said Ōtoro, grasping the implications. “The Spanich Disease?”
Ito nodded.
Ōtoro frowned. “But you say that you do not have the disease.”
“No, I do not. I was not with my sons when they … contracted … it. It consumed them and swept through their households. My wife, too.”
Tears glistened in Ito’s eyes, but they did not fall.
“I am sorry to hear this,” said Ōtoro gently. “Will you tell me what happened?”
Ito turned to look out at the cherry blossoms as they fell. Already the path he and Kangyu had walked had been covered.
“How much do you know of this disease?”
Ōtoro considered. “Not much. I have been in retirement here for some time.” He paused. “Putting my affairs in order, as you guessed. I know what people in the countryside are saying.”
“Gossip?” asked Ito with a small smile.
“Not all gossip is mere chatter and noise,” said Ōtoro. “As a wise man once put it.”
Ito nodded, still smiling, though his smile was filled with sadness.
“The stories say,” continued Ōtoro, “that the disease came to our shores aboard a Spanish trader, and that much I believe. They say that it strikes and spreads very quickly. There are stories that whole towns have been overrun, and that government troops have razed those towns to the ground to keep the infection from spreading.”
“All of that is true,” agreed Ito. “But what the gossips do not know is that the government is worried. The Emperor is worried. Each time they think the disease has been contained and all carriers killed, it crops up again in another place.”
“Then it is carried on the wind itself. There are diseases like that.”
Ito shook his head.
“What then?” probed Ōtoro. “Is it a plague that hides among the fleas on vermin? Do you remember what those Jesuits said about the plague that slaughtered nearly a third of the people in Europe? You can burn a village and kill all infected people, but how do you build a wall that will keep out rats and mice?”
“No,” said Ito. “That is not how the disease is spread.”
“Then how?”
Instead of answering, Ito asked, “What have you heard about the disease itself?”
Ōtoro poured more tea and considered. “They say that the disease comes on very quickly, that it brings with it lethargy and a spiritual malaise. The inflicted become strange and solemn, seldom speaking again once the disease has overcome them. Often, they are violent, perhaps hysterical in their suffering. Death follows soon after.”
Ito glanced at him. “Is that all you heard?”
“No, but the other rumors are nonsensical. The villagers say that the disease does not die with the victim, nor does it let the victim lie quietly in the grave. There are wild tales that say the victims become possessed by jikininki, the hungry ghosts the Buddhists believe in. People believe that the jikininki have come to punish our people for allowing the Europeans to corrupt us. From there the gossip descended into fantasy and I stopped listening. But then … people are always ascribing spiritual interference with everything. A dog barks at night and it is ghosts. A child is born with a birthmark and it is a sure sign of demonic possession.” Ōtoro waved his hand in disgust.
“Not all gossip is a lie,” Ito reminded him.
“Do you say so?” asked Ōtoro. “Then tell me where the truth is in these fanciful stories? We Buddhists believe in many things, but on a hundred battlefields I have never yet seen a ghost or demon. They may exist, but what proof is there that they interfere in the ways of steel and flesh?”
“Let us be frank, Ōtoro-san,” said Ito. “We are both dying.”
Ōtoro raised an eyebrow. “You know, then?”
“Yes. As I said, the gossip about you is nonstop. You have no family …?”
“No. They were killed in the war with the Yuraki clan. While I was crushing their army on the field, their assassins came over the walls of my estate and murdered my wife, my children, my parents.”
“I read about that!” said Kangyu excitedly. “You rode into the Yuraki camp and strangled the daimyo in front of his remaining generals, and then cut them all to pieces. It was magnificent!”
Ōtoro wanted to slap the young man, and clearly the twitch of his uncle’s arm suggested that he was using a great deal of personal control to keep his hand from loosening Kangyu’s teeth. The boy saw their expressions and lapsed into a confused silence.
The serving girl came with a fresh pot of fragrant tea.
“So, Ōtoro-san,” said Ito, “is it true? Are you dying? I know it is rude and impertinent to ask this in such a bold way, but since I discovered I was dying I find myself taking many liberties.”
Ōtoro smiled. “I am dying. Like you, I have a cancer. It gnaws at my bones.”
They sat in the silence of their shared understanding. Two dead men. Two samurai who drank tea in companionable silence there on the brink of the abyss. Kangyu, young and vital and with all of his years before him, might as well have been a shadow on the moon.
“We are both old,” said Ito, “but you are younger than me. You are still strong. Under … other circumstances … you might have lived to become a general of a great army, or a lord with charge over many hundreds of samurai.”
Ōtoro shrugged.
“And in some distant battle you would have found that beautiful death. A moment of balance between life and unlife. You would have danced there on the edge of a sword blade and found peace.” Ito paused. “But there are no wars left to fight. Peace—damn it for all eternity—is a wasteland for warriors. That is, I believe, why you sometimes accept small missions. You are not a ronin, you are a warrior in search of a meaningful war.”
“Yes … you do understand. But, Ito-sama, how does this involve my killing your family?”
“Ah,” said Ito, and he took a roll of silk from an inner pocket of his coat and spread it out on the floor. The silk was decorated with the faces of several people, all painted in the ultra-realistic Chinese style. “My wife, my three sons, my two daughters.” The old man’s voice faltered as he caressed the silk portraits.
Ōtoro allowed a moment before he said, “Which of them do you want killed?”
Ito turned back to face him, and his eyes looked a thousand years old. “All of them,” he said.
They had shared two bottles of saké and a dish of rice cakes and the sun had set quietly behind a wall of clouds. The servant girl had lit the lanterns, and now brown moths buzzed in the cooling air.
Ito spread a map out on the floor. It showed a small island two hundred miles due south of the port city of Osaka, out in the emptiness of the Philippine Sea. The daimyo tapped the spot with his forefinger. “Keito Island.”
“I’ve not heard of it.”
“It has no military value except that clans like mine send their families there during times of crisis. There are fifty estates there, and their presence has always necessarily been kept secret.”
