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  Theories and realities aside, on Yamabuki’s prior crossings of the strait, it had fallen to the retinue to clear the path of riffraff, making sure that the prying eyes of the lowborn were directed elsewhere—usually toward the dirt, foreheads touching the soil.

  However, on the previous occasions, Yamabuki and the other highborn ladies traveling in her company, in keeping with the custom, would let one of their arms dangle from behind one of the silk-curtained carriage windows; whose arms and which window remained a matter of changing fashion. With arms appropriately extended, the prevailing breeze would pick up the graceful cut sleeves of the women’s lavish brocade kimonos. Thus, the quick of eye could catch a glimpse of a milky-white exposed wrist. At this a gasp might escape from someone who kowtowed by the roadside—a muted gasp at that, for if discovered, the wrath visited by the retinue on the offender was swift and painful. Everyone knew firsthand, or at least in the telling, that being smacked with swords, even those still in their scabbards, left bruises.

  Men—as men are, from the lowest to the highest—could not help but wonder what fetching creatures remained hidden behind the colorful curtains; and the women for their part laughed and giggled coyly, adding to the allure which their station demanded that they uphold at all times.

  Today, however, the demands on Yamabuki were entirely different. Not giggling. Not hiding behind silk curtains nor exposing a wrist. Not in the finest brocade but in the best-made battle gear, she led Mochizuki down Foot Trail while the arriving Ōuchi men trekked up. Her armor covered almost every bit of her body—feet, legs, torso, shoulders, head, arms, and hands—all except for her fingertips, where tactile sense was needed to effectively wield her weapons. And in a twist of irony, the only other part of her flesh that was exposed was her quite naked face.

  Yamabuki’s personal servants had been aghast that she would let herself be seen thus. Exposed to everyone! Her handmaids had almost insisted, though it was not really their place to do so, that she wear a mempo battle mask to conceal her physiognomy.

  Nakagawa had suggested otherwise. A mask would only invite curiosity. He had noted there was a common samurai protocol used to defuse unwarranted suspicion: while passing one another on any given street or road, warriors would briefly trade momentary glances in what Nakagawa called the peaceable practice of wolves recognizing wolves.

  Though at first she did not care for the custom, quickly she had learned that if another samurai’s gaze lingered, she had to look directly back without exactly locking eyes until they looked away in feigned disinterest.

  If anything, it was the spirited horse, and not of the seemingly ordinary Taka warrior in the dark-green armor with cobalt-blue woven-silk cords, that drew the attention of other warriors.

  During prior journeys, the retinue had forced everyone to gather along the roadside and thus attracted a great deal of mandated attention, after which the retinue thrashed those who could not help but finally look.

  But now in the guise of a buké she realized that most people simply moved through the world. Anyone who dared to meet her gaze could apprehend her countenance—though so far on her journey few commoners had.

  Though her gear was immaculate, it was not all that different from the gear worn by the warriors now coming up Foot Trail. Like them, she too bore swords, bow, arrows, and a pole arm, as well as the other armaments, such as daggers and throwing stars, peculiar to warriors.

  However, there was one thing that might have drawn attention to her, if the others only knew: she carried three scroll-length dispatches hidden on her person. Meant only for the Taka courtiers in Heian-kyō, under no circumstances were they to fall into unintended hands.

  Three:

  The One-Eyed Daimyō of Ten-Legged Things

  Yamabuki was more than halfway down Foot Trail when she saw a man whose black hair glistened strangely, almost blue in the sun. Clad in fisherman’s gear, on hands and knees, he struggled to recover a tipped-over basket-load of spider crabs that scrambled in every direction. Muttering plaintively about not making it to market on time, one by one he tossed the feisty still-living creatures back into the carrier.

  Yamabuki paused while the procession of approaching Ōuchi stepped around the crabber, paying him no more notice than a river would to a large boulder. She watched him moving crab-like. The daimyō of things ten-legged, she thought to herself.

