Child of Vengeance

Chapter One

The battle was over, but still Kazuteru ran. He had duty to fulfil. The young samurai ignored the howling of his lungs and the ache within his muscles and bore forth his sacred burden: a dagger the length of his hand. His Lord awaited it at the top of the valley.

It had rained all day yesterday and most of the morning too, an anomaly in the high summer. The sun shone bright now, but too late. Hundreds of feet and hooves had trampled the sodden slope and churned it into a swamp. Kazuteru’s armour and underclothes, which had once been a brilliant blue, were now a mottled grey, and his legs were heavy with plastered clay and turf.

His hands alone were clean, protected as they had been under gauntlets and gloves. Bared, the flesh had remained immaculate enough to hold the dagger. But the humidity and the layers of metal, cloth and wood he wore had made his entire body slick with sweat. It stung his eyes and he could taste it on his lips, and when the ground gave suddenly beneath him as he ran, he felt it on his hands also. His wet palms fumbled, and the dagger slipped from his grasp.

The blade caught the light as it fell. It winked white once at him, and then plunged into the slimy dirt and vanished with a sad little sound. Kazuteru let a smaller, sadder whimper escape him. His waiting Lord had a thousand swords and spears with him already, but they would not suffice. They were not ceremonial and pure. The dagger, which had been, was now sullied.

He fell to his knees, and plunged his left hand into the muck. It vanished up to his wrist. He began to grope blindly, hastened by desperation but slowed by fear of the blade’s edge.

Something to his right moaned suddenly, a pained voice so pitiful that it stopped Kazuteru. He saw a man twisted where he had fallen, one leg so shattered and bent that his toes almost touched his hamstring. The samurai had no mind left for words; his eyes pleaded Kazuteru to kill him, and for a moment he thought to oblige.

But then Kazuteru realized that he wore the red of the enemy, and for that he left him. The man’s agony was but one voice in dozens.

Hundreds.

His fingers touched blunt metal. He pulled the dagger free, and filth came with it. Kazuteru tried to wipe the blade clean as best he could. Once when he was a child – too young to know about sacrilege – he and his friends had hidden a small cast-iron Buddha in an ox’s feed just to see if the beast was too stupid to notice. It had been, and three days later they had found the Buddha again. Looking at the dagger now, he was reminded of that serene, shit-smeared face.

Water. He needed water.

But there was none here, save for that which had soaked into the ground; this was where the fighting had been. There was no time to return to their distant camp, where he had just run to collect the blade in the first place. The only place he could look was up the slope, towards the valley top they had stormed not one hour ago.

He began to run towards the hilltop once more, skidding and stuttering in the mud, dagger in his filthy left hand with his right hand held high and free of any contamination. Ahead of him, overlooking the entire valley, Lord Kanno’s castle burned. One of the smaller curved roofs groaned loudly, and then collapsed inwards. A ragged cheer carried on the distant breeze, and a fresh billow of black smoke erupted into the sky.

There, in the corner of Kazuteru’s eye – a mangled man lying against a barricade of bamboo stakes, seemingly drunk as he fumbled about himself. His numb hands were trying to put a canteen to his lips. Clear water dribbled from the mouth of the ray-leather bladder, catching the light.

Kazuteru hesitated, his conscience caught, but it was clear the man was beyond any help that water could possibly bring. He squelched to his knees beside the samurai, and tried to take the canteen. The man held on stubbornly.

‘I need that water, friend,’ said Kazuteru gently.

‘W’tr?’ mumbled the man, his eyes distant. Still he tried to remember how to drink, still his hands corpse-tight upon the canteen.

‘Our Lord Shinmen requires it,’ said Kazuteru.

‘F’r Lord Shinm’n,’ the man said. Out of instinct alone, he obeyed that name and released his grip. His eyes closed, something that wasn’t blood or water bubbled out of his mouth, and then he died.

Kazuteru muttered his thanks to the man’s departing soul as he began to slowly pour the water on the dagger. It was not quite enough, one clod of black mud remaining. There was nothing else to do but stick his tongue out and lick it clean, and then he knew the taste of the battlefield. He spat, and then the dagger was as clean as it was going to get. Back it went into his pristine right hand, and then he ran once more.