“This is where your family is now?”
Ito hesitated before nodding agreement. “My wife retired there to be with our eldest daughter during the birth of her first child. A boy … I’ve not yet seen. Six weeks ago, one of my sea captains came to me to report that the regular supply ship to Keito had not returned on schedule and had instead been found adrift, almost washed ashore on Shikoku. My captain sent five of his crew aboard and as he watched with a telescope, he saw the crew of the supply ship come boiling out of the hold like maggots the moment his men were aboard. They overwhelmed the five men and …”
“The Spanich Disease was aboard the supply ship?”
Ito mopped his face with a cloth. “Forty men, all of them as gray as ghosts, moaning like demons. The five crewmen were torn apart on the main deck. Torn to pieces and … consumed.”
As hard as he tried to keep a shudder of revulsion from shaking his whole body, Ōtoro felt it pass through him. His forearms pebbled with gooseflesh.
“I had heard accounts of this disease,” continued Ito. “Of how the infected wasted away with a sickness no doctor could cure and then against all logic came back to a kind of half-life in which they do nothing but prey on living men and devour their flesh. It is easy to see why so many people believe that these are jikininki—the returning spirits of gluttons and impious men whose unnatural appetites brought them back to life to feast upon the living.”
Ito paused again. It was clear that he was having to pull each word from his own mouth.
“Listen to me, Ōtoro-san,” he said, “I am Buddhist, but I am also an agnostic. I began losing faith in ghosts and demons long ago, and even this current disaster did not at first ignite sparks of belief in me. Like most of the other samurai I believed that the plague was probably just that: a disease whose symptoms caused strange and violent behavior. I’ve seen victims of rabies and of other disorders. That was sickness, not possession. But then I heard the story of the Spanish ship Infanta Christa which had sailed into the island port of Shinjujima bringing a cargo of tapestries from Turkey and spices from the Arab states for some domestic merchant whose name was still unknown. The ship flew the yellow plague flag and was put under quarantine out in the roads, well away from the docks … but witnesses claimed to have seen people jumping off the ship—ostensibly men driven to suicide by fear of the wasting disease—but who were later seen walking out of the surf to attack fishermen. Naturally, when I’d first heard the story, I doubted any of it was true because the news criers always exaggerate; but then I started hearing accounts from colleagues—men I trust. Scores of local ronin were suddenly booking passage to Shinjujima to take jobs with town security or to bolster the household protection for the merchants. Within a month the going rate for a week’s employment had quadrupled. Then the stories began circulating that some of these ronin were deserting their new jobs because the enemy was not what they expected. These were neither diseased people who merely had to be contained, nor were they Europeans deliberately spreading a disease. These were the corpses of the people who had died of the Spanich Disease. Do you understand me, Ōtoro-san? The corpses.”
Ōtoro pursed his lips for a moment. “I’ve heard some of those same stories, but not from the lips of trustworthy witnesses. Always second- or third-hand.”
Ito nodded. “That was the case with me for many weeks, but then I heard that large numbers of people were booking passage to Keito. Nearly every one of the important families who maintained estates there were sending their women and children to the island for protection.”
“I have not heard that.”
“It was kept very quiet,” explained Ito. “Information was shared only by those of us who owned land there. We did not want to inspire an invasion of the island by everyone who wanted to escape the disease.”
Ōtoro nodded. “Go on.”
“I sent most of my household there, keeping only my brother’s son and a strong detachment of samurai to guard my estates and warehouses. My daughter had just given birth to my first grandson. After nine granddaughters I finally had a grandson. I thought that my family would be safe there, but after weeks and weeks I had no word from Keito. Then rumors began circulating among my fellow landowners. Rumors that the Spanish plague was already on the island. Can you imagine my horror, Ōtoro? I had done everything I could to protect my family and my clan, to ensure that the family name would continue.” He reached out and placed a trembled hand on Kangyu’s arm. “My nephew may now be the last person to bear our clan name, and that is a terrible responsibility for one so young.”
“Uncle, I—” began Kangyu, but Ito shook his head.
Ōtoro said, “What did you do when you heard the rumors?”
“Last week I sent my fastest war galley with twenty of my most seasoned and trusted samurai to scout the island. Their orders were to protect my family and evacuate them if necessary. Three days ago, that galley returned to my dock with only a skeleton crew aboard. The captain of my galley said that when he tied up to the wharf behind my estate and the samurai debarked, a large group of people came rushing out of the compound. They fell upon the samurai. Of twenty seasoned fighters, only two made it back to the ship, and both of them were badly mauled. The captain cast off and narrowly escaped having his ship overrun. The wounded samurai succumbed to the sickness and died, but within minutes they came alive again. If ‘alive’ is a word that has any meaning. They opened their eyes, they rose from where they had fallen, and they attacked the crew. Many men died in the fighting that ensued. The captain ordered all of the dead to be thrown overboard, and by then he had seen the correlation between a bite and the inevitable transformation into one of the hungry dead. He ordered his remaining, uninfected crewmen to kill anyone who had so much as a scratch, and all of the bodies were cast into the sea. With only a few sailors remaining, the galley limped home. I sent them all to their deaths, just as I had sent my own family to—to—”
“Uncle, please … be easy with yourself,” said Kangyu with more gentleness than Ōtoro would have expected. “You did the right thing. How could you have known what would happen?”
Ōtoro decided he liked the boy after all. He was trying very hard to be a man in a family whose men had all died … or were dying. Bravado, in the face of such circumstances, could be forgiven.
Ito nodded and took a deep, steadying breath. “Several of my friends sent boats to the island,” he continued. “But not one has returned. The island must be completely overrun. It has become a place of death.”
“I am sorry for your loss, Ito-sama,” said Ōtoro, bowing.
“There is more,” said the daimyo. “There is one thing that anchors my hope to my sanity, and it is why I have come here today and disturbed your retirement.”
“Tell me.”