  Already on his knees, he kowtowed even further, if such a thing were possible. After all, she led a battle horse who needed a wide berth, yet she did not drive the old man off the side of the hill as would have been her warrior-class right.

  When he finally did look up, she saw the frayed, thick, and soiled patch he wore over his right eye. He smiled cautiously. Despite the missing eye, he seemed otherwise fit. He even had all his teeth, which was unusual for a commoner of his years.

  “Eating crabs must be bringing you health,” she said with a grin. As she moved away from the cliff to walk around the crabber, Mochizuki snorted.

  Without warning, an Ōuchi samurai with the build of an ox marched downhill past the temperamental steed, well-nigh knocking the crabber aside. Paying not the least mind to the common fisherman, nor his catch, the samurai tramped straight through the still-swarming crabs. Annoyed by the crab basket in the road, he growled and kicked it, sending more crabs flying.

  “Ahh!” The old man let out a muffled scream.

  Crunch.

  The samurai’s foot crushed one crab.

  Crunch.

  Another crab suffered the same fate.

  What impertinence! Yamabuki stiffened at the affront to her, not the crabber.

  The samurai moved as if he could not get to the dock fast enough. She speculated that he must have forgotten something on the boat. But when she saw his sword blade’s length, she knew he was definitely not among the Ōuchi warriors who had just come up the hill. She would have certainly remembered someone hefting a field-sword—a weapon whose chief function was to enable foot soldiers to bring down mounted samurai. Too long to sling from the waist, its bearer had to shoulder the nodachi blade in the manner of a spear. In fact the amount of steel residing in the blade made it unusually heavy, so much so that it ordinarily took two warriors simultaneously grasping the hilt to correctly swing a field sword through its effective arc. However, if a warrior possessed exceptional strength, he might master one-man-nodachi-style, enabling him to hack down any adversary before his opponent could ever get close.

  Momentarily her thoughts flashed back to the day Nakagawa had brought his own nodachi into the Taka training hall back in Great Bay Province and challenged her, his ten-year-old student at the time, to find a way to defend against it. “For the very strong,” he had said, “a nodachi provides many advantages, yet a weakness is buried in each.” But, as always, he never exactly showed her the answer, and of course he never revealed it in words. But after a score of days in the training hall had passed, she came to understand how to defeat the nodachi: speed.

  She continued to watch as the long-sword samurai disappeared around a switchback. So, she thought to herself, this “Long Sword” will likely have to be endured on the boat today. She frowned.

  The fisherman, still on all fours, chased after what remained of his catch.

  She moved on, leaving him to his woes.

  But the one-eyed man was watching her retreating back, and once she was around the bend and barely out of sight, he leapt up and started scaling the hillside, abandoning his crabs and basket in the middle of the trail.

  Climbing like a goat, he reached an overlook point in a line of sight with the beach.

  He pulled a bright yellow silk scarf out of his tunic. Raising it high, he let the prevailing wind catch it. When the scarf started to flutter, he waved it frantically.

  Moments later, in answer, a mirror glint flashed up from the beach.

  With that he stuffed the yellow s
hawl back into his tunic and clambered even higher up the rocky hillside, disappearing into the pines, leaving the ten-legged things to their own devices.

  Four:

  Full Moon Tide

  Yamabuki arrived at the base of Foot Trail. The sun had risen high enough to wash the cove with full morning light, but beneath the bluff’s semi-shadow, by the water’s edge where the air was definitely cooler, squawking gulls scuttled across the rocks, sand, and shell. Out in the channel cormorants and pelicans poked their bills into dark waters, coming up with prey in their beaks.

  Up and down the shore, villagers with waterlogged wooden buckets dug around the half submerged larger boulders. Oyster hunters.

  She looked further along the shoreline to the point where the land curved away from the channel, beyond which only the wide-open, mysterious blue ocean stretched toward the world’s edge.

  Near land’s end she noticed a small hovel. Dirty smoke rose from a vent in the roof. Someone had notched together a series of square wooden frames. They lay on the sand just outside the hut. Probably makers.