The ground up on the valley top was not so bad, some solid green turf surviving. Nothing slowed him as he weaved his way through the groups of surviving samurai towards where the Lords and Generals awaited. A cadre of exhausted foot soldiers all as dirty as Kazuteru knelt in a clustered circle around their superiors, facing inwards to bear witness to this final act. Lungs were still panting, open wounds being treated.

Kazuteru dropped into a walking crouch as he drew close to the mock court, holding the dagger above his head respectfully. Men parted for him until he came to where his Lord Sokan Shinmen sat on a small stool. He dropped to one knee and waited.

The Lord was sitting in his under-armour of toughened cloth. During the battle an arrow had thumped into the plate of his chest armour almost directly over his heart, and he had removed the heavy cuirass to nurse the bruise it had left. The narrow escape had given the Lord a spark of manic joy in his eyes that he was unable to conceal.

Shinmen took the proffered dagger and examined it. Kazuteru held his breath. The Lord raised an eyebrow for a moment at the drops of water upon the blade, but he said nothing. He shook it dry and nodded appreciatively at Kazuteru. The samurai bowed low, and then backed away on his knees to melt into the crowd. The taste of mud still in his mouth, relief and pride flooded him; he had done his duty.

‘Lord Kanno,’ said Shinmen, turning back to the three figures at the centre of the gathering, ‘do you know what follows now?’

Lord Kanno was the defeated enemy, and he had nervous tears in his eyes as he knelt. Regaled in a full set of miniature armour, he could have escaped from some comedy theatre. He was nine years old.

‘I think so,’ the boy-Lord said. ‘I have to perform seppuku. But . . .’ the boy began, and then faltered.

‘But?’ said Shinmen.

‘But, I don’t know how, Lord,’ Kanno said sadly. His small shoulders wilted. ‘I was never allowed to see. I wanted to, but father said I was too young.’

An affectionate laugh rippled through the crowd of samurai. Only two men remained silent. One was Kanno’s General Ueno, who knelt beside his Lord. He was an old man with thinning grey hair that hung dishevelled around him. It was he who had been truly in command of the enemy, and he who had lost the day. His left eye was bruised, his nose was bleeding and he bristled with futile venom.

The other silent man stood behind the kneeling pair, his face emotionless for it would be obscene to show joy in front of defeated enemies, and it was he above all the men there who had defeated the Kanno clan. His armour was plain and practical, without any mark of garish boasting save for perhaps the dents and scrapes that spoke of how much fighting he had seen and yet still stood. He was Munisai Shinmen, Commander of the Lord’s foot soldiers, and so trusted and beloved was he by Lord Shinmen that the Lord had bestowed upon him the honour of his own name. Now he waited for command patiently, one hand upon the swords at his hip.

The mirth subsided, and then Lord Shinmen spoke on. ‘Seppuku is not difficult, Lord. It is what we are bred for.’

Kanno still looked nervous. ‘My brothers told me that you put a sword in your belly. Is that right?’ the boy said.

‘They were right, Lord.’

‘But, doesn’t that hurt?’ asked the boy. Shinmen smiled at the innocence.

‘I should imagine it does. But not for long, Lord. A moment of pain, and then your honour is restored and your spirit is free to wander the heavens and be reborn. It is a good death,’ he said.

‘But, I never lost my honour! It was my father, Lord! It was he who declared war on you!’

‘The clan is as the Lord,’ said Shinmen. ‘This is the way of nobility. The body changes over the years but in you is your father and your grandfather, as my father and my grandfather are in me, all the way back to the start of time. In you all of their honour rests – will you disappoint them?’

‘No! I’m not afraid . . .’ said Kanno, and he was panicking because he could not explain himself and like all children feared looking small in front of adults. ‘It’s just . . . I . . . I don’t know!’

‘Well then, perhaps your General could show you how it’s done?’ said Shinmen. The kneeling Ueno raised his maddened eyes.