“After my ship had cast off the captain took the fastest route home, which meant that he passed behind the east end of the island. My estate is there, perched high on a sheer cliff. I chose the spot because there is no beach, and it is inaccessible from sea and therefore safe from raiders or pirates. By twilight’s last light, the captain saw a figure running along the cliff. A woman.” Ito took a breath. “My daughter-in-law, Haru, wife of my second son. She was clearly in flight and was likely making her way to the caves below the edge of the cliff. We keep some stores there in case of an emergency. Haru was carrying a bundle with her, clutching desperately to her bosom.”
“Your grandson?” asked Ōtoro.
“I do not know. It could have been my grandson, or it could have been another child. Or a pet, or a bundle of food. There is no way for me to know. And perhaps it doesn’t matter. That was last week and by now my entire family is dead. My grandson … will have been consumed.”
Seconds fell slowly around them, drifting down through the silence like the blossoms outside, but lacking all beauty.
“I may be a samurai and a killer, Ōtoro-san,” said Ito heavily, “but those are masks I wear. When I take off my swords and my kimono, I am only a man. A husband, a father, a grandfather. I am my clan, Ōtoro-san. I love them above all else.”
The tears brimming in the old man’s eyes broke and fell, cutting silver lines through his seamed and weathered cheeks. Even then he sat straight and proud, a man of great character and dignity.
Ōtoro said, “Why do you come to me? You could hire an army to assail the island.”
A ghost of a smile flickered across Ito’s tear-streaked face. “As I said, you are a hero. Even if you do not agree with that assessment.”
Ōtoro said, “I am one man, Ito-sama. If a warship and twenty samurai could not penetrate the island to rescue your family, what do you expect me to accomplish? Even setting aside for the moment that I am dying—as you are dying—and cancer in my bones does not grant me any immunity to a plague.”
“I sent men in force, without secrecy,” said Ito. “It is my belief—supported by the scant reports of the surviving crew—that the plague victims were alerted by the presence of the ship and the sounds of soldiers debarking and marching through the forests. Drawn by such things the infected attacked in force and my men were devoured.” The old man shook his head. “One man, however, could come ashore quietly, avoid being noticed and therefore avoid being infected.”
The girl brought warm saké and Ito drank a full cup.
“There are younger and healthier men who would take this mission …”
“I’ll do it!” cried Kangyu, but Ito shook his head again.
“No, nephew. This is not a mission for the young. This is not a job for anyone with a pocketful of unspent years.”
Ōtoro said nothing, though he agreed with the sentiment.
“What would you think this one man could accomplish? Are you looking for a spy—?”
“No,” said Ito. “I am looking for death.”
“Death?”
“Death’s grace. A sword stroke is a great mercy,” said Ito. “It is a clean death, and if delivered by a samurai of sterling reputation, a true samurai, then honor would be restored. Death would take the infected in truth, and that death would be beautiful because it would be correct. It would be just.”
Ōtoro drank his saké.
Ito said, “There is another thing, my friend. I know your politics, and I believe I understand your idealism. I know that you have gone into battle so many times in defense of the innocent. Even of innocent peasants in towns that would have been overrun by gangs of bandits. I am samurai enough to know why.”
Ōtoro said nothing.
“You believe power without purpose is vain, ugly, unworthy.”
“It is without honor,” said Ōtoro.
“Yes, without honor,” agreed Ito. “My family has been so dishonored by this foreign disease that the grave will not even accept them. No one should have to live with shame they did not earn.”
“Ah,” said Ōtoro softly. “You want me to act as their kaishakunin, to provide the death cut that they are unable to take themselves.”
Ito nodded. “Not only will you restore the honor of my samurai sons, but you will be rescuing the helpless from the bondage of this dreadful curse. Including my newborn grandson. All will be freed. No matter which way your sword cuts, it will do heaven’s work.”
“But , Uncle,” said Kangyu, “no one could escape that island. It must be completely overrun by now. You are sending him to his death.”
“Yes,” said Ito. “To certain death. To a quicker death than that which an unjust fate offers him.”
Ōtoro smiled. “And, as you say, Ito-sama, there are far worse deaths.”
“Now I will tell you one more thing, Ōtoro-san,” added Ito. “Time is very short. I have it on reliable authority that the Emperor is going to have Keito burned next week. They are rounding up infected and even suspected infected and they’ll transport them to the island. Within six days there will be many thousands of them there. You would never be able to find my family. And, when all of the infected are there, the fleet will use cannon and mortars to shell the estates, and firebombs to reduce everything to ash.”
“Would that not end the misery of your family?” asked Ōtoro.
“Tell me, Ōtoro-san,” said Ito, “could you sit here, safe and comfortable, while rough and rude soldiers burned your suffering family?”
The smile on Ōtoro’s lips became thinner, colder. It was enough of an answer.
“Besides,” said Ito, “I don’t know if fire will do what needs to be done. I know—I have seen—that a neck cut will do it. Remove the head and the infected are released into ordinary death. Nothing else seems to work.”
“Why?” asked Ōtoro.
“No one knows. This disease does not kill as we understand it,” said Ito. “Death will not take them, and they will have no rest. They are corpses roaming the earth like damned things. When I close my eyes, I think of my wife staggering around, dead and rotting, trailing the rags of her fine silks, hungry for fresh meat. And then I think of my grandson. How small a meal he would make …”
Kangyu made a small, soft gagging sound.
Ito closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them, and the old man’s eyes were hard and steady. “My sons were samurai of the old traditions. Good men, dedicated to bushido; men who deserved to die on a battlefield, or in a duel, or as old men at the end of a life lived to its fullest. Now they are denied that and even denied the mercy of committing seppuku. It is not right, Ōtoro-san. This plague destroys more than flesh. It is a blasphemous thing. I do not know if ghosts or demons are at work here, but the very nature of the disease is an insult to the very nature of honor. It removes any chance of beauty in death. I am an old man and I no longer have the strength, otherwise I would go myself. I would make of it my last battle, and it would be one worth fighting. If I found all of my family infected and roaming the earth like monsters, I would cut them down and in doing so would free them from dishonor and horror. With every cut I would ease their pain while giving them the clean and honorable death that they deserve.” He paused. “My nephew is a good swordsman for all that he is brash and young, but he is the last male of my house. I cannot spend his life as if it was a coin in my pocket. And I am unable to see this done myself. As for others … there are few who would undertake the mission and fewer still that I would trust to accomplish it with skill and honor and compassion. And that, my friend, is why I come to you, to the sword master Sensei Ōtoro.”