  Standing on some rocks above a tidal pool, two laughing young men with shaven heads, flowing white robes, and thick walking sticks skipped pebbles out into the channel to see who could get the most hops over the wave tops of the rapidly outgoing tide. Buddhists. Tendai sect, no doubt.

  She saw the samurai with the nodachi sitting on a large boulder high above the water, away from everyone else. He had assumed the countenance of a rotund Buddha, but instead of gold-plate, this one sat clad in indigo armor. He scowled as he studied the two monks.

  Well, she laughed to herself, almost a Buddha. A scowling Buddha at best. Hmm. What interest does he have in the monks? A manly attraction? Maybe. They certainly could be pleasing.

  One of the oyster hunters, a reedy girl with a sweet smile, carefully approached Yamabuki. The girl glanced uneasily at Mochizuki, who for the moment remained placid. Overcoming whatever fear she might have had, the girl lifted a brimming bucket for Yamabuki’s inspection.

  “Oysters, samurai-sama?” she said, bowing.

  Yamabuki had not eaten an oyster since she left the shores of Great Bay Province, and the mere sight of the barnacle-covered shells filled her with memories of home.

  “How much?” Yamabuki asked.

  “A copper,” the girl answered, casting her eyes down.

  Yamabuki’s eyes narrowed. “A copper? For how many?”

  The girl started. Her eyes shot back up. Her lips quavered slightly.

  The older oyster hunters, who waded out among the rocks, watched the interchange from out of the corners of their worried eyes.

  Likewise, Yamabuki watched the oyster hunters.

  Their fear was obvious, and she understood their concern. Both she and they knew that most samurai made a point of being unpredictable, temperamental, and dangerous. A samurai would think nothing of striking an oyster hunter, whatever her age, who delivered an insult, real or imagined.

  Trying to stay only a bit stern, Yamabuki glanced at the bucket. “Are they good? Fresh?”

  “Just now,” the girl answered, pointing back toward the oyster hunters who waded ever further out into the channel. “Full Moon tide. Water’s low. Good.”

  Yamabuki looked skeptically into the bucket. When she let her eyes meet the girl’s, she did not show her samurai face. She smiled down at the child. “They alive?”

  “Hai,” the girl replied and poked her finger into the various open shells, each of which lazily closed.

  “One copper. Five oysters.”

  The girl’s eyes opened wide.

  Maybe she can’t count. Yamabuki held up five fingers.

  The girl bowed very low.

  Humph. Looks like I’ve already agreed to pay too much.

  The girl quickly fished out five oysters, ones toward the bucket bottom.

  “These’re the best,” she said, catching her breath. “Biggest. Freshest of all.”

  The girl yanked a knife out of her sash and shucked the five with total alacrity, setting the half shells on a waist high boulder next to Yamabuki.

  Large indeed. Yamabuki took the closest oyster and lifted it, shell and all, to her lips to scoop the meat off into her mouth; she could not help but smile as the taste of ocean mingled with the delicate flavor of the oyster’s flesh.

  Yamabuki handed the girl the promised copper.

  The girl scurried away to the other oyster gatherers, where there was much talking, nodding of heads, and veiled gesturing in Yamabuki’s direction.

  Indeed, I definitely paid too much. Still, as she finished the fifth and final oyster, it tasted just as good as the first. In fact, it was better than what she remembered being served at her estate house in the Taka compound.

  Maybe the old saw was true: “Oysters taste best when your toes touch the sea.”

  She was sated. The copper coin was irrelevant, the actual purchase being the girl’s momentary smile.

  One more thing remained. She reached into her saddle pouch to remove a small bamboo canteen adorned with an indigo-black jade Taka crest. She took a quick, yet ample, sip of saké from the flask innkeeper Inu had replenished just that morning. Not too much, now, she reminded herself. Who knows how long it will be before I again shall taste saké such as this?

