I lay awake thinking about Akiko. I had no idea of what to do. It was my helplessness that really galled me. There seemed no way things could end well for her. We had to get her spirit to move on to the next world within forty-nine days of her death. After that, she would be doomed to haunt the world as a shade, forever cut off from any chance to escape, her spirit isolated and never able to be reborn. It had already been nearly forty days, and we were no closer to a solution than when we started.
My attempts to sleep were fruitless, so I got up before dawn. Professor had requested that I help again with the training efforts that morning. With our shortage of trained men, we were forced to staff the guard towers primarily with women. We were using our experienced staff at the gates, but the watchtowers and other wall locations were being guarded by contingents of two females and one male per position, all of them green recruits. It was far from ideal, but it was the best we could do under the circumstances.
As I walked over to the training field, I passed through a group of people climbing ladders to the roof of one of the outbuildings. They all carried buckets of water. These were the staff who were either too old or too young to fight or who didn’t feel they could kill in battle. They had been assigned to support roles like fire duty. Cook was drilling them in their responsibilities.
She stood near the ladders, yelling. “Faster! Faster! The building burn down before you even get it wet!” She saw me and then looked directly above me and her eyes widened. She cried, “Look out!”
I looked up just in time to get a face full of water. The man on the ladder above me had dropped his bucket. After hitting one of the lower rungs, it emptied its contents on me then bounced into the wall of the building.
Cook called the man down and began detailing his inadequacies both as an individual and as a member of her support unit. Her penetrating voice and command of invective would have made many an old training sergeant green with envy.
Soaking wet, I continued on to where my pupils waited for their instruction. That morning, I was concentrating on personal weapons. I was trying to get the trainees to hit the target dummy harder with their bokken. “What was that, a love tap? Are you trying to kill the enemy or seduce him?” I yelled at one girl.
She glared at me.
“Are you angry?”
Her face grew red.
“Then HIT the dummy! Pretend it’s me!”
She hit it with the bokken hard enough I could hear the whack over the noise of all the other recruits training.
In a more even tone, I told her, “Good. Keep swinging like that for a few days, and you’ll be ready to go.”
Cook’s group had just finished their training, and she stopped by for a moment to watch us drill. Teasing her, I said, “Cook, would you like me to teach you to protect yourself?”
She snorted. “I can protect myself fine.”
From somewhere, she produced a razor-sharp kitchen knife like the two she carried in her belt. As far as I could tell, it had just materialized in her fist. I hadn’t even seen her hand move.
I raised both hands up in mock surrender. “All right, you convinced me. You don’t need me to show you how to use that knife. But what if someone with a big weapon comes after you? That knife is pretty short compared to a tachi.”
She snorted again. Her arm flashed forward in a blur. With a solid thunk, the knife buried itself halfway to the hilt in the solid wood target dummy.
This small, simple woman kept surprising me. Laughing, I said “All right, all right. It’s clear I don’t need to worry about you.”
Cook grunted acknowledgment as she went to the target dummy and tried to work her knife out of the wood that held it fast.
I went up and yanked the knife out and handed it to her, hilt first.
She looked at it and sighed. “I hoped when Hyacinth-sama said she would teach Kameru to read and play the koto, that Kameru would not have to learn to fight in to survive. That she would have an easier life than me.” She shook her head sadly.
I took Cook’s hand and looked her in the face. “Don’t worry, Cook, we’re going to take care of Dimples and all the other girls. I promise you we’ll protect them.”
She turned away and started walking back to her group, but I thought I saw an unshed tear in her eye.
My students were staring after Cook, goggle-eyed. I turned to them. “Well, that just goes to show, don’t get Cook mad at you.”
I once more picked up a bokken and demonstrated how to hit a target. “You need to put more force,” I hit the dummy with a loud twhack that echoed across the training yard, “behind your blows.”
One of Surei’s dancers came running up. She wore the hakama and light robe that was the uniform of the on-duty guards. She carried a yumi and a tachi and wore a quiver of arrows on her back. She grabbed me by the arm and began dragging me to the south wall. “We have trouble!”
As we ran, I puffed at her, “Why didn’t you ring the gong?”
“The gong? Oh, I completely forgot about it!”
I sighed in irritation. “One strike if you need the duty captain—”
“—two if you need support, and three if there is an attack,” she finished. “I know, but I forgot about it.”