Kangyu shook his head. “But, Uncle … you would send him to certain death …”
“Of course,” said Ito. “And what a wonderful death it would be. Filled with purpose and honor …”
“And beauty,” said Ōtoro.
Ōtoro drank some saké as blossoms fell from the trees.
“Very well, Ito-sama,” Ōtoro said in a voice that was very quiet and calm, “it will be my honor to serve you in this matter.”
-Shi-
Ito’s war galley set sail on the next outgoing tide. Ito was aboard, as was Kangyu. The plan was to sail to within twenty miles of the island and drop Ōtoro over the side in a small fishing boat. Then the ship would make a wide circle of the island, returning to the drop-off point at sunrise. If, after that time, Ōtoro had not returned, then the ship would sail back to the mainland.
Ōtoro knew that there was little chance that he would make that rendezvous, and he figured that this part of the plan was there more to soothe Kangyu’s conflicted feelings than to offer him a hope of rescue.
As the ship sailed on, Ōtoro sat by himself in a posture of meditation, listening inside his body for the places where the bone cancer had weakened him. He was still strong enough to compensate for anything he was aware of. At least he had not yet reached the point where his bones would become brittle. With luck, he would never experience that level of sickness and humiliation.
For a time, Ito and Kangyu knelt on either side of him, all three of their faces turned toward the setting sun. Much was said without words during that time. Between Ōtoro and Ito, and perhaps between both older samurai and the young man who would one day become a lord of men.
The trip was without incident.
Later, when the captain told them that they were in position, Ōtoro and Ito exchanged a bow, and Kangyu helped Ōtoro into the boat.
Once Ōtoro was settled in the thwarts, Kangyu placed one foot on the ship-side ladder, but then he paused and turned.
“I … I would have done this for my uncle,” he said. “I would have done this for my family.”
Ōtoro smiled at him. “I know you would,” he replied.
Kangyu glanced up at the rail of the ship far above and then thoughtfully back at Ōtoro. “Sensei … even if you manage to do what my uncle wants … there are so many of the infected on the island … too many for one man to fight. You know that they’ll get you. They’ll infect you.”
Ōtoro nodded.
“And then you’ll become one of them.”
“There is always seppuku,” said Ōtoro.
“How, though? In the midst of an army of infected dead, how will you have time to prepare yourself and read your death poem and cut your stomach? How?”
But Ōtoro did not reply to that.
“I could come with you and act as your second and—”
“And then who would be there for you?” asked Ōtoro. “No, young samurai, your strength is needed for a different fight than this one. Be strong, be alive, and be what your uncle needs you to be.”
The boy studied him for a long moment, then nodded.
“I hope I see you again,” said Kangyu.
Ōtoro cast off the line and used his oar to fend his boat away from the ship. He turned the boat and found the current. A few minutes later he raised his sail and bore away toward Keito Island. He did not look back to see how long Kangyu remained there on the side of the ship, watching him.
-Go-
Ōtoro made landfall in the middle of the afternoon. Keito Island was a lush crescent-shaped hump of green rising from the blue waters, the remnants of the volcano it had once been visible in the spikes of black rock that showed here and there through the foliage. The far side of the island was shadowed under a pall of smoke. Something big had burned but Ōtoro judged the fire to be at least half a day old. A fire last night.
Ito had given him a small French telescope and Ōtoro extended it and examined the coastline. The beach was littered with boats, and each one was a wreck, their hulls smashed in, broken oars scattered on the sand. He lowered the glass and frowned. It was too regular and too thorough to have been storm damage. Could the local militia have done that to prevent the infected people from fleeing? He thought it likely. A desperate act, but a smart one.
He scanned the island for an hour and saw little else of value. Just the lingering smoke and the corners of the walls of a few compounds amid the trees. He did not see a single person, alive or dead. He folded the telescope and sailed toward Keito Island, ran the boat up onto the sand, and hid it among the reeds of a small lagoon. He slung his katana across his back, which was better for running. Various knives and weapons were secured in pockets throughout his garments, cushioned with silk to prevent clanking.
A three-quarter moon rose above the island and it gave him enough light to read his map and pick his way through the woods, following clearly marked paths that had once been neatly edged and swept, but which were now being reclaimed by creeper vines and broadleaf plants. No one had tended these paths in weeks. Insects screamed at him and owls mocked him as he ran.
The Ito compound was at the east end of the island, but Ito had been right about the lack of a useful beach and the sheer height of the towering cliffs. While resting in the boat, Ōtoro had committed the map of Keito to memory. There was a main road that linked all of the estates to the only harbor; however, there were dozens of small paths cut through the forest. Some were for use by servants, others for the patrolling guards—a cadre made up of four samurai from each of the households on the island—and a few private walking paths that wandered through the beautiful woods. Ōtoro took one of these, partly because it was unlikely anyone would be out for a casual stroll during a plague outbreak, and partly because it took him to within a hundred yards of the eastern-most edge of the Ito estate, and less than two hundred yards from a small goat path that led up along the rocky face of the cliffs.
He made excellent progress across Keito, though, but when he was nearly halfway there, he saw another samurai standing in the woods directly ahead.
Ōtoro froze.
The man wore the light turtle-shell armor of a sea-going trade guard, and he stood with his back to the path. Ōtoro could see that the man wore a single sword—a low-ranking guard, and that there was a symbol painted on the back-plate of his armor which Ōtoro recognized as the crossed feathers of the Asano family, one of the Tokugawa retainer clans. The Asano compound was next to Ito’s, so this was either a household guard or one they had lent to the island’s security force.
