‘I invited you to hunt, Naga-san, not to repeat views I’ve already heard,’ Toranaga said.
‘I beg you, Father, for the last time: stop the training, outlaw guns, destroy the barbarian, declare the experiment a failure and have done with this obscenity.’
‘No. For the last time.’ The hooded falcon on Toranaga’s gloved hand shifted uneasily at the unaccustomed menace in her master’s voice and she hissed irritably. They were in the brush, beaters and guards well out of earshot, the day sweltering and dank and overcast.
Naga’s chin jutted. ‘Very well. But it’s still my duty to remind you that you’re in danger here, and to demand again, with due politeness, now for the last time, that you leave Anjiro today.’
‘No. Also for the last time.’
‘Then take my head!’
‘I already have your head!’
‘Then take it today, now, or let me end my life, since you won’t take good advice.’
‘Learn patience, puppy!’
‘How can I be patient when I see you destroying yourself? It’s my duty to point it out to you. You stay here hunting and wasting time while your enemies are pulling the whole world down on you. The Regents meet tomorrow. Four-fifths of all daimyos in Japan are either at Osaka already or on the way there. You’re the only important one to refuse. Now you’ll be impeached. Then nothing can save you. At the very least you should be home at Yedo surrounded by the legions. Here you’re naked. We can’t protect you. We’ve barely a thousand men, and hasn’t Yabu-san mobilized all Izu? He’s got more than eight thousand men within twenty ri, another six closing his borders. You know spies say he has a fleet waiting northward to sink you if you try to escape by galley! You’re his prisoner again, don’t you see that? One carrier pigeon from Ishido and Yabu can destroy you, whenever he wants. How do you know he isn’t planning treachery with Ishido?’
‘I’m sure he’s considering it. I would if I were he, wouldn’t you?’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘Then you’d soon be dead, which would be absolutely merited, but so would all your family, all your clan and all your vassals, which would be absolutely unforgivable. You’re a stupid, truculent fool! You won’t use your mind, you won’t listen, you won’t learn, you won’t curb your tongue or your temper! You let yourself be manipulated in the most childish way and believe that everything can be solved with the edge of your sword. The only reason I don’t take your stupid head or let you end your present worthless life is because you’re young, because I used to think you had some possibilities, your mistakes are not malicious, there’s no guile in you and your loyalty’s unquestioned. But if you don’t quickly learn patience and self-discipline, I’ll take away your samurai status and order you and all your generations into the peasant class!’ Toranaga’s right fist slammed his saddle and the falcon let out a piercing, nervous scream. ‘Do you understand?‘
Naga was in shock. In his whole life Naga had never seen his father shout with rage or lose his temper, or even heard of him doing so. Many times he had felt the bite of his tongue but with justification. Naga knew he made many mistakes, but always his father had turned it so that what he’d done no longer seemed as stupid as it had at first. For instance, when Toranaga had shown him how he had fallen into Omi’s—or Yabu’s—trap about Jozen, he had had to be physically stopped from charging off at once to murder them both. But Toranaga had ordered his private guards to pour cold water over Naga until he was rational, and had calmly explained that he, Naga, had helped his father immeasurably by eliminating Jozen’s menace. ‘But it would have been better if you’d known you were being manipulated into the action. Be patient, my son, everything comes with patience,’ Toranaga had counseled. ‘Soon you’ll be able to manipulate them. What you did was very good. But you must learn to reason what’s in a man’s mind if you’re to be of any use to yourself—or to your lord. I need leaders. I’ve fanatics enough.’
Always his father had been reasonable and forgiving but today. . . . Naga leapt off his horse and knelt abjectly. ‘Please forgive me, Father. I never meant to make you angry . . . it’s only because I’m frantic with worry over your safety. Please excuse me for disturbing the harmony—’
‘Hold your tongue!‘ Toranaga bellowed, causing his horse to shy.