‘If you think I’m going give you cowards the honour of that, you dogs can—’ he began snarling, spit flecking from his lips.

‘Where is your dignity?’ snapped Munisai, speaking for the first time. ‘Your Lord needs your help, and you act like this? Are you samurai, or did someone dress a shit-tossing peasant in the General’s armour this morning?’

‘A cunning ruse, perhaps,’ said Shinmen.

‘You’re one to talk of ruses, Shinmen! Accepting our gold and feigning peace like some demon fox! And you,’ the General growled, jerking his head towards Munisai, ‘you are one to talk of samurai! Instead of standing on the field like any true warrior would have, you sneak around our rear like some common thief!’

‘That rear was where I found you hiding,’ said Munisai.

‘I was protecting my Lord!’ Ueno shouted.

‘A fine job you did of that,’ said Shinmen, and laughter rippled around the gathered men. There was no warmth this time. Ueno could do nothing but glower at the floor and try to endure the humiliation, but it was much too great to bear.

‘To the hells with you all!’ he spat. ‘Very well, I will show him! Give me the blade!’

‘What of your death poem?’ asked Shinmen.

‘I have nothing I want to say to you. Tossing coins to stray cats,’ said Ueno as he unbuckled his armour, hands furiously jerking the clasps open. He placed the cuirass on the ground before him and rose into a dignified kneel.

‘The blade,’ he commanded. Shinmen wrapped the dagger in a length of white silk, and then it was conveyed respectfully to the General, who took it wordlessly.

‘I suppose I will have the honour of the great Munisai Shinmen taking my head?’ Ueno sneered as he placed the tip of the dagger to the side of his stomach.

Munisai looked to Lord Shinmen, who nodded once. He moved to the side of the General and drew his longsword. The elegant weapon was dulled with use, and so it did not gleam as Munisai held it high, ready to flash the killing stroke.

‘I am ready, General,’ he said, simply.

‘Are you watching, my Lord?’ asked Ueno. The boy uttered a small affirmative. Ueno took a few deep breaths, licked his lips and steeled himself.

‘This is how a samurai dies,’ the old man said, and suddenly threw himself backwards at Munisai.

It was impressively fast for an old, exhausted man. He had sprung onto his feet and thrust the bulk of his weight upwards into Munisai before the samurai had a chance to react. Munisai was knocked off balance, and barely managed to catch the dagger as Ueno span and stabbed it downwards seeking the gap in the armour at his neck.

Munisai was staggering and encumbered with holding his sword, and there was a hanging second where it seemed to the onlookers the tip of the blade must surely split his throat. But he found his footing once more, and then it was simply a matter of age and but the work of a moment to roll himself around and throw Ueno over his hip. The General landed heavily, and before he could rise Munisai had stabbed savagely downwards with his sword, impaling him through the chest.

It was a brutal blow, deliberately crude so as to be insulting. The two locked eyes as the General lay dying, and Munisai knew Ueno understood the affront. But the old man did not make a single sound. He merely mouthed wordless curses at Munisai as his strength left him. Eventually his lips ceased to move, his eyes glazed over, and then Ueno was still.

‘Disgusting,’ said Munisai in the silence.

He withdrew his sword, wiped the blood off the blade and then sheathed the weapon. Only at that signal did the bodyguards release Lord Shinmen; they had thrown themselves around him as a human shield as soon as Ueno had pounced. Munisai had trained them well.

‘He hated you,’ said Lord Kanno quietly. He hadn’t moved from where he knelt. ‘You killed his son last summer, Munisai.’

‘Then he let that cloud his judgement,’ said Munisai. ‘What of his honour? His son died well, in equal combat. He did not. We gave him the chance of an honourable death and . . . That was not the way it should be done, Lord Kanno.’

‘Then what is?’ asked the boy. Munisai hesitated, but then he saw the look of worry in the child’s face. The earnestness of it sparked something within him that he had not felt in many years, and slowly he began to speak in a soft tone.