Ōtoro crept closer to the man, making no sound on the path as he closed to ten yards, then to five. The Asano guard turned. Ōtoro was sure he had made no noise, but still the guard swung around as if something had drawn his attention, his head tilted like a dog’s as he sniffed the air.
In the off chance that the guard was uninfected and was actually patrolling these woods, Ōtoro whispered the island’s current call-sign, provided for him by Ito. “Tiger.”
The response was supposed to be: ‘Eagle.’
The guard opened his mouth, but not to speak. Instead, he let out a low and inarticulate moan that somehow spoke eloquently of an inhuman and aching hunger. A wordless, nearly toneless groan that chilled Ōtoro to the marrow. The clouds passed from in front of the moon and the white light showed the Asano guard’s face in all its horrific clarity.
The man had no nose. There was just a ragged hole in which maggots writhed. One eye hung from its tendril of nerve, rolling against the bloodless cheek. The man’s mouth was open, the lips torn and pasted with some viscous gore that had to be old blood. Inside the mouth broken teeth nipped at the air in Ōtoro’s direction.
Ōtoro gagged and staggered backward as the Asano guard lurched forward, arms reaching to grab and tear.
Shock may paralyze the mind, but it is training that rules the muscles. Ōtoro’s hand jerked up and grabbed the handle of his sword just as the thing staggered toward him. There was a silver rasp of metal and then both of the Asano guard’s hands went flying off into the brush beside the path. Ōtoro stood poised, his sword raised at the apex of the cut, his body shifted out of line of the natural spray of blood.
But there was no spray of blood, and the man kept coming toward him.
This time the shock nearly froze Ōtoro in place for good, but as the guard took two more lumbering steps toward him, the samurai spun and slashed sideways with a vertical cut that disemboweled the man, spilling his intestines onto the path.
And yet the guard did not stop.
This is madness! thought Ōtoro.
With awkward feet slipping and tripping on his own guts, the Asano guard lumbered forward, relentless in his search for something to quench that awful hunger.
Ōtoro felt the world spin and reel around him. This was truly madness. No plague could do this. Ōtoro had killed a hundred men on battlefields, in duels, and in private feuds. No one could withstand such a body cut. Nothing human could keep coming.
“Jikininki,” he whispered, backing away.
Hungry ghost.
Hearing Ito talk about it was one thing; Ōtoro had not truly believed it then and could barely accept it now.
The man took another step. One more and he would be close enough to wrap those handless arms around Ōtoro and gather him in toward that snapping mouth.
Hissing with fear, Ōtoro brought his sword around in a heavy lateral cut, higher this time, faster, and the Asano guard’s head leapt from his shoulders, landing with a crunch on the gnarled root of a tree.
The body simply collapsed.
No staggering steps, no pause: it just crumpled to the ground.
Ōtoro stood frozen at the end of the cut, the sword blade pointing away from his own pounding heart. This sudden drop was as eerie as the attack. With any ordinary person there was a moment or two when even a headless body tried to function as if life still persisted. Some even took a step, however artless. Severed heads blinked, mouths worked. As grotesque as those things were, they were proof of life even at its end.
But this …
The abruptness from which it went from unnatural life to total lifelessness was so completely … wrong.
Ōtoro held his blade away from him. The steel was black with blood that was as thick as paste. He snapped the sword downward once, twice, three times before the ichor fell from the oiled steel.
Then Ōtoro turned in a slow, full circle, staring at the murky forest, aware that he had stepped into a new world, some outer ring of hell. Is that what the Spanish Plague was? Could it truly turn men into demons?
All around him the forest seemed suddenly immense, and as he began to move once more down the path, he was aware—all too aware—that there were fifty estates here. Each with at least two dozen servants as well as the families of each daimyo. Plus, the local militia, the fishermen, the tradesmen. And the samurai from Ito’s ship.
If the plague had them all then what chance could he have of completing his mission—of finding Ito’s family and restoring their honor through the purification of a clean death?
Ōtoro set his jaw and started to run toward the Ito compound.
-Roku-
Ōtoro met three more of the creatures in the forest.
The first was a skinny old fisherman who lay legless beside the road, his stick-thin arms reaching in vain for Ōtoro as he passed, his toothless gums biting with infinite futility. Ōtoro cut off his head with a deft downward slash, hardly breaking stride. The second was a fat naked woman with a dagger shoved to the hilt between her bloodless breasts. She rushed at Ōtoro and he split her skull from hairline to chin.
He no longer tried disemboweling cuts. He cut the head off and cut the brain in half. Both methods seemed to work and offered him a small cup of comfort. At least he was not fighting something that could never die. That thought was worth holding onto. It seemed to connect these horrors to the physical world rather than allowing them to slide irrevocably into madness and magic.
When he encountered the third creature—a distinguished looking man of about his own age—Ōtoro shook out an iron throwing spike and with a flick of his arm hurled it into the man’s forehead. The creature was able to take a single staggering step before it fell. Not as fast as a decapitation, but still effective.
He retrieved the spike. It was coated with a black ichor that no longer resembled blood. Tiny white things wriggled in the goo—threadlike worms almost too small to see. Ōtoro cursed with disgust and wiped the spike on the man’s kimono and slipped it back into its holster under his sash.
These kills had been easy, but Ōtoro did not take much comfort from that. As he ran, he wondered what he would do if he encountered a dozen of these creatures.
The path split, and in his mind he could see Ito’s map. The left-hand path curled around to the gates of the Ito family compound; the right-hand path zigzagged through the trees to the cliff. He went that way.
The forest was not quiet. It never is at night. Crickets and cicadas chirped with an orderliness and constancy of rhythm that seemed to reinforce the truth that their world had little to do with ours. The plague was not a factor for them, and the music of their mating calls was nothing to us.