Frantically Toranaga held on with his knees and pulled the reins tighter in his right hand, the horse skittering. Off balance, his falcon began to bate—to jump off his fist, her wings fluttering wildly, screaming her ear-shattering hek-ekek-ek-ek—infuriated by the unaccustomed and unwelcome agitation surrounding her. ‘There, my beauty, there . . .’ Toranaga desperately tried to settle her and gain control of the horse as Naga jumped for the horse’s head. He caught the bridle and just managed to stop the horse from bolting. The falcon was screaming furiously. At length, reluctantly, she settled back on Toranaga’s expert glove, held firmly by her thong jesses. But her wings still pulsated nervously, the bells on her feet jangling shrilly.
‘Hek-ek-ek-ek-eeeeekk!‘ she shrieked a final time.
‘There, there, my beauty. There, everything’s all right,’ Toranaga said soothingly, his face still mottled with rage, then turned on Naga, trying to keep the animosity out of his tone for the falcon’s sake. ‘If you’ve ruined her condition today, I’ll—I’ll—’
At that instant one of the beaters hallooed warningly. Immediately Toranaga slipped off the falcon’s hood with his right hand, gave her a moment to adjust to her surroundings, then launched her.
She was long-winged, a peregrine, her name Tetsu-ko—Lady of Steel—and she whooshed up into the sky, circling to her station six hundred feet above Toranaga, waiting for her prey to be flushed, her nervousness forgotten. Then, turning on the downwind pass, she saw the dogs sent in and the covey of pheasant scattered in a wild flurry of wing beatings. She marked her prey, heeled over and stooped—closed her wings and dived relentlessly—her talons ready to hack.
She came hurtling down but the old cock pheasant, twice her size, side-slipped and, in panic, tore arrow-straight for the safety of a copse of trees, two hundred paces away. Tetsu-ko recovered, opened her wings, charging headlong after her quarry. She gained altitude and then, once more vertically above the cock, again stooped, hacked viciously, and again missed. Toranaga excitedly shouted encouragement, warning of the danger ahead, Naga forgotten.
With a frantic clattering of wings, the cock was streaking for the protection of the trees. The peregrine, again whirling high above, stooped and came slashing down. But she was too late. The wily pheasant vanished. Careless of her own safety, the falcon crashed through the leaves and branches, ferociously seeking her victim, then recovered and flashed into the open once more, screeching with rage, to rush high above the copse.
At that moment, a covey of partridge was flushed and whirred away, staying close to the ground seeking safety, darting this way and that, cunningly following the contours of the earth. Tetsu-ko marked one, folded her wings, and fell like a stone. This time she did not miss. One vicious hack of her hind talons as she passed broke the partridge’s neck. The bird crashed to the ground in a bursting cloud of feathers. But instead of following her kill to the earth or binding it to her and landing with it, she soared screaming into the sky, climbing higher and ever higher.
Anxiously Toranaga took out the lure, a small dead bird tied to a thin rope, and whirred it around his head. But Tetsu-ko was not tempted back. Now she was a tiny speck in the sky and Toranaga was sure that he had lost her, that she had decided to leave him, to go back to the wilds, to kill at her whim and not at his whim, to eat when she wanted and not when he decided, and to fly where the winds bore her or fancy took her, masterless and forever free.
Toranaga watched her, not sad, but just a little lonely. She was a wild creature and Toranaga, like all falconers, knew he was only a temporary earthbound master. Alone he had climbed to her eyrie in the Hakoné mountains and taken her from the nest as a fledgling, and trained her, cherished her, and given her her first kill. Now he could hardly see her circling there, riding the thermals so gloriously, and he wished, achingly; that he too could ride the empyrean, away from the iniquities of earth.
Then the old cock pheasant casually broke from the trees to feed once more. And Tetsu-ko stooped, plummeting from the heavens a tiny streamlined weapon of death, her claws ready for the coup de grace.
The cock pheasant died instantly, feathers bursting from him on impact, but she held on, falling with him to let go, her wings slashing the air to brake violently at the very last second. Then she closed her wings and settled on her kill.
