Chương 19: Book 1: Chapter 7 - Satomi [Part 3]

The lord was younger than Shimon had expected, perhaps in his thirties, though the lines around his eyes spoke of hard-earned experience. Those who held power in the Warring States were forced to mature quickly. His face was composed, with a sharp jaw and the controlled stillness of a man who knew that every reaction was being watched. His robes were not ostentatious, but the fabric was fine, carefully layered, and arranged with precise attention. A short sword rested close at hand.

Behind and around him, the Satomi two-line crest adorned screens, banners, and even the smallest fittings. Nagai Morichika sat to one side, his posture perfect, the little feathered microraptor nowhere visible today. Somehow, Shimon missed it. Near him, Master Hieda was also present, looking smaller here than he had the other day. The young man realized that wealth changed one's presence depending on whose room it stood in. The shrine priest from yesterday was there too.

He looked at Shimon for one moment and then looked away. That was not comforting. Tarō bowed deeply, prompting Shimon to copy him. A breath later, he decided deeper was safer and lowered himself further, hands to the tatami, forehead nearly touching. The room held its silence, and he wondered if he had overdone it. Satomi Yoshihiro spoke.

"Raise your heads." Tarō did, followed soon by Shimon. The man from another time and place did not look directly at the lord's eyes, instead choosing a point somewhere near the man's sleeve.

"My retainer Nagai Morichika has given report," Lord Yoshihiro stated.

"Master Hieda has given report. Priests have confirmed the proof. Yet dead men cannot speak, and even those who live often speak poorly. You will tell me what happened." Tarō bowed again.

"Yes, my lord." Shimon bowed half a heartbeat later, and then the questioning began. Tarō began with the recruitment; Master Hieda's commission, the Adventurer's Za, Kuroda Genzō taking command, the Kume brothers at the front, Mizuno Sōbei and Sakurai Iori with bows. At the mention of Sakurai, several faces in the room shifted. Not much. These were trained men after all. But enough to make it known that they were unsettled. Yoshihiro asked, "Sakurai Iori spoke his own name under witness?"

Tarō answered, "Yes, my lord." The lord's gaze moved to Hieda. Hieda bowed.

"The name was entered. The Za official witnessed it. The scribe recorded it." A clerk to the side consulted a paper and nodded and Tarō continued with his account. They moved through the road, the village, the storehouses, the charms, the crows. Tarō described the legless Hojo soldier crawling from the woods, begging to be killed, then dying before he could say more. He did not embellish, and his voice remained rough and flat in the retelling.

He spoke next of Mizuno taking the soldier's head, then the coolies fleeing at the sight of the slaughter. Then came the part about the hollow and its dead. And yōma feeding upon those dead. As Tarō spoke, the room seemed to grow colder. Men who had not been there could imagine themselves there now. That was the power of plain speech, Shimon realized. It left room for fear to fill the empty places of the imagination. Then came the most important part, the part when everything went wrong. Sakurai.

Tarō's jaw tightened.

"Kuroda-dono ordered Sakurai to fetch a spear from the abandoned bundles. Sakurai drew instead. He cut Kuroda-dono's arm at the joint. Deep. Then he called to the yōma as brothers." A stir moved through the hall. Yoshihiro's face did not change.

"His words?" Tarō swallowed.

"'Come and feed, my brothers.'" The shrine priest made a small sign with his fingers and Nagai Morichika's eyes narrowed and became hard. Yoshihiro looked to Shimon.

"You saw this?" The room turned toward him. Shimon's mind vacated itself.

"Yes, my lord," he somehow managed. Good. Short. Polite. It would have to do. The Lord studied him with a neutral expression.

"Did Sakurai show strange behavior before this?" This was more dangerous. Shimon considered every interaction. Sakurai had been quiet. Cultured. Interested when Shimon mentioned guns that did not exist here. Strange, yes, but in a way that everything was strange to him. The young man could have said all of this and more.

"He was calm," Shimon said instead, taking great care with his words.

"Well-spoken. Skilled. He asked little. I suspected nothing that I understood." The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. One advisor leaned forward.

"That you understood?" Shimon lowered his head.

"I am green, my lord. Kuroda-dono said so himself. I did not know him well enough to judge." There was a faint shift in the room. Not amusement exactly, but something close to it. Tarō glanced at him, and it might even have been approval. Another retainer asked, "Did he avoid charms? Salt? Priests? Did animals fear him?" Shimon thought of the road. Of the village. Of the forest. Of the microraptor yesterday. Had it reacted to Sakurai? He could not remember. Memory, traitorous thing, offered only fragments.

"Not that I saw," Shimon answered.

"I suspect the yōma hid well because the man it hid under, hid well." That produced silence. He cursed himself, wondering if he had said something too poetic. Yoshihiro's gaze remained on him.

"And then?" Tarō resumed, but only briefly.

