CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

TIME TO BEAT THE GRASS

Hanshiro rested his right hand on the Barber’s hilt. He pulled his left hand back through his wide sleeve and out the neck of his jacket. He rubbed the dark stubble on his chin and stroked the long, ugly scab over the gash on his cheek. The sleepless night had left his eyes red-rimmed and puffy and particularly menacing.

Like a falcon surveying plump mice from a great height, he stared around at the semicircle of fresh bearers who squatted on their dirty heels before him. Behind the bearers, the front and rear criers stood leaning on their poles. Beyond them rose the ascent to Suzuka Pass. The Tkaid was crowded with early-morning traffic. The bells on the pack horses made a merry noise.

“If any of you bolt”—Hanshiro’s tone, barely above a whisper, was far more effective than a harangue—“I will widow your wives and orphan your children.”

He waited a few beats to let the message register. These were the men who had been waiting in the yard of the transport office in Tsuchiyama. Lord Hino’s advance man had hired them from the pool of local laborers. They weren’t Hino’s retainers, nor were the criers his warriors in disguise. In matters of defense Cat and Hanshiro were now on their own.

“But if we reach Kameyama by midday,” Hanshiro added, “you’ll each receive a bonus.”

From the corner of his eye Hanshiro saw Cat return from the roadside convenience. Her nun’s scarf hid her face and shaved head as she lowered herself into the rear palanquin sitting beside the road. Hanshiro grunted, and the men rose and trotted to their places at the carrying poles.

“Ho-yoi-yoi.” The bearers used their sticks to heave the poles onto their callused shoulders, and the palanquins lurched forward. Only one of them held a passenger, though. Hanshiro chose to jog just behind the front crier.

By the time Hanshiro had run one of the two nearly vertical ri separating Tsuchiyama and Sakanoshita, his heart was thumping like a frantic animal in his chest. His calves cramped with pain, but he was so relieved to be free of the confines of the palanquin that he didn’t care.

The mist that had reached tentative wisps out onto the low lands had thickened into a dense fog by the time the bearers reached the suspension bridge, the detour over the deepest gorge. The crier gave his usual shout. The line of travelers waiting their turn to cross the narrow, swaying span parted and bowed. Looking out into the fog, Cat had the feeling that the rest of the world had disappeared. That these were the survivors, the last of earth’s mortals.

The bearers stopped at the entrance of the bridge so Cat could get out. She untied her wide-brimmed hat from the side of the palanquin and put it on over her veil. Then she retrieved the naginata from the carrying pole and walked back to stand behind the rear crier. Hanshiro gave her the briefest of looks, but it sufficed. He was counting on her to help him keep the bearers from deserting.

Hanshiro led the way out onto the lengths of bamboo lashed together to form the bridge’s floor. Five farmers had already started across carrying heavy wooden frames loaded with bales of rice and towering bundles of firewood. They were followed by a lightweight kago carried by two men. Their passenger followed them on foot. A large party of pilgrims, several of them women, approached, single file, from Sakanoshita. The bamboo flooring clattered incessantly, and the woven bamboo hawsers creaked with the travelers’ weight and tread and the wind that blew in the gorge.

The bridge’s concave arc hung below the tops of the cliffs on either side, and the chasm looked as though it had been filled to overflowing with thin, steaming rice gruel. When Hanshiro had almost reached the middle of the bridge, he could just make out the five disreputable-looking rnin lounging at the other side. He smiled to himself. Hino was so predictable.

But there were only five swordsmen. Hanshiro was offended that Hino thought so little of his skill and that of Lady Asano. Apparently Hino thought she had insisted on the naginata only as some foolish female whim, as an accessory, like a mirror or a tortoiseshell comb. Perhaps he thought that because she wasn’t a legitimate daughter, Lord Asano had neglected her training in self-defense.

“Halt!” The leader of the rnin moved to the entrance of the bridge.

Suzuka Pass was famous for bandits. The people heading toward the rnin wasted no time. They turned and began pushing back through those behind them. Those already moving away from the ruffians increased their pace.

“We have a quarrel with the hirelings of the traitor Hino,” the man shouted. “The rest of you may cross in peace.”

No one believed him for an instant. The women began screaming. Everyone bunched up ahead of Hanshiro as they tried to crowd past the kago. The kago’s bearers, however, were also trying to turn around, and their carrying pole had become entangled in the woven ropework that formed the sides of the bridge.

The fact that Hanshiro and the white-robed nun and their men didn’t retreat seemed to infuriate the rnin. He made a great show of drawing his short-sword and sawing at one of the two main hawsers supporting the bridge.