There were other sounds in the night. Nocturnal predator birds, and even exotic monkeys that had likely escaped from private collections among the estates. Ōtoro moved through shadows, listening for sounds that did not belong. Listening for the ring of steel that might indicate a battle, or for screams.
All he heard was the forest, and its orderly noises seemed to mock the pain and loss of the humans on this island. It made Ōtoro feel angry in a vague way, more so because the notion was fanciful and he was not given to fancy.
He moved along the cliff path and soon the foliage thinned out to reveal nothing but bare gray rocks.
No.
Not bare.
The rocks were streaked with something that gleamed like oil in the starlight.
Ōtoro bent close to one smear and even from a foot away he could smell the coppery stink of blood.
He frowned. The copper smell faded quickly as blood dried and thickened, so for the scent to be this strong it must be fresh. A few hours old at most.
The path ahead was too narrow for swordplay, so he sheathed his weapon and instead drew his tanto, the short, sturdy fighting knife. On such a narrow path the dead could only come at him in single file, and he was confident that he could dispatch them in single combat. Even so, cold sweat boiled from his pores and ran down his flesh under his clothes.
He crept along the path, following the glistening smears, grateful for the celestial light that turned the rocks from dark gray to smoky silver. The path hugged the face of the cliff and Ōtoro marveled that Ito relied on this route as a passage to safety. In anything but bright moonlight or sunlight this would be a treacherous avenue in any circumstance except the most dire desperation.
The blood spatters increased in frequency and volume. If the gore was all from one person, then that man or woman would have to be bled white.
Ōtoro rounded an outcropping and came to the black mouth of a cave that yawned before him. The light penetrated only a few yards into that dark mouth, but it was enough. The cave was shallow and was mostly taken up by boxes of provisions wrapped in waxed cloth. There were ashes in a fire pit and smoke still curled up from them; a pot of soup was hung from a metal frame above the pit, and the liquid was nearly boiled away. Blood was dotted over everything: boxes, soup pot, the walls and floor.
But there was no one there.
Then he froze as he saw something lying against the back wall. A small, ragged bundle that lay in a pool of dark blood.
Ōtoro had seen every kind of slaughter on his nation’s battlefields, including the bodies of his own murdered family … but he had to steel himself to go and investigate that bundle. This would not be the clinical and brutal murder of an enemy child with sword or spear. This would be unspeakable. He steeled himself for the image of tiny limbs gnawed and torn by human teeth.
He crouched and extended the tip of his sword into the outer wrappings of the bundle. Nothing moved.
Ōtoro took a breath and tilted the sword up, using the tip to lift the bloody cloth. There was some resistance, some counter pressure from something slack and heavy within the rags. But he made himself look.
When he saw what it was, he began to exhale a breath of relief, but that breath caught in his chest.
It was not a child.
It was a woman’s hand. Delicate, unmarked by the calluses a servant might have. The hand of a noblewoman.
Ito’s wife? His daughter-in-law?
If this was the hand of one of Ito’s household, and if that hand had belonged to whomever had come here clutching a bundled child to her bosom … then where was the child?
Ōtoro bent to try and read the story told by the scuff of footprints that painted the cave’s floor. There was one set of prints overlaid by two others. The first set were small and smudged, a woman’s feet in thin stockings. The others were heavier. Men’s sandals. Soldiers?
The woman’s prints led back the way Ōtoro had come, though they vanished quickly as the blood wore off of the stocking fabric. Partial prints from the sandals overlaid the smaller prints, clear sign that the woman—maimed and dying of blood loss—had managed to wrestle free of her attackers and fled back along the path, and the men had followed.
All of this had happened recently.
Within minutes, perhaps.
Ōtoro turned and ran.
-Shichi-
He slipped once in the blood and very nearly pitched sideways off of the path. Fifty yards below him the ocean threw itself at the rocks, lashing and smashing at the unyielding stone as if venting its fury.
Ōtoro slowed his pace to keep from plunging to a pointless death.
Seconds and then minutes seemed to ignite and burn away around him as he negotiated the devious path. And then he was at the edge of the cliff wall. He stepped away from the sheer drop, feeling his heart hammer within his chest, then he plunged into the woods and ran as fast as he could. Leaves whipped at him; branches plucked at his clothes like skeletal fingers.
Suddenly the compound wall rose out of the darkness in front of him and he stopped and crouched down behind a thick shrub. The wall was in good condition, whitewashed and tall, but gates were smeared with bloody handprints and painted with the wild spattering of arterial wounds. The ground near the gate was littered with torn clothing, bits of broken swords, arrows, a discarded matchlock rifle, and the gnawed ends of bones. Here and there were unidentifiable chunks of bloody meat. Some so fresh that blood gleamed wetly, and some writhing with fat maggots. He found no complete corpses, however. The pall of smoke he’d seen from the coast hung thick in the air. A battle had been fought before this gate, he judged, and the defenders had all died.
All of them.
The main gate was locked, however, and that gave Ōtoro his first flicker of hope. Could the Ito family be locked inside? Hidden behind walls? It seemed unlikely that the creatures could climb. The thought of possibly finding some of Ito’s family alive carved a half-smile on Ōtoro’s face. Kangyu would love such a tale.
Though, gods help me, thought Ōtoro, that really would make me a hero. I would kill myself to escape the embarrassment.
Still smiling, Ōtoro took a grappling line and threw the hook over the wall three times before its spikes caught. He jerked the line to test the set of the spikes and then scaled the wall. Climbing hurt his dying bones and he imagined that he could feel the teeth of the cancer gnaw at him with each grunt of exertion. As soon as he gained the top of the wall and looked over into the courtyard, all hopes of a fanciful last-minute rescue of besieged family members evaporated. His smile died on his lips.
The courtyard below was filled with the dead.
All of them stopped milling and as one turned and looked up at him. Their moans of hunger tore the night.
Ōtoro sighed heavily. He sat down on the tiled walkway and looked out at the creatures as he fished the roll of painted silk from his pocket and spread it out on his thigh. The painted faces of Ito’s wife and children looked serene and alive in the moonlight. Ōtoro studied the faces of the dead below, matching several of them to the portraits.