‘We are samurai, Lord. Death defines us. We must become a master of dealing it to our enemies, yes, but most of all lose all fear of our own. Seppuku is the ultimate test of this. You must draw the blade across your stomach. Some rare men will complete the ritual in its entirety, turn the blade and draw it back across. But rare men indeed, for there must be complete silence. If you whimper or cry out, it proves that you are afraid, and thus not samurai and never were. If you are too much a coward to force the blade up, or if you lose yourself to blind emotion like Ueno, then all the worse.’

He cast another scornful gaze at the General’s body, and then nodded for the boy to take in the ugliness of the thing – the way it lay twisted in the mud, the hatred still upon the face, bestial and fragile and spiritless. After a few moments Munisai turned and gave another gesture. A brush, ink and a scroll of silk affixed to an easel were brought forth and placed before Lord Kanno.

‘Ueno hated me?’ said Munisai. ‘Then he should have damned me in his death poem. The ritual must have dignity. The ritual must have calm. To write the death poem is to cleanse yourself of all emotion.’

‘A poem?’ said Kanno. ‘I’ve never written a poem.’

‘It is not difficult, Lord,’ said Munisai. ‘It does not have to be a poem proper, no rhyme or rule . . . Just say what you want. Put all your fear, or your anger, or your sadness into the poem, and then you are empty and free to do the act as it should be done.’

Kanno thought for some long moments. All watched silently as the boy dipped the brush into the black ink and began to slowly write. His brow furrowed in concentration as he did so, taking care to be perfect.

Kazuteru watched Munisai as the boy wrote. He had never heard his Commander speak more than curt orders, let alone give a speech. Now the man was staring at the child with a strange intensity. It looked almost like longing.

Eventually the boy sat back on his knees, and placed the brush aside. Munisai looked over his shoulder.

‘Is it good?’ the boy asked anxiously.

Munisai nodded. Kanno smiled happily, proud of his work. He withdrew his clan’s centuries-old seal and stamped it below the letters. Then the silk was folded and sealed, placed into a lacquer box and whisked away. It would be joined, after the ritual, by a lock of the Lord’s hair and sent to the boy’s mother as proof that he died well. She would smile as she wept.

A sheet of white hemp was laid on the muddy ground whilst Lord Kanno stripped off his armour. The ceremonial blade was pried from Ueno’s death grip, cleaned in a pail of water and then given to Kanno. It seemed the size of a sword in his hands. He knelt, and pointed it towards himself.

‘From one side to the other?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Munisai. ‘It won’t hurt for long, I promise, Lord.’

Munisai drew his sword once more, and this time because it was the boy, he dribbled water along his blade also. A pure blade for a pure young soul, the weapon glistened in the afternoon sun as he raised it now, a bar of light almost. He nodded at Kanno.

‘Your ancestors depend on you, Lord. Be brave,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Munisai,’ said the boy.

He turned and bowed deeply one last time to Lord Shinmen and the gathered samurai, rose to his knees, and then thrust the dagger into his belly. He doubled over and his eyes went wide.

Of course they did not expect a child to force the blade across himself. Munisai heard the boy’s sharp intake of breath, and before Kanno could cry out and shame himself, he slashed the sword down perfectly and struck the boy through the neck. There was a dull thump as the head rolled free, and then the small body toppled sideways. The white hemp turned red.

The gathered samurai, whether Lord or common soldier, bowed deeply to the corpse, and a sigh of admiration ran through them all. Such immaculate bravery from one so young.

‘What did his death poem say, Munisai?’ asked Lord Shinmen.

‘That is not for me to say, my Lord,’ said Munisai, and though Shinmen could have ordered him to do so, he gave his Lord such a look that Shinmen questioned him no further.

When the bleeding stopped, they took Kanno’s head and his body and cleaned them. Then they wrapped them in a white funeral shroud, anointed them properly, and cremated the boy. His ash they spread on the wind, so that it might travel to the ends of Japan, and then his name was added honorably to the centuries of names on his clan’s gravestone. It would be the last to ever be chiselled. Years later a tree had sprung from near the spot of the seppuku, and the local peasants knew their brave Lord must have returned to them. They wove a sacred rope and tied it around the tree, so that Kanno’s spirit might never leave again, and for centuries after pregnant noble women would visit the place and pray that their children might have the same courage as the young Lord.