She held it in her claws and began to pluck it with her beak prior to eating. But before she could eat Toranaga rode up. She stopped, distracted. Her merciless brown eyes, ringed with yellow ceres, watched as he dismounted, her ears listening to his cooing praise of her skill and bravery, and then, because she was hungry and he the giver of food and also because he was patient and made no sudden movement but knelt gently, she allowed him to come closer.
Toranaga was complimenting her softly. He took out his hunting knife and split the pheasant’s head to allow Tetsu-ko to feed on the brains. As she began to feast on this tidbit, at his whim, he cut off the head and she came effortlessly onto his fist, where she was accustomed to feed.
All the time Toranaga praised her and when she’d finished this morsel he stroked her gently and complimented her lavishly. She bobbed and hissed her contentment, glad to be safely back on the fist once more where she could eat, for of course, ever since she had been taken from the nest, the fist was the only place she had ever been allowed to feed, her food always given to her by Toranaga personally. She began to preen herself, ready for another death.
Because Tetsu-ko had flown so well, Toranaga decided to let her gorge and fly her no more today. He gave her a small bird that he had already plucked and opened for her. When she was halfway through her meal he slipped on her hood. She continued to feed contentedly through the hood. When she had finished and began to preen herself again, he picked up the cock pheasant, bagged it, and beckoned his falconer, who had waited with the beaters. Exhilarated, they discussed the glory of the kill and counted the bag. There was a hare, a brace of quail, and the cock pheasant. Toranaga dismissed the falconer and the beaters, sending them back to camp with all the falcons. His guards waited downwind.
Now he turned his attention to Naga. ‘So?’
Naga knelt beside his horse, bowed. ‘You’re completely correct, Sire—what you said about me. I apologize for offending you.’
‘But not for giving me bad advice?’
‘I—I beg you to put me with someone who can teach me so that I’ll never do that. I never want to give you bad advice, never.’
‘Good. You’ll spend part of every day talking with the Anjin-san, learning what he knows. He can be one of your teachers.’
‘Him?’
‘Yes. That may teach you some discipline. And if you can get it through that rock you have between your ears to listen, you’ll certainly learn things of value to you. You might even learn something of value to me.’
Naga stared sullenly at the ground.
‘I want you to know everything he knows about guns, cannon, and warfare. You’ll become my expert. Yes. And I want you to be very expert.’
Naga said nothing.
‘And I want you to become his friend.’
‘How can I do that, Sire?’
‘Why don’t you think of a way? Why don’t you use your head?’
‘I’ll try. I swear I’ll try.’
‘I want you to do better than that. You’re ordered to succeed. Use some ‘Christian charity.’ You should’ve learned enough to do that. Neh?‘
Naga scowled. ‘That’s impossible to learn, much as I tried. It’s the truth! All Tsukku-san talked was dogma and nonsense that would make any man vomit. Christian’s for peasants, not samurai. Don’t kill, don’t take more than one woman, and fifty other stupidities! I obeyed you then and I’ll obey you now—I always obey! Why not just let me do the things I can, Sire? I’ll become Christian if that’s what you want but I can’t believe it—it’s all manure and . . . I apologize for speaking. I’ll become the Anjin-san’s friend. I will.’
‘Good. And remember he’s worth twenty thousand times his own weight in raw silk and he’s got more knowledge than you’ll have in twenty lifetimes.’
Naga held himself in check and nodded dutifully in agreement.
‘Good. You’ll be leading two of the battalions, Omi-san two, and one will be held in reserve under Buntaro.’
‘And the other four, Sire?’
‘We haven’t guns enough for them. That was a feint to put Yabu off the scent,’ Toranaga said, throwing his son a morsel.
‘Sire?’
‘That was just an excuse to bring another thousand men here. Don’t they arrive tomorrow? With two thousand men I can hold Anjiro and escape, if need be. Neh?‘
‘But Yabu-san can still—’ Naga bit back the comment, knowing that once more he was sure to make a mistaken judgment. ‘Why is it I’m so stupid?’ he asked bitterly. ‘Why can’t I see things like you do? Or like Sudara-san? I want to help, to be of use. I don’t want to provoke you all the time.’