"The yōma charged. Mizuno-dono called for my brother and me to hold them while he and Ayanokouji moved on Sakurai. Kuroda-dono, though wounded, struck Sakurai with his spear. Ayanokouji cut Sakurai. Then my brother struck one of the grey yōma with his spear. The point went in." Tarō stopped. For the first time, his voice lost its flatness, something in it threatening to break.

"The thing pulled itself along the shaft. Another struck Jirō. He fell. I threw my spear and missed. I drew my sword and charged." His mouth tightened.

"Then something struck me. I remember the blow. I remember the tree. After that, nothing until I woke." The admission landed cleanly. Not weakness, not shame, just a fact as if he was discussing the state of the weather. Another retainer looked at Shimon.

"So from that point, only Ayanokouji can speak to events." Unfortunately, yes, Shimon thought.

"Yes, my lord," Shimon said aloud. Satomi Yoshihiro watched him.

"Then speak." He chose truth with important omissions.

"Sakurai was wounded but not dead. Kuroda-dono's spear had pinned him. Mizuno-dono fought though his eye was hurt. I cut Sakurai again." He did not say the voice had entered his skull. He did not say the thing had told him he was not human, not yōma, but would suffice.

"Sakurai's head nearly came free," Shimon continued.

"He fell. The yōma still came." An older advisor asked, "The three grey ones?" He looked at the older man.

"Yes."

"And Kuroda Genzō?"

"Dying or dead by then," Shimon answered succinctly.

"He had already done more than a wounded man should have been able to do." That seemed, again, to be the acceptable answer.

"Mizuno Sōbei?" another important looking man insisted.

"Alive then," Shimon reported, schooling his face to calm.

"Half-blind. He pulled me back when I would have stood too long. He fought beside me." That was also true, for Mizuno Sōbei had stood with him. Shimon had disliked him, but that did not make the debt he owed the dead man vanish.

"One yōma had Jirō's spear in it," Shimon continued.

"It moved badly. The other two were whole. We tried to keep them away. We failed. Mizuno died fighting." His voice almost caught there and he hated himself for that moment of weakness. The room listened. Shimon remembered the grey shapes, teeth, arms too long, and the cold clarity of his chip. Something else riding through him, using him. Lines in the air, thin and bright, and the sword vanishing into its sheathe, gathering energy then exploding into strikes that reduced monsters to meat.

Yae Ikazuchi, the eightfold lightning draw. But that was not talk for this room.

"I do not remember all of it clearly," he stated, and it was truth enough armored by omission. A retainer frowned.

"Yet you killed them."

"I was alive at the end," Shimon said.

"They were not." The hall became very still and Nagai Morichika looked at him as if trying to decide whether this was stupidity, insolence, or the highest form of battlefield simplicity. Lord Satomi Yoshihiro's mouth moved by the smallest possible fraction.

"Alive at the end," the lord repeated. Ayanokouji gathered what sincerity he could.

"Yes, my lord." Yoshihiro did not press immediately. Instead, he asked about the aftermath. Tarō could speak again there. He explained waking, seeing Shimon alive among the dead, seeing Sakurai's changed corpse, seeing the three grey yōma dead. He explained taking proof; the yōma teeth, Sakurai's head, and the heads of routed enemies, and the burning of the bodies. He spoke too of the practical part of leaving weapons and armor for later retrieval. At this, one older retainer nodded as if approving the sense of it.

Shimon needed to place the spotlight clearly upon someone else.

"Tarō insisted the dead be burned, and he brought us out of that place." Tarō looked uncomfortable. Good, Shimon thought. Suffer being useful. The lord listened, and his questions circled back to Sakurai again and again. How had he entered? Who had spoken for him? Did anyone know him? Had the Za official recognized the name? Had Sakurai handled the contract? Did he sign with a kaō? Did he bleed before being revealed? Did he eat with them? Did he ask about patrols, villages, storehouses, routes, old battlefields?

Most answers were no, but some were worse. The worst being that they did not know. That, it seemed, troubled the room more than any monster's teeth. A yōma in the forest was a horror. A yōma who could sign a name under witness and stand among hired men was a grave threat to civilization. Shimon understood that kind of fear. The modern world loved systems. Security systems, identification systems, and payment systems. When stripped away, it showed the true vulnerability of the society it protected.

At last, however, the questions slowed. Satomi Yoshihiro sat in silence for several breaths, his gaze resting not on the survivors now but on some point in the middle distance. Then he spoke.

"Men died in my land. Men under witness. Men sent to learn the shape of disorder. They found it. The dead will be remembered and their names recorded." Tarō bowed until his forehead touched the tatami. Shimon copied him half a heartbeat later.

"The Adventurer's Za was permitted to gather blades because yōma work is filthy, dangerous, and beneath the orderly deployment of troops," Yoshihiro continued.

"Such convenience now shows its flaws." Master Hieda lowered his head deeply. The lord's eyes moved to him.

"Hieda."

"My lord."

"You will assist Nagai Morichika in examining the Za's records. Names, marks, commissions, payments, scribes, witnesses, all of it." Hieda bowed even lower.

"At once."