General Ueno, however, was left for the crows.

The war had been the fault of the old Lord Kanno. The summer before, the old man had suddenly decided to try and recapture his youth and play soldier again. Lord Shinmen was engaged in a war with a neighbour to the north, and so Kanno reasoned that Shinmen could not protect the valuable paddy fields on his eastern border. He was right, for a while.

Kanno’s mistake was to go riding in winter. Buoyed by the successful annexation of the paddy fields, the old Lord felt twenty in his heart again. In his knees however he was still very much his seventy years, and the frozen mountain paths were treacherous at the best of times. Borne from the bottom of the canyon where it was found, his corpse was anything but regal.

Kanno had been a lecherous old goat. He had fathered many sons to many embittered women, and he harboured a great fear that his boys loved their mothers more than him. Not one of his four previous heirs had lived beyond nineteen, by accident or design, and now his fifth would not see ten.

In the spring the newly installed boy-Lord’s advisors had offered a truce. Shinmen had feigned acceptance of the ridiculous terms – no mention of returning the stolen land – and so two days ago, with the coming of the summer, Shinmen had launched a lightning raid. His small force had overrun the watchtowers and outposts with such speed that Kanno’s army had barely had time to rally here in the very heart of their domain.

Were it not for the rain the day before slowing them, there would not have been time at all for Kanno’s men. But those few bogged-down hours had given Ueno time to entrench his army around the castle and force Shinmen into a bitter uphill fight. Hundreds of men had died simply because of the vagaries of weather.

But what was victory without sacrifice? Blossom without fragrance, nothing more.

Munisai sat down amongst the flowers. He held a man’s hand as the samurai oozed out his last breaths. He had been run through by a lance, the blade entering at his collar bone and exiting at his pelvis. Skewered entirely, but somehow the man had lingered this long with the wood of the shaft still wedged through him. He gurgled and writhed. His eyes met Munisai’s for a moment, desperate and pleading.

‘It’ll be over soon,’ said Munisai. ‘You did well. We won.’

There were many like this man here where the healers worked their art, a mass of mangled men encircled by a white palisade fifty paces across. The air was rent with moaning and the stench of purifying herbs burning as doctors dashed from man to man, trying to do what they could. Healthy men knelt or stood by as friends died, the filth smeared across their faces slashed by the path of tears.

Munisai had been here many times before. It was strange to him how, within the space partitioned to the healers it was always worse, always more frantic after victory. After all, if you ceded a battlefield, you ceded every man left there upon it. Loss brought silence and contemplation, triumph misery and despair and guts in your hand.

Blossom and fragrance, he told himself. The man whose hand he held hacked up a fresh shower of petals.

Munisai was in a strange mood. Something was different this time. He had never felt joy after victory for more than a few vital, visceral seconds, but neither had he felt lingering doubt as he did now.

The samurai looked up and saw the smoke from Kanno’s castle drifting lazily across the evening sky. Memories came to him. He saw his home village on fire, the night aglow the colour of persimmon peel, and then the charnel stink in the morning as thick greasy plumes of smoke hung low across the valleys.

But that was not it, entirely. He had seen fire before on the battlefield, and he recalled that terrible day of his past more often than he cared to admit.

The eyes of the boy-Lord, Kanno. Determined and innocent. They were what haunted him, for in them he saw another boy, one he had left behind many years since and tried to forget, a boy that was through no fault of his own the bane of his life.

He wondered what the face around those eyes looked like now. Children, boy or girl, were feminine; the father did not truly show until adolescence. Hatred coursed through him at that thought, both for the face he imagined and for himself. But still he imagined it, for the unanswered ache within him knew that he needed to see.

‘Bennosuke,’ murmured Munisai.

‘His name is Aoki,’ said a healer, gesturing at the man with the spear through him. ‘Was Aoki.’

Munisai barely heard him.

