Year of the Demon

Then the Toyotomis found their footing. In his opening gambit Daigoro had felled ten men, but thirty more now formed a wary circle around him. Most had swords drawn. Here and there an archer took aim.

Unwilling to be shot down where he stood, Daigoro rushed in like a madman. One, misjudging Daigoro’s reach, lost an arm. Two arrows went wide, both hitting kinsmen. A third archer drew a bead on Daigoro’s jugular. Then his bowstring snapped, cut from below by a shinobi who appeared out of nowhere. The whip-snapping string lacerated the archer’s eyeball. Then the shinobi was gone.

Daigoro had no more luck tracking him than did the Toyotomis. He knew the shinobi was there only because now and then a man would have him dead to rights, and in the next instant that man would fall. Then the shinobi vanished again into the swirling melee.

Once, twice, a dozen times Daigoro tried to cut himself a channel to open ground. Each time the enemy denied him, closing back around him as inexorably as the sea.

Once, twice, a dozen times the Sora breastplate saved his life. Here it turned aside a katana. There it sparked as an arrowhead struck home. One of the Toyotomi commanders managed a clear shot with his matchlock. The ball knocked Daigoro two steps back but could not penetrate the Sora yoroi.

At last Toyotomi steel found flesh. Daigoro’s right leg collapsed beneath him, blood spurting from his wasted thigh. Glorious Victory fell in a deadly arc, killing the one who’d struck him and two more as well. Daigoro fought from one knee, desperately parrying the attacks of six, seven, eight men at once.

Someone behind him let out an almighty scream. It was no shriek of pain; this was a war whoop. The ground shook. Either a horse was charging him or else a score of men. Daigoro slashed forward, driving a few assailants back, then turned to meet the new threat.

Katsushima rode through the heart of the Toyotomis, bellowing with a typhoon’s fury. His sword flashed red and silver, claiming limbs every time it fell. His charging bay shattered swordsmen as easily as clay pots. When Katsushima saw Daigoro, he kicked his heels savagely and Daigoro had to throw himself flat or else be decapitated by a hoof.

The Toyotomis scattered in the wake of the leaping horse. Suddenly the field was clear enough that Daigoro could struggle back to his feet.

Katsushima killed two more before wheeling his mount around. “Come on!” he shouted. “This is no time for patience!”

Already the Toyotomis were regrouping—what few remained. Most were dead, dying, or crippled. Daigoro hobbled over a pair of broken men, settled his left foot in Katsushima’s right stirrup, and stepped up to grab the saddlehorn with his left hand. “Good to see you again,” Daigoro said.

“I’m glad to see there’s something left of you to see,” said Katsushima. “But talk later. We’ve work to do yet.”

He nodded toward the gate, where the surviving Toyotomi swordsmen had formed a line to deny access to the keep. Heedless of the dead, deaf to the moans and cries of the wounded, they stared Daigoro down with grim determination.

Determined or not, footmen were no match for Glorious Victory Unsought. She was a cavalry sword, at her deadliest when she struck with the weight of a warhorse behind her. Katsushima charged the line. Daigoro, effectively a human outrigger, stretched Glorious Victory out long. Inazuma steel mowed down the right flank. Katsushima claimed one on the left. Their horse crushed two in the center.

Then the blood work was done. Daigoro would not honor the wounded with a clean death. Any man who bowed to a lickspittle like Shichio wasn’t worthy of such a gift. Moreover, Daigoro didn’t want killing them to burden his conscience. He hadn’t asked for this fight. Had their positions been reversed, Daigoro would never have resorted to using Shichio’s family allies as playing pieces in their private war. He chose to let his defeated foes explain why they still lived, and let Shichio bear the burden of sending them on to join their ancestors.

Daigoro limped across the courtyard, leaving a bloody footprint wherever his right foot touched the gravel. The Yasuda soldiers watched him in wonderment. Their spears still jutted out like quills from the doorway to their master’s bedchamber, as if they hadn’t yet realized the fighting was over. Daigoro looked down at his blood- spattered hakama and haori, then at their spotless moss green garb. He felt absurd: these ranks of older, wiser men gaped at him like he was a battle-hardened veteran—a veteran still months away from his seventeenth birthday.

He’d forgotten he was still wearing Toyotomi colors—what was left of them, anyway. He’d also forgotten that he was armored; only the sight of an arrow recalled it to mind. The arrow looked like it was sticking out of his gut, but in truth it had only caught in his haori after shattering against his Sora breastplate. He remembered first donning the armor on the banks of the Kamo not so long ago, remembered how heavy it had felt then, how awkward, how alien. Now he wore it like his own skin.

By the time he reached the stable to fetch tack and harness, the shinobi had reappeared beside him, noiselessly as always. Swords had sliced his clothing in a hundred places. He bled from his face, his forearms, his shoulders, his shins, but most of the blood on his tattered clothes was not his own. He gave Daigoro a silent, approving nod.

Halfway back to the horses still tied to the gates, Daigoro’s throbbing hands prompted him to wonder why he hadn’t walked the horse to the saddle instead of lugging the saddle to the horse. His mind was as exhausted as his body; his thoughts plodded along as if wading against an undertow.

“Who’s your friend?” Katsushima asked when Daigoro reached his mare.

“He is of the Wind,” Daigoro said, laughing weakly. “The Wind is without name.”

Katsushima’s eyes narrowed, and the smile of a proud father played at the corners of his mouth. “You found them.”

“I did.”

Katsushima looked at the shinobi with new eyes. “Whatever your name is, Wind- sama, I thank you for saving my good friend’s life.”

The ninja’s only response was to grunt as he heaved his saddle up over his saddle blanket. If Daigoro hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn his shinobi was actually fatigued.

“How did you find me?” Daigoro asked.

“I was on my way to your family’s place when I heard the commotion,” Katsushima said. I never expected to find you here. I thought I had a few days’ lead on you on the Tokaido.”

“We came by ship.”

“Did you?” Katsushima whistled. “You weathered an unholy bitch of a storm.”

“A Toyotomi blockade too. Shichio’s men are watching every last pebble of coastline.”

“Then we’re apt to find many more of them when we reach your mother’s house.”

Daigoro gave him a long, studious look. His friend looked back down at him, red spatter dotting his woolly sideburns. An hour’s conversation passed between them in that single glance. Then Daigoro made a final adjustment to the girth, and with energy reserves he didn’t even know he had, he stepped up into the saddle.

Katsushima had to dismount to lash Daigoro’s right leg in place, and even then Daigoro felt on the verge of sliding off his horse. His own saddle, the precious one Old Yagyu had fashioned for him, was many ri behind him. Sitting in an ordinary saddle, the weight of Daigoro’s left leg threatened to drag him down and his right leg wasn’t strong enough to counteract it. He could only stay ahorse by balancing there, the muscles of his belly, chest, and back shifting constantly, as if he were an acrobat on the tip of a pole. It was exhausting even when his horse was standing still, and impossible at a full gallop.

It was necessary, then, that Katsushima lash down his right leg. Nevertheless, Daigoro could not help thinking that usually it was the injured and dying who were tied into the saddle. When at last they set out on the road, his coal black mare shied from the twitching of pained, bloodied men, nearly throwing him. Only by gripping the saddlehorn with both hands did he manage to stay mounted.

But soon the miasma of battle was behind them and Daigoro could settle into a rhythm. “If I didn’t know better,” Katsushima told him, “I’d swear you just stole a horse.”

“Lord Yasuda knows I’m good for it,” Daigoro said defensively, realizing only too late that his friend was kidding him. “I apologize, Goemon. I’m too tired to think. Why did you ever come back? Why do you want to have