Thousand Shrine Warrior Read online

  “That’s foolish,” said Norifune. “Priest Kuro is still sitting near our Lord.”

  “No. He is not.”

  Lord Sato spoke again, a pouting edge to the words. “If you won’t drink one cup before you go, then I will revoke the license that makes Otane your servant from now on.”

  The nun took the huge bowl from the page, who was ghostly and faint despite standing closer than Kuro, who alone could be seen plainly. For a moment she considered dashing the contents onto the tatami; but Sato added with petulant cruelty:

  “It is not much to ask that you finish one small cup. If you fail, it can only be out of disrespect. As you can see, my vassals stand ready to kill you at my command.”

  In fact she could not see any vassals. She believed they were close by. She held the basin near her mouth and, before drinking, quoted the aphorism, “‘When drinking poison, do so to the dregs!’”

  Then she began to gulp.

  Priest Kuro relaxed his posture. The lights came up as between acts of a play. The bikuni saw Lord Sato was draining his very tiny cup; he looked happy now that the nun shared saké with him. Norifune had finished his cup. He was scratching behind his ear, then scraped under one fingernail with another, unmindful of sorcery. Several vassals stood near, swords drawn, but at bay.

  The bikuni finished the wine and tossed the shallow basin upon the tatami mat. “Keep your promise to me,” she said, more to Kuro than Sato. “Let me go now.” The wine had not yet taken effect, except for making her stomach uneasy.

  Priest Kuro took another strange pose, his head turned demurely, his frail hands held forward, the thumbs interlocked, his fingers like the wings of a nightingale.

  Lord Sato sighed, then said, “Now that she is gone, I feel bored.”

  “I’m still here,” said the bikuni. Nobody heard.

  “I am too wound up,” continued Sato, “to consider sleep. I wish the weather were clear enough for a midnight hunt.”

  Even now the bikuni could not deny the beauty of the face that gazed at hers. It was her own vanity to find him beautiful. She had hated to think he might be a relative; but now she welcomed thinking it, for if he were not a man of Heida, then he was not a man at all, but some distorted reflection of herself. He spoke a few seemingly idle words, which were directed at Lord Sato, who presumedly believed the priest still sat close at hand.

  “The snow has ceased falling only a little while ago, my Lord.” Kuro’s tone was sweet, his narrative poetic: “The wind has cleared Heaven of its clouds. The Celestial River is a bright rainbow. The moon is full, surrounded by a vast halo.”

  “Wouldn’t it be fine,” Lord Sato exulted, “to view the moon in its big rain hat!”

  The bikuni heard everything, but saw nothing beyond Kuro in the resurged dark.

  “A midnight hunt indeed!” said Norifune, sounding relieved that the evening’s nuisances were over. “It would be a challenge!”

  Priest Kuro cocked his head a bit more, increasingly sweet and, if one knew no better, utterly guileless.

  Lord Sato commanded gleefully, “Turn that gray doe loose, the one who was so frisky this morning! I will hunt her to the ground!”

  Kuro parted his hands. The lights came up again, but no one noticed the bikuni still in their midst. Lord Sato’s bodyguards, who had obeyed none of his commands earlier, were now quite eager to fetch his hunting cape and hat and other garments for a mounted chase. The other vassals scurried out of the room to get their own hunting gear or to prepare the horses. The nun had given up on drawing her sword, but thought to grapple the priest by leaping on him in a contest of physical strength. Her feet would not move in his direction. Her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth. Priest Kuro pointed to the door, the only route open to her. How painful was his expression!

  “Each step we take,” he said, “is mistaken.”

  Thinking only of Otane and Shinji, the nun darted from the meeting-chamber. Halfway along the halls, she staggered against one wall, feeling the effects of the drink. Her arms were light but at the same time heavy. When she found her way outside, she fell upon a snowy path and vomited noisily. A small portion of what she had swallowed came out. She looked upward at the black sky, which was not as clear as Priest Kuro had promised. Here and there were smudges of moonlit clouds rushing majestically along the curve of the Celestial River. The moon indeed had a halo. It was called a rain-hat because it generally heralded a storm. Off in the west, there were still billowing clouds, changing and roiling at a miraculous pace. The clarity over Lord Sato’s castle was, then, the calm before the long-promised storm, a gargantuan blizzard to freeze Otane and Shinji to their cross.