He let go of Aoki’s hand. He dropped to both knees and bowed to the corpse as a mark of respect, and the men watching quivered with pride as they saw their Commander humble himself so.

When he stood, he saw that atop the slopes alongside the inferno of Kanno’s castle a great palanquin had arrived to pomp and fanfare and waving banners. It was decked in burgundy and it shimmered like a peacock. Munisai looked at it with disgust. Dozens of men had carried it – dozens of men who could have carried spears and helped in the battle instead.

The clan Nakata had arrived.

There was a dull throbbing pain beneath his left shoulder that he had ignored and did not want to think about, but the very sight of the palanquin made it pulse anew. He would be expected to visit that gaudy thing, to bow and prostrate himself before men he hated, and the thought filled him with loathing.

But the Nakata were allies of his Lord Shinmen, and so he would have to endure it. This was duty, he knew, and duty was distraction. Duty meant that he did not have to feel nor think of wounds both of the flesh and of the heart.

He looked around once more. Those warriors that could bowed to him as his eyes passed across them. The doctors, shaven-headed and sweating, were too frantic to worry about him. Saying nothing, he rooted around in a wooden chest and took some bandages and a small envelope of what smelled like salve, and left them to tend to their macabre and glorious garden.

*

On the way to the palanquin, Munisai found himself giving commands that did not need to be given, dallying to supervise that which needed none. But he could not avoid it forever, and when he finally arrived he stood before it for a few moments. Night was all but fallen already, and the burgundy silk glowed from lanterns lit within. A mobile palace brought to reign over a place that other men had fought and died for. He had to force the scowl from his face before he ducked his head and passed through the curtains.

As soon as he entered, he was hit by the smell of incense. Wisps of it hung in the air, no doubt to mask the stench of the battlefield. He held back in the shadows of the entrance and looked inwards.

All was silk or lacquer wood painted in gold leaf. When it was carried, the hall was big enough for perhaps a half-dozen to sit in comfortably. But set down, hidden panels and curtains could be opened and unfurled so it grew, and now it was big enough for Lord Shinmen and the Nakata to sit on a raised dais whilst a few ranks of bodyguards and courtiers from either clan knelt around them. A woman plucked quietly on a koto harp in the background, the music lilting and soothing.

Lord Shinmen’s wound had been treated in a way that Munisai did not know how to describe without talking ill of his Lord. The bruise where the arrow had struck certainly didn’t warrant a sling, but now the Lord’s left arm was tightly bound to a body swathed in bandages, and he made a show of having difficulty drinking.

There were two of the Nakata with him. Both wore rich kimonos in burgundy, patterns traced upon the garments in threads of silver. The man closest to Shinmen was Lord Nakata; an old squat man with a doughy round face and eyes that were constantly pinched into a squint. The jokes ran that he was always looking for the last coin in the room, so scared was he of missing wealth.

Munisai recognized the other man as Nakata’s eldest son and heir, Hayato. He was burning the incense, idly poking stick after stick to stand in a small bowl of sand. He looked little like his father, being a slight man with a long face. His eyes were wide and dulled, the incense holding him in its sway.

Indeed, Hayato seemed oblivious of anything but the smoke. He ignored his father and Shinmen as they spoke. The pair of Lords had chosen a polite, inoffensive topic as etiquette required.

‘It is believed the slaughter was great, that the enemy were dashed to pieces upon the rocks of your brave men like a great wave of filth and pestilent vermin, Lord Shinmen?’ asked Lord Nakata, eyes blinking around blindly.

‘Indeed, Lord. Were guessing required, it is not unreasonable to think that even their distant descendants will still have nightmares of this day,’ replied Shinmen.

‘Quite so, quite so. No wonder, if even one such as a Lord should sustain a grievous wound as you have. Would it be rude to enquire of the combat, my stalwart ally? It is trusted the wretch who struck you paid with his life?’

‘Unfortunately not, Lord. He was but a cowardly archer, so his fate we are not able to ascertain. But with this sword alone, three of the enemy were sent to their graves. The last one was barely worth calling a man! Have you heard the cry a pig makes as it dies, Lord? The cry this man made was not dissimilar!’