‘Then learn patience, my son, and curb your temper. Your time will come soon enough.’
‘Sire?’
Toranaga was suddenly weary of being patient. He looked up at the sky. ‘I think I’ll sleep for a while.’
At once Naga took off the saddle and the horse blanket and laid them on the ground as a samurai bed. Toranaga thanked him and watched him place sentries. When he was sure that everything was correct and safe, he lay down and closed his eyes.
But he did not want to sleep, only to think. He knew it was an extremely bad sign that he had lost his temper. You’re fortunate it was only in front of Naga, who doesn’t know any better, he told himself. If that had happened near Omi, or Yabu, they’d have realized at once that you’re almost frantic with worry. And such knowledge might easily inspire them to treachery. You were fortunate this time. Tetsu-ko put everything into proportion. But for her you might have let others see your rage and that would have been insanity.
What a beautiful flight! Learn from her: Naga’s got to be treated like a falcon. Doesn’t he scream and bate like the best of them? Naga’s only problem is that he’s being flown at the wrong game. His game is combat and sudden death, and he’ll have that soon enough.
Toranaga’s anxiety began to return. What’s going on in Osaka? I miscalculated badly about the daimyos—who would accept and who would reject the summons. Why haven’t I heard? Am I betrayed? So many dangers around me. . . .
What about the Anjin-san? He’s falcon too. But he isn’t broken to the fist yet, as Yabu and Mariko claim. What’s his prey? His prey is the Black Ship and the Rodrigues-anjin and the ugly, arrogant little Captain-General who’s not long for this earth, and all the Black Robe priests and all the Stinking Hairy priests, all Portuguese and all Spaniards and Turkmen, whoever they are, and Islamers, whoever they are, not forgetting Omi and Yabu and Buntaro and Ishido and me.
Toranaga turned over to get more comfortable and smiled to himself. But the Anjin-san’s not a long-winged falcon, a hawk of the lure, that you fly free above you to stoop at a particular quarry. He’s more like a short-winged hawk, a hawk of the fist, that you fly direct from the fist to kill anything that moves, say a goshawk that’ll take partridge or a hare three times her own weight, rats, cats, dogs, woodcock, starlings, rooks, overtaking them with fantastic short bursts of speed to kill with a single crush of her talons; the hawk that detests the hood and won’t accept it, just sits on your wrist, arrogant, dangerous, self-sufficient, pitiless, yellow-eyed, a fine friend and foul tempered if the mood’s on her.
Yes, the Anjin-san’s a short-wing. Whom do I fly him at?
Omi? Not yet.
Yabu? Not yet.
Buntaro?
Why did the Anjin-san really go after Buntaro with pistols? Because of Mariko, of course. But have they pillowed? They’ve had plenty of opportunity. I think yes. ‘Lavish’ she said that first day. Good. Nothing wrong in their pillowing—Buntaro was believed dead—providing it’s a perpetual secret. But the Anjin-san was stupid to risk so much over another man’s woman. Aren’t there always a thousand other, free and unattached, equally pretty, equally small or big or fine or tight or highborn or whatever, without the hazard of belonging elsewhere? He acted like a stupid, jealous barbarian. Remember the Rodrigues-anjin? Didn’t he duel and kill another barbarian according to their custom, just to take a lowclass merchant’s daughter that he then married in Nagasaki? Didn’t the Taikō let this murder go unavenged, against my advice, because it was only a barbarian death and not one of ours? Stupid to have two laws, one for us, one for them. There should be only one. There must be only one law.
No, I won’t fly the Anjin-san at Buntaro, I need that fool. But whether those two pillowed or not, I hope the thought never occurs to Buntaro. Then I would have to kill Buntaro quickly, for no force on earth would stop him from killing the Anjin-san and Mariko-san and I need them more than Buntaro. Should I eliminate Buntaro now?
The moment Buntaro had sobered up, Toranaga had sent for him. ‘How dare you put your interest in front of mine! How long will Mariko-san be unable to interpret?’
‘The doctor said a few days, Sire. I apologize for all the trouble!’