  Just then she heard sounds behind her that echoed and reechoed along the crescent cliffs: a group of shouting men coming down the Carriage Road. She counted six of them. They rolled a rickety two-wheel cart onto the rocky beach. All wore vivid green work tunics decorated with golden roundels. Fine clothes or not, the men wrestled like common laborers with the handcart they had stacked to overflowing with bundles.

  They are wearing fine fabrics. Probably fabric merchants.

  One of their number, who seemed to be the master weaver, animatedly pointed, bobbed his head, and waved his arms. The other men heaved, pulled, and shouted at one another, but finally the cart bumped its way over the rocks and onto the wide set of planks that covered the last forty or so strides to the dock. Even so, the merchants were making painfully slow progress.

  For the time being, Yamabuki thought it best to keep her colt back from their ruckus.

  She glanced back at Carriage Road and saw Blue Rice saunter onto the beach. He paused. Taking in a deep breath, he placed one hand up to shield his face from the direct rays of the sun, which just now broke over the highest top of the hillside.

  “Feed for your handsome stallion, samurai-sama?” asked a wizened man, stooped from carrying a load of hay across his back. “Only one copper for all this.”

  A copper for just that? Then again, Mochizuki won’t eat that much anyway; and besides, it will keep him quiet.

  She flipped the man the coin, which he caught one-handed. He set the bale down, bowed, and scurried away. Mochizuki snorted and immediately started to munch.

  The sun was still rising. She turned her gaze toward the mid-morning seascape, taking in the beauty, wishing to seal these precious moments in her memory.

  It would be some time before she would cross home over Barrier Strait.

  The morning moon had set. Though she did not wish to let herself become overly sentimental, her Taka-born characteristic realism reminded her that sentimentality might not be an indulgence at all.

  As the tide moved out to sea, she felt a sweeping sense of awaré, the sorrowful awareness that the world is transient.

  Five:

  The Boyish Face Behind the Mask

  The prior afternoon, just as the sun had begun to settle into the Leeward Sea, Yamabuki had ridden into the bustling coastal port of Kita, a town of a thousand strangers. Only a quarter hour’s ride from the Barrier Strait, the town consisted more or less of two hundred permanent structures, including several inns, making it the perfect place for travelers to bed down and wait for the dawn.

 
As was the custom among the Taka, she sought out the Inn of Young Bamboo, the Wakatake. A place of genuine hospitality, the inn was a source of valuable information to the Taka as to what and who of note passed by on the road, as well as sailed into and out of the port. The Yūkū family, Wakatake’s fifth-generation proprietors, were not only friendly to the Taka but also in the clan’s pay.

  Don’t the Taka call innkeeper Inu “Ears”?

  Yamabuki stopped Mochizuki in front of the inn and took a moment to observe the surroundings.

  A chest-high fence of woven bamboo staves separated the front garden from the street, but it did not obstruct the inviting view of the large building, one of the few two-story structures in all of Kita. Emerald banners inscribed with white calligraphy flew to tout the inn to passersby. A wide first-floor veranda ran the inn’s entire perimeter. Heavy wooden outer doors stood open to let in the warm and fragrant spring afternoon.

  She slung her leg over the saddle and, despite wearing full armor, leapt down, landing gracefully and solidly on her feet. She tethered Mochizuki at the entry gate, taking in the sweet aroma of the cherry blossoms that bloomed in abundance.

  No sooner had she set foot through the gateway than Old Inu stepped out onto the veranda.

  “Welcome, Lady Taka. Welcome!” Having not aged a day, he almost sprang on the balls of his feet, bowing low several times as he approached her. “I was told you might be our guest tonight, though I wasn’t exactly sure when you were going to arrive.”

  She indicated with a small gesture of her hand that he should not so freely reveal her exact identity.

  “Ha!” he exclaimed, blushing a bit from embarrassment. “Don’t worry. You’re our only guest tonight. No one else’s here. I’ve been telling everyone that we have no rooms.”

  Then she noticed a stranger hanging back in the entryway shadows. Quite tall, at least as tall as she. Powerful of build, he stood erect like a warrior.

  “You said I was the only guest.” She pointed in the stranger’s direction.