Ito’s wife.
His oldest son.
Three of his granddaughters.
Then he saw the face of Ito’s second son, the father of the baby. The samurai had only a single arm, and his throat was a ruin through which tendons and vertebrae could be seen.
Ōtoro cursed softly to himself.
“So much for heroes,” he murmured. Now all that was left for him was his original mission. Clean deaths for as many of the family as he could manage before the monsters pulled him down.
He knew that to accomplish his mission he would need to go down into that courtyard. He would need to give closure to each of Ito’s family members, granting peace, restoring honor. That meant that he would have to do two things that he didn’t want to do. He would have to go down into that courtyard and kill all of those monsters. Twenty-six, by his count. And then he would have to search the darkened house, room by room, looking for the others.
“Shit,” he hissed. He was beginning to see the logic in the Emperor’s plan. Fire would be faster, surer, much less risky.
Ōtoro rose and began walking quickly around the top of the wall to do a full circuit in case there was something he could use to distract some of the monsters while he killed the others. The dead below moaned hungrily and lumbered along, following his scent.
When he was on the far side, he felt a salty breeze and turning saw that the sea was just beyond the compound. The harbor was choked with vessels that had been set ablaze or sunk where they were anchored. The entire harbor area, every pier and wharf, was overrun by the shambling infected.
Frowning, Ōtoro completed his circuit of the wall and braced himself for what was to come. He patted each of his pockets to reassure himself of the number and placement of his weapons, and he loosened his sword in its sheath. The creatures below milled around, their dark eyes and hungry mouths turned toward him as if they knew that he was bringing hot blood and fresh meat to them.
With prayers to demons and gods he’d long ago stopped worshipping Ōtoro prepared to enter hell. He dropped from the walkway to the slanted roof of a stable. The infected reached up for him, but even the tallest of them could barely scrape their finger against the terracotta tiles.
Ōtoro closed his eyes for a few seconds and muttered a prayer to gods he was sure had stopped listening to him decades ago. He prayed to the kami—the demons who were tied to this household. He prayed to the ghosts of Ito’s ancestors to come and help him restore balance and honor to this family.
Only the cold wind answered him, and it carried within it the stink of rotting flesh, burned hair, and corruption.
The samurai squatted down and reached inside his kimono for a small roll of white paper. He unrolled it and read the words he had written the day after he had learned that he was dying of cancer. His death poem. The words would mean little to anyone else. They would likely never be read by anyone since this place would soon be burned to ash by the Emperor’s ships.
All that mattered was that the words meant something to him.
He lifted the corner of one tile and slipped the edge of the paper in, letting the tile drop back into place. The paper fluttered in the breeze, but the tile held it fast. Still squatting there, Ōtoro closed his eyes and recited the poem.
Empty-handed I entered
the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going—
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
Like dew drops
on a lotus leaf
I vanish.
A great peace seemed to settle over him as he spoke the last two words.
He opened his eyes and looked down at the milling dead.
“Thank you,” he said.
And then the dying began.
-Hachi-
Ōtoro used the throwing spikes first.
He knelt and took careful aim with the first one, cocked his arm, threw, and saw the chunky sliver of steel punch into the back of the skull of Ito’s wife. The woman staggered forward under the impact, her legs confused. She dropped to her knees, arms thrashing, fingers clawing at the air.
“Fall,” begged Ōtoro, dreading that he had caused her more suffering rather than less. Then the flailing arms flapped to her sides and her body pitched forward without the slightest attempt to catch her fall.
The other infected milled around as before. If they noticed the death of one of their companions, it did not show.
Ōtoro selected a second spike, aimed, and threw. This one punched through the eye-socket of Ito’s eldest son and the force flung the young man back against the wall.
But he did not fall.
He rebounded clumsily from the impact and growled, low and feral, as he charged toward the stable.
Ōtoro took a breath and threw a second spike. This one hit the man’s forehead, but the spike lacked the weight to chunk through the skull. It opened a deep gash and fell uselessly to the ground.
He tried a third spike and succeeded only in blinding the man.
Ōtoro tried to work that out, to make sense of it.
The spike to the back of Ito’s wife’s skull had killed her as surely as had the decapitation of the guard Ōtoro had met in the forest. He’d also cut off the heads of the next three dead he’d encountered.
Decapitation, it was clear, always worked.
The spike in the back of the skull had worked, too, but not as quickly.
The spikes in the eyes had not worked at all.
So, what was he missing? What part of the brain needed to die in order to kill these infected?
He experimented, as grisly a thing as that was. He removed a pouch of six-pointed shuriken and hurled the metal stars at the dead. He hit eight of them in the head. Five were unaffected; one fell. That last one had been struck at the very base of the skull, where the spinal cord reaches up to the brain.
And then Ōtoro understood. It was that part of the brain. The big nerve at the top of the spine and the corresponding part of the brain near the bottom. The base of the skull, the neck, and the very top of the spinal column.
A delicate target. Acceptable for a sword, too risky for tonki—the throwing items like spikes and stars.
He let out a pent-up breath. He wished he had brought a bow and arrows. He could clear the entire courtyard with a large quiver of arrows. But he did not have any and that meant that this was sword work. There was even some wry humor in that, a message from the universe reminding him that the samurai’s own soul resided within the steel of his sword. How appropriate that was for reclaiming the soul of those who had been lost to the infection.
He rose, feeling his knees pop, and drew his sword. The steel glittered in the moonlight and the sight of him, standing tall above them, drew a deep moan of hunger from the dead.
With a warrior’s cry, Ōtoro dropped from the stable roof into the midst of all those dead.
They swarmed around him.
And in his hands the cold steel sang its own death song. The blade hissed and rang and whispered as it cleaved through reaching arms in order to offer its calming kiss to dead necks. The bodies of the dead seemed to fly apart around him. He saw faces that he recognized from the silk portraits fly past him, detached from bodies, which reeled and fell in other directions.