The travelers’ fright turned to panic. Men and women clawed at each other’s clothing as they tried to force their way through the press. The kago’s owners cut the ropes holding the pole to the top of the basket and pushed it through the mesh of ropes and out into space. The fog swallowed it. One of the bearers almost fell after it as he tried to hoist the flimsy bamboo kago onto his back while the other travelers shoved past him.

Hanshiro motioned for his own men to move to one side so people could hurry by. And still the rnin sawed at the hawser.

“He’s bluffing.” Hanshiro could tell the bearers didn’t believe him. “And even if he weren’t, you can cling to the bridge if it falls, but you cannot escape the Barber.” With one hand he slid his long-sword a few fingers’ width from its scabbard. When he pushed it back in, the iron sword guard hit the sheath’s lacquered rim with a hollow, ominous click. The click’s echo seemed amplified by the fog.

Finally everyone had passed Hanshiro but the unfortunate kago bearer, deserted by his partner and fare. He stood, mouth agape and eyes bulging, as Hanshiro strode toward him. When he realized that with such a bulky load he could not pass the palanquins, he looked back over his shoulder. The rnin was still sawing on the hawser.

“Homage to Amida Butsu.” Hardly pausing to take breath, the bearer muttered the sacred phrase over and over. With his immortal soul taken care of, he tried to figure out how to save his kago and his livelihood.

Cat disdained letting go of the naginata to grab the ropework that formed the side of the dancing bridge. She planted her feet firmly about a shoulder’s width apart on the corrugated bamboo surface. She flexed her knees so her legs moved easily in response to the bridge’s gyrations. She stood like a sailor on the deck of a storm-tossed boat as the wind whipped her white robes and scarves about her.

From habit, she turned to reassure Kasane, who had always stood behind her. And she remembered the poem a courier had handed through the bars of her window when she’d reached Tsuchiyama. It had been written in Kasane’s childish hand.

The mist that rises
On the far-flung mountaintops
where morning finds you
Is but the breath of the sighs
Of one who remains behind.

The ancients believed that the thoughts of those at home accompanied loved ones on their journeys. Cat felt Kasane’s presence now. I welcome your spirit, elder sister, Cat thought.

She was glad Kasane was safe. Her young man would marry her. She would bear children noisy as summer’s flies. In time she would remember her former mistress only on the prescribed days of mourning.

Cat watched the desperate kago man suspend his flimsy basket over the side. Leaning his chest against the cables, he sidestepped along, carrying it past the terrified palanquin bearers. The rnin cut through the hawser, and that side of the bridge dropped with a sickening lurch. The sudden fall and shift in the cant of the bridge’s floor threw the bearers and Cat against the cable webbing that formed the handhold on the lower side. Cat recovered first.

When the palanquin bearers turned to flee, they saw her kneeling on one knee. She had braced her other leg in front of her. She held the naginata over her head and aimed at them. Behind the flapping ends of the scarf she was grinning like a madwoman. Oishi had been right when he’d told her that swordsmanship led one to the center to confront life and death.

Cat realized that perhaps Hino planned to kill her after all, but she wasn’t afraid. She was exhilarated by the prospect of falling into the swirling void below her. She and her beloved would die together, to live forever in Paradise.

Her men were convinced, however, that they were in the employ of a particularly deranged pair of demons. Wide-eyed, babbling in terror, they struggled to carry the palanquins forward on the tilting bridge.

Cat decided that the bearers had come too far to try to retreat. She could pass them now to be at Hanshiro’s side. As good as Hanshiro was, he would need her help against five men. She began toiling up the tilting, sloping, swaying span. The bearers looked back at the yawning expanse of the abyss behind them and hurried after her.

The rnin was sawing at the second cable as Hanshiro closed in on him. He looked murderous, but he didn’t fool Hanshiro. Even though the man himself had obviously fallen on hard times, his short-sword was of a superior quality and finely honed. He could have cut through the cable in one stroke of his long-sword instead of making all this show.

Hanshiro remembered Kasane’s endless store of peasant aphorisms. Time to beat the grass and scare the snake, he thought. Time to do the unexpected.

He crossed his arms on his chest, threw back his head, and laughed. He laughed heartily, joyously. He laughed louder than he had laughed in ten years.

“Baka!” The leader of the rnin glowered at him. Hanshiro could see the thoughts going on behind those squinting, venal eyes as plainly as if they were written on a scroll being slowly unrolled. The rnin hadn’t been instructed to kill Hanshiro, but even if he had, he wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to attack a laughing opponent.

Hanshiro’s laughter was so infectious, Cat began laughing, too. Helpless with it, she braced the butt of her naginata and hung on it. She laughed until her sides ached and tears ran down her cheeks.