‘I made it very clear I needed her services for another twenty days. Don’t you remember?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
‘If she’d displeased you, a few slaps on the buttocks would’ve been more than enough. All women need that from time to time, but more is loutish. You’ve selfishly jeopardized the training and acted like a bovine peasant. Without her I can’t talk to the Anjin-san!’
‘Yes. I know, Lord, I’m sorry. It’s the first time I’ve hit her. It’s just—sometimes she drives me insane, so much that—that I can’t seem to see.’
‘Why don’t you divorce her then? Or send her away? Or kill her, or order her to cut her throat when I’ve no further use for her?’
‘I can’t. I can’t, Lord,’ Buntaro had said. ‘She’s—I’ve wanted her from the first moment I saw her. When we were married, the first time, she was everything a man could want. I thought I was blessed—you remember how every daimyo in the realm wanted her! Then . . . then I sent her away to protect her after the filthy assassination, pretending to be disgusted with her for her safety, and then, when the Taikō told me to bring her back years later, she excited me even more. The truth is I expected her to be grateful, and took her as a man will, and didn’t care about the little things a woman wants, like poems and flowers. But she’d changed. She was as faithful as ever, but just ice, always asking for death, for me to kill her.’ Buntaro was frantic. ‘I can’t kill her or allow her to kill herself. She’s tainted my son and makes me detest other women but I can’t rid myself of her. I’ve . . . I’ve tried being kind but always the ice is there and it drives me mad. When I came back from Korea and heard she’d converted to this nonsense Christian religion I was amused, for what does any stupid religion matter? I was going to tease her about it but before I knew what was happening, I had my knife at her throat and swore I’d cut her if she didn’t renounce it. Of course she wouldn’t renounce it, what samurai would under such a threat, neh? She just looked up at me with those eyes of hers and told me to go on. ‘Please cut me, Lord,’ she said. ‘Here, let me hold my head back for you. I pray God I’ll bleed to death,’ she said. I didn’t cut her, Sire. I took her. But I did cut off the hair and ears of some of her ladies who had encouraged her to become Christian and turned them out of the castle. And I did the same to her foster mother, and cut off her nose as well, vile-tempered old hag! And then Mariko said, because . . . because I’d punished her ladies, the next time I came to her bed uninvited she’d commit seppuku, in any way she could, at once . . . in spite of her duty to you, in spite of her duty to the family, even in spite of the—the commandments of her Christian God!’ Tears of rage were running down his cheeks unheeded. ‘I can’t kill her, much as I want to. I can’t kill Akechi Jinsai’s daughter, much as she deserves it. . . .’
Toranaga had let Buntaro rant on until he was spent, then dismissed him, ordering him to stay totally away from Mariko until he considered what was to be done. He dispatched his own doctor to examine her. The report was favorable: bruises but no internal damage.
For his own safety, because he expected treachery and the sand of time was running out, Toranaga decided to increase the pressure on all of them. He ordered Mariko into Omi’s house with instructions to rest, to stay within the confines of the house and completely out of the Anjin-san’s way. Next he had summoned the Anjin-san and pretended irritation when it was clear they could hardly converse at all, dismissing him peremptorily. All training was intensified. Cadres were sent on forced marches. Naga was ordered to take the Anjin-san along and walk him into the ground. But Naga didn’t walk the Anjin-san into the ground.
So he tried himself. He led a battalion eleven hours over the hills. The Anjin-san kept up, not with the front rank, but still he kept up. Back again at Anjiro, the Anjin-san said in his almost incomprehensible gibberish, hardly able to stand, ‘Toranaga-sama, I walk can. I guns training can. So sorry, no possibles two at same timings, neh?‘
Toranaga smiled now, lying under the overcast waiting for the rain, warmed by the game of breaking Blackthorne to the fist. He’s a shortwing all right. Mariko’s equally tough, equally intelligent, but more brilliant, and she’s got a ruthlessness that he’ll never have. She’s like a peregrine, like Tetsu-ko. The best. Why is it the female hawk, the falcon, is always bigger and faster and stronger than the male, always better than the male?