Then there was a searing white-hot explosion of pain on his calf, and he whirled and kicked free of something that lay sprawled on the ground.
It was Ito’s eldest son, blind and crippled, sprawled on the ground, his mouth smeared with fresh blood. Ōtoro slashed down and the man’s head rolled away. But the damage was done. Agony shot up Ōtoro’s leg and when he back-pedaled away from the dead, he left a trail of bloody footprints.
The bite had been strong, the teeth tearing through cloth and skin and muscle.
The wound burned with strange fires, as if the infection of the bite was already consuming his flesh.
How long did he have before it stole his mind and his life?
How long?
Ōtoro cut and cut, and more of the dead fell before him.
And then something happened that changed the shape of the night and nearly froze Ōtoro’s heart in his chest.
It was a wail. High, and sharp, and filled with all of the terror in the world.
Ōtoro looked up, toward the house. Every pair of dead eyes looked up.
A window banged open and there, framed by a strange orange glow, stood a woman. She was as white as a ghost, with black and haunted eyes. She clutched a bundle to her chest. One hand was knotted in the fabric, the other arm ended in a ragged and bloody stump. For a fragmented moment Ōtoro thought that the woman was already dead, that this was one more monster come to the feast. But then he saw the wild panic in her eyes.
She screamed to him. Not in the inarticulate moan of the dead, but in words. Three words.
“Save my baby!”
But those words were drowned out by the infant’s shrill scream of terror.
Behind mother and child, the orange glow resolved itself into the biting teeth of a fiery blaze. The woman had set the house on fire.
She leaned out through the window and held the bundle toward Ōtoro.
“Please …” she begged.
And she let the bundle fall.
-Kyu-
Ōtoro ran.
He did not remember catching the child.
He knew that he had been in motion before the child fell from his mother’s arms, but he did not remember how he had gotten all the way across the compound in time to catch him.
The child screamed all the time he ran.
The courtyard was littered with the dead.
He had managed to accomplish great slaughter, before and after catching the child. But even that was blurred. His arm ached from the swordplay. His body was smeared with gore—red and viscous black. His leg felt as if real fire burned beneath his flesh.
He ran.
Behind him the dead followed.
Ōtoro had killed every member of Ito’s family that he could find. Every single one.
The island, however, was filled with the dead. It was a land of the dead, and—drawn by the sounds of battle and the screams of the child—they had come to find a feast. Now they shambled through the woods behind him. Most of them moved slowly, but a few—the more recently dead—were faster. When they caught up, Ōtoro was forced to turn and fight.
Each time there was less of him for that task.
The child struggled and writhed within the bloodstained wrappings.
He did not even have time to check it, to see if it was free from infection.
All he could do was run.
It took ten thousand years to reach the beach. He placed the child in the bottom of the boat and then threw his weight against the craft, sliding it over the rasping sand. The moans of the dead were everywhere. When he dared to turn and look, he saw them boil out from between the trees.
Dozens of them.
Hundreds.
The child screamed.
Ōtoro screamed, too.
The boat began drifting, caught by the outrolling surf. Ōtoro ran to catch up, but the dead caught him. Cold hands plucked at his hair, his sleeves, his sash. Teeth sunk into his skin. Blood burst from his flesh.
He bellowed with rage. He kicked and shoved and chopped and bashed.
And somewhere in the mad press of bodies his sword caught in bone and bent and snapped.
Ōtoro staggered backward into the surf, the broken sword in his hand.
He gaped at it for a split second.
The sword was his soul.
Broken now.
With a cry he flung it at the dead and then turned and dove into the waves. The salt water shrieked into every bite.
Ōtoro floundered and slogged and then swam.
He caught up to the boat.
He hung there for a long time as the current pulled them out to sea.
It took another thousand years for him to climb into the boat. Longer still to hoist the small sail.
The breeze was the only kindness. It blew in the right direction and the boat veered off toward the darkness. Toward a ship that lay somewhere out in the night.
When the boat was well out into the current and the sail was guiding them on a true course, Ōtoro slumped down and bent over the tiny, wriggling form. With great delicacy and great fear, he peeled back the layers of cloth. The child was covered in blood. In his mother’s blood.
Ōtoro scooped handfuls of seawater up and used them to wash away the gore. He raised the screaming child up into the moonlight, turning him one way and then the other, looking for the slightest bite, the smallest nick.
There was nothing.
The child was untouched.
Pure.
Alive.
Ōtoro removed his kimono and used it to re-wrap the child. After a while, the baby’s screams faded into an exhausted whimper and then into silence as the rocking of the boat lulled it into fitful dreams.
Ōtoro sat back and rested his arm on the tiller.
He could feel the infection working within him. His skin already felt slack, his limbs leaden and wrong.
How long would it take?
Dawn was three hours away. If he held his course, he would come up on Ito’s ship as the first rosy light daubed the horizon.
If he could hold his course.
As the minutes crawled by sickness began to churn in his stomach.
And with it came a terrible new sensation. Not nausea … no, this was a dreadful, insidious need that burned in his stomach and bloomed like hateful flowers in his mind.
Hunger.
Unlike anything he had ever felt before.
A naked, raw, obscene hunger.
He looked down at the child.
It was a plump little thing. Tender and vulnerable.
Ōtoro set his jaw and locked his hand around the tiller. He would not succumb. Honor would hold him steady. The dawn was coming, the ship was coming. Rescue was coming. Not for him, but for this child. If he trusted to wind and tide, Ōtoro would have pitched himself over the side and left the baby to chance. But that was a foolish dream. That was something out of a storybook. But no, the boat needed a strong hand on the tiller. The sails needed trimming. And this child needed a samurai to see him home.
The hunger grew and grew.
“No,” he told himself. “No.”
The hunger screamed ‘yes.’
And Sensei Ōtoro screamed back at it. In his mind. In his heart. With his dying breath.
No.
The dawn seemed to be forever away.
And the boat sailed on through the night.