Year of the Demon

Daigoro and his shinobi made short work of the watchmen left aboard. They slipped the little ship’s hawsers unnoticed, and with a skeleton crew of two they rode the tide out to sea.

Daigoro was no great sailor, but he’d lived his entire life on the coast, with his family’s harbor for a playground. He knew his way around a junk rig, and his shinobi was evidently an expert seaman. In fact, the man seemed to do everything with an expert hand. The Wind must have trained him since boyhood. He and Daigoro had that much in common: neither of them had ever been children. Daigoro spent his childhood learning swordsmanship, horsemanship, archery, calligraphy, poetry; the shinobi must have been raised on brewing poisons, moving silently, killing men with his bare hands. Daigoro wondered at what rigors the Wind must have put him through, and how many of its disciples survived the training.

At first light Daigoro had caught sight of other Toyotomi sails on the horizon, and feared the crew of the hijacked ketch might have sounded the alarm. Then he’d realized the truth: the ships already at sea weren’t hunting him. They were just a part of Shichio’s fleet. They couldn’t have learned of Daigoro’s piracy, because the ketch’s crew had no one to sound the alarm to. They’d been alone in the harbor—hardly a typical deployment for naval vessels, so Daigoro could only surmise that Shichio must have stationed a ship in every last harbor along the coast. A lone ship was vulnerable, yes, but Shichio had a mind to place eyes and ears as widely as possible. No doubt he thought there was little risk of a crippled boy commandeering an entire warship on his own.

But Shichio had underestimated the prowess of the Wind, and neither had he accounted for Daigoro’s own boldness. It was beyond bold to propose a two-man assault on a harbor; it was rash, even foolhardy, but Daigoro vowed he would make Shichio realize the danger of driving an enemy to desperation.

Now, despite the pain in his fists, Daigoro wanted to howl at the sky. Shichio had made an animal of him, but not a mere cub. He was a prowler, a predator. As he approached the Toyotomi blockade, he felt the same hunter’s glee a tiger might feel as it slipped through tall grasses toward its prey. Hidden by nothing substantial, invisible nonetheless, the thrill of it made him feel he might actually grow claws.

Perhaps the other captains might have hailed him if he’d made straight for House Okuma’s jetty, but Daigoro was too canny for that. He ran the blockade at its thinnest, giving the other crews no reason to point their spyglasses his way. Even if they had done so, he and his shinobi were both wearing Toyotomi colors, borrowed from dead men who no longer needed them. Shichio’s fleet was spread too thin; at this distance even a hawk wouldn’t notice the ketch had too few crewmen on deck.

Daigoro had run the gauntlet. He would reach Izu after all.

54

The Green Cliff loomed over the road, tall and broad and steadfast. It was not, strictly speaking, a castle, but rather a wall surrounding House Yasuda’s largest compound. Not only was it the Yasudas’ sturdiest stronghold; it was arguably the most obdurate structure in all of Izu. Blessed by the gods of good fortune or else by kami dwelling deep in the rocks, the Green Cliff shrugged off earthquakes as easily as arrows. The land was weak just north and just south of the Green Cliff, falling away from the road in deep ravines that swallowed bridges whenever the tremors grew violent. Each time the Yasuda carpenters shored up the trestles and rebuilt the spans, and each time the Green Cliff stood fast.

The typhoons that lashed Izu every autumn had no greater effect than the earthquakes. While other lords commissioned new roofs, new gates, even new walls, against House Yasuda the driving rains only brought more moisture for the verdant moss that gave the Green Cliff its name.

Behind the Green Cliff, inside the Yasuda compound, banners of muted green snapped on their poles, causing the white centipedes adorning them to wriggle and slither. The same wind bent low the flames of Toyotomi fires, making them gutter and crackle and return all the stronger. Twenty fires, maybe more. They should not have been there.

The little cookfires illuminated the skirts of long, multicolored tents with gently sloping roofs, pitched in two long columns like horses on a wagon team. Long banner poles flanked each tent, these ones bearing not the white centipede of House Yasuda but the black kiri flower of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. They should not have been there.

The thought paced back and forth in Daigoro’s brain: they should not have been there. How had Shichio come to know of this place? Did his demon mask give him second sight? Or had he communed with actual demons, who spied on Daigoro from the pits of hell? Garrisons at the foot of Katto-ji made sense, or at the Okuma compound, but there was no reason to place House Yasuda under guard. Daigoro had told only one person of his true destination in Izu: the shinobi right next to him, who had not left Daigoro’s side since the night they’d disappeared into the storm.

And yet there they were: Shichio’s sentries, dwarfed by the Green Cliff. Tiny points of firelight glinted on their spears. They should not have been there.

Daigoro was too tired to think of anything else. For such a long time he’d been pushing himself forward on willpower alone, always with the thought of House Yasuda as a safe haven. Seeing it besieged was enough to break his spirit. There was nowhere left for him to go.

His only refuge was the talus-strewn hilltop overlooking the Green Cliff. He could not even stand; he had to crawl from boulder to boulder, or else risk being seen. His shinobi moved like a spider, swift and effortless, but Daigoro’s shoulders and thighs burned from exertion. He crawled on his elbows because neither of his battered hands could take the weight.

He assayed the Green Cliff once more, and the garrison encamped at its base. “They outnumber us twenty-five to one—and that counts only the enemy we can see. There’s no getting in there.”

“You lack imagination.”

Not true, Daigoro wanted to say. He could imagine a hundred ways in which these men might kill him. The biggest part of him wanted to get it over with. Just walk up to the gate. The sheer audacity of it might take the enemy by surprise, at least for a moment. Long enough to cut a few of them down before he died.

There were fathers who raised their sons to think such recklessness was exactly what bushido required of them. They said anything less was cowardice. But Okuma Tetsuro had raised his sons differently. He taught them to think strategically, to avoid combat whenever possible, so that when they drew blood the world would know it was necessary and right. Above all, he’d taught his sons to be of good use to their clan. Daigoro knew he could serve his clan best by gaining an audience with Lord Yasuda Jinbei. He just couldn’t see how to make that happen.

“Maybe we can get Lord Yasuda to come outside,” he whispered.

“You said he is ill,” said his shinobi. “Bedridden.”

And has been for most of this year, Daigoro thought. Truth to tell, he couldn’t even be sure his old ally was still alive. No one would have sent word to him if Lord Yasuda had passed on. Daigoro had no standing now, no face, no family. He didn’t even have a home where he could receive the news.

Daigoro set his jaw and steeled his mind. He was still samurai at heart, even if he’d given up any such claims in the eyes of the world. Speculating about worst-case scenarios was unbecoming of him. “To hell with it,” he said. “I’m going in there.”

“Better,” said the shinobi. “At last you see clearly.”

They retreated to the far slope of the hill, where they were impossible to see and less likely to be heard. Even so, they kept their voices low and their movements slow and seldom.

“When I first hired you,” Daigoro said, “you didn’t know I intended you to deliver me here, neh? You thought I was making for my family’s compound?”

“Yes.”

“And you thought to encounter soldiers there?”

“Many.”

“What was your plan? How did you intend to get me inside?”

“Walk through the front door. Kill as many as necessary to do so.”

“Oh. Right.” I guess he doesn’t share my father’s beliefs about restraint, Daigoro thought. “And now?”