They’re all hawks—she, Buntaro, Yabu, Omi, Fujiko, Ochiba, Naga and all my sons and my daughters and women and vassals, and all my enemies—all hawks, or prey for hawks.
I must get Naga into position high over his quarry and let him stoop. Who should it be? Omi or Yabu?
What Naga had said about Yabu was true.
‘So, Yabu-san, what have you decided?’ he had asked, the second day.
‘I’m not going to Osaka until you go, Sire. I’ve ordered all Izu mobilized.’
‘Ishido will impeach you.’
‘He’ll impeach you first, Sire, and if the Kwanto falls, Izu falls. I made a solemn bargain with you. I’m on your side. The Kasigi honor their bargains.’
‘I’m equally honored to have you as an ally,’ he had lied, pleased that Yabu had once more done what he had planned for him to do. The next day Yabu had assembled a host and asked him to review it and then, in front of all his men, knelt formally and offered himself as vassal.
‘You acknowledge me your feudal lord?’ Toranaga had said.
‘Yes. And all the men of Izu. And Lord, please accept this gift as a token of filial duty.’ Still on his knees, Yabu had offered his Murasama sword. ‘This is the sword that murdered your grandfather.’
‘That’s not possible!’
Yabu had told him the history of the sword, how it had come down to him over the years and how, only recently, he had learned of its true identity. He summoned Suwo. The old man told what he had witnessed when he himself was little more than a boy.
‘It’s true, Lord,’ Suwo had said proudly. ‘No man saw Obata’s father break the sword or cast it into the sea. And I swear by my hope of samurai rebirth that I served your grandfather, Lord Chikitada. I served him faithfully until that day he died. I was there, I swear it.’
Toranaga had accepted the sword. It seemed to quiver with malevolence in his hand. He had always scoffed at the legend that certain swords possessed a killing urge of their own, that some swords needed to leap out of the scabbard to drink blood, but now Toranaga believed it.
He shuddered, remembering that day. Why do Murasama blades hate us? One killed my grandfather. Another almost cut off my arm when I was six, an unexplained accident, no one near but still my sword arm was slashed and I nearly bled to death. A third decapitated my first-born son.
‘Sire,’ Yabu had said, ‘such a befouled blade shouldn’t be allowed to live, neh? Let me take it out to sea and drown it so that this sword at least can never threaten you or your descendants.’
‘Yes—yes,’ he had muttered, thankful that Yabu had made the suggestion. ‘Do it now!’ And only when the sword had sunk out of sight, into the very deep, witnessed by his own men, had his heart begun to pump normally. He had thanked Yabu, ordered taxes to be stabilized at sixty parts for peasants, forty for their lords, and had given him Izu as his fief. So everything was as before, except that now all power in Izu belonged to Toranaga, if he wished to take it back.
Toranaga turned over to ease the ache in his sword arm and settled again more comfortably, enjoying the nearness of the earth, gaining strength from it as always.
That blade’s gone, never to return. Good, but remember what the old Chinese soothsayer foretold, he thought: that you would die by the sword. But whose sword and is it to be by my own hand or another’s?
I’ll know when I know, he told himself without fear.
Now sleep. Karma is karma. Be thou of Zen. Remember, in tranquillity, that the Absolute, the Tao, is within thee, that no priest or cult or dogma or book or saying or teaching or teacher stands between Thou and It. Know that Good and Evil are irrelevant, I and Thou irrelevant, Inside and Outside irrelevant as are Life and Death. Enter into the Sphere where there is no fear of death nor hope of afterlife, where thou art free of the impediments of life or the needs of salvation. Thou art thyself the Tao. Be thou, now, a rock against which the waves of life rush in vain. . . .
The faint shout brought Toranaga out of his meditation and he leaped to his feet. Naga was excitedly pointing westward. All eyes followed his point.
The carrier pigeon was flying in a direct line for Anjiro from the west. She fluttered into a distant tree to rest for a moment, then took off once more as rain began to fall.
Far to the west, in her wake, was Osaka.