We got to her position. There was no one there. “Where are the others?”
She pointed out into the street. “There! Some men were pulling a woman out of one of the shops and they ran out the gate to help her.”
Across the square, a group of three men stood over a crying woman. Two young children clung to her. One of the men reached down and grabbed her by the arm, trying to drag her to her feet.
Two figures came running around the corner of the wall, heading directly for the three thugs. It was Dimples and one of the male recruits, a stablehand who had dreams of becoming a bushi.
I had a sudden vision of razor-sharp kitchen knife stuck through a sensitive part of my anatomy, pinning me to a wall while Cook asked me, “What happened to my little girl? Why did you let her get hurt?”
“You stay here,” I snapped. “Never abandon your post again. Raise the alarm. Two strikes of the gong.” I vaulted over the top of the palisade and landed in the square. Behind me, the gong sounded out twice.
I called after Dimples and the stableboy, Yoshino no Ryouji, “Wait!” They paid me no attention.
Dimples and Ryouji reached the group of thugs. Dimples drew her tachi, shouting at one of the thugs, “You leave her alone.”
The man’s face expressed complete astonishment at the sudden appearance of this girl holding a tachi. He stared at her for a long moment, then recovered. He swatted her tachi aside with his club and backhanded her across the face, knocking her to the ground. Dimples dropped her tachi as she fell.
Sneering, he said, “This ain’t no dance, honey.” He raised his club over his head as Dimples tried to regain her feet.
There came the twang of a yumi behind me. The arrow narrowly missed Dimples and the thug. “Don’t shoot unless you have a clear target,” I shouted back over my shoulder.
The man grabbed Dimples by the hair and dragged her close, putting his arm around her neck and holding her in front of him. “Let’s see you try that again,” he yelled to the archer on the wall. His companions closed in behind him, jeering and brandishing their clubs.
Dimples’ hand dipped into her sleeve and reappeared holding her tantou. She stabbed it deep into the thigh of her captor. With a piercing scream of agony, he grabbed his leg with both hands and collapsed to the ground. Freed of the man’s grasp, Dimples fell to her knees.
I am almost there. If they can just hold out a few moments more.
While all this was occurring, the stablehand stood transfixed, staring at Dimples.
“Ryouji, chuudan-no-kamae!” I shouted.
At my words, he instinctively brought up his tachi and assumed chuudan-no-kamae, the first guard position we had spent so much time and effort drilling into the recruits.
One of the comrades of the fallen man struck. Ryouji caught the blow on the flat of his blade. The impact seemed to wake him up, and he started fighting back.
The other man closed in to get behind the stablehand. Dimples grabbed her tachi from the road and rolled to her feet. I rushed forward to attack … and realized I still held the bokken I had been using to demonstrate strikes to my students. I looked at the training weapon unbelievingly for a moment, then raised it over my head.
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Men have been killed with bokken before.
Ryouji clumsily defended himself, but his opponent was too skilled for him to prevail. He didn’t have much time. Dimples yelled as she threw herself forward and cut deeply into the attacker’s neck. Blood spurted from the wound, covering Ryouji and Dimples.
The last man, distracted by the messy demise of his friend, failed to notice me approaching. With a loud crunch, I crushed the side of his head in with the wooden weapon.
Ryouji and Dimples stared at the three men on the ground—two dead and one moaning in agony as his life bled out through the cut in his leg. I heard movement inside the shop. Pointing at the woman with the two children, I snapped, “Get them back to the Spring Palace.” Nothing happened. They were transfixed by the sight of the dead and dying men. “Move!” I shouted.
They gave a start then Ryouji and Dimples grabbed the woman and hurried her back towards the saké house, her children following behind.
“What the hell is going on here?” Three men came out of the shop. Two were of the same cut as the men we had killed, low-class thugs armed with clubs. The third man wore his metal helmet and armored shirt with the same ease other men wear a hunting jacket. He looked like a bandit chieftain. His well-worn tachi and scars marked him as an entirely different class of foe than the ones we had just killed. His eyes widened as they took in the sight of the three men on the ground and Dimples and Ryouji scurrying away with the woman in tow.
I stepped in front of him.
Three against one with just a bokken. This could be painful.
They turned their attention to me. The leader raised his tachi to attack but flinched as arrows whipped past his head. His two minions went down, each man suddenly sprouting two arrows in the middle of his chest.