  She stumbled across the veritable mesa on which the castle was built, and came to the gate leading downward. The post was curiously abandoned. No one stopped her from unsealing the gate. She stood at the top of the long stairway, the sight making her woozy. It had been cleared of snow, though a bit more had fallen since vassals did that labor. She felt the effects of the liquor rather too much now. Her first step downward caused her a sensation of sudden vertigo. If she took each step as carefully as she felt necessary, the hunters would be after her before she was halfway down.

  Alongside the staircase was a rough slope for horses to ascend and descend. It, too, had been more cleared than not, but had an icy slickness here and there. To her bothersome state, the slope appeared more manageable than the stairs; but she had gone only a short ways when she slipped off her wooden geta and tumbled face downward.

  More fretful of her sword’s sheath than her own bones, she protected the Sword of Okio and slid dangerously along the incline, coming to halt after what felt like a very long time. She lay on her side, feet higher than her head, feeling annoyed, and uncertain if she were injured. The saké dulled her sense of pain, but her left arm ached from the plunge.

  She half slid, half hopped the rest of the way to the lower gate, which was also unguarded. She opened it without difficulty.

  Hunters on horseback might pour downward at any moment. She tried to run across the moat’s causeway, staggering left and staggering right, fearful of dumping herself into the frigid water. At the end of the earthen bridge, she had to stop, dizzied by her flight. Before her, the snowy sea rose and fell. The sight amused her despite her predicament: a sea of snow. Didn’t it go up and down just like water? How exciting! It was slow and subtle, but definitely moving. The world had become an ocean.

  Her arm definitely ached. Pain reminded her of the seriousness of her situation. How moods swayed under the influence of spiritous drink! Things now appeared gloomy and hopeless. And in a few more moments, it no longer seemed that anything mattered one way or the other.

  Already she heard horses neighing as they issued from stables above, prepared by grooms for the night hunt. Would Priest Kuro’s glamour be so complete that not one vassal, not even Norifune, who was more under the sway of laziness and corruption than Kuro’s magic, would be able to tell they hunted no deer, but a drunken nun? She couldn’t think about it. She could barely think at all. If she dwelled too much upon it, she might convince herself that she had drunk a magic potion and become, indeed, a gray deer, and the perceptions of the hunters were less foggy than her own belief in her human appearance.

  More by instinct than reason—for her reason was askew—she knew not to use the main road across Sato’s estates, for she would be run to the ground at once. She staggered from the road, through snow, leaving unfortunate markings to betray her passing. She saw the glistening, moonlit sea of whiteness, and a stand of trees way across the fields. Among those young trees, she might have a chance at surviving. But she had become so awkward, she might never make it so far. Night erased depth-perception and the trees were actually further than she guessed—a shadowy forest of misbegotten hope, which stayed the same distance ahead, try as she might to get nearer.

  Mounted vassals clattered from the castle’s height, drummed the earth of the causeway. The sound carried nicely ove
r the quiet fields. They had directional lanterns, reflector beacons that cast long stripes of light across the snow. She heard Lord Sato’s childish shout of joy as he spotted what he thought to be the deer. She heard a whistling arrow. Only by blundering face-down upon the snow was she saved, by luck alone.

  She fell into a narrow ravine, so shallow that she had to tuck her head down in order to be protected. The ravine had a small overhang; and the harried nun half crawled, half loped along the narrow space where no snow had reached the ground. The ravine came eventually to an abrupt end, where snowdrifts had filled it. She raised her head and saw Lord Sato and his men far off, arrows poking upward at their backs, tall hunters’ hats upon their heads, their hand-held beacons shining this way and that. They looked left and right but didn’t see where the prey had vanished; from their perspective, there was no ravine to be seen.

