want to knock me around, you better be ready for me to knock back. I’m going to walk out that door, and I don’t want to see you again. Ever. Find someone else to do your dirty work.”
Furukawa had no idea what to do with that. He watched, dumbstruck, as Mariko slammed the door behind her.
BOOK SIX
AZUCHI-MOMOYAMA PERIOD, THE YEAR 21
(1588 CE)
26
“You’re a little one, aren’t you?”
The man who asked the question was anything but little. He had shoulders like an ox and a belly like a whale. He carried a long naginata with a blade as broad as a butcher’s cleaver. It was rusty, ill kept but well used. There was no mistaking the notches taken out of its edge; this one had seen plenty of fighting.
The big man—already named Whalebelly in Daigoro’s mind—had two accomplices. On his left stood a flat-faced man wielding two short kama. The sickles were intended for farming, but they were increasingly used in hand-to-hand combat now that the Sword Hunt had disarmed most of the population. On Whalebelly’s right stood a lean, haggard, foul-smelling woman who looked tougher than the other two put together. Her yellow nails were broken but her knives weren’t. She had one in each hand and half a dozen more tucked into her belt.
For his part, Daigoro was armed primarily with a huge bundle of dried wattle. It was his best disguise to date. The sheaf was large enough, and bowed his back enough, that bystanders had trouble making eye contact with him. It was light but it didn’t look that way, so no one would question a boy of his size limping under the load. Better yet, it was long enough that he could hide his father’s odachi in the center of it. So disguised, Daigoro found he could pass unnoticed within an arm’s reach of Shichio’s patrols.
On the other hand, his hunched posture restricted his peripheral vision, which made it easy for yamabushi like Whalebelly to take him unawares. His disguise also made it impossible to draw Glorious Victory, so if it came to blows, he would have no choice but to face these bandits with his wakizashi. Even that was tucked up into the bundle, frightfully slow on the draw.
“Wattle don’t sell for much,” he said, affecting a lowborn vernacular. “Not much use to folk like you, neither.”
“What do you mean, ‘folk like you’?” Whalebelly demanded. “You think you’re better than us, farmer boy?”
“No, sir. Figured you’re not fond of building fences is all.”
A sudden gale brought the surrounding bamboo forest to life. Leaves rustled. Long, green stalks clacked and clattered. The wind carried the smells of the yamabushi too: old sweat, oily hair, clothes so dirty they would never be worth washing again. And yes, alcohol. Whalebelly was drunk and spoiling for a fight.
Daigoro looked past them, down the natural tunnel formed by the overarching bamboo. It ran straight downhill to the road. Once he reached the road, he knew he’d see the moss green banners of House Yasuda. No more than a hundred paces, he guessed. A hundred paces and he would have peace. Damn you, he thought, damn all you gods and devils. Why could you not give me just a hundred paces more?
A lone boy versus three armed bandits. A one-sided fight to say the least. “I’ll give you one chance to retreat,” Daigoro said.
“Hah!” Whalebelly whacked his naginata against the ground, just like a bull pawing the earth before a charge.
“So that’s the way of it,” Daigoro said.
A one-sided fight, if the lone boy was samurai. Daigoro predicted the woman for a thrower—no reason to carry eight knives if she wasn’t—and he made sure her first shot went into the wattle. Flipping his sheaf the other way, he intercepted Whalebelly’s charge. The oversized naginata entangled itself irretrievably in the tangle of bundled sticks.
Daigoro ducked the next knife. Then he pulled the first one from the wattle and rammed it into Whalebelly’s diaphragm. It sank all the way to the hilt. That was enough to send the other man running.
The woman stood her ground, but only for the moment. Whalebelly clutched his weapon, trying desperately to keep his feet, so between the dying giant and the huge sheaf of sticks, Daigoro had adequate cover against her knives. Every missed throw would arm her quarry with another blade. “I’ll go,” she said, “but only if you let me take his wineskin.”
“It’s all yours.”
She crept up cautiously, expecting a double cross. Then, quick as