One against one. Seems fair.
My ear pained me. I touched the lobe with my fingertip, and it came away bloody.
I really need to remind them not to shoot so closely into combat.
The bandit leader regained his composure. Roaring a war cry, he brought his tachi down towards my head. I sidestepped his blow and smashed the bokken down on his knuckles, causing him to drop his tachi.
I swung the bokken up between his legs as hard as I could until it shuddered to a halt, smashed against bone. He grabbed himself, his face deathly white. His eyes rolled up in his head, and he passed out without making a sound. I tossed the bokken down on top of him, snatched up his fallen tachi, and slit his throat.
Dimples and Ryouji were just rounding the corner of the compound on their way to the west gate. I sprinted after them.
When we got to the gate, I yelled at the guards to open the doors. They had closed and latched them when the alarm sounded, as we had taught them, but we needed to get inside.
I directed the guards to shut the gates behind us. Dimples, Ryouji, and the small family waited nearby. I told one of the guards, “Take them,” indicating the woman and her two children, “to the Ume twins and get the three of them settled. Tell the twins I sent you. You and you,” I said, stabbing my finger at Dimples and Ryouji, “come with me. We are going to see Hyacinth-sama.”
I grabbed two of the off-duty recruits who had responded to the alarm and sent them up to the watchtower to replace Ryouji and Dimples. People stared at the three of us, splattered in blood, as we walked through the saké house.
Ryouji stayed beside me, shaking from a combination of fear and the emotional aftereffects of the battle. Dimples trailed along behind, saying, “Why are we going to see Hyacinth-sama? We didn’t do anything wrong. We couldn’t just sit there and watch them do those terrible things.”
“Guards who abandon their posts are executed,” I growled.
She started to cry.
Dread filled me as I considered what would happen if this makeshift band of recruits had to defend against a real military unit. I was afraid Dimples’ and Ryouji’s dereliction would be the least of our problems. Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea.
It didn’t take long to find Surei. “What happened to you three?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at she eyed our gore-covered robes.
I grimaced. “Some thugs started looting a shop across the square. When they tossed a mother and her two children into the street, these two,” I gestured at Dimples and Ryouji, “got excited and ran out to get involved. Although it turned out all right this time, we can’t have guards abandoning their posts.”
Surei looked angry. “Why shouldn’t we help our neighbors?”
I sighed. “These two left their post without permission.” Ryouji looked even glummer if possible. Dimples swallowed hard, a look of apprehension on her face as she realized I was serious about punishment.
Professor opened the door and walked in. He glanced briefly at the two standing next to me, then looked at Surei and said, “I came as soon as I heard.”
“We were just discussing what to do with these two,” I said.
Dimples grabbed Professor’s arm. “Professor, you won’t let him kill me, will you?” She looked at him with her lip trembling and eyes wide.
Professor looked at her coolly and said, “Why don’t we have them wait somewhere while we talk about this?”
Surei told them, “You two go get cleaned up then wait in the kitchen. We will call for you when we finish.”
Dimples shot a last pleading look at Professor as she and Ryouji left.
I said, “They need to face some kind of disciplinary action.”
Surei emphatically shook her head. “No, they did the right thing.”
“Hyacinth-sama,” I said carefully, “have you ever heard of Sun-Tzu?” It was a trick question. Surei had memorized the Art of War by the time she was ten. It was one of the Chinese texts her father taught her.
She smiled, “Yes, of course.”
“Do you remember what he said about succeeding in all your attacks?”
She frowned in thought. “I think he said something like, ‘You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended.’ So what?”
“What did he say about enticing the enemy?”
“Wasn’t it ‘Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.’ What does this have to do with Dimples and Ryouji?”
I sighed. “If I were preparing an attack on the Spring Palace and I heard about this incident, I would know you were vulnerable. I would send four bushi dressed as looters to cause trouble within sight of one of the watchtowers. When the guards left their post to deal with the ‘looters,’ I would have another group use a ladder to scale the walls at that point. I would also have a force hidden by the gate to seize it when your guards went outside to assist the victims. The first indication you would have of any trouble was when my forces took you from behind.”
Surei looked worried. “They do things like that?”