  They rode across the snowy field in the wrong direction. Some of them split into a second party and started in an even more mistaken direction. The bikuni was little encouraged by their miscalculations. The moment she were to climb from cover, they would see her; and if she remained where she was, they would eventually find her.

  The two groups of hunters split up again, intending to flush the deer from whatever feeble hiding place it had discovered. The nun sat in the bottom of the ravine, back against the wall, massaging her left shoulder. She realized her fingers were stiff, either from the fall alongside the staircase or from her usual problem in cold weather.

  She tried to make her wine-enfeebled consciousness think more clearly. “If I climb out, I’ll be a big gray shadow on white snow. Even in the darkness, they will catch me.” That was as much as she could resolve.

  Her wooden geta had been a nuisance. She removed them, tied them together, and hung them from her belt. Her toe-socks would suffice against the cold, unless they got wet. She needed every edge of sure-footedness, considering her present awkwardness.

  For the moment, she felt a reckless calm and did not feel as harried as she did a bit earlier. Her mind was resigned though no less befuddled. As Lord Sato’s men had broken into several groups, perhaps she would have a chance against them. Surely she could devise some plan, she thought, if she sat quietly a few moments more and concentrated.

  Concentration was difficult. Her mind wandered. Her arm hurt. She had, in one sleeve, a bamboo container packed with the ointment Priest Bundori had made for her. She removed some of this and put the aromatic remedy on her sprained shoulder and her stiff knuckles.

  If she stayed in the ravine much longer, she would be in trouble.

  But she could think of no plan.

  Some of Lord Sato’s hunting companions were highly skilled men who, in fact, were specialists in catching healthy beasts alive, and bringing them to the estates for their lord to hunt down. Others were not skillful men. Most rode after their prey with no sense of the untoward; with no sense of urgency; but there were one or two who sensed and appreciated the evil jest.

  These latter were men without conscience who, akin to Chamberlain Norifune, were less in the weird priest’s thrall, for there was less goodness in them for Kuro to suck out. In the case of Norifune, the lack of conscience made him an indifferent sort of fellow, willing to go this way or that way as the tide insists. But those hunters who suspected they were not chasing a deer, who could only half pretend to see tracks as those of a deer and not a stumbling, drunken warrior-nun … these men could not suppress a tight-lipped, knowing grin as they looked at their companions and their lord, wondering who else, if any, shared this macabre knowledge.

  By day, nothing could hide for long in the snow-flattened fields. But by moon and starlight, something might evade them for a while. The mounted hunters danced their horses this way and that. They shined their candled beacons along the snow, but had left so many of their own tracks along the ravine’s margin that they could not be sure they hadn’t obscured the marks of fleeing prey.

  A few shouts were passed back and forth, but nobody made a call of discovery. They began to wander further apart. The land sloped upward, affording a fair view of the dips and rises, which were few. Some of the men were highly familiar with the terrain, having hunted here often and having learned to assure Lord Sato good sport. They knew that the apparent lack of hiding places was somewhat illusory. A few narrow streams and occasional gulleys could not be seen at a glance or from a distance. The hunters began to wander further and further from one another, each having in mind this or that spot where prey had huddled on past occasions.

  It was Norifune’s group that passed the spot where the nun had been sitting, panting, trying to collect her wits despite what she had been forced to drink; but she had vacated the spot. None detected the sign of her having been there, or having left, except one man. He looked askance at his fellows, more and more certain that they honestly believed their prey was merely a dumb beast. This man searched the area with the others, and held back when they began to ride further on, going slowly, looking at the ground for evidence of a deer’s passing. The straggler rode back to the end of the long ditch, shone his beacon into it, and looked pensive.

  He saw the markings of human feet, naked but for tabisocks. Though he could see where she had been sitting, he could not quite tell how she had gotten out without leaving a trail. But, since he had some sense that the prey was not a beast (the glamour had enough effect that he was not actually convinced of anything), he suspected his quarry’s human cunning. Furthermore, he was aware of the methods by which a human being, though not a beast, could pass over snow without leaving much evidence. The others had not thought to check for such signs, being more fully convinced that the prey was more than two-legged.