‘Regrettably that pleasure has yet to be experienced, Lord. Were it only that all of our enemies could suffer such a fate, gorging on their own entrails and drowning in their own blood.’

‘If that were so, Lord, one might be happy. But then, what would we do? We are samurai. It is our nature to slay our enemies. Peace is only the gasp of breath before we can plunge back into that rapturous ocean known as war.’

‘Quite so, Lord. Quite so!’ said Lord Nakata, and raised his cup of sake politely. Shinmen returned the gesture.

Munisai saw what he had feared – his Lord had changed again. Gone was the man from the battlefield of today, confident and trustworthy and the man he had followed for five years. Here now was the new Lord Shinmen that had been seeping in more and more these past months, the closer he drew to Nakata and his promise of wealth.

Ambition, they said, was a virtue. Once it had been when Shinmen’s was a desire for honest struggle, for he and his forces to prove themselves upon the battlefield, as samurai ought. But now it had festered, rotted him from within and drew him instead to shrines of affluence like the one he sat in now. Munisai could not bear seeing the man behave like this.

No one here was going to stop them, though, for they were regal mouths speaking and so all had to acknowledge the words as profound rather than what they were – ridiculous. His face unreadable, Munisai made as if he had just arrived, swinging the inner curtain aside wildly and ensuring his armour rattled. He approached the dais and then dropped to his knees before Shinmen, placed his forehead to the floor, waited the respectful length of time and then rose.

‘My Lord, forgive my lateness. There is still much work to be done,’ he said.

‘Like extinguishing fires?’ said Hayato venomously, suddenly rousing from his stupor to look at Munisai.

‘My Lord?’ asked Munisai, surprised that the young Lord had spoken. He had looked to Shinmen, but it was Lord Nakata who spoke.

‘Forgive my son, Munisai Shinmen. Being young, it is unknown by him how men should properly compose themselves,’ he said, and turned to his son who had returned to lighting incense sullenly. ‘Look upon this man, Hayato – here is one named the Nation’s Finest! Do you not understand what that means?’

‘You flatter me, noble Lord Nakata,’ said Munisai, bowing, ‘but that title refers solely to swordsmanship and nothing more. There are much finer men than I within our land. Even so, if something has been done that is unsatisfactory to either yourself or your heir, it would be shameful if it could not be spoken of and rectified.’

‘It has been a fine day’s work, Munisai, indeed. We live on in a world that is less one enemy. But . . . There is the issue of the castle,’ said Lord Shinmen.

‘My Lord?’

‘The castle of the late Lord Kanno, which was promised by Lord Shinmen to our clan as a most wonderful and splendid gift and a sign of our enduring alliance,’ said Lord Nakata.

‘The ruins of my castle now, which are still ablaze outside,’ said Hayato. The young Lord was all petulant fury as he looked at Munisai.

This was the first he had heard of any plans for the castle as a gift, but Munisai nevertheless bowed once more to the Lords, and said, ‘What happened with the castle was regrettable, my Lords. But in context of the situation an entirely necessary regret.’

‘Are you certain of that, Munisai?’ asked Shinmen.

‘Yes, my Lord,’ said Munisai. ‘If you would allow me to explain?’

‘Please do,’ nodded Nakata.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘My Lord Shinmen led the main body of men up through the valley, whilst I led a covert force around the rear to try and take the Lord Kanno and the castle itself. Unfortunately our ruse was spotted earlier than I had hoped, and Ueno more cautious also. We had managed to pass the gate of the stronghold, but a fight ensued with a hundred men or thereabouts to my three score. Furthermore Ueno had a chance to barricade himself and the Lord Kanno within the armoury of the clan. My men could not hold indefinitely, and neither did I want to prolong an uphill battle for my Lord Shinmen, so time was of the essence – we needed to extricate the Lord from the armoury as soon as possible.

‘I believe there is no faster way to encourage men to leave a building than the prospect of burning, and so we set a fire that in our zealousness unfortunately grew out of control. But it