I gave a short laugh. “If only you knew. You should really reconsider this decision to stay and defend the Spring Palace. I think we would be better off leaving the city until all the trouble has been resolved. Everyone would be safe then.”
Surei stood and started pacing. “You seem to think leaving the city would avoid any problems. But if we abandon the Spring Palace, it will be burned to the ground. At that juncture, even if everyone is alive, they will have no jobs and no place to go. Most of them would starve to death within months.” She looked at me with fierce eyes. “I will not allow everything I have accomplished to be destroyed by vandals.”
I shrugged. “Then you need discipline among the troops.”
Surei looked at Professor. He nodded in agreement. “Oh yes, Yoshi is right. One winter when I was young, we had a bandit raid against our stronghold. Our compound was designed to be easily defended, but everyone had to be inside before the gate was closed. My father wouldn’t permit the gate to open once the enemy approached. Everyone had gotten inside and the gates shut. Suddenly, my uncle, my father’s younger brother, and his young wife came running up to the gate, the enemy not far behind.”
Professor reached over and poured himself a large bowl of saké and downed it without asking permission. When he continued, his voice was a little rough. “They yelled and begged us to open the gate as they approached, but my father refused. ‘They knew they had to be inside—it doesn’t matter why they were late,’ was all he would say. When the two of them arrived outside the wall, they were set upon and killed by an ambush party of six men. The ambushers had tunneled through the snow and hidden in high drifts near the gate. In their white clothing and hoods, we hadn’t seen them.” He stopped speaking for a few moments. “If my father had opened the gate, the ambush party would have swarmed inside and held it open long enough for the rest of the bandits chasing my uncle to gain entry.”
He looked at Surei. “I didn’t leave home just because I wanted to study and read books. I never wanted to be the person who had to make that kind of decision.” He put the saké bowl down on the table. “Yet, here I am.”
I nodded, completely understanding his point.
Surei looked a little sick. “So, you expect me just to sit here and watch as ruffians rape and kill our neighbors?”
Professor shrugged. “That is what war is all about. We absolutely cannot have anyone leaving their posts for any reason. Discipline is one of the key attributes of a successful military force.”
“Surei,” I said.
She looked at me.
“We don’t have a large enough force to police the city. We have to punish these two so no one else will even think about leaving their positions.”
Surei shouted, “This is barbaric! I can’t believe the Emperor and Retired Emperor are risking the destruction of the capital just for their own personal gain. I hope the priests are right and those two and all the others responsible for this atrocity burn in hell suffering the pains of all those who they condemned to die because of their greed and lust for power.”
My heart sank. After one particularly bad campaign, I had sworn never to work for any of the nobility again. From that time on, I only hired on with units led by bushi. Surei was acting just like many of the nobles I had seen. They refused to let hard facts on the ground interfere with their carefully constructed worldview. Even as a child, she had never let facts or common sense get in the way of what she wanted.
Have I managed to put myself under the command of another idealist?
Surei calmed herself and looked at Professor and me. “You are my military commanders. This is your problem—you deal with it. However, I will not permit you to execute them.”
Professor thought for a bit, then slowly smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I have some duty for them that will make them wish we had executed them. It won’t hurt them in the slightest except that they are going to get little sleep for the next ten days or so, and they are going to stink to high heaven.”
Surei nodded grimly. “Thank you, Professor.”
He stood. “I’ll go tell them the good news.”
After he had left, I sat looking at Surei with new eyes. She poured herself a bowl of saké and downed it, then gazed out the window into the garden. Her shoulders slumped and her face was weary. It struck me she was responsible for every person in the Spring Palace, and she took that responsibility seriously.
As a girl, she had been a willful, spoiled child of privilege. I had been so busy resenting the loss of the Surei I had known that I had failed to appreciate the woman Surei had become. The girl I remembered would have refused to see the necessity in front of her, instead complaining and ignoring the issue until it got out of control. Her acceptance of the need to punish Dimples and Ryouji, reluctant as it was, showed that she had grown in many ways not readily apparent to me before. She was a different person from the one I remembered, better in many respects, certainly more mature.
She noticed me watching her and snapped, “Don’t you have some more training to do? I still have a lot of reading to do before the exorcism.”
Ah, still irritable and short-tempered. Maybe she isn’t so different.
With an unaccountable lightness of heart, I stood and bowed deeply to her. “As you command, my lord.”
She stared at me very strangely as I left.