  The hunter had his horse’s reins attached to the saddle and controlled the mount by knee pressure. He hooked his lamp on the saddle as well. Then he pulled an arrow through the bottom of his quiver (the arrows being kept with fletched ends down and accessible through an opening at the base of the quiver). He sat ready to nock the arrow, but had not yet comprehended the prey’s location. He did have clues.

  As the horse obeyed its rider’s subtle encouragement, the hunter was able to locate—barely visible in the moon’s glimmer—a strip of snow that had been oddly unsettled, as though someone had dragged a bail of rice over it. He knew it to be the kind of track left by someone who lies flat atop snow and inches along in a wormlike fashion, skimming the surface, leaving little evidence of having passed.

  This trail ended a short ways on. The hunter became puzzled. He nocked the arrow but could not see where to aim. His companions were now quite scattered over the terrain. Lord Sato and his group were furthest off mark. The hunter knew that he alone was onto something; but, selfishly, he did not call the others back. He danced his horse around the area, trying to guess what further trick the prey had used, what direction she next had taken.

  He pursed his lips and glowered downward from his mount, unable to resolve the mystery.

  Without warning, a patch of snow erupted, directly beneath the horse. The nun stood, her sword bared, stabbing straight upward through the horse’s stomach, pushing the stomach with her shoulder. The hunter felt the horse tense its every muscle, heard it scream, and almost simultaneously felt his rectum punctured.

  As the horse went down, the hunter unleashed his arrow at random; it went deep into the snow, to no purpose. He began to shout with panic and horror as he hopped away from his thrashing horse, trailing blood in his wake. He clutched his buttocks and cried for aid, then fell, thrashing, much as the horse was thrashing. Meanwhile the nun had gone a surprising distance over the snow, though hampered by deep drifts.

  Nineteen hunters were on their way, responding to the cries of their fallen companion. A barrage of arrows was unleashed. The drunken nun wheeled, staggered, made a sweeping arc with her sword, standing less than perfect for a proper yadome-jutsu arrow-deflection. The arrows shattered against her blade, missing their mark, but a splinter lodged in her arm. Her clog
s, dangling from her obi, clattered like wooden ox bells as she dashed in the direction of the stand of trees. She heard the twang of bowstrings and turned again, deflecting death. There was small chance of getting as far as the woods. She had to consider offensive action rather than try to outrun horses and arrows. The hunters were still scattered and it would take a while longer for them to regroup. She must act swiftly.

  She ran straight toward Chamberlain Norifune.

  The nun looked ghastly in the moonlight, her shoulder-length hair plastered by sweat to the sides of her head, eyes maniacal rather than afraid, sword raised above her head. Norifune was completely undone! He tried to wheel his horse about, to let other men take the initiative. He shouted the order, “Kill her! Kill her!” but this confused the situation further, since the others saw only a deer blundering into better range. Norifune half-saw the illusion—a misty deer with the image of a warrior nun superimposed—and his mind tried to withdraw from any such knowlege of sorcery. It really was a helpless doe, ripe for feathering, not a dangerous warrior.

  She made a miraculous leap (must have been a deer after all!) and Norifune felt the edge of steel strike his neck. He plunged to the snow, his horse running off. He knew the blow should have decapitated him, but somehow he lay upon his back feeling good as dead but hardly headless.

  The nun hovered over his prone form, point of steel to his neck; and if the illusion of the deer was utterly dissipated for him, he still would not see things as they truly were, but fancied that the nun had been the sorceress from the beginning, and led the hunters a merry chase for reasons all her own.

  “Who are you?” screeched the panic-stricken Norifune, unable to move away from the threatening blade without injury.

  “A lot of people want to know my name,” she answered. “All right. I will tell you. It is Neroyume. It means ‘sleeping in hell.’” She pressed the sword’s point until Norifune was scratched the slightest bit. “You would be sleeping there just now, except I struck you with the backside of my sword and not its sharp edge. You owe me your life! Now, tell those other men to stop this business at once. I can’t think so well and am liable